The Bulwark Podcast - Matt Yglesias and Brian Beutler: The Left Hits Biden Harder than Trump

Episode Date: February 27, 2024

In our first crossover pod, Tim queries Yglesias and Beutler about Biden's Gaza response, and why Dems aren't holding Kushner hearings—or raising hell about the GOP's promotion of fake oppo from a Russian spy. Then catch the tables getting turned on Tim on the Politix pod Wednesday. show notes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/politix/id1485109198

Hello and welcome to the Bullard podcast. Today's show we have a pair of exennial bros with Substack newsletters. Matt Iglesias, he's a contrarian center left neoliberal and author of Slow Boring. Brian Boitler, he's a contrarian woke progressive and the author of off message they co-host a new podcast called politics spelled with an x at the end to honor either elon musk or latinx or gen x i'm not sure which boys malcolm x malcolm x oh i should have had that welcome i'm excited for this we're doing something special today we're trying something new we're going to do a home and home where i'm going to quiz you guys about democratic stuff on this feed. And then you're going to turn the tables on me for the politics show, which will come out tomorrow at 6am.

So people can get a double dose of this kind of, I self-identify as an elder millennial. Are you Gen X self-identifying? I identify as, yeah, elder millennial. I'm 82. And I think the cutoff is 80. So yeah, 81. I'm, elder millennial. I'm 82, and I think the cutoff is 80. Yeah, 81. I'm the oldest millennial. But I don't want to derail you here, but in my mind, the elder millennial kind of is this, I feel like I have more in common with young Gen X people than with

mainline millennials, just because of technology mostly. Yeah, I don't know. I have Peter Pan syndrome. So I identify more with mid millennials than Gen X people who I find sad. But that's all about our personal, our personal mental issues, I think mostly. Okay, let's do some work. We got the Michigan primary tonight. Biden versus Dean Phillips after his star turn on the Bullard podcast versus uncommitted. I think Dean versus uncommitted is going to be tight. Former U.S. rep and presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke said on Friday that Democratic voters should vote uncommitted to show they're unhappy with Joe Biden's handling of Israel. Rashida Tlaib agrees with him. Guys, what is your sense for what is happening in Michigan tonight? And do you think

that people should be registering their unhappiness by voting for the ghost of Beto O'Rourke's candidacy? Who do you want to answer that question? Whoever. Go first. I think that at the end of the day, what is going to matter vis-a-vis this issue is whether the war comes to an end or pauses or the United States through Joe Biden gets some distance from Benjamin Netanyahu and condemns what he's doing to some degree. And it's not really going to be about how people register their views about it in primaries. But to the extent that people want to register their disapprovement, now is a much better time than six months from now or something like that.

And so I kind of think it's no harm, no foul. And maybe to the extent that it motivates Joe Biden to realize that there's a problem here politically for him and that there are more things that he could do to try to to try to hold the coalition together on this one issue. Maybe it's for the best, but I honestly don't think it's that big of a factor. Okay, so that presumes something not in evidence. I don't think Matt, Brian says that Joe Biden has a policy problem here. Are we sure he does? Ro Khanna said that he said we cannot win Michigan with a status quo policy. There was an anonymous person in Politico this morning saying that he can't win Michigan with the current policy. Meanwhile, I'm over here with the

Never Trumpers going, all these moderate Wall Street Journal Romney voting Republicans have been begging for Joe Biden to give him their sister soldier moment. And he's kind of done it here with regards to the Gaza protesters. And are we sure that it hurts him? I think this, to me, illustrates the kind of like pathological nature of current progressive politics, which is that there is this obsession with protesting Biden over Gaza, right? So like progressive leaders, influencers have created a political problem for Joe Biden. And now they are spending all their time urging Joe Biden to address this political problem of their own creation by creating disagreement at Yahoo. But you also know, I mean, I know people who are very passionate

advocates for Palestinian rights. Some of them are like crazy people, whatever, but the really sensible, really sane ones, like what they want is an independent Palestinian state. And Bibi Netanyahu is not going to give them one. And Joe Biden is not going to be able to deliver one. So Biden can do a lot to alienate pro-Israel voters by catering more to the views of Gaza protesters, but he's not going to satisfy people who want a complete transformation of the Israel-Palestine conflict or of the longstanding American alliance with Israel. For progressives, this is just like a catastrophic issue to have in the news. And you know, if I could pull strings, I would like try to get people to like do abortion rights protests in red states. Like that's a good issue for Biden. Anything you can do on Gaza, like is bad for Biden. And I think if you vote for

uncommitted, you are going to generate headlines about Gaza, and that is going to help Trump win, right? Like, if you say anything on Twitter about Gaza, that's going to help Trump win. And like, it's fine if you want Trump to win, right? Like, if you want to polarize support for Israel, the best way to accomplish that probably is for Trump to win. And like, great, but I think that would be bad. I live in America. And I want the United States of America to be well governed, which means reelecting Joe Biden. I feel like that, like, Matt's the policy guy, but there is a policy issue here. And like, the reason there are lots of people in Michigan, or

at least enough, maybe to swing the state away from Joe Biden, who are upset about Joe Biden's position on Israel is like the moral problem of what Israel's doing in Gaza. Like they don't like it. And they don't like the Joe Biden at least appears to support it, right? Like, and without, you know, completely upending how the US government how any other president probably would have related to Israel after October 7th. There are things that Joe Biden could say and do that would communicate to those people. I hear you and I agree. And it's just a thorny thing to unwind. And there's been very little effort to do that. And I think it's achievable without alienating some other large contingent of the Democrats. There aren't a lot of Democrats anymore who think bb netanyahu is some good guy we have audio joe biden did address

this issue yesterday with an ice cream cone in hand yes let's listen to that really quick let's talk about that you give us a sense of when you think that c5 will start sir well i hope by the beginning of the weekend i mean the end of the weekend. At least my national security advisor tells me that we're close. We're close. We're not done yet. And my hope is by next Monday, we'll have a ceasefire. All right. So maybe it could have been better if he was not like,

he was literally like about to bite the cone when he said this. There's a little bit of like a George Bush, like let's watch me drive kind of flashback. I was getting kind of night sweats watching that element of it. But the actual positioning, Matt, again, I think we should talk about the policy and what the moral policy and what the right policy is. But positioning wise, isn't he in the right place? I mean, I think so. I mean, it depends what happens, right? Like, I mean, he wants to get a ceasefire. That would be good. He's trying to do it. He's working on that. And I do think that, you know, this is a question where the

politics is downstream of the, like the reality, right? Not the position taking, but like what actually happens. If there is an end to active conflict that Netanyahu says, we won, right? Then Biden could say, and we got a ceasefire and we stood with Israel. And then it's not like everyone will be happy, but most people would be happy with that. But, you know, it's challenging. I mean, I think an important thing that, you know, your perspective, Tim, and your audience can provide is like, I think that a lot of progressive minded people don't believe that there is a constituency of people who think that Donald Trump is bad and who voted for Joe Biden, but who wish Joe Biden was more moderate on policy issues.

But in fact, there are a lot of people who think that. I mean, it's not 100 million people, but it's not zero people. And the biggest thing that disturbs me talking to Democrats is how little attention they pay to that question, right? Like, I hear people talking a lot about how do we motivate young progressives? What do we do about Michigan protesters? And I unfortunately don't hear a lot of people saying, like, how do we get people who voted for Gary Johnson in 2016 and then voted for us in 2020? How do we keep them inside the tent, inside the coalition? When I think if you just like look objectively, like that's the problem Biden is facing politically. Like he got some swing voters in 2020. And now he is losing

them. Yeah, this is where the tactical element of this, I think, comes into question. I'm interested in your view on this, Brian, because like, objectively speaking, you know, I'm like, probably not the best representative. You know, we had an intro bullwork fight the other month about what was happening in Gaza, and I'm on like the squishiest side, I just really disdain BB. I don't really think he has a plan. And I think that a lot of the, you know, actions have been pretty, there's been unnecessary carnage that has been happening in Gaza and attempts to achieve the stated effort of getting hostages out. So I have, you know, certain policy frustrations, but from a politics standpoint,

there is a big constituency of people. You just look at the numbers, right? Like the number of people that are, you know, saying, oh, you know, glory to our martyrs versus the number of people that like generally support Israel, you know, in this fight, maybe not all the particulars. The preponderance of them is on the generally supporting Israel side. And a lot of those people overlap with the swing voters you're talking about your Atlanta suburbs, you know, Romney Biden voters. And like my frustration, Brian, I'm interested in your take on this is that like, it feels like Biden and his allies aren't even getting credit with those folks, right? That he's in this sour spot where he's getting all this pressure from the progressive left, and feels like he needs to cater to that.

And so he's not getting credit for the thing that he should be like, hey, guys, you've been worried that I'm a puppet to the far left. And I've been demonstrating for four months now that I'm not actually a puppet to the far left. And if I was, my policy or my rhetoric on this would be very different. So how do you get out of that bind? A few things to untangle there, i think one is that like i don't think it would be a good idea for joe biden to go to the camera and put his finger in the air and say like from the river to the sea right that would be a mistake and he would lose a lot of okay stipulate it we have agreement we have three-person agreement on that that would be bad also it's not clear to me that like these i want to call them like these like Trump realignment voters.

He's like suburban Atlanta voters who are just like repulsed by Donald Trump is where Joe Biden's really like the locus of his problems. Like what I see is that Joe Biden entered office. He had beaten Donald Trump and not like vanquished him. And he kind of put together this plan to steal himself against the Trump revival or against, you know, the MAGA movement, picking a new figurehead and having to kind of wage a similar campaign in 2024 all over again. And it was to like, focus all of his policy energy on revitalizing the industrial base in the Midwest to just get unemployment generally low, to be like a good steward of the economy, and then to be like normal, right? Like

not ruffle feathers, just be kind of chill, tolerant, recede a bit, get out of people's faces. People were exhausted by Trump and they would thank him for like relieving them of having to think about politics all the time. And that approach I think has not worked. And it's not clear to me that the reason why is that Joe Biden didn't volunteer here and there that I also happen to support fracking, right? Or whatever else. All right. Now you're speaking my language. Right? Like I just, I don't think that the like people who voted obama then trump then biden are reverting to trump because of single issue style obsessions that joe biden has disappointed him on like they are just hearing constantly that joe biden is this

doddering fool who caused inflation who like maybe in some sense is responsible for the pandemic because their memories of that have gotten all fuzzy. And like the tactical solution for Biden, this problem is to build a time machine, go back to 2021 and adopt a more aggressive political strategy. But I kind of hear it's like water's too far under the bridge. So this is my question on the river to the sea crop. So Fetterman's kind of hear it's like water's too far under the bridge. So this is my question on the river to the seacrop. So Fetterman's kind of done this. Couldn't a handful of Democrats who agree with his policy, I assume that there are some,

go out there and say, be agitating on this? Like, wow, look at the way that Joe Biden has stuck his finger in the eye of the campus left. Excuse me, wouldn't that help? Like create news? Doesn't that speak to like your tactical demands? I know it doesn't speak to your policy priors but like doesn't that speak to kind of your tactical i think that like to to resolve the specific political problems that seemingly exist around biden's positioning on israel i think you'd want

like three basic things to break through to the public. One is that like Joe Biden is not some unique butcher in the firmament of US politics. Like you swap in basically any president, including Trump from the past 40 years, put him in office in 2023 on October 7th, and their policy would be very similar to Joe Biden. So he's not like this Kissingerian, like uniquely insensitive to the plight of the Palestinians president, right? Okay. We didn't invade Iran in response to it, for example. We didn't like invade a different country. I think that beyond that, you want two other things. One is you want people like Fetterman

being surrogates for Biden's policy, like just out in the media, at campaign rallies, wherever. And you also, like, I would have liked Bernie Sanders as like the most prominent Jewish politician in the country to come out in a way that created space for Biden to break with Netanyahu and Netanyahu's policies without opening him to a sort of bad faith attack that he's like anti-Semitic or anti-Israel in some sense. And those pieces of surrogacy have just not really materialized in a way that I think is particularly helpful. But I don't necessarily think it's too late either, but it's just been uncoordinated. And so it's kind of this mess. And so I think that

like for people who are dissatisfied with, and I don't actually think polls show that people are dissatisfied with Biden's Israel policy. He's like polling it, last I checked, like 55, 60% on the issue. So it's not like some kind of epic disaster nationwide. It just hasn't like, that hasn't lifted him to being a popular president. And to the extent that you could make elements of his voting coalition think more highly of his position, it would be to pull those three levers. And it hasn't really happened. To me, this is a problem not of Biden or of anything Biden should do about the campus left or not, or Netanyahu or Israel. It's a question of what do progressive-minded people want out of life? And you see it on Israel, but you see it on a broad swath of issues that I think the left in America is like not that committed to defeating Donald Trump in 2024.

They are very committed to their substantive policy agenda, which on some topics Biden is pursuing quite vigorously. And on some topics he isn't, in which case they dedicate all of their energy to attacking Biden, even while acknowledging that Trump is worse. Right. Like climate change activists protest against Biden. Like Palestinian rights activists protest against Biden. But it's not like they're confused. Well, also Biden's the president. He's the one who's in charge. But I mean, I'm saying that it's not a case of confusion. Like I don't hear them replaying the Ralph Nader, Tweedledee, Tweedledum thing. It is a tactical philosophy that Biden is the president currently, that they have more leverage over Biden

than they do over Trump. And so that is what they choose to do with their time, which is fine. I mean, everybody is entitled to do what they want with their time. But you should be honest. It's to say that a lot of the people who are most fired up. I think it's helped the never Trumper media business model quite a bit because we're the most fired up without stopping Trump. That's what I mean. And this is where I always find, I feel like Brian executes this kind of straddle where like he, he wants to be with you, but then he, he also wants to be with the leftists. But like, this was an argument that Democrats, I think, were really having a lot before COVID in 2019, where one view that I associated with Biden at that time was this kind of like narrow anti-Trumpism, right?

Like, we got to go with a guy who's going to beat Trump. And then there was Elizabeth Warren, who she was talking about big structural change, right? And like, what was the point of that? The point of that was to say, we don't want to just like decapitate Donald Trump from leadership of the United States, put a sane person in there. We need big structural change. And Biden won the primary, but he did not win the argument. People continue to have this debate over and over again across a whole swath of issues. It's like, are Democrats trying to transform the country in profound ways, or are they trying to not have Donald Trump be president? And Israel is a particularly tough version of that. Brian? Yeah. So because Israel is a tough version, I want to chime because in general,

on policy issues, particularly now with Congress divided, for most questions, policy is a second tier thing for me. And the progressive groups have their objectives and biden has his campaign and i'm just kind of like whatever and like my main thing is just beat the orange guy right yeah right and like i agree with matt when he points out that like it would be in the best interest of the climate and of the democratic party for climate activists to protest republicans republicans on abortion right like totally agree with that there is like a a sphere of issues where like the biggest moral questions of the day um and the most urgent ones where i kind of feel like you can't just apply this kind of raw strategic calculus without at least gesturing in the

direction of what's happening, right? So like- That's right. I respect that. I agree that the left-wing pro-Palestine, anti-Israel activists do a version of this that I think can be really toxic, right? I have agreed with them across every line of their critique about like Israel is pursuing a policy that's indistinguishable from ethnic cleansing and Joe Biden- Indistinguishable may be overstated. Well, I mean, if you add up what Bibi Netanyahu's plans for Gaza and the West Bank are, it starts to look a bit like that, right?

Like the point I'm trying to make is that I conceded to all of this, right? And that Biden was becoming complicit with it in some way and that this was like a moral problem, whatever the politics of it were. And like, they all hate me because I won't stipulate that Joe Biden supports genocide, right? Or that this is a genocide that's happening right now. You haven't done any genocide, Joe, TikToks? No, but, but, but like, maybe here I'll do the straddle again. Okay. 25,000 Palestinians dead. It's horrible, but I still wouldn't say there's been a genocide in Gaza. But there is no limiting principle to what Bibi Netanyahu is doing.

And at some point, the death count grows. And then these claims of genocide stop sounding to me like rhetoric and start being really hard to dispute. And that just tells me that this is like a very, very high stakes and profound moral issue. And so I feel like pointing at the people saying that and saying, you should be talking about abortion instead is like, don't lose your humanity over this thing. Right. Like at the same time, like if you give me a choice between, like, tell them that and Trump wins, like, obviously I... Okay, we did, I think, 18 more minutes on the Gaza dispute

than the Bullard podcast audience is looking for, but I found that very satisfying. Just closing the loop on Michigan really quick. Obama got 89% uncommitted 10.6 in 2012. How do you guys handicap whether Joe Biden will best that this evening? Can you repeat the numbers Obama got? Obama was 89.10. Obama was 89.10. There was 10.6 uncommitted in 2012. I bring this up because I'm kind of skeptical there'll be significantly more than 10.6. The New Hampshire scheme to like write in like ceasefire repeats itself. Obviously, Joe Biden's going to win with like over 90%. I think with Rashida and with Beto and like

high profile Dems, like kind of encouraging this, I'll give Biden 82, 82%. Okay. I just picked that number out of my ass, but. That's a good pick. Matt's going to set the expectations low at 69 so that he can beat expectations because it's all about beating expectations. And so we can all say, nice, nice. I want to move on. I give you guys a thought experiment because I do think, I think we've kind of explored it a little bit in the concept of Gaza, but let's set that aside. I want to try to get into your ongoing disagreement between the two of you about what the best thing the Democratic Party could do to embed itself, to embiggen its vote share. So I'm giving you magic genie powers, each of you, and I'd like for you to tell me one thing that you would like

to change that would do the most to help the Democrats increase their vote share and do the most to harm Donald Trump's chances of being an autocrat in nine months. Matt, why don't you go first? You know, I mean, I think it's really just a question of substance, like, read the 2012 platform and, like, try to go back. The 2012 Democratic platform? Democratic platform.

And, like, try to go back to Obama-style positions on climate and energy, on race, on immigration and crime. And those were good positions, and they won. And Democrats moved left since then. And in a way, I think Donald Trump is a bad politician, and he's corrupt, and people don't like him. And Democrats have chosen to take advantage of that to move left on a number of topics, which I think is dangerous, and they should they should go back and beat him badly. So this is something that I struggle with, having not, you know, been part of the internecine fighting among the Democrats. Like, I understand that the platform is probably is more liberal in 2020 than 2012. But Joe Biden and Barack Obama, he's meaningfully

moved the party left, in your opinion, and his political problems are about his policy positions and not the fact that Obama was just a better speaker and a better presenter of the same policy positions. I think the fact that Obama was a better speaker and a better politician helped get progressive minded people on board with a platform that was more moderate than they would accept these days. You know, that like Obama talked about his all of the above energy strategy. He talked about his like instinctive blood boiling when he saw illegal immigration and stuff like that. And like, you can create a, I think, a false dichotomy around this. But like, part of Obama being a good rhetorician is that he was able to make

progressives feel good about him while also saying stuff that moderate-minded people agreed with. I mean, that's politics, right? I mean, we don't have, in the Netherlands, I think they have 13 parties in parliament. So you can like slice the electorate really, really thinly. You're trying to get a majority in a country with 330 million people, you need a lot of people who don't agree with you about everything to vote for you. That's the trick of politics. I think that the boringness of the platform is just a useful index to look at in that vein. Sure. Okay. So you gave them one then. You've just been made the czar of the Obama White House. I hear that they read Slow Boring over there in the West Wing.

And so maybe... You just pulled a Trump and called Biden Obama. Did I do that? Man, how embarrassing. Yeah, you're senile. Oh my God, I am. I have dementia. I actually think that that's more of a college dorm room behavior issue for me

and not an age behavior. But one Biden issue, one issue that he could do right now that he could just embrace and for people who haven't been paying attention for three years and they're tuning in in March of 2024 and they're like,

wow, Joe Biden's been really tough on- I think immigration, which is a step they're taking, but I think Biden's been really tough on... I think immigration, you know, which is a step they're taking. But I think they got to keep going down that path. Brian, do you have any response to that before you give your genie answer? Yeah, yeah, I do. Because, I mean, I was going to say, Biden has gone down the path of immigration. And thus far, at least, it has not been a huge boon to his politics.

And I think that if you look down like the issue positions Biden's taking, actually like just the issues where he's made progress, he's passed popular bills and they've had zero impact on his polling, right? Like, and I just don't think that this is a very like effective lever to pull if your goal is to become better liked. And like, if we were to go back to 2012, you'd like notice a few things. One is that there'd be 20 million more people uninsured, right? Because the Affordable Care Act provisions that expanded insurance hadn't been factored in. And the climate emissions trajectory would be on the upswing.

Also gay rights, right? Like, I mean, we've had huge, you know, progress in gay rights. Yes. Yes. Which is good. These are all good things that the country's moved left on these issues. Yes, but that's the thing is that it's not an issue of Democratic leaders or Biden pulling the party to the left so much, in my view, as just like the process of mission fulfillment means that once you accomplish one incremental step, you move on to the next one. And so you pass the Affordable Care Act.

There's still 20 million people uninsured. Your agenda is going to reflect that by saying now it's time for a public option. If you don't pass a climate change bill under Obama, your next move is to say, fine, we're going to throw hundreds of billions of dollars in the climate spending, right? And if you get marriage equality, there are going to be people left behind by the Obergefell decision who say, well, we don't have equal rights yet yet. So that's where the Democratic Party is going to end up.

And that's not progressive activists being stupid. It's just the sweep of history and where we all like ended up in it. So I just don't think that like Joe Biden would be like, and so in order to beat Trump, we're going to go back to more emissions you know like it's like not a good idea and i know matt thinks i'm like wrong about this and the like same magnitude i think he's wrong you can tell i do

actually engage in your guys's content that i'm just picking right at the scabs i'm going right to the wounds of your disagreement like i like matt and i are doing modeling the thing that everyone in washington talks about is like disagreeing without being disagreeable we're the only people doing it no very disagreeable but now i'm supposed to say like what i what i think would help like this won't surprise either of you like for a long time i wanted democrats to do a better job just remembering that politics in the u.s is a zero-sum contest parties. So like, your job isn't just per se to be popular, but to build and maintain a margin between your party, the Democrats and the GOP.

And like one part of doing that might be around like policy and ethic, like be the kinder, gentler party, adopt a more popular agenda than than the other party does. But you should also place a lot of emphasis on the other half of the equation, which is making the Republican party less popular. This was Mitch McConnell's big insight about how to deny Obama legislative victories. And ideally, he wanted to beat him in 2012. That part of it didn't work out. B, resolutely opposed to them, what they stand for, who their leaders are, how. So I think that they've neglected key aspects of this over the last, mostly like five years since they took the house back in 2019. They seem to think that various incarnations of Mediscare tactics tactics like they're going to take

your medicare they're going to take your social security are enough to hurt the gop but it's like a much more target rich environment than that right like if they had made trump like two points less popular in 2020 by being more methodically anti-trump just like flood the zone with true shit about his corruption, right? Then Biden would have won in a landslide and we might have had like a substantially less turbulent three years, right? Can I chime in and violent agreement of both sides? Can we both be right of this? Can we moderate and also attack more? Why haven't all two dozen of Trump's victims been brought through Congress?

Why hasn't Jared Kushner been brought through Congress? You guys were both ranting about the Russia thing. Yes, absolutely. Like, why are we not going insane about the fact that there's a Russian spy dropping oppo on the president of the United States and the Republican Congress is the biggest megaphone? Like, where is it? Those are the storylines.

Like, we are going to get to this in the second half, like me asking you about, like, why Republicans have this instinct, right? Like, and Democrats don't. But, like, it's that kind of thing and, like, less buoying of the Republicans by talking about how we're going to find the reasonable and we're going to do bipartisanship with them.

It's like, no, they are unacceptable. We are the only safe harbor option. And then you might get your 56-44 split that keeps the party impossible to beat so long as Trump is the head of the GOP. So yeah, I mean, look, I just want to say that I think that the substance does come back into this. That's something that I remember very much, right? Is like, when your colleague Bill Kristol started going really hard against Trump, he started attracting praise from a lot of Democrats. Yes. Because it was like, Bill Kristol, he's saying Trump is bad, and I agree that Trump is bad, then if you said anything nice about Bill Kristol on the internet, leftists would start attacking you. Because it wasn't okay to agree with a defector from the Republican coalition unless he went through the sackcloth and ashes and

renounced everything he had ever done in life, things like that. He's put on the hair shirt. He has, which is great for him. He's basically moshing at a Rage Against the Machine concert at this point. When John Kasich spoke at the 2020 Democratic Convention, like people were upset. They were like, but Kasich, like he's bad, right? And, you know, some people who I like, have an organization called

Welcome Pack, where they like, try to get like ex Republicans in, right? But part of that, yes, like, I absolutely agree, like Kushner, Russian spy, like there should be attack, attack, attack, attack on that kind of stuff. But part of that is you have to say, look, if you want to join us in this attack, like we are happy to have you on the team, not here is our hundred point list of items that you have to all agree with to go come in. And this is where like- We're putting the theses on your door. Right, yes.

Have you put your pronouns in your Twitter bio yet? No, we do not accept you as part of our coalition. And there's this, you know, a tendency toward really strident moralism on the left, where, you know, this is where like stuff about cancel culture, which gets like overdone in some ways, but where I think it's correct is a tendency to say, like, we want to kick people out right that like people will say i'm on your side i'm against trump you know blah blah blah blah blah but then if you say one thing that is right of center you're expelled are you sure you're not a little twitter brained on this i mean liz cheney is i'm incredibly be sainted on msnbc right now i'm pretty sure Liz Cheney could win a Democratic primary right now.

Maybe I'm wrong about that. But in a certain context, in certain districts, certain states, like, I don't know. I think you might be a little Twitter. I think you're right about the notion that, like, Donald Trump has a better instinct on this than a lot on the left do, right? If I came out today on this podcast and I said, you guys are woke libs, you are wrong. And Donald Trump has actually been right all along. And I put on a red hat, like they would clip that and he would put it out on truth and he'd invite me to Mar-a-Lago

and like all sins would be forgiven. So I do think that Dems could learn a little bit from that instinct, but- I actually agree with basically all this. The small distinction I'd make is that there's a difference between the water's warm. Praising converts and praising Susan Collins. Yeah. You don't need to concede to Susan Collins to become more popular in the country, I don't think. You don't need to adopt her policy prescription. Now, you don't need to say that she needs to become a raging single-payer advocate in order for her to endure. That know, that's kind of silly. And then like, I agree that the silliness that if you like retweet bill crystal,

that means you support the Iraq war. Like that stuff is stupid. And it's like many of the people who, well, one person who does that kind of thing will also like appear on Tucker Carlson show, but like would never claim to support the white genocide or whatever. We can,

we could do a two minute hate on Glenn Greenwald on this podcast. This is a safe space for that, or we can move on. No complicated thoughts here. The idea that Democrats should be open to validators and that the people saying John Kasich speaking at the democratic convention is some sort of betrayal. That's stupid. They should be happy about it. And like, I think if anything, Democrats should welcome validators who are less like, I'm going to go speak at the convention and endorse my buddy, Joe Biden, and more people like Liz Cheney or something like that, or Chris Christie, who might be like, I'm not sure I can bring myself to endorse Joe Biden. And then in six months are like, it really pains me to do this. But for patriotic reasons, I'm going to vote for Joe Biden. And then in six months are like, it really pains me to do this. But for patriotic

reasons, I'm going to vote for Joe Biden and Republicans who are skeptical of Donald Trump should do it too. Like that's more effective to me than like bringing them to the convention and having like a big, like kumbaya moment. And you can facilitate that by not conceding the policy to them. We're going to do more of this on your side. We all just can agree that we just have a moment of like, we need to attack harder. The attacking is just, it's just very, it's unbelievable. Like the fact that the Donald Trump accusers are not household names is unbelievable. The corruption, the fact that people that he screwed over in business, just all of this is, it's kind of boggles the mind.

It boggles the mind that there have been, I guess it was you, Matt, that wrote it this morning, 70 hours of Hunter Biden hearings and zero hours of Jared Kushner hearings, despite the fact that we have, we, I'm we in this case, in the anti-Trump case, that we have controlled the Senate. Okay, a couple of rapid fires before we move on to yours. Matt, you wrote in your 21 thoughts on Biden's age, this is a kind of sub thought that harris is less popular because she's viewed as more liberal i don't think that's a fatal flaw of the idea of harris's presidential nominee it just goes to show that she should pivot to the center and revert to the more tough on crime kamala the cop persona i love this is a

classic iglesias take i love it because it's like, I'm not 100% sure you're even serious about it, but I think it's also right. And so, but is it even possible? Like, is it an imaginary thing? Like, do you think that's something that is even conceivable? Or does the moment that Kamala, you know, sees herself in a competition

for the White House, does she revert to, you know, the kind of like leftist protest element? I just like actually think it makes more sense. I mean, I think her 2020 primary campaign got so messed up, because it was the worst possible historical moment for someone whose only job had been as a prosecutor to run in a Democratic primary. And it was bad timing for her. She didn't do well, and then sort of like lost confidence in her persona. But like, she was an assistant district attorney, then she was a district attorney, then she was attorney general. She was like a pretty

tough on crime moderate in all of those roles. She wrote a book about it. And she should, you know, obviously, politicians don't actually write their own books, but she should read what the book with her name on it says. It's a good book. It just says a lot of totally sane, normal things. It aligns with other people should have health insurance, just normal, progressive stuff. I think it's in some ways easier than people make it out to be. Brian, is it possible for kamala to revert to kamala the cop or is that wish casting from the heart of the niskanen center i think that i mean you you remember the etch a sketch you were maybe involved in mitt romney's

etch a sketch attempt right you have to be pretty deft to go from being like i'm kamala cop to i'm kamala the avatar for the black lives matter wing of the democratic party to I'm Kamala the cop again. Right. And like, I think Nikki Haley, if she were to somehow get the nomination would experience the complications of her own. I'm anti-Trump now I'm in his cabinet. Now I'm anti-Trump again. Right. Like people can smell that on politicians. And I think it hurts them. I'm not saying that like that would make it worse for her to revert to being Kamala the cop if she were to run for president. The Nikki Haley thing, this asks me to another follow up for you before I get to my final question for you, too. There is a fundamental asymmetry in the fact that like, as we assess Biden and assess Kamala's chances, Haley has, has not suffered from that kind of flip flopping that you're talking about. If you look at head to head polls, Haley is not suffered from that kind of flip-flopping that you're talking about. If you look at head-to-head polls, Haley is crushing Biden.

There is no version of that on the Democratic side. Why? Yeah, that was the thesis of my- That's where you're going. I interrupted you to put a finer point on it. Sort of. It's the thesis of the piece that I wrote for Tuesday morning. I think Kamala Harris's main issue is less, I agree that people perceive her as more liberal but i think

that that's because she's a black woman from california more than that like people's deep familiarity with her policy agenda which like you have to go back to her senate votes that nobody remembers to like actually ascertain why she she's coded as liberal in a legislative sense right um and she's not going to be able to shake those things because they're integral to who she is right so the only way to have a Nikki Haley on the left is for it to be a white guy that has a southern accent and like like as missing some fingers John Edwards the great hope I think like the sad truth is that like somebody like Pritzker or Josh Shapiro, like a charismatic white guy is going to have like, from a swing state is going to have less blocking and tackling to do than even like

Gavin Newsom, very charismatic, very polished, very prepared to be president. But from California, everyone assumes that he's some kind of communist, right? And I think that that's like the issue. And so like Nikki Haley, I think polling well is a reflection of the fact that there are a lot of people voting democratic right now who wish that they could be voting for a normal Republican, right? And they think of Haley right now because she's running against Trump as like a vessel for that. If she were to win, I think that the Biden campaign would have to retool very quickly, but they would run a campaign about how she was actually like a ride or die charismatic and making people like her as a person, and then they will incept themselves into thinking,

oh, maybe she's more moderate than I thought she was. And in the break glass, in case of emergency scenario, the reason that the people keep coming up with Shapiro, Whitmer, et cetera, is that they're from swing states. They're well-liked in their swing states already. You can tell that they're charismatic and states. They're well-liked in their swing states already. You can tell that they're charismatic and confident in their political personas. And so it stands to reason

that if magnified nationally, they would be well-liked and they wouldn't have the Biden-Harris baggage. And then like Nikki Haley, I think that they would be polling much better than Trump. Okay. We can do more of this on the Politics Podcast.

Finally, I want to get you guys canceled. Short one-sentence answer. You're here with the Never Trumpers. I want to know your most conservative coded position. And Matt, I want to know why it's getting rid of the Jones Act. Brian, I know it's going to take you a minute to think about it, but Matt, you say you go first. You know, for me personally, I think stuff related to education policy.

You have a Jeb-ish education? Yeah, I do. I want Jeb. I want W. I love all Bushes. I'm just laughing at Brian. Brian's looking everywhere. He's plunging the recesses of his brain.

He's like, do I have a single conservative position anywhere in here? Maybe your most conservative coded position is just your most Joe Biden friendly position. Maybe he's as far right as you can go. You know, I don't know. It's weird. I mean, I was going to make some joke about like court packing being conservative because as an originalist, like that's totally legit. So I think it depends how you define conservative.

And I'm not trying to, I'm not. Classically liberal. Your most staturate coded position. So in the conservative firmament, to the extent that there are any conservatives who understand that there needs to be some level of welfare support, right? Like I think that there's a division between libertarians who say like, no nanny state stuff. If you need to give people money, give them money. And then there's a more like traditions based conservative wing where it's like, that's bad. And if we're going to help people, it should be in this sort of like, make sure that they have a job. And I used to be like in the more libertarian camp, like

universal basic income would be preferable to our patchwork quilt of blah, blah, blah. And over time, just like watching how people reacted to the difference between some people getting Medicaid benefits and some people getting Obamacare subsidies. You've become a dignity of work man. I'm loving this. I just think that... And it's not about raw ideology because as a matter of raw ideology, I remain pretty libertarian on this stuff. But just as far as you need society to cohere and we're seeing what happens if it doesn't, right? It's really, things get really scary. And a more like, yeah, dignity of work style liberalism that concedes to conservative views about work and blah, blah, blah is probably better

for just making people less angry at each other. And so I've moved in that direction, like substantially. I'm glad I asked that. I'm sending Jeb the last eight minutes of this podcast because it just means like he could have been the uniter we all needed. Okay guys, I went over, I went over, I did 49 minutes so you guys lose four minutes. I'll see you on the politics podcast. All right, thanks guys. That was a great conversation. Here's a little clip from the tables getting turned on me over on the politics podcast. You can check that out on their feed on Wednesday, and I'll be back here in the host seat on the Bulwark pod tomorrow. We'll do it all over again. See you then. You had suggested to a client that the people coming after you are funded by Soros. You can go after them for that, right? And there

was blowback for that. And we're not here to say that you were an anti-Semite for putting that in your strategy memo. You were a Republican and you're like, if you want to beat your opposition, savage them. Where did that come from? I want to know how it is that Republicans just become imbued with this reflexive go for the throat thing, because Democrats don't have that. Yeah. I mean, there literally is an RNC campaign school. I don't know that it still exists, but I both went to it and trained at it. But part of it when it comes to the comms element of this is just really putting into people's mind like a rapid response, always on offense kind of mindset. And really, I can't go back before Bush, because that's before my time. But there is like a just

a direct line of, you know, Steve Schmidt, you know, who ends up doing Lincoln Project stuff, and does Palin and all this. And he was in charge of rapid response for bush in 04 and like created like a little army underneath him that like really are schooled in being attack dogs and like i am like two generations underneath that but like that's what i was schooled at like i did not go to political campaign school to be like oh how do you write flowery speeches speeches. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown. Relax, we'll make no bones A house, not a home And home is nowhere we can stay

Dodge the trap, can't dodge the wall Forever cursed to live in Seattle The gun it drops A gun, a tevix, cops, a sunburst Trembling before our human nature It wasn't better for me It wasn't better for me