The Daily Beast Podcast - What the F*ck Is Wrong With Joe Manchin?

Episode Date: June 4, 2021

What does Joe Manchin want? That’s what Molly Jong-Fast, co-host of The New Abnormal, wants to know—along with “what the fuck is wrong” with him. Because of the West Virginia senator, Democrats can’t say they have the majority in the Senate. “Unfortunately, that’s the way they have to look at it,” she says. “It’s totally screwy. We are in this weird conundrum of our own Democratic making. End the filibuster to push through top Democratic legislative priorities? Forget about it, because Manchin doesn’t want to do it. The Daily Beast’s congressional reporter, Sam Brodey, joins the podcast’s latest episode to offer insight on what makes the senator tick—and what might possibly move him on the all-important filibuster. Also on the show, comedian Andy Levy laments the passing of Donald Trump’s blog and says the former commander in chief was undone by the “media he hates so much,” with reporters tweeting about his posts and thereby robbing him of vital traffic. Later in the episode, writer Sasha Issenberg talks about how same-sex marriage was “the dominant culture war issue for a long period of time. And now I think we look back at it as the most significant civil rights breakthrough of this millennium.” If you haven't heard, every single week The New Abnormal does a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast’s membership program. where Sometimes we interview Senators like Cory Booker or the folks who explain our world in media like Jim Acosta or Soledad O’Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner and sometimes its just discussing the fuckery. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a Beast Inside member where you’ll support The Beast’s fearless journalism. Plus! You’ll also get full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Convierte your passion in a business with Shopify and bathe records of with the form of pay with a better conversion of the world. You've heard of the best.

The Mereverion of the world. The incredible system of Pago of Shopify facilita the site web, in the social and in any place.

That is music for your ears. No, you'll be more vets. Your business is a super-exit with Shopify.

Empecia to start your period of month in Shopify. coms. Barra Records. Hi, I'm Molly Jongfast, and welcome to The Daily Beast, The New Abnormal. I'm a left-wing pundit and an editor at large at the Daily Beast.

We're here to have fun, sharp conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics, and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer. Our world has been turned up day down. On the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and figure out how to get ourselves out of it. And I'm producer Jesse Kennan. I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. What a show we have today.

Sam Brody, a congressional reporter for The Daily Beast, will talk to us about his latest profile of Joe Mansion, and try to get us to understand the man that's driving us all insane. Then, Sasha Eisenberg, author of The Engagement, America's quarter-century struggle over same-sex marriage, is going to talk to us about his book as well as what we can expect in the upcoming culture wars. But first, comedian Andy Levy joins us again.

Welcome back to the new abnormal Andy Levy. Thank you so much. It's glad. It's glad to be back. It's glad. Is it glad to be back? I'm doing a third person thing, but as an object. Well, I don't hate it.

You're becoming a frequent flyer here. When do I get my first class upgrade? That's right. Free drinks at the very least. Soon we're not even going to welcome you here. We're just going to. Say mean things to you. So speaking of a person who enjoys his special special privileges wherever he goes,

have you guys heard that Trump's blog? His little live journal is dead? I want to talk about blogging. It's not for everyone. Andy, you and I are old, though luckily you're older than I am, which is really great. Because you and I both existed in the time of bloggers. There's nothing to be ashamed of here. The world is littered with failed bloggers, as we both know.

And look, it was always asking a lot for Trump fans to read. I think the main thing here is, like, I never went to the actual website. No, me neither. Have at least a tiny bit of a life? I don't, but I still didn't. I'm on Twitter because I don't have a large bit of a life. But that means I was forced to see a lot of Trump's blog because people inexplicably insisted on tweeting his dumb shit into the timeline. And that sucked for me, but it also, ironically, it sucked for Trump because thanks to

the media that he hates so much, there was no need for anyone to go to his blog, so he didn't get any traffic. Yes, his blog failed because the traffic was low and whatever, but his blog post certainly got coverage, which is really what you want as a blogger. Some considerate irony. Did he really fail? If a blog quits in the woods, does it even make a sound? I think he was just, he was too good of a blogger. That's right. His scoops were too hot. Yeah.

And he got so quoted by the media and by other bloggers and by tweeters and by substackers and by podcasters that there was no need for the actual blog anymore, which is just amazing. My favorite thing about that blog, though, was that if you hearted a post, you weren't able to unhard it, which is like the most Trump thing of. all time. Is that right? I didn't even know that. That's amazing. That's like clicking the box for the donations. And if you don't click the box, you love Antifa, but also you make it a recurring donation.

That's wonderful, though. That's how it should be. Yeah. That's how it should. You don't get to take back your love. Love is forever. Love is permanent. And, you know, having been through some bad breakups where people inexplicably decided to fall out

of love, it's like, no. You can't do that. Yeah. Once you love me or anything, you are obligated to love it forever. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I like to think of though the meetings

about the features of it and him being like, no, you can't unheart things. You know, there's no takebacks on loving me. Like, you know, that's the one feature he insists on is really good. But I think it is interesting that he wasn't able to break any of his own news. Like yesterday,

Maggie Haberman had a scoop where she said that, Trump and believes he's going to be president again in August. Now, this is completely insane, but any of us who know Trump know that this sounds like something he would say. I mean, does this surprise you? Well, I don't like that you say it's completely insane for a couple of reasons. One, Mike Lindell, the creator of my pillow, believes this. Sydney Powell, who is a qualified legal expert, believes this. So to me, there has to be a factual basis for this. this unless you are going to sit here and tell me that Mike Lindell and Sidney Powell would go around peddling falsehoods.

Yeah. And I do not, Molly, I do not believe that you are doing that or that you would do that. Certainly not. Even though there is absolutely no constitutional mechanism under which this is even remotely possible, I have to believe that these people know something we do not. Yeah. I mean, it's the only answer that makes sense. Am I right?

Yeah. I actually tried the my pillow years ago before we. Did you really? well, before we knew a lot of things. Before they had pillows. I lost more sleep using that pillow than I do worrying about what Mike Lindell says. It's just, it's a bad pillow. It's lumpy and it's misshapen.

It's as if it were made in its creator's image. But it's just that I actually felt, I have to say, you know, I saw the Maggie Haberman thing. And then I saw that, oh, this is coming apparently from the likes of Mike Lindell. and I instantly felt better. Wait, why? Because it's Mike Lindell. Mike Lindell is a guy that even most of Trump world knows is out of his gourd. Yeah, I think that's a fair.

I think that might even be some, might say a generous assessment. Yeah, no, definitely. But Lara Trump, who I think today I saw or on Thursday, said, you know, no, this isn't happening in August. Yeah. And that was an interesting clip on Fox and Friends, Lara Trump. Lara. Lara, coming in with a, like, it's the liberal media's fault that my father-in-law said that. Well, yeah, I mean, that's the, it's Michael Flynn syndrome.

So there's this month of voting rights action that Biden is pushing. Now, on this podcast, we've obviously been really pushing for this. What do you guys think is going to happen here? Do we see this actually being effective? Going to have to go to Joe Manchin. Yeah, and cinema. And cinema. Did you see that presser with cinema and John Cornyn together?

I did not see it blessedly. At the end, they go, what are you going to do about the filibuster? And she shakes her head and makes a cute face. No, but that's her thing, right? I mean... Did she give it a thumbs down with a little cuntie? She wasn't wearing a two-two. You know, the theme of the show lately has been performative moronics,

and I think we finally found the Democrat doing some of it. Yeah, or a lot of it, even. I mean, that's the thing. It's like, it's not really a Democratic majority, you know? When you have cinema and mansion, you don't have a majority. And, you know, that's something that unfortunately that's the way they have to look at it, I think, in terms of the Senate, is they can't just say, well, we have a majority because you don't. Right.

I mean, the problem is you don't, you also don't have enough sane, you don't have enough sane Republicans to be able to pass anything. So what happens? Yeah. Well, that's a given. I mean, at this point. So what do you do? Yeah, I don't know what you do, except I sort of feel like what you don't do is keep watering shit down to appease people that don't want the outcome that you want. Yeah, I keep being haunted by that thing.

We talked to Isaac DeVora on a recent episode about the thing that all these people wanted Obama to actually push through. And like when they were watering down healthcare, that this was a really bad thing. and I feel like we're watching this in slow motion now. I mean, the problem is you're always living in this world of either like Democrats preventing you from being able to do things. Or, I mean, usually it's Republicans preventing Democrats from doing something. In this case, it's Democrats preventing each other from doing something. Yeah, which by the way, I don't, I think you were right the first time as well. I don't think it's unusual to see Democrats preventing Democrats from doing things.

Which is what's happening here. Yeah, exactly. But I don't know. I'm just like at a certain point, don't they just get tired of being like, you know, well, we're going to keep kowtowing to the Republicans in the hope of getting them on board. And then either they end up not getting them on board at all or by the time they get them on board, whatever the thing is they got them on board with no longer resembles the original thing. It's just how many times do you have to have the football yanked away?

At a certain point, you just have to say, you know what? Here's what we think would be good for the country. And we're going to put it out there. And if you want to vote against it, then you can go explain that to your constituents. And that's life. Just stop appeasing. Right. I mean, that's the question with Biden is like Biden could theoretically do some executive orders.

I mean, they won't do what a congressional, you know, bill would do. but he could do some things right away right now that would make people happy. I mean, you know, and even this whole infrastructure thing, like, who cares? I mean, you can pass infrastructure with reconciliation. The parliamentarian just said that, of course, everything the parliamentarian said is just made up stuff. Because they get to decide. That's the best job, by the way. I mean, really, well, they're like, oh, now you can, she said today, she said you can pass two different,

two different budget things that under reconciliation but not a third I mean like fuck you you know you could just say like you can pass you know as long as they do a little dance and make a little love you can pass any

thing you want I mean it's totally screwy so I don't know I mean we are in this like weird conundrum of our own democratic making can I just say that the parliamentarian is the only person I want to see one of those DC lifestyle pieces like I have to understand

who this significant person is. Like, I want to know if their lawn is trimmed right. Like, what is up with the parliamentarian? Like, do we think that, do we, how do we think they're living? A real parliamentarians of D.C. would be a great show. Yeah, I would watch. I want that job. I absolutely want that job because you basically, like, you wake up that day and you have,

what I'm assuming is like a dungeons and dragons 20-sided die next to your bed. And you're like a dungeon master. And I, by the way, I have never in my life played Dungeons and Dragons, so I may be butchering this metaphor completely. But I just feel like you're sort of like a dungeon master in that you, you know, you tell people, you know, if you go here, you know, oh, then you're attacked by Republicans and then you roll the dice. And if it's a, you know, if it's a one through eight, you can do this through reconciliation. And if it's a nine through 12, you need a filibuster-proof majority. And, you know, and it's just, but it's like you're just literally deciding things on what feels like a whim. And that is a hell of a way to make a paycheck.

Her name is Elizabeth McDonald. She's 54 years old. She went to Greens Farms Academy in Connecticut. She makes $175,000 a year. She's making that podcast money. She should do ads. Yeah, she's lucky she doesn't have to do ads. She lives in Arlington.

Nice. According to Wikipedia. So let's talk about somebody else. No One understands. Ron DeSantis. I feel like you understand him, Andy Levy. I look at this and, you know, he's getting some heat lately because for various reasons, he just signed a bill.

With his daughter standing next to him? You mean that bill? Look, he just signed a bill that basically vetoed funds for an LGBTQ youth center that was, you know, and another thing that was supposed to help with people who had understandably had PTSD from the Pulse nightclub shooting. And, you know, I understand it. It was $150,000 for the program aimed at helping the survivors of the nightclub shooting. And it was $750,000 for a program to help homeless LGBTQ kids. Not something that Ron is into.

No. And so you're talking there, you're talking $900,000. And the state only has a $9.8 billion budget reserve. So I understand not wanting to find, you know, the idea of wanting to help, you know, homeless LGBTQ kids. I mean, who wants to do that, you know, really? Yeah, those homeless children, good luck to them. Yeah. And the good thing is, you know, at least he didn't do it the day after signing a bill that prevents, you know, trans women from competing as women.

And at least he didn't do all of this during Pride Month. So it's just, he's really. Wait a second. He's just hitting one, you know, one bright spot after another for me. You know, my favorite Ron DeSantis story is the fact that he is, he's like fighting with the cruise ships. So I have a theory that Ron DeSantis, and again, we don't know if it's performative moronics or if it's actual moronics, but some of what he's doing here is pandering to his Trumpy base. So, you know, like he did a bill recently.

They said tech companies couldn't ban people like Donald Trump from Twitter, even though it's a completely unconstitutional bill and nobody, it's not going to hold up anywhere. But he knew that, right? He just did it to make the base happy. So there's a lot of that. But what's going on right now is he's fighting with the CDC. About the cruise ships. Yes. He doesn't think it's fair to have the CDC says you can run your cruise ships, but you have to have people be vaccinated, which would make the most sense when you don't want people to die of COVID.

but not Ron DeSantis. Well, the thing is, I mean, cruise ships in general have had a great track record of no illnesses and, you know, and of being incredibly just healthy and helpful environment. So I think, once again, I think Ron is being unfairly pilloried by the, by the lame stream media like you, Molly Jong fast. It's my favorite, yes. If that's... If that is your real name.

That's right. He's going to be president. So I would watch what you're saying. now is all, and that's all I'm saying. Don't say that. That's the worst thing anyone's ever said. It's not a thing we say all the time and then make groads afterwards. But you know what's interesting about this is like he's going to be president and it's going

to be so fucking bad because like Trump is an idiot. With Trump, he's so ridiculous looking. You think like, oh, Jesus, like this person is really going to kill us all. where was DeSantis, he's ridiculous, but he's not, he doesn't seem as ridiculous, which is kind of scary. He's sort of sliding into the spot that's been, at least so far, been left vacant by Mike Pence. Who would have known the charisma game could be won so easily? Right. But that's always been, the Pence thing has been like, you know, well, you know, you underestimate just his wackiness because, you know, he doesn't look wacky. That guy has been very MIA for the past bunch of months.

and, you know, look, I don't blame them. They just tried to hang him. He's been working at the Heritage Foundation. Yeah, no, I know, which is where all good conservatives go to die. So I guess, you know, that's what you want. I do want to say, look, this is a little off topic, but regarding the anti-trans bill in Florida that DeSantis just signed, I did find, I saw something that I thought was really interesting and actually gave me like a little bit of hope.

The sponsor of that bill was a Republican state senator named Kelly Sturgel. and the Orlando Sentinel ran an op-ed urging to Sanis to veto the bill. And it was written by a woman named Laura Stargill, who it turns out is Kelly's daughter. And I think that's really emblematic of a generational thing where I think Gen Z is just so much more comfortable and at ease with transgender stuff, gender fluidity, you know, and just the notion that in general there are a lot of people who don't check binary boxes. So I do think that, you know, all this sort of ignorant stuff will be gone in the future. Obviously, that doesn't help the people affected by it now and it's, you know, small comfort.

But it is, you know, sort of a rare note of hope that every once, every six months I like to inject a note of hope. Okay. Okay. I mean, no, I think, look, it's good that younger generations see how fucked up we are, but will they have time is the question. Agreed. I mean, that this is all assuming they're not, you know, trying to change things while wearing scuba gear and stuff like that. That's right. I think of that Harvey Millcline, though, all the time that what actually converts people is knowing people. And now that we have so much transvisibility in our society, I think people are really going to get converted. And I will call this my one theory of Trump's fame that I will subscribe to is that, you know, his visibility on TV helped profile.

him and that much transvisibility on TV, I think will really help this not be the thing that gay rights are. And we'll discuss this a lot more in the interview we did with Sasha Eisenberg right in the end of this episode. No, I absolutely agree with that. And it's just to piggyback off where Jesse said, I've, you know, I think Gen X, my generation, because I'm old, I think we were the first generation to become comfortable with gay people. Again, I don't think it's because we were, you know, better people than our parents or whatever. I think it's exactly what Jesse said. It's because gay people themselves became more visible while we were in our formative years. And so we were really the first generation that

knew out gay people. And then you also had the culture. You had Will and Grace and stuff like that, which I don't think can be underestimated. I don't think so either. I completely agree with you. I have Gen Z nieces and they are unbelievably comfortable with all the gender fluid stuff and the non-binary stuff. you know, in a way that, although I'm completely in favor of all of that, you know, it's still, I'm at, I'm at the age where I have to unlearn stuff in order to learn the, you know, they're at the age where they don't, thankfully, they don't have to unlearn stuff. They just can see how, they just can see how people are and how the world works. So they're at an advantage, you know, that's an advantage that we didn't have.

But it's an advantage that we had, we straight people of my age had with regard to gay people because, you know, we were like, oh, well, I know people who are gay. So, okay, what's the big deal? Today is yet another bad day from Representative Matt Gates of Florida's first district. Federal prosecutors are examining whether Matt Gates obstructed justice during a phone call he had with a witness in the sex crime investigation with the Florida congressman, according to two sources familiar with the case. I feel like sex crimes, if that's in the tweet, you lose. Right? And then also today, the Daily Beast, Jose Pagliere, talked about today that the federal judge in Florida formally accepted the plea deal for Joel Greenberg. And now who is the big fish that he is turning in? Well, I think we know the answer to that, right? Yeah, I mean, I think that's where it's going.

It's the guy with the sex crimes in his tweet. Can you guys tell me, I think about like the the most insufferable face in the GOP, do you think it's Josh Mandel or Matt Gates? Oh, that is a tough call. I think it's Ted Cruz, baby. Gates has the bigger face

with that huge head so that he gets an edge there. His hair is amazing, too. But man, the Ohio Senate race at this point, it's just like, I know J.D. Vance is not even like a candidate yet, but it feels like he is. Yes. Is he not even in? He's in.

I mean, Peter Thiel's giving him all that money he's in. Yeah, I mean, he's in, you know, not officially, but he's doing everything that a candidate would be doing. But it's just between Mandel burning his mask, with the word freedom, like, you know, you're not, like, Wait, if he's burning his mask, is he against freedom? Oh, good points. You're not braveheart, buddy.

I'm sorry. But it's just, you know, you've been talking about about performative politics. And it's like the Ohio Senate race, right? It seems, it's like it's a race between Josh Mandel and J.D. Vance to see who will get to the N-word first. It really is like their tweets are just every time. And I know a lot of them are ratcheting up, but Jesus Christ, you're so right.

It's just unbelievable. Like when your whole thing is based on like they're both running on the, on the libs ticket. And at a certain point, you're just like, you have to go to, you know, you have to push it as far as you can. And it's just, it's a real race to the bottom there. And I'm just like one of them is going to say it first. And that person will probably win the election.

Right. I was going to say that'll probably clench it for them. This kind of brings me to the thing that, you know, everybody's got all their hopes up about Jeff Bezos owning MGM and releasing the supposed N-word tape that exists of Trump. And it's like, yeah, you think that's going to hurt him with his base? I know. First of all, Bezos isn't going to do that.

And second of all, even if, no, it really is not. Who would that hurt Trump with at this point? Nobody. I mean, there'll be the people who deny he said it. There will be the people who say, well, he said it, but in context, then there will be the people who say, well, it was a different time. And then there will be the people that say, fuck yeah, he said it. Don't forget locker room talk. It's just locker room talk.

Yeah. So, I mean, that's the four, you know, that's the four species of Trump supporters. We're going to die. Hey, new album, normal listeners. just want to let you know that we have Thomas Frank, who you may know as the author of What's the Matter with Kansas, on our bonus episodes this week. To get to hear all of our bonus episodes,

as well as gaining access to the Daily Beast fearless journalism, head to New Abnormal.com. That's New Abnormal.com. Sam Brody is the congressional reporter for The Daily Beast. Hi, Sam, Brody. Hello, hello. Talk to me about what the fuck is wrong with Joe Manchin. This is you, as you know, this is like being on PBS.

What the fuck is wrong with Joe Manchin? Joe Manchin is, yeah, it's, we're to start with Joe Manchin. I mean, I think we all knew coming into this year after the Georgia runoffs and Dem's taking control of the Senate and Biden winning that everything was going to hinge on Joe Mansion. And I think that has been proven plus some. I don't know if it's possible for more than every. to hinge on Joe Manchin, but that's where we're at. And it's a really, really kind of interesting

situation. What does Joe Manchin want? That's like a really, really good question. And I think it is one that there are many good answers to potentially, but I don't know if there's any one good answer. So let's start with, I think, the clearest and best answer potentially is. I think that Joe Manchin wants to have power and influence and does that by being at the center of basically everything. In doing the story, I was trying to get a sense for people. Like, is Joe Manchin like naturally in the middle on all this stuff or does he find the middle so that he can be there and kind of play this role that he plays? And I think it really is a mix.

Like he's been able to really do this throughout his entire career, even as the Democratic Party has sort of shifted left, he still managed to find. the middle on most things, which I think speaks to a desire to be in the middle. Like, I talk to people who've known him for a super long time and they're like, yeah, obviously he loves the spotlight. Like, of course. Because people always go, oh, Mansion, he just wants to be in the thick of it and all the cameras on him. Like, yeah, he absolutely does. So then I think then the trickier question is like, what does Joe Manchin want to do with this power? And that's where people have their own opinions and disagreements and things like that.

like down to Mansion and cinema and basically all of democracy hangs on them, what happens now? It seems like cinema is the same, right? Yeah, I think cinema is the same. And, you know, I just said that Joe Manchin is at the center of everything and everything rise on him, which I think is true. But one point that is important is that you've got cinema. And I think there are a few members that Joe Manchin does speak for. And they're happy to let him take all the flack because it's good for him back. home in West Virginia to kind of be in this role. And the folks who are running for re-election and stuff, they can sort of keep their heads down and let Joe Manchin take the heat. But I think there's like a block of Mansion-aligned people. So when we're talking about stuff like HR1,

the big election reform bill, Mansion is not in favor of it as written. And I think that kind of takes the heat off some members for whom it could be a little tougher. Cinema. I think is a little different because she's just had such a wild evolution, like, over the course of her career and was a former, like, Green Party activist. And now she sucks. So I'm not going to pretend to be a cinema expert. But, like, I really don't know if there's anything at this point that moves Mansion. I really don't. So to that, Sam, Joe Biden's calling for this month of voter action.

Do we think that's to motivate and try to get a force behind, like, some polling that maybe could make Mansion see the light? or we just think that this is like Joe Biden's just doing this because he has to pay it at a lip service? I think all of these things can be true to an extent. I think Joe Biden and Schumer have to put this stuff up to a vote. So, you know, I previewed this today, but there's HR1, Paycheck Fairness, the Equality Act, gun safety stuff. They have to do this. They have to put this stuff up.

And I don't think there's an alternative. I think the hope, certainly for those who are parsing what Schumer and Biden are doing is that, you know, the failure of all these bills will, you know, piss people off in the base and put pressure on people like Manchin and cinema to reconsider because, you know, I think there's some who hope, like, well, Manchin will really be convinced at this point that bipartisanship isn't possible after seeing all this. But really, the biggest thing here was the January 6th Commission failing. Right. That was something that Manchin really supported.

He was distraught when Republicans blocked it and it didn't move him an inch on the filibus. So why will the same thing happening on bills he doesn't support, you know, do the same thing? I think it's going to have to be if anything moves him, which, again, I seriously doubt at this point, it's going to have to come from the broader world and his home state. If you're not going to kill the filibuster to find out why people wanted to hang Mike Pence, then you're not, you know, going to kill it for anything else. But is Mansion, I mean, again, like we're so binary the way we talk about this, Is Mansion amenable to like a filibuster override?

Because you can do all, I mean, there are no, you know, there are a lot of rules, quote unquote, from the Senate parliamentarian, but there really aren't any real rules. So like they could do a, I mean, do you think that's a world that that could happen? I think so. And I think the pragmatist, realist types in the Senate Democratic group realized that that's probably the best option here with Mansion that like having him come out and totally endorse nuking the filibuster is really unlikely, but that he does show a capacity to move and shift depending on where things are. Again, he finds the middle wherever that may be. So he's come out, for example, and expressed openness to this idea of like the talking filibuster, basically keeping the filibuster, but making it way, way harder and just more of a pain in the ass to use.

Mansion could be supportive of that. Now, the real big one in this kind of territory is something that, you know, Senator Raphael Warnock outlined a few months ago, which is this idea that could there be an exception to the filibuster carved out for voting and election stuff? Right. And there are Democrats who are really hopeful that Mention could be amenable to that. I don't know where it's at, but I think it's tough with Mention because on the one hand, he's just so strident and adamant about not budging. Yet I think there are some smart people who think that it can happen when they look at the arc of his career.

and, you know, just aren't willing to rule it out. I mean, Manchin just got reelected. Like, if there ever were a person and he can't be primary by Democrats because they'll just lose the seat. Like, if there ever were a person who could just do whatever the fuck he wants, it's Joe Manchin. It is exactly Joe Manchin. I think, you know, you ask what does he care about? I mean, like, the dude is hyper-focused constantly on West Virginia stuff. Like, people grumble, like, oh, Mansion is in a walk on X, Y, or Z.

but he knows like everything there is to know about West Virginia and his whole deal is looking out for West Virginia in representing them. And to his credit, he has gotten reelected. That's kind of ultimately, I think what he cares about aside from, you know, having this influence is, you know, this is what gets him reelected. And I think there are those who are frustrated that Mansion has this central role where literally the national, you know, national interests are writing on him yet he is so hyperphobic. focused on his state. Isn't everything stalemated now? I mean, the other thing, let's just go back to Manchin for one more second. West Virginia, and the reason that Shelleymore Capital is the Republican doing this is because West Virginia desperately needs infrastructure, right? Like, they are in a position that no other states are in and the fact that they are like really, you know, so isn't there a world where like you could negotiate with Mansion through cutouts and do things for West Virginia and get what you want? Yeah, you'd think so. And that's, sort of the way that it used to be with moderate senators who are Democrats, is that they would put up

this opposition, but then you could get them stuff and, you know, that was what it was all about. I'm not convinced that Manchin operates that way. I think he has been able to direct a lot of stuff towards West Virginia, but if he had a price here, so to speak, you know, it's hard not to think that he would have been satisfied by now. Literally everyone, Chuck Schumer, all of them are just like, how can we get this guy on stuff? And they've spent a lot of time thinking about it. So I don't know. I think he's, he's looking out for his brand as much as anything else. I mean, this is all burnishes him as, you know, the bipartisan voice of reason, which is, I think, how he sees himself and how he wants to cultivate himself. You know, you talked about the stalemate

here. And I think one point that people made to me when I was reporting this mansion story was that the prerequisite for him to start thinking about changing his mind on the filibuster is for the whole place to shut down. Like, nothing is getting done absolutely. And when I asked mention about the filibuster a couple of weeks ago, with respect to voting stuff, he said, well, you know, we're doing stuff in the Senate where, you know, they were working on this China bill. They did a hate crimes bill. They were working on infrastructure. As long as you can point to things that are happening on a bipartisan basis, he's got cover. If that stops to happen, then perhaps you know, there is an opening. And I think it remains to be seen what happens on the infrastructure

piece because, you know, you can pass that on reconciliation with just 50 Democratic votes, which is easier said than done, but it is not going to force the filibuster question. What should we be watching for in the coming weeks? There's this really, really weird, like, dissonance between the votes that, and maybe it's not a dissent necessarily, but the split screen that is set up in the Senate, where you've got votes on, you know, voting rights and, you know, all kinds of Democratic priorities, gun safety, that will show how sharply divided the Senate is and how impossible bipartisanship is and force these really difficult questions about the filibuster. At the same time that Joe Biden and Schumer and

others are trying to strike huge bipartisan deals on infrastructure. There's also the police reform bill that Biden said he wants to get done. These would all be, like, huge bipartisan compromises, and it's going to be happening at the same time that Schumer and McConnell will basically be in open warfare. So to me, that's what I'm watching, is how do these two totally different tracks that are happening at the same time, how do they influence each other and ultimately what gets done or not done? Thank you, Sam. That was great. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. What's crazier than QAnon, more outlandish than Pizza Gate, and scarier than a Mexican getaway with Ted Cruz? The answer is, what the American

American right wing has planned next. Be one of the first to listen to Fever Dreams, new podcasts from The Daily Beast, tracking the conspiracy slingers, orange acolytes, and straight-up grifters pushing to retake power. Every Wednesday hosts Swin Tsubisang and Will Summer,

checking in on the movement of the radical right. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash podcasts or your favorite podcast player to catch the first episode and get subscribed. That's FeverDreams, which you can subscribe to wherever you get your podcasts. Sasha Eisenberg is the author of The Engagement, America's quarter-century struggle over same-sex marriage as well as Victory Lab, as well as a journalist for Monaco.

Welcome, Sasha Eisenberg, to the new abnormal. Very excited to have you. Thanks, Molly. Good to be here. So talk to me about gay marriage. I think we all remember that for the better part of a decade at the start of this century was the dominant issue and I think dominant sort of domestic social issue in our politics. the most divisive thing we had. I think it many times it felt in 2004 or five, six, it was sort of taking over our politics in a certain way. And what's remarkable about it is it's an issue that basically came out of nowhere. A decade earlier than that, you know, if there was barely a politician in the United States, it had ever been asked their opinion on this issue. There were no organizations that were either for or against same-sex marriage. And a decade after that, after the Supreme Court ruled in 2015, obviously same-sex marriage is a sort of fact of life now, but it's not a political. issue now at all either. And so, you know, I wrote about this sort of weird, intense 25-year arc in which an issue sort of comes out from nowhere is born, takes over our politics in a certain way, and then recedes again. Yeah, it is interesting. Like, I spent so much of my, I don't know,

I want to say, like, of my adolescence and growing up, reading about the sort of wedding cake fiasco and the various. I mean, it was like, I almost feel like it was like a conservative talking point. Yeah, I mean, you know, I think that what, you know, people look back at this, I think it's sort of like the dominant culture war issue for a long period of time. And now I think we look back at it as sort of the most significant civil rights breakthrough of, you know, certainly of this millennium. You know, I'm 41 years old. So it became clear to me when I started this book about a decade ago that this was sort of the defining social movement of my generation. Yeah, we are in your generation. And so my goal is to sort of make sense of this the way that writers tried to do with big books about the civil rights

movement in a generation before me. Unlike abortion, which conservatives are obsessed with taking away, it seems like gay marriage is settled law. Yeah, so, you know, I don't know anyone who thinks that there's a possibility that the sort of central holding of Obergefell, which is that same-sex couples have a fundamental right to marry across the United States will be challenged. What we do see, and the Supreme Court is sitting on a case now that they'll probably rule on later this month, is the extent to which private actors can qualify for religious liberty exemptions from having to acknowledge same-sex couples that have been married. So we have the cases of the Baker that came up a few years ago that wasn't really decided on the merits. Now there's a case about a social service agency, Catholic social service agency in Philadelphia that

doesn't want to place foster children with gay couples. And, you know, I think that the end point of this could be something where the Supreme Court is ruling on a question like, can an employer decide that they will give health care, health insurance to the opposite sex partners of their employees, but not to the same-sex spouses of their employees. But the idea that this is going to be overturned the way that conservatives want to do with Roe v. Way, just not going to happen. Why is it that conservatives gave up on this? Because obviously we're seeing now, you know, 40, almost five years later with abortion, it's just a constantly relitigated thing because it riles up the base so much.

Why does this not rile up the base, do you think? So one thing is I think that they saw trans issues as a kind of more politically opportune place to go where majorities. You know, some of the story is that we fought over gay marriage, starting in the mid-1990s as a country, because during the 1980s, sort of in parallel, the gay rights movement professionalized and became well-funded, at the same time that the religious right became professionalized and well-funded, and they were almost built to fight over something. And, you know, the Equal Rights Amendment had passed, the initial fight after Roe v. Wade had passed, and this kind of became the place that the culture wars over sexual politics were fought out for for for a decade or

two um and i i think that you know so much of politics is people choosing the sphere in which they want to engage in conflict and once it became clear even before obergapel i think a lot of kind of anti-gay anti-lgbcuit religious conservatives realized this cause was lost but they were going to start you know if they if they went all in on the trans issues that they would they would um be in a place where public opinion was on their side. And frankly, the issue was sort of new enough that some of the same types of scare tactics that had worked earlier in the marriage fight would still work for them on trans issues. It seems like Republicans are more obsessed with using an issue than the actual result.

Yeah, I mean, look, I think that there were since people who had a sincere opposition to same-sex marriage early on. I think a lot of it was that it was sort of unimaginable before the first couples legally got married to Massachusetts in 2004. And I think a lot of people had real fear that was sincerely felt that, you know, as they would say, disrupting a institution that's existed for 6,000 years and that was kind of at the core of basically every civilization, major civilization on Earth, could have dangerous consequences. What became difficult for them was that after couples started marrying in Massachusetts, nobody could really point to what the consequences were of that. heard anybody. And so, you know, I think what happened is that, that I think some of the, the, the scaring people about the issue was sincerely felt, but they really had trouble identifying who was injured by it. And we're, you know, I think we're sort of, if you think about the trans issues, we're at a sort of a similar point at that arc, which is that they can't actually muster a lot of

female athletes or whatever who are being disadvantaged in these competitions, but it is, you know, societal fear of sort of crossing a threshold into a new, into a new era is just filled with uncertainty. And I think people have a sort of, you know, a sincerely felt fear of, of the new. And I think a lot of conservative politics, you know, traditional conservative politics, not sort of Trump era, righty politics is driven by a real fear of dramatic social change. I mean, that's like one of the core sort of tendons of conservatism. And a lot of it sincerely felt. Do you think ultimately Republicans really cared about gay marriage as a real issue? So I think that they did in that. Look, there's some part of the Republican Party over the last 30 years is just fundamentally anti-gay and has a sense of moral disapproval of homosexuality, thinks gay and lesbian relationships are inferior to straight ones, and oppose any sort of change in the law that basically respected the full citizenship of gay people.

So I think that was sincere. I mean, I think a lot of it was hyperbolic. You know, when Rick Santorum compared the Massachusetts decision to 9-11, like literally. Right. What, you don't think that was the same as 9-11. But I do think that the fear of the new was was sincere for people. And I think part of the reason that the coalition sort of collapsed in the decade after the Massachusetts decision is that fewer and fewer people were actually invested in stopping gate couples for marrying. And so I do think that there is a, if you know, if you're a, if you're a,

it was much more difficult to hold together a coalition on this because very few people, the number of people who were invested in gay and lesbian couples marrying, not just the couples themselves, but their families or communities, their employers who now had like a clear legal idea of what benefits you had to give them, all sorts of people weren't, you know, the number of, as gay couples married, the number of people invested in their relationships grew, and the number of people invested in stopping them from marrying shrunk. And, you know, the people at the end are just sort of fundamentally anti-gay, and they would have opposed anything. The problem is that, you know, the big rhetorical people that, people like Rick Santorum ended up

in is that they spent half their time as public figures talking about how important marriage and the traditional family are to society, and then argue that these people that they thought of, you know, as should remain outcasts and denied access to this institution that they thought was the source of stability in American life. And it became very hard to jive that. Yeah. I mean, it is also, and then they all supported Donald Trump, who had been married 10,000

times and had cheated on his right during the election. Do we see this transgender culture war actually catching fire, or do we think this is going to be a real dud for them? No, I mean, I think we're probably in the early stages of something that's going to last a while. And part of that is that the sort of science of

transgender identity is is still relatively new and young and informing. One thing that's remarkable, and as I went back and studied this history of the debate over marriage is that every time that people talked about gay issues in the 1990s, there was this sort of reflexive, to be sure, we don't know whether homosexuality is a matter of nature or nurture. That was in every bit of news coverage of a gay issue in the 1990s. What changed over time is, you know, scientific research changed.

identified that there is, you know, some fund, we don't really understand the gene, environmental interactions here. But we, we as a culture, understand that fundamentally people are born with a whole lot of baggage and a whole lot of stuff they can't control. And that's not just how we talk about sexuality. It's how we talk about addiction. It's how we talk about temper. It's how we talk about a lot of personality traits. And nobody talks about the gay lifestyle anymore. Even the Rick Santorum's of the world, don't talk about the gay lifestyle. They don't, they don't suggest that if you give gay and lesbians rights, more people will want to be gay because you're like incentivizing homosexuality, which is how people talked about this in the 1990s.

And I think that the trans arc is sort of analogous in the sense that we're in early days on people understanding the science of this and having a broadly accepted sort of society-wide understanding of where gender identity comes from. And I suspect we are going to see a lot of science research that slowly trickles down into the way that, you know, average people kind of see this issue. And I think that's going to be the foundation on which we decide the kind of broad civil rights, equity questions. Gotcha. So, Sasha, you also wrote a book called The Victory Lab, The Science of Winning Campaigns. This podcast is always talking about how. That's pretty much all we do is talk about how do Democrats win campaigns, let's go. No pressure.

Yeah, so, you know, that book was about a real scientific revolution in the way campaigns were run between 2000 and 2010. And the novel use of data for statistical modeling, what ends up being what we often call micro-targeting, and the use of field experiments to actually uncover what works and what doesn't in political campaigns. And, you know, what we've seen in the last decade is I think that book came out in 2012. In the years since, I think that the gains have become, or the sort of improvements in campaign tactics had become more incremental and have become probably a little more evenly shared across the parties. It was pretty clear that Democrats had a sort of advantage in the science of electioneering a decade ago. I think a lot of the knowledge that has been created has been sort of disseminated in ways that both sides benefit from now. but the thing that's really changed in terms of the kind of science of campaigns is the way that in light of the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandals, a lot of innovation has been sort of engulfed by these moral, legal, ethical questions about privacy and the law. And it's really hard to understand where campaign tech and tactics are going to go without really knowing where we're going to end up on regulation of data online advertising.

advertising stuff like that. Can you explain how Democrats are good at winning campaigns when they, especially, like, how they're good at winning campaigns when they can't win campaigns? I mean, there are a lot of reasons people don't win campaigns and all the best sort of innovations I write about help at the margins. So, you know, a lot of the data innovations are about, you know, you can talk about this in a very sexy way, which is people call my book Money Fall for Politics. you could also call it like how to make your direct mail program 5% more efficient. Right. And so a lot of it is, you know, now that's important. If you're the D-Triple-C and you're going to spend $100 million on direct mail this year, getting 5% more efficient is useful to you, right?

But it's not going to fundamentally change the conditions under which an election takes place. And I do, you know, we should not pretend that any sort of technical, innovation. This was crap when, you know, Brad Parscale went out and said, like, we won the election on Facebook. Did he win the election on Facebook? They fought the campaign in large part on Facebook, but no, they didn't win the, I mean, I don't think, I think anytime you try to describe victory or defeat to a tactic or a technical platform, you're not understanding how elections work in this country. And so, you know, elections are fundamentally won and lost on the popularity of the party that's in power, the state of the economy,

very broad sort of messaging, framing decisions. And then, you know, this is a like a 12, 15 billion industry. So people want to be smart about how they actually do it. And I think that stuff does affect the way people run campaigns and helps at the margins. But unpopular incumbents are not often winning elections because they, you know, run tactically better campaigns, for example. And so, you know, I think that this is all, these are all sort of things that parties and movement should be doing, because they should, you know, they should be improving. They should be trying to use these tools to hold consultants and vendors and operatives accountable for when they don't do a good job. Part of the use of these sort of experimental measuring is that you can actually say what works

and what doesn't and it makes it a lot harder for, you know, sort of grifters to fleece political candidates or, you know, I think because you want to respect your volunteers and donors and make sure that what they're doing, you know, that if they're knocking on a door, you know that you're doing it in the most efficient, effective way possible with, like, real evidence and not just because that's the way you've always done it. But I don't think we should fool ourselves into thinking that there's sort of anything anybody's going to do with, you know, with a spreadsheet that's going to dramatically change the terms of any election. We're in so, I mean, I get that that's true, but why, and I understand that, like, the narrative is shaped by the winners, okay,

But why have things gotten so much worse with elections? You mean in terms of the results? Well, and also just like the polling is so off, right? Like, I mean, we had polls with this election where, you know, that Susan, I mean, Susan Collins thought she was going to lose by 10 points. Yeah. And I understand that Maine is fucked up. Okay. But like, even Iowa, like, there were so many polls that were just completely off.

Like, do you have a, do you, can you, can you, explain why it feels like we're getting less good at predicting elections. Yeah. So I think that polling, and especially public polling, is in a period of real crisis. I mean, public polling going back to the 1960s, 70s, you know, was built on, predicate on the idea that everybody in the United States basically had a landline phone and that there was an equal, everybody had an equal likelihood of answering it. That changed for a number of reasons. answering machines, caller ID meant that people did not reflexively pick up the phone when it rang in their home. And people moved away from landlines. So you actually, it's a lot harder now to know

to get phone numbers of cell phones and know where they actually are. And now we have a kind of social cultural problem, which is that even when people answer the phone, they're not equally willing to talk to a pollster. And that is, you know, presumably downstream from a generation of maybe more of Republicans attacking the media and attacking academia and don't, you know, fake news, all that stuff. And so what's happened is that types of polling that are based on random dialing, which is, you know, sort of the foundation of our polling, just don't work because you're not finding a random sample of people if you just start calling numbers. This is new enough as a problem. And I think it really accelerated with Trump because so much of his political rhetoric was about polling. Like, that's just weird.

Like, we had politicians who had mentioned a good poll or a bad poll, but like, they didn't give, like, whole rallies about polling. And so when he made that a kind of central issue of who he was running against, the pollsters and the fake news, I think it really gave licenses supporters to hang up on pollsters or not answer their questions or whatever. And so, holsters have not figured out how to adjust for the, for the fact that they're sampling, their approach to sampling isn't designed for an era in which people don't want, even we want to talk to you. Yeah, it's weird. This was really great. Thank you so much for joining us. I hope you'll

come back. Thanks for having me. This is fun. Performative still as moronic. I think they are even more or moronic, aren't they? Today, I have two fuck that guys. They're both performative and they're moronics. The first is Ohio senatorial candidate, Josh Mandel, who burned a mask, okay, and put it on Twitter. all right, that is the most performative of performative moronics. What's great, too, is he's trying to appeal to these Ohio voters and rile them up, and it's like, he doesn't get the memo when he runs for these elections and loses badly every time that no one likes him, no matter what Trumpy things he does.

Yeah, I'm really impressed with how unlike he is, you know. He's a really unlikable person. I watched him debate Sherrod Brown one time, and it was like cringe. Yeah, no, he's terrible. He is performatively a moron. And then you will remember George P, the only Bush that Trump likes. That is not a moniker that you want. This is true.

You don't want to be Trump's Bush. Wait, wait. What would George P. Bush do, though? George P. Bush announced his candidacy. He is running against Ken Paxton. Oh. You'll remember Ken Paxton as being indicted many, many times. But also still being, and supposedly having an FBI investigation.

against him too, but he is staying in office. George P. Bush handed out beer cozies that said, quote, this is the only Bush that likes me. This is the Bush that got it right. I like him, quote, Donald J. Trump. And there's a picture of them shaking hands. You're welcome. Jesse Cannon, who is your fuck that guy? My fuck that guy is West Virginia governor, Jim Justice.

You used to be a Democrat. Yes, yes, yes. While he's on the right side, trying to get people to take the vaccine, giving away guns is performative moronics. It's total just, Hey, Lib, you hate the guns, but we're going to give them away.

People get hurt with guns. Random people shouldn't be receiving guns. We should have, you know, one of the most popular things in this country that's not a law is that we should restrict who gets to own guns more tightly. This is a awful, awful. thing to do and truly performative moronics.

I don't think you're right. I think it's good to get people to take vaccines and if you have to give them a gun to do it. I mean, look, I don't like guns. You know what would do this way more effectively? The money it costs to buy those guns just as much. At least Jim Justice is not Jim Jordan. And for that, we are grateful. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast.

In future episodes, we'll be talking to small. smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics and science, will help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you again on the next episode. 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 enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. Subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover what might become the darkest

timeline head to the daily beast.com slash membership slash podcast and sign up today.