Speaker 1: Pushkin Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the
Speaker 1: show where we explored the stories behind the stories in
Speaker 1: the news. The biggest stories in this part of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one are really stories of politics. There were the
Speaker 1: offseason gubernatorial elections in which the Democratic governor of Virginia was,
Speaker 1: surprisingly to everybody, defeated, and the Democratic governor of New
Speaker 1: Jersey barely scraped by, despite the fact that in New Jersey,
Speaker 1: as indeed in Virginia, Joe Biden had defeated Donald Trump handily.
Speaker 1: These issues themselves playing to the question of what Joe
Speaker 1: Biden's national accomplishments are and whether any and he knows
Speaker 1: about them. And then the deeper and more sustained political
Speaker 1: issues about the depth of polarization in our politics, the
Speaker 1: rise of violence, and the long term future of politics
Speaker 1: in the United States. What kind of a guest, you
Speaker 1: may be wondering, would be eager to talk and share
Speaker 1: views about every single element of these if a most unrestrained,
Speaker 1: direct and colorful way possible, Who, indeed but James Carville,
Speaker 1: the man who became known is one of the great
Speaker 1: political strategists of the modern era. After crafting Bill Clinton's
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two presidential victory. James started working in politics
Speaker 1: long before that, and he continued working in politics long after.
Speaker 1: He's a sought after commentator, an analyst, a political adviser, and,
Speaker 1: in the deepest and most positive sense, a character. He
Speaker 1: says what's on his mind without fear or favor, and
Speaker 1: that makes him about the most entertaining podcast guest you
Speaker 1: could begin to imagine, in addition to having things to
Speaker 1: say that are potentially deeply significant and insightful for where
Speaker 1: we are and where we're going. James, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for being here. I want to get into the
Speaker 1: deep trends that are facing changing political life and in
Speaker 1: our country today, but I want to start off with
Speaker 1: something more local, which is the gubernatorial races, both in
Speaker 1: New Jersey where Democrat Film Murphy barely survived and then
Speaker 1: Virginia where Terry mccaugh the Democrat, went down. And I
Speaker 1: want to ask you what your interpretation is of those results. Well,
Speaker 1: I think it speaks to a large issue for reasons
Speaker 1: that are complex, and I don't quite understand, people have
Speaker 1: become willing to believe anything about Democrats. We are immunocompromise
Speaker 1: where people are willing to believe the most outlanderous things
Speaker 1: because a small segment of people who associated to Democratic
Speaker 1: Party come up with these crazy ass ideas that gained currency,
Speaker 1: and we dive into that because I have two part
Speaker 1: answer to that. The first is Donald Trump. He taught
Speaker 1: everybody that you can assert anything and people who want
Speaker 1: to be on your side will listen to you. But
Speaker 1: that's not going to be enough here because a lot
Speaker 1: of those voters in the places you just mentioned who
Speaker 1: went Republican themselves were anti Trump, So that's not quite enough.
Speaker 1: The other element has got to have something to do
Speaker 1: with the internal politics of at least the publicly facing discussion,
Speaker 1: where I do think that what's happened is that super prominent,
Speaker 1: especially younger voices on the left side of the party,
Speaker 1: have tremendous sway in the public conversation, as more moderate
Speaker 1: voices just say okay, I hear you, but don't stand
Speaker 1: up and argue against that side of the party because
Speaker 1: they think, well, we have the votes anyway, we have
Speaker 1: the power in the party anyway, there's no point in
Speaker 1: wasting our energy in fighting with you publicly. And what's more,
Speaker 1: you'll bring us down. So we're just not going to
Speaker 1: do that. And then when a Republican goes out and
Speaker 1: says you have to believe this about the Democrats, the
Speaker 1: public says, Okay, I guess we do believe because you
Speaker 1: haven't been we don't visibly see you fighting with the
Speaker 1: left wing of your party. So, by the way, I'm
Speaker 1: not a modern Democrat. I'm allible Democrat. And I take
Speaker 1: all of these little exams online, you know, Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a thousand of them. Then I always come out like
Speaker 1: an eight point two or something. All right, But what
Speaker 1: I'm not is a leftist. But you got to understand it.
Speaker 1: That is part of the Democratic coalition. It's not a
Speaker 1: big part at all, all right, not at all. I
Speaker 1: could fight you election after the election in Manhattan, in
Speaker 1: New York City, in Cleveland and New Orleans and anywhere
Speaker 1: you want to look, and they are in my view,
Speaker 1: and you have a lot of it in academia. To me,
Speaker 1: they're kind of silly, all right. They're not evil. They're
Speaker 1: just I think, silly and try to change the language,
Speaker 1: and people just resist and don't want to talk about
Speaker 1: the significant part of their party is out now evil
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, I mean, none of it in
Speaker 1: a fruitcake. Yeah, yes, yes, yeah. Supposed you have a
Speaker 1: grandchild of a niece, a nephew and they come to
Speaker 1: you and they say, I'm gonna I'm gonna work in
Speaker 1: the LC's office. It will be the deputy communications person.
Speaker 1: You would your reaction would be, well, that's fine, you're
Speaker 1: gonna meet some interesting people or probably some of the
Speaker 1: things that you have Kate and I can't go along with,
Speaker 1: but there'll be a hell of an experience. Please do it.
Speaker 1: If your niece, your grandchild comes you and says I'm
Speaker 1: going to work from Martrey Taylor Green, you jump off
Speaker 1: the bridge. Your life is open. It's not a comparable event.
Speaker 1: They're not comparable people. But the thing is it gives
Speaker 1: a it gives the equivalence caucus. Well, yeah, you got them,
Speaker 1: but we've got that. Yeah, you got some silly people,
Speaker 1: we got some criminals. Okay, that's a difference between all
Speaker 1: right having a silly idea and Sam in the goddamn capital. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's too different. I could not agree with you more
Speaker 1: that we're talking about radically different things. One thing it
Speaker 1: really strikes me is that, you know, when I was
Speaker 1: first learning about politics, the Republican Party was self presenting
Speaker 1: itself as moral. They called themselves moral. They had a
Speaker 1: group called the Moral Majority, and Democrats were the party
Speaker 1: of liberalism, which was a party of tolerance, where we
Speaker 1: didn't preach that we were moral. On the other side
Speaker 1: was not moral, that said. A lot of the most
Speaker 1: deeply committed activists on the left of the Democratic Party,
Speaker 1: or some of them called themselves democratic socialists, are highly
Speaker 1: focused on a politics of morality. They think that supporters
Speaker 1: on the other side are not just wrong, but are bad,
Speaker 1: and that worldviews that they disagree with are not just wrong,
Speaker 1: but our evil, our racist or grounded in racism, or
Speaker 1: our capitalist in a way that's not excusable. And that
Speaker 1: seems to me to drive a lot of the debate
Speaker 1: in which liberal Democrats or moderate Democrats don't want to
Speaker 1: get into it. They don't want to fight over these questions.
Speaker 1: But I understand that. Okay, it's a small part of
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party. Agreed. Agreed, They're a big part of
Speaker 1: the culture, and they're given a much bigger megaphone than
Speaker 1: their votes deserve. They lose every freaking election. The only
Speaker 1: election that can never win is primary in some poor
Speaker 1: old Democrat in a plus Cook plus PBI forty district.
Speaker 1: They don't run against Republicans. All they run is in Mouth,
Speaker 1: all right, that's what they experts at and in people
Speaker 1: don't want to live like that. So when people live
Speaker 1: in fear, they just don't do it. And I was
Speaker 1: steaching two lane, and I said, look, the only reason
Speaker 1: that I'm not inviting David Duke to speak to this
Speaker 1: class because I just don't want the president university crap
Speaker 1: of pineapp apple. And you know i'd call it, but philosophically,
Speaker 1: I'm an old liberal, like even Bernie Sanders. As much
Speaker 1: as I tussle with Bernie, he's the same way. And
Speaker 1: a lot of old line a clu Ada Democrats that are.
Speaker 1: And I'm bored to come bore out of the Southern
Speaker 1: Democratic tradition. But this shit makes me uncomfortable at some level.
Speaker 1: But I'm not uncomfortable enough to challenge it because it'll
Speaker 1: just scream it out. I haven't gotten any significant pushback
Speaker 1: from a democratic strategist, opportunites, consultant, whatever you want to
Speaker 1: call them, saying your misdiagnosis, James. No, yep, they're just that.
Speaker 1: No one, no one believes that. But I'm gonna draw
Speaker 1: back a little bit because I'm tired of fighting with
Speaker 1: other Democrats because I think the country's on the go
Speaker 1: the wrong fucking way here. All right, this is not
Speaker 1: that was gonna be. That was gonna be my next question, Um,
Speaker 1: what is your assessment of the odds of genuine disaster
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two and twenty twenty four to Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you go in and you're having a medical test,
Speaker 1: all right, and what's the odd that you say, fuck this,
Speaker 1: I don't want it. It's way hard that Okay, if
Speaker 1: that's going in and doing a heart cast or something
Speaker 1: in the dodge that I was gonna die, age highs
Speaker 1: that we have a genuine catastrophe in I say, I
Speaker 1: should I just die of a heart attack? Man to
Speaker 1: stay away from me. Yeah, I can't put a number
Speaker 1: on it, but it's unbelievably for the fear that people
Speaker 1: like me have, We're not We're not. It's not crazy
Speaker 1: to be that a fred And it's not crazy for
Speaker 1: people to say at some point we're such a danger.
Speaker 1: We just got to stop fighting with each other, all right.
Speaker 1: And I'll be the first. I've always been willing to criticize,
Speaker 1: and I think justifiably, don't get me wrong, but sometimes
Speaker 1: you got to subjugate, which you really think for the
Speaker 1: greater good of the country. And I think we're entering
Speaker 1: a period like that. I really do. Well, let me
Speaker 1: ask you about that, because I like to say that too.
Speaker 1: I always say, you know, and things get bad enough,
Speaker 1: we reach and recognize that we have enough in common
Speaker 1: that we have to pull together. But you know, pandemic,
Speaker 1: national shutdown, economy through the floor, that all just happened,
Speaker 1: and it did not pull us together. It did not
Speaker 1: produce any kind of unification. And what's more, in some way,
Speaker 1: we got through it. I mean, I'm not saying we're
Speaker 1: all the way through it. We're not. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: we're not through it without consequences. There are consequences. But
Speaker 1: we did get through it. And so that sort of
Speaker 1: makes me wonder what did it take. What would it
Speaker 1: take for us to actually say we got to pull together.
Speaker 1: I don't think we saw it all right. I mean,
Speaker 1: we exist, and you know, the Kenya treasury is still
Speaker 1: with the benchmark of the world. But I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that we food yesh. I mean, we had a insurrection,
Speaker 1: which is one of the great criminal acts, political criminal acts,
Speaker 1: and since what's something and we're still dealing with it.
Speaker 1: I don't think we threw it at all. In the
Speaker 1: aftermath of that insurrection. We've had a total breakdown in
Speaker 1: the capacity of our institutions to blame anybody for it.
Speaker 1: And you know, we've got centure that has no effect
Speaker 1: on members of the House who are centured money off
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah, exactly, they turn around and raise money
Speaker 1: off it the next day. Forty three percent of this
Speaker 1: country doesn't want it to get better, and I'm afraid
Speaker 1: another eight percent have just checked out. Yeah. So if
Speaker 1: that's the case, I'm not clear on what it takes
Speaker 1: to so that the kind of the grand talk that
Speaker 1: I believe in of being able to find our way
Speaker 1: back to the middle. I'm I worry that I'm wrong.
Speaker 1: I'll do too. I'm worried at you all wrong. Yeah, Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I'm really worried. I'm not saying that is
Speaker 1: going to end poorly, but I'm saying the odds of
Speaker 1: that happening are way too high. One thing that made
Speaker 1: me optimistic is too strong, but made me makes me
Speaker 1: feel positive is looking at Stacey Abrams and what she
Speaker 1: accomplished in Georgia using turnout in twenty twenty, and I
Speaker 1: was really curious to hear your view about that. I mean,
Speaker 1: she in her case, it's a multi year strategy with
Speaker 1: a theory, an operation to try to bring it about
Speaker 1: and at least under those election conditions, really impressive results
Speaker 1: on presidential election and then both Senate seats. I worry
Speaker 1: a little bit we're too dependent on those Senate seats.
Speaker 1: But but I want to hear what you think about that,
Speaker 1: the Stacey Abrams strategy and how it's been executed. So
Speaker 1: I have a lot of thoughts about that. First of all,
Speaker 1: we p to Peacia academic research, the lead research. I
Speaker 1: want to say to Stoppel, who's at hard news data
Speaker 1: from the ninth and it basically compared Stacy in Georgia. Shoot,
Speaker 1: I think it was Reverend Barba North Carolina. Wait, in,
Speaker 1: this is my real issue with these left issues. They
Speaker 1: don't want to engage in politics. They think it's like
Speaker 1: a dirty business. If you're not willing to engage in politics,
Speaker 1: you're just full of shit, all right. Reverend Barbara North Carolina,
Speaker 1: he organized around idealism and Stacy organized around politics, and
Speaker 1: like went out campaign for like like Democrats brought up bills, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Georgia's voted blue in twenty twenty and North Carolina didn't.
Speaker 1: And it's it's a very compelling piece of research, and
Speaker 1: it's a compelling piece of political science. I recommend it
Speaker 1: to everybody. You have to get your hands dirty, and
Speaker 1: you've got to compromise, and you gotta push, and you
Speaker 1: gotta do this. And once you start thinking that you
Speaker 1: have to wear a condom anytime you're around politics, you've
Speaker 1: lost the game. And I think that is in her
Speaker 1: cohorts research showed that very demonstravely. I have a very
Speaker 1: high opinion of politics. But I do think the problem
Speaker 1: is one side, I go back to my central thesis,
Speaker 1: is out of their goddamn minds, literally accepted of criminality,
Speaker 1: and the other side is caught up in what I
Speaker 1: would say is not particularly productive, almost theological view of
Speaker 1: the world, a zealous thing that they called the dictatorship
Speaker 1: of the politarium. This is the dictatorship of overwhelmingly over
Speaker 1: educated whites trying to dictate to the rest of the
Speaker 1: country's something that they're not interested in buying. When you
Speaker 1: investigate this to few people, and they're very good. They did,
Speaker 1: like a four thousand sample divide America into nine different
Speaker 1: subgroups for Democratic, for Republican, one independently. In the Democratic Party,
Speaker 1: the extreme left was like eleven percent of the party.
Speaker 1: It was the only majority white part of our coalition.
Speaker 1: That'll tell you something. Somebody's got a call this for
Speaker 1: what it is, right, Yeah, and that is I mean
Speaker 1: that also fits into the stay Abrams approach. I mean
Speaker 1: she won over and got turned out from black voters,
Speaker 1: not by running to the left of the of the party,
Speaker 1: but running things back towards the center right. And she
Speaker 1: did also a little better around the state with the whites,
Speaker 1: you know, particularly in like northern you know, some of
Speaker 1: these areas not not great. You know, we had a
Speaker 1: theory in twenty twenty. We've spent ninety million dollars and
Speaker 1: seventy seven counties in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and we
Speaker 1: actually changed the boat those counties by somewhere between three
Speaker 1: and six. That changes sea level. Yep, that changes sea level.
Speaker 1: Once they have this sort of urban strategy that we're
Speaker 1: gonna have educated whites and by park it's at the
Speaker 1: ADI just not enough because they're not enough. They're not
Speaker 1: enough white people. They're not enough white people of that
Speaker 1: very strategic and located. And by the way, the black
Speaker 1: indigenous people of color becoming, if anything, slightly less democratic.
Speaker 1: In eighteen percent of the people in this country elect
Speaker 1: fifty two senators. Right, So unless you're willing to just
Speaker 1: throw the unless the Senate doesn't count, your strategy is stupid.
Speaker 1: It's not gonna happen. Yeah, what about those proposals that
Speaker 1: I think of frankly is crazy to break up big
Speaker 1: democratic states and create more states, which obviously the Republicans
Speaker 1: could retaliate with Texas at least. But when you hear
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, when I hear it, I just
Speaker 1: think crazy talk. Don't waste my time. It should I
Speaker 1: be more realistic about that. Yeah, you should be more.
Speaker 1: You should be worried. In Batterygees where I grew up,
Speaker 1: Corville was twenty miles south of bat Rage. I went
Speaker 1: to college, and they just have this thing where it's
Speaker 1: just kind of white part of South batter Rouge wants
Speaker 1: to break off from the parish because they don't want
Speaker 1: to support schools in non white districts. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: a pretty clear what the motivation is. It's very popular,
Speaker 1: and you can just see as you see these polls
Speaker 1: and you're started to dimiss them, like thirty eight percent succession,
Speaker 1: really succession? You can wait a minute. You know, urban areas.
Speaker 1: You know, I grew up in Louisiana, though all in
Speaker 1: versus the rest of the state. I cut my teeth
Speaker 1: in Pennsylvania politics, it's always Philadelphia versus the rest of
Speaker 1: the state. And boy, if you look at Texas ship
Speaker 1: eighty percent of the growth in Texas is all in quote,
Speaker 1: democratic rural counties unquote. I mean, it's all in Harris
Speaker 1: and Dallas and Tarrant and Travis and Bayer and there's
Speaker 1: everything else. And so that this is a it's a dangerous,
Speaker 1: dangerous idea that's taken more hold than I would like.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back, James. Another topic I wanted to
Speaker 1: ask you about, which is only obliquely related to this,
Speaker 1: is executive privilege. So you've got Steve Bannon, who's you know,
Speaker 1: about as unpleasant a person as you can imagine, just
Speaker 1: been federally charged for contempt of Congress for asserting that
Speaker 1: executive privilege would protect him from having to testify with
Speaker 1: Donald Trump telling him so, and you know, as a
Speaker 1: matter of existing law, he is wrong, and presumably if
Speaker 1: it gets to a jury, he'll be convicted. But it
Speaker 1: does raise an underlying question, which is, and you've had
Speaker 1: this experience yourself of being a close advisor of presidents.
Speaker 1: So how much should communications between the president and senior
Speaker 1: advisors continue to be protected even when the next president
Speaker 1: says I waive the privilege. I'm happy for the information
Speaker 1: to come out. Well, I mean it should be protected
Speaker 1: pretty vigorously. Okay, Now if he should not be protected, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's the bright line. That's that's the bright line. You know,
Speaker 1: if you say, look, if we negotiate this, or you know,
Speaker 1: this guy wants a postmaster and Shoeboygan, and so we
Speaker 1: can give him a postmaster ship and Seboygan and we
Speaker 1: can get his vote on that, that that obviously should
Speaker 1: be protected. To the Instagram. Yeah, I think executive privilege
Speaker 1: does have a pretty solid place in the law. But
Speaker 1: by the way, I think if any if he goes
Speaker 1: to jail to be his cellmate, you could make a
Speaker 1: good Eighth Amendment Cruel and unusual punishment. Can you mand
Speaker 1: what he smells? Like, oh my God, you had to
Speaker 1: said his name. Sell that Jesus, he'd have people looking
Speaker 1: looking for the gas chamber. I'm not I'm ever going
Speaker 1: to touch that one, although I'd be very surprised if
Speaker 1: he sees the inside of a prison, very very surprised,
Speaker 1: but not impossible. Do you think, by the way, speaking
Speaker 1: of Bennon, do you think that as a kind of
Speaker 1: intellectual father of Trump is um because you know, tru
Speaker 1: himself did not invent Trump. Isn't that much as clear
Speaker 1: And although success as a thousand fathers, it's clear that
Speaker 1: Bennon is one of them. Is he someone whose political insights,
Speaker 1: in your view, were powerful? I mean they're bad. I
Speaker 1: don't think there's any question about that. They're very bad.
Speaker 1: But what is he someone you put in the kind
Speaker 1: of short list of people who, like you, have the
Speaker 1: kind of political clarity and vision to see what's coming
Speaker 1: down the road? I mean Karl Rove, whose politics I
Speaker 1: don't particularly care for, and neither do you. I think
Speaker 1: he clearly does fall into that category. But does Steve
Speaker 1: Bannon fit in that category? I think Bannon's genius was
Speaker 1: he saw a dormant narrating that people would just really
Speaker 1: ready to respond to. And I hate to say it.
Speaker 1: I hope that Bennonism's crushed, But again, I don't know.
Speaker 1: He could. He could be one of the more relevant
Speaker 1: people in next not American consulting. Yeah, I hate giving
Speaker 1: a guy. Clearly, you have this kind of Thanksgiving Day table,
Speaker 1: you know, Uncle Joe spouting shit off. It was a
Speaker 1: lot more popular than you didn't We would have liked. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: what do you think explains it having been dormant for
Speaker 1: as long as it was, Because that's one thing that's
Speaker 1: fascinating about it. Like you said, it's not really that
Speaker 1: new and narrative in its essence. That's why you call
Speaker 1: it dormant. It was there all along. We just people
Speaker 1: like like us thought to ourselves, Yeah, there's Uncle Joe,
Speaker 1: but that's not how you win elections in the United States.
Speaker 1: There's certain things that you can't say, even if you're
Speaker 1: the Republican candidate running for president. You can have a
Speaker 1: whistle dog whistle to racism, but you can't overtly be
Speaker 1: a racist. Turns out not true, right, You can say
Speaker 1: a lot of things openly that we thought you couldn't say,
Speaker 1: and not just we, but everyone in the political game
Speaker 1: thought you couldn't say it openly, So why why was that?
Speaker 1: Why don't we get as long a period in which
Speaker 1: these things were inappropriate to say or believed to mean
Speaker 1: a rope to say politically as we actually got said.
Speaker 1: It kind of started the obligation kind of started with
Speaker 1: Lee at Water. He said, you know, you used to
Speaker 1: be able to stand up and say blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: but now you got to say busting of urban you
Speaker 1: from And what the balance of the world said is no,
Speaker 1: you don't. You just go you go right for the jugular.
Speaker 1: And you know, the Republican Party for a long time
Speaker 1: was sort of more interested in service and capitalism's needs.
Speaker 1: But again, yeah, I think that we we don't speak
Speaker 1: in coded languages so much anymore. And I actually kind
Speaker 1: of like coded languages. That's the kind of language is dangerous.
Speaker 1: It is really dangerous because dangerous people hear it and
Speaker 1: believe it. That's a danger and that something does And look,
Speaker 1: you could go a long way in America feeling to
Speaker 1: people's prejudices and fears, and it's really a if you
Speaker 1: stop and you think about it, product, there have an
Speaker 1: idea that they and I hear this all the time.
Speaker 1: I hear from family members, I hear from people I
Speaker 1: grew up with. You know, James, this is not the
Speaker 1: same country we grew up in. I said, of course
Speaker 1: it's not. It's not going to be just named country.
Speaker 1: And there's some idea that there's some restoration. And you're right,
Speaker 1: if you're a white male, your status in American society
Speaker 1: has been severely disminished. Yeah, people like you and I
Speaker 1: are not particularly distressed about the changes that are coming
Speaker 1: to the country. We think we bring a lot of
Speaker 1: people to the table that wouldn't be there before, and
Speaker 1: as opposed to relying on a talent pool of just
Speaker 1: college educated white males, we have this drawing on this
Speaker 1: enormously vast and increased talent book. Right, But you gotta
Speaker 1: understand that people are very fearful of that, sure, and
Speaker 1: they think there's a way that we can go back
Speaker 1: to the old ways. That's that's what's really at work
Speaker 1: at American politics is that people like us are kind
Speaker 1: of enthusiastic about the kind of demographic changes that are
Speaker 1: happening in the United States. But there are a lot
Speaker 1: of people that are very fearful of these changes, and
Speaker 1: they are abstracting a price at to voting boom is
Speaker 1: that this is my last sort of big picture question,
Speaker 1: is that what's behind the polarization that we see at
Speaker 1: the deepest level, you know, is the polarization a story
Speaker 1: of the gradual rise of recognition by white men and
Speaker 1: a lot of white men that they're losing and things
Speaker 1: have changed, in which case this polarization is not going
Speaker 1: to go away for a long time, or are there
Speaker 1: some other factors going into the partisan polarization that might
Speaker 1: be reversible without a kind of Dottle royale where white
Speaker 1: men finally accept that things have changed, you know, configured Vane,
Speaker 1: Max close are the best theoretical fit. Physics is not
Speaker 1: named Einstein. Yeah, Max. He said, science does not triumph
Speaker 1: because it convinces its opponents. Science triumphs because its opponents
Speaker 1: eventually die. Science advances one funeral at the time, Okay,
Speaker 1: which I think is a pretty Yeah. That's a depressing
Speaker 1: thing for a guy seventy seven, not, I hear. But
Speaker 1: the truth of the matter is, if you are a
Speaker 1: white male, particularly an old white male, you're such a
Speaker 1: loss is real. And by the way, it's not just
Speaker 1: economic class, it's cultural lass. There used to be TV
Speaker 1: shows made about you. There used to be movies made
Speaker 1: about you. You're contund being told that you mattered. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: and it's a dangerous problem. But you know, we're a
Speaker 1: race with the actually er tables right now. Do you
Speaker 1: think that if the Court, as it seems very plausibly
Speaker 1: likely to do, overturns rov. Wade, that that's going to
Speaker 1: generate meaningful organizational support for Democratic candidates in a way
Speaker 1: that has any meaningful long term success, Because they're obviously
Speaker 1: the justices are thinking about that, and it's part of
Speaker 1: their strategic calculus. You know, if they think that they're
Speaker 1: gonna that there's going to be court packing after they
Speaker 1: do that, that's going to give them pause. But if
Speaker 1: they think that the Democrats won't get the kind of
Speaker 1: bump out of that, then they're going to vote their conscience,
Speaker 1: and in the case of more than five justices, their
Speaker 1: conscience is that Roe v. Wade should be overturned. So
Speaker 1: I think this, and I've thought it for some time,
Speaker 1: and I've become more convinced. The most significant moment and
Speaker 1: my American history was Bush Gore and the region it
Speaker 1: was they told them they could fucking get away with
Speaker 1: anything you wanted to do. All right, they're just went
Speaker 1: end and just stole an election right in front of you.
Speaker 1: And they did it. But like an opinion and Scottish
Speaker 1: and blah blah blah and put in the Democrats. What
Speaker 1: did the country Doah? Well, you can see the times
Speaker 1: in the post and everybody. Well, the justices have spoken,
Speaker 1: and ye Gore to be applauded for recognizing the official
Speaker 1: transfer of power, although there have been a lot of
Speaker 1: recounts of those votes that suggested that actually it was
Speaker 1: going to be really close that in the counties that
Speaker 1: that that Gore asked for, but the Florida Supreme Court
Speaker 1: was getting ready to have a statewide recount which would
Speaker 1: have not been close. And they knew it. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: Look I was there. I was a baby lawyer working
Speaker 1: for the Gore campaign. We felt we were we had
Speaker 1: it stolen from us, no question. Well, you did the
Speaker 1: logic cases they suffered no political consequence. You're right, No,
Speaker 1: they didn't and they and they said they. But you
Speaker 1: don't think that there is a counter argument that the
Speaker 1: right to choose is so much more visceral, immediate, and
Speaker 1: powerful than a presidential campidated al Gore, whom, let's be blunt,
Speaker 1: not too many people were super enthusiastic about to be
Speaker 1: in with George. George W. Bush was not the George W.
Speaker 1: Bush that he came to be seen by later. Then
Speaker 1: he was the compassionate conservative. You know, it didn't seem
Speaker 1: like the end of the world to a lot of people,
Speaker 1: and this I think would seem like the end of
Speaker 1: the world to a lot of young people. It did
Speaker 1: not seem like the end of the world. But it
Speaker 1: kind of was. I hear you, Okay, events happened in
Speaker 1: history that are not recognizing it was. It was. But
Speaker 1: but what they would say is they never the allis
Speaker 1: bluster and talk we've done nothing to when they're getting
Speaker 1: and they're getting and decide if fuck these guys ain't
Speaker 1: gonna do anything about I did just kind of screaming, yeah,
Speaker 1: when you know, we're just going and we'll enforce our
Speaker 1: view of corporatocracy in America and you know, whatever it
Speaker 1: is they do, and it's not an unreasonable view for
Speaker 1: them to have. And when people, when people do, when
Speaker 1: the Democrats do go out there, if and when this
Speaker 1: happens and try to motivate the base by saying and women,
Speaker 1: especially by saying we have to win back the Congress
Speaker 1: because we got out and the presidency because we got
Speaker 1: to pack the court, which is where we're headed. They're
Speaker 1: going to have to argue for that. Do you think
Speaker 1: it has any legs or does it have doesn't have
Speaker 1: any legs where it takes an election to do that. No,
Speaker 1: that's what I'm saying. I think if this happens, it
Speaker 1: will happen next summer, and so it's four elections, but
Speaker 1: you have you have to win the election in which
Speaker 1: you have to run on. Is people's views on a
Speaker 1: Washington conflict, you know where they're not conflicted? Or Row? Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, Row is a seventy three percent deal. So
Speaker 1: if they overturn Row, which there's a real probability that
Speaker 1: they will this summer, then it depends on the strength
Speaker 1: of organizing and people what kind of appeals are going
Speaker 1: to make. But I do think if you if if
Speaker 1: a court imposes a solution, it has twenty five percent
Speaker 1: support in the country. The question is the depth of
Speaker 1: how much people are willing to support rope. Is it
Speaker 1: one of these things about rich people can get around it?
Speaker 1: And I don't know the answer to that. But they've
Speaker 1: gotten away with a lot, and the response from people
Speaker 1: like us has been feeble, all right, it just has.
Speaker 1: And I think that I actually think that twenty twenty
Speaker 1: one is one of the most significant years in American history.
Speaker 1: I think people have a viewed that, well, it's just
Speaker 1: I'll ball down in partisanship and ship nothing happens. Man's
Speaker 1: a lot of shit happened in twenty twenty one, and
Speaker 1: no one has done a very good job, myself included,
Speaker 1: because I can go get a headline attacking these goofy leftists,
Speaker 1: all right, and everybody wants to have that conversation. But
Speaker 1: the country really doesn't know. This has been a pretty transformation.
Speaker 1: You know. People that noticed shit tell me this that
Speaker 1: this corporate minimum tax. I had never thought anything like
Speaker 1: that could have happened in this substantial it's substanti substantio.
Speaker 1: It comes in so far are very meaningful accomplishments. The
Speaker 1: question is is anybody hearing that or is anybody noticing that?
Speaker 1: The larger question is anybody telling people that no one
Speaker 1: wants to be in sales, all right, everybody wants to
Speaker 1: be in policy. Everybody wants to be a theoretician. No
Speaker 1: one wants to go door to door with the pots
Speaker 1: and pants. Okay, give me a door to door a
Speaker 1: knife salesman from nineteen No One, But Stacy Abrams she's
Speaker 1: willing to go toter door again. I'll go back to data.
Speaker 1: You show she went out and organized, She traveled to
Speaker 1: all of these places, and she she got her hands dirty.
Speaker 1: And you know, we got cabinet members that are so
Speaker 1: good as stunning. Try miss Andrew. Miss Andrew is the
Speaker 1: best communicator I've seen my wife not named Bill Clinton.
Speaker 1: I'll promise you I'm not just saying that because I
Speaker 1: try Gena romalto to the commerce is incredible. She is amazing.
Speaker 1: Jennifer Grennell, take every person in that cabinet that is
Speaker 1: evil runs the statewide office. I'm saying, I want your
Speaker 1: ass out there on television. We'll get some bureaucrat to
Speaker 1: run the details. Get out there himself. He's got really,
Speaker 1: he's got cabinet people and people in his administration that
Speaker 1: have world class skills. Get them out there. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't I don't know. They're not using because they're worried
Speaker 1: about what if Biden can't run In twenty twenty four
Speaker 1: and Kala Harrison has sees them as competition cares. We
Speaker 1: don't know, we're gonna be here in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: Fair and fair, I mean, just get get out there
Speaker 1: and sell. Yeah. You know, my mother she sawd World
Speaker 1: book Encyclopedias, but she never called him Encyclopedias. She called
Speaker 1: him education and materials. And so she would put me
Speaker 1: out that'd be like thirteen years old, and we'd ride
Speaker 1: around south of young and she says, ball, we're gonna
Speaker 1: look for two things, a bass boat and a bicycle,
Speaker 1: because that tells us two things. This house has disposable
Speaker 1: income and they have a child. Yep, said knock on
Speaker 1: the door. This is late nineteen fifties, Louisianelade, come in,
Speaker 1: miss Carhood. Are you doing. She started talking about these
Speaker 1: educators and said, James, this is a capital of Vermada,
Speaker 1: say mont Pillion, Oh god, And she gonna, what's the
Speaker 1: capital of art and said, oh shit, is a genius.
Speaker 1: But how did he ever notice? But he bought these
Speaker 1: educational materials. Said then they would inevitably bring the man
Speaker 1: of the house in because that was the way it was.
Speaker 1: And you know that she made up pitch and the
Speaker 1: guy would say, well, almost card. It seemed like it's
Speaker 1: very good, but you know we've got school voting, and
Speaker 1: don't you come back? And four months and she said,
Speaker 1: you know, sir, I find it interesting that you can
Speaker 1: afford a basketboat for yourself, which can't afford educational materials
Speaker 1: for your children. That was just like a pile of
Speaker 1: fucking soul. Okay, he was signing anything eighty one years.
Speaker 1: He just wanted to get out of there because he'd
Speaker 1: been so humiliated in that kind of pitch. You know
Speaker 1: that that kind of pitch always stuck with me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, I thought there was. By the way, if
Speaker 1: thought World Book was a good product, I know it is.
Speaker 1: She was doing good. She was selling a good product,
Speaker 1: good to people if they and if they opened it,
Speaker 1: they learned. Yes, and there's nothing wrong being a pitch man.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much for pitching for all these years,
Speaker 1: for analyzing, for pitching, for calling it like it is,
Speaker 1: and for sharing your inimitable perspective. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: All Right, we'll proud for good. Look to you. Thank you, Jordan.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back when you talk to James Carville.
Speaker 1: You can't possibly agree with everything the man says, But
Speaker 1: you do realize that you have to take everything he
Speaker 1: says seriously, even and in fact, especially when you may
Speaker 1: not exactly agree with it. James Carville's assessment of where
Speaker 1: we are right now in American politics is in a
Speaker 1: sense a story of contradictions. On the one hand, he believes,
Speaker 1: I think with good reason the Joe Biden's accomplishments in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one have been meaningful, significant, and potentially long
Speaker 1: lasting in terms of their policy effects. At the same time,
Speaker 1: he believes that the Democratic Party, the party he loves
Speaker 1: and supports, the Party of Coalition, is doing a terrible
Speaker 1: job of going out and selling its ideas. He holds
Speaker 1: out Stacey Abrams, whom regular listeners of the podcasts know,
Speaker 1: has been with us as a guest on the podcast,
Speaker 1: as the model of what good, real political engagement looks like.
Speaker 1: If we do more of what Stacy is doing, he
Speaker 1: thinks Democrats can have future successes. Yet, the threats to
Speaker 1: the fundamental structure of democracy he considers to be real
Speaker 1: ones Trumpism, beyond just Donald Trump, he sees as a genuine, serious,
Speaker 1: fundamental threat to the capacity of the American political system
Speaker 1: to operate he sees it as growing out of white
Speaker 1: male frustration at decline in social status, in power, and
Speaker 1: the share of economic life. And he says that the
Speaker 1: combination of partisan gerrymandering the structure of the Senate where
Speaker 1: fifty two seats can be chosen by eighteen percent of
Speaker 1: the party plus the electoral college, means we do face
Speaker 1: the genuine possibility that a relatively small number of Americans
Speaker 1: with Trump's political sympathies can hijack the political process and
Speaker 1: block the access to a fair share of political power
Speaker 1: deserved by everybody else. Last, but very much not least,
Speaker 1: James has been an outspoken critic of the left wing
Speaker 1: of the Democratic Party for the specifics of its cultural politics,
Speaker 1: which he believes lose the party votes nationally. That's of
Speaker 1: a piece with his preference for pragmatism, coalition, and compromise,
Speaker 1: all of which inevitably mean giving up on a more
Speaker 1: moralized narrative of doing the right thing in American politics.
Speaker 1: In this sphere, we know the Democratic part is just
Speaker 1: beginning to enter a period of deep introspection. What comes
Speaker 1: out of that introspection is going to have a major
Speaker 1: impact on the politics of the national election in twenty
Speaker 1: two and in the presidential election of twenty twenty four. Beyond,
Speaker 1: James Carville wants to be a profit of pragmatic possibility,
Speaker 1: not a profit of doom. But there were moments in
Speaker 1: this conversation where it's sometimes sounded like he felt we
Speaker 1: should be honest about recognizing that things could go terribly
Speaker 1: wrong in the years ahead. Until the next time I
Speaker 1: speak to you, Breathe deep, think, deep thoughts, and if
Speaker 1: you have any hope left, have a little fun. If
Speaker 1: you're a regular listener, you know I love communicating with
Speaker 1: you here on Deep Background. I also really want that
Speaker 1: communication to run both ways. I want to know what
Speaker 1: you think are the most important stories of the moment,
Speaker 1: and what kinds of guests you think you would be
Speaker 1: useful to hear from. More So, I'm opening a new
Speaker 1: channel of communication. To access it, just go to my
Speaker 1: website Noahdashfeldman dot com. You can sign up from my
Speaker 1: newsletter and you can tell me exactly what's on your mind,
Speaker 1: something that would be really valuable to me and I
Speaker 1: hope to you too. Deep Background is brought to you
Speaker 1: by Pushkin Industries. Our producer is Mo Labor. Our engineer
Speaker 1: is Ben Taliday and our showrunner is Sophie Crane mckibbon.
Speaker 1: Editorial support from noahm Osband. Theme music by Luis Guerra
Speaker 1: at Pushkin. Thanks to Mia Lobell, Julia Barton, Lydia, Jane Coott,
Speaker 1: Heather Faine, Carlie mcgliori, Maggie Taylor, Eric Sandler, and Jacob Weisberg.
Speaker 1: You can find me on Twitter at Noah R. Felder.
Speaker 1: I also write a column for Bloomberg Opinion, which you
Speaker 1: can find at Bloomberg dot com slash Feldmer. To discover
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