Advisory Opinions - Tell Somebody in Your Town

Episode Date: September 14, 2020

For the month of August, the Biden campaign outraised the Trump campaign by a whopping $150 million. (Biden raked in $360 million last month compared to Trump’s $210 million). As stark as this fundraising difference may be, is there any reason to believe it will be meaningful in the long run?A lot of this money will go toward television ads at this point, but campaign money starts diminishing in value once people start voting by mail. In other words … now. Not to mention that the fundraising difference doesn’t matter so long as each candidate meets a certain threshold. On today’s campaign update episode, our podcast hosts discuss these fundraising efforts while dissecting Trump’s surprising lead with Hispanic voters as well as the usefulness of yard signs, door knocking, and phone banking to a campaign’s overall success. Rather than waste time putting up yard signs or trying to persuade voters to vote with ideologically charged Facebook posts, Sarah argues that the most important—and statistically effective—thing you can do to boost voter turnout is text your closest friends and remind them to vote. As David points out, “It fits in with the sort of general reality that we have a large amount of influence over a small amount of people and a small amount of influence over a large number of people.” Stick around for a discussion about the newest additions to Trump’s Supreme Court list—also known as Sarah’s close friends list—as well as David’s latest Sunday French Press newsletter on the use and abuse of critical race theory. Show Notes: -Sign up for a 30 day trial at The Dispatch here! -“The Sweep: Swing States and Voter Registration Trends” by Sarah Isgur and “Sorry campaign managers: Lawn signs are only 98.3 percent useless” by Philip Bump in the Washington Post, and three polls showing Trump winning Hispanic voters in Florida, The Emerging Democratic Majority by John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira. -“The Most Tremendous Reelection Campaign in American History Ever” by Olivia Nuzzi in New York Magazine, the newest additions to Trump’s Supreme Court list, David’s latest French Press, “On the Use and Abuse of Critical Race Theory in American Christianity,” the New York Times’ 1619 Project, and “A pandemic, a motel without power and a potentially terrifying glimpse of Orlando’s future” in the Washington Post. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You ready? I was born ready. Welcome to the Advisory Opinions Podcast. This is David French with Sarah Isker. And before we dive into the guts of the podcast, I want to take just a second and plug the dispatch.com. We're in the middle of a 30-day free trial period. So you can sign up for free for 30 days to get all of the wonderful things that the dispatch has to offer. A lot of you are what we call and with nothing but affection free listers meaning you've signed up to receive the free

elements of our work but if you can take an extra step and dip the toe in the water for 30 more days of freeness you're not only going to get for example Sarah's Monday sweep which you're already getting if you had subscribed to it but you're also going to get her midweek mop up if you are a free lister you're already getting if you had subscribed to it, but you're also going to get her midweek mop-up.

If you are a free lister, you're only getting one-third of the things that I write, because I write twice a week. Tuesdays and Thursdays, if I'm diligent, Wednesdays and Fridays, if I'm procrastinating. So

three times a week with the French Press newsletter. Jonah has a midweek epistle that is behind the paywall we have a lot of stuff that is behind the paywall but if you go to thedispatch.com slash 30 days free you can have 30 days free and also while I'm plugging dispatch work let me plug this podcast, specifically reviewing it.

Please go review us on Apple Podcasts. Five stars, please. Leave a comment. It helps us out a great deal and we appreciate it. Now, Sarah, on to the main event. So this is a three-part podcast. Part one, State of the Race.

Part two, a segment we're going to helpfully call Sarah's friends list, which is not ridiculous as you'll see, but it is going to be Sarah's personal insights into all of her buddies on the new Donald Trump Supreme Court list. And then the last thing we're going to end with is a discussion of critical race theory. I wrote about it in my Sunday newsletter. It has kicked off quite the discussion. And so I thought, and this is actually in response to some questions

that I got from folks asking us to address critical race theory, what it is and what its limitations are and uses are on the podcast. So we got a lot of really meaty stuff to talk about. But first, so Sarah, you've got a newsletter, The Sweep, coming out really any minute now, probably will come out even as we record the podcast. And so give us a preview of what is in The sweep. And also tell us, has anything changed in this here presidential race? I don't know if things have changed, but we always get more information and that can make it feel like it changed.

So there's three buckets I want to talk about today. A money bucket, a polling bucket, and a field operation bucket. That's the one I want to spend the most time on. So let's just real quick on the money bucket because this made huge headlines a few days ago. For July, so go back two months, the Trump campaign out-raised the Biden campaign, not by a lot, but the Trump campaign raised $165 million and the Biden campaign. Not by a lot, but the Trump campaign raised $165 million and the Biden campaign raised $140 million. Those are both good hauls, not just respectable hauls. They're good hauls. Right. So we got the August numbers that the campaigns themselves released. We don't have the FEC reports yet. We should be getting those tomorrow or the next day. And so I think we'll probably want to dive in again on these numbers once I can actually

look at the full report and see where all the money went. But we have the top line raise numbers. We do not have the cash on hand numbers, which frankly is the real number. But the raise numbers do tell you something, especially this time. So for the month of August, the Trump campaign raised $210 million. That's what you want to see. 165 in July, 210 in August. You want to see that number going up. It means their donor list is getting activated and churning out those dollars. The Biden campaign raised $ 150 million more than that. That's wild. Now, again, I want

to see how much the Biden campaign spent to raise that amount, because if you're spending 80 cents to raise a dollar, then yeah, that raise number tells you a lot about your ability to find new donors, that prospecting list that we've talked about before. But it doesn't actually tell you how much money you have to spend on the race, if that makes sense. So those donors that you find that are $5 donors, they are more likely to vote now because they're invested in your campaign. It is a good thing to be able to raise that much money, even if you spent 80 cents on the dollar. But you'd still want to know that cash on hand number to let us know how much you're going to be able to spend for the rest of the campaign. But a couple of things to note about this before

we get the cash on hand number. First of all, money starts having a diminishing value here like now, especially with the early vote that we're expecting. North Carolina already voting. Let's see. Georgia, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan all start voting this week. Some in person, some absentee ballot. So the money is diminishing no matter what because the votes are already coming in. But even if that weren't true, even if we're talking about Election Day, the money starts diminishing because you can really no longer spend it on your field operation. If that's not already in place, it's not getting in place now. So the money at this point is going to TV and or you spent money you didn't have knowing you'd get in money.

Fair enough. So that's that's the money thing. David, any thoughts, feelings on money? Yeah, you know, when I saw that gap, the first time I began to think, okay, does this, you know, because the operating presumption that I've had is that there's been all kinds of enthusiasm for Trump, and not a lot of enthusiasm for Biden, but a lot of enthusiasm against Trump.

And there are a lot of different ways to measure enthusiasm gaps. And especially if you're talking, I'd love to see the breakdown in small dollar donors, large donors, etc. And if you've got a lot of small dollar donors coming in to create that big of a gap, I'm wondering if that is something that is sort of a rough and imperfect, but somewhat of a measure of whether it's anti-Trump more than pro-Biden. Is there a surge of enthusiasm for the Democratic ticket or oppose the Republican ticket as we get closer? And that was one interesting question I had. I'm less convinced that money differences matter a great deal. The way I've kind of thought about this in recent years is both major parties raise enough money to run sophisticated campaigns. And if one raises 25% or 30% more

over the course of a campaign, they're still raising enough money to run their campaigns. So I'm not so sure how many more sweepers, to use the curling analogy, can Biden hire now enough to make a difference. I don't know. That's true, although

we've seen some odd stuff with the Trump campaign going off TV in a bunch of battleground states. Which, you know, you'd still have to believe that TV makes a big difference. Probably you'd need to believe that it has some persuasion value, which we don't think it does. We think it has turnout value. So even so, it's odd to me that they're still going off TV. I

thought that was just going to be a mid-convention tweak. And I agreed with them strategically that going off TV during the convention to do those tweaks made perfect sense because you're already on TV because of the convention. But they're still off TV in a bunch of these states. So really interested in the cash on hand numbers. I think it will be small dollar donors, a lot of them, because in theory, the Biden campaign should have been able to sweep up all of their big ticket donors to max out the second he got that nomination solidified. So that really should have been happening in June and July. But it's possible that with Harris added to the ticket that they went back to the non-maxed out, still large donors and had them max out. So we could see some larger donors finally maxing out. And so it might not be as big a small dollar haul as we

think looking at the number, but we'll see. Yeah. So can I ask you a completely useless anecdotal question? I love useless questions. Okay. So do you live in a Biden precinct? What will be a Biden precinct? I believe that I do. Okay. What's your yard sign situation? Oh my God. So I cover that in the sweep today. Can I just read you my favorite headline of all time? Maybe of literally all political time. Yes, please. Sorry, campaign managers. Lawn signs are only 98.3% useless.

I love it. Hat tip, Philip Bump at the Washington Post. Big fan of his, but yeah. You know, so I live in sort of suburban D.C. And there are not a lot of yard signs yet. But I haven't seen a single Trump yard sign. I've maybe seen four of yard signs yet, but I haven't seen a single Trump yard sign. I've maybe seen four Biden yard signs, not in an aggressive way, like in a very tactful suburban way.

Right. In fairness, David, I am not out a lot. I'm still pretty quarantined in my house. Gotcha. Okay. I was just, you know, it's so funny because if you're not on Twitter, you don't know about sort of the kind of the anecdotal yard sign wars. Oh, my God. Which is really funny, but it's sort of like, hey, watch out, y'all. Don't pay attention to the polls. I was out in sort of rural Pennsylvania and I saw nothing but Trump yard signs. And this is why candidates, by the way, are obsessed with yard signs. Campaign managers hate them. They're a logistical nightmare. You

need volunteers to build them because they actually just come from the company as like the wire frame, the three-sided wider frame, and then the sleeve that you have to put over it. So you need volunteer hours to build them. And then you've got to deliver them or have your people who want them come pick them up. They're a nightmare and just a total waste of time. And every political science, like the major political science experiment

we have on these shows that you as a supporter putting a yard sign in your lawn, zero effect. Actually zero. Now, there is some evidence that you could have a 1.7% effect, which is not nothing actually. That's

you know, especially in a down ballot race and a tight race, that could be meaningful if you randomly distribute them through a precinct. Interesting. Which no one does. In theory, that could make a difference. I'm already wondering if we're taking our podcast off the rails.

Maybe we're only 98.3% off the rails in talking about yard signs. But my assumption has always been you have a lot of these down ballot races, say for like county clerk or alderman third district or something like that. You may not be all that familiar and you might be swayed by that's a name I recognize from being all over the neighborhood. So that's the 1.7% effect. It's mostly name ID. And yet yard signs have quadrupled between 1984 and 2012. It just turns out that almost anything else you can do is more meaningful than a yard sign, except for one thing, which is your candidate's headspace. Yard signs are just up in your candidate's headspace. So what campaign

managers will do, and I did not include this in the sweep, but what campaign managers will do, because I didn't want it in writing, but I had done it, but I have, is you know the route from picking up your candidate or the airport or whatever else to the place you're going with your candidate. And you will actually, I swear to you, spend the volunteer hours to put yard signs on the route that you're going to drive just so your candidate sees them.

And they're in a good headspace when they arrive at that town hall, rally, donor event, whatever it is. They're thinking, look at that spontaneous groundswell of grassroots support. The one thing that I do think is interesting about sort of the yard sign phenomenon is this concept known as, I think, did Jonah coin the term smaga, secret maga? He coined it for me, whether it existed before Jonah, but I definitely got it from him. Yeah, the whole smaga concept that there's this huge number of people who are not proud of being Trump supporters who are going to come to the polls for Trump.

And when you live in a red district, like that's just not a thing. Like it's so not a thing. Like it's so not a thing. I mean, one thing that you can say about like particularly the more enthusiastic Trump supporters is they are loud and proud. It's not a yard sign. It's a yard sign and a flag, uh, or it's a yard sign and a flag hanging outside the, uh,

you know, on the typical, you know, kind of flag, uh, flagpole on your front porch. I thought the barns were pretty cool. Remember the barns from 2016?

They were painting the side of their barns. And I was like, that's actually awesome. That looks good. Oh, yeah. You see Trump barns. But it's like sign, flag, and then another flag in an upstairs bedroom window. I mean, there ain't no Smaga in Middle Tennessee.

Now, there might be smaga in Brooklyn. You know, if it doesn't matter where it doesn't matter. And I think there's like secret Biden where I am, but it doesn't matter. That's right. I tend to think the secret phenomenon are in those jurisdictions where the reason why your secret is because you're in an overwhelming minority.

Yes. Which means you lose in an overwhelming minority. Yes. Which means you lose. Which is true for anything. Like, it's just sort of intuitive. Yeah. So, speaking of surprising, like a Brooklyn Trump voter, we have three polls in the past week from Florida. And all three polls show Donald Trump winning the Hispanic vote.

That is surprising. So Trump lost Miami-Dade County with Hispanics, sorry, the Hispanic vote in Miami-Dade County by 30 points in 2016. That's about right. He is now leading Biden 47 to 46%. So look, that's within the margin, but who cares? The point is he's made up a 30 point deficit in four years in Miami-Dade County among Hispanic voters. This could be a big deal in Florida, especially as we've seen a 30 point swing, give or take, it's probably less than that among seniors. The other direction, you could just have a total like reshuffling. I'm just imagining sort of the etch a sketch,

like shake the etch a sketch in Florida where the end result may actually look pretty similar. Florida being a swing state that's relatively close, maybe even leans a little red, but for totally different reasons. And if that's the close, maybe even leans a little red, but for totally different reasons. And if that's the case, and Trump makes this massive ground up with Hispanic voters and not just Cubans, by the way, that cannot account for these Miami-Dade numbers. If that's the case, the future of the Republican Party conversation that everyone is having, you know,

oh, if Trump loses in the future of the party or if he wins in the future of the Republican Party, that's going to be a really different conversation if he just made up 30 points with Hispanic voters given everything. It will tell us so much more about identity politics on the left and immigration wars and where all of that's going to sort out. That could be a really big deal. So keeping my eye on that, it could be an outlier,

but three-poll outlier, you know. Yeah, it seems like there's enough polling to say the senior vote for Trump is sliding hard in Florida, but the Hispanic vote is surging. And the interesting thing about that is, you know, I'm sure, you know, anyone who follows politics closely is really familiar with this sort of demography is destiny argument. You know, the emerging Democratic majority, the coalition of the ascendant, and that has always depended on the hispanic vote being overwhelmingly democratic

that's that that that analysis has always depended on that and smart i've even seen smart people on the left say why are you assuming that why are you assuming because it's not as if say the hispanic vote in his, Hispanic vote in Texas, Hispanic vote in Florida. Those are three big states where it can, you know, there's enough voters for it to really, really matter. That's not all the same culture. It's not all the same politics. No, in fact, we have Hispanic numbers from Arizona, and he's down 30 points with Hispanic voters in Arizona. So, like, that number has stayed largely the same where Florida has shifted. And I, you know, a lot of folks I know kind of don't like

this notion that you say, if somebody is Cuban American or Mexican American or Colombian American or from Honduras or from, you know, like as far as their, their family ancestry, that they're, that they're all the same. Right. They find that really reductive. Really reductive. It is reductive. Yeah. Yeah. And that's always why I've...

And remember, George W. Bush got well north of 40% of the Hispanic vote in 2004. We also know that someone who moved to the country and became a citizen 10 years ago looks really different as a voter than their kid and then their kid, all of whom will be counted as, quote unquote, Hispanic voters. But it's not just that, you know, ones from Venezuela and ones from Mexico, you know, first generation and third generation look wildly different as voters for obvious reasons. I mean, my grandmother was first generation. So my mother was the first born here. And so

while I identify somewhat as an immigrant family, I don't have an accent. My grandmother has passed, so, like, she was part of my life with an accent for a long time. But it is so different as a second-generation American. So do you want to hear something wild, Sarah? Yeah. Okay, so I found this out while I was researching for my book and researching how deep amongst some voters, not all, but some voters, how deep our polarization runs

and how deep our political identity runs. And it is this, for not a majority, not a majority, but for a measurable and significant number of voters, a person with the identical ethnic makeup will identify as white or Hispanic depending on their political affiliation. And so a person with the identical ethnic makeup will say they're white if they're Republican and Hispanic if they're Democrat. That's interesting because I know a

know a Colombian immigrant Trump voter and you're right, he identifies as white. Yep. Also people with identical religious beliefs will identify as different. Well, a Democrat with identical religious beliefs

to a conservative evangelical or Republican evangelical will not identify as evangelical. In other words, that is seen as such a marker of a political tribe that they will reject it, even if they have the identical theology as their Republican counterpart. Well, on to my last section. Are you familiar with the Britney song You Better Work, B? Well,

I don't know if my Britney library is that up to date. So You Better Work, B. Yeah, it's actually a great song because it's so true.

You want a hot body? want a bugatti you want a maserati you better work b you want a lamborghini sipping martinis look hot in a bikini you better work b i mean that's just true david i mean you know, timeless wisdom, really. That's right. That's right. So that is the name of the section in the sweep this week that I want to talk about, which is if you have a candidate that you feel strongly about

and you want to help that candidate, what are the things that actually make a difference and that you should go do? We already talked about yard signs and my red hot hatred. And I talk about phone banking. I talk about social media, but we had some headlines this week and what will be really fascinating after

the election and what you and I are definitely going to be talking about in, you know, late November, December, when we get some of the stats back, the Trump campaign put out a press release that they, in late November, December, when we get some of the stats back, the Trump campaign put out a press release that they have knocked on their hundredth million door and phone bank.

They were including phone banking as well. But that's actually just a ton of doors that they're hitting in the pandemic. The Biden campaign has knocked on zero doors. So for the first time, we're actually going to have the real experiment of does door knocking make a difference? Now, the Obama campaign in 2008 and 12,

it was like a big deal that that's how they won the race. But we're about to find out whether that was really true. And what we have from social science experiments so far is that, yes, it can make a difference. It can get you about 40. Like if you knock on 5,000 doors and we're assuming a pretty high response rate, which makes sense in a pandemic that we'd actually get a high response rate because a lot more people are at home these days. So generally a high response rate of 5,000 doors would be about 1000,000 people answering.

That will generate around 40 new voters. And again, not persuading Biden voters to switch to Trump. We're talking about Trump-friendly people who are not going to vote. So it creates 40 new voters. Yeah. Yeah. So, and it costs around $33 a vote. Now, these are volunteers knocking on doors, but it takes a lot of staff time to put together the micro-targeting list of which doors to knock on, the maps for the voters, coordinating the volunteers, yada, yada.

So about $33 a vote. This will be a big deal either way. It's a big deal if it works. It'll be a really big deal if it doesn't work and that's just the end of door knocking because that'll really change what field operations look like. Yeah.

But at the same time, there's this new thing that has not been tried and is, as far as I know, not really being tried this cycle called deep canvassing. And that's where instead of going and having a script that you read off of, you ask them questions

and probe their interests and everything else. The problem with that and why it's not being done is it's incredibly hard to train volunteers to sort of do empathetic listening, which if you're into books on psychology is definitely a way to actually persuade people. So that's not happening. But if door knocking, it turns out, is pointless,

I think you could see more of that. Because in 2012, the really interesting study that nobody paid a lot of attention to was that, yes, door knocking made some difference, they think, in 2012 for Obama. But it actually made... Remember how we were talking about how the average of 95 and 5 is the same as 45 and 55 or whatever? It looks like the Obama campaign was doing a little bit more good than harm,

but they were actually also doing quite a bit of harm in their door knocking because the people who volunteer to door knock do not look, and I mean look ideologically, demographically, age. They don't look like the people whose doors they need to knock on and persuade to go vote. In 2012, they were much whiter, much younger, and much more extreme ideologically. So even though you would give them a script, when were much whiter, much younger, and much more extreme ideologically. So even though you would give them a script, when you're phone banking, you're sitting in the campaign office often. And so the volunteer coordinator can hear if you go off script and are like being crazy. But if you're just out on your own knocking on doors, you can sit there and talk about how, you know, abortion on demand is the most important thing.

And we need to shut down all the coal industry and move to the fully new green deal. And capitalism is terrible. And why do we even have it anymore? And the voter who you knocked on is like, whoa. Yeah. Come again. So that can that not just can happen. it absolutely does happen with door knocking. So we'll see whether the Trump campaign has any sort of secret recipe that they'll share afterwards, whether it was helpful and hurtful or whether it just made no difference at all.

Can I express a hint of skepticism at those numbers? Because 100 million is a lot of doors. They're self-reported. Yeah, they're self-reported. Yeah. They're self-reported. And there was a really interesting, so, um, Olivia Nuzzi,

Nuzzi. Yeah. Um, she wrote a really interesting story in New York magazine where she wanted to see the ground game. So she did this sort of deep reporting on the state of the race and the state of the, of the,

um, the state of the, the campaign operation itself. And so this came out in mid August, middle of last month. And she went around to these, some of these Pennsylvania events and some of them weren't happening at all. Some of them were not attended at all. And some of them,

the local campaign office did not even know they had been scheduled and advertised the other problem with the self-reported numbers is like okay you can knock on a door basically it does it's quantity over quality even if it's all accurate it doesn't mean anyone answered the door it doesn't mean it was a real house in theory uh it doesn't mean the phone number door. It doesn't mean it was a real house in theory. It doesn't mean the phone number ever connected could have been a wrong number. They would count that still. Yeah. Potentially. Yeah. So I, you know, I, I'm skeptical of those numbers, but I think there's still no doubt that you're the fundamental reality. What you're saying is correct, which is the Biden campaign is not emphasizing this. The Trump campaign is emphasizing

this, and it's going to be interesting to see what kind of difference it makes. Before we move on, let me just sort of say, again, sort of my own sense of things compared to 2016 is there's both an extreme sense of agitation and simultaneously a sense of exhaustion, which sort of says, I'm highly agitated.

Can we just vote and get this over? Whereas 2016 had much more sort of sense of what is going to happen? This is interesting. This is fascinating. Everybody feels both more agitated and more fatalistic in the world that I'm inhabiting. It'll be interesting to see how the debates affect that. Yeah.

We're just over two weeks away from the first debate. I think there will be some more anticipation towards this debate, maybe even in 2016. Oh, I think you're right about that, in part because the relentless messaging that Joe Biden isn't up for it. So a lot of people are going to tune in just to see if he's up for it. Definitely had a dream about the debate last night as I'm sitting here talking about this that I'm remembering. But anyway. All right, shall we move on to... Wait. By the way, David, do you know what the most effective thing to do? Door knocking, phone banking, yard signs,

all of these things that you can do for a campaign to help your candidate? Do tell. It appears that the most effective thing you can do is call or text 20 of your closest friends reminding them to vote. Well, that makes sense. Yep. Yep. Relational contact is by far the most effective per contact. That makes a ton of sense. And it fits in with sort of a general reality that we have a large amount of influence over a small number of people and a very small amount of influence over a large number of people. Yep. So when Facebook put up, they put

up a banner that said like, go vote or something that touched 60 million people. And from their own analytics, it made zero difference. It did not encourage a single person to go vote. But when they created the I voted sticker and individual people got to put the I voted sticker, that put a lot of social pressure on those people's 20 closest Facebook friends. And that increased turnout actually a real amount. Now, let me be clear, David, your persuasive Facebook post that says not just go vote. I voted. You should go vote, but go vote for Joe Biden or Donald Trump. And here's why and blah, blah, blah. And trying to switch people's votes. Still not really any effect. Surely you're out. Yeah. You're saying that about other people's Facebook posts, not my Facebook. Oh, God. Yes. I feel like that's what everyone is hearing.

post, not my Facebook post. Oh, God. Yes. I feel like that's what everyone is hearing. But definitely, if you want to help your candidate, make a list of if it's 30 friends, 40 friends, however many of your close friends, and just say, don't forget to go vote. Now, obviously, this has much more an effect on down ballot races. In a midterm race, this can really, really change turnout. In a presidential race, turnout's actually very, very high among registered voters. But nevertheless, if you can find someone in your friend group who's a registered voter who is not going to go vote, it will have a huge chance of getting them to go vote to hear from you that you voted and that you're sort of watching whether they vote. I think in one person in my friend group, my local friend group, and he's probably a Joe

Jorgensen voter. So if I remind him that Libertarian Party is going to get an extra vote. In a local election, so not Senate, not even really congressional, but like a city council election, it can make a 13-point difference in turnout. Goodness gracious. That's a real number, Sarah. That's the whole ballgame. There is nothing else you could possibly do. No TV ads, no door knocking, no phone banking could make up the difference of a 13-point turnout. Let's pause for a moment and thank our sponsor, Gabby Insurance. When you've had the same car insurance or homeowner's insurance for years, you get kind of trapped into paying your premiums and not thinking about it. That makes it really

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list and readers. So, I mean, listener readers, you're not reading this. Listeners, what's the over-under on the number of people who have been in, that Sarah has had dinner with? The over-under on that. So, okay, let's not make it exclusive to dinner. I'm not counting. I'm not doing this. You're not doing this? Just had a meal or a cup of coffee with. I'm not. That's embarrassing. No, I'm not. No, it's not embarrassing. So

how could it possibly be embarrassing? Because this is value added of this podcast. Because otherwise, it's just a people sort of saying, hey, you know, I read an opinion by this person once. And you can say, I know Ted Cruz likes Splenda and not Sweet and Low. And it's coffee. This is value. It is always a big thing. If you know how someone takes their coffee, I mean, the hand that rocks the cradle, right? It's the equivalent for candidates. But that's a funny story, Nancy.

And for those who don't know, Nancy and I barely dated before we got engaged. And we're only engaged. We were dated six weeks before we got engaged. We were engaged for about three months before we got married. So we knew each other really for less than five months. in Manhattan. And she was waiting for me at a restaurant and the waiter asked if I would like coffee. And not only did Nancy not know how I took my coffee,

she didn't know if I drank coffee. And we were married. So... So here's what I think is really interesting about the list. Aside from seeing many familiar faces,

some good friends on the list, and that's familiar faces some good friends on the list and that's all well and good two things one this list makes no difference whatsoever the next opening will be filled by Amy Coney Barrett or Amul Thapar and they were

already on you know previous list I just don't think there's any question of that. But here's what this list did, does. First of all, it just was an easy press release. Every news organization had to cover it.

It's a great headline for your supporters to see. It gets picked up on every cable news station. I didn't actually check if the nightly news covered it, but I wouldn't be shocked if it got 20 seconds on the nightly news potentially. So I mean, what a brilliant thing to do. And I don't know why Trump keeps getting to do this. And yet the left who has this opportunity to create democratic Supreme Court voters, it was starting to bubble up after the Kavanaugh hearings, and they just didn't really do anything to capitalize on that or to educate their voters on what that would look like. So first of all, kudos to the Trump campaign.

There is no downside to doing this. As I said, I don't think a single person on this list will actually be on the Supreme Court, to be honest. But who cares? Second, there are some specific names on the list that are quite interesting, and to me are like sort of specific dog whistle shout outs. Kylecan from the fifth circuit and lawrence van dyke from the ninth circuit both are wonderful people by the way this is not a question of them being good judges or wonderful people uh lawrence uh i've known uh judge van dyke for quite a while we went to law school together but there are other judges on the ninth circuit and the fifth circuit who did not make this list, but are not as socially conservative. And Kyle Duncan in particular has been sort of, uh, has, has a certain fan base within a very specific segment of the evangelical social conservative, segment of the evangelical, social conservative, very high knowledge voters, and not even really voters, David, let's be real. It's people like you. Kyle Duncan is a meaningful name to the

David Frenches of the world. True. And so for the administration to say, we know who Kyle Duncan is, we know he's meaningful to you, and we're going to put him on this list, even though we're not going to put him on the Supreme court, because this tells you that we recognize quality or whatever, you know, it really says we're going to appoint more appellate judges in the frame of Kyle Duncan or Lawrence Van Dyke. So that was meaningful. Um, you know, there were some names that were left off that were maybe a little surprising. Justin Walker not being on the list was very surprising to me.

That's the new young judge who I also went to law school with who is on the DC circuit who had sort of been cause celeb there for a little bit. Not on the list. Surprising. Yeah. What'd you think?

Well, I, you know, what I thought was you had here about as close as Trump could get and even probably went about as far as he could possibly go

to, he didn't really put forth a bunch of people who met the new Josh Hawley test. Except for maybe Josh Hawley. There are those people. Right. Except for Josh Hawley, who's on the list.

But he kind of went and said, it was sort of like a wink, wink, nod, nod. If anybody is going to be as conservative as Josh Hawley wants, it's going to be these people. conservative as Josh Hawley wants, it's going to be these people. And then some of it sort of felt like fan service. Like, why do you include Cotton, Cruz, Hawley?

You know, why include those people? It seems to me that's sort of like a reward. It's, hey, I'm giving you a presidential shout out. I'm sort of, in addition to saying you're good. I think I might disagree for why they were included because the David French's of the world know who Kyle Duncan is.

But a lot of people know who Cotton Cruz and Holly are. They won't know a single other name on this list. So for me, it was more like, hey, this isn't just for nerds. You know, you can assume that the other people on this list. So for me, it was more like, hey, this isn't just for nerds. You can assume that the other people on this list are a lot like Cruz, Cotton, and Hawley, and you know who they are. Now, but the interesting thing is Cruz, Cotton, and Hawley, I would not believe if they were appointed on the Supreme Court would have the same judicial philosophies. No. In fact, all three are like quite different little strands,

maybe from the same orchard, but they are different trees in that orchard. And very much so, very much so. So this was not a, it didn't strike me as, here is a list of people who have a particular judicial philosophy that I agree with as president. It seemed much more like here is a list of people that fit in different categories of my base. And there's sort of somebody here for every category of the Trump base.

There's the, you know, sort of the hardcore, what would be perceived as sort of the hardcore, always been a part of like the evangelical movement, the evangelical legal movement. There's also sort of the people that are like, well, they've been always been a part of the sort of originalist constitutionalist movement. And then there's the new sort of nationalist statists. And then there's the new sort of nationalist statists. So it's a very eclectic, within-the-right list of people, which is a little bit different from the way it's been in the past, quite frankly. There's also been some reporting that this is a Clarence Thomas list.

A lot of former Thomas clerks make the list, and that this was sort of a shout shout out to Clarence Thomas. I think another way to read that though, is in fact, the way Clarence Thomas picks clerks makes them more likely to appear on a list like this. He is less interested in law school, pedigree, law review stuff, and far more interested in your judicial ideology. Yeah. And so, as you just said, this is a list that's far more ideological in that sense. And so, yes, there's going to tend to be more Thomas clerks on this list. There is one other theory, though, that is if you needed to add a single person to the list, you would have to still include 20 people on the

rest of the list in order to add that person, because otherwise you'd be signaling maybe a little too much. You're not saying you're definitely picking them. You just need to make sure to add them because you hadn't added them before. If that's what this list was, I'm looking at Barbara Lagoa out of the 11th Circuit, a really interesting judge down there, conservative, Hispanic woman, young, checks a lot of boxes. And if I were to pick someone who comes in number three after Amy Coney Barrett and Judge Thapar, it's Judge Lagoa on the 11th Circuit. Interesting. Okay. Interesting. Now, how many times have you had dinner with Judge Lagoa on the 11th circuit. Interesting. Okay. Interesting. Now, how many times have you

had dinner with Judge Lagoa? Zero, zero. I was so excited for you to ask that. Ha! No, she's a good friend of a friend. And so I've heard good things about her. She was flagged for me early on, but I have never met her. But I think she is a person to watch on this list. You know, there's, there's other wonderful people on this list, but, um, but again, I think, I think that's the one I would pick out as actually being on a real short list for the Supreme court. Daniel Cameron, of course, is a rising star. He's the attorney general of Kentucky who spoke at the convention. Definitely a political rising star. Don't think he's actually on a Supreme Court shortlist, but for sure he's on a Senate shortlist and maybe even a cabinet shortlist.

Would he be on an appellate circuit court shortlist? Honestly, if I'm advising Daniel Cameron, I would probably tell him not to do that. I was wondering that. Yeah, it always depends on what your own ambitions are and your family. Being an appellate judge is a great position from which to have a family. But he has a lot of political potential, and I wouldn't hang up the spurs quite so quick. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, if you're a rising political star, I mean, you're somebody who could be

a senator from the state of Kentucky. If you're somebody becoming, if when, once you become a senator, how many senators get one eye on the White House? And if you go into even a federal appellate court position, you're kind of where you are. I mean, that's your life then, which is a great life. I mean, not many people ascend to that level. But let's say Trump wins a second term and Cameron's like 37 years old and he's appointed to appellate court position. There's no guarantee he's going to get to Supreme Court. No.

That's at age 37. He's set. That's where he is. And he might have, you know, it sounds odd to say my ambitions do not end with a federal appellate in the federal appellate court. But it's quite a cloistered lifestyle. Yeah.

And also, you know, if you want to make a lot of money for your family and send your kids to college but maybe don't want to have your wife work, you know, an appellate judgeship pays very well. But it is not what you could make at a private law firm. Yeah. It's not what you could make

after being a two- or three-term senator from Kentucky. So there's a lot of reasons that he may not be considering that. But still, good move to include him. Good move for him to be included. No question. But here's a good rule of thumb. You know your future is bright when people might be advising you to reject a federal court of appeals appointment. With Mitch McConnell in your corner, all things are possible. Let's take a moment and thank our sponsor, ExpressVPN. Have you ever wondered why internet access is so much cheaper these days, like 30 to 40 bucks a month? It's because internet service providers like Comcast or AT&T aren't just making money off subscription fees.

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Your data is your business. Protect it at expressvpn.com slash opinions. Visit expressvpn.com slash opinions. Visit expressvpn.com slash opinions to get three extra months of ExpressVPN protection for free. That's expressvpn.com slash opinions to learn more. Shall we move on to like one of the most contentious topics

of anything I've written about at the Dispatch and in our culture at large? Which for a lot of people wouldn't say much. Like for me, I don't write about a lot of contentious things. I mean, maybe there's some people out there with strong feelings about yard signs. But when David says it's one of the most contentious things he's written about, like that's on a whole different chart than what I even have. That is turning the amp up to 11.

Oh my goodness. Yeah. That is turning the amp up to 11. Oh my goodness. Yeah. But sometimes, Sarah, I feel like I could write that the original Star Wars was a good movie and like get death threats. It's weird out there sometimes, but no.

Okay, so I wrote a Sunday newsletter in part because I was just getting a flood of questions about critical race theory and what should we think about critical race theory. in the fall of 1991. And the reason is that every one of my 1L professors except for one was known as a crit. That was the term we used at the law school to describe a person who was a critical race theory scholar. And to be clear, there's other kinds of critical theory, critical gender, critical race. And I very quickly learned sort of what it was as a general matter,

and then the almost impossible complexity of what it is in a particular sense. And so what is it in a general matter? I quoted, I have a definition in my piece, and I'm not going to read the whole definition because it's a little bit opaque in some ways, which is a problem with critical race theory in general. It often has its own lingo. It can be extremely complex, extremely opaque to someone who's not steeped in the lingo of it. But it says, critical race theory recognizes that racism is ingrained in the fabric and system of the American society. The individual racist need not exist to note that institutional racism is pervasive in the dominant culture. This is the analytical lens that critical race theory uses in examining existing power structures. Critical race theory identifies that these power

structures are based on white privilege and white supremacy, which perpetuates the marginalization of people of color. Okay. What does that mean in plain English? When in plain English, it means... Can I actually add one more sentence to that? Yeah. Because I think it's really relevant to the conversation, which is that it also rejects

meritocracy and the idea, the concept that everyone who works hard can attain wealth, power, privilege, because the crits at one point, and I think it was literally 1991, like take over the Harvard law school. Yes. Uh, and that's always an interesting part of this story to me is the rejection of meritocracy, which is sort of the pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps American dream from the 1950s Truman Show-esque conception of America qua America. You know, Duncan Kennedy at the law school so thoroughly rejected meritocracy that he actually proposed rotating jobs so that a professor would be a professor one semester, a janitor the next semester, and the janitor would be the professor the next semester. And then, so it was like a total

leveling. A total leveling. Now, what it also means is that, so if I'm a crit, to use the term we used in the early 90s, what I'm doing is I'm beginning with a starting presumption that there are hidden, or sometimes not so hidden, issues of power and privilege and also hidden assumptions about the way we communicate through language in almost any circumstance. And so that you can take, um, you can take a, uh, almost any kind of complex social problem and you can find the crit would say, you can find how racism has influenced the way in which, um, our culture has responded to that social issue or the way in which our culture has defined our business practices or our economic system or whatever. If you peel back the layers far enough, you'll find the white supremacy. You'll find the legacy, at the very least, of racism. And I remember when I was first exposed to it, I sort of had two thoughts at once. One was,

there are some low-hanging fruit that I was exposed to that helped me see that there was some real value in questioning things that we just sort of say, this is the way things are because this is the way things are. To say, wait a minute, there's a history here that is actually rooted in an awful lot of explicit racism, even if everyone participating in the system now is not racist, is still influencing the system. And I use this example in my piece of when I was advising a school board and the school was given the option of a free police officer, a free sheriff's deputy to be in the school and to be security. This was offered after one of the terrible, terrible school shootings. And initially, the board was like, yeah, free security, let's do it. But then the headmaster said, wait a minute.

I mean, the chances of a school shooting here are incredibly, incredibly low. But every time what law enforcement does, it has the potential to criminalize school discipline. So for an example, a fight isn't just a fight where the parents come in and the headmaster talks to them and the student's suspended for three days and you deal with it. Sometimes the fight's an assault and the person is then processed through the criminal justice system. Or if someone brings some weed to school

and maybe sells part of his stash to his classmate, again, the headmaster would call in the parents and they would discipline with, you know, counseling perhaps or suspensions, etc. But if you have a law enforcement officer there, then it's a drug deal and somebody is then processed through the criminal justice system. And so he said, you know, do we want to potentially criminalize our system of school justice? And the board thought, huh, no, we don't want to do that and rejected the cop. Now, for that school, that was the right decision. I believe that was the right decision in that decision making process. There was no discussion of race. There was no hint, like nobody that I um in that room had a racist bone in their body but the crit looks at that and says oh do you see how disparate power which is rooted in a lot of history this is a southern community with a long history including a history of a race riot in in the lifetime of some of the people on the board created, there's a wealth gap. People in the private school had more wealth. That wealth gap exists because of, not entirely, but in many ways,

because of the system of past racial oppression. That wealth gap creates privilege. So the students in that school had the privilege of committing low-level crimes without fear of criminal enforcement. And then it creates also language and communication issues. Because if one place has no police presence at all, and another place absolutely has a police presence at all, do we really actually know how much more dangerous one school is than the other? Do we really know these things? And do we then make a lot of assumptions about one school over the other in part because of these legacies?

And that's when I was saying, that's useful. That's useful to help understand why the life you live, it just feels like total normal life to you, can be rooted in some past things. to you can be rooted in some past things. And again, a lot of people, when you talk about this thing, say, are you saying I'm racist? No, not at all. I'm saying that our existence is rooted in things that occurred often centuries before we were alive or persisted for centuries that have massive influence on the way we live now. And that's what, and I'm going to stop monologuing in a second, that was the thing that was useful to me about critical race theory. Then I'll get to the stuff that I don't think is useful. Yeah, so I think to the extent we can even call it critical race theory, look, having empathy for other people is a good thing.

And if you need a framework in which to build empathy for people who are not you, okay, I'm fine with that. I would argue that there's ways to do it without a framework. You can just try harder. But the part in critical race theory that is different than just building empathy is that it's basically founded in just a few buckets, race, gender, and sexual orientation. Right. And I don't want to make light of this, but I have generally found that most people have gone through some hardship in their life. Now, that hardship may be enormous. Their hardship may be enormous compared to my hardship, but we're all on sort of this hedonic treadmill of hardship, if you will. And so the hardest thing in my life is still

a 10, and the hardest thing in their life was still a 10. Their 10 may on some grand scale be a thousand compared to mine if there were some all-experiencing person who got to experience both. But generally speaking, most people have been through a hardship. You have not walked in their shoes. You don't know how hard it was on them. And so having some empathy without even knowing what that hardship was, because maybe it's not based on race or gender or sexual orientation. Maybe it's a sexual assault. Maybe it's, you know, they were orphaned at a young age. Maybe it's a double mastectomy when

they were, you know, in high school. Whatever that is, it was hard for them and it affected their life in a way that you don't fully understand because you did not have that hardship. That's a good thing for people to internalize that sense. The problem with critical race theory is that it is used as a cudgel often of, I understand that person's hardship, which is odd because sort of by definition you don't. And two, that if your hardship does not fall into one of those three buckets, that it shouldn't really count because it's not part of the power structure. And if it doesn't fall into one of those buckets it automatically puts you in a place of privilege correct so the um you know the uh child whose both parents died they end up homeless

or they were an abusive family or something like that uh is is a white heterosexual male they are seen in a position of privilege. Now, look, I actually do understand that there are some privileges that come with that despite being homeless and, you know, abusive parents or whatever else it may be, but to not recognize the, you know, wild disparity just because he happens to be white and male and heterosexual, because it doesn't fall into one of the crit buckets, um, that they would argue that there's these power structure differences that need to be grappled with. It's too narrow a lens. The, the crit theory is is and what it does instead of building empathy for people which

you would think would pull people together what crit theory does is it pulls people apart well it's very you know so the couple of things that about it that so i i agree with everything that you just said by by putting such a premium on the racial experience um it it does it does absolutely divide it focuses on race to an extreme degree and in focusing on race to extreme degree it often what it often does is it begins with a starting presumption that virtually anything that you see any phenomenon um whether it's big like capitalism or whether it's smaller like minimum wage laws to you you name it almost anything can and must be analyzed if not exclusively then often primarily through a racial lens and so this is how you get to some of the really convoluted scholarship where you'll find

people peeling and peeling and peeling and peeling through writings and and speeches and writings and speeches and and then they'll find that you know they'll find something that was racially problematic and say aha you know this this is why uh this structure and this reinforces our idea that this structure is based on race. And one of the areas where you saw this, I think, was most notably was like the 1619 project, which had a number of portions of it that were actually, you know, quite useful and worth reading and very, very interesting and fascinating on their own terms. But then when it began to say that, you know, the 1619 was the true American founding,

when it began to argue that the American revolution was based in large part on the idea of the, the desire to preserve slavery, you know, then you begin to see this influence, this distorting influence of a crit lens on the past. Like I'm totally about saying okay i i am very open to trying to understand if i have privilege that i did not experience because you you often don't

experience your life as privileged it's just your life right i'm totally open to understanding and to learning about concepts of privilege and hearing an an argument about that. But then to then say, the analytical lens that we should use is one that is going to take essentially every part of every American power structure and shoehorn a white privilege, white supremacy analysis into it, it starts to fall apart and it starts to get almost impossibly complicated as you're trying to find and unpack and deconstruct. And somehow, in some ways, this is one of the reasons why the language, excuse me, gets so opaque in why the analysis often gets so difficult to follow because it's starting with the starting presumption and then trying to unwind everything to find the proof to prove the starting presumption. And I find it often not just very unhelpful,

but often ahistorical. And the other thing that I would say is this very explicit rejection of liberalism, small L liberalism, is very dangerous and also, again, ahistorical for determining how, for example, many marginalized communities have attained a greater degree of equality. They've attained it not by rejecting liberalism, but by appealing to the promise of liberalism and highlighting its absence in their experience. And so, you know, time and time again, going back to Frederick Douglass, I mean, Frederick

Douglass absolutely respected free speech as a value, one of the fundamental underlying virtues of liberalism, and noted how its absence was contributing to oppression. And so the rejection of liberalism of critical race theory to me is one of its core, core flaws because it's liberalism itself that has begun to liberate our country from that legacy of 1619. legacy of 1619. I also, so there was a story on Thursday, I guess it came out, Washington Post. I think we'll include it in the show notes because it's a meaningful

read. It's not that long. And the headline was, A Pandemic, A Motel Without Power, and a Potentially Terrifying Glimpse of Orlando's Future. And it is the story of a handful of people, you know, our fellow Americans, living in a hotel, motel,

where the owner abandoned it outside Orlando. The power has been shut off. They have nowhere else to go. they're sort of living on the edge of society as it were as it was before the pandemic hit and now they're stuck and there's you know an 82 year old man there a 17 year old girl and what i guess struck me in reading it in the context of this conversation is their race, gender, and sexuality does not matter in the next hour in a 95-degree day without power and without money. They are experiencing something together that we should not really accept in this country, I would argue. But crit theory has very little to say to these people and what it has tried to do. And maybe there was a reason to do this was to build bridges between people who maybe did not think they shared a lot in common,

but do share a race or a sexual orientation, a gender identity, whatever. But oftentimes, experience trumps those things. And again, empathy, I am very in favor of. But what crit theory has done is it would look at this story and divide these people further at a time when they need this very fragile community that they do have to survive. And it doesn't matter what race they are. The 17-year-old and the 82-year-old have been put into a terrible situation. And, you know, she loses her job at Taco Bell and now she can't go back because she can't get a coronavirus test because it's 11 miles away and she doesn't have a car and the bus doesn't go there. Um, you know, those are the stories that

I'm interested in someone's academic theory for how we talk about those things. I am less interested in academic theory that came about in the early 90s that I think has largely outlived a lot of its usefulness, and it's time for a new way to talk about empathy, privilege, if you want to use that term. I think that term's become quite loaded.

I think it really is another way to talk about empathy, privilege, if you want to use that term, I think that term's become quite loaded. I think it really is another way to talk about empathy. I think that's right. I also would say that one of the reasons why critical theory is alluring is that it is in touch with the illiberalism and authoritarianism of our time. So it is a very much of a will to power sort of worldview, because if you're going to reject liberalism, if you're rejecting sort of these neutral rules, like free speech is a neutral value that we ideally should all be able to take advantage of, or due process, for example, on college campuses where, you know, over time, the rejection of liberalism has meant that rejections of due process in some circumstances if you're rejecting these things what are you replacing them with and what you're

often replacing them with is a uh a kind of authoritarianism that is built around this concept of experiential authority that sort of says okay there's going to be a group of people mainly often young activists who say i am going to stand in and speak for the black male experience. Or I'm going to stand in and I'm going to speak to the lesbian experience. And it's often very flattening, very leveling, and there's one experience. It doesn't account for the diversity within these groups. It doesn't account for the diversity within these groups. And then you fashion speech rules, you fashion due process rules, you fashion school policies,

all based on the unquestionable experiential authority of a particular subset of a particular demographic. And it elevates people, gives people a lot of power if you're in that group. It gives you a ton of power. And it's often a power wrapped in a kind of virtue that I am the one who's ameliorating all of these centuries of injustice. And so it's a very alluring ideology if you got towards that sort of will to power authoritarianism or illiberalism that's sweeping across the land. And there's an illiberalism on the right that we could talk about a ton, but this is something that is an illiberalism on the left. And it was the impetus for the college speech code, which I fought and fought and fought and fought for years and years. But what they intentionally tried to do

with the college speech code was say, free speech has been the enemy. We're going to redress the balance of power by putting other people in charge of speech according to their subjectively defined rules. And it did not achieve the results that people wanted it to achieve. I think that's just a great point about power. Because first of all, not everyone, people who seek power will justify their power-seeking desires and authorities. And that is the history of humanity, probably more than anything else, is power-seeking among a certain segment of humans and what they do to justify that power and then how they use that power. Yeah.

So, I mean, my bottom line is pretty simple. they use that power. Yeah. So, I mean, my bottom line is pretty simple. I'm grateful to the professors I had in the early 90s who helped me understand, question some of the assumptions about why things were the way they were. But what they actually ended up doing is reinforcing my commitment to liberalism, to show to me which communities of Americans needed further extension of the blessings of liberty and further protections of the constitution. Not that we've tossed the blessings of liberty and tossed the constitution to turn American power dynamics upside down. It's an extension, not a reversal. And I think those are different concepts. Anything else, Sarah?

No. Okay. Well, I'm a little upset because I didn't get to really plunge into how six or seven members of the Supreme Court list take their coffee, how they like their steaks cooked. But you can't lay it all out for the listeners in every podcast. You got to leave them wanting more, really. It's like a whole different type of privilege when you're talking about how many people on the Supreme Court list

you've had coffee with. That is true. If we have any crit listeners, their heads have been exploding over the privilege. That's right. That's right. All right. Well, thank you all for, their heads have been exploding over the privilege. That's right. That's right. All right. Well, thank you all for listening.

And as I said at the beginning, please check out our free 30-day trial, thedispatch.com slash 30 days free. Also, please subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts and rate us on Apple Podcasts. It is much appreciated. Until next time, this has been the Advisory Opinions Podcast

with David French and Sarah Iskra.