Advisory Opinions - Unintended Consequences

Episode Date: February 3, 2020

David and Sarah look at polling shenanigans ahead of the Iowa caucuses, take a closer look at the history of the 17th Amendment, and discuss the impact of Apple's "The Morning Show." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Moisturizer, now available online or at your local retailer. Welcome to the Advisory Opinions Podcast. This is David French with Sarah Isger. We have got a three-part podcast for you today. We're going to start with Iowa. We're going to go to the 17th Amendment, and we're going to finish with The Morning Show, the Apple TV show that got a lot of attention, a ton of award nominations, and was really, really thought-provoking. But before we get into those three things, a couple of requests. One, the paywall is about to come down at thedispatch.com. So please sign up now while you still can for free to see our content for free. I think you'll like it. If you already like it, please think about subscribing. Also, please subscribe to this

podcast. It helps us out a ton if you subscribe. It also helps us out a ton if you rate it. So go to Apple iTunes and give us. We'd love a five-star rating. So those are the requests to start. Please sign up for the Dispatch. Please sign up, subscribe for this podcast and rate us. We'd love a five-star rating. So those are the requests to start. Please sign up for the Dispatch. Please sign up, subscribe for this podcast and rate us. And with that, we are off to the races. This is an incredibly jam-packed week. It's today, Monday, February 3rd is a notable day because this is the Iowa caucuses. And we are so privileged to have not only as a co-host, but a veteran of the Iowa caucuses, Sarah Isger. And I thought we could spend at least a little bit of time. First, what is it like to be on the ground in Iowa?

And then also talk about some of the stuff that's a little odd that's going on right now. And let's start with that, Sarah. There's some weird, you said it as we were talking before we hit record, polling shenanigans right now in Iowa. And I'd love to hear what are the polling shenanigans? What do they mean? Yeah. You want to start with polling? Yeah, let's start with that. Okay, so Christmas happens at 9 p.m. the Saturday night before the caucuses for political junkies, and that is when the last Des Moines Register CNN poll is released before the caucuses. And really what that does is for those of us who don't have fun things to do on Saturday night, this is our fun thing to do is to pour through that poll and make all sorts of fairly baseless judgments on what's going to happen on Monday.

But that poll was not released on Saturday. So, you know, minutes before it was set to be released, okay, a couple hours, they said that they had found some irregularities and they weren't going to release it with. Fascinating. Yeah. Thank you to all the reporters who then called every source that they had. And here's the story that looks like was most likely based on what the Des Moines Register said and based on some of the behind the scenes reporting as well. Polls are done by call centers, right? These are more or less minimum wage jobs where you sit around and make these calls and ask people to answer questions. And they use a script. And

that script is what goes through infinite processes by the pollsters to make it the most beautiful, perfectly worded, scientifically accurate script. The only thing that maybe gets more attention is who to call. Right. But none of that is particularly relevant because none of that had any errors in it. The error happened once it got to the screen of the call center. And someone wanted really large text on their screen. Well, the large text, think of like a teleprompter, you know, where it like cycles through kind of,

except because the text was so large, it cut off the bottom name. Now, the bottom name does switch for every call that you make. It automatically would just randomize that. But unfortunately for everyone involved, this caller called someone for the poll who was a Buttigieg supporter. And for that call, the last name on the screen was Pete Buttigieg.

And so that name was not read. That Buttigieg supporter who did not hear Pete's name then called the Buttigieg campaign. I believe he was like the mayor of a small town or whatever. So he like ring ring Mayor Pete and says, hey, the DMR poll has a big problem. They're not even reading your name. The Buttigieg campaign then calls the DMR-CNN pollster people and is like, hey, we have this evidence that you, you know, disadvantaged our candidate.

Well, that then leaves them with a big, what do you do now? Oh, my goodness. Because most likely it was just this one caller. Most likely it was actually, it's not good, but in theory it would have randomized each person who was left off right but you know it's like a slot machine to have the buddha judge name left off for a buddha judge supporter it you know bad news bears i don't think they had a lot of choice but at that point to pull the poll um because it would have undermined any faith in the poll if the Buttigieg campaign had come out and told them about the errors.

If they had come out and said about the errors themselves and then said, but here's the polling data that we have, anyone could have just picked it apart then and discounted it if they wanted to. So that was a disappointment. But there was a second poll that came out a couple days ago that I also, I like, the part of me that, you know, enjoys the class of statistics just wants to scream about. I'm sorry, listeners. You're now going to do some polling crosstabs with me. So the ABC Emerson poll, the local ABC Iowa Emerson poll. They polled 497 people. 8% of those people supported Andrew Yang. Now, these polls do weight and everything, so you don't know exactly how many people actually picked Andrew Yang, but let's just take it on its face. Roughly 40 people is what that means.

They then asked, like you're used to seeing over and over again, additional polling questions if you said, you know, you were a Yang or anyone else supporter. If Andrew Yang is not the nominee, would you support the eventual nominee? Well, there was like some weirdness in that 42% of Yang supporters said no, they would not. and that 42% of Yang supporters said no, they would not. Mind you, 100% of Elizabeth Warren supporters said they would. 89% of Biden supporters said they would. So all of a sudden you have this huge number of Yang supporters who are like, nah, I'm walking.

But the graphic that the cable news programs put up this weekend said that that number, the 42% of Yang supporters would not support the nominee, had a margin of error or plus or minus 4%. Now, David. I already see the problem. I already see the problem. I know you're not a math major. No. But even a lawyer, even two lowly lawyers like us know that that is not a margin of error of plus or minus 4%. Cross tabs, those sub questions that look at like sub groups, do not have the same margin of error as the main questions that ask all 497 people that. So the subgroup of roughly 40 people had a margin of error of over 15 percent. So look, maybe Yang

supporters are more likely to peel off from the nominee, but maybe they're not that much more likely. And maybe that polling question, while sort of marginally interesting, doesn't really tell us much, especially as you get to the candidates that have so, you know, 8% or less support. I tweeted this. And for the most part, the Yang supporters were super pumped about it. Again, it actually is not a point about Andrew Yang. Right. It is a point about math.

Hashtag math, which is his hashtag. I will give you that, although it's an acronym for him. But whatever. Math is math. But then I was concerned by the number of people who tweeted at me that they don't believe that 497 has a margin of error of plus or minus 4%. And now I really want to just tweet out the formula for bell curves and margins of errors. Well, you know, the only math I ever had to do as a political science major

in college was math surrounding polling and polling margins of error. Yeah, so I had a whole class on this. There was an effort in the 1980s, so we're going way back here, Sarah, to make political science more science and less political. science and less political. And so I took an entire class on the science of political science, which happened to be a huge amount of polling math. And it somewhat stuck with me to this day. But there's another thing about the polling. So going back to the DMR poll. So as I understand this, I interpret this. Let's say you have 100 members of the call center. There's 100 people calling on the poll. Maybe one person of the 100 people had the large text. So the large text was not amongst all the callers. It was the one

caller who had requested it. And it was allegedly randomized who was the the one caller who had requested it and it was allegedly randomized the who was the name left off but and it should have been consistent that as long as that pollster always used the large text which presumably they did right it would have been consistent for that caller a hundred probably is more than they had okay so? Yeah. I think that's probably more accurate. Yeah. I can totally see why A, DMR would look at this and go and think, truly, truly, it probably didn't substantially corrupt or materially corrupt the results of the poll, but also really, truly, we had absolutely no choice. Yep. Yep. And they don't have another bite at this apple. Nope. It's done. It's done for another four years. Now, will they release it after if it was accurate? Yeah, that's a good question. That's a good. Maybe. Well, and let's talk for a minute about caucus polling in general, because there's another aspect of caucusing. So tough. Yeah. So again, we were talking, some of the pre-pod conversation is quite pod worthy. So I wanted to bring some of the

pre-pod conversation into this. And so we were talking beforehand, and I was just saying as somebody who is not a veteran of caucus like you, that I can totally see the long shot allure that a candidate has about making a splash in Iowa. It takes about, say, 30,000 people in raw numbers to really make a splash. That's a little bit bigger. That's bigger than, smaller than a football stadium, bigger than a basketball arena. It's not a lot of human beings. And you can sort of feel like, A, I can get 30,000 people to like me. And B, that 30,000 can, in theory, fly completely under the polling radar. So I can shock the world. It's possible for me to shock the world. So tell me why, if you're advising a long shot candidate, my thinking is flawed here. Well, because it turns out that at least for the

last several cycles, the polling has not been that far off, even when it's been off. Sometimes it's been spot on. Polling has gotten a lot, lot better since, for instance, David was in the Jurassic period in college. We've invented cars and electricity. Oh, no, wait a minute. Improved polling. So it is, sorry, I'm laughing at David being old because it is funny to me. I don't know. Yes, a candidate, a staffer can convince themselves that they just don't know because I've been reaching these new people in Pella, Iowa and Indianola and Ankeny and like I'm bringing new people to the caucus in a way that for a primary that's not really true because if you haven't voted in a primary before, the likelihood is you ain't gonna this time. Right. You can really touch new people in Iowa for a caucus state and they might show up.

But they're pretty good at correcting for that. They're pretty good at correcting for that. And the likelihood of someone coming to your political event at the coffee bean on Main Street means that they probably have already voted in a caucus before. You know, the Andrew Yang's of the world are interesting in that and that maybe they're finding new people. new people. But, you know, it's been surprising how accurate the polling has been in the past, even where it's been wrong. But like, remember, being 2% wrong is not going to shock the world. Right. You'd have to be 15 points of just like totally new people who have never, ever shown up on any poll, have never answered a phone in their life. You know, they do call cell phones now. They do reach people through different ways. But absolutely, if you are, you know, we were talking about what it feels like to be a staffer on a campaign the day of the Iowa caucus. You are thinking to yourself, no, I'm pretty sure we have new people every time.

Hope springs eternal. Oh, absolutely. And it strikes me that it's just in this day and age of social media, of people tweeting out and Instagramming and Facebooking their every thought, that it's hard to have a stealth movement of 30K caucus goers. Yeah. Like it's hard for that to not be showing up on people's radar screens days in advance. And so, and especially, you know, until the DMR has, you know, had demonstrated its little quirk we just talked about, especially when you've got an awful lot of political pros on the ground in Iowa, this is just what they do. This is...

Oh, yeah. And they do it. They don't do it every four years. This thing is four years, so it's pretty constant. Right. So tell us, Sarah, the day of the Iowa caucuses, what is a campaign doing? What are you doing? What are the Sarah Isgers of the world doing today? David, have you seen the movie, the 1997 classic, Gattaca? I have, in fact. It's just one of the more underrated sci-fi flicks. I agree. So for those who haven't,

and no spoilers here, but in the future, there are sort of perfect babies that are genetically modified to have all the high IQ and the athleticism and the blue eyes or whatever else you want as a parent. And then there are love children who are not genetically modified and are made the old fashioned way. So it's about two brothers. One's perfect and one's a love child.

And the love child, of course, who is played by Ethan Hawke, always beats the perfect child in the swimming competition that they do. Yes. And at the very end, okay, here's the spoiler, spoiler alert. At the very end, the perfect child asked the love child, how do you always, how did you always beat me? And the love child says, because I never left any for the swim back. I'm paraphrasing. Yes. I remember that now. Yes. And it's this great moment. It's kind of an inspiring thing to hear. On the day of the Iowa caucuses, you have left nothing for the swim back. Even if you're going on to New Hampshire, no matter what, even if I don't know what else you could have, like you're done. There's nothing left in the tank and you are now, you know,

they say that human walking is actually just a series of falling. One foot catches you in front of the other. Like that's literally what you are doing today. So, you know, this weekend would have been incredibly busy, you know, late, late nights, and then early morning TV, radio, drive time, starting at, you know, four or five in the morning to then do a pre-breakfast coffee, then a breakfast, then a mid-morning town hall, then a lunch. Maybe you get an hour of downtime to catch up on clips and everything. And like, for me, most of the time is spent in the back of a SUV or, you know, a bus or RV, whatever the candidate is going to travel in, desperately trying not to get car sick. And wondering when my next food is coming. Like,

I was like a dog in the back row of that SUV that just like waiting for snacks. Like, where are my treats? So you've left nothing. And, you know, to some extent today, unlike a primary day where people are voting all day, so you actually have a fairly quiet day, you're pushing people to still go. Now it's a work day, so it's less busy than the weekend is, which can almost feel like a bit of a letdown. But you're still trying to find them. You're getting supporters out with signs on the side of the road, like jumping up and down, clapping when cars go by. Your candidate's going to join for some of that. It is less cold in Iowa today than it normally is. So good for them. They may leave with all 10 fingers and toes unfrostbitten, but that's a rarity.

rarity. So, yeah. So it's and, you know, you sort of feel the love of the family of the campaign that will be done after this, because, again, even if you're going on to New Hampshire, you have a whole Iowa team that's done now. So here's the question again. I'm not I'm not a veteran of political campaigns. I've been a litigator for years and years before I became before I entered the world of journalism. So these staffers, once this Iowa campaign ends, they don't have a job anymore. Right. They're the most part. There's some exceptions. So who is it that. So are these are these folks who take a leave of absence from another job, take a campaign job and go back to another job? I'm just, this might sound like a weird question, but I've always wondered who are the class of people who are free to be hired temporarily for a caucus campaign and then discharged from that job. And then they do what? So I've always wondered

about this. Like you hear about campaigns, I'm staffing up, I'm staffing up. It's like, it's almost like there's a bullpen and you have, you know, like the, you've, you've got your middle reliever and your short reliever and you, you give the signal and like these staffers just come charging in from somewhere. Who are these people, Sarah? Tell us. Yeah, through the corn into the field of dreams, they just, they come when called. So, okay, there's several different clumps. One, there is sort of a national parachute in clump and those people, instead of going now to New Hampshire, they won't go to New Hampshire. They'll go to California. So they're going to skip ahead several and move to maybe a March 3rd state.

Right. To a super duper Tuesday state. Those were not Iowans usually. They came from national headquarters into Iowa maybe two months ago to help, quote, staff up. They know where their next assignment is and it's somewhere else. Okay. Second batch, the purely full-time Iowa caucus staff person. They're going to be relatively senior. They will probably work for a political consultant firm if they are not the head of their own firm. Got it. And yeah, they've got some downtime right now, but don't worry because

they also have some state legislative races. They've got maybe a mayor's race or two. They've got other candidates. And yes, this was taking up all of their time right now. But don't worry about that. The third group are the field staffers who are Iowa staffers. And they're not senior. And they don't have a whole bunch of other campaigns and

they don't work for a political consulting firm. A, some of those were kind of quasi-volunteer. Okay. And then some of them maybe work for a state legislator who gave them three months off. So they actually do have jobs where they can take three months off. And a lot of them are young, new college grads. And this was their plan. Starting in May, they graduated. They took this job.

It was a fun six-month job. And now they get to go either fly to D.C. to find a job, go to the state capitol and try to find a job, or, you know, go to Casey's gas station and, you know, start making Casey's breakfast pizza. Yeah, I was wondering about that. Like, do you have a group of people who are, you know, let's say they're selling insurance at State Farm and they say, boss, Elizabeth Warren needs me. See you in two months. Or it sounds like there's a class of

political employee, in essence, or aspiring political employee, who this is a bullet point on the resume, gets them to know people, gets their foot in the door. And it's sort of part of the process. Yeah. And if Elizabeth Warren becomes the nominee and you were one of those in that third group, you're definitely coming back around usually once the nomination is secured. Yeah. For the general. And you're going to be, you'll the nomination is secured. Yeah, for the general. And you're going to be, you'll be working your tail off in Iowa in the general and then maybe get an administration position and the rest can be history. Yeah.

And you know what, though? And extra credit to these people. A lot of people don't want an administration job. They are doing this. I don't want to say that that's a wrong reason to do it, but they're doing it for the pure reason of they really want to see her elected. This is a fun thing to do. They don't want to fly to DC or move to DC. They've got family or whatever else. And this is a passion project. So thank God for those people because they are part of what makes this whole system work. Yeah. Well, I've always wondered that. I don't,

you know, I've always thought, where do people come from when you say I'm staffing up? And where did they leave? And are their employers okay with it? It's just, I know that's probably my own little quirk, but hey, it's our podcast, so we can explore those. It's a little like, where do the birds go when you don't see the birds anymore? That's a great comparison. Yeah. Where are my cardinals in my backyard? Are they sleeping? Aristotle thought that maybe they transmorphed into a different type of winter bird. Interesting. So yeah, we could do a whole thing on bird evolution. Well, let's press pause on bird evolution and go to the 17th Amendment because it's interesting ever since we –

By popular demand. And that is actually true to say that. It is actually true. After our most recent podcast where we jokingly said the people demand a 17th Amendment podcast, we then began to receive a steady stream of emails. We then began to receive a steady stream of emails. I would say actually the predominant email that we got after the last podcast was, no, really, we'd like to talk about the 17th Amendment. And so why don't we talk about the 17th Amendment, Sarah? And why don't we start with what is it?

Why was it passed? And was it wise? So those are three. Those are the questions. Those are the questions. So let's start. I'll interview. What is it? And why was it passed, Sarah? This all goes back to when I was in eighth grade and I had to memorize the Constitution. You had to memorize the Constitution in eighth grade? Yes. Yes, we did. Thank you, Mrs. Healy. We had to memorize the year that each amendment was passed for a bonus point as well. Amazing. And I will just tell you that your pod co-host got 119 on that test. Whoa. You got more than the perfect score. That's remarkable.

That's right. Although a savvy listener will note that if each year of a constitutional amendment got you an extra point, maybe I'm down some. Although my memory is that actually the Bill of Rights should have all been the same. So I doubt we got an individual point for that, in which case I believe that we had two additional bonus points. So I do think I might have gotten a perfect score. But regardless, the 17th Amendment was the direct election of senators. So pre-17th Amendment, senators were elected by the state legislature. And this was part of the purpose. It was not an accident. The Anti-Federalists and the Federalists both wrote about this bicameralism. I'm going to quote from the Anti-Federalists.

One branch of the general government, the Senate, or the second branch, was to be appointed by the state legislatures. The state legislatures, therefore, by this participation in the general government, would have an opportunity of defending their rights. James Madison in the Federalist Papers confirmed, quote, the Senate, on the other hand, will derive its power from the states. And if we want to check in circa 1858, the Lincoln-Douglas debates are actually part of this process. The Lincoln-Douglas debates take place during a state legislature race in Illinois, and Lincoln and Douglas are both, the debate, the purpose of the debates was to get people out to vote for their party for the state legislature so that they could get elected to the Senate. So if you're a Senate candidate,

you're campaigning for state legislators. That's right. Who will vote for you. Right. That's right. Which, I mean, if anyone has loved the Lincoln-Douglas debates, you can thank the not 17th Amendment being in effect. So this April, David, we are coming up on the 107th anniversary of the 17th Amendment. It was part of the Constitution as of 1913, which makes it part of sort of the rise of the progressives. And there are two main reasons, but I'm going to give you a third Sarah reason of why they felt it was necessary. Gotcha.

One, corruption. When you have so few voters to give you a Senate seat, you may be incentivized to help them make up their minds. Spend a little cash. Yes. Help them make up their minds. Spend a little cash. Yes. And the party bosses may be so incentivized. So there is some evidence of real just like brazen corruption, just money changing hands.

But there's also sort of the soft corruption of family dynasties, party bosses, friends, et cetera. No question, especially, I mean, that's just sort of the Gilded Era, Gilded Age in general. There's corruption kind of everywhere, as we've been told in our history books. Okay, number two, deadlock. It was the case that for some states around the country, the state legislature would deadlock on who to pick and not send any senators to D.C. And there were some times where a state would have zero senators in the U.S. Senate. Now, there is a debate over how real that threat was. There is a debate over how real that threat was. One person, so Todd Zwicky, who's a wonderful George Mason law professor and a Fifth Circuit clerk, where I clerked, of course, which makes it the best circuit.

And Jay Bybee, who's now a Ninth Circuit judge, back in the 90s, both wrote great law review papers, the Zwicky one in particular, and the Cleveland Law Review in 1997. If you really are looking for additional reading on the 17th Amendment, highly fun, readable little Todd Zwicky, 1997 Cleveland Law Review, Cleveland State Law Review, I believe, actually. Okay, so he said that, in fact fact only 2% of the races ended in deadlock. But even he acknowledges these deadlocks were devastating because 2%, you know, not having senators, etc. Oregon had some huge problem with this. And whether it was real or not, it was certainly one of the two major reasons used to push the 17th Amendment, if that makes sense. Okay, now my third reason. It became incredibly consuming for the state legislatures.

Both the races for state legislatures became all about who are you going to vote for in the Senate. Again, think back to the Lincoln-Douglas debates. And once they were in the state legislature, it became all-consuming. They weren't doing a whole lot more than picking senators or talking about picking senators. Again, how true was this in practice? It was certainly true for the races for state legislatures. How true was it in the state houses, I think, did depend on which state house. How much was controlled by one party?

Obviously, if it was wildly controlled by one party, it's probably not going to take that much time. But where it was a closer thing. So that's sort of, that's the why. That's where, that's painting a picture of what it looks like in 19, let's call it 11, before the amendment is really put out to the states. What say you, David? Yeah, I mean, all of that stuff. I mean, you know, when you mentioned the progressive movement, David? Yeah, I mean, all of that stuff. I mean, you know, when you mentioned the progressive movement, just sort of the general push towards more popular democracy that and which frankly began to move the Senate away from the Senate's intended purpose. I'm glad you went back to the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists talking about what the Senate was supposed to do as part of the bicameral design. And I kind of look at it like this, and

this isn't a perfect structure, but I think predominantly it's correct. And that is, you had the House of Representatives, which was, these were the representatives of the people. You had the Senate, these are the representatives of the states. And then you had the president, who's the head of state and head of an executive branch, but who is representing the nation to the rest of the world, so to speak. And so there's this sort of nice symmetry to it that each one of these houses, the two houses have a really a different purpose. And we look back. A different purpose and a different accountability. Exactly. And the accountability matches the purpose. So if the House of Representatives

is to represent the people, it's accountable to the people. If the Senate is to represent the states, it's accountable to the actual government of the state, the legislature of the state. And so it has that different accountability. It has that different purpose. And we look now in the era of centralization where, you know, really post-World War II and the massive growth of the federal government and this sort of representation of the states doesn't make as much sense to us because we think of everything as being so centralized and so federalized. But one of my theories is that we're going back to – so after – from the Great Depression to World War II to the Cold War, From the Great Depression to World War II to the Cold War, we had three huge challenges that really sort of nationalized our American sense of self. We had a huge national government response to the Great Depression.

We had to have a huge national response to the Axis powers. And then in the rise of the Soviet Union, you have this sort of international conflict between two great systems, I mean, the two dominant systems, communism and capitalism, democracy and tyranny. And we had to all more or less pull together. Now, with all of that, no Great Depression, no Axis powers, no Soviet Union, we're kind of defaulting back to sort of the America that was, which is this incredibly diverse society in an incredibly diverse geography, incredibly diverse racially, incredibly diverse religiously. And in that circumstance, the devolution of power to the states starts to make more sense, but we don't have that system anymore. It's just not there. And so that's why I sort of I find it interesting, this sort of small, nerdy movement

of people who who say, hey, the 17th Amendment is kind of a problem now. And so here's. No, go ahead. No, go ahead. Well, there's a couple of things, right? So this our whole conversation about this kicked off last week and really a couple of weeks before that when we were talking about the gutting of Congress's accountability and authority as the Article 1 branch. Right, right. And I was citing the 17th Amendment as one of the reasons for this. But there's a problem with the band of merry warriors who want to get rid of the 17th Amendment. Besides there's no constituency for this? Correct. There's no constituency at all. But there is a second problem, which is I don't see a world, an additional barrier, I guess. When the state legislatures, when it would favor one party so

much more than the other to repeal the 17th Amendment, it's definitely not going to happen. And so I pulled up some data from the National Conference of State Legislatures from February 2018 to look at what would happen if we repealed the 17th Amendment. at what would happen if we repealed the 17th Amendment. Republicans control 32 state legislatures. This is, again, February 2018, so pre the 2018 election. Apologies. But Republicans control 32 state legislatures. The Democrats control 13. Four are split. Nebraska's unicameral. So that would roughly translate to 64 seats for the Republicans in the current Senate under the pre 17th Amendment rules. That would also put the Republicans four votes over a filibuster proof 60 vote majority and within three seats of a 67 vote super majority needed to override a presidential veto. So in other words, this ain't going to happen. No way.

So in other words, this ain't going to happen. No way. So you repeal the 17th Amendment. And can you imagine the awesome power of the man known as Cocaine Mitch? I mean, I don't even I'm not like, no. Is there a drug more potent than cocaine that we could use? But so this is more of a philosophical discussion you and I are having, David. Well, you know, it's interesting because there's sort of a couple of philosophical discussions taking place. I just listened to a really – so I've been reading Ezra Klein's book on why we're polarized. I'm fascinated by the polarization topic, as anybody who reads French press knows. Great book. Highly, highly recommend it. And he's –

Oh, and to clarify to some of your readers, you're not French. It's your last name. Right. There was a lot of anger that they shouldn't have to listen to someone from France about U.S. religious issues. And I just do want to clarify that it's not that you're hiding your accent. You're right. You're not French. Yeah, that was so the dispatch boosted a Facebook post of my most recent newsletter, which caused a lot of anger as to why are French people weighing in on American politics? So I'm not French. I was born in Opelika, Alabama. Which is about the

opposite of Paris, I would say. Spent some time in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Oh, wait a minute. A little hint of French. A little hint. A little hint, a little bit and raised in Georgetown, Kentucky and live in Franklin, Tennessee. So that is not France. But so there is this really interesting conversation because Republicans are very powerful by sheer numbers in the states. in the states. Democrats are very powerful by sheer numbers of people, but they're concentrated in a few states. And so there's this real sense of angst that I totally get this. And Ezra has this statistic, and I quoted it in my newsletter a few days ago, that by 2040, 70% of the people will be represented by 30% of the Senate and 30% of the Senate will, and 70% of the Senate will represent 30% of the people because frankly, we're clustering, we're clustering in these big states. And so there's this real issue that the will of really an overwhelming majority of people could be thwarted by a pretty small minority. And there's no way to stop this absent constitutional amendment. Yet the 30 percent

of the people who will control 70 percent of the Senate seats will never, not ever in a million years, give up that power. And why would you? Of course not. Of course you're not going to do it. And so there's this really interesting question about whether or not the constitutional system that we have, which was designed from the ground up to relieve pressure and to relieve sort of this pressure of what Madison called the violence of faction, is imposing pressure. And I think it is in an interesting way. And I think the answer is one of the answers is a renewed interest in federalism. But I can't I don't see a huge interest in federalism except as a tactic. So when Democrats are out of power, they'll use federalist arguments. So, for example, the California sanctuary state movement is a very much of a federalist movement. Republicans are trying to crush it in court. Then when Republicans

are out of power, they're all about federalism, like Arizona's immigration policies during the Obama era. And Obama did, in fact, crush that in court. And so I don't see any much genuine principled interest in federalism. Instead, there's an awful lot of interest in centralization, and the system is straining for different reasons for each side, if that makes sense. It does. And to maybe put a bow on this, for me, what the 17th Amendment is about, metaphorically, philosophically, whatever, are two things. One, the power of unintended consequences and sort of why Burkean minimalism should have more constituent. Amen, sister. I mean, we talked about earmarks last week, and this is similar to earmarks in that I could see

a lot of people. I could see 1911 Sarah saying, yeah, we should have the direct election of senators. I'm sick of these party bosses buying off the state legislatures to elect their son to the Senate. And then there were these huge unintended consequences that echoed throughout the country. weaker in terms of vis-a-vis the federal government, but also made them more addicted to federal spending as well because of that weakness. Right. And allowed for federal spending to increase, which then gave more of that money to the states with strings, but nevertheless money because more money was coming into the federal government. And so you have just ripple after ripple of unintended consequences that would make it

nearly impossible today to repeal it, even minus my partisan point of what would actually just happen if you snapped your fingers today. And the second part is on incentives. The state legislatures, part of this at least, was that they didn't put up a fight against the 17th Amendment because they didn't want to do it anymore. They didn't want their races being controlled by who they were going to pick as senators. It made them feel like a member of the Electoral College where they had no actual purpose other than this other thing that they voted for, this other person. And perhaps to some extent, they didn't want that state power in the way that they had it and were happy to have less accountability and blame the federal government. Of course, that exact thing is then happening now at the federal government in Congress. And what we end up with, the administrative state that is incredibly unaccountable to people. And so I am left saying that large-scale change to the constitutional

structure has unintended consequences that you simply cannot predict, and we should be very, very careful, even on something as small as earmarks or as big as the 17th Amendment, even on something as small as earmarks or as big as the 17th Amendment, you don't know what you don't know. As if I were in if I were in church, I would then respond to that with preach it. Hallelujah. So, you know, it's and readers, please correct me if I'm getting the phrase wrong because I'm just blanking. Chesterton's fence. In other words, you see a fence in a field and one kind of person says, what's that fence doing impeding my progress through this field? And another kind of person says, huh, there's a fence there. There must be a reason for that. Let's find out that reason.

And I think that you're hitting exactly the nail on the head. There are good reasons for many things that we have demolished. And you can't go back and build them. You can't build them again. Exactly. Exactly. It's getting rid of the algae in the ecosystem and then being shocked when the large scale predators die off. Well, because the little guys eat the algae and the bigger guys eat the little guys and then the biggest guys eat those. And like, you don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's move on to topic number three on that happy note of all of our alpha predators dying off to the morning show. So other alpha predators. Yes. um, to the morning show. So, so other alpha predators. Yes. So let me, let me tell you how I came into this. So wait, huge. We need, there will be spoilers. Oh yes. Spoilers,

spoilers, spoilers, spoilers. So please, if you're, if you haven't watched it, if you, I don't think it will ruin your experience watching it to know the spoilers actually. But if you're one of those people, then turn this off. Yes. I think, uh, you could hear this and you might actually even enjoy the show more in a way. Cause you're going to understand that it's got a huge amount of depth that may not be apparent from the pilot, but so here was how I came into this. Um, the trailers for it, I thought were misleading. Like the, the trailers for it made it sound like, okay, this is a, here is the story. Women in the Me Too era, women are going to beat these terrible men.

And here's how. This is the story of these women rising up and defeating these men. And I was kind of, okay, you know, it looked like straightforward, sort of a political tale, but which I don't really get into those kinds of shows or movies that much. But I was butting up against another rule that I have, which is if you pack enough talent into one show, I'm just going to watch it and trust the talent. A classic example of that is for me is Big Little Lies, which on HBO, which... Similar cast, I note. Very similar cast, but not the premise of a show tracking these like upscale moms in suburban California. That's not my normal scene, which includes usually a lot more warp drives and lightsabers. And yeah, and I'm not sure you're the demographic for Big Little Lies.

No, no, but I watched it. It's great. But anyway, so great cast. I thought I'll give this a chance. And I have to say there were two things about it that really stood out. One was it really wrestled, honestly, I think, with this is what happens when you take human beings, you put them in this kind of work environment that an awful lot of upper middle class Americans are familiar with, especially if they're young, which is my work is my life. Yes. My work is my life. The people who are my friends, the people who I spend all my time with are in this office. And what happens and what happens with human relationships, what happens with friendships, what happens in the principal issue is what happens with the romantic relationships that spring up. And it isn't all predator prey, although they're there.

There's definitely predator prey. But there's also, you know, there's this what I feel like is kind of like the sweetly romantic relationship between the weatherman. And is it one of the production assistants, I guess? And yeah. And I just thought it was so well done on that standpoint. well done on that standpoint. And then we got to a point later in the show where one of the Predator characters, who's modeled loosely off Matt Lauer, has a sexual encounter with an assistant booker. And holy smokes, did it, was itirm to me how consent, a sexual ethic that is based on consent only, like that's the only thing that matters. There's no morality beyond consent is can get really dicey, really fast because of these differing perceptions in the moment.

I loved that episode because so often nonviolent rape, meaning rape that was simply not consensual versus a gun, etc. Nonviolent rape is still so often in media portrayals as basically violent rape right um where you know she says no and is screaming and scratching and he knows that she's saying no and he's just this obviously evil bad person. And she's doing everything she can to get away. Or she's so drunk, so out of it that obviously he's a terrible person for wanting to have sex with an unconscious person. This was not that. And I loved how nuanced and complicated they made it because that's what real life looks like in in a lot of these situations where and this goes back to the kobe bryant situation to some extent he i absolutely

believe that kobe thought that was a consensual encounter this show on this character on the morning show believed he was having a consensual encounter she did not. Now, you know, what makes it more complicated and interesting is that she does not say no. And so by any sort of, well, it depends. If you believe that consent is an opt-in feature, it's hard to say at what point she ever consented to the sexual encounter. But if you believe that consent is more of an opt-out feature that she needed to at some point stop things, say no, do something, she did not do that either. She simply lays there, frankly. Right. Right.

And how legally we deal with that, what culpability he has morally or legally was so great and prompted all these fantastic conversations, including with my husband, who he is far more. Sorry, Scott, I'm like outing you here. But he was far more that like in reality, in, you know, 2020 sexual relationships, it is more of a opt out. She probably did need to say something or do something um to end the encounter or he's going to assume that she wants to continue right uh whereas i was like well yeah i don't know about that i think that you know, a woman truly at no point says anything or does anything, you're taking a risk by assuming that she's cool with what's happening. And of course,

we both agreed that like, this doesn't seem like fun sex to have. And, and probably most people would call it off simply from a like, Hey, or do you like most men would ask like, uh, wait, do you want to be here? Because she Because she's literally laying there. But that's what made the episode so fascinating. Well, you know, so here's I've written a bunch about this after the Harvey Weinstein's of the world, you know, that the Me Too issue burst on the scene. And so here's what I mean when I say something more. We need a morality beyond consent. So for a Christian, that's a Christian sexual ethic. So, you know, the Christian sexual ethic that I grew up with, you don't have sex before marriage. So that event there, you know, that thing that happened in episode eight of The

Morning Show, that's not going to happen because you have a morality beyond just is somebody willing to have sex with me? And a true Christian holistic sexual ethic is not just, OK, there's this marriage line that it's not just is their sex OK or not OK. There's a true Christian sexual ethic that's also about respect. It's also about love. It's also about communication. It's very rich and layered. Now, I recognize that, A, not everyone who listens to this show is Christian. And B, there's actual scriptural dictates to sort of say that the Christian world should not be focused on imposing its sexual morality on non-Christians. It should be focused on policing its own sexual behavior within its own ranks. So what does it mean if you don't share that kind of religious sexual ethic? still valid rules and sort of valid ways that respect other human beings that's not exactly

a Christian sexual ethic, but involve things like respect, communication, the building of relationships before the initiation of sexual activity, that they're not specifically religious, but I think that they're so respect-based that they eliminate an awful lot of this. And I'll end my little sermon with this. So I'll end my sermon with this if people are not persuaded by my argument that consent-only sexual ethics are wrong. I think perversely a consent-only ethic works to sexualize everything. So if the only rule is consent or no consent, that means business lunches. That means breakfasts.

That means meetings. That means all kinds of relationships and interactions you have become potentially sexual because, you know, there's going to be a situation where if it's consent only, well, there's going to be sort of that inquiry, that sort of pushing, that sort of testing of the waters, which is totally fine if the only thing is consent. And then that's when we start to really get far afield because there's a lot of social science that says, for example, that's when we start to really get far afield because there's a lot of social science that says, for example, if a really good looking person pushes the boundaries, that's usually that's welcomed more often than if somebody does exactly the same behavior, but isn't quite as good looking.

I hope that you're citing here the best SNL skit of all time, which is the Tom Brady how to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace and the punchline. It like basically, you know, the like ugly guy walks up to the girl is like, hey, can I have your number? And she's like, oh, my God. And she calls H.R. and Tom Brady walks up without pants on and says, hey, like, do you want to have sex in the bathroom? And she's like, oh, my God, I'd love to. And the rules of sexual harassment in the workplace are one, be attractive. Two, don't be unattractive. Three, be Tom Brady. Yeah, exactly. So anyway, I'll stop talking.

But that was my, that's what came to my mind. So I love when you and I disagree on the details. And I think that all the things you just listed that were quote unquote, respect based sexual ethic outside of consent based and outside of a religious ethic, I would say back to our incentive structures from our last topic, I would approach it differently. I think the things you listed make for better sex. I think if you want to have good sex as a man or a woman, those are the building blocks of good slash great sex. And so if you want to talk to young adults, teenagers or otherwise,

about why it should not be a simply consent-based system, put it as an incentive structure for them. Look, if you want to have mediocre, one-off, maybe terrible sex, by all means, find a random at a bar, take them home, see what happens. Nothing good, particularly. But great sex is built on communication of what you want, what the other person wants. Having a foundation of the relationship that makes you feel comfortable and less self-conscious. I mean, God, if there's anything that ruins sex, it's like, how do I look? So I think you can end

up in the same place, but make it maybe more attractive to young people to adopt your? Yeah. Yeah. It's I when you when you started talking down that line, I wish people could have seen the Skype. My face started to get red. His face was very uncomfortable. Very. No, I absolutely hear what you're saying. I hear what you're saying. And I think that this is where this is where at some point you have to ask a human being, do you care about the other human being? Do you care about the other person? Do you care about yourself? I think we do. Women, young women in particular, and you're a father of daughters and I was a daughter.

I am a daughter, sorry. I'm still the daughter of someone. We tell them so often, you know, you're not ready for sex. Sex, you know, can wait and all these things, which I think are true and fine messages oftentimes. But we spend a lot less time on sex will be better if. Oh, interesting. Well, I'll, I, I haven't thought about, I hadn't thought about that angle. So that's the, that's the diversity of this podcast, y'all. That's right. Yeah. I'll close with this. And this is something my dad did. So my dad taught for, um, 30 plus years at a small college in Kentucky, uh, Georgetown college where I grew up. And one of the last things he did, he gave a chapel talk. And he had this interesting construct in how urging people how to treat each

other with respect that I thought was really fascinating. And he said, you're either dating right now your future husband or wife. And how do you want to form and build that relationship? Like how is it that you should be thinking about what I want my marriage to be like? Or you're dating somebody else's in all probability future husband or wife. And how do you want, how would you want somebody to be treating your future wife? What is the kind of life experience that you want your future husband or wife to be bringing into your relationship? And I thought it was this really sort of interesting twist on the golden rule. And it was funny. He said, as I was saying those words, I noticed across the auditorium a number of people shooting each other some rather sharp looks. I was talking about earlier that we seem to have created this binary in a lot of places where here are these religious people who have this religious worldview that even they don't really

uphold all that often, but at least it's aspirational and they kind of have this common grounded morality. And then we have this whole other world where how dare you impose anything on me but then that gets really really messy and then we sort of are trying to recreate a sexual ethic from the ground up and it's not working well and if consent is the only foundation I don't think it can and when I say consent's the necessary minimum. Necessary but not sufficient. Necessary but not sufficient. And that's what really rang through to me from watching this show.

Yep. And when you get to the end of season one, you will see why it is necessary but not sufficient. On both. On both the sweet relationship between the PA and the weatherman and the much more senior person who maybe does or does not have consent from a junior person. Well, I think our time is up and you have just listened to the most, we'll say, the podcast that caused one co-host to blush more than any other podcast in our young history at the Dispatch. But, you know, we keep it real, Sarah. Yeah, we do. We keep it real. Well, thank you guys so much for listening. After, when you hear the next advisory opinion, we're going to have some real clarity on Iowa. We'll be going into New Hampshire.

We're going to have, in all likelihood, an impeachment into New Hampshire. We're going to have, in all likelihood, an impeachment acquittal. We're going to have a State of the Union. So we are not going to lack for anything to talk about next week. But as always, thanks so much for listening. Please subscribe to The Dispatch. Please subscribe to this podcast. And please go rate us on iTunes, five stars only. And thank you so much for listening. Thank you.