Chapo Trap House - 890 - Spare Us, Cutter (12/2/24)

Episode Date: December 3, 2024

We do the work of having conversations and connecting to people by reviewing last week’s Pod Save America episode featuring Kamala Harris’ top campaign staff. Through their telling, it was an amazing feat of data, precision and triangulation that somehow came up just slightly short, but we look at some different “stories to tell” from what they’re able to reveal about the campaign’s strategy. Plus, a Thanksgiving poem from Matt. Felix’s new series “Searching for a Fren at the End of the World”, an examination of the last 50 years of Conservative media, premieres next Wednesday, December 11, right here on your Chapo feed.

All I'm gonna do is hit the drum. All I'm gonna do is hit the drum. Greetings everybody, it's Monday December 2nd. Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving holiday because we got some choppo coming at you. Stay tuned for the end of the episode because you've got another edition of Matt Christman's Strokes of Genius. We're all looking forward to that a great deal. But on today's episode, myself, Felix, and Amber are going to sort of, I don't know, we're not going to be talking about material that's certainly well-trod in the Chapo canon, but I think we're sort of breaking with the sort of format ofo canon but I think we're sort of breaking with breaking with the

sort of format of the show because I think for usually we don't spend this podcast discussing things that were said on another podcast but I'm making an exception we're making an exception for this Monday's episode because we are going to talk about a specific podcast episode that has garnered a great deal of media attention and I think will certainly stand the test of time is probably the definitive what went wrong Kamala Harris election post-mortem and the answer to the question on the episode of Pod Save America what went wrong featuring the people who ran the

Kamala Harris's campaign the answer answer to the question, what went wrong is nothing. They ran a great campaign, all the data was on their side. And if they had to do it all over again, they wouldn't have done anything differently. I have never actually listened or seen the whole episode of Pod Save America But so many people were sending us links to this that it demanded. I think it demanded a further investigation. So What were your guys just general impressions both of the Pod Save America format and what we all what we all just saw Okay, so um just to start out. I do want to give some background um This is in the interest of full disclosure, okay? When we did our Chicago show with Trunon this summer, me and Chris were on the same flight back to LA, and who was on our flight? But I think three of the four Pajamas?

Dan Pfeiffer wasn't there, but it was the one who... You were giving him this shit assignment, no doubt. Yeah. It was the one who looks like he has a spice sickness, John Fabestar, and John too. And I want to make something clear. Most people that know me know that like, in most situations where I saw like an op, I would be like King Von when he saw Guando Rondo. I would run over and just start hitting until, you know, whoever is on the Pod Save team who like is the guy who carries the gun and catches all the cases for them, like the shine of the Pod Save crew until he killed me. But that didn't happen because I was incredibly fat at the time and I was worried that if I had approached them, they, you know, before I could even swing my fists,

like King Vaughn, they would have said something like, oh, are you from the Chapa Waffle House? Oh, are you on Atreon? Oh, I heard that you like the book Settlers because it describes every woman who's ever fucked you. And so I couldn't really risk that. And I just, you know, we went on our way, they went on their way. Hopefully they didn't recognize me

because I was so fat, but I'm less fat now. And now if I'm on a plane with them in the section of the plane I ride in, the JetBlue for slave owners, I will confront them courageously this time. I will confront them courageously this time. I will confront them courageously this time. Hopefully the Air Marshal will not be,

not be have cause to take action, but. So. Sorry, Amber, go ahead. My takeaway is that I despise these people and I will not rest until they are defeated. Yeah, I mean, the American people, yeah, I mean, also like the rest of the world deserve better than Trump and I'm like, yeah, but I don't know if they actually get that.

Like I didn't get any sense that They're like, oh this is a bummer. This is gonna be bad for people because they're not really interested in that they want to be sort of they want to be successful and that means maintaining the status quo that they sort of think is like a default stability of the polity So yeah, they and they definitely deserve better than you. So I don't think they get that. Anyway, bottom line, I don't want anyone to get hurt, but I do want someone to learn a lesson. Low possibility of that. Uh, anyway, despise these people. That's my takeaway.

Yeah, that is it. That is something I noticed. Like they were constantly harping on like the political environment, which is a hilarious thing to say when you have had the presidency for four years. It's like if I did a podcast where I'm like, someone keeps leaving crusted diarrhea on the rim of my toilet. I don't know who's doing this. Every time I go to my bed, there's like a thin filmy layer of crunchy cum, and I feel like I'm sleeping on cornflakes.

It's like the old subway joke. You made it. They act like the default political environment for America is that like, I guess just everyone loves Trump. And they even like, when they were bigging themselves up, they were like, actually, we got Kamala's approval rating above Trump. And I think this is the first time

that someone with a lower approval rating has won the presidency. And it's like, no, that happened last time with Trump and Hillary. Also like approval ratings, like we know that polls are bullshit and like they just don't know what there's no one's job at the New York Times anymore that it is to like

read every newspaper in the Midwest and figure out what's actually going on because those papers don't exist anymore. But like approval ratings don't really mean anything either in so far as like, if you were running, what are they approving of your campaign? Like that's like not like a performance review of your career, like which is what people taking those polls are thinking of. Like an approval rating is their ability to give you a performance review early on. And the only people that take them are like, yeah, sure. I have time for a survey or dorks.

So it's just not going to be a very useful piece of information. Yeah. Like, like there's also like, there's tons of people who like disapprove of Trump and like still vote for it. Like people who are like, oh, I think he's a bad person and he's doing deals for it. Like it doesn't really mean that people don't make

like a choice where they're like, oh, I disapprove of Hillary't really mean, people don't make a choice where they're like, oh, I disapprove of Hillary by 57%, but I disapprove of Trump by 61%. These are not numeric, these are qualitative information. This is not quantitative information. This is not on a scale of one to 10. The pain chart, which is how sad is the sad face? How much pain are you in? Well, okay, like, well, what you're talking about is like,

like the impression that they give to me, was people who have not communicated to another human being outside of a slack or Excel spreadsheet in decades. Yeah, and they and they all of them have a fealty and loyalty not just to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, but they have a fealty to the data. But the thing is, the data is completely divorced from any outcome or like, you know, it's just like, it just doesn't line up. And the overall impression that I got watching this episode of Pods Save America is that they really, it really reminded me of postgame press conferences where NFL coaches have to like account for why they blew like a

14 point lead in a playoff game. And I gotta say like they have a lot of the that the like the way of talking without ever actually saying anything. And they have a lot of weight, but they need to like learn a couple catchphrases as a means to claim accountability without ever actually actually taking it. And they just need to learn the following phrases. It starts with me starts with the coaching, failed to execute in all three aspects of the game. Or like they can say things like, you know, I think we did a good job establishing our run game, but we

failed to execute in terms of passing, tackling, blocking and special teams. But they got to say, it starts with me, and we got to look at the tape. We got to look, we just got to look at the tape, break it down, but ultimately accountability starts with me. See, they didn't preface any of the things they said not taking accountability with saying it starts with me and I take accountability. So frankly, it's all, it's all, it's all a bit, It's a bit incredible to me. Yeah, these are the only people I believe should be held accountable.

Normal people, I don't care. Like, I don't like these are the only people that deserve to be berated with tweets. I mean, they deserve worse, but that's all we have. But like when you're talking about like coaching, like starters, like Nate. Yeah. Like Nate was telling me about Ohio State football, like loss to Michigan, which is like their rival, which put them at 10 and two, which is a very good record, but they are rivals.

So Ohio State fans are posting the head coach's home address. There is so much more accountability in almost everywhere in the world. These are the most untouchable people. And like back to the polls, my friend Patrick like said, okay, keep in mind I know that this is buried in a thirst trap.

But my ex-boyfriend posted one of the best things on his stories where he was like, well, look, uh, if you voted for Kamala despite your objection to the genocide of the Palestinians, then you already understand why people voted for Trump despite their objections to a bunch of shit? Absolutely. Yeah, 100%. And you know what? I think a thirst trap was a good way to deliver that message.

She had really good abs. This Democratic Party could learn something. Well, I will say the other thing that was sort of jaw dropping in this hour and a half retrospective on what went wrong with the election or like what lessons what lessons should the Democratic Party learn from this? The words Israel and Gaza were not mentioned even once. Nor were the words Social Security or Medicare as well, which I know you noticed as well. But I guess, like, to me, the moment that really summed up this entire episode was at the very end, when Dan Pfeiffer asks one of the guests, Jen O'Malley-Dillon. He asks, like, you know, like, do you have any closing thoughts, or like, do you have any final lessons we can take about this? And Jen O'Malley-Dillon says at the end of this hour and a half about what went wrong

Her lessons to be taken away were that you matter and are important and the work you did volunteering matters And I just don't want people thinking that the VP wasn't exceptional because she was The people who worked on this campaign are the future and we need to follow them you guys all did amazing work under impossible circumstances and future and we need to follow them. You guys all did amazing work under impossible circumstances. And that is one thing you would never hear in an NFL press conference. And you know, it's, it's, it's shocking. They're like the people who just lost this election, they're the future and we need to follow them and they're important. And I don't want anyone feeling bad about themselves. No, it's just like, keep donating, please keep donating. These people hold themselves

Entirely blameless and this is supposed to be like like like a post-mortem on what we can do differently what we need to learn And they're like over and over again They were like well, you know, we pretty much did everything right and if you look at it Like the best line is when they kept saying, you know, the states will re-campaign she did well Yeah, I mean if if we had campaigned other places, we would have won, but no sense of like, oh, we should probably do that. But they're not they don't even that states where they campaigned were all these battleground states because they've just completely given up on making new Democrats. All they're doing is trying to retain their slowly receding number of supporters.

They're just like, just don't lose enough. They're not making more of them. They're not making more of them. Towards the end, I think at one point Dan Fieiffer was like, Latino men, do we got anything on that? And they're like, well, you know, it looks bad. But like the thing is, we really need people to identify with a candidate both as a brand, but then both as a someone who has solutions to problems, and they can communicate the solutions to those problems to them. But yeah, and they're like, Latino males, what do we have there? And

they're like, I guess nothing. I don't know. I mean, we'll just have to see how that plays out. But you know, we're gonna have to look at the tape. But obviously, it starts with me and we got to establish the run game early. It's so deranged. The whole the whole thing with like any of their losses, they'd like never examine it. But they, they do go back to like, yeah, we're really trying to tell a story, which is like, that is weird. God shark tank this weird shark tank idea

Electing her and like well we want to tell the story to these people that you know like don't usually vote Well, we also want to stock talk about policy, but we really need to introduce her to them So we didn't want to focus on policy. Like they immediately, they multiple times contradict themselves and say, Hey, we were running on the economy. And but then like, they will literally say, we didn't want to focus on policy because we had, we only had 107 days. And by the way, using that, my dog ate my homework two fucking weeks for the goddamn floods. I'm sorry. that was horrifying. That was horrifying, but I checked into that maybe twice a day and spent a few minutes going, damn, sucks.

I wasn't locked to the screen. It wasn't like the day after 9-11 where we were all watching the 9-11 show. We were like, boy, I guess that just happens all the time. Yeah, the dominant excuses played out here were like the number one one was, take a shot every time you hear the phrase, the political environment, political headwinds or political ecosystem.

And they were like, David Plouffe, P. Loeff at one point. It was so gross how they kept saying plop like every time they They're like yo, I want plop to get back down on this It was so gross they kept saying it like Jen O'Malley Dillon would say something like well, you know Latinos They called them the demographic that has kids and that's really Was that Kamala used to be a kid. The tortilla generation. And then the guy with spice sickness would go,

Pluff, what do you think about that? And it was like, can you stop saying Pluff? It's so gross. To compound this, Pluff looks like he lives on a Greyhound bus. Like he looks insane. He looks like he would show up in the lobby of my building and get arrested for asking women to step inside a sleeping bag he brought with him. He looks crazy.

It's funny, because Pluff was the only one who was not in studio and he was zooming in and when they first cut to Plouffe. From a bunker. They cut to Plouffe, they were like, joining us now from one of the tunnels underneath Gaza is David Plouffe currently being held hostage by Hamas. And he was like, look, the political headwinds of my hostage situation, obviously I couldn't connect with voters in those seven battleground states as I'm currently being held hostage

by Hamas. But they're like, they kept saying'm currently being held hostage by Hamas. But they're like, they kept saying the political ecosystem, the political headwinds and like what David Plouffe's point was, he was like, we ran an absolutely perfect campaign. All the data was there. But the political environment was just atrocious. The political environment was so bad. And by the political environment, they mean everybody hated Joe Biden and and like Donald Trump more than him. And they were like, the political headwinds, they just blew in out of nowhere. It's just one of those things like a wildfire. It just happens. And we just ran into those political headwinds. And also, we only had 107 days,

we couldn't run a full campaign. At one point, they said, they were like, if this were a normal campaign, and Kamala ran in the primary, won the nomination and then had like a full summer to define herself. I was like look I'll stop you there. She never would have won the nomination. She dropped out of there. They couldn't figure out like why didn't people jump on her? And by the way being like we only had a hundred seven days. Well whose fucking fault is that?

Well they had to make a QB Well, they had to make a change. They had to make a change at QB1. They had to bring a guy off the bench. And, you know, once again, it starts with me and we got to look at it. People are already really pissed off, too, that like at how undemocratic the primaries process is. And now she just gets it as like a fucking administrative nepo baby. They just fucking like rush her through.

That's even less people. I resent that. I'm like, let me vote again. I'll pick someone weird, but like fucking let me vote in primaries. You'd have snap primaries that would at least be exciting and give people the impression that like, I don't know, there's some kind of democracy at work. Yeah, the her only moment in the entire primary was attacking Joe Biden for being against busing.

The only other defining moment of her in the entire primary that she had to drop out of before voting was when she made a policy proposal that was so spacey and out there, even Warren was like, what? When she got on stage and was like, will you commit to banning Donald Trump from social media? And even the joke candidates like John Delaney were like, huh?

That was like, you know, John Delaney stayed in the race longer than Kamala did. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think they offered to buy her out pretty early. That whole thing of like, we only had 100 days and two weeks of those were the storm and everyone blamed us for the storm, I guess. Oh.

It's incredible because it's like, yeah, gee, you guys only had a billion fucking dollars. Donald Trump was on trial for like the first half of the campaign. Like. Yes. Yeah. Donald Trump was like in holding.

Yeah. Like what the fuck. And Biden, here's the thing, Biden did have goodwill before he melted. That was the reason he won. People were like, yeah, this guy seems like he rides the train and likes the unions and he's like, seems sort of normal despite the fact that his teeth are blinding and the plugs are weird. But like people did like Biden before his rapid decline and the absolute plummeting

of like things got really worse with this shit, like inflation, they got a lot worse. So like they burned through his goodwill. Like that's it. Like you had a head start at the beginning of the administration, starting with the fact that like he won. So, you know, that's pretty's pretty good, but what the fuck?

He beat the incumbent president. If you had just let him sort of, Leonard Nimoy, my work here is done, or whatever, he could have gotten out and be like, yeah, the Democrats are really smart. Let's start picking a successor and talking about it now. Yeah. If he had done that, he would have gotten a legacy that he so richly did not deserve.

Oh, absolutely. He would have been thought of as one of the greatest presidents of the modern era, this horrific fucking goblin of a man who has been on the wrong side. Oh, they would have called him FDR. Yeah, they would have called him the new FDRDR this guy who's been on the wrong side of every fucking decision for 60 fucking years of his career Instead all these people including the people on the show lied about his mental competency and they wonder why The political environment is just so weird voters don't trust us. I wonder why

It's just so weird voters don't trust us. I wonder why At one point at one point David Plouffe says the fact that we got the race to a dead heat was positive Which is his way of saying well, we covered the spread I want to go through like yeah I want to go through the like the Pod save America character select screen because like some of these people Yeah, I want to go through the like the Pound State of America character select screen because like some of these people Like Dan Pfeiffer and you know, he's crooked media guy. The only thing I only think I've noticed here, he was served as communications director for Evan by in 2008. And Evan buys 2008 presidential campaign. But he's also from he was born in Wilmington, Delaware. And David Plouffe is also from Delaware.

I think it's odd that two of the people who are running this campaign, or I know David Dan Pfeiffer wasn't odd that two of the people who are running this campaign, or I don't know, David Danpfeiffer wasn't, but like two of the people on this panel are from Delaware, which is, you know, it's odd to me. It's odd to me. It speaks to the... They're Tulpas created out of tax havens. Yeah. We have been to Delaware.

The pathing on the people who live there is all fucked up. If you talk to the wrong NPC in Delaware, he'll just wander off a cliff and you'll have to wait a week until the LLC that he's registered spawns another one. And you know, like we talked before about how like, Kamala's campaign headquarters was still in fucking Delaware. They didn't even change that after Biden dropped out. And it just, you know, if you're pointing to problems with the campaign, I start with Delaware. But okay, I want to talk about-

But Pfeiffer has said in other contexts, something that is equally as gobsmacking, that Joe Biden has been, other than the four years or what a, yeah, four years that he was out of office under Trump won, Dan Pfeiffer has been represented by Joe Biden his entire life. That's, yeah. Wow. As either Senator or Vice President or President. one, Dan Pfeiffer has been represented by Joe Biden his entire life. Yeah. Yeah. Either senator or vice president or president. I mentioned this to you at the jump. But like, I really I really do want to underscore that these people all have a genuine affection and loyalty to both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris,

which is nauseating. But like their lack of anger at like any of the people that they work for or at themselves is rather shocking. Do you think it's like a genuine affection or it's just sort of like a closing rank? I mean, I think they want their next job. I mean, genuine affection is a very thin. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're like, I think they're like, we got to we got to we're in this.

We're all in this together and you're going to lose, but I am still going to get hired. Yeah, but that's stupid because all they're doing is associating themselves with the biggest losing brand of the 21st century. I know. I know. Is Joe Biden and the fucking Democrats. So much so that even like Felix and I were talking about this. So much so that even like the New York Times was like, you guys, we got to stop. You can't keep saying that he's not senile.

Like even they pushed back. They're like, we can't, we looked really stupid after Hillary. We can't look that stupid again. That is another thing. We talked about this yesterday when we were both listening to the episode, but there's a lot of this on the episode,

especially from Jen O'Malley, Dylan Francis Fitzgerald, with way too many last names on this lady, she must love being a step-sibling? I don't know. She's married three times. Yeah. But like, she was constantly harping on how the media would tear Kamala or Biden for that matter apart for one thing and not do it to Trump.

And it's, it is symptomatic of a general trend in democratic politics that I have seen since, I would say, after the 2018 midterm, where they now legitimately believe that the media is just in the tank against them. And specifically like the New York Times stuff them. And specifically like the New York Times stuff, they will act like the New York Times is in the tank for Trump because they won't write headlines that are like, lying bad Trump lies about hero Biden or whatever. And it reminds me of like the Israelis who would get mad at BBC because BBC would do like the bare minimum to acknowledge war crimes. And it's like, no, you don't get it. They're doing that so that they can have

a sense of propriety to help you more. Yeah, it's plausible deniability that there's a Jewish media conspiracy. Yeah. They have to maintain some sense of propriety and they can't just like act like Biden is fine anymore. They want people to still like, I don't know, believe that they have like an accurate appraisal of reality. I do want to talk about Jen O'Malley, Dylan Thomas Beckett. She talked a lot. She talked a lot. And so who is this woman? She is she's a American political strategist who served as the campaign

chair for Vice President Kamala Harris's 2024 campaign and held the same position with President Biden's 2024 reelection campaign. She served as White House deputy chief of staff. She was the first female campaign manager for a successful Democratic presidential ticket. She also ran the Beto O'Rourke campaign in 2019. She worked as field director. She actually started her career working for John Edwards.

And then after 2012, she founded with Stephanie Cutter, who also on this episode, a consulting firm called Precision. Well, it's not that precise. And then it says she also advised Gates Ventures, a venture capital firm founded by Bill Gates, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative founded by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, General Electric, and Lyft, which her deferred compensation and severance from precision was at least $420,000. And she was the first person to serve as Biden's campaign manager who was not related to him. So that's just a little bit of her CV.

Who was not related? Oh, what a fucking dog shit operation. Joe Biden is a man, I hope that one day we have a Joe Biden movie. Because I think he's had such an interesting and I'm not gonna say fun life, that his family was killed several times. But, you know. Well that's just cause he wanted to be a Kennedy. Yeah. Now I, Felix, there is a Joe Biden movie.

It's called Being There. It's really good. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's really good. That's exactly what I mean. The businessman today is at the mercy

of kid lawyers from the SCZ. It's happening to everyone, I'm afraid. The way things are going, they'll probably legislate the medical profession as we know it right out of existence. Yes, right out of existence. Yeah, it's just just one thing from General Malley, Dylan Francis Thomas Beckett. So at one point, Dan Pfeiffer, Dan Pfeiffer, like does actually put them a real question. And he says,

like, okay, like, what about what about the the like Kamala not distancing herself from Biden or like saying like hey I wouldn't have done anything differently I'm paraphrasing but this was Jen O'Malley's answer she said we had to tell a pretty robust story and then she gives the time excuse again about Freudian slip days we only had a hundred and seven days to tell a story about this woman I mean mean, God knows. I mean, like, that's a crunch. And she goes, and we focused on how she was different from everyone else. At the same time, she was very clear that she was a new generation of leadership.

Whenever we had the opportunity, the VP put her own stamp on things. Of course, when you have an administration where a lot of progress has been made, it's hard when you're asked questions. And she leaned into her own vision, but headwinds are tough. And when she campaigned, she did better than Trump did. And we did make strong progress against these national headwinds. Okay, absolute drivel. Meaningless, like, like your cat sitting on your keyboard. The thing about like only having 107 days and like, you know, we defined her successfully

is so insane to me because it's like, you guys in your own accounting, you had the vaunted generic Democrat that runs like 10 points ahead of Trump in every poll. And yeah, I know like those types of polls that are for a hypothetical, without any specific timeframe or like kind of bullshit. But the general-

They believe in them, they believe in them. Yeah, the general idea was like a generic dem, if such a thing existed without like Hillary's baggage or like Biden's dementia would like destroy Trump. And that might've been true in 2016 even. But they're saying they took a generic dem and fucked it up. They made it worse. I don't know what this means.

They keep saying, we told her story. What story? They've just fucking, it's shark tank. They think that this is, it's like tech language. Remember during the Theranos thing where she talked about, the thing is you've got stuff through with the story. And it was so, they were so focused on that

because that does work on investors in fake technology. They're like, oh, story, it's story time. I've never considered the possibility that one of the ways you test for disease is adding a substrate to something that contaminates the blood sample itself. But I love stories. They think that everyone is as dumb as they are, or everyone is as much of a rube as they are. BOWEN This was my major takeaway from this whole thing as well while we're on it is that if I can identify one fatal flaw with this campaign after having consumed a

number of poor post mortems, uh, it would be that Kamala Harris believes in nothing. Uh, and so, it was the perfect campaign because there was no campaign. So they talk over and over again, I've been like, our challenge was to define her, which turns out to be an impossible challenge because you can't define nothing. And so the entire campaign turned out to be the drill racism dial tweet where they're just reading polls and just trying to turn the dial to see how racist they needed to be to meet some hypothetical voter that only lives in a spreadsheet. And then you get a campaign that reminds me of like listening to

these people talk about it reminds me of like listening to like Mr. Beast describe his artistic process. Like it's just like looking at numbers and trend lines and like trying to derive some kind of like real felt reality from it. Yeah. You, I'm sorry. You can't define an absence. Did you guys notice this part where when they were talking about like her breaking with Biden and like the idea that like, you know, he's like, this would be like breaking with the new deal, we couldn't do it.

They were talking about her doing that. And when I think Pfeiffer sort of pushed them on it and was like, well, a lot of people saw her as like a continuation of this woefully unpopular administration. They said that it would cause too many problems for every president and vice president in the future if Kamala broke with Biden on anything. What the fuck? We're thinking ahead.

What? Would it open a portal? We have a, look, we have a long game here at the sacrifice of the short game. Lose the battle, win the war. Kamala is, you know, they're thick as thieves, except when she ran against him, she called him a racist. Other than that.

Yeah. They said every president in the future for the till the sun explodes, I guess. Like what? That answer was provided by Stephanie Cutter, who is the senior advisor for strategy messaging. And of course, she was involved in Obama's first term, where she served in the Treasury Department as Timothy Geithner's counselor, where she protected Geithner's reputation and tried to spin policies like the Troubled Asset Relief Program and the AIG bailout. And then she found another precision strategies with General Mally Dillon and Teddy Golf, and worked with a number of clients, including Justin Trudeau and General

Electric. But Chris, every time I want to get to her answer about why Kamala didn't break with Biden. But Chris, every time Stephanie Cutter was speaking, I was thinking of you, because every time she talked, I was all I could hear in my head was spare us the cutter. Spare us the cutter. It doesn't cut the mustard, this cutter. Spare us the cutter. Cutting the cutter. My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my We got that everywhere and we had to show her as her own person but she also but also felt that she was part of the admin and She said she was she felt that she was part of the administration and unless we said, you know X to

Differentiate her we were never gonna satisfy anyone So she's not from Washington and her career has been about reaching across the aisle and finding common-sense solutions We were trying to tell a story that she was different, but not pointing to a specific issue. She felt like she couldn't, she could cherry pick things, but she has tremendous loyalty to Biden. Imagine if we said, well, we shouldn't have taken this approach on the border. Imagine the stories that would come out.

Then they get into this thing where she says- Yeah, you might have lost. You know, you know what? You know how you get around that? You know how you weasel, you know how you weasel your fucking way around that? Very easily. You say, this was our policy now, things have changed. We're taking a different direction

because we're adapting to changing political. Like you just weasel out of it really easily. You say, I'm gonna do things different because things are different now. That was right then, this is gonna be right now. That's how you break without throwing somebody under the bus, but also you could throw him under the bus. He could literally get run over by a bus right now and not feel it. Yeah, yeah. Like Trump does that all the time. Like, all his entire political career is like

saying he's going to do something. Like, I'm going to tear up NAFTA and then he like replaces it with NAFTA too. That's exactly the same. He did that constantly. The guy who's beaten them twice now. It's fucking insane. I, well, there was another thing that Cutter said that I thought was hilarious, and it was in the same field of questions about Kamala splitting with Biden. And she said, well, Kamala,

we wanted to show people that Kamala was from outside Washington, and so she understood that good ideas come from all over the country. That one was so funny. That one was so funny. I laughed out loud at that, and when Jen O'Malley, whatever, was talking,

by the way, I listened to all of this stuff at 1.4 speed or something. Every time it got to her, I had to turn it back down to one. Like that was an extremely amazing point where it was like, that was one of the better things with we're gonna talk about policies. She's like, it's not about that. It's about solving these problems, getting things done. It's like getting what done? How do you think, when are you going to consider the possibility

that it's you? That they don't like you? They don't really love the Republicans. They like Trump because they think of him as not a Republican. And you know what? I've talked about this with a friend of mine who was a social worker for just like the most dire situations, you know, working with kids. She said, well, you know, I've seen some of these kids grow up and there's this phenomenon where, like, they're mad at their dad for, you know, violently abusing them, but they're mad at their dad for you know violently abusing them but they're more mad at their mom for letting it happen and that's the Democratic Party

they are mom they are the spring mother and they say there's nothing I could have done about it and you know what Trump doesn't feel like daddy feels like, I don't know, fun, big brother program guy. But I feel like the most baffling, the most insane thing in the whole thing where they establish this totally fraudulent idea that vice president simply never break with the president. That just doesn't happen. And it was like, well, that'd be news to Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr. I mean, I'm not going back. Have you news to Mike Pence? You only have to go back to the like, third or fourth president of the United

States, but You only had to go back to the previous president. Yeah, exactly. No, and then they use the example of Trump and Mike Pence. And they said, well, you can break with your president when he tries to murder you. And they're like, yeah, it's called the murder exception. And then Qatar at some point says, yeah, when people die, you can break with your president. I'm sorry, say again, what was that? What was that? I mean, I don't know, like the absolute, the gaping void of these people and like the fact

that they didn't say the word Israel or Gaza even once on this. And they were like, that was one of the main things people were Looking for her to break with the president on and they were like, oh you simply be he has loyalty to him vice presidents They never break with the president except when people die. Well, I mean what what the fuck what I mean, come on that was that was one of the most tone-deaf insane things you could possibly say after like, I would say like a historically evil administration. Like this is, I would put the Biden administration,

I don't know where exactly, but probably around like, I don't know, Andrew Johnson in light of everything. And just not only to like willfully ignore it during this fucking postmortem, but like, what if people died? I mean, if you needed any confirmation that they do not see Palestinians or really like anyone at the wrong end of American foreign policy is human, this would be it. It was it was extremely weird. It's like it was a forbidden word. It's like if they said it, someone might die. Like they had already said Bloody Mary twice. But like, it's like it's like the refusal to the refusal to acknowledge, like what will be the I'm sorry, like the only thing people remember about Joe Biden's presidency, they're in total denial that it had any like that it even was happening

or that it played a role in this campaign. But they are also in complete denial about the fact that if anyone in 20 years, 30 years, even 10 years from now thinks of Joe Biden at all, they will think only about what he did to Gaza. And they will think also of everyone who ever worked for him in a similar fashion. Well, no, there will be super cuts of him drooling in his sleep as well.

Okay, yeah. Those two things. Possibly that. And then I want to talk, the last guy. Before we move on from the women, can I just say, because I forget if it was Qatar or O'Malley-Dillon who said this, but I just wanted to shout out one of my favorite quotes from the women, can I just say, because I forget if it was Cutter or O'Malley-Dillon who said this, but one of my, I just wanted to shout out one of my favorite

quotes from the entire episode, which is one of them talking about the energy around the convention and trying to offhandedly describe what she thought of as the democratic coalition. And she was like, the convention brought a lot of coalitions together. Yes. And here's the quote I directed says, we had independence, Republicans, Democrats, business leaders, sports figures, all coming together. Yes. And here's the quote I direct. It says, we had independence, Republicans, Democrats, business leaders, sports figures, all coming together. Remember the groups? She's talking about the groups. They're all talking about the groups. There's like a lot of groups do a lot of

things really. I think she said fucking well. Yeah. And it's like, Ooh, getting a little punk rock, aren't you? And like, it's like a lot of groups do a lot of thing And we're involved in a lot of groups And I'm like what are you talking about like fucking the Elks Lodge like fucking Girl Scouts? Bowling leagues, what are these groups? I couldn't I was genuinely Mystified does anyone I mean I this is not a Rhetorical question does anybody know what like groups they're talking is it like NGOs? Taylor Swift fans and then

sports figures like LeBron is the one that comes to mind and he endorsed Kamala but that's weight against the endorsements of every player in the NFL every player in Major League Baseball every player in the National Hockey League and Probably a good chunk of the NBA. Oh, no, well, there are so many Latinos in MLB Don't they know don't think like they're all on their side Also, by the way, what a fucking like nerd-ass sports ball Thing to say sports figures instead of athletes. Yeah thing to say sports figures instead of athletes? Sports type individuals?

I have one more jaw-dropping sports metaphor here. This is from David Plouffe. David Plouffe said, he was speaking about like, they spent a long time talking about Donald Trump's they them ad. He's for you, she's for they them. Okay, but like, David Plouffe was saying, why don't we respond directly to it? And he says when you respond when you respond to the transit hacks you're playing on the opponent side of the field You in sports that's good when you're on the opponent side of the field. It means you're threatening to score Easy thinking like you're you're playing on their home field or whatever fine He's saying like, you know, we really don't want to be playing on the opponent side of the field, but it's like in every team sport, that's the objective.

I have, I have some thoughts about that, about that ad and I'll try and get through them as quickly as possible. But like one, we already know from a few years ago that the way you win on the, the like the trans subject is by just talking a little bit less about trans people than the other person. Like all you have to do is be like, wow, you guys, Donald Trump wants to take on water polo, but I'm thinking about inflation. Like it's a very easy thing to do. And it did, the thing she said did make her seem out of touch and like the dude was right that he's like, yeah, it wasn't even that, he said they use like

a pseudo economic, I don't want my tax dollars paying for that and like, and like, I don't know, I don't think that's like any more pseudo-economic than people being worried about quote unquote, welfare mothers. Like it's alarmist and it's stupid, but it's like that's been a big, like taxpayer waste has constantly been a tool of the right. The other thing like the sports things,

and by the way, quit making that fucking joke, it's like, oh, this is the first time you cared about women's sports. Lots of people care about women's sports. Like it is a question of like, I don't know what constitutes doping or something like that and whether or not this is fair. Now I remember back when, like when we were kids, like the gay marriage debate was up and you did not see this kind of rhetoric. Obviously there's a lot of really nasty, visceral transphobia, but the president during the gay marriage debates was like,

I don't like it, I'm a Christian, I think it's bad. There was all this really- That was Obama. It was all these really moralist, I'm opposed to this thing. Now, even in so far as there are people that like hate trans people and it's all like, you know, under their skin and they're focused on it

because they're weird freaks. Like the president, he has to come at it from a, you know, your tax dollars are paying for this and you know, don't you care about girls volleyball or whatever the fuck. He can't be like, it's wrong, it's sick. And I think it's for a few reasons. One is sort of positive in that there's at the very least a more of a like, if not like trans affirming or whatever, a more libertarian attitude towards gender and sexuality. People are just like,

I don't, this is our white business. It's not as like viscerally hateful as it has been in the past. Two, and I think this is really like important to note, Caitlyn Jenner supports Donald Trump very vocally and he might need someone to run over and kill someone with a car. And you don't alienate your shooters. need someone to run over and kill someone with a car. And you don't alienate your shooters. You can't alienate your shooters.

And there's hateful stuff going on at a personal level, but the Republican presidential candidate, not saying these people are dangerous bathroom freaks, having to be like, your tax dollars, that's a really interesting shift. But I mean, the rest of the party is like just calling them pedophiles. Oh yeah, totally.

But that's why Donald Trump is a different kind of candidate, which they all keep saying. They all keep saying, and they are right. They just don't know what that is or what they're talking about. Like he's not a weird religious dork. Like he's a, he doesn't even know what that is or what they're talking about. Like he's not a weird religious dork. Like he doesn't even know what to do in terms of nationalism.

He hugs the flag. Like he's like, I love the Bible. I read it all the time. I hug the flag. Like if this was, I don't know, even if this was like Vance, he'd probably go down the bathroom sicko route or something. But he is different.

He doesn't approach this stuff from like the nastiest, like conservative Christian or like, yeah, he has a majority thing. He has different instincts than like a Dobson or way rich trained Republican. Like he, I think it's more effective. Oh, definitely. I mean, like he, absolutely. One of his biggest like, uh, flare ups with the party at large

right before he cinched up the nomination in 2016 was like, it was sort of similar to Biden's at least three answer, the greatest answer ever given. Yeah. Oh, during that moment I was kind of endeared to him because I really do believe that he was like, I don't know. It's the it's none of my business.

I do think America in general, other than like just right wing freaks like are be taking more of a libertarian. I don't care. Like just leave me alone. Like, I don't wanna talk about the bathroom freaks, which is why, like, when the Republicans were doing it last time, people were like, I mean, you talk a lot about little boys dicks.

Oh yeah, yeah. Like, it was, it backfired spectacularly in 2022. I mean, the problem is, of course, like, the story of the last, like, eight years of American politics has been one side prevailing over the other due to the other's neptitude and their slim margin of victory being a vindication for wanting to do everything the exact way that they want to do it all the time. So yeah, we probably will see some like Dobson-esque social policy in the next. That's so insane too, like them keep bringing it up. It was like, why are you like, all

you have to do is say like everyone deserves dignity and also let's talk about healthcare instead. Why are you so weird about trans people? What's going on there, huh? Me think the Lady Doth protested too much. Or like fucking just like... Well it's telling that the campaign actually had energy when they had Tim Walz going out there and throwing that stuff back in people's faces and being like, look at these fucking freaks who are obsessed with this weird shit all the time. And then these people who were on this podcast got in the room and said, no, no, no, we can't alienate people by calling them weird. We have to reach out to these moderates because as Amber, you said earlier, we're not making new Democrats. And I think it also goes back to Kamala's inability to defend this position is goes

back to the fact that she didn't actually believe the thing when she said it. She just thought that that was the right type of progressive spaghetti to throw against the wall when she was asked about it. And now she doesn't have any belief that counter counterdicts it. I think it wouldn't even matter if she equivocated in some weird way. Like, they're mostly annoyed that, like, it's just why are we still talking about this? Like the fucking like 21 year old white like Trump voters that listen to, you know, whatever BJ in the dork fucking podcast. They're not the ones that are like obsessed

with hating trans people. Like that's not what kind of Republican he is. He's not any kind of Republican. He's a weirdo. He's Berlusconi. I want to get to the inordinate amount of time on this episode spent talking about podcasts. Oh, there's one, there was one other quote I want to talk about from Stephanie

Cutter that I thought was very telling. And it speaks to this idea of, like, what does what does Kamala actually believe in? And this was this was in response to the question, hey, where'd all the money go? Where'd all the money go? What'd you spend this money on? And like some of the more embarrassing line items, like for instance, spending half a million dollars a minute to put an ad on The Sphere in Las Vegas. So this is Stephanie Cutter talking about that. And she said, when we were closing the race, we felt it was really important for people to feel like they were part of something bigger, culturally, not politically, which is why we did the sphere. The point was not a Las Vegas play, but to get awareness. It was a big part of our strategy. In urban communities,

there were murals that were cultural and cool, and people connected with them. And we felt that was very important. Latinos love murals. Oh, we thought we're like, yeah, like, what it was, it's more of this, like, ethnic, like the code in urban communities, like, it's like weirdly coded. And then it's like, well, who's the sphere trying to get? And again, as I've said before, I want the helicopter, I want the big Mussolini face, or like, those 30 feet tall North Korean ones. We had murals that were cultural.

Like, do these people just get home and turn on their TVs and type in music, show? Like, there is nothing going on upstairs. AI human beings. It's just also, I don't know, it's just like, again, they're so racist. Yeah, they're so racist about this shit where they're like, yeah, we're kind of like a four pillars of hip hop style. Yeah, like to the point that like this, this answer was in response to like

criticism about how you spent a billion dollars. And in defense of like how they spent that money, she was like, Oh, no, no, no, the money was very well spent. Like, for instance, all the street art murals we did in urban communities of color to track low information voters of color. It's just like, well, okay, but it's back to the back to the point I want to make is when she said it was very important in the closing of this campaign, that we connect with people culturally, not politically. And this just goes back to the thing that we talked about over and over again on the show is that culture is the last

refuge of people who don't believe in politics, or have given up entirely on give up. They don't even this generation, they don't even remember what politics are. It's like before their time, because this campaign has nothing to offer in terms of an agenda, a message, a vision and ideology, whatever you say, like a no material connection between politics and people's lives. They they they come up with all these excuses about messaging, the story we tell, you know, the political atmosphere,

the political biosphere, and just all this, all this hokum to cover the fact that they don't believe in anything. And they think that like the sum total of what they regard as politics is looking at the data and figuring out what's popular that people like, I guess that's what we believe in, save for the things that are actually popular and would have helped Them in this fucking election. I really want to get into this stuff They said about podcasts because it's the part where they talk about hot ones took me out and I really want to talk about that Okay, so they were talking about like putting her on a political podcast and they were like, well, Tim Walz actually did a lot of running podcasts. And it's like, if I found out that

a member of my family was listening to a running podcast, I would shoot them. But they bring up hot ones and one of them goes, there's never been a candidate in history who's more, who's better suited for hot ones than Kamala, which is like, what the, why? First of all, I had this written down word for word because it was more oratory than that. Never in time has there been a candidate ever suited more for hot ones. Never in time is so for score and seven idiots ago. They sounded exactly like Mitt Romney

talking about this shit. There's a rabald gentleman with a shaved head who subjects his guests to chickened wings that are spiced to perfection. It's a terrific enterprise that Kamala would do an outstanding job on. Delightful. The entire section on podcasts was predicated on the idea that Trump's entire media strategy

was not doing like was having zero earned media and doing only like sort of bro podcasts, a strategy that has been vindicated a thousand times over. And the other thing that's amazing about this is like, going on, it's like digital media or new media is like, like a recent phenomenon. These people have had 20 years, at least, just sort of caught into the idea of like digital or like non-traditional media. And they're talking about on this episode, like they've come across it for the first time ever. Oh, the TV thing, by the way, they're like, well, only old people watch TV. And it's like, dude, yeah, young people watch streamers and YouTube, and you can buy ads on those two. Well, like, yeah. But like, and like, it's talking

about like, the comla. And like, they were like, Oh, why didn't we do Rogan? Like, the scheduling was wasn't there for us. You know, like the flooding in North Carolina just happened. And we just get that off that. I'm not often. Well, she specifically said, though, because it because they went to. By the way, that woman was really fucking snippy because the Beyonce event, she's like, well, I'm going to call it the reproductive liberation. If it's like, oh, shut the fuck like, you know what he means?

You fucking look, this is actually it's not a vagina. It's a vulva. Like, shut the fuck up. But anyway, like, they said that, and I was just like, well, Rogan probably wouldn't have, you have to have something to say to attract people on Rogan, and like, it wouldn't have worked anyway. But if they believe that it's about appearances, so why did she go to the Beyonce's abortionarium event instead of the fucking, why did they

go witness Beyonce's violation of Q-Durage instead of that? As if you already have the abortioneers on your side, there's not going to be a lot of fucking Trump voters there. Don't go to that one. Go to the one where people like don't know who you are. I mean, if they think that's gonna work, it's not, cause she has nothing to say. But why would you fuckin' preach to the choir?

Do they think like, yeah, we're gonna get the, we're gonna get every single one of these fuckin' planned parenthood volunteers, we got them on lock. Wait, I gotta woo him though. I gotta woo him with Beyonce. Otherwise, you know, they're probably, they're low information voters.

They're on the fence, they're undecided. You fucking idiot. Well, Amber, like they were very clear in the podcast section when they were talking about like matching Kamala with the right podcast. It was very clear, they were like like we tried to get her on all the apolitical podcasts and they're like and like I think left unsaid in all this about like why she didn't do the shows that appeal to like young people or

young men in particular that Trump did and did so well on is that if she was going to in any forum any non-traditional media forum in which the subject of politics is discussed and like they have an audience that's politically engaged, she would have had to face questions that she is simply cannot answer. And I'm talking specifically on Gaza, but on a number of other issues. Now, this was a conscious strategy. So what they did say is they're like, we tried to get her on all the apolitical podcasts. And you know, we got her on club Shasha. And they talked about like, you know, sports figures.

And then at one time, one point, one point, O'Malley said of the apolitical podcasts that she didn't do or they made offers to, she said, quote, a lot of people didn't want to associate their brand with politics, to which I left out loud because like, no, they didn't want to associate their brand with you losers. Yeah. They didn't want to check the ticket for a Kamala because they knew she was gonna fucking lose Yeah, it's just complete loser thing. It's like yeah. Well people don't really like politics. It's like no you don't have any you're going towards culture again Because you're completely lacking substance and here's the thing if you are going to leave it to culture war Trump is gonna win cuz he's a better TV show

Yeah, 100% they touched on something during this whole, like, horrific podcast conversation, probably one of the worst conversations ever recorded, if we're tabulating these things. They said that part of Trump's media strategy was meant to, the guy actually said, I'm just going to be honest, I think they were trying to like prevent black men from voting for us. And it's like the nerve, they were trying to win you're saying? Well, it's also they were trying to,

there's two different things here. They said they're trying to like woo black men. No mention of like voter suppression either. Not that like that's your main issue at this point. Your issue is that you're hemorrhaging what used to be your base. They're still talking about the fucking blue wall, even though like there were all those think pieces like after Hillary, they're like, the blue wall is crumbled. It's like, there's no fucking blue wall.

You shut up. Like quit talking about you have no base anymore Everyone is jumping ship and it's not because you're too woke or too un-woke or whatever like none of those things are Why people hate you they hate you because you suck and you have no politics and as far as The culture that you do pick no one cares about it, But it's like, it's just, it's the difference between nothing and a more fun nothing. You're gonna pick the more fun nothing. The last, the last segment of this post-mortem is that they touch on the Liz, the Cheney endorsement, both Dick and Liz. And there was a, like there was some telling moments about this.

We're like, David Plouffe, of course, of course David Plouffe like said, you know, basically defends the decision to campaign with Liz Cheney and says we did nothing wrong on that. And you know, you have to get, you have to activate some of these moderate Republican voters. Yeah, and then when he said it, he says the Liz Cheney thing was connecting with people, because this is in the week that like all the fascism stuff and John Kelly's comments and when he says it was kind of people were connecting with this issue and he said for instance When Trump was saying that he wants generals like Hitler that bothered voters

So we so in this case we had to hear from Adolf Hitler's daughter to let everyone know that Even though the political environment is indeed atrocious That even though the political environment is indeed atrocious Thanks to Adolf Hitler's daughter. He wants that she wants to let the country know that she supports Adolf Hitler's opponent Yeah, I also think this all goes back to the fucking Whoever you like you like regardless of what Dom think they do like it just goes back to Patrick sex is fucking thirst trap. It's like everyone it I don't think I Think there's a small number of people who were turned off by the shady thing, but mostly if you're gonna vote for Kamala, you're gonna vote for Kamala. You're gonna

vote for Trump, you're gonna vote for Trump, no matter what you, he might be the Antichrist, but I don't know, the economy. I think at this point the best thing to say about the Liz Cheney endorsement is that like it did not help. It did not gain her, it didn't gain her votes. it didn't gain at all. And like, you know, now with hindsight, rather than look at that and be like, yeah, it didn't work. They're still defending it. And like, even though it didn't work, and they lost at no point to the question, just the morality of all of this, about like, like, hey, is

there a moral component to? don't know speak like letting someone speak on your behalf who's connected to probably the most evil person one of the most evil people who's ever served in American government like is there a moral cost to this that maybe is like not reflected in the votes or the data and once again it's just like if you believed in something these would be the questions you would have to face but if you don't believe in anything then you just look at the data and go you know what we did a good job we did as good as we possibly could given the political headwinds and an atmosphere biosphere and systematic

sort of barometer I would respect them if they did something that nasty and it worked like I would like like like if you're gonna be a piece of shit and just be like no clean hands in a dirty world you know okay but at least I would respect you for playing dirty you play you did something immoral and it did nothing for you exactly yes yes that's it yeah that's exactly cuz like you can make this they keep talking about like look we like we have to make all these strategic considerations, you know, and we have to dominate the moderate vote. We're not winning these elections without these regrettable Republican voters, such that they exist. But the thing is, okay, it's one thing to make all of these strategic considerations and, you know, commit, take immoral stances or commit immoral acts in the service of winning and like the ends justify the means but they didn't even do that so it's still

fucking failed and then like they're still not confronting the moral cost of it so like if you're going to lose anyway here's the thing is if you're if you were going to lose anyway because of the in political environment then why not run a campaign saying and standing for the things you actually believe in oops we actually don't have those we actually can't answer any of those questions so what we have here is the campaign we ran which on paper was perfect but just wasn't enough but we want everyone to know we tried our hardest and it's still important and you still matter and we did a great job and the VP is an

exceptional woman that that thing at the end pissed me off the most because that is a democratic classic. They did it in 2016. They even did it to us after our post-mortem Hillary episode where they go, okay, we may have lost but don't for a second ever try to say that the 97-year-old black grandmas that volunteer for us are worthless and should be killed. Because that's what you're saying when you say the campaign was bad. I mean, Will has brought it up before, but they certainly seem to love human shields in the right circumstances. Right, right.

Yeah. I mean, the last the last guy, the last guest that we didn't talk about is a guy named Quinton Falks and he worked on Raphael Warnock's campaign. He was sort of like the digital ad guy. He talked by far the least of any of them. I just zoned out every time he opened his mouth, but he did say something really funny at the end when he's talking. I think he made actually a good point that voters don't like when their candidate apologizes and they were like and they were like Donald Trump never apologized. Some men don't like it when you apologize it's like not a politician.

Women don't like it when you apologize. No one does because it either means you're a pussy or that you did something wrong that you should apologize for. But then he says he was like in the midst of making like the one good point on this about Donald Trump, which is that he like him and the Republicans never apologize and voters men in particular don't like when you apologize for things. And then he was like, I think the phrase is standing on business. Yeah, that was really funny. I mean, he was probably like the least stupid guest, but it was hilarious when he

said that. That's true. He was the least stupid. And coincidentally, he spoke by far the least. Like, O'Malley and O'Malley O'Reilly O'Dillon and Stephanie the Cutter were talking, they were going a mile a minute and he was just sort of sitting there. But you know, it happens. It happens on podcasts. David Plouffe was, you know, again, they kept throwing to Plouffe, and I think he was an ADX flo- Yo Plouffe, speak on it.

Yeah, Plouffe, Plouffe, put your funk on this. Plouffe, spit on this crap. Plouffe, mark your territory. Plouffe, pee on the scent post. Plouffe, start rubbing your scent into the tree bark. Can I get some pluff on this? Turn the pluff up in my headphones. Yeah, I know you got me fucked up.

Inviting me over here, there's no pluff? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha I mean, did you do you have any like any moments from that? I mean, I feel like I've covered all the things I want I wanted to mention. Do you have any specific standout moments from this episode? He looks Chris or Amber. Oh, oh, I there's I took a lot of notes and we've mostly like covered them. But there is just a little phrase that made me laugh. And it was when after like bitching about the media for like an hour, Jen O'Malley Dillon said, and I'm not a media hater by any means, which is-

Like sports figures, I like the media, the murals were cultural. This is just, this is such a non-person. She is just like, like, like if you could, if you could like scan people's thoughts, if there was like an MRI where you could read someone's internal monologue, if you hooked her up to it, it would just be like, I am alive. I am alive.

I am alive. I mean, to that point, well, you mentioned earlier that there was no mention of specific mention of Israel Gaza. I would just expand that to say that they're just, they're not a lot of proper nouns in this conversation. Right. Yes. They say groups. They say groups.

There's just like you know, obviously, like they don't they talk much more about like my biggest thing about Potsdamerica is that they don't really talk about politics. They're more like a freelance comms advice zine for the Democratic Party. Because everything always comes out at the end of every conversation is not like, what can we change about the party? What can we change about the policy? What can we change to offer people? The final question of every conversation is, how do we message this?

How do we change the communication? Yeah, yeah. It's always about messaging. And it's just funny to have a show that is obsessed with messaging where they never say any details about what was being messaged about the gritty of, of, uh, and I obviously, you know, you don't have to be like a white paper or like a, you know, a policy wonk on these things when you're messaging them,

but there's just no discussion about actual substance ever proper nouns, literally the thing it's only indicators, never the indicated. Yeah, that's a really good... The lack of proper nouns is a really good observation. Yeah. One of the things that I have to like remember is, you know, they're like sort of obsessed with January 6th and everyone's obsessed with a bit a lot those. It's like, you's going to pardon those people. By the way, most of those people should be pardoned. Almost all of them, probably.

I mean, they don't need fucking jail. They need social workers and have their fucking Facebook taken away. But there was a little slip where they said when Trump stormed the Capitol, like he was there, he was fucking like leading the charge in a tri-cornered cap. That's awesome. A smarter political opponent would have nailed him for not storming the Capitol and letting his minions fucking get shot and arrested while his ass was skated away scot-free.

He abandoned you. Yeah, if they were fucking smart. Letting a guy from Mr. Show take the fall for this, I think not. Mr. Trump also just on details. I will say that the very next episode of PSA had Hassan talking. Yeah, I did want to mention that. I don't love it.

I listened to all of that today and obviously Hassan doesn't need us like big upping him, but he did a fantastic job actually laying out a detailed case for the left of like what went big upping him, but he did a fantastic job actually laying out a detailed case for the left of like what went wrong. And I think a one billion times more substantial way than anything that these people said. I thought it was a very good talk with John Lovett. Or you know what, just like go to a very old gas station

where men in overalls are sitting around talking about it. You'll get more information than you did from this. Yeah, I really would not recommend anyone who isn't a professional watch this. If not just for like the sheer maddening factor of, as Chris said, no proper nouns and the sheer, just the unbelievable vagueness of everything. Sports figures, media groups. It is like kind of a madness room. If you're not being made for this, don't subject yourself to it. I know like you want to be like us, but we're trained.

Yeah, you can't just like jump into that swirly thing that astronauts get into. They train a lot before they do that. We have all had the benediciserate mind training into that swirly thing that astronauts get into. They train a lot before they do that. We have all had the Bene Gesserit mind training to see our ancestors and take the water of life and not die. The last thing I want to say is just one quote I have here.

We need to do the work of having the conversations and connecting to people. Fuck off, folks. Fuck off. True words have never been said. We need to do the work of having conversations. Even just the phrase, doing the work of having conversations, that's not work. That's just fucking hanging out. Having a conversation isn't work. Shut the fuck up. What do you think your job is? Having conversations? Does she say this shit to like General Electric

when they're like, hey, we just invented a new seeker head for a missile that identifies toddlers. And she said, I think we need to do the work to identify groups who are having cultural moments. It's played out, like to say it now, but it's like these people are just AI like yeah scripts at this point everyone has to see our brand as a party but also as candidates and as people who are providing solutions and making

connections and there's a path for that and the VP was exceptional at it that's all I gotta say I think that's all I I think if you put really any of these guys, except for the guy who sits standing on business, the least stupid number of the crew, if you put them in an empty pool like the Sims, they would just perpetually walk into the wall until they died of starvation. They would not use the ladder. They wouldn't get out. There is nothing going on up there Oh

Well that that does it for our postmortem of the postmortem But I promised at the beginning of the episode we got another Matt Christmas home for you now this poem I I said that I give Matt some ideas for the holidays and then I said Thanksgiving's coming up Why don't you do a poem about what you're thankful for? He was very enthused by that idea. So here we have a Matt Christman Thanksgiving poem, the second official entry in Matt Christman's Strokes of Genius. And before we kick to that, I think with Felix's consent, the, I just wanted to announce that the final release date for the first episode of Felix's new series,

tracking the history of conservative media over the last 50 years, searching for a friend at the end of the world will come out next Wednesday, December 11th for free for everyone. And then all future episodes on Patreon. Yes. Shout out to Spencer for that title. It took us, it took me a while to settle on a title, but that is a great one. Yes. So we'll, I'll put up a blog post about that, just explaining it a little more and giving the full schedule for it. But Wednesday, December 11th, episode one, searching for

a friend at the end of the world. And now Matt's Thanksgiving poem. Hello, this is Matt Christman, giving thanks to all of our wonderful listeners. A Thanksgiving poem. In the smoke and the haze, blood calls for blood, Jefferson Davis commemoration of Thanksgiving. We gather round a bounty, it is good and proper to give thanks. I'm thankful that we buried the putrid corpse of liberty in crowned glorious Tulsa King. Hailing from Oklahoma, a Pruster John of the Heartland, he traveled the world invoking Prima Nacca. I'm thankful to have called into being the legion of horribles, hundred in number, alive as you and me, of manifested destiny slouching towards DC. I'm thankful

I don't know the meaning of the word good and proper. I'm thankful that though I'm alone watching TV, you are at home watching the same bright star as me. I'm thankful for global warming that as the beat of sweat rolls down my temple, I can imagine it is a fretful tear for a climate change. I'm thankful that wise Tulsa King is executing treasonous bastards, knowing the axis swift, the brutal finality of the chop. I'm thankful for alien technology

that we are all watched over by machines of loving grace, indistinguishable from gods, amen. I'm thankful that I'm more persecuted than you. Now let's eat the dogs and the cats that are in there. Proving alternatives What's in the bottom drawer? Waiting for things to give