WEBVTT - The Election Home Stretch with Liz Plank and Ezra Klein 0:00:03.440 --> 0:00:06.600 Hi, everyone, I'm Kitty Kirk and this is next question. 0:00:10.119 --> 0:00:14.120 Ezra Cline is one smart cookie. He's got a podcast 0:00:14.240 --> 0:00:18.639 with the somewhat unoriginal title of the ezraclined show. Hey, 0:00:18.680 --> 0:00:20.840 I've got a company called Katy Kirk Media, so I 0:00:20.880 --> 0:00:23.479 guess I'm one to talk. But he's also an opinion 0:00:23.520 --> 0:00:27.000 columnist for The New York Times. Semaphore called him the 0:00:27.040 --> 0:00:30.800 breakout media star of the twenty twenty four election cycle. 0:00:31.200 --> 0:00:34.879 His columns and his podcasts are incredibly insightful and at 0:00:34.920 --> 0:00:39.280 times pretty surprising. He often gives us new, fresh takes 0:00:39.320 --> 0:00:43.120 on some of the same old problems. Today, I'm very 0:00:43.120 --> 0:00:46.479 excited to have as my plus one the one the 0:00:46.520 --> 0:00:50.919 only Liz Plank, who is a feminist writer, commentator. She 0:00:50.960 --> 0:00:55.240 has a biweekly newsletter called Airplane Mode, which I subscribe to, 0:00:55.680 --> 0:00:58.720 and I absolutely love Liz. Thank you so much for 0:00:58.760 --> 0:01:00.800 being my plus one and any of meat today. 0:01:01.240 --> 0:01:02.240 Thank you for having me. 0:01:02.440 --> 0:01:04.640 I've been on the wait list for a while, so 0:01:04.800 --> 0:01:07.480 I'm happy to be to be here with you now. 0:01:07.640 --> 0:01:11.120 We're having today as our guest Ezra Klein, who I 0:01:11.160 --> 0:01:13.240 know you're a big fan of. I'm a big fan 0:01:13.280 --> 0:01:15.959 of as Sema for said not too long ago, he 0:01:16.040 --> 0:01:20.160 was having a moment. He has an extremely popular podcast, 0:01:20.319 --> 0:01:23.280 and I always appreciate his point of view. Are you 0:01:23.319 --> 0:01:25.400 a big fan, Let's hope so because he's listening. 0:01:25.720 --> 0:01:27.520 Yeah, I'm a super I mean I'm a super fan. 0:01:27.560 --> 0:01:30.560 I had the privilege of working for Ezra when I 0:01:30.600 --> 0:01:33.520 was a box and I still have like an Ezra 0:01:33.600 --> 0:01:36.200 cleient voice inside my head that pops in sometimes of 0:01:36.319 --> 0:01:39.640 lessons that I've learned from working with Ezra, Like every 0:01:39.680 --> 0:01:42.600 time I did get time with him, I would leave 0:01:42.640 --> 0:01:45.280 with like a really important thing that would stay in 0:01:45.360 --> 0:01:48.040 my head. And so I'm super super excited to be 0:01:48.080 --> 0:01:49.160 talking to him today with you. 0:01:49.400 --> 0:01:52.480 What are some of the headline issues that you're looking 0:01:52.560 --> 0:01:54.000 to interrogate with Ezra? 0:01:54.480 --> 0:01:57.720 Well, I think Ezra wrote an entire book about polarization, 0:01:58.000 --> 0:02:00.960 and obviously we think a lot about polarization in the 0:02:01.000 --> 0:02:05.920 sense of political parties and political ideology. But recently, just 0:02:06.000 --> 0:02:07.400 with all of the data that's come out of the 0:02:07.400 --> 0:02:10.520 election and this huge and growing gender divide, I've been 0:02:10.520 --> 0:02:12.160 thinking a lot about it in terms of gender, and 0:02:12.200 --> 0:02:15.120 so I'm very curious to hear his thoughts about how 0:02:15.200 --> 0:02:19.760 we resolve this growing gap between women and men and 0:02:19.880 --> 0:02:22.600 us being kind of like each radicalized in our own 0:02:22.639 --> 0:02:25.840 corner of the universe, and the sort of political landscape right. 0:02:25.720 --> 0:02:28.360 Now, well, let's get to it. Ezra Klein, welcome to 0:02:28.440 --> 0:02:29.120 next question. 0:02:29.480 --> 0:02:30.360 Thank you for having me. 0:02:30.760 --> 0:02:34.480 I'm so happy to have you. And before we look ahead, 0:02:34.560 --> 0:02:37.359 I want to look behind us for a moment, because 0:02:37.400 --> 0:02:40.160 you did get a lot of credit, Ezra for being 0:02:40.200 --> 0:02:43.480 the leader of the pack saying that Joe Biden must 0:02:43.520 --> 0:02:47.560 step down looking back on that whole experience, because I 0:02:47.600 --> 0:02:49.760 know you think highly of Joe Biden, you like him, 0:02:49.800 --> 0:02:53.240 you think he was good president. Any regrets for leaning 0:02:53.320 --> 0:02:56.360 sort of the movement to replace him with someone else, 0:02:58.000 --> 0:02:58.519 I hear. 0:02:58.400 --> 0:03:01.240 Me in some ways more credit than I I'd look 0:03:01.320 --> 0:03:03.440 like I was. I don't think of myself as early 0:03:03.560 --> 0:03:06.040 or the media as early. Certainly the voters were there 0:03:06.080 --> 0:03:08.320 for a long time. A lot of what I was 0:03:08.320 --> 0:03:11.960 saying in those kind of pieces back in February was 0:03:12.040 --> 0:03:15.760 that you had had in poll after poll sixty five 0:03:15.880 --> 0:03:18.359 seventy five eighty percent, which are hard numbers to get 0:03:18.400 --> 0:03:20.920 in American politics, a voter saying that he should step 0:03:20.960 --> 0:03:24.480 aside early in the Democratic primaries, you know, or when 0:03:24.600 --> 0:03:26.639 there wasn't really a Democratic primary, but when there might 0:03:26.680 --> 0:03:30.520 have been a plurality or majority of Democrats depending on 0:03:30.520 --> 0:03:33.440 the poll, didn't want him to run again. Go watch 0:03:33.520 --> 0:03:37.480 his convention speech in twenty sixteen. There was not a 0:03:37.480 --> 0:03:40.400 better speech at that convention. I mean, he just took 0:03:40.440 --> 0:03:42.800 Donald Trump apart. If that guy had run against Donald 0:03:42.840 --> 0:03:47.120 Trump at twenty sixteen, he would have won by six points. 0:03:47.160 --> 0:03:50.680 Because because we league not. 0:03:50.720 --> 0:03:53.720 Only by the example of our power, but by the 0:03:53.800 --> 0:03:57.880 power of our example. That is the history of the 0:03:58.000 --> 0:04:03.960 journey of America. God willing, God willing, Hillary Clinton will 0:04:04.000 --> 0:04:08.120 write the next chapter in that journey. We are America 0:04:08.400 --> 0:04:13.040 second to none, and we own the finish line. Don't 0:04:13.080 --> 0:04:17.880 forget it. God bless you all, and may God protect 0:04:17.960 --> 0:04:19.719 our trips come. 0:04:20.960 --> 0:04:27.479 You're America. And I think Joe Biden gets credit for 0:04:27.520 --> 0:04:30.880 doing something that is extraordinarily rare, not just in American 0:04:30.920 --> 0:04:36.599 politics but in politics worldwide, which is having ultimate political power, 0:04:37.160 --> 0:04:38.880 having a chance of keeping it right. I mean, he 0:04:38.920 --> 0:04:41.000 was never that far behind Donald Trump and the polls 0:04:41.640 --> 0:04:44.360 and giving it up because that was the better thing 0:04:44.440 --> 0:04:46.480 to do for the country. I mean, I know people 0:04:46.560 --> 0:04:48.320 who say, oh, he did it too later, he never 0:04:48.360 --> 0:04:51.159 should have run fine sale that. But the kinds of 0:04:51.240 --> 0:04:55.200 personalities that become leaders of nations, these are people who 0:04:55.279 --> 0:04:57.720 want power, not people who find it easy to say 0:04:57.760 --> 0:05:00.560 no to power. And so what Biden and in the end, 0:05:00.800 --> 0:05:04.320 I do think was heroic and historic. 0:05:04.800 --> 0:05:08.080 He definitely solidified his legacy and wasn't part of the 0:05:08.120 --> 0:05:11.760 reluctance for the Democratic Party to sort of acknowledge what 0:05:11.839 --> 0:05:14.120 was happening and was unfolding in front of our eyes 0:05:14.680 --> 0:05:16.960 was the fear that there was no replacement, right, that 0:05:17.040 --> 0:05:20.200 Kamala Harris didn't have the popularity that's required in order 0:05:20.279 --> 0:05:23.159 to become the candidate. And it was so interesting. I 0:05:23.160 --> 0:05:25.920 think if there'd been more time between Biden stepping down 0:05:25.960 --> 0:05:28.280 and then Kamala Harris becoming the candidate, maybe there we 0:05:28.320 --> 0:05:30.880 would have had more time to talk about is she electable? 0:05:30.960 --> 0:05:32.760 Can you know? Can she do this in America? Get 0:05:32.800 --> 0:05:33.240 on board? 0:05:33.760 --> 0:05:36.039 And it's almost like, because there wasn't enough time for 0:05:36.080 --> 0:05:39.480 people to doubt it, her popularity sort of spoke for itself. 0:05:39.560 --> 0:05:41.359 But I'm curious how you see that, how do you 0:05:41.400 --> 0:05:42.880 explain her popularity right now? 0:05:42.960 --> 0:05:44.680 So I think there are two things happening at that time. 0:05:44.720 --> 0:05:46.440 So one was a lot of people around Biden and 0:05:46.440 --> 0:05:50.000 the Democratic Party. This was not, in my view, some 0:05:50.080 --> 0:05:52.120 grand cover up. And the way you know it wasn't 0:05:52.120 --> 0:05:55.480 a grand cover up is because the Biden campaign team 0:05:55.520 --> 0:05:59.240 negotiated an early debate. They thought he could do it right. 0:05:59.320 --> 0:06:02.080 And you know, maybe they were fooling themselves, maybe they 0:06:02.080 --> 0:06:04.200 were seeing something we weren't. Maybe they weren't accepting things 0:06:04.240 --> 0:06:06.200 they were seeing. Some days, there are a lot of 0:06:06.200 --> 0:06:10.480 ways people sort of can negotiate internally something that is 0:06:10.600 --> 0:06:13.119 maybe not true or reality they don't want to accept. 0:06:13.160 --> 0:06:14.960 But I do think that was happening. The view that 0:06:15.000 --> 0:06:17.320 they sort of knew this was a disaster is not 0:06:17.560 --> 0:06:20.400 aligned to what ultimately their actions really were, So I 0:06:20.400 --> 0:06:22.760 think you should believe their actions. But then, yeah, Liz, 0:06:22.760 --> 0:06:25.120 what you're saying is true. When I was doing this reporting, 0:06:25.680 --> 0:06:28.080 the thing that I kept hearing from people who understood 0:06:28.120 --> 0:06:31.520 Joe Biden's age to be a potentially insufferable political problem 0:06:32.160 --> 0:06:36.800 was well, the only really likely replacement is Harris, and 0:06:36.920 --> 0:06:40.200 Harris cannot win Pennsylvania, Michigan, in Wisconsin, right, And that 0:06:40.320 --> 0:06:42.279 was the view. And Harris had trailed Joe Biden in 0:06:42.320 --> 0:06:46.240 popularity for much of his presidential term. She was at 0:06:46.240 --> 0:06:48.800 that point still to my knowledge, if I'm remembering the 0:06:48.839 --> 0:06:52.680 polling right trailing him a bit. The Democratic Party had 0:06:52.720 --> 0:06:55.040 lost a lot of faith in her over the course 0:06:55.080 --> 0:06:57.839 of Joe Biden's presidency. I said, then, I think it 0:06:57.880 --> 0:07:00.000 has proven true that that was always a little bit 0:07:00.120 --> 0:07:02.920 is sterious, and she'd become underrated because nothing had actually 0:07:02.920 --> 0:07:05.839 gone wrong for her in any very significant way. I mean, 0:07:06.120 --> 0:07:07.960 she had a kind of bad luster whole interview, but 0:07:08.000 --> 0:07:11.200 that wasn't enough to explain how far her star had 0:07:11.240 --> 0:07:13.880 fallen among many sort of Democratic insiders. 0:07:14.440 --> 0:07:16.800 I think Estra, just to interject real quickly, I think 0:07:16.880 --> 0:07:18.520 part of the problem was she was almost in the 0:07:18.560 --> 0:07:22.760 witness protection program. I think this philosophy of not making 0:07:22.840 --> 0:07:26.840 Joe Biden available for interviews and not having him interface 0:07:26.960 --> 0:07:30.840 with a lot of journalists kept her away from the press. 0:07:30.880 --> 0:07:34.480 They could have done even joint interviews that reinforced that 0:07:34.520 --> 0:07:37.360 they had a good working relationship, but I feel like 0:07:37.440 --> 0:07:39.840 he kept her away from the media, and then when 0:07:39.880 --> 0:07:42.440 she did interviews like the Lester Hold interview or some 0:07:42.520 --> 0:07:46.720 other interviews and didn't fare well, it solidified this idea 0:07:46.800 --> 0:07:48.640 that she wasn't that competent. 0:07:49.280 --> 0:07:51.120 I think this one's hard to say. I know that 0:07:51.160 --> 0:07:54.400 she did an interview with you in January. Commos is 0:07:54.440 --> 0:07:56.720 not like she does not do many media interviews, right, 0:07:56.800 --> 0:07:59.400 That is an authentic, I think thing to her. I 0:07:59.400 --> 0:08:01.240 don't think it's a strong format for her. I don't 0:08:01.240 --> 0:08:04.920 really understand why. Oftentimes she's very very good defending Biden 0:08:05.400 --> 0:08:07.080 after the debate, but in a lot of the media 0:08:07.120 --> 0:08:10.920 interviews she's given, she will not answer questions that are 0:08:11.040 --> 0:08:13.520 very straightforward, and she gets tripped up by straightforward to 0:08:13.560 --> 0:08:15.320 questions in a way I don't understand. 0:08:15.520 --> 0:08:18.239 It's almost like she's ticking off talking points. 0:08:18.680 --> 0:08:20.840 Yeah, It's like you can watch her firing up the 0:08:20.880 --> 0:08:24.680 nearest script, whereas in a debate she's excellent, right, And 0:08:25.520 --> 0:08:27.560 she was good in her interview with you. I remember 0:08:27.600 --> 0:08:29.400 listening to it while I was trying to think about 0:08:29.400 --> 0:08:31.000 all this and trying to find interviews of her. So 0:08:31.040 --> 0:08:34.000 I came across her with you, and I think that's 0:08:34.040 --> 0:08:36.640 one of her better interviews. So she's definitely capable of 0:08:36.640 --> 0:08:37.079 doing it. 0:08:37.600 --> 0:08:41.240 Yeah, and I still think she often ticks off talking points. 0:08:41.280 --> 0:08:43.640 It's almost like she's afraid she's going to say something 0:08:43.679 --> 0:08:48.000 wrong when I saw Kamala Harris debate, I thought, Wow, 0:08:48.360 --> 0:08:51.199 she did a really good job. Perhaps she'll feel liberated 0:08:51.240 --> 0:08:54.440 to do more interviews because she's quick on her feet, 0:08:54.720 --> 0:08:58.480 she has a facility with facts and figures. And then 0:08:58.640 --> 0:09:01.480 it went right back to kind of sounding scripted in 0:09:01.480 --> 0:09:04.600 interview situations I couldn't figure out. But anyway, continue your 0:09:04.640 --> 0:09:05.800 earlier point is raight. 0:09:05.960 --> 0:09:08.760 So there was this view that she wasn't up to it. 0:09:08.800 --> 0:09:10.360 This was a really big thing in the party, to 0:09:10.400 --> 0:09:12.560 be fair with something that people around Joe Biden were 0:09:12.600 --> 0:09:15.760 saying in order to fortify his position, and then by 0:09:15.840 --> 0:09:18.040 the time he dropped out, there was not time for 0:09:18.080 --> 0:09:20.040 what a lot of people in the party thought they 0:09:20.520 --> 0:09:23.679 should have, by the way, something Kamala Harris quietly also 0:09:23.679 --> 0:09:26.000 thought they should have because she thought it'd be better for her, 0:09:26.320 --> 0:09:28.160 which was some kind of competitive process. 0:09:28.400 --> 0:09:30.719 In fact, you advocated that as where you said there 0:09:30.720 --> 0:09:35.040 should be an open convention so people could really determine 0:09:35.040 --> 0:09:38.360 who was the strongest candidate against Trump. Given that, were 0:09:38.400 --> 0:09:43.040 you surprised that her popularity, as Liz mentioned, was almost 0:09:43.040 --> 0:09:46.959 instantaneous and among Democrats, very very strong. 0:09:47.280 --> 0:09:50.199 I wasn't surprised that her popularity among Democrats was strong. 0:09:50.320 --> 0:09:53.480 I was surprised by how much her overall favorables among 0:09:53.520 --> 0:09:56.360 the electorate rose. Look, I think we're going to see 0:09:56.360 --> 0:10:00.640 in the election ultimately, right, if Kamala Harris the election 0:10:01.080 --> 0:10:04.320 right and she particularly like wins it convincingly, you know, 0:10:04.360 --> 0:10:08.560 the sense that Kamala Harris was terribly underrated is going 0:10:08.600 --> 0:10:11.320 to be true. Right, it will just have been true. 0:10:11.760 --> 0:10:14.280 And if Harris, if the polling errors in the other 0:10:14.320 --> 0:10:19.480 direction and Harris loses Michigan and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, then 0:10:19.520 --> 0:10:22.240 the sense that she is maybe not the candidate, you know, 0:10:22.320 --> 0:10:25.160 a California Liberal that you would have picked to run 0:10:25.160 --> 0:10:28.520 in those states, and she doesn't win North Carolina in Arizona, 0:10:28.520 --> 0:10:31.000 which looked like harter states for her anyway, then the 0:10:31.040 --> 0:10:33.680 sense that the Democratic Party probably didn't have, you know, 0:10:33.760 --> 0:10:35.760 the exact person you would have wanted to run in 0:10:35.800 --> 0:10:38.120 those states is going to congeal. I am not willing 0:10:38.120 --> 0:10:40.760 at this junk. I think she's been a much stronger candidate, 0:10:40.800 --> 0:10:43.240 and I did podcasts about how she's underrated and had 0:10:43.280 --> 0:10:45.680 always said then, no matter what process you do, she 0:10:45.760 --> 0:10:48.760 is the most likely candidate out of it. So if 0:10:48.760 --> 0:10:51.240 you wanted to replace Biden on the ticket as I did. 0:10:51.600 --> 0:10:54.000 You always had to be comfortable with Kamala Harris being 0:10:54.040 --> 0:10:56.600 the candidate because she was probably going to win no 0:10:56.600 --> 0:10:58.720 matter how you did it. And I was comfortable with that. 0:10:58.760 --> 0:11:00.240 So I was willing to make that argument at a 0:11:00.280 --> 0:11:03.960 time some people didn't think it made sense. But look, 0:11:04.000 --> 0:11:05.719 if Democrats lose this here, there's going to be a 0:11:05.720 --> 0:11:07.040 lot of anger, you know, if they lose because of 0:11:07.040 --> 0:11:09.200 Pennsylvania where she didn't pict Shapiro, there's going to be 0:11:09.200 --> 0:11:11.760 a lot of anger. So you've been around this longer 0:11:12.040 --> 0:11:14.920 than I have, but I'm always careful before getting ahead 0:11:14.920 --> 0:11:17.160 of a narrative when we haven't seen the election play out. 0:11:23.280 --> 0:11:25.400 If you want to get smarter every morning with a 0:11:25.440 --> 0:11:28.720 breakdown of the news and fascinating takes on health and 0:11:28.760 --> 0:11:32.080 wellness and pop culture, sign up for our daily newsletter, 0:11:32.160 --> 0:11:45.240 Wake Up Call by going to Katiecuric dot com. Let's 0:11:45.240 --> 0:11:50.280 talk about Trump calling her mentally impaired. You know, there 0:11:50.520 --> 0:11:54.720 don't seem to be any consequences for him making statements 0:11:54.800 --> 0:11:59.920 like that, and gosh, a whole myriad of other insults 0:12:00.679 --> 0:12:03.280 He does, though, seem to be having a hard time 0:12:03.600 --> 0:12:07.920 running against her and be slightly flummixed by her candidacy. 0:12:07.960 --> 0:12:11.120 A friend of mine said, the lummix is flummixed, and 0:12:11.640 --> 0:12:16.120 so I'm curious your observations on how he's trying to 0:12:16.200 --> 0:12:19.080 position her and position himself against her. 0:12:20.160 --> 0:12:25.120 My observations about Donald Trump's positioning. I think with Donald Trump, 0:12:25.160 --> 0:12:30.559 you are dealing with someone who is intuitive and not strategic, 0:12:30.679 --> 0:12:33.160 and that's who he's always been. That people say there's 0:12:33.160 --> 0:12:35.679 maybe even some age related deterioration in him. I mean, 0:12:35.720 --> 0:12:38.640 he's not a spring chicken, as I say. I think 0:12:38.679 --> 0:12:43.920 that's probably true as well his inability to stick to 0:12:44.080 --> 0:12:48.920 a line of attack on her as a leftist California 0:12:48.960 --> 0:12:52.280 flip flopper. Will I was speaking a minute ago about 0:12:52.320 --> 0:12:55.040 how narratives take hold after elections. If he loses his 0:12:55.120 --> 0:12:58.240 election convincingly, which in my view is a pretty good shot. 0:12:59.559 --> 0:13:02.800 The view that he completely blew for him a winnable 0:13:02.800 --> 0:13:06.760 election because he didn't have a shred of self discipline 0:13:07.280 --> 0:13:11.199 will take very stronghold. He could have run against her 0:13:11.640 --> 0:13:15.920 on election. I'm election on inflation, on the set of 0:13:15.920 --> 0:13:19.480 positions she took in twenty twenty, where she swung very 0:13:19.480 --> 0:13:23.080 far to the left to try to out flank Bernie Sanders, 0:13:23.480 --> 0:13:26.760 there was a the Joe Biden admistration is unpopular and 0:13:27.040 --> 0:13:30.120 his record is unpopular, and she is part of that administration. 0:13:30.679 --> 0:13:33.440 I mean the way that a normal Republican candidate, right, 0:13:33.520 --> 0:13:37.480 if the Republicans had gone another direction and picked Nicki Haley, 0:13:37.920 --> 0:13:41.600 The way Nicki Haley would run against Kamala Harris is obvious. 0:13:41.760 --> 0:13:43.800 It rights itself, and I think most people bet that 0:13:43.840 --> 0:13:47.840 Haley would have won. And Donald Trump he can only 0:13:47.840 --> 0:13:52.680 be who he is, and her ability to dangle obvious 0:13:52.760 --> 0:13:55.120 bait at him in front of the during the debate 0:13:55.559 --> 0:13:59.080 and say, you know, on his strongest issue, immigration, Oh 0:13:59.120 --> 0:14:01.200 but you have you know, bored people wandering out at 0:14:01.200 --> 0:14:01.880 your crowds. 0:14:02.200 --> 0:14:05.400 I was going to say his second strongest issue, crowd size. 0:14:05.160 --> 0:14:07.400 Yeah, right, And the guy snorts and like pause at 0:14:07.440 --> 0:14:10.720 the ground and charges that was it wasn't just that 0:14:10.800 --> 0:14:13.280 he's got that failure in the moment at a debate. 0:14:13.760 --> 0:14:16.960 It is a core personality problem in him, right, a 0:14:17.000 --> 0:14:20.640 core temperamental problem that is playing out all across the election. 0:14:21.080 --> 0:14:24.040 Yeah, and you brought up discipline, which I think is 0:14:24.120 --> 0:14:27.960 such an important word. I was watching Joe Rogan's take 0:14:28.160 --> 0:14:31.960 on the debate to him, the discrediting thing about the 0:14:32.000 --> 0:14:35.640 debate was his lack of discipline, that she came off 0:14:35.720 --> 0:14:39.240 as not just more prepared, being able to stay on topic. 0:14:39.400 --> 0:14:44.120 And to me, discipline is actually a masculine or traditionally 0:14:44.160 --> 0:14:47.680 masculine quality, right there is definitely and I think we're 0:14:47.680 --> 0:14:49.360 going to get into it, just the gender divide of 0:14:49.400 --> 0:14:52.360 this election. You know, a lot of men are not 0:14:52.440 --> 0:14:55.040 on board with Kamala Harris and are you know, have 0:14:55.080 --> 0:14:57.680 been moving away from the Democratic Party for a while now, 0:14:57.720 --> 0:15:00.840 but it's even more significant in this election. And part 0:15:00.840 --> 0:15:04.960 of me wonders, like, I mean, watching Kamala Harris her 0:15:05.680 --> 0:15:09.040 speech at the DNC and some of these media appearances, 0:15:09.520 --> 0:15:12.440 they almost seem like, yes, she's talking about abortion, she's 0:15:12.440 --> 0:15:15.600 talking about reproductive rights. She's definitely speaking to women. But 0:15:15.760 --> 0:15:18.840 some of these I think soundbites are like for the dudes. 0:15:18.960 --> 0:15:22.040 You know, her talking about America being the most like 0:15:22.120 --> 0:15:24.880 lethal force in the world, talking about shooting people if 0:15:24.920 --> 0:15:27.840 they come into her home. Do you see her kind 0:15:27.920 --> 0:15:30.560 of signaling to men and male voters in a way 0:15:30.600 --> 0:15:33.920 that's maybe not as overt as what Donald Trump is doing, 0:15:34.360 --> 0:15:35.960 And do you see it working? 0:15:37.360 --> 0:15:38.840 I probably have a slightly different view and where it 0:15:38.880 --> 0:15:41.080 comes from. I think there's like a bunch of interesting 0:15:41.120 --> 0:15:42.480 things to pick up on there. I'd love to talk. 0:15:42.560 --> 0:15:44.160 I feel like you get a whole podcast on this 0:15:44.240 --> 0:15:46.880 question of whether discipline is male coded in American politics, 0:15:46.880 --> 0:15:49.840 and I'd love to think about that. Kummeleris comes out 0:15:49.840 --> 0:15:55.520 of a black political tradition. She is a moderate law 0:15:55.520 --> 0:16:00.960 and order black urban politician, right, that's where she comes 0:16:00.960 --> 0:16:03.080 from in San Francisco, and San Francisco is thought of 0:16:03.080 --> 0:16:05.040 as very liberal. In many ways, it is very liberal, 0:16:05.360 --> 0:16:07.560 but as somebody who's lived there and grew up in California, 0:16:08.000 --> 0:16:11.960 San Francisco is a city that has always struggled terribly 0:16:12.080 --> 0:16:17.200 with disorder, right with drug use, with homelessness, with a 0:16:17.280 --> 0:16:22.600 kind of burbling chaos that often feels like it is 0:16:22.640 --> 0:16:26.160 only inches from consuming much of the rest of the city. 0:16:26.800 --> 0:16:30.320 And Harris emerges as a DA there. She runs against 0:16:30.360 --> 0:16:34.120 the existing DA as bad at winning prosecutions. She becomes 0:16:34.520 --> 0:16:39.160 ag of California on a somewhat similar argument, running against 0:16:39.160 --> 0:16:42.600 some more law and order republican from Los Angeles and 0:16:43.000 --> 0:16:46.160 right and left, male and female, the kinds of voters 0:16:46.200 --> 0:16:49.360 Harris like cut her political teeth knowing how to appeal 0:16:49.400 --> 0:16:53.160 to were voters who wanted somebody who would catch bad guys, 0:16:53.160 --> 0:16:56.120 who would put bad people behind bars. I mean the movement, 0:16:56.480 --> 0:16:58.200 which I think is the cause of a lot of 0:16:58.200 --> 0:17:01.040 her sort of political instability in twenty twenty, where the 0:17:01.040 --> 0:17:04.560 Democratic Party wanted her to succeed but had turned sharply 0:17:04.600 --> 0:17:07.439 against law and order politics, and like that creates this 0:17:07.560 --> 0:17:10.200 kind of space where she can't be who she really 0:17:10.280 --> 0:17:14.440 is politically, but never really finds another political identity to inhabit, 0:17:14.560 --> 0:17:16.840 and then ends up kind of looking correless and having 0:17:16.880 --> 0:17:19.040 taken a bunch of positions, she's now walked back from 0:17:19.600 --> 0:17:23.760 what Harris is reinhabiting here when she puts out these 0:17:23.800 --> 0:17:26.719 ads where she's you know, stalking across the border and 0:17:26.760 --> 0:17:29.439 you know, saluting border guards and saying, you know, fixing 0:17:29.440 --> 0:17:31.600 the border is tough, and so is Kamala Harris and 0:17:31.600 --> 0:17:33.280 saying if anybody comes into her house, they're going to 0:17:33.320 --> 0:17:37.840 get shot. Right. If you look at black politicians from 0:17:38.040 --> 0:17:42.880 urban areas, you know, over the nineties, over the two thousand's, 0:17:43.320 --> 0:17:45.359 this is a long political tradition. I mean, go back 0:17:45.359 --> 0:17:47.520 to the eighties, go back to the seventies. Right, there's 0:17:47.560 --> 0:17:50.360 nothing actually all that new about it, and it's really 0:17:50.400 --> 0:17:53.360 that Democrats kind of abandoned it for a period of time, 0:17:53.440 --> 0:17:55.879 and now she's running at a time when you know 0:17:55.920 --> 0:17:58.280 she can pick it back up. And even more than that, 0:17:58.359 --> 0:18:00.520 runn against guy who's a convicted criminal, which allows you 0:18:00.640 --> 0:18:01.760 to really reinhabit that. 0:18:02.160 --> 0:18:05.600 So if that's the case, why are so many young men? 0:18:05.800 --> 0:18:08.119 This is what I'm fascinated by, and I know Liz 0:18:08.240 --> 0:18:12.600 is too, are turned off by Kamala Harris. There's an 0:18:12.680 --> 0:18:15.440 NBC News poll of gen Z adults found that young 0:18:15.480 --> 0:18:18.560 women favored Harris over Trump by thirty points, while young 0:18:18.600 --> 0:18:22.520 men favored Harris by just four points. Let's dig into 0:18:22.560 --> 0:18:24.480 the gender gap for a few minutes, as we what 0:18:24.640 --> 0:18:27.760 is happening with young men in this country? Why do 0:18:27.840 --> 0:18:31.240 they seem to be gravitating or some of them to 0:18:31.440 --> 0:18:36.320 the kind of macho Donald Trump messaging that we're hearing 0:18:36.520 --> 0:18:40.280 again and again and that he's going to protect women, 0:18:40.359 --> 0:18:42.959 which we'll talk about in a moment, but what is 0:18:43.000 --> 0:18:44.200 going on with young men? 0:18:44.560 --> 0:18:47.679 So this is candidate agnostic. I should say. There was 0:18:47.720 --> 0:18:50.040 a big Wall Street journal piece on this using Biden 0:18:50.200 --> 0:18:53.040 and Trump pulling a couple weeks, a couple of months ago, 0:18:53.640 --> 0:18:56.840 and so Biden was hemorrhaging support among young men. That's 0:18:56.920 --> 0:19:00.760 part of why Donald Trump's knight at the RNC was 0:19:00.800 --> 0:19:03.720 like like a Vegas show about masculinity, right, like Whule 0:19:03.760 --> 0:19:05.600 Cogan like ripping off his shirt to you know, for 0:19:05.640 --> 0:19:08.240 all the little Trumpsters out there. And you had Dana White, 0:19:08.280 --> 0:19:10.400 you know, the head of the UFC introducing Donald Trump. 0:19:10.440 --> 0:19:14.720 I mean the whole thing was the campiest masculinity, like. 0:19:14.800 --> 0:19:19.479 Not cho much show man, you just expected the village people. 0:19:19.960 --> 0:19:22.080 Yeah, like as a text for Judith Butler, it was 0:19:22.280 --> 0:19:26.680 extremely rich. So you get that happening. I mean, what's 0:19:26.720 --> 0:19:28.840 happening with young men? But I wouldn't tell you, I 0:19:28.880 --> 0:19:31.480 know entirely, and I'd actually really loved he here Liz 0:19:31.600 --> 0:19:34.679 as part of it. But there we have had a 0:19:34.880 --> 0:19:38.040 very sharp in this era of politics and part of 0:19:38.080 --> 0:19:42.280 the digital politics shift in sort of the moras right, 0:19:42.280 --> 0:19:44.399 like we talk about the future as female, and we 0:19:44.440 --> 0:19:49.200 talk about toxic masculinity, and there's like a million descriptions 0:19:49.240 --> 0:19:52.000 of like how traits that are traditionally male are bad. 0:19:52.080 --> 0:19:53.920 You have the Home Me Too movement, you. 0:19:53.920 --> 0:19:58.360 Have DEI which left a lot of white males feeling marginalized. 0:19:58.480 --> 0:20:00.720 Those are that too. You know. You then have the 0:20:00.840 --> 0:20:04.000 rise of people like Jordan Peterson and Andrew Taate. There's 0:20:04.240 --> 0:20:06.520 a lot of you know, can you say any of 0:20:06.560 --> 0:20:09.480 these politically correct things? And all this is sort of 0:20:09.600 --> 0:20:11.520 like much of it is very good, much of it 0:20:11.560 --> 0:20:14.320 is natural, right. You know, you're having a feminization of 0:20:14.320 --> 0:20:17.439 politics and power generally as people sort of push to 0:20:17.440 --> 0:20:20.919 have more representation. But that's going to create backlash, right, 0:20:20.960 --> 0:20:23.719 I mean, that is the nature of every political movement 0:20:23.840 --> 0:20:26.280 like this that we have ever seen, and you're seeing it, 0:20:26.640 --> 0:20:28.960 I think specifically among young men. I do think it 0:20:29.000 --> 0:20:32.719 is somewhat supercharged by the way media fractures, and you 0:20:32.800 --> 0:20:34.919 have a lot of young men in sort of you know, 0:20:35.000 --> 0:20:38.520 twitch politics, right, you know, the in sort of sports 0:20:38.560 --> 0:20:41.040 talk radio, which has become somewhat more rte coded in 0:20:41.040 --> 0:20:44.000 recent years. Although that's not all that new. People forget 0:20:44.000 --> 0:20:47.000 that Rush Limbaugh begins as a sports broadcaster, not as 0:20:47.000 --> 0:20:51.000 a political broadcaster. Joe Rogan is I think not as 0:20:51.080 --> 0:20:52.800 right as he is sometimes made out to be. He's 0:20:52.800 --> 0:20:55.440 a sort of but he is a kind of frustrated 0:20:55.600 --> 0:20:59.679 masculine id politics, and I would say in general, the 0:20:59.680 --> 0:21:03.000 Demo Party was not trying to talk to men, and 0:21:03.040 --> 0:21:07.040 when it was, it was in a pretty scolding, dismissive tone. 0:21:06.920 --> 0:21:10.359