Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 5/5/22: Roe v Wade Politics, Ohio Primary Results, Fed Policy, Union Busting, SCOTUS Outlook, Trump's Influence, & More!

Episode Date: May 5, 2022

Krystal and Saagar cover the Roe political fallout, Ohio GOP and Dem primary results, Fed raising rates, Starbucks union busting, DIY abortions, SCOTUS retrospective on culture war, Dems failures on abortion, and election analysis with Kyle Kondik!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/Kyle Kondik: https://www.ohioswallow.com/book/The+Long+Red+Thread https://centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/author/kyle-kondik/   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. mainstream by becoming a Breaking Points premium member today at BreakingPoints.com. Your hard-earned money is going to help us build for the midterms and the upcoming presidential election so we can provide unparalleled coverage of what is sure to be one of the most pivotal moments in American history. So what are you waiting for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Lots of breaking news this morning to get to some new indications about just how the politics of Roe being overturned might play out. We've got some data for you there. Also, big primary results in Ohio. We have J.D. Vance winning the Republican Senate primary. Nina Turner losing her race against incumbent Chantel Brown.

So we'll break all of that down for you. The Fed making some big moves and actually the market very relieved at some of Jerome Powell's comments sort of reining in and limiting his indications of what the Fed is going to do going forward. So we'll talk about that. New union busting efforts from Starbucks' return CEO, Howard Schultz. This is actually completely outrageous and probably illegal. They're going to lift wages and benefits, but only for the non-union Starbucks workers. I can't believe it's real. Seriously. I mean, it really is probably illegal. So we'll see what the NLRB ultimately does with it. We also have Christian Smalls, of course, the president of the Amazon Labor Union, at the White House today meeting with Kamala Harris and

also with Labor Secretary Marty Walsh and testifying on Capitol Hill in front of the Senate Budget Committee. I know he's going to be urging them to fully fund the NLRB. That's something that is, I mean, it's insane that this agency just doesn't even have the funds to do the basics of what it is supposed to be doing. Also, some new and revised takes on horse medicines. Some horse medicines are allowed, apparently. We're going to update you on all the latest in veterinarian care um so you know important story to bring to you this morning we're also happy to be joined by kyle kondick of course a great political analyst he will break and he's really

been tracking the rightward shift in ohio so he'll get into all the numbers um which we're excited about as well but we wanted to start with some early indications of how the politics of Roe versus Wade being overturned might ultimately play out. And sorry, you found this. I thought this was very interesting. Go ahead and put this first piece up on the screen here. So Politico had a big report kind of diving into this. The headline for their article was Democrats are skeptical that SCOTUS will ultimately save them in November. And one of the things they point to here is the fact that the day after Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, Democratic donors poured more than $30 million into Democratic

campaigns and groups through ActBlue, so highly motivated by that situation. However, in the 23 hours after the draft SCOTUS opinion, ActBlue took in just $9 million. It wasn't updated. It's actually $12 million, but still significantly less than the $30 million after Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. And Sager, you know, for Democrats, like, what case can you really make that things are going to be different if you elect them again? When people already elected you in part on a promise that you would codify Roe v. Wade and protect them against this outcome. So it's like, return us to power because we promised this time we'll do the thing that we refuse to do right now and we didn't do last time. It's just not that much of a compelling case, to be honest with you. Oh, and things are really expensive and we're not doing anything about that. Well, there's that, too.

I mean, and that's the thing is, like, I do think that—so my analysis at this point, which can always change and, you know, to take a million caveats, whatever. And there's a long time between now and November is the election is still going to be on the economy. 100%. It's still going to be on inflation. It's still going to be on the fact that people there were some new economic numbers that came out that were in terms of how people feel about the economy from CNN. It was like 70 percent feel terrible about the economy and blame Biden. And yes, and there's a lot of blame on the Biden administration. That's what this election is ultimately going to turn on now at the margins. Do I think this

decision could make a difference? Yes. And I also think that, you know, it makes it creates a difficult rhetorical landscape for Republicans. So it creates more risks that you have, like Todd Akin type moments and candidates that just say something that is completely sort of abhorrent and outrageous and end up, you know, setting themselves on fire. But overall, do I think it totally upends the wisdom of this election and like hands it to Democrats. No, I think it probably is ultimately going to be a relatively marginal impact that still has some benefits for Democrats, but overall doesn't really change the game. I think that's right. Also, I do want to say on the numbers, which is that, look, $12 million is still a lot of money.

And what I'm interested also in is this. Right now, the story is, well, they've ruled it privately. Maybe, we don't know. It could change. Who is the leaker? Eventually, when's the decision coming out? You know what I mean? It's one of those things where, yeah, like we report it as it is. We try to give everybody the facts, but it's still not definitive and we're still going to have months before this happens. I would describe it this way. They did confirm that it's an authentic draft. That's right. It's confirmed an authentic draft. However, it's not the actual final ruling.

It doesn't actually change the law of the land currently as we speak. So it activates probably the most hardcore people. Imagine trying to explain this to a normal person. You're like, oh, there's a leaked person, and there are five people, maybe votes. And you're like, wait, what? Do you mean is it there or is it not there? Like what's the law? So that complication doesn't make it definitive.

And so there still could be a possible backlash, but I would describe it this way. I think ours were cruising to like an R plus seven victory with a massive amount of previously unactivated or even Democrats coming in and voting with a referendum on COVID, on the economy, and to a limited extent, political correctness. Now, this just has a lot of uncertainty. And this is reflected really in the Senate Republican talking points. Let's put this up there on the screen. Axios got their hands on this. So what are they talking about? Well, they are maximizing their message whenever it comes to the leaking. So what they say is this, and I find this very interesting too. If they have to discuss

abortion, they say this specifically. Be the compassionate consensus builder on abortion policy. While many people have different views on abortions, Americans are compassionate people who want to welcome a new baby into the world. Expose the Democrats for the extreme views that they hold. Biden have extreme and radical views on abortion. Finally, and this I think is probably the most important, forcefully refute Democratic lies regarding GOP positions on abortion and women's health care, adding that Republicans do not want to take away contraception, mammograms, female health care, or throw doctors and women in jail. So they're trying very specifically to try to isolate the fringe movements within the pro-life consensus, I guess you could say. I just have to nitpick on that. We don't want to throw women and doctors in jail. In Texas, there was literally a woman who was indicted in March after she miscarried. They ultimately dropped the charges. I was going to say, I think the charges were dropped.

What happened was she told staff at a hospital in Texas that she had tried to induce her own abortion, ultimately miscarried. And they indicted her. I mean, they they did you know, they were going to charge her and then they ultimately dropped the charges. But I mean, it's definitely the case in Texas, if not the women being criminalized, certainly the doctors are being criminalized. Anyway, all of this is a long way of saying that I think what you're pointing to is it is now going to be very difficult for Republicans to not be the extremists in this debate and appear to be the extremists in this debate because Roe being overturned is out of step with majority opinion. And, you know, polls sort of consistently show that. So it used to be the case that effectively everything was going the GOP way, certainly the economy. And I still think that's the number one issue. You know,

that's it's typically the number one issue when people feel like they're struggling, they're unable to put food up. That's what's weighing on them day in and day out and that they're thinking about when they go to bed at night and when they wake up in the morning. But it used to be that they had that going for them and they were kind of, you know, had the upper hand in terms of the cultural conversation. Exactly. Now it's a mixed bag because this is certainly going to be the dominant cultural issue and conversation between now and November. And you can tell that they know it's a difficult one for them because,

and this has been the strangeness of this whole situation, they just got word that they're about to achieve their goal of like 50 years, like this long quested after major accomplishment of a significant part of the Republican movement. And they don't seem that happy about it. Instead, they're like,

let's not talk about that. Let's talk about the leak. Let's like, and you know, let's, it's a literal insurrection and it's actual terrorism and it's actual violence. That is a tell that they don't think this conversation about the actual substance of what is happening here is beneficial for them politically. They would rather not talk about that and fixate on, you know, maybe some woke kid leaked this and we're mad about it. Yeah, and we saw that reflected by Jenna Ellis. You guys might remember her. She was part of a Giuliani. What were they called exactly?

Like the really class A team that was in charge of the Stop the Steal movement under the Trump campaign. Was she at the Four Seasons Landscaping press conference? That was a real high point. She was certainly involved in some of the most embarrassing and ridiculous moments of the final days of the Trump administration. She appeared on Newsmax with exactly this line. Let's take a listen. All about Democrats just want America the way they want it, and they don't care who they have to hurt and punish in the way. And so what nobody's saying about this is this isn't just an act of civil disobedience. This is an actual insurrection. We want to talk about January

6th. That's completely different. This is something that is actually trying on purpose to undermine the rule of law. This is a literal insurrection. I saw insinuations that whoever this person is should be jailed by the FBI. Look, I mean, the chief justice has ordered the marshal of the Supreme Court. By the way, that is a real person for those of you who know the meme about the marshal of the Supreme Court. And this goes back to Luis Mench back in 2017. Is this what MTG meant by marshal law? Oh, marshal. That's right. I forgot about that. M-A-R-S-H-A-L-L.

So this, there's a marshal of the Supreme Court. They have been ordered to have an investigation. But by all accounts, beyond, you know, getting fired, it doesn't appear to be a federal crime in terms of what has happened here. That's also quite odd. It was illegal. It was just, this is their norms. And so suddenly there's a, oh my God, breaking the norms. It's a literal insurrection.

I think breaking the norms is bad. We disagreed on that. But listen, it's not a crime. I mean, you know, when we were talking about crimes and using this type of rhetoric, then I just think it's a little bit ridiculous. And by the way, you and I were also against a lot of the most maximalist, ridiculous rhetoric whenever it came to January 6th. We're like, yeah, it's a crime and we're just, you know, go inside the Capitol. You could be prosecuted for that. But trying to throw like terrorism and all that stuff on some of these people was completely ridiculous. Anyway, the

whole point is that rhetorical escalation on the part of the Republicans talking about the leak, probably not going to work. And it really just opened the question here around what do Americans actually think about Roe versus Wade specifically? So obviously it just happened in terms of this news, but we have a snapshot view into YouGov America and their latest poll. Let's put this up there on the screen. What's very interesting is that there actually was a high perception, including shared by us, that Roe versus Wade was likely to be overturned. However, that increased even more so after the SCOTUS draft leak. Now, in terms of what Americans think about this, here's what they said. Overall, 70% of Americans said there was a 50-50 chance that the ruling would be overturned. Most

Americans said, whenever it came to the overturning themselves, that they do not want the Supreme Court to overturn its Roe versus Wade decision. So this is US adult citizens overall, not by party. 32%, yes, we would like to see it. 23%, not sure. 45%, no, I would not like to see it. Now amongst Democrats, in terms of who would like to see it overturned, it's 22%, 28% amongst independents, 57% amongst Republicans. In terms of people who don't want to see it overturned, it's 64% Democrat, 47% independent, 24% Republican. So what I always point to is with the Democrat and the Republican number, that's obviously going to be skewed. But the winner in American politics is always who is more directionally aligned with the independents.

And in this case, I mean, there's no question about it. The independent number almost exactly matches the overall U.S. adult figure and is more than double of the Republicans who don't want to see Roe versus Wayne overturned. So I would just say that it's very clear here that this is an area where the independents will be more aligned with the Democratic Party messaging. However, the question in politics is also salience. On the day of the election, what do you care about most? Now, look, you can say maybe it's material politics. I don't know about that. I honestly, looking back at the 2020 election, what are some of the top reasons that people voted for Trump? Yeah, some people said the economy. But if you really dig down into it, a lot of it was cultural messaging, Crystal. And I think a lot of Republicans, you know, people on the right, I realized that very quickly after the election results. I was like, oh, you know, like a lot of this doesn't really have to do with macro conditions at all.

It has a lot to do with more like a referendum on political correctness and culture. Well, that can flip around on you if you appear to be the one who is more culturally extreme on the day of the election. How will that play out in November? I don't know. But by that time, Roe was probably not going to be law of the land, Crystal. We will have Alabama laws and Georgia laws possibly. It'll be more real. And others with outright bans.

So not just six weeks or even exceptions in the case of the life of the mother. There are probably some southern states out there which will have straight-up bans which will dominate the news cycle at that time. Or maybe they'll have a state legislature, you know, that is needing to do something like that. You just have to try and imagine what's a news cycle going to look like on November 2022. And with this, it just injects uncertainty into the system. and we've seen this here to some extent, but we've also seen it around the world, is some situation where, you know, a horrific, unjust situation, a 15-year-old forced to bear her rapist baby who's her stepdad.

I mean, something that is— You see this stuff in, like, the Middle East or— Even in Poland, there was an outrage over, you know, women who died unnecessarily because of extraordinarily restrictive abortion laws. So, you know, there's going to be a lot of potential dangers for Republicans going forward, both in terms of what they say about this and just in terms of what people realize reality looks like when you no longer have the protections of Roe versus Wade. So I think that is well said. Look, again, ultimately, do I think this is going to be the number one issue in the election? No. But, you know, in midterms also, unlike presidential elections, it really matters who's animated. And that has been the other thing Democrats have

really suffered from is their base is not animated at all. And why should they be? Because they elected these people to do some things and they've done like nothing. So of course, they're like, why am I going to bother to show up for you again? This could animate some of the Democratic base. It could sway some independents, you know, again, I think, on the margins. And as you point out, I think that's a good point, you know, very much depending on if there is some particular outrageous event that really galvanizes public opinion against this decision, then, you know, that does create kind of a wildcard situation. So, you know, it makes the landscape a lot more chaotic, a lot less certain than it was before. The overall dynamics and trends are still probably in the Republicans'

favor, but maybe instead of a complete historic blowout where they end up with the largest majorities that they've had in decades and decades, maybe instead it's like we kind of eke out a win in the House, we kind of eke out wins in the Senate, and it's not quite as definitive. I'd put it this way. You went from an almost guaranteed R-plus-50 victory to possibly R-plus-25 in the House specifically in terms of the majority. And in the Senate, maybe it costs you one seat, maybe two. Again, you have no idea yet how this is going to play out. So we'll see.

Let's go ahead and move on then to the next part of this, which is how Washington specifically is reacting. So President Biden was actually asked if he was going to ask for the end of the filibuster in order for the Senate to vote to try and codify Roe versus Wade. Here prepared to make those judgments now. But, you know, I think the codification of Roe makes a lot of sense. Look, thank you. So part of the problem that they have there, Crystal, is that, well, you know, look, obviously, you know, filibuster politics and all that aside, in terms of the actual vote count, which we will get to, he did not call for it. And he's actually being pushed more so by the Democrats who are in the Senate. And Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is actually vowing that they are going to have a

vote in response to what happened here in order to get every single senator on the record. Let's take a listen to what Schumer had to say. It is our intention for the Senate to hold a vote on legislation to codify the right to an abortion in law. Second, a vote on this legislation is no longer an abstract exercise. This is as urgent and as real as it gets. We will vote to protect a woman's right to choose, and every American is going to see which side every senator stands on. Third, to the American people, I say this. The elections this November will have consequences because the rights of 100 million women are now on the ballot to help fight this court's awful decision. I urge every American to make their voices heard this week and this year. So it's interesting there that he's pledging the vote itself. Now, people need to remember this,

and I brought it up the last time that we were talking about it. In terms of the actual vote, it's very much up in the air. And you rightfully pointed this out, which is that last time around, there was a vote a couple of months ago in order to codify Roe versus Wade. It did not pass. It did not even come close to a majority. However, now that the Republican senators, Murkowski and Collins, who have come out and said that they were misled by Kavanaugh, like, okay, everybody, that's a complete joke. You were either, you're lying to yourself. Yeah, you're either an idiot if you believe that. Right, they may have lied to you, but you also were lying to yourself, no doubt.

You are either dumb or you're a liar. I'm not sure exactly which is worse. Possibly both. Let's put this up there on the screen in terms of what the two of them have had to say. Susan Collins' statement. If this is leaked draft opinion with final decision, it would be completely inconsistent with Justice Gorsuch and Kavanaugh said in their hearings, in our meetings, in our office from Murkowski. She says, quote, my confidence in the court has been rocked. Now, to be fair, Murkowski did not vote for Kavanaugh, but I believe she did vote for Justice Gorsuch. Collins, of course, famously said that she had said that Kavanaugh told her it

was settled law. By the way, I asked around. There is a legal rationale for being able to say that while also overturning the decision. But rhetorically, it's very clear that she either didn't want to familiarize herself with it or, you know, I guess she really deluded herself into thinking it wasn't possible. Guys, the whole reason these guys were put on the court was for this exact thing. I mean, this is the whole reason that Trump released his list of names. He literally said, when I put these people on the whole reason that Trump released his list of names. He literally said, when I put these people on the court, it will be overturned automatically.

I think he used the term anti-abortion judges, which had never been done before. Usually they'd be like, we're originalists. You know, it's like, yeah, no, he did not wink and nod. He outright said, when my people are on the court, it will be overturned automatically. So, I mean, listen, there's been a multi-decade, well-funded, extremely well-organized, extremely disciplined effort to effectuate exactly this outcome. So that you're all shocked and surprised that it happened? Come on. I mean, we showed the poll. The American people were not shocked and surprised that this happened. They were fully expecting it. So they're ridiculous is the bottom line. And I do want to say also, I mean, I think this whole episode shows how not serious about governing Democrats are. I mean, even with the filibuster politics,

if you actually think that these issues are existential and apocalyptic and we are heading to Handmaid's Tale and all of the rhetoric that they use, then is it really that big of a deal to change the rules of the Senate, which you can do with a majority vote? And oh, by the way, this is the reason that people elected and voted for you in the first place. So they should be held to account for their failures on this. And not just under the Biden administration. I'm going to talk more about this in my monologue. But Obama had a super majority. He said this was the first thing he would do on a day one of his presidency is codify Roe versus Wade. And he didn't do Jack. So, you know, you can't be surprised that the people who were put here to overturn abortion ultimately overturned abortion.

Well, you should, you know, you can feel all kinds of ways about that. But you should also be very upset with the people who said they were going to protect you from that outcome. And then they sat around and did nothing and made excuses just like they are now. And even the vote in the Senate, this is a show. They know it's not ultimately going to, I want us to put people on the record. Okay, fine. What is that ultimately going to do? Nothing. And to that end, let's put this up there on the screen specifically about this, which is that they really do not seem to have the votes. The last time the Senate voted on this, it was 46 to 48, but Susan Collins and Murkowski voted against the cloture motion. This time around,

I guess it's certainly possible that they might be able to, but that obviously also doesn't give you the 60 votes that would be needed to advance to an actual vote. So in terms of what the vote would be on cloture, Senator Joe Manchin has already come out and he said that, you know, first of all, he's pro-life. It's one of the reasons that he supported these justices. So he would not be a vote. You could possibly swap that out with Senators Murkowski and Collins. But, you know, I went ahead and checked, Crystal. Senator Casey, Bob Casey, Pennsylvania, I believe, is the last pro-life Democrat.

I guess, you know, however you count Joe Manchin. Last mainstream pro-life Democrat who's actually in the Senate. And apparently his father is the person who was involved in the Casey decision of 1992. I didn't know that. I was reading yesterday. I was like, oh, that's the Casey. Fascinating. So there you go in terms of what that means. So the votes itself, you could swap out those two, but you would still probably come to a 50. I guess if they did scrap the filibuster, though they don't have the votes to scrap the filibuster, that that could then theoretically be broken by Kamala Harris. And of course, the House, I believe, passed this with 218 votes. I know there's a smattering of Democrats who are in the House who I believe are pro-life. So there you go. In terms of the votes, they don't have the votes. Procedurally, they also don't. Also, I think it should be mentioned that Senators John Thune and others in the Republican leadership were asked if they would overturn the filibuster in order to try and

outright ban abortion nationwide, and they ruled that out. Yeah, well, they, you know, we'll see. We'll see. I don't know. Also, it's actually, you know, just telling you from an internal GOP politics perspective, that's going to be the next real knock against McConnell, which is they're going to be like, you guys need to nuke the filibuster from the social conservatives. You know, the social cons, yes, they've just won this. However, they, you know, their goal is an outright ban, even though that's like 13% or whatever that actually supports something like that. Anyway, that very much likely to be a major point of contention if Trump does win the election again and there is a majority of Republicans. Yeah, they'll be under a lot of

pressure. David Shore actually has projected out that it's very within the realm of possibility that Trump, if he gets reelected, would have a super majority in the Senate. So then a lot of those guys are really going to be put under the spotlight. They're like, okay, you guys have said for decades you support this. Are you going to vote for it or not? So that'll be a popcorn time. There's a little bit of dog that caught the car for the GOP right now. Oh, I definitely think so. No doubt about it. It was better for them politically, which again, is why they're like, let's talk about the leak and not this other thing when this was hanging out there as a way to motivate their, this time it's going to have, this time it's going to, you got to vote for us. So this time it's going to happen. So now they're going to have to, they're going to have to deal with that.

The last thing I want to say about the abortion politics, just on a macro level, and again, to give you insight into my own philosophy and why, even though I, you know, am broadly pro-choice and have always been, it's not at the core of my politics. You know, the overwhelming majority of women, and there are new numbers about this, who end up seeking an abortion are low income. And, you know, it's very clear that the overwhelming reason why women go down this path is because they can't, because having a family is basically like a luxury good in this society. And so if you really care about women's autonomy or family autonomy in this country, you know, you should focus a lot on making sure people have higher wages, good jobs, unions,

those sorts of things, you know, on whichever side of the debate you're on that would automatically lessen abortions by a significant degree and so it was very interesting to me and i put out this tweet that was like pointing out the class dynamics of this basically saying like look if you're a wealthy woman you've always been able to get whatever care whatever doctors whatever you you ultimately want this is really about the autonomy of poor and working class women it was interesting to me the number of women who rushed in to assure me that this was not a class issue, that class had nothing to do with it, that it would equally hurt all women, because that's a way of sort of shifting the debate

away from these other material conditions that create this situation that, you know, women feel like they have no other choice ultimately. So anyway, just something I've been thinking about in terms of the surrounding material conditions and how much that matters in terms of, it's kind of this like market-based, personal responsibility, neoliberal type solution

of like, we're not gonna make it so you can actually have a family and afford to support a family, but I guess we'll give you this out. So we're gonna really commit ourselves to that. That is fascinating. I can't believe that anybody would even object to that. That's just like objectively obvious. I know, I was a little bit shocked by it too. Just take a look at the people. Just look at the numbers. It's public record. You can go and see

exactly who it is. You know, this also does put Republicans majorly on the spot because a lot of them have said some version of, and this is more of an online phenomenon of the most pro-life pro-life folks. They're like, listen, you know, if it means that we would abolish abortion, then we would support a much more robust welfare state in order to support all these. Like I said, look, I'm skeptical too. I've, you know, I've, I've seen, I've been hoodwinked enough times in order to remain very, very skeptical on this. But if that becomes the case, it's like, okay, well now you're on the spot. You know, are you going to fund, you know, adoption clinics? Are you going to fund and make it possible for low-income or single moms or whatever? Probably, what, they're the most disproportionately, I believe, poor single moms most likely in order to pursue abortion.

Yeah, their typical abortion patient is actually already a mother. Right. So they're, you know, very much concerned with the family they already have and being able to take care of themselves and their, you know, children that they already have. So, yeah. So, come on, guys. Show us. Like, get on board with the child tax credit. Let's see it.

Ross actually, Ross Douthat had a, I think he had a column like years ago, maybe like a decade ago. Somebody can go and fact check me on this, where he wrote, he's like, look, I'm pro-life. I'm absolutely for the overturning of Roe versus Wade. He said, but I don't believe the Republican Party is ready yet for the robust welfare state that it would require and actually get rid of abortion in this country. So as usual, I think people, if they want an honest conservative perspective, they should go and listen to Ross specifically on this issue, because I think he and probably growing number, but still very nascent and small people are going to be pushing that if that were to become

the case. And it's a very good chance of saying, OK, show us where your money is. Like, show us, do you really believe this? Because if you do, you're going to have to support all of these sorts of policies. I remain incredibly skeptical. Yeah, because the reward in the GOP, and perhaps this is a good segue to our next segment, the reward in the GOP is not for being unorthodox on economics and, you know, supporting a robust support system for families and allowing people to have kids not as just a luxury good or get married not just as a luxury good. The rewards all come from, like, being the most obnoxious person possible on the culture wars. Yeah, 100%. Okay, let's go ahead and move on then. So J.D. Vance winning the Ohio GOP Senate primary. Let's put this up there on the screen.

He won with 33% of the vote. Coming in second was, interestingly enough, the polling did bear out, Crystal, that Dolan figure, the kind of, not never Trump necessarily, but Trump skeptical, skeptical and critical of January 6th. He pushed back on the rigged election crap. That was what he really did. Yeah, I mean, he was a multimillionaire. He spent many, many millions of dollars on the air. Josh Mandel, the most cringe character in the history of American politics, suffered a third-place defeat. I think all of America can unite on itself in saying that this clown who spent $30 million and put on a fake Southern accent losing is an unambiguously good thing.

However, there's an interesting, really, test case here as to what this means. Now, Vance obviously is the favorite in order to win this election. Tim Ryan, I hope he can meditate his way to the top. Very unlikely, especially in the state of Ohio. He's going to downward dog his way to the top. Right, he's going to downward dog his way to election. Good luck, bro. Whenever it comes to J.D., as always, personal disclaimer, I've known him for years and he is a friend of mine. So you can always look at my analysis through that. And I'm not talking about that economically. Now, I know J.D. I've interviewed him several times on economics. He is about as close to me as any

member of the sitting Senate would possibly be. That being said, his campaign was not really about economics. His campaign was about immigration and it was about the culture war. Immigration was number one issue on this. And on the culture war, specifically, he positioned himself as probably one of the most Trumpist-style candidates who was there. And I do want to say, I do think that is authentically kind of where he is right now, because there's some skepticism around whether he's playing or acting. I can tell you through my personal interaction with him, I do believe that this is authentic. Now, that being said, it translates to how is J.D. going to be whenever it comes to Congress? And for that, it's interesting to look at the people

who spent all this money against him, Crystal. We talked about how the Club for Growth came and attacked J.D. Vance, spending millions of dollars in order to try and destroy him. Now, it's fascinating that they were willing to do so because if you look at J.D. and Josh Mandel and Mike Gibbons and the others, none of them really differ on the cultural front. So clearly this was about economics, or at the very least, it was about fiscal policy. They saw J.D. very much as a character who kind of is against the economic orthodoxy of the Republican Party, and they were willing to spend many, many, many millions of dollars to try and hit him. That could be an

indication of how J.D. is going to govern. I can tell you, I have no idea. The incentives in Congress are not to where I would like to see J.D. govern as a senator. I was telling you before we went on the air, Senator Hawley, like a week ago, said, well, maybe we'll raise corporate taxes. Not we will, like maybe. The freak out here in Washington and amongst his GOP colleagues and the behind the scenes level was in a way that you can barely comprehend. So it's, the stars are not aligned in order to vote in the economically populist direction, right? The incentives in the GOP, and you can see this, MTG and Matt Gaetz flew down to Ohio in order to campaign for J.D. for a reason, and a lot of MAGA people because they believe he's there

with them on culture. Marjorie Taylor Greene doesn't give a goddamn about industrial policy, okay? Let's all be very honest about what's going on here. So the incentives in the party and the reason Trump, frankly, even endorsed him in the first place, I don't think has anything to do with economics. I think it has to do with the fact that Trump likes that he's famous and he likes that he's smarter than Josh Mandel. And, you know, J.D.'s willing to basically supplicate himself to Trump and say, I'm sorry that I, you know, didn't vote or I said I wouldn't vote for you in 2016. He's like, he made a mistake, but he's owned up to it. So the real question to me is, how does this all work in practice?

And honestly, I don't know. He's going to have a tough time. I don't think there's any question about it. Like the amount of institutional money, which is allied against this perspective here, makes it so that it's very, very convenient. I mean, you can look no further than Holly. It's much easier to be the January 6th warrior than it is to be the guy pushing the antitrust bills. Now, can you use one in order to give yourself cover on the other? I don't know. I honestly have no idea how that's going to play out. We'll do our best. I'm going to do my best

to try and stay objective here. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's correct to be highly skeptical that there will be much break from GOP orthodoxy on economic issues. Because, look, Hawley is the perfect example here. You know, shortly before January 6th and the fist pumping and going all in on that nonsense, he was working with Bernie on a new round of checks. $2,000 stimulus checks. He didn't get a lot of credit for that, by the way. What did the base reward him for? Yeah, January 6th.

What did the base reward him for? It was for 6th. What did the base reward him for? It was for the fist pump on January 6th. He raised more money on that than anything he's ever done in his career. So, I mean, that tells you everything about the political landscape and the incentives. And, you know, I'm especially highly skeptical that someone who didn't run on anything that was economically heterodox, really, from the base and who focused exclusively on culture war, is suddenly going to turn around once they're in office and be different. Because the reality is there's always an excuse. There's always an excuse of, you don't understand, because now I've got to run for re-election and, you know, it's already, and I've got to be able to raise money and they're

going to come after me. And there's always an excuse for why you can't do the right thing. And oh, you outsiders just don't ultimately understand. Now, the interesting thing to me also was the way that the media portrayed Vance Mandel and Dolan. And actually, I was just looking at the results. On election night, Dolan was ahead of Mandel. Now it looks like Mandel may have just eked down ahead of him for second place. I do want to give him his due. All right. Very close. But anyway, Dolan was considered the moderate candidate.

And Mandel was considered like to the right of him and very far right. And Vance was considered the most far right. Yes. I mean, the only thing you could really say about them that is different from a policy perspective at this point in terms of how they ran is just what they said about Trump and how they oriented themselves. So not only is the Republican base sort of judging candidates based on their how loyal they are to Trump, but the media also judges them in that way. The only one of these three that you have any shot, even if it's a 1% chance of doing something different on economics, like maybe supporting antitrust or supporting some sort of modest corporate tax hike or

supporting some sort of relatively small child tax credit or something like that. The only one of the three that you have any chance of that with is J.D., which is why the Club for Growth spent millions of dollars ultimately against him. They see that there is a somewhat of a possibility that he could buck them on some economic things that are core to their terrible, like, elite libertarian type policy, pro-corporate policy. So when you look at it from that perspective, where you lined these guys, where the media lined these guys up on the spectrum really doesn't make any sense. But it tells you everything about the only divide that like matters in Beltway media. And it's all about- Yeah, they don't know how to tell this story that

we're trying to tell. Not at all. And it's not just on the Republican side. Like, you know, anyone who became an opponent of Trump, no matter what they thought, no matter what wars they supported, no matter how many corporate tax cuts they're on board, no matter what they think about anything, then, you know, they're on the correct side and they're put on this side of the political spectrum. And then it's the same thing with the Republican candidates here. It's just all about, you know, how you orient yourself to Trump. And that's how they put you on how far right on the spectrum you are. So it was very revealing in that way. You know, I thought the sound we got from Jordan Cheriton when he was on the ground there, from some of the voters who were coming out of a J.D. Vance event and explaining why they liked him,

I thought it was very instructive that every single one of them basically said, like, listen, he owned up to his quote unquote mistake in criticizing Trump. And I do think that with this particular race, probably what happened is there was a natural affinity towards J.D. He is from, you know, he has a deep understanding of especially rural Ohio, actually the area that I used to live in Ohio that's been decimated, that is basically Appalachia. So there was kind of a natural affinity towards him, but there were questions about whether this guy's really on our side. And so Trump created a permission structure for people who wanted to vote for J.D. to go in that direction. Of course, he had Peter Thiel backing him and providing that support for him to get through the stretch when he was not doing well in this campaign, ultimately. And so Trump, no doubt, was the kingmaker in this race. I don't think there's any question about it. But you found this saga, which is very interesting. It's not working out quite the same way down in

Georgia. And so the Trump effect is a little more complex than the storyline might be coming out of this race in Ohio where he definitely decided, like, J.D.'s the guy and then it ultimately happened. Go ahead and put this tear sheet up on the screen. Right now, Kemp is running away with the nomination in the GOP primary. He's at nearly 60 percent. Perdue is down at 21 percent. So, I mean, he's getting curb stomped right now. And remember, Kemp was, you know, not just like has offered some rhetorical pushback to Trump and stop this deal and all this. I mean, he was very strong in saying we're not going down this path.

And, you know, very clear Trump was over the top and condemning him. And Georgia voters are like, that's nice, but we still prefer this dude over your, you know, David Perdue. See, I think this is interesting because everybody's like, oh my God, this shows that the Republicans will just do what Trump wants. Well, Ohio is Trump country. It's a Trumpy state. So they're obviously going to be the most loyal to him. But then in Georgia, a state that he lost, well, they're not so Trumpy. So it just shows you that there's like a real polarization happening in the Republican Party. And actually, they even had an exit poll of Vance voters, or people who voted in Ohio. Only 60% of Ohio GOP primary voters said that they wanted Trump to run again. Now, obviously, that's a majority. But it also shows you 40% were like, no, I don't think so. Now, those 40% will probably all vote for Trump

if he did win the nomination. Sure, yeah. But it just shows you, you're like, okay, so the enthusiasm isn't that strong even in the state of Ohio. So what I would point to is this. Trump's endorsement matters a ton if you live in Trump country. If you live in Georgia, or if you live in Trump country. If you live in Georgia or if you live in Arizona or if you live in, I don't know, any of these other states where Trump himself is not the dynamic animating figure for Republican politicians, then his endorsement either doesn't matter or it actually could backfire on you. At the very least, it's not enough in order to carry you across the finish line. Certainly. As evidenced by Perdue.

So it's a way that you need to adjust your thinking when thinking like, oh my God, these Republicans will just vote for whoever Trump says. It's like, well, not necessarily. It's a mixed story. I think it's also, I think there are some other factors at play too. So like Josh Mandel was an annoying, terrible candidate who almost got in a fist fight on a debate. So in Georgia, you have Kemp, who is an incumbent governor. I mean, also don't downplay the power of incumbency.

And people have some experience with him and who he is and what it's like to live in Georgia with him as governor, separate and apart from whatever Trump's opinion is. Whereas with the GOP primary field in Ohio, it's kind of more unformed. People probably had fewer opinions about the candidates who were in play. So in that kind of a wide open arena where you have no incumbent and where people maybe don't have like fully formed, you know, really strongly held views about the different candidates and it's Trump country, then you throw Trump into the mix. And yeah, it's going to be an extraordinarily powerful endorsement, especially when you backed up with, you know, Tucker was also very influential in keeping J.D. on the air and really sort of pumping him up in terms of the GOP

base. In Georgia, you know, you've got an incumbent who apparently is still popular among the Republican base. They like, I don't, you know, I couldn't tell you the specifics of what he's done that people like, but apparently people like more or less what he's done as governor, at least on the Republican side. And so they were able to make an independent judgment separate and apart from whatever it was that Trump wanted them to do. And, you know, in fact, as this race has gone on, Kemp has opened up more of a lead. So now it looks like it won't even go to a runoff very likely. So, you know, it won't even go to a runoff, very likely. So, you know, it's it's fascinating. And I think the bottom line is that the Trump effect is a

little more complex than probably the media would ultimately have you believe coming out of the J.D. Vance story. Absolutely. All right. So the other Ohio primary that we were watching was Nina Turner's rematch against Chantel Brown in a redrawn district. Ultimately, Nina not only came up short, but by a significant margin. Let's go ahead and put this tear sheet up on the screen. Chantel Brown wins 11th district Democratic rematch with former Ohio Senator Nina Turner. The margin was about like 66% to 33%. So again, this did not end up being close in the end. Let's go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen, which helps explain a little bit of why it ended up being so lopsided this time, when last time Nina only came up short by maybe five points. This is from The Intercept, and their headline

says, progressives massively outgunned, ditched Nina Turner, effectively pointing to the fact that, you know, Nina was really abandoned by almost every corner of the progressive sort of elite institutional money and power base. I didn't even realize Justice Democrats did not play in this race. They did not endorse Nina Turner. And their, you know, excuse was like, oh, we just didn't have enough money. They said, Nina's a giant in the progressive movement. We're proud to have gone all in for her campaign last year. But the reality is our organization has to be strategic about our priorities. So we're getting massively outgunned by Republican donors funneling millions to super PACs like APAC and DMFI against our existing

candidates. So they stayed out entirely. Of course, you guys know the Congressional Progressive Caucus endorsed Chantel Brown. the corporate-backed candidate. The only one of the squad that ended up endorsing Nina this time was AOC, who came in literally 12 hours before voting started. Bernie did come in and endorse her. Of course, I mean, Nina had been his campaign co-chair. It would be completely outrageous if he didn't ultimately. But so you had this dynamic where not only did these sort of progressive money and elite elected infrastructure completely abandon her, but frankly, the progressive base did as well. She didn't raise nearly as much money as the first time around. And I think it's because there's this just like deep anti-electoral nihilism that has set in among a lot of the left, which is the greatest gift you

could possibly give to people like Nancy Pelosi and Jim Clyburn. Then on the other side, the, you know, establishment forces, oh, they were all in for Chantel Brown. So you had, you know, PAC money by the millions flooding in. She, Nina was outgunned like 10 to 1 in terms of the airwaves. You had Jim Clyburn and Hakeem Jeffries and all of these establishment figures. Hillary Clinton endorsed Joe Biden endorsed and many figures actually coming into the district to campaign for her. that she would get embarrassed in this race. And I think that's ultimately, you know, how things shook out. It's very instructive. I wouldn't be surprised if in the final weeks of this campaign, the polls really moved towards Chantel Brown just because of how much Nina was ultimately outspent on the airwaves from this massive flood of institutional support. And Jordan Cheriton was there, you know, covering the race for us and for Status Q. And he had an interview with Nina after the fact that was rather noteworthy. Nina

kind of taking some of the gloves off about how she felt about all of this. Let's take a listen to that. Who are the Pinos? And did the squad and the broader progressive movement let you down? I don't want to get into the squad. okay? Some of those women are my friends. Some people were threatened. Threatened? Were threatened. By who?

And, you know, I don't want to get into the threats, but they were threatened. So, you know, look, I want to lead them to the side. I will say that the Congressional Progressive Caucus was wrong. They were wrong. And I was really glad to see Congresswoman Jayapal in the Punchbowl article kind of allude to they need to change their, the way that they do this. That came from the pressure of the movement itself. Let me ask you, would you consider running as an independent rather than in the Democratic primary if you ran? I would consider that. Absolutely, I would. All options are on the table. So she alluded in her concession speech to maybe she's looking at 2024. So we'll see what ultimately comes of that. And listen, same caveat you gave for J.D. I love Nina dearly. She's a personal

friend, longtime personal friend. So just put that all out there. But, you know, she doesn't want to speak too ill of the squad. But I'll just say, I mean, these are people, some of whom are supposed to be her personal friend. And I don't care if they threaten you, honestly, you know, like they need to understand these people are not their friends. They are not their allies. They hate you. They will always hate you. They will do everything they can to like stab you in the back and screw you over. But there's something that sets in when they get here in Washington, where it's like every day they're in this town, they just sort of get cozier and cozier and conform more and more to the way things are done here. So it's very sad to see ultimately that Nina, who, you know, wherever your politics are, whatever you think about Bernie and whatever you think about Nina, this is someone who was a loyal foot soldier for this movement, was one of the most charismatic and inspiring figures who was out there supporting Bernie before it was cool, who could have gone the

path of cozying up to Hillary Clinton and probably be in the administration right now or have a show on MSNBC or whatever. And when she stepped out and said, hey, guys, I'm doing this and I need your support, they completely abandoned her and let her down. Yeah, I think that is an important part of the story. Yeah, it's pretty shocking how badly she lost on this one. But I guess if you put it within that context, it makes sense. Pretty wild that they, especially if you consider someone your personal friend, and you just leave them out to dry like that, that's pretty disgraceful. I, listen, I wasn't in their shoes. I don't know what kind of pressure they were put under. I don't know what kind of threats were made. But I would like to think that if it was my personal friends and those were the choices that I would stand with

my person instead of these disgusting, bought out, manipulative ghouls in this town. But that's just me. All right. Big news from the Fed yesterday. Let's go ahead and put this tear sheet up on the screen. So they met and they have, which this was expected, decided to further lift interest rates by another half of a point. They also announced that they're going to begin that balance sheet reduction that is set to start on June 1st. The way that they do this is they don't actually sell off the assets. These, of course, were, you know, the reason that their balance sheet is so large is because of extraordinary efforts that they undertook during the pandemic to essentially backstop the stock market and the bond market, measures that went beyond anything they've ever done before, including during the

Great Recession. So now they have this massive balance sheet and they've got to try to unwind it. They don't do that by actually selling things off. At least they're not doing that yet. Instead, they just allow things to mature and sort of like naturally fall off of the balance sheet. They're going to move forward with that, set in motion a plan to trim their portfolio of treasuries and mortgage-backed securities by as much as $95 billion a month, question mark as to how much of an impact that will have in terms of reducing demand and sort of tightening the economy. And we'll see how that all plays out. But the big news that he made, that Jerome Powell, Fed chair, made was not even so much that announcement because that was broadly expected and sort of already priced

into the stock market. During his press conference, he actually said, we are not considering going beyond these half percentage point raises. So the exact quote was, so a 75 basis point increase is not something that committee is actively considering. I think expectations are that we'll start to see inflation, you know, flattening out. And he said, I would say we have a good chance to have a soft or soft-ish landing. On that news, basically saying, everybody relax. We're not going crazy. We think we're getting inflation under control. We think we can handle the soft landing. We're not going beyond the half percentage point increases. The stock market had a huge rally. Stocks jumped sharply on Wednesday. It was the largest stock market increase of this year. I think the last time we had a bump like this was back in November of last

year. So this clearly eased a lot of minds ultimately. You know, Sagar, the other thing that the Fed is really looking at here is whether or not they can cool off the housing market. Because, of course, we've been covering how, I mean, prices have been insane. The number of offers that buyers are getting has been insane. You better show up with, like, all cash in hand and over the listing price in order to have a prayer of getting into this housing market whatsoever. And so while the Fed rate isn't directly tied to mortgage rates, we've already seen mortgage interest rates climb significantly at the fastest pace that's ever happened in history. And there seems to be some early indicators that is starting to cool down the housing market. I was reading, I think it was a Wall Street Journal article that put it in this context.

It was like, it's still very hot, but maybe now instead of getting 20 offers, you get 10. Right. And so the number of new mortgages and offers on homes and people who are touring homes as a metric, all down significantly year over year, all down month over month. So that's one of the things that they're really looking at because a lot of these other, and this is something else we've talked about on this show, of why the Fed is not exactly ideally positioned to deal with a lot of the economic problems that we ultimately have. They just have this like one narrow toolkit and it's a very blunt toolkit. This is one area where they

think they could actually be effective in helping to cool inflation because some of the other things are really out of their hands. I mean, the Fed lifting interest rates does nothing to help the fact that Shanghai is locked down as one perfect example. Yeah. And one of the things I've been trying to point to, my friend David Sachs, the venture capitalist, put this up there on the screen. He had a great thread on Twitter yesterday declaring investor sentiment in Silicon Valley is the most negative since the dot-com crash. And he's got a series of graphs that he points to there about the major corrections in the internet index, in the fintech industry. Here's what he says. So what happened? $10 trillion of money was printed in response to COVID, caused an asset bubble, and a spike in inflation. In response, Fed turned hawkish, which is causing rate expectations to

rise. This is hammering growth stocks. While there will be a bounce back, there was over the last six months, the market bounced back to the historical mean on valuations. That anomaly was COVID. So from here, the market will go up or down based upon rate expectations. If inflation proves transitory, there is upside, but the reverse is also true. If inflation is more persistent, where is the downside? And so what he points to is that there is a risk to earnings from a slowdown in the economy, which has not yet broadly materialized outside of COVID stocks. So will B2B or business-to-business stocks be impacted? This will, of course, decrease the overall business environment. And then he points even more so to this.

Venture capitalists take their cues in the private markets from public valuations. More directly, the large crossover investors who provided most of the late-stage funding operate in both public and private markets. So when you have less capital from one and not increase that you can borrow against in others, that decreases the amount of money that you can then add into the overall private market. So really what it just points to and what he's saying is that for a variety of factors, inflation, overall slowdown, and now just the relationship between public and private investors, and also the amount of kind of, quote unquote, dumb money that's been operating in Silicon Valley, it's going to change the way that tech stocks are now valued and possibly could for the next decade. I mean, Bill Gurley, who's one of those guys who invested, I think, in Uber and in, yeah, let's just say Uber. I know that one

for sure based upon the books that I've read. He put out an entire thread of the same thing saying, listen, we've had a bull market now for a decade. Most of you people have no idea what it's like to operate in the bear. And he's like, and I think that's where we're going to be at. I thought this particular part was interesting where Zach said, will there be a bounce back? There was. Over the last six months, the market bounced back to the historical mean on valuations. The anomaly was COVID, not now, because you did have the Fed injecting trillions of dollars into these markets.

And so you had asset bubble, you had bubbles basically across the board. And so now that things are getting back to what the historical mean is, it feels like a gigantic collapse. But in reality, what was out of the norm was what was going on during COVID. One other sign that some of the sort of irrational exuberance in the markets is being squeezed out right now. Go ahead and put this next piece about NFT sales. NFT sales are flatlining. Is this the beginning of the end of NFTs? This is from the Wall Street Journal.

So what they say is the sale of non-fungible tokens or NFTs, aside from our lovely purchase of the CNN Plus NFT. I hope that one's gone up in value. Made our little contribution to the NFT marketplace. Right. Fell to a daily average of about 19,000 this week. That's a 92% decline from a peak of about $225,000 in September. The number of active wallets in the NFT market fell 88% to about $14,000 last week from a high of $119,000 just back in November. They say rising interest rates have crushed risky bets across the financial markets and NFTs are among the most speculative. So the bleeding edge of sort of the market pullback

and some of these reassessments and, you know, reality of the Fed drastically changing their policy here, hitting the NFT, you know, mostly scam market pretty hard. Not a surprise. You know, I feel bad for anybody who's got a majority of their net worth that were tied up in these things, but... Get out while you can, guys. That's all I got to say. I guess what the game looks like over there. Yeah. Good luck to anybody who's involved. Okay, there's a pretty remarkable story,

new story coming out regarding Starbucks union busting from our friend Howard Schultz, the once and current CEO brought back into the company expressly, apparently, for the purpose of trying to stamp out this nascent and rapidly growing union movement. Let's go ahead and put this tear sheet up on the screen. So Starbucks says employees getting new benefits, but not at stores that are unionizing.

A month after his return to Starbucks, his interim CEO, Howard Schultz, has announced new benefits, including expanded training, improved sick leave, credit card tipping for some 240,000 Starbucks employees at more than 8,800 stores across the country, but not for those who are unionizing. Here's his excuse. We do not have the same freedom to make these improvements at locations that have a union or where union organizing is underway. He claims that, and this is true, you have to negotiate. Once you have a union, you have to negotiate with them. But he's pretending like, oh, we can't even offer it. Of course you can. Of course you can. Yeah, but maybe they'll accept it.

Total gaslighting. Now, if the union says, no, we don't want your improved wages and benefits, then that's another matter. But do you really think they're going to say that? Ridiculous. Workers United, which is the union behind the massive Starbucks union wave, called Schultz's assertion dead wrong. And they also filed unfair labor practice charges with the NLRB. One of their lawyers said under Section 8A5 of the Fair Labor Standards Act, employers simply cannot implement new benefits during contract negotiations unilaterally. Instead, they must bargain with the union if they wish to implement new benefits programs. In the filing, they allege that Schultz misrepresented that law by giving the misimpression that Starbucks could not even offer such benefits to the workers

or the union representative. Schultz's comments had an immediate and profound chilling effect on organizing campaigns nationwide, according to the lawyer for the union. And let's put Stephen Greenhouse, longtime labor reporter for the New York Times. He tweeted out, this smells like illegal discrimination against union members for having dared to defy Howard Schultz and unionize. I predict the NLRB will move quickly to find this a nationwide violation of federal law and will order Starbucks to give unionized baristas the same wage increases. So listen, you are not allowed under federal law to penalize stores and workers who decide to unionize. I mean, that is blatant illegal activity and union busting. You have an NLRB under Biden that has already issued decisions that were favorable to workers, both in Starbucks and the Amazon instance. So we'll watch this one. I would not be surprised to see the NLRB say what you're doing is just blatantly illegal.

And Schultz just lying through his teeth about the reality of the law. Of course you can offer the union workers the same benefits as everyone else. If they reject it, they reject it. But come on, you really think they're going to reject improved pay and benefits? This is total and complete bullshit and really a new low in terms of the lengths that they're willing to go to to stamp out what has been a wildly successful movement. Yeah, it's completely nuts. I mean, when you read what he's saying, he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah,

we'll just give it to everybody else. It's actually very much in the vein of what Amazon is doing. So I've been watching a show on Hulu recently. The only downside is you have to watch those stupid ads. I am bombarded, Crystal, with Amazon ads. By the way, they're not targeting well, clearly. But I'm

watching this thing. It's like, at Amazon, we give you $18 an hour, health care, 20 months of maternity leave. And I was watching this, and I was like, wow, this is really interesting. Because you can see that the public push on the propaganda from their end is like, we'll take care of you, but you better not join a union. We'll take care of you. You better do exactly as we say. So this very much is in a direct response to that. I mean, I guess in one way you can say, look, it's not a terrible thing in order for them to offer higher wages in response to this historic union campaign, but trying to do it in this split the difference way, tried and true union busting tactic of old. Yes. Yeah, it's blatant retaliation. And

the irony is, whether it's Amazon or Starbucks or any other anti-union corporate boss, they want to convince you like, oh, the union's not going to help you at all. They're not going to improve your wages and benefits. But then this is proof positive that even just the fact that there's a threat of the union is forcing them, is forcing their hand to provide better conditions, better benefits. So it already, even just the possibility that stores are going to unionize has already improved conditions for workers across the board. So it also really undercuts their argument that, like, oh, the union doesn't help you at all. Totally unrelated matter. We're going to lift pay, guys. How do you think about, how do you feel about that? So anyway, really, you know, probably illegal tactic, and we'll keep an eye on what the NLRB is ultimately going to do with this one. The other story we wanted to mention to you is Chris Smalls, president of Amazon Labor Union, is headed to the White House today.

I'll put this up on the screen. He is going to meet with Kamala Harris and Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh. They're going to meet today, Thursday, in person with labor organizers, including Chris Smalls and other attendees from Starbucks, REI, and more. So this is something that Bernie Sanders has been pushing for, at least to have a White House meeting. I think it's kind of lame that Biden won't be there personally. Yeah, Kamala? Like, why wouldn't, whatever. Yeah. Most pro-union president in history can't take a little time out of his day to, you know, go and meet with the most inspiring new labor movement leaders in the country. Anyway, that's happening. And then you also have a Senate Budget Committee, of course, chaired by Bernie Sanders, holding a hearing on Amazon.

And Chris Smalls will be testifying. I did get a little bit of an exclusive for us, Sagar, on two items. Tell us. So first of all, Chris previewed for me a little bit of what his testimony to the Senate Budget Committee will be. And one of the things he's going to be pushing for is just funding the NLRB. And this is something that the new general counsel for the National Labor Relations Board has been talking about. Union elections are up 57 percent. I think that's the right number year over year. So there's been a massive increase in the number of workplaces that are filing for union elections.

And yet their funding every year continues to go down. And I think it's important to juxtapose this with the fact that, you know, they like billions out the door casually all day every week for new, you for new military weapons. But when it comes to, you know, they're not asking for anything special here, just literally the amount of money and staff and resources to do the basics of their job. And that seems to be too much to ask. So I know that's one thing he's going to be talking about to the Senate Budget Committee today. So we'll look forward to that.

And then the other little exclusive I got for us is what the drip is going to be. What the fit is for today at the White House. He said he told them, I'm coming as is. I'm not putting on a suit for you at the White House. Well, it's not the president, so I don't care. Or the Senate Budget Committee. I knew you'd have an issue with this. I personally love it. I love that he just embraces like, this is who I am. And if you don't want me there, no problem. I don't need to come. So he told me he was going to wear all black,

and he has a jacket that says history on the back, and he's got some black and white Nikes that he's planning to wear. Of course, the ALU t-shirt underneath. So that's a little Breaking Points exclusive for you there. Like I said, he's meeting with Kamala, so as far as I'm concerned, anybody could wear a T-shirt. I'd wear a T-shirt.

That's a joke. I would put on a suit. But anyway, I don't find it as disrespectful whenever it's the vice president and not the president. Listen, I personally love the energy

of like, listen, this is how I'm coming. It's fair that at least he said, he said, if you don't want me to come like that, that's fine. That's fine.

I respect that, actually. So I think that that's okay. Yeah, so there you go want me to come like that, that's fine. I respect that. Yeah. So I think that that's okay. Yeah. So there you go. All right. So we have a hilarious one. I went deep on this for the benefit of everyone. So we, of course, you know, remember the horse medicine, horse dewormer phase of the ivermectin discussion. It feels like a lifetime ago, but I think it was literally like three months ago. Anyway, so obviously that was attacked by the media. Ivermectin was censored from the internet. Obviously, the efficacy of that remains up in the air.

You can go and do the research. I mean, the latest studies seem to indicate it doesn't do anything. Look, I saw some pushback on that. By the way, I don't care anymore, okay? Just, you know, do whatever you want. At this point, COVID is mostly a cold, so you can deal with it. Now, from this point forward, though, it has set a standard, of course, by both Twitter and in general by the media, we should be critically covering drugs that people are taking experimentally, and we should be labeling them horse medicine

if, in fact, you are experimenting with those drugs. Now, in the wake of the Roe versus Wade case, we have a hilarious demonstration, which was both allowed on Twitter and has yet to receive any of the fact-check freak-out coverage that we saw with the ivermectin debate. Let's put this up there on the screen. Okay, so Motherboard, a part of Vice News, put out this piece, post Roe versus Wade. Misoprostol, which is relatively easy to acquire from veterinary sources since in addition to medically inducing abortions, is also used to treat ulcers in horses. And Crystal, Vice is sharing there an anarchist collective advisory that you can make your own do-it-yourself abortion pill by specifically acquiring horse medicine.

And as we said, they specifically referred to ivermectin at that time during the Rogan scandal, saying Rogan has recovered from COVID-19 and used his first showback to spread misinformation about the horse deworming drug that he took. Now, Motherboard, whenever it was confronted with this side-by-side comparison, they had this to say, quote, you may be reminded of ivermectin, which is used to control parasites in horses. It became a favored but ineffective COVID treatment

among conspiracy theorists. The main difference here in our reporting is that misoprostol does something other than giving you the shits. So that is their— But that's kind of fair, right? Like the thing that they're talking about it for is actually proven to have the impact that they're saying it has. Well, I guess. I mean, I just think in general at the time what was being put out—

By the way, ivermectin, as I understand it, doesn't have any of the negative side effects. It's been put out and used by billions of people, I believe, specifically in the developing world. Yeah, but not the horse version, which is way, a much larger quantity. Okay. And more, right. I'm not a doctor. I know. All right.

Listen, I did have a little bit of a different take on this, though, because. I mean, okay, sorry, go ahead. Well, I was just going to say, I read the article that this was about. Yes. I mean, okay, sorry, go ahead. I was just going to say, I read the article that this was about. And I think the point of the article was more like, it wasn't like, go out and make your DIY anti-abortion pills, or abortion pills, guys. It was like kind of a warning of these are the type of lengths and measures that women in a post-Roe world are likely to go to.

And, I mean, judging by history, that's probably just the case. It's sort of like the modern version of the back alley abortion and the coat hanger. So I saw it in a different light than you did. I definitely agree with you that that's what the article is about. But the headline specifically is sharing instructions to make DIY abortion pills. So it says anarchist collective sharing instructions to make DIY abortion pills. Well, it says Anarchist Collective shares instructions to make DIY abortion pills. And in the article, they don't go out of their way to be like,

I think they do have some language in there about like, guys, not a great idea to DIY your own meds. Yeah, be like, hey guys, don't take horse meds and try and DIY any of this. But it seemed to me like the point was like a warning about these are the sort of dystopian measures that we're going for here.

And that's a fair point, which a decent amount of people actually do make for people who are reluctantly pro-choice. Anyway, more what I thought is that the treatment that this is getting seems pretty ridiculous because actually it trended all across of Twitter. It didn't receive any of the negative coverage. And even people who are sympathetic and are very much within the point that you're making, Crystal, were not as quick in order to jump on it. So it's like, look, is horse meds good or bad? How about this? It's always bad. And we should just tell people, hey, consult with a

physician, a doctor. You shouldn't be trying to DIY your own abortion pills specifically. I mean, I can't think of a more horrific thing in order to try and screw around with. So, look, your point well taken within the article itself. But I do think that the treatment of the two stories does tell us quite a bit about, like, which horse drugs are apparently allowed and good for discussion on the internet. And then which, not even a horse drug, really, but, you know, castigated as a horse drug at the time, which are completely off limits. But again, again, there is a key difference here in that this particular horse drug seems to have more medical evidence behind it in terms of having the effect that they're talking about versus the other one.

There was some studies which showed clinical use of ivermectin. Not like a ton. Listen, I was against the censorship of, you know, the talk discussion about ivermectin. There was Japan, you know. There were some Indian cases and what other people could point to and say, hey, maybe this thing works. And, you know, this is a different time. It was like September of 2021. I just went in and checked. So I think there was a decent enough case pretty much for the exact same thing.

I'm sure there's all kinds of side effects from whatever that— Look, anything that medically induces an abortion does not seem to be one of those things you should be screwing around with regardless. I probably would say ivermectin is, once again, I am not a doctor, seems probably safer in order to use. However, as you said, the horse deworming version, probably much stronger. I did check though, my dog's heartworm medicine is ivermectin, which I thought was hilarious. I was giving my dog a heartworm, I was like, I'm like, oh my God, this is ivermectin. I was like, oh, I guess I should take some of this.

Did you stash some just in case? Yeah, I should stash some for myself. I actually don't care if I get COVID. We should say for the YouTube, whatever out there. Don't take medical advice. Don't take our medical advice. Don't DIY it with horse meds, even the ones that have more sebum. Do not DIY meds, period. Okay, how about that one?

Yes. Let's put all the disclaimers out there. Okay, with all that being said, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, when I look back at my ideological evolution over the last couple of years, one of the most important monologues I ever wrote was after the death of RBG. It was about 50 days before the 2020 election. Honestly, it feels like a lifetime ago. But at the time, I remember sitting down, watching all my GOP friends around me really excited beyond the belief at her death and,

frankly, the implications for Roe versus Wade, and thinking, man, there's got to be a better way than this. So I thought we would go through and look at the different parts, which I still think are very relevant. Here's what I wrote that day. Quote, we're all getting played by the elites of this country who have designed the system exactly this way in order to even remove the illusion of choice from our lives. Let me explain. Right now, if you're pro-life or you're pro-choice, you're pro-gun or anti-gun or pro or con, whatever your divisive social issue is, you basically have a gun to your head. If you're culturally conservative and you want a chance at reserving it through the courts, you should probably vote for Trump. And if you're culturally progressive and you'd want

your agenda codified and expanded into law, you should probably vote for Joe Biden. And I want to be clear, that is the reality of situations, and many millions of people will act accordingly on November 3rd. But why the hell is it that way? Here's where I continued. I said, quote, why? Well, because starting in the 1970s, Congress decided to explicitly make a choice. Debating abortion, gay marriage, guns, and all these other issues is very hard. Congress, hating doing hard things, because then they might have to answer for them, the voters at the ballot box, both parties embrace the same strategy, kick everything to the courts, everything to the courts, including abortion and guns, and then Obamacare, Citizens United, Keystone Pipeline, antitrust law. So now we live under

one of the great cons perpetuated upon the American people. We are now held hostage to our respective cultural values and forced to vote for people based upon a vote that they will then make a few times in a six-year term in the U.S. Senate. And every single one of those senators knows something else, too. At the end of the day, even if you're mad at them, you're probably still going to vote for them if you agree with them on social issues. Why? Because they will cast a vote for a Supreme Court justice who will then rule the way that you want on public policy. So they can screw us all day long economically, they can deny us stimulus payments,

they can let the country rot and they can vote to keep more troops in Afghanistan, but come voting time, they can come back to the district and claim I have delivered on the promise to vote the right way on the court. What I wrote that day remains even more true today. A victory of the GOP that can take back to its evangelical base

is taking just a few votes to confirm somebody in the Senate. Now, I guarantee you that if and when Trump runs for re-election, many evangelical and Catholic leaders will crawl over glass in order to vote for him as he's the guy who actually delivered. And again, when I say delivered,

it was three days of his nearly 1,000 days as president that he nominated somebody to the Supreme Court. That's enough for them. And look, I'm not going to judge. It's not my belief system. But don't we want something better for our political system? Here's how I think I ended that monologue. Quote, I am just so sick of having to fall into this trap every single time. The trick that helps corporatists in Congress the most is making every single election existential. Why? Because when things are existential, then everything else goes out the window. How Wall Street conducts business, how large Amazon is, the growing wealth gap in America, the size of student loan debt, the inability for American families to provide for

their families, get married or have children. They all go on the back burner in so-called existential times. That again seems very prescient. As David Sirota wrote in reaction to the Roe vs. Wade news, every oligarch in America is so effing psyched this morning the country will be arguing about abortion for the next decade while they get to continue ripping everyone off. In fact, I can already confirm the U.S. Senate is already poised to ditch their entire agenda over the next couple of months and to hold votes on Roe vs. Wade that we literally already know the outcome of. They don't have the votes, by the way. That's a spoiler alert. But in the meantime, a landmark piece of legislation that would boost semiconductor manufacturing here at home, help us compete for an independent future, is being put on the back burner.

Millions of jobs, and possibly the future of the US, is at stake technologically. But hey, who cares, except for a weird nerd like me. Or, you know, there's a war in Ukraine, the US is currently pursuing a de facto policy of regime change against Russia. Seems important. But that, oh, you probably aren't going to hear about that. Which is exactly the gray area that the people in this town love to operate in. They do better when nobody is looking. In fact, in retrospect, some of the most disastrous policy pursuits in the Syrian civil war by the United States happened exactly at the time of the hottest fights in Washington over immigration. Same with Afghanistan and Iraq policy right before the rise of ISIS. My point on these

is that immensely consequential actions are either not pursued or are done in your name, while many of us are fighting the culture war. Now, to be clear, most people are okay with that, and probably will be for the majority of my lifetime. But that also doesn't mean you have to be that way. Ultimately, that really is up to us and what we choose to get jazzed about. If I'm being honest, the stuff that gets the right most incensed about politics is almost always a viral culture war video. And if you're on the left and you're honest with yourself, it is probably the same thing on your end, except it probably comes from like the mainstream media. It's okay. Just admit it. A key insight I found out about myself through both fitness and even

doing this job a long time is controlling your impulses and moving past them. Checking your thought process and saying, does this really impact the way I live my life? What utility does my emotion have right now? Can it be productively used towards a different end? And then sucking up and do something else. This will probably never happen at total scale,

but you really don't need that to be effective. That's really my message coming out of this entire thing to you and everybody else. American politics is a game of coalitions. Just look at the pro-life folks. They're only one-third of the entire country. So now the answer really is you simply need to form your own coalition and demand a new standard over many decades. That's what I ended that monologue some time ago with, and I'll repeat it. Quote, the only way in order to change things is to treat issues like our economic future as existential, as the social values that govern our lives. This is a tall order, I realize. To the

religious right, it sounds like moral equivalence on something where it simply doesn't exist. To the progressive left, it sounds like you're willing to sacrifice any individual's chance at a future in favor of making life better for some others. But I would posit, once again, that at a time like this, we've had more to lose, and that as citizens, we deserve a chance to vote for someone or something other than a single vote that they'll take on the bench, but instead to take votes on issues that we can literally determine how we live every second of our lives. It was interesting going back on that monologue, Crystal. I really remember. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue,

become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, guys, in 2007, activists finally scored a big win, forcing lawmakers to lift the minimum wage to $7.25, where it has remained ever since then. The Democrats were in control of the House and the Senate, and they could have passed a bill that tied the minimum wage to inflation or cost of living increases, setting in motion an automatic provision that would allow the wage to at least keep pace with rising costs of living. But they

didn't. Why? Well, because they wanted to preserve the power of the minimum wage as a political cudgel. In effect, they wanted to preserve the ability to have this moment. One of the fights that I've been waging for a number of years now is to raise that minimum wage to at least 15 bucks an hour. Is that something, Joe, that you are supportive of? Bernie, I am extremely supportive of that. And I thank you for leading on it. I thank you for your endorsement, your support. But it means, look. Just stab me in the heart every time. Biden there, of course, promises Bernie and by extension his voters that he will lift the minimum wage to $15 an hour, a core goal for Bernie's

movement. The fact that the minimum wage had been allowed by design to languish at a pathetic $7.25, it actually served Democrats' interests in regaining power. In the Biden era, Democrats included a revolutionary child tax credit in their initial COVID relief package, a stunningly successful policy. It lifted millions of children out of poverty. It cut childhood hunger dramatically. But they only put the policy in place for one year. Why? Because they believed that it could be a similarly effective political cudgel that they thought either Republicans would be pushed into actually backing the extension of the child tax credit because of its political popularity, or they could use Republicans' opposition to the CTC as, again, a politically beneficial cudgel in the midterm elections. Now, their calculus turned out to be wrong. The CTC expired with barely a whimper from Democrats or from the national press,

even as the families who had briefly benefited from it moved in droves from the Democratic Party to the GOP. And so it is with Democrats and Roe versus Wade. The whole situation, it seems kind of perplexing, right? The Christian right has literally spent decades mobilizing to overturn Roe at the Supreme Court. An entire, well-funded legal architecture has been constructed and justices vetted with precisely this goal in mind. Disciplined, one-issue voters backed candidate after candidate, willing to promise them this end result. Ultimately, it was kind of an unlikely figure, Donald Trump, the dude who used to donate to Planned Parenthood and who no one would be shocked to learn if a mistress or two had availed themselves of their services.

It was that guy who would deliver this long-awaited victory. He clinched his election by releasing a list of SCOTUS nominees to prove to the evangelical base that he would, in fact, be a reliable partner in their nearly 50-year project. He famously said Roe would be overturned automatically if he was elected president. The justices he sent up for confirmation to the court were handpicked for exactly this aim. Well, and to make sure that they serve the interests of our nation's oligarchs, as Sager was discussing. So no one should be surprised that this court did exactly the thing that it had been constructed to do. You could no more be angry at a snake for biting you. This decision was their entire raison d'etre. So with decades of knowledge

that this was the ultimate goal of a highly organized, extremely determined movement, why in the world did the Democrats, over many cycles of holding power, refuse to take the extremely obvious and popular step of protecting Roe by enshrining it in federal law? The answer is obvious, because they cared more about using voters to scare them into line than they did about actually delivering on the issues that they claim to care about. I mean, think about this. As David Sirota points out, Obama promised that the first thing I'll do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. And then the first thing he actually did was bail out his Wall Street donors.

I might remind you that Obama had a huge majority in the House and a super majority in the Senate. What excuse could he possibly have for just instantly forgetting one of the things that he promised was a day one action? Even today, as Democrats bemoan the imminent demise of Roe, the entire establishment battalion from Pelosi on down, they've all lined up behind anti-abortion lawmaker Henry Cuellar. This in spite of him, by the way, currently being under FBI investigation. Now, for me personally, I would rather the Democratic litmus test be around committed support for labor unions than for abortion policy is one example. But of course, they don't actually care about any of these issues. They only care about supporting candidates who will uncritically support the current power regime. And they care

about whatever cynical manipulations of issues critical to wide swaths of the nation might help them hold or regain power. In fact, the Supreme Court is at the center of these cynical games. How many times have we been told that we must support the current democratic regime exactly as constituted because if we don't, we'll basically end up in the handmaid's tale with the end of Roe. Republicans play the same games, by the way. That's why on the precipice of a victory that their base has worked for and their donors have funded for decades, Republicans are bizarrely despairing. They're bemoaning a leak rather than celebrating

what should be unequivocal good news for their ideological project, the culmination of a multi-decade project. In this, the GOP is kind of like the dog that caught the car. They also liked having the status quo, the potential end of Roe, as a motivating issue for their base, an organizing principle. Now that they are losing their own little voter cudgel and faced with the prospect of being clearly on the side of a new reality that is not supported by the broader public, they're kind of horrified. For Democrats, on the other hand, who are headed for certain electoral disaster, who are starting to contemplate just reaching once again for the multi-failed messaging of Trump is bad for a midterm in which, of course, Trump is not on the ballot and currently holds no official power. This decision, which is monstrous to their base, is like manna from heaven for Democratic

elites. They don't have to do anything to deliver material. They don't have to come up with a messaging strategy. All they have to do is remind everyone how much they hate the Republicans and promise once again that this time will be different. This time, if you elect them, they'll actually do the things that they have been promising for literally decades to do. That's why Biden and co have been quick to offer a solution to the new Roe predicament. Just elect more Democrats. Sean Patrick Maloney, chair of the Democratic congressional campaign arm, he really took the cake with this blame-shifting assessment. Here's this quote. Democrats were angry and hurt, I know, but it's

not about filibuster, size of the court, or what the Senate hasn't passed. It's about Republicans, not us. We can save our freedoms, but it's November, stupid. I mean, that is so peak that I almost cannot believe it is not parody. It's possible that this Roe decision upends the midterms, compelling Democrats to vote and even more Democrats in the futile hope that for some reason this time will be different. But I don't actually think it's going to work too well because you can only use these cudgels of promises for so long before people ultimately see through your game,

before they realize that you don't actually care about these issues. You claim are existential in apocalyptic language. And that's not on the voters, by the way. It's on you, the Democratic elites. This time, I suspect their strategy will fail. Because if you look at the way the Democrats have already been wiped out in vast swaths of the country, the truth is this strategy of broken promises and cynical manipulations and constant excuse making and blaming the voters, that strategy has been failing for a very long time. It really is a kind of an—I see a—

And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Joining us now to talk all things Ohio is managing editor of Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball at the UVA Center of Politics, the one and only Kyle Condit. Great to see you, Kyle. Good to see you, man. Thanks for having me. Also want to mention to people, you're the author of a terrific book. We have the book jacket we can throw up on the screen. It's called The Long Red Thread, How Democratic Dominance Gave Way to Republican Advantage in U.S. House Elections. Definitely a must read for all political junkies out there. Kyle, just give us your top line thoughts of specifically the Republican Senate primary in Ohio. Did things shake out basically the way that you expected?

Yeah, I thought the polls actually were pretty good. They sort of showed that, you know, that Vance was gaining a little bit before the Trump endorsement, or at least it was competitive, and then kind of took off after the Trump endorsement. So I think it's reasonable to give, you know, the former president credit for Vance, but then also I think Vance himself and his allies, most notably Peter Thiel, sort of, you know, kept him alive in this race long enough to get Trump's endorsement. And, you know, it's very hard to quantify, you know, what exactly is the Trump endorsement worth in terms of, you know, what share of the vote Vance got? Because I guess you could argue that, well, you know, if Trump had total command of the party,

then Vance would have gotten 60% or something or 70%, but he got a little over 30. But the bottom line here is I think that Republican candidates believe that Trump's endorsement is powerful. And certainly the Vance example is one other instance of Trump being on the winning side. Trump isn't always on the winning side of Republican primaries, but he often is. And the belief that he has power in the party

actually gives him a lot of power in the party too. That's interesting. Kyle, we were trying to parse this in the show today, which is that Ohio, a Trumpier state, makes Trump's endorsement matter a lot. But then is that, you know, Ohio, a Trumpier state, makes Trump's endorsement matter a lot. But then in Georgia, for example, Brian Kemp is now up by 60 points currently in this poll against Perdue. How do you think about the Trump effect in those two cases? Like, what does that tell us about politics? Well, look, I think in the Ohio Senate primary,

you had a lot of different candidates, and I think it was probably hard for voters to kind of figure out who they actually wanted to support in that race. And they were all broadly, you know, conservative Republicans. There was one candidate, State Senator Matt Dolan, who wasn't necessarily anti-Trump, but wasn't kind of genuflecting for Trump the way that the other candidates were. So he was maybe the least Trumpy of the candidates. But and I think in a situation like that, if you all hear the candidates saying like fairly similar things and they're all politically pretty similar, again, it can just be hard for voters to distinguish among them. And the Trump endorsement is maybe helpful in that sort of regard as to

giving voters a little bit more guidance, I guess, as to who they maybe should vote for. Whereas in Georgia, first of all, it's effectively a two-person race. There's another candidate in the race, but it's basically Brian Kemp versus David Perdue. Kemp is an incumbent. And other than Trump being, you know, mad about Kemp in the 2020 election, Kemp is a down-the-line conservative and someone who was really supported and helped a lot by Trump in 2018. And so I think it's just a different dynamic. You know, I think there's also a possibility that maybe, you know, Trump probably brought more people into the Republican Party in like the Midwest because he converted a lot of white working class folks,

whereas in the South, a lot of those white working class folks were Republicans anyway. So maybe there's just like some extra juice for Trump on sort of a regional level because Georgia is a state that moved away from Republicans during the Trump years. Ohio is a state that moved toward the Republicans in the Trump years. Yeah, I think that all makes a lot of sense. I also thought your point was interesting that like, well, if the Republican base was just a bunch of Trump cultists, Then J.D. would have won by even more. I mean, clearly it mattered a lot, right, because people are looking for more information about, we don't really know that much about these different candidates, so who should we support? So it mattered a lot.

But ultimately, it wasn't like he ran away with the thing by 30 points. The other thing I'm interested in, Kyle, is there was a lot of commentary about how this election was to fill the seat of retiring Senator Portman. And in sort of affect, J.D. Vance has been very different from how Portman comported himself. I mean, Vance uses sort of like apocalyptic rhetoric about the Democratic Party and the far left and the end of America and all this sort of stuff. Whereas Portman prided himself on being someone who could work across the aisle

and bipartisanship and all those sorts of things. But it strikes me that on a policy ideological perspective, they're maybe not that much different. I mean, Portman is certainly like a consistently conservative character. So it seemed to me like a lot of what the media was latching onto and how they put these people on a spectrum is more about their level of bombast and their level of fealty to Trump than it is about exactly where they fall on an ideological spectrum. In fact, you could make the argument, I'm skeptical that J.D. Vance will ultimately buck, you know, that sort of like

hard conservative economic line once he's in the Senate because he didn't really run on those issues. But clearly the Club for Growth is concerned that he won't be as conservative as Rob Portman consistently was for them in terms of economics. I think there's a real prioritization of sort of style over substance in these primaries right now and also in sort of the way we sort of talk about the differences amongst these Republican candidates. I think you're right that there may not be that big of a difference between how Portman would act and the Senate and Vance would act, although Vance at least has – one of the things he sort of caught some flack for among many other things during the campaign was sort of poo-pooing the idea of us helping the Ukrainians, you know, fight off the Russian invasion. And so it may be that Vance and some other Republicans, kind of newer Republicans in the Senate, if in fact Vance

makes it to the Senate, will be maybe more dovish on foreign policy matters. But I just don't know if that's actually what would end up happening. And a lot of what we're, you know, I mean, Trump is a good example of this himself, because Trump, I think, was helped by sort of running as maybe kind of less like a supply side conservative in 2016. You know, he was not like Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan from 2012 in the way that he talked about some of these things. I think that was probably helpful in attracting some of the voters he attracted. But then when he actually got into office, I mean, yeah, there was some stuff with trade and tariffs that he did, but certainly the tax cut package that he signed at the end of 2017 was something that any Republican president would have signed. So I just, you know, Vance is, I think, a really interesting person, whatever you think of him. You know, there've been a lot

of kind of big magazine features done about him in which he's, he seems to be kind of shooting the breeze on a lot of stuff and saying some things that, um, you know, are, I think you could argue, you're definitely going overboard. Um, uh, you know, talking, basically, basically telling him, saying if Trump got back in office, he should essentially fire the whole federal bureaucracy. And the court said he could do it, just defy them, defy them on it. But I don't know how much of that is just him shooting the breeze when talking to a reporter or if that's something that he actually proposes, because if you take him at his word, you know, it's a pretty strident thing to be talking about. So I just, you know, again, I do think there's just sort of this style thing going on and this sort of like radio kind of, you know, I mean, Trump is a great example

of it, but this sort of like talk radio tone as opposed to like a sort of more muted tone, but it may be more than that. It's also sort of what you're pointing to there is like procedural extremism, right? So even though ideologically, I mean, on certain issues like with Ukraine, you might say he's actually to the left of Portman, you know, based on what his comments have been. But in terms of how he's oriented himself to the institutions of the federal government, he's put himself in And, you know, the sort of like over the top fealty towards Trump, that seems to be more what people are responding to than what he actually thinks about X, Y, or Z policy issues. Yeah, that's, that's a great, that's a great point. And you could argue that some of the things that the Republicans have done over the past several years that have really upset the left, like not holding a vote on Merrick Garland or those sorts

of things, that's not really like a left versus right issue. It's just like a, it's just a question of sort of, as you say, procedure or even sort of norms and decorum. But at the end of the day, like if there's a Republican president and a Republican Senate House majority and the Republicans want to like cut taxes or something, is Vance going to go against them on that?

You know, my guess is probably not because the party used to sort of always sort of fall back into that. I'm just wondering if at some point the party will change in such a way that maybe it doesn't do that, that it has a that just has sort of a different set of priorities to reflect the kind of growing sort of working class nature of its base. But, you know, I just I just don't know if that's on the horizon. Yeah, well, I think the fact that J.D. didn't really put those economic issues at the center of his campaign, that he clearly and he did very well with a new,

you know, white working class Republican base. Ohio, I know you know this, but for the audience, is home to the district that has moved the furthest right the fastest. It's like an Appalachian Ohio district. It's actually a place I used to live. So that base was very responsive to his sort of like cultural signaling. And so that means you don't actually, there's not much incentive to buck the conservative line on the tax break issues and things that you're talking about because ultimately the money is all behind, like, continuing the same what I would call pro-corporate direction. I mean, yeah, I think it's a fair point. And yeah, Vance won every county south of Columbus.

A lot of them are Appalachian counties that you would definitely classify as white working class and places where Democrats have been doing worse and worse over time. Some of Vance's best counties also were, you know, southern and eastern Ohio, places where Trump also did well, even while losing the 2016 Republican presidential primary to John Kasich in Ohio. And so there was definitely some crossover, I think, between support, although Vance also held up pretty decently in some of the kind of bigger urban counties. And so, you know, again, he only got about a third of the vote, but his level of support was pretty broad. And again, it was a field with five fairly credible candidates. And so, you know, I don't want to knock him too much for, quote, only getting a third of the vote. No, yeah, it was still a significant achievement. Kyle, what does this tell you about the broader map? We've got a bunch of upcoming primaries.

Where are some other tests of Trump's power that we should look to outside of Georgia that I already mentioned? Yeah, so North Carolina and Pennsylvania are coming up on May 17th, so less than two weeks away. Trump endorsed Ted Budd, a House member over Pat McCrory, who's the former governor of North Carolina. That happened many, many months ago. And McCrory was leading for a while. It looks like Budd has taken command of that race. And so that would represent another kind of endorsement victory for Trump. And then you've got Pennsylvania, which I think is a more interesting race, where you've got a number of candidates. The most prominent ones are David McCormick, a business guy, and then Mehmet Oz, the television doctor. And Trump, of course,

endorsed Oz, even though a lot of some other folks sort of in Trump world are backing McCormick. That one still seems kind of up in the air to me. We haven't gotten a lot of updated numbers there since Trump backed Oz. So that's probably the most interesting one coming up in the next few weeks. And what about on the Democratic side in Pennsylvania? I just saw a new poll that seems to show that Fetterman, who was like a Bernie Sanders backer, is kind of running away with the thing. At least according to this poll, he's 53 percent Conor Lamb, who's, you know, sort of positioned himself as like a moderate blue dog type candidate down at 14 percent. What do you make of that side? Yeah, I mean, all the indications have been that Fetterman is going to run away with this thing. I think it'd be a real big surprise at this point if he wasn't nominated. And I just think Fetterman sort of, uh, has made sort of a bigger name for himself. Uh, he is from Western PA just like Conor Lamb is, but, um, I think Fetterman is probably

much better known across the state because he is in a statewide position, even though Lieutenant Governor is not that big of a position, but you know, Fetterman is kind of a, kind of a character. Um, he's someone who gets a lot of media, media attention. And I think he also made, uh, kind of raised his profile in the aftermath of the 2020 election when he was really all over the place on television and whatnot, defending the integrity of the Pennsylvania election, which I think probably also kind of helped him lay the groundwork for what looks to be a at least successful primary run for a Democratic nomination. Yeah. Always great to have your insight and analysis, Kyle. Thank you so much for taking the time.

Thanks, Kyle. Always good to be on. Thanks. Absolutely, man. Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. Thank you guys just so much for your support. You know, this week, it's been, it's just crazy. We've got the Roe versus Wade stuff,

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I think he's going to be talking about the concept of instead of quitting their jobs, staying and organizing and what a revolutionary concept that is. Obviously, having Jordan on the ground during the Amazon fight, on the ground in Ohio, getting some really interesting insights into why voters are supporting J.D. Vance and kind of being ahead of that story. I really think that has added something very important to the whole ecosystem that we have here. It makes me really happy. And Jordan does a good job of staying neutral whenever he's doing interviews, which I really appreciate as well. And look, I mean, that's just another thing. It costs a lot of money in order to put people out on the road. So if you can help support that, we really appreciate it.

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