Tangle - Liz Cheney loses.

Episode Date: August 17, 2022

And some more updates on recent primaries. Plus, a question about what she'll do next.You can read today's podcast here.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and produced by Trevor Eichhorn. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages 6 months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle.

Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, the place where you get views from across the political spectrum. Some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I'm your host, Isaac Sell, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about the primary races from last night and Liz Cheney and a little bit of the primary stuff from last week. Just generally an update on the primary elections, what it all means, where the parties are headed, what's going on. As always, though, before we jump in, we'll kick it off with some quick hits. First up, the federal government announced new emergency water cuts in Arizona, Nevada,

and Mexico, declaring a first-ever Tier 2 shortage for the Colorado River, which supplies water to seven states and Mexico. Number two, U.S. Border Patrol agents reported 182,000 arrests at the U.S.-Mexico border in July. It's the second month of declining numbers, but arrests are still on pace to exceed 2 million on the year for the first time ever. Number three, the FBI interviewed top White House lawyers about missing documents that were stored at Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence. Number four, inflation in the United Kingdom topped 10%, underlining rising energy prices that are driving up costs across Europe. Number five, the education department says it will cancel $3.9 billion in federal student debt for over 200,000 borrowers who attended ITT Technical Institute, which is

now defunct. Last night, Representative Liz Cheney, the Republican from Wyoming, Last night, Representative Liz Cheney, the Republican from Wyoming, lost her primary race to Trump-endorsed candidate Harriet Hageman. Cheney had trailed Hageman by more than 20 points in the polls, and the outcome of the race seemed assured for weeks. Cheney, who chaired the House Republican Conference from 2019 to 2021, which is the third-highest-ranking position in the House, has broken from the party in recent years by becoming a staunch opponent of former President Donald Trump. She voted for his impeachment and is now helping lead the January 6th House Committee's investigation into Trump's role of the events of January 6th. Hageman trounced Cheney, winning 66% of the vote to Cheney's 29%, but Cheney vowed to continue to

fight Trump's election lies and steer the GOP away from him, telling her supporters that the real work is just beginning. I've said since January 6th that I will do whatever it takes to ensure that Donald Trump is never again near the Oval Office, and I mean it, Cheney said. This is a fight for all of us, together. In Alaska, the race to fill the seat left open by the death of Representative Don Young is expected to head to rank-choice tabulation after none of the candidates top 50% of the vote. Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska and vice presidential candidate, is attempting a political comeback to fill the seat. She will face another Republican in November, businessman Nick Bakish III,

and Democratic state lawmaker Mary Peltolo, whose surprisingly strong showing has raised speculation she could win the seat. Meanwhile, Senator Lisa Murkowski, with 43% of the vote, advanced to the general election against Trump-endorsed challenger Kelly Chewbacca, with 41% of the vote. Murkowski and Chewbacca will head to a four-way ranked-choice general election in November. Last week, the most-watched races were in Wisconsin, where Tim Mickles won his Republican primary to face off with Democratic in Wisconsin, where Tim Mickles won his Republican primary to face off with Democratic Governor Tony Evers. Mickles, a wealthy businessman endorsed by Trump, defeated the Mike Pence-backed Rebecca Cleafish. Mickles has claimed the 2020 election was rigged and has expressed support for dismantling a bipartisan commission that

runs Wisconsin elections. Also in Wisconsin, Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes won the Democratic primary to face Senator Ron Johnson in the general Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes won the Democratic primary to face Sen. Ron Johnson in the general election. Derek Van Orden, who attended the Stop the Steal rally on January 6th, won Wisconsin's Republican primary to fill a vacant seat and will face State Sen. Brad Pfaff, the Democrat, in November. And State Assembly Speaker Robin Voss narrowly defeated a Trump-backed challenger. In Washington state, Representative Jamie Herrera-Butler, the Republican who supported Trump's second impeachment, conceded defeat in her primary. In Minnesota, Representative Ilhan Omar, a member of the Progressive Squad, defeated a centrist challenger in the Democratic

primary. Florida, Delaware, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Louisiana are the final states to have primary elections in the coming weeks. Below, we're going to take a look at some reactions to Liz Cheney's defeat and how the midterm primaries have gone. First up, we'll start with what the left is saying. The left said Trump's powerful influence over the party is now becoming clear. Some say Republicans are risking their expected red wave by electing extreme candidates in primaries. Others praised Liz Cheney for standing up to Trump no matter the cost. In the New York Times, David Leonhardt and Ian Prasad Philbrick said the full picture of Trump's influence is becoming clear.

He has become the rare defeated president to wield enormous sway over his party, with the ability to end careers, like Cheney's perhaps, and to turn once-obscure candidates into winners, they said. Trump even persuaded other top Republicans, like Representative Kevin McCarthy and Senator Ted Cruz, to endorse Cheney's opponent. But Trump's influence is not complete. The success rate of his endorsements in competitive elections hovers around 80%, and some incumbents, like Murkowski perhaps, have proven strong enough to overcome his criticism of them. Trump's biggest successes include races in which he has helped defeat incumbents who defied him, including four of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him over January 6th.

Trump has also transformed some campaigns without an incumbent, allowing his endorsee to win in a crowded field. Examples include J.D. Vance in the Ohio Senate primary, Mehmet Oz in the Pennsylvania Senate primary, and Kerry Lake in the Arizona governor primary, they said. Of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump, four also did not run for re-election. Overall, only two still have a chance to remain in Congress next year. With all this said, Trump is not omnipotent. The races where his endorsed candidates have lost this year tend to fall into one of two categories. Either his chosen candidates were facing incumbents with a strong enough connection to voters to survive, or the Trump-backed candidates seemed too flawed to win. In the Washington Post, Dana Milibank said the red wave is beginning to look more like a ripple.

Democrats just gained a small 0.5 percentage point's advantage over Republicans in what's known as the generic ballot, when voters are asked which party's candidates they will support for Congress. Earlier this year, Democrats had trailed by as many as 2.7 points, according to the political website FiveThirtyEight, Milibank wrote. Also, polls show Democratic voter enthusiasm pulling even in recent weeks, with Republican levels erasing an earlier gap. And the data are supported by anecdotal evidence. High Democratic turnout in contested primaries, a lopsided rejection of an anti-abortion measure in Kansas, and Democratic candidates' dramatic outperformance of Joe Biden's 2020 showing in recent special elections in Minnesota and Nebraska. This is because voters are receiving repeated reminders of what made them so unhappy about

the Trump era, he said. Extremist candidates, some of them with ties to QAnon, the Oath Keepers, or the events of January 6th, are dominating Republican primaries. Scores of election deniers have become GOP nominees for governor, secretaries of state, and other positions. The few truth tellers have been banished, with Tuesday's likely defeat of Representative Liz Cheney, the Republican from Wyoming. Eight of ten Republicans who voted to impeach Trump will be leaving Congress. The Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade, enabled by three Trump appointees, has taken a fundamental right from Americans. On top of these unwelcome reminders of what MAGA means, easing inflation, falling gas prices, and a string of legislative successes for

President Biden's agenda, all with unemployment at a 50-year low, have blunted the GOP argument that Biden and the Democratic Congress are ineffective. In CNN, Jody Enda said don't shed any tears for Liz Cheney. In this, the era of Trump, traditional political strengths have been supplanted by blind loyalty to the standard bearer, Enda said. So it is that Wyoming's sole member of Congress has become a pariah in her own party, stripped of her House leadership position, expelled by her state's GOP, widely derided and essentially banished for having the audacity to fight for something conservatives like her used to hold dear, America's democracy. Because Cheney had the gall to take on Donald Trump and his insurrectionists,

the former president has taken on Cheney by promoting her primary challenger. On Tuesday, if the polls are to be believed, Cheney will lose. But shed no tears for Liz Cheney. Her star has never shown more brightly. Cheney is the breakout star of this summer's blockbuster TV series, the hearings of the House Committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. As the vice chair and one of only two Republicans with the medal to serve on the committee, Cheney has been granted the lead in hearings that have methodically and

dramatically revealed the role that Trump and his sidekicks played in the violent attempt to overturn the election of Joe Biden, Enda said. Cheney's forthrightness evokes a time when patriotism occasionally trumps partisanship, and officials sometimes work worked across the aisle for the greater good. Alright, that is it for what the left is saying, which brings us to the right's take. Many on the right are celebrating Cheney's comeuppance for carrying Democrats' water and becoming a constant Trump critic. Others fear what this means for the Republican Party. Some say Republicans should embrace making the election about Trump and compare his record to Biden's. In the Federalist, Tristan Justice said Wyoming Republicans threw Liz Cheney out of Congress. Cheney, a three-term incumbent, lost after the

Congresswoman was overwhelmingly kicked from her number three role in House leadership as chair of the Republican conference. The Wyoming lawmaker traded her influential perch in GOP leadership for a lead act spearheading the Democrats' latest anti-Trump crusade in the form of the Select Committee on January 6th, on which Cheney is vice chair, Justice wrote. Despite more than $15 million raised to protect her seat, however, Cheney failed to triumph in the state, which voted for Trump in 2020 by Cheney failed to triumph in the state, which voted for Trump in 2020 by a wider margin than anywhere else in the country. Of the nine other members who supported Trump's second impeachment,

four retired, three lost their primaries, and only two prevailed. Now, Cheney, the final member of the GOP impeachment caucus to face primary voters at the ballot box, will become the eighth to leave office. Her time as the leader of the congressional neoconservatives who embrace an aggressive interventionist foreign policy has also come to an end. While Cheney relied almost entirely on out-of-state support to fund her desperate re-election campaign among voters she rarely visited, Hageman spent the prior 11 months traveling the state to build a grassroots coalition for a fraction of the cost, Justice said. Cheney's obsession with Trump not only antagonized members of her own party on Capitol Hill,

but also sank her in Wyoming, where residents scoffed that the Cheney directed theatrics of the Soviet-style January 6th committee and the state party voted to no longer recognize her as a Republican. When the Federalists asked Wyoming voters at Cheyenne's Frontier Days Rodeo Festival what they thought of the January 6th investigation, voters called it a farce and labeled Cheney a hypocrite and a traitor. In turn, Cheney skipped events with constituents whom she called crazies to mingle with reporters instead on her own few trips to the cowboy state. The late stages of her campaign took the form of a doomed candidate attempting to capitalize on the anti-Trump martyrdom for a future presidential run, with much more of her campaign war chest left unspent

at the conclusion of the contest. The National Review, Jay Nordlinger, more in the end of of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages 6 months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed.

Learn more at fluselvax.ca. One by one, the 10 GOP impeachers have bowed out of politics or been defeated in the primaries, he said. I think of an Agatha Christie title, and then there were none. That was a pretty gutsy thing to do. Vote to impeach a president of your own party after he won 70% of the vote in your state. I admire Liz Cheney. For months now,

Republicans have claimed that the January 6th hearings are a circus and a show trial and so on. I'm inclined to respond, they wish. The hearings have been conducted with sobriety, with gravity, which is not necessarily the norm in Congress. Many of the witnesses have been Republicans, and many of those have been alumni of the Trump administration. If the hearings are conveying false things, people can step forward and contradict those things, under oath. Any takers? The team Cheney is on when it comes to January 6th is the team of finding out the truth and telling it straight, he said. Cheney thinks that January 6th is very important, as she has explained repeatedly and with remarkable patience. In the same vein, she thinks that the Trumpian lie about the election is very important. According to polls,

a majority of Republicans believe the lie, believe that the Democrats, perhaps in cahoots with the Venezuelans and the Chinese, stole the election from Trump. This affects our politics and infects our politics. It infects our society as a whole. It led to the attack, the physical assault on the U.S. Congress. It poisons everything. Cheney thinks there needs to be an honest accounting of the past, yes. People ought to be held responsible. But she also believes the truth needs to be established for the sake of the future, to prevent future manipulation and future explosions of violence. In his newsletter, Eric Erickson said if Republicans are going to take the bait on making the election about Trump,

at least play some political jujitsu on the whole thing. Joe Biden's approval rating is at 40% or worse. Inflation is still high. Gas is still high. Grocery bills are still high. One in two Americans cannot afford to fill their car up fully with gas. One in five Americans have to take stuff out of their grocery cart at checkout because they cannot afford the bill. Trump actually outpolls Joe Biden. Not a single media outlet in America has talked about the Democrats' inflation measure, instead talking about their climate bill, Erickson said. If they want to talk about Trump, let's talk about Trump. People's 401ks were not declining under Trump. They are going down under Biden. Gas prices were unaffordable under Trump. Now,

one out of every two Americans cannot fill up their tank. America was energy independent under Trump. Now Biden is begging rogue regimes to produce more oil for us. Americans did not have to worry about groceries under Trump. Now, if they can even find the groceries they want, they cannot afford them. Biden promised to return us to normalcy, and instead he handed Afghanistan to the Taliban, American streets to criminals, and our retirement funds to bankruptcy. He promised to beat COVID and COVID beat him up repeatedly, he wrote. And even now, despite that, he's firing American soldiers and sailors for not wanting to take a vaccine that won't stop them from getting sick.

He'll put HIV plus soldiers on the front lines of active duty and fire healthy soldiers. If Joe Biden wants to make this about Donald Trump, let's make it about their records. Are you better off now than you were under Donald Trump? The answer for Americans is no. Your gas prices are higher, your grocery bills are higher, your city's crime rates are higher. The only thing lower is your retirement account. Alright, that is it for the left and the right's take, which takes us to my take. It's amazing how much politics can change in just a few short years.

It's amazing how much politics can change in just a few short years. In 2016, Harriet Hageman called Donald Trump a racist and xenophobe and said this of Liz Cheney. I know Liz Cheney is a proven courageous constitutional conservative, someone who has the education, the background, and the experience to fight effectively for Wyoming on a national stage. Now, Hageman is writing a Trump endorsement to Congress and battering Cheney's record every chance she gets. I think the two predominant ways of framing Cheney both have merit. On one hand, she took a stand against Trump's lies about 2020, and I do think they are lies, that she knew would result in losing this election. She didn't back down after threats to her leadership position or the entire Trump ecosystem of power brokers turned on her. As vice chair of the January 6th committee, she has overseen an investigation

that exceeded my initial skepticism and actually brought a great deal of new information to light. On the other hand, her Trump hatred has seemed all-consuming. In public appearances, rather than discussing inflation or abortion rights or gun rights, issues that matter a great deal to voters in Wyoming, she seems to incessantly bring everything back to Trump. She completely abandoned Republican Party events in the state she was supposedly representing and derided her Trump-loving constituents as crazies. Every representative has to balance their own beliefs with those of their constituents who put them in Congress, and it's always about striking a balance between leading and representing.

But in this cycle, Cheney seemed particularly uninterested in what any of her constituents wanted, running campaign ads about Trump and prompting reporters to speculate on whether she even really wanted to win. I'm of two minds about the whole thing, too. I wish Republicans spent more time disassociating from the Matt Gaetzes and Marjorie Taylor Greens of the world than they do from Cheney. But I also wish we lived in a country where you'd get thrown out of office by the voters for being part of a political dynasty that helped bring chaos to the Middle East, not for simply crossing Trump. The worst part of all this is what I fear it portends about the Republican Party. I often join conservatives in their criticism of the left's purity tests and virtue signaling, but the Wyoming political leaders who have ousted Cheney seem to be succumbing to a conservative

version of the exact same impulses they constantly deride progressives for. Showing up to political conventions wearing guns and cowboy hats is now conservative. One Wyoming delegate has suggested schoolchildren not be required to say the Pledge of Allegiance because the word indivisible tramples on the state's right to secede from the union. And now, Liz Cheney, a Republican who voted with Trump 93% of the time, has staunchly opposed abortion rights, advocated for gun ownership, wanted to repeal Obamacare, voted against nearly all of Biden's signature legislation, and even opposed gay marriage in 2013 after her own sister had married a woman the year before is suddenly not conservative enough. If opposition to Trump is enough to get someone that conservative on

social and economic issues ousted, then truly, there are not going to be any conservatives who can survive without bending the knee. To be clear, this isn't to say Republicans who buck Trump on principle are somehow superior. I'm the first to say that Trump's presidency consisted of accomplishing many of the things he promised, and there are a lot of Republicans out there who support him for executing their vision for a stronger America. It is to say that the party appears hell-bent on purging all dissent from its ranks. All you have to know is that only two of the ten House members who voted for impeachment still have a shot to be in Congress. Shoot, you could take a look at my inbox where I hear from Trump supporters every day who unsubscribe when I criticize him at all. To me, though, what happens next will be even more interesting.

Progressives who ran on burning the system down, the left-wing version of draining the swamp, know well the struggle of actually governing. Just see what happened in San Francisco. The insurgents outrouting Trump's opposition from the party will have to produce results to stay there, and for many of them it's unclear what credentials or experience they have aside from loyalty to Trump. Has the wave of Trump-backed victories in the midterm suddenly hurt Republicans' odds to take over the House and Senate this fall, as some establishment Republicans fear? Perhaps. There's no doubt the data points to increasing Democratic momentum, but I think that surge is more likely attributable to Biden's recent flurry of legislative victories for his

base, signs of receding inflation, and the abortion issue, all of which may actually boost turnout for Democrats. Whatever the driving factors, a few things seem certain. Trump has completely remade the Republican Party. Refusing to support him appears to be a death sentence for Republican voters, and Democrats' odds in November may be better than many people, including me, thought even just a few short months ago. All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your question's answer. This one is from Jared in Casper, Wyoming. Jared said, Do you think Liz Cheney will run for president? She seems to be implying she will. If so, do you think she has a shot? No and no. I'd be pretty surprised if she ran, and she definitely doesn't have a shot to win a Republican

nomination if she did. She can't even hold a seat in Wyoming. That being said, I agree her concession speech last night and her rhetoric more broadly seem to indicate some grand plan to ensure Trump doesn't get elected in 2024. It's worth asking what that looks like. Perhaps she is just alluding to her continuing role on the January 6th committee. Maybe she intends to repurpose her millions of dollars in campaign funds to anti-Trump ads across the country, something surely her donors would support. And it's possible, yes, that she intends to run as a spoiler. I could see a world where she runs third party and insists on principled Republicans casting a ballot for her in hopes of drawing votes away from Trump. To me, that's the least likely option, but it's certainly possible.

All right, next up is a story that matters. This one is from the FDA, who issued a new rule yesterday that will allow millions of Americans to buy over-the-counter hearing aids without a prescription. The rule will go into effect by mid-October and applies to certain air conduction hearing aids for people with mild to moderate hearing impairment. Hearing aids intended for pediatric use or severe impairment will still remain prescription devices. Some 30 million Americans could benefit from the hearing aids, according to the FDA. Hearing loss has been associated with depression, dementia, walking problems, and falls. The move has drawn bipartisan praise because it will reduce the cost of hearing aids.

Reuters has the story, and there's a link to it in today's newsletter. and there's a link to it in today's newsletter. All right, that is it for A Story That Matters, which brings us to our numbers section. The percentage of Democratic voters who said they are extremely or very enthusiastic about the midterms in a June 17th to 20th survey before Roe was overturned was 48%. The percentage of Democratic voters who said they are extremely or very enthusiastic about the midterms in a June 24th to 25th survey after Roe was overturned was 56%. The Republican generic ballot lead over Democrats on June 17th was 44.7% to 42.4%. The Democrats' generic ballot lead over Republicans on August 17th 2022, is 43.9% to 43.4%, according to FiveThirtyEight. Harriet Hageman's polling lead over Liz Cheney heading into Tuesday's race was 57 to 28.

The percentage of Wyoming voters who said they were undecided was 10%. Hageman's margin of victory in the actual race was 66% to 29%. Hageman's margin of victory in the actual race was 66% to 29%. All right, that's it for our numbers section. Last but not least, our have a nice day section. A 17-year-old engineer has designed a motor that could transform the electric car industry. Robert Sansone just won a $75,000 cash prize at this year's Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair, also known as ISEF, the largest international high school STEM competition. His invention was a prototype of a synchronous reluctance motor that uses copper wire and

a steel rotor instead of rare earth magnets currently used in electric vehicles. Sansone said he wants to solve electric vehicles' sustainability problem, hoping to build an EV engine that doesn't rely on rare earth materials that are costly and environmentally dangerous to extract. How he did it is a little bit above my head, but Smithsonian Magazine has a fascinating story about him and the invention and the implications, and there's a link to it in today's newsletter. Alright everybody, that is it for today's podcast. As always, I'm not even going to say it. You know what to do. You want to support our work, you go to retangle.com slash membership. Just become a subscriber. It helps us out big time. We'll be right back here same time tomorrow. Peace.

tomorrow.com. We'll see you next time. is stressing. Holla differently this year with DoorDash. Don't want to holla do the most? Holla don't. More festive, less frantic. Get deals for every occasion with DoorDash. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages 6 months and older, and it may be available for free in your province.

Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCellVax.ca.