The Daily Beast Podcast - Christie Has One Move Left That May Save Us From Trump

Episode Date: January 12, 2024

The Bulwark editor Jonathan Last tells The New Abnormal that if Chris Christie really believes that Donald Trump must be stopped at all costs, then he has one card left to play. Plus! Anat Shenker-Osorio, host of the Words to Win By podcast, tells The New Abnormal co-host Danielle Moodie, how Joe Biden’s 2024 campaign messaging is landing with voters. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy and current Campbell News conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Kedden, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. We are back in full form and we have such an excellent show for you today.

Annette Shanker Osario, the host of the Words to Win by podcast, which is all about how progressives win is here to talk all about the Biden campaign's messaging and if saving democracy will be enough. Then we'll talk to Bullwork editor Jonathan V. last. And he's going to tell us what to make of the Republican field now that it's pretty much. much shaken out and we're on to the general election. But first, let's have some fun. Well, friends, some exciting news. Andy is back. Oh, M.G. It has been, oh, I don't know, forever and a day since we have talked about the hellscape that is America and it just didn't feel like a new year without you yet. So this is officially the happy new year from the new abnormal. Happy New Year, everyone.

I am glad to be back. Finally, on the road to recovery from a very, very annoying illness. Well, we are so happy to have you back. You missed absolutely nothing. Just kidding. Everything's still a shit show. So it's hard to decide where to begin, but we had a little anniversary that just passed. It's a big tourist anniversary for the Republican Party called January 6th.

Marjorie Taylor Green wanted to throw a big old party. and that was busted when the hotel realized what she wanted to rent it out for. But right before January 6th, Joe Biden came out with his big campaign. Like, what is the Biden administration? What is the Biden-Harris 2024 campaign slogan? What are they hanging their hat on? And it is saving democracy. Saving democracy from going off of a cliff, saving democracy from going down in quicksand,

saving democracy from Maga supremacy? I don't know. But Andy, you know, because you've had so much time to take, you know, to take in the news. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know, because I hear that nothing helps healing better than nonstop political news. Right. How has it been landing with you, you know, that we have 10 months to save democracy?

Well, me and my new best friends, the cast of Chicago Fire, because I'm, I have discovered that shows like that when you're sick are somehow a comfort. And I am now officially an old man and I watch network procedurals, but only the reruns on like ion and stuff like that. Brilliant. I think saving democracy is the correct slogan in a factual sense because I always used to be, yeah, it'd be better if this side won, but we'll make it through it the other side one. Yeah, I don't know that that's the case in 2024.

I really do think that this is an election, much as 2020 was, where saving democracy is on the ballot. I guess the question is, do enough Americans understand that? Do enough Americans believe that for that kind of slogan to be effective and to not just be an eye-roller? I haven't seen it rolled out. I haven't seen it popping up all over the place yet. But I think to a large extent, this is what you and I have been harping on for the past. year or whatever, it feels like a decade at this point, because we have to keep saying it. But this is what we've wanted the media to be doing and talking about how this election is going to be about saving democracy and not New York Times headlines about Trump's bold plan to kick out all the brown people,

you know, and phrasing it like that or whatever. Obviously, I made that one up, but that's the way they phrase it. I don't know. I think maybe I'm glad that they're doing this. Am I wrong? Am I crazy? Am I sick? I can't tell you all of the above, but here's what I'll take that as a yes. Here's what I'll say is that in an interview that I have with Anas Shankar's Asardio, who is like the messaging maven. And you guys will hear it come up later in the episode when I sit down with her. But I think that there is a problem with saving democracy. I think much in the same way that people have been told that if you vote every four years, then you can bury your head in the sand and you have no responsibility or vigilance that is necessary in

order to keep this country going. And I don't think that because of our public school system and the gutting that has happened over the last several years in many school districts, that I don't think that people really understand fundamentally what democracy is about. Yeah. What they do understand, though, is freedom. Let's just look at what the right wing, radicalized, grifting ass Supreme court just did in their first major decision following the Dobbs decision, which got rid of and gutted Roe v. Wade. They just decided that in Idaho, if you are a pregnant woman or pregnant person, and you are in need of an emergency abortion in order to save your life, well, the Supreme Court just said, fuck you. Let them die. And that's okay. So I think that people understand freedoms, bodily

autonomy, your ability to cast a vote, your ability to get a job, they understand those things being taken away. Those of us who are in, you know, have been inside of the Beltway, have been in this, you know, in this work and in policy arenas and all of those things. Democracy, you know, we can understand and articulate and have debates about. But freedom, I think, is what regular people understand and your freedoms and your rights being taken. away and now we have a patchwork of protections. Look, I agree with all of that 100%. And by no means am I suggesting and by no means do I believe that casting a vote for Joe Biden in 2024, even if he wins, means, oh, thank God we saved democracy. I guess more what I'm saying is

it's a necessary component of saving democracy, of saving freedom. I think it all goes to the same place. The thing you're talking about in Idaho and every other thing we've talked about on this show with gutting of education and what's going on in Florida and what's going on in Texas. It's all being done by Republicans. I understand substituting freedom for democracy. I think part of the problem with that is the Republicans talk about freedom nonstop. And we've allowed them to, we've allowed them to co-opt it. Absolutely. And it absolutely should be taken back. The problem is it ain't going to be taken back between now and November 2024. I agree that it needs to be taken back. And I agree. that it's a, I don't know, if you want to say freedom, you want to say rights, I think both of those

are probably better terms and more easily digestible and understandable than democracy. So much depends on Donald Trump not being president because all these other things, all these things that are going on at the state levels, they have to be dealt with and they have to be, but it feels like a lot of them have to be dealt with on the state levels. and having Donald Trump as president, and if, God forbid, there's a complete Republican control of both houses of Congress, fucking forget about that. I absolutely get what you're saying, and I'm really interested to hear this interview, and I have absolutely no doubt that I will learn a lot. I guess my point is I am happy for the Democratic Party to start talking about things in bigger terms. By that, I mean by talking about the importance of this election and how we do need to save all of, we need to save democracy, we need to save people's freedoms, we need to save people's rights, and not make this about a one or two point difference in the economy, or I don't know, should the Pentagon have $20 billion or $16 billion.

I don't want the Democratic Party to run this election on the margins. I want them to get out there and fucking start telling people how important this is and that this isn't about the size of the Pentagon budget. And you know what? It's not even about whether your Social Security check is $20 higher or lower. And I'm not minimizing that. All I'm saying is this is about things that are so much bigger. And this is, again, this is what I want the media to start doing. I want this to not be a horse race.

To me, the idea that the Biden campaign is even starting to think about things in broader terms and to campaign in broader terms. And yeah, I'm perfectly fine to change the actual words they use. But I like the concept of doing that because I think it is, I just, I just think we're at that point in the country. I think we are just at this incredible inflection point. And I think people need to be made aware of that. You know, and I think, too, one of the pieces that is important as we are watching the Republican primary wind its way to the Iowa caucus happening next week, which is, look, whether or not it's Donald Trump or if it's 50 points below him, Nikki Haley, right, or 10 points below her Ron DeSantis, all of these people possess the same ideology, which is that they do not believe that the people, of this country should have a voice and opinion in how this country runs. They want one person and one person alone to set the agenda, to set the ways and everyone else you either follow

or you get run over, right? And what I've been saying to people is that you can listen to Donald Trump because he's telling you, I'm going to be a dictator. He's telling you, I'm going to weaponize the Department of Justice. I'm going to flush out all of these career people that have been in place in our governmental agencies. And I'm going to put in my own loyalists and sycophants and Maga supremacist. The rest of them, like, we watched, I mean, not really, but the Republican debate. And did you hear anybody say that that wasn't right? Did you hear anybody call Donald Trump un-American? Did you hear anybody defend the Constitution? and let processes play out because that's what it means to be part of a democracy.

No. These people are lock in step. And so I want to remind folks that even if by the grace of fucking God that Donald Trump, oh my God, one of these cases manages to go the way that it would for any other American in this country and that he was held responsible for a coup, right? He was held responsible for stealing from the United States. he was held responsible from enriching himself from the office of the presidency, that if any of those things were to happen, whoever comes in his place still believes the same shit. And they're telling you

that. So for me, it's like, I want Joe Biden to be like, look, this election isn't even about me. Because I know y'all don't like me. I see the polls. Right. Like, y'all ain't trying to fuck with me, you know, but the opportunity to go ahead and have a march, to go ahead and pick it, to go ahead and strike. and you have those rights. Now. Now, with a Democrat in office, you will not otherwise. This is what it comes down to for me. If you're having trouble figuring out which party you should vote for

and which party wants progress or whatever, and if you want to figure out which party is the bad guys, look at which party wants fewer people to vote. Look at which party wants to make it harder for people to vote, wants to make their votes count less, wants to make it more difficult for certain groups and certain races to vote. They're the bad guys. And I think that's just like regardless of what your beliefs are, if there's a party out there that wants fewer Americans' voices to be heard, there's a reason for that. And it ain't a good reason. And do not vote for that party.

And to me, that's just, look, there's a million plus reasons why the Republican Party in the 2020s is God awful. But if you're on the fence for some reason and you're like, well, you know, but the Democrats do this and the Democrats do that, which party wants to make it harder for you to vote? Which party wants to strip people of their voting rights? They ain't the good guys. And they ain't the people that represent America. and they know that, and that's why they want fewer people to vote. So to me, you can throw everything else out if you want and just look at that one issue, and it makes it really, really easy, and it's a really stark comparison.

And it tells you which side, whatever the problems that side has, and God knows the Democrats have tons of them, but it tells you which party will at least allow you to try to make things better in the future. Because the Republican Party doesn't want to allow you to make things better in the future. They want to take your voice away and they want to make it so that only people who think like them have a say. So that's why when I hear saving democracy, and that's why I'm like, yes, at least you're nibbling around the edges of what the actual issue is here. So I don't love it, but I'm okay with it. By the time we do this segment again, the Iowa caucuses will have been decided. I will say, I don't know how many people are showing up at these caucuses when, in fact,

they're going to be taking place in the middle of a polar vortex, a word that we have become more conscious of over the past couple of years. It is when, oh, I don't know if you've ever seen the movie, Andy, the day after tomorrow, but it's kind of a little bit like that, where the fucking temperatures plummet well below zero. the winds pick up, there is like a considerable amount of snow that is dumped, wind that is blowing, you know, covering cars with with icicles that look like they're from the ice age. But this is when this is supposed to take place in Iowa. And the Republican Party refuses to change the date. And folks that were interviewed were saying, oh, well, I'm still going to show up.

And I'm just like, you're saying that right now. But when it's 13 degrees below zero, do you know what I'm saying? Is your first thing going to be like, I wonder if my heat is going to keep working in these, you know, in the tundra? Or if like I'm going to make my way to go argue with my neighbor in the elementary school gym, unclear. Look, Iowans are hearty people. They are the pride of America. And I am sure that they will get out there and do their civic duty. I have to say all that in case I ever run for president.

Oh, okay. And I'll be your running mate. I'm so excited about them. I just want to make sure that that's on the record. And so if anyone goes back and looks at the tapes. Apo researchers write the new abnormal pod at gmail.com for all the cutting room floor stuff you need. Interesting. Oh, you want to get down in the mud, cannon?

All right. No, thank you. No, thank you. We'll rassel. To me, it's simple. if you're trying to figure out which party to vote for, you can look at one thing, which party acknowledges climate change. Yeah.

I'm just going to keep doing this with different issues, I think. I love this. The refusal to recognize climate change is so fucking bizarre because it's not, climate change is not political. Like, it's just, it's what's happening. Every year we get a stat. This was the warmest year on record, breaking the record of last year. Like we're seeing this every single year.

We got a little dusting of snow here in New York last week. It was like the first time in almost two years that we'd had snow. I mean, I grew up in New York. It snowed all the damn time. I don't remember a winter as a child and it not snowing. Yeah. And not putting on a snow suit. Right.

And not getting days off school. Mm-hmm. I mean, it was the best thing in the world. And my heart bleeds for these school kids who don't even know what a snow day is. Danielle. I feel for them. And, you know, and here's just the thing, just speaking of New York real quick, because climate change, there was like a mini tropical fucking storm that rolled through New York City and like the eastern seaboard pummeling winds of 60 miles per hour that were rocking skyscrapers in the city over the weekend. Oh, it was unreal. In January. By the way,

it was also 50 degrees outside. So you think that I, Our infrastructure in this city, which is crumbling from the inside out, can handle that type of unexpected, unexplain. And not unexplainable, because we can explain it. But unexpected type of tropical storm weather in the winter. Like, and again, the denialism that comes from this party is going to be our financial ruin. because these places, there isn't a place that is safe from these type of climate storms, impact, whether it's snow, whether it's droughts, whether the heat. So over the summer, temperatures in Texas, triple digits for like two weeks in a row.

There's not a amount of air conditioning that you can run, you know, when you have these grids that are failing because they are being pushed to their limits because they also haven't been funded by the same Republicans who are also. telling you, don't worry, what your feeling doesn't exist. If you want to look at two organizations that know damn well climate change is real, you look at the military, and I've said this before, so I won't get into it, but they have multiple papers and strategies that are based around the ideas that climate change is what they call a force multiplier. And more importantly, I think maybe look at the insurance industry, because the insurance industry, most of which is pulling out of states like Florida at this point.

No damn well that climate change is real and that what we're seeing is, I guess, for lack of a better term, Danielle, the new abnormal. Mm-hmm. I'm back, baby. I'm so happy. You're back, baby. I'm so happy. Folks, I am very happy to welcome back to the new abnormal.

Anat Shankar Asadio, who is a researcher, a message maker, and host of Words to Win by, a podcast about progressive wins and a person who is, I don't know, message maven, wizard wordsmither, somebody who I look to to say, is this landing or not? We now have a better picture of what the Biden administration thinks that their opening campaign 24 messaging is. Joe Biden gave a speech the day before the day before the anniversary of the insurrection. He did so on a historical battleground. And he said that this election is going to be about, quote, saving democracy. And that is, I don't know if it's an expansion from saving the soul of the nation, which was his 2020 campaign slogan. But let's start off. How do you think that

this is landing with voters. And more importantly, how is it landing with you? So I would say, good in concept, shaky in execution. And what I mean by that is the notion of needing to radically reframe what the electoral decision is for voters, imperative, essential, add lots of synonyms for that same thing. What we know from common sense, what we know from the 22 elections, 23, 18, 2020, and all of the special elections in the odd years in between is that in the races and the places where Democrats successfully made the election a referendum on who is going to protect your freedoms and who is going to take away your freedoms, we won. And so the notion that we need to pivot what the election is about away from kind of a classic bread and butter,

let's talk about the economy to something bigger and broader and much more existential. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. The notion that the word democracy can occupy that role, I guess my joke about it is democracy never bought me dinner. Democracy is simply too flaccid a word. to uphold something as essential as democracy. Let me ask you then, would a better word be freedom? Or is that just to, again, amorphous of a word,

but is it something that people get? Yes, and yes, and more yes. So we have been testing this concept since, you know, I no longer even remember because time has lost all meaning, at least to me, but at least since 2020. And what we find any and every time we look at it, whether we're doing a split sample test in a survey

where we'll ask folks something around protecting our freedoms versus protecting our democracy, and we ask kind of what is more essential. But we also ask, how does that impact their vote choice? What we see over and over again is that freedom and when the grammar allows it, the plural freedoms, is not just an essential concept when you ask Americans, what is the number one value you associate with this country,

across races, places, ages, the number one value selected is freedom. And that's been true pretty much since people have been asking values-based questions in different kinds of public opinion and social science research. And so this core value of freedom, it's not just, a really important thing to people, it's important within the context of their understanding of American-ness. Democracy, in contrast, is something we've never had in this country. And I'm not arguing that we've ever had the full exercise of freedoms either, to be clear.

But the notion of saving our democracy, that sentence structure or protecting our democracy or shoring it up implies that we had a democracy to begin with, which of course we don't, even at the most basic level when you have things like the electoral college and the grossly unrepresentative Senate, you layer onto that gerrymandering, you layer onto that voter suppression, you and I could go on and on, there is no democracy here. And so if you're trying to animate, especially young folks, especially black folks, especially new American immigrants, then promising them that you are going to kind of patchwork, quilt up a thing that's never existed is really not that animate.

In contrast, freedom is what we call corporeal. It's felt in the body. The kind of salient example our people have of abnegation of freedom is being confined and constrained. And that's visceral, right? You can taste that. you can feel it, you can touch it. And because Republicans have done what they have done to the freedom to decide whether

and when we have kids, the freedom to decide who governs in our name, we have these super concrete examples on abortion and on January 6th plus voter suppression that tells voters, oh, you're not just simply chicken little here. This is not the sky is falling. You have tangible examples. And so from there, we can weave the rest of the tail that they are coming for your freedoms. And we have found that to be really, really resonant. If you look at 2022 and you look at folks, for example, like Governor Shapiro, but across the battleground states that we won, they really made protect our freedoms their core message.

When I think about what Republicans are doing and have been doing over the past several years, because the thing is that the trouble I find with presidential election cycles is that the way that they have the narrative around them is that every four years somebody is coming in on a white horse to save you. and then you can absolutely not participate, not have any involvement, not pay attention until the next four years. You can just kind of hit snooze. And when Joe Biden said in 2020, I, you know, we're coming to save the soul. We need to save the soul of the nation and you do so by voting for me. And then when people now reflect on the last four years,

I don't think that they feel that the nation's soul, has been saved. Right? Like that's, I mean, so, so it's like I'm saying A plus B is going to result in C. And I'm looking around and saying, well, didn't you say that four years ago? And I actually feel worse than I did. And so that being the reality that this administration and this country is up against does saying that I'm going to fight for your freedom, we need to fight.

for our freedom, you do so with your vote for democracy, whether or not you like the candidate that you're voting for. When we just watch what they are voting on in Missouri, which is to put the death penalty on the table for women and people with uteruses that access an abortion, we see it in Idaho. We see it in all of these different areas and places where, but you are president of the United States and freedoms are still being taken away. So how do we reconcile these realities? Yeah. So let me give you a layered answer, if I may. The first layer is that what we see and what you're responding to as a person, a very, very tapped in, tuned in, well-informed person in this media environment, which differentiates you, right? Most people are not tapped in, tuned in, dialed in to that degree

about politics and are kind of going to pay whatever level of attention they will eventually pay come September at best, perhaps October. So, you know, you and I do not kind of represent a mainstream relationship to politics. And it's important to try to beat that into our brains because that really is the much bigger divide in American politics. We think it's between left and right. It's truly between engaged and unengaged. And in being engaged, we represent. present real outliers. So it's important to remember that. What I want to say about your question, your very, very well-informed question, and I'm underscoring that because it is a well-informed question, is that it is much easier to make the negative case than the positive case. So this is

layer one, by which I mean making the case that MAGA is coming for your freedoms and is taking away your freedoms is much more credible to voters across the spectrum. Of course, always absenting the diehard Republican supporters where there's nothing that you can say, right? They're in their cue hole. And communicating with them is just you wasting your own oxygen. But for the voters who are reachable, it's much easier to make that negative case credibly and viscerally than it is the positive case that Democrats are going to protect your freedoms. That's absolutely true. And what that means second layer is that in effective electoral messaging, the protagonist antagonist-antagonist relationship to set up is, as I said, antagonist equals mega-republicans,

protagonist equals we the people. It does not equal Democrats. And I'll sound out what that is in a message in a moment. But even if it were the case that we could convince. people that Democrats are coming in to save you, which newsflash, we cannot. That is not credible to voters. Shocking. We wouldn't want to do that because the purpose of a political message, electoral message, is to convince the person listening to it to become an agent. It's to convince the person listening to it that you got to do something. And what we find over and over again is that social proof is real. People do the thing they think people like them do.

And so at the most facile level, when we test it, we find that ads that show people attending a town hall make people more likely to attend a town hall. Ads that show people striking, make people more likely to strike, ads that show people voting, make people more likely to vote. You get where I'm going. So what the protagonist-antagnist relationship is, is MAGA is the antagonist and you, my friend, listening to this ad, listening to this speech,

reading this text, are the protagonist. And so in a message, in America we value our freedoms, freedom to decide whether and when we have kids, freedom to pick our leaders and have them govern in our name. But today, MAGA Republicans are hell bent on taking every one of those freedoms, from the freedom to retire in dignity to the freedom to put. put food on the table, be home in time to eat it. See how I'm weaving in that economics? Yep. There's that economics. That doesn't go away. But we sent them packing in 2020. We dealt them a key blow in 2022 and we're just getting started. Our freedoms are on the line. And if they

think that we will bend over so that they can rule over and not represent us, they've got another thing coming. We the people will stand up and protect those freedoms again as voters. Notice, like, did I even mention Democrats? I did not mention Democrats. And that is the message that we find. It's a message of defiance. So the negative emotion that we want to tap into is not fear. It's defiance. And the third layer, if I may, you know, complete this cake, is that, the American electoral system is at very best, the very kindest descriptor that I could give to it, is that it is utterly and completely a shambles. I would say broken, but that implies it wasn't built to be this way. And of course it was. And the way that I analogize it is that it is a shitty,

fucking broken down toaster with precisely two slots in it. Say it. And if all you have in your kitchen is a toaster, you can't get protein out of that meal. You can't get vitamins, you can't get minerals. You cannot get a delicious well-balanced breakfast out of just a toaster. So what is this toaster with precisely and only two slots? It is a one vehicle. It is one thing that we have in our metaphorical kitchen where one slot you can put a piece of dry, crusty bread, which will not be delicious. It will be crispy and burnt, but it will provide you some caloric intake in order to get through a day. The other slot features an arsenic-laced carcinogenic bundle of poison, which will kill you. And so what is available to you, friends?

This is not my message. This is like how I understand the system. What's available to you, friends, is the ability to create a piece of bread in order to have enough caloric intake to do the actual fighting for a complete breakfast. What is the actual fighting? Last year, there were 400 by the end of 2023 separate labor actions, many of which are, resulted in contracts that have increased and rightly so, people's pay, improve their conditions, given them security, given them stability. We need so much more of other kinds of democratic actions. And so in effective messaging, we have to render the listener, the agent,

and we have to provide with that agency multiple channels of participation, collective participation. Be honest about what is possible through this broken down shitty-ass toaster, i.e. American elections. And ensure that people participate in this so that we can live to fight another day. Here's what I want to say, first of all, bravo on the analogy. I mean, we've been baking and toasting. and cooking this entire interview.

And I'm just like, okay, I'm with it. Like, I'm going to roll up my sleeves. With the toaster analogy, I either get the dry, burnt piece of toast that is a sense of sustenance that does give me some bit of energy, or I get the poisoned piece of bread that will ultimately kill me. What do we say those of us who are informed, who do have platforms, to those group of motherfuckers that say, well, I just won't eat. Yeah.

What we say to those people, and again, I want to be clear, the toaster analogy would not be my electoral message. It is my like having a conversation with you and your listeners way of understanding. I would, for some people, if I'm having interpersonal communication, I would say I would actually use the toaster analogy. And I have, I have with people who are for various reasons. many, many of them an extraordinarily clear moral stance around egregious things that are happening, both within our country, but principally outside of our country, that our country is tragically financing and supporting. I think you know what I mean. What I say to them is that stance and that feeling, I admire it and I respect it. I think that we all know that the only way we would have

significant change in this country would be to withhold our labor. Basically, all of this is a product of the nefarious unchecked growth of unfettered, unhumanistic capitalism. And the only thing that capital will ever respond to is us withholding our labor. And so take that energy, that energy that wants to vote third party or wants to not vote at all or wants to kind of disrupt that electoral system. And let's talk about how we can use that energy to actually disrupt the means of production. Because I genuinely believe that if we were to have half of a day of a general strike, and I know that this is far-fetched, don't mistake me, I'm aware, far-fetched. But if we were to do that in one major metropolis, this country would bend over and lean down and be forced to reckon and to listen to those demands.

And so on the one hand, I think we need to give folks a place to channel that defiance and that energy because I think it's really, really critical and important. And I've personally never had the experience of telling someone, you're a fucking idiot and everything you're doing is wrong, which I don't believe, and have them turn around and be like, yes, you're right. Please tell me more. So that just doesn't work as a message, either, you know, to my teenage kid or to any voter or would-be voter. I think what we say to them is we have to use an extraordinarily broken product in order to attempt to fix an extraordinarily broken product.

And that's a lot to wrap your brain around. And so what we're doing here is we are coming together to declare. that this is one source of our power. And if and when we turn out in record numbers as constituencies that do believe that we shall not rest until freedom is one, what we demonstrate is that our priorities, our beliefs, our morals are the ones you need to listen to. Why is it that politicians bend themselves up into knots to listen to senior citizens? Why is it that politicians bend themselves up into knots to listen to white suburban moms? Obviously, racism, but also they represent a clear political block. You have to attend to them because they vote, they vote habitually, and they

vote in a uniform pattern. Taking yourself out of the system is telling the system to ignore you. You are telling the system that you do not matter. You do not count. And frankly, you don't care. You don't care. But more importantly, I as a politician, I don't need to listen to you because you've decided to be silent. I know this is a long answer. But where I draw my hope and inspiration in 2022, Brazil had an election. I don't know if this is going to sound familiar to you, Danielle, but two old-ass ex-presidents, both of whom were not appealing to young people. And they increased youth turnout by 47%. That was not an audio typo, whatever you call that, 47%. And the core message that they used was, if you don't decide, they'll decide for you.

You have to channel people's rightful, righteous desire for defiance into a venue that is actually productive and helpful. And that is both a participation in the political system, picking the best thing that we got as angry and upsetting as it is, going down ballot to pick in many cases. Look at Jasmine Crockett. Like, there are some good ass down ballot options, not even that far down ballot. What I will say is that everything that you have outlined is exactly how this administration, in the 10 months that we have, have got to channel people's very real frustration and anger into something that they can use. Not in the way that Republicans have weaponized white supremacy and fear and all of these things, but in a way that you can utilize people's anger and frustration to, fight for their freedom. My friend, Anat Shankar Osario, folks, if you are not listening to words to win by, then you are absolutely missing out. It is in its third season, and I encourage

you to check it out. Anat, thank you so much, so much for joining the new abnormal, and I hope that we will have you back a number of times over the course of this election year. Daniel, thank you for everything that you are doing. When I originally asked Bullwark editor Jonathan Vlas to join me, 2024 was just beginning, the skies were blue, and America was filled with a sunny optimism. Then I got sick and everything went back to shit. And that's by bad.

But he stuck with me and he joins me now. JVL, thanks for being here. You missed your window, Andy. I'm sorry. I'm glad you're feeling better, but I get optimistic like once every seven years. It only lasts for, you know, three days and that's gone. So you got normal me back here.

All right. So the cicadas are gone. Dark JVL. Brudex is gone. Dark JVL is here. Okay. So originally I wanted to talk to you about a bore column you wrote that laid out the upcoming political year.

And I still do want to touch on that and ask you some questions about it. The Iowa caucuses are next Tuesday. We all know Trump is going to win big. Eight days later is the New Hampshire primary. Again, Trump will win. Does Halley or DeSantis even stay in the race until Super Tuesday on March 5th? No. No.

I mean, like anything can happen. So I'm not going to say it's a 0.0 chance. DeSantis is right now praying that he comes in third in Iowa. Because if he comes in third in Iowa, then he can wait a day and then gather his supporters and announce that he's suspending his campaign and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And talk about how unfair the media was to him. If he comes in second in Iowa, then it becomes much harder to get out before New Hampshire. And so he probably has to go to New Hampshire where maybe he finishes fourth to Vivek.

It's possibly can finish behind Vivek. And after that, he's gone. But the earliest, Ron DeSantis gets. out the two days after the Iowa caucuses, at the latest, he gets out probably the day after New Hampshire. Nikki Haley is an interesting question, too. There are a couple polls that have showed her within striking distance in New Hampshire. A, I don't really believe those polls because there are a bunch of other polls that show her

behind by double digits. B, I expect that Donald Trump's momentum from Iowa, where he is going to have the biggest margin of victory by any Republican in the history of the caucuses, he's going to get a. bounce coming out of that. As DeSantis' support collapse, he will probably pick up a few more points. And so if you're Nikki Haley, then if you finish second in New Hampshire, you can just get out. And then it's over. Donald Trump has won the first two contests. Nobody who has ever won the first two contests hasn't been their parties nominee, et cetera, et cetera. But she wins somehow, like if she eeks out a one point victory in New Hampshire, then she's got to like sit around

for four more weeks until she gets to South Carolina where she will lose by more than 20 points. She'll lose by probably 40 points in Nevada. Nevada's a little weird because it's a caucus state. That would be, in a way, catastrophic success for her. I think what she really wants is to finish a respectable second in New Hampshire. And then she can suspend her campaign and talk about how her time isn't now, but Donald Trump is a great strong leader. And she served him before and hopes she can serve him again. And then she just holds on to her ticket for the VP sweepstakes.

Another thing you wrote in your column laying out 2024 is that after Super Tuesday, the general election polling enters a new phase. Explain what you mean by that. God knows. People listening to this podcast aren't going to believe this, but it does seem to be true. There are large segments of the American population who still think that it is unlikely that either Donald Trump or Joe Biden will be their party's nominees. I don't understand how people go through life living like this. I don't get it. I don't know how these people are able to like put food on their table.

and operate stoves and motor vehicles. But here we are. And once we have an actual, like, nominee for both parties and everybody understands, oh, shit, we're doing this again. We're going to run it back. Then saying that you don't support Joe Biden goes from, yeah, I've been disappointed because of X, Y, Z to fuck. That means I'm supporting the other guy.

A majority of Americans really hate Donald Trump. Like, it's not like they disagree with him or like they hate him. Now, it's not a huge majority. It's like 55% or something. I'm like that. But it is a flat majority. And Joe Biden does not engender especially strong feelings, even among the people who have fallen off the Joe Biden bandwagon.

It's not like he's become some devil to them. I don't know. I look at this and I think that we get through Super Tuesday and Trump will just have been absolutely mashing, right? You know, he's beaten these guys. He's beaten these guys. He's the big winner. He's won every primary.

He's won every caucus. And then like we're at this high watermark for him. And I'm not sure where it goes from there, except that I think it's likely to start contracting. I think whatever lead he has in the general election polling then begins to shrink. Polsters will tell you, and economists will tell you, the consumer sentiment is a lagging indicator of economic reality. It typically lags by six to nine months. The economy's just been very good for the last year. I'm sorry.

People don't like to hear that, but it's just the objective truth. And that really is starting to register. You're seeing that, starting to move in consumer sentiment surveys. And so the question is, do people sort of wake up. fast enough to get Joe Biden over the line? Or does it take just a smidge too long? And Trump winds up reelected. Okay. I want to get to something you just said about the economy being a lagging indicator and that the economy is actually really good, et cetera. You have a piece out now at the bulwark called, we're living in the upside down, which I assume is some kind of nerd reference,

but not being a nerd myself. I don't get it. But what you're basically saying is that there's some enormous cognitive dissonance going on among Republican voters. The first example you use is you point to Trump saying of the economy as he did in this past week, when there's a crash, I hope it's going to be during the next 12 months because I don't want to be Herbert Hoover. And what you do is you point out that a lot of people are overlooking an aspect of what he's saying here. Yeah, right.

I mean, you can't crash unless you're in a place where things are good. Right. It's just if we were living through American carnage, which has been the Republican line. And, you know, it's been not like, oh, things could be better. The Republican line of attack for the last two years has been, this is American carnage. It's worse than the Great Depression. People can't afford rice. They can't afford gas to drive to see their mama. And all of a sudden he's like, yeah, you know, I mean, the good times could all come to a halt. I don't get it. And there is all of the data. And all of the data is real. And you can hit people over the head

with it. And they just don't buy it. Right. And people say, well, you're not talking their lived experience when you say that median household wealth is up 30% adjusted for inflation over the last three years or that unemployment has bowled in below 40% for 30 straight months or something like that. Right. So I, you know, I go where I'm making these Vulcan arguments and people say, well, that's not people's lived experiences. So I'm going to retreat to anecdote. We boat sales, the sales of watercraft in America are higher than they have ever been in the history of America. People just out buying boats. Maybe these people are all Biden voting. I don't know. I kind of doubt it.

Do you remember, Andy, did you go out for Halloween at all? I did not. You didn't drive around during the weeks preceding Halloween and see people with these gigantic 12-foot-tall skeleton decorations on their front yards. Sure. Yeah, yeah. Those things cost $300 at Home Depot. I am sorry, but if you can spend $300 on a 12-foot-tall skeleton for your yard,

then it is not dust bowl days. It's just objectively true, right? your feelings don't care about the fact, but whatever, there it is. It is interesting to me if Trump is going to pivot from everything is terrible, don't believe your own personal financial situation to sure things look good, but everything's about to crash as a message. And I mean, he is pretty canny. He's pretty smart.

And, you know, he's got the lizard brain cunning to him. I think it's possible that at some point he'll realize people have turned on the economy stuff and they now think things are pretty smart. pretty okay. There's been a vibe shift and he's got to go swing further into. This is all the product of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Joe Biden's dark sorcery and the crash is coming and I alone can stop it. Interesting. You talked about Nikki Haley maybe considering herself for the Veepe slot and you've written a piece for the Atlantic saying just that. So you think that she is right now, I don't want to say

in the catbird seat, but you think she's a frontrunner, if not the front runner, for the Veep selection. Yeah, I think she is. Now, this isn't to say that she's got it nailed or something. Sure. In betting parlance, right, if you offered me the choice of Nikki or the field, I would still take the field. Gotcha.

Does that make sense? Yes. But among the people who are vaguely plausible, I think she's pretty strong, but for non-obvious reasons, right? And there are a whole lot of reasons why she wouldn't be. The top one being that Trump learned that he doesn't want another Mike Pence. He can't have somebody who might grow a conscience at a critical moment and defy him. And especially because he knows that he may have to

win the election by overturning the result after the fact. They're fully prepared to do that again. They're prepared to work at the state level to toss votes and do alternate slates of electors and try to throw it to the house. And he needs somebody who's going to be in for a penny and for a pound all the way. And maybe he can't trust Nikki on that. But on the other hand, As I said, he's cunning and he's a survivor and he has frequently shown willingness to do things which he clearly finds distasteful, but because he believes they are existentially necessary for him to hold power, one of which was taking Mike Pence to start with. I don't know if you remember this, but there was a thing like maybe he'll take Rudy. Maybe he'll take Newt. Right.

But he wound up taking Mike Pence who was really on nobody's list because he needed somebody who was a Midwestern evangelical to get those people to settle the horses down. and get those people to go along with him. It is possible that he'll look at the numbers that he is doing with women, which are terrible. Biden was plus 11 with women in 2020. In every type of survey you've seen, Democrats have done better with women since then because of Dobbs and Roe. Trump has moved away from Dobbs and Haley has also not embraced Dobbs, so maybe she could help him in that way in a way that, like, Christy Nillam wouldn't. And who knows. Maybe he decides he does need somebody who's going to keep the Wall Street Journal editorial

page people on side too to prevent them from staying home. I don't know. I could see all of that and I could see him at the end of the day, biting the bullet and saying this is a necessary or condition in order for me to have a chance of, you know, it's not sufficient, but it's a necessary condition for me to have a good chance to win here. And he has run a very disciplined campaign so far. Susie Wiles and Chris Lasavita have really run a professionalized operation. They've been tactically and strategically smart. I don't think they're going to be in his ear telling him, you know, oh, go get Kerry Lake. You know, I mean, he's got professionalized people around him who are disciplined, and I think they are likely to say, just take Haley. It's the obvious answer. Everybody will be happy with it.

So the calculus here is that the people that this would piss off, the Bannonites, the rest of Magadam, will get over it and who else are they going to vote for? But meanwhile, picking Haley might entice some moderates and some independence and some actual conservatives, the seven or eight that are left in this country and women. And so it would be a net positive. Yeah, I think so. I mean, I am sorry, but I do not understand any argument which states that there is anything Trump could do that would keep his base from going with it, like the ban on the world. Eve refused to sign the fucking pledge in Illinois to not overthrow the government. They are picking up what he's laying down. The idea that he's let Nikki, I'll say anything, Haley, onto the ticket, is not going to, for one second, dampen their belief that they finally have the strong man they've always dreamed of.

He does this. I don't know if you remember, but in both 2016 and 2020, or 2020, rather, the final two weeks of the general election campaign, he stopped all the craziness and just started talking about like unemployment and debt and spending. And he ran like normie campaigns for five minutes at the very end. And all these normie Republicans were like, ah, yeah, there it is. That's the guy, you know, all they needed was literally 14 days of this. And, you know, over the course of you had 52 weeks of insanity. And then you had 14 days of just normal. And they were like, great. Okay, cool.

We're in. So he'll do that again, I assume. And those people will need some extra assurance. But I don't think the, I don't think the Steve Bannins of the world are going to forget the previous 50 weeks and understand that he is their retribution. Yeah. I think it was 14 days in 88. minutes, if I recall correctly. Yeah, something, something like that. I wasn't running a stop watch.

No. And of course, Haley has done nothing to suggest that she doesn't want the slot. The opposite, right? She's the one who's when asked about it has refused to say that she wouldn't, you know, and she just dances around it. I mean, maybe this is me being overly cynical, but I believe that her slavery thing, once she walked into that question, her refusal to apologize for it and make good on it, she viewed that as like part of her audition. And, you know, She had to make sure she didn't go showing any sympathy for black folks because that could really get her into trouble. Right. Right.

Or any sense of actual American history. Also, if she wins New Hampshire, I think that probably hurts her chances a little bit because I don't think he could have anybody who ever looked like even for a second they might be stronger than him. And so that again, you know, catastrophic success. I think Nikki really does not want to win New Hampshire. Because again, for her winning New Hampshire is, who is the Japanese Admiral did Pearl Harbor, right? You know, I can run wild in the Pacific for five months. Then what? Yeah, Yamamoto, right?

And then what? You know, so she, okay, great. So I can win New Hampshire by two points and then what? I have to injure four weeks of people saying, gee, you have 100% name ID in South Carolina. The people in South Kakalaki elected you to the office of governor. You're losing by 25 points. Why is that governor, Haley? Right.

What is she going to say? Trump has sort of jumped on this birther train with her. Oh, Nimirata. I'm so sorry, Nimirata. So he's now laying it out there that she's not eligible to be president. So how does he pick her for vice president? I mean, because if he backtracks from that, I don't think that his supporters are going to just forget what he said. I do.

I know. I couldn't even get through that with a straight face. Look at his in the federal district court this week where he is making the argument that as president, he cannot commit any crimes. Everything he does is by definition legal. At the same time that he's campaigning against the Joe Biden crime family and promising to unleash the Department of Justice against Joe Biden to hold him accountable for his crimes. And like, how can he say these two things?

And how do his people? And the answer is because they just, they're just fucking mouth breathing idiots. Yeah. Either that or they're nihilists. If I were a nerd, I would say we're living in the upside down. Yeah. Yeah, but you're not. No, thank God.

My exit question for you is whither Chris Christie? So I'll just sit here and like eat shit on this because so I am a longtime chronicler of Christy. I wrote my first piece, my first, I reported my first piece on him when he was in the early stages of his campaign for governor against John Corzine in Jersey. And I was very impressed with him just qua politician back then. And when Christie did his heel turn, in 2016. I mean, there was there was almost nobody. That's not literally true.

But there were very few people who took it as hard as I did. I was like, what is the, you know, I've watched this guy now for years and thought he was a tremendous politician and an interesting commodity. How can he fucking do this? And I took it pretty hard. And I was, uh, skeptical of his, his campaign here. And I think he acquitted himself honorably at every stage of this campaign. He did the right thing to get out.

when he did, because he does give Haley a chance to maybe, you know, get a two-point victory in New Hampshire. But he also was right not to endorse her. And in fact, to say the opposite and to say that anybody who does endorse Trump is themselves unfit for office. My hope here is that he follows this to its logical conclusion because the logic of everything he is said and done for the last year is that in August he should be in Chicago at the Democratic National Convention. and he should be on stage saying, I am not a Democrat, I am a Republican, it kills me what has happened to our party. We got to save the party because America needs two health and parties. You can't just have one. If you have only one healthy or political party, your country is fucked in the long term. But I am here to tell you guys that if you want to save the Republican

party, the way to do it isn't to suck it up and vote for Trump. It's to get Trump beat with a stick. And that's why I am supporting Joe Biden and I call on all of my other fellow. Republicans vote for any honorable Republicans down ballot that you can find. You should definitely vote for them. But join me in supporting this good man. And once we have banished Donald Trump to blah, blah, well, you see where all this goes, right? Yeah.

And that is, I think, the thing that America needs from him. And I don't have any illusions about this. It's not like I think, like, oh, well, if Chris Christie does that, it'll move four million votes. It won't. But there are going to be a large number of people, both former Republicans, current Republicans, and most importantly, people who worked for Donald Trump in his administration, who spends the next 10 months saying, this man can't be president again.

And this election is going to be won or lost at the margins of like four figure vote totals in Arizona and Georgia. Once you're at that level, who knows what the tipping point thing is, right? I mean, who knows if it is Liz Cheney who winds up winning the election. in Georgia or Chris Christie who wins the election in Arizona for a Democrat. So I think it's important to have all hands on deck and to just keep pushing all the buttons you can in the hopes that we can avoid the guy who says he wants to terminate the Constitution and be a dictator. That would be nice. Yeah. Jonathan Las, thank you. As always, I love talking to you. And you

have such a pleasant way about you as you lead us down as a guide to the end of the Republic. Thank you. You're welcome, Andy. Feel better. Thanks. Andy Levy. Daniel Moody. Andy Levy, who is your very first fuck that guy for 2024? Okay, so we try to make fuck that guy. We try not to be hyper-local here on the New Abnormal and talk about New York too much

because obviously we have listeners all across this great nation, both the continental U.S. and the great states of Alaska and Hawaii, and all across the world, places like Berlin, Dublin, Sydney, Even Canada loves us at this point. But I have to go local for my first fuck that guy of the year. And it's going to be our mayor, Eric Adams. And it's not his first time being here. And believe me, and Daniel knows this.

It can be both of our fuck that guys every episode we do. This is just, I saw this the other day. It blew my mind. So Mayor Adams has been going around. He has cut funds to libraries. He has cut funds to a million other. places. All of this, he had reasons for. He would blame the migrant crisis, budget gaps in like $7 billion budget gaps in the budget. So he said, we have to cut the education budget by a billion

dollars. We have to close all our libraries on Sundays, all of this. And he even had to put a hiring freeze on his beloved NYPD. Well, he announced on Wednesday they found the money to restore funding, not to the libraries. And not to the parks. Not to the parks, not to education, but to the New York Police Department. And that they're going to add 600 new recruits in April. And all of this is because they had, quote, unquote, better than anticipated tax revenue. Oh, is it from all the stop and frisk? Or did he find the money under his fucking couch? Like, where did it come from? Look, I don't know. The crystals may have led him a pot of gold. But it is just absolutely fucking Unreal. The NYPD budget is so large and so out of control in this city, while library services

pretty much gone on Sundays across the city. Maybe a handful of exceptions, but other than that, pretty much gone. Education cut by a billion dollars. And he finds money to add more cops. Yeah, got to love it. It is so shameless and just so in your face with how brazen it is. that I would almost respect it, except it's so disgusting. And he needs to get gone. And he needs to get gone in the next election. Not long after he was elected, I remember saying, man, this is the fastest I've ever hated a New York mayor.

Usually it takes like a year or so. Like Diplazio, I think it took a little bit before you realized, oh, this guy doesn't know what he's doing. But he is rapidly becoming in a class unto himself. And it is just, it is so bad and it is so bad for this city and it's embarrassing. And I would just, just once in my lifetime, I would like to see New York City elect a good mayor. So for all those reasons, fuck that guy. Oh, there aren't enough fuck that guys to fuck that guy with, you know?

I know. I know. All right, Danielle, who is your fuck that guy for my first day back? Well, Andy, since we're going with oldies but goodies, I'm, going for the entire state of Texas. And at this point, you're just like, well, what did they do this time? Well, you know that the governor of Texas, he loves fetuses. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, loves them. But you know who he fucking hates? Actual kids. And let me tell you why. Because the Houston Chronicle has reported that Texas has decided to turn down. Folks, hold on to you.

chair and hat for this. Texas has turned down $350 million in federal aid to help feed millions of low-income children during the summer months after a state agency said it lacked the time and the resources to implement the program this year. So for all there, what about the children? What about the babies? We got to lock women and people with uteruses in prison for a boarding them. We got to do something about this and make these people into criminals. So then we turn around and we say, so how are you going to support all of these babies and children that are now being brought into the world via forced labor? And their response is, well, it's not our fucking problem. And even when the federal government provides them with well over a quarter of a billion

in aid to help the people of that state. That state turns around and says, nah, we're good. I don't know how much fucking hate. You have to have inside of your body in order for you to say that children should starve in the summer months. Because schools are not just the places that our kids go to receive an education. In many ways, the public school system also is a community hub.

and the place where they go oftentimes to get two of the meals that they will get that day. Through a breakfast program and through a lunch program. I look at these fucking class of people and I will go back to what Andy said at the top, which is that look at these parties. You don't know which one to vote for and you're sitting on the fence. Which one believes in forced birth and which one actually believes in helping children? Because the picture is utterly fucking clear. So for that reason, the state of Texas once again,

topping my list, starting out 2024 strong, fuck those guys. So the state lacks the time and resources to implement a program to feed millions of low-income children. But they sure as hell have as many resources as they need to go after Kate Cox, a woman who was trying to get an abortion because she was literally going to die if she didn't and to prevent her from getting an abortion. And they had all the fucking resources in the world to take her to court, to take her to federal court, to get out there and say to warn any doctor against helping her in the state of Texas.

I mean, it shouldn't be mind-boggling at this point because we see them do this day in and day out, but it is still mind-boggling how evil. people can be. It really just is. And yeah, fuck those guys. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh and our star-studded the Daily Beast podcast at thedailybeast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoy this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. Subscribing is the best way to feed the

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