The Bulwark Podcast - Tim Miller: Nazis Bad, Constitution Good

Episode Date: December 9, 2022

Brittney Griner is home, Sinema does the Angus King thing, Republicans pass on a "Get Out of Jail" card, and a huge win for same-sex marriage. Plus, every Democrat should get schooled by the Warnock and Shapiro campaigns. Tim Miller's back with Charlie Sykes for the weekend pod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Happy Friday and welcome to the Bulwark podcast. Hey, before we start, this is going to be my last live podcast for a little while, but do not worry because we have something very special planned. Starting on Monday, we're going to be sharing some of the Encore Best of Bulwark podcast. We'll hear from Adam Kinzinger and Maggie Haberman and Peter Baker and Susan Glasser and a host of others. We thought this was a good idea. It's not just going to be the best Tim podcast. I've misunderstood the pitch. I thought it was going to be the best Tim podcast that you were going to air. No, this is the best of our podcasts. Okay, the best of our podcast. You know, we do this every single day. And I understand that not everybody listens every single day. And there's just so much good content out there. So this seemed like a good opportunity to reprise some of the conversations that we've had over the last year.

So Tim, welcome to the podcast. I want to start with this, okay? Let's start with the big story of the day. Kirsten Sinema declares her independence. We make decisions about what's best for ourselves, our family, and our community. And so we don't spend a lot of time thinking about, is this a Republican idea or is this a Democratic idea? Is this liberal or is this conservative? That's not how Arizonans think. What we think about is, what's right for my family? What's right for my community?

What's right for my future? So Tim, you getting a tingle up your leg listening to that? Not exactly. I thought that the audio is going to be Martina McBride or something from, what was the president's name in Independence Day? Today is the day. That's good. Well, just first real quick, I'm going to get to cinema, but I just, I really hope you enjoy your time in France. And if you start speaking, you know, if there's maybe some breaking news or you can do a little parlez-vous Francais and, you know, I just hope you come back with a, you know, a beret and maybe cigarette smoking, pick cigarette smoking back up.

You never know what could happen. I don't think I'm going to pick up the cigarette smoking, but no, and the beret would be a hard no as well. Okay, well, something. Hopefully, you know, hopefully you can just really embrace the culture and the time off. Thank you. Cinema.

She's a strange bird. You think? You think? And I guess that's an understatement of the year. You know, I said this. I kind of care less about this than I did some of the silliness around some of the legislation, particularly what ended up becoming the IRA.

But, you know, it could have some important ramifications. It seems as if she's going to keep caucusing with Democrats, but I guess not showing up to the caucus. She wants more time to hang out because the 51-49 versus 50-50 did matter. I mean, the Democrats maintain their Senate majority. It's a big deal. Yeah, but the committees then become plus one Democrat instead of even. So this does not affect the balance of power in the Senate, at least as of right now, right? Because, I mean, just to remind people, there are two other independents who caucus with the Democrats. Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat. He's an independent. Angus King from Maine is an

independent. They caucus. They are part of that 51149 majority. If she continues to do that, then the committee structure doesn't change, the majority doesn't change. So that's kind of the, let's just start, everybody take a deep breath about that. Yeah, but I think that's a fair thing to be worried about, right, as the thing goes on, that this could be just a nudge away from that. And then eventually, you know, she decides that it'd be good for the democratic, you know, systems and our norms to go back to even Senate committees, you know, who the hell knows, right with Kristen. So I think that's something that's a fair thing to be worried about. In that sense, 5149 and 5050 as is meaningfully different in a way that 5149 and like 5248 isn't. So that's just one note as we look ahead to this.

I think the other just political note is she was going to be in a really tough spot in a primary with Ruben Gallego coming up in a Democratic primary when she's up for re-election. Doing the Angus King thing would be a very, also could be in trouble, but, you know, changes the calculus quite a bit, right? Because, you know, the Democrats are like, do we really run two quasi-Democrats, right? It's harder to beat her in a general election. So it could be a savvy move in that case if the Democrats decide, you know, if she votes enough with them and continues to caucus with them, Democrats might decide this is not worth spoiling a Senate seat over. No, you're right here, because if she does run, and she didn't say whether she's running for re-election, although that video that I played, that's a campaign video.

There's no question about it. She's running. So if she does, that raises the possibility of this fractured field, you know, could divide Democratic and independent votes. And so a lot of people are going, oh, my God, this is how we get Senator Kerry Lake. Right. Yeah. And so you might end up with a McMullen situation that just people are less excited about, where instead of doing the McMullen deal with the Democrat and the Independent, increasing your odds, you do it out of reluctance because it's the only option. Yeah, but that requires Democrats to stand down like they did in Utah. I can't quite see the Democrats in Arizona standing down. It's hard to imagine. Yeah, it depends a lot on her behavior. And the contempt, I think, is really real. Just one observation I have.

So when I was writing about the Arizona governor's race, one of those articles that I wrote ahead of the election, a couple of friends in Arizona had flagged for me that Sinema had not actually endorsed Hopps, you know, and hadn't even said she was going to support her. And, you know, a couple of said she was going to support her and you know a couple of them just not really jokingly but kind of gallows humor said she might even be voting for carrie lake who knows right and so i emailed her team and was just like hey who's cinema voting for

in the governor's race and they wouldn't tell me and then the spokesperson called and we had a very it was an interesting conversation just because it was off the record, but just the spirit of it was you could sense that there is just a lot of bitterness and it's a two-way street. And I think that some of Sinema's complaints about the Democrats are legitimate. You covered a couple of them in your newsletter this morning. You know, I think that people are very harsh on her within the party. Yeah, the following her into bathrooms and harassing and berating and censoring her maybe was not a move of real political genius after all. But what do I know? Exactly. Yeah. And I think that she gets a lot of heat from inside the tent. Some of it's deserved. Some of it's, you know, maybe a little overheated. Some of it's maybe has a tinge of sexism.

But you could sense, you know, this phone call was kind of like me calling me eight days before, you know, Jeb lost. This person was beaten down and angry and annoyed and flustered. And I mean, you know, they felt like they were getting it from all sides in a real way. And so I think that that sheds a little bit of light on this. To underline the point here, you know, her standing with fellow Democrats, there was this Data for Progress poll out earlier this year that showed her with a minus 57 approval rating among Democratic primary voters. She had a 19% favorable rating, 76% unfavorable rating. So the reality is the Democrats had basically washed their hands of her. She was going to get absolutely shellacked at a Democratic

primary. So you can understand why she might feel the way she felt. Okay, you had another point, though. Yeah, so no, my last thing on her, and here's where I think that she brings it on herself to a certain degree, despite the fact that I agree, you know, I shouldn't be chasing people into bathrooms. And, you know, some of the mocking of her for her outfits and stuff is weird and inappropriate. It's still like not really clear why she, you know, does not feel comfortable in the Democratic coalition. I mean, she's like a thorn in the side of the Democrats, just like instinctually. It's just like she's like a human cactus that just likes to poke people for no real reason. It's not like there's this ideological. Kind of like a Democratic lesbian version of John McCain, though.

Well, yeah, but... Arizona's got a little bit of a history of independents who are prickly and manage to tick off their party. Yeah, and McCain is prickly and was sometimes impulsive. But McCain's ideology was coherent, right? I mean, he was a sort of globalist, what you would call the word globalist now, like kind of neocon that was non-traditional, you know, when it came to, you know, some of the economic policies and was for reforms in campaign finance in areas like this, right?

So, like, everybody kind of knew what they were signing up for, that, you know, John McCain was going to be for every war that people wanted to. And so if there's disagreements within the party, you knew which side he'd be on. You knew that he'd want to help free people and refugees and asylees everywhere, and that there was going to be some people in the party that wanted us to not let anybody in. You knew that he'd always want people to let people in. You know, you knew he'd be for, you know, campaign finance reforms that would side him with the Democrats more times. Did not, right? From time to time, I think that he voted against the Bush tax cuts just because he was annoyed at George W. Bush one time, right?

So occasionally he would act like Sinema, right? But mostly he had a coherent ideology that you knew what you were getting from him. And his opposition to the party was ideological. And you felt like it was largely principled. I can't tell you what Kyrsten Sinema's ideological objections are to the party, really. Her objection on the last Inflation Reduction Act was like, she wanted to not increase taxes on the hedge fund guys. And she used to be a member of the Green Party.

And she feels very passionate about the filibuster for some reason. Weird, yeah. And like, this is the thing, if you take out all of her weird thorn in the side stuff she was with the democrats on the infrastructure thing she voted with biden 90 of the time if it wasn't for her he would not have gotten those judges through he would not have gotten any of that the gun bill she was negotiating on so she did some good things that is within the democratic policy rubric so why is she always so why is she different than Joe Manchin? I mean, you're like a, you know, St. Joe Manchin.

Why not St. Kirsten Sinema? I mean, she doesn't want big omnibus spending bills. And I don't know. I don't know. But the hedge fund thing, I can't explain. I don't know. Joe Manchin has a pretty clear ideological framework, though. Joe Manchin is a conservative West Virginia Democrat.

Like, he's for... This is like the John McCain thing, and he's not going to be for things that hurt the coal industry and other fossil fuels, right? I mean, he's not going to be for big spending bills. He is on guns, you know, going to be want to cut a middle ground, right? He's not going to be for assault weapons bans, but he might be for background checks, right? Because he's from West Virginia. Like that makes sense, right? Like it makes sense politically in a state that Joe Biden got like 8% of the vote and it makes sense ideologically. Kirsten Sinema is from everyone is Democrats in her state now. You know, I mean, she says that like Arizonans, we like our independence. I guess that's kind of true, but Mark Kelly won by five points.

Katie Hobbs won despite my critiques of her campaign. It's more about the tone, it seems like, because as you point out, her voting record is pretty consistent. But I do think that the blowback that she got, the fact that she was declared a heretic, I think that ran pretty deep. For sure. And I think that there's obviously some internal resentment. And so that was, to me, like, is my point, like, from when I was talking to her spokesperson, that makes sense to me, right? Like, that there's some resentment that she was attacked too harshly for some kind of minor crimes against the tribe. But the other part of it, which is, like, why she's always being such a thorn in their side, you know, it would make more sense to me if she had something that was a little bit more coherent as far as like, this is Christian cinema. I'm with

the Democrats on 85% of the things. Here are the 10% of things that I feel really passionately about that I'm out of step with the party on. All the voters know it. I know it. You can either welcome me into the caucus or not. I just think that people would be fine with that. But like, that's not what it is. It's just like out of the blue on Tuesday morning, they're like, is Kyrsten Sinema going to try to be the chart in the punch bowl today over something random, like because she's upset? I think that is what kind of led to a lot of this tension. Well, I saw somebody on Twitter refer to this as creating a Sophie's choice for Democrats now, because they really have to make some tough decisions, especially because the map

in 2024 is brutal for the Democrats. They'll be defending all sorts of seats. Doesn't mean that they can't do it, but it's going to be a very, very tough Senate map and they cannot afford to lose that Arizona Senate seat. So we'll see. You know, I'd like to actually, while I win this for some time, I devoted pretty much my full morning shots today to the whole Kirsten Sinema thing. Including a, you know, I know people love the, you know, I told you so warnings from the past. But you know what? Here's the thing, Tim. We do this on Fridays.

And this has been the case since 2017. That by the time you get to Friday, you forget the massively big stories from Monday. You know what I mean? I want to get to the Brittany Griner story. I want to get to Friday, you forget the massively big stories from Monday. You know what I mean? And so I want to get to the Brittany Griner story. I want to get to Herschel Walker. I want to get to all of this stuff. I want to get to the fact that the, you know, Congress has just given, you know, final passage to this, to the, you know, respect for marriage bill, which is a truly epic moment in terms of, you know, the long-term shift in politics. I want to talk about that too. But before we do this, can we just rewind the tape to the beginning of the week

where we were still going, wait, did the former president of the United States actually call for terminating the Constitution? I mean, it's one of those things where every once in a while, can we just slow it down a little bit to meditate on the fact that the former president of the United States says that he wanted to be reinstalled in office? And if that took

throwing out all the laws, rules, and even the articles of the Constitution, he was down with that. You have a fantastic Not My Party where you deal with this. And I just want to play the end of it because I think you ask a really interesting question. So Tim, I'm going to play Tim for you. Growing up, a lot of Republican nerds like me carried around our little pocket constitutions, like a lot of GOP politicians still do. The likely incoming Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy, has said he even plans to have a performative reading of the document on the House floor next month. how does that square with refusing to condemn the man who wants to terminate it can't have them both honey the best thing that

mccarthy and the republicans could do both for the country and for their own political viability in 2024 would be to begin that reading with a universal condemnation of trump's assault on the document that they claim to care so much about you know that's never going to happen otherwise they'll sink to new lows by continuing to chain themselves to their shipwrecked sh**. Tink or swim. Now I want to hear from y'all. Trump isn't going anywhere,

but Partme wants to unshackle this show from covering him for a while. Would you guys rather that I keep Tomahawk dunking on Trump every time he ups the ante with his bulls**t, or put him on ice for a bit so the 2024 campaign really heats up? Let me know by swiping up and taking the poll, and we'll see you next week for more Not My Party. Okay, so I want to be first out of the box here, Tim. I want to swipe up and say, keep the Tomahawk dunking coming because I think we've gone through the what happens when you ignore the guy. Yeah. So what do you think people are going to say? What is your audience of Enfuego 17 to 24-year-olds who watch

you on Snapchat? What are they going to say, do you think? I'm fascinated to find out, actually. I've had one person DM me privately on Instagram and say that they couldn't figure out how to do the poll thing to count their vote as a yes. They're the teens, so it's not all the old people who can't figure out the technologies. Had I known you were going to ask that, I would have asked Drew for where the poll stands today before I got on the podcast. So I don't know, I'll tweet out an update or something for listeners. But I really don't know. And I was genuinely torn. And this is why I put that in there. Because I was like, I don't want to do another episode on Trump this week. There was so much stuff that was happening. To your point,

some of this stuff was new. You know, I take these things on Tuesdays, they come out on Thursdays. And so most of the time that works. And sometimes I'm just like, oh, I wish I would have known Brittany Griner is going to happen or this is going to happen this week. No, no, no. This was the big, this is still the big story of the week, Tim. It still is the big story. Yeah, you're right. And this goes to show you how crazy and how much, how, how much news we've had is like, I was like, I wonder what he's going to ask me about what happened on Monday. I didn't even know where you were going with us when you started the windup. And so no, yes, a former president saying he wants to terminate the Constitution is unprecedented. This is a point

that I made earlier in that episode. It's important for the teens. Yeah, the teens to realize that like, this is not something, you know, you could go back to, you know, the Japanese internment or something or Civil War, but like in the post World War II era, there is nothing even in the ballpark of this. Like a former, there's not a senator, there's not a congressman, there's not a governor that said that we should terminate the Constitution. And this is a singular person who's, well, I guess now there's a congressman since Paul Goethe, sorry, endorsed him. But there's a singular person. He deleted the tweet. There's a singular person who has proposed this. And so you can't just sweep

it under the rug. And so I think that we should probably keep covering him. You're going to France, so you get this. We're through this election cycle. Maybe I can just take two months off of this asshole and deal with him back in February again. But this was so bad, I felt like we had to do it this week. And I understand why. I wrote a book about why. But it does feel like that he has given these guys such an opportunity to just be like, you know, I'm against Nazis and for the Constitution. And Ron DeSantis seems fine.

Let's just move on. And the fact that people can't do that still. They'll allude to it. Leibovich was good on this on the podcast on Wednesday. Mitt Romney will say it. But everybody else, you know, they might dance around it. Theyibovich was good on this on the podcast on Wednesday. Mitt Romney will say it, but everybody else, you know, they might dance around it.

They'll say it without saying his name. But it's just like, why can't people just say that? Like, why can't Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity just be like, nope, guys,

Nazis bad, Constitution good. I'm done with this guy forever. Like, fuck it. Well, exactly. In the video, you say, you think this would be a layup for my former conservative pals.

I mean, is it that hard to say having dinner with Nazis and proposing we shred the Constitution is a deal breaker? It doesn't feel hard. It is so, people, this is it. You get your get out of jail card. It's right here. And it's like, no, no, can't do it. And even the National Review guys, even the guys that want to get rid of them, you know, and they seem to be the most on the front edge of this. So I hate to keep picking on them on trying to move the party off of Trump. But even those guys are like, yeah, DeSantis, it wouldn't be strategic for him to weigh in. Like, are we really? Are we sure about that? Like, have we polled the Republican primary voters? Like, are they really going to be mad at Ron DeSantis if he's just like, you know, I don't think we should hang out with Nazis, and I think we should keep the Constitution in place? Is that sentence really going to hurt DeSantis in the primary? It's possible that it does, but I don't know that we know for sure. Just one last comment on all of this. You know,

almost all the commentary now is like, well, does this help you or hurt you in 2024? Is this politically good or is this politically 2024? Is this politically good or is this politically bad? What will this mean for suburban swing voters? At some point, one of the reasons why you denounce Nazis and shredding the Constitution is because you actually believe in something. You have principles. There's a vestige of conscience deep inside there somewhere, right? You take an oath to uphold the Constitution. So, yes, I understand in our political environment, everything's about, does this help you or does this hurt you? Well, you know, really, is it naive now? Is it like just, you know, totally nerdy to say, well, it's also

because it's the right thing to do? You know what I'm saying? Yeah. And also, I'm just floating out there the possibility that in this case, it might be the right thing to do and not hurt you. You know, I mean, I get that on the people been burned on this one with Trump, but he feels pretty weak right now. And this stuff is, is, is way out there. Yeah, exactly. And by the way, speaking of what kind of a week it has been, again, this is Friday. I believe it was Tuesday that the Trump organization was found guilty of 17 felonies, and it probably wouldn't make a top 10 list of the biggest stories of the week. So just mentioning that. So let's talk about Herschel Walker just a little bit. I have to say that I'm already

fatigued from the midterm elections, but I do want to make one point here. And JVL made this point on the live stream last night, and I thought it was really interesting. He read from Herschel Walker's concession speech. First of all, it's interesting that he gave a concession speech, that even some of the hardcore MAGA people actually gave concession speeches, which we no longer take for granted. And he made the point, doesn't the fact that even Doug Mastriano and Herschel Walker conceded that they lost the elections, doesn't that really sort of highlight what outliers people like Kerry Lake and Donald Trump are? Doesn't it underline the fact that Donald Trump and his refusal to recognize

the outcome of the election is really kind of a uniquely toxic figure, just kind of a reminder that, you know, even in this bizarre era, that this election denialism, you know, it's not universal. I don't want to give too much credit to Herschel Walker for all of this, but, you know, by the standards of our particular era, it was a gracious concession speech and kind of reminds you how bizarre and unique the Kerry Lakes and Donald Trumps are. It does. And I'll just be a Bulwark fanboy for a second and be like, those Thursday night live streams are good. You got Christmas time is a good time for Bulwark Plus signing up for.

Bullard Plus, it's the merriest gift of the year. Not always the merriest, I guess, evenings, but over the aggregate, we keep people merry. Yes, Donald Trump is an outlier. He is uniquely personally deranged. And this is like the George Conway, I'm not a psychiatrist, but Donald Trump is psychotic type of thing. And that is a category difference. And I think that it's just important to recognize that. And it's a shtick that I've had for a while now, but it's like, it's really hard to imagine people storming the Capitol waving Ted Cruz or Ron DeSantis flags, right? It's really hard to imagine that. And it was always really hard to imagine people storming the Capitol waving Doug Mastriano flags. Now, that doesn't mean that

their footsie with the big lie and their accommodation of the big lie wasn't problematic. It was, and you could have one-off crazy people that get radicalized by a lot of things. But the scale and the scope of this lie, it really takes people who are personally deranged to be able to do that. And I guess Kerry Lake was the winner of the derangement category of our midterm candidates, and Mark Fincham, maybe, also in Arizona. But I think that that's important to recognize, and it's important to just acknowledge there was a ton of great news about democracy in these midterms, and Hershel Walker's defeat and concession is the latest example of it. Okay, let's have some rank punditry here, looking at the results.

Georgia is fascinating because every other Republican won, and won relatively comfortably. So there's kind of a debate going on about what happened among Republicans. It seems pretty obvious to me, and I want to get your take on all of this. You know, what was really decisive here was that soft Republicans broke against him, that there are Republicans who will vote for every other candidate. But when it comes to Trump and or somebody as Trumpian bizarre as Herschel Walker, they just won't go along. You know, as I said on a previous podcast, I wish there was a name for those kinds of Republicans. You know, maybe we should work on coming up with that.

Never or something. I don't know, whatever. So your thoughts on all of this, because once again, soft Republicans, I think, who are willing to split their ticket, turn out to be absolutely decisive in these elections. Yeah. And this is persuasion matters. This was politics 101 up to like, I mean, 10, 15 years ago. And then something happened with the Bush reelect in 04, and then Obama in 08, that made people think that all that mattered in politics was turning out the base. And this idea has snowballed down a mountain to such a degree

that the Donald Trump voters thought that Doug Mastriano and Donald Trump was going to be the only thing that mattered. And you still see it on the Democratic side. And unfortunately, for Democrats, you saw it in Georgia with Stacey Abrams. And I just think that this Georgia is a laboratory for this. This does not take away anything from the work that Stacey Abrams did to register people and to register black voters and register young voters in Florida, which were part of the, you know, part of the recipe for getting Democrats to win Georgia now in two straight election cycles. But it was only part of the recipe. You know, a red state doesn't turn blue just by turning out more young voters. The math doesn't work like that. You have to persuade people. You got to bring folks over. And I think that on the Democratic side, particularly in the

Trump era, I kind of understand why, frankly. You look at Republicans, you're like, if you voted for Donald Trump, you must be a horrible person, right? Like you must be so ungettable and irredeemable that we can't even care about you anymore. And like humans are just more complicated than that. And that's not true. And there are some irredeemable Trump voters. And there were some people that held their nose for Donald Trump and didn't pay attention that closely to all of his gaffes and our Fox News watchers. So we weren't told about some of his negative comments and were made to believe really crazy things about Hillary Clinton and her kill list or whatever. And so they held their nose and voted for him, but they were gettable. They were still gettable with the right kind of persuasion

campaign. And if you look at, Nate Cohn has a really great article in New York Times about this, turnout the cycle in the midterm, despite Democrats' surprisingly good cycle, it was a normal midterm cycle. The Republican turnout and enthusiasm was higher. Republicans did turn out more across the country. It just was a certain percentage of Republicans wouldn't vote for the biggest lunatics on the ballot. And good news for Democrats, Republicans nominated a lot of big lunatics. And so that worked out for them. And so when I wrote that article, and I went down to Georgia, that my biggest surprising takeaway from interviewing people who said that they were Kemp or not voters, was I expected them to be negative on Herschel all right, for them to just be like, Hey, Brian Kemp's done a fine job. He's

a fine governor, but Herschel's a lunatic. I can't vote for him. Person after person in those interviews said to me, Yeah, Kemp, I think he's done a pretty good job, but I don't know. Stacey feels like she's gone a little too woke, too far left. Again, this is all proof. I'm not endorsing all these views. I'm just saying what these voters are saying. Meanwhile, Raphael Warnock, his ads are really good, and apparently he's worked with Tommy

Tuberville on stuff. That takes balls to do that. And he's a pastor, and he's a dad. And I don't know, he just seems really relatable to me and I can trust him. It was as much about Warnock as it was about Walker for these people. Warnock ran a very smart, intentional campaign. They didn't do interviews with national press. He didn't do big magazines. He didn't engage on random culture war fights, except for the ones he really cared about, like Dobbs and voting rights. But he didn't weigh in on every Ron DeSantis or Donald Trump

thing, right? He smartly positioned himself as somebody that these Atlanta Republican red dogs, or even Republicans, could get comfortable with him. And it worked. And he ends up winning by, I think, 11 points when the final tallies come in. 11 points better on the margin than Abrams did. And that is a ton. That is one out of 10 voters switched. And that, I think, is a testament not just partly to how crazy Walker was, partly to the fact that Brian Kemp showed just the tiny iota of courage standing up to Trump, but also partly because of the fact that Warnock actually believed in persuasion. And if you look at his campaigns post-mortem interviews, that's what they all say. This is an excellent point.

And this was, of course, very intentional. And they talked about it afterwards, that they had the choice of going hard for just ginning up the base and decided, no, we are going to engage in this politics of persuasion. We are going to reach out decided, no, we are going to engage in this politics of persuasion. We are going to reach out to independents. We are going to go for those soft Republicans. And they crafted their message in the persona of the campaign. It was a very, very smart campaign and one that I think has tremendous lessons going forward for these swing states. With Shapiro in Pennsylvania. Exactly. Every Democrat should have to go to a school where they just listen to a presentation

from Raphael Warnock and Josh Shapiro's campaign teams. Well, Mark Kelly in Arizona, too. Back to Arizona. Let's raise an interesting question. Who do you think ran the best campaigns of 2022? I would love to see an article from you, by the way, on this. Who ran the best campaigns and who ran the worst

campaigns? It's hard to sometimes judge in a vacuum, but I mean, Shapiro and Mastriano just really jump right out at you, right? I mean, it's possible that we had the best campaign and the worst campaign running the same state. You look at margins, right? I mean, the difference between the Shapiro and Fetterman margin, very notable, right? I don't have the numbers in front of me, but a significant difference. Warnock and Kemp, a significant difference. You know, Ohio on the inverse of this, you see DeWine and Vance, right? Like, so that's another good example. I mean, the model was there. Kemp, right? I think for Kemp and DeWine, like the model was there for

Republican governors. They showed how you win in ways that Republican Senate campaigns didn't. You know, I have to shout out my friend Adam Frisch in Colorado to almost beat Lauren Boebert. I had an amazing campaign. Nobody believed him, literally nobody except Bill Kristol. And Bill Kristol kind of talked me into kind of believing him. I'd have to think about it a little more, but those are some of the ones that jump out at me. Yeah, I also think that Governor Whitmer's campaign really was very effective. And, you know, you think about what's happened in states like Pennsylvania and in Michigan and in Arizona and Georgia. And I think they all have roadmaps for what you need to do to win these elections. And so, you know, we've done a lot of these podcasts of saying,, yeah, Democrats are bad at this or Democrats can't do this. In all of those states, they got the formula. And I think they hit that spot.

And one thing for our lefty listeners is sometimes I get this feedback from the lefties who are like, you guys just want Democrats to run to the middle and be moderate because you're conservatives, you're moderates. Sure, yeah, right. I love a moderate Democrat. Don't get me wrong. But I think an interesting lesson from Shapiro, Whitmer, Kelly, Warnock, none separating from the fund the police and some of the crazy stuff that's happening in Philadelphia.

But they mostly ran kind of middle-of-the-road Democratic platforms. I mean, middle-of-the-road, like in the middle of the Democratic coalition. And yet, they did it by just choosing their spots. Choosing the spots where they didn't engage, which is sometimes as important as do engaging, choosing a couple of things like defund the police, you know, to make sure to just put a little bit of an arm away from the far left. But mostly, you know, kind of running on the Biden agenda, running on infrastructure, running on actually dealing with healthcare, running on modest gun reforms, common sense gun reforms. You know, none of these folks were like running, like we're doing what Joe Manchin did,

or Kyrsten Sinema did, right? And it worked, you know, because of the way that they branded themselves and how they chose to engage. And I think that's like an important lesson that Democrats can learn, that you can do this without totally, you know, whatever, like throwing in with the people you might not agree with on cultural matters. Yeah, let me just throw out one other name as a possibility, if you're making a list of, you know, best campaigns. Wes Moore, the new governor of Maryland.

Now, of course, that was a layup. That was a slam dunk, but very, very impressive figure. But, you know, the more I think about it, the more I think that Brian Kemp's success is underrated. For sure. And you mentioned this before, you know, in part because here you have a very conservative Republican who openly defied Donald Trump. I mean, who went right at him on the big lie and not only survived, but has prospered. And I think that the conventional wisdom in the Republican Party is just baked in that if you defy, if you are too open in defying Donald Trump,

that it's political death, that you will be destroyed. You'll either be destroyed in the primary or the party will be so divided that you can't win a general election. And here's Brian Kemp going, I basically called him out on the big lie and Brad Raffensperger and I are still in office. It's a counter-narrative that other Republicans need to think about more broadly as opposed to the National Review folks who go, you know, Ron DeSantis is just being brilliant by not saying anything, not ever taking a stand because you cannot ever go up against Donald Trump. For as much as you praise Warnock, again, just looking at the politics of this, for being 11 points better than Abrams, Kemp's 11 points better than Walker. And that's as impressive as, I mean, Ron DeSantis wasn't running 11 points better than Rubio, right? I mean, so just if you look at the in-state, the performance above expectations, you know, your little war wins above replacement, if you will, for politics. Kemp obviously gets it. And the other thing that

you make a really great point on that I've been trying to hammer on my TV interviews is, yeah, Trump is to blame for Walker. But so is Mitch McConnell and Rick Scott and the Republican establishment for not having the balls to try to challenge him, okay, or to put up a primary opponent. Because are we sure Walker would have won a primary? I don't think that there's any reason to be certain of that. Nobody thought that Brad Raffensperger was going to win a contested Secretary of State primary. Everyone thought that was baked in the cake, that he was DOA. He wins. Kemp wins against Purdue, handily. Is it not possible that somebody that was in the Kemp vein couldn't have run against Walker, who from day one you knew was

a disaster. I went back and looked. I wrote that article, my Herschel Walker profile, in March of 2021. And all you had to do is read that article to know that the Walker campaign was going to be a nightmare in March of 2021. And so you had 15 months to come up with a different candidate and at least attempt. But they didn't do that because they still were so scared of Donald Trump. They're scared of their own voters. They're scared of their own shadow. None of them have any courage or have any balls. And they've learned all the wrong lessons from the last seven years. It was just a crucial mistake by Rick Scott and Mitch McConnell. And it's easy for them to point the finger at Trump, but they are equally, if not

more responsible because it's their job actually to elect senators. No, and that was actually one of the big surprises of the cycle is that Mitch McConnell, who obviously there's no love lost between him and Donald Trump, the fact that he rolled over on Herschel Walker, and it was like, okay, your job is to be the grown-up in the room, and clearly you abdicated that. So yeah, he shares the blame dramatically. But you know, you mentioned something that, again, and I'm sorry to keep coming back to the Brian Kemp story, but the more I think about it, I think the more important this narrative is that, you know, Brian Kemp did not go along with the big lie. Trump went all in to destroy him, to get rid of him. He got former Senator David Perdue to run against him in the primary. So you have one of the biggest names

in Georgia politics, right? Who had been a United States Senator up until like five minutes ago. So from Trump's point of view- From the Perdue family, Sonny Perdue had also been governor of the state. He recruited the absolute best, strongest candidate to take out the guy who had gone full cock rhino on him. And what was the result in that primary? Was it like 70-30? It was like 63 to 37, I think.

I'm going from memory. Well, whatever it was, it was a complete blowout. It wasn't even close. So Brian Kemp managed to take out David Perdue, who had been a United States senator. I mean, before Trump came along, everybody assumed that David Perdue was going to be a United States Senator from Georgia forever, right? I mean, because of the name, because of who he was, et cetera. And two years after he's, you know, he loses for reelection, thanks to Donald Trump, Donald Trump tries to pump him up again. And that may have been one of his most epic fails in a year of epic fails for Donald

Trump. Okay. We got to move on though. He won by 50 points. I'm sorry. I just thought I was crazy. So what was, what was the final margin? I don't know. I'm just pulling up this every time. 50 points. Yeah. 70. You were right. You were causing me 73, 21, not 63, 37, 73, 21. That is insane. Crazy. That is crazy. That's crazy. That is crazy. So the most interesting story of the week, I think, the release of Brittany Griner in exchange for the merchant of death, arms dealer for Russia. So let's talk about this because this has become something of a controversy.

I think that most Americans are looking at this as a tremendous feel-good story. How could you not feel the joy of watching her? On the other hand, we have Paul Whelan, who's still sitting there, and many Republicans are using this as the talking point, that this is a failure, that it was not a good deal, he should have gotten both of them. So give me your take on the whole Brittany Griner release, because I know you've dealt with this before on You're Not My Party. Yeah, I've got a big rant on this one. I'm just so happy that Brittany's home. Obviously, nobody wants to trade an arms dealer and do a prisoner swap, but this isn't like the NBA, right? We have two GMs acting in good faith, right? You're dealing with a genocidal monster. On the other side of the table here, Tom Nichols has a good article about this in The Atlantic, where it's like, we actually still care about humans, and he doesn't. So that does

give him a big advantage at the negotiating table, if you're going to grade these things such as that. To me, this is just a human story. Brittany Greiner doing hard labor in Russia, targeted because she's a black woman, targeted because she's gay, targeted because she's a female athlete. That is why this happened. There's a really great thread that I'd recommend people read if they care about by a guy named Meg Greenguard. He's a staffer for Gary Kasparov. And he goes on this long rant about this, rebutting the people that are like, well, she did break the law with her vape. And the gist of his thread is there is no rule of law in Russia. This is not like saying you went into

Alabama and you know that the laws of the state of Alabama are differently. This was a hostage taking situation. And so like, that's what you have to acknowledge that this was like, this was a hostage taking situation. You have to deal with it as such. As far as that's concerned, I just think that I'm happy that the administration, you know, continued to keep working on this. Originally, if you remember, some of the negotiation demands were related to the war, right? So like, there's been no sacrifices, which I think would have been a red line, obviously, for the Biden administration, for me personally, even like, you can't do anything to hamper our efforts to stop their invasion of Ukraine and to give our full support of the Ukrainians. So there was nothing like that,

that was on the table. To express sympathy for the Whelan family, which I totally have, I get. To say, man, I really wish that this situation was such that Whelan and Greiner would have, guys. This is just the nature of the case. Whelan wasn't on offer. To attack Reiner with sexist, racist. The thing that really gets my goat is like all the people on Fox and on social media, like mocking her for being a WNBA player. Oh, who cares? The WNBA player, these fucking assholes that like pretend that they care so much about the sanctity of women's sports.

Every time there's a trans athlete playing in a high school skateboarding match like that's on fox and friends like the same token you mock like somebody that is at the highest level of their sport in the wmba who it's insane by the way that she has to even compete in a russia league to supplement her income you know given the level that she's at the wmbNBA, like that shit pisses me off. Just the vitriol aimed at her, you know, given just the fact that she was taken hostage by her enemy, the siding with of Russia and like this whitewashing of Russia and acting like, oh, if she just would have followed the laws of the fucking Putin regime, like, fuck that. That stuff really, really makes me upset. And so, you know, I think that you could have a honest, good faith critique. I think there are people who are like, we shouldn't do these kinds of deals. You know, that's outside of my expertise, but that is not what you're seeing on

Fox. I agree with most of that. I guess my reaction is somewhat complicated because I do get both sides of this argument. I think ultimately, when it comes down to the decision that the Biden administration had to make, it was one or none. This was what was on offer. It was either going to be Brittany Griner or it was going to be nobody. And so they decided that they were going to take this very difficult decision, I think, probably for them in terms of leaving Paul Whelan behind. But they made the right decision. And the Whelan family agrees with that. They have been incredibly gracious about all of this. The bad faith criticism, I agree with you absolutely completely about it.

But there's some legitimate points being made. This is negotiating with a terrorist in a hostage situation. And Vladimir Putin held her as a highile hostage in order to get something of much, much greater value, and he succeeded. And so every time you do a deal like this, it is legitimate to be concerned that you are incentivizing more behavior like this. There are more Americans that are being held in captivity all around the world than we would like to think. And every time something like this happens, it basically says, hmm, maybe you can get something for taking a high profile American as hostage in this particular case. And so Vladimir Putin is rewarded for some really, really bad behavior. I understand that. And I understand the frustration of people who are thinking, you know, why is he still sitting there making that contrast? But on balance, this is a good thing that an American

has been freed. It was hard not to feel the joy of what happened yesterday. But I guess this is where, you know, I'm listening to some of the people who are critiquing this and saying, okay, you know, you have a legitimate point, but that doesn't mean that when you have a binary up or down decision like Joe Biden had that he didn't make the right decision. Fair enough. This is where my jingoism comes in. I don't disagree with any of that. But like, isn't that hard choice just the burden of being a country that cares about

human rights and cares about people? You know, that's never going to change, right? Throughout all of history, there are always going to be despots who want to kidnap people to try to get leverage over us. And like, they're always going to be able to. In a vacuum, right, you can make the argument that say, well, if we just show them that they're not going to get anything for this, then they'll stop doing it. Maybe, I guess, but like, that's not how we act. We care about, we care about human life and human rights in this country. And that is why we're, I still believe, you know, the greatest country on earth. Well, see, you know, that's where this asymmetry does come in.

So on the one hand, you could look at the asymmetry and say, okay, so they get this merchant of death arms dealer, we get a basketball player back, that looks asymmetric. On the other hand, your point is, I think, completely valid, which is the asymmetry is also that we actually care about the rule of law, they don't. We care about human life. They don't. And so that may make us look weak in some eyes, but it's also who we are. So great point. This is good.

That was actually a better discussion than I was expecting. Okay. I don't know. What was your expectation from my commentary, Charlie? No, no, no, no, no. I just think you've sort of peeled the onion of profundity just a little bit more

than I was expecting. So, you know, good on you. All right. So it's been this kind of a week that, you know, now we get to this other extraordinary story, which is extraordinary,

I think, from an historical point of view, legal point of view, political point of view, and obviously for you, a personal point of view. The passage of this respect for marriage bill yesterday on, you know, pretty fair bipartisan majority. It's so interesting to think about how the politics of this have changed since the 1990s, how dramatic it has been. And the fact that you did have a super majority in

the Senate, you had, how many Republicans voted for this? Republicans, we lost some, not to start out the negative. I thought that was weird. We went from 45 down to 39. To 39. But now this is now the law of the land. So talk to me about that particular piece of legislation. Talk about a legislative triumph. You know, we've been beating on my home state of Wisconsin for some time, but Tammy Baldwin, this is certainly one of, you know, her greatest moments as a United States Senator. And, you know, she's the driving force behind that and uh congratulations to her yeah a huge win and another one that i guess it depends on how you look at it but it worked out well for her i was a little critical of her i thought that they should have had this vote before the election

and they cut the deal to do it in the in the in the lame duck uh because a couple of republicans were going to find their courage again if they did it the lame duck and you know is kind of like, well, let's use it as a political issue. They should use it as a political issue. It turned out they didn't need it. They won all their Senate seats. So the strategy worked out for Baldwin. So credit to her on that for sure. Awesome moment, you know, that again, like the idea that this could have happened. I just like think back to, it wasn't that long ago. I mean, I'm getting kind of old right now, but I'm trying to think about Tim growing up in the suburbs in Denver. You're still spry, I think. I'm still spry, but I'm just saying it was more years ago than maybe it would seem now, I guess.

But 20 years ago, I'm just trying to think about myself 20 years ago thinking that this vote could happen, that there would be 39 Republicans supporting it. Inconceivable. Inconceivable. Inconceivable to young closet Tim. that this vote could happen, that there would be 39 Republicans supporting it. Inconceivable. Inconceivable. Inconceivable to young closet Tim. And so that is amazing progress. It's nice for Biden. It kind of brings full circle.

You know, Biden hasn't exactly been on the civil rights wing of the Democratic Party per se from time to time on the leading edge, but he was on this. You know, he blurts out that he's for gay marriage on that Meet the Press interview. I think I have this right. I think it's about 10 years ago to the day of when the vote came down, give or take a few days. So quite a decade for Biden getting out front on this, and he deserves a ton of credit. And so, yeah, I mean, it's just, it makes me feel good. I think that the two things that just for context on this that are a little, you know, concerning are one, this repeals basically the Defense of Marriage Act. So for me and Tyler and our family, we're now safe and protected and good on Congress

for doing this. This means that if we decide to move to a red state, our marriage will still be recognized, even if that state would overturn it, that federally, you know, with taxes and such, our marriage will still be recognized, even if that state would overturn it, that federally, you know, with taxes and such, our marriage will still be recognized. What it can't do, because our federalist system, right, is if the Supreme Court was to try to overturn Obergefell, then in theory, a red state could ban gay marriage still. That seems like a very far out there possibility to me. That's kind of the narrow element of what was passed. Not narrow, but that's the limits of what was passed. And then, but that's the limits of what was passed. And then, you know, like I said, I thought it was kind of weird that we lost six Republican House members over the last month. All this progress over the two decades, and then they

went from 45 to 39 or 47 to 39 Republican votes. And the Vicki Hartzler speech, that was weird. It's something to show you, though, the stability of the gay position here, that we could watch that and laugh. Like, I would watch that and be angry or mad maybe 10 years ago, but now I watched it and just like, you're crying over the fact that that's my marriage just now, not going to, at risk of annulment by government. A little bit, pretty odd situation there. Well, I mean, you know, this is one where the legislation followed public opinion, which has undergone this sea change. And I just want to emphasize, make a couple of points here. Number one, there's a piece in either the Times or the Post, see, I get confused on these things,

pointing out the importance of this campaign by very prominent Republicans to work the Republican side of the aisle, people like Ken Millman, who used to work in the Bush administration, and others who organized, you know, a campaign to encourage Republicans, you know, and, you know, showed them the polls, you know, talked to them about, you know, where the public was on this, you know, how they did not want to, you know, create this level of uncertainty. That would be point number one. Point number two is I think that the success of this legislation underlines the importance of the compromise that Tammy Baldwin and others made on the issue of religious freedom. And I understand this is a very, very difficult issue. You know, the fact that you need to balance out the recognition of the rights. You know, let's also, if we're going to get this kind of

legislation through, we need to acknowledge, you know, the rights of conscience that not every, you know, churches should not be compelled to necessarily change their practices. And, you know, if in fact they had insisted on a bill without any religious freedom, religious liberty, religious conscience elements, we would not be having this discussion today. It just would not happen. And this issue would become much more toxic going forward. And I think that with that compromise, you come close to diffusing the issue. Now, I'm not so naive to think it's not going to be part of the culture war, but the full-on recognition of the religious conscience provisions takes a lot of the edge off that. Yeah. And I don't have opposition to this. I remember having some awkward discussions with Jeb prepping him for these questions back in 2016, you know, trying to navigate around the language. Not awkward because he was in a bad place on it, but just figuring out how to talk about it. I actually think there's some progress of some of these activist groups.

I disagree with me on this on the left. I think the productions are good. And I think that graciousness is important. It's a sign of the progress that we have in this country that you can feel stable in this. I can't get myself to a place where I'm upset about the lady that doesn't want to make a wedding website. That's fine for me. And I'm sure there's some legal, you know, different, you got to figure out how this works law.

There's some constitutional elements to this. Obviously, that is not the case if, you know, my husband's from Union, West Virginia, right? Like there's only one restaurant on Main Street. Like if that restaurant wanted to ban a gay wedding party from happening there, like they should not be allowed to do that, right? Like there should be reasonable restrictions on all this sort of thing. But I think that it is a sign of the progress. And it's an area where I kind of feel like it's important to have, you know, graciousness and recognition of like letting people have conscious objections, you know, which I think are kind of ridiculous. But I'd like them to meet me and my

family. I think we're fine. I don't think there's anything to be unconscious about. I also find that oftentimes it's a little inconsistent. I noticed that these conscious objections don't usually tend to straight people's third weddings. But okay, you know, whatever. I just think that that is kind of how we live in a pluralistic society. And I think that that's fine. Exactly. See, I think that's the key point. This is what it means we live in a pluralistic society. And I think that that's fine. Exactly. See, I think that's the key point. This is what it means to live in a pluralistic society. And that's not going to change anything anytime soon. So let's end on that positive note.

Great. Let's do it. You know, that weirdly enough, 2022 seems to be ending on kind of an up note. I'm, by the way, saying that I hope I'm not jinxing it. I hope I'm not hexing it. I hope I'm not hexing it either because I've already planned my New Year's episode with Drew for Not My Party. I was like,

we're going to go all out. We're going to remind the teens that it's been a good year. Let them celebrate. There's been some not great stuff, but on balance, a good year. I can't wait for that. I'm kind of hungry for that sort of thing. We've been through some pretty dark periods here. a good year. I can't wait for that. I'm kind of hungry for that sort of thing, right? Because we've been through some pretty dark periods here. I mean, some really dark. Hello,

darkness, my old friend. But in any case, Tim, you and your family, I hope you have a wonderful holiday season. Merry Christmas and a wonderful new year. And we've almost made it to the end of 2022. So thanks for coming along for the ride. Enjoy France. You're going to have to learn how to do it. Is it joy you? What would it be? What is Merry Christmas in French? I will be back here by Christmas, but there may be some visits to Bordeaux, Cognac, and Champagne for no particular reason, because that's basically the area we're going to be in. Joy you well. I should have had that. Enjoy it, Charlie. It's been a good year. We'll talk to you on the flip side. Okay, thanks a lot. And thank you all for listening to this Weekend's Bulwark podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. Stick around for next week, because I think we

have some special podcasts for you that'll remind you what an extraordinary and often mind-blowing year we just had.