The Dispatch Podcast - All Bow to the God of Conventional Wisdom

Episode Date: November 11, 2022

Sarah, Jonah, and David come together to give the midterms a post-mortem to end all postmortems. They discuss the vibe theory of political trends, the presidential prospects of Republicans Not Named Donald Trump, and the lessons both parties took away from the elections. Oh, and of course: do all roads lead to Georgia..? Again?? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isger. We have Jonah Goldberg and David French. And as you can probably guess, this is going to be a lot of post-midterm chat. Let's dive right in. David, big picture takeaways. Yeah, I mean, look, as we're talking, we still don't know the state of play in the House or the Senate.

It's entirely possible that at the end of all of this, that the Republicans could control both. It's still possible that they could control both. And at the end of the day, Republicans would say, well, it wasn't what we wanted fully, but the bottom line result is what exactly, you know, what was our goal. So there's a lot to be sort of said right now about the Republicans underperforming, but we still don't know how badly they underperformed. But it's absolutely clear that they underperformed. And I think a good way to think through the underperformance is not just

by looking at historical numbers, which we went through on advisory opinions earlier, but also to look at what could have been in some other ways. And Jonah in his in your in your newsletter, you talked about, for example, how a number of races, very winnable races, just seemed to be thrown in the garbage. So it wasn't just that Republican primary voters in some instances, i.e. Herschel Walker, picked somebody who was a uniquely bad candidate or in New Hampshire a uniquely bad candidate or we could go around. It's also that some good candidates were kind of scared away from running. Governor Ducey in Arizona seems like he probably would have handily defeated Senator Kelly, like handily defeated him,

didn't run. You know, in New Hampshire, the best candidate didn't run. And so there's a lot of what might have beens for Republicans and a ton of the what might have beens are tied to Donald Trump and tied to his continued influence. And so we're in one of these phases right now where it looks like there's at least some people who've been somewhat critical of Trump in the past publicly who are really publicly now much more aggressively critical. Some people who are aggressively critical in the past and then kind of got on the Trump train, have now been critical again. But we still have an awful lot of the anonymous sources are saying

that they're urging Trump not to call, you know, not to announce. Anonymous Republicans are saying, and I have to, I have to say, I will believe that the Trump fever has broken in the party when the anonymous sources aren't anonymous anymore. And until then, I'll believe it when I see it. So Jonah, one of the narratives that has really taken hold since election night is this idea that it was the results or a repudiation of MAGA movement, Donald Trump, that he's the guy who had the worst night. I just want to provide a alternative theory here, which is, and again, bear in mind, I was the person who said that I was not seeing a lot of data that abortion was an important factor in this election.

But assume for a second, and I think we do have some data now, that abortion was a really important factor in this election for a lot of voters, doesn't that mean this was a repudiation of social conservatives and that in fact the MAGA movement isn't really about social conservatism and that the narrative has just been kind of incorrect? Yes and no. No and yes. Yes on Wednesdays and half of Fridays. And no. Look, I mean, it's, first of all, this is the problem that we, that all of us in this crazy, stupid life that we have chosen, we want, you know, it's like every two years or every four year, after every election, there's like 72 hours where there is this giant smoldering lump of molten metal. And everybody from every side is trying to bend it, mold it to their, false god of conventional wisdom and you only get 72 hours to do it and everyone's doing it furiously and then once it hardens

we all must genuflect until the next election to this one image of what the conventional wisdom says what the election was about. The election was about a lot of stuff. That is such a perfect way to phrase it and I find that stuff so frustrating

this rush to have one explanation and one overarching theme for any given day of the week. Right. And particularly because, I mean, the great irony is, like, I don't think it's going to happen, but I was thinking this like yesterday, all of these yet to be counted things, they could end up tipping all for Republicans. And so, like, this, it wasn't a red wave thing. Actually, it was a red wave, but the conventional wisdom already sort of set in and it was going to stick. Regardless, I think there are a bunch of things going on here.

First of all, I agree with you. I think David would agree with you even more than me that MAGA really isn't about social conservatism. but that's an ideological intellectual argument. For the typical MAGA person, they think it's about social conservatism, but more importantly, for the anti-Trump coalition, MAGA and social conservatism go hand in hand, right?

Because your typical sort of liberal voter, progressive voter, always thought a lot of social conservatism was really just fancy dressed up, bigotry and that Trump revealed that and there are a lot of social conservatives that helped Trump create that impression. And so I think I was talking to Ron Rounstein about this because I've been at CNN all week and his point is that there was a Trump coalition. The problem is this wasn't a Biden pro-Biden coalition. You can't have a pro-Biden coalition when his approval ratings are in the low 40s according to the people who all voted Democratic, right?

it's that this was a much broader sort of anti-Trump, anti-Maga, anti-Republican coalition. And I think that one of the reasons a lot of people got blindsided, particularly on the abortion part, is that among the hardest, and you know this stuff better than I do, Sarah, but among the hardest people in the world, the poll are young people under 30, right, particularly college kids. and it sounds like in a lot of states with big universities, they bust in a lot of college kids who all voted Democratic. So I, look, I mean, I can go on for a very long time about how this is a repudiation of MAGA and the sort of chaos that Trump brings and the unease that Trump brings and all that kind of stuff.

It's also just, but it's a repudiation on a sort of a more basic level. there's a whole crop of Republican candidates who think being a jerk wins you more voters than it loses right? In reality, being a jerk wins you a lot of intense voters within the sort of base of the Republican Party but repels more general election voters than it attracts.

And, you know, I use this in the newsletter yesterday. Butsy Arizona, Jonah, right? Like this is what strikes me in every single narrative that you can come up with from the 2022 midterms, I can present you the counter argument. And that's unusual. And so Arizona is the counter argument to everything you just said about how candidates being jerks don't work out well. Carrie Lake told people that if they basically weren't right wing enough not to vote for her, to go vote for the other side. And it was like, well, let's see how that plays for you. And it's like, it looks like it's actually

going to play out pretty well. Well, do see one by 15. Do see one by 15. She's squeaking it out. Okay. So, you know, I mean, there's no question she, she didn't build the coalition. We were talking before about how there are going to be, you know, any complicated event, any complicated phenomena is going to have counter examples, right? I mean, I can, I'm saying for 30 years now when it comes to the popular culture, I can, I can, if all I need are three examples to prove a point, which is the rule in journalism, like three examples makes a trend. I can give you three examples about how popular culture has never been more, more uplifting and wholesome. and I can give you an argument

about how popular culture is the worst sewer it's ever been because both things happen to be true because there's evidence for both. The Arizona case, it's sort of like all the social all the sort of social democratic people who think that like Sweden proves you can do this or you can do that and all that. And the thing is, as Charles Murray once said,

there's a well-established finding in the social science literature that says pretty much any bad idea can work for a while in Sweden. and Arizona is a mess with full of very angry, weird people right now. And so, yeah, Carrie Lake may squeak this out. But take, I mean, I take a more basic example, mail-in voting. You know, I heard several reporters on cable news networks yesterday

talk about how traditionally Republicans only vote on the same day and Democrats prefer mail-in voting. Well, if you define the beginning of this long-standing venerable tradition with 2020, then sure, that's true. Right. Yes. But like historically. It's an entirely new trend.

In fact, going back to like my days, early vote and mail-in voting favored Republicans slightly because of the olds. Right. Exactly. And like there's a lot of advantage as a, again, you know there's better anyway, but like if you're a political campaign, banking votes before election day is awesome. And I'll make you this bet that Federman lost. I mean, Federman won because he banked enough votes prior to that debate that it didn't matter how many people were freaked out about how badly he's still recovering from the stroke.

And because of Trump's, you know, encyclical on the sin of mail-in voting, you now have a bunch of Republicans who all want to leave it to Election Day. And like, it's that kind of stuff that has screwed up the party as much as anything else and is being reputed. I'm so glad you mentioned that because while I think. that the overall narrative, that this was a repudiation of MAGA, is overblown at this point. The operational side of how Trump has messed up the Republican side of campaigns is unfathomable at some points. And the early vote thing is such a perfect example. Like I said, it used to favor Republicans, not by a lot, but slightly. By and large. But in some states, by a lot, you know, in other states not, right? Sure. I mean, by a lot, though, we're still talking, again,

marginal compared to where we are now, such that, for instance, you wouldn't want to file a lawsuit to throw out early votes or absentee votes because you were going to throw out as many of your own as theirs. Like there just wasn't, that marginal difference was not going to be substantial enough to take the risk. So A, because of the change in voting behavior that Donald Trump instigated, you now can target lawsuits toward an entire section of. of process voting that has a huge partisan advantage on either side.

And second, as you said, Jonah, what you want is to get as many people as you can to vote early so that on election day, your man hours per voter is low. You know, you want like a one-to-one ratio, a volunteer to voters left. That's what the Democrats have right now, but it's not what the Republicans have. With the same number of volunteers, they're having to reach, you know, 60% more voters or something. And that's just, it's going to be a lot harder. You also tweak your messaging more as you get more voters in the bank. You start aiming your messaging to voters who haven't voted yet, you know? Yep. So David, part of any election narrative is the expectations heading into the

election. And the expectations heading into this election were building and building for Republicans in those last few weeks. Some of it was polling. Some of it was vibes. Can we talk to about plenty on here. And some of it was those historical trends feeling like they were coming home, whether it was the economic numbers, the inflation, gas prices. So was all of that wrong? Why were the expectations different than, again, even if Republicans end up controlling the House and the Senate, in some ways I'm glad we don't know that because what you actually want to know is that Republicans wildly underperformed the expectations from a week ago. Not the expectations from three weeks ago, but the expectations from a week ago.

And there were some good reasons for those expectations and some bad reasons. So let's start with the bad reason for the expectation. This whole weird vibe theory of politics that started out of nowhere for about two or three months here and right in the run up to the midterms was things feel like they're going in one direction. They just sort of feels like people are losing momentum. And I get it. I mean, you could sense a lot of that. But part of it was how much of it is sort of people reinforcing each other on this notion

that things feel a certain way. But then there was actually, there was actually some indication that the feelings were being matched by data. If you looked at the generic ballot, for example, it flipped from being maybe narrowly for the Democrats to narrowly for Republicans, but there was a very decisive vibe shift and a very small polling shift before the actual, before actual election day. So you had this big vibe shift. You had a lot of smart Republicans saying it's going to be a red wave. It's going to be a red wave. All of the indications, we've got so much intensity, we've got so much enthusiasm. This is our time. And that really sort of built its own momentum.

And then they were taking small polling shifts and saying, see, see, it's not fully reflected in the data, but see. And it turns out that maybe those small polling shifts were all there was, was something pretty small. And, you know, aside from some. You think the polls ended up being right? In the aggregate, they did. Not each individual given race. I mean, DeSantis blew out his expectations. I did not see a 19, DeSantis plus 19 polling average prior to the Florida election.

But in the aggregate, it looks like you're going to see, especially when it comes to things like generic ballot, stuff's going to be pretty okay. I agree with you, by the way. I think the polls were right, especially when you consider that there were still undecided voters in all of those polls. So, A, they were within the margin of error for the most part. The averages, Trafalgar Group had a really bad night, for instance. There were some polling groups. Maybe because they make stuff up. But two, you add in the margin of error plus the undecided voters that were in each of those polls

that were still hovering at three to five percentage. And all of a sudden, I mean, in fairness, that leaves you with about an eight-point wiggle room on any given poll, which so at some point the polls aren't as useful as you think they are. You have to always assume that the undecideds are going to break each. evenly, which they rarely do. But in this case, they kind of did. Yeah, yeah, they did. And one other quick thing, I would, I think there's a difference between a MAGA repudiation and MAGA's fault.

So in other words, I would say MAGA repudiation is when the voters say, I'm sick of MAGA. Maga's fault is when the MAGA movement puts bad candidates forward. I like that distinction. And I think there is, that's what, that's what happened more than a, the voter saying, we don't want any more. That's an important point. I can't remember exactly what my answer was before, but like the repudiation is coming now.

I'm not sure the repudiation was entirely at the ballot, right, at the voting booths. The repudiation, the loss was at the voting booths. The repudiation is on the front page of the New York Post this morning, you know, where they have Donald Trump as Humpty Dumpty. It's all over, I mean, like, I try not to watch very much Foxx. news anymore and uh but sometimes you have to just for the sociology of it um um and it is amazing

how much of it is you should we like we should bring in kremlinologists to read the significant silences in so much of it but so like laura ingram who i defecate you negatory the last in-person conversation i think i ever had with laura who i've known for like 30 years she was she mildly lectured me about how the this is long before Trump how the GOP needs to be wary of all the crazies and be the grown-up party and I always thought about that over four years of watching Laura under Donald Trump and now last night apparently I saw some extended clips of it she's talking about how the GOP needs to care about persuasion and and

and reaching out, and it's the party of ideas and yada, yada, yada, and it can't all be about one person. Never says no name Donald Trump, as far as I can tell. So I find that part a little grading, but I think it's progress, right? And baby steps. And I do think, so I think the repudiation is more coming now in terms of the institutional and political responses to this than it was necessarily at the voting boom.

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and thousands of families already applying through ethos, it builds trust. Protect your family with life insurance from ethos. get your free quote at ethos.com slash dispatch. That's E-T-H-O-S dot com slash dispatch. Application times may vary, rates may vary. David, do you think abortion was a large factor in this election? I'm going to say yes. I don't, I keep looking for some information that counters that narrative. You know, what is the hard data? What is the hard data? And the hard data that we have. have seems to indicate that abortion actually was quite helpful for Democrats. So one thing is

trigger warning, Sarah, exit polls. I can't believe you're going to do this to me. How dare you, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. But they say abortion was the second most important issue after inflation. Also, we have the matter of the referenda. And the referenda here, I think, are really interesting in telling that every one of them, every one of them so far went in the pro-choice direction. Now, some of them, of course, like one's in California. You know, you had some blue Vermont. Vermont's a weird state, actually, in fairness. So I probably shouldn't lump Vermont in, but they're doing their own thing out there, all 12 of them. Michigan is a swing state. Montana's a red state. Kentucky is a red state at the presidential. And,

and Senate, you know, in congressional level, these were all places where the pro-life movement had a real, I thought, had a real chance. And not only did the pro-choice side win, the pro-choice side ran ahead of Democratic candidates in many of those states. And so. That's what I think so important. Again, you look at Michigan, the referendum on the pro-choice side had more support than the Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, which isn't a perfect causal arrow. You could still argue that it's correlated in some respects. But in general, to me, that is going to tell me that the turnout for the referendum is what

drove turnout for her. Not the other way around. Democrats are already talking about putting as many referenda on the ballot as possible for 2024. And, you know, look, I mean, it's incredibly clear at this point that the pro-life movement has a lot of work to do because it has tied itself so tightly to the GOP. And of course, the Democrats have kind of thrown out everyone

who disagrees as well. But it is so tightly tied to the GOP that one of the sad realities is the pro-life movement is going to be maybe about as popular as the GOP or maybe less popular than the GOP writ large. and that's a sobering thing to consider going forward in this post row world. The other evidence that's interesting

is the state legislatures that flipped because this is going to be a decision largely made by state legislatures and that seemed to be, it seemed to move some entire bodies, Michigan, Minnesota. But David, you know, what struck me is that the Kentucky ballot measure

actually all it said was that Kentucky's constitutional, does not protect a right to an abortion. It wasn't one of these like six-week, heartbeat bills. It wasn't anything like that. It was really just going to let the state legislature then decide what to do about abortion. That's what lost. Yeah.

And what I find sort of interesting about that, David, is this is where the GOP moves away from the legal conservative position, perhaps. The pro-life position is to end abortion. As you've said, David, it's to not necessarily ban it, but to lower slash end abortions in the country. The legal conservative position, however, was that this was not an unenumerated constitutional right, and therefore it should be left to the political parties. I don't mean that in the partisan Republican Democrat, political parties, meaning the legislatures, the voters, to make a decision on what they think, the policy.

preferences should be of their local state, even potentially national interests. So in some sense, legal conservatives should be like, yep, we did our job and success. You can decide whatever you want, Kentucky, but that's very different than what the Republican slash pro-life side wants. Well, the pro-life movement was a subset of the anti-Roe movement. So the anti-Roe movement was slightly bigger than the pro-life movement. in the sense that because what you're saying that the anti-Roe movement that included a lot of folks who believe Roe was just wrongly decided,

but then if abortion is on the ballot in their own state might vote for something like a 15-week regime or a 20-week regime or something like that that is not what the pro-life movement wants, but was incompatible with Roe or incompatible with Casey prior to Dobbs. So I don't think that's a huge number who were anti-Roe, but also somewhat pro-choice, but it's a number. It's a number for sure.

And I think that that's an important distinction. And I think the reality is that the pro-life movement has to reckon with the fact that in a democratic society, its position, except in states like Tennessee where I am, its position is a minority position. And so it has a lot of hearts and minds winning. to do. And that is going to be a difficult challenge in a highly partisan, super

acrimonious political environment. Speaking of winning over hearts and minds, I don't know why I'm giggling, but I think of Nate because he's on a little bit of a persuasion campaign in our house that he should be able to have peanut butter cups for all meals at all times. And so he goes around the house

singing, I want peanut butter cups and like it makes up this whole little song about it. And so He is definitely trying to win over hearts and minds. It's a very funny. He goes from angry, you know, tyrant to full-on persuasion, to trying to make the best case for it. It's very, it's not that different from any political operation.

Sarah, can we swing back to the polling question just for two seconds rather than let your conventional wisdom gel? Although I have to say I spent in a way to sort of be your ally and punish David for bringing up exit polls I was trying to figure out how I could seamlessly work in you can't yell fire in a crowded theater

but I just couldn't figure in that anyway I agree with you the polls like New York Times Sienna kind of got stuff right right there was a lot of polls there was a lot of red polling but the have the practice of factoring

in shoddier Republican polls, particularly like Trafalgar, into polling averages, particularly at Real Clear Politics. And also the very real problem of underpolling Republicans in the past, it does feel that in some polls, and even in, I think Real Clear Politics actually changed their methodology for the average. Maybe I'm wrong. I seem to recall that. It does feel like there was more eagerness in the polling industry and certainly in right-wing media to find polls that

people wanted to hear and that those, and certainly Trafalgar was, I mean, like some of Trafalgar's calls towards the end were just nonsense, right? I mean, they were just way off. And that's sort of a magnet next to the compass, right? It blows off

all the averages and all of that. So, you know, there's more to the – I don't think the era of polling is over yet, but it's there's – this will – this event will seem consistent with that story of the decline of polling 10 years from now, I think. I think so too. Okay, let's play a little 2024 game because, I mean, this election's been over for 48 hours, 36. So it's time to move on to the next one. I want to present two different scenarios for the Republican primary in 2024 and see which one you think seems more likely sitting here today.

One is that once again we have 10 plus candidates in the field. Donald Trump is one of them. The nine plus argue amongst themselves, each making the case that if they can just get into a head-to-head with Donald Trump, will be able to defeat him. And that's why we need to like cut the legs off of Ted Cruz or whatever else. And they go around Tanya Harding one another in the hopes of just getting on the ice. And by the way, I think Donald Trump then just very easily keeps on keeping on because none of them like we learned in 2016 ever get to that head on head. And by the time they kind of even do, it's too late. There's been a coalescing, if you will, of Republican prime.

primary voters. Here's scenario number two, that Ron DeSantis's win in this election was so large and has created such a whirlwind around him that was building over the last two years as well and through COVID. His name idea is high. He's polling high enough that what you're going to have is a media and a voter narrative that is Ron DeSantis versus Donald Trump. And the other eight plus candidates, actually will never get any oxygen or any attention because everything is going to be seen through this DeSantis versus Trump lens. And that is, at least, I don't know how that turns out in a DeSantis versus Trump. I mean, yes, today, you have Fox News, you have others that are seeming to come out pretty hard on Team DeSantis here. But of course, we've seen that before,

cough, cough, January 7th. So, Jonah, which of those two narrative? Do you think feels more likely, as we sit here today? I don't know. I mean, I truly do. I think I was talking to an NPR producer about this yesterday, and he asked basically this exact same question. And I think one way to sort of split the baby on this is to say that a post-Trump GOP future,

it's too murky to tell whether it's likely right now. but it is early enough to say it's never been more possible right and those are two different things the window of opportunity here is huge for for cooler heads to prevail

for same people to prevail for the sort of the hardcore MAGA own the libs types to save face while still endorsing a different candidate and for the gosh we got to just move on from this guy crowd to do it without having to sort of rub salt in everybody's ruins or purge people from the

movement. This is a real opportunity here. Whether it will be seized upon, I don't really have a great answer. David? I'm where Jonah is, but maybe a little more pessimistic. Nice. Do you need me to run through the other candidates? Because there's so many, that could take up a good five minutes of our time here. Asa Hutchison, the Arkansas governor's, a dark horse that I think has a high likelihood of hopping in. You've got the Larry Hogan's and Chris Christie's. Is Ted Cruz?

What about Tim Scott? Sununu. Sununu. So, Greg Abbott, like so many names. I mean, so a couple of things. One is I'm not underestimating the ability of Donald Trump to suck all the oxygen out of the room really quickly as soon as he announces, whenever that is. You know, his allegedly insiders are telling him to please delay until after the Georgia runoff.

Who knows if he will. Oh, we're going to get to that. So he has an enormous ability to suck all the oxygen out of the room. He will go after DeSantis hammer and tongs. But, you know, DeSantis has kind of got an interesting approach to that, which is ignoring him, just not really talking about him and just running Florida, which is worked for. and pretty well so far. I mean, he's now head and shoulders above any other Republican. You know, if you're, if you're, if you're, once you, once you move beyond Donald Trump, he's

head and shoulders above any other Republican. But the fact of the matter is Trump's vulnerability will I, I, the more I think about it, and we talked about it yesterday, I think a lot of folks think DeSantis is overhyped, um, that he kind of has a bit of a boomlet because he was, was a target of the media during COVID, very shrewdly captured a number of culture war issues. But there are folks that believe he's just not that compelling a figure when you actually put him on a stage next to other folks, that he kind of has a very sour demeanor,

that he's just not going to be as ready for prime time as people think when he's actually tested by, a competitive campaign compared to going on a Fox News hit where he's going to be just, you know, where he's lavished with praise and he's allowed to say his peace. So there are folks who think that he's just not up to a primary campaign against better competition. I don't know. I don't know. I think he's got a lot of momentum right now, but I'm not completely sold that, A, other people will be deterred from him from taking him on

and be that when other people take him on that he'll clearly prevail. I will say to a person when you talk about the people who think Ron DeSantis is overhyped, like everyone who works in politics in D.C., every Republican governor, basically the people who have interacted

and worked with Ron DeSantis over the years think he's overhyped. Now, that could be some performance, professional jealousy. A lot of these governors want to run themselves. And when you talk about Florida politics, we might have three Floridians running, Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, and Rick Scott. So, and I mean, Marco Rubio, probably not, but who knows? So there's a lot of incentive to say he's overhyped as well, but certainly in the whispery closed door places, you hear that often. Yeah, I mean, I agree with that. But I also think that there is truth, because I've talked to people

who do not highly have skin in the game who've been in the room with him quite a bit and just say he doesn't own a room, right? Don Trump walks in the room, he smoozes everybody, he owns the room. Bill Clinton owned a room. He's kind of antisocial. He's kind of socially awkward.

Barack Obama didn't, though. Barack Obama was fabulous at rallies, but he wasn't a room-owning guy. I'm not saying it's like, that is the one key, this one key trick, you go in the presidency. I'm just saying that like,

there's a reason to be, you know, skeptical about it. And, uh, But David's point about, like, it's going to be DeSantis or nobody or, like, the DeSantis is the key to it. I personally have no problem whatsoever sacrificing the political careers and lives of as many of these politicians as possible just to get Donald Trump out of American politics. Completely agree. So if it's, if Mike Pence wants to strap on the vest and shout Alu Akbar and go hug Donald Trump on a stage, metaphorically speaking. fine by me you know and same thing with desantis same with any of these people you know like

the one guy left amongst the rubble on the stage when the smold and the burning curtain and all that who can shake off you know the the viscera of his other opponents and dust himself off can claim the prize i don't care who it is i mean if that's scott or rick scott or whatever you know fine I don't care. Scott Abbott, they've now just glued themselves together. I do think there's, so you know I don't believe in lanes. I think the lane theory of presidential politics is like dead and stupid and always was. But there's like some archetypes that I think are emerging for 2024.

And so you have Mike Pence, Glenn Yonkin, the Republican governor of Virginia, who won in 2021, by ignoring Trump, holding him at arm's length. He didn't do any rallies for him. but he also wasn't denouncing Trump. He never was negative towards Trump. Ron DeSantis, and I might maybe even throw Ted Cruz into that same archetype of embracing Trumpism without embracing Trump necessarily. Do you think that voters have more or less of an appetite for any of these? I mean, to your point about, like, maybe Ron DeSantis doesn't own a room, maybe he's overhyped.

Does that make Glenn Yonkin or Mike Pence? more attractive as a candidate to you? To me? I don't know. Whoever. David? Some guy? Yeah.

You know, I'm at the point where I would like to see a small cluster of contenders. I do not want to see a large gaggle. Oh, you're not going to get that. I know. We can narrow them down. I will narrow them down for you, but that's not going to happen. Sarah, I am no, I am not naive. I know that I do not get what I want,

but I'm just stating what I want. Your preferences to see the universe? Okay, cool. Yes, to the universe. I'm saying a small gaggle of contenders that narrows quickly. I would like a gaggle of vultures, crows, and some miniature donkeys, just if we're saying things that we want. It's almost Christmas.

And here's one thing that I will not get that I want from everything that I've heard, Brian Kemp as a presidential contender. From what I've heard, he is not interested. But this is somebody who has his own story, his own DeSantis-like story without a lot of sort of the DeSantis baggage that carries along, that comes with him. And I think the one thing, though, I think that's going to be interesting to see. And again, this may actually end up helping DeSantis a great deal because, remember, a lot of his momentum has been generated by media opposition.

the way the GOP base works right now, whoever the media circles around, they're going to defend, and then when they defend it, the media circles around that attacks even, you know, brings more scrutiny. Get ready for the wave,

and it already started a little bit, but get ready for the wave of commentary that says DeSantis is just as bad as Trump, or DeSantis is worse than Trump. I think that already started. It started a little bit. I've definitely seen that. Or worse. I've seen a lot of DeSantis is worse than Trump because he's Trump, but competent and smarter.

Right. And which is like saying it's a vest, but with sleeves. Right. I totally agree. The fact that DeSantis is quote unquote more competent and smarter also is because he has a different set of ambitions than Donald Trump and those different ambitions will create completely different results if he's president, in my opinion, than a second Donald Trump term. I am set aside policy preferences. David, you and I have talked about some of our civil liberty concerns with some of these new Republicans, for instance. But in terms of an underlying threat to the republic as we know it, I don't know. No. Ron DeSantis doesn't concern me at all. Not remotely. Like that's that argument that he's a threat to the republic or a threat to democracy.

No, no, stop it. If he is, then Gavin Newsom is. because they have the exact same flaw in my view. I mean, Newsom has more flaws and that he's much more progressive overall. But if I was going to say, the thing that I like the least about DeSantis and the thing I like the least about Gavin Newsom

is exactly the same thing, which is they're not big fans of the First Amendment. And, you know, I think they both have that problem. And every single time the Democrats say, oh, look at the Stop Oak Act. He's an absolute menace. I will say, What about California trying to force pro-life pregnancy centers

to advertise for free and no-cost abortions? How about California trying to force churches to cover abortions? I mean, you just can go on down the line with California time and time and time again. You have two major contenders who are not civil libertarians here between DeSantis and Gavin Newsom. I don't like that. It doesn't make them a threat to the republic. It doesn't.

With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot trackside. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Pre-sale tickets for future events subject to availability and varied by race. Turns and conditions apply. Learn more at amex.ca. slash Y-Mex. There's a lot of actual results that we don't know, which is its own whole conversation about as many people have pointed out.

the millions upon million, I think what, Florida has 21 million voters or something and they had results immediately and Arizona has 7 million and like we still don't know, Nevada, even fewer, Oregon, all these races that we just don't have results yet 36 hours later and nor does it seem like we're that close to having the results, frankly. Set aside how stupid that is. It's not frustrating actually because it's, we know it's doable because Florida does it and they do it with more people. So it's just... And Jeb Bush is responsible for it, right?

I mean, this is when Charlie Cook made, is that after the Florida recount stuff, Jeff Bush was like, we're going to have the best voting, vote counting system in America. And they do. And what is it they say in that movie The Edge? What one man can do, another can do? Like, Florida can do it.

That means it's doable, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And again, like, they have more people. They have both rural and dense areas. There's just no excuse for why other states aren't doing this. They have lots of allegations. I mean, and they did it by overcoming the impediment of having Florida man as overrepresented in their population. So, and they can still do it. I mean, some of the Arizona stuff in Maricopa County was outrageous to me that they didn't test their printers ahead of time to ensure that the

ink was dark enough to run through their scanning machines. You're joking me, right? And Nevada doesn't even have that excuse. They're just being slow, but we saw that before. Anyway, one thing we do know for sure is that George is going to a runoff, and that gives us about four weeks to be miserable. But I'm sort of from just a strategic standpoint, there's three players here whose strategies I'm very interested in. Herschel Walker's campaign and strategically how you message this over the next month Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis and what they're like go all in like the hokey pokey that they're about to do. And then of course the Democrats nationally the Warnock campaign. I'm going to put those all in one bucket and how you do it again because their strategy in 2020 was there

were some new parts of it. Some parts were particularly brilliant, I thought. They've now got Stacey Abrams at their disposal, who I understand she lost her race. But the reason why Georgia is a competitive state is because of Stacey Abrams and the energy, the machine, the money she brought to that state. So Ralph Warnock being a senator at all is because of Stacey Abrams. And now she's freed up to do something. So curious, let's just because we heard just talking about it, let's start with the hokey pokey dance, DeSantis and Trump, what will their role be? What should there will be in the next month when it comes to the Georgia runoff race,

Jonah? First, just because I think it's interesting, maybe you guys knew this. I learned this on NPR this morning. The whole reason why Georgia has a runoff system is it was a way to ensure that there would be a final race where a white candidate could win.

It would winnow out black candidates, and I think there's some great historical irony that this is a race between two black candidates and and all because of Stacey Abrams and whatnot. So, you know, racial progress. Hooray.

I'll just make a quick plug, though, for having a 50% plus one election system because it does prevent plurality-based candidates from winning. And so you do need to get over 50%. Nobody wants to go to a runoff. And that probably incentivizes some better behavior, though, but see, Georgia. So who knows?

Yeah, no, I think there's a lot to be. I mean, France does it with their presidential stuff. and like I'm more sympathetic to it than I otherwise might be given that as French. The libertarian, interestingly, got 2%. That 2% would have made all the difference and tells you not only the drop-off between Kemp and Walker,

which I think ends up being about five points. Again, we'll see at the very end how much it is. So five percentage of voters voted for Kemp and either voted for Warnock or did not vote in the Senate race. And then 2% voted for the libertarian, and there was a Green Party candidate in the race, and they got less than 1%. So the 2% libertarians were almost certainly Walker protest votes. So bad news for the Walker team that 7% of your voters were like, no, anything but this.

Whether it's the Democrat, not voting, or the libertarian, just not this. Right. Which is good. It means candidates do still matter. I like that. answer the question, I think you also just have to do the level-setting thing of it really depends what the count in the other Senate races is, right? If it really does all come down to Georgia again, the living will envy the dead. I mean, again, we don't know right now, but the path is

because Pennsylvania flipped, Republicans now need two of the remaining states, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada. Nevada looks good. Arizona doesn't. The likeliest scenario right now is that it absolutely, Georgia will be the deciding one. The only real alternative is maybe they lose Nevada and Arizona, in which case Georgia doesn't matter. The idea that they're going to win both Nevada and Arizona, maybe, but unlikely. So certainly right now, the odds on, we're all heading to Georgia. So, I mean, in a sane world, the good news for Donald Trump is that he could learn. from his past mistakes and not do the same thing

he did two years ago, right? Oh, that's so adorable. Oh, my God. Isn't that cute? Yeah. But odds that he will do that are unlikely. The interesting thing to me is, like,

you know, it doesn't get nearly enough attention that Brian Kemp and Brad Raffensberger were probably second only to Liz Cheney on Donald Trump's hate list. And they both got. got reelected. And one of the things I think that says is that Georgia Republicans in particular

have been inoculated to the crazier stop-the-steel stuff from Trump, right? Because, you know, and that means his ability to damage the runoff is more limited than it might be in almost any other state. Still, in a 50-50 race, a little damage goes a long way. I mean, And so I think DeSantis' role is pretty easy. He goes around campaigning for Herschel Walker and says responsible things and some red meat to the base and all that. But for Trump, whose agenda is always about his own ego,

the question is, how much restraint can he show? And you're already hearing voices saying he really, really needs to wait to, he needs to postpone this announcement, this November 15th announcement until after the Georgia runoff. I kind of doubt that he's going to do that. So I don't know.

I mean, like, it's, as you said with your bless your heart response earlier, you know, like, we can come up with what the right strategy is for Donald Trump, but like we can also come out with what the best chess moves for a spider monkey are. It's just

it's all lip, it's, it's all lip-flapping. So, David, if Donald Trump announces, he has all the downside and none of the upside. If Herschel Walker wins, no one's going to say it's because Donald Trump announced for president. But if he loses, but even, like, that will be such a difficult case to make because why, why would that help Herschel Walker? There's an argument for why it would hurt him, but in terms of helping him, so you took away attention and money, and that's what got him over the finish line? That's a weird argument. Ron DeSantis, he surely has to be the most sought-after surrogate in the country right now.

And yet, I don't know that it's particularly in Ron DeSantis' interest to go all in on Florida, I mean, on Georgia right now. There's some risk. There's a lot of risk. He either can't pull Herschel Walker over the finish line, or again, Herschel Walker wins, and I'm just not sure that anyone's like, Ron DeSantis did it. But I think everyone who wants to run for president in 2024 is going to have to bop down there at this point. And whether Donald Trump announces, I think will color, I do,

I think it'll color the whole thing in terms of how it's covered, in terms of how voters think about it, and in terms of how they think about control of the Senate, because we're done with policy arguments at this point. There's no more pro-life, pro-choice, inflation, like all of those things that were so important 36 hours ago. This will be, do you want them to control the Senate or us to control the Senate, a case for divided government, checking Biden, a case for confirming judges, all of those things. And if Donald Trump's in the presidential race, it'll be, it'll almost feel as if he's already president. And so you don't want to give him the Senate, quote unquote. Right. Yeah, I mean, from the Republican standpoint, there's just no case for Donald Trump announcing. Like if you,

if you have any sort of institutional GOP concern, there's just no case for it. None, zero. And of course, that doesn't matter to Donald Trump at all. I mean, this is a guy who celebrated the loss of a Republican Senate candidate in Colorado. That was his first response to the election night was, like, I got to keep my powder dry.

Oh, wait, this guy lost, yay. Yeah, it was Make America Great again. I'm so glad this Republican lost. It was weird for someone who is, in theory, the leader of the Republican Party. Yeah. So this all boils down to his own perception of his own self-interest, even maybe up to two hours in advance of the rally. The only thing that I would wonder about is, is there so much momentum in place now that he can't back away, that he perceives that he just can't back away from it? Because I doubt he would then say on November 15th in front of everyone at Marlago, I'm back.

on Twitter. I mean, it's amazing. He made that announcement the night before the election because he was so concerned that there was going to be this huge red wave and he wanted to make sure that he was going to get credit for quasi-announcing.

And then when the red wave doesn't come, now he's locked himself in to some announcement in just a few days. Whew. All right. Last few thoughts on the election. what are the parties learn from this? In particular, because we haven't talked about them much,

the Democratic Party. What does the Biden administration take away from this? What do the Democrats in Congress say is the narrative? And I'm thinking specifically in the run-up to the election, third way, which is a centrist-democratic group, puts out this premortem that's like Democrats are going to lose because voters do not believe the Democrats share their values, don't think they're patriots, don't think they value hard work,

they're instead off on these progressive tangents that people don't care about. Democrats wildly exceeded expectations. And I don't mean the polling here. I mean historical trends for a president with a 40% approval rating for his first midterm in office. Again, you look at the only other time in our lifetime that that's happened. And George W. Bush had a 63% approval rating

when he picked up eight seats. Democrats should be saying Like this is In my view They have evidence to say This is a near mandate Jonah Yeah so

We talked about this a little bit On the Dispatch Live Which you missed For shamed That was said with a little bit of No You were missed You know

So That felt a little like It had a little curve on that ball Yeah, it might like a little So, no, and it was funny. Like I was hosting mediocrily, and for the first half of it, we were talking about what are the recriminations and the lessons that the Democrats are going to learn from all of this. And then the results actually started to really, you know, take shape and we're like, oh, so they're going to be recriminations and lessons for the Republicans. That's interesting.

didn't see that coming and so I think this is one of the downsides of having a binary two-party system is that basically only one side gets an opportunity to learn a lesson at a time

and I think the Democrats are making it this is my long-standing gripe for a long time now which is that part of the problem in our country is that parties for all sorts of of complicated or simple reasons

overinterpret their victories and at the same time act as if the power that they get has a very brief shelf life on it so they have to do everything they can when they can for fear of losing power again and that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and the fact that Biden when asked whether he was going to change any of his policies

he says he wasn't going to change a damn thing right he says nothing I wouldn't change anything right is not a great sign. And I think that this is one of the things that a lot of people don't appreciate is that, like, victory is always not in the long-term interests of a party. I understand why you've got to, like, push for victory.

But Republicans were kind of lucky. They lost in 2020, given that inflation was coming and all these problems were coming and let them be outsiders. The fact that Democrats did this well in the midterms makes it much harder to get rid of Biden. even though the argument for getting rid of Biden

is in part just because he's friggin' old. And he's... His birthday's in just a couple weeks. November 20th, he will turn 80 years old. And because of the nature of quantum temporal physics, he's only going to get older, right? And if that's the fact... Like, this is...

It's sort of like inflation, right? You know, how everyone says, like, you can't hide... Like, you know, Joy Reid saying, people only talking about inflation because Republicans have taught them the word and blah, blah, I know it's like the most ridiculous stuff. Like people know inflation because they see it in gas prices and food prices every single day. People see in Biden that he's, it's not so much an age thing.

It's like a specific thing. It's like because there's some people who are old who don't show it. Bernie Sanders doesn't really show his age. But they see in Biden that he's fading. And that's just going to make him a very weak candidate in 2024. I also, just to get it out there, I think this argument that, because he beat Trump once he can beat him again is a dumb, dumb argument

because, well, I do think Trump will be a very bad candidate, right? And so it's possible that Biden can beat him. The reason Biden beat him was that he campaigned on this return to normalcy vibe. He campaigned on this idea that he was going to be bipartisan. After four years of not being bipartisan and not returning normalcy,

he can't run the same play and he can't run, stay the course, right? Don't change horses in the stream and all that kind of thing. And so it's just a new race all over again. So I think the in having unified control of Congress. I mean, you talked about how it helped Republicans in 2020 to lose the Senate. Arguably, if Republicans don't control the Senate in 2023, it makes their chances in 2024 a little bit better.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And like, I was talking to a very prominent Democratic consultant yesterday. And he was saying, you know, one of the benefits of gridlock is that now Biden doesn't have to live, you know, he can exceed the length of the least. that AOC held over Biden. So maybe we'll see something different. But I think the Democrat Party needs to learn a lot of lessons because both parties suck. And that's my position.

David? I mean, I got, I think, an insightful text from a friend late Tuesday night and said, this was a good night for the right. It just doesn't know it yet. Ooh, that does. I like that. Yeah.

That's good. And the point was this moved the right away from Trumpism. and it kept the left moving away from Biden. And so if the Republicans take the lesson that they should take from this, then the chances that you have a younger, better Republican taking on an incumbent Joe Biden in a post-Trump environment just increased. Now, there's a giant if there. The giant if is, do the Republicans take the lesson that they should take from this?

I'm not super optimistic about that, but I will say that the chances increased, the chances increased. But that's where I am on it. I think this was a better night for the right than the right realizes because of that. And then the other thing is, let's, I know the Democrats rightfully,

and just to put this in context of, you know, we were talking about history, the last time a president went into the midterms with a 44% approval rating was Bill Clinton in 1994, and the Democrats lost 54 seats, okay? So that's the kind of perspective we're talking about. But the Democrats rightfully are exuberant right now,

but they had some swings and misses too. I mean, you know, they got to be kicking themselves about Wisconsin and Ron Johnson. Johnson was vulnerable. Way more vulnerable than they thought. And it's because Johnson had been left for dead by the Republicans so many times, and roared back. This time it was not a roar. It was a meow. Yes. Lost by one point running a far left

dude. Like how far left? This is a guy who praised Iranian government Twitter accounts for their supportive Black Lives Matter. Like, are you kidding me? So there was there was some stuff that they left on the table as well. But, you know, in the flush of sort of seeming victory or more likely bullet dodged, they're not going to take that lesson and they're more likely to double down on Biden. And over the long term, that might be better for Republicans if they can learn the lessons they need to learn. All right. Well, we're going to end with a joke or is it a metaphor. For some reason, I just think dispatch listeners will enjoy this one. Snake walks into the forest slithers into the forest. Come out, little critters. Don't be afraid. I'm not poisonous.

Actually, says the mouse as he leaves his little hidey hole. You mean venomous. Poisonous refers to something that unloads toxins when eaten. Works every time, says the snake. Oh, my goodness. It's nice to see transcending gender binaries and age restrictions. They're going straight into dad jokes. And with that, we will see you again next week.

And yeah, I'm sure we'll maybe even know a little bit more about the vote in some of these states or not. A week later, why should we expect Arizona to have finished counting by then? Thanks for joining us. And again, it helps other people find this podcast if you rate us because the higher the rating, the higher your algorithmic yada yada yada magic voodoo is. And so give us a rating. Or become a member of the dispatch and hop in the most fun and lovely and kind and inquisitive comment section. I expect lots of comments about snakes and mice and poison and venom.

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