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Speaker 1: Hello there, Happy Thursday. Welcome to another episode of the
Speaker 1: Chuck Podcast. I got a loaded show for you today.
Speaker 1: We're gonna obviously tackle the question that I've gotten a
Speaker 1: thousand times today from various walks of life, which is
Speaker 1: do these Epstein emails mean something more on Trump? Is
Speaker 1: this gonna? Is this problem? We're gonna tell it. We're
Speaker 1: going to dive into that fairly deep here in a minute,
Speaker 1: I'll give you We're going to debate Teflon versus Velcro,
Speaker 1: and we'll get there in a few minutes. My guest
Speaker 1: for today is Adam Gentlsen. He is a long time
Speaker 1: Senate a to the late Senate Majority Leader Senate Democratic
Speaker 1: Leader Harry Reid. He started a new I guess he
Speaker 1: calls it an action tank, but basically it's a think
Speaker 1: tank of sorts that is called the search Light Institute,
Speaker 1: named after the town that Harry Reid was born and
Speaker 1: he came from search Light, Nevada. And the point is how, basically,
Speaker 1: how to broaden the tent, How to get Democrats to
Speaker 1: broaden to not be a stereotype of what perhaps they
Speaker 1: are perceived to be as a brand over the last decade,
Speaker 1: certainly in the post Obama era, how did they broaden out?
Speaker 1: And we discuss how there was wasn't that long ago
Speaker 1: that Democrats could elect senators, had senators from thirty six
Speaker 1: different states at one point when they got sixty senators
Speaker 1: in two thousand and nine. Right, that wasn't in the
Speaker 1: twentieth century or the nineteenth century. That was in the
Speaker 1: twenty first century. So it's an interesting conversation. We delve
Speaker 1: into the whole thing of the shutdown debate. You know,
Speaker 1: how do you confront Trump? Should they have cave, not cave?
Speaker 1: All of those things? I think you're going to enjoy
Speaker 1: that conversation, even if you no matter the side that
Speaker 1: you might be on on that one. Then of course
Speaker 1: after I'll do a little few more q and as,
Speaker 1: and I'll have my big college football preview going into
Speaker 1: the weekend. But I want to start, obviously with this
Speaker 1: question and look the world of independent media, the world
Speaker 1: of content creators. Right, we are in an Epstein frenzy,
Speaker 1: and it's a deserved sort of feeding frenzy of the
Speaker 1: moment because there's new material out there, right, There's new emails,
Speaker 1: there's new shock emails, and the swearing in of Adelita Garalva,
Speaker 1: the Arizona congresswoman who's been waiting to be sworn in
Speaker 1: for over a month now because of the Speaker Johnson's
Speaker 1: bizarre decision to keep the House out. I really think
Speaker 1: he really did a disservice to his own party and
Speaker 1: his own members here, because it's pretty indefensible, you know,
Speaker 1: the lack of the lack of action, the lack of
Speaker 1: anything from the House Republicans, and they're running. They're on
Speaker 1: the ballot before anybody else, is right, it's the House
Speaker 1: Republicans are all on the ballot come in November twenty
Speaker 1: twenty six. And I think Mike Johnson has put his
Speaker 1: own members in a terrible situation. Obviously, he made a
Speaker 1: it feels like he made a decision that the White
Speaker 1: House has him to do, not what was in the
Speaker 1: best interests of the House Republicans, and you know these
Speaker 1: in some ways, this controversy over the Epstein file is
Speaker 1: the same thing. Mike Johnson is consistently doing what's in
Speaker 1: the best interest of the White House, which is a
Speaker 1: branch of government. He does not lead, nor is he
Speaker 1: a member of. He is actually the leader of the
Speaker 1: legislative branch. The Speaker of the House is essentially the
Speaker 1: de facto leader of that branch of government. The same
Speaker 1: way John Roberts as the Chief Justice, is essentially the
Speaker 1: current leader of the judiciary branch, and he is essentially
Speaker 1: outsource decision making on what Congress should do to the
Speaker 1: White House. You get it. Politically, I understand why they
Speaker 1: feel like they have to. And we live in this
Speaker 1: jerrymandered world where primary voters matter more than the rest
Speaker 1: of us. That of course, you know, this gets into
Speaker 1: the larger conversation, which, by the way, I get into
Speaker 1: with Adam Jentlesen right the filibuster. He wrote a whole
Speaker 1: book about the filibuster and what was the founder's intent?
Speaker 1: And you know, how should this all work? And when
Speaker 1: do you have supermajorities and when don't you et cetera.
Speaker 1: But I will tell you, I think what Mike Johnson
Speaker 1: has done with House Republicans is so damaging, and I
Speaker 1: do not think they fully appreciate how much damage he's
Speaker 1: His decisions here, again, all were only to the benefit
Speaker 1: of one person, Donald Trump. None of it to the
Speaker 1: benefit of anybody that's actually going to be on the
Speaker 1: ballot in twenty twenty six, namely every single one of
Speaker 1: those House Republicans that he is charged with leading. The
Speaker 1: discharge position is here. It's interesting that the White House
Speaker 1: apparently was working Lauren Bobert seeing if they could talk
Speaker 1: her out of being a signer, trying to do whatever
Speaker 1: they can to stop this. And I think that, you know,
Speaker 1: the question is will this You know, this is a
Speaker 1: guy you know axis Hollywood didn't end him. January sixth
Speaker 1: didn't end him. I mean, look at the things he
Speaker 1: has done since coming into office. I mean, I'm going
Speaker 1: to give you a quick rundown. These are just the
Speaker 1: people he pardoned on January sixth that have committed crimes
Speaker 1: since right and none of this has hit him yet.
Speaker 1: Edward Kelly pardon for January sixth, later convicted to conspiring
Speaker 1: to murder FBI agents. Daniel Charles Ball was pardoned in
Speaker 1: the January sixth pardons, and he was rearrested on federal
Speaker 1: gun charges. Kyle Colton was pardoned with his January sixth participation,
Speaker 1: later had to be indicted for receiving child pornography. Christopher
Speaker 1: moynihan was pardoned for the January sixth pardons and in
Speaker 1: October twenty twenty five with charge of threatening to kill
Speaker 1: the House Democratic leader Aqim Jeffreys. And then there's Robert
Speaker 1: Packer pardon another January sixth partony in September of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five, charged in connection with a dog attack that
Speaker 1: left four people injured. So people he's pardoned have gone
Speaker 1: on to commit more crimes and have become menaces to society.
Speaker 1: Never mind the other pardons he's done of some really
Speaker 1: questionable figures, like the one where it looks like he
Speaker 1: sold the pardon with Sheng Peng Zao, the finance founder.
Speaker 1: That guy's in business with his sons and he magically
Speaker 1: gets a pardon. I wonder how that worked. This guy
Speaker 1: apparently had billions and illicit transactions, and it was Trump's
Speaker 1: Department of Justice the first term that actually prosecuted him,
Speaker 1: But we digress. George Santos, the serial liar who defrauded voters,
Speaker 1: defrauded Congress, did all sorts of things. He gets pardon
Speaker 1: ed Martin who handles his pardons. He gets pardoned. He
Speaker 1: got convicted of financial crimes, misusing nonprofit funds, and he
Speaker 1: gets pardoned. And of course I think works for Trump.
Speaker 1: Denesh Desuza, who is traffics and made up Propatcanada with
Speaker 1: his Mules movie and all this stuff, well, he was
Speaker 1: convicted of illegal of the straw donor scheme. He received clemency.
Speaker 1: A couple of other crypto fraud financiers that he's pardoned
Speaker 1: ever since. So he's got and I say this, none
Speaker 1: of this stuff has mattered, right, I throw all that
Speaker 1: out there. All of this happened this year. He's you know,
Speaker 1: did the bailout of Argentina instead of bailing out US
Speaker 1: beef producers. None of this has hit him, stuck to
Speaker 1: him yet, So why should the Epstein file stick to him. Well,
Speaker 1: there's another way to look at this is that there
Speaker 1: are times in any presidency where you have Teflon as
Speaker 1: a president, and there are times in every presidency where
Speaker 1: it feels like you're dressed in velcrow. There was you know,
Speaker 1: Richard Nixon had teflon in his first term. By the
Speaker 1: second term, it was all velcrow, and everything that was
Speaker 1: connected to Watergate or loosely connected to Watergate or any
Speaker 1: sort of presidential abuse of power seemed to stick to
Speaker 1: him and stick to him. But why did he go
Speaker 1: from a teflon guy to a velcrow guy? A simple reason?
Speaker 1: The economy sucked. Why did Bill Clinton not get essentially
Speaker 1: punished by the political system or by voters when it
Speaker 1: came to Monica Lewinsky the economy was great. Why did
Speaker 1: the stuff in Trump's first term not stick to him?
Speaker 1: There was a perception that he oversaw a successful economy
Speaker 1: pre coronavirus. Why is this possible that this time he's
Speaker 1: in this is why could this time be different? Because
Speaker 1: too many people in this country think this economy sucks. Because,
Speaker 1: as we've discussed, if you have money, you're doing okay.
Speaker 1: If you don't have money, you're struggling. You're barely out
Speaker 1: of you're barely above water. You're seeing your electric bill
Speaker 1: go up, You're seeing the grocery bills go up, You're
Speaker 1: seeing everything in your life go up. In price. Trust me,
Speaker 1: even if you have some savings, you're seeing everything go up, right,
Speaker 1: The cost of everything has gone up and feels like
Speaker 1: it's going up substantially, particularly when you look at electricity.
Speaker 1: So you know, Epstein's been out there as an issue
Speaker 1: for Trump arguably for years. The question is when does
Speaker 1: it does a you know, why would it matter this
Speaker 1: time more than before. You can say, well, there's more
Speaker 1: evidence that connects them that he knew something. I definitely
Speaker 1: think there's always going to be. But you could make
Speaker 1: the argument you kind of new, right, like, there's this
Speaker 1: great quote from JD. Vance that actually which was you know,
Speaker 1: there's always a tweet, right, This is JD Vance Sarkha
Speaker 1: two thousand and one, So you'll be forgiven. I know
Speaker 1: that way you have to go way back in his past,
Speaker 1: right some four whole years ago. But the quote, and
Speaker 1: I just want to get it directly here. I had
Speaker 1: it up. Remember this is him. He was a tweet
Speaker 1: he made in twenty twenty one. Remember when we learned
Speaker 1: that our wealthiest and most powerful people were connected to
Speaker 1: a guy who ran a literal child sex trafficking ring,
Speaker 1: and then that guy died mysteriously in jail and now
Speaker 1: we just don't talk about it. Of course, that was
Speaker 1: when there was a democratic administration that he did tweet this,
Speaker 1: right number one, And that was back when the right
Speaker 1: was convinced this was a cover up having to do
Speaker 1: with Bill Clinton. But of course Jeffrey Epstein's closest friend
Speaker 1: was not Bill Clinton. It was Donald Trump. And with
Speaker 1: a the point I'm making here is do I think
Speaker 1: Trump could Jedi mind trick his way out of this? Well,
Speaker 1: he has for a long time. And why has he Well,
Speaker 1: there's been other things. There's been And again I go
Speaker 1: back to the first term, even when Jeffrey Epstein was
Speaker 1: in custody, even when this whole thing consumed a cabinet
Speaker 1: secretary of his who had to essentially drop because of
Speaker 1: his lenient sentencing that he oversaw down in South Florida,
Speaker 1: it was because the perception, well, yeah, we knew all this,
Speaker 1: this was all baked in. We kind of knew Trump
Speaker 1: was this. And this is why in some ways people
Speaker 1: already know. Remember when we learned that our wealthiest and
Speaker 1: most powerful people were connected to a guy hard stop.
Speaker 1: So that's problem number one for Trump is that Trump
Speaker 1: has made it clear he's been part of the establishment,
Speaker 1: part of the elite. He knows everybody. He knows all
Speaker 1: these guys, he's been there. He himself has quotes of him.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Jeffrey likes him young and he knows. There's
Speaker 1: that other quote that's floating around where he said, man,
Speaker 1: it was the nineties, a lot of crazy stuff was happening.
Speaker 1: I don't remember, which is always code for I don't
Speaker 1: want to talk about what I might know, or what
Speaker 1: I might have seen, or what I might have participated in.
Speaker 1: The Point is, it isn't going to be hard for
Speaker 1: people to believe that he had a relationship with Epstein,
Speaker 1: that he was close with him. The difference is they're
Speaker 1: pissed off about he's not doing what he promised to
Speaker 1: do as president, which is bring down the costs. They're
Speaker 1: doing anything, But if anything, his policies have hurt you, right,
Speaker 1: it is the price of coffee is up, not down.
Speaker 1: Notice the Treasury Secretary says, we're going to lower the
Speaker 1: price of coffee and we're going to lower the price
Speaker 1: of fruit. Translation, they realize these tariffs actually impacted everyday people.
Speaker 1: And when you teariff Brazil over a political obsession of yours,
Speaker 1: all you do is attack all Americans in the book
Speaker 1: because of the price of coffee. So I'm always has
Speaker 1: it in to assume, ah, this is it. But look,
Speaker 1: every presidency comes to an end and their influence comes
Speaker 1: to an end. And the way we mark the end
Speaker 1: of a presidency as we say, oh, he's becoming a
Speaker 1: lame duck, and you're starting to hear the words lame duck.
Speaker 1: I think when you measure when does a president become
Speaker 1: every president becomes a lame duck. The question is win
Speaker 1: does it begin. Well, trying to figure out when a
Speaker 1: presidency is an official lame duck status is like trying
Speaker 1: to guess when we're in recession. Right. There's a great
Speaker 1: line about economists with recessions. They can always tell you
Speaker 1: when it started. After the recession has started, there's not
Speaker 1: a single economist that can tell you when it's going
Speaker 1: to begin.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: They never tell you when it's going to be, and
Speaker 1: they we always are, We're always informed of when it began.
Speaker 1: I actually think there's the same thing with when it
Speaker 1: comes to a lame duck presidency, is this begun? Are
Speaker 1: we in the midst of it? Are we at the
Speaker 1: beginning of it? We're not going to know for sure,
Speaker 1: I think for about six months or a year. But
Speaker 1: I'll tell you this if we fast forward a year
Speaker 1: and the Democrats sweep the House in the Senate, which
Speaker 1: to me, you know, and you're going to hear this
Speaker 1: actually in the Adam Jenlsen interview, and I think he
Speaker 1: sets this bar correctly, which is, if Democrats don't win
Speaker 1: the Senate, they don't win the midterms.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Winning the House is simply participating, right, that's table stakes.
Speaker 1: Winning the Senate means you won an argument, you won
Speaker 1: the campaign because you convince people who normally aren't on
Speaker 1: your side to be on your side. That's winning, right.
Speaker 1: Winning the House is simply participating. Winning the House is
Speaker 1: a participation trophy. Winning the Senate is winning the midterms.
Speaker 1: So a year from now, if we're in a situation
Speaker 1: where we say the Democrats swept the House in the Senate,
Speaker 1: we will then go back and say Donald Trump's lame
Speaker 1: duck presidency hit lame ducks status election Day twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: and arguably it probably happened a bit sooner. We might
Speaker 1: say that essentially the symbolic beginning of his lame duckness
Speaker 1: was the destruction of the East Wing when he became
Speaker 1: so consumed with his personal legacy and he stopped worrying
Speaker 1: about the American voter. Right. Look, Donald Trump's history is
Speaker 1: he wants to get everything he can out of you
Speaker 1: that benefits him. And once he drains, once you've given
Speaker 1: him everything he can get out of you, he moves on. Right,
Speaker 1: My substeck this week is about how I think I
Speaker 1: think he has treated the Republican Party the way he
Speaker 1: treated many of the casinos that he operated or businesses
Speaker 1: that he's run, which is he essentially leveraged it for
Speaker 1: his benefit, left this entity with a huge debt. In
Speaker 1: this case, the debt he has left him as moral
Speaker 1: and ethical bankruptcy. And then he's gonna walk away. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the Republican Party is going to be the pardon of
Speaker 1: shitty pardons, is going to be the party of that
Speaker 1: doesn't care about the rule of law unless it applies
Speaker 1: only to the other side, like he is gonna that
Speaker 1: they're part of that. The legacy is somehow the Republican
Speaker 1: Party is the party of crypto scammers. Like that's not
Speaker 1: a good legacy. And then you throw in Epstein here,
Speaker 1: and he's the party of protecting the Pedophiles. This episode
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Speaker 1: at checkout. Always use the code, get the discount. I'm
Speaker 1: telling you, it's excellent, excellent, bright. There's nothing more the
Speaker 1: Republican Party can do for Donald Trump. There is no
Speaker 1: opportunity to run again. So now Donald Trump's worried about
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, and because of that, does it appears to
Speaker 1: not even be worried about the voter anymore. And this
Speaker 1: is where he goes from having a teflon suit and
Speaker 1: he was teflon Don and he's been teflon Don. Right.
Speaker 1: You know, he can attack John McCain and not lose somebody.
Speaker 1: He could shoot somebody apparently on Fifth Avenue and not
Speaker 1: lose a supporter. But if this economy sucks, and if
Speaker 1: the grocery bills, he can't Jedi mind trick away a
Speaker 1: grocery bill. And then suddenly when that happens, and they think, well,
Speaker 1: my life sucks, and this guy is worried more about
Speaker 1: the East wing of the White House. Oh yeah, and
Speaker 1: this guy protected a pedophile for decades, and this guy's
Speaker 1: going to commute or the sentence of said pedophiles partner
Speaker 1: in crime, literal partner in crime, and Gallaine Maxwell, that's
Speaker 1: how this that's how this story matters, right, And now
Speaker 1: you've got this orchestration of a series of votes where
Speaker 1: you know Epstein is one of these few stories. We
Speaker 1: live in this siloed information world where literally, you know,
Speaker 1: I could say, you know, I mean, I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: an interview with Clay Travis in a couple of weeks.
Speaker 1: I don't think my mother knows who Clay Travis is.
Speaker 1: And I say this with no, you know, why should
Speaker 1: she you know he is? He is in a different
Speaker 1: media ecosystem than my mother travels in. She doesn't, you know,
Speaker 1: she watches a lot of college football, but it happens
Speaker 1: she doesn't watch anything on Fox because Miami doesn't ever
Speaker 1: play on Fox. They usually play on the ESPN or ABC,
Speaker 1: so she might be aware of ESPN personalities, but she's
Speaker 1: not aware of any Fox Sports personalities, let alone aware
Speaker 1: of his radio show or any of those things. And
Speaker 1: Epstein's one of these stories that every every single silo
Speaker 1: has an Epstein corner. Right, Your MAGA silo has an
Speaker 1: Epstein corner, Your sort of never Trump silo has Epstein corners,
Speaker 1: your sort of center, your sort of mainstream media has
Speaker 1: an Epstein corner, Your progressive wing has an Epstein corner. Right,
Speaker 1: there is this collective interest in Epstein. And let's be honest,
Speaker 1: why there is. It's all you know, at first, the
Speaker 1: rights interest in Epstein was all about Bill Clinton, nothing else.
Speaker 1: It was always about Bill Clint. That's how the right
Speaker 1: got fascinated by this. They were hoping to paint and
Speaker 1: it was all these you know, democratics are all part
Speaker 1: of this weird pedophilia conspiracy that QAnon launched. All this
Speaker 1: it's all sort of wrapped up in that. And then
Speaker 1: Trump's names showed up in the Epstein files. Right then
Speaker 1: we realized. And then Trump became a cornerstone of MAGA
Speaker 1: and became sort of created somebody's created mega, right, certainly,
Speaker 1: it's always a question, you know, like anything. Trump doesn't
Speaker 1: create anything. He just sort of got in front of
Speaker 1: a parade that was that was starting to form, and
Speaker 1: then suddenly he became their leader and their unifier. But
Speaker 1: here we are, and now everybody else is interested in
Speaker 1: it because you're like, whoa, So Trump's involved in this
Speaker 1: and this side, you know, and it's just one of
Speaker 1: those stories that everybody's got a stake in. So this
Speaker 1: is going to be a story that constantly, just like
Speaker 1: the economy is right, the economy breaks through every because
Speaker 1: you can't sort of information silo your grocery bill. You know,
Speaker 1: there isn't a Fox News version of the grocery bill
Speaker 1: or an MSNBC version of the grocery bill. So you
Speaker 1: can't do that with the economy, and in this unique case,
Speaker 1: you can't do it with the Epstein story. And this
Speaker 1: is why this feels like a very lame that this
Speaker 1: is what lame duck. What happens to lame duck presidencies
Speaker 1: is that they can't stop feeding frenzies anymore. You know,
Speaker 1: this happened with George W.
Speaker 2: Bush.
Speaker 1: You know a lot of people will say the feeding frenzies,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of the lame duck period of the
Speaker 1: Bush presidency began with the twenty oh six midterms. I'd
Speaker 1: actually argue, or you could go backwards and say it
Speaker 1: began with the Terry Schivo thing, when they went full
Speaker 1: bore on that and the public revolted and they couldn't
Speaker 1: sort of, you know, their typical positions didn't work, their
Speaker 1: typical media spin didn't work. And then you realize, you know,
Speaker 1: his credibility was shot. It was already weakening due to
Speaker 1: our rock. Terry Schivo hits, then Katrina happens, and then
Speaker 1: the whole thing is over. But Katrina didn't start the
Speaker 1: lame duck period. The lame duck period actually began at
Speaker 1: the tail, at the at the beginning of five when
Speaker 1: he started messing around with the Shivo business, social security investments,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And so that's where I think this if
Speaker 1: we're if indeed we're able to in a year from now,
Speaker 1: really in it. We have the environment that we have
Speaker 1: and it does turn into a democratic suite, we will
Speaker 1: say this lame duck period began in the fall of
Speaker 1: In the fall of this year, just like with Joe
Speaker 1: Biden's presidency. It turned out the beginning of the end
Speaker 1: of his presidency happened really early in his presidency, right
Speaker 1: with the Afghanistan withdrawal and the inability to to sort
Speaker 1: of hold anybody accountable, fix it, explain it, and he
Speaker 1: never recovered from there. And while because he was a
Speaker 1: first term president, you'd never say lame duck, in hindsight,
Speaker 1: you know, that's when he lost. That's when he lost
Speaker 1: the plot, and it was and everything went downhill from there.
Speaker 1: You know. That's I think the situation we may be
Speaker 1: living him now, and the nightmare for the White House
Speaker 1: press shop is is, you know, Trump has not helped
Speaker 1: them at all. You know, I argue that he actually
Speaker 1: had a you know, Trump's problem is going soft on
Speaker 1: Maxwell because by going soft on Maxwell, but he is
Speaker 1: essentially confirmed the idea that Maxwell knows some stuff, that
Speaker 1: he's friendly with her, that he knows her, and it
Speaker 1: undermines the story that he had sort of lived with
Speaker 1: for a while when it came to Epstein that I
Speaker 1: that mostly worked with his supporters, which was, yeah, I
Speaker 1: knew Jeffrey Epstein very well. And then our relationship ended
Speaker 1: because I didn't like what he was doing to, you know,
Speaker 1: women on my at mar Alago. So we had this
Speaker 1: sort of story that was that had some credibility to
Speaker 1: it that you know, he didn't because there was it
Speaker 1: was true he recruited apparently he recruited one of these
Speaker 1: women from mar Alago, and Trump said he kicked him
Speaker 1: out of mar Alago and said, you can't come back here.
Speaker 1: Now we now learned that that that the reason for
Speaker 1: the real breakup between Epstein and Trump wasn't that it
Speaker 1: was over a piece of property in Palm Beach. We
Speaker 1: eventually learned about that later, but he had a story
Speaker 1: that he was feeding his supporters that yeah, I knew Epstein,
Speaker 1: and then when I realized what he was doing.
Speaker 2: I was out.
Speaker 1: I didn't want that Slee's bag around. Okay, then why
Speaker 1: are you soft on Delanne Maxwell? If you're so outraged
Speaker 1: by what Jeffrey Epstein did, then your Justice Department should
Speaker 1: have made life harder for Maxwell, not easier. But you
Speaker 1: went soft on her. And what he did was is
Speaker 1: essentially made it impossible to defend Trump's actions. You couldn't say,
Speaker 1: you know, if he was as disgusted by what Epstein
Speaker 1: did as he said and he's as disgusted as his
Speaker 1: supporters say they are disgusted. Then this idea of leniency
Speaker 1: on her, giving her, you know, the club fed treatment
Speaker 1: when it comes to transferring her in prison, sending your
Speaker 1: personal attorney who happens to be the Deputy Attorney General,
Speaker 1: to coax answers out of her, including the I never
Speaker 1: saw anything untoward. Uh, it was so important to him
Speaker 1: to get that on the record. But Trump seems to
Speaker 1: be worried about something with Maxwell, when if he actually
Speaker 1: wanted to keep his con up on Epstein, and let's
Speaker 1: assume I'm gonna assume it's a con. And you know,
Speaker 1: with Trump, it's it's hard not to assume that. So
Speaker 1: let's I'm gonna assume it's a con. He'd have been
Speaker 1: better off playing he said she said with her, and
Speaker 1: said he'd and then made life tougher on her. And
Speaker 1: and if and if she threatened to go public with stuff,
Speaker 1: let her go public. She's the one sitting in prison.
Speaker 1: She's got the credibility problem. And then if you were
Speaker 1: being tough on her and she was then pushing back,
Speaker 1: it could simply be she's squealing. But the fact he
Speaker 1: didn't do that right, whatever she he thinks she knows,
Speaker 1: he seems to be fearful enough of that. It's leveraged
Speaker 1: that she's successfully used with him and with Todd Blanche
Speaker 1: and that's why his story falls apart. Now again, does
Speaker 1: any of this matter politically, Well, I go back to
Speaker 1: every Republican's been carrying around Trump baggage for a long time,
Speaker 1: and in some ways they're now used to it. But
Speaker 1: when the economy is as bad as it is right
Speaker 1: now for so many people, and as frustrating of an
Speaker 1: economy as this is, and that's what it is. It's
Speaker 1: a you know, it's one of these things that you
Speaker 1: can look at it statistically and say, well, this is
Speaker 1: going well. Like I saw a stat today that said
Speaker 1: that publicly traded companies are having one of the best
Speaker 1: years earning wise that we've seen. Ninety two percent of
Speaker 1: them are reporting earnings above the normal average. And you're
Speaker 1: just like wow, And yet jobs are decreasing, not increasing, right,
Speaker 1: So that means Wall Street's being rewarded for its efficiencies
Speaker 1: in its companies. Wall Street's being as they as a
Speaker 1: company should make. Your productivity is up and your labor
Speaker 1: costs are down. Good for you. Investors like that. But
Speaker 1: that means there's a whole bunch of people in this
Speaker 1: economy not succeeding. And so that's why it's very hard
Speaker 1: to you know, when Trump's using the stock market as
Speaker 1: a as a as proof that his economy is doing well,
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, you're you're you're with the hat your
Speaker 1: your economy is working for the haves. Your economy is
Speaker 1: not working for the have nots. And the irony is
Speaker 1: that he built his political coalition on the have nots
Speaker 1: very successfully and now he doesn't seem to care about
Speaker 1: the have nots anymore. And that's where what when these
Speaker 1: That's when I go back to Epstein for the longest time,
Speaker 1: it is basically run into teflon don and has slid
Speaker 1: off of him. Well, I think it's I think he
Speaker 1: is now has a suit of velcrow on. More things
Speaker 1: are sticking to him than ever before. Right, you've got
Speaker 1: sleepy eyes Trump, Now that's sticking to him. You've got
Speaker 1: the medical issues. Huh, something's going on. If he passed
Speaker 1: his MRI. You don't pass an MRI, but congratulations, I
Speaker 1: guess you know you're not at You don't you don't
Speaker 1: do an MRI unless they're wondering what, unless they can't
Speaker 1: find the problem of something that's bothering you. So you
Speaker 1: got that he's just doesn't seem healthy, doesn't look healthy,
Speaker 1: doesn't behavior low. And you can see he's really aged
Speaker 1: a lot in the last six months. Go look at
Speaker 1: clips from April and then look at clips in the
Speaker 1: last two weeks. His voice is thinner. Maybe there are
Speaker 1: days that you know, you could just tell he there
Speaker 1: are days where you know he's tired, and that's always
Speaker 1: a sign of aging. And of course when you're at
Speaker 1: a certain age, and this happened with Biden, just because
Speaker 1: things are fine six months ago, you know this is
Speaker 1: one of those things. At some point in your late
Speaker 1: seventies early eighties, you can you know, you don't age
Speaker 1: at an equal rate. Okay, you sort of go. You
Speaker 1: have fits and starts, and then you know, we've seen that.
Speaker 1: I've had elderly relatives where everything's fine, and then you
Speaker 1: don't see him for six months and you're like, holy cow,
Speaker 1: what happened to uncle Joe? Or I have a real
Speaker 1: uncle Joe, So no, nothing's happened to uncle Joe. I
Speaker 1: don't want uncle Joe. That isn't about about you. I
Speaker 1: was just using like Jane, and I'll go uncle John Doe.
Speaker 1: I don't have an uncle John, so I'll do uncle John.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, what happened to Uncle John? Or what
Speaker 1: happened at Jane? And you know that happens in these
Speaker 1: three and six months. And the point is is that
Speaker 1: you know, it's like the you know, it's like in business,
Speaker 1: your hockey stick moment, but going the wrong way. You're
Speaker 1: going along, You're going along, and all of a sudden, Yep,
Speaker 1: it's off a cliff. It just collectively feels like he
Speaker 1: has now got a suit of valcrow. And so if
Speaker 1: we have essentially six weeks of every couple of days
Speaker 1: there's an Epstein development, which now there's going to be
Speaker 1: now that this discharge petition has happened, they're going to
Speaker 1: have this vote at some point in the next couple
Speaker 1: of weeks that will be there. Then you then it
Speaker 1: has to go to the Senate. I you know, there
Speaker 1: was a time I thought, eh, the Senate will kill it.
Speaker 1: I don't know anymore. Right, it's going to be an
Speaker 1: interesting test. How many Republicans will there be thirty, will
Speaker 1: there be thirteen Republicans who joined forty seven Democrats to
Speaker 1: force this release and force it on is you know,
Speaker 1: for you know, have both the House and the Senate
Speaker 1: have this. That's an interesting development. Is it a moment
Speaker 1: where some Republicans decide, I need to show some independence
Speaker 1: from Trump? Is this the safest place.
Speaker 2: To do it? Right?
Speaker 1: It could be the healthcare subsidies could be a way
Speaker 1: that Republicans distance from Trump. The tariff ruling when it
Speaker 1: comes out likely saying that his his tariffs are unconstitutional.
Speaker 1: Is that at the moment is that the Epstein files.
Speaker 1: The point is there's a lot of ways now that
Speaker 1: Republicans can start to put some distance in a in
Speaker 1: what will look like a baby step, right just voting
Speaker 1: against him on Epstein, or voting against him on tariffs,
Speaker 1: or voting against him on healthcare subsidies. That suddenly what
Speaker 1: is a trickle turns into of you know, a rush
Speaker 1: of you well of water coming out of the faucet,
Speaker 1: essentially trying to get away from him. So that's how
Speaker 1: I think this story is potentially that you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's like javert, do you got him? Now? You know?
Speaker 1: It's it's the accumulation and it's the fact, because of
Speaker 1: this sour economy, he's now wearing a suit with velcrow
Speaker 1: on it and more things. More of this other stuff
Speaker 1: is now going to start to stick to him because
Speaker 1: he he didn't handle the main thing. He was elected
Speaker 1: for one reason and one reason, only bring down costs,
Speaker 1: and he's failing massively at that, which means every other
Speaker 1: secondary issue becomes a problem for that voter because they think, wow,
Speaker 1: he can't do this well. He must be that. He
Speaker 1: must be that, he must be that. And that's why
Speaker 1: this Epstein story could be just yet another sign that
Speaker 1: the lame duck status is now the You know, if
Speaker 1: you were to go to Trump's Facebook page, he should change.
Speaker 1: He may have to change his status to lame duck.
Speaker 1: So with that, I'll sneak in a break and we'll bring
Speaker 1: in Adam Jennilsen. There's a reason results matter more than promises,
Speaker 1: just like there's a reason Morgan and Morgan is America's
Speaker 1: largest injury law firm. For the last thirty five years,
Speaker 1: they've recovered twenty five billion dollars for more than half
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Speaker 1: remember all law firms are not the same. So check
Speaker 1: out Morgan and Morgan. Their fee is free unless they win.
Speaker 1: So joining me now is Adam Gentlelsid. I've known him
Speaker 1: a long time. He was a longtime staffer for the
Speaker 1: late Senate Majority leader Harry He's author of a book
Speaker 1: about the Senate called kill Switch, The Rise of the
Speaker 1: Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy. So we'll
Speaker 1: have a little fun about about how broken is the
Speaker 1: Senate and how to repair it? But I have them
Speaker 1: on because you just started anew and I'll be curious
Speaker 1: what you describe it, Adam. Is it a think tank?
Speaker 1: Is it a research institute? But it's named after the
Speaker 1: hometown of Harry Reid, search Light, Nevada. It's called the
Speaker 1: search Light. May make sure I get this right? Well,
Speaker 1: you could tell me for sure, search Light Institute? Is
Speaker 1: that right? Right?
Speaker 2: Got it?
Speaker 1: Here we go, so basically trying to get Democrats to
Speaker 1: broaden the tent, make the case that this is a
Speaker 1: big tent. And given that you worked for Harry Reid,
Speaker 1: who was for years known as personally pro life or
Speaker 1: pro gun at times, you know, certainly was culturally a
Speaker 1: bit conservative, if a probably an original populist on economic
Speaker 1: issues that I think people if you didn't follow his
Speaker 1: career closely, might not realize. So in many ways, naming
Speaker 1: it after Harry read makes a lot of sense to me.
Speaker 1: But what is it? What do you describe search Slight Institutes?
Speaker 1: The think tank? Is it something else?
Speaker 2: We are an action tank, Chuck?
Speaker 3: And that feels like a focus group word, dude, Well,
Speaker 3: you know the reason I call it that is that
Speaker 3: is that you know, we we develop ideas, but we
Speaker 3: don't want them to sit on the shelf.
Speaker 2: You know, these aren't white papers that are designed to
Speaker 2: just sort of be read by academics and policy wonks.
Speaker 2: You know, they're they're well thought through, their credible, but
Speaker 2: we want them to be put into action, and we
Speaker 2: want them to become legislation. We want them to become
Speaker 2: talked about on campaigns, and we want them to shape
Speaker 2: the debate. And so the part of the reason we
Speaker 2: have both a policy development arm of what we do
Speaker 2: and and appolling arm of what we do is to
Speaker 2: you know, try to get that balance right between being
Speaker 2: responsive to the public listening to the American people. I
Speaker 2: think in a democracy it's very important to actually have
Speaker 2: the policies that are developed reflect the will of the people,
Speaker 2: but then factor that in to how we develop our
Speaker 2: own policies, you know, And we don't just pull to
Speaker 2: say what's popular. We just want to understand people think
Speaker 2: and then design people design policy in a way that
Speaker 2: sort of bridges the divide sometimes between what we think
Speaker 2: is correct on the policy and where the American people
Speaker 2: are in their own thoughts and feelings on the issue.
Speaker 1: Compare yourself to cat Center for American Progress, which is
Speaker 1: arguably the sort of the leading progressive think tank these
Speaker 1: days in Washington. We're more head of Then and Then
Speaker 1: and Brookings, you know, more center left, I guess, or
Speaker 1: you might say very academic in comparison to the other two.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right. And I think on sort of ideology
Speaker 2: compared to both of those, we are more heterodox. We
Speaker 2: will take the best ideas from wherever they come from,
Speaker 2: from across the ideological spectrum. And it's my own personal
Speaker 2: view that the best and most durable and frankly the
Speaker 2: policies that bring the biggest change to this country tend
Speaker 2: to reflect points of view from across the ideological spectrum.
Speaker 2: So I think a lot about social Security, right and
Speaker 2: you know, people have called social Security liberal ends by
Speaker 2: conservative means. It's the greatest anti poverty we've ever implemented.
Speaker 2: Is you know, a core part of Democrats appeal to
Speaker 2: the American people, but it also embraced conservative principles of
Speaker 2: personal responsibility people paid in FDR himself was personally would
Speaker 2: rail against the dole and cabinet meetings. He would say,
Speaker 2: this is not a dole, this is not welfare people
Speaker 2: are going to earn what they get, they're going to
Speaker 2: pay into it through the payroll tax, and then I
Speaker 2: get something back in return. So you know, we try,
Speaker 2: we try to think about that balance as we develop policy.
Speaker 2: We're smaller, we're nimble. I think we're more action oriented
Speaker 2: than some of the folks who've been around for a
Speaker 2: long time. And I think, but you know, it's it's
Speaker 2: the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 1: We were talking off camera here for a minute and
Speaker 1: you were talking about how your office space is right
Speaker 1: in your heritage, and it's interesting you brought up Social
Speaker 1: Security as an example that sort of meshed a liberal
Speaker 1: and conservative idea. I could argue Obamacare did the same thing, right,
Speaker 1: you know, the infamous heritage. You know, the heritage has
Speaker 1: been through a lot of shall we say, facelifts over
Speaker 1: the years. Maybe they have a mar lago look now
Speaker 1: that they went to the doctor and got my joke,
Speaker 1: not years, but in the nineties they came up with
Speaker 1: essentially the healthcare plan that was the model for Mett
Speaker 1: Romney and arguably the model for Barack Obama.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right, and you know, having sort of been
Speaker 2: actually a cap for a little while while while the
Speaker 2: affordable character was being debated during the OI campaign and
Speaker 2: then legislated and then being on the hill through a
Speaker 2: lot of that too. That's exactly right, and you know,
Speaker 2: part of the way that we were able to pass
Speaker 2: that was by embracing conservative ideas, and in fact it
Speaker 2: was modeled You're one hundred percent correct. There was a
Speaker 2: Heritage study in the nineties that sort of provided the
Speaker 2: intellectual basis for it, and then it was put into
Speaker 2: practice first by Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney when he was
Speaker 2: governor there, and people called it Romneycare, so you know,
Speaker 2: before it was Obamacare, it was Romneycare, and it certainly
Speaker 2: reflected you know, the idea of having an individual mandate,
Speaker 2: you know, and other aspects of it were and you know,
Speaker 2: frankly being aimed at bending the cost curve, at bringing
Speaker 2: down the deficit. These are all conservative principles that were
Speaker 2: incorporating into that development, although Heritage walked away from it.
Speaker 1: You know, every once in a while, I always try
Speaker 1: to give little breadcrumbs to sort of like, you know,
Speaker 1: how my political mind was shaped by my parents, and
Speaker 1: you know, my father had this saying when I remember
Speaker 1: as a kid, he'd said, you know, and I'd ask him,
Speaker 1: you know, and he was he became a he was
Speaker 1: a Reagan Democrat that became a Reagan Conservative. And he'd
Speaker 1: say he left the Democratic Party over LPJ and Vietnam.
Speaker 1: That was that was sort of where you went. But
Speaker 1: he used to also say, he goes, you know, I
Speaker 1: want the Democrats to come up with the ideas and
Speaker 1: I want the Republicans to implement them. It was like
Speaker 1: that that was his in his mindset, you know, at
Speaker 1: the time, and that back in the seventies and eighties,
Speaker 1: the perception of the two parties was, you know, the
Speaker 1: the managerial brain was on the Republican side and the
Speaker 1: the empathy brain was on the Democratic side, and that
Speaker 1: you know, if you had too much empathy, it would
Speaker 1: be too expensive. You needed, you know, that sort of balance.
Speaker 1: And in some ways what you're describing here was what
Speaker 1: you describe to Social Security, what we were retelling the
Speaker 1: story of Obamacare somewhere that does sort of work itself
Speaker 1: out right, that the stuff that sticks is the stuff
Speaker 1: that is more ideologically diverse when it comes to the
Speaker 1: cooks in the kitchen that create the policy.
Speaker 2: Right, that's that's exactly right. I mean, you know, we've
Speaker 2: fallen out of this balance, and we're talking.
Speaker 1: About for polarized.
Speaker 2: We're so polarized, we'll talk about Philbuster, you know. You know,
Speaker 2: I think that's a big part of it.
Speaker 1: I argue the two parties aren't as you know, I
Speaker 1: always say, what's the biggest change in American politics in
Speaker 1: my lifetime, It's been the lack of ideological diversity inside
Speaker 1: the two parties.
Speaker 2: Oh well, you know, I mean think of that was
Speaker 2: the huge chain, one hundred percent. I mean, I think
Speaker 2: a lot about what the Senate Democratic Caucus looked like
Speaker 2: back when I worked for Harry Reid in the Senate
Speaker 2: and we had first of all, we.
Speaker 1: Talk about all those northern red states that had Democratic
Speaker 1: senators for well.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, both Dakotas, you know, we had senators there,
Speaker 2: We had a senator Nebraska. We had both Senate boat.
Speaker 1: Centers in Nebraska for a long time.
Speaker 2: That's right, Bob Carry and Ben Nelson. We had both
Speaker 2: Senate seats in Montana for a long time, both seats
Speaker 2: in Arkansas. If you want to move further south, Louisia
Speaker 2: had one seat in Louisiana. I mean you know, we
Speaker 2: had I think when I went to count it, it
Speaker 2: was we had at least one one Senate seat in
Speaker 2: thirty six of the fifty states, right, so just really
Speaker 2: spread across the country. And the reason why was this
Speaker 2: ideological diversity that you're describing. You know, senators like Max Bocchus,
Speaker 2: ben Nelson, mary Landrew, Blanche Lincoln. They were four things
Speaker 2: like you know, mary Landrew was strongly in favor of
Speaker 2: the fossil fuel industry, coming from a state like Louisiana
Speaker 2: where that was critical to the economy. Ben Nelson was
Speaker 2: pro life, Blanche Lincoln was in favor of fiscal responsibility
Speaker 2: and balanced budgets.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: And that didn't make them not Democrats, right, They still
Speaker 2: were strongly Democratic on most issues. They still voted with
Speaker 2: the party, you know, on most issues. But embracing that
Speaker 2: ideological diversity is what allowed us to win that seats
Speaker 2: in those states. And what we've done over the last
Speaker 2: ten years is to try to purity test out anybody
Speaker 2: who has any kind of ideological diversity, particularly when it
Speaker 2: goes to the right, and that's just shot ourselves in
Speaker 2: the foot. It's left us unable to win seats in
Speaker 2: those red states where we barely can can't even compete
Speaker 2: these days.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny you brought up Blanche Lincoln and
Speaker 1: remember that primary challenge she had to deal with sure
Speaker 1: do yep and organizing him right, And it was it
Speaker 1: was you're just sitting there going, guys, what are you doing.
Speaker 1: She's already in a tough general election. What are you
Speaker 1: doing to her? And it made a tough situation worse well.
Speaker 2: And it's a good point because you know, I think
Speaker 2: what gets mixed up in the sort of debate on
Speaker 2: social media and elsewhere about this is that to embrace
Speaker 2: somebody like Blanche Lincoln doesn't require you or your friends
Speaker 2: or most other Democrats to change their points of view. Right,
Speaker 2: I'm strongly pro union. Most of my policy views are
Speaker 2: probably pretty far to the left of the American electorate.
Speaker 2: But for someone like Lincoln to win in a state
Speaker 2: like Arkansas, she's going to have to take different positions,
Speaker 2: positions that diverge from my own, and that impulse towards
Speaker 2: purity is going to guarantee that our caucus is smaller,
Speaker 2: that the number of Americans Democrats are able to represent
Speaker 2: is smaller that the number of Americans who look at
Speaker 2: Democrats and say that is a party I want to
Speaker 2: be a part of. Is smaller.
Speaker 1: You know. I got my start at National Journal, and
Speaker 1: they were famous in the seventies and eighties and nineties
Speaker 1: for doing this.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Now we've got a whole bunch of other ways that
Speaker 1: people look to use sort of votes to put people
Speaker 1: on the political spectrum. But there was always when I
Speaker 1: first started at National Journal, when the Almanek would come out,
Speaker 1: it was always interesting how many Democrats are to the
Speaker 1: right of the most liberal Republican and how many Republicans
Speaker 1: are to the left of the most conservative Democrats. And
Speaker 1: there was always you know, and we would lament, Oh,
Speaker 1: it's getting smaller every year. I think it's been a
Speaker 1: decade since the streams have crossed, meaning like you know,
Speaker 1: I think Mansion and Collins were like this. If I'm
Speaker 1: for those of you just listening on audio, my hands
Speaker 1: are very close together but not touching, almost in the
Speaker 1: way it was almost felt like they were being repelled.
Speaker 1: Do you think that is a bad thing or a
Speaker 1: good thing for the US c oh.
Speaker 2: I think it's I think it's a very bad thing.
Speaker 2: I think that you have to have people on you know,
Speaker 2: you have to be able to build bridges across the
Speaker 2: logical lines, and you know, sometimes you can do that
Speaker 2: in a strange Bedfellow's way, where you know, you have
Speaker 2: you know, a Bernie Sanders alliance with a Josh Holly
Speaker 2: or you know on some.
Speaker 1: Is sure and you see this in some of these populists.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but I think that it shouldn't be the
Speaker 2: case that you know, the sort of you know that
Speaker 2: there's no senator in the Democratic Caucus who is anywhere
Speaker 2: close to Republicans on ideology. I could get beat up
Speaker 2: by some of my party for saying that, but I think,
Speaker 2: you know what if that is the case, you know,
Speaker 2: there are consequences, there are trade offs to taking that approach,
Speaker 2: and that's what we have here where Democrats can only
Speaker 2: win forty seven sentence seats at best, you know, maybe
Speaker 2: scrape by to the narrowest imaginable majority, but that's you know,
Speaker 2: there's a consequence of taking that approach and narrowing your
Speaker 2: tents simply means you can win in fewer places.
Speaker 1: Look, and to me, this is the I think the
Speaker 1: baseline of what I remember seeing your press release when
Speaker 1: you first came out. I think an op ed that
Speaker 1: you wrote as well. You know, I think that the
Speaker 1: twenty thirty two presidential election, if you just if Kamala
Speaker 1: Harris carried the same the Democratic candidate carries every state
Speaker 1: that Kamala Harris carried, and they won Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Well,
Speaker 1: and right now, that was worth two hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: electoral votes. She'd have won right on the nose. That's
Speaker 1: only going to be worth two hundred and fifty nine
Speaker 1: electoral votes come twenty thirty two. That path, so every
Speaker 1: state she carried, plus the three in the Midwest, the
Speaker 1: three Midwestern states, and then when you look at Senate seats,
Speaker 1: because I've done this math, if Democrats sweep the seven
Speaker 1: battlegrounds in Senate seats, right, and when every Senate seat
Speaker 1: in every blue state that she carried, the max I
Speaker 1: think is fifty two.
Speaker 2: Yep, that's right.
Speaker 1: I mean you just said thirty six states at one point, right,
Speaker 1: which is why I mean, let's look at Barack Obama's
Speaker 1: first year, that six month period when you had sixty
Speaker 1: Senate seats. All right, it was a brief period, and
Speaker 1: it was you know, we can yes, it was some weird.
Speaker 1: You know, you had the specter party switch and all that.
Speaker 1: But the fact of the matter is, I don't know
Speaker 1: what a path to sixty would look like. Let's say
Speaker 1: that was your goal, you know, got to get to
Speaker 1: sixty Senate seats. What's that path look like in today's politics. Well,
Speaker 1: that is our goal. I mean's that's what Searchlight is
Speaker 1: here to do. We are trying to craft an agenda
Speaker 1: and an approach that will allow Democrats to aim at
Speaker 1: sixty Senate seats. We talk a lot about this idea
Speaker 1: of super majority thinking here, and a supermajority mindset is
Speaker 1: not to aim at two hundred and seventy electoral votes
Speaker 1: and to try to scrape by there or aim at
Speaker 1: you know, narrow majorities in the House and Senate. It's
Speaker 1: to aim at three hundred and sixty five electoral votes,
Speaker 1: which is what Obama won in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: and it's to aim at sixty Senate seats and then
Speaker 1: work backwards from there. So you know, what that looks
Speaker 1: like is much more flexibility on issues across the board.
Speaker 1: You know, I personally think that if you were to
Speaker 1: sort of devise a basic template, you know, and again
Speaker 1: I sort of am allergic to templates. I think part
Speaker 1: of what we're trying to do here is is create
Speaker 1: more flexibility. But just for the sake of argument, you know,
Speaker 1: let's let's root this in some you know, concrete idea
Speaker 1: of ideology. I think, you know, economic populism is.
Speaker 2: A powerful force. It's so powerful that Trump has embraced it.
Speaker 2: Trump has moved to the center on issues like social
Speaker 2: security and Medicare.
Speaker 1: And the only reason Republicans got have won the popular
Speaker 1: vote exactly right. I mean, I think it is at
Speaker 1: that specific decision he doesn't make that. You know, we
Speaker 1: all there's a lot of people that you know, say
Speaker 1: Paul Ryan had a high character guy and all of
Speaker 1: those things, but the Paul Ryan view of entitlements was
Speaker 1: a losing issue for the Republican Party, which is why
Speaker 1: Mett Romney never won the president.
Speaker 2: And this is part of what our theory of the
Speaker 2: case is, is that a Democratic presidential candidate can just
Speaker 2: decide to embrace a different set of policy positions like
Speaker 2: we are here to help provide that infrastructure and help
Speaker 2: you know, create those ideas and provide the air cover.
Speaker 1: Put a little bit of a blue stamp on it.
Speaker 1: So it doesn't feel so hard for some left maybe.
Speaker 2: Right, but you were there. It's difficult to overstate how
Speaker 2: sort of encased in concrete. The conventional wisdom was in
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen that entitlement cuts were part of what you
Speaker 2: had to be in favor of in order to succeed
Speaker 2: in a Republican primary. You know, Paul Ryan was the
Speaker 2: vice presidential nominee in twenty twelve. He was the Speaker
Speaker 2: of the House by the time the primary was in
Speaker 2: full swing in twenty sixteen, Ryanism was considered, you know,
Speaker 2: orthodoxy among Republicans, trying which lays the stool, right, that's irresponsibility. Right.
Speaker 2: Trump just threw it all out the window, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean I remember him standing on the debate stage.
Speaker 2: You know. The Iraq War is another issue that was considered,
Speaker 2: you know, orthodoxy. In twenty fifteen, he stood on a
Speaker 2: debate stage in South Carolina and he turned to Jeb
Speaker 2: Bush and said, I think the Iraq War that your
Speaker 2: brother started was a big, fat mistake, you know. And
Speaker 2: so it is really difficult to imagine a Democratic candidate
Speaker 2: diverging from their party and taking stances in opposition to
Speaker 2: the Democratic ideology on that level, you know, of that magnitude.
Speaker 2: But that's what we need is we need Democrats to say,
Speaker 2: you know, we are here to break that rigidity, We
Speaker 2: are here to open up a new pathway and to
Speaker 2: bring in more voters. And you know, Trump, it is
Speaker 2: an underappreciated aspect of his appeal that he was truly heterodox.
Speaker 2: He defied his party's orthodoxy on three or four or
Speaker 2: even more very high profile issues that were considered core
Speaker 2: to the Republican ideology. And that's part of why people
Speaker 2: saw him as a different kind of Republican.
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm convinced. And this is also why you can
Speaker 1: sort of see I mean, I'm convinced that this is
Speaker 1: a coalition it's not going to be able to hold
Speaker 1: itself together without him in whatever you know, we you know,
Speaker 1: set aside the character issue the guy has the guy
Speaker 1: created a coalition that was unique. It was durable for him. Right,
Speaker 1: It's not really been transferable, but it's been durable for him.
Speaker 1: And and the thing is is you can see it, right,
Speaker 1: the conversation on snap benefits the conversation on healthcare. They're
Speaker 1: not singing off the same song sheet because they're actually
Speaker 1: a coalition that that sort of got forged together and culture,
Speaker 1: and they're they're all over the place on economic policy,
Speaker 1: and I think that's where this thing starts to break
Speaker 1: apart pretty soon.
Speaker 2: I think that's right. I mean, that's that's the optimistic
Speaker 2: view for sure, and I think it's probably the right one,
Speaker 2: you know, especially the economy keeps feeling the way it
Speaker 2: definitely this it's a I always say, it's like, if
Speaker 2: you have a little bit of money, this economy is okay.
Speaker 1: You know, everything's a little more expensive, but it's okay.
Speaker 1: If you have some money in the stock market, you
Speaker 1: feel like, okay, I'm I've got Pad. But if you
Speaker 1: don't have Pad, this economy is horrible. Right, that's the rendous.
Speaker 2: It's the Disneyland phenomenon.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: If you can afford the express pass, you know, it's great.
Speaker 2: But if you can't, you know, you're stuck in three
Speaker 2: hour lines the whole time for one ride. So yeah,
Speaker 2: it's you know, it's you know, I worked for I
Speaker 2: don't know of your listeners. Remember John Edwards the Center
Speaker 2: of North Carolina in two thosand and eight. He talked
Speaker 2: about two Americas, And I think that's what we're seeing these.
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Speaker 1: you've got a growing family. Boy, that speech would be
Speaker 1: really resident today. I agree more so. I mean, you know, Edwards,
Speaker 1: he was a blast being there is a ton and
Speaker 1: I sort of I have not to go off on
Speaker 1: a tangent here I have. I think there's more empathy
Speaker 1: that that the Edwards family deserves. You never get over
Speaker 1: losing a child, and and I've always thought that their life, so,
Speaker 1: you know, and it threw him into politics, I get
Speaker 1: in some ways it did, But you know that that
Speaker 1: I think that you can't judge Edwards without understanding that.
Speaker 1: So I'm always a little more empathetic, I think than
Speaker 1: the average person on him. But boy, his you know,
Speaker 1: and what he was was it's old Southern populace and
Speaker 1: it's no different Zell Miller, Bill Clinton, Dick Riley. I
Speaker 1: think about all everything you're describing here. I think about
Speaker 1: what Trump is doing. This is what the Southern Democrats were,
Speaker 1: Those Southern Democratic governors were. They would they were like, hey,
Speaker 1: government can be a good thing for you, and we
Speaker 1: want to help you. But they were also culturally somewhat conservative, right,
Speaker 1: your Zell Millers, your Bill Clinton's, your Dick Riley's. But
Speaker 1: those Southern governors of the eighties, in some ways, the
Speaker 1: economic policies they were pushing are exactly what's popular.
Speaker 2: Today, that's right. I mean, you know John Edwards, son
Speaker 2: of a mill worker, you know, I mean he was
Speaker 2: in touch with with regular people, and you know that
Speaker 2: that economic populism, I mean, that was the foundation of
Speaker 2: the New Deal coalition, you know. I mean that that
Speaker 2: was the foundation of lbj's coalition too. You know, as
Speaker 2: you mentioned your father, I mean, you know, some of
Speaker 2: the cultural stuff, that's that's the you know, on the
Speaker 2: Republican side, it's it's can you hold people together on
Speaker 2: cultural issues while you pass economic policies that primarily benefit
Speaker 2: the wealthiest and the big corporations, and the Democratic side,
Speaker 2: it's can you hold people together on economic populism issues,
Speaker 2: you know, while you often take stances on cultural issues
Speaker 2: that the American people don't agree with. And I think
Speaker 2: when Democrats and liberals succeed, it's when they're able to
Speaker 2: center their message on those core economic populist ideas and
Speaker 2: provide some flexibility on cultural issues in a way that
Speaker 2: will allow us to win in more states.
Speaker 1: Let me introduce an uncomfortable question about Democrats. I can
Speaker 1: make an argument that the four Democratic presidents of my
Speaker 1: lifetime that have been elected, Carter, Clinton, Obama, and Biden,
Speaker 1: none of them win without the economic downturn that was
Speaker 1: happening during their initial campaign. And I say that in
Speaker 1: that is that the only path to the presidency for
Speaker 1: a Democrat?
Speaker 2: Well, I think what that those downturns do is they,
Speaker 2: you know, when you're in times of prosperity, people people
Speaker 2: gravitate more towards cultural issues, you know, And I think
Speaker 2: that's that's sort of a pattern there, and then Republicans,
Speaker 2: you know, win on cultural issues past policies that benefit
Speaker 2: the top one percent and often you know, run up
Speaker 2: huge deficits, despite their you know, their claim to care
Speaker 2: about this corresponsibility, and then that leads to a crash
Speaker 2: and Democrats have to come in and you know, and
Speaker 2: refocuses the public's attention on how unbalanced and tilted towards
Speaker 2: the one percent Republicans policies, where I don't think it's
Speaker 2: a necessary precondition, but you know, it certainly focuses voters'
Speaker 2: minds on the unfairness and gross inequity of Republicans economic policies.
Speaker 2: For sure.
Speaker 1: Does that stark reality because I could argue that the
Speaker 1: last Democrat to win the White House without help from
Speaker 1: a poor economy was Kennedy? Does that stark reality mean
Speaker 1: that the Democrats should be less leaning into some cultural issues.
Speaker 2: I yeah, I think that's one hundred percent the case.
Speaker 2: I think that, you know, part of what some of
Speaker 2: the work that we've done here at Searchlights has shown
Speaker 2: is that, you know, it's not just that we are
Speaker 2: out of step with the public on a lot of
Speaker 2: these cultural issues purely on the merits, it's also that
Speaker 2: focusing on them distracts the public's attention from the economic issues.
Speaker 2: It's it's what we call a crowding out effect. Where
Speaker 2: you know, simply, you know, you listen to the average
Speaker 2: Democrats stump speech today, it's a laundry list, and they
Speaker 2: go down and they acknowledge every issue under the sun,
Speaker 2: you know, and.
Speaker 1: The land acknowledgment. And I say this, I'm not trying
Speaker 1: to be snarky about it, but I just that listen that.
Speaker 2: You know, the DNC's most recent meetings started out with
Speaker 2: one and so I think, you know, look, Republicans will
Speaker 2: seize on that, and they'll attack you for it, you know,
Speaker 2: but you don't have to give them so much, ammo,
Speaker 2: and we and we do that all the time. And
Speaker 2: so then you know, it is not it is not
Speaker 2: inaccurate for a voter to fike to themselves.
Speaker 1: Hmm.
Speaker 2: This Democrat seems more focused on these cultural issues that
Speaker 2: prior I don't agree with. But yeah, so where is
Speaker 2: your economics? You know What's really interesting, though, Chuck, is
Speaker 2: somebody who did an incredible job of avoiding that crowding
Speaker 2: out effect was Zoron Mamdani. We went through and we
Speaker 2: analyzed his paid media and you know, you do a
Speaker 2: word cloud based on the analysis, and in you know,
Speaker 2: words like affordable rent, freeze, billionaires like all those words
Speaker 2: were huge in the cloud. You literally could not find
Speaker 2: the words climate change or LGBTQ issues didn't appear in
Speaker 2: the cloud because didn't appear in the cloud either. He
Speaker 2: chose not to talk about it, you know, and and
Speaker 2: so he became sort of almost like, you know, a
Speaker 2: joke by the end of the campaign that he could
Speaker 2: take any conversation and steer it back towards affordability. Right,
Speaker 2: So that kind of message. And of course Zorn cares
Speaker 2: about climate change. Of course he cares about LGBTQ rights.
Speaker 2: You know, He's not throwing those causes under the bus.
Speaker 2: He's making a conscious decision to focus his campaign relentlessly
Speaker 2: on kitchen table issues. So you know, I wouldn't take
Speaker 2: all of his ideological positions and try to apply them
Speaker 2: in other states, but I certainly would take that discipline
Speaker 2: practice and avoiding crowding out that he demonstrated as a
Speaker 2: lesson that can be universalizable in other places.
Speaker 1: So, look, we're taping just to timestamp this on a Wednesday,
Speaker 1: November twelve, where the government is in the process of
Speaker 1: being reopened. Perhaps the release of the Epstein emails has
Speaker 1: distracted the left's anger at the at Schumer and the
Speaker 1: Democratic senators that chose to put a pause in this
Speaker 1: in this debate. And I call it a pause because
Speaker 1: I I'll just be I think a better messenger. You know,
Speaker 1: I think you and I both know Bill Clinton would
Speaker 1: have been able to say, we're going to feed people,
Speaker 1: We're going to let you get to grandma, and we're
Speaker 1: going to make sure grandma comes home to you to
Speaker 1: this holidays. We haven't given We're we're not giving up
Speaker 1: this fight on healthcare. And in fact, we've got more
Speaker 1: people focused on it than ever. We've got them super
Speaker 1: nervous about it. But yeah, we're going to reopen the government,
Speaker 1: and this is why we're going to reopen the government.
Speaker 1: But it's only for the next and they they're on
Speaker 1: the clock and they have sixty five days. Why was
Speaker 1: that not an effective way to sell the reopening of
Speaker 1: this government.
Speaker 2: I think expectations got completely out of whack, you know,
Speaker 2: And this is this is a responsibility of leadership, you know, Frankly,
Speaker 2: is that you know the idea Republicans were never going
Speaker 2: to give Democrats a full year extension of the subsidies.
Speaker 2: You know, this was just not.
Speaker 1: Without a fight. I mean, they still might. I still
Speaker 1: think there will be. My theory is it won't be
Speaker 1: a majority of Republicans that do it, but that there's
Speaker 1: going to be enough to force the issue.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that's right. I mean, I think as
Speaker 2: the political pain takes hold, you know, that's that's probably
Speaker 2: the case. But you know that's got to have You
Speaker 2: got to give that time to breathe and give that
Speaker 2: time for people to start feeling that. You know, I
Speaker 2: don't want them to feel the pain, but because of
Speaker 2: the Republicans policy choices, they're going to. So I think, look,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean the problem with being a congressional
Speaker 2: leader is that the skills that help you get that
Speaker 2: job aren't always the same skills that make you good
Speaker 2: at communicating with the public, you know, And so it
Speaker 2: is a very inside baseball job. It is about. You know,
Speaker 2: you worked for.
Speaker 1: A senator who was really good behind the scenes, and
Speaker 1: he was was the best community care Let's.
Speaker 2: You'd be the first to say it, you know, I
Speaker 2: mean it was.
Speaker 1: I I say this, I love talking to him. Right
Speaker 1: the minute it was on the record, his everything changed
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 2: Well, he didn't care, you know. I mean that's the
Speaker 2: other thing is that he didn't care that he didn't
Speaker 2: have a you know, a you know, flowery SoundBite. You know,
Speaker 2: he would give you exactly what he wanted to say.
Speaker 2: He'd say it very quietly, you know. Uh, And and
Speaker 2: that was it because he had the confidence of knowing
Speaker 2: that he you know, he thought through the strategy that
Speaker 2: he had the caucus behind him. So it's always been
Speaker 2: the case. I mean, Nancy Pelosi was an incredible leader,
Speaker 2: but was also you know, a huge target of Republican attacks, right,
Speaker 2: so he wasn't the best communicator. That's that's right, And
Speaker 2: it's it's a difficult combination of skills, you know, and
Speaker 2: especially today in a medium vironment that prioritizes or that
Speaker 2: you know, where the ability to communicate across mediums, to
Speaker 2: be natural on camera, to be quick with the quip,
Speaker 2: you know. It's so that's just something that is evolving
Speaker 2: and we're going to have to figure that out as
Speaker 2: as the caucus decides, you know, what's the right mix
Speaker 2: they want to see in the next leader.
Speaker 1: So it's funny, it's it's one of these cases where
Speaker 1: it's Schumer's fault that this is being misinterpreted, whether it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's this is not. It's not as much
Speaker 1: about the tactics, it's more about how he communicated.
Speaker 2: I think there's a there's a communication aspect, but there's
Speaker 2: also a decision making aspect to this too, which is
Speaker 2: that at some there was never really an end game here, right,
Speaker 2: and at some point.
Speaker 1: And every shutdown ends almost exactly how this shutdown is
Speaker 1: exactly the same. Whether right, you don't get what.
Speaker 2: You want, you never get literally never in the history
Speaker 2: of shutdowns has the side that is demanding a major
Speaker 2: policy concession gotten that concession. Right, just doesn't happen. And so,
Speaker 2: you know, a the decision to do in the first place,
Speaker 2: I think probably that was inevitable, especially after one in
Speaker 2: the spring. The caucus just wasn't You.
Speaker 1: Could feel it. It's like letting steam out of about
Speaker 1: you kind of had it, and they found the issue, right,
Speaker 1: that's right. I look, the reality is this was a
Speaker 1: shutdown in search of a rationale and they found a rassial.
Speaker 2: Yeah it was, And they succeeded in elevating the conversation
Speaker 2: about healthcare they have not succeeded up to this point
Speaker 2: and being able to drive a consistent, clear message about healthcare.
Speaker 2: So they did that Trump's numbers came down significantly, whether
Speaker 2: you know, that's a function of the healthcare conversation, you know,
Speaker 2: images of the east wing getting demolished, whatever it was,
Speaker 2: you know it. You know, part of the reason the
Speaker 2: east wing conversation was so salient was that we're in
Speaker 2: the middle of a shutdown and he's out here building
Speaker 2: a ballroom. You know. So they really did a great
Speaker 2: job driving a message, setting them on their terms. You know,
Speaker 2: I think a lot. I think a lot about the
Speaker 2: fall of twenty eleven, where Democrats came off a really
Speaker 2: tough summer, you know, coming off bad intermin in the
Speaker 2: first place, the whole debt ceiling, you know, debate in
Speaker 2: twenty eleven got our butts handed to us. But then
Speaker 2: we were able to fall to shift the conversation more
Speaker 2: towards our terms by shifting the focus to what we
Speaker 2: call the Jobs Act at the time, you know, which
Speaker 2: was just a bill we put together out of the
Speaker 2: most popular policies, was never really going to pass. But
Speaker 2: you know, President Obama did a speech to the Joint
Speaker 2: Session of Congress, you know, and we put that bill
Speaker 2: on the floor and made Republicans vote on it again
Speaker 2: and again and We didn't pass it, but it got
Speaker 2: us back on our front foot going into twenty twelve,
Speaker 2: and we were able to sort of take that momentum
Speaker 2: going into twenty twelve. So I hope that you know,
Speaker 2: the legitimate anger the Democrats are feeling right now because
Speaker 2: I think they were fed some false expectations. You know,
Speaker 2: we should be able to move on and say, look,
Speaker 2: we take the good here, which was driving the conversation
Speaker 2: about healthcare, getting the conversation back on our terms, and
Speaker 2: play that forward into the midterms.
Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting they hold THEMS in disarray, you know,
Speaker 1: the fund meme that gets put around, and I think
Speaker 1: about the fractures that were you know, you sort of
Speaker 1: it's like watching, you know, a fault line start to
Speaker 1: start to crack, and you see the the ones on
Speaker 1: the left, and you see the ones on the right.
Speaker 1: The divide on the left right now is not it's
Speaker 1: really just tactical. This is not. What's interesting is is
Speaker 1: you know, you you talked about the word cloud of
Speaker 1: mom Dannie. You probably could have applied that to Spamburger
Speaker 1: and and Cheryl right and and they both you know,
Speaker 1: as far as messaging, we're talking about the same issues
Speaker 1: they may have, they may have leaned in different ways,
Speaker 1: they may have talked to different constituencies, but they were
Speaker 1: always on the affordability message. So like, this is one
Speaker 1: of those cases where it's like democat, you guys are
Speaker 1: all rowing in the same direction and you still want to.
Speaker 2: Fight right like this we find it out like what's
Speaker 2: the line Jurassic Park? You know life, Life finds a way, right,
Speaker 2: Disarray finds a way with Democrats.
Speaker 1: But the big tact I always say, the biggest I
Speaker 1: think the biggest divide right now on the left is
Speaker 1: do you start to look pa Trump or do you
Speaker 1: continue to fight Trump? And I think it is an
Speaker 1: either or conversation, even though some might argue no, you've
Speaker 1: got to do both. There are entities that should be
Speaker 1: thinking about fighting Trump. Like that's what I expect my
Speaker 1: ACLU to do, and that's what I expect. You know,
Speaker 1: where the hell are the good trial lawyers around? Like,
Speaker 1: you know, ultimately I expect the courts to be doing that, right,
Speaker 1: I expect the elected officials to be thinking about, Okay,
Speaker 1: what's next? Right where I have a feeling I know
Speaker 1: where you are, but I assume you're on the side
Speaker 1: of it's about thinking of the post Trump.
Speaker 2: One hundred percent. I mean, that's why that's why I
Speaker 2: created Searchlight, you know, I mean, that is what we're
Speaker 2: trying to do here, is to craft a vision that
Speaker 2: will get people excited about the prospect of democratic governance again.
Speaker 2: And we're going to go big on how we're thinking
Speaker 2: about that. But I think you know, look, I think
Speaker 2: there's also a little bit of a difference between a
Speaker 2: mid term election and a presidential election. And so for me,
Speaker 2: my formative elections were two thousand and six in two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight, and Democrats did a good enough job
Speaker 2: in two thousand and six of putting forward a positive vision.
Speaker 2: They had this six roh six agenda that focused on
Speaker 2: you know, we were the original drain the swamp. I mean,
Speaker 2: we wanted after Mark Foley was a really salient issue
Speaker 2: that year, hugely salient. I mean, you know, so every
Speaker 2: opportunity to make corruption salient again. This year, we had
Speaker 2: ideas about you know, getting out of iraqs, minimum wage
Speaker 2: and ethics reform, and then you know that was and
Speaker 2: that was solid, right, I mean, because you have to
Speaker 2: have something that every Democrat in every corner of the
Speaker 2: country can can run on.
Speaker 1: And you guys are running in tough states. I mean
Speaker 1: think about six, I mean the six pickups to get
Speaker 1: they needed six Senate seat's less more than what it
Speaker 1: is for this cycle. And you had to win in Montana. Virginia.
Speaker 1: Was a big deal at the time because that was
Speaker 1: the tough tad of a sitting Republican senator that many
Speaker 1: thought was going to be a presidential candidate until he
Speaker 1: sort of his own words, got in, got him, got
Speaker 1: him in trouble, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Right, like, think of
Speaker 1: the the antenna that was Tester. Tester wins in six,
Speaker 1: mccaskell is in O six. You have Casey winning in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: You had Shared Brown in Ohio, Jim Webb. Look at
Speaker 1: all the people I'm describing all of them in the
Speaker 1: economic populist category.
Speaker 2: One hundred percent. Jim Webb was very culturally conservative on
Speaker 2: a lot of issues, but was was was a committed
Speaker 2: economic populist, you know, and John Tester, Claire mccaskell, you
Speaker 2: know the same. And I remember that was you know
Speaker 2: when when mccaskell won, you know, at his watch party,
Speaker 2: read got down and kissed, kissed the television because I
Speaker 2: think she was the one who put us over. Although
Speaker 2: actually think the Virginia election, I think.
Speaker 1: Because it was late counting. I was on the air
Speaker 1: for that, like literally called people about Fairfax County. How
Speaker 1: much more is coming in?
Speaker 2: Right? Yeah, But that's the thing is it was defied expectations.
Speaker 2: You know, the pundits did not expect us to take
Speaker 2: back the Senate. I think the House was expected, although
Speaker 2: I think the margin was higher than what people predicted,
Speaker 2: but the Senate was considered a reach at best. And
Speaker 2: so that's but that's where we find ourselves again here
Speaker 2: and so for me, the litmus test for success though
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty six really should be do we take
Speaker 2: back the Senate? Because you have to push yourself through there? Yeah,
Speaker 2: because look in the cycles where the you know, the
Speaker 2: cycles are, you know, a lot of it is determined
Speaker 2: by the fundamentals. The Senate is a gnarly beast because
Speaker 2: you only it's resistant to big swings because you only
Speaker 2: have a third of the chamber up for reelection at
Speaker 2: any election, whereas you know, everybody in the House is
Speaker 2: every seat in the House is up. So what you've
Speaker 2: got to do is you really got to maximize your
Speaker 2: gains in the cycles where the fundamentals are in your favor,
Speaker 2: and for us, that maximizing our gains would would look like,
Speaker 2: you know, winning holding all the seats where we have
Speaker 2: incumbents up and then winning you know, all of the
Speaker 2: swing states and then throwing in someones that are reaches
Speaker 2: for us, like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I look at the you know the path,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, North Carolina, Maine or quick and
Speaker 1: then you start going, oh boy, okay, you need Ohio
Speaker 1: to come in again, you probably need one of the
Speaker 1: following and then you need one of the following three Alaska, Iowa, Texas, right,
Speaker 1: and then you don't want to be you know, then
Speaker 1: you got to sort of probably throwing a couple others
Speaker 1: like you did that six for oh six. There were
Speaker 1: two other races that were top tier races in that
Speaker 1: last month of the campaign. One was Harold Fords Tennessee
Speaker 1: race against that that was a Ford corker, was a
Speaker 1: competitive race. And then you had I think Jim Peterson
Speaker 1: in Arizona. If I remember that, Kyle, that's.
Speaker 2: Right, And I mean you look you know, so yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, we look, Ohio, Iowa, Alaska. We have held
Speaker 2: Senate seats in all three of those states. Within the
Speaker 2: last ten years, we should be able to win there again.
Speaker 2: And then yeah, you've got it. You've got to reach
Speaker 2: in a place like Texas. That's how you put together
Speaker 2: Senate majorities, you know. And what's crazy is that even.
Speaker 1: That argued Kansas and Mississippi to be on the mat
Speaker 1: You look at those two, they're both there are what
Speaker 1: I call green shoots for Democrats in both of those states,
Speaker 1: but they need some work, Like you've got to actually
Speaker 1: tend that guard.
Speaker 2: Ye had a democratic government, Cathleen's we have currently have
Speaker 2: a democratic governor, you know. I mean, the Democrats can
Speaker 2: win in these states.
Speaker 1: Sixteen to the last twenty four years in Kansas has
Speaker 1: been that's right, that's right.
Speaker 2: Talk about economic populism. I mean, that's the home of
Speaker 2: prairie populism. And yeah, exactly. And so it's really a choice,
Speaker 2: you know. I mean, Democrats can simply choose tomorrow to
Speaker 2: start running on a mix of issues that can appeal
Speaker 2: to folks in those states, the way that Trump just
Speaker 2: simply decided to throw core tenants of Republican orthodoxy out
Speaker 2: out the window. And you know, again that doesn't mean
Speaker 2: that the entire party has to shift its position on
Speaker 2: some of these cultural issues. It just means we have
Speaker 2: to embrace people who are going to have different views
Speaker 2: than us because they're the only ones who can win
Speaker 2: in states like that.
Speaker 1: How do you think the unofficial presidential campaign presidential candidates
Speaker 1: are doing right now in moving message? Because I look
Speaker 1: at a guy like Gavin Newsom, who, on one hand,
Speaker 1: it's impressive to me how much the bases embraced him
Speaker 1: and that they love the fact that he's fighting. But
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, he's introduced himself as
Speaker 1: one of the great d n C chairs of all time,
Speaker 1: right like he is, meaning like he's attacked, he's he's
Speaker 1: he's winning on tactics. It's not as if there's some
Speaker 1: great policy proposal that is just taking the world by storm.
Speaker 1: So I'm a skeptic that this holds for him right that,
Speaker 1: because this is a process moment. Let's a policy moment.
Speaker 1: But in general, how would you you know I had Bashir,
Speaker 1: I've done, interviewed Pher, I've seen we've got the rom
Speaker 1: stump speech. I've got to be interviewing by the time
Speaker 1: this hits well, I've interviewed Wes Moore at Texas the
Speaker 1: Texas Tribune Festival. What what do you think so far
Speaker 1: of the of the field and how they've tried to
Speaker 1: communicate about twenty.
Speaker 2: Eight Yeah, I mean we are we are a wash
Speaker 2: in raw talent, and it's it's gonna take. But I
Speaker 2: think there's still very powerful forces pushing our candidates to
Speaker 2: stay firmly inside that liberal box, you know. And so
Speaker 2: and it is true that the sort of there's gonna
Speaker 2: be sort of a you're gonna have to marry two
Speaker 2: things together, I think to get the right candidate here,
Speaker 2: and that's marrying the aggressive, you know, taking the fight
Speaker 2: to Trump and the Republicans, that pugnacity that you see
Speaker 2: in someone like Gavin Newsom, that's why he's he's sort
Speaker 2: of risen to the top of the conversation in a
Speaker 2: lot of places. But you're gonna have to marry that
Speaker 2: pugnacity with an issue mix that can appeal to a
Speaker 2: broad swath of Americans. And so right now, you know,
Speaker 2: I think there's some more of sort of tinkering around
Speaker 2: the edges there. You know, you look at at a
Speaker 2: Josh Shapiro, who is who's sort of you know, defying
Speaker 2: the left wing of the party on some issues. But
Speaker 2: I think I think we're gonna need somebody to go further,
Speaker 2: you know, if we're going to talk about a supermajority,
Speaker 2: and I you know, look, you could eke buy. You know,
Speaker 2: in a polarized nation, every election's a coin flip, right,
Speaker 2: you could you could get to seventy. You may even
Speaker 2: get to fifty in the Senate. But but that is
Speaker 2: a recipe for you know, whiplash.
Speaker 1: Biden didn't get to govern very well, didn't He had
Speaker 1: all three, but he barely had all He barely had
Speaker 1: the trifecta.
Speaker 2: You lose it, you probably lose.
Speaker 1: I think we could have the trifecta. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I managed it. From the White House perspective.
Speaker 2: I agree. And I think even if you're lucky to
Speaker 2: have the trifecta, you probably lose it in the first midterm,
Speaker 2: you know, and then and then you're stuck. And so
Speaker 2: I think, you know, what I see as a super
Speaker 2: majority is having a durable governing majority that sustains itself
Speaker 2: at least through a few election cycles, that you can
Speaker 2: actually pass a robust agenda. Most of what Biden has
Speaker 2: passed has already been undone with Republicans. But this has
Speaker 2: already been undone by Republicans, you know it. At best,
Speaker 2: your accomplishments are extremely fragile. They don't last, they're quickly repealed,
Speaker 2: and then the other side comes in and does the
Speaker 2: same thing, and then we're stuck in this this back
Speaker 2: and forth. So I think that the time is right
Speaker 2: right now for one side or the other to craft
Speaker 2: the supermajority appeal that can actually build a governing coalition
Speaker 2: that can sustain you in power. You know, beyond just
Speaker 2: one one two year period.
Speaker 1: Do you worry about a insurgent third party or independent?
Speaker 1: And do you worry that? You know, I look at
Speaker 1: it as somebody who's always dabbled, And my first professional
Speaker 1: year covering politics was the year of rouss Perrot, So
Speaker 1: you know, when you get introduced to politics that way,
Speaker 1: and how crazy it shook up the map and it
Speaker 1: shook up ideologies and it really I've always thought that
Speaker 1: the Paro Paro's third party candidacy was extraordinarily successful because
Speaker 1: he made both parties change who they were, you know,
Speaker 1: he made the Democrats a bit more sensitive on fiscal issues,
Speaker 1: made the Republicans a bit more sensitive on trade issues. Hey,
Speaker 1: that's that's to me, that's an accomplishment, right. That was
Speaker 1: in theory originally why ross Pero got it right, he
Speaker 1: was trying. He thought, Hey, these guys don't know what
Speaker 1: any in those two issues. He accomplished a lot. We're
Speaker 1: in a moment. There is a vacuum, right, you see,
Speaker 1: sometimes it's simply a vacuum in a place like Nebraska,
Speaker 1: South Dakota, or Idaho. And I single those guys out
Speaker 1: because I've interviewed all of them. There. There are a
Speaker 1: bunch of really strong candidates running as economic populists who've
Speaker 1: chosen to run as independence instead of Democrats, and they
Speaker 1: just simply all. I had two of them on together
Speaker 1: and they said, it's simply so they can have a
Speaker 1: conversation with local voters, like they agree with the agenda.
Speaker 1: But if the minute they find out they're a Democrat,
Speaker 1: then they don't want to like they won't. It's like
Speaker 1: they close their ears, so they're trying to open their ears.
Speaker 1: Do you worry that there's a vacuum out there that
Speaker 1: can be filled by a non democratic entity?
Speaker 2: Oh, I one hundred percent worry that there's a vacuum,
Speaker 2: and I think it's incumbent on the party to close it,
Speaker 2: you know, and if they don't do that, then yeah,
Speaker 2: they leave themselves very It is a it's a regular,
Speaker 2: you know, not a not every election, but you know,
Speaker 2: every once a generation or so, an independent candidate comes
Speaker 2: along and identifies the sort of the ways in which
Speaker 2: neither side is meeting the demands of the American people.
Speaker 2: Nineteen sixty eight, George Wallace, You know, he did, and
Speaker 2: that caused you Nixon was sort of running on a
Speaker 2: light southern strategy in sixty eight and.
Speaker 1: Then probably wins by a bigger margin without Wallace, I think, right,
Speaker 1: but I don't think that's yeah, that's probably that's probably right.
Speaker 2: But then he sort of, you know, just I mean this,
Speaker 2: I don't see this is a good thing being a liberal.
Speaker 2: But then he know, decided to close off that that.
Speaker 1: He didn't let that, but he wasn't going to let
Speaker 1: that happen to him a second time exactly.
Speaker 2: And then Reagan sort of refined that approached and you know, so,
Speaker 2: I mean, I think I think that, you know, it's
Speaker 2: it's sort of a market feature of if if neither
Speaker 2: side is meeting the demand then you know someone's going
Speaker 2: to step in. They won't win, I don't think, but
Speaker 2: they can certainly, you know, cause Democrats to lose. And
Speaker 2: so it really is incumbent on Democrats to take it
Speaker 2: upon themselves to craft a broader appeal to sort of
Speaker 2: pre the possibility of getting, you know, having an end
Speaker 2: run around them by an independent candidate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's talk about the Senate. You wrote a book
Speaker 1: about it, you know, and and the filibuster. You know,
Speaker 1: one of the things the philibuster that I always want
Speaker 1: to take a little time to educate people. It is
Speaker 1: not in the constitution. The philibuster is a choice, right,
Speaker 1: its Senate rules, right, that's right. There is the mythology
Speaker 1: that you know I grew up with, certainly was mister Smith, right,
Speaker 1: the famous Jimmy Stewart movie of the fifties, and it
Speaker 1: sort of celebrated the idea that one senator can sort
Speaker 1: of stand up. So give me the ideal. What's your
Speaker 1: ideal of I assume you still embrace the ideal that
Speaker 1: a a senator should feel as if that they can
Speaker 1: do that if they so choose to. How should that
Speaker 1: work and how should we be using it as a
Speaker 1: governing tool in your mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. That. That's the thing is that people think
Speaker 2: when they think of the filibuster, if they think about
Speaker 2: it at all, they think of they think of Jimmy Stewart, right,
Speaker 2: But that's not how it works.
Speaker 1: I don't. I'm hopeful actually that most of the people
Speaker 1: that are listening to this podcast are younger than I
Speaker 1: am and probably are like, who the hell is Jimmy Stewart.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's true, but but I think that. But still,
Speaker 2: the idea of, you know, of somebody standing up and
Speaker 2: talking is what people think of, right, And that's just
Speaker 2: not how it works anymore. You know. What's happened is
Speaker 2: it's become a sort of a quiet, you know, passive filibuster,
Speaker 2: where any veto it's pocket veto. I mean you literally
Speaker 2: have your staff call the cloak room and say I object.
Speaker 2: You know, that's it, and nobody has to do to
Speaker 2: show up to the floor. They don't have to say
Speaker 2: a word. And then that automatically raises the threshold for
Speaker 2: procedural reasons that will borrow your readers to tears to
Speaker 2: sixty votes. And I think what's important to understand is
Speaker 2: that you know, according for the first two hundred years
Speaker 2: of its existence, from the from the time it was
Speaker 2: conceived of the Framers until you know, about century in
Speaker 2: the twentieth century, the Senate was a majority rule institution.
Speaker 2: It was it was intended to be that way, and
Speaker 2: the Framers, it wasn't an accident. They thought very hard
Speaker 2: about whether there should be a super majority requirement in
Speaker 2: Senate rules, and they decided against it. And the reason
Speaker 2: they decided against it was because they had just had
Speaker 2: experience with the Articles of Confederation, where there was a
Speaker 2: super majority threshold in the legislature, and they put it there,
Speaker 2: you know, on the theory that it would promote compromising consensus,
Speaker 2: when what happened in reality was that it empowered a
Speaker 2: minority to be obstructionist and to grind things to the
Speaker 2: halt when they didn't get their way. And so the
Speaker 2: Framers saw that happen and said, okay, well, we're not
Speaker 2: doing that, you know, And so they designed the Senate
Speaker 2: to be different from the House in lots of other ways,
Speaker 2: by giving every state equal representation, by having senators serve
Speaker 2: for six year terms so they can be a little
Speaker 2: bit less responsive to the whims of the moment staggering
Speaker 2: those elections, like we talked about, you know, basically sort
Speaker 2: of building in things that made it a more deliberate institution.
Speaker 2: But they were, and they wrote about it in the
Speaker 2: Federals papers. They debated the Concerts Convention. They said, we
Speaker 2: are not putting in a majority a super majority threshold,
Speaker 2: because that would allow and they said explicitly, because that
Speaker 2: would allow a minority to obstruct, you know, when they
Speaker 2: didn't get their way. And so that's the that's the
Speaker 2: difference in the filibuster is that there should be unlimited debate.
Speaker 2: You should have the opportunity to stand and say your piece,
Speaker 2: to join with other colleagues to keep a filibuster going
Speaker 2: indefinitely if you want to. But you should have to
Speaker 2: put in the work. You know, you should not be
Speaker 2: able to do it passively. Why is it so hard
Speaker 2: to sell, to sell that bipartisanly? That to me seems
Speaker 2: the proper use of the filibuster. I agree, you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's it's it's just the sort of the proverb
Speaker 2: of the frog being boiled in water, where you know,
Speaker 2: the Senate never decided to have it be the way
Speaker 2: it is. It was a passive accumulation of one norm
Speaker 2: being laid on another in layered form over several decades,
Speaker 2: where basically when you're in the minority, you find this
Speaker 2: thing to be useful. But came up with the filibuster
Speaker 2: happened what sometime after direct election of senators. Yeah, well
Speaker 2: so in nineteen seventeen they when seventy of the amendment, right,
Speaker 2: So when direct election happened, it was around the same
Speaker 2: time during the progressive era. You know, there was this idea.
Speaker 2: But what's really interesting about it is that the rule
Speaker 2: that today gets used to cause the super majority threshold
Speaker 2: was originally put in place to end filibusters.
Speaker 1: It's I don't want to get yeah, it's like it's
Speaker 1: like you're describing one of my favorite things. You know,
Speaker 1: a reform in one era turns into it a problem
Speaker 1: in another. You know, the seniority system was actually instituted
Speaker 1: in the House at the turn of the last century
Speaker 1: because there were so many cronies that a speaker would
Speaker 1: put into place, and they said, well, we can't have that.
Speaker 1: So the seniority system was actually a reform that's right,
Speaker 1: to improve representation.
Speaker 2: So the super majority rule was, you know, put in
Speaker 2: place because if you had a talking filibuster that was
Speaker 2: going on for way too long, right you You said, okay, fine,
Speaker 2: you know what, We'll give you a tool to bring
Speaker 2: that to an end. And that's if you know sixty
Speaker 2: at the time it was three fits. It was three
Speaker 2: thirds or something, or at the time it was two thirds.
Speaker 2: Now it's three fits. But they said, look, if three
Speaker 2: fitts of the Senate can decide that, you know, mister
Speaker 2: Smith has talked too long, you know, presumably that's bringing
Speaker 2: people together from both sides of the whatever issues being debated,
Speaker 2: you can sort of say, okay, that's enough guy. Even
Speaker 2: then you still have like thirty hours, so you know,
Speaker 2: in true Senate fashion, it wasn't moving that precipitously. But
Speaker 2: but that was supposed to be able to say, okay,
Speaker 2: that's gone on long enough, let's let's let's end it.
Speaker 2: Let's move to a vote. Now what happens is because
Speaker 2: of the ease of implementing the filibuster, because you don't
Speaker 2: have to go to the floor and you can just
Speaker 2: have your staff call the cloakroom. That's all it takes
Speaker 2: to do a filibuster. So there's no there's no you're
Speaker 2: not putting any onus on the person blocking, but that
Speaker 2: simple act of calling the cloakroom triggers that super majority requirement. Now,
Speaker 2: so every time the Senate votes on the super majority,
Speaker 2: they're technically still ending a filibuster, even though there's nobody
Speaker 2: on the four filibuster. So it's completely a mutation of
Speaker 2: what the original rule was decided to do, and it's
Speaker 2: just accumulated in this sort of like you know, accretion
Speaker 2: of layers of norms and made the sound of completely dysfunctional,
Speaker 2: just like the Framers predicted it would be if a
Speaker 2: supermajority requirement was put in place.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the different like hacks that were
Speaker 1: essentially created to avoid the filibuster reconciliation. I got a
Speaker 1: fun viewer question back to my last episode about it,
Speaker 1: and I said, well, it was correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 1: It was a creation essentially of Robert byrd right.
Speaker 2: That's right, you know it was. It was sort of
Speaker 2: downstream of the sort of imperial presidency under Nixon, where
Speaker 2: you know, Nixon seized a bunch of powers to the
Speaker 2: executive branch, and so in the post Watergate reaction against that,
Speaker 2: they wanted to shift more power back to the legislative branch,
Speaker 2: and so they created this thing called budget reconciliation, where
Speaker 2: you know, under the power of the purse, one of
Speaker 2: the most important functions of Congress is to pass a budget.
Speaker 2: And you know, if Congress gets you know, stuck on budget,
Speaker 2: that's an advoication of their powers. It shifts more powers
Speaker 2: to the executive because Congress hasn't told the executive how
Speaker 2: to spend the money. So they wanted to make sure
Speaker 2: that budgets could not get stuck or blocked by a minority.
Speaker 2: So they created a separate pathway for anything related to
Speaker 2: the budget, and they put in place strict rules where
Speaker 2: it said, you know, it has to meet these standards.
Speaker 2: But if it meets these standards and applies to the budget,
Speaker 2: it has its own pathway where there's no supermajority requirement.
Speaker 2: It's a straight fifty vote threshold all the way through.
Speaker 2: But there is sort of almost a talking filibuster built
Speaker 2: in of this thing called voterama, where you know, anybody
Speaker 2: can bring an amendment, and so before passage you'll have
Speaker 2: these night you know, sessions that go all night where
Speaker 2: everybody's so you know, kind of they sort of tried
Speaker 2: to recreate the original Senate, but only for issues related
Speaker 2: to the budget. Those those criteria that determine what can
Speaker 2: pass along that pathway that's been expanded steadily over the
Speaker 2: since the seventy when this was enacted to sort of,
Speaker 2: you know, expand the definition of what's allowed to pass
Speaker 2: through it. But even so, you know, anything that's not
Speaker 2: economic and nature definitely can't pass through that pathway, and
Speaker 2: even a lot of things that are economic and nature,
Speaker 2: you know, still get kicked out.
Speaker 1: I think the first Bush tax cuts were not reconciliation.
Speaker 1: I think he did that with sixty because I remember
Speaker 1: him finding five Democratic senators.
Speaker 2: I know, No, I think I think it was reconciliation
Speaker 2: he did, and both those things are true. He did.
Speaker 2: Max Bockus supported those, some Democrats supported him, But I
Speaker 2: still think it was on the reconciliation. But with which,
Speaker 2: by the way, is the way it used to happen,
Speaker 2: which was that just because something passed, you know, along
Speaker 2: majority rule pathway, didn't make it party line, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, medicare you know. So the things we
Speaker 2: think of as the greatest by partisan accomplishments generally happened
Speaker 2: during the period when the Senate was majority rule, and
Speaker 2: what would happen is people would fight it tooth and nail.
Speaker 2: But then as soon as it was clear that the
Speaker 2: majority had the votes, a bunch of people who were
Speaker 2: holding out for something would would then come on and say, okay,
Speaker 2: I'm going to join on board anyways, on the way
Speaker 2: on the right.
Speaker 1: I want to be on the right side of that boat.
Speaker 2: Sure that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, let's talk the judiciary, because this is where
Speaker 1: I I I you know, there have been separate rules created,
Speaker 1: and I kind of think everybody's gone the wrong direction, right,
Speaker 1: Meaning if I read Federalist seventy eight, which is the
Speaker 1: Alexander Hamilton Federalist paper on the judiciary, it is pretty
Speaker 1: clear that the description of the judiciary that the founders
Speaker 1: intended was for what I call referees, so the least
Speaker 1: partisan individuals you could get in the least partisan way.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: That was the reason for the lifetime appointment. That was
Speaker 1: But so to me, he didn't say there should be
Speaker 1: and maybe you could make the argument, you know, he
Speaker 1: should have said, you know, all federal judges should be
Speaker 1: super majorities. But that's where my head is at, Like
Speaker 1: I don't trust the two parties anymore, and to the
Speaker 1: point of, with the way the judiciary works, would we
Speaker 1: be better off if if we didn't instead of lowering
Speaker 1: the threshold from sixty dowe to fifty, of raising the
Speaker 1: threshold from sixty to seventy five. And the reason I
Speaker 1: have come down on this idea is looking at I
Speaker 1: got to know somebody who worked in the Bush White
Speaker 1: House Counsel's office in the first Bush forty three and
Speaker 1: they were the last Republican presidency under the sixty vote
Speaker 1: threshold right until Trump came in, and then it got lowered.
Speaker 1: He got to lower it, all got lowered, and he
Speaker 1: said they'd have nominated completely different people for federal judge
Speaker 1: ships if the threshold was fifty and not sixty. Much
Speaker 1: more ideological, much less you know. That to me was
Speaker 1: that is why I'm like, Yeah, this is why we
Speaker 1: shouldn't have lowered the threshold, because ultimately I want the
Speaker 1: least partisan people as my judge. I don't want partisan
Speaker 1: people as my judge. I know we're a long way
Speaker 1: away from us from a situation going back to that,
Speaker 1: but why is that so difficult? How did we allow
Speaker 1: the judicial? Why did we decide to politicize the judicial.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think one hundred percent. See you
Speaker 2: know where you're coming from on that. I think that
Speaker 2: you know, it is a bit cyclical, right, I mean, like,
Speaker 2: you know, a lot of judges did used to be
Speaker 2: pretty part of it. I mean, you know, the nineteen said, look,
Speaker 2: the nineteenth century judiciary general was corrupt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, yeah, and there was a ton of a
Speaker 1: lot of corruption there. I'm not gonna I take your point.
Speaker 2: Right right, So I think I think those things work
Speaker 2: in cycles. I think where I come down on this
Speaker 2: stuff is that it's really hard to you know, enforce
Speaker 2: good things like you know, good judgment, moderation by rule.
Speaker 2: It's just very hard. And that's when you run into
Speaker 2: this problem we were just talking about, of the rule,
Speaker 2: you know, having unintended consequences. It's just if the nature
Speaker 2: of the times is such that, you know, this is
Speaker 2: what people are demanding, it's it's going to find a way.
Speaker 2: And I think that you know, you know, I'm not
Speaker 2: a conservative by nature, so I feel, you know, slightly
Speaker 2: incoorporable saying this. But when you go back to the
Speaker 2: framer's design, you know, I think I am an originalist
Speaker 2: when it comes to the system designed, you know, and
Speaker 2: this the system was designed to just not have a
Speaker 2: super majority threshold anywhere in the path from beginning to end.
Speaker 1: The only thing that required a super majority, it was was.
Speaker 2: Was cast, social amendments, impeachment, you know, but they specified
Speaker 2: those in the Constitution, which just goes to show how
Speaker 2: they consider this to be.
Speaker 1: It's a very fair point. The fact that he didn't
Speaker 1: argue for it, you know, he certainly argued. He argued
Speaker 1: hard against judicial elections, which to me tells you that
Speaker 1: what I mean, you want to talk about corrupt, Those
Speaker 1: state supreme court partisan races, to me are just ter
Speaker 1: I mean, I think they just the mere existence of
Speaker 1: them under month rule of law.
Speaker 2: Well, and you're seeing more and more money start to
Speaker 2: flow to them too, you know. I mean, they're going
Speaker 2: to become just as political as any election. I think
Speaker 2: that's right. So I think it's it's just a tough
Speaker 2: thing to do by rule. And so, you know, there
Speaker 2: are many bad features of the times we live in.
Speaker 2: I think, you know, sort of a return to the
Speaker 2: basic features of our system that allow things to move
Speaker 2: and allow our system to I think if you went
Speaker 2: to seventy five, which you'd probably have is just massive
Speaker 2: judicial backlogs and seats not getting filled.
Speaker 1: Well, this gets to the whole chicken and egg thing.
Speaker 1: Like we began earlier talking about the lack of ideological
Speaker 1: diversity in the two parties. When we had ideological diversity
Speaker 1: in the two parties, we regularly had these sixty and
Speaker 1: seventy vote confirmations because there was this ideological diversity as
Speaker 1: we polarized ourselves right as you know, the embedding of
Speaker 1: red and blue right, which you know, we could make
Speaker 1: an argument it began in two thousand. I sort of
Speaker 1: think now in hindsight, it began with the fallow of
Speaker 1: the Berlin Wall. That that's when both parties bases, you know,
Speaker 1: got reanimated again. We're like, okay, cold War's over. We
Speaker 1: can't be told to sit sit quietly in the corner anymore.
Speaker 1: We're coming right. But you know, that's the I guess
Speaker 1: it is the better solution than open primaries, getting rid
Speaker 1: of all partisan primaries, and that then you then you
Speaker 1: just get a different type of nominee.
Speaker 2: I think that's I think that's I would be in
Speaker 2: favor of opening up primaries for sure, you know, and
Speaker 2: I think that you know, you look at someone like
Speaker 2: would Bernie Sanders have won the twenty sixteen presidential nomination
Speaker 2: if their primary had been open, you know, it's or
Speaker 2: more primaries and along the way had been opened. Maybe
Speaker 2: they I think they argued that at the time. You know,
Speaker 2: he's interesting because you could say he's ideological. But also
Speaker 2: he was sort of an underappreciated aspect of his twenty
Speaker 2: sixteen campaign was that he was more moderate on cultural
Speaker 2: issues than Hillary, and he was actually sort of presenting
Speaker 2: much more of that classic point. Remember how Hillary talking
Speaker 2: about attacked him, kept attacking him in sense, Yeah, attacking
Speaker 2: him from the left, not the right, that's right.
Speaker 1: You know, he had at.
Speaker 2: Some point said the interest groups are the establishment. You know,
Speaker 2: plan pared to all these groups. So I think that's
Speaker 2: I think you've opened the doorway for a more interesting
Speaker 2: mix of ideologies.
Speaker 1: If you did that, well that uh, let's land the
Speaker 1: plane this way. What do you plan? You know, do
Speaker 1: you see searchlight? On one hand, you want to you're
Speaker 1: going to be an incubator of policy ideas and also
Speaker 1: an incubator of campaign tactics.
Speaker 2: Well, I think if we had a sort of campaign advice,
Speaker 2: it would be basically to be heterodox you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: we would say which, and I think that's more powerful
Speaker 2: than any campaign tactic. We are, we are a political
Speaker 2: culture that's a wash in. You know, this or that
Speaker 2: media strategy, this or that platform, and all those things
Speaker 2: are important, but fundamentally, the most powerful thing you can
Speaker 2: do is offer a different mix of issues to the
Speaker 2: American people. And so much else flows downstream from that.
Speaker 2: So our advice to candidates would be decide to be heterodox.
Speaker 2: You know, if you look through your issue positions, and
Speaker 2: every single position on that page on your website, you
Speaker 2: know is a rigidly ideological left wing position, then you know,
Speaker 2: if you're running in a competitive race, then you're probably
Speaker 2: doing it wrong. So and listen, look and look in,
Speaker 2: Look to your beliefs, look to the people that you're
Speaker 2: seeking a represent.
Speaker 1: This only works those issues you are right, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I look at Grand I look at the Grand Platner situation,
Speaker 1: and you know how I look. I got my skepticism
Speaker 1: on the tattoo story. I will admit that, Like, you know,
Speaker 1: I think you put a permanent marking on your body.
Speaker 1: You're going to research what that is. But so look,
Speaker 1: that's me as a voter or as a as a
Speaker 1: consumer of this. But what do you make of his
Speaker 1: staying power. What does that tell you about what you're
Speaker 1: what you're advising people to be.
Speaker 2: I think I think it's it's it says a lot.
Speaker 2: And I think that you know, he's he's a person
Speaker 2: who served in the military, you know, and enlisted in
Speaker 2: a war that he says he didn't agree with. But
Speaker 2: I think that's a powerful story. He loves this guy
Speaker 2: loves guns, you know, not just in the sort of
Speaker 2: carried a gun once way, but I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: that's that's a heterodoxy that fits the state of Maine.
Speaker 2: People are looking for authenticity. They're looking for that that
Speaker 2: desire to fight that, that authenticity being imperfect, having made mistakes,
Speaker 2: all that stuff. I think it's it's very powerful. And
Speaker 2: so far, the way voters in Maine are reacting to
Speaker 2: those stories is to dismiss them or even to say
Speaker 2: that's making me back him even stronger. So I think
Speaker 2: that's a very powerful phenomenon that's going on right now.
Speaker 2: And his level of heterodoxy could win a state like Maine,
Speaker 2: which is, you know, pretty blue. If you're going to
Speaker 2: be running in a state like Iowa, Ohio or Nebraska.
Speaker 2: You know, you got to be even more heterodox. And
Speaker 2: that's the that's the advice I would give to candidates.
Speaker 1: And is this about finding how much of this is
Speaker 1: on the party seeking out those candidates and how much
Speaker 1: is it just simply more candidates need to not seek
Speaker 1: out the groups looking for I mean, you see this
Speaker 1: a lot where and I'm sorry, I think that I
Speaker 1: watch the committees do this, right, Well, if you don't
Speaker 1: do this, then we're not going to be able to
Speaker 1: bunge your general election. They sort of hold you hostage
Speaker 1: on certain things.
Speaker 2: Oh one hundred percent. I mean people, you know, the
Speaker 2: questioning gas a lot is like, oh, these are just
Speaker 2: little nonprofits, you know, doing the best they can. And
Speaker 2: that's that's in the post Citizens United world. These groups
Speaker 2: wield war chests of millions and millions of dollars, and
Speaker 2: in the primary, if you don't take their preferred positions,
Speaker 2: they spend those millions of dollars against you and in
Speaker 2: favor of your opponent. So it's still a lot of power.
Speaker 2: But I think, you know, it would be smart for
Speaker 2: the groups to get a little bit smarter in what
Speaker 2: they're asking people to do and make their asks more
Speaker 2: about you know, can you beat the Republican then than
Speaker 2: you know, going through a purity test. But I think
Speaker 2: candidates should, you know, if they're being asked to take
Speaker 2: crazy positions, they should just say no, and they should
Speaker 2: make they should be clear of the voters that they're
Speaker 2: saying no.
Speaker 1: I think would you no longer do questionnaires?
Speaker 2: A questionnaire with one question, which is the tell me
Speaker 2: why you can beat the Republican? That would be my FoST.
Speaker 1: That's just the questionnaire.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: Are you Can you imagine search Light funding a campaign
Speaker 1: for against a candidate in a primary.
Speaker 2: We are acumenical for now. I think what we want
Speaker 2: to do is just sort of put out the best
Speaker 2: ideas and approaches and hope that that, you know, people
Speaker 2: adopt them. So that's that is our stance for the
Speaker 2: time being. We'll see.
Speaker 1: Well, I love your marker for success in your mind.
Speaker 1: If Democrats don't win the Senate, they can't say they
Speaker 1: won the midterms.
Speaker 2: That is exactly what I think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a high bar, but guess what if you
Speaker 1: want to if you want to succeed, you got to
Speaker 1: go meet a high bar.
Speaker 2: You've done it before, you know, it's important name.
Speaker 1: High anyway, Hey Adam, this was great. Uh. Look, you
Speaker 1: have a book out about the Senate. You talked in
Speaker 1: such detail. Why don't you want to tell people how
Speaker 1: they can go by it?
Speaker 2: It's absolutely good. Kill Switch by by Me is available
Speaker 2: on Amazon and anywhere books are sold, So.
Speaker 1: Go check it out, check it search Light Foundation.
Speaker 2: It's about the Senate, but it's not boring. It's the
Speaker 2: best is the mind.
Speaker 1: Think you did a good job sort of talking the
Speaker 1: little history. I mean you you you sort of you
Speaker 1: scratched all the itches I was hoping you'd scratched during
Speaker 1: our conversation, which was talking about the founder's original intent
Speaker 1: all this. And you've certainly been persuasive to me about
Speaker 1: the lack of mention of supermajorities in certain parts of
Speaker 1: the founders versus where they did intentionally bring up the
Speaker 1: decision super majorities. I think if you're going to be
Speaker 1: an originalist, you got to pay attention.
Speaker 2: To that as well. That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: Well, thanks check Fran, good to see it. Well you
Speaker 1: heard Adam Jennison there. I do think the bar I
Speaker 1: think he makes a fair argument, and I think that
Speaker 1: you know, there's gonna be a lot of Democratic protectors
Speaker 1: of the Democratic brand who are going to tak that's
Speaker 1: not fair. This is too hard of a Senate map.
Speaker 1: But he's right if you can't say you won the
Speaker 1: midterms if you don't win both the House and the Senate.
Speaker 1: And yeah, the senate's hard, but they only need four seats.
Speaker 1: In twenty oh six they needed six and they got
Speaker 1: the six. So it's not like you know, this is
Speaker 1: four is not an unreasonable number. So if you're truly
Speaker 1: winning the argument, you win the four seats. And you know,
Speaker 1: which is why if you're going to mess around with
Speaker 1: the with the prediction markets, now's the time to buy
Speaker 1: shares in Democrats win the Senate because and then, to
Speaker 1: be frank, then you sell them sometime in mid October
Speaker 1: and cash in your profits. So with that, let's take
Speaker 1: a few questions ask Chuck. First one comes from Max
Speaker 1: w from Alexandria here in the DMV sains. I've been
Speaker 1: a fan since before you hosted Meet the Press. Thank you,
Speaker 1: and I particularly enjoy your political analysis and how you
Speaker 1: use American history. Explain what we are going through towards
Speaker 1: that end. Have you watched Death by Lightning? On Netflix.
Speaker 1: I am in the middle of it or not finished
Speaker 1: Part one. It's four part series telling the story of
Speaker 1: James Garfield's rise to the presidency after winning the nomination
Speaker 1: on the thirty six ballot at the Republican National Convention
Speaker 1: in eighteen eighty and his assassination after only three months
Speaker 1: in office. It's filled with political intrigu corruption, spoils, and
Speaker 1: patronage near the end of the nineteenth century. Right up
Speaker 1: your ally, Max, You're right, and I will sort of
Speaker 1: give you a little insight here. I've been obsessed with
Speaker 1: the Garfield story for a long time. Have a writing
Speaker 1: partner off and On by the name of Adam Pearlman,
Speaker 1: who has done some terrific work billions in particulars, and
Speaker 1: he and I have and I have a pilot script
Speaker 1: actually that we had once been working with a major
Speaker 1: production company and the Game of Throne guys bennyoffen Weisse
Speaker 1: got the Netflix deal and they ended up pitching a
Speaker 1: Netflix Garfield series. And let's just say they had a
Speaker 1: longer track record than my Adam and I did on this.
Speaker 1: I have watched episode one, I've enjoyed it. It is
Speaker 1: not the take I would have done, and I'm not
Speaker 1: This is not to be critical. I think they've made
Speaker 1: an interest, They've made some interesting decisions. I'm looking forward
Speaker 1: to where they go, and that is the beauty of
Speaker 1: this story. I'm I'm obsessed with the period itself. Right,
Speaker 1: this was we were so close to getting reconstruction back.
Speaker 1: And I'm somebody who thinks a Garfield presidency. You know,
Speaker 1: the Garfield presidency got a civil service reform, which was
Speaker 1: not a small thing. Trump's actually trying to the Trump
Speaker 1: now is trying to undo some of the civil service
Speaker 1: reform that that Chester Arthur, who ends up the you know,
Speaker 1: a forced vice president on by the political machine in
Speaker 1: New York, ends up after the death of Garfield, sort
Speaker 1: of sees the light and stops being a cog in
Speaker 1: the Roscoe Conkling New York political machine and actually pledges
Speaker 1: to fulfill a Garfield presidency. But I think Garfield himself,
Speaker 1: had he lived, I think you might have seen reconstruction
Speaker 1: come back. I think, you know, he he was. He's
Speaker 1: the closest thing we've had to sort of the out
Speaker 1: of nowhere president. Right. It's the you know, I've always
Speaker 1: said the mythology. I was telling this to my wife
Speaker 1: when we were watching and I said, you know, the
Speaker 1: the mythology that you know, the out of nowhere candidate
Speaker 1: can get the nomination with a speech. The reason the
Speaker 1: mythology existed with conventions is because that had happened once, right,
Speaker 1: James Garfield, right, his speech moved enough people to suddenly
Speaker 1: start considering him because of this sort of deadlock when
Speaker 1: it came to the grant side and the machines and
Speaker 1: all of this stuff. So, you know, Getteau and I
Speaker 1: think there I like how they're portraying Getteau because I
Speaker 1: think he was mentally ill and sort of a guy
Speaker 1: with delusions of grandeur who clearly had a trouble upbring
Speaker 1: had a troubled relationship with his father. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of you know, not to play spoiler here,
Speaker 1: but you know, Gato ends up trying to defend defends
Speaker 1: himself when the first real sort of feeding frenzied trial
Speaker 1: of the century that the media was obsessed with was
Speaker 1: actually the trial and the Gettou trial, which began before
Speaker 1: Garfield died. Because Garfield's you know, Gettoau Getau, you could
Speaker 1: argue didn't kill Garfield. The doctors who didn't know what
Speaker 1: they were doing killed Garfield, right, they stuck there. There's
Speaker 1: a kind named doctor doctor and I haven't I don't
Speaker 1: know if they're going to portray him or not. But
Speaker 1: the guy's name really was doctor doctor. Like sometimes you
Speaker 1: just can't make it up right, it's going to sound
Speaker 1: like it's been fictionalized. But he didn't believe that you
Speaker 1: had to wash your hands before you I mean, this
Speaker 1: was still like debated medical science. Do you do you
Speaker 1: do you do?
Speaker 2: You?
Speaker 1: Should you wash your hands? Do you need a sterile
Speaker 1: environment before you? You know? Which I know seems but
Speaker 1: it was a there was this was so called new medicine,
Speaker 1: new medical practices that was coming out of Europe, and
Speaker 1: it was a guy named doctor Lister, which if you're
Speaker 1: wondering if doctor Lister invented listerine, he did not, But
Speaker 1: doctor Lister was sort of the godfather of this sort
Speaker 1: of idea that you wash your hands and you need
Speaker 1: a sterile environment before as a doctor, before you give
Speaker 1: medical care. So Lister Reene was though named after you
Speaker 1: know Lister, is that part? But no, the treatment, the
Speaker 1: attempt to save Garfield's life killed him. It's possible if
Speaker 1: nobody touched him. That he that he might have that
Speaker 1: the bullet wouldn't have killed him, and he might have
Speaker 1: lived and recovered with the bullet in him, but the
Speaker 1: attempt to get the bullet out actually killed him. So
Speaker 1: but that's obviously stuff that you've scientifically figure out later,
Speaker 1: which in the moment we didn't have. But I am
Speaker 1: obsessed with the entire period. Again, it's interesting how they
Speaker 1: chose to sell it, which is, here's two guys you've
Speaker 1: never heard of or you've forgotten, who have been forgotten
Speaker 1: to history. One was the twentieth President of United States.
Speaker 1: It was It's an interesting choice. I get it. They're
Speaker 1: trying to mass appeal it, and I'm enjoying it. I
Speaker 1: fully will confess I would have had a slightly different way.
Speaker 1: I would have done it different way. I would have started.
Speaker 1: Nothing wrong with what they did. And here's my goal.
Speaker 1: I want this to be successful enough that there is
Speaker 1: more appetite for more. I think Roscoe Conkling if you
Speaker 1: want to go and read about one of the most
Speaker 1: you know, the Mitch McConnell or Nancy Pelosi of their day,
Speaker 1: and I say both right. He was a congressional leader.
Speaker 1: Congressional leaders are both lionized and backroom transactionalists at the
Speaker 1: same time. And don't let anybody tell you that you
Speaker 1: got to have the mix of both of them. Conkling
Speaker 1: was an interesting cat, and he's going to be portrayed
Speaker 1: sort of, I think a bit simply here. It's less
Speaker 1: simple than it is. But boy is he is he
Speaker 1: a character that if there really was a demand for
Speaker 1: more about this era, he could get his own mini series,
Speaker 1: Like you could really develop something just on him. He's
Speaker 1: that colorful of a character. And yes, the way they
Speaker 1: have him dressing, he was always for the day, dressing
Speaker 1: in brighter colors than everybody else. He was flamboyant man
Speaker 1: about town. I don't think he ever spent a night alone.
Speaker 1: So there's a it is. You are right, Max that
Speaker 1: it is up my alley. It was so up my alley.
Speaker 1: I wanted to make my own version of it, so there,
Speaker 1: all right, But kudos to those guys, and thank you
Speaker 1: Netflix for for green lighting a period piece like that.
Speaker 1: There's great history to be told through incredible storytelling, and
Speaker 1: I'd love to see more production companies support stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Next question comes from Stafford from downtown la Hey. I've
Speaker 1: been a fan since your days of Meet the Press,
Speaker 1: and I'm loving the new podcast. Before my question, I
Speaker 1: wanted to say that you appear to have done the impossible.
Speaker 1: You've gotten me interested in both professional and college football.
Speaker 1: Having grown up a Chargers fan, I had largely washed
Speaker 1: my hands of the sport after nineteen ninety five. My
Speaker 1: question is this, can anything be done in the short
Speaker 1: to medium term about electricity costs? I'm a school teacher
Speaker 1: and my partner is a grad student at USC fight On.
Speaker 1: We live in a one bedroom apartment in LA and
Speaker 1: while our incomes are enough to get by, it's starting
Speaker 1: to pinch. I just opened our electric bill for a
Speaker 1: single month and it's easily fifty percent more than we
Speaker 1: were paying a couple of years ago. I know data
Speaker 1: centers are affecting energy prices, but is there more to it?
Speaker 1: Thanks for all the wonderful analysis and for making your
Speaker 1: episodes lengthy. I really get a lot of detail I
Speaker 1: can't get elsewhere. Sincerely, Stafford from downtown LA. How about
Speaker 1: that somebody thanking me for the length. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to go Joe Rogan on you. I must no three
Speaker 1: hour podcasts right. Simmons pushes the envelope in the two
Speaker 1: hour plus range. I'm going to still try to keep
Speaker 1: a one in front of that number on that front.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting with electricity, it's such a complicated thing.
Speaker 1: I was digging into this, and in fact, I'm going
Speaker 1: to be when you hear this, I'm going to be
Speaker 1: down in Austin, Texas, interviewing the governor of Maryland, Wes Moore,
Speaker 1: And I was talking with his staff about a few issues,
Speaker 1: and we were talking about electricity, and I said, you know,
Speaker 1: I was asking about the data center issue in Maryland
Speaker 1: and Maryland, doesn't you know Virginia is a data center state.
Speaker 1: And he was noting how you know, he says, Maryland's
Speaker 1: a transmission state. You know, a lot of electricity goes
Speaker 1: through our state and we pass it through. And you know,
Speaker 1: some states are elect energy producing and they add to
Speaker 1: the grid. Others only take from the grid, Others help,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of the grid itself is a complicated thing.
Speaker 1: California has its own set of rules that only add
Speaker 1: to it. And it's it's one of those things that
Speaker 1: I think that you know, we're we're in this. You know,
Speaker 1: elect elect electric companies are are private companies, but they're
Speaker 1: but they have to get public approval for what they
Speaker 1: do and how they do it. And I think that
Speaker 1: we're about to see, especially with the data center, you know,
Speaker 1: obsession and drain, and it's a real issue in the
Speaker 1: state I live in Virginia because it is like Virginia
Speaker 1: is a huge got a bunch of data centers, and
Speaker 1: we have some of the highest spikes in electricity. So
Speaker 1: I think there's going to have to be some federal
Speaker 1: legislation here because I do think that you know, every
Speaker 1: state is set up to try to regulate itself, right
Speaker 1: You're you're in a you're in a state where where
Speaker 1: they're using a lot of air conditioning and there's always
Speaker 1: a high an a little more usage of energy, particularly
Speaker 1: in the southern part where you know, they're constantly having
Speaker 1: to regulate it, and it is done on a state basis,
Speaker 1: based on state usage. But if we're going to have
Speaker 1: more of these sort of drags on the grid coming
Speaker 1: from other states, and all of this is interconnected, so look,
Speaker 1: I think this is going to be I think the
Speaker 1: electric bill issue is going to be what the price
Speaker 1: of eggs were, right, and grocery bills were in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four. You know that this is going to be
Speaker 1: the thing that everybody comes back to. We saw it
Speaker 1: in the New Jersey race. Because this is happening across
Speaker 1: the board. Everybody's electric bills are going up. There's just
Speaker 1: a more and there, you know. And what people do
Speaker 1: is they cherry pick the thing that they don't like
Speaker 1: to say this is the reason it's going up. It's
Speaker 1: just everything is the reason. And I think that there's
Speaker 1: some argument that what Trump has done with canceling some
Speaker 1: of these all of the above energy strategies, that he
Speaker 1: actually limiting new energy getting onto the grid, like we
Speaker 1: need more diversified sources of energy in order to keep
Speaker 1: everything going that we're going and him sort of you know,
Speaker 1: essentially torpedoing the Biden Energy Bill mandates when it came
Speaker 1: to wind and solar and things like that. It's going
Speaker 1: to directly impact the cost of electric bills. So I
Speaker 1: don't think there's anything short term that's going to get done.
Speaker 1: But I will say this, I think you're going to
Speaker 1: have more political rhetoric about it. You know, we're all
Speaker 1: going to have to start to recalibrate what's warm and
Speaker 1: cold in order to save a few dollars. I can
Speaker 1: tell you what I'm looking into is trying to figure
Speaker 1: out is there's some solar alternatives, you know, to at
Speaker 1: least minimizing the cost on some things. Right, is there
Speaker 1: and it may be tough in an apartment situation to
Speaker 1: the benefit of that. But will you start to see
Speaker 1: landlords who maybe maybe you know, I don't know how
Speaker 1: you're building a set up and sometimes you everybody sort
Speaker 1: of splits the utility costs. It's part of a larger fee,
Speaker 1: and in that sense, the landlord is incentivized to want
Speaker 1: to maybe put you know, solar panels and come up
Speaker 1: with a different way. But I think you're going to
Speaker 1: see a lot of people looking for alternative ways to
Speaker 1: minimize their drag on the grid. But they're still going
Speaker 1: to want need energy to power their electronics or power
Speaker 1: their car or power whatever. So but I I you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna I'm going to keep researching this more
Speaker 1: and more to give you a better answer to this question, Stafford.
Speaker 1: But I can tell you I think this is this
Speaker 1: is an issue that isn't is only going to get
Speaker 1: more in the mainstream in the conversation because it's the
Speaker 1: type of issue that everybody feels, right, everybody sees the
Speaker 1: cost of that, and we're seeing these giant spikes throw
Speaker 1: in extreme weather where in some places you're using your
Speaker 1: air conditioner longer than you normally do, or in some
Speaker 1: places you're using heat maybe at a time you never
Speaker 1: used it before. That also does weird things to the
Speaker 1: grid and ups the costs of what you're doing on it.
Speaker 1: So I think there never definitely needs to be a
Speaker 1: little more federal involvement with how this grid, with how
Speaker 1: the electric grid is operating, because it's it definitely feels
Speaker 1: and you know, who knows Texas is not on the grid.
Speaker 1: They sort of created their own system. That thing it,
Speaker 1: you know, feels like it's it could trigger a bigger
Speaker 1: problem if they have a tough winner. It's always the
Speaker 1: winners that really put a lot of stress on that
Speaker 1: Texas grid, And if that collapses and it's come close
Speaker 1: a couple of times, it could really sort of sober
Speaker 1: up everybody and realize that we have a federal problem here.
Speaker 1: This isn't going to be solved in one state. I
Speaker 1: don't think states have this have the ability to do this.
Speaker 1: Now you may get some states try to find financial
Speaker 1: help for people, but I'm not sure. There's only only
Speaker 1: so much money that might be available for that. But
Speaker 1: I do think this is going to become the most
Speaker 1: symbolic issue that's talked about when it comes to cost
Speaker 1: of living challenges. Next question comes from Jim Philadelphia's It's
Speaker 1: Big Fans in c NBC Days. Congrats on a great
Speaker 1: start to the new chapter. One been wondering, what do
Speaker 1: you think Trump's real motivation is for intervening in Venezuela
Speaker 1: under the narco terrorism label. He's never shown much interest
Speaker 1: in preserving democracy. Is this really about removing Maduro? Or
Speaker 1: is it just another self serving move, maybe even a
Speaker 1: play for a Nobel Peace Prize. Jim, I'll tell you
Speaker 1: what my thesis is on this. So Marco Rubio, you know,
Speaker 1: after starting off his relationship with Trump making Dick jokes
Speaker 1: about him right at a debate talking about his hands, right,
Speaker 1: Why is the hands part of the thing? Right? It
Speaker 1: is Rubio that made that meme famous. Rubio has since
Speaker 1: done a one ad ent Trump right. We saw it
Speaker 1: sometime during the first term, and he has gone out
Speaker 1: of his way to endear him endear the Latin American
Speaker 1: political activist community that is on the side of ousting
Speaker 1: some of these guys, but that diaspora that has a
Speaker 1: lot of political and financial power in South Florida who've
Speaker 1: been very supportive of Rubio's politics over the years. He essentially,
Speaker 1: because Trump is such an important figure now in South Florida,
Speaker 1: he essentially helped Trump cement whatever you know, cement this,
Speaker 1: or you could argue Rubio had to catch up to
Speaker 1: where all these folks, they all were going, they were
Speaker 1: going to gravitate towards Trump anyway, but this began where Trump,
Speaker 1: where Trump started. Basically doesn't make any decision in Latin
Speaker 1: America without Marco Rubio. And that was true in sort
Speaker 1: of the last year or two of the Trump era,
Speaker 1: the first Trump term. And it is and then you know,
Speaker 1: Rubio really ingratiated himself during Trump's exile at mar A Lago.
Speaker 1: He'd constantly go there. He'd bring these Latin American figures
Speaker 1: to meet with them. He'd be So this is a
Speaker 1: long way of me making the case that this is
Speaker 1: not a Donald Trump obsession. This is a Marco Rubio obsession.
Speaker 1: And I think that Rubio has you know, there is
Speaker 1: there is a demand. Look go see the I hope
Speaker 1: you heard my conversation with Billy Corbin and he did
Speaker 1: a documentary called Men of War about a failed sort
Speaker 1: of bizarre coup, a you know, group of US mercenaries
Speaker 1: working with a former bodyguard of Trump's to somehow get
Speaker 1: on the get into Venezuela and overthrow Maduro. Kind of
Speaker 1: a bay of pigs, Venezuelan style type of story. It's
Speaker 1: one of those you can't believe this is true, but
Speaker 1: you know, Billy always has the receipts. There is a
Speaker 1: group of folks in South Florida that that are, you know,
Speaker 1: frustrated with Maduro, and this is Rubio cares about this.
Speaker 1: Rubio believes in this, and I think Rubio has got
Speaker 1: enough stature and status in Trump's world He's both Secretary
Speaker 1: State National Security Advisor that it is Rubio that is
Speaker 1: helping to steer him in this direction. And I think
Speaker 1: that there's no doubt in my mind that this is
Speaker 1: a Rubio project that Trump has adopted and he's you
Speaker 1: you know, this narco terrorism thing is you know, if
Speaker 1: you had to prove it, I don't know how they would, right,
Speaker 1: you know, where do you prove that the drug money
Speaker 1: is being used to fund terrorism. That's number one. Number two,
Speaker 1: what fentanyl. You know, this is not where our fentyl
Speaker 1: problem comes from. It's not in Venezuela. It comes from
Speaker 1: Mexico and China. So this is a pretext that's sort
Speaker 1: of been created. Look, I would feel better about this
Speaker 1: if the argument were we're trying to enforce democratic norms,
Speaker 1: then we can debate whether we should be using the
Speaker 1: military to do that. That should be the debate we
Speaker 1: should be having as a country about this Venezuela move.
Speaker 1: But instead they're essentially lying to us about the rationale
Speaker 1: for what they're doing, saying this is not about regime change,
Speaker 1: it's not about the democracy. This is about a specific thing.
Speaker 1: And yet what are we doing. It looks like we're
Speaker 1: on the verge of of overthrowing a government. So it
Speaker 1: feels like we're you know, it feels like we're doing
Speaker 1: this all the wrong way, Which is why a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks ago, in my toodcast time machine, I wanted
Speaker 1: to make the Panama Canal Anniversary the Liberation of Panama,
Speaker 1: if you will, an important story because anytime, you know,
Speaker 1: whenever we're involved and we lie about why we're involved,
Speaker 1: we do not help our long term ability to have
Speaker 1: influenced the right way in Latin America. And I just,
Speaker 1: you know, I am I want to see Maduro go.
Speaker 1: I am, you know, sort of like it's like it's
Speaker 1: like Saddam. I'm glad Saddam left. But was that the
Speaker 1: way to do it? I don't know if this is
Speaker 1: the right way to get rid of Adua. Next question
Speaker 1: comes from Dan, and then I'm going to get into
Speaker 1: my college football preview for the weekend. We'll do it
Speaker 1: through the prism of the college football playoff. He goes,
Speaker 1: I've been enjoying the podcast is always. Something I noticed
Speaker 1: is that the election coverage shows that Andrew Cuomo outperforms
Speaker 1: on Mam Donnie among voters without a college degree. NBC
Speaker 1: reports that Mam Donnie won only twenty six percent of
Speaker 1: white non college graduates, and similar trends appeared in the
Speaker 1: gubernatorial races. Despite overall wins, Democrats still seem to underperform
Speaker 1: among non college educated voters, raising concerns about their strengthen
Speaker 1: states like Michigan and Nebraska. Is it fair to interpret
Speaker 1: these results as evidence that Democrats have not yet repaired
Speaker 1: their image with working class white voters. If so, what
Speaker 1: steps should the party take to become more competitive with
Speaker 1: this group? Thanks Dan, Well, look, I hopefully you're listening
Speaker 1: to the answer this question after you've heard the interview
Speaker 1: with Adam Gentilsen. It's exactly what he's trying to do,
Speaker 1: which is, how do you get you know, the irony
Speaker 1: is you know, I think Democrats have struggled culturally to
Speaker 1: connect to this group of voters for some time. They
Speaker 1: used to be sort of Democrats and they were just
Speaker 1: sort of Democrats, and it was they were culturally Democrats
Speaker 1: that and the Democrats they thought economically were looking out
Speaker 1: for him as is That explains why there were two
Speaker 1: US senators in Nebraska for you know, not an insignificant
Speaker 1: period of time, and almost always one a state that
Speaker 1: you know, is the birthplace of the the perhaps the
Speaker 1: original Prairie populace William Jennings. Bryan, Right, So I think
Speaker 1: you're right to point out those things. I think this
Speaker 1: is to me the great danger of the midterms on
Speaker 1: the Democrats, which is they don't need they could do
Speaker 1: as mediocre as they did with non college educated whites
Speaker 1: in the midterms because they won't turn out in the
Speaker 1: same numbers that they'll turn out in a presidential election,
Speaker 1: giving Democrats an opportunity because they'll they'll sort of over
Speaker 1: index on their more frequent voters and college education voters,
Speaker 1: and they will be a bigger share of the electorate
Speaker 1: in a midterm than they will be in a general.
Speaker 1: It's why, you know, have they been a presidential like
Speaker 1: turnout in say Virginia, Maybe she only wins by eight
Speaker 1: instead of fifteen, and maybe if you got although you know,
Speaker 1: to me, the New Jersey thing is why I why
Speaker 1: I believe this was a Trump referendum. When you have
Speaker 1: the Republican candidate actually getting more raw vote than he
Speaker 1: got four years earlier, but he lost by ten percentage
Speaker 1: points more than when he lost before, shows you a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of voters that didn't show up four years
Speaker 1: ago that decided to show up. Well, you didn't have
Speaker 1: an equal basically, a whole bunch of presidential only voters
Speaker 1: decided to show up in a governor's race on the
Speaker 1: Democratic side. You didn't get the presidential only voters to
Speaker 1: suddenly show up in a governor's race on the Republican side.
Speaker 1: And then you can see how lopsided things can get.
Speaker 1: I think the biggest, the potential worst outcome for the
Speaker 1: Democrats hopes in twenty twenty eight. Weirdly will be thinking
Speaker 1: that if they win the House in the Senate, that
Speaker 1: they've solved their problems and it's just a it's you know,
Speaker 1: there going to just coast to the presidency like what
Speaker 1: happened in six going into eight, and I would just
Speaker 1: say it's very possible they could have a midterm revival.
Speaker 1: Eighty six midterms were terrific midterms for the Democrats, and
Speaker 1: then they after getting clobbered in eighty four, and then
Speaker 1: they go and get clobbered in eighty eight. So I
Speaker 1: do think the Democratic makeup of their more likely voter
Speaker 1: automatically puts them at advantage to overperform in the midterms.
Speaker 1: It's why even in a bad midterm year like twenty
Speaker 1: two was, they didn't get clobberd the way they that
Speaker 1: an out party gets clobbered or an inn party gets clobbered,
Speaker 1: simply because more of their voters are just are more
Speaker 1: regular voters. No, I think that the party still has
Speaker 1: a problem and until it you know, in fairness to
Speaker 1: the party on this one, neither Virginia nor New Jersey
Speaker 1: is a huge It had a rural vote that the
Speaker 1: candidate had to make an effort. That's not going to
Speaker 1: be the case in trying to win an election in
Speaker 1: North Carolina. That's not going to be the case. In
Speaker 1: trying to win in Ohio. That's not going to be
Speaker 1: the case in trying to win in Iowa or Alaska,
Speaker 1: or Kansas or Mississippi or even Texas. You know, you
Speaker 1: can't win Texas just by winning the cities that a
Speaker 1: Roar came close, but he couldn't do it. He want
Speaker 1: all the he won all the cities, and he won
Speaker 1: all the the big media markets, but he couldn't. He
Speaker 1: got killed in the ex serbs and the world voters.
Speaker 1: So uh yeah, I don't think they've solved any other
Speaker 1: problems on that front. And I still think they the
Speaker 1: Democrats are you know, they have to be seen as
Speaker 1: a stronger party. Strength And I know that's an elusive word,
Speaker 1: but I think strength's a big, a big thing with
Speaker 1: this with with this voting group. If they're going to
Speaker 1: try to reconnect back with them, and you know, the
Speaker 1: economy will be an entree. It's not lost on me.
Speaker 1: If you think about it. The last four Democratic presidents
Speaker 1: in my lifetime who've won all one during an economic downturn.
Speaker 1: You know, it's possible that Democrats are just you know,
Speaker 1: in my lifetime have culturally been on the wrong side
Speaker 1: of where the country is, and Republicans have culturally been
Speaker 1: on the right side where the country is. But that
Speaker 1: Democrats when the economy's in the tank. It was true
Speaker 1: in seventy six, it's true in ninety two, and although
Speaker 1: the economy was recovering by the time Trump Clinton won,
Speaker 1: but the perception was it was in the tank. It
Speaker 1: was true in eight, it's true in twenty right, it
Speaker 1: was certainly virus related, but still it was an economic downturn. Sadly,
Speaker 1: it may be that there's an economic downturn in twenty
Speaker 1: eight and that powers everything. And let me just tell
Speaker 1: you this, when you have an election that's all about
Speaker 1: the economy, it suddenly papers over all of your different
Speaker 1: interestscript problems, right because everything becomes about that. So for Miami,
Speaker 1: it's their last home game. I know you're on pins
Speaker 1: and needles. The College Football Playoff Committee is getting a
Speaker 1: little better at giving some respect to the University of Miami,
Speaker 1: though not A. Ton, the guy who runs the committee,
Speaker 1: who was the spokesperson, basically said Miami is the only
Speaker 1: team in the ACC that has won a decent non
Speaker 1: conference game, like completely forgetting that Ala Fingbama lost to
Speaker 1: Florida State in Week one and so what you see
Speaker 1: as you see. And this is why I do not
Speaker 1: trust the ESPN Invitational Committee. I think all of these
Speaker 1: athletic directors and they're all I mean, my god, they've
Speaker 1: all realized they work for ESPN and the SEC and
Speaker 1: nobody else. Apparently. It is it is, it is why
Speaker 1: we have to get rid of this committee. They are
Speaker 1: not you know, I and if yous me, you know,
Speaker 1: you could say I'm being you know, yeah, I'm being
Speaker 1: biased towards the ACC. My bias is I want the
Speaker 1: ACC to get treated fairly. I'm just asking for fair treatment.
Speaker 1: This is a committee, and this is a network that
Speaker 1: has already punished the ACC two years ago with denying
Speaker 1: an undefeated ACC champion access to the playoff of Florida State.
Speaker 1: This is a ESPN Invitational committee that denied the number
Speaker 1: one ranked offense in the country with ten wins and
Speaker 1: two losses, the Dederus from Miami. They did not put
Speaker 1: him in the playoff simply because they were in ACC
Speaker 1: school the exact same resume, but an SEC school, and
Speaker 1: I promise you they would have made it when you're
Speaker 1: literally the top ranked offense in the country, because supposedly
Speaker 1: those outside metrics matter. No, their metrics matter only when
Speaker 1: it is about getting the matchups that they want for
Speaker 1: the television show. And now it is a head scratcher
Speaker 1: to me that they didn't think cam Ward was good
Speaker 1: for their television show. I would argue cam Ward would
Speaker 1: have been great for their television show last year in
Speaker 1: the exhibition that is the ESPN Invitational. But the fact
Speaker 1: that the committee is literally lying about the ACC's resume
Speaker 1: on national television with Rhys Davis or misinformed, okay, lying
Speaker 1: and inquires motive, But there is a motive here. They're
Speaker 1: going out of their way to make the case against
Speaker 1: the ACC because apparently, if you're if you're in the
Speaker 1: ACC and you have a competitive conference, your conference must suck.
Speaker 1: If you're in the SEC and have a competitive conference,
Speaker 1: it's proof that your conference is great. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: just sorry, it's subjective bullshit on this, Okay, Yes, is
Speaker 1: it true that the SEC program spend more money collectively
Speaker 1: than the ACC does. So you assume you have more talent, yes,
Speaker 1: but you know is produced like something I like if
Speaker 1: you want to sit here and play that game. The
Speaker 1: ACC has I think produced the second most amount of
Speaker 1: first round draft picks over the last ten years, right
Speaker 1: behind the SEC and ahead of the Big ten in
Speaker 1: the Big twelve. But again we can you can find
Speaker 1: little things like that all the time to slice and
Speaker 1: dice things. But they went out of their way to
Speaker 1: punish to and it would have been some other ACC
Speaker 1: school and they've done it. And again this goes back
Speaker 1: to the where the hell is the commissioner Jim Phillips
Speaker 1: is way too meek uh in this conversation he lets
Speaker 1: Greg Sankei go move around with them up and down.
Speaker 1: I told you last week about my source that that
Speaker 1: told me how much that every week Greg Greg Sanki
Speaker 1: must have had a hissy fit. That that Herbstreet and
Speaker 1: Fowler were out doing a Texas Tech game. That must
Speaker 1: have freaked them out. But that every week he lobbies
Speaker 1: that you must be in the SEC. You must be
Speaker 1: in the SEC. And again I get it. ESPN's in
Speaker 1: business with the SEC, but they're also in business with
Speaker 1: the ACC, and I think the ACC could be suing
Speaker 1: ESPN for breach of contract. This is a network that
Speaker 1: has gone out of their way to diminish the value
Speaker 1: of the ACC. The ACC is increased its value, and
Speaker 1: ESPN tries to diminish the value of the ACC, and
Speaker 1: they're your biggest business partner. The ACEC should be in court.
Speaker 1: Don't sue each other. Sue ESPN for essentially for diminishing
Speaker 1: the value of ACC sports in general and ACC football
Speaker 1: in particular. I'm sorry the lack of pushback, and again
Speaker 1: it's you know, ESPN controls the college football playoff, a mistake,
Speaker 1: which is why you got to get rid of this committee.
Speaker 1: We ultimately got get rid of this committee. There is
Speaker 1: a way to make all of this and on the
Speaker 1: field issue, you can you know, if you basically say,
Speaker 1: you know, if a conference, i'd love to see sort
Speaker 1: of actually an eighteen playoff that essentially had each conference
Speaker 1: have their own sort of six team round robin of
Speaker 1: some sort that decided who their representative was in the
Speaker 1: eight and you'd have your four conference champions, your group
Speaker 1: of five champions after they had a little tournament. But again,
Speaker 1: you had to win on the field to get in,
Speaker 1: and then you might have and you might have three
Speaker 1: wildcards which Notre Dame would be eligible for, and the
Speaker 1: next two highest winning percentages in the power for just
Speaker 1: like the NFL wildcard works. And yes, sometimes you might
Speaker 1: have somebody left out, but it was done on the
Speaker 1: field with metrics. Everybody understands at the beginning. You know
Speaker 1: what nobody says from this committee. They can't tell you
Speaker 1: to this day. What matters more your wins are your losses.
Speaker 1: It's a win right. If they want to make the
Speaker 1: case that Miami is in, they will make a big
Speaker 1: deal out of their wins. If you want to make
Speaker 1: the case that Miami is out, you will make a
Speaker 1: big deal about their losses. Dinno. With Notre Dame, what's
Speaker 1: the case to put them in? They lost? Two of
Speaker 1: their losses were by a collective of four points against
Speaker 1: two of the most talented teams in the country. What's
Speaker 1: the case not to put Notre Dame in? The two
Speaker 1: times they faced talented teams in the country that belong
Speaker 1: in the playoffs, they couldn't beat them. But Notre Dame
Speaker 1: is a brand. Look, Miami has been a brand. Miami
Speaker 1: is the number one rated ACC school as far as
Speaker 1: television audience is concerned. It has been the last couple
Speaker 1: of years. You know, for the most part, Miami's been
Speaker 1: a brand and that usually helps them in situations like this.
Speaker 1: I do believe when college football continues this what they've
Speaker 1: done to the conference with the SEC and the Big
Speaker 1: Ten have done everybody else, Miami will probably be a
Speaker 1: half And unfortunately, my friends at NC State, Miami's opponent
Speaker 1: this week may end up being a poor have not. Now.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's healthy for college football. I think
Speaker 1: we could be doing this a better way. But anyway,
Speaker 1: here we are, so college football playoff rant over. It
Speaker 1: does look like Miami's path is not crazy anymore. They
Speaker 1: finally have them. They're still a bit under ranked. You know,
Speaker 1: are you're really ranking Miami behind Utah? No offense? To
Speaker 1: my producer, Lauren is a big Utah guy, and you
Speaker 1: know they do the you the wrong way. It's not
Speaker 1: this way, guys, It's like this, but that's okay. That said,
Speaker 1: do you think I have a lot of confidence in
Speaker 1: this coaching staff to be ready to put a licking
Speaker 1: on NC State on Senior Day at Miami? You know,
Speaker 1: I got a sixty five percent confidence level, but I
Speaker 1: don't have a ninety percent confidence level. You know, Miami
Speaker 1: should be able to put a number up on NC State.
Speaker 1: A forty five to ten victory should be what they
Speaker 1: do if they want to make the playoff. They kind
Speaker 1: of need a forty five to ten. But if you
Speaker 1: told me this was a thirty one, twenty four to
Speaker 1: twenty seven game that Miami eked out or somehow screwed
Speaker 1: it up at the end due to poor coaching decisions,
Speaker 1: I let's just say I fear it a little bit now.
Speaker 1: I don't think NC State has the defense and I
Speaker 1: think Miami's defense. You know, again, we're I'm going to
Speaker 1: learn a lot about how much these players want to
Speaker 1: play for these coaches, because if they do. I did
Speaker 1: not like the first half of what I saw in
Speaker 1: the Miami Syracuse game. It looked like it didn't look
Speaker 1: like I mean, it does feel like the offensive coordinator,
Speaker 1: Shannon Dawson is just out of ideas they continue. They
Speaker 1: are clearly not comfortable with Carson Beck making some decisions
Speaker 1: because they seem to fear putting him in positions to
Speaker 1: uh win it, you know, to either make a big
Speaker 1: player potentially, you know, put him in a precarious position.
Speaker 1: It's a shame how they coach it, how they do this.
Speaker 1: So we'll see. I'm nervous. I'm very nervous. I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna lie to you. I'm very nervous about this game
Speaker 1: because I actually think coach Crystal Ball is feeling the pressure.
Speaker 1: I think Shannon Dawson's feeling the pressure. And sometimes pressure
Speaker 1: is good on people respond to the pressure and they
Speaker 1: give you their best work, and sometimes the pressure puts
Speaker 1: them and they get parallel La. We'll see. The biggest
Speaker 1: game on the board as far as Miami's playoff rankings
Speaker 1: are concerned, is actually at the sight of where game
Speaker 1: Day decided to go, which is an interesting decision. They're
Speaker 1: in Pittsburgh and they're for the Notre Dame pit game.
Speaker 1: This is arguably Notre Dame's toughest game left, which is
Speaker 1: really so they're there because you know, Notre Dame has
Speaker 1: they can't lose in order to have a shot at
Speaker 1: the playoff. They went out, They're going to get in
Speaker 1: because a ten and two Notre Dame team will always
Speaker 1: make the playoff no matter who their two losses are.
Speaker 1: To and no matter if the ten wins are against
Speaker 1: the entire MAC conference, it's Notre Dame. You know, it's
Speaker 1: TV show people, So as long as it's an invitational,
Speaker 1: they'll always get the invite. Pitt's been an interesting team
Speaker 1: ever since they put in this freshman quarterback. He's been
Speaker 1: on He's lit it up. A patent our doozy team. Usually,
Speaker 1: isn't this free flowing on offense?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Miami has to play Pitt last game of the year,
Speaker 1: so this will be a common opponent. So everything about
Speaker 1: this game I have to I'm going to be watching
Speaker 1: every inch of it. It goes. It's on, it's the
Speaker 1: noon game, it'll be on before the Miami game, which
Speaker 1: is a three thirty. This is a huge game for
Speaker 1: the playoff. It's a huge game for Notre Dame. It's
Speaker 1: a huge game for the ACC. It's a huge game
Speaker 1: for Miami. It is this is interesting, right, what's better
Speaker 1: for Miami Notre Dame winning. I think I want Notre
Speaker 1: Dame to win by a field goal and then Miami
Speaker 1: to beat Pit by thirty. That's probably the best outcome
Speaker 1: because this will be if Miami and Notre Dame are
Speaker 1: both ten and two the Pit game will be the
Speaker 1: most recent comparative they'll both have played at PIT, So
Speaker 1: I have a feeling Pit and by the way, Pit
Speaker 1: seven to two, they're not out of this, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm not, you know. I don't know if they can
Speaker 1: make get all the way through their schedule and finish
Speaker 1: it off right. The two of their two of their
Speaker 1: next three games or Notre Dame and Miami, and the
Speaker 1: other one is Georgia Tech. So pitt literally might be
Speaker 1: facing three playoff teams at the end of their season.
Speaker 1: But they certainly are going to have an impact on
Speaker 1: Notre dames chances, Miami's chances, and Georgia Tech's chances. And
Speaker 1: they it's their last three games. So look, Pitt's had
Speaker 1: kind of an easy schedule. We still don't know how
Speaker 1: they lost to West Virginia, and I think they're trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how they lost to West Virginia and
Speaker 1: then their only other losses Louisville, which is a loss
Speaker 1: that Miami also has, but they've not They've not had
Speaker 1: the toughest of schedules. They opened with Duquine and Central
Speaker 1: Michigan and then West Virginia was their third game of
Speaker 1: the year. Which because it's a it's a regional rivalry,
Speaker 1: you throw the records out, right, But it's it's easily
Speaker 1: the single most important game as far as the playoff
Speaker 1: is concerned. That's on the board. A few other game games. Uh,
Speaker 1: do you buy that Wisconsin can play two good games
Speaker 1: in a row and give Indiana and Indiana plays two
Speaker 1: bad games in a row? Hard hard to see that one.
Speaker 1: This one's at Indiana. Boy, after this, Indiana only has Purdue,
Speaker 1: you know, the end of the season. And that's that
Speaker 1: could be fun, right, even though Produe is winless, they're
Speaker 1: gonna they care about this game. It's do you have
Speaker 1: to throw the records out? We shall see South Carolina,
Speaker 1: Texas A and M. I was not going to pay
Speaker 1: attention to this game. And one of my favorite betting
Speaker 1: podcasts made the point that South Carolina is coming off
Speaker 1: of bye after firing their offensive coordinator, a guy named Shula,
Speaker 1: one of the grandson of Don Shula, And uh that
Speaker 1: they're gonna make you know, and they already know that.
Speaker 1: Miami and other schools are already sniffing around Leonora Sellers
Speaker 1: for the for their portal QB for next season. I
Speaker 1: have a feeling that South Carolina offense is going to
Speaker 1: be a bit different showcasing Sellers, let him do his
Speaker 1: thing a lot more. It's going to be an open offense.
Speaker 1: So either it works and we see an exciting game
Speaker 1: and Lenora's sellers is the is the quarterback we all
Speaker 1: thought he was at the beginning of this season, or
Speaker 1: an m just rolls and they win by three touchdowns. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it's certainly worth turning on that game. Don't sleep on
Speaker 1: South Florida Navy South. You know, this is just the
Speaker 1: type of game that could turn into a weird shootout.
Speaker 1: The way Navy now can score, South Florida can score,
Speaker 1: it will this This shouldn't be close, but it is
Speaker 1: at the Naval Academy. It will be a little chilly
Speaker 1: in Annapolis. You know, this is just the type of
Speaker 1: game that USF could blow. Do you believe in Oklahoma?
Speaker 1: I don't so I think Alabama pays them, But it
Speaker 1: is worth noting Alabama is not the best favorite all
Speaker 1: the time. Is Caleb de Borera so far? But I
Speaker 1: just I just you know, I just don't buy that
Speaker 1: that Oklahoma can score much on them. And do you
Speaker 1: how do you think they have a good I know
Speaker 1: they statistically have a good defense. Do you believe they
Speaker 1: have a good defense? Have they really played anybody? Just
Speaker 1: something to think about it. I guess their Tennessee win
Speaker 1: that was that was a pretty good performance. You got
Speaker 1: to give them that. But obviously still has playoff implications
Speaker 1: right now, Oklahoma has to win, and I guess Alabama
Speaker 1: doesn't because it would only be their second loss, and
Speaker 1: and you know they and apparently their first loss doesn't
Speaker 1: even count anymore as far as the College Football Committee
Speaker 1: is concerned. Other than that, Iowa USC. You know, USC
Speaker 1: still has the outside chance. Iowa's lost. Iowa had it all,
Speaker 1: it was there for the taken. If they beat Oregon.
Speaker 1: This game is a whole, but it's a big a
Speaker 1: lot different. It suddenly becomes a playoff game. Now does
Speaker 1: Iowa know it's over? And if they do know it's over,
Speaker 1: USC could pace them. The only other game that might
Speaker 1: be intriguing to keep an eye on, of course, is
Speaker 1: Georgia and Texas. Texas can't lose, they have to keep winning.
Speaker 1: This game's at Georgia. There's been a part of me
Speaker 1: that's wondered, what does all the arch manning commentary of
Speaker 1: the last two months. What happens to all of it?
Speaker 1: If suddenly Texas beach Georgia this week, beach Texas A
Speaker 1: and M in the last game of the year, and
Speaker 1: is sitting there at ten and two, and suddenly, with
Speaker 1: wins over Georgia and Texas A and M, they're probably
Speaker 1: a top ten team if that's what happens. Oh, by
Speaker 1: the way, so that's anyway. Let's see what arch Manning
Speaker 1: looks like. Let's see if the Georgia defense. You know,
Speaker 1: I think Georgia can score on anybody. They've proven that
Speaker 1: that offense has turned out to be pretty good this year.
Speaker 1: This Texas defense show up and slow down Georgia. Obviously.
Speaker 1: The good news is this is the primetime game and
Speaker 1: we'll all have a lot of time.
Speaker 2: To watch it.
Speaker 1: So with that, let's go Canes and I'll see you
Speaker 1: next week.