Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey everyone, welcome back to Risky Business, a show
Speaker 1: about making better decisions or freaking the fuck out. I'm
Speaker 1: Maria Kandikova.
Speaker 2: And I'm Nate Silvan. It's is our first emergency episode.
Speaker 1: I believe is this is it is it is. It's
Speaker 1: our emergency podcast. You guys heard our voices just yesterday,
Speaker 1: and we are back again today, Friday, after the presidential
Speaker 1: elections because we just could not sleep. Literally in some cases.
Speaker 2: Elections are oh yes, sorry, which gives people thankfully.
Speaker 1: This is how fried my brain is. This is how
Speaker 1: fried my brain is. I said, elections instead of debate. So, Nate,
Speaker 1: last night we were both watching the debates from opposite
Speaker 1: coasts and about let's see twenty minutes in. I actually
Speaker 1: have the time stamp on my phone. Six twenty, I
Speaker 1: texted you, since you know we we were not watching it.
Speaker 1: We were watching it together but apart, and I'm just
Speaker 1: going to read my text, I says. I said, this
Speaker 1: debate is painful, what is even happening? Make it stop?
Speaker 1: And then I said we are so fucked. And that
Speaker 1: is when I knew Nate that we had to talk today.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I was getting a lot of texts like that.
Speaker 2: You know, people know, like I'm busy during debates, I'm
Speaker 2: probably going to respond right away, but like the degree
Speaker 2: of unanimity.
Speaker 1: You responded to me.
Speaker 2: Thanks, Yeah, look, you're hyph riary the degree of unanimity
Speaker 2: that I was seeing from from you know, different types
Speaker 2: of Democrats, right centrist Democrats and left wing Democrats and
Speaker 2: Democrats who have been very mad at me for suggesting
Speaker 2: Derek to suggests that having a guy running to be
Speaker 2: president Untilose eighty six might be a bad idea and
Speaker 2: couldn't badly and or with a Donald Trump presidency instead,
Speaker 2: And like, I want to criticize people who change their
Speaker 2: mind in the direction that I think is persuasive. But
Speaker 2: like among the media slash pundit class, you have to
Speaker 2: be really bad when the incentives are so strong to spin.
Speaker 2: You have to be really bad to get to a
Speaker 2: point where even the spinners kind of give up.
Speaker 3: Right, And I'm you know, the.
Speaker 2: Term preference cascade is sometimes used where people think something
Speaker 2: and there's a social stigma of saying it. Well, there's
Speaker 2: no longer a social stigma of saying that Joe Biden
Speaker 2: should drop out, right, That's like, that's like almost like
Speaker 2: the normy not normally damn voter you although actually it
Speaker 2: is Actually I take that back, because like if you
Speaker 2: look at Poles, and overwhelming majority of voters and the
Speaker 2: majority of Democrats, not an overwhelming majority of Democrats have
Speaker 2: said that they think Biden is too old to be
Speaker 2: president at least for another four years.
Speaker 3: So look, I think this was, you know.
Speaker 2: Relative to Look, I actually thought about this ahead of time, Maria,
Speaker 2: because I'm weird like that, right. I thought there was
Speaker 2: like a twenty percent chance that I would write a
Speaker 2: post which I wrote at Silver Bolton early this morning
Speaker 2: slash late last night.
Speaker 3: Entitled Yes, Joe Biden should drop out.
Speaker 2: I thought there was a twenty percent chance of that,
Speaker 2: but I thought that twenty percent people would be really
Speaker 2: really mad at me. And now like everyone loves the
Speaker 2: post and it's like the conventional wisdom and it's obvious
Speaker 2: apparently right.
Speaker 1: But like, by the way, you got a lot of
Speaker 1: shit when you said he should drop out when we
Speaker 1: were talking about on this podcast about four weeks ago
Speaker 1: something like that, because you said he could drop out.
Speaker 3: We didn't say he should should.
Speaker 1: We said he should consider.
Speaker 2: And then we launched our election model on wed days
Speaker 2: and even on Wednesday, and Biden had like a thirty
Speaker 2: five percent chance of winning that forecast, and that will
Speaker 2: probably go down maybe quite a bit after the debate.
Speaker 2: But like at thirty five percent is where I was
Speaker 2: roughly indifferent. It's a good poker term, right, although actually
Speaker 2: use that in like regular life. It's like not that weird,
Speaker 2: but like I was indifferent at thirty five percent between
Speaker 2: Biden and mystery.
Speaker 1: And folding, right, yeah, between.
Speaker 2: Calling and folding, you know, whatever his efforts debate, it's
Speaker 2: it's a fold. It's not even a fucking close fold, right,
Speaker 2: It's not even I'm not gonna I'm not going to
Speaker 2: use a time bank chip thinking about this one any longer.
Speaker 3: It's not tenable, not tenable to have.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm not just even tenable for him to
Speaker 2: be president for the next six months or whatever, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, that's a debate we could probably have, right,
Speaker 2: that might be close, but like, it's not tenable to
Speaker 2: have someone who wants to be president for another four
Speaker 2: and a half years give a performance like that where
Speaker 2: he obviously shows his age, which is what you'd expect
Speaker 2: because he's eighty one and he wants to be president
Speaker 2: until he's eighty six. It's not tenable to have this
Speaker 2: person continue to run for president right now. People are
Speaker 2: fucking stupid and stubborn, especially old people. Yeah, and they
Speaker 2: may make a bad decision, but like, if you care
Speaker 2: about like, uh, defeating Donald Trump, if you care about
Speaker 2: the kind of you' sure the Democratic Party, and if
Speaker 2: you care about listening to like the voters who have
Speaker 2: done you the favor of telling you this for a year,
Speaker 2: that like, yeah, hey, common sense, you know, eighty one
Speaker 2: is too old to be president and president was eighty six.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, but like this is kind of not that
Speaker 2: close a decision anymore, I don't think. And in some ways,
Speaker 2: like I told, like a I'm rambling. I'm sorry, you know,
Speaker 2: it's I.
Speaker 1: Told you're allowed to ramble on it, and then I'll
Speaker 1: ramble after you. Please continue with.
Speaker 2: This little social event on Wednesday night, and I had
Speaker 2: a good conversation with women I had met before, and
Speaker 2: she was despondent about Biden's performance, and I'm like, well,
Speaker 2: you'd probably root for it to go either really well
Speaker 2: or really badly, right because the muddling through the status quo,
Speaker 2: you know, two third chance of losing or whatever. I mean,
Speaker 2: one thirds in that bad as any poker player knows.
Speaker 2: But you know, it may have been so bad that
Speaker 2: it's the thing that saves Democrats from a disaster. Although
Speaker 2: I still think and the other nominee against Trump would
Speaker 2: also be, you know, in a difficult position.
Speaker 3: I'm not Pollyanna ish about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Oh, Gavin Newsom waved the wine and now he wins.
Speaker 2: Like no, I think Gavin Newsom now or Kamala Harris
Speaker 2: has a puncher's chance or maybe more than a puncher's chance,
Speaker 2: but like but like just you know, might be below
Speaker 2: fifty percent, but above Biden.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So a few things. I mean, first of all, like, yes,
Speaker 1: I think that yesterday was abysmal. I mean I actually
Speaker 1: literally was watching at the beginning, like I do horror movies,
Speaker 1: like sometimes when something is too grizzly, like I like,
Speaker 1: you know, shield my face and I don't even realize
Speaker 1: I'm doing it. And I was doing that yesterday, Like
Speaker 1: I was sitting on the couch and like at some
Speaker 1: point I just went like this, you know, I shielded
Speaker 1: my eyes and I was like, oh my god, this
Speaker 1: is this is just it was painful, Like it was
Speaker 1: actually physically painful to watch, especially at the beginning. I
Speaker 1: think he got a little bit better, but he was
Speaker 1: just struggling so much, and you could really see his
Speaker 1: age and Trump, I mean, Trump was making no sense either,
Speaker 1: but he was confidentially making no sense and lying, and
Speaker 1: the fact that a candidate couldn't beat that, couldn't point
Speaker 1: out the inconsistency, you know, the old I was a
Speaker 1: debater all through school. Like the debater part of me,
Speaker 1: I was like, I wanted to be like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: you know you have to you have to do you
Speaker 1: have to interrupt him here, you have to try, you
Speaker 1: have to do this, you have to address this. And
Speaker 1: then Biden just flubbed his biggest points, you know, abortion,
Speaker 1: He just suddenly pivoted to immigration. You know, it was
Speaker 1: just it was just really really sad, heartbreaking and also scary.
Speaker 1: Like I said, I felt like I was watching just
Speaker 1: this slow motion train wreck horror movie where I didn't
Speaker 1: even want to see what was happening on screen. Now,
Speaker 1: what you were saying, kind of the second part of
Speaker 1: your ramble about people, you said you were rambling. You
Speaker 1: called it a ramble, So I'm just referring back to
Speaker 1: what you said. It was a very cocerent ramble. I
Speaker 1: didn't think you were. I didn't think you were rambling,
Speaker 1: but then you said I'm rambling. So that's why I'm
Speaker 1: calling it.
Speaker 2: You're supposed to say, oh, this look great on me, right,
Speaker 2: It's like, you know, I'm all right, Nate in.
Speaker 1: The second part of your incredibly coherent multi part speech.
Speaker 1: Oh by the way, now I'm going to go on
Speaker 1: a ramble on a tangent and say that every single
Speaker 1: time that Biden started saying number one, I was like,
Speaker 1: please don't do it, Please don't do it. You're not
Speaker 1: going to get like, we're not going to get to
Speaker 1: number two. And then he would say like number one again,
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh no, just just please stop.
Speaker 1: Stop stop doing these lists. Is this is not good.
Speaker 1: And other people felt that way as well. But anyhow,
Speaker 1: what I was going to say is the second part
Speaker 1: of what you were talking about, kind of the stubbornness.
Speaker 1: And I've actually seen reactions to people saying, well, you know,
Speaker 1: it's what will this say about the Democratic Party that
Speaker 1: they've been like hiding this and blah blah blah. No,
Speaker 1: so let's go back to something we've talked about on
Speaker 1: this podcast before, which is the sunk cost fallacy like
Speaker 1: this is probably the single most important sunk cost fallacy
Speaker 1: that you could face and you know in politics ever,
Speaker 1: which is that you know some cost fallacy to remind
Speaker 1: our listeners putting good money after bad, good time after bad,
Speaker 1: good energy after bad, basically saying that because we haven't
Speaker 1: done something to this point, or we have done this
Speaker 1: and we've already invested, we can't change right. We have
Speaker 1: to keep going and we have to just continue on
Speaker 1: the path we're on. Whereas the rational choice might be
Speaker 1: to say, Okay, you know what. I can't change the
Speaker 1: fact that we didn't replace Biden immediately. I can't change
Speaker 1: the fact that we didn't convince Biden not to run
Speaker 1: for a second term and to step down immediately. I
Speaker 1: can't change the fact that back in September, when we
Speaker 1: had more time, he didn't step down. What I can
Speaker 1: change is what I'm doing right now. And that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean I'm nefarious. That doesn't mean that I've done something stupid,
Speaker 1: that I've been hiding things. All it means is that
Speaker 1: the information the dataset has changed the reality right now
Speaker 1: isn't the reality of a year ago or two years ago, which,
Speaker 1: as you pointed out in your newsletter, happens because decline
Speaker 1: does happen kind of suddenly, and you know, it's not
Speaker 1: like it's a very gradual process, you know. And we
Speaker 1: I think we witnessed it yesterday. But what you should
Speaker 1: say is, Okay, this doesn't say anything bad about me.
Speaker 1: What it says is that I'm smart, that I understand
Speaker 1: what's happening right now, and then I'm willing to change
Speaker 1: my mind. And that is a sign of intelligence and savvy.
Speaker 1: And as you say, having Biden step down is not
Speaker 1: guaranteeing a Democratic victory, but having him not step down
Speaker 1: is almost almost, I mean not quite, but almost handing
Speaker 1: the victory to Trump.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, again, he was at thirty five
Speaker 2: percent or thirty three percent whatever before the debate. The
Speaker 2: CNN instant pole of debate watchers had him losing two
Speaker 2: to one. This is a poll the Democrats have won
Speaker 2: every debate that Trump has ever participated in, every debate
Speaker 2: since the first of eate in twenty twelve. That might translate,
Speaker 2: if you kind of use the back of the envelope formula,
Speaker 2: into Biden losing another two or three points, and they
Speaker 2: head to head poles against Trump. At that point he
Speaker 2: might follod it twenty percent or something in our model,
Speaker 2: and twenty percent is still meaningly above zero. But look,
Speaker 2: as you were saying, like, I mean, there's two things here.
Speaker 2: One is that there has been a lot of new
Speaker 2: information revealed.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: I might have made an inference that I thought Biden
Speaker 2: wasn't going to handle the debate. Well, but that was
Speaker 2: just a guess, right, And now we have actual evidence
Speaker 2: of it, and we have evidence of Biden's polling being
Speaker 2: stagnant and Trump maintaining a lead after all this stuff
Speaker 2: that has happened, like Trump's criminal convictions and the economy
Speaker 2: getting quite a bit better, and Willage being more.
Speaker 3: Focused on the race. There's also a poker thing.
Speaker 2: Though, where like sometimes you have a hand where there
Speaker 2: isn't new information, however you have more time to reflect
Speaker 2: and come to your senses. Right, you can have a
Speaker 2: hand where it's like, well, why to call with this
Speaker 2: hand on the turn? If I'm going to fold to
Speaker 2: the river on a relatively good card for me, and
Speaker 2: if you plug it into a solver, it would say
Speaker 2: you've made a mistake. Well, it's because you had more
Speaker 2: time to think about it on the river. Maybe you're
Speaker 2: a little bit tilted or something on the turn, maybe
Speaker 2: you were distracted, maybe you're playing poker online multi tabling,
Speaker 2: playing more than one table at once, so being able
Speaker 2: to say, look, I have thought about this more, and
Speaker 2: I'm changing my mind, certainly when there's new information, but
Speaker 2: even when there's not is also assigned.
Speaker 3: And I think judgment and experience.
Speaker 1: And character absolutely. Now I have a question for you,
Speaker 1: so historically, and correct me if I'm wrong. I had
Speaker 1: the sense that debates didn't affect polls that much, right,
Speaker 1: that kind of the polls didn't don't move that much
Speaker 1: in the in the you know, in the aftermath of
Speaker 1: a debate. Do we think that that's going to change
Speaker 1: in this particular case, or do we think that it
Speaker 1: might that you know, this might still be the case here.
Speaker 2: I mean that much is relative, right, Like nothing has
Speaker 2: moved the polls more than like about a point at
Speaker 2: a time. You know, if I had to predict, Trump
Speaker 2: was one and a half points ahead in our national
Speaker 2: polling average, which of course national poles don't really count
Speaker 2: for very much, but it's you reasonable benchmark, one point
Speaker 2: five points ahead in our national polling average, but I
Speaker 2: had to predict it might be you know, three or
Speaker 2: three and a half within a couple of weeks, once
Speaker 2: the higher quality polls are fully priced. Ten.
Speaker 3: You know, the problem is.
Speaker 1: So that's actually pretty substantial.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's the wild guess. It could be two,
Speaker 3: it could be four.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, the problem is that Biden is not
Speaker 2: in a position where he's ahead and just has to
Speaker 2: stem the damage, right and let the floodwaters recede. He's
Speaker 2: behind and to come back, and he'll be further behind,
Speaker 2: almost for sure, once these poles are incorporated. Yeah. And
Speaker 2: you know, one of the opportunities he thought he had
Speaker 2: to turn around the campaign was the debate. Now there's
Speaker 2: only one more debate. And believe me, if Biden could
Speaker 2: like cancer, he probably would. So how is this guy
Speaker 2: supposed to show the dexterity and energy and flexibility to
Speaker 2: mount a comeback against a guy I mean, look, whatever
Speaker 2: you say about Trump, he immediately sens.
Speaker 3: You can kind of see it on his face. Right.
Speaker 2: It's like a poker player who realized that like a
Speaker 2: player on his right is a fucking drunk fish. It's
Speaker 2: going to donate thousands of dollars to the table, and
Speaker 2: he's gonna guaranteed to soaking the next hour.
Speaker 3: An hour, an hour, right next hours ahead.
Speaker 2: Like Trump knew instantly that Biden was parted terribly and
Speaker 2: at times was more restrained or at least was like
Speaker 2: crisp in the delivery. And like, you know, but like
Speaker 2: that's kind of says It's like Trump still has his
Speaker 2: political animal instincts intact, and like I'm not sure Biden
Speaker 2: even has that anymore. I mean, he couldn't deliver his
Speaker 2: canned lines, he couldn't deliver his closing statement. And as
Speaker 2: you know, when people get older, they can have days.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't want to name anyone in particular,
Speaker 2: but like they can have days maybe half the time,
Speaker 2: two thirds of the time, three quarters at the time
Speaker 2: where they act like their old self, or maybe they
Speaker 2: do in most capacities in their life. But it's not
Speaker 2: good enough when you're the American president and the president
Speaker 2: for another four fucking years. It's just irresponsible. The people
Speaker 2: in the White House who have not spoken about this
Speaker 2: publicly should be shun from public life frankly, you know,
Speaker 2: I mean seriously, some of them will write, you know,
Speaker 2: big magazine expose's and get book deals and things like that,
Speaker 2: they're fucking cowards. If you're in the White House and
Speaker 2: you think you're a fucking patriot, come fucking forward and
Speaker 2: tell us what Joe Biden's really like, right, don't get
Speaker 2: a fucking book deal in two years and then say
Speaker 2: how much you knew all along? You're a fucking coward. Yeah,
Speaker 2: not like willing to speak or defend him. Er say, look,
Speaker 2: I'm being honest and I'm going to tell you that,
Speaker 2: like it's actually not that bad. That's fine too, but
Speaker 2: like there's a lot of fucking cowards at the Democredit Party.
Speaker 1: So something that you said makes me kind of reflect
Speaker 1: on a broader point, which is that you know, our
Speaker 1: decision making ability, our cognitive capacity isn't equal right over time,
Speaker 1: and you could have good days and bad days. Now,
Speaker 1: what we saw yesterday was a high pressure situation, right
Speaker 1: performance under time, pressure performance with the cameras on you.
Speaker 1: High pressure, Like you know, you need to perform. And
Speaker 1: the thing is, if you're running to be the president
Speaker 1: of the United States, that's when you need to perform well.
Speaker 1: You need to perform well under those high pressure situations.
Speaker 1: I don't give a fuck if you're fine on your
Speaker 1: off days on the weekend, when you have, you know,
Speaker 1: hours and hours to think about it. I need to
Speaker 1: know that you're also fine in a crisis situation, when
Speaker 1: the lights are on you, when you have to respond
Speaker 1: undertime pressure, when you have to make hot decisions. I
Speaker 1: want to know that that's when you shine, that you're
Speaker 1: not going to choke. And what we saw last night
Speaker 1: is Biden absolutely choking. And by the way, it also
Speaker 1: kind of reminded me, you know, back in school in
Speaker 1: political science class when you probably watch these clips two
Speaker 1: of the original Kennedy Nixon debates, where like Nixon just
Speaker 1: looked horrible on camera, right, and Kennedy just won because
Speaker 1: you looked so much better. Sorry, you were going to
Speaker 1: get another debate and there, Yeah, Bida just looked awful.
Speaker 1: He just looked like when you looked at the split screen,
Speaker 1: he looked lost, you know, he just looked like he
Speaker 1: didn't know what was happening. He was gaping. He just
Speaker 1: didn't He had no presence, and Trump has presence. I mean,
Speaker 1: I hate Trump. He was lying. There was not a
Speaker 1: single true word out of his mouth. But as you said,
Speaker 1: his political instincts were on. He you know, commanded the camera.
Speaker 1: He had this chesshire cat grin like yes, I'm about
Speaker 1: to get all the whales money right here, like keep
Speaker 1: it coming, and he had the barbs like the you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know what he said at the end of
Speaker 1: that last sentence. I don't think he knows either. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's those clips are going to go viral, and that's
Speaker 1: going to really be well awful. I said a lot
Speaker 1: of different things there, but I think they're all really.
Speaker 2: Trump was even more brazen than usual about kind of
Speaker 2: unapologetically lying, and part because I think he realized that
Speaker 2: like Biden couldn't fight back, right. I mean, it's what
Speaker 2: you might call an exploitive strategy, and poker is like
Speaker 2: I can just keep bluffing because this guy is too
Speaker 2: weak to call me down, right, he does not have
Speaker 2: what it takes today to call me down.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the physical thing. I mean, there have been an advance.
Speaker 2: Of the debate, Republican groups circulating unflattering videos of Biden
Speaker 2: like looking like he's wandering off or dazed or freezing
Speaker 2: and like, and these.
Speaker 3: Videos are.
Speaker 2: Unflatteringly and kind of selectively edited. So like you have
Speaker 2: these news organizations put out like fact checks and say, okay,
Speaker 2: well if you look at the broader context and Biden
Speaker 2: was like there was one where they're in a field
Speaker 2: at like the G seven summit and for some reason
Speaker 2: they're like parashooters. This all sounds very weird. You know,
Speaker 2: international organizations in Europe is weird, right, So like, of
Speaker 2: course it's weird, but like, so what will happen is
Speaker 2: like the fact checkers will show the full clip in context,
Speaker 2: which also looks pretty fucking bad. Right. It also makes
Speaker 2: by the fucking old and loss not as bad as
Speaker 2: the GOP edited special directors cutversion. But the GFP fucking knows,
Speaker 2: because they seem to care about winning more the Democrats
Speaker 2: to they know that. Like they're going to have this
Speaker 2: double hit with these videos where the added version and
Speaker 2: all the fucking precious fact checkers dutifully show the real version,
Speaker 2: which is also fucking bad for Biden because he's fucking
Speaker 2: eighty one years old and he's clearly diminished. He is
Speaker 2: maybe above average for an eighty one year old, but
Speaker 2: he is very much diminished. I mean, what really freaked
Speaker 2: me out about Biden was, you know, Ezra Klein wrote
Speaker 2: this column maybe back in March or something, saying Biden
Speaker 2: should consider dropping out and having this emergency lever pulled
Speaker 2: at the convention. And he just linked to some videos
Speaker 2: comparing Biden's campaign announcement in twenty twenty versus twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3: And I saw that. I'm like, oh my god, even
Speaker 3: though this prepared speech in even in four years.
Speaker 2: I mean, I watched some yeah clips of the twenty
Speaker 2: twenty debate, tookrect for the debate, and I'm like, oh, actually,
Speaker 2: Biden is like better than I thought in twenty twenty. Right,
Speaker 2: there is noticeable physical and mental decline, as you would
Speaker 2: expect as an runningly you know, probabilistic prior. You would
Speaker 2: expect that to be true when someone goes from age
Speaker 2: seventy eight to eighty two or seventy seven to eighty
Speaker 2: one under the pressures by the way of the US presidency,
Speaker 2: not the least successful job in the world.
Speaker 3: Exactly, that's what you would expect. And it's like obvious,
Speaker 3: and like the fact that parts of the pundit class thought, oh,
Speaker 3: just a media fixation.
Speaker 2: It's just it's like, no, it's the It's the one
Speaker 2: unassailable fact in this complex room living is that this
Speaker 2: guy is too fucking old to be president.
Speaker 3: Now the other guy tried to like start insurrection of
Speaker 3: January six. So given those two.
Speaker 2: Things, and I'm going to vote third party now in
Speaker 2: New York, which is not a wing state, right, if
Speaker 2: I were.
Speaker 3: In Nevada, I would still hold my nose and move
Speaker 3: for Bud.
Speaker 1: I'm voting Biden. Yes, I hope I'm voting not Biden,
Speaker 1: because I do hope he steps down. But I'm voting
Speaker 1: Democrat obviously across the board, because I am in a
Speaker 1: swing state and my vote actually matters for the first
Speaker 1: time in my life. But you know, I think that
Speaker 1: people are so afraid, you know, of being called ageist,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera. But this is not agism, right
Speaker 1: there is and not saying that, oh my god, you know,
Speaker 1: everyone over the age of seventy five should be put
Speaker 1: to pasture. I have, you know, my thesis advisor, my
Speaker 1: graduate advisor in grad school, Walter Michelle, was in his
Speaker 1: eighties right and was one of the sharpest people I knew,
Speaker 1: and I became friends with one of his closest friends,
Speaker 1: Danny Connoman, you know, non Bell laureate who was then
Speaker 1: in his seventies, sharp up until both of them sharp
Speaker 1: until they're dying day and incredibly sharp. You know, you
Speaker 1: could have very deep debates. But first of all, they're
Speaker 1: in academia, right, They're not running for president, and the
Speaker 1: fact that their exceptions doesn't mean that we should be
Speaker 1: looking at the data that's in front of us and saying, oh,
Speaker 1: but it's ageist, right, No, this this goes for both
Speaker 1: of them, by the way, And you could see Trump, like,
Speaker 1: let's just say that Trump did decline throughout the debate,
Speaker 1: and you could see that someone at some point, you know,
Speaker 1: I was looking at kind of Twitter feeds and I
Speaker 1: don't remember who tweeted this, but someone said, oh, I
Speaker 1: now see the difference between seventy eight and eighty one.
Speaker 1: It's forty five minutes. And I thought that that was
Speaker 1: that that was pretty pretty spot on, because Trump did
Speaker 1: start rambling and kind of losing it a little bit
Speaker 1: near the end. But people are going to so let's
Speaker 1: talk about also how memory works from a psychology standpoint.
Speaker 1: People are going to remember the beginning, right, people that
Speaker 1: first impression. People are going to remember how they performed
Speaker 1: when they turned on the television at the beginning, and
Speaker 1: that was abysmal. That was the worst moment for Biden.
Speaker 1: He had his kind of freezing moment. It was just
Speaker 1: like at that point, that's game over. And a lot
Speaker 1: of people turned off the debate at that point as
Speaker 1: well because they were like, I don't want to watch this.
Speaker 1: This is too depressing. I'm done, and that's that's not
Speaker 1: where you want to be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I think I think people have his experience
Speaker 2: where like, you know, after the first fifteen minutes and
Speaker 2: began to see it reflected in like some market prices
Speaker 2: like the price of bitcoin and prediction markets and things
Speaker 2: like that pretty quickly shout out to prediction markets. But like, yeah, look,
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people, uh, after the first
Speaker 2: fifteen minutes, speaking for myself, kind of got lost in
Speaker 2: a series of conversations and texts and things like that
Speaker 2: and social media chatter and like because there was no
Speaker 2: recovering from from that point, right, Like I mean now,
Speaker 2: because it's like not this is why it's like people
Speaker 2: are going to say, oh, well, Obama lost the first
Speaker 2: debate in twenty twelve and then came back to win.
Speaker 2: But there are a couple of things, you know, what
Speaker 2: Obama lost the debate in a way that was much
Speaker 2: more easy to write off to being a one off,
Speaker 2: arrogant maybe performance. And second, Obama was ahead at the
Speaker 2: time that he lost that debate and not behind, so
Speaker 2: he could he could recover. You know, Biden has been
Speaker 2: hidden in some ways from doing all the things that
Speaker 2: a president normally would do. He did not give a
Speaker 2: softball interview during the Super Bowl, for example, which every
Speaker 2: president has. He've been prompted three times, and Biden did,
Speaker 2: I think two years ago. So you know that wasn't
Speaker 2: a good sign. He has reviews to give us a
Speaker 2: down interview with the New York Times, which has beef
Speaker 2: with Biden, but it is the most widely read publication
Speaker 2: among influential Democrats and influential people in general. And so
Speaker 2: why would you not want to let the New York
Speaker 2: Times grill you? He did not, more understandably in this case,
Speaker 2: did not want to debate Dean Phillips, Sir Mariam Williamson.
Speaker 2: But like, look, if you had had a primary. People say, well,
Speaker 2: if you'd had a primary, then Biden would have won
Speaker 2: these more popular than like Devin Newsom or whatever. I'm
Speaker 2: not sure he would have won if he had even
Speaker 2: one of these debates, and the primaries must to have
Speaker 2: like six or seven debates, right, the recent had a
Speaker 2: primary would be to vet Biden and see is he
Speaker 2: prepared for like the begures of a campaign. And this
Speaker 2: is the first real tests and he just has to
Speaker 2: be the worst general election performance in history in a debate.
Speaker 2: It can't be closed. Absolutely, Michael Bluemberg have to have
Speaker 2: Michael Bloomberg. We probably have Bloomberg fans in the Risky
Speaker 2: Business audience. You know, interesting guy accomplished a lot. Bloomberg
Speaker 2: was the next worst performance I've seen in a debate
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty. And then there's a Marco Rubio thing
Speaker 2: here or there. It's probably in third place. Right, but
Speaker 2: like this was like again the fact that like if
Speaker 2: I hit to pinpoint, because I'm hypersensitive to like calibrating
Speaker 2: what everyone thinks about everything on like Twitter and social media, right,
Speaker 2: if I had like circle, here are ten people that
Speaker 2: would never ever say that Biden should step down. The
Speaker 2: debates going badly. That's going really badly. Like any of
Speaker 2: those ten people are like this sucks, he needs to
Speaker 2: get out of there. I mean, it's it's you know,
Speaker 2: the elected officials and like Nancy Pelosi's haven't said very
Speaker 2: much yet, but like, I don't know the folks I
Speaker 2: was watching the.
Speaker 3: Debate with last night.
Speaker 2: You know, we've talked about p doom on the show,
Speaker 2: the probability of the world be destroyed by artificial intelligence.
Speaker 2: He dropped the probability that Biden will drop out at
Speaker 2: some point between now and the convention.
Speaker 3: I guess technically now in November, the way those.
Speaker 2: Markets resolve at Polymarket, before I began taping this, it
Speaker 2: was around forty two percent or something like that. Now, look,
Speaker 2: if Democratic delegates were free agents and they could do
Speaker 2: what they wanted, I think for sure they would not
Speaker 2: want Biden at this point. However, legally, Democratic delegates are
Speaker 2: bound to Joe Biden. So if Joe Biden wants the nomination,
Speaker 2: then I mean you could have some litigation to see
Speaker 2: what really happens if he's like seems like he's disabled
Speaker 2: or something. It was like a twenty fifth Amendment or something.
Speaker 2: But like, you know, basically Joe Biden has to agree
Speaker 2: to step down. And so there's kind of two levels,
Speaker 2: like will there be some elder counsel of Democrats that
Speaker 2: comes up to him and says, Joe, you gotta go,
Speaker 2: and then will he listen to that? I think it's
Speaker 2: more well, I'll maybe be careful. I think it's fifty
Speaker 2: to fifty. I would buy p drop at forty two,
Speaker 2: and it was like twenty five percent last night. I
Speaker 2: was telling people I'd buy that too, because like, he
Speaker 2: doesn't have any answer his argument, and the polls are
Speaker 2: going to come out in a week or two, and
Speaker 2: like maybe I'm wrong, maybe he'll only be behind.
Speaker 3: Me's already behind to begin with. Right, He's not going
Speaker 3: to gain the.
Speaker 2: Polls, but the polls will come out. There's another freak out.
Speaker 2: You know, if you watch what White House staffers do.
Speaker 2: You know, if you begin to have some people leak
Speaker 2: or go public, give little tell alls, you know, to
Speaker 2: the New Yorker or whatever else, then that could be damaging. Potentially,
Speaker 2: we don't know what like Jill Biden and the Obamas
Speaker 2: will do in people like that. You could also have,
Speaker 2: you know, Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris, who are I
Speaker 2: suppose the two most likely replacements actually in the reverse order.
Speaker 2: I think Kamala is quite a bit like more likelier
Speaker 2: than Gavin Newsom. But we'll see as someone by the way,
Speaker 2: who think she's a very accomplished person but a terrible politician.
Speaker 2: I'd still rather have her than Biden at this point.
Speaker 2: A least she's a blank spite. At least she has
Speaker 2: some upside. At least it's a fresh look, right, I
Speaker 2: would rather have Kamala Harris and increase my variance instead
Speaker 2: of have this seemingly losing not inevitable but like difficult path.
Speaker 2: They are being good foot soldiers for Biden and saying, well,
Speaker 2: you know when it's a bad day now, and then
Speaker 2: I'm sure behind the scenes though, pop are like, be
Speaker 2: you a Kamala Gavin at your moment?
Speaker 3: Girl?
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sure, I'm sure because you're both it's just
Speaker 2: politicians too.
Speaker 1: Obviously, we both agree that at this point Joe Biden
Speaker 1: should step down. That that you know, yesterday was kind
Speaker 1: of the the nail in the coffin of our hopeful
Speaker 1: optimism that maybe he actually could perform. And I think
Speaker 1: it's it's it doesn't look like it's going to get better.
Speaker 1: And by the way, as we both keep saying, he
Speaker 1: might still win, right, and it's still incredibly risky, but
Speaker 1: let's assume that there is a council of elders, Like,
Speaker 1: let's just play out a hypothetical that he does decide. Okay, fine,
Speaker 1: I will step down. What do we think kind of
Speaker 1: is the best path forward? I would love to kind
Speaker 1: of talk a little bit about kind of what those
Speaker 1: scenarios look like, whether it's Kamala, whether it's Gavin Newsom.
Speaker 1: Last night, you know, as I texted to you, you
Speaker 1: know Mayor Pete question mark because I you know, I've
Speaker 1: seen Mayor Pete debate and he would have. Now he
Speaker 1: is a debater. He is someone who would have wiped
Speaker 1: the floor with Trump in a setting like that. You know,
Speaker 1: there are names of people who have followings, but who
Speaker 1: obviously have issues of their own. So what do we think, like,
Speaker 1: is what's a viable strategy going forward? Like, let's imagine
Speaker 1: that you and I get to advise the Democrats. Wouldn't
Speaker 1: that be awesome?
Speaker 3: What would he suggest? Okay?
Speaker 2: What I would say is that I want some sort
Speaker 2: of open audition process in which there's some element of
Speaker 2: public feedback. So the primaries have happened, Firstly, you have
Speaker 2: some time to work with The Democratic Convention begins in
Speaker 2: mid August.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you have some time to work with. Look,
Speaker 3: in the ideal.
Speaker 2: World, I would say that you should do some fact
Speaker 2: finding first in terms of like how many people are
Speaker 2: interested in this potentially right, and then maybe like literally
Speaker 2: have a debate. You can also, by the way the
Speaker 2: primaries have happened, parties can schedule their own elections, which
Speaker 2: are called caucuses. They have to pay for it, but
Speaker 2: Democrats could say, let's schedule let's pick six states that
Speaker 2: are demographically representative cross section of the US or the
Speaker 2: Democratic Party at least, right, have this debate and then
Speaker 2: have a non binding party caucus. Party one caucus in
Speaker 2: these six states will pay for it. We'll get some
Speaker 2: rich guys to pay for it, right, and that will
Speaker 2: help inform super delegates for what the public preference might
Speaker 2: be and at the public references and the US then
Speaker 2: maybe you default to Kamala out of some sense of
Speaker 2: shiating the VP obviously, but like, I don't look, if
Speaker 2: you're going to take the drastic step of replacing the president,
Speaker 2: I don't think you want to tiptoe around the fact
Speaker 2: that Kamala Harris has also unpopular, and like, what's the point, right,
Speaker 2: if you're going to replace the president. You know, I
Speaker 2: think she should have to fight for it as she
Speaker 2: would have if Biden has said what you should have
Speaker 2: done a year and a half ago, I'm not gonna
Speaker 2: run for a second term, no one would have handed
Speaker 2: the nomination to Kamala Harris. You would have had to
Speaker 2: earn it, and she might have earned it. Candidate's get
Speaker 2: better sometimes their second run for the White House, and
Speaker 2: there are attacks on her qualifications, and I think sometimes
Speaker 2: are unfair, But like I think you have to like
Speaker 2: try to have some element of that process. And look,
Speaker 2: you're almost free because like I don't think any of
Speaker 2: this is about fifty percent, right, I mean it's a
Speaker 2: matter of like are you getting cashing in your forty
Speaker 2: percent equity instead of twenty percent?
Speaker 3: Or I'm not sure where I'm getting these estimates. They're
Speaker 3: off the cuff. But like.
Speaker 2: So in some ways you can afford to have a
Speaker 2: riskier process almost and like playing it too safe.
Speaker 3: But like, look, the sooner and the more.
Speaker 2: Organized a Biden dropout would be than then the better
Speaker 2: it is, right if it's the case that like, look,
Speaker 2: there's one path that looks something like the polls are bad,
Speaker 2: but not quite as bad as they're as we think
Speaker 2: they're gonna be, and then Biden holds on and then
Speaker 2: in early August there's some disastrous press conference and then
Speaker 2: it's truly untenable, right and then it kind of has
Speaker 2: to be chaos at the convention. Right right now, there
Speaker 2: is just enough time to get some sense or like
Speaker 2: even just in polls and they'll remember, you know, someone
Speaker 2: like a Kamala Harris is much better known than like
Speaker 2: a Gritch and Whitmer or something like that. But like
Speaker 2: some type of open audition process, I think, yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean that's I think an open audition process sounds
Speaker 1: good if provided it happens right now, because I think
Speaker 1: that what we want to avoid is like a total
Speaker 1: shit show in August right where there is no unified
Speaker 1: consensus about who should be the nominee. Because I do
Speaker 1: think that at this point, because it's so late in
Speaker 1: the game and people are fragmented and this is an unprecedented,
Speaker 1: incredibly risky move, there does need to be a united
Speaker 1: front and people do need to rally around one candidate
Speaker 1: as kind of the choice and the person who's going
Speaker 1: to get kind of the support and who's going to
Speaker 1: be able to represent well. So I do think that
Speaker 1: this needs to happen sooner rather than later. Otherwise it's
Speaker 1: I think it might end up being a risk that
Speaker 1: just is sure. It can't be worse than buy it,
Speaker 1: But the chances of winning are going to be lower
Speaker 1: because that you know, any cracks kind of in that
Speaker 1: front are going to be exploited. We've seen that, you know,
Speaker 1: the Republican Party is very good at exploiting cracks. And
Speaker 1: there are a lot of undecided voters who look at
Speaker 1: something like the debate yesterday and don't really kind of
Speaker 1: don't know that Trump is actually lying his face off
Speaker 1: in every single sentence and look at these two people
Speaker 1: and say, you know what, I'd rather have the guy
Speaker 1: on my on the left than the guy on the right,
Speaker 1: because you know, he's just making more sense to me.
Speaker 1: And what is it that he said about immigrants, you know,
Speaker 1: taking my jobs and killing people. I don't want that, right, Like,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people who aren't going to
Speaker 1: do that secondary fact checking, So you need someone to
Speaker 1: do it who's able to kind of do it in
Speaker 1: real time, someone who is able to to rebuff and
Speaker 1: actually kind of show Trump for what he is. The
Speaker 1: other kind of the other thing in my mind, though,
Speaker 1: is you know, last time Trump won, he ran against
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton, and one of the reasons that he was
Speaker 1: able to win is because she was very qualified, but
Speaker 1: unpopular and didn't run a good campaign. And I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people didn't want to vote for a female,
Speaker 1: like as a female, you know, I I was definitely
Speaker 1: tuned into that. So I think there is kind of
Speaker 1: a it's a little bit risky to put a Kamala
Speaker 1: Harris or Aggretchen in there, because you know, once again
Speaker 1: he'll be running against a woman, and I don't know
Speaker 1: if that's the best candidate to defeat Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure it's Gavin Newsom either, who is not
Speaker 2: terribly popular himself and will have a lot of problems
Speaker 2: associated with the state of California, which is losing population
Speaker 2: and all those things.
Speaker 3: Right, I mean, he you know, looks good in a suit,
Speaker 3: I suppose you know.
Speaker 2: Look, Democrats actually have I think a reasonably talented bench
Speaker 2: of candidates. They did very well in both the twenty
Speaker 2: eighteen and twenty twenty two midterms, which is kind of
Speaker 2: where you get your bench from. I mean, someone more
Speaker 2: unknown like Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, for example, could be
Speaker 2: potentially a compelling candidate.
Speaker 3: JB. Pritzker in Illinois, the governor of Illinois is.
Speaker 2: This big guy kind of when Trump got convicted, kind
Speaker 2: of gave it a very old school Chicago style like
Speaker 2: take care of Trump that I think could play well
Speaker 2: against Trump's bluster.
Speaker 3: Because the thing is, like Trump is not that popular.
Speaker 2: Either, because popular has actually improved a little bit, and
Speaker 2: in some ways, if we're being honest, I think he's
Speaker 2: run a better campaign compared to four years ago and
Speaker 2: gave a better debate performance than the five previous ones
Speaker 2: he's had against Biden or Clinton. So I don't think
Speaker 2: Trump is easy to defeat. But there have been voters
Speaker 2: clamoring for a long time that like, can you please
Speaker 2: not now many of these.
Speaker 3: Fucking two people again?
Speaker 2: In a country of three hundred and thirty one million people,
Speaker 2: can you please that how many these two guys is
Speaker 2: like really the best you have to offer? And there
Speaker 2: is some upside chance that like a newer kind of
Speaker 2: freshered Democrat. I mean, I don't know, right, but like
Speaker 2: I mean the reason why I'm like, I don't know
Speaker 2: that Democratic Party elders are going to be able to
Speaker 2: agree on some consensus choice. If if Kamala Harris were
Speaker 2: a little bit more popular and people are more confident
Speaker 2: in her quote unquote electability than.
Speaker 3: She would be the obvious choice, the obvious choice. If
Speaker 3: she had the obvious choice.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure Biden would have run in the first
Speaker 2: place for her second term. So I don't think there's
Speaker 2: an obvious choice, and therefore to have some public feedback
Speaker 2: as a coordination mechanism.
Speaker 3: A one more point, by the way, that is important.
Speaker 2: The delegates at the convention are delegates chosen by Joe Biden, Right,
Speaker 2: you actually picking her that to say, I want Maria
Speaker 2: and Nate to be my delegates if I win.
Speaker 3: This nominating contest in New Jersey or whatever.
Speaker 2: Therefore, they are loyal to what Biden would do. But
Speaker 2: it also means are probably more moderate, centrist, demo pragmatic Democrats.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: That makes things a little easier because there's like not
Speaker 2: an appreciable like left wing faction among the super delegates,
Speaker 2: and that might increase the ease relatively speaking of the
Speaker 2: coordination problem.
Speaker 1: Well, I think that's a that's a rare hopeful point
Speaker 1: in today's podcast, which has not been very hopeful. You know,
Speaker 1: I wish that you and I would be able to
Speaker 1: come up with a nice little roadmap and be like, okay, done,
Speaker 1: you know, forty minutes and we've saved democracy. Good job
Speaker 1: of us. But you know, it's obviously not that easy.
Speaker 1: This is an incredibly complicated situation. And I feel slight.
Speaker 1: Actually no, I was about to say I feel slightly
Speaker 1: better after talking to but that's not actually true. I
Speaker 1: feel just as despondent as I did before. But I'm
Speaker 1: really glad that we had a chance to talk this
Speaker 1: through and to talk through some of kind of the
Speaker 1: big issues, the big psychological issues, and there are obviously
Speaker 1: psychological issues for the voters too in terms of swapping
Speaker 1: out Biden right now. So I think that that's you know,
Speaker 1: these are all things that we'll need to revisit, and
Speaker 1: I'm really interesting. I'm really interested to see kind of
Speaker 1: what the actual response is going to be in the
Speaker 1: next few weeks. I would say pe drop is actually
Speaker 1: probably lower than the prediction markets have them right now now,
Speaker 1: because you know, ego, ego, ego, ego, ego, and you know,
Speaker 1: Biden clearly has has a lot of it, and he
Speaker 1: doesn't want to drop out, and he's surrounded by people
Speaker 1: who've been shielding him and who've been saying, you did
Speaker 1: such a great job last night. You know, good job.
Speaker 1: How Trump didn't say, I.
Speaker 3: Mean, it's an emperors.
Speaker 2: I mean the reason why like parables like the Emperor
Speaker 2: has no clothes exists is because the people actually it's.
Speaker 1: True, O good exactly. So we're in the middle of
Speaker 1: the Emperor has no clothes, and I really hope that
Speaker 1: the emperor realizes he's naked and is willing to take
Speaker 1: a seat and let someone else come out. I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's if that will happen, though. What's your
Speaker 1: personal p drop? Is it higher or lower than the
Speaker 1: prediction markets have it right now?
Speaker 2: A little higher, I think because of the degree of
Speaker 2: unanymity among the kind of political and pundit class. And
Speaker 2: look in twenty twenty, the kind of democratic elites came
Speaker 2: together in this messy nomination process where it looked like
Speaker 2: Bernie Sanders might win, and like literally all got together
Speaker 2: and they all flew somewhere like Pete boodhag Edge and
Speaker 2: Amy Klobishard dropped out and endorsed Biden right and James
Speaker 2: Climber and the very influential congressman who is maybe the
Speaker 2: most admired black Democrat endorsed Biden, and he kind of
Speaker 2: zoomed from kind of this muddle and like second place
Speaker 2: to winning actually very easily on South Carolina and on
Speaker 2: Super Tuesday. So it is a group that has someone
Speaker 2: shown itself capable of making adult kind of group decisions.
Speaker 2: And again, the problem is that, like you can hit
Speaker 2: this story about Biden's age every single day, However many
Speaker 2: days are left one hundred and something whatever in the campaign.
Speaker 3: Because first of all, he's behind in most of these poles.
Speaker 2: He's not going to like pull ahead after this at least, right,
Speaker 2: so every time a poll comes out, you can be like, Okay,
Speaker 2: the New New York Times Sienna pole has Biden four
Speaker 2: points down in Pennsylvania. Must win the state. You know,
Speaker 2: that seems really bad. Every time Biden has a public
Speaker 2: speaking appearance where it goes mediocre at best and disastrous
Speaker 2: at worse, it's going to be a point of debate.
Speaker 2: And believe me, if Democrats in the media forget to
Speaker 2: talk about it, the Republican attack ads are going to
Speaker 2: be devastating. And you know, just the before and after
Speaker 2: clips of Biden then versus Biden now, and there's a
Speaker 2: cascading effects I think, and you know there will be.
Speaker 2: There's also, by the way, they're also opportunistic effects.
Speaker 3: I don't think that.
Speaker 2: I don't think that Gavin Newsom or Gretchen Whitmer or
Speaker 2: whoever else Rafael we're not would face the same degree
Speaker 2: of stigma if they said, if needed, I will serve, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, they'd be subtle about it and koya about it. Newson,
Speaker 2: by the way, was not very coy about his intentions
Speaker 2: to potentially challenge Biden two years ago. But like, there
Speaker 2: are opportunists who could say that, like I am willing
Speaker 2: to serve, or I mean, you know, someone could say
Speaker 2: that they want to vote registers a third party. That
Speaker 2: probably wouldn't work because it's too late to collect enough
Speaker 2: signatures in certain states. But yeah, if you need it to,
Speaker 2: you could kind of poison pill Biden, right, You could
Speaker 2: like threaten to leak unflattering things that would ensure that
Speaker 2: he would lose and so therefore he's forced to resign
Speaker 2: and Biden.
Speaker 1: That's another risky strategy.
Speaker 3: Well, look, I.
Speaker 2: Mean, you know it's what's the burning of bridges strategy.
Speaker 2: But like, I think the degree of elite consensus and
Speaker 2: Democrats are the party of elites at least by one
Speaker 2: definition of the term, is so strong and there are
Speaker 2: not very many ways to undo that because Biden just
Speaker 2: isn't capable of it, right, he isn't capable of it. Well,
Speaker 2: scheduling in a debate next week, how about that?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 1: I yeah, mostly agree, and.
Speaker 3: I have another debate. We'll see how you do.
Speaker 2: Maybe that would elay nerves, but like you're not gonna
Speaker 2: let people wait until September to have another debate.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And by the way, even if we have another
Speaker 1: debate tomorrow and he does much better, that's still not
Speaker 1: going to assuage my fear because, as I said, I
Speaker 1: need someone who consistently can perform under pressure and under
Speaker 1: the lights. That's not consistency, that's good days and bad days.
Speaker 1: What if there's what if we're on a bad day
Speaker 1: when there's a nuclear strike? Right, Like, we cannot afford
Speaker 1: that in a president. So you know, I think our
Speaker 1: headline for today's podcast is we thought we were fucked,
Speaker 1: and we're kind of fucked. But you know, let's let's
Speaker 1: tune in in a few weeks and see where we
Speaker 1: are and see what happens. And I hope that, you know,
Speaker 1: people listening to this and listening to the unanimity of
Speaker 1: voices will actually finally do something about it, and we'll
Speaker 1: be in a better situation, or at least a situation
Speaker 1: where variance is on our side, where when we when
Speaker 1: we next revisit this topic.
Speaker 2: Also, you know, again, I'm trying to come at this
Speaker 2: from a little bit more of a nonpartisan lens. Although
Speaker 2: I've said I don't think Trump would make a good
Speaker 2: leader and I don't want them to become president again, America,
Speaker 2: stop fucking voting for these really fucking old guys, right,
Speaker 2: You should age discriminate more. Do not fucking vote for
Speaker 2: people who are seventy five years or older to be
Speaker 2: the fucking president of the United States, the hardest job
Speaker 2: in the world. I would propose a constitutional amendment to
Speaker 2: say you cannot begin your presidential term.
Speaker 3: Past the age of seventy five.
Speaker 2: In the absence of that, I'm pledging Maria that I
Speaker 2: will never vote for somebody age seventy five or older
Speaker 2: again for president.
Speaker 3: I'm pledging that good.
Speaker 1: I will pledge that with you, and I've actually often
Speaker 1: thought that since we have a younger limit on the presidency,
Speaker 1: we should have an older limit as well, So Nate
Speaker 1: we can do the Nate Silver and Maria Kannakova and
Speaker 1: men meant to make sure this doesn't happen again. I
Speaker 1: think that's a great call.
Speaker 3: To action for.
Speaker 1: The end of our show today. Thanks for joining me
Speaker 1: on this emergency pod. I appreciate your time in this
Speaker 1: emergency time.
Speaker 3: Thanks Maria, and for listeners.
Speaker 2: Next, people have an interview that we have pre recorded
Speaker 2: with a special guest, unless there is more emergency news,
Speaker 2: which everier.
Speaker 1: One might be yes, in which case you'll get the
Speaker 1: two of us again. All right, thanks for listening. Risky
Speaker 1: Business is hosted by Me, Maria Kannakova.
Speaker 3: And Me Made Silver.
Speaker 1: The show is a co production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia.
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Isabelle Carter. Our associate producer
Speaker 1: is Gabriel Hunter Chang. Our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
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