Advisory Opinions - The Mostly Meaningless Podcast

Episode Date: April 17, 2020

Wisconsin primary results, regulatory taking in Pennsylvania, adjournment clause, 2020 veepstakes, and much more. David and Sarah have thoughts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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That's expressvpn.com slash opinions. Expressvpn.com slash opinions. Ready? I was born ready. dot com slash opinions. You ready? I was born ready. Welcome to Advisory Opinions. This is David French with Sarah Isker. We're going to hit a lot of topics today. We're going to talk some Wisconsin voting. We're going to talk veep stakes.

We're going to talk regulatory takings. We're going to talk adjournment clause. And we're going to get a little introspective about what we've learned about ourselves in the quarantine. So I always have to give you a shout out before I say this, Sarah, because this is your catchphrase, but let's dive right in. So let's start with what we've learned from Wisconsin. Let's start with what we've learned from Wisconsin and the Wisconsin vote by mail experiment, Wisconsin outcomes. Put on your political expertise hat and share with the listeners what we should think about what happened in Steve Hayes' home state. Super fascinating. This is why we actually have elections, because all of us sitting around beforehand guessing what it's going to look like is never as good as the real thing. Turnout, first of all, is around 1.5 million. That is lower than 2016,

higher than 2012, and about the same as 2008. here's the issue a lot of folks i see out there are comparing it to 2016 which i find a little annoying because in fact 2016 still had a highly competitive primary at that point and i don't think that that's a completely fair comparison it's closer to 2008 in terms of the primary that was going on, you know, mostly wrapped, still sort of there. You know, 2012, the Republican primary was pretty much over at that point. So not surprising that it's much higher than 2012. So what do we know? About 80 percent of those were absentee ballots which is incredible when

you think about it because for all of the flim flammery going around in wisconsin it means they actually did get their act together and get the vast majority of those ballots out does that mean that all everyone who requested an absentee ballot got one? No. Is that okay? No. But that's still very good turnout numbers. And I think that bodes well, based on our conversation with Rachel, for a bunch of these states that are going to try to move to a much larger absentee ballot system, which of course, let's back up for a second. Mail-in ballots are when sort of everyone in the state gets a ballot. Absentee ballots are when you need to request a ballot. Let's just use that as like our definition for this conversation.

So that's good. Now, the liberal challenger for the Supreme Court beat the conservative incumbent, which was the main general election feature of this. Why there was a general election on this, I don't know. I can't answer such interesting questions about Wisconsin. But OK, so why did that happen? Was it, you know, Donald Trump has lost altitude in Wisconsin since 2016. Maybe, maybe. I think, though, another big factor you have to put in here is that for the, you know, 48 hours or so and even the week and a half beforehand, all of a sudden, this election, which would normally get zero attention, got a ton of attention and national attention, which for a primary slash off cycle election, whatever you want to call this weird little thing that they created is very unusual and would, of course, drive some turnout. And probably Republicans suppress their own voters.

suppress their own voters. Yeah, that's so yeah, everyone, every this happens every single time you'll have a local election. And in the era of instead of all politics is local, all politics is national. And so we then have a huge argument about what it means for the presidential election. I mean, my my favorite recent one was the really big argument over Matt Bevin's loss in Kentucky, the gubernatorial loss in Kentucky, when Republicans swept every other seat in Kentucky. And nobody thinks Kentucky's in play for 2020. But there were thousands and thousands and thousands of words about what Matt Bevin's loss meant for Donald Trump. There's not been quite as much because it's a little bit swamped by, not a little bit swamped, a lot swamped by coronavirus. But there's still been

a few words written about the implications GOP for several years, I've kind of called them the SEAL Team 6 of state GOPs. I mean, what they have kind of done as far as taking a state that was pretty solidly blue for a really long time and making it a home that was turning it into pretty solidly or at least reddish purple with a lot of conservative reforms and a lot of ability to mobilize voters. In many cases, they were that kind of the last firewall against Trump in 2016, if you remember, it was his last big loss. And to the extent that sort of that GOP hold and that sort of GOP resurgence in Wisconsin is losing any kind of steam. Johnson is losing any kind of steam. That's why I say almost meaningless, not meaningless. Am I wrong?

Look, it's definitely not good news for Donald Trump's reelection. It just might not be bad news. However, I do think that you have to factor in the shooting in the foot aspect, which is that the Republicans took this one on the chin in the press and should have kind of seen this coming. You know, again, you have the Democratic Party versus the Democratic governor versus the Republicans for a long time in this fight. And then the Democratic governor at the last minute switches with the rest of the Democratic team to try to move off the election. The Republicans stand in the way. My only point being that then they're left holding the hot potato or whatever metaphor you want to use. And so the rallying cry in Wisconsin becomes they're trying to say that you either, you know, vote or death. They're trying to say that you either, you know, vote or death.

And so for for sort of anger, enthusiasm, turnout purposes, I was surprised that the Trump campaign didn't step in and say that this isn't worth a Supreme Court seat when we have the majority, regardless of this seat. What we don't want to do is tell a bunch of Wisconsin voters that we're trying actively to suppress their vote. And in the end, of course, what it looks like is suppressing their own vote with elderly voters. So but like fast forward six months and the world looks pretty different. I don't know how, but it will. And will this have mattered? Hard to say. Again, so I don't think it was good news for Trump's reelection, but to say that it was like, this is proof that Wisconsin's gone?

Nah. So would you join me in saying almost meaningless? Or would you say virtually meaningless? Or would you say meaningless? If I were on the Trump campaign, I would spend the next couple of weeks digging into the numbers in specific county turnout to see whether it was in fact suppressing their own voters or whether this was flipping counties. Or whether this was flipping counties. So it is almost meaningless to us. If I were on a campaign and had the time, energy, and will to actually dig in, there's probably some meaningful numbers in there.

Gotcha. Okay. But sorry, listeners. I don't care. So this is the kind of content you come to Advisory Opinions for, an extended discussion of something almost meaningless. That's right. And that's what we're leading the podcast with. That tells you how things are going in our lives. And in the midst of an international pandemic, we begin with a almost meaningless political story. Well, we can move on to the second one that is also, I think, almost meaningless legally, which is this Pennsylvania takings opinion. Yeah, let's do that. Let's go almost meaningless to almost meaningless. And then I think we'll

gradually get to somewhat meaningful by the end of the podcast. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. But yeah, by the end of the podcast. Maybe, maybe, maybe. But yeah, go ahead with the let's talk Pennsylvania takings. OK, so we had this whole takings podcast a few weeks ago. I, for whatever reason, like this has set my nerd heart on fire. I'm so into the takings argument. And just as a refresher course, or for those who didn't hear it, you have some major Supreme Court opinions. One is Penn Station, which sets out factors for whether it's a regulatory taking. Two is Lucas, which says that it has to be, you know, entire, the entire value to be a regulatory taking. And then three, you have Tahoe, which says that a temporary taking is not a taking, more or less. Right, right. Okay, so those are the three, I don't know, the three lighthouses that are like spinning around

this question today. The three legs of the regulatory taking stool. OK. Yeah. Yeah. So enter Pennsylvania and someone has managed to sue about the takings question. And Pennsylvania says. And to be clear about the shutdown orders. Correct. Yeah.

They say that basically a police power can't be a regulatory taking. The reason that I say this is almost meaningless is because that is not going to be how the law sorts out on this, because in that sense, I mean, all you have to do is say the magic incantation police power. to do is say the magic incantation police power. Well, if they're taking your property along the border to build a border wall, that sounds like a police power. If they're, you know, everything is a police power then, or at least can be, just recast it. Well, and they also, and you can tell that they do talk, they begin with this statement. We conclude that petitioners have not established that a regulatory taking has occurred. And they start with it's a temporary loss of the use of the business premises. And the reason is to protect the lives and health of millions of Pennsylvania citizens.

Now, the reason would be relevant. The reason would be relevant. The reason isn't necessarily super relevant here unless you're challenging the public purpose of the taking. Right. should not and ultimately will not sort of wash the state of responsibility ultimately for regulatory seizure of land. But then again, they go back right after that and then say, we note the emergency code temporarily limits the executive order to 90 days unless renewed and provides the General Assembly with the ability to terminate the order at any time. and provides the General Assembly with the ability to terminate the order at any time. So once again, we're back to where we started on regulatory takings. So long as this is going to be temporary, so long as they can sort of see a sunset provision, you're not going to get compensation right now. But the dissent raises an issue, the partial dissent raises an issue. And that is,

you know, some of these businesses just may not endure through the temporary period. And that's going to raise an issue. And I think one of the legal issues, people who are going to argue against that it's regulatory taking, that even though the business doesn't exist, that the real estate still has value. But from the standpoint of the business owner, that's small consolation. Well, and this is where if you're picking your plaintiff carefully, and we talked about this a little as well, but you do want to make sure you're picking something that is also zoned very specifically. For the purpose of the legal argument, you don't want to be able to convert the property into anything else. You need it to be zoned commercial use only. And then the government comes in and says, and now you cannot use it for a commercial

purpose. Yeah. And I think what's going to end up happening and what we're starting to see now is the litigation bubbling up about the various shutdown orders. So we talked about the overreach in Louisville in two podcasts ago where a mayor banned drive-up church services, and that was reversed by a federal judge in Kentucky. We now see this bubbling up. The DOJ is getting involved in drive up services as well. You know, we haven't gone into the abortion. I don't even know what to call it. The abortion hole of never getting out of litigation. Oh, right. Right. Yeah. The Texas case. Oh, my gosh. It has bounced around like a pinball. So much so that it's been difficult to write about or talk about because every day something else happens. But Abbott has extended that order for three weeks. But right before he did that, the Fifth Circuit reversed on the medicinal abortions. Then Planned Parenthood or the abortion clinics mooted out their appeal to the Supreme Court. So it's gotten very procedurally messy.

But yes, those are still bouncing around in a lot of states, actually. Yes. And what you're going to see is, I think in those cases, because the issue is so fraught and nobody knows what or trusts what the Supreme Court will do on either side, you're going to see an enormous amount of procedural gamesmanship on these cases. And with the ultimate goal, I think, of trying to make sure that if this does get to the Supreme Court, that it gets to the Supreme Court under the most favorable possible facts for the litigant that's taking up the cert petition. But the legal maneuvering, it's going to be very difficult to get the case up there with the most favorable possible facts because the other side's going to play some its

own games to moot out, to drop cases, etc. So I'm not sure if we're going to end up with anything that makes it to SCOTUS on abortion in the pandemic. I just feel I have this feeling that neither side has enough confidence to do that right now. Yeah, there's a lot of like dancing, gamemanship, head weaving. It's a it's a boxing match where nobody is willing to actually make the first punch. Is that a thing? Is that a metaphor I can use? Listeners, I don't know. Yeah. I mean, I've seen enough boxing matches where it seems like both both boxers came out from their respective corners completely reluctant to engage. completely reluctant to engage. Yes. Which, you know, not having boxed myself, I can completely imagine being reluctant to go ahead and initiate the bubbling. But yeah, I feel like

particularly in the abortion arena, we're going to see a lot more gamesmanship. I think in some of the other areas, you'll see much more aggressive litigation. Well, and in the takings arena, to go back to that, there's also, I don't know, a first mover problem where like there are so many potential plaintiffs that if you're just itching for a Supreme Court case, go, go, go. Right, right. Exactly. Exactly. go. Right. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And but, you know, the way this works and hopefully I mean, hopefully we don't we don't know what's going to happen, but I can easily imagine a situation where a takings case comes before the Supreme Court after this is over. And and it's going to be very interesting to see the retrospective litigation around this. Remember how we talked about the difference between the – oh, gosh, I'm suddenly blanking.

Help me, Sarah. Ex parte Quirin. Yes. Where the Supreme Court is weighing in after the Civil War is safely over. Oh, no. Kirin's World War II. You're thinking Milligan. Oh, Kirin's World War II. You're thinking Milligan. Oh, Kiran is World War II. Yes, yes, yes. Okay. Ex parte, Milligan, civil war, Kiran,

World War II. So in one, the court's weighing in when the war is safely over. The other, the court is weighing in while the war is raging. And they reach pretty different conclusions. It's going to be interesting to see sort of what is the retrospective litigation outcome versus the real-time litigation outcome on an awful lot of these orders. You also have just a reality check. The federal government cannot pay the takings for all of these businesses. Isn't that the truth? Yeah. So I don't, you know. Nor state governments. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So what should we move on to adjournment? Oh, some Article two. You know what a fun part of this whole pandemic has been is really getting to do some deep tracks in the Constitution, you know? Constitution, you know? And boy, if Article 2, Section 3 ain't a deep track.

Oh, my goodness. I mean, so I saw an amusing tweet that said, oh, gosh, I'm blanking on it now. I don't have it in front of me. But it was something along the lines of, contest for the most obscure constitutional provision to chain prominence in the Trump era. And it was originally emoluments clause, raise his hand, and then adjournment clause, hold my beer. I mean, boy, that is tough to pick between which one was more obscure. I've got to go with adjournment. Okay. All right. I like it. I wanted to start a third amendment club in law school. No one was behind me on that one. Yeah. So, so anyway, I'm minding my own business yesterday. Um, kind of, uh, keep during the Trump press conferences, I sort of have, he's open on one tab and he's kind of in one ear. I have the headphones on and he's sort of going in one ear

so I can pay attention to, you know, any breaking news or emerging news, but don't, I'm not necessarily interested in the constant, you know, battle back and forth with reporters. But every now and then, you have that record scratch moment where it's like, what? And two days or three days ago, the days are running together. One of the record scratch moments was, I have all the authority. What? Total authority. What? And then the adjournment, adjournments clause. What? Hold on. And then you then at that point, I think there's like maybe a nine second delay on Twitter, which is what it takes people to like type out about 120 or 180 characters. And all of a sudden, everyone's like, Nick, he can't do that. Can he? Wait. Has anyone ever done that before? And what we're talking about is this threat to adjourn Congress so that he can make recess appointments. And it turns out, Sarah, under very limited and probably completely unrealistic circumstances, he can.

and probably completely unrealistic circumstances, he can. Yes. And historically, this is the adjournment side has never been done. But the convening side has actually been done fairly frequently, used to be far more frequently. But it has been done in the 20th century. Right. So this is the president convening Congress and the president adjourning Congress. And the conditions where the president can adjourn Congress are basically when the two houses don't agree on adjournment. I mean, the two when the House and the Senate don't agree on adjourn never been done. It requires some pretty highly specific circumstances. And there, for example, can just sort of snap the House back into session. And it's extremely obscure. It's extremely unusual. It would require a pretty close cooperation with Mitch McConnell and some essentially negligence by Nancy Pelosi for this to happen in any meaningful way.

But he he could do it in theory. He could do it. Odds of it happening, Sarah, 0.5 percent, 0.8 percent or 0.9 percent? percent or 0.9 percent? The odds of it happening in the near term are 0.00 something or other percent. Fast forward and it looks like, you know, you might leave a D.C. circuit seat on the map. I think your odds actually go up quite a bit. Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, I could imagine McConnell using this as leverage. I could easily imagine him using it as leverage and saying, well, we don't want to get to a historically unprecedented moment where the president does something that no president has ever done, do we? Because you know he'll do it, sort of this bad cop, good cop. I can easily imagine something like that. It's harder

for me to imagine them actually pulling the trigger on this. Worth mentioning, by the way, the Noel Canning case. Big disagreement over how this is pronounced, by the way. Many people pronounce it Noel Canning. It is not a name, actually. It is a company. And so I've been told that it's Noel Canning, but everyone else pronounces it Noel Canning. So I don't know. Anyway, that's sort of beside the point, except that now I have to say the name over and over again again. So I'm going to call it Noel Canning, and that's why. Uh, so I'm going to call it Noel Canning and that's why. Um, Noel Canning is the Supreme Court case about Obama's recess appointments. And, uh, and it strikes those down and says that pro forma sessions do not count for the purposes of recess appointments. Um, the reasoning might be somewhat applicable here that basically you can't create false pretenses to make recess appointments.

And, you know, you could imagine a situation where they don't dot all of their I's and cross all of their T's so that you end up more in the Noel Canning territory than you do in the perfectly executed Article 2, Section 3 territory. So I flag that as a backstop to all of this. Yeah. I mean, and there's been frustration with these pro forma sessions. I mean, that was the source of Obama's challenge to senatorial authority in the Canning case is he was basically saying a pro forma session isn't a session. There's nothing there's no business being this is just empty shell blocking of my ability to do what I'm constitutionally able to do in the Supreme Court. This is where you sort of have the institutionalist side of the of the Supreme Court rearing to life, which sort of says, look,

it's not our job to define what a session is. That's not our job. We'll let Congress define what a session is. So canning doesn't shut down Trump here in any way, shape or form. And a lot of people were sort of spitting that out there. Now, it does shut down to the extent that if Trump tried to make an argument that the pro-form accession is an accession, then he's, of course, blocked by canning. But yeah, so this is Trump getting and someone in Trump's legal team trying to get pretty creative. And it struck me as sort of a transparently bad cop, good cop dynamic, setting up Trump as bad cop. But, you know, again, I mean, one of these things, what we're learning and what everyone should know is that every tactic that is used by one side can be

used by the other side and will in fact be used by the other side with a little extra on top. So when Harry Reid abolished the judicial filibuster for everything but the Supreme Court and then the Democrats filibuster Justice Gorsuch, well, it wasn't much of a precedent to say, hey, McConnell, we kept the filibuster for Supreme Court justices. Once that Rubicon was crossed, that was it. That was it. So it was follow the Democratic precedent with a little spicy seasoning on top of it. So just we always have to think about as we break through each sort of new norm, that norm is probably done for the foreseeable future. And it will have an extra spicing of

unpredictable nature added on top of it. And all that you need here is the presidency in one house of Congress, and then you can push through all the nominations that you want, is what this would mean. Right. Exactly. Exactly. On your own timing, no checks, no meaningful checks. Yeah. It would be a pretty extraordinary change, which again, I think is small chance it happens. But the fact that it was raised has led to a conversation I never thought I'd have. Just to recap on this scintillating podcast, we have addressed the almost meaningless election results in Wisconsin. We have addressed the probably not all that meaningful regulatory takings case in Pennsylvania. We have discussed why a lot of the abortion legal

maneuvering probably isn't going to result in any important precedent. And then we just spent some time talking about Trump's latest blustery effort to break a logjam in Congress probably won't happen. But we do know some things that are happening that should be more meaningful than all of that. Maybe we should have led the podcast with it. Maybe. Maybe. So first, Barack Obama's endorsement of Joe Biden. Inevitable, of course, meaningful in its timing and content. Sarah. Yeah, huge bummer if you are the Biden campaign, that that's the way you have to roll it out on a sort of video situation. They got good viewership on the video, kinda, but you'd really want that to be a big rally and something that the cables can take live and make it an event and break into the news cycle. In no

way did this break into the news cycle, in my opinion. And it was pretty much out of the news cycle like an inner tube at the, you know, water park. So that's a huge bummer for them and for their campaign team. The Warren endorsement was even less sort of spectacular. I would say from all the endorsements so far, the Birdie endorsement is the only one that actually made much of a splash. I wonder whether they're going to hold back Michelle Obama's endorsement and see whether they can do that as a rally at some point in the summer or fall, because she's incredibly popular and could make for a very fun event. But at some point, you just got to, you know,

get everyone on board and in line. So I don't know. I'd be disappointed if I were their team. But this is just one more thing out of many where you're watching the time tick by to November. Right. You know, I think I mean, there's been a lot of talk about the inability of Trump likely to hold rallies for the foreseeable future. But the inability to put- Except in the Rose Garden. Yeah, right, exactly. But the inability to put Obama in front of a cheering crowd hurts the Democrats as well, because people forget he had a major rally presence. I mean, many of his rallies dwarfed anything that we've seen in the Trump campaign. And so he has this sort of rally persona, this inspiring rally persona that, quite frankly, Joe Biden doesn't quite have. And the inability to have Obama, at least, you know, in my view, barnstorming around the country, speaking to thousands and thousands of people is going to hurt.

thousands and thousands of people is going to hurt. I don't know that will hurt the Democrats as much as at least the Trump team might perceive its inability to hold rallies hurts Trump. But he's he certainly, as you notice, as you note, he has his sort of cheerleading time every day at 5 p.m. And this frees up Obama now to make donor calls all day long, to call local and state officials and get them, you know, moving and shaking out there. So some to some extent, you wanted that endorsement out of the way as well to be able to get some other balls rolling. And you can always hold the rallies, hopefully, you know, circa Labor Day and after, which is where you're really pushing on get out the vote stuff. You know, the biggest problem right now, I would say, if I were on that campaign team is voter registration drives, because you don't want to be doing those after Labor Day.

You want to be turning registered voters into likely voters after Labor Day. What you want to be doing between now and Labor Day is registration drives, which you really cannot do. Right, right. I mean, there's so many, we're moving into so many unknowns at this point. Unknown, how can you hold a single rally? Can you hold a single rally between now and the election? Can you hold the conventions and anything approaching a normal form? What happens if Trump, as part of his effort to try to get the economy rolling, heads down into a red state that hasn't had very much coronavirus and starts holding rallies in places that have not have been largely untouched by the by coronavirus, whereas all of the blue, big urban blue areas are still in much greater risk. Will that create a dis you know,

will there be a disadvantage? Will that create its own food fight about Trump's alleged irresponsibility? I mean, we're just in. Sarah, if you're you, you have been deeply, deeply involved in many campaigns. If you're putting on your campaign planning hat right now, what's your level of sort of like anguish, anxiety, and despair at the lack of access to many of your normal tools right now? It's so high. And all, I think all I would be doing is looking at competitive advantage stuff. Because it really doesn't matter whether you're being disadvantaged.

It matters whether the other guy's being disadvantaged as much or more. Well, and to that point, there is a competitive advantage that Trump has. He has a much bigger organic social media reach than Joe Biden does. It's not even close who the competitive advantage is here. So if you're on the Biden team, your pillow is wet with the tears of anguish because you picked a great candidate in a lot of ways, but maybe not for this way. Right, right. And that's frustrating. So, you know, to not, like, for instance, like, here's one footnote, by the way, that I'm really interested in. Assume we

don't have party conventions this summer. Will we ever have them again? They weren't exactly barn burners to begin with. Networks hated covering them. You know, going back to the West Wing, which obviously everything goes back to the West Wing, there's this whole food fight in the West Wing that the networks say they're not going to cover the convention. And the White House staff is like, yes, you will. And they're like, we do this every four years. You know, and they're like, we do this every four years. Um, you know, and they're like, we'll cover the balloon drop. So, you know, we may never have party conventions again. Like we may never have handshakes again, both of which I think I'm mostly okay with.

Yeah, it is. I mean, I was talking to somebody, um week, and as you look at how deadly the virus is, I mean, extraordinary. I mean, it's just extraordinary. We've gone from this thing 30 days ago had taken less than 100 lives. As of today, it's taken more than 30,000 lives in the United States. And you then look at what's the realistic timetable for a vaccine that's really effective. And you realize that we're going to be struggling to figure out the right balance for months and months and months, moving well over a year, maybe up to even two years. And unless the most optimistic theories are these wildly optimistic theories out there that perhaps we already have more herd immunity

than we think we do. And I was listening to Scott Gottlieb on, Rich Lowry interviewed him on his podcast and Ezra Klein interviewed him on his podcast. And in both of them, Gottlieb said, pretty much poured like a giant bucket of cold water on the idea that there's already widespread herd immunity. He was thinking that on the upper end, there's only been 5% exposure to this virus. And on the more realistic end, it's more like 2% to 3%. So yeah, I mean, what are we going to do about, So, yeah, I mean, you know, what are we going to do about, you know, few people will lament lost conventions. An awful lot of people will lament we can't pack 110,000 people into a football stadium.

Yeah. But back to the competitive advantage question. So, you know, you picked Biden as your nominee, someone who had a lot of advantages against Trump and electability. Then this thing happens and his competitive disadvantages that you pointed out, online presence, he's just getting crushed on that. Some of which is because of who he is, most of which is because of what's going on. But he has one more choice left to make that can affect that. I'm not saying it can turn the tables. I don't think it can. But it can affect it, which is his vice presidential choice. But here's the other problem. He's pinned in on that as well because in part of his age, there was a poll out this week that said that, let's see, eight in 10 said it was important that Biden's vice presidential selection have legislative and executive experience.

The majority said that it needed someone, the person needed to be younger than him. needed to be younger than him. And very few, 29% said it was important to pick a woman. 22% said it was important to pick a person of color. Now, none of that asks, is it important to pick someone who can get into the media stream? But it goes to like, you know, he does have to pick someone who can be president as well. So let me ask you this. I would have thought Tim when did you read Tim Alberta's profile of Gretchen Whitmer? No. In Politico. Really good. Big Alberta fan. Yeah. Really well done. And what was fascinating about it was the bipartisan praise for her. And after I read that profile, I thought, oh, this is her.

It's her nomination to lose at this point that she has risen to the occasion in Michigan. And then all of a sudden we began to see some of this overreach, some additional restrictions she placed that seemed nonsensical, that have triggered at least a little bit of a backlash. There was a big protest in Lansing, several thousand cars honking and protesting some of the overreach. Where do you think she stands in the veep stakes now that she's banning you from getting garden seeds at Walmart? If I were the Biden team, the only thing about that I think I would particularly care about are the Michigan numbers about that. Because if Michigan thinks that that's OK, I'm probably OK with that because I think it's pretty defensible. It's annoying, mind you. Very annoying, but defensible.

very annoying, but defensible. But is she someone who can overcome some of these other disadvantages that he has? Can she get herself into the news cycle? Can she excite the base, turn out voters? And can she get Michigan? So Michigan's the most important part of that in a lot of ways. Vice presidents have not, there's no, this is the podcast of things that don't matter. Vice presidents have traditionally not mattered. If you really crunch the data, there's very little evidence that in recent history, any vice presidential pick has made a whit of difference to the overall situation. of difference to the overall situation. Even Sarah Palin, you're hard pressed to find even a negative correlation in voters. That being said, hope springs eternal. So can Whitmer deliver some votes in Michigan? If these extra restrictions show that in fact she's losing altitude in Michigan, I'm not even like it's done. Like I'm done. I'm back to Harris,

I think. Interesting. OK, well, one last thing. I'm going to spring this on you. Do you believe the polling in Arizona that has put Biden rather solidly ahead of Trump? Yes, because the polling shows similar altitude in the Senate race. And that's sort of how Arizona was moving generally. It fits with common, like common wisdom, multiple polls. And look, I've talked about Biden's disadvantages and the competitive advantage that Trump has right now. But the competitive advantage just makes this a referendum on Trump. It's not that it puts him at an actual voting advantage, if that makes sense.

Drowning out Biden in a way could actually hurt Trump because then you're not looking at any of Biden's faults. You're just deciding, do you like Donald Trump? Yes or no? Right. And that is one last political question before we get introspective. So we did see the rally around the flag effect, but it was very modest, very modest after the coronavirus emerged, where Trump bumped right about above 50 percent in some approval ratings. But he's right back where he was. I mean, within the margin of error, very close to within the margin of error where he was before coronavirus. It's quite clear that he feels like his daily exposure in at the White House is good,

is helping him. I just am not sure about that. I just kind of feel like the daily exposure at the White House is just kind of reminding everyone of everything they already thought about him. Yeah, it's similar to his rallies. I think it's very good for his base. It gives them the talking points for how to defend him. It shows him fighting against the press and liberals and, you know, the normal things that he fights against. But it just makes this more and more and more of a referendum on him as a person, not his actions, not his government's actions, but him and his personality. And, you know, in general, for the majority of voters that has not his personality has not polled well and i think if you look back to 2016 and this has been my pet thesis this whole time when it was a referendum on trump hillary was winning and when it was a referendum on hillary

trump was winning and what happened when comey gave that press conference right before election day was he flipped it at the last minute to make it a referendum on Hillary Clinton. And Trump pulls it out. So if that holds four years later, I do think he got some altitude over the last four years, by the way, from November 2016. But Biden's also a very different candidate than Hillary. If this becomes only a referendum on Donald Trump, yeah, I don't think that's necessarily good news for Donald Trump. And Biden gets to slide through everything, any faults.

It's like for everyone doing Zoom and Skype and all of those filters that you get to use, Biden gets all the filters. Yes. you know, all of those filters that you get to use, like Biden gets all the filters. Yes. And he misses the, you know, Biden on the rope line where a voter challenges him and he, you know, and then Biden goes to like the pushup contest or, you know. And he misses all the times that Biden, you know, may not remember something or stumbles over his words or says something about corn pop. Those are gone. Yeah. All of them gone.

And I do wonder on the competitive advantage if just the whole thing is a referendum on Trump. And the other thing is, if the economy doesn't come snap back as we ease out and you just begin to get to this like relentless grinding reality, it's hard for me to imagine that as weeks and months, fair or unfair, fair or unfair, it is hard for me to imagine weeks or months going by

with an economy that is as bad as it looks like it will be. It's hard for me to imagine Trump bumping too much above that 43, 44, 45 percent where he is right now. Fun follow up. Gallup just released their approval rating for the week. It dropped six points, 43 percent. 40 back to kind of his normal. normal. In fact, it's a little, it is at his normal back in November when things were looking particularly eh and partisan around impeachment stuff. Oh, interesting. Okay. So it's low. Well, so I think we've ended this mostly meaningless podcast with some meaningful numbers. Maybe we should have led with them. To the extent approval ratings are meaningful,

who knows? Maybe we should have led with that. Well, let's end with, we were talking before the podcast, what should we talk about in our cultural segment? Because we've spent a lot of time on entertainment. And Caleb, our producer, had a great suggestion. What is it that we have learned about ourselves? I think my wife counted up. We're nearing close to around day 33 in our house where we were essentially under this kind of these lockdown conditions. That's been a while. And what have we learned about ourselves that might be a little surprising? So, Sarah? ourselves that it might be a little surprising. So Sarah? I saw a poll on Twitter and it said, are you an extrovert who found out you're even more extroverted, an extrovert who found out you're actually a little introverted, an introvert who found out you're more extroverted, or an introvert who found out you're more introverted? And I laughed because I was like, oh my gosh, that's really easy for me. I am an introvert who found out I was even more introverted. And I laughed because I was like, oh my gosh, that's really easy for me. I am an

introvert who found out I was even more introverted. Honestly, like this is just fine with me. Wu-Tang Financial is one of my favorite Twitter accounts. I don't know if you have followed Wu-Tang Financial. No, it sounds like I need to. Oh, it's delightful. But one of their tweets this week was, hey, introverts, your privilege is showing. Look, I have many frustrations and, you know, things I'm missing out on and stuff like that. But, boy, does this turn out to be a lot easier for me than I even thought it would be yeah you know I'm one of those people I've always been pretty extremely extroverted there especially oh gosh I would say I've had an extremely busy travel schedule for at least the last 15 years since I left the private practice of law and

became a president of FIRE, Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and began doing the speaking fundraising thing. I mean, there's times when I can't even remember a year that would go by where I had more than three consecutive weeks at home, that like just that much traveling. And sometimes it gets a little, it's more exhausting, but I really have enjoyed getting out there and meeting people and speaking. And for an extrovert, it's just been, it was great. And then it's all gone. Like you looked at my schedule and the other day I had, I still had all my speaking engagements and all my travel still on the schedule. And I just went through and I deleted them one by one by one by one by one. And it was unbelievable. It's like somebody nuked me until September. Uh, and I

expect the nuke to drop on September on, on, but, um, and what I found though, was I am far more content with the rhythm of life and the absence of that than I thought I would be. And, and, and just, you know, the, and I found that I've taken a lot of joy in just this moment of, and it's really a moment you never thought you would ever have. Like once your oldest daughter gets married and your son goes to college where everyone's just together. And that, you know, and I know a lot of people are all together while they're losing their jobs and they're all together

while some people are getting sick. And so I recognize I'm ludicrously blessed. But that sort of I'm here, I'm not going anywhere, I'm what I am focused on, my family has been a real in a lot of ways, it's been a real blessing. And so, yeah, I'm the, the extrovert who realized that I had, um, a little intro, uh, internal introvert in me. I don't know what, that having six people in your house counts as being introverted. I think like as an introvert, I can tell you that would drive me crazy, but I guess if they're your own offspring,

maybe it's a little different. Well, yeah. I mean, like, you know, last night late, I, maybe it's a little different. Well, yeah. I mean, like, you know, last night late, I had the delight of sitting there and listening to my wife and oldest daughter spend, I think, maybe two solid hours breaking down the various permutations of an old season of The Bachelor. Not just the one that just ended, but like from years ago that's apparently on Netflix. So, you know, it's those moments, Sarah, it's those moments. You just got to treasure them. Uh, yeah. So, uh, you know, again, that's, that's, I think is the thing I've learned about myself, which you couldn't really know until you either signed up for big brother or something and had to live in a house or, um, or something and had to live in a house or, um, you also, I think, learn, um, you know,

do you like your spouse? Yes. I don't know another test that could be run quite as well as this to test compatibility. Well, you know, and that's a, I'm just waiting. You just identified something that maybe you'll write this. Somebody's going to write it. It's going to be the 2,500 word think piece in the modern love section of New York Times about how professional couples couples who met, dated, and were married with extremely busy mutual schedules, suddenly spending more time with each other than they ever had in the entire history and course of their relationship. And what does that mean? Oh, that is me and Scott. And the running joke we have today is I didn't know I was married to an owl circle back guy, except in this case, it's like me saying it.

Like he caught me saying it on a call and he's like, Oh, and I was like, I'm so sorry. But, but you know what? Like that's another thing that I thought would be a harder adjustment than it was. In fact, you know, we're both, it's, the frustration is not being as busy, actually. But we talk about it. And then we, you know, cook dinner and, and do that together. And the actual time together has been very nice, especially, and this is, you know, pre-baby, right? Like, to have 12 weeks right before you're about to have this major life change and getting to spend all that time together is incredible.

Yeah, that is, that is a blessing. And I'm also looking, yeah, I'm looking a lot like if you've watched Monsters, Inc., um, Mike Wazowski, I'm like a round thing with like sticks for legs. Like it's getting very difficult to move around. Well, we're, I know listeners will be eager to hear about the dynamic post baby, but that's going to have to wait a good while. Woo.

Eight weeks to go. So the dynamic post baby will be interesting. I would, I would say we should solicit what's the most surprising and best piece of advice that you ever got before you're a parent from listeners. But who knows what can of worms that would open. So far, Scott has really taken over doing the dishes to the point that I now feel guilty. But loading and unloading the dishwasher when you're a big round meatball is pretty difficult. So I hope that sticks.

I hope that can be a post-baby change too. Well, we have just reached the conclusion of our Mostly Meaningless podcast. But we hope you've enjoyed it. And as always, please give us feedback, David at thedispatch.com, Sarah at thedispatch.com. And we have been fielding a number of topic requests. And those of you who sent in some of the ones that we covered today, thank you very much. day. Thank you very much. And as always, we appreciate your feedback by email. We really appreciate positive reviews on Apple Podcasts. And we would ask that you subscribe on Apple Podcasts and also, for that matter, become a member of the Dispatch. Once again, this has been the Advisory Opinions Podcast with David and Sarah. And thanks so much for listening.