The Bulwark Podcast XX
[0] Happy Monday and welcome to the Bulwark podcast.
[1] It is the day before the midterm elections.
[2] It is November 7th.
[3] Everybody is confidently making predictions, although I think it's safe to say, Will.
[4] By the way, good morning, Will Salatan.
[5] You know, welcome back.
[6] Hey, thanks, Charlie.
[7] I think it's also safe to say that there seems to be a certain amount of anxiety among the pollsters and the pundits and the predictors out there that they may not actually know what's going on.
[8] Yeah, well, there's uncertainty about the absolute level of where things stand.
[9] race to race, but there's, I think, a lot of certainty about the trend and about the wave.
[10] I think so, although, you know, we can get into that.
[11] I mean, I, look, I'm not going to argue against the conventional wisdom here that this is going to be a Republican win.
[12] It was your point about the counterwaves, right, that there's possibly, you know, other things, you know, waves within waves that may surprise us.
[13] You know, tomorrow night, I mean, there's a couple of cautionary notes.
[14] Number one, I mean, we will get a pretty good idea, I think, early on how things are going when you get some of those bellwether congressional districts out of Virginia that everybody's focused on, Luria, Abigail Spanberger.
[15] But also, I think it's worth reminding people that this might not be over for quite a few days.
[16] I mean, we're all focused on, you know, what a shambolic mess 24 might be, but there could be a lot of challenges, a lot of delayed counts.
[17] We may not know for some time, for example, who won in Pennsylvania because of the way they count the ballots.
[18] There's that whole red mirage thing where you have a certain number of votes that that come in early that tend in one direction and then the big cities report.
[19] Same thing is going to happen in Wisconsin.
[20] And I think we've learned exactly how the bad faith actors can react to a completely predictable cycle of counting.
[21] Yeah.
[22] So let's separate what we don't know from what we know.
[23] We don't know exactly who's going to win and lose in the toss -up races, right?
[24] But we do know that there's been a trend toward the Republicans.
[25] we do know that the, as you just said, that the Republican votes by and large will be counted first.
[26] That is to say that there will be mail ballots heavily used by Democrats that will come in later, that will be counted later.
[27] Some of that because Republicans themselves, for example, in Pennsylvania, prevent the state from counting those ballots earlier.
[28] So basically, there will be a red mirage.
[29] And as you point out, bad actors on the Republican or the right wing side will use that gap to claim that, you know, as Trump said, stop the count, claim, you know, count only the election day votes that we've already got and not the mail -in ballots that came in legally that are Democratic leaning and that might push some of those elections to the Democratic side.
[30] Well, and I also think that it's likely to become a new normal that they're going to be refusal to concede and endless challenges of mail -in ballots.
[31] The lead story in the Washington Post this morning is about all of the Republican challenges around the country to mail in votes, trying to disqualify them.
[32] Here in my home state of Wisconsin, the chairman of the Assembly's Elections Committee is actually trying to have all military ballots thrown out.
[33] Like, hey, thank you, thank you for your service.
[34] Now fuck off.
[35] I know what?
[36] So you know that in any kind of a close race, there are going to be people running to court, challenging the ballots, that will be various conspiracy theories.
[37] is anyone who thinks that this is going to go off easily, I think is somewhat naive.
[38] Now, of course, it's a big Republican blowout amazingly.
[39] Republicans will decide that they believe the outcome and the validity of the election, but we can't be sure.
[40] So let's come back to some of this, the closing arguments over the weekend and whether they're working.
[41] I want to get your take on all of that.
[42] You picked up on a couple of very, very interesting talking points.
[43] But we have to spend a couple of moments talking about this interesting, red on red fire from the former president who during one of his rallies just sort of gratuitously dropped in a new nickname for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who, by the way, is on the ballot the election in one of the most important states in the country tomorrow.
[44] So this is what Donald Trump said when he was calling Ron DeSantis, Ron Sanchez.
[45] I don't know who's teaching him his words because I'm telling you he didn't come up with that word himself.
[46] But here's the sound We're winning big, big, big in the Republican Party for the nomination like nobody's ever seen before.
[47] Let's see, there it is, Trump at 71, Rhonda Sanctimonious at 10%.
[48] Mike Pence at 7.
[49] Oh, Mike's doing better than I thought.
[50] Okay, so, Will, what is this?
[51] I mean, let's wallow into this.
[52] Shots fired a couple of days before the midterm elections.
[53] There's obviously been all these reports of tension between the candidates.
[54] Trump goes to Florida, has a rally without the sitting Republican governor, and then calls him without any context whatsoever, Ron DeSanctimonious.
[55] There's so much going on in this, Charlie.
[56] Okay.
[57] So first of all, we have this alpha dog standoff between these two guys, right?
[58] Trump is saying he hasn't endorsed Ron DeSantis because DeSantis hasn't asked him to.
[59] Desantis didn't come to Trump's rally because Trump didn't personally invite him.
[60] There's this mafioso thing going on between these two guys.
[61] You have to come to me is what each of these guys is saying to the other.
[62] So they're doing that.
[63] Meanwhile, there's this jostling for position.
[64] And it's not DeSantis who is, in particular doing this.
[65] It's Trump.
[66] Trump, he delivers that ridiculous nickname for DeSantis.
[67] I mean, I guess it's one of Trump's better nicknames.
[68] I think Trump is generally bad at nicknames.
[69] This one's marginally funny.
[70] But what's interesting to me about that quote is he's doing it.
[71] He's insulting DeSantis in the context of reading off Republican poll standings, not Trump versus Biden, not against the Democrat, but among Republicans.
[72] So Trump is entirely focused on, as you point out, Charlie, DeSantis is on the ballot right now running against a Democrat, and instead of thinking, I am with the Republican team, Trump is out there trying to position himself against DeSantis, against Pence, against anyone else who might run for president on the Republican side in 2024.
[73] It's all about Trump.
[74] So what's interesting is watching the reaction of many of the anti -anti -Trump conservatives who are just shocked and outrage in the poll that Donald Trump would exercise.
[75] So little discipline that he would actually do something like this.
[76] And, of course, it reminds us of the leopards eating people's faces party and how they are always shocked to find out that the leopards are going to eat their face.
[77] But the question is, okay, so what?
[78] What's going to happen?
[79] You know, our colleague, Sarah Longwell, is arguing, look, Ronda Sanchez is eventually going to just, you know, suck it up and realize I'm not going to put up with this.
[80] This is a taste of what's coming, if I'm quoting her correctly, based on Twitter, that she doesn't think he's going to run.
[81] I mean, he can keep his powder dry.
[82] He can raise lots of money and then run in a few years where he's still a very young man. So what do you think?
[83] I mean, right now there's all of this angry.
[84] I can't believe this sort of thing going on.
[85] But I kind of remember that vibe from 2015.
[86] Well, people aren't going to stand for this.
[87] He's insulting our own people.
[88] I mean, my goodness, this isn't going to work.
[89] Well, actually, we know exactly how it played out.
[90] Why would we think it doesn't play out exactly the same way this time?
[91] So I basically agree with that.
[92] if you look at the behavior of the Republican Party for the last six years, seven years since Trump ran for president, the driving factor, the dominant factor, has been cowardice.
[93] If you want to understand how Republicans behave, that is elected Republicans, they are cowards.
[94] So they didn't stand up to Trump when he was president.
[95] And there's very little reason to think that they will stand up to Trump when he is an ex -president running to be president again.
[96] I think they will knuckle under.
[97] DeSantis is probably another of those people.
[98] And to echo a point that Sarah has made, you know, Ron DeSantis is a shrewd politician, but is he charismatic?
[99] I mean, I don't think DeSantis has charisma the way that Trump does.
[100] No, he does not.
[101] There are a lot of people who listen to us, Charlie, who hate Donald Trump.
[102] And you can hate Donald Trump all you want, but he is a charismatic politician.
[103] And I just don't think Ron DeSantis has ever shown any evidence that he is.
[104] Well, also, I think that DeSantis will have to, you know, come to grips with the fact that if he runs against Donald Trump, that Maga World will feel the need to destroy him utterly, to ridicule him, to attack him, to throw everything.
[105] This was like a little bit of a, like a throwaway line saying, you know, if you come from me, it's going to be like this.
[106] Remember what I did to Ted Cruz?
[107] Remember what I did to Marco Rubio?
[108] Remember what I did to Jeb Bush, all of these folks.
[109] Do you want some of this?
[110] Another news story that kind of relates that I don't, well, I actually don't know whether it relates.
[111] I want to get your take on all of this.
[112] So, baby Netanyahu is going to be back as Prime Minister of Israel, despite being indicted on corruption charges.
[113] And our colleague Mona Sharon, who's been arguing that perhaps it's too risky to criminally charged Trump was tweeting out, hey, just noting here that maybe indicting a politician doesn't actually prevent them from being reelected in the future, just saying.
[114] So what do you think?
[115] Yeah, no, I think she's right.
[116] I think that we, you know, we, Charlie, you and I have, and others have, have expected for quite some time.
[117] I can't speak for you.
[118] I have made a terrible mistake in all of my punditry, and that is that I have assumed that rationality and decency will affect history.
[119] And I have been proven wrong.
[120] Welcome to our club.
[121] So, yeah, the guy gets indicted.
[122] You would think in a moral universe that would matter, but it seems not to.
[123] And there seem to be a hell of a lot of people, and not just in the United States who just don't care.
[124] They don't care about, particularly about violations of the law.
[125] They don't care about violations of ethics.
[126] And, you know, I think I'll speak for, I'm Jewish.
[127] I kind of thought, you know, my fellow Jews, you know, in Israel would be morally offended, even if some right -wing Americans aren't.
[128] And it turns out I am just as wrong about Israelis as I was about Americans.
[129] So what was Trump getting at with the Ron DeSanctimonious thing.
[130] Do you know?
[131] Well, he's just looking for an edge.
[132] I don't think, yeah, but what was it a reference to?
[133] Is it a reference to his position on COVID?
[134] Was it a reference to that bizarre ad that DeSantis had over the weekend?
[135] Which we would be talking about if other bizarre things weren't happening, the one where he sort of implied that God made him.
[136] Do we have some of the audio of that one?
[137] Because that one has to be listened to to to actually believe.
[138] And I, by the way, I don't know whether Trump is talking about this.
[139] This was certainly, it was kind of eyebrow raising.
[140] So can we play this, you know, and on the eighth day, God made Ron the Sanctimonious?
[141] And on the eighth day, on his planned paradise and said, I need a protector.
[142] So God made a fighter.
[143] God said, I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, kiss his family goodbye, travel thousands of miles for no other reason than to serve, the people.
[144] to save their jobs, their livelihoods, their liberty, their happiness.
[145] So God made a fighter.
[146] Oh.
[147] That is so bad.
[148] And yet the funny thing about it is I'm listening to it thinking, that's the kind of ad that Donald Trump wants about him, right?
[149] He was the chosen one.
[150] So did DeSanta step into the I am the one ring there?
[151] Is he encroaching on the God king, you know, priest?
[152] synced?
[153] Well, yeah, okay, first of all, he certainly is.
[154] It's a little bit ludicrous.
[155] I mean, I remember Ron DeSantis as like just another backbench Republican who was just this mousy comments at hearings.
[156] So the idea of him being a god king is kind of ludicrous.
[157] But then Donald Trump stepping into that role was already ludicrous.
[158] Charlie, here's what I think about this.
[159] If you, like me, were one of the people who were horrified by the rise of Donald Trump in 2015 and 2016, and you thought that the worst thing in the world was this guy, Donald Trump, becoming president of the United States and all the damage he could do, you were an optimist.
[160] That is to say, the problem in the Republican Party is much bigger than Donald Trump.
[161] Trump stepped into that role, but what we have in the Republican Party is a base that is looking for a god king, right?
[162] And the fact that they would take this scoundrel, this reality TV show host, and make and put him in that role, was a sign of how low their standards were.
[163] This is a party that is willing to bow down to Herschel Walker and now sort of bow down to Ron DeSantis.
[164] I think this ad says we, we the Republican consultants working for Ron DeSantis, know what the Republican base is.
[165] And what the Republican base is is a mass of people who are looking for a God King and have extremely low standards for filling that role.
[166] And yet there's only room for one god king at a time and so this is the message i am the chosen one but if you think that you can be the next god king you are sanctimonious or something like that all right so we're rolling into this uh the midterm election and i have a feeling of uh of significant dread not not so much yes about the outcome but but also because i as i mentioned earlier i think it could be a mess or an indication of how messy these things can be.
[167] But over the weekend, everybody was trying out there.
[168] They're closing, you know, arguments and statements.
[169] And Will you picked up an interesting trend, the fact that some Republicans have decided that they're going to take the election denier thing and turn it into different kinds of deniers.
[170] Who should we start with?
[171] We start with Kellyanne Conway here.
[172] And it's a pretty good indication of kind of the messaged discipline how many people were on the Sunday shows using the exact same kind of thing, well, no, you're an inflation denier, you're a crime denier, you're a border denier.
[173] So here's Kelly Ann Conway.
[174] You know, they're all out there saying election deniers and Americans are looking at them and saying, you're inflation deniers, your recession deniers, you're rising crime deniers, your education lost learning and reduced test score deniers.
[175] That's why a lot of those women that you talked about are willing to talk to pollsters, are willing to come to the polls and say, look, I'm swinging over, and the issue said is uncomplicated and is straightforward.
[176] It's inflation, the economy, economy, it's crime, it's immigration, but it's also education.
[177] Parents, a year after Glenn Young can won that, Virginia racing, Jack Shirley really came close in New Jersey, Shannon and Mark.
[178] Parents are still parents.
[179] They're still upset about what they see as a hangover from all the lost learning and test scores.
[180] And they don't understand why, even though kids are back on campus and in the classrooms, that the left seems to be attacking the curriculum instead of attacking the lost learning issues.
[181] And of course, the fact that like a million people died during that pandemic seems to be completely invisible.
[182] I mean, can we come back to that in a moment?
[183] Sure.
[184] Because I do think it's interesting how that whole thing has now been turned completely around.
[185] So Kelly Ann Conway trying out, they, well, you are the real deniers.
[186] Don't call us deniers.
[187] So former Democratic pollster Mark Penn used the same kind of line.
[188] Here's Penn. They did not confront these issues directly in any meaningful way.
[189] They became inflation deniers.
[190] And that really, I think, is a stupid strategy.
[191] we're going to see whether or not I'm right, and that was probably one of the worst strategies I've ever seen in the midterm, or they were right.
[192] They had some tough issues, and they decided to completely avoid them.
[193] Okay, well, so the email went out, and then here's Rana, not Romney, McDaniel, the chair of the RNC, also trying out the same new talking point.
[194] This is not what the American people are caring about right now, and let me tell you what they are worried about.
[195] Our commander -in -chief, Joe Biden, going in front of the American people and talking about this and saying, oh, look at these issues with election deniers.
[196] Well, here's what the Democrats are.
[197] They are inflation deniers.
[198] They are crime deniers.
[199] They're education deniers, literally.
[200] Okay, but this is not what the American people are talking about.
[201] They're not talking about.
[202] I don't want to.
[203] Okay, Will, you're not just another pretty face because you've picked up the fact that the email went out this weekend, didn't it?
[204] But we've seen this before again and again how what they do is they take a line and they sort of project it back.
[205] I mean, do you remember we're both old enough to remember when fake news described disinformation coming from the Russians in the right wing?
[206] And then, of course, what they did was they simply just adopted fake news.
[207] So they're throwing out the you people are the real deniers.
[208] We're not the deniers.
[209] What do you think?
[210] Okay, first of all, Charlie, I think it's kind of a good line.
[211] I mean, just like objectively speaking, it's, and, and I will, let me, let me start by conceding.
[212] I think that Kelly Ann and Ronna McDaniel and these other people using this line, have a point.
[213] It is true that Democrats decided pretty early in this election cycle that these were bad issues for them, talking about crime, talking about the border, talking about inflation, frankly, was just a loser for them.
[214] And so they would try to change the subject away from that, and we're not going to call this a recession.
[215] Technically, it's not a recession.
[216] Democrats were looking for ways to shut up about these issues and to hush them up.
[217] I think Republicans have a point there.
[218] The problem is that election denies.
[219] is not the same thing as denying inflation or denying crime.
[220] You know, that's standard political stuff, trying to make inflation go away, trying to make border problems go away.
[221] When you are denying election results, that is not one issue.
[222] That is an attack on the entire system.
[223] People who deny election results threaten the foundations of democracy.
[224] And when democracy itself is threatened, what happens is government is no longer accountable to you.
[225] It no longer has to actually win the election.
[226] you just lie about who won the election.
[227] When that happens, government becomes completely unresponsive and all the other issues go away.
[228] So it is objectively true that election denial is a more important thing, a bigger problem, a bigger threat to our country than any other kind of denial.
[229] And I regret, Charlie, I'll speak for myself, that I have not been able to make that sale, to sell that message, that fact, that truth to a broader public.
[230] No, I think you're exactly right.
[231] It is objectively, qualitatively different and much more dangerous.
[232] On the other hand, this is an effective way of throwing up smoke and dust, which, of course, is what people like Kelly Ann Conway get paid the big bucks to do.
[233] Now, having said that, though, that they have, you know, unfortunately, one of the reasons why I think this is going to be effective is because I think it does touch on a reality here.
[234] And Axios is reporting about this new letter from third way, the center -left think tank that's backed by some of the biggest names in Democratic politics, sounding the alarm about some pretty deep -seated flaws based on their own polling from some of these battleground Senate races.
[235] And they write, if Democrats manage to hold onto the House and Senate, it will be in spite of the party brand, not because of it.
[236] Despite a roster of GOP candidates who are extreme by any standard, voters see Democrats as just as extreme, as well as far less concerned about the issues that worry them most.
[237] So then they sort of, you know, break down.
[238] This is the kind of thing that, you know, Rui Tishara and James Carville have been saying for a long time.
[239] So third way, again, these are kind of like your tribe, right?
[240] Kind of a little bit.
[241] They come up with this brutal bill of particulars.
[242] And it's called out of touch on priorities, out of touch ideologically, and out of touch on values.
[243] And I'll read a little bit of this.
[244] Democrats are underwater on issues voters' name is their highest priorities, including the economy, immigration, and crime.
[245] While Democrats maintain a lead on certain issues like abortion and climate change, voters rank those issues as lower priorities.
[246] All bad.
[247] Voters question whether the party shares essential values like patriotism and the importance of hard work.
[248] Only 43 % of voters say Democrats value hard work compared to 58 % for Democrats.
[249] Even in the areas where Democrats are trusted more, including education, it is not clear that voters are sold on Democrats' ability to get things done.
[250] Democrats are benefiting from perception among voters that Republicans are extreme, but they cannot fully reap the gains of this view as voters think Democrats are extreme as well.
[251] So first question would be, do you agree with that?
[252] Yeah, I do agree with it.
[253] I agree.
[254] And you and I were talking about this last week.
[255] Democrats have lost their knack for talking about values and for framing economic issues among others in value terms, right?
[256] So what we have in today's Democratic Party is a lot of talk about equality, but it's too much about equality of outcome and not about equality of merit.
[257] So, for example, if you were talking about the working class of America, you don't just talk about people being in need, and you don't just talk about sending money and redistributing money.
[258] You talk about work.
[259] You talk about people who are working hard for a living and what they are owed.
[260] You talk about Social Security or Medicare.
[261] These are earned benefits.
[262] You stress it.
[263] Work hard and play by the rules.
[264] Exactly.
[265] Clinton's formulation.
[266] And Charlie, I think you're right.
[267] It's not, it's rules.
[268] When we get to crime, when we get to immigration, legal versus illegal immigration, what a lot of people want to hear is an affirmation that there are rules, that you don't just have people flowing over the border without regard to whether they have meritorious asylum claims, without regard to whether they are working or not, and whether they're criminals or not.
[269] And Democrats just need to emphasize the moral aspect of all of these issues.
[270] You can be for equality, but it has to be equality with respect to rules and merit.
[271] So let's play a little soundbite from Senator Cory Booker, who is also, you know, making this last -minute pitch and see whether or not you think that he's getting closer to a message that might have been more effective for the Democrats.
[272] And obviously that we're doing a, you know, pre -autopsy here.
[273] But let's play Cory Booker.
[274] This election still is in the balance.
[275] And the reality is we're bucking what our usual trends.
[276] I think we're bucking them because folks know, at the end of the day, do they want to go back to the sort of Donald Trump politics that divided our nation, undermined our democracy, and really preference.
[277] Their signature bill was a big giveaway to the largest corporations and the richest in America.
[278] And even though our economy is tough, people think about it and say, wait a minute, this is the party trying to protect unions.
[279] This is the party that made sure we did things to lower prescription drug costs and lower health care costs, that this is the party at the end of the day that's trying to protect fundamental freedoms like the right to control your own body.
[280] So I think that this is a tough election season.
[281] It's a midterm election, but I still see a pathway for us to maintain control of the Senate.
[282] All right.
[283] So has that been the message that Democrats have effectively gotten out?
[284] Well, I think the answer is yes, but Charlie, I'll be damned if I can tell you what what Cory Booker just said.
[285] I mean, he just went through a list of four or five different things.
[286] And it's hard for me. Totally not thematic.
[287] What?
[288] Can you?
[289] tell me what ties together what he just said no i see this is part of the problem is and and i and i think this has been one of the problems of being a legislative party is what you you you come up with a series of of different points that aren't necessarily tied together by some broad theme like the one you described you know that it says you know that we are on i think he's trying to say we are on your side we are doing things for you but i'm not sure that just simply citing a series of policies is the way to do that in this particular environment.
[290] And by the way, I don't do this for, I'm not a spinmeister.
[291] I'm not a consultant, so I don't have the quick and magic bullet.
[292] But remember last week, I played a soundbite from Barack Obama's speech where I thought he really did strike those notes.
[293] It was, it was, it is interesting that both Bill Clinton and Obama managed to find a way to say, I am with you, I share your aspirations, these other guys don't, in a way that listing a series of policy.
[294] he doesn't do.
[295] Yeah, no, I think that's a good point.
[296] Obama in the soundbite we listened to before was really hitting the theme of hard work and being rewarded for your hard work.
[297] So it was a message to ordinary people that the rich shouldn't be benefit.
[298] It shouldn't be favored over you.
[299] But that's not because you are a person in need.
[300] It's a person because you work hard.
[301] You work harder than those rich people did.
[302] And so that should be rewarded.
[303] That should be the government should pay attention to you.
[304] I would just point out, though, Joe Biden himself, if you ever listen to Joe Biden talking freely, he agrees with this.
[305] Joe Biden has a sense of the work ethic and of the middle class as people who work and should be treated with the proper respect for doing so.
[306] But for some reason, that doesn't come across because Democrats are trying to pace together all of these other issues.
[307] They're trying to paste together divisiveness, the economic message, abortion rights.
[308] I mean, and these are all legitimate concerns, and some of these are winning issues, but it's really hard to make them cohere.
[309] No, it is.
[310] And, of course, we'll be so much smarter after we get the results of the election.
[311] I'm not going to ask you to make predictions unless you wanted to.
[312] Well, I do think it's worth talking about what's, I mean, here we are the day before the election.
[313] So if it's okay with you, I will say a little bit about this.
[314] Sure, okay.
[315] Okay, so.
[316] I just didn't want to put you on the spot.
[317] I'm kind of a nice guy here.
[318] Yeah, no, no, I think it's just useful because people are going to be watching the election returns tomorrow and sort of how to think about this.
[319] People have been talking about a wave.
[320] Is there going to be a red wave, a red tsunami or a red puddle or whatever that is?
[321] I think it is useful because I'm from hurricane land.
[322] I've come from the Gulf Coast of Texas.
[323] By the way, congratulations Houston Astros.
[324] I'm winning the World Series.
[325] Set that aside.
[326] Hurricane Harvey came into the Houston area and it was over the Houston area for days.
[327] And it just, so it flooded the city.
[328] It wasn't that it blew things away.
[329] water level just comes up.
[330] That is the way to think about this election.
[331] Don't think about a wave.
[332] Think about a flood.
[333] The water level of Republican support of the backlash against Biden, against the Democrats, has been coming up.
[334] It's been coming up for about a month at this point.
[335] And there are various Democrats in various different places, John Fetterman, Katie Hobbs, are at different levels.
[336] There are different levels in the floodplain.
[337] So the water level is going to come up.
[338] Some of these Democrats are going to stay above water.
[339] They're going to eke out victories despite the bad national environment.
[340] Some of them are going to get, the water's going to come over their head and they're going to drown.
[341] And that is sort of the way to think about this election.
[342] And as you say, Charlie, it'll be days in some cases before we know who drowned.
[343] But the water level has been coming up.
[344] It's really high.
[345] And there are a lot of Democrats who should have been high enough to survive any hurricane but this one.
[346] And this flood is just that bad.
[347] So who's going to survive?
[348] Who do you think is going to keep their head above water?
[349] Almost all indications would suggest that the Democratic candidate for governor in Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, the city attorney general, will survive.
[350] Do you agree with that?
[351] What do you think is going to happen with Federman and Oz?
[352] I mean, I'm looking more at the Senate map than the governors.
[353] I mean, you're going to laugh hard at me, Charlie.
[354] You're in Wisconsin.
[355] I'm not laughing.
[356] I thought Democrats were actually going to win that race three months ago.
[357] And every poll, Barnes was up.
[358] And as you correctly predicted, Yeah, the water came up.
[359] That is gone.
[360] Wisconsin is gone.
[361] Nevada is in serious trouble.
[362] Pennsylvania at this point to me, which we all thought, people at the bulwark thought that Oz was dead.
[363] That's a coin toss at this point.
[364] Georgia incredibly, also a coin toss.
[365] Incredibly.
[366] Incredibly.
[367] Yeah.
[368] And can I, I got to go off about Georgia for just a minute because this race drives me crazy.
[369] The backlash against Biden and the Democrats is.
[370] So not just bad, but reflexive that the voters in Georgia who decided they're going to vote for the Republican nominee simply don't care what has been exposed about Herschel Walker, about the abortions, about the abuse.
[371] The lying, the abuse, the abortion.
[372] I mean, almost if you were writing a novel about like the worst shit you could come up with, you'd probably, you know, stop a little bit short of that.
[373] And now let's just stick to one abortion.
[374] Two abortions is like, you know, too much.
[375] But you're right.
[376] They don't care.
[377] And, you know, I don't know how you listen to Herschel Walker for five minutes and don't think this man should not be an elective office, much less the United States Senate.
[378] But that is not what millions of voters in Georgia are concluding.
[379] Yeah, it's bad.
[380] And I think, I mean, we all remember when Trump said he was running for president and he said I could walk out on Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters.
[381] At this point, you know, we've had two abortions that Herschel Walker's been linked to.
[382] I mean, Herschel Walker could literally do an abortion on television.
[383] He could perform it himself.
[384] I think he would not lose a single vote.
[385] And this is what happens to democracies when they are in decay is people are so intent on voting for a party that they're not at all looking at the character of the person they're electing.
[386] And you end up with Trumps, you end up with walkers, and God knows who else is going to get elected this year.
[387] And that also means, though, that that's what what democracy has become.
[388] Now, and I'm going to ask you a hard question.
[389] All right.
[390] If democracy yields figures like Herschel Walker who win a free and fair vote, if that is what the Demos wants, is our goal really to defend democracy?
[391] I mean, you know what I'm saying?
[392] I mean, obviously at some point we keep saying democracy's on the ballot, democracy's on the ballot, well, what if democracy just fucks us over?
[393] Okay, so very, very straightforward answer to your question.
[394] Yes, democracy is worth defending.
[395] And what it's important, okay, I can't speak for other people.
[396] Many people out there think democracy is wonderful because we will elect great leaders who will do well for us.
[397] That is clearly untrue.
[398] Right, right.
[399] That's been falsified by many democracies, including ours.
[400] The reason why we need democracy is not because it will get us the best government.
[401] It is because it allows us to take down the worst governments, right?
[402] Democracy is the worst form of government except all the others.
[403] Democracy gives you the right four years after you elected Donald Trump, one of the worst people in the United States of America, it gives you the right to vote him out.
[404] Donald Trump obviously tried to overturn democracy so that we couldn't turn him out.
[405] But we prevailed.
[406] We still have the democracy.
[407] If Herschel Walker gets elected, he will be a terrible, terrible senator for six years.
[408] And then the citizens of the residents of Georgia will have a chance to vote him out.
[409] it is better that they have that chance than that they don't.
[410] Okay, so I'm just playing with these ideas here, and I agree with you.
[411] But, you know, part of our view is shaped by, you know, a series of optimistic beliefs about the marketplace of ideas, the truth will always win out, that democracy rests upon the, the intelligence and the wisdom and the virtue of the people.
[412] Those are all under significant challenge, you know, and at some point we should have a much we're in -depth discussion about free speech because I think I have, you know, up until the last few years, been a pretty solid free speech absolutist, believing, you know, that you counter bad ideas with good ideas, that you counter hate speech with other kinds of speech.
[413] On the other hand, that presumes a functioning marketplace, not the kind of world we're living in right now.
[414] So, you know, whether we need to sort of like go back to the drawing board and like, how do we cope with this, what is acceptable.
[415] But I do think all of this challenges what we had thought of as pretty settled norms in liberal democracy.
[416] And I'm hoping you're right.
[417] And I do think that you go through it.
[418] I mean, look, the reality is that we've elected some pretty horrible people over the years.
[419] The problem, of course, is that most of those horrible people, fortunately, did not have access to the nuclear button, did not have access to social media.
[420] But this will not be the first time that you've had really deplorable people chosen by the people.
[421] But it's going to be an awkward moment if, in fact, some of these folks win and win decisively in a free, fair election.
[422] And whether or not that support for democracy will continue among people who are disappointed at those results.
[423] Yeah, but I believe we firmly, we have to stand for democracy itself.
[424] We have to stand for the system.
[425] Look, if Kerry Lake gets elected governor of Arizona on Tuesday, which I think is likely to happen, then the important thing is not to say, Carrie Lake is an election denier.
[426] We have to find some way to invalidate this election.
[427] No, then you're playing Kerry Lake's game.
[428] What we have to say is what we are defending is the system, not the D, not the Democrats, not, you know, we're against election deniers.
[429] We are in favor of democracy.
[430] We're in favor of free elections.
[431] She was elected in a free election, and we are going to respect that.
[432] And we will work to defeat her at the next democratic opportunity, not the next undemocratic opportunity.
[433] So I firmly believe, that we have to respect that, and we're just going to have to, you know, we can resist legally within the system bad people who get elected on Tuesday, but we have to defend the system.
[434] Well, speaking of other systems here, I wrote in my newsletter this morning and morning shots that it feels like piling on to comment on Elon Musk's terrible week, but why not?
[435] I mean, we're seeing the celebrity oligarch just both trash his investment, but also his reputation.
[436] I mean, I don't know if you ever did this.
[437] I went back and read the time magazine person of the year cover story about him that would you know back in december which is genuinely cringe worthy especially as you watch him kind of expose himself as this shallow petty petulant edge lord who's not actually very good at things like managing human beings but there are real world consequences to what he's doing now the latest and you tell me whether this is the latest he's delayed the uh imposition of the new uh non -verified blue checkmark thing until after the midterm election.
[438] Is that right?
[439] He's decided that maybe having that, you know, having the hellscape go into full -fledged Inferno the week of the election maybe was a bad idea.
[440] Is that right?
[441] So he's delayed it now?
[442] I think that's correct.
[443] I mean, the point, we're 24 hours away from it.
[444] So, you know, I think at this point he's delayed it.
[445] But in any event, it doesn't take that much to just wait a few days till after the election to do this.
[446] Yeah, because theoretically it would be a less shitty idea then, right?
[447] The problem, of course, as we keep saying is the election is not necessarily going to be over on Tuesday, but, you know, we're in a very challenged information environment now at perhaps the worst possible moment.
[448] And Chris Krebs, who you referenced earlier, you know, used to head up cybersecurity for the administration until he was fired by Donald Trump for not going along with his lies about the election was on Face the Nation yesterday talking about this.
[449] Let's play a little bit of Chris Krebs.
[450] It opens the information space to a broad.
[451] broader community of influencers, clout chasers, election denialists.
[452] Foreign actors?
[453] Absolutely.
[454] I mean, we've seen reports lately of Russia, China, and Iran back at their old tricks.
[455] And it is going to create a very chaotic environment.
[456] I think that's inevitable, Will, that it's going to be a very chaotic environment and that all of the people who are looking at ways to bring us down and to confuse us and so discord have got to be thinking this is a fantastic opportunity.
[457] Yeah, I mean, I think what's happened here is that Musk has bought into and is purveying this idea, this anti -institutionalism that is sweeping the country and sweeping much of the world, right?
[458] It's that we don't like the blue checks.
[459] We don't like the system that allowed some people to be blue checks, the fake news media, yada, yada, so we're going to open things up to everybody.
[460] And there's this sort of spirit, this atmosphere of freedom and equality, at all.
[461] But, you know, when you tear down the institution, you have to ask yourself what you're replacing it with.
[462] And if what you're replacing it with is anybody can pay eight bucks and get the check mark, then as Krebs says, you're opening yourself up to all kinds of exploitation and not just individual opportunists, but state opportunists, right?
[463] The Russians who, you know, can easily sort of through proxies, through laundered, you know, accounts, find ways to get verification, to get to get a certification on accounts that they control.
[464] And that's true of the Chinese.
[465] That's true of anyone you want to name.
[466] And at that point, who is the average Twitter user to trust?
[467] How do you know who to trust?
[468] Well, exactly.
[469] I mean, you know, I have to admit, can I make a confession to you when I first heard that soundbite?
[470] And he's being asked about the foreign actors.
[471] I thought she said porn actors.
[472] And the reason, okay.
[473] In my defense is because I have been thinking about Elon Musk's financial problems, which are severe, having taken on $13 billion in debt.
[474] So his debt service payments, I'm going to get back to the corner in a moment, his debt service payments are about a billion dollars a year, which is more than Twitter has ever made.
[475] I mean, the math just doesn't add up no matter how you do it unless you strip out all the costs and find new ways of generating revenue.
[476] Now, he's shedding advertisers like crazy because they don't want to be, you know, surrounded by trolls and racists and bigots and crazy and all of this stuff.
[477] The $8 an hour thing is not going to be a massive success, just saying, I don't think it's going to work, which means that, you know, he's either going to have to reduce the expenditures to close to zero or come up with a vast new source of revenue, which brings me to the porn actors.
[478] He said, at some point, he's sitting around going, guys, you've got to come up with some idea for making money here.
[479] How can I make some money off Twitter?
[480] And somebody's going to raise their hand and say, you know, the only thing that we can think up to monetize is pornography for you.
[481] Right, right.
[482] But that's hilarious.
[483] I didn't hear it that way, but, you know, God bless you.
[484] Honestly, Charlie, if porn takes over Twitter, that's less bad than some of the alternatives I can think of.
[485] I'm sorry, this will offend some people, but I completely agree with you and all that.
[486] Of all of the really, really, really bad toxic outcomes, that is the least bad.
[487] Okay, fine.
[488] Right.
[489] And if you are working for the Internet Research Agency, that is the Russian operation that goes out and tries to, the bots and whatnot, I encourage you to spend your money on porn and, you know, go ahead, pornify our Twitter.
[490] What I'm obviously, what I'm much more afraid of is people just spreading lies disguised, disqual, news, actual fake news on Twitter.
[491] And that, if you think it's been bad now, if you think what you right wingers call fake news is fake, wait till you see the crazy stuff.
[492] I mean, look at the freaking Paul Pelosi episode.
[493] Yeah, that felt like an hors d 'oeuvre for what's, what we're about to be served.
[494] It's like you can't even come up with stuff more bizarre.
[495] Look, when we had the president of the United States actually sitting around the Oval Office talking about Italian spy satellites stealing the election, we were pretty far down the road.
[496] I'm sure people can go back, you know, before that, well, what about, you know, the JFK, you know, conspiracy theories?
[497] What about, you know, the 9 -11 truthers?
[498] You know, this stuff's been around, but now it just feels like it's bursting all the bounds and, yeah.
[499] And, of course, we haven't even fully experienced the impact of deep fakes.
[500] I mean, I thought this might be the cycle, the next cycle may be, and who knows what comes after deep fakes.
[501] It is going to be, it is going to be a hellscape.
[502] By the way, I have to admit that I thought it was somewhat inspired trolling when he said, yeah, You know, we're going to eliminate actual verification.
[503] Anybody that wants to can have a blue check just for giving me $8 and somehow trying to make that as a man of the people populace thing.
[504] And the number of people who basically were saying, okay, Elon, this is what you want, this is what it's going to look like.
[505] And then they changed their names to Elon Musk and began tweeting over his name, which clearly pissed him off because now he's saying anybody that does that, no warning, you're going to be banned forever from Twitter, even to think about it.
[506] But it was interesting to make the point to him.
[507] Elon, imagine what it's like if there are 100 ,000 people who are pretending to be you unverified.
[508] Point made, whatever the result is.
[509] Oh, exactly.
[510] I love that.
[511] And this is something I just want to say to people who think they're pessimist.
[512] If you believe you are a pessimist and your version of pessimism is Twitter is a cesspool or democracy is a cesspool, it can't possibly get any worse.
[513] You are not a pessimist.
[514] You are an optimist.
[515] A pessimist is a person who looks at the world as bad as it is and says, oh, this can get much, much worse.
[516] And we're about to find out, in the case of Twitter, how much worse it can get when you change from a system that a lot of people agree had serious flaws to one that is likely to be much more flawed and much more dangerous.
[517] So final question on that bright and cherry note, what do you make of the people going over to mastodon?
[518] I actually have it on my to do list to at least like try to figure out how it works.
[519] I mean, apparently it's a little more challenging and it would take me probably 15 minutes to explain it to somebody.
[520] But, you know, like, where's our light?
[521] What's the lifeboat?
[522] This weekend, I went over to Mastodon to try to figure out, you know, I thought, you know, it's good.
[523] Why don't we go plant the bulwark flag over there, set something up.
[524] You have to sign up on a particular server.
[525] Charlie, I could not find a server, a group on Mastodon that would fit a heterosexual, non -furry, somebody who's interested in political news.
[526] It's sort of a niche community, an esoteric community place, a network of such communities.
[527] But they can all talk to each other, right?
[528] So we could, like, create a little bulwark, like, you know, Hamlet?
[529] Yeah, I guess they can talk to each other.
[530] And by the way, I just want to be clear before I get in trouble for what I just said, I'm not equating homosexuality with furries.
[531] It's not that there's anything wrong with being a furry, but I'm just saying there isn't a mass community, a general audience kind of place on Mastodon, as far as I can tell.
[532] And people ought to know there's a different nomenclature over there.
[533] You don't tweet at Mastodon, you toot.
[534] Yeah, you send out toots.
[535] Seems a little derivative to me. But I, you know, the thing about it is that, so you form these organic communities that can talk to one another.
[536] You're not necessarily siloed.
[537] You can bring over your whole mutes and block thing from Twitter.
[538] No, okay, I agree with you.
[539] I never like to be one of the other.
[540] of the first adopters, you know, to jump into the pit.
[541] But if enough people do, it creates a critical mass where it might be at least marginally viable.
[542] And by the way, because we all have to be thinking about how we're going to respond to the Trump apocalypse.
[543] You saw that we actually, at the bulwark, are offering an alternative to the Trump apocalypse, that for the month of, I kind of like this, we're offering a better deal than Elon.
[544] Elon wants you to pay eight bucks for a meaningless checkmark that gets you pretty much nothing.
[545] We are offering for the month of November.
[546] Here comes the pitch.
[547] Eight bucks for full membership in Bullwork Plus for a year, eight bucks a month.
[548] So we're basically saying, Elon's offered, he says for eight bucks a month, you get a blue checkmark.
[549] We're saying for eight bucks a month, you get to be a member of the Bullwork Plus community.
[550] And we're going to give you that deal for a full year, eight bucks a month.
[551] So just just thinking about it.
[552] This would be a time to do.
[553] this.
[554] I think it's a pretty sweet offer.
[555] Obviously inspired by Elon.
[556] Right.
[557] And this is something that I hope everyone in our audience will think about it.
[558] It's like the bulwark is a community of people who are, yes, we have limits.
[559] People who believe in democracy.
[560] Okay.
[561] If you don't believe in democracy, probably not going to be happy at the bulwark.
[562] We believe in evidence.
[563] If you don't believe in evidence, not going to be happy here.
[564] We believe in good faith argument.
[565] If you don't, if you like to lie, you're probably not going to be happier.
[566] But if you believe in those things, if you believe in democracy if you believe in evidence if you believe in good faith discussion the bork is a terrific forum a great place to be and you meet lots of other people who share those values and then you also get the snark so i i i have to admit i if you if you if you if you sign up you get like things like my my morning newsletter morning shots where you get to see the the transformation my take on the transformation complete with pictures of elon musk from being i am iron man to i am zoolander Including a picture of the most iconic scene from that movie that I believe describes both our political and our cultural moment, which you can see if you were a Bullwork Plus member and subscribe to Morning Shots.
[567] Did you ever see that movie or is that one of these pop culture references that, you know.
[568] I don't know it, but like thousands of other people, I am now going to Morning Shots to catch up on it.
[569] Can I just redo some of the things?
[570] Because I, okay, this should be in one of our behind the paywall things because for some reason, I still subscribe to Time Magazine, maybe just out of sort of, you know, nostalgia in memory, it has become sort of, it's got some good stuff in it, but it's also obsessed with star -fucking.
[571] It is so besotted with celebrities.
[572] So last year, this is a direct quote, Time Magazine, names him person of the year, describes that he, Elon Musk, quote, dreams of Mars as he bestrides Earth, square -jawed and in dominable.
[573] Okay, even his absurdities make him larger than life.
[574] And this is a magazine that used to be run by Henry Luce.
[575] This is the man who aspires to save our planet and get us a new one to inhabit.
[576] Clown, genius, edge lord, visionary, industrialist, showman, cad, a madcap hybrid of Thomas Edison, P .T. Barnum, Andrew Carnegie, and Watchman's Dr. Manhattan, the brooding blue -skinned man god who invents electric cars and moves to mars man god okay so and now people are going you are this just nasty thin skin puts you know who tweets out these flop sweat tweets that show how needy and insecure you are and he's done this to himself in one week it's amazing so all right so we can agree that like i think charlie i think we've come to a unifying ether here, which is against God Kings, against all the fake God Kings and the veneration of these deeply flawed people, including Elon Musk.
[577] And as you're saying, it's beautiful that what Elon bought here was not, you know, Tesla, not SpaceX.
[578] It was, it's a platform, a communication platform on which the thing that he has communicated is to put it politely, his fallibility, obviously not a God King, a 12 -year -old, like Donald Trump, like Ron DeSantis, and like many others, who pretend to be God Kings.
[579] So, Matt Leibosh, Labash, I'm sorry because I was actually corresponding with him, so I want to get it right, but wrote about him, everyone's favorite publicity tapeworm of a billionaire, the man who puts the ass in ass burgers.
[580] So it's gone a long way from the brooding, blue -skinned man -god to the guy that puts ass in ass burgers.
[581] Okay, we will talk.
[582] Next week, Will.
[583] We will be so much older and wiser them.
[584] Yes, we will, Charlie, and I hope that you and I will not be underwater.
[585] And I am just going to write out the note that our new slogan should be, Bullwork, the home of the resistance to all God kings.
[586] The Bullwork podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio production by Jonathan Siri.
[587] I'm Charlie Sykes.
[588] Thank you for listening to today's Bullwork podcast, and we'll be back tomorrow and do this all over again.