The Dispatch Podcast - Between Politics and Morality

Episode Date: October 7, 2022

Sparing an hour between driving his “friends” to and from the airport, Declan joins Sarah, David, and Jonah to debate the Herschel Walker saga, whether moral character matters in politics, and whether Democrats enjoy a double standard on hypocrisy. A broader midterms update is then followed by a quick glimpse into the new Supreme Court term. Plus: Elon Musk gets another NWYT mention. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isgar, joined by Jonah Goldberg, David French, and the once-in-future, Declan Garvey, editor of the Morning Dispatch. He made it. He made it. He got back from the airport just in time. We'll be talking about Herschel Walker and the soul of the GOP midterms and what issues are percolating to the top here in the final stretch and a little overview of the Supreme Court term, and frankly, Jonah's going to sit that one out. All right, let's dive right in. Declan, do you want to give us an overview of where we are on the news reports coming out of Georgia

related to the Republican nomination? for the Senate seat, Herschel Walker? I mean, do I want to? Not really. Will I? Yes. So this has been trickling out over the past three or four days. Now we've, there was an initial Daily Beast report that came out, I believe, on Tuesday evening that alleged that Herschel Walker paid for a girlfriend or mistress's abortion, I think 12 years ago in 2009. the Daily Beast alleges that they have a check from Herschel Walker, a getwell card for the woman, and the woman came forward anonymously to say that she went through with the abortion.

Now, last night, so this would have been Wednesday night, the Daily Beast updated their reporting. They said that this woman, they still don't use her name, but they do say that she is the mother of one of Herschel Walker's kids. So in the interim, Walker had denied that he knew her, said that he wasn't sure where these allegations were coming from. Now, the Daily Beast is reporting that it is, in fact, someone that he knows very well. It's someone that is the mother of one of his children. And still, the denials are, so after the second allegation, the denial came out from Walker's camp, as I have already said, there is no truth to this or any other Daily Beast report. So they're really not going too much into the details. They're just trying to stay top level, attack the media on this.

And then, you know, kind of separate but related are allegations and kind of a attack on character from Walker's son, Christian Walker, who's been a supporter of his dad's campaign is a big influencer and kind of young adult right-wing politics, big TikTok influencer. who, when this initial story came out, kind of turned on a dime and started attacking his dad, attacking his dad for not being there for him and his mom, for being abusive towards him and his mom, and moving them around a bunch. And so the campaign's kind of in free fall. We're not, we've seen a couple polls come out since this has happened, but we're not really sure exactly how it's going to play other than the fact that the Republican establishment has really closed ranks behind him and is not budging an inch on either accepting the allegations as fact or even if they are fact, he's still our best chance to take back the Senate. We're going to do everything we can to get

them into the Senate. So that's where we stand. I guess we'll see today, Thursday, how this second allegation plays out. People are going to be asked about that and we'll see whether that changes calculations at all, but I doubt it will. David, obviously this has echoes of the access Hollywood tape. Although, again, I think that that actually was much easier to chalk up as locker room talk if you wanted to, because he was talking about something versus here we have an allegation of sort of the doing of something. There's also, I think, a sense on the right that basically if you have sort of these moral values, it's easier to charge a Republican with hypocrisy. And so these scandals tend to pop up more on the right. And somehow, you know,

that becomes easier to dismiss as well. And finally, you know, the Democratic candidate has had some allegations against him when it comes to domestic violence. And so I see some Republican defenders of Herschel Walker saying, you know, yeah, you don't want to pick the guy with a domestic violence charge, okay, then you can't vote for either of these guys for Senate. So the alternative matters when you're talking about what the quote-unquote scandal is. I'm curious how you've sort of watched the reaction from the right in the last day or two. Yeah, what was interesting to me is not so much the difference between, say, the reaction to the Access Hollywood tape and now, it's the reaction to Roy Moore and now.

So Roy Moore was a Senate candidate. He had very compelling allegations made against him of improper, of sexual harassment, sexual assault of underage girls years ago, years and years ago. And it cost him the Senate seat in 2017 in Alabama, which is take some doing for a Republican. And, you know, a Democrat filled the seat for a couple of years and then in came Tommy Tuberville. And in 2017, I think that was kind of maybe the last gasp of, no, really, the Trump thing is different because he was president. He was president, and he was running against Hillary, and Hillary was corrupt. We still have standards. It's going to be interesting to see how many people take that line in Georgia now.

I'm seeing an awful lot of rationalization. my favorite one is you know we're Christians we believe in repentance but wait denial isn't repentance and if it's a lying denial that's the furthest thing for repentance it's like saying after Bill Clinton in 1998 said I did not have sexual relations with that woman that everyone says well look at him repent look at him can't we just so but yes I agree Raphael Warnock has policies that I strongly oppose. He supports taxpayer funding of abortion, for example. There is a highly disputed allegation of whether or not he ran over his wife's foot and his car during a domestic dispute that the police were called to. And so, you know, one of these things, and a lot of people

really object to this sort of solution as a response to two candidates who have domestic violence allegations, is to not vote for them, is to not vote for them, you know, to say no. You know, one of the reasons, this might sound like simplistic analysis, but one of the reasons why we have a surplus of extremely low character people in politics is that we vote for them. We vote for them. And so, you know, I've put this out on, you know, I've written, this, I've said this. I have a two-part test for politicians. One, do you have a character that is a character that is sufficient for the office you seek? And the higher the office, the higher the character test, in my view. And then do you broadly support my policies? Not all of them.

Nobody supports every one of the policies that I support, but broadly support my policies. And if the answer is no on either one of those, I just don't vote for you. I don't think that any given election is worth spewing more character sewage into the American body politic. All right. So Pollyanna has a great position that's very hard for me to ask any follow-up questions on. But one of these two people is going to be president. And I think what I'm hearing, sorry, Senator, God help us. I'm buying gold if one of these guys. one of these two people is going to be a senator from the state of Georgia and what I hear right now at least from Republicans is yes

and they're both flawed but one of them says he's pro-life and says he wants to ban abortions and one of them is not one of them you know doesn't know of what restrictions he wants tax fair funded abortions and so I'm going to pick on policy and what one of them did 15 years ago that he denies is not that it's not relevant, it's just less relevant. A low-character pro-life movement is not going to end abortion in the United States, okay? And one aspect of a low-character pro-life movement is, I'm going to ban abortions and neither am I going to apologize for the abortion that I paid for, okay? That's a low-character. That's not a compelling message to anyone who's remotely on the fence. And the other thing

it does to the especially hardcore pro-life movement. Let's remember there's a rising very hardcore pro-life movement called abolitionists. And abolitionists say, women who get abortions should be prosecuted for murder. Herschel Walker, by their reasoning, engages in murder for hire. Eh, people change. What? What are we talking about here? Like the hypocrisy is so brazen. It just hurts. And this sort of idea that that's, that's the movement that's going to change hearts and minds because guys, you've got to change hearts and minds here because you have a minority position on the issue. That is your position is a minority position. And so then you're going to say to the world, we are so dedicated to our pro-life principles that we're going to excuse

abortion. I don't know. I'm sensing mixed messages here. And I have to, I don't just disagree with it. I have contempt for it. I have just contempt for this position. Sarah, I have a question for you as a former party operative making these kind of decisions. We've seen an example within the past three weeks, and I brought this up on Dispatch Live this week, of the Republican Party completely dropping a candidate that they saw an allegation came out. This was J.R. Majuski in the House in Ohio, a candidate. it who lied about his military service, who said he was in Afghanistan in combat, a stolen valor

situation. And the party the next day, we're not funding him. We're seating that seat to the Democrats. We want nothing to do with him. They still have that capacity to drop someone like a hot potato. But I mean, the obvious answer is that the Senate seat is much more important than a backbench in the House. How are those calculations made? You know, if it's not, going to be, you know, every house seat matters. I think it's not going to be the red wave that people were foreseeing six months ago. You know, what is the, is there a chart somewhere where if this seat is this important, will allow this much of bad character and craziness? If the seat's less important, will allow less, how are these calculations made? So I do think that the

fact that it's higher profile does matter. It's not just that the Senate is maybe a closer call, but it's just a higher profile. It's more nationalized race. And so it's harder to walk away. People will accuse you of, you know, surrender monkeying. Also, I think that loss in Alabama is really meaningful to this. I think that Republicans didn't think that they could actually lose the seat. And they did in Alabama. I also think that the nature of the allegation is a little bit different you know in the stolen valor situation it was like dead to rights they had all of it and here i mean it's about as close as you can get you've got the abortion on september 12th the 700 payment from him on september 17th and a card signed by him that says you know get well rest

relax which is a weird card but i guess harlmark doesn't make that more appropriate card to make the abortion cards. Fortunately, he didn't write PS. Don't worry, it's not murder. That would have helped. And he goes out immediately and says, nope, I give money to people all the time. I send cards all the time. You know, goes on Hannity and denies it, shores up his right flank. And I think that there, it's a hypocrisy charge that Republicans are kind of sick of. what I found interesting on the Hannity interview, by the way, is that, you know, Herschel walkers out there within hours, the first answer is perfectly well rehearsed. And, you know, the first question Sean Hannity asks is, do you know this woman?

And he does exactly the textbook thing. He does answer the question first. He says, nope, no idea. Then pivots and says, but it's a flat out lie. But then where you would expect him to sort of prove that it's a lie, defend himself against the lie, he pivots immediately. All he says, nope, and it's a flat-out lie, pivot again, and says, these people don't want me to win the Senate seat and goes after the motives of the Democrats. And those are all of his answers from that point forward. He touts his

website, says, give me money. You saw later that night that he, his campaign, sort of was touting how much money they had raised off this Daily Beast story. The number was actually not impressive, but they made it sound like it was a... Yeah, lessen Warnock raised, not just that day, but like on average of every day in the last month for quarters. And I thought that was an interesting tactic on the motives,

which I think helps him with the right base. And there's one other thing to answer your question, Declan, which is expectations matter a lot. If this had been Mitt Romney running for Senate and a pretty tied up with a bow allegation that he had paid for an abortion in 2009, which would be so 180 degrees from this, like, perfect Boy Scout of a candidate, I think that would have landed in a much weirder, well, harder to imagine place.

But frankly, Herschel Walker has been a difficult candidate for Republicans to get over the finish line. And frankly, they were expecting this. They knew it was coming. There was a rumor about an abortion, by the way, for weeks. This might not even be the same abortion. there might be another one. So I do think expectations matter. People knew that Walker was a deeply flawed candidate.

And then something comes out that shows he's deeply flawed, and they're very prepared to shrug. Okay, since I have not actually said anything for the first 16 minutes of the podcast, I'm going to just barge in here before we change subjects for a second. First, look, just backstory, Sarah's very cross with me, and so she's just giving me the silent treatment. but um

why would I be crossing you literally I have witnesses here that seconds before we started recording you flip me the bird I was antagonized um she flips the birds to a lot of people

she gives cards to a lot of people she can't remember which one she flips the bird to birds um but uh I think they're there are two points worth making one on this expectations thing there is a soft beggary of low expectations aspect of this i agree and i and i use that deliberately because

i think that there's something that a lot of people don't understand about the the sort of what we used to call the tea party right um is that uh they really don't like being called racists and they like calling other people racist and they really want to be able to do the what-aboutism in the other direction on the issue of race. And this is one of the reasons why the two of the most popular Tea Party candidates of 10 years ago were Ben Carson and Herman Kane is, you know, they were basically the leaders of a Tea Party movement, which everybody was claiming was a racist movement. And they're like, how can we be racist?

We got this guy, right? And it was in the era of Obama and they wanted to say, look, we're not racist. Here's our leaders and all that kind of stuff. I think that there is a weird intersectionality. in right-wing politics when it comes to black candidates, where they want to basically dare the other side to hold Republican black candidates to standards that, like, they claim they're hypocritical,

but not holding to Democratic black candidates, whatever. I think that's part of the psychology, certainly in talk radio, right world. It's a big thing. And then there's, like, the second point, I want to go back to what David was talking about. I can, I grade everything on a curve these days, right?

So, like, we're not talking about objective standards here. But, like, I can forgive a lot of Republican hacks for being Republican hacks, right? I mean, if, like, you're a party guy and you say, look, we live in this era. Are there bad choices? It's better to have Republican in that seat than a Democrat in that seat. I get it, you know, and I don't even, I'm not even really using a hack pejoratively here. I just mean, like, party people are allowed to be party people. I think the moral quandary for largely for the reasons that day,

David gets into for pro-lifers is enormous. And the idea, I'm sure I've missed it. I don't follow every jot and tittle in pro-life world. But like, I've seen a lot of supposedly very pro-life people talking about how this doesn't matter, right? That there was a piece of the Federalist that said this changes nothing. Dana Loche literally, Lash said, literally said, like, I don't care that Herschel Walker paid for some broads abortion

and then called her a skank yeah and it's basically like slut shaming some woman and like it's not a good look right and David's right about the moral suasion point the thing that I think gets also gets left out of this which I've seen a lot of is that

there are a lot of pro choice people who insist that the pro life position actually has nothing to do with saving the unborn it's all about controlling women and it's all about misogyny and it's all about these things and abortions

you know abortion bans for thee but not for me is literally the perfect behavior to say it was really never about the unborn it's about controlling women and the damage the long-term damage it does to the pro-life movement to be hypocritical on this

it's different than being hypocritical on like I don't know taxes it's it's the closest thing it's, I think the closest analogy to it is sending kids to war while being a draft dodger. Right? It is just, it is so poisonous.

And just the inability of a bunch of pro-lifers to say, this is tragic, this is heartbreaking, if this story is true and I have no reason to believe it's not true, I'm not saying that you can't vote for, for Herschel Walker because of the stakes and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But personally, we should condemn this and we should you know and we should pray for the mother whatever i don't know what the right language is but making at least rhetorically upholding this distinction i think it's just hugely important for the pro-life cause if the pro-life cause wants to be about something having to do with the unborn yeah let me let me one one last thing on this i think you're hitting on something really really important jona because here's the thing um and again when i'm when i used the term abortion abolitionist and this is Herschel Walker is pretty much campaigned as this, is somebody who is wanting to be,

to ban abortion, even in circumstances sometimes where life or physical health of the mother might be in danger. Abortion abolitionists, and I don't know if Walker's done this, but his strongest allies say you should prosecute the woman for murder. There is no distinction between an abortion and a, what we read, recognize now as murder. And if you're going to make that point, by your own logic, by your own logic, Herschel Walker committed a murder for hire, a murder for hire, by your logic. And if you say, eh, people change when he's not even apologizing for it, right? I mean, he's just

saying, didn't happen, don't know the woman. What are you broadcasting to the world? You're broadcasting the world is, I don't believe my own rhetoric. I don't believe my own words about abortion. And you're broadcasting that about as loudly and clearly as you possibly could. And then another thing that you're broadcasting is this. Well, you know, I'm going to, here's what I recognize that abortions are going to happen, including in our own movement. And so here's what we're going to do.

we're just going to use raw state power now. It's all about raw state power now. And again, that is not a message that is going to resonate. And but the real issue here is you're betraying that you don't believe your own words when you are. And it's not just this is horrible, like you were saying, Jonah, this is horrible, this is terrible. but we're in a really tough position. We don't know who to support. And then when you say that, like Dana Lash did,

that this person is a broad or a skank, well, wait, what is Herschel Walker? Right. Why is this exclusively morally on the woman here? You know, what is he? Is he an innocent victim in this? Everything that we've seen, kind of the rights coalescence around Walker the past couple days,

you know, you can never prove a hypothetical, but I'm entirely convinced that even if this allegation had come out and been published before the Georgia primary, that he still would have won. I, you know, right now people are making that this is a binary choice argument. It's either him or Warnock, and you can, good people of good faith can come down on either side of that debate. I totally understand the argument there. But, you know, we've seen, like Walker was anointed the candidate as soon as he got in

the race. He had Trump support. He had Mitch McConnell's support. He had the support of a ton of, you know, Georgia leaders. And it's obviously a unique case that he scored dozens of touchdowns for the Georgia Bulldogs in the 80s. And, you know, was like that you laugh, but that's a, you know, I think that's a huge part of his appeal. No, I'm just laughing that you backended the most important part. Right.

It is the only reason, what are you talking about? It's important. Like, it is the raison d'Entree of the agency. know. You're like, he also happened to do it. Like, what else is on his resume? He was an honorary sheriff for a couple of years. Yeah. I heard that. Don't forget that. But yeah, so I just, you know, it's really disheartening that, like, I have no reason to believe that he wouldn't win this primary with these allegations at the time. And, you know, we'll, I'm sure we will have a chance to prove that in the coming years with a different candidate and see if I'm right or wrong about that. But

I hope I am. I guess I am interested in the asymmetry that we're all pretty quick to be able to point to examples on the right. Alabama, the stolen valor case. I mean, just this month, right? We have two Republicans with sort of these hypocrisy scandals. What is the equivalent on the left? I mean, Federman with his race issues, too, in Pennsylvania, I think is a huge example of That's a great example. Yeah, there's an issue where he was problematic with profiling a black man and having a gun. I mean, the gun thing in general, when liberals have... Problematic with firearms.

Yeah, that would be mine. It's like Rosie O'Donnell having... But no one thought that the Democrats were dropping Fetterman? No. Are Al Franken then? Al Franken then. Oh, that's a good one. I mean...

Okay, at the height of the Me Too movement, the Democrats do push... Al Franken, some of them, to resign, and then say they regret it later. I think that's a good example. And Northam in Virginia with the blackface photo. So first of all, that was outrageous and it was a big scandal, but he didn't resign. No one pushed him to resign. Well, no, I thought a lot of people pushed him to resign. The problem was that African Americans in his state said they didn't give a rat's ass about it.

Fair enough. But the point is, like, there's, I feel like there's more hand-wringing toward the right when something like this happens, then on the left? I agree, but I think there's a good reason for it and a bad reason for it. I mean, the good reason is that if you go around touting yourself as the moralistic party, right, that you have, if you're the one, and again, it's been a while since the GOP did that remotely convincingly, but like as someone who's had the same position on the last three presidential impeachments, you know, I feel comfortable talking like this.

the character issue used to be a Republican thing. Republicans still, when convenient, say the character issue is a Republican thing, but they're just not very convincing on it. But when you go out there talking about character and morality and principles and all that kind of stuff, hypocrisy is going to sting you harder. And then the second part of it is...

I think that's right. The media environment is like, I would say two-thirds of political editors are really just on the Republican hypocrisy beat and they don't even know how to see democratic hypocrisy. You know, we get tongue tied trying to articulate what a, like,

a hypocritical Democrat would be in a lot of situations. Well, they made a lot of money. They tried to reduce their tax burden. I mean, like, it's like, what would make a Democrat, you know, a really partisan Democrat, a hypocrite other than sort of private bigotry and yet,

Sheldon White House, I believe, is still in an all-white country club. I could have that wrong, but I'm pretty sure that's the case. So anyway. You mentioned that the Republican Party is, you know, pushing itself as the moralistic party, but you could make the same case that Democrats are pushing themselves as the anti-racist party, and, you know, they are holding themselves to that higher standard. I think they're pushing themselves as the moralistic party. I wouldn't even change the term.

They're moralistic on any number of issues. Climate change, race, guns, immigration, that those are all. all moral arguments that they're making on those issues. Understandably so. Moral arguments are very powerful in politics, but they're just different moral arguments than the right. Well, you know, I came of age politically like in the 80s and 90s, and one of the reasons why my Republican, why I became a Republican was the character issue. So if you're in the 80s, who is one of the leading Democrats, lionized by the media, you know, revealed. beard in the Democratic Party, Ted Kennedy, okay? And so you lift up the rock on Ted Kennedy and

there's chapiquitic. And that's not all of it, right? It's not all of it. And so you're sitting there and it was waitress sandwiches with Chris Dodd. Terrible stuff. And then you roll into Bill Clinton. And so you're talking about one of the reasons why I say for me, why I was a Republican was this, I recognize that the party was not perfect. But in the bottom line, the bottom line, part of the identity of a big segment of the Republican base is we want to center around character, the 1998 Southern Baptist Convention Resolution on Character and Politics. So if you're ripping out one of the core reasons why you're part of the party in the first place, don't be surprised if people say, wait a minute. You know, wait, like this was absolutely core to sort of my view of what Republicans stood for, what Republicans were, and it wasn't just me.

You know, if you look at polling, evangelical voters were more likely than any other category of voters to say that character was important. So I wasn't on an island here. And then by the Trump era, evangelicals were the least likely to say that character mattered, the least of all of the demographics. And the change was shockingly fast. And so, you know, I think that's one of the things we have to... Which tells you the problem with issue polling.

Well, it was reflected in behavior, not just, you know, not just an abstract issue polling. And so that's part of the issue. Oh, no. I mean, it tells you something, but it doesn't tell you what I think most people thought it told you, which was suddenly there was a change in the character debate. No, it was that it didn't, it was a shibboleth to begin with. Just like so many of the issue polls now, they were picking the word character because that's what an evangelical was supposed to pick. Right. No, that's true. And I thought they picked character because they believed in character. And that was on me. Oh, David. That was on me. I know.

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more broadly um you know we've talked about sort of this vibe shift that has gone back and forth and i think this is where georgia does change things slightly you have the democrats sort of pulling back into the race over the summer um then labor day hits things tighten as you would expect them to maybe more of the momentum on their side. And the chances of them taking back the Senate probably move back to, you know, a little bit better than 50-50. Georgia this week, I don't think anyone thinks it's going to massively change the polls a la Alabama, but the idea that it could handicap Walker by two points.

I don't think anyone can rule that out at this point. Two points could very well decide that race. And so it feels like all attention has moved to Nevada. It's sort of interesting to me that there's not like a Republican poster child nominee at this point. I mean, Adam Lackselt nobody's paid any attention to really. And all of a sudden, you have Republican Party leaders saying that that is the number one pickup race in the country. Nevada, the race nobody talked about until now. And it's not that the polls have particularly changed, by the way.

It's just that all the other ones nobody wants to talk about anymore. We're all on these press releases and watch all these ads more so than I hope any of you listening do. But one of the things that I've been sort of struck by is the absolute message discipline of so many of these Republican candidates on the crime and quality of life issues, by which I mean, you know, homelessness or petty crimes, not just, you know, assaults and murders and stuff. And I, that absolutely is coming from sort of national focus group, issue polling, testing, or else I don't think you'd see it nearly so consistently. In other races, you'll see candidates sort of have messaging weeks. You know, we'll do crime this week. We'll do the economy next week.

And you're just not seeing that. It's crime, crime, crime, crime, crime, crime. And Joan, I'm curious what you're watching right now, where you think the vibes are. Do you think that Georgia has moved down the list? Where are you putting all this? Yeah, I mean, I think I'm not alleging coordination or anything, but one does get the sense sometimes that you ask what I'm watching. One gets a sense that maybe somebody, the RNC has been talking to somebody at Fox about

like what the, what the saturation news coverage is going to be next week because, like I've just noticed a huge uptick in part driven by the numbers again I'm not I'm not actually saying those coordination but like the obsession with the crime story on Fox has been really kind of interesting and if it's a national strategy

you know again I'm not doing the there are no coincidences thing but I think that it's I think there is I think the vibe shift thing is real I think that everyone is sort of priced in now, Nancy Pelosi not included, that Republicans will take the House.

And so that just makes the Senate story, I mean, the Senate races are always more interesting than House races for the most part anyway. But it makes the Senate stories just that much more interesting, particularly when you have so many bad candidates running, right? I mean, they're in a handful of these races, but just imagine, you and I have talked about this offline before like imagine if it was sununu in new hampshire right imagine you see in arizona ducy in Arizona um uh you could um or even McCormick in Pennsylvania which is a harder contrafactual but I still think he's good for three more points than what Oz can get um this should have been a question of whether the Republicans are going to get 54 seats in the Senate or you know 55

seats in the Senate, that kind of thing. Instead, it's like, can they possibly get across the finish line? And I think it's because, largely because of the stupidity of the, of basically the Trump picks, you know, to be blunt about it. And that makes it a lot more fun for the national media to be covering it that way. Um, particularly if your real obsessions are threats to democracy and all that kind of stuff. And the Republicans have put up a lot of non-vinical Milla candle it, candidates. I mean, Herschel Walker, I don't think anybody has put in the threat to democracy column,

but Mastriano and Lake Masters and some of those people are, Kelly Lake and, or Carrie Lake in Arizona. And so I think that there's a real headwind in terms of the kind of, both because of the poorness of the candidates in the Senate races for the most part, and not just that they're bad candidates,

but they're great candidates, It's for political reporters who want to write about how bad they are. You know, it'd be one thing if they're all just stiffs on the stump. It's that some of them are actually quite compelling, but they seem like they're members of Hydra. And that's just gold for, you know, the political press. And so I think it's smart for the Republicans to make this issue about general dissatisfaction with life and not about any of their candidates. And I think the crime thing, for whatever reason, fits into that much better than a lot of other issues. By the way, David, interesting issue poll from Politico, again, to some extent, highlighting the problem with issue polls.

But this question was interesting. Based on what you've seen, read or heard, how much of a problem, if at all, do you believe violent crime is? Major problem, 77% of the country. Wow. Yeah. Now, at the same time, who do you trust to handle it? Democrats, 37%, Republicans, 44%. So Republicans leading, but not by the margin that you'd sort of think based on Fox News or something.

One of the other questions in this, though, had me chuckling. Who do you trust more to handle abortion access? So not, you know, to put in abortion policies you agree with, but abortion access, Democrats in Congress, 52%. Republicans in Congress, 30%, which either means people don't understand the question or willfully misunderstanding the question or truly don't know.

But like that's a useless question when you ask it that way. All you're doing is showing that like something very wrong in your polling question, frankly. So are all the questions about like the threats to democracy, right? Because all the Republicans think that the threat to democracy is Democrats stealing elections and all the Democrats think the threat to democracy

or Republicans lying about Democrats stealing elections. I mean, it doesn't tell you very much. So, David, where do you think, what do you think that we'll look back on and say this election turned on? I'm going to say either one thing or another thing that I honestly don't know the answer. So let's bar, let's just presume and hope and pray

that nothing so dramatic happens in Ukraine like a nuclear detonate. that upsets all this calculus, it is either, in my view, sort of crime and inflation or abortion, and it's so close, I don't know which. And, you know, the only reason I put abortion in there, because you and I, Sarah, have long said, abortion is something that people talk about, but don't necessarily vote on, especially on the pro-choice side in the same way that pro-life voters do. but we saw the Kansas referendum and again like we know Kansas is a little bit of a weird state politically

but everyone was surprised by that everyone was surprised by that so when you've just had a sort of a salient data point that really surprised people it makes me very reluctant to say this is what's going to happen and I was just asked this at an event at Duke last night and I said I don't know I think it's either the Biden inflation crime or abortion, ordinarily, I would say, ordinarily I would say it's going to be crime and inflation, but this is the first election post-ob. So I'm going to say, or I'm going to say probably crime and inflation, but I'm definitely leaving open the possibility. Yeah.

So that's a great decisive answer. Yeah, that was awful. I remember back to the aftermath of the Virginia race. And whenever sort of one candidate wins, the immediate narrative is, whatever that candidate ran on is why they won. Despite the fact that, like, that could have absolutely nothing to do with it whatsoever because Yonkin ran on education, parents, rights, the CRT stuff. Everyone was like, he won on CRT.

And it's like, or Biden's an incredibly unpopular president, you know, crime. There's all this other stuff going on slash McColliffe wasn't a particularly compelling candidate and ran on abortion. So I think that if Democrats have some surprise showings, the immediate narrative will be that it was because of abortion. But like the CRT thing in Virginia, I'm going to need more than just that's what they ran on and they won. Causality and correlation not being the same.

Also, I mean, like David's, when I came to a fork in a road, I took it answer. Yes. Decisively. May have, may actually have merit, right? because in some races, it's going to, the decisive factor might be inflation. And in other races, the decisis factor might be abort. No, I'm kind of saying because if you look at the way the coalitions work for a lot of voters, like take the student loan debt thing, right?

That pisses off a lot of voters. How many voters does it piss off who weren't already going to vote Republican anyway, right? On the abortion stuff, how many Republicans who are going to vote Republican are now going to vote Democrat because of it? that might be a bigger number. And it might matter where you are in terms of, you know, that this wide, the new NPR Maris poll is really interesting. The voters who are least interested in voting are non-college educated women,

single women. And the voters who are most interested in voting are college-educated women. And like, those demographics are going to play differently in different places. And so it just, I agree with you. I hate it when they reduce an entire sweeping election trend to like one issue. And like no one who ever, it's only the people who are completely invested in that issue ever make that argument. You never hear like the Consumer Electronics Association saying this election was decided on something having nothing to do with consumer electronics. Right.

And so anyway, it's a hot mess. Thank you, Jonah. Thank you, Joe. I am your ally here. Thank you. Declan, you actually are going to have to cover this midterm every morning, well, five mornings a week for the next 33 days. What's going to surprise you? That's a cruel.

What's going to surprise you? I know. I can't answer that question without, is that kind of a tautological. Nicole, if I know what's going to surprise me, it wouldn't surprise me. It's a Zen cone kind of thing, right? Hey, Declan, what's this down to one-hand clapping? I won't be surprised to answer the question I wish you asked me. I would be interested to see if Democrats start putting this new data point in their ads.

We were talking about crime earlier, and we put this in the morning dispatch today. The FBI came out with annual crime statistics yesterday. for last year and found that violent crime dropped 1% from 2020 to 2021, including a 9% drop in robberies. But they excluded 40% of the country from their statistics because those police offices didn't update their reporting methods in time to be included in this. So, like, I do wonder if we'll start to see Democrats running ads like, look, crime is actually going down

in the same way where Republicans can then be like, oh yeah, but you're excluding New York and Los Angeles and I think Chicago, so that's entirely meaningless. Also after an enormous jump, right? It's like if you do year to year, then it's after an enormous jump, it's gone down a little from a big high.

With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot track side. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful band. Backing of Amex. Pre-sale tickets for future events subject to availability and varied by race. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at mx.ca.com. Last topic, David, I thought we'd do just a little bit of

Supreme Court O.T. 22 October term is how you measure Supreme Court time. It's kind of like a fiscal year, but instead of starting in September, you start with the first argument, which just happened this week. And we've already have a lot of cases lined up. There will be more to come. But David, over on the flagship podcast, we had initially dubbed this the race term because of cases about the Voting Rights Act, affirmative action, race related to adoption, for instance. But with the latest round of cases that the Supreme Court just said they were going to take, it might turn out to be the social media term. And I was wondering if you could just Talk a little high level on the politics of the Supreme Court's caseload this year.

So the cases that are going to generate the headlines are going to be the race cases. We just had a very lively oral argument in the Alabama redistricting case. What lawyers call hot bench. It was a very hot bench. And this is essentially asking, can Alabama consistent with the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution? Here's a way of phrasing it. Does the Constitution kind of require Alabama to create a redistrict in such a way that 27% of the population, which is black Alabamans, ends up almost permanently with 14% of the representation in Alabama should current voting patterns

or traditional historic voting patterns hold? Then we've got the Harvard admissions case. How much can, if at all, any longer, can you consider race and admissions process? And UNC Chapel Hill is also a case involving that. So these cases are going to be big. We have the independent state legislature case as applied to legislative districts. That's going to be big. We have a case called 303 creative involved.

Can the state of Colorado compel a Christian graphic designer to design a website for a same-sex? wedding. I filed an amicus brief in that case. That case is going to be big. And then the tech cases are very interesting because they're kind of a twist on the classic argument that we see about social media. And the one that I think is most interesting relates to YouTube and YouTube's alleged role in providing terrorist propaganda through its algorithm, which may have inspired or motivated the Paris terror attacks. And the question is, does the act of creating an algorithm or some other mechanism to promote videos, to push them into your feed, is that protected by Section 230? Is that something that is going to provide? Is there going to be immunity from

liability? Is that the same thing as moderating? Now, Section 230 provides immunity when you're just moderating but is promoting the same thing as moderating that's going to be a really interesting question and for those who really want social media to open up more and to be more open to free speech if the court holds youtube liable for it or says that youtube could be potentially held liable it wouldn't hold youtube liable could be potentially held liable under section 230 the general response in these kinds of circumstances is going to be a bigger clamped out. It is going to be more restrictions, not fewer restrictions. So this is going to be very interesting and could have some far-reaching implications for tech. And it's kind of due now, Section 230 in the Communications

Decency Act. This is something that is Clinton-era legislation when the Internet was in its relative infancy. A lot has happened and developed since then. And so, you know, it was only a matter time before the Supreme Court was going to take some of these cases. And to see them take some pretty hot-button cases, this term has really, I think, escalated the stakes of the term a bit. And we would expect them to take also the Texas social media case or the Florida social media case, which would then really amp this up. Jonah, do you think that the Supreme Court continues to lose altitude in sort of national approval? esteem, and what does it look like for a Supreme Court that the majority of the country doesn't take for granted that their outcome is the final word?

I fear so. I mean, there was just actually those numbers that the U.S. military is in the lowest esteem, you know, faith and trust numbers that they've had in a long time, particularly among young people. And we know, we all know this, despite it being an issue poll, that this is a longstanding and fairly reliable trend that faith and trust in institutions has been bad for a while and that the military, while still over 50%, I think there's, I think that's it in terms of institutions that are above 50% at this point. And the dispatch. The dispatch, that's right. You have to do a lot of push polling where you inform the list of respondent what the dispatch is first. But, So I have to think that those trends are going to continue.

I mean, it was interesting. Penguin Random House came out with a book version of the dissent in the Hobbs case, and which I don't, you know, people are saying, oh, it's a free document. Why are you selling? I don't give a bit of that. But the subtitle of the book says that the Supreme Court, this is the dissent in the decision where the Supreme Court banned abortion. And I think in a climate where, like, a major publisher is just going to lie on the cover of a book about what the Supreme Court actually did and where the press in general is going to do that, they're going to be responsible for tearing down a big chunk of the court's, you know, nonpartisan, you know, reputation.

There's part of me, I have to say, I know this is the kind of thing that gets you to burst into flames on advisory opinions, but there is part of me that says, that wants to say that it wouldn't entirely be a bad thing if the, if people stopped always looking to the Supreme Court to being, I have no problem with the Supreme Court being the final arbiter on the constitutionality of some questions. It bothers me a great deal that so many people think it's the only arbiter of the constitutionality of some questions. And that's a thing. You're singing our song. That's our song. What are you talking about? I feel attacked. And so I feel like if you could somehow, if you convince a lot of people in the political class, like, oh, crap, it doesn't fall, just, I can't just get Mikey to eat it.

Mikey is the Supreme Court and Mikey eats everything. That would actually be, could be good for the country, but it's very easy if you're going to come up with all sorts of scenarios, it would be really, really bad for the country. So I generally buy gold. Quick question, Sarah. Should we change the name of advisory opinions to USS Advisory. opinions to formally signifies flagship status. Interesting.

Maybe we should. We should consider that. I think actually we can do that without anyone's approval, and it'll take them a while to even notice. Which sort of settles the issue about whether, in fact, it is the flagship. If you actually have to change the name to say it's the flagship, it's probably because you're not one. Like Maggie Thatcher.

And if you're conceding that no one would notice, you're really making my point for. Yes, yes, fine. Declan, anything you're watching. on the Supreme Court, what would get into the morning newsletter from the Supreme Court at this point? I mean, we like covering oral arguments. I think we'll have to be, we'll have to pick and choose which ones we do. There's not quite a Dobbs level case this term. But no, I think that, you know, these will be incredibly divisive issues. It's going to continue to be the case that both the legislative and executive branch continue to punt issues that they don't want to

deal with to the judiciary branch. I mean, we saw last night a ruling DACA, kind of sending it back to the lower court to review the final rule that the Biden administration issued on that, but that's going to end up before the Supreme Court. Trump's petitioning some of the Mar-a-Lago stuff before the Supreme Court. And I know, does that technically count as part of OT this term, or is that kind of an ad hoc basis, that stuff. So it's on the emergency docket. So it's not on the merits docket. But yes, absolutely. The emergency docket is part of OT22. Although again, the idea that the Supreme Court is resolving what amounts to a magistrate judge's plan, wow, how the mighty have fallen. So, and just the last, some words of wisdom from the soon to be owner of Twitter is

Elon Musk this morning saying that war is the ultimate Supreme Court. So we can just leave that with listeners to kind of dwell on and think about there. Well, quite depressing. And that brings us too, not worth your time. Declan, where are you headed after this? I'm going to drive a friend to the airport. A different friend than the one that I picked up from the airport last week, causing me to miss this podcast. Do we think that in secret? not listen. We're not paying Declan enough, and he's actually just an Uber driver. He's just an Uber driver. And he just calls all of his customers friends because he's so nice. The problem is that this one I have to go to Dulles, which is the worst airport in America. How long have you known

this person for? What kind of friendship is this? A good friend from college that I met probably nine years ago now. He's in town for a job interview, and I'm taking him back to the airport. But just to clear things up, the person I picked up from the airport last week, just to defend my honor, is my best friend from growing up, my hometown, and we were going to his bachelor party. And I was technically on like a half day of PTO that day regardless. And so I will defend my honor. And I thank you, David, for doing this.

But just to be clear, you did agree to do the podcast the day before. Two or three days before, but yes. So the PTO is a little bit of a red herring. It's totally irrelevant. We don't care whether you got paid, Declan. I'm just muddying the waters a little bit, just a little bit, so that I can claim some degree of higher. I had your back.

I still have your back. This is actually not our not worth your time point, but I have to say that Dulles is not the worst airport in the country, and it is not the worst airport to drive to in the D.C. region. That's BWI. I mean, these things are known. Well, you can take a train very easily to BWI. Nobody's doing that.

Yeah, and like, and the Irish can board passage on the Titanic and steerage. Who takes a train to BWI? This guy, this guy. You have to take the train to BWI, then a bus from the train station to the terminal that makes 50 stops along the way. You are getting to the airport hours in advance, and I'm a walk-on to the plane kind of girl. So that's a hard no.

Okay, but that's not even our topic. Our topic, Jonah, is. Elon Musk's musings. Yeah, so I got to say... Which I segued us very well into before we disrupted it with my airport travel. You did, you did, and then Sarah derailed us. I wasn't going to take that.

I knew what you were doing. Sarah's like in the race where I don't want your stinking baton. I'll grab my own baton. So Elon Musk has tweeted his bold peace plan for Ukraine is to have a UN supervised referenda in the contestant in the recently annexed territories and it's a dumb idea I thought the Ukrainian response was actually that part I thought was sort of like actually interesting and what had highlighted

the various responses and Russia's response and all that and I thought the Ukrainian response where people were saying well you know so but my dead my murdered grandmother won't get a vote how will that work right um was very powerful Elon Musk has now sort of doubled down and done some really bad punditry about ukrainian politics to the point where like i guess my question is first of all do we all agree that his opinions about some of these things are not worth our time but also isn't it not worth his time to do this i mean why wouldn't you if you had a hundred and something billion dollars hire some sort of like like hire sarah isgar i know there's a price that you would take the

money sarah and just say hey i'm thinking about tweeting this can you look into this to make sure this won't embarrass me um you'd think that i just i honestly i don't get why a guy who's got this much writing on so many got so much writing on so many things thinks like the highest best use of his time is to be a really bad hot take merchant on Twitter. I throw it to the floor. Pick up any piece of you want. He's driving engagement on his new platform. He's getting people to...

This is just a marketing ploy. I don't even fully follow. I feel... So we hear from people from time to time. I get these emails or comments in the pod that's like, you know what? I can't pay attention to the midterms anymore. Just wake me up when it's over and tell me how it turned out.

The like ups and downs. I'm sick of. following. And I'm like, how, how is that possible? This is the fun part. And then someone's like, did you see what Elon Musk said about his Twitter purchase now? And I'm like, no, wake me up when it's done. This is, I don't, I don't need to follow this anymore at this point. He's agreed to buy it for the thing he agreed to buy it for in the beginning of this whole thing. What have I done for the last nine months of my life? No. You know, what we really need to get over in this country is this billionaire guru syndrome because we see it all over the place.

Somebody makes a billion dollars doing X or Y and Z. And good for you. I mean, Tesla's are great cars and I really want to see SpaceX get to Mars, as I've said, only 10,000 times. None of that means you know how to solve the Ukrainian-Russian war. Like I saw Peter Thiel sit down the other day where somebody's very thoughtfully listening to him and he's like, there are only three outcomes in the future. One is Chinese AI techno, you know, autocracy.

Another one was like some form of authoritarian nationalism. And you're thinking, no, I can think of a lot more than these three possible outcomes for the future. And the fact that you've made a billion dollars on PayPal doesn't make you a futurist, you know. And you see this in a lot of places. You'll go to some conference and everyone's sitting around and someone made a billion dollars designing some really incredible creative lines of code. And then they go, let me explain. to how to solve race in America.

No, no, this billionaire guru syndrome is absurd. This is my problem with large donors, yes, like telling me how to run a presidential campaign and what the people really want to hear. Got it. By the way, so every time that the brisket gets home now, he runs into my arms, jumps into my lap, and says,

mommy make rockets go boom and he wants to watch i think currently the best youtube video available which is how not to land an orbital rocket booster so good and if you just google how not to land an orbital rocket booster you will get two and a half minutes of amazingly wonderful content for all ages frankly uh it appeals to two year olds it appeals to 40 year olds and everyone in between because it you know I get to teach a valuable lesson about trying again every time the rocket goes boom I say try again and then the rocket goes boom and I say try again and then at the very end I get to say they did it and he really loves that part too I'm a little concerned because I will tell you that he started saying oh no all the people are hurt I'm like no no unmaned

Unmad rocket, no people on the rocket. Well, that's good. He's not a psychopath. He's not like, let me watch the people die again. Do you think they screamed while they burned? I just dawned on to me now. I figured it out. Sarah talks to the brisket in the exact same way she talks to me.

Try again. I figured it out. All right, I'm going to leave you with the best headline of the year so far. And we're almost done with the year. So it's going to be hard to top this. I'll see if anyone can do it in the comments section. Pig in Australia steals 18 beers from campers, comma, gets drunk, comma, fights cow.

That's it. Top that. I dare you. Thank you for joining us this week. You know, when Steve's gone, this is, it just all goes down. That's just what it is. It rises to the top because Steve's not holding it down. If you enjoyed this podcast, want to join the comments section, become a member at the dispatch,

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