The Dispatch Podcast - Are the Normies Taking Over? | Interview: Ben Dreyfuss

Episode Date: August 26, 2024

Ben Dreyfuss, the former Mother Jones editorial director who now publishes the Calm Down Substack, shares his insights from the Democratic National Convention and takes Jamie's questions about whether Kamala Harris showed her party that she's a competent candidate. The Agenda: —From the convention floor of the DNC —The left-wing influence —Decline of woke politics —Speculating Harris' priorities as president —Implications of a Trump victory —The future of journalism Show Notes: —Dispatch Live post-DNC recap The Dispatch Podcast is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including members-only newsletters, bonus podcast episodes, and weekly livestreams—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Conditions apply, visit your local Volvo retailer or go to explorevolvo.com. Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Jamie Weinstein. My guest today is Ben Dreyfus. He is the author of the Substack Calm Down and formerly a writer and editor at Mother Jones Magazine. He is a left-of-center opinion journalist, and he was at the Democratic National Convention. So I thought I'd bring him on to talk to him about what went on there, the state of the Democratic Party, why he thinks Vice President Harris is a good pick for the Democratic Party. It's kind of a little bit different than last week. Some of the listeners, I take it from the comment section, thought last week

was a little bit too talky, pointy from my guests. And I understand where they are coming from. It was a bit frustrating at times, even though I do think we got a good conversation in the end. So here's a different perspective from a writer of the left, a commentator of the left, on the DNC, the 2024 campaign, and what about the left wing, where the left wing is and how powerful they are within the Democratic Party. I think you're going to find this conversation interesting. So without further ado, I give you Mr. Ben Dreyfuss. Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. Thanks for having me, Jamie.

I want to begin. Listeners, believe it or not, not all of them at least, may know who you are. So in brief, if you could just kind of describe where you came from in terms of journalism and also your ideological moorings. Sure. I mean, I'm a substacker now with a substack called Calm Down. And prior to that, I was the editorial director of Mother Jones magazine before being somewhat canceled in 2020. and moving to the island of misfit toys called Substack. I think, ideologically, I'm sort of a Normie Lib,

whose main interest is in fighting my mortal enemy, the left wing of the Democratic Party. But occasionally I also reminded that the right wing is also a traditional enemy of mine. We go far enough. But, yeah, the last few years I've become more in concord with my new friends in the Never Trump era. So that's sort of where I am now.

Well, Norma Lib is kind of what I was hoping for today. We tried to have someone on last week to talk about Kamala Harris, and, you know, it was a little bit too much as if he just received talking points in some cases from the Democratic Party, although I like him and we had a good conversation about boxing. But you were at the convention. You are still there in Chicago. Just describe what you saw the last four days in Chicago. It's hard to talk about.

without just focusing on the vibes really. There's arguably like it's too confident really the vibe here. But from what it was a month ago when it was Joe Biden on a direct path to losing, it just seemed like people had flipped a switch. You know, there was a walking through the desert and then finding a bit of water and suddenly everyone is, you know, quite thrilled to have found that oasis. And whether that leads to the most rational objective like review of the water is something else. But it's definitely, uh, the main feeling here was one of, of relief, I think. I feel like everyone was so, there was so much anxiety at the Democratic Party last year at least, but, but really like, especially the month before where, where people were just afraid of

watching Biden speak even, you know, every time he went out, there was this, this thing in your chest that was, oh God, oh God, what's going to happen here? And then once, once that that changed, there was just, you know, I don't think Kamala Harris is the best order in the entire world, but she is a person who can talk and she's the sane person. She seems like a nice person and she can do it all right. And there's just this huge feeling of relief. I feel amongst people that there's this standard bear for the party that you don't have to sort of like make all these qualifications for at such a pure level of, oh my God, they're going to talk and I need to be. Interesting what you said that, you know, there's this kind of euphoria there in a way.

Were you at the Republican convention? Yeah. Yeah, I wasn't, but one of the things that jumped out at me watching it and with the J.D. Vance pick was like, oh, wow, this might be what a top of a bubble looks like. You're so confident you're going to pick J.D. Vans now and we're on a glide path to victory. The euphoria there. Was there any thought like, oh, man, hopefully this could be a bubble. This could be maybe taking too much in stride that this is, we now have Kamala Harris and we're going to win. Yeah. I mean, maybe it's also just that I had just been in Milwaukee, but that was my fear from the moment I got here was that I was like everyone is being a little too, a little too confident. It's, you know, tempting fate. God has a great sense of humor and he always liked to send you a surprise. And I mean, the last time that I remember there being two conventions where both conventions were euphoric was 2008. And, and, you know, 2008 when I was leaving the plane from Denver, like the Friday after, is when the Sarah Palin, papers announced. And, you know, obviously, that went one direction after a while, but it led to this immediate hump, this feeling on the Republican side that I remember on the plane, all the Democrats leaving were suddenly like, and were stricken with this thought of, oh, my God, wait, we're not just going to win the way we had just thought we were in Denver. And so there's

something about overconfidence at these conventions that just makes me a little scared. When you look, especially, you know, like Nate Silver has it right now, like Kamala at 55% or something, which is a coin slip it's still a little uh it is it is worrisome to worry the parallels to milwaukee where it's like is this going to be the high that just kind of vibes because i mean i think those are interesting and important i don't know if you uh went out after i mean it ended late every night but what was you know the mood of the of the people there i mean was this you know because kamal harris didn't do that great in the the 2020 democratic primary are these people now all you know kamala harris fans when they when they you know maybe a month ago were yeah yeah that's right i mean it's one of those

it's sort of a hilarious example of how like you know there's the rally around the flag thing what people do with their team sports but no i mean i think that you were a little gracious in the way that you described Kamala's 2020 performance right it was quite not good i think that there and even as recently as a few months ago you know the the Biden white house was the main people pushing the, oh, he can't step aside because Kamala, she can't win. And so there was all of that. And I think that maybe one of the things that worked out well in her favor was the expectations were set so low by a few years of that of the White House having a somewhat antagonistic relationship with her, this memory of this 2019 campaign, I don't even think she got to

2020. And then also a lot of Republicans who just have never liked her and have thoughts about her for years and so that everyone's expectations going into it were a bit like, oh my God, what is this actually going to be like? And then when she cleared those at all, it was this relief of, oh my God, all right. And I think that like what she proved really, and she's been proving for over a month, was that Biden was like a below replacement level Democrat at this point. And that she at least is a replacement level Democrat, right? Like she's, she is doing the things that you need to do to campaign seriously and run a real campaign. And she's not, she did herself on her foot or doing insane things like she did in 2019 where she was embracing

the left and doing all this nonsense. So you did have all of this, just a relief here. And to answer your question just directly, yeah, that is exactly right. Like these people who mostly, I don't think, would have voted for Kamala if this was an open primary, did suddenly, you know, they are all on board here in a way that really was sort of the best way this could have happened for her. If there There was a primary. I don't know that she wins it, right? Like, it's sort of a fascinating turn of events. Was there anything at the convention that surprised you that you didn't expect to see when you landed in Chicago? I had been convinced by everybody that there was going to be more left-wing nonsense, that there was going to be more, you know, protests. When I got here, I got here last weekend. And they had been talking about 30 to 40,000 protesters. But then on Saturday night, one of the, one of the, a reporter who was embedded with them told me that they were saying, you know, really, we're probably going to have 100,000.

And, you know, they got 1,200 maybe, something like that. Like, it's, it's off by a scale of a hundred. And it really just led to this. I think that also led to the relief that everyone sort of felt here was that there wasn't going to actually be this 1968 sort of, oh, God, we're going to have to justify Chicago police beating a couple of these kids in the ER. I mean, why was, I mean, it's not, what wasn't just political people predicting this. There's a financial guy, Iceman, who, you know, if you read the big short, he's one of the guys

that got the big short in Michael Lewis's book, and now he comes on TV all the time, and his prediction was Trump's going to win in the landslide because you're going to see burning of the American flag and the Israeli flag, and it's going to be worse than 1968. Why did that not materialize? What happened? I mean, I think that in general, there's two things. One of which is the left in the United States is incredibly small. Like, it's over indexed in the media, so we have to talk about them a lot. The other thing is, is that because they're so small, the left can only get purchased for anything ever if normie libs who are more disengaged are afraid and start to to throw in their lot

what happened during the Trump years right like they suddenly decided that this theory of change that the left had was right and so they threw all their support behind it and you got a lot of ridiculous stuff but the best way to take oxygen out of those movements is for norman lives to be confident you know is to like have them have Obama in office when suddenly the left had no power whatsoever and there was drone strikes and we did everything we every we did everything we had to do And basically, I think that what's happened in the last month is that that group, that critical mass of army dams, and even ones who are West Wing viewers and a little further to the left or whatever, but they're not ideological lefties have just calmed down. And once that happens, the left has no power. It's too tiny of a movement.

And so then you end up with 1,200 lunatics who have signs surrounded by 80,000 signs that they couldn't even hand off to anyone. Well, I was going to get to do it a little bit later. I mean, speaking of Kamala Harris's speech, or Vice President Harris, I always say the name wrong, not intentionally. But that was not the 1619 project speech. I mean, it was waving the American flag. This is the greatest country in the world. This is not kind of the left that we've been told had such power in the Democratic Party.

Is it that they know they have to be marginalized a little bit, at least play marginalized in order to win? or do you do you really think there's such a minor force that this is the this is the this is the mainstream democratic party that was waving the american flag on stage and this is the greatest country in the world i mean i think that the left is is real like it does exist it does have some very weird opinions about american greatness and it does have some weird stuff that we've all witnessed over the last few years i mean like that but i just think that in reality that isn't a large i mean how many people are even in the house are in the squad for

You know, like there's not even one of them is now moving into the center, is moving away from it. Are you referring to AOSC? AOC, is that who you think of? Yeah, yeah, who DSA hates because she doesn't want to set fire to, you know, foot lockers or anything anymore. But I do think that, like, that most of the people are cringe. Same with the Republican Party. Most of them are actually just, like, cringe sort of pro-American. They like to come to these conventions and, like, hear nice things about their country and feel strong and patriotic.

But then a lot of those voices can just be over. were taken by louder ones that are ideological. And, like, the truth about the Democratic Party is it's not ideological. It's not, this whole system is always supposed to be, you know, its job is to win elections while being further to the left than the Republicans. But besides from that, they'll kill you for a quarter. And, like, the left hates that about the Democratic Party because it's not like Europe and it's not like, and the left accurately knows that the establishment in the Democratic Party,

like the wing that I associate myself with, you know, if they bring a gun onto the plane, we're not opening that cockpit door, right? Like, the plane is being landed. They can do whatever they want, but we're getting that plane on the ground. No one really trusts the left with it, which is why you then ended up with this thing last night where they wanted a speaker. And they were doing it. You're talking about the uncommitted movement that they wanted a Palestinian, talk about the, the Palestinian American talking about their viewpoint of what's going on with Israel Gaza. Right.

And then they released a speech of it that was really, you know, a fine speech. The text was fine. but that it wasn't, they weren't going to, at the last second, just allow the uncommitted movement to have it. And why would they? Because like the uncommitted movement has on time over time that like its goal is, is chaos as to. But it's intriguing. I mean, leading up to this, if you told me that, you know, there would be chance to bring them home in the Denver National Convention and they wouldn't allow even a Palestinian American to come give a speech, I'd be pretty surprised. I mean, was that surprising to you at all? Or am I just so like my brain's on Twitter and my brains on like following Medi Hassan that I that I'm not in touch with the zeitgeist of the actual Democratic Party establishment? I just think that like the actual if you are on Twitter and you are even looking at the media as well because the left is so much more overpopulated on both those things. Then of course it's crazy like like of course because also I mean that was kind of what I wanted to see at this convention was how much of this was going to be how many fears that I have about this stuff are going to be.

realized by her doing what she did in 2019, which was embracing a lot of stuff on the left. I wasn't initially a walled guy. I don't really have a problem with him, but he wasn't my first pick. And I was a little like, uh-oh, maybe, you know, who could know? And then I really didn't see any of that this year. Like, one of the benefits of the way that this happened for her without having to have a primary is she didn't need to run to the left to win a primary, right? So if she did run to the left right now, it would just be an act of suicide. Like, it would just be an unstilled only like mainstream candidate who's ever run to the left for no reason whatsoever in a general was Joe Biden. You know, there's like there's no other, there's no other point for them to do

it. Well, I mean, this is an interesting point though. I mean, do you think this could reshape how we run? I mean, we're one of the longest, I mean, England, like, they run a campaign. They decide they're going to have elections and it's like in three weeks. They, they run a campaign. Do you think that the fact that she didn't have to pander in a primary is kind of a new format? I mean, Why would we, I mean, I guess you have to have a primary in a certain way, but do you think parties will shorten their primaries to, to, to kind of mitigate kind of the pandering that goes on in these primaries? I mean, it would be sort of amazing. It's, it's, if she wins this election, if it all works out, really, like, it, it'll be the, the biggest change in, in how these things have worked. Because it's all, it's all been going one way of them getting longer and longer for since 1970 me, too.

And I don't know. I mean, I don't know if you could actually turn back the tide with it. But it will be fascinating to see. It's the first, it'll be the first change. I mean, also, maybe it won't work. Maybe it will all go up. This was terrible. You can't do everything so quickly.

As you mentioned, I mean, the waving the American flag. I thought the first fourth of it was really, really good about her story, kind of only can happen in America. Some of the other parts, you know, I didn't necessarily love. But, I mean, I thought at one point that she was about to come out and say, And, you know, and by the way, Tom Cotton should write in the New York Times when he, you know, like she was almost, this was, again, I keep going to anti-1619, like almost repudiation. Are you seeing anything on Twitter and from writers kind of the left of center that led a movement in 2020 that were in the zeitgeist of the moment in 2020 that are angry? Because, I mean, there was almost like a complete rejection, or at least a ignorance of woke politics in that speech.

I mean, I haven't seen any in the exact day, like specifically about that. And I sort of imagine that it'll be quite tempered because they're going to, they're going to be high on their own vibes. But I have seen that happening over the last few years as we kind of just as a zeitgeisty thing moved away from that. You know, I mean, as we've passed sort of like the peak woke era of 2020, and it's been, you can't repeatedly, it's been sort of like beaten at the polls, but then also all of these institutions that were a little more susceptible to it have built up some immunity to it so that there's less sort of indulging some of this quack, wacky stuff. And I was talking to someone who was going to go to a debate with someone about cancel culture. and they were going to say, you know, cancer culture bad. And the person that they were paid with was a big columnist who was, who I was like, she's still, she's still defending it?

Like, I hadn't even heard we were doing that anymore. You don't even see it any, anyone arguing it anymore. And I don't know. I think that that's, as opposed to like Kamala or the Democrats leading in any sort of important way here, I really feel like they're just slowly catching up to what the actual people on the ground were saying. My favorite part of the convention was Obama speech. I'm like a millennial Democrat, so I love Obama.

Obama, when he does that line that says, you know, don't boo, vote, what I was thinking is I watched it, and for the first time I heard him say that so many times is that that's all Obama asks of me, is to vote. You know, he doesn't ask me to stop being friends with people because they have bad thoughts. He doesn't ask me to have purity tests in my social life. If he doesn't ask me to use politics as a totalizing view of pop culture, of all of these things, he just says that, you know, the first Tuesday after the Monday in November, you go vote. And like then you can go to other stuff.

And like that's honestly, I feel like the way that so many people in America just sort of feel. And them getting back to that as opposed to the sort of, the Democrats getting back to that as opposed to this other view of this, everyone is an activist. and we're all going to go and live our lives doing all of this, is popular. It's more normie. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online. Whether you're building a site for your business,

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You can offer services, book appointments, and receive payments directly through your site. It's a single hub for managing your work and reaching your audience without having to piece together a bunch of different tools. All seamlessly integrated. Squarespace.com slash dispatch for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code dispatch to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Well, let me ask you this, though. I mean, I guess the criticism is and the question is, and obviously it's going to be the Trump campaign, is like, what is, they're not going to ask the question, they're going to kind of tell it.

But the question is, what is her ideological core? I mean, is it the 2020, you know, decriminalize the border, you know, give money to beyond, protesters that were arrested, no fracking, or is it, you know, the person who's reversing all these? Does she have an ideological core, or is it purely what the zeitgeist of the moment is? And if she does have an ideological core, which of these two kind of strands, is it? I don't know. What's in her art? I don't think that I, I never really bought the one that she did in 2019, just because she didn't look like she did. She wasn't, like as an actress, she wasn't selling it, right? You know, as long as you. As you. As you. As long as you. You know, as long as you,

she is disavowing flip-flopping in the direction that I think she should and in the direction of public opinion, then I think it's good. Like, that's a good gravity to be pulled that way. It's bad when people don't do that, when people are, like, too stubborn. That was one of my fears with her was that it's hard to flip-flop twice, and sometimes people get too proud to do it. And, like, this involved her having to flip-flop first in 2019, and then again, now on all of that. But the fact that she's just wholesale been throwing out all of those awful opinions for 2019 is great, wonderful.

As long as it happens like that, because, I mean, there's going to be institutional reasons why she could not flip up the other way again in office. There will be lots of, like, constraints, Congress, courts, all of these things. And so worst case scenario, those things will come in. But it's nice to know that she recognizes that America doesn't agree with those opinions. I mean, the other criticism is that, you know, this has been a great month for her. The rollout has been surprisingly good. I would not have predicted it. But it's all an artifice because, you know, she hasn't given an interview for a reason

that once you start, you know, putting her in front of debate, on a debate stage or an interview, that they're avoiding, avoiding, you know, putting her in a place that is more difficult than reading off a telepropter, which he did very well and better than I think a lot of people would have expected. What do you think the reason is that they're not doing interviews? I mean, it is kind of crazy. It's been a month. And what would you advise the campaign if you were a political advisor?

Presumably, they're going to change that now. Like, I think that they thought for a while, like, they could go through the convention and come up with a platform. Because, I mean, they didn't even have a platform. They didn't have any, they had no issues or anything like that. And so I think that maybe that was one of the reasons why they were kicking the can down. But obviously, now there's a ticking clock on it. Like, now, but now they need to do it like this week.

We need to be seeing all of it. And if not, then I think it'll raise a lot more concerns about it. Because I mean, give Trump this. Like, he's always been quite good at going and doing the interview. You know, even no matter how it's going to go, he'll go and do it. And people respect people who go and do that. And the debate's, I mean, how do you, Trump's been pretty good. I'm not necessarily his answers, but he's a good performer.

He understands how to get people, you know, off their game in a certain way. At least he did in the Republican primaries in 2016. How does that debate go? Yeah, I mean, and her debates in 2019 weren't great. You know, they were, she had some viral moments, but they weren't knockouts. I think that when people, when I know it's just for myself, I think about her performance, I sort of forget that what I'm, when I'm thinking back on are sort of during Senate committee hearings and things like that, which is a debate, but it's a one-sided debate, right,

where you have all the time. I think it'll be interesting to see where it goes. Trump has only ever won one debate against a Democrat, though, and it required that Democrat to be having his brains leaking out of his nose. I think that his thing that just plays differently with Republicans in general election. So I would imagine that it'll be, I don't want to, like, say, be too confident about it because he did just knock out Biden from, he won so badly against Biden that Biden had to withdraw. But I think that like she'll hold her own at least.

She seems to be able to talk as much as she needs to without talking too much. You mentioned that it's good that the directions he's flipping in. But do you get a sense of like what she actually cares? Like when she's in the White House, if she's president, like what are the issues that she cares about and are going to push? I mean, a president has a limited bandwidth to push certain things. Like what does she actually care about that she is going to push? It seems like not global warming for sure.

I don't know if that was mentioned. I mean, I remember at one of the, it must have been 2012 DNC where, like, I calculated how much, how many times that was brought up. I didn't listen to every speech, but I didn't hear her mention that at all last night. No, I mean, I love that. I think that, like, I believe that the Democrats should declare victory in global warming and just say, like, in the future, we just need small changes that can be dealt with at, like, the appropriations level. No, like, America doesn't, we, the war is over, okay, mission accomplished. But no. So yeah, definitely not that. I think that I've been told from various reports close to her that the emphasis is on, you know, the earning income childhood tax credit and sort of like strength families and all of these things that she can't do without Congress. I don't really know what that will look like if it's just executive actions and stuff like that. But beyond that, I don't have much of a sense of a sense of where her true, like when when she's going to have to make a tradeoff that every president does, it's. some point between, you know, the ACA, pushing the ACA or pushing for, you know, carbon tax.

Well, she's not going to get either of those because she's not going to Congress. But, like, what that would be and what she would choose, I don't really know. And I think it's sort of why it's been sort of interesting watching her staff up with more Obama people than with Biden people. Because the Biden people seemed a little captured by the left. And the Obama people at least kept, I wouldn't have said this a decade ago, I guess, when they were actually in power. But the allow of people have sort of a greater distance from it

that makes it seem a little bit more distinct. Here's another way of getting about it. Who do you think her House columnist? I mean, you have Tom Fried, it seems like Joe Biden reads Tom Friedman, maybe Mike Barnacle, if he still writes or something. I mean, those are the people he wakes up. And like, if he sees a negative thing, are David Ignatius, he probably calls him and say,

why are you writing this about me? Who is Kamala Harris, the vice president, reading, or when she's president, and reading and caring what they say. Is there somebody out there? I mean, I imagine that it was, I would have said this person anyways, but I think Ezra Klein is probably someone like that. You know, aside from the fact that Israel played quite a role in this whole thing happening

since he was one of the first people to call for Biden to step aside. But I remember, you know, when they were releasing the white, the vice president's visitor logs, she was meeting with all these journalists. And they were all from the same like coalition of black journalists, except for Ezra Klein. It was like the one white there. And you could see the like, it's not, not the last. like focus on the race, but it was just like they were all clearly part of a group. And he was somebody that they were clearly like, well, we also let's bring Ezra. We love Ezra. And I think that

he's become sort of the columnist of the New York Times set, who is, you know, a little bit younger, a little bit more, maybe a little further than left, but also like him in the blog age. And, and also isn't far to the left anymore, is progressively more center. So I think that he probably would be. And then once you say that, then there's various people last. him and you got up with John Shate. Have you ever met her? I should have asked them in the beginning. I haven't. I haven't. People get really mad. I don't do it on purpose. I don't think I say the name correctly. So I try to say vice president. No, no. I've been saying it wrong for up until quite recently when I finally got it right. But then did you see the slate article like a month ago that was

like, she's not pronouncing it right either. And so I was apparently there's just, I love that part yesterday where they had, they had Carrie Washington do the how to perhaps the name thing. I just kept thinking back to that slate person who was so woke that she said that Kamala wasn't pronouncing her own name right. And I was like, oh, she's doing. Do you remember the era of the Bush era when, then Chris Matthews, he would pronounce Cheney in a very different way and would saying, this is the right way to say, and like Dick Cheney never pronounced it. It was like Cheney or, you know, but he was very confident that this was the way you said it and he would correct people, even though the Cheney themselves never corrected anybody. But I'm more, yeah,

Yeah, so I don't want to get in trouble for that. Here, kind of touched on it a little bit on cancel cultural kind of the speech and where it goes from here. I mean, there is a series of things, part of which is we had a real problem within D.C. And it's all over, you know, the crazy stuff that's being taught in elementary schools to like three years old and five-year-old and stuff that I saw, you know, made, they were underplaying on on Fox News what was going on in the schools. Do you think that era is ending? I mean, is this convention a signal that like the left is getting kind of of that, you know, vintage, pushing that type of crazy stuff, in my opinion, failing. They're on the decline. Wouldn't it be great if that is what happens?

I mean, that was honestly, like, that was how I felt. I loved the whole patriotic doing so much wrapping it in the flag and people being proud to love America. America's a great country. And yet we spent all these times with these woke kindergarten nonsense where people are. it's absurd. And I honestly think that the only time those of intellectual left-wing movement ever gained power

is when the like Dems act you know, like scared little kittens and that only happens when Donald Trump our mortal enemy is president. So as long as, if Trump wins, no, I don't know, it's all coming back. They're going to rename Abraham Lincoln.

But it's an interesting point. Was Trump an accelerationist? I mean, like without Trump, Does the left get as much power as it did? No. The fact that he was there that it accelerated them and gave them, you know, people just went crazy so they kind of went to the people that were the most against him. And whatever their views were, they kind of adopted.

It became a big coalition. Totally. I mean, that's exactly what happened. I mean, if Hillary Clinton had just won a squeaker, you know, like it had just continued sort of Obama's third term with stuff like that, the left doesn't have any of that, you know, we don't have to deal with that era of like teen vogue columnists. becomes the best person in America, the smartest left-wing socialists in America. You don't have to deal with the explosion of all of that stuff because they would stay just

sort of like uninvited to these parties. Like they would just stay in the part of it where they were whining it on the second term about Trump strikes. I don't care about it. But then I guess like the way that you just described it with the accelerationist things is what the left like to describe it at. They're like, oh, some people are like, we should let Trump win so we can do this again. But like that doesn't actually get you anything because then when the votes are actually

years later, they still nominate Joe Biden. You know, it's just all, it's all discourse nonsense. And it's just discourse nonsense that hurts everyone and makes everyone a little less friendly to each other. What do you think? I saw a little clip. I guess you're on the Reason podcast about October 7th. Well, my theory is that October 7th really has pushed back against, you know, a lot of people that were for these programs in theory, but didn't really follow them, saw what they led to on campuses and we're like, wait, why are we supporting this? Yeah. Do you think October 7, I mean, and I'm hopeful, I'm not confident that these things are really on the decline. But to the extent that they are, my view is October 7 has played a role. And I'm kind of interested in your view on that.

Totally. I mean, I feel like one of the things that I've been most wrong about was about a decade ago or so. I kept saying, oh, it's just college kids, you know, it's just going to stay. They're all stupid. And the fact is, it turns out that a lot of them kept their ideas when they went into the job market. and then from the bottom up. And then, but even then, you still have this temptation to say, like, oh, you know, they are just kids and they are maybe just on college. And then it was, it was the response to October 7th that really was so bad and so, so numerous.

It wasn't just some weirdos that you were reading about in our report. These were hundreds and thousands in various different places who wouldn't, who, who, who, who you didn't have to read in a report. You could see them doing it that I think really did make you have to. re-evaluate a lot of the things that were going on at these schools and what the hell they're doing. And I don't know, I don't know how the left entirely will come back from that anytime soon. So let me ask you this. Payne to pick. If Donald Trump does win, what is the best case scenario in your view, him as president? And what is the worst case scenario? What is the, what is the doomsday scenario? I mean, the best case scenario is, I think,

that like not much happens and that essentially there's no tail risks that come out and he's stopped by the courts and maybe he extends his tax cuts and something like that there's there's some appointees but essentially there's no crisis and it's all and also like that's probably that's probably what happens right just because that's the way risks work but the bad part would be that he the courts are a little more plant he gets away with a little more things um that there is some sort of crisis that happens that maybe we end up in and it's than where it does matter that he can, you know, sort of spout things off without much thinking. And that you end up in either closer to serious war situations or that he actually tanks the

economy with these awful tariffs even worse than it is. And I don't think, I don't think that the concerns about him like staying on for a third term are realistic. And I'm never really interested. The people on the like sort of conspiratorial, he's going to be a dictator thing has never really made a lot of sense to me. But I could see a situation where, you know, he has so done well with the party that he's able to sort of designate a successor. And then there's more influence and he can have J.D. Vance maybe one day being doing well. And that would be terrible. But yeah, I think that in reality, what's probably going to happen would be what happened would be what happened in the last one. We'd muddle through okay until there was a crisis. And then maybe

he wouldn't handle it well. Let me just close on this asking you about substack as a as a future. I'm intrigued by it. A lot of great writers are now on it. But is it, I wonder, like, what is your, is this like the future or is it just, I mean, it feels like almost like the Hulu and all that stuff has become. It was supposed to be like the opposite of cable, but now it seems like everyone's bundling packages and it's become just a very different version of cable. Is that what Substack's going to become? What does the future of journalism look like?

I mean, if Substack somehow resists going to the bundle, it'll be remarkable because it'll be unprecedented because like you're absolutely right every time that they try to unbundle things they never will start trying to bundle them again um i don't know substack it feels so new but then at the same time you know it's been five years or something like that since it started doing this and when you think back to the era of journalism that sort of um changed it entirely of that that time where people talk about like facebook throwing things into the funnel you know and increasing the number of people following politics and everything like that that entire era was three years long You know, that, like, it wasn't, it, it completely changed everything and gave us BuzzFeed and then killed BuzzFeed and did all these things and changed all these places. But it was really 2013 to 2016. And substacks actually, like, when you then look at it, you go, oh, it's been five years and the bubble hasn't burst yet. I still think it would be sort of silly to be confident in the future of it, because everything, everything's always changing. But, um, I do think it's been, I don't know how people were able to be journalists outside of staff jobs before. It sounds impossible unless you're Michael Lewis. You're paid $10 a word.

Yeah, well, he had his staff job for a little bit of The New Republic. Oh, really? Michael Lewis? Yeah. I mean, that's where he wrote Wallet. You know what? I don't know if he was on staff. I know he did freelance there.

That's where he started Losers, which was one of the great books of campaign politics. But with that, Ben, Dreyfus, thank you for joining the Dispatch Podcast. Thank you so much for having me. I love you guys. You know, I'm going to be.