Speaker 1: Hi, everyone, I'm Kitty Kirk and this is next question.
Speaker 1: Ezra Cline is one smart cookie. He's got a podcast
Speaker 1: with the somewhat unoriginal title of the ezraclined show. Hey,
Speaker 1: I've got a company called Katy Kirk Media, so I
Speaker 1: guess I'm one to talk. But he's also an opinion
Speaker 1: columnist for The New York Times. Semaphore called him the
Speaker 1: breakout media star of the twenty twenty four election cycle.
Speaker 1: His columns and his podcasts are incredibly insightful and at
Speaker 1: times pretty surprising. He often gives us new, fresh takes
Speaker 1: on some of the same old problems. Today, I'm very
Speaker 1: excited to have as my plus one the one the
Speaker 1: only Liz Plank, who is a feminist writer, commentator. She
Speaker 1: has a biweekly newsletter called Airplane Mode, which I subscribe to,
Speaker 1: and I absolutely love Liz. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: being my plus one and any of meat today.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: I've been on the wait list for a while, so
Speaker 3: I'm happy to be to be here with you now.
Speaker 1: We're having today as our guest Ezra Klein, who I
Speaker 1: know you're a big fan of. I'm a big fan
Speaker 1: of as Sema for said not too long ago, he
Speaker 1: was having a moment. He has an extremely popular podcast,
Speaker 1: and I always appreciate his point of view. Are you
Speaker 1: a big fan, Let's hope so because he's listening.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm a super I mean I'm a super fan.
Speaker 3: I had the privilege of working for Ezra when I
Speaker 3: was a box and I still have like an Ezra
Speaker 3: cleient voice inside my head that pops in sometimes of
Speaker 3: lessons that I've learned from working with Ezra, Like every
Speaker 3: time I did get time with him, I would leave
Speaker 3: with like a really important thing that would stay in
Speaker 3: my head. And so I'm super super excited to be
Speaker 3: talking to him today with you.
Speaker 1: What are some of the headline issues that you're looking
Speaker 1: to interrogate with Ezra?
Speaker 3: Well, I think Ezra wrote an entire book about polarization,
Speaker 3: and obviously we think a lot about polarization in the
Speaker 3: sense of political parties and political ideology. But recently, just
Speaker 3: with all of the data that's come out of the
Speaker 3: election and this huge and growing gender divide, I've been
Speaker 3: thinking a lot about it in terms of gender, and
Speaker 3: so I'm very curious to hear his thoughts about how
Speaker 3: we resolve this growing gap between women and men and
Speaker 3: us being kind of like each radicalized in our own
Speaker 3: corner of the universe, and the sort of political landscape right.
Speaker 1: Now, well, let's get to it. Ezra Klein, welcome to
Speaker 1: next question.
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy to have you. And before we look ahead,
Speaker 1: I want to look behind us for a moment, because
Speaker 1: you did get a lot of credit, Ezra for being
Speaker 1: the leader of the pack saying that Joe Biden must
Speaker 1: step down looking back on that whole experience, because I
Speaker 1: know you think highly of Joe Biden, you like him,
Speaker 1: you think he was good president. Any regrets for leaning
Speaker 1: sort of the movement to replace him with someone else,
Speaker 1: I hear.
Speaker 4: Me in some ways more credit than I I'd look
Speaker 4: like I was. I don't think of myself as early
Speaker 4: or the media as early. Certainly the voters were there
Speaker 4: for a long time. A lot of what I was
Speaker 4: saying in those kind of pieces back in February was
Speaker 4: that you had had in poll after poll sixty five
Speaker 4: seventy five eighty percent, which are hard numbers to get
Speaker 4: in American politics, a voter saying that he should step
Speaker 4: aside early in the Democratic primaries, you know, or when
Speaker 4: there wasn't really a Democratic primary, but when there might
Speaker 4: have been a plurality or majority of Democrats depending on
Speaker 4: the poll, didn't want him to run again. Go watch
Speaker 4: his convention speech in twenty sixteen. There was not a
Speaker 4: better speech at that convention. I mean, he just took
Speaker 4: Donald Trump apart. If that guy had run against Donald
Speaker 4: Trump at twenty sixteen, he would have won by six points.
Speaker 2: Because because we league not.
Speaker 5: Only by the example of our power, but by the
Speaker 5: power of our example. That is the history of the
Speaker 5: journey of America. God willing, God willing, Hillary Clinton will
Speaker 5: write the next chapter in that journey. We are America
Speaker 5: second to none, and we own the finish line. Don't
Speaker 5: forget it. God bless you all, and may God protect
Speaker 5: our trips come.
Speaker 4: You're America. And I think Joe Biden gets credit for
Speaker 4: doing something that is extraordinarily rare, not just in American
Speaker 4: politics but in politics worldwide, which is having ultimate political power,
Speaker 4: having a chance of keeping it right. I mean, he
Speaker 4: was never that far behind Donald Trump and the polls
Speaker 4: and giving it up because that was the better thing
Speaker 4: to do for the country. I mean, I know people
Speaker 4: who say, oh, he did it too later, he never
Speaker 4: should have run fine sale that. But the kinds of
Speaker 4: personalities that become leaders of nations, these are people who
Speaker 4: want power, not people who find it easy to say
Speaker 4: no to power. And so what Biden and in the end,
Speaker 4: I do think was heroic and historic.
Speaker 3: He definitely solidified his legacy and wasn't part of the
Speaker 3: reluctance for the Democratic Party to sort of acknowledge what
Speaker 3: was happening and was unfolding in front of our eyes
Speaker 3: was the fear that there was no replacement, right, that
Speaker 3: Kamala Harris didn't have the popularity that's required in order
Speaker 3: to become the candidate. And it was so interesting. I
Speaker 3: think if there'd been more time between Biden stepping down
Speaker 3: and then Kamala Harris becoming the candidate, maybe there we
Speaker 3: would have had more time to talk about is she electable?
Speaker 2: Can you know? Can she do this in America? Get
Speaker 2: on board?
Speaker 3: And it's almost like, because there wasn't enough time for
Speaker 3: people to doubt it, her popularity sort of spoke for itself.
Speaker 3: But I'm curious how you see that, how do you
Speaker 3: explain her popularity right now?
Speaker 4: So I think there are two things happening at that time.
Speaker 4: So one was a lot of people around Biden and
Speaker 4: the Democratic Party. This was not, in my view, some
Speaker 4: grand cover up. And the way you know it wasn't
Speaker 4: a grand cover up is because the Biden campaign team
Speaker 4: negotiated an early debate. They thought he could do it right.
Speaker 4: And you know, maybe they were fooling themselves, maybe they
Speaker 4: were seeing something we weren't. Maybe they weren't accepting things
Speaker 4: they were seeing. Some days, there are a lot of
Speaker 4: ways people sort of can negotiate internally something that is
Speaker 4: maybe not true or reality they don't want to accept.
Speaker 4: But I do think that was happening. The view that
Speaker 4: they sort of knew this was a disaster is not
Speaker 4: aligned to what ultimately their actions really were, So I
Speaker 4: think you should believe their actions. But then, yeah, Liz,
Speaker 4: what you're saying is true. When I was doing this reporting,
Speaker 4: the thing that I kept hearing from people who understood
Speaker 4: Joe Biden's age to be a potentially insufferable political problem
Speaker 4: was well, the only really likely replacement is Harris, and
Speaker 4: Harris cannot win Pennsylvania, Michigan, in Wisconsin, right, And that
Speaker 4: was the view. And Harris had trailed Joe Biden in
Speaker 4: popularity for much of his presidential term. She was at
Speaker 4: that point still to my knowledge, if I'm remembering the
Speaker 4: polling right trailing him a bit. The Democratic Party had
Speaker 4: lost a lot of faith in her over the course
Speaker 4: of Joe Biden's presidency. I said, then, I think it
Speaker 4: has proven true that that was always a little bit
Speaker 4: is sterious, and she'd become underrated because nothing had actually
Speaker 4: gone wrong for her in any very significant way. I mean,
Speaker 4: she had a kind of bad luster whole interview, but
Speaker 4: that wasn't enough to explain how far her star had
Speaker 4: fallen among many sort of Democratic insiders.
Speaker 1: I think Estra, just to interject real quickly, I think
Speaker 1: part of the problem was she was almost in the
Speaker 1: witness protection program. I think this philosophy of not making
Speaker 1: Joe Biden available for interviews and not having him interface
Speaker 1: with a lot of journalists kept her away from the press.
Speaker 1: They could have done even joint interviews that reinforced that
Speaker 1: they had a good working relationship, but I feel like
Speaker 1: he kept her away from the media, and then when
Speaker 1: she did interviews like the Lester Hold interview or some
Speaker 1: other interviews and didn't fare well, it solidified this idea
Speaker 1: that she wasn't that competent.
Speaker 4: I think this one's hard to say. I know that
Speaker 4: she did an interview with you in January. Commos is
Speaker 4: not like she does not do many media interviews, right,
Speaker 4: That is an authentic, I think thing to her. I
Speaker 4: don't think it's a strong format for her. I don't
Speaker 4: really understand why. Oftentimes she's very very good defending Biden
Speaker 4: after the debate, but in a lot of the media
Speaker 4: interviews she's given, she will not answer questions that are
Speaker 4: very straightforward, and she gets tripped up by straightforward to
Speaker 4: questions in a way I don't understand.
Speaker 1: It's almost like she's ticking off talking points.
Speaker 4: Yeah, It's like you can watch her firing up the
Speaker 4: nearest script, whereas in a debate she's excellent, right, And
Speaker 4: she was good in her interview with you. I remember
Speaker 4: listening to it while I was trying to think about
Speaker 4: all this and trying to find interviews of her. So
Speaker 4: I came across her with you, and I think that's
Speaker 4: one of her better interviews. So she's definitely capable of
Speaker 4: doing it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I still think she often ticks off talking points.
Speaker 1: It's almost like she's afraid she's going to say something
Speaker 1: wrong when I saw Kamala Harris debate, I thought, Wow,
Speaker 1: she did a really good job. Perhaps she'll feel liberated
Speaker 1: to do more interviews because she's quick on her feet,
Speaker 1: she has a facility with facts and figures. And then
Speaker 1: it went right back to kind of sounding scripted in
Speaker 1: interview situations I couldn't figure out. But anyway, continue your
Speaker 1: earlier point is raight.
Speaker 4: So there was this view that she wasn't up to it.
Speaker 4: This was a really big thing in the party, to
Speaker 4: be fair with something that people around Joe Biden were
Speaker 4: saying in order to fortify his position, and then by
Speaker 4: the time he dropped out, there was not time for
Speaker 4: what a lot of people in the party thought they
Speaker 4: should have, by the way, something Kamala Harris quietly also
Speaker 4: thought they should have because she thought it'd be better for her,
Speaker 4: which was some kind of competitive process.
Speaker 1: In fact, you advocated that as where you said there
Speaker 1: should be an open convention so people could really determine
Speaker 1: who was the strongest candidate against Trump. Given that, were
Speaker 1: you surprised that her popularity, as Liz mentioned, was almost
Speaker 1: instantaneous and among Democrats, very very strong.
Speaker 4: I wasn't surprised that her popularity among Democrats was strong.
Speaker 4: I was surprised by how much her overall favorables among
Speaker 4: the electorate rose. Look, I think we're going to see
Speaker 4: in the election ultimately, right, if Kamala Harris the election
Speaker 4: right and she particularly like wins it convincingly, you know,
Speaker 4: the sense that Kamala Harris was terribly underrated is going
Speaker 4: to be true. Right, it will just have been true.
Speaker 4: And if Harris, if the polling errors in the other
Speaker 4: direction and Harris loses Michigan and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, then
Speaker 4: the sense that she is maybe not the candidate, you know,
Speaker 4: a California Liberal that you would have picked to run
Speaker 4: in those states, and she doesn't win North Carolina in Arizona,
Speaker 4: which looked like harter states for her anyway, then the
Speaker 4: sense that the Democratic Party probably didn't have, you know,
Speaker 4: the exact person you would have wanted to run in
Speaker 4: those states is going to congeal. I am not willing
Speaker 4: at this junk. I think she's been a much stronger candidate,
Speaker 4: and I did podcasts about how she's underrated and had
Speaker 4: always said then, no matter what process you do, she
Speaker 4: is the most likely candidate out of it. So if
Speaker 4: you wanted to replace Biden on the ticket as I did.
Speaker 4: You always had to be comfortable with Kamala Harris being
Speaker 4: the candidate because she was probably going to win no
Speaker 4: matter how you did it. And I was comfortable with that.
Speaker 4: So I was willing to make that argument at a
Speaker 4: time some people didn't think it made sense. But look,
Speaker 4: if Democrats lose this here, there's going to be a
Speaker 4: lot of anger, you know, if they lose because of
Speaker 4: Pennsylvania where she didn't pict Shapiro, there's going to be
Speaker 4: a lot of anger. So you've been around this longer
Speaker 4: than I have, but I'm always careful before getting ahead
Speaker 4: of a narrative when we haven't seen the election play out.
Speaker 1: If you want to get smarter every morning with a
Speaker 1: breakdown of the news and fascinating takes on health and
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Speaker 1: Wake Up Call by going to Katiecuric dot com. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about Trump calling her mentally impaired. You know, there
Speaker 1: don't seem to be any consequences for him making statements
Speaker 1: like that, and gosh, a whole myriad of other insults
Speaker 1: He does, though, seem to be having a hard time
Speaker 1: running against her and be slightly flummixed by her candidacy.
Speaker 1: A friend of mine said, the lummix is flummixed, and
Speaker 1: so I'm curious your observations on how he's trying to
Speaker 1: position her and position himself against her.
Speaker 4: My observations about Donald Trump's positioning. I think with Donald Trump,
Speaker 4: you are dealing with someone who is intuitive and not strategic,
Speaker 4: and that's who he's always been. That people say there's
Speaker 4: maybe even some age related deterioration in him. I mean,
Speaker 4: he's not a spring chicken, as I say. I think
Speaker 4: that's probably true as well his inability to stick to
Speaker 4: a line of attack on her as a leftist California
Speaker 4: flip flopper. Will I was speaking a minute ago about
Speaker 4: how narratives take hold after elections. If he loses his
Speaker 4: election convincingly, which in my view is a pretty good shot.
Speaker 4: The view that he completely blew for him a winnable
Speaker 4: election because he didn't have a shred of self discipline
Speaker 4: will take very stronghold. He could have run against her
Speaker 4: on election. I'm election on inflation, on the set of
Speaker 4: positions she took in twenty twenty, where she swung very
Speaker 4: far to the left to try to out flank Bernie Sanders,
Speaker 4: there was a the Joe Biden admistration is unpopular and
Speaker 4: his record is unpopular, and she is part of that administration.
Speaker 4: I mean the way that a normal Republican candidate, right,
Speaker 4: if the Republicans had gone another direction and picked Nicki Haley,
Speaker 4: The way Nicki Haley would run against Kamala Harris is obvious.
Speaker 4: It rights itself, and I think most people bet that
Speaker 4: Haley would have won. And Donald Trump he can only
Speaker 4: be who he is, and her ability to dangle obvious
Speaker 4: bait at him in front of the during the debate
Speaker 4: and say, you know, on his strongest issue, immigration, Oh
Speaker 4: but you have you know, bored people wandering out at
Speaker 4: your crowds.
Speaker 1: I was going to say his second strongest issue, crowd size.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, And the guy snorts and like pause at
Speaker 4: the ground and charges that was it wasn't just that
Speaker 4: he's got that failure in the moment at a debate.
Speaker 4: It is a core personality problem in him, right, a
Speaker 4: core temperamental problem that is playing out all across the election.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you brought up discipline, which I think is
Speaker 3: such an important word. I was watching Joe Rogan's take
Speaker 3: on the debate to him, the discrediting thing about the
Speaker 3: debate was his lack of discipline, that she came off
Speaker 3: as not just more prepared, being able to stay on topic.
Speaker 3: And to me, discipline is actually a masculine or traditionally
Speaker 3: masculine quality, right there is definitely and I think we're
Speaker 3: going to get into it, just the gender divide of
Speaker 3: this election. You know, a lot of men are not
Speaker 3: on board with Kamala Harris and are you know, have
Speaker 3: been moving away from the Democratic Party for a while now,
Speaker 3: but it's even more significant in this election. And part
Speaker 3: of me wonders, like, I mean, watching Kamala Harris her
Speaker 3: speech at the DNC and some of these media appearances,
Speaker 3: they almost seem like, yes, she's talking about abortion, she's
Speaker 3: talking about reproductive rights. She's definitely speaking to women. But
Speaker 3: some of these I think soundbites are like for the dudes.
Speaker 3: You know, her talking about America being the most like
Speaker 3: lethal force in the world, talking about shooting people if
Speaker 3: they come into her home. Do you see her kind
Speaker 3: of signaling to men and male voters in a way
Speaker 3: that's maybe not as overt as what Donald Trump is doing,
Speaker 3: And do you see it working?
Speaker 4: I probably have a slightly different view and where it
Speaker 4: comes from. I think there's like a bunch of interesting
Speaker 4: things to pick up on there. I'd love to talk.
Speaker 4: I feel like you get a whole podcast on this
Speaker 4: question of whether discipline is male coded in American politics,
Speaker 4: and I'd love to think about that. Kummeleris comes out
Speaker 4: of a black political tradition. She is a moderate law
Speaker 4: and order black urban politician, right, that's where she comes
Speaker 4: from in San Francisco, and San Francisco is thought of
Speaker 4: as very liberal. In many ways, it is very liberal,
Speaker 4: but as somebody who's lived there and grew up in California,
Speaker 4: San Francisco is a city that has always struggled terribly
Speaker 4: with disorder, right with drug use, with homelessness, with a
Speaker 4: kind of burbling chaos that often feels like it is
Speaker 4: only inches from consuming much of the rest of the city.
Speaker 4: And Harris emerges as a DA there. She runs against
Speaker 4: the existing DA as bad at winning prosecutions. She becomes
Speaker 4: ag of California on a somewhat similar argument, running against
Speaker 4: some more law and order republican from Los Angeles and
Speaker 4: right and left, male and female, the kinds of voters
Speaker 4: Harris like cut her political teeth knowing how to appeal
Speaker 4: to were voters who wanted somebody who would catch bad guys,
Speaker 4: who would put bad people behind bars. I mean the movement,
Speaker 4: which I think is the cause of a lot of
Speaker 4: her sort of political instability in twenty twenty, where the
Speaker 4: Democratic Party wanted her to succeed but had turned sharply
Speaker 4: against law and order politics, and like that creates this
Speaker 4: kind of space where she can't be who she really
Speaker 4: is politically, but never really finds another political identity to inhabit,
Speaker 4: and then ends up kind of looking correless and having
Speaker 4: taken a bunch of positions, she's now walked back from
Speaker 4: what Harris is reinhabiting here when she puts out these
Speaker 4: ads where she's you know, stalking across the border and
Speaker 4: you know, saluting border guards and saying, you know, fixing
Speaker 4: the border is tough, and so is Kamala Harris and
Speaker 4: saying if anybody comes into her house, they're going to
Speaker 4: get shot. Right. If you look at black politicians from
Speaker 4: urban areas, you know, over the nineties, over the two thousand's,
Speaker 4: this is a long political tradition. I mean, go back
Speaker 4: to the eighties, go back to the seventies. Right, there's
Speaker 4: nothing actually all that new about it, and it's really
Speaker 4: that Democrats kind of abandoned it for a period of time,
Speaker 4: and now she's running at a time when you know
Speaker 4: she can pick it back up. And even more than that,
Speaker 4: runn against guy who's a convicted criminal, which allows you
Speaker 4: to really reinhabit that.
Speaker 1: So if that's the case, why are so many young men?
Speaker 1: This is what I'm fascinated by, and I know Liz
Speaker 1: is too, are turned off by Kamala Harris. There's an
Speaker 1: NBC News poll of gen Z adults found that young
Speaker 1: women favored Harris over Trump by thirty points, while young
Speaker 1: men favored Harris by just four points. Let's dig into
Speaker 1: the gender gap for a few minutes, as we what
Speaker 1: is happening with young men in this country? Why do
Speaker 1: they seem to be gravitating or some of them to
Speaker 1: the kind of macho Donald Trump messaging that we're hearing
Speaker 1: again and again and that he's going to protect women,
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about in a moment, but what is
Speaker 1: going on with young men?
Speaker 4: So this is candidate agnostic. I should say. There was
Speaker 4: a big Wall Street journal piece on this using Biden
Speaker 4: and Trump pulling a couple weeks, a couple of months ago,
Speaker 4: and so Biden was hemorrhaging support among young men. That's
Speaker 4: part of why Donald Trump's knight at the RNC was
Speaker 4: like like a Vegas show about masculinity, right, like Whule
Speaker 4: Cogan like ripping off his shirt to you know, for
Speaker 4: all the little Trumpsters out there. And you had Dana White,
Speaker 4: you know, the head of the UFC introducing Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: I mean the whole thing was the campiest masculinity, like.
Speaker 1: Not cho much show man, you just expected the village people.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like as a text for Judith Butler, it was
Speaker 4: extremely rich. So you get that happening. I mean, what's
Speaker 4: happening with young men? But I wouldn't tell you, I
Speaker 4: know entirely, and I'd actually really loved he here Liz
Speaker 4: as part of it. But there we have had a
Speaker 4: very sharp in this era of politics and part of
Speaker 4: the digital politics shift in sort of the moras right,
Speaker 4: like we talk about the future as female, and we
Speaker 4: talk about toxic masculinity, and there's like a million descriptions
Speaker 4: of like how traits that are traditionally male are bad.
Speaker 4: You have the Home Me Too movement, you.
Speaker 1: Have DEI which left a lot of white males feeling marginalized.
Speaker 4: Those are that too. You know. You then have the
Speaker 4: rise of people like Jordan Peterson and Andrew Taate. There's
Speaker 4: a lot of you know, can you say any of
Speaker 4: these politically correct things? And all this is sort of
Speaker 4: like much of it is very good, much of it
Speaker 4: is natural, right. You know, you're having a feminization of
Speaker 4: politics and power generally as people sort of push to
Speaker 4: have more representation. But that's going to create backlash, right,
Speaker 4: I mean, that is the nature of every political movement
Speaker 4: like this that we have ever seen, and you're seeing it,
Speaker 4: I think specifically among young men. I do think it
Speaker 4: is somewhat supercharged by the way media fractures, and you
Speaker 4: have a lot of young men in sort of you know,
Speaker 4: twitch politics, right, you know, the in sort of sports
Speaker 4: talk radio, which has become somewhat more rte coded in
Speaker 4: recent years. Although that's not all that new. People forget
Speaker 4: that Rush Limbaugh begins as a sports broadcaster, not as
Speaker 4: a political broadcaster. Joe Rogan is I think not as
Speaker 4: right as he is sometimes made out to be. He's
Speaker 4: a sort of but he is a kind of frustrated
Speaker 4: masculine id politics, and I would say in general, the
Speaker 4: Demo Party was not trying to talk to men, and
Speaker 4: when it was, it was in a pretty scolding, dismissive tone.
Speaker 4: The sort of elevation of Tim Walls as a kind
Speaker 4: of masculinity that can be embraced and rallied behind is
Speaker 4: a pretty significant change from where things were four years ago,
Speaker 4: you know, maybe even a bit more than that. So
Speaker 4: I think we've been through a pretty intense oscillation in politics,
Speaker 4: not the only one, but one of them that has
Speaker 4: been really alienating to young men who were coming of
Speaker 4: age as part of it, and they began gravitating to
Speaker 4: voices who said, no, you don't have to change everything
Speaker 4: about you. In fact, you're great. You know, you should
Speaker 4: be watching combat sports and saying things that offend people
Speaker 4: and risk taking and you know, and all the things
Speaker 4: that that sort of appeal to you, and playing your
Speaker 4: video games and whatever. And then sort of Donald Trump
Speaker 4: comes up and tries to embrace that, I think, you know,
Speaker 4: in crypto and all the rest of it, in maybe
Speaker 4: a hamhanded way, but nevertheless a very obvious way. And
Speaker 4: I think it's actually to the c of Harrison and
Speaker 4: Walls and the Democrats that they're trying to come up
Speaker 4: with a sort of counter narrative here. But yeah, I
Speaker 4: think you're looking at backlash to what was a very
Speaker 4: rapid and intense ideological shift and change. But Liz has
Speaker 4: been sort of part of this and been part of
Speaker 4: the Internet in this period, so I'd be curious for
Speaker 4: her take on.
Speaker 1: That me too. And I wonder also how effective a
Speaker 1: masculine archetype Tim Walls actually is. Is he enough to
Speaker 1: sort of mediate some of these feelings of anger among
Speaker 1: young white men? Liz, your thoughts.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3: Also, it could just be a whole hour on this. Yeah,
Speaker 3: to me, Trump was always running as a man, right,
Speaker 3: And that sounds like obvious, right, But we really don't
Speaker 3: think about when we think about gender, we think about women,
Speaker 3: and we've been talking there's so many ways that women's
Speaker 3: lives are gendered, but like men's lives are so gender too,
Speaker 3: And back in twenty sixteen, you know, Trump was again,
Speaker 3: you know, playing up his masculinity in all kinds of
Speaker 3: different ways. And by the way, Trump is not the first,
Speaker 3: you know, candidate to do this. I think amongst Republicans,
Speaker 3: it's very it's very charged. I mean Mark or Rubio
Speaker 3: wore heels, you know when he ran for president, I
Speaker 3: mean allegedly, right, like we don't have any proof, but
Speaker 3: but to appear taller, right, Trump called Ted Cruz the
Speaker 3: P word, right, calling him basically a woman and discrediting,
Speaker 3: you know, sort of demeaning him, using that kind of
Speaker 3: language of and masculating him. And I think this time
Speaker 3: around he is doubling down on it. And I totally
Speaker 3: agree with Ezra. I think that there's been such a
Speaker 3: void basically on the left.
Speaker 1: And you mean avoid in terms of appealing to young
Speaker 1: white men.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or just talking about men.
Speaker 3: Right, you have one party that speaks directly to men,
Speaker 3: and in very it's not a subtext, it's very overt.
Speaker 3: Right in twenty sixteen, it was you know, it's harder
Speaker 3: for men now than it is for women, you know,
Speaker 3: Trump saying that around the Kavanaugh hearing and sort of
Speaker 3: post me to. So you have one party that's acknowledging
Speaker 3: the feelings of a lot of men, and you have
Speaker 3: the other party that is, I think often completely ignoring
Speaker 3: those feelings. And it's almost like the new deplorable, where
Speaker 3: I think sometimes in democratic circles you will hear someone
Speaker 3: bring up masculinity or bring up disaffected young men, and
Speaker 3: it's sort of like, well, those guys are red pill,
Speaker 3: those guys are almost right, like, we don't even want
Speaker 3: to try and convert those people. And to me, it's
Speaker 3: such a missed opportunity. And as I was listening to
Speaker 3: your interview with Richard Reeves, which everyone should go listen to,
Speaker 3: it's a really interesting conversation and I think one of
Speaker 3: the few conversations where that hold space both for talking
Speaker 3: about men's what's sort of happening to men and boys
Speaker 3: in this country and sort of around the world, and
Speaker 3: you know, holding space for what's happening to women and
Speaker 3: actually connecting those conversations, to me, has been the biggest
Speaker 3: failure here. I think in the progressive movement that a
Speaker 3: lot of the problems that do plague men have to
Speaker 3: do actually with patriarchy, have to do with a lack
Speaker 3: of nurturing of boys and men.
Speaker 2: I'll end on this note, but I think that Democrats.
Speaker 3: Actually have a lot of policies that are very helpful
Speaker 3: to men, and they don't message it. And then you know,
Speaker 3: on the right, I think you have policies that actually
Speaker 3: might be detrimental to them, but they're very good at messaging.
Speaker 3: You know that this will help you, and so I
Speaker 3: see that that as one of the main disconnects.
Speaker 1: Well, there's a lot to chew on their Liz. I
Speaker 1: think you're right though, I feel that they have been
Speaker 1: ignored and disregarded, and it was just a lot all
Speaker 1: those things that Ezra outlined coming fast and furiously from
Speaker 1: me too to now more lost students and met students
Speaker 1: are women too, as I mentioned DEI and feeling like
Speaker 1: that they weren't going to get into the school of
Speaker 1: their choice because of affirmative action. I just think it's
Speaker 1: a whole crock pot of things that they have seized on.
Speaker 1: But I do want to pick up what Ezra said
Speaker 1: about Tim Walls as a way to kind of balance
Speaker 1: where the Democrats were going. How do you think he
Speaker 1: helps Kamala because as you said earlier, a lot of
Speaker 1: people may second guess the decision not to tap Josh Sapiro.
Speaker 1: But how does this archetype in your view or is
Speaker 1: it enough to bring in some of these young, disaffected
Speaker 1: male voters.
Speaker 4: I'll say it's a dangerous time to be trying to
Speaker 4: answer this question because of the vice presidential debate, which
Speaker 4: will be his best chance to help Kamala Harris as
Speaker 4: tomorrow night. So anything I say might end up looking
Speaker 4: very different one way or the other after that debate.
Speaker 1: Well, let's not even talk about the debate, just talk
Speaker 1: about sort of his candidacy. Writ Largely.
Speaker 4: The reason I mentioned the debate because I do want
Speaker 4: a timestamp where we are, is he probably won't help
Speaker 4: Kamala Harris here. Vice presidential candidates genuinely don't write. They
Speaker 4: generally do not do a lot in one direction or another.
Speaker 4: I don't think Joe Biden.
Speaker 1: I would argue that Sarah Palin hurt John McCain.
Speaker 4: You can, in extreme conditions hurt right, And I think
Speaker 4: Jade Vance is hurting Donald Trump for other reasons. But
Speaker 4: I would be surprised to see Wall's help. I will
Speaker 4: say I've been a little surprised and frankly dismayed at
Speaker 4: the way the campaign is using or I will say,
Speaker 4: not using Tim Walls. I had him on my show
Speaker 4: like four days before he was named vice president. It's
Speaker 4: one of my favorite interviews I've done with the politician ever,
Speaker 4: and we talk about the problems of young men, and
Speaker 4: he's great at talking about it. And Tim Walls won
Speaker 4: that vice presidential slot in large part because of how
Speaker 4: good he was in the media, how good. He's a
Speaker 4: rare politician who when you interview him you can see
Speaker 4: him thinking and responding in real time. And they locked
Speaker 4: him up the same way they've locked her up.
Speaker 6: Why.
Speaker 4: I don't understand the level of caution that campaign has.
Speaker 4: But I would be putting Tim Walls on like Lex
Speaker 4: Friedman on Joe.
Speaker 1: On next question, on next question, even though he's probably speaking,
Speaker 1: you know, preaching to the choir. But you're right, why
Speaker 1: aren't they?
Speaker 4: But I would have him out. I would have him
Speaker 4: out on sports talk radio. Right, that's a dude who
Speaker 4: can talk sports. He ran, you know, he helped coach
Speaker 4: a team to the state championships. Like, let Tim Walls
Speaker 4: be Tim Walls. Like let Kamala Harris go out and
Speaker 4: be Kamala Harris. They're running in very risk averse ways,
Speaker 4: which I kind of get. But they're not that far ahead, right,
Speaker 4: They're not so far ahead that I wouldn't like to
Speaker 4: see them trying to pick up marginal voters in places
Speaker 4: where the people who are sort of on the bubble
Speaker 4: about them might reside well, you're an insider.
Speaker 1: Why are they running the campaign this way? As I
Speaker 1: feel like you've got a lot of sources within the campaign,
Speaker 1: do you ask them about that? Because I'm very frustrated too,
Speaker 1: because not only because I want to interview both of
Speaker 1: these people, but I just don't understand why they are
Speaker 1: not everywhere. And now I feel like when they do
Speaker 1: interviews they do so few. The stakes are really high.
Speaker 1: And it was interesting because just a few days before
Speaker 1: Stephanie Rule interviewed Kamala Harris on MSNBC. She had this
Speaker 1: to say on Bill Maher.
Speaker 7: It would be great for her to sit down with
Speaker 7: you or George Stephanopolis or you Stephanie and gave a succession.
Speaker 4: As if she'd sit down.
Speaker 7: With you, asked her, ask her no nook.
Speaker 2: George W.
Speaker 7: Bush twenty five years ago was asked if he could
Speaker 7: name the president of Pakistan other people. He had no idea,
Speaker 7: and people said, this guy has no command of a
Speaker 7: foreign policy, and it turned out to be a pression
Speaker 7: set of questions. It's not too much to ask Kamala,
Speaker 7: say are you for a Palestinian state if Hamas is
Speaker 7: going to run that state?
Speaker 1: Okay, yes or no?
Speaker 8: And Let's say you don't like her answer. Are you
Speaker 8: going to vote for Donald Trump?
Speaker 7: No, I'm not.
Speaker 1: I said, I'm not going to vote.
Speaker 8: Not running for perfect, She's running against Trump. We have
Speaker 8: two choices, and so there are some things you might
Speaker 8: not know her answer to. And in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 8: unlike twenty sixteen, for a lot of the American people,
Speaker 8: we know exactly what Trump will do, who he is,
Speaker 8: and the kind of threat he is to democracy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was a weird look for them to choose
Speaker 4: that right after that. I mean, for all, I know
Speaker 4: that was decided before. But look, I don't know why
Speaker 4: they're not. I know that the view of this is
Speaker 4: many of the same Biden people, right, Her campaign is
Speaker 4: run by many of the same people, and their view
Speaker 4: was in interviews don't help them that much, particularly the media,
Speaker 4: And you know what, I think that's a totally reasonable
Speaker 4: perspective instrumentally to take, right. I wish they wouldn't take it,
Speaker 4: because I do think it is good for people to
Speaker 4: see the candidates and there's an informative role to sitting
Speaker 4: and doing I would love to see Kamlah Hairs like
Speaker 4: she's always welcome on my show to talk about serious
Speaker 4: economic policy and housing. And I've said that to them
Speaker 4: and await the response. But I think a lot of
Speaker 4: people hear this as special pleading for the media, which
Speaker 4: is politically because I think they're probably right that they're
Speaker 4: not picking up like when they go on MSNBC, Right,
Speaker 4: they're not converting a single voter, right, they are doing
Speaker 4: that to say they did another interview. They're converting no
Speaker 4: one the interviews. Politically, if I were running a campaign,
Speaker 4: I would want to see is in places where they're
Speaker 4: trying to get people who do not look at them positively.
Speaker 4: Right Again, as I was saying, I would love to
Speaker 4: see Tim Walls going on the kinds of podcasts and
Speaker 4: YouTube shows where these young disaffected men are a sports
Speaker 4: talk radio. I mean, Katie, you mentioned a couple of times,
Speaker 4: you know, not trying to appeal to young white men.
Speaker 4: They're losing men of color, right, They're losing. They've been
Speaker 4: hemorrhaging support among men of color in recent years. So
Speaker 4: try to go out to the places where the marginal
Speaker 4: voters you might need are. I think they feel that
Speaker 4: they are running a bit ahead of Donald Trump, and
Speaker 4: there's probably more downside risk than than upside risk. And also,
Speaker 4: and you know this, you've covered you know, a lot
Speaker 4: of presidential campaigns. Campaigns almost always have the character of
Speaker 4: the campaigner, right like as any organization does, even if
Speaker 4: it doesn't really want to. Organizations take on the preferences,
Speaker 4: the temperament, the tendencies, the strategies of the people who
Speaker 4: are at their center. Kamala Harris doesn't like doing interviews.
Speaker 4: The Kamala Harris campaign does not prioritize doing interviews. She
Speaker 4: does like doing speeches. They prioritize doing speeches, right. You know.
Speaker 4: Donald Trump is doing way fewer rallies, but it is
Speaker 4: a campaign that likes rallies to the extent that it
Speaker 4: likes anything any he you know, he likes going on
Speaker 4: in these sort of weird you know, talkie formats, So
Speaker 4: he does that. Campaigns Ultimately, whatever even their strategic views are,
Speaker 4: they end up reflecting what the candidates actually want to do.
Speaker 4: When you're sitting there with a million things to do
Speaker 4: with the time of these two people, and you know,
Speaker 4: you say, hey, you know, Vice President, we have a
Speaker 4: couple of ideas for podcasts you should go on. She's like,
Speaker 4: really do we have like you know, and you've got
Speaker 4: to really justify it, and what if it goes bad
Speaker 4: soon enough you stop suggesting that, and you know, like, hey,
Speaker 4: we've got for more places in Pennsylvania you can make
Speaker 4: a stop at. And she's like great, Like we're doing that.
Speaker 1: Before we dig into jd Vance. And I know Liz
Speaker 1: has a lot to say about him as to you, Ezra,
Speaker 1: and the future of MAGA and how he kind of
Speaker 1: represents a new breed of MAGA. You did a podcast
Speaker 1: on this, Ezra. I want to ask you about the
Speaker 1: criticism that she hasn't gotten specific enough in policy issues.
Speaker 1: I interviewed Hillary Clinton recently and she made the point
Speaker 1: that Hillary was criticized for being too specific and kind
Speaker 1: of suggested there might be a double standard. She said,
Speaker 1: Trump himself claimed only to have a concept of a
Speaker 1: plan when asked about healthcare reform and the debate, and
Speaker 1: Hillary said to me this, I.
Speaker 6: Was accused of being too specific, too specific a lot
Speaker 6: of other things, but certainly that, and I was also
Speaker 6: I put out a book about my policies, I gave
Speaker 6: speeches about my policies. At the end of the campaign,
Speaker 6: nobody knew anything about my policies. And I just think
Speaker 6: it's a trap. But when I hear people say that,
Speaker 6: it kind of makes me think, well, compared to what or.
Speaker 1: Is something else text there?
Speaker 6: And that's right, Katie, I mean, is it like I
Speaker 6: just need to know more?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 6: I think part of it is what they're really saying,
Speaker 6: I just have to be more comfortable voting for a
Speaker 6: woman and voting for this woman.
Speaker 1: So she's basically saying it is veiled secon these demands
Speaker 1: for Kamala Harris to get more specific about policy when
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is kind of all over the place. I'd
Speaker 1: love to get your take on that idea. What do
Speaker 1: you think of this idea that there may be something
Speaker 1: else going on and it may be thinly veiled sexism, Ezra.
Speaker 4: I think that's ridiculous, honestly, that it's thinly veiled sexism.
Speaker 4: To want policy details from candidates as somebody who's covered
Speaker 4: policy among many male candidates, we wanted from them, as
Speaker 4: somebody who's attacked Donald Trump relentlessly for not having details
Speaker 4: on his policies. And that's why actually Project twenty twenty
Speaker 4: five is entered the picture because it offered the detailed
Speaker 4: Trump didn't, right, I think being vague has actually hurt
Speaker 4: Donald Trump. I have a different view I think on
Speaker 4: Kamala Harris and policy releases though than a lot of people. Look,
Speaker 4: they just released an eighty page economic policy briefing book,
Speaker 4: and to be honest, I don't think it's not helpful
Speaker 4: at all. I don't really care about candidates having one
Speaker 4: hundred and fifty different policies right, something Clinton is talking about.
Speaker 4: I do think it was part of her brand that
Speaker 4: she knew everything about policy, and that was helpful to
Speaker 4: her in my view, not hurtful to her. But nevertheless,
Speaker 4: it wasn't obviously helpful enough. But for Harris, what I
Speaker 4: wish they had for her, what I wish she had
Speaker 4: was the two or three policies that it feels like
Speaker 4: she feels really strongly about. So she is having a
Speaker 4: lot of trouble, repeatedly trouble answering the question what will
Speaker 4: you do first? Right, which is a very obvious question.
Speaker 4: Presidencies are all about prioritization. She sits down this Typa
Speaker 4: Dana Bash. This also happened on a Pennsylvania with a
Speaker 4: local kind of television anchor something, a reporter in Pennsylvania,
Speaker 4: and she gets this question like, what are you going
Speaker 4: to do specifically, and she starts to do she's like, well,
Speaker 4: I'm a middle class kid and I come from here.
Speaker 4: And the thing she doesn't really have is the couple
Speaker 4: of policies that it feels burned within her to the
Speaker 4: extent she does. One where I think this is a
Speaker 4: huge exception is Roe. I think you can tell when
Speaker 4: she talks about Roe that she will do absolutely everything
Speaker 4: in her power that if you will elect Kamala Harris,
Speaker 4: she's going to do everything Kamala Harris can do to
Speaker 4: make sure abortion rights are restored and protected. Right. Maybe
Speaker 4: she will not be able to do it because it's
Speaker 4: in a filibuster, but she's also said they get they
Speaker 4: should make an exception to the filibuster for that. So
Speaker 4: that's something where when she talks about it, you can
Speaker 4: feel that you are hearing this is what this presidency
Speaker 4: will be about. On economic policy, they have a bunch
Speaker 4: of policies I can tell you about them. They have
Speaker 4: an earned income tax credit expansion. Now, they have a
Speaker 4: six thousand dollars credit for the first year of a
Speaker 4: baby's life. They've an expanded child tax credit.
Speaker 1: Twenty five thousand dollars for first time homeowners.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of different things going on.
Speaker 1: But even like asking her, how are you going to
Speaker 1: pay for that? That sounds insane to me.
Speaker 4: Well, to be fair, that policy is so weirdly targeted.
Speaker 4: It is first time homeowners whose parents did not own
Speaker 4: a home, and then there's an income Like when you
Speaker 4: read the details, I think they've so micro targeted. I
Speaker 4: will not be that expensive. We're that But it's also
Speaker 4: not that good of a policy for that reason. But
Speaker 4: I had an old political mentor. I've said this a
Speaker 4: lot of times this year because it's always in my
Speaker 4: head Mark Schmidt, who used to say, it's not what
Speaker 4: you say about the policies, it's what the policies say
Speaker 4: about you. You could say a lot of things about
Speaker 4: Donald Trump and its total lack of policy detail, but
Speaker 4: Donald Trump usually is two to three things he talks about.
Speaker 4: And the point is not the policy. The point is
Speaker 4: that he is signaling what he really fundamentally strongly believes.
Speaker 4: And I'm going to deport every undocumented immigrant in the country.
Speaker 4: Is saying I hate immigrants and I'm going to do
Speaker 4: everything in my power to make America an unwelcoming place
Speaker 4: for immigrants of all kinds. His universal tariff proposal reflects
Speaker 4: his belief that America is in a constant zero sum
Speaker 4: competition with other countries. We are losing that competition, and
Speaker 4: the way too prosper as an economy is not to
Speaker 4: cooperate with other countries, but to use our power to
Speaker 4: negotiate more and more aggressive deals with them. Donald Trump
Speaker 4: does not release big, he tailed policy documents, but he
Speaker 4: talks about a couple things that actually do give you
Speaker 4: a sense of what he really cares about. What I
Speaker 4: would like to see on economic policy. I cannot tell
Speaker 4: you as somebody who's covered Harris four years and knows
Speaker 4: her economic advisors and has read her whole policy book
Speaker 4: and has read her policy speech, is actually trying to
Speaker 4: do the work here that when she comes into office
Speaker 4: and she's to decide what to do, right like with
Speaker 4: her scarce political capital, when she wins the election. If
Speaker 4: she wins the election, and if she wins the Senate
Speaker 4: and the House and they have, you know, like a
Speaker 4: tight majority, what are they going to really prioritize? That's
Speaker 4: the question, not what do you think about every policy,
Speaker 4: but what are the two to three things that really
Speaker 4: define not just you, but the way you see the
Speaker 4: problems America has right now. Yeah, Hillary Clinton had a
Speaker 4: billion policies, and not that many of them said that
Speaker 4: much about her. But the thing that her policy said
Speaker 4: about her is that Hillary Clinton knew what she was
Speaker 4: talking about on everything, and that was known about Hillary Clinton,
Speaker 4: and it's one thing a lot of people admired about
Speaker 4: her and still admire about her. I don't think Harris
Speaker 4: needs to try to be Hillary Clinton in that way.
Speaker 4: But having a couple of ideas that reflect who you
Speaker 4: are and your core concerns in politics, I don't think
Speaker 4: it's a thing to throw overboard.
Speaker 1: What do you think she should say? So, in addition
Speaker 1: to having this burning desire to be an advocate for
Speaker 1: abortion rights in your view, and knowing her and covering her,
Speaker 1: what do you think they are or is that a
Speaker 1: problem that we don't know and you don't know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't think I know on a bunch of issues,
Speaker 4: and I've done the reporting to try to understand this.
Speaker 4: I've been very excited to see the degree to which
Speaker 4: he's emphasized housing affordability. But I've read those policies and
Speaker 4: I don't think they're that strong. They're very, very tightly
Speaker 4: targeted it's like an expansion of a credit if you're
Speaker 4: building homes that are affordable for only first time home buyers.
Speaker 4: There's one really good policy in there. It's a forty
Speaker 4: billion dollar grant program for states and localities that they
Speaker 4: can apply for it if they have sort of packages
Speaker 4: of sort of regulatory changes, et cetera.
Speaker 1: You're pretty to be Yeah, so we get it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So like that's good. I would like to see that.
Speaker 4: But I don't think that that policy package when you
Speaker 4: really read it. If you ask me, is that going
Speaker 4: to fulfill her promise to build three million homes? I
Speaker 4: will tell you absolutely not. And I've talked to a
Speaker 4: bunch of housing experts and they will tell you, if
Speaker 4: they're being honest, almost certainly not. I don't know on
Speaker 4: the economy what drives her. She was one of the
Speaker 4: leaders in the Senate on expanding the child tax credit,
Speaker 4: so I could imagine that being it. And she does
Speaker 4: have a good proposal for expanding the child a tax credit.
Speaker 4: She doesn't talk about it in the way or with
Speaker 4: a frame where I'm sure like that's the thing she's
Speaker 4: really going to try to sell. It could be something else,
Speaker 4: right for Bernie Sanders it was obviously Medicare for all.
Speaker 4: For Elizabeth Warren, it was reducing corporate power. There are
Speaker 4: a bunch of policies that you could tell really drove
Speaker 4: her on that. I think this is the hardest thing
Speaker 4: for Kamala Harris, whose background is in law enforcement. I
Speaker 4: think Harris is amazing what she's talking about rights. I
Speaker 4: think that she has a lot of us on safety.
Speaker 4: I think it would have actually made sense for to
Speaker 4: emphasize safety a lot more than she has in campaign.
Speaker 4: But when you ask me what would I like it
Speaker 4: to be, the problem is this is a hard thing
Speaker 4: to fake, right. I've got mine. I'm an obsessive about
Speaker 4: housing supply, but it's got to be hers, right. And
Speaker 4: I think one of the problems she's having talking about
Speaker 4: economic policy is the opportunity economy thing. It sounds pulled right.
Speaker 1: It sounds yeah, what does that mean?
Speaker 4: Even and every politician is always said they're going to
Speaker 4: build an opportunity economy. So I'm not trying to be
Speaker 4: too hard on this. A lot of these policies are good.
Speaker 4: I love an expanded child tax credit. I believe in
Speaker 4: expanding the Earning Them tax credit for childless adults, like
Speaker 4: there's a lot in there that I support. But what
Speaker 4: they're doing now is they're building out a policy book
Speaker 4: and not a policy argument, and I would like to
Speaker 4: see them build out a policy argument.
Speaker 1: You mentioned childless adults. Liz, let's talk and by talking
Speaker 1: about jd Vance. Oh, no, I don't mean. I don't
Speaker 1: mean no, I don't mean Liz as a childless adult,
Speaker 1: although she is. But she's written extensively about this, and
Speaker 1: of course this has become a huge hot button issue,
Speaker 1: as we all know, with jd Vance and the Childish
Speaker 1: cat Lady and all that kind of conversation. So Liz,
Speaker 1: let's talk about jd Vance. What would you like to
Speaker 1: ask Ezra? What would you like to say about him?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I really have loved your commentary about it.
Speaker 3: Ezra his obsession with fertility right and having children, but
Speaker 3: having children in sort of the right, right right, because
Speaker 3: he's against or he's not supporting, you know, the protection
Speaker 3: of IVF, but he anyway, it's inconsistent, right, But they
Speaker 3: clearly want a sort of traditional family model. But what
Speaker 3: I really loved about your take on it is that
Speaker 3: you compared it to the way that the left feels
Speaker 3: about climate change. That it feels like this existential sort
Speaker 3: of threat. I'm curious like.
Speaker 2: Where that comes from.
Speaker 3: And is that the sort of thing that resonates with
Speaker 3: sort of young men and young voters.
Speaker 1: This fear that there aren't going to be enough kids.
Speaker 3: Basically, Yes, this sort of you know, the whole replacement
Speaker 3: theory and the idea that yes, we need more children,
Speaker 3: we need white children essentially, and that come from this nuclear.
Speaker 2: Household heterosexual structure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, why is there this subsession with fertility and do
Speaker 3: you think it's working? Do you think it's reaching voters?
Speaker 4: Oh, I definitely don't think it's reaching moteries. I don't
Speaker 4: think these have been politically well sold arguments. Yeah. So
Speaker 4: on the right there has emerged a sort of overarching
Speaker 4: macro fear, which is it America specifically, but the globe
Speaker 4: generally is entering into a kind of extended multi generational
Speaker 4: demographic collapse, and that the thin edge of the wedge
Speaker 4: or the tip of the spear is a place like
Speaker 4: South Korea. The total fertility replacement rate for a society, right,
Speaker 4: the number of kids that family should be having in
Speaker 4: order to maintain the society's population, is called two point
Speaker 4: one two point two South Korea is a point nine, right,
Speaker 4: so South Korea is entering into geometric shrinkage that actually
Speaker 4: is civilizationally threatening to South Korea. It is not clear
Speaker 4: what happens after you turn over a couple generations like that,
Speaker 4: when you have a society build forever, many people are
Speaker 4: there now it's a big country, and then you have
Speaker 4: a small fraction of that. America, I'm so worried about
Speaker 4: getting the numbers wrong. I want to say it's one
Speaker 4: point seven. It might be one point three. I think
Speaker 4: it's one point seven. But the thing is it's happening everywhere.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: So Italy, highly Catholic country. I believe their demographical placement
Speaker 4: is something like one point three if you look at
Speaker 4: the Nordic countries, right, which when we talk about what
Speaker 4: are pro fertility policies on the left, we often talk
Speaker 4: about what they do very very excellent paid family leave,
Speaker 4: including for men, excellent childcare. They're at like one point one.
Speaker 4: There are very few societies, really almost none around the
Speaker 4: globe that are not seeing a very sharp decline in fertility.
Speaker 4: And this reflects women having much better opportunities in the world. Right,
Speaker 4: So you know the sort of opportunity cost of having
Speaker 4: children goes up. It reflects birth control right being affective
Speaker 4: so people can plan out their fertility, and so the
Speaker 4: right has become kind of obsessed with this right, and
Speaker 4: it's not a totally crazy thing to worry about that
Speaker 4: if you just kind of imagine this rolling forward, what's
Speaker 4: going to happen when humanity just begins shrinking sort of
Speaker 4: year on year and year on year without sort of
Speaker 4: an obvious way to stabilize it. And the fact that
Speaker 4: no country, not Japan, not South Korea, none of these countries,
Speaker 4: but there's been a lot of worry about this, has
Speaker 4: been able to turn these numbers around also makes them nervous.
Speaker 4: So what some of these people like Jadvans have come
Speaker 4: up with is, if you sort of look in these
Speaker 4: more post liberal Catholic right circles that he's part of,
Speaker 4: is at least, among other things like scolding people right,
Speaker 4: yelling at you and trying to make it socially and
Speaker 4: culturally unacceptable, shameful, embarrassing to not be having children like
Speaker 4: that's what this thing about miserable childish cat ladies are right.
Speaker 4: The idea is that elites in power need to stop
Speaker 4: talking about how everybody should live like whatever life they
Speaker 4: find fulfilling, and begin saying that if you are not,
Speaker 4: you know, coupled up and having children, you're a sort
Speaker 4: of pathetic, selfish.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's focus on the individual, right, and what the
Speaker 1: individual wants.
Speaker 4: We're seeing so I would say this is it reflects
Speaker 4: a real thing that I think it is worth thinking about.
Speaker 4: I do think that you should ask hard questions about
Speaker 4: societies that have devalued having children in the way that
Speaker 4: I think a lot have, or cultures that have devalued
Speaker 4: having children that don't support them that I mean, what
Speaker 4: does it mean if you don't have a belief that
Speaker 4: it is worth sort of you know, extending the chain
Speaker 4: of humanity out into the future. And on the other hand,
Speaker 4: to talk about it the way they're talking about it,
Speaker 4: to think about it the way they're thinking about it
Speaker 4: is it's often cruel, it's ineffective. I don't think it
Speaker 4: is thoughtful. Right. They're not working with like the actual
Speaker 4: questions they should be working with, right, which is okay.
Speaker 4: If a lot of people are looking at what it
Speaker 4: means to have a family in the modern era and
Speaker 4: saying I don't want that, or I wanted it but
Speaker 4: can't have it right. Many people, many families, have fewer
Speaker 4: children than they would like to have. Then what right
Speaker 4: do like? There are a lot of things you could
Speaker 4: begin to imagine doing, some of them technological, and some
Speaker 4: of them you know, financial, right, and some of them societal.
Speaker 1: Well, a lot of my daughter's friends say they don't
Speaker 1: want to have or a number of them have said
Speaker 1: they don't want to bring a child into the world
Speaker 1: because they're afraid the world they're bringing the child into.
Speaker 4: I hear that. I'm always really skeptical of that one,
Speaker 4: to be honest, when you think about what the world
Speaker 4: was like like any time in human history before nineteen
Speaker 4: fifty functionally, and I mean nineteen fifty in rich countries, right,
Speaker 4: for most of human history, half of all children died
Speaker 4: right before their fifteenth birthday, and we brought children into
Speaker 4: the world. There's something to me of all the arguments here,
Speaker 4: the liberal argument that climate change or something else has
Speaker 4: made the world like too terrible to bring kids into.
Speaker 4: And then I think about, I mean, you know, my ancestors,
Speaker 4: like having my great grandparents as they were fleeing from pogrims.
Speaker 4: Something about that always rought like too much comfort of
Speaker 4: modernity has affected our thinking.
Speaker 2: I mean, for me, it's a financial right.
Speaker 3: Like I think sort of what what you're getting to
Speaker 3: is a lot of policy would actually encourage people to
Speaker 3: have children and make it, you know, easier. And those
Speaker 3: aren't the things that JD. Evans is you know, necessarily supporting.
Speaker 3: Like he's not saying, let's get men parental even let's
Speaker 3: make sure that there's universal childcare, or that people can
Speaker 3: afford their groceries and the rent and housing right, like
Speaker 3: all of those things are also connected. I think a
Speaker 3: lot of young people aren't having kids because they can't,
Speaker 3: not because they don't want to.
Speaker 4: This gets to a real schism in the MAGA movement
Speaker 4: I think, which is interesting and we're thinking about, which
Speaker 4: is that there's sort of two big streams in what
Speaker 4: people kind of call Maga or the new Right, And
Speaker 4: like one side of it is this weird, postliberal, heavily
Speaker 4: Catholic influenced conservatism that Jade Evans is part of right,
Speaker 4: and it's very concerned about things like fertility collapse. It
Speaker 4: is very concerned about things like abortion. It thinks, you know,
Speaker 4: we don't have enough virtue anymore, and men can't be
Speaker 4: men and blah blah blah blah. And then there's this
Speaker 4: other one, which you know sometimes it is called barstool
Speaker 4: sports conservatism after the Dave Portnoy site, which is this
Speaker 4: more liberty libertarian like dudes playing video games and drinking
Speaker 4: beer and just like want to be left alone and
Speaker 4: they don't like the censorious smoke liberals. And sort of
Speaker 4: during the pandemic and during the sort of post George
Speaker 4: Floyd moment and the me too moment, these groups kind
Speaker 4: of came together. But they're actually not not only not,
Speaker 4: they're not the same. They're not anything like each other, right,
Speaker 4: They're deeply opposed to each other, right, I mean, Dave
Speaker 4: Portnoy and that crew do not want abortion banned because
Speaker 4: it might mean they have to take care of children
Speaker 4: they don't want to take care of. And you know
Speaker 4: this of skepticism of birth control, right that you see
Speaker 4: on the sort of the other side of the right,
Speaker 4: the sort of you know, more reactionary, right, they.
Speaker 2: Want to ban porn, I mean, the reaction they want
Speaker 2: to ban porn.
Speaker 4: On the first page of Project twenty twenty five, it
Speaker 4: calls for banning porn. Like that is not where Donald
Speaker 4: Trump is. Donald Trump wants to ban being convicted for
Speaker 4: hiding the fact that you slept with a porn star
Speaker 4: during a campaign. Right, Like, so there's this weird jd
Speaker 4: Vance Donald Trump like difference here that like Trump chose
Speaker 4: Vance in some ways this air to maga. But Vance
Speaker 4: is a very different thing than Trump is.
Speaker 1: Well, let me end by asking you this question, and Liz,
Speaker 1: I'd love you to chime in. Is jd Vance hurting
Speaker 1: Donald Trump or helping him?
Speaker 4: He's definitely hurt him. In my view, it would have
Speaker 4: been if Trump had chosen Doug Burgram a Marco Rubio,
Speaker 4: he would be in significantly a better shape today. One
Speaker 4: he would have been more comforting to people in terms
Speaker 4: of you know, there's always this question people like, ah,
Speaker 4: like which Donald? Who is Donald Trump?
Speaker 1: Really?
Speaker 4: Is he the guy you know that you saw on
Speaker 4: January sixth, or I actually remember the economy being pretty
Speaker 4: good in twenty nineteen and a guy like Doug Burghram,
Speaker 4: a sort of boring business executive, would have been a
Speaker 4: signal that it's going in that other direction. Right. Whether
Speaker 4: that single would have been true, we could argue about.
Speaker 4: I sort of would suggest it wouldn't have been true,
Speaker 4: but it would have been comforting to people who maybe
Speaker 4: needed to be comfort and steady. Gets Vance, which accentuates
Speaker 4: the ideological extremity, the weirdness of the people, not just
Speaker 4: not just Trump himself, but the whole Trump coalition that
Speaker 4: you're bringing back into power. Right, That's why things like
Speaker 4: Project twenty twenty five matter. Trump can disavow that all
Speaker 4: that he wants. The thing is, it's all the people
Speaker 4: who work for him and worked for him and will
Speaker 4: work for him again. And JD. Vance is there writing
Speaker 4: the forward to the book that Kevin Roberts, you know,
Speaker 4: his forthcoming book, Kevin Roberts being the head of the
Speaker 4: Heritage fination that you know oversaw Project twenty twenty five.
Speaker 4: So in choosing Vance, Trump ended up drawing attention to,
Speaker 4: like the part of his movement that is most unpopular
Speaker 4: and off putting and unnerving. When his best argument was
Speaker 4: weirdly given who he is, a kind of stability argument.
Speaker 4: But he didn't pick somebody who accentuated stability. He picked
Speaker 4: somebody who accentuated kind of instability and uncertainty and weirdness.
Speaker 4: And yeah, I don't think Vance has helped this ticket
Speaker 4: at all.
Speaker 2: I totally agree.
Speaker 3: I mean and Let's remember, you know, he pays Jady
Speaker 3: Vance when Joe Biden was the candidate. You know, it
Speaker 3: was a very different race and it was sort of
Speaker 3: a shoe in and so yeah, Jade Vance doesn't reach
Speaker 3: people that Trump isn't reaching. And to as his point,
Speaker 3: I think it's hurting him with groups that would otherwise
Speaker 3: maybe would have voted for Trump. I mean, when Jennifer
Speaker 3: Aniston posted about Jade Vance, a person who obviously has
Speaker 3: a lot of influence but isn't necessarily on your bingo
Speaker 3: card of you know, who will take a stand or
Speaker 3: endorse anyone during an election, That's when I knew, like, oh,
Speaker 3: like he's in trouble, and yeah, he's just He's also
Speaker 3: like Trump is charismatic at least, you know, and funny
Speaker 3: and entertaining, and Jade Vance is just, you know, it
Speaker 3: doesn't even have that. So I don't think Trump is
Speaker 3: thrilled about that decision. That would be my guess.
Speaker 1: Ezra. I know you have a lot to do. You're
Speaker 1: a very busy man. Thank you for taking the time
Speaker 1: to be with Liz and me today. We really appreciate it.
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me. It was great to see
Speaker 4: you both.
Speaker 1: Liz, that was so fun. So smart, isn't he.
Speaker 3: He's so interesting as always, you know, it's always going
Speaker 3: to be smart, but it's also he has surprising takes
Speaker 3: on everything. You know, you think you will have understood
Speaker 3: an issue, and then he'll come at it from a
Speaker 3: different perspective.
Speaker 2: And yeah, that was so that was so fun.
Speaker 1: I really found the gender conversation interesting, Liz, And I
Speaker 1: know you've been focusing on that axioside A piece just
Speaker 1: over the weekend, talking about women turning left, men turning right,
Speaker 1: women going to church less, men becoming more religious than women,
Speaker 1: seeing it sort of in every aspect of American life.
Speaker 1: I find that's so interesting and so troubling. And I
Speaker 1: think you made a great point that we've just kind
Speaker 1: of ignored these young men and there is an inevitable
Speaker 1: backlash to these big social movements that we've seen over
Speaker 1: the last five years.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I, by the way, feel totally part of.
Speaker 3: The originating problem of this, right because I before iended
Speaker 3: up writing a book about masculine in twenty nineteen, I'd
Speaker 3: never thought that these issues were connected, right, that the
Speaker 3: men's problems could somehow be connected to women's problems. I
Speaker 3: did have that sort of zero sum mentality that we
Speaker 3: needed to focus on women in order to uplift them
Speaker 3: and have gender equality.
Speaker 2: But I think the more we can.
Speaker 3: Connect those issues and realize, I mean, we all have
Speaker 3: to live together, right, But the more we're able to
Speaker 3: sort of work on those issues together and build more coalition.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I think online is not where it's necessarily
Speaker 3: I was.
Speaker 1: Going to say, it's only exacerbating that with these bubbles.
Speaker 1: And then some of the people that Ezra was talking
Speaker 1: about that these young men follow and almost worship and
Speaker 1: are really being shaped by are not necessarily the best messengers.
Speaker 1: And one of the other interesting points list that I
Speaker 1: thought as we're made among many was that they should
Speaker 1: be using Tim Walls moreh That is just the kind
Speaker 1: of person who would appeal to disaffected young men. He
Speaker 1: obviously had extraordinary success as a high school coach and teacher.
Speaker 1: You know, when you saw all those football players at
Speaker 1: the DNC, you know, coming on stage, he elicits this
Speaker 1: profound affection and respect. I agree with him. Where are you,
Speaker 1: Tim Waaltz get on this damn podcast exactly? Well, although
Speaker 1: I'm not sure I'm the right podcast, but selfishly I'd
Speaker 1: like to talk to him, but he should be going
Speaker 1: on all these shows. I think I do believe he's
Speaker 1: being underutilized. And I wonder if the slip he made
Speaker 1: when he talked about his war record that they're afraid
Speaker 1: that he's going And I think this caution might be
Speaker 1: moren out of a fear of making a mistake or
Speaker 1: saying something that could be manipulated by the far right.
Speaker 1: But I just I think they're missing a great opportunity here.
Speaker 3: And it's funny because you're so right that the campaign
Speaker 3: is very is being very careful on the one hand,
Speaker 3: but on the sort of like outwardly, they're taking all
Speaker 3: these risks right TikTok and on social media they're you know,
Speaker 3: using the coconut that's.
Speaker 1: Also within their control. That you know, that's within their control.
Speaker 1: They have to give up a certain amount of control
Speaker 1: when she's faced by a prepared questioner who's going to
Speaker 1: ask her really specific questions about policy, about her record,
Speaker 1: and about her future agenda. So you know, yes, I
Speaker 1: think they've been great online, but that's so different, and
Speaker 1: you know, as a journalist, of course, I err on
Speaker 1: the side of wanting her to be challenged and I've
Speaker 1: always found that a lot of these politicians, they rise
Speaker 1: to the occasion when they're asked very challenging questions. That's
Speaker 1: when they do the best. If there ask these open
Speaker 1: ended questions, I think that that is when they sometimes stumble.
Speaker 1: But anyway, that's my argument. Kamala, you come on this
Speaker 1: podcast too. Anyway, Liz, thank you so much for being
Speaker 1: my partner in crime here. It's always great to be
Speaker 1: with you. And again, I love your newsletter called Airplane Mode,
Speaker 1: and everybody should check it out subscribe to it because,
Speaker 1: as Liz often tells us in the middle of our newsletter,
Speaker 1: it's really important to support grassroots journalism and she works
Speaker 1: really hard to bring interesting information and insights to all
Speaker 1: of us. So thank you Liz for that.
Speaker 3: Thank you Katie, You're my hero. This is so iconic
Speaker 3: to be on with you, and this is so fun.
Speaker 3: I hope we get to do it again soon.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening everyone. If you have a question for me,
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