The Bulwark Podcast - Jon Lovett: Unprecedented Times

Episode Date: July 3, 2024

The quiet coming from the White House sure suggests that the people around the president don't think Joe at his best can overcome Joe at his worst. Jon Lovett joins Tim Miller to discuss all the possible options as the world waits for Biden to say what he's going to do.

landlord telling you to just put on another sweater when your apartment is below 21 degrees? Are they suggesting you can just put a bucket under a leak in your ceiling? That's not good enough. Your Toronto apartment should be safe and well-maintained. If it isn't and your landlord isn't responding to maintenance requests, RentSafeTO can help. Learn more at toronto.ca slash rentsafeTO. Hello and welcome to the Borg Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It's a little later because my guest likes to sleep in. It's Wednesday, July the 3rd. I've got the co-author of Democracy

or Else, How to Save America in 10 Easy Steps. Hopefully they're easy. He's the princeling of the self-important podcaster class. He's my frenemy turned comrade in arms. He's Crooked Media's own John Lovett. What's up, buddy? Hi, Tim. It's good to see you. Yeah, no, it's 930 on the West Coast. I think it's a completely reasonable time to record a podcast. I want it to be up. I want to walk my dog. I want to read the news. I want to know what's going on in the world.

And then I want to talk to you. I don't think that's so terrible. It is not terrible. I'm just, the listeners expect three o'clock. The listeners in the East expect three o'clock. So when it's a little later, they're going to want to know who to blame. And I just want to make sure they know it's you. This is not probably going to be that uplifting of a podcast, as people know. And so I pledge to you that we're going to have a few laughs

and we're going to have a few constructive, optimistic, forward-looking items about the easy steps to save democracy at the end, if you stick around, if you can survive. And Tim, I want to tell you something. I woke up today feeling optimistic. Great. Tell me about that. At core, here's what I was feeling going into the debate. What's level set? How were your vibes before?

I went into the debate. Look, we're all venting spleen this week. We're all revealing our deepest truths. It's 2 a.m., and everyone has just revealed to each other that they believe that the wedding they're at was heading for divorce. You know, it's just like everybody is just loose. Everything is coming out, right? I went into the debate feeling like there were three possibilities.

Obviously, the one most hoped for was that Joe Biden would have a stellar night. Right? That, like, they prepped him for this. They wanted this. He is going to do very well against Donald Trump, put a lot of these stories to bed, and the dynamic will shift. The other two scenarios, one was obviously what we're currently living in. But what I felt was the most likely scenario was the middling performance.

The one where Joe Biden shows up, he is fine. He has some stumbles. It's two old men bickering, lands a couple punches. The dynamic doesn't shift. Joe Biden comes out at, you know, what we would hope we could call tied, but is really still behind with voters having deep concerns about his age, disliking both options and kind of the slow churn and march towards an uncertain future continues. And at first you're watching this debate and it feels fucking terrible. Like you feel a pit in your stomach. But as it continued, you start to realize that we may not know what's coming next, but the one thing that is for sure is that that dynamic that slow painful enervating dynamic has shifted to what well to what right has it shifted to a funeral march

has it shifted to you know like getting eaten alive from the inside or has it shifted to a different more positive dynamic i think what it has done is that it has flattened the curve of outcomes. Like, very good and very bad outcomes both feel more possible than they did going into the debate. Okay, that's true. But the median outcome we were heading towards wasn't pretty. Like, the most likely possibility that we were heading towards felt like an inexorable march to maybe

eking it out. But all of us feeling in our bones like this was a campaign that had to change something. It didn't have the capacity to change. Okay, so there you go. So the possible optimism is that there is some type of course change coming. Okay, we'll go through what those different options are. I guess the question is we don't have a course change now though you know what we have is in the follow-up from the debate

last thursday you would have thought both of us have been on campaigns you've been on more winning ones than me but you would have thought if you were gonna you know try to change the dynamic with the current ticket that something would have done been done to try to do that there was a nice waffle house hangout after the debate there was a pretty good speech the next day that some people were excited about and then since then there's been nothing it has been the quietest that these two old men have been in our lives in a half decade while all of us are drunk at this wedding to extend your analogy whispering about things they have been silent joe biden was out for like one minute yesterday i believe his schedule today is pretty light he's got lunch with

the vice president he's got a medal of honor. He might Zoom with some governors this evening. And so, you know, do you think that's just a calm before the change? Or what do you see happening right now with the existing Democratic ticket? We talked about this yesterday on Pod Save America. I think obviously the polling coming out has made people feel a little bit more willing to come out and say they have deep and abiding concerns about Joe Biden being the nominee. But more than that, the fact that Joe Biden hasn't been out there more is really fueling this at this point, because if that really was one bad debate performance, and obviously, I think that everyone says that, and they're being a bit glib, they know that the Joe Biden at his best right now is still, comes with a certain amount of risk, but that this debate

and the level of bad that we saw was somehow an outlier, if that really were the case, he would be out there right now. He would have immediately done a round of interviews on the Friday. He would have been on the campaign trail on Saturday. Where has he been that they're not addressing these concerns? The one thing we heard, like there's a deeply weird story that comes out over the weekend that he's huddling with family and turning to Hunter Biden.

And they're thinking about whether he should do a town hall or a long-form interview. Then we find out he hasn't even been calling members of Congress. Then we found out like, no, no, he's going to sit down for an interview with George Stephanopoulos

on Friday, a week after the debate, for 15 minutes. It all is really amping up the concern that they don't believe Joe Biden, even at his best, can overcome the Joe Biden that is worse that we saw at the debate. And we needed Joe Biden to do really well at that debate. He had to change the dynamic, and instead it confirmed everyone's worst fears. And there's a story out today that he's talking to people about how bad the performance was, that he's pretty clear out about it. But then there's this strange summary of the call where apparently, according to The Times, Joe Biden told someone, someone he's apparently close with, but not so close with that they wouldn't go talk to The Times, that he understands that if he has another moment or two, like what happened in the debate, it's over. And it's like, I'm sorry, was that debate strike one? What are we talking about here?

That's a good question. And it kind of leads into another one of the things I wanted to hash out with you as a charter Democrat, because some people have been telling me that my Republican stripes have been showing. But I do want to just throw out one more thing. You mentioned the polls. And so we do have a new pullout today that i think is going to drive a lot of

this discussion uh it's the new york times sienna poll before the debate trump was already beating biden by three points among likely voters six points among registered voters in that poll and the latest poll since the debate now trump leads leads Biden by six among likely voters and nine among registered voters. Honestly, I just, I never even thought that Donald Trump winning by nine points in a polarized country is even possible. There have also been other leaks, not just his friend about how he was taking naps during prep. And, you know, Hunter isn't just at the photo shoot at the family, but Hunter's in the White House now. And so it shows that there's some people around him that are concerned who aren't speaking out. And so my question to you is, there is a school of thought that says, Joe Biden is the president.

This is Joe Biden's decision. Joe Biden's been nominated by the voters. And so until Joe Biden says anything, people like us shouldn't. And I'll put a finer point on it here's the chief strategist of George W Bush's 2004 campaign Matt Dowd he says I would ask pundits who are anti-Trump how they think they're helping by constantly undermining our only current opposition do you really think the White House will be influenced by you he goes on just because you believe something to be true it doesn't mean you have to say it if it isn't helpful. Sometimes the best path in life is to not always announce your truth.

John Lovett, what do you think? Is it helpful for us to be discussing our truth right now? Or, I mean, because it's possible that Joe Biden's just going to ride this out if he thinks it was only strike one, right? If Joe Biden ultimately decides not to step aside, that he looks at all of this conversation, he looks at the data, and he makes a decision that as much of a risk as it is to continue, given his liabilities and the way in which he confirmed them with voters, it is even riskier to throw the nomination open or to throw it to Vice President Harris, because the polling does not show that they perform that much better and better to go into battle with the sure knowledge of your biggest liability rather than finding it out over the next several months. If that happens, I will fight like

absolute fucking hell to make sure Joe Biden is the next president, that my concerns about Joe Biden are about his ability to be a messenger and candidate to carry the torch for what we believe are the incredible stakes in this election. So why not just do that now? Why not just pod save happy talk, you know? Yeah. Grampy's doing great. You know, he landed that one good line about the handicap, about Trump's handicap, and now he can't carry a bag. That was pretty good. This is always the challenge in the run-up to an election,

talking about a candidate you want to win but have concerns about, right? When are you supposed to be just a team player who parrots what they're saying? And when do you talk openly about your concerns? I think one of the lessons of Trump winning in 2016 is that for fear of hurting the campaign we wanted to win, we weren't honest about our anxieties. and we were too sanguine about the fact that the Clinton campaign would pull it out. In this case, I think that that debate performance was shocking enough to make us all say, despite the fact that obviously it would be better for Biden, if Biden is the candidate, for us to all be saying, it was an anomaly. It wasn't that bad. It's about the policies, not the messenger. It's about the stakes, not the odds, whatever. Obviously, I think that would be better. But there are moments where you say, hold on a second. We should be honest about what we saw,

because it might be the case that it is worth in this moment to make a change. And the only way we will come to a point where Joe Biden decides to make that change is if people right now are being honest about how they react to the debate and their concerns about the implications for the electorate of what we saw. And we're not the Republicans. We're not the Republicans. We're just not going to pretend we didn't see what we saw with our own eyes. That's not who we are. That's not who we want to be. I don't want to be part of a political movement where you have to pretend that the dear leader is infallible. We have one of those. It absolutely fucking sucks. It has destroyed a political movement. It has destroyed a party. It destroys the people

and the credibility of the people who are a part of it. And I just don't believe you have to do that in order to be a successful political movement. I just reject the idea that that is what's required. Just so everybody knows, Lovett had me on Pod Save America during the height of the Gaza protests. And he was like, Tim, so what do you think about from the river to the sea chance? So this whole interrogation section is simply payback for that. I don't even know that these are supposed to be hard questions. You don't feel like this is challenging? You aren't persuaded at all by the notion that maybe given the stakes, there should be a just propping up Biden-Harris

and fucking full speed ahead, pedal to the metal? That's not persuasive to you the metal. That's not persuasive to you at all? It's not persuasive to me. I understand it. I'm open to it. I'm thinking about it. There's some validity to it. It would be one thing, though, if this was a debate about Joe Biden gave a speech in Milwaukee at a brewery and stumbled a bunch, and then those videos were going viral on TikTok. And then there was a media reaction to it. But the idea that this is some media-driven narrative, I think, is ridiculous when you

have roughly 80 million people consuming the debate, whether on their phones or live, plus all the many millions of video views of the worst moments being shared on TikTok and Instagram and everywhere else. The idea that we shouldn't be talking about this because it lends credence to what people saw with their own eyes, I think is ridiculous in this very specific case. I think the fact that the debate made people question whether Joe Biden is capable of repairing the damage joe biden did means the conversation has to happen so that's that i also don't think it's close call i'm like i'm obviously playing the devil's advocate because this is like what people are hearing to me it's insane to me i

actually i'm fine i listen to the people's feedback on this but it's insane i mean like it wasn't it's even worse than what you described not only was it not one bad speech in milwaukee with some stumbles it was like the worst thing i've ever watched on live television and it was it was horrific earlier you're like there's a pit in your stomach i was like there's a pit in my stomach i like my entire insides were eating themselves like i was sweating and i guess i've never i couldn't look like i couldn't watch. So you can't pretend like that didn't happen. And so you have to deal with it. I think the more complicated question is the opposite.

Do you feel like there should have been a more open conversation about it before? Or do you think it was defensible to not have a more open conversation about it before? Because frankly, it was a borderline call and whenever there were big moments, Joe Biden did the job. And so what else were you going to do? Have you thought about that at all? Yeah, I have. I actually have. Like, I've tried to be honest about it. And I think a few things. First of all, how you just

characterized it, I think is exactly right. It was a borderline call. I think the question over the last two and a half years has been been some version of, is going into a general with Joe Biden and the risks associated with that greater or lesser than the risks that go with trying to find somebody new. And I truly felt like it was hard to say, just really just didn't know the answer. And I was also, I think, a bit deferential to Ron Klain said this once, which I think is a very fair way of describing the media and its reaction to Joe Biden, which is don't underestimate how much the media underestimates Joe Biden. And I think that there's some truth to that. I underestimated Joe Biden as a candidate. I underestimated Joe Biden as a president. A lot of people did.

And certainly on domestic policy over the last four years, it's hard for me to point to a single place where I would say Joe Biden's age, his lower stamina than that of a younger man, prevented success on the legislative front, on the executive front. Maybe on the, what about making a case for the successes front? Because that's part of the job of being president. Right. But I'm talking about just his successes as a governing president have been extraordinary. Sure. Fair. That he understood what he could and could not get out of Congress. Even when others doubted him, he was able to out-negotiate Kevin McCarthy. He was able to negotiate with Joe Manchin. His persona as a moderate made more progressive policies policies even you don't like tim that i like eminently possible like he did an amazing job and he was came in after a pandemic really nice that now

that we know that the presidents are totally immune that he that he used that that you know new tool in his toolbox to only give doctors you know uh and get out of jail free card on their med school loans. I think that was a great use of the one get out of jail free of this new tool that he's got. But anyway, continue. It is a side point, but I don't understand how the Supreme Court can be like, oh, the president can't regulate pollution, but anything the president does using his authority vested in the Constitution makes him immune from prosecution. So can't he just go do whatever the fuck he wants?

Anyway, it's deeply confusing. It is confusing. That's maybe a question for John Roberts. We have a request to get John Roberts on the podcast. We'll see if he entertains that. Yeah, yeah. Good luck with that. Good luck with that.

But yes, the biggest liability Joe Biden has had has been as a messenger, as a speaker, as a persuader. And I think part of why I think this debate is a very good one to be having after that debate performance and why I'm not persuaded at all by the idea that we should just shut up and get on board is because what he has to do is persuade people he's up to the job. And just by the fact that he's not been out there the past couple of days tells us that even inside Joe Biden's closest circle, they don't know that he is up to the task of persuading people that he's up to the job, even if he is, even if he can successfully do the most important pieces of what it is to be president. And that's just the reality.

All right, I want to start going through what the reality. All right. I want to start going through what the fuck we do then. Shout out props to Lloyd Doggett was going to play the audio. But, you know, you can Google it of a congressman out of Austin was the first guy out on the out on the plank here asking Joe Biden to step aside. There have been some others, you know, a little muted from the actual politicians. And we had Jen Psaki, a friend of ours, friend of yours, friend of all the pods. She was on this week over the weekend with Bill Kristol.

And like her case was, it's going to be too messy. Doing anything is too messy. You know, it's too complicated, you know, because of convention stuff and open. And so anyway, what do you think about that case? That it is what it is, it was a bad debate, but it's a close run call again, actually. It's not actually as clear as the bros want to say it is. What do you say to that?

I think it is messy. I think it is risky. I don't know what happens. I don't know how well the party coalesces and how quickly. It's never happened in our lifetimes. I don't know how everyone reacts. It would be history making. It would be surprising. Anyone who could claim to know how it all shakes out, I think, is full of it. Also, our current path has never happened. I get really frustrated on this. People are like, the only time we did this was 1968. Look at how that turned out. And I was like, okay, well, the only time you ran an incumbent president with approval ratings in the 30s, they lost.

So look how that turned out. We've never had an incumbent president running who just came off a debate where they demonstrated that they couldn't speak coherently. So that seems like a risky and messy proposition as well. I feel like there are people that, given the uncertainty and anxiety and the legitimate terror they have of Donald Trump being elected, are trying to find purchase. They're trying to find little islands of confidence on which they can launch their little attacks. And sorry, we're all floating in the sea here, all of us. And right now we are marching towards defeat.

That's what it feels like. Do I think it is possible that Joe Biden can change that? Yes. Does it require Joe Biden being out there in a way he has so far not been willing to be? Yes. Was the debate the moment he was supposed to do that? Yes. Does it require Joe Biden being out there in a way he has so far not been willing to be? Yes. Was the debate the moment he was supposed to do that? Yes. But of course, it's possible. And if he is the candidate, we will do our best to make it true. And I think, by the way, I just want to throw this out there going on, because who knows, Joe Biden might end up making a decision. This is Joe Biden's decision. The one point that the people telling us to shut up have is like it is joe biden's decision and so it's like not really our decision and and

maybe our us speaking out is unhelpful i kind of disagree with that i think it like creates a domino effect where it gives courage to people that maybe have influence with joe biden to speak more but like joe biden could still win the blue wall He could still narrowly, but that's like probably the ceiling. Yeah. Diminished Joe Biden could probably win 270 electoral votes. And it's way better than Trump winning a landslide, which is also possible. But that's a scary outcome,

right? This idea that that's not crazy. Like Joe Biden, by the narrowest margins of our lifetime, wins an election where, where he is in this condition, like the MAGA reaction to that like we're going head first into a rocky fucking situation no matter what eight years ago the question was

can Donald Trump win right we're going to go into the election eight years later and the question will be can Joe Biden win can he sneak out 270 electoral votes the narrow just understand what we're talking about. Over eight years, through four years of Donald Trump mishandling a pandemic, being impeached twice, inciting an insurrection, we will have gone from the question being

can Donald Trump win to can Donald Trump lose? And I just don't believe we should accept, without a big, fulsome, honest conversation that the best way we want to go into the general election after our party's convention is can Donald Trump lose? Shouldn't that tell us something about the need for an honest conversation now before

we have reached that point? I think we can do better than that. Okay, so what's better? Next, the next question is, obviously, the vice president is Kamala Harris. Jonathan Last, my colleague, has a newsletter out today that people are sure to be thrilled about, which argues that maybe the best thing to do would be for Joe Biden not just to drop out of the race, but to resign so that Kamala Harris could run as an incumbent and make Donald Trump call her Madam President. I do think that's kind of a juicy proposition.

On the other hand hand she's not exactly lighting the world on fire in the polls either and uh i think a big part of the reason why we're in this situation is that there's a lot of folks that have doubts about kamala harris uh the biden people clearly behind the scenes are attack have attacked her and and used like the fact that they don't think that she could do it as a rationale for staying. So like, what, what do you say about that first step, the Kamala Harris of it all? Do you think that she could do it? And do you think it's worth even talking about other options? Or what do you think about that? So first of all, I find that kind of argument, pretty, the argument from whoever they

may be, and who knows how reliable they are, Biden people, basically saying, you know, it's a little bit like in Hollywood. You'll see that like some very, very high person inside of a studio will always make the dumbest motherfucker their deputy because that makes them unfireable. Like that's like a joke in Hollywood. Like, oh, right, he put so-and-so beneath him so that he never needs to worry about being replaced by the next person. I find that kind of argument pretty insulting, both because Joe Biden chose Kamala Harris. So I don't understand. The argument is that Joe Biden should remain president because on the most important question of who would replace him, he chose someone he doesn't believe

in and therefore you're stuck with him because you'd have to go with this other person, the person he put on the national stage. I just find it to be a very self-serving and circuitous argument. I certainly believe, if Joe Biden came out to the microphones and said, I've made a decision, as much as I love doing this job, I believe that it's time to pass the torch. And I'm passing the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris. And I urge all of my delegates to support my vice president. And she's the nominee on the first ballot. 100% do I believe that we could rally behind Harris and that she could absolutely win. And I'd be completely fucking ecstatic to do everything we could to elect her. Do I believe that's what necessarily has to happen? No. You could just as easily say, Vice President Kamala Harris is an extraordinary politician,

and she will be one of the people the delegates will have to choose between. And the delegates will then have a big choice to make, which is do her strengths and her name recognition and her, you know, place in the national stage overcome some of the negatives and baggage associated with incumbency. And like, you know, put that through its paces, we'll have a race. I just just like i don't know which one of those is better and i can be persuaded either way to be honest yeah i want to add one more thing about the uh we can't switch from kamala because she's so weak argument kamala's already on the fucking ballot because there's an 81 year oldold president that had a total freeze on national television for 15 seconds.

So Kamala's already on the ballot. So if you don't think that people will elect Kamala because the country's too racist or too sexist or because they don't like her or whatever, then that's an argument for quitting the race if you're Joe Biden, not an argument for staying in the race. Because of the situation that Joe Biden has left us in, Kamala is going to be the person that the Republicans run against. Yeah. And also, by the way, nobody knows what it looks like to have Kamala Harris step forward in this moment and agree to be the nominee and carry the torch to be the representative, by the way, in the fight to preserve abortion rights, something that she's been doing across the country already. Like being vice president is a silly job. And there have been a bunch of silly moments and Kamala

Harris has silly moments. And so like, everyone's like, oh, she's silly. It's like, okay. She is a center left, normal, democratic politician who is under the age of 70. Which is, it seems to me, what the country is fucking clamoring for. And now, does she meet the bill for new and normal? Does the association with the administration become a liability when people, I think,

are looking for something new? Maybe, maybe not. I don't know the answer to that. But my general sense is just stepping all the way back is the country is saying very, very clearly that they are unhappy having to choose between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. They're even more dissatisfied with their options after that debate. The power and appeal of new and normal, whether that's Kamala Harris or someone else, I think would be extraordinary. I agree with that. And by the way, I think everything you said is right. And I think that Kamala clearly is a stronger candidate than the current president, because she's capable of waging a strong campaign.

And I think that she's a fresh face. And so I think there's that. Also, look, I know you feel this too. Look, I felt kind of insane over the last few days, like especially when people point to like the generic numbers like, oh, well, you know, a generic Democrat isn't necessarily performing better than Joe Biden, or Kamala Harris doesn't perform better than Joe Biden. And it's like, yeah, right, but there would then be a campaign. There'd be a big political campaign that would take place. And figurehead could do something with it. Well, presumably, the reason we all pay attention to politics, people raise all this money, they care about the biography and talents of individual campaigns. We have primaries rooted on who would be the most electable and persuasive to a general populace because we recognize that the act of conducting good old

fashioned politics is not pointless. It will have an impact and influence on the planet, on the world, on the people that it actually influences. Like practicing politics does something, right? So it's like, do I know what happens when J.B. Pritzker or Gavin Newsom or Kamala Harris runs against Donald Trump? No, of course I don't know. But I presume they'll do politics and they'll have some impact on the numbers. Same. Same. Doing politics would also be a step up some impact on the numbers. Same. Same.

Doing politics would also be a step up for us at the moment. Okay, so we're going through all this. We all would have said this is silly. This is West Wing. This is stupid podcast talk. Just don't even think about this. It's not a broker convention. This is absurd.

We ought to have dismissed all this, but we're here now. Like we are in the most insane, situation imaginable yeah where america's stupidest man a reality tv show host who was criminally indicted forced effort times and and spur and cited an attack on the capital of losers carrying his flag is like right now on a glide path to the presidency again which he plans to turn into a light autocracy so that like that is happening and the current person running against him is unable to speak so like we're in unprecedented times and so like shouldn't we at least consider unprecedented options i'm all for kamala if it's kamala but like to stop that crazy motherfucker

that we just talked about you just need to win three states wisconsin michigan and pennsylvania two of those states have popular governors that just won huge midterm victories landslides it's reasonable to believe that they would win easily against donald trump in their home states which means that the two of them together josh sapiro and gretchen whitmer would have to win one other state like if we're going to be in unprecedented times and pull the emergency alarm to stop Donald Trump and save the country, shouldn't we pull the fucking emergency alarm and pick the best people that we could possibly pick? I say that with love to the vice president. So I think you have to go even one step further, which is to say, hey, everybody, forget deciding that it should or shouldn't be Kamala Harris versus Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer, Raphael Warnock, whoever it may be.

Don't hide from the responsibility, which is you get to decide if we're going to decide at all. Like the Democratic Party, we are not two kids in a trench coat pretending to be adults. We are going to decide who we send out to represent us. And we can hide from that decision, which is just another way of making the decision and choosing Joe Biden. We can look around and wait for somebody else to be the adult, which I think has been a little bit what it's felt like,

right? All these politicians and others saying on background to reporters that they want somebody else to step up, but nobody actually coming forward and stepping up. Or we can just be adults, right? Like we can just take on the responsibility and say we're going to have this debate and we're going to trust each other and we're going to be honest about the fact that it's risky and messy but we're not going to shy away from the responsibility like i i don't like that to me is is the first step like there's this feeling that somehow i don't know maybe it's like a fault of social media and just seeing each other too much and kind of like, you know, nobody is a hero to their, to their valet, right? Like we all kind of know each other,

knowing a little too much about each other that we kind of look around and say, oh, none of these people are like, these are the people who are in charge. They're just, they're just regular people. They, how could they possibly be in charge of such a monumental decision? That's always how it's been, right? Like that's always how it's been. It's just, you know, Ted Cruz had a moment at the convention where he had one moment where he showed some metal and he said, everybody should vote their conscience, right? Like that's what it looks like. That was one moment. And if more people had been like that, if more people had decided that they were responsible, that they were the adults, that there was no other group of leaders, that history wasn't made of different kinds of people, that they were just people like you.

Like, if more people had been like that, maybe we would live in a different world today. Like, there's nobody else coming. Like, it's us. the debate and we'll ride with Biden maybe to victory or to defeat, or we'll coalesce around Kamala Harris because it was a way to avoid a big convention fight, or we'll decide to throw it open. Whatever it will be, will be a decision we collectively made, even though yes, right now it is up to Joe Biden himself to decide what he does. I think it's just hard to argue, looking at all that, all this is close run call stuff. I think it's hard to argue that opening it up is not the best option. And I think it might be the best option for the vice president, by the way.

Because I think her going into the nomination, having earned it, having had a forum, having had her first 60 Minutes interview, where now she's the president. I think the pressure takes a little bit of the air out of the pressure from her a little bit i don't know i think it might be the best situation it seems to me if we're being a grown-ups if we're looking to ted cruz and saying do what rafael cruz did it seems like that's the thing to do i think you are right that if kamala harris is the nominee the best way for her to be the nominee is to have earned it by being part of an open process and winning a vote. That's obviously true to me. It is not obviously true to me that it is better to have an open convention versus very quickly coalescing around Vice President Harris. I just truly would like to just remain ambivalent about that and not confident in the way that you are, that you bring to everything.

That beautiful confidence. do i have confidence well here that's a good transition into our next segment which i added today just for you it's a one-time segment okay and this segment is called apology tour you might remember your friend uh barack obama um became the president was a historic moment the country united around him we were happy. And then he immediately traveled the world apologizing for all of America's ills. And that inspired the Mitt Romney bestselling book, No Apologies, which you may have read or may be sitting somewhere in a basement. And by the way, hey, do you think it's been good or bad for our society that the Republican Party decided that apologizing is always 100% a sign of weakness? Do you think that maybe that book's title was a hinge point after which Republican politics shifted towards this shameless, ridiculous version of what it means to be strong, which is to never, ever admit that you made a mistake? Do you think that might

have been a negative? I don't know. What do you think of it? Do you think it was good for our society that now when you make a fake ad of mark luther king endorsing you you apologize then realize oops that was a mistake and then you embrace it 100 do you think having that kind of no apologies politics has been a good thing tim happy i propose this segment um i do not think it's been a good thing i do not um i do not also think it was a hinge point of history and thank god for willard mit romney uh we could use more a few more people like him right now though there was probably a bad call in the book title and the shaking of trump's hand and the shaking of trump's hand i mean a lot of things that mit romney could and should apologize for and he has had some apologizing i have as well

and so you know yes i do bring confidence a lot of times in the moment which is needed i think you know some people to do something i think the Democrats could use a little infusion of some people who have a little bit of confidence to try to spur some backbone and like some discussion and bring things out to the open. But that does lead to some downside consequences sometimes, which is what follows next, the apology tour. We're going to start here. Do we need to apologize, yes or no, to Dean Phillips? Do we need to apologize to Dean Phillips no, to Dean Phillips? Do we need to apologize to Dean Phillips? That's such an important question. But I will tell you, I think the answer is no.

But that's because I remember thinking to myself at the time, I want to know how we talk about Dean Phillips. We will not look back on this and feel any kind of regret. And I think if you, look, what a terrible thing to suggest. What was his name who said to a bunch of reporters, go follow me around? And they followed him around. Then he was on the monkey, the monkey ship. What's his name?

Gary Hart. Gary Hart. Yeah. Like famous last words. But like, I believe at the time. Go listen to my podcast from February by Dean Phillips segments and see if there's anything I said that was bad. See how big we did.

But like, I feel like the question we were weighing then is still the same question we're wearing now, which is, is the risk of Biden and his age greater or worse than the risk of someone new? I just think that debate changed the calculus, right? I think it was an open question until Joe Biden, who said, after the Her report, how can you prove you're up to the job? Watch me. We did, And he didn't pass the test, right? Like the problem with Dean Phillips wasn't that there wasn't validity to what he was saying is that A, he wasn't the candidate and B, no one else emerged to challenge Joe Biden in a serious way. It's a little bit of the problem now, right? Because to our conversation earlier

about like, like where are the adults that realize that's up to us? Like, no one told Barack Obama to challenge Hillary Clinton in 2007, right? He just decided, he looked at the world and said, I can do this, right? He had to decide that. And nobody decided they were the right person to challenge Joe Biden, which meant they weren't. It meant they weren't. The right person to challenge Joe Biden, which meant they weren't. It meant they weren't. The right person to challenge Joe Biden was the person who decided it was their time to challenge Joe Biden. There wasn't a challenger.

Dean Phillips wasn't the right person. And so we didn't have an alternative. So that's sort of my feeling about it. And by the way, the concerns he raised at the time weren't invalid. And we didn't say they were, you know? I'm going to disagree. I'm speaking only for myself. I do need to apologize to dean phillips i still don't like that gelato and i still think the campaign uh that you ran could have been more positive and focused on how we need generational

change rather than pot shots but that said i think i was too dismissive of your concerns i'm sorry dean phillips next next person do we need to apologize to alex thompson annie linsky the wall street journal that did a front page story about joe biden and and everyone was like rupert murdoch is gaslighting you do we need to apologize to axios as alex thompson or or the walls oh were you in were you in fiji during the wall street journal outrage tell me what the story was yeah front page wall street journal story that said that like several there were several sources saying that joe biden has good days and bad days the problem was the only on the record sources were republicans so everybody did a long segment including us saying fuck you

wall street journal like if you're gonna write the story you need democratic sources alex thompson hasn't like has just been covering the you know biden bubble aggressively and getting a lot of heat you know from from liberals uh do we apologize to any of the reporters that were trying to trying to write about this uh i think probably what do you think yeah okay i think yes i think clearly yes i don't the wall street journal thing they fucked it up like the wall street journal editors should have made sure that they had at least like you know a stated democrat on background or like something like the way that the wall street journal thing went out and since you know you were like grabbing coconuts out of the coconut tree what's the common line

you might not remember but i do think that there were some legitimate criticisms but i think there were a lot of pot shots at the beltway media class for like you know talking about like joe biden's light schedule or whatever and um i think the joe the joe biden team pushed a lot of those pot shots and i think probably the reporters were right okay this one's last one one for you one for me this is the one for you john love it do you need to apologize to kamala harris let me read crooked Media co-founder and podcast host John Lovett attacked Harris for debating Warren over the fate of Trump's Twitter account.

Quote, Kamala Harris going after Elizabeth Warren on banning Trump from Twitter is one of the most pathetic stunts I've seen in a debate, John Lovett tweeted and later deleted. And then there's this segment from Love It or Leave It. Let's take a listen. Is the 2024 anxiety getting to you too? The election. Heck no, John. I'm not worried at all. And it's not just because I ate all the pills at the bottom of my purse that I thought

were loose mini Altoids, but then they were pills. Really? Well, they definitely weren't Altoids. Okay. Smell? Okay. I mean, oh, Jesus. Yeah, no, I don't think it was. I mean, aren't you worried about the election next year? Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

No. No. 2024, okay, it's a piece of cake, John. Piece of funfetti cake, even. Do you have an apology to Kamala Harris? Our future nominee. Let's take these one at a time.

I'll take the second piece first. That's Alison Rees who does an incredible Kamala Harris who is delightful every time she's on the show and I will never apologize for having that amazing performance on Love or Leave It. Would do again.

Will continue to do, especially if Kamala Harris is the nominee. It's so funny. To find that, I googled John Lovett. Apology, John Lovett dragged. John Lovett, I'm sorry. And there was people quoting. Sure, sure. So now the K-Hive, which I think has mostly removed the hashtag,

kind of taken off their uniforms and hidden amongst the civilian population. I know, they're back. They're coming after me this week. The K has been hitting me hard. Now, they really dislike that tweet from the primaries. My criticism of it, and I think this was and continues to be fair, is that the stakes in the election were so high, trying to score a point against Elizabeth Warren about calling on Twitter to ban Donald Trump from

Twitter, to me felt beneath Kamala Harris and not a important place to draw a distinction with one of your opponents. And i thought and still think kamala harris is a stronger and bigger figure than that i just i just didn't like the hit by the way i've deleted all my tweets i have deleted i've deleted the full archive uh for the record and with it's a good piece of advice that's gonna lead us to our next next item actually um so do you have to apologize to kamala harris or no no no no apologies john love it so far this is great i know i totally flipped roles we totally flipped roles you chastised me for being the republican that won't apologize and now i've apologized for to every person so far no apologies for you i would say no here's what i will say

that was a very in a heated moment i feel like i expressed that very harshly. I'll concede that. I'll concede that. I was just, but I was annoyed because I was like, I think Kamala Harris is better than this. And it just felt like such a stunty moment. And I was bugged by it. And I won't apologize for that, Tim. I just won't.

Concession accepted. I appreciate your, you're like, I wonder which of the Romney children are you? Are you Craig or are you Tag? And by the way, like, I think Donald Trump being off Twitter kind of made absence make the heart grow fonder. It's like we lack the kind of daily grind of his evil for a long time. Anyway.

Totally agree with that. Totally agree with that. Okay, my last one is for me. It's to Politics Girl. Earlier this week, I have all these people that are replying to me that are, I hate the word griftersifter so i'm not going to say it that are influencers that are you know that like do videos and tiktoks and they're like we gotta stand by joe because democracy is on the line and all this stuff and they're they're flooding my feed with

them and tom nichols on monday brought up how his wife couldn't even watch the debate. And that jogged a memory in my mind that one of the people sending me videos had said the same thing that they didn't even watch the debate, but it doesn't matter. And it turns out like the video is much more nuanced than that. And I wasn't as familiar with the oeuvre as I should have been. And I am politics girl. I appreciate you. She's been out there doing the good work. I shouldn't have called you a grifting influencer that is not true i apologize that ends the segment

apology tour okay we're skipping the right stuff we're out of time we'll do a whole me and john love it a little whole youtube on the right stuff another day you know if our democracy survives quick mailbag then you're gonna end us with something uplifting mailbag for john david how did you know when you should log off and take a break from Twitter? Because that is a lesson I need to learn, apparently, given what's happening to me on x.com this week. But I can't stop looking at it. So how did you do it? How did you know when you should log off? So it's not when you know you need to log off. It's when you've logged off for a while and realize how much better it is to not be logged on.

For me, actually, by the way, I feel like log off from log on is not the issue. Here's what I would say. Just take it off your phone. I really am increasingly feeling like it's not about the platforms or the algorithms. It's the access point. Twitter is a fine device on your desktop.

It lives on your desktop. And it's a screaming void that only exists when you're at your work machine. But then when you're in your life in the world, and you have your phone, your phone is for texting and maps. Just get this stuff out of your brain in the little liminal moments of life when you're just out in the world. That's when I think Twitter does its most damage because you're just in life and then all of a sudden you're back into this fucking box of screams and you're out and you're back in life

and then it's just like dipping into a horror movie. You're in a romantic comedy and then your phone is a horror movie like put you don't need that that's what i that's my feeling okay i'm not gonna do it this week or until we have a nominee i can't i'm i'm just i can't think about anything else i can't talk about anything else i need the box of screams because i'm screaming unfortunately a lot of people are screaming at me this week. So there's that.

So I probably should log off. I know I should, but I can't. I don't know how and I can't, but I'm going to- But see, but this is what I mean. But who is screaming at you? Who cares? That's a good point. Who cares? Going back into it, I've just been back on it this week and it's just like, it's so bad for your brain that to see one good thought you have to see eight bad thoughts yeah right or wrong just poorly expressed bad thoughts just just mediocre poorly described feelings i'm not gonna re-listen to my dean phillips interview but i will i'm gonna re-listen to this advice from john lovett which i think is sage once we're through this crisis

because i don't i don't i think i would be lying to myself if I thought that I could get off now. Okay. Deb, that's a question for me, but I'm interested in your take as well. John, when you were an operative in the Republican party, that's the Tim,

did you also hear about orgies and tons of drugs like Madison Cawthorn mentioned? And so I have that question for you as well in the democratic party, you know, I've heard about things in dc i've heard that people occasionally do drugs and occasionally have group sexual encounters i don't think that it was madison cawthorne having it with i don't know paul ryan or lindsey graham or i don't know tim scott or anybody else i don't think that was happening

i have a sense of madison connor and might know that's a little thing about drugs and orgies that's just a sense that i have and so i think he might have been expressing experience that he had in washington but i don't think unlikely with other republican congresspeople but you actually worked in government unlike me because all my candidates lost. So what would you think? Orgies and drug parties in DC? Is that something that you saw a lot of? Here's how I feel about this. I feel so profoundly left out. Like, I feel like maybe they were happening. Maybe they weren't. But I just wasn't getting the nod. You know what I mean? Like, like, I always feel like i have felt from the time i first realized i was a gay person that like the the super fun version of being gay the like

the the parties and the the the whole thing circuit parties and the bubbles all of that was like yeah was like i don't know like a like a neighborhood away from me. Like I just was never... Just out of your grasp. Yeah, exactly. So it's like, if it were happening, if it weren't happening, I lived in D.C. for what? Like almost a decade?

Nobody ever offered me cocaine even one time. Not one time. I just don't think people look at me and think this is a person that's going to party. I was digging through the dregs of the mailbox. I got that question like three months ago, but I've been waiting for the right person to get a feedback on it. And,

and you're exactly, that was exactly the answer I was looking for. Okay. Lastly, you have this book. Everyone should buy it. We do need to know. I,

we get this question about all the time. What can we do? What can I do? How to save America in 10 easy steps. So tell us, I want you to, I want you to tell us what do we do about despair? What do we do? What can I do? How to save America in 10 easy steps. So tell us, I want you to tell us, what do we do about despair? What do we do if you're just a regular listener and you want to help democracy? Give us some advice. Let's just do it. What are some steps? So the first thing I

would say is, no matter where you are, no matter what is happening, there is an election near you where you could literally be the difference between winning and losing. And the reality is the closer it is to you, the less attention it will get and the more of an impact it will have on your community. I was in North Carolina last weekend. We were knocking on doors for candidates running for state legislature in North Carolina. One person switched parties, and it gave the Republicans a super majority in the legislature. That gave them the ability to pass a draconian abortion ban. That gave them the ability to overcome a Democratic veto from the governor to pass a bill that allowed education

funding to go to some of the most extreme religious figures in the state. Some of those districts have been gerrymandered. These are people running in seats that will be decided by 200, 300, 400 people. The number of doors you could personally knock on and talk to people about these races and the, what the book is about. And it's actually funny. Please check it out. We, it's not just, we really tried to make something that was entertaining and silly and joyful because we know how much of a slog politics feels like right now. But like the reality is that being a part of politics, especially off of your phone and in the world, it's obviously a good thing to do for society, but you will enjoy it. It will make you a happier person. There are a lot of people that want you to be cynical about

politics. If you step outside of that kind of noisy, cynical space and just get involved at the local level, just do it one Sunday. In the next couple of weeks, you will be happier for it. I totally agree. And also buy the book. Also buy the book. by the book but meeting other people is important we did like what i'm about to say doesn't actually it isn't say saving democracy but it's it's related to what you're saying which is we had our live event in denver you know we had a little gathering afterwards and like a bunch of people that used to be

republicans or or were center-left democrats or whatever just think we're funny or whatever like came some flew from other places, and you could just sense in the group that it was booing. Yes. You know, it was booing for me. And so like going back to the box of yells, like that is not booing. It is the opposite.

And, you know, even if it does not make the difference between winning or losing, just as a personal matter of feeling good, of feeling energized, of feeling like you're doing something that has purpose, like going out and actually seeing other humans. Other humans are mostly great. Other humans are mostly great when you don't have to hear every single thought of theirs, like on the Internet. You know, like being around them is a positive and community building is a positive. And so I agree with you 100% on that should buy the book democracy or else how to save america in 10 easy steps we're gonna need it john we're gonna need it and uh yeah we did i failed my job uh we had a lot of funny republicans to make fun of but like saving democracy right now does require a little

bit of a convo among our little coalition here, a little unwieldy coalition. So I think we had to focus on that today. And we can tomahawk dunk on Republicans together another time. I would love to. Nothing would make me happier. All right. That sounds good. Thank you to John Lovett. Everybody have a great Independence Day. Got a special show for you tomorrow. So come back and check it out. And we will see y' all then. Peace. What else should I be? All apologies What else should I say? Everyone is gay

What else should I write? I don't have the right What else should I be? All apologies In the sun, in the sun I feel as one In the sun, in the sun Mary Mary Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Breth.