The Bulwark Podcast - Brian Schatz and Mona Charen: Democrats Don't Trust Happiness

Episode Date: September 3, 2024

Kamala is showing that she's good at politics by uniting the party's coalition and making appeals to the center. But many Democrats can't help themselves and are just waiting for all hell to break loose. Plus, building affordable homes, conserving the republic vs. preserving conservative policies—and Walz, the everyman. Sen. Brian Schatz and Mona Charen join Tim Miller. show notes: Mona's piece, "What Are We Conserving?" Pat Toomey on CNBC today

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We can see what is possible unburdened by what has been. We have aspirations. We have ambitions. And the system that is a good system is one that supports that and allows people the opportunity to go where they can see and imagine themselves to be. That's what I'm talking about when I talk about an opportunity economy. We fight for a future where every senior can retire with dignity. And so we will continue to defend Social Security and Medicare and pensions. Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.

That was Kamala Harris yesterday at a Labor Day rally in Pittsburgh. We've got a doubleheader for you today. In a little bit, I'll be back with my colleague Mona Charan to talk about her article. What exactly is it that conservatives are trying to conserve anymore? But first, I'm here with a man who is certainly unburdened by what has been Senator Brian Schott, senior senator from Hawaii, member of the caucus's leadership team. How you doing? Welcome to the Bulldog Podcast. I'm doing great, Tim. Thanks for what you do. Hey, man. It's so good to have you.

You tweet like a normal person. Well, actually, that's not true. You don't tweet like a normal person. You tweet like a fellow poster, an authentic poster who likes to put their real opinions on the internet rather than just, you know, anodyne talking points. And so I've always appreciated that about you as a fellow poster. Well, I do enjoy it. I'm trying to make sure that my Twitter account is not the first thing that people mention in my bio, but I do spend full time legislating and tweet on the side. But I do find it to be a pretty useful medium, just for that reason. Because if you can actually speak directly from your own voice,

that's pretty unusual in politics. I apologize for undermining that goal then. So what is your first line in your bio that you would have liked me to have led with, just so I can learn for future? One of the key authors of the Inflation Reduction Act and the chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee. And by the way, and I know we're going to get to this, we have done so much for people on Indian reservations, tribal members, Native Alaskans, Native Hawaiians over the last four years, more literally than has ever been done in American history. And that's partly what's at stake this year. Let's just start there, you know, because I feel like I've been a little remiss in focusing on the Senate races, just because the presidential campaign has been so

insane the last two months with everything that's happened. You know, obviously, it's going to be extremely tight, just going to set the scenes for people because of the mansion, you know, like, let's just be real, the Democrats are probably not going to win West Virginia. I don't know if you could admit that on the record. Correct. Okay, you can. So that means that the Democrats need to win both Ohio and Montana are the most challenging ones and then a bunch of other ones we can get to. Or if they lose one of those, you have to pick up a race in Texas or Florida, which is going to be challenging. So it's an extremely challenging map.

And Montana is like absolutely at the core of that with Senator John Tester. And over the weekend, there was a piece of audio that came out about the Republican Tim Sheehy going on about how Indians like to get drunk. I guess you start going to the Crow Reservation and a great way to bond with Indians is drinking at eight in the morning. And he talks about how Crow tribal members throw Coors Light scans at his head. So given that you have the experience of that committee, maybe talk about that specific issue and then the Montana race in general. Sure. I mean, I just know John so well, and he respects Montanans, tribal members and non-tribal

members so much that he just like doesn't talk like that. He's a tough, tough dude, one of the toughest people in the United States Senate. But he's got that aspect of really respecting all of his constituents. And this is just disrespecting his constituents, not to mention, you know, a pretty long and sordid history of people from other parts of America coming onto reservation land and making a series of assumptions about the people who live on reservations and the people who are members of tribal nations. John's been chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee and done tons for his tribes and tribes across the country and Native Hawaiians.

And I just think now this race, it was already important for the, you know, the balance of the Senate, but now it has a lot to do with how we feel about the United States government's interactions with and relationship with tribal nations. I don't think she gets it. I mean, we already knew that, but it's beyond just sort of the normal run of the mill, not getting it. This guy sounds like he's from 1850, not from 2024. As part of the leadership team, looking know, looking at that Senate map, I often hear from listeners who are like, you know, get lost. Like, which races should we focus on? You know, particularly ones that are not from battleground states. That's you in Hawaii. Like,

where have you been kind of focusing your energies as you look at the map? Are there any Senate races that stand out to you as being particularly important or stark in the contrast between the candidates? Well, I guess what I would say is a couple of things. First, there are a couple of races that are likely to be tight and likely to tip the balance, but there are a bunch of races that are equally important. If you, as a volunteer or a donor, trying to figure out where to put your resources, I would start in the Midwest, Bobby Casey, Tammy Baldwin, Alyssa Slotkin. Those are key.

If we don't win those, we just lose the Senate for sure. So those are all good races to get involved in. And then Jackie Rosen in Nevada, you know, there are some polls showing her way, way ahead. I don't think she even believes those polls quite yet. It's going to come down to Clark County. It's going to come down to turnout in the Las Vegas Strip. And, you know, if Jackie does well, she will win by some number of tens of thousands of votes.

But it's very, very likely to be super tight. And I think the same is true for Ruben Gallego, even though Cary Lake is completely bonkers and often not in state. I still think this thing tightens to the point where we're waiting for Maricopa County to come in. And then Rububen is successful, but not by, you know, 14 points like some of these polls are showing. And then the final two, I know you want to get to. Sherrod Brown's holding up really well in Ohio. He's ahead, I'm not sure, four to six points. It depends on which poll you rely upon. And Sherrod has been able to survive a rightward shift in the state of Ohio. I think

he will be able to do that again. The other thing about Ohio is it's actually not as red as Montana. Montana will go somewhere between 15 and 25 points, likely for Donald Trump. And so therefore, Jon Tester has to survive an absolute torrent. He can. It's a small enough state where the interactions that he has personally with people can be the difference maker. And he's been able to transcend, you know, running under Barack Obama, running under Donald Trump, running under Joseph Robinette Biden. And he continues to survive because people know that his name is synonymous with Montana. The one thing I'd say is that there's kind of this, as we saw $500 million being raised for the Harris campaign and all the rest of it,

there might be a sense among donors, regular folks, and say, well, you know, I already sent a thousand bucks. What do they need with another thousand bucks? Let me tell you, they all need another thousand bucks. I am in conversations where we are making decisions about how to deploy resources, and it is not a resource unconstrained environment. It is very much, we have a lot of money, but we do not have enough money because we also have to play offense in two of the biggest states in the union in Texas and Florida. And to be really competitive, and we can be competitive, those are a couple of hundred million dollars each. And so the first thing we do is sort of secure the high ground, all of our incumbents, and

especially the toughest of the incumbent races. But in order to have success, we have to do what we didn't in Georgia, which is we thought we were a bit of a long shot, and then we ended up picking up two. So it always feels like it's a terrible Senate map. And for the last two cycles, we've been able to survive it and even build our majority. On the resource unconstrained thing. It sounds to me from my friends, the ones that still talk to me in Republican world that because it's resource constrained for them, they might be leaving old Cary Lake out to dry. So we'll see how that turns out. That'd really be a

shame. But you kind of alluded to this. I'm interviewing Colin Allred later this week at the Texas Trib Fest. And it is not a resource unconstrained environment. That's a very tough race. Texas is a tough state that might be fool's gold. You know, the Sherrod Brown race is much more likely to be the one that determines whether the Democrats have a tie in the Senate or not. So how do you assess like what to do about the texas race and whether it's worth it just in the hopes that you don't have to see ted cruz every morning anymore i mean i guess the way i

would answer the question is it depends how much money and how much uh time you have if you have enough time to help us with these challenger races and you feel particularly strongly about either ted cruz or uh colin allred or uh debucarso-Powell and Rick Scott. Yeah, regular people, though, can do whatever they want, which feels good, though. I'm talking about you all. You said you're in the meetings with the DSCC and that crowd. Oh, no, you start with your incumbents. You absolutely start with the incumbents.

There are no scenarios where you abandon an incumbent in favor of a challenger, even if it's another state, even if the statistic... It's just a sort of article of faith in politics that we protect the caucus members. These are the folks that have given us the infrastructure bill, especially with John Tester and Sherrod Brown. You got an author of the PACT Act, which provides resources for burn pit victims. And in Sherrod Brown, he's the one that saved the big pensions in the industrial Midwest. So these guys deserve our support. And we will be with them all the way through until victory. All right, moving over to the presidential. The Kamala Harris thing has just been such a phenomenon

over the last six weeks. And, you know, I think that a lot of people have been pleasantly surprised by just her performance, by the way that like her dynamism, kind of how she's handled a lot of this, her reputation. Let's just be honest, not just among regular folks or pundits or whatever, like the whispered reputation in Washington among Democrats was that there were some concerns about whether she was going to be up for this. I mean, you got to know her when you were working together in the Senate. Have you been surprised by this? Did you kind of see the strength of her campaign coming? Yeah, I mean, I was not as surprised as others. Obviously, I don't think anybody could have reasonably predicted as good of a six weeks as we've had, right? A pretty flawlessly executed transition into a convention, into rallies and Tim Walz, and all of it is going well, and yet it's still basically a statistical tie. But I do think there was a little chatter from the Washington kind of pundit class.

Let's be honest, Tim, they're mostly white dudes of a certain age. And, you know, Kamala was in a tough spot. She ran for president and the first two states were Iowa and New Hampshire. So what would have been the conventional wisdom if the pundit class were a little bit more diverse and the first voting states were a little more diverse? And then maybe people would have seen her a bit differently. So I guess I have to challenge you on that, though, Senator. Like, I don't think it's really that. I mean, sure, obviously, she deals with racism and misogyny. Absolutely accepted.

But like, you know, during the period between the debate and when she took over, that was a lot of the folks in the Congressional Black Caucus that were coming to Biden's defense and wanted to stick with Biden. In focus groups that my colleague Sarah Longwell did of black voters and black women voters, there were people that were concerned about her for legitimate reasons. So I don't know. I think that some of this was some of her interviews initially or the 2019 campaign that didn't really find a lot of footing.

I don't know that it's just that, right? I mean, I think that some of this was performance. No, it's not just that. I don't want to attribute it to, you know, that people wake up every morning and wring their hands and try to figure out how to have racist or misogynistic thoughts. What I am saying, though, is that people judge you on your last race. And I'll just give you my best example. I ran for Congress, a little known fact. And as my old friend, Governor Waihe'e used to say, that wasn't a loss. That was an experiment. I came in sixth out of 10. I lost to a lot of my colleagues in the legislature. It did not go well. And quite reasonably, the conventional wisdom was like, maybe he's not that good of a statewide or district-wide politics. And I think

that Kamala was basically zero and one. And then going into this thing, and the only data point we had for how she would perform in an election, well, we had California, but that can be reasonably kind of calibrated to be a different kettle of fish. And then we had the Democratic primary for president, which objectively, on one level, electorally didn't go well. The other way to look at it is, well, she ended up vice president, so it went great for her. But I just think she is objectively now good at politics. She united the coalition. She has essentially activated the left. The base is thrilled. And she is explicitly making overtures to people in the middle, which is basically like

hitting all the marks in every single way. And people are still stroking their chin saying, yeah, but is she really good at this? And I'm thinking, yeah, I don't know. I just judge people's success based on their actual election results and how the campaign is going. You know, part of what's happening, I think, in politics is Democrats don't trust happiness. And so I saw some just absolutely insane screed on Twitter last night. Yes, I was on Twitter last night. And someone was essentially like, it's all going to go to hell in October. We need to

brace ourselves. And I'm thinking, yeah, I'm sure something crazy is going to happen in October. But part of the objective of the other side is to freak us out, right? And Kamala has been unflappable. And she has set a tone for the grassroots to also be unflappable. So I'm pretty excited. I also abide by the by the aphorism in politics, only the paranoid survive. But I am I'm trying to balance that with the idea that winning begets winning and optimism begets, you know, money and grassroots and volunteerism and good vibes, as they say. Somebody who's worked on some campaigns that finished sixth or worse in a primary, it's all right, you know, you can rebound, you rebound from that. Is there anything from your you got to know her, right? Is there anything you don't think people know about Kamala

that you, you know, from, from your time working with her, either about issues or a character trait or any kind of story you have from being her colleague? Yeah, she's pretty normal. I mean, look, the Senate is full of people who are really extraordinary in terms of their accomplishments, but it is often accompanied by a strange affect, Either it's something that, you know, sort of comes over decades of being in power or that, you know, sometimes those are two sides of the same coin that you're extraordinarily talented, but like, you're not a normal person. You are not a regular person. Kamala was pretty normal. And I just remember being on a couple of text strings. And before you asked him, I have since deleted them many years ago with Booker and Kamala, just sort of making sarcastic comments about what was going on in the caucus lunch and all the rest of it. But I found her to be, you know, one of the most normal people in the United States Senate Democratic Conference. I think I've benefited from the fact that I found the only job where being normal makes you kind of like unusual. And I think she was she was a fellow traveler in that way. All right, Tim Apple, let's let's release the texts. I want to I want to see them.

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an audio from jd vance audio from from JD Vance just keeps resurfacing. The guy did so many podcasts. He's a gift that keeps on giving. I want to listen to it because I saw you comment on it the other day. And I think the gender inequity stuff is like, we need more of the medicine. Okay, clearly this value set has made me a miserable person who can't have kids because I already passed the biological period when it was possible. And I live in a 1200 square foot apartment in New York and I pay $5,000 a month for it. But I'm really better than these other people. What I'm going to do is project my like racial and gender sensitivities on the rest of them. And like the reason that our society is broken is because these people don't think the exact way that I think, even though the way that I think has made me a miserable person, I just need to make more people

think like that. So we're going to teach this in our schools, in our universities, even in our elementary schools, because once everybody agrees with me, then everything will finally come full circle and we'll have a happy, healthy society. I don't know if that's projection or insecurity. I noticed that you thought that what was interesting is how fully formed his philosophy was. That's what you said. Expand on that a little bit.

Yeah, I mean, my sense is that he had a couple of really terrible interactions with people in New York when he was a fancy pants VC dude or a fancy pants new author. And I remember people dropped off his book at our Senate office. You got to read this, you got to understand what's happening and all the rest of it. So I think he just sort of interacted with some people in New York City, and didn't like it. And it hurt his feelings. And that's turned into a whole, you know,

way of looking at the world. But on a more serious note, it does seem like this guy is like 4chan in three dimensions. I mean, these are truly wacky ideas. And I think increasingly in the United States Senate, whether it's Ted or it's JD or any of these other Ivy League educated folks, they've clearly got big brains. They've clearly got big educational attainment. They are on paper smart. And their thought process is more like a 17-year-old who's just being told what to think. And they're like pretty good memorizers. And they're blank slates anyway.

And so they just say, sure, this is now what I think about the world. And so I think there's a really kind of dangerous vector here of these Ivy League educated people that really have borderline psychotic views of other people. And that's what this is. This is not about politics. This is like, why do you think people in New York are inherently unhappy and trying to impose it? Like everyone, everyone, wherever you are, if you're in Southern South Carolina, you're in Mississippi or you're in San Francisco, you're in New York, you're just a person trying to succeed and trying to maybe meet somebody and eventually start a family, make a little money, not get sick, have some fun. People are people. And this kind of ontology of there are these kinds of people and they all think this,

and this is why my politics is x is like the worst kind of divisiveness and it's it's just weird because if you read that online you would think it was a crank this person like a 17 year old boy like you said like a 17 year old yeah yeah like a pretty smart 17 year old boy tim i'm i'm just wondering how conservative and smart you were at 17 yeah I was gonna say I'm sorry that's why I'd interject there were a few familiar themes to my and ran phase at all boys high school that I heard there uh but not not even quite as mean though but you know there's some echoes maybe yeah and that's the thing is like I can understand kind of exploring different things intellectually this seems so personal to him yeah um and that's why it's a little more creepy than just like, that's a weird public policy

position. And the other thing that I think is extremely creepy is you have a 78 year old man running for president of the United States, who, you know, is going to be well into his 80s. So this guy's got a 5050 chance of being or a little bit, you know, less than that, but a pretty solid chance of being the leader of the free world. And so, you know, people say the VP choice doesn't matter. I think it is a little different when you have an elderly man running for president. And I think it is a little different when this person is like way, way, way outside of the mainstream. Yeah, I agree. And it seems miserable himself, honestly, I just to me, I'm not a psychologist, but it feels like it is not a sign that you are fulfilled if you're spending so much time

discussing the perceived misery of other people based on their biological clock and their wombs and all the things he's obsessed with talking about. We have to do a little bit on issues. We were both on the Yimby's for Harris call. Congratulations to us. I got tickled. I was listening to your Ezra Klein interview when you were criticizing the community engagement process. I was like, oh, man, this guy is one of us, it turns out. So just just talk a little bit about about the Harris plan on the 3 million new homes. And what's some low hanging fruit? Like what are some things that people could actually do here around the issue of trying to take away some of the red tape around building affordable homes.

Well, I know your podcast is sort of heterodox ideologically, but I'm going to make a very progressive pitch on Yes In My Backyard. And here's the thing. We all clearly agree that it is improper and dangerous to allow the noisiest, crankiest, most vigilant person to make a determination about what library books go into the public library. We all understand that community engagement can be hijacked by individuals with an agenda, either an economic or an ideological agenda. And it's an article of faith among progressives that we want to let librarians decide what goes into the library, with some, you know, exceptions for truly dangerous material that is already impermissible for young people. On the housing side, we've just decided to elevate so-called community engagement

as the sine qua non around housing. If you don't care deeply about community engagement, then you don't care about the community. And look, I think there are ample opportunities at the state, county, and federal level for people to get involved. But all we're saying is there is a national shortage of housing and the way to at least unlock some of the housing that we need is to simply make it easier to build housing. Certainly in the state of Hawaii, the same laws that protect our most precious spaces, culturally and environmentally, also stop the most obvious, logical, humane, and economical fourplex apartment buildings just to allow a nurse and a firefighter and an elderly person to live anywhere near where they work and to not have to, frankly, move to the continental United States because land is cheaper.

And so, look, I'm the chairman of the Transportation and HUD Committee, which means I do the appropriation, I do the money for affordable housing and for housing stock and all the rest of it. And we've been able to increase that dollar amount. Let me tell you something. There is not enough money to solve this problem unless we make it easier to build housing. One final thing on this, Tim, which is, I think, great. This actually shows that Kamala Harris is turning the page ideologically and generationally on a really important pain point for a lot of voters. It is the highest cost for most people, either rent or mortgage. And this is something we can actually do about it. And it is an area where she is actually abandoning the Democratic Party's orthodoxy. And so for those moderates and those sort of pro-free market economy voters who are always nervous about

voting for a Democrat but don't like Donald Trump, this is an indicator that she's not just using the words around reaching out to center-left and center-right individuals, but she's putting some meat on the bones in terms of policy. So I'm thrilled, as you can tell. Since you called it out, it's the Heterodox Podcast. I have two, you know, whatever, moderate things to pick on you on really quick. One, but the $25,000 for first-time homebuyers, it's just going to make houses more expensive. Come on. As Adam Smith, that's Adam Smith, Senator. We're going to give people more money when it's already too expensive, the supply and demand. How does that work? So I don't have any problem, generally speaking, with a subsidy for a first time home buyer. But I will agree with you that I think

there are two strategies that are likely to be more successful. And the first is to allow people to build the kind of housing that we say we want. And that's the whole YIMBY movement. And the second is to the extent that we're going to provide federal resources, I would rather those resources go into recapitalizing the federal housing stock. Right now, there are old units that fall into such disrepair as to be unavailable. And so for say $50,000, we can keep something in the housing stock. And if it falls out of the housing stock, we got to build a new unit, which may cost up to three, four, depends on the state for $500,000 per unit. So I don't hate that idea, but I would not prioritize it as high as the campaign has. Smart. Okay, here's the last one and I'll let you go. So you said at the top, the IRA,

you want to be at the top of your, you know, your bio and your accomplishments. And there's a lot in there to like, even for, you know, for somebody like me, there's some there's some progressive stuff that I didn't like as much. But most of it, I thought was totally reasonable, especially the building and the development side of us. And that's where we get to the question, with the broadband and building some of the plants that have come along with this, there just have been delays, like the red tape, you know, the rural broadband is not happening, you know, at the speed you would have hoped it was given how long it's been since the bill was passed. What's the hang up on that? Is there anything Congress can do to alleviate it? You're right, we passed a bunch of important bills,

and a lot of that money is going out pretty fast. It does depend on state and local and county approvals and development timelines and all the rest of it. So I would say the chip stuff is working pretty fast. And the solar and wind stuff is also working pretty fast, although we have to, as you know, do permitting reform for transmission. But on the broadband stuff, it has been painstakingly slow. I don't think there are any excuses to make. I do think the Democratic Party should be the party of getting shit done. I do think the Democratic Party should be the party of building stuff. And we don't have to always defend the government. We should defend the premise that the government is there to help. We should defend government expenditures. We should defend the public generally. But if something is going too slow, we're allowed to admit that.

It is not our job to defend every aspect of the civil service and the bureaucracy if things are not moving as fast as they can. And I think there are a lot of people who agree with our objectives, but literally in the end think that we're not going to be able to get it all through in reality and would rather have a party that promises nothing and delivers nothing. We promise a lot. We've delivered a lot. But now we have to execute. Speaking my language. Senator Brian Schatz, thanks so much for coming on the Bullard Podcast. Let's do it again sometime.

Thank you, Tim. Take care. Appreciate it. All right. Up next, my colleague, Mona Charan. This message comes from BetterHelp. Can you think of a time when you didn't feel like you could be yourself? Like you were hiding behind a mask? BetterHelp Online Therapy is convenient, flexible, and can help

you learn to be your authentic self so you can stop hiding. Because masks should be for Halloween fun, not for your emotions. Take off the mask with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com. And we're back. She's the policy editor at The Bulwark. She hosts the Beg to Differ podcast. Comes out once a week, as well as a subscriber-only Just Between Us podcast. So you subscribe at TheBulwark.com slash free trial if you want to test it out. That's my pal, Mona Charan.

How are you doing, Mona? Hi. It's so good to be with you, Tim. You've been doing such a great job with this podcast. Congratulations. It's fantastic. I've been trying. I cuss too much. Okay. And it's you and my father that I think about mostly. My mother doesn't like the cussing either, but I don't know. It doesn't bother me for some reason, but you and my father, I just have sometimes on my shoulder. I'm like, did I really need to say that word right then?

But sometimes I just can't help myself. I am fighting a lonely battle against profanity, and I'm losing horribly. You are losing horribly. And I guess it's really not a downgrade from Charlie on that front. I mean, maybe, though his curses were maybe a little more creative at times. I like to stick with the old standbys. You had an article last week that was titled, What are we conserving? That just, you know, had me standing up out of my chair and hooting and hollering.

And it was sort of a commentary on this, like, question about whether anti-Trump conservatives, like what to do in the election. And David French had written an article about how he was going to vote for Biden, because in a way, he thinks that will help conservatism in the long run. And I care a little less about the, you know, pundit slap fighting parts of this than the bigger questions that you got to, which was kind of like the, what is the point of this? Like, why are we here? And how does that inform the decision? So maybe just talk about that at the biggest picture. Right. Well, first of all, thank you. So the arguments that I have seen tend to be along these lines.

People say, well, you know, up on all of these important policy matters, whether it's school choice or, and they'll run through a list. So I approach it in two different ways. First of all, big picture, actually, let me do the weeds first, because even if you were talking about the particular issues, one of the things that has happened in the last 10 years, to me at least, is that seeing so many people on the right that I used to respect and trust and believe were acting in good faith and that when they presented arguments, you could rely on them as being accurate and true, at least as the facts, have shown themselves to be capable of this staggering mendacity and bad faith. And so it does cause you to look back and say, well, hang on now. I mean, there are certain issues where I know a lot and I don't rely on other people to guide my thinking.

But there are many issues where I don't know. And so I rely on people who agree with me on, say, phonics education or anti-communism. This was my favorite line. Thank you. I'm glad. You know, who agree with me on those things, right? And I'll think, well, they agree on this, so they must be right on Federal Reserve policy or something else. And that has been shaken. And I no longer believe that the people who agreed with me on some issues are reliable. So that caused me to sort of re-evaluate many assumptions that I had made about issues. And so when people say, well, you're not voting for the

most conservative electable candidate, which was Bill Buckley's standard that he propagated many decades ago, you should always support the most conservative electable candidate. And I said in the piece, you know, I am not as sure as I used to be that the most conservative candidate is going to be one that is right on all matters. I've re-evaluated some of my views. Okay, so that's the first part. The second part is, and there's a third, but so the second part is though, and this is the crux of the piece, is that when you decide who you're going to support in an election, especially one that features such a vile cretin like Donald Trump, who is dangerous for the republic, not just has the wrong views on things, which he does. It isn't about those policy preferences. It is as conservatives, the main

thing that we wish to conserve is the founding, is our constitutional system, is the republic as it was bequeathed to us and we hope to bequeath it in turn to our children and grandchildren. And so I talked about 2020 when it looked for a few hot minutes like the choice was going to be Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders. And I remember you wrote a really great piece at the time saying, people, you know, this is coming down the track, you know, this is happening, please get your act together. And they listened to you, thank God. But anyway, for a little while there, it did look like that might be the choice. And it's hard to think of a political figure that I think is more wrong on the left anyway than Bernie Sanders.

But I said, I thought about it then. I would have voted for Sanders because as much as I think his policies are wrong and destructive, I think he would have abided by the law and would not attempt to rule as a dictator, would not attempt to overturn a free and fair election, et cetera. And so since I had already gone through all that in 2020, to say, can you vote for Harris? Of course. Harris is easy. This is not a hard thing. It's a matter of preserving the constitutional republic, and therefore, it's not hard to say, yes, I will support Harris. So, this is where, like, we'll get a little bit nerdy and then get back into the issues. But I love this part in particular because it is kind of this uniquely American definition of conservatism.

True. and preserve the fundamental principles of the founding, maybe not the actions of the founders, right? But like the principles that are laid out in the founding documents, there are a lot of those things that have these kind of classical liberal sort of values to them that which includes the rule of law, but also includes pluralism and various individual freedoms we have. And like conservatism is defined in most of the rest of the world is different, right? It's traditionalism, it's what in soil. And so like, because of that unique element of American conservatism, you can kind is more about that, like defending these classical liberal values, rather than it is some like tick list of policy priorities that have, you know, developed over the course of 200 years. Yeah, I think that American conservatism rightly understood is about conserving the founding, which is, after all, an enlightenment project that was all about

individual rights and limited government and making sure that individuals can thrive to the maximum degree possible and with equality and respect and all of that. And those are not the conservative values, as you say, of Europe or other parts of the world where it's thrown an altar or blood and soil. It's a very different kind of thing. Now, there's some overlap, but there has been a huge debate in America since the rise of Trump where with these Christian nationalists, for example, they are just, they are completely denying that conservatism has anything to do with small L liberalism. You know, they're saying, no, no, it's, it is about that the government should have the power to tell everybody how to live and that we are the, we know what's right. And they're happy to throw out checks and balances and all that. They say,

what has conservatism gotten for us you know if you want to get really nerdy on this so after i read your article over the weekend i was listening to uh the know your enemy podcast those guys oh yeah i listened to them yeah on bozell and buckley and this does go back a little bit to that right like their fight actually which so this strain was there the whole time which was bozell was kind of pushing for like no the goldwater libertarian thing is not actually conservatism like the government should push for you know traditional values and and you know have it stung on the scale and be more be more active and involved exactly and so then you get to the trump side of this right which is like okay so there are some people around trump like like the Project 2025ists, who have like moved, who are trying to move away from kind of that classically liberal style of conservatism.

And then you have Trump, who is like basically without ideology. Well, he doesn't have an ideology, but he definitely has a mood. And that mood is authoritarian and admiring of authoritarians, which I would have thought was the exact opposite of everything that conservatives were taught to revere. As I understood it when I was coming up, we were the people who were against authoritarianism. We were for freedom. We were the Liberty Party. Reagan, in one of his great speeches, you know, described a Vietnamese boat person, you know, being helped aboard a U.S. ship and saying, hello, freedom man. And that was who we were. And I found that inspiring.

And I still do. And in Trump, you have someone who not only doesn't understand any of that, but openly admires the world's dictators, thugs, and tyrants. So again, there, if you're a conservative, rightly understood, you should be allergic to that and say, yes, I prefer Harris on foreign policy. Not hard to say. The Vietnamese story reminds me, we talked about this brief with Bill yesterday, I think, but the J.D. Vance, right? So now Trump has spawned these imitators and these warped versions of trumpism jdu is out saying that mocking the idea that we should help afghanistan interpreters you know right and saying that oh and so it's like a rejection of of that american ideal i do wonder what one of the things that kind

of spurred this conversation this this sort of nerdy intro never trump conversation was something that that steve hayes wrote where he where he he was critical of Harris saying that and called her a statist. And I kind of blanched at that. I was like, isn't Trump the statist, I guess, but being generous to his point of view, like, do you look at the Democrats and see any of the statist elements that you feel like conservatives should be allergic to? Yes. I mean, I really objected to Joe Biden, for example, doing that student loan forgiveness thing without legal authority, just as I objected to Obama changing immigration law with the stroke of a pen without going to Congress, those kinds of things, how you do things is just as important, sometimes more important than what you do, because the rule of

law has to be paramount, which means the rule of the people in the end. And so, yes, I do find elements there that should be criticized, but I mean, the Trump people are the last ones to accuse anybody of statism. Now Trump, what does he want to do? He wants to subsidize IVF for the whole country. Do you know how much that would cost? Seems cheap. That seems affordable. Wow. But, you know.

I mean, eventually we know. The final form of Trump-Vance-ism would be to fund IVF, but only for straight people. Well, I IVF, but only for straight people. Well, I was going to say only for white people. Yeah, only for straight white people. We'll fund it for. That would be it. But, you know, statism and, you know, racial identity politics put together. We had Pat Toomey today was over on CNBC. And the short of it was that Joe Kern Kernan the kind of Trumpy host of Squawk Box is just kind of like the inverse of us he's apoplectic with Toomey that this is a binary

choice and the capital gains rate might go up to x percent under Harris and how could he how could he not choose I didn't think it was interesting the to me case is basically that after january 6 trump disqualifies himself so he has to be neutral i don't know to me that feels a little bit short like to me is is not there but i kind of wonder what you how you react to something like that so i'm trying tim i'm really trying to be happy with republicans who say they won't vote for trump because after after all, that is worth a lot, right? If Trump voters don't show up, yeah, if Republicans just don't show up, because they're disgusted with Trump, but don't affirmatively vote for Harris, it's still good

for Harris. But it's not as good as saying that you would support Harris. I was reading a New York Times piece about the Haley voters over the weekend. And you may have seen that. And one of them was just saying, and I think this probably speaks for a lot of them, that he doesn't like Trump, but I am a Republican, so I will vote for a Republican. He didn't say which it would be, might write somebody in, but that is so strong in people. And, you know, the argument goes, and I think some people have made this case, well, it's better to tell them to stay home, because you can't get them over the hump of saying support Harris. So if they just stay home, that's good enough. And that may be

the most you can expect. What do you think? I guess I mean, the Toomey thing is interesting. He's on CNBC and kind of getting the business on this. He voted to bar Donald Trump from becoming president again, right? Like he voted to convict him. Yep. Which is a great vote. Thank goodness. I mean, if 11, 10 more people had made that vote, we wouldn't be here.

So good for Pat Toomey for that. But to me, it's like, and then Richard Burr said he's voting for Trump, who is also one of those people. And so is Cassidy. And I'm like, I just don't understand how you could have made that vote and then not just be for Harris. I mean, you can wear the hair shirt and be for Harris and say, I don't like that I'm for Harris, but you guys gave me no choice because I already have voted that this person should be disqualified from being the president again. It would be better for me if

he was out there. If maybe if our colleague Sarah Longwell, who's launched a new, the Republican Voters Against Trump has launched their new campaign today. You know, if he was out there, if maybe if our colleague Sarah Longwell, who's launched a new the Republican voters against Trump has launched their new campaign today. You know, if he was out there in an ad saying, I can't vote for Trump in Pennsylvania, I was your former senator, and I can't vote for Trump for this reason, that reason, then I'd bless him, then I would give him the Catholic blessing for it's okay, even if he doesn't say Harris, but he's not really doing that, right? Like he's kind of just disappearing. So that's sort of, I don't know how I assess it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I 100% agree. I think, you know, if we're fantasizing, I mean, it would be great if he would do an ad saying, I personally have,

you know, was in the Capitol and I saw what Trump did. And I will accordingly be voting for Harris, even though I've never voted for a Democrat before in my life. But you may not be able to get there. But please, whatever you do, I'm not saying you have to vote for Harris, but just don't vote for Trump. That would be good. Vice President Harris should call him. Absolutely. They're colleagues. She should call him and they should they should try to make the push because he sounded I don't he was pretty uncomfortable on CNBC. Anyway, we'll put the full thing in the show notes if people want to watch it i wanted to get to tim walls but you said one thing at the very beginning that piqued my interest and so i have to follow up and i thought this was a great point in the article that like we all have these kind of

partisan shortcuts right it's like oh well i grew you know i don't know that much about this issue or that issue i'm going to trust an expert or trust somebody that i look to you know who i admire, whose ideology I admire and say, okay, well, if they feel strongly about this, then I'll go along with it. But you kind of implied that because of that, you've now reconsidered various issues. Is there anything that comes to mind? Is there anything in particular that you feel like over the last eight years that's like not really related to Trump, but because of this rethinking, you've started to reassess? Well, you know, it was partly the Trump Trump, but because of this rethinking, you've started to

reassess? Well, you know, it was partly the Trump thing, but also just in general, because my concern about the national debt has been an ongoing thing for me. I was not in favor of the Trump tax cuts. I think we've had enough tax cuts. I was for them in the Reagan era. I was for them when George W. did them. But enough. We have these huge deficits. We're very undertaxed as a country. That is a very odd thing for a Republican to say. But honestly, compared to what Europeans pay, I've definitely become an apostate on taxes. I've always been a bit of an apostate on guns. I've always believed in gun control. But there are other things like when it comes to social policies where I have definitely changed. And this is because of the people that I heretofore would have trusted their judgment

and no longer do. So for example, I am now much more in favor of giving support to families with children, government support. I used to worry that this would cause too much dependency and that it would undermine the family and things like that. But I think the evidence has shown over the last number of years that the benefits are so dramatic. If we got back to a two-parent norm for raising kids, that that would be best. But it's also the case that we're not there, and there are all these millions of kids who are growing up in single-parent, poor homes. Let's help them.

So that has changed. So you're saying that somebody may be like, I don't know, just pulling a name out of my hat, Bill Bennett, who wrote a book called The Book of Virtues, then going fully in on Donald Trump, maybe because you just think, I don't know, maybe not all the virtues in the Book of Virtues were as virtuous as he had, as I had thought. That's a sad story. I was very close to Bill Bennett and I loved him and his wife. And it's just a very, very sad thing. I mean, he's one of the biggest disappointments because I do think he had a lot to contribute to society and he would have been a very important voice if

he had been anti-Trump. And for him to go all in, it was just crushing at the time. But I'm past all that. I expect nothing of anybody anymore. I know. I have no more room in my heart for hatred of these people. No, no more room. It's full. Okay, I want to close with Tim Walls. You know, some of us at The Bulwark were a little Tim Walls iffy,

ranging from mildly hostile to mildly pro, I guess, was maybe the Bulwark range of opinions on tim walls and i was watching him on labor day yesterday and i felt like the speech showed simultaneously all the reasons why why he made some of us a little bit queasy and also why so many people are so excited about him and so walls pilled and so i want to play one clip from it let's listen i saw last week the wall street journal was trying to say because they did a story that apparently i am the poorest person to ever run for vice president so then

but then they did another story that said oh he's actually richer than his statement says because he has and i quote like this is an evil thing a defined benefit pension plan that is my wish for every american to have a defined benefit pension plan he just goes on to just kind of rip the rich there's another good quote he's doing making fun of trump for trying to help his rich friends i mean it was a pure pro-labor populist every man kind of speech which you know the democrats have lost ground with some people in those in that demo right the the obama trump voters so, I was watching it. And I thought simultaneously, I get it. I get why there's an add value here, but also a defined benefit pension plan for every American. It's not exactly going to be on the Bulwark Manifesto. So anyway, what are your

thoughts on Tim Walz now a couple weeks in? Well, okay, so let me let me go back to August when Tim Walz was first named as the VP and they did that Pennsylvania rally and Josh Shapiro spoke first and he was the one we at the Bulwark. And it wasn't like we made a corporate decision. We're going to be for, you know, Shapiro, just like everybody agreed that he was the strongest. He was a natural fit because of ideology and politics. True. That too.

Yes. Yes. And so I was disappointed when she named Walls instead of Shapiro. But then I was listening to the rally and I heard Shapiro's speech and it was good, but it was very politician-y sounding. You know, it sounded, you know, there is a little bit of like echoes of Obama, that he's kind of imitating Obama's style a little bit.

Anyway, it was very good, but very politician-y. And then Tim Wolfe gets up there, and he does have that every man affect. And I thought to myself, maybe Kamala Harris is onto something. That is, in this era when nobody likes politicians, he may have something that is more appealing. I just thought it was on full effect. They were out for Labor Day yesterday, and I thought it was very telling.

I mean, again, it's a more traditional Democratic campaign than some of the Trumpy ones. But they are out on Labor Day. It's Walls is campaigning. She did two events. We played a clip from it at the top. Trump and Vance were not. They were on vacation yesterday. And I think that's telling. And that's that, you know, we just we are hyper focused here, obviously, unlike the suburban college educated former Republican swing voters, right, who are our friends and our people and the voters we're familiar with. But there is that other side of it,

like the working class voter that Trump took away from the Democrats. We'll see, but maybe they can claw back some percentage of that voter. Maybe. And the important thing is, though, there is one aspect of this, I don't know if you'll agree, but if I were advising the Harris Walls ticket, I would say, you know, definitely pitch to working class people, but not necessarily just to union people. Because unions, especially in the private sector, have gone like, they're only about 10% of people are in unions anymore. So it's really not a matter of unions, but it is a matter of pitching your message toward

people who are not, you know, college educated, for example. Yeah, no, I totally agree. And that's definitely going to be true in those three key blue walls thing states. All right, well, this is wonderful. Do you have a beg to differ plan this week? Do we have a guest? So we do.

We have Kim Whaley, who's going to come talk to us about the pardon power. She wrote a whole book. I don't know how she turns out these books so fast. It's quite impressive. But anyway, so we're going to talk about the pardon power a little bit because God forbid, it could be the case that Trump is reelected. So we're going to do that. And just as soon as you and I hang up, I'm going to talk with our friend Will Salatin on Just Between Us, which is that little niche podcast that you can get if you subscribe to The Bulwark every week. It's not always me and Will.

It's sometimes me and AB and sometimes me and JBL and sometimes a mystery guest. Maybe I'll even get you to come on sometime, Tim. I'm available. All I do is sit in this room with the Pinto being signed behind me. So you just let me know. Mona, thank you. Thank you for coming on. That's New York Times bestselling author, Mona Charon, if you didn't know.

Takes one to know one. We will be back tomorrow with another doubleheader. I think it's going to be delicious. Two of my favorite Democrats, a former senator and a Biden administration official. It's going to be good. So come on back. We'll see y'all then. Peace. Temptation hides in the space between.

Lord, help me find this desire for fire. Words can cleanse and purify or tear down a pack of lies. In your presence, consequence I can't stop trembling For all of my virtue Why can I not hold the truth? For all my good fortune I will chase my place with you

This path will lead us back, will lead us back to ruin For all of my virtue, why can I not hold the truth? I've fallen, I've fallen again The Bullard Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Breck.