The Bulwark Podcast - David Weigel: MAGA v MAGA

Episode Date: January 24, 2023

Republicans may have underperformed in the midterms, but the RNC chair fight is not about changing the party's direction. For the base, it's about out-suing the "cheating" Democrats. Plus, the free-for-all in Chicago's mayoral race, and the Oscar noms. Dave Weigel joins Charlie Sykes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's good to be here. Doing great. Thank you for having me. You're in sunny Los Angeles. I know you've been hopscotching the country. So before we get into the nitty gritty of politics, and I want to talk about the RNC race, whether or not we should actually care about this. I'm also very interested in what you saw in Chicago, where they have a very, very messy, complicated mayor's race. But since you're in Los Angeles, can we talk a little bit of Academy Awards? I'm happy to. Yeah, I guess this is a controversial position to have really liked that Everything Everywhere All at Once film. And I get that people think it went on too long because I think it did go on too long. But I was happy to see all the recognition that got at this stage.

The most dramatic of these showdowns is Cate Blanchett and Michelle Yeoh, right? That's the one I think that has the most emotion involved in it. I think I'm on the Michelle Yeoh team, mostly for the maybe like soccer dad mindset of, well, Cate Blanchett's already had a couple Oscars. Give somebody else a chance. I always go through this process every year. I think a lot of people do. You look at the list of best pictures and you go, okay, I haven't seen that one. I haven't seen that one. I haven't seen that one. So let's just walk through this. So Triangle of Sadness, I have not seen. You? I have seen that. That was the Palme d'Or winner. I didn't really like it.

I see the appeal. It's a satire about capitalism set first on a cruise ship, and then I guess I'd spoil the rest of it if I tell the plot. I thought it was fine. I saw it on a plane, so maybe that shouldn't count. Nothing achieves its full greatness on a plane. I take your point there. However, I actually have seen movies on a plane that were pretty good,

and I've watched them afterwards again. So, okay, so I have a perhaps unpopular opinion here. I mean, I love good movies like everybody else, but we live in an era where I think it's very, very hard for movies to compete with the very best of the television series, you know, which are so much longer form. And I'm always struck by the depth and the nuance that you can get on some of these series, which are just absolutely outstanding. And I'm talking about everything from The Wire to Game of Thrones, etc. Okay, so that's just my little asterisk here. So Women Talking, have you seen that one? I have not. I have not seen that. I'm not allergic to it. I just haven't caught that yet. The thing I like about L.A. is you do get a chance, if you want to see anything, you can see anything. And even more so in New York, something is playing in two theaters around the country.

It's one of them's going to be not far from me. I haven't done it yet because I also have a fiance. I sort of put up to a vote what we should vote for, and that hasn't been her priority. Well, the one movie that I wanted to see, but I really because I read Sonny Bunch all the time, I know I absolutely must, must, must see it in a theater, not on a big screen. I need to see it in the biggest theater possible with three glasses.

Avatar, The Way of Water was also nominated. Have you seen that? Does that live up to its hype? I did see that one. I get it. I mean, that movie is just of such a scale and quality in what they were trying to do that I get it. I mean, that movie is just of such a scale and quality in what they were trying to do that I get why it was nominated, even if I'm not part of it. There's a very strange

online fan base for Avatar that is rooting for it out of respect for James Cameron and contempt for other blockbusters like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and they've been rooting for every time it crosses another box office threshold, and I thought, all right, well, that's Marvel Cinematic Universe, and they've been rooting for every time it crosses another box office threshold.

And I thought, all right, well, that's fine. I mean, my opinions are not all boring. My opinions are not, that movie is pretty good. But with that one, I'm just, I thought that was like a really good action movie with like some wonderful imagery that I don't think about from day to day. And some people live inside Pandora now

who have much more passionate feelings than me. Did you watch it 3D? I did watch it in 3D. And I remember the first Avatar, the 3D glasses, the scene where Jake Sully is floating in space before he's brought down to Pandora. Seeing that in the theater, oh, this technology is going to change everything. I didn't think the 3D was as mind-blowing here. But, you know, I'm not going to second guess James Cameron. Now, I definitely have on my watch list, I don't know why I have not yet to second guess James Cameron. Now, I definitely have on my watch list. I don't know why I have not yet seen it. All Quiet on the Western Front, which looks outstanding and has been nominated for Best Picture.

So I'm definitely going to be watching that soonest. You've seen that one? I have not. I know it's on Netflix, right? So you can just take it as played in. I had the thought like, oh, well, there already are movies based on that. Then I realized, well, they're American. I guess it's only fair that the Germans get to make a movie

out of the great German war novel. So I'm sure it's good. I just haven't seen it. I thought it would probably be good. I didn't realize it was going to be this good. Okay, so I have not seen Elvis, which is also on streaming. I will see that. I have not seen Tar.

I have seen everything, everywhere, all at once. I have seen The Fablemans, which I enjoyed. I have not seen The Banshees of Inisharin, although I have acquaintances, colleagues, and friends who have said that they really like it. Although I'm guessing that that is one of those movies that people line up on on different sides, depending on your particular taste. So I want to see that. Have you seen The Banshees? Yeah, I did. I saw that before lots of the plot was known. Not like the first week. It was just it was kind of a slow building.

This is a reliable director. I didn't like his last movie, The Three Billboards Outside of Missouri. I didn't like that at all. Really? Yeah. It just missed me. I just thought it was it was ham handed and everyone. And he does this. He is Martin McDonough, who has a very dramatic theater mindset where characters make rash decisions that you're shocked by that are much more dramatic than like what we're used to with a lot of serial stuff where the characters are going to have to deal with each other for a long time. It's this interesting, I wouldn't call it a morality. It's just this meditation on friendship and one of two friends contemplating the end of his life without

having achieved everything he wanted to achieve. It's a really rich text. I really did like it. I found people kind of went into it, people who went into it thinking it would be a wacky Irish island comedy, of which that's a genre, right? I mean, there's a whole genre of films where there's a small Irish town, small Irish island, and people learn things. It's a lot more like Ryan's Daughter, where the setting of an Irish town early in the 20th century is used to tell a very dark human story. And I liked it. Everything we mentioned, except for Triangle of Sadness, if it won the award, I'd say that's fine. So I'm going to tell on myself a little bit.

And I may be knocked off of Sonny's Christmas card list for this, but I really enjoyed Top Gun Maverick, as did a lot of people, which means there's no way that that's going to win based on, you know, the track record of the Academy Awards, which seems to have an active bias against the most popular films. It's one of those movies, we kind of let it wash over you and go, this is what it is. It is pure entertainment. It is pure escapism. And I have to admit, I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed it. Although I do not want to be put in a position of defending Tom Cruise. I'm not doing that. That's what movies still do. And I understand that a lot of people go, and Charlie, you're wrong. You know, we, you need to have these very deep and dark indie movies that 20 people have watched. Those are the best pictures, not these big freaking blockbusters about, you know, men

in their giant airplanes. Well, OK, this is me. I like Top Gun Maverick. So sue me. Well, I think the sunny interpretation of it is that most of the film is a end of life dream by Tom Cruise, who dies in the first act. There's a couple of these movies. I think Tara's got some of this, too, where people have attacked it as saying, like, everyone's

reading this wrong. There's a very subtle magical realism or dream sequence logic in this part of the movie. No one got it. I didn't see the movie that way. I saw it as a straightforward action movie. I thought it was as good as that Donner gets. I was mentioning people online, not to get too metatextual about this but that that's benefited from people's frustration at cgi goop movies there is some cgi goop to make top gun look better but there are real people in planes acting and you really just feel the

difference when people are acting in that and shouting out their lines in that environment you just compare any clip of uh the pilots talking to each other in Top Gun Maverick to some movie where it's people on a set and a green screen talking to each other. It's just not, you can't nail it. No offense to all actors who've tried this, but it's a combination of just a solid movie and it's shot such care and attention to like realism as far as you can get in this story like that, that I really loved it. I mean, I, again, not offended if that wins. This is a pretty good year for movies that would not irritate me if they walked away with it. Yeah, that's kind of the way I feel about it as well. Okay, so shall we get down to business now? Sure. This was much more fun than what we're going to talk about.

I think we have to talk about the battle for control of the Republican National Committee, which you have done a deep dive on, you and your colleague Shelby Talcott. Okay, I guess the meta question here is, why should anyone give a shit who the chairman of the Republican National Committee is? I mean, does it actually matter, Dave? I've confronted that question, too. So there's two. I think there's one, is McDaniel really in trouble? Two, should we care about this? And McDaniel tried early on, I think she got a boost actually from Lee Zeldin when she early on

put out a letter from 100 members of the RNC backing her for re-election. There's only 168 members, so do the math, that she had it locked up. Zeldin is exploring a bid for RNC chair at the end of last year and says, well, there's no point, she has it locked up. And so it's possible at the end of this that there's lots of ways like this. I always looked at Ohio Senate campaign last year and thought, I'm going to assume J.D. Vance wins, but some stuff might happen that's interesting. That held up. It was safe to assume that he would win that Senate seat, but did everyone who went there to write a story waste their time? It's a very existential question in media. Like, what's the point of writing about a campaign that looks like it's going to win that wins? I think what's been interesting is that Harmeet Dhillon, who is challenging Ronna McDaniel,

who she's been a chair of the party in San Francisco. She's been an RNC member from California. She is not somebody like Reince Priebus 12 years ago who comes in saying, look at the scoreboard. I know how to run a party. She's not that. She is a Republican activist. Her firm actually works with a lot of Republicans challenging election law in court or lawfare, as she refers to it, not just her. But she is not a sort of Priebus super effective, here's my model for running the party figure. She is more of a protest figure. And she was embraced immediately by Turning Point USA and other extra RNC organizations that believe they know where the party should be going. That's what's been interesting to me, is just how this race has not played out in public forums as the previous race did. It has sometimes not been clear exactly which policies Dylan would change compared to McDaniel.

But the tastemakers on this and the forums have been, they both go on Steve Bannon's podcast. Dylan went to the TPUSA conference. Dylan goes on fairly far right shows. So does McDaniel. You're seeing the power of the MAGA media universe in shaping this. Because it is MAGA versus MAGA. I mean, we're talking about Ronna McDaniel, Ronna Romney McDaniel has been a Trump loyalist. She went so far as to drop the Romney name. She's done just about everything for Donald Trump. She paid his legal bills, et cetera, et cetera, all of those things. But Harmeet Dhillon is running as the super MAGA non-loser candidate, right? And she has tapped into what I've described as the id of the right, you know, the TPUSA folks.

And Ronald McDaniel is trying very hard not to be outflanked by this grassroots id. And that's why they both go on Steve Bannon's show. So it's really a choice to go with, you know, pure MAGA or super MAGA. Now, Trump seemed to kind of throw Ronna under the bus last week. Where is that a misreading of it when he said that he's not really making an endorsement, which had to be kind of disappointing for Ronna, who is, I mean, you know, talk about, I mean, kissing every conceivable ring, et cetera, there. But it wasn't enough to get her the Trump blessing. That's right.

He stayed out of this process. So he's just kind of let this unfold. And he's let, really, I'm glad you made the distinction because she is the MAGA Trump candidate. She is the chair. She is running in because she's so close to Trump. But you have a conservative face that was never a huge fan. I mean, it's hard to get them excited about the RNC, but are convinced that you need an outsider

in that job. They see her as one. And the fact that Trump is not saying anything, that's how they interpret it. As Trump saying, please, you can vote for somebody else. One of the effective things, it looks effective from people I talk to, at least, that the Dillon supporters have done is encourage a lot of rank and file conservative activists to email RNC members. Some of them have told me it's irritating. They're tired of getting it. They're tired of not just reporters talking to them, but they're tired of getting hundreds of emails that they think sound like form emails.

Especially I was, Jeff Kaufman, there was one thing he told Shelby was that you can recognize them all. They sound like spam. But they've also gotten these state parties when they have pre meetings before they go to the winter meeting to have a vote on whether Ronna deserves another term. And they've been voting no, with no pressure from Trump. I mean, I think Trump could, if not stop all that, at least ameliorate it by I mean, he could he could end this if he endorsed her. And he's not Trump is allowing there to be a fight inside the party between people who are, as they go on these conservative media we're talking about, just talking about their loyalty to the MAGA agenda and how they're going to create a campaign

that can win in 2024 with Trump-style politics. Although, they're not saying it's going to be Trump. They're both interested in having a Republican primary, assuming Ron DeSantis is running. And I think that explains why Trump is staying out of this. Like he could run a win if she said, I'm not going to let their primary and I'm just going to support Donald Trump again. I'm not sure. But she said she's not saying that. And then Trump's response is, all right, I'll stay away. I mean, that's an interesting question, because, of course, she went out of her way to block any sort of a primary back in 2020. I mean, she shut down any sort of opposition to Donald Trump. So her role really in 2020 was to be a protector of Trump, to be a

shield. By the way, we have been remiss in not pointing out that this is a race between Ronna McDaniel, Harmeet Dhillon, and Mike Lindell. Okay, so Mike Lindell. My pillow guy. Yes. Mike Lindell. That's true. Okay, so Mike Lindell is seeking the job. What's his role in all of this, other than just to add a little dollop of crazy? He has no stated support. Now, the only support that we know he has is that there's going to be a forum this week. This is mostly closed press, by the way. I mean, I'll be at the site in Orange County where their RNC meeting is happening, but a lot of this stuff is going to – they're going to shut the doors to the press. They're going to find out what's happening through just reporting,

which is my, which is my job. So fine. But yeah, Lindell had enough, was vouched for from at least one member so he can participate in a forum that they're going to have that the media is not allowed to watch. He has not had any members campaigning for him or saying outright that they support him. He's played this function of, I'd say, accentuating Dillon's criticism by going on a lot of the same shows and making the same critique. But of course, saying that if he was chair, the party would be devoted to overturning election laws and overturning the 2020 election, get to the bottom of 2020. I mean, he is more interested, unsurprisingly, in relitigating 2020 forever than Dillon is. Where Dillon is more

saying, all right, we've lost then, we have a party that's terrible at figuring out the tricks Democrats are going to use against us. Put me in there because I know how to sue. I know how to pursue lawfare. I know what to sue over. I know how to beat the Democrats on the rules even before we get going. And then on top of that, I'm going to, one of her ideas is moving it from DC to somewhere in the middle of America. A lot of it is just though, I'm going to one of her ideas is moving it from D.C. to somewhere in the middle of America. A lot of it is just, though, I'm the person who did not lead our party when we lost. And whereas the Lindell argument is much more hardcore. Well, I'm that person. Also, you know, you know what I think about the election.

I think it was stolen. Some of Dylan's biggest supporters, though, are RNC members who are on that page, especially Tyler Pallier in Arizona, who is a Turning Point USA guy and RNC member, retweeting Kerry Lake stuff, and he's engaged in this fight here. The hardcore Mike Lindell mindset is represented in this race, even if people are not voting for Mike Lindell. Well, I mean, as you point out, I mean, this is a party that's underperformed in the last three election cycles. And obviously, anytime this happens, you have people who want to assign blame. You need to have a scapegoat. And of course, it is not tenable for them to blame the Orange God King in exile down at Mar-a-Lago. So, you know, they focused on Ronna McDaniel. And I really do

get the sense that there is this, we have to change something. We cannot keep doing what we are doing. And yet, that's what McDaniel's re-election will symbolize, right, is that they've really fundamentally learned nothing from the midterm, and they're going to keep doing what they have done since 2016. Yeah. And there's also going to be, at some point, a, this is one concession McDaniel made that she did not make after 2020, which is this, got some members who won or lost their elections, Republicans from Blake Masters who lost to Katie Britt in Alabama who won, and they're producing some document about what the party needs to improve. So she's doing that. She didn't do that for 2020. She didn't, I mean,

the position, you remember this position McDaniel was in in 2020 was surreal, where she was going to Georgia to try to get people to turn out for the runoff and getting heckled by people who were angry the RNC wasn't fighting to overturn the election. I watched the discourse in this race, and I think, like, why does she want a fourth term? She wants eight years of this? She wants eight years of this job? There must be some nice aspects of this, because every cycle that they don't win, she has to make more concessions to people who say, we don't want to change anything about how we're running. We're not going to, you know, because this was a thing that Steele did with, I think, not much success, that Priebus was more focused on the nuts and bolts of what the party needs to do and how you need to out-compete the

Democrats. Yeah, the discourse this time is much more, we need to just figure out why Democrats are cheating and sue better and not change anything. We need to be the MAGA party, the working class MAGA party, run on that agenda, but also make us win. And that is a tough order for a party chair. I mean, like, look at the states Republicans underperformed, where they tried that and where they had all the RNC resources. It didn't work, but they're not really allowed to have that discussion. They're not allowed to say, all right, well, maybe let's abandon some of these ideas that no one likes. Let's maybe talk slightly less about critical race theory or something. Not really. It's who is going to be a more efficient manager of the

mega Trump strategy, which often is just what's coming off Donald Trump's dome. Let's run on that. You and Shelby sat down with her mate Dylan. You know, she talked about how she had this, you know, burst of support after she went on Tucker Carlson, which, of course, is, you know, the beating heart of the conservative bid. She launched her campaign on Tucker Carlson, which is a key part of this. Yeah. And I think a critique is exactly what you described. You know, things aren't going well, she said. We are not winning elections. It is insufficient to say you're knocking on more doors or you're turning out more voters if those voters are not voting Republican or you're knocking on doors and not connecting with or persuading voters. That's just numbers on a piece of paper.

And interesting, she told you that she did not think the five-vote majority in the House counted as a win. Now, that's interesting because, I mean, you do have some Republicans saying, look, we did win the House of Representatives. We won the popular vote. We do control the gavel. We do control the subpoenas. But she's leaning hard on the no, we were promised a red wave. And what we got was this. We shouldn't be satisfied. Yes, that's her argument. And it's not unconvincing. I mean, like for a lot of Republicans like that, every week Republicans have another kind of round of irritation. OK, we have a House majority, but all we're talking about is George Santos. OK, we have a House majority, but we had to concede and put Marjorie Greene on oversight and Tom Massey on rules.

Like the idea that the party underperformed is potent. And actually, one thing Ron is doing today, she's in California already and she's going to one of the Asian-American communities in Orange County. I think that probably after this week and the shootings, this is taking on different salience. But saying like, look, this is one thing we did very well. The party has actually been performing really well in finding new voters, Hispanic voters, Asian voters. She's just trying to emphasize they did make some of these inroads. But Dylan's point is, yes, you promised us the move. And you can't run against Kevin McCarthy. You can't run against Rick Scott.

They were promising the same thing. They were promising a red tsunami that was going to wipe Democrats out completely. Then you're right. Dillon does not go through every single thing the party could have done better. She was using that example to emphasize that's not enough that you managed to win the House despite everything going your direction. But the key Midwest states where they really wanted to have governors and secretaries of state in place ahead of the 2024 election, that was a wipeout. And the only person you can get accountability from and blame for that loss is McDaniel. I think that is to a lot of people more important. It's okay, well, the House majority,

whether it was winning it at all is going to be good for us. It's going to let us wage investigations. But we needed to tee things up to win the presidency again. And she didn't do that. She gave us a House majority that is very easy to flip back on paper in 2024. So what was the point? OK, so this is very interesting. Let's flash back to 2012 after Republicans lost the presidential race that year. Reince Priebus was head of the RNC, and they engaged in this infamous, famous autopsy, you know, thinking about what the Republican Party needed to do. And of course, they came up with a series of recommendations, and they did exactly the opposite over time. But this is interesting that after the midterms in 2018, after the loss of the presidency in 2020, after the midterms in

2022, there is no discussion of, you know, fundamentally, you know, looking in the mirror and saying, hey, you know, maybe we ought to rethink our position on abortion. Maybe we ought to rethink our position on climate change. Maybe we ought to find a way to appeal to younger voters, particularly younger women. Maybe we ought to rethink our position on guns. They are not talking about fundamentally rethinking their position on any of these things from diversity or why they are losing this demographic. None of that seems to be happening this time, is it, Dave? It's just simply how do we use the RNC to be a more effective bullhorn for whatever the MAGA agenda of the week happens to be? I mean, that's really the bottom line here is that there is no

real introspection or change of direction that's at stake in this election. That's pretty fair. And I would compare this to Democrats after 2016. They lost, but the energy in the party was with the Sanders wing. And their argument was, there are things we could have done that would have excited more people, more left wing ideas that were popular. And we didn't tap into them. We ran as establishment candidate. So this is not the first time that AFRA lost the idea is let's actually move more towards the base and get them more excited. Yeah, factually, it's harder for them to prove that that is the problem in 2020 than it was for Democrats. There were millions of people who voted Green Party or Libertarian or stayed home because they disliked Hillary Clinton in particular.

And Hillary Clinton was gone. I mean, this is as if the Hillary people stuck around in 2017 and say, all right, well, our bad. But exactly. Trust us. Just keep running exactly the campaign that we ran in 2016. Keep doing that. Keep identifying with that. Keep circling the party around a figure who is not very popular. And that, yeah, they have not had much of a discussion. Now, everything that's happening is the first race since the end of Roe v. Wade. And that is a topic that clearly caused problems for Republicans. Even Donald Trump says caused problems for Republicans because there's not in different places. It plays very differently. It's very easy for Democrats to accuse Republicans of trying to

ban abortion everywhere. And that's not really part of the discussion either. It is really just, OK, we'll figure that stuff out later. But we need somebody who is closer to the grassroots and closer to the conservative activists who are at the doors and getting them excited. So it's the same sort of idea that we basically are not going to change what we're running on. We're not going to debate things that lost us votes. We can't really debate them with us how they are and say we're just going to have a more efficient leadership trying to outsmart the Democrats. And you really mean not to be repetitive on it, but like the idea that just the elections are not lost, that they are stolen by Democrats, and all you need to do is out-sue them. Democrats did not have that in 2017. There were some voices,

you know, talking about Russia conspiracies. But they did not say, okay, we just need to get better at like suing in advance to keep polls open on election day. This idea here that this Republican party under McDaniel has now given away two elections by being incompetent, letting Democrats steal it. That is a different element in the mix. Implicit in that is don't change anything. The party is on the right track. It's just getting robbed. We devoted the first half of this podcast to knives out among the Republicans. Let's talk about knives out among Democrats. And you're seeing this in a variety of places, including like San Francisco. But now we have an election in Chicago where we have an incumbent Democrat, Lori Lightfoot, who is, well, based on your reporting, Dave,

sounds like she's in a lot of trouble. OK, this is very, very complicated. And I wish I could hand everybody kind of a scorecard. Everybody in this scenario is really is effectively a Democrat. How many major candidates are there right now in Chicago? And what is it about? Why is Lori Lightfoot in so much trouble for reelection? Yeah, I'll try to run it down because it's a runoff system, but it's not that complicated. There are nine candidates who made the ballot, four of whom are raising enough money to be serious. A fifth, Willie Wilson, who's a kind of self-made multimillionaire, owns a medical supply company and has run for mayor three times. He's actually self-funded more than anyone has donated to these candidates. So there's five people that are kind of fighting for one of these top two runoff slots. Very different depending on who gets in the slot. So Lightfoot is in terrible trouble. She has absorbed blame for everything that's gone wrong in the city. And she is, and this is, you want to be careful when you're talking about like a female mayor. Female politicians of both parties are used to being accused of being uncompromising. But it comes up with everyone.

I mean, you talk to labor unions, you talk to the police union, you talk to your opponents. She is a very combative by nature person who had never been an executive before she became mayor. She ran in 2019 as a pure outsider, a former prosecutor who was going to clean up corruption and did not have relationships with the aldermen. I mean, did news people in the business community was not all on board with him, did not have good relationships with the teachers union, which has striked multiple times since she's become mayor. And she presided over both COVID and this increase in crime that was partly a result of COVID. So everything, there's actually

not many mayors who presided over COVID and then had to run for reelection. Bill de Blasio was termed out. Eric Garcetti was termed out. She is running on the entirety of what happened over the last four years and saying, well, all right, it was awful. I fought for the city. I did what I could. You know where I stand and things are improving is kind of the argument. And you mentioned San Francisco. Yes. One of those things where things on paper, some things are improving, but people don't feel like they are. So, I mean, the rap on her is that she doesn't work or play well with others. What is really driving that? You mentioned COVID. The crime seems to be top of mind.

It seems like that that is what most of the ads are directed to. A lot of the debate is, is she perceived to be soft on crime? Is she a progressive on crime? Is she being challenged from the left or from the right on this crime issue? That's a great question because she's doing what every incumbent in this position is trying to do. It's a Goldilocks strategy that has not been working so far, which is that she's got two opponents. And I mentioned there's nine people, there's fewer serious. So Willie Wilson exists, but her most credible opponents have been Paul Vallis, who is a former schools commissioner 25 years ago, has moved around the country,

been a schools commissioner in different cities, ran for governor. And he's got this funny trait, which we can talk a little bit, where he he's run for two governor. And he's got this funny trait, which we can talk a little bit about, where he's run for two elections and both times people had buyer's remorse about who won. So he ran for governor against Rob Blagojevich as a Democrat, and people don't really miss Rob Blagojevich. He ran for mayor in 2019 and just never got traction and Lightfoot won. So he's kind of a buyer's remorse candidate, but he's also, he's a white Greek American who is pledging to not just hire back police, but the city lost by 1500 police over the last four years, build back to that level, put more cops on the CTA, on the loop. He is running as the,

I am the pro police candidate who's going to crack down on crime finally. And then you have two progressives. You have Chuy Garcia. He's a longtime Latino politician, started his career during Harold Washington's mayoralty. Now I'm getting a little bit in the weeds, but basically he's running as the guy who says, I'm from the sort of rainbow coalition that when it takes power in the city and it hasn't been allowed to since Harold Washington leads with equity, you know, like redistributes resources, redistributes jobs. He's running more as the I can be the conciliatory mayor who will pursue progressive policies, but not make everybody furious. And then you have Brandon Johnson, who is a former teacher, a lobbyist for the teachers union, and they endorsed him. And he's more of the new generation

Bernie wing candidate. Now, Chewy was the Bernie candidate last time. And the knock on him from the Johnson people is he's made too many compromises. He's too tied into the party establishment after he had a chance not to be. Brandon's movement is the fresh progressive movement that's going to rethink policing. And that's the more defund is the word that every opponent has used when I talk about Johnson. But yeah, that idea that we just need more resources in the city. And so you have these Lightfoot has tried to punch from the right against Johnson and Garcia saying that they're just not credible. The city would get less safe. Businesses would leave if they win. And she's punched left against

Valis, saying he's a Republican in disguise. This is so interesting. Among other things, the fact that Valis did not say anything after Roe versus Wade was overturned, and he was like not a candidate. He didn't have a role, but she'll say, where was he during those eight months where we're fighting on Roe? Because she, like a lot of Democratic mayors, has made Chicago like a sanctuary for people who live in a red state where abortion is banned. In Illinois' case, this is Indiana, basically. And there's funds that people can use. They come to the city, get abortions. She's tried to hit that and say, look, you might be unhappy with me, but this guy's a crypto Republican. He's backed by the FOP. When I was with the mayor this week, I mean, she referred to the John Contanzara, the president of the Fraternal

Order of Police as a monster, a racist, homophobic monster. That is her strategy is I am, you might not be happy with what happened in the last four years, but I am the person you know, the devil you know, who is not as extreme as the cop candidate or the, you know, defund the police candidate. That is kind of her strategy. And according to the polling they've released from her campaign, you know, that's gotten her 25% as an incumbent. Okay, this is how messy this race is. Because you just mentioned this new poll that was released. And this was by her campaign.

Her own campaign released a poll showing that she is at 25% of the vote. The former schools guy, Vallis, is at 22%. Chewy Garcia is at 18%. Wilson is at 11%. Johnson's at 9%. I mean, this is a free-for-all at this point. So the way that it works is the top two will go on to a runoff. So I mean, clearly, all she needs to do is finish in the top two to have a shot. But it is interesting that Vallis, who is the guy talking about crime, an older white male, is the guy closest or only, you know, three points back. That's within the margin of error, isn't it? And this is her own poll. Yeah. And he's really been kind of resurrected from the political dead. Like he ran for mayor

in 2019 and came in ninth place. And I talked to him about this. He just said, yeah, there was no money because in 2019, the issue was Rahm Emanuel had been mayor for eight years. Everyone on the left hated him. Mike Madigan was starting to go down. All the corruption in Springfield, which is the Democratic majority in Springfield in the state government, is driven by Chicago area politicians. There was corruption in the ward. So she ran as the anti-corruption candidate. And he is the let's get back to basics candidate, just didn't get any traction. That has changed this time. As the old hand who knows how to fix the schools and fix crime and battle the teachers union,

that is a much better position for him to be in this time. So the Lightfoot campaign takes him very seriously. And it's happened before. I mean, there are people who run the first time, go nowhere, and then take fire. But this is a guy, you know, late 60s, end of his career, like a ton of energy when you see him on the trail. And I was I was with him and he was he's visiting every single ward. I was with him in black and Latino wards that everyone assumes other candidates are going to win. And he's not getting enormous crowds, but he's just very blunt. He's like, yeah, my the city is going to fall apart if she if she gets reelected or if one of these left wingers wins. This is the really dangerous, weedy thing. It's like I'm trying to imagine the runoff scenarios.

You can have a runoff between the mayor and him, where she'd be running as the progressive Democrat trying to save the city for right-wing takeover. You can have her versus one of the left-wing candidates, where she'd be the responsible progressive. Or you could have Vallis versus one of these left-wing candidates. And just a huge variance now, they would see the job. You'd have just like an existential discussion of, do we need to get policing back to 2019 levels or should we be funding more mental health and decarcerating people? In addition to that, who can work with the state's attorney? So Cook County contains Chicago and it has its own equivalent of the DA, the state's attorney.

He was one of these original who elected in 2016 the broad Soros campaign to elect progressive prosecutors. She was part of that wave. And both Vallis and the mayor blame her for letting too many people out of prison say that police don't don't want to even give testimony anymore because they know the case is going to be reversed at the county level. It'd be them versus people who say, yeah, Kim Fox is on the right track. Let's keep it going. I mean, it is, you set it up as the Democrats in disreputing my seat chair. It really is. I mean, this is every idea and faction of the Democratic Party is represented in this. And you have a mayor who is trying to be in the middle of that. It's only successful, in fact, that in so far as, as an incumbent, she has a chance of making the runoff. She's in a very weak position. This is why this is worth watching. Well, it's worth watching because it is Chicago and the mayor's race in Chicago is always worth watching.

But there is that through line of these progressive prosecutors who have become these flashpoints in places like Philadelphia, San Francisco, and now in Chicago, where there appears to be a significant backlash among fellow Democrats against some of these policies that sounded pretty good, I suppose, in the seminar rooms. But, you know, facing reality and what and how it's playing out on the street has been very different. We saw the recall of a progressive prosecutor in San Francisco. We see, you know, efforts to oust the progressive prosecutor in Philadelphia. And of course, now the progressive prosecutor in the Chicago area has become a major campaign issue. And so this is going to keep popping up. And it's going to be interesting

to see how Democratic primary voters resolve this. It will be because it's an all party election. So it's not Democratic primary. This is Chicago got rid of partisan primaries about 24 years ago. And it's always been a runoff. But there are a lot of Republicans who can vote, not many. If you look at the demographics, it's a small, Vallis could not win the election just with them. But the same thing in that recall in San Francisco, very similar, is once you go to the large pool, there are people who might represent a tiny section of voters in the city, a tiny group of conservatives. They need to be supplemented by liberals who've had enough. And that is the Vallis strategy. Everyone in the race, a tiny group of conservatives. They need to be supplemented by liberals who've had enough. And that is the valid strategy. Everyone in the race, too, is very aware of Chicago's

reputation, just how much it's attacked. I talked to Lightfoot about just how she's covered on Fox News. And she says, yeah, she goes around the country and people hear she's mayor of Chicago and they hear horror stories about it. Everyone is aware that the city is the icon of like... There's a mass shooting every weekend in Chicago. Yeah, that predated Lightfoot. And she's not saying it's an unfixable problem. She's saying just, I inherited this, and then the pandemic happened, and I'm trying to guide us all through it. Where opponents are like, yes, you inherited it, and everything got worse, so we need to replace you. But everyone's kind of within the boundaries of the Democratic Party.

I mean, as much as they're trying to portray Vallis as a Republican, when he ran for governor, he's a Democrat, he is a Democrat, but he is one of those sort of London breed, Brooke Jenkins, I'm a progressive, but enough already. Like, I'm a progressive, but like, we need to fund police. You can't have the liberal society we want if people are getting shot and their cars are getting broken into. That's the kind of liberalism he's running on. It's interesting because of Chicago, but that's made it, I think, extra interesting. In L.A., where I'm pulling from, we had a similar rundown last year.

So Karen Bass wins. But Karen Bass is the congresswoman from South Central parts of Los Angeles. Rick Caruso is a billionaire developer who was a Republican for years, became a Democrat to run for mayor. That was both more straightforward because it became a runoff between these two candidates. But what works for Bass was just saying, I am a progressive Democrat. He is a Republican. He's the Donald Trump of Los Angeles. And I'm going to meet him. I'm meeting everybody halfway. I want to fix homelessness. That's my priority if I'm elected. Very different Chicago. One crime is worse in Chicago. There's more gun murders, just as a fact, even though it's a smaller city. And two, yeah, it's Caruso was a Republican. She was a Democrat. She wasn't the

incumbent. So she was introducing herself to people. She's not the first unpopular incumbent to face this. But that's this ineffable fact with Lightfoot is that she's going into an election where most of the city, according to every poll, just doesn't like her and thinks she's been terrible. I mean, the event I went to with her, where I talked to her and was meeting people, I mean, it was not advanced very widely. It was for local business owners, many of whom were still on the fence. And she goes out, she very briefly, this is, you know, Wrigleyville, she's a Democratic mayor. This is a place where 100% of voters voted for Joe Biden. And in, you know, Wrigleyville. She's a Democratic mayor. This is a place where 100 percent of voters voted for Joe Biden.

And, you know, the five seconds she steps out of the car, there's a couple people say, hey. And then a woman who is walking past her, he goes, boo, fix the CTA. I mean, she's just kind of getting heckled by people who are going to vote for Democrats in every other election. I just think that she can't hack it. Well, I mean, that's the interesting thing about Chicago politics is because people there are dialed into the political world in a way that perhaps they might not be in a different city. Dave Weigel, this has been fantastic. Dave Weigel, political reporter now at Semaphore, by the way, what a fascinating website.

Congratulations on that move. Previously with the Washington Post and with Slate, also the author of The Show That Never Ends, The Rise and Fall of Prague Rock. You are a man of Renaissance tastes, Dave White. Oh, yeah. My secret is always I root for the Eagles, and that's the only sports I care about. And if you only root for one team, like 15 games a year, you have a lot of free time to get interested in nerdy music. That's my secret. Well, thanks for coming back on the podcast. And thank you all for listening to today's Bulwark podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We will be back tomorrow and we'll do this all over again.

The Bulwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.