The Dispatch Podcast - Biden Backlash Begins

Episode Date: November 3, 2021

Sometimes the news of the day calls for some good old-fashioned rank punditry and after Tuesday’s elections today’s Dispatch Podcast does just that. Sarah, David, Jonah, and Declan look at the results not just in Virginia, but New Jersey, Minneapolis, and Buffalo, too. What do the results mean for the 2022 midterms? Anything at all? Our hosts break it all down. Show Notes: -TMD on election night in America Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isger, and we are all in person today, which is a real treat. I've got around my table here, David French, Jonah Goldberg, and Declan Garvey, of course, our fantasy football commissioner. We obviously have so much to talk about. It was Election Day last night. So what we learned in Virginia, what other races ended up mattering, how it's going to affect the Democrats and how it's going to affect the Republicans. Let's start at the very beginning, as we were taught by Julie Andrews, Jonah, what did we learn in Virginia? We learned that a Republican candidate doesn't have to fully embrace Donald Trump to win, even in a blue state. We learned that among some subs, I mean, so I listened to the Emergency 538 podcast this morning at 6 a.m. Because that's the kind of life I've chosen for some reason. I listen to it at 4 a.m. Something you'd afford to do in your 20s.

So I don't like all of the monocausal explanations for this. I think there are a bunch of explanations for it. I think last night it was amaze balls to use a term from political science. that MSNBC locked into the idea, it was just simply race card, racism, more racial racism and race cardism of racial race cards. And I think you can say that that was at work in some ways and in some places, but for the most part, it shows that candidates matter. It shows that some of the old rules of rules of thumb of politics, the sort of, what do

they call it, the thermostatic nature of elections, is that Virginia, by a rule of of thumb should have gone for the party of not the incumbent president and it did and that a lot of the things that people thought had said the old rules don't apply anymore weren't as powerful people are going to be chewing this for a long time but it it I think it shows that suburban the suburban voters who repelled against Trump did not necessarily lose all of their normal sort of Republican inclinations, and that issues like schools still really matter. Declan, what did you learn last night? I learned a lot of the same things that Jonah did.

Correct answer. But, no, I think I also learned that many of the fundamentals of this race, as Jonah mentioned, were heavily tilted in the Republican's favor. And I think that the conventional wisdom didn't reflect that because there is kind of an idea. that Trump was president for four years and the Republican Party is going to pay a price for that at some point, has to pay a price for that at some point. And it might just not. And it might not in these kinds of races. And in a way that, you know, Yonkin, I'm particularly interested, and I'm sure there will be more reporting about this. Hopefully I can do more

reporting about this, about the interpersonal relationship between Yon and Trump and how he kind of kept, I'm serious, because the coverage every day for the past month or two months has been Yonkin is stiff-arming Trump. Yonkin is keeping him away from the campaign. And Trump kind of let that happen. Obviously, he held a teletown rally or tell a town hall rally or voter call something earlier this week, didn't attend any events with Yonkin and kind of let him be off on his own and not interfere in the race. I think the fact that Trump was not on Twitter helped Yonkin a phenomenal amount. Right. I think that the idea that Yonkin can kind of keep Trump's voters while also winning back the suburbs is something that we hadn't really seen tested in a real way,

post Trump's presidency. And it'll be curious to see whether Trump allows this kind of candidate to run a similar race, again, going into the midterms. If they, if he's okay with candidates saying, I don't need you. I'm not going to insult you every day. I'm not going to, you know, bring up January 6th every day, but I'm not going to be praising you effusively. I'm not going to be referencing how great your musk is. And can you just let me do that and let me win my race? And if Trump says yes to that, then there's a path forward here for the Republicans. We'll see if that continues.

David. Sarah. All right. Let's break this down a little. As of this summer, July, McCallif was way ahead. Yep. Double digits in some polls, high single digits. An insurmountable lead, it appeared.

Nobody knew who Yonkin was. And while we talk about how the Virginia governor seat goes to the opposing White House parties, I mean, yes and no, it was a swing state for a long time. And now it's not really a swing state. So to me, that's a bit of a mischaracterization of what we know about Virginia. What causes this race to tip in the first place? Well, I mean, so many things. So if you're going back to June, July, this is pre-Afghanistan. So Afghanistan happens. And as we know, some things, you can over-nationalize things, but you can also under-nationalize things. There's absolutely no question that the sort of democratic momentum in Washington began to fall off a cliff over the summer. I mean, you can just see it in Biden's approval ratings, the disaster in Afghanistan, the absolute inability to take a win on the, bipartisan infrastructure plan that they had that they had negotiated in the senate with the progressives in the house like no no no we need trillions and trillions of dollars of more spending and where it just looks like there's disarray because guess what there is disarray and then you're beginning to have supply chain problems building people can't get the things that they want then on top of that you have this whole issue of schools unfolding where i think what we're going to overinterpret

the CRT piece of this, and we're going to under... I totally agree with that. We're going to underinterpret this sort of really basic thing of, did I have confidence my kids were going to be in school this far into the pandemic when we now know beyond a shadow of doubt because most school districts around the country have been operating for months and months, and this is still up in the air. Are you kidding me with this? And then you have Terry McCalliffe, who in the face of all of this foment does such

genius things as sort of saying, well, you know, minimizing the role of parents in education. And then what was it the last day or so? He campaigns with Randy Weingarten from the American Federation of Teachers. I mean, really, really in the midst of this enormous amount of discontent with the way that schools have been run in the face of McAuliffe minimizing the role of parents, he brings in the one person who probably nationally is more symbolic than anyone else in the whole country about neglecting parental concerns and campaigns with her. So all of these things together

add up. And look, let's just put to rest this idea that this was some sort of racist backlash in Virginia. I mean, this is a state that went for Obama in 08. It went for Obama in 2012. It went for Clinton in 2016. It went for Biden in 2020 by 10 whole points. So to sort of say that this is a racist backlash, I mean, come on, come on. No, no, no, no. That's not the explanation for this. Yeah, so three things for me. One, record turnout means that it was not simply that McColliffe's base stayed home,

that he didn't energize the base enough. It was people switching their vote who voted for Biden, probably voted for Obama, switching their vote and voting for Yonkin. And so to your point, you're calling your own voters racist then. And I think that actually gets to sort of a problem with this whole thing. If a parent complained that they didn't know what their kid was being taught at school or they didn't like what they were being taught at school, they were told that they were simply racist by McColliffe, which is obviously a problem. Or an idiot. Because remember you don't understand. Critical race theory doesn't even exist. They literally would say that over and over again. Yeah. Oh, that's a myth. It's just not true. And while I tend to agree that critical race theory is not being taught in Fairfax County Elementary schools, if that's your argument back to these parents, you've not been listening.

listening to what they're saying. They say that they don't like what the kid is being taught. Whether they label that CRT or not isn't the point and telling them that their concern is racist or what when President Obama came to speak. And he said it was these trumped up culture war issues, dismissing their concern entirely. And so, look, I am, don't ever read too much into the exit polls, but I don't think there's going to be any question that there was a big swing with suburban women. Why? Because they were given permission to look for another candidate in August when Afghanistan happened and there was like incompetence, Delta surge was happening again. So then they're looking around. They're shopping a little.

You have their children in Fairfax County. This is the largest plurality of voters in the state in a single county. And it's not even close. They have about 13% of the voters in the state in Fairfax County. The next highest is 5%. And it's basically like all, there's about three or four tied at five percent. Loudoun counties, one of them, which we've talked about a lot. Fairbanks County schools were not only closed for the spring of the pandemic.

They were closed the whole next school year. That has repercussions throughout the economy and people saying like, oh, well, first of all, women have to leave the workforce because they're the ones who are going to have to stay home with these kids now who are doing remote learning. Remote learning is not good for their kids. And then they're also starting to see what their kids are being taught. And they've got the time to do so because they're not in school and in work. And so then when McCullough basically dismisses their concerns about the schools being closed,

dismisses their concerns about what's being taught. And then, of course, the gaff heard around the world, I don't think parents should be telling schools what to teach. It was so condescending. Yeah. And a misunderstanding of everything. that they were trying to tell him. And McColliffe, to me, his biggest mistake was believing what was true in 2013 and before when he ran for governor, obviously, and won.

Teachers vote as a single voting block. And so winning that voting block can trump a whole lot of other things. Parents don't vote as a voting block. They vote based in the economy or where they live or what socioeconomic, you know, strata they're in. But if parents vote as a block, there are always more parents than teachers. And he just missed that happening. And so he kept courting the teachers union. That's why Randy Weingarten was his closing pitch.

Amazing. Like, if she was a Marvel character, her name would be school closer. And that's who he's, you know, that's who he's running with. I mean, this is, that was just remarkable to me. And I can't remember who tweeted this. The thing is Mary Catherine Hamm. She basically said, look, we're going to under-talk about the school closings. We're not going to talk enough about the school closings and the budding and the building frustration around that.

Because I remember... And by the way, well, those women are home out of the workforce. That means they're down to a single income. And then inflation hits. And now you can't get your Christmas presents. When you do, they're going to be a lot more expensive. The grocery stores don't have things. There are supply chain issues everywhere.

and you weren't working, so now your family has less money. I mean, it's all, education is the economy, economy is education, and especially in Fairfax County. So I was going to say, I mean, not to steal time back to David, but when you were talking about how all of these things sort of rely upon each other, like a Rube Goldberg machine, I was talking to somebody, a businessman yesterday who was explaining the full depth and scope of the supply chain problem. And he was talking about, you don't understand.

It's not just like this commodity is not available or whatever. the containers that bring the commodity aren't where they need to be to get the commodity and so the spot price has gone up 10 not you know gone up a thousand per he goes ram me through all this stuff

the supply chains were incredibly efficient with this on time arrival stuff for years and we took them for granted we've been having this division of labor about moms and schools as essentially it's analogous to the supply chain thing

everyone just thought this was the natural way things work but anybody who's had their kids school clothes unexpectedly understands that it's like a supply chain disruption. All of a sudden, I can't be in two places and once. I got to be here. That means I can't go do this other thing,

which means I can't get that thing to go to this place. And I think you're right. You can overinterpret it, overinterpret the critical race theory part of it. But part of it is that it's sort of like a Mott and Bailey argument. Yeah. Where they push really, really hard on ideological stuff. And the second it's question,

they pull back and say, oh, so you just don't want to teach about race? You don't want to teach about slavery? And it's like, no, no, that's not. what I was objecting to. And, and the, and I think that for a lot of parents, sort of to your point, they just were on autopilot about how politics works, about how voting works. They weren't think that the school stuff was convenient to their lives in ways that didn't make them pay attention to how their kids were at school. And one of the things you mentioned, Sarah, is not only is it like, are they home, are moms home disproportionately with the kids? The kids

after 16 months of not going to school are now afraid to go back to school. And mom's like, oh, crap. I can't even get back to normal now, right? And to be condescended to by a bad politician. And I think that's one of the weird things about McCullough. And I think in any ways, this really, David has a very good riff about why he's jealous of the name of my podcast being the remnant and about what the meaning a remnant is because it both means the residual part and the opportunity for rebirth. This shows that the remnant of Clintonianism in the Democratic Party is both dead. and now has an opportunity for rebirth.

Because McAuliffe should have been, like, McColliffe could have dunked on teachers quite a bit and still gotten the teacher's vote. He could have said, you know, look, there are excesses and whatever, and we got, we all, it's all one country and school closures kind of got out of hand. It's not like, you know, Randy Weingarten is going to, damn, Terry threw me under the bus and a speech to parents.

Now I'm going to have to vote for Yonkin. Right. I mean, like, he, she understood that, you know, like Clinton did that all the time of people, and people understood that at the end of the day when it came to policy, Clinton was going to get their back, but he had to, like, triangulate. Triangulation is what would have saved McCullough in a heartbeat, and he just didn't think he should do it. Also, people calling that a gaffe, let's just be clear, it wasn't a gaffe.

He didn't clean it up afterwards. He said, no, that's exactly what I meant. Right. And then, I mean, the weirdest interview was John Carle. Right. Yeah. I'm not even sure it was that. It was a talking point.

It was a talking point. So he does this interview with John Carl of ABC afterwards. And not only does he double down, he says, everyone clapped in the room. What? Yeah. That is a concerning response. It really seems to me that what the voters have been saying since 2020 is reaffirming the same message that they tried to give in 2020, which was stability, normality,

make things go back to normal please so you know for that burst of moment that burst of hope that we had before everything went to crap with the stop the steel stuff was wait hold on did the voters just eject Donald Trump and keep a Republican Senate probably in Georgia to say that there's going to be divided government but there's going to be no Trump so did did you thread the needle voters did you reject Trumpism but also reject the far left at the exact same time, then, of course, Trump nuked all that. And then here we go into 2020. And Biden, it seems to me, if you had, you know, like any understanding of the political temperature in this country has a mandate to let's just be normal, not revolutionary policy,

not big, huge, bold moves. Let's just be normal. And then he goes and he completely does the opposite. it. And Afghanistan was the symbol of it because it was this giant, bold, buck stopped with him move that just blew up in everybody's faces as anyone who knew anything about the area knew that it would. And then here are the voters again, let's be normal. We haven't talked about Eric Adams yet from in New York. This was a formality of an election. Of course, he was going to be mayor. But his election in the Democratic primary, let's be normal. The defund the police initiative going down in Minneapolis. Let's be normal. There's just this scream. And I saw that Matt Iglesias said something. He said, everyone on the left has been saying, now's the time for boldness,

completely missing, completely missing. Less boldness. Less boldness, please, more stability, please. I mean, just being the whichever, I mean, I'm saying this for so long now, whichever party can just figure out how not to be the crazy party could be a majority party. Yeah. And just don't be the crazy party. And they're determined to give each party the other party the chance to seem less crazy than them. All right, Declan, let's talk about the other races. What else were you watching last

night? I was watching a lot of things that David just mentioned. Obviously, the Eric Adams mayoral race resounding victory. You weren't actually watching that. Nobody was actually watching to see the returns. You were checking your phone while watching baseball. Come on. It scrolled across

my screen. And I saw it. I wasn't watching it. But the results out of Minneapolis where the incumbent mayor, Jacob Fry, was up for re-election after a year and a half of kind of conflicting criticism from both the far left of the Democratic Party over his refusal to fully endorse defunding the police and some of his on the right criticism that he gave too much credence to the idea that police. needed to be reformed. Minneapolis is also being where George Floyd was killed. This was the epicenter of where the protest started last summer. Right. And so that that race is employing ranked choice voting, which I want to put a pin in and

come back to in a little bit. But he's resoundingly ahead. Looks like he's going to hang on. And then for the same voters to also resoundingly reject a plan to replace. the police with a, I believe, public safety department, not entirely, I don't think even even they fleshed out entirely what that would entail. But not the Jacobin Committee for Public Safety, right? I mean, I would trust those guys with my life.

Oh, they'll take it. They'll take it. Yes. So that was a race that was very interesting. And then in Buffalo, we had a crazy campaign where a, um, A self-proclaimed democratic socialist, India Walton, won the Democratic primary for the mayoral race in Buffalo. And the incumbent mounted a write-in campaign to basically be like, let's do this again. And he won.

And so, you know, there have been instances of write-in campaigns working in the past that Lisa Murkowski in Alaska, and I believe 2010 being the most recent example. But do you know what the other Senate race is to ever have won in a right-in candidacy? I don't, but I know you do. I know the answer, but I saw it in your tweet. It's 1954. Strom Thurman. Strom Thurman. Imagine the different history that we would have if he had simply lost that right-in candidacy.

My goodness. I know. Yeah. He stayed, what, another 50 years? He's still there. Fathered another several children? Yeah. Yeah. So I think that, you know, combined, oh, and the very similar thing happened in Seattle, far-left, progressive Seattle, not home of Antifa, but close by home of Antifa.

Home of Chas. Yes. Elected a Republican city attorney because the Democratic option was for police abolition. And that is about, that is about the only possible way that a Republican could get elected in a city-wide. race in Seattle is for the alternative just be so crazy. And so I think that we are, you know, there are counter examples because nature is healing, but nature is healing, right? And that's the just the, yes. For me, Buffalo was everything. That tab was up for me, like before the Virginia tab on my computer was up, because if you wanted to have an experiment, like as pure as you could have between the progressive wing

and the moderate wing of the Democratic Party Buffalo was a perfect setup for this because the progressives then have all the wind behind them her name is on the ballot the moderate's name is not on the ballot he spends $100,000

on little rubber stamps that he hands out to his supporters so that they don't have to write his name although his name is Brian Brown it was not particularly difficult to spell Chittarelli whatever guy in Jersey is C-I

and And so to have that pure of an election and it wasn't close. And this is in a deep blue city, but a deep blue city that is more working class, more, you know, steel belt. But this is prime democratic territory. It's the eastern end of the rust belt. Yeah. This is like where Joe Biden's voters in theory need to be. Joe Biden's voters are telling him who they are.

So that to me was by far more telling than actually Virginia was Because I do think Virginia had so many other local things going on As you said, don't overnationalize it don't under nationalize If there's like a Goldilocks to go with Virginia I feel like Buffalo was the race that taught me the most last night Buffalo and Jersey I mean I take your point on Buffalo for all sorts of you know reasons And the blow it strikes against the I mean the blow it strikes for the David Shore thesis is very strong wrong. Yeah. I was just going to say

the name, David Short. Yeah. Popularism had a good night last night. New Jersey has a 12 point swing from where it was just a year ago with Biden. Even when Chittarelli... I thought it was 16 points. Okay. But either way. 12 in Virginia. 12 in Virginia. I thought it was 16. In New Jersey. There's still votes to count.

Look who got the numbers right. And by the way, Cook Political Court report, Dave Wasserman has said that he has seen enough to call New Jersey for Murphy. But it is still only about 7,000 boats apart. Yeah, but that's the point, right?

It's like, and so we've talked about this a bunch. We pay too much attention to Virginia. It's where you live. I'm right across the water from it. It's basically the suburbs of most of the D.C. Pundit class. And so we take it more seriously than we probably should. At the same time, it's really kind of amazing.

You know, on the commentary podcast, my friends, John Podoritz and Noah Rothman, every now and then they talk about the Jersey gubernatorial. race. Norrothman lives in Jersey. Pod lives right across the Hudson from it. And it's the same media market. And he, they always have to say, okay, so what's the Republican's name again? Yeah. They can't, you know, like, they can't even remember it. And for all the people who want to say Virginia was all about critical race theory and racist dog whistles, Jersey wasn't. No. Right. And so you can't have a 16 point swing in the most suburban state in the country, I believe Jersey is. And um that went massively for biden and say oh the only way republicans won in these off year elections

is because of these various culture war issues and all the rest some of it has to do with the thermostatic you know nature of this stuff just like jersey go jersey democrats don't repeat um or don't get reelected or whatever but there's just a there is a national trend to some extent that just shows that there's there's space between the the suburban voters so typical we were Republican suburban voters who would not vote for Trump, but are still willing to vote for other Republicans. And it sort of jives with Raffinberger as, you know, he's going around talking about the numbers in Georgia these days. And he's just like, you know, Trump underperformed Purdue. There were in Bolton County. It was like 28,000 people just didn't fill in the top ballot for president,

you know. There are people like, and so there's going to be a big fight to see whether or not this diminishes Trump or not as a power in the party. I know we're not supposed to say these two words together in the presence of Sarah after an election. No. Exit polling. Exit polling. Get out. Yeah, we're not supposed to say that. But with

all of the... How about egress surveys? Did that work? Yes, there we go. The egress surveys that are imprecise, imprecise indicated that Trump was still seriously underwater with Virginia voters and Yonkin was not.

That Yonkin had a positive rating and Trump had a profoundly negative rating of Trump, of course, then tried to take credit for Yonkin's victory. Which, by the way, this was really interesting in the exit polling, which, of course, I looked at. I just don't, like, absorb it. The fave unfave that Yonkin had was incredible. I believe, you know, something around 53 fave, 44 unfafe, McCallif was exactly flipped.

44 fave, 53 unfave. If you look at the ads McColliff was running, that were all against Trump and not really about Yonkin. Yeah. Yep. Congratulations, Terry McAuliffe. You kept Donald Trump's fave on fave underwater in Virginia, and you didn't touch Yonkin. So this just raises a question.

How much of this was a product of these, you know, the Democrats not being nimble, taking these macro narratives for granted and not actually looking at the granular stuff? And one of the macro narratives was Gavin Newsom ran against Trump in the recall, like six months ago or three months, times a flat circle. recently. I can't remember one. And they took from that that they could do to Yon what Newsom did to Larry Elder, right? And so like Larry Elder is a 25-year

talk radio talk radio caricature, right? I'm not saying he's a horrible person, but you know, he's he's it's not hard to lump him with trumpiness. Yeah. Right? And and and Yon is a, is the guy who brings the extra star books to the kid's soccer game, right? I mean, he's like, he's a milk toast. Elder never had a coherent message like Yonkin did either. Yeah. He never settled. He wasn't a real candidate the way

Youngkin. To talk to the Yonkin team, by the way, they made some interesting points, but one of which was Terry McCullough was running something like 12 different ads, totally different than the ones he was running six months ago. Glenn Yonkin was still running the same ad. He was running six months ago, and they were only running four ads. That focus on a message. I I think, did them some good. I mean, Yonkin has far more in common with Mitt Romney than he has with any other wing of the Republican Party. I mean, he was what, he was what chairman of the Carlisle group.

I mean, this is your big business Republican figure who ran a simple and compelling message. And, you know, this go, let me go back to David Shore for a minute. And his emphasis on the Democrats are their activist classes, too young, too online, you know, one of the things, if I'm, if I'm in the Democratic Party right now and I'm, and I'm thinking about running a campaign, one of the things I might tell my whole staff is I want to see your phones and I want to see Twitter not on them. Yeah, yeah. Just remove that app and now let's talk to real people. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss and it was a stark

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Democrats. No, this was record turnout for Yonkin. And by the way, even look at 2020, the high turnout helped Donald Trump. Yes, it wasn't enough to push him over. And so this idea that you're going around trying to make it harder for people to vote because you have weird idea that Republican voters are smarter or more able to jump through hoops than Democratic voters is a, that is kind of a weird takeaway because I, I mean, very anecdotal, obviously. A Republican voter I know recently moved to Virginia and they don't have same-day voter registration in Virginia, so she couldn't vote for Yonkin. As it turned out, Yon didn't need her vote. But, you know, if as the parties shift and as the Republican Party starts

picking up more non-college-educated white voters, blue-collar voters, making it harder for them to vote is shooting yourself in the foot. And again, not because they're not smart enough to figure it out. It's because it's a bunch of hoops to jump through. And at some point, you're like,

this ain't worth it. The juice ain't worth the squeeze. Okay, so that's one, high turnout, can be good for Republicans. It can be bad for Democrats. Two, when you make it a referendum on Donald Trump, Republicans lose. When you don't have it as a referendum on Donald Trump,

it becomes a referendum on something else. In this case, a referendum on Joe Biden's policies or on school closures or on, who knows, and that can help Republicans. But if you go back to making it a referendum on Donald Trump in 2024, do not expect those same suburban women who just had a 15-point swing in Virginia to stay with you because it's a very different thing

you're asking them. Yeah. And it seems like Democrats learned this lesson several years ago when they were running in the midterms in 2018, and it was just health care. Everybody would ask, reporters would ask, are you going to impeach Trump? Are you going to? And they're like, I don't know, health care. I don't know. Health care. And it was the only thing that candidates would talk about. And they won, what, 60 seats, something like that in the 2018 midterms. And then it kind of regressed since then and started falling for these easy

trap. And obviously, a lot's happened since 2018. That is worth talking about January 6th. You know, the first impeachment trial, all these other things. But it kind of trapped Democrats in the sense that they think, because we're as outraged by this, that everybody must be. And so if we talk about this nonstop, it will remind people that the Republican Party hasn't yet been punished for Trump and for his misdeeds. And so, you know, it was actually interesting. And I think we'll get to this later, but reading the intra-democratic party sniping that was happening last night was incredibly fascinating, one, because usually it's the, over the past four years, it's been the Republicans shooting each other behind the scenes. But, you know, the moderates and the progressives both agree, we should not have been talking about Donald Trump this much. The alternative to that is that there wasn't much for McAuliffe to run on besides Donald Trump.

And that might be an even scarier proposition for Democrats in that, you know, Biden, I think this is correct. Biden has the lowest net approval rating of any president dating back to like Calvin Coolidge at this point in his presidency, save Donald Trump and maybe Gerald Ford. And that's just in a race that's so nationalized. And I think McAuliffe, several times during the campaign, made a point to nationalize it. You know, he brought in Biden, he brought in Harris, he brought in Barack Obama for all these events. He wanted to get voters fired up, but fired up about what exactly? Like, what is the point that you're nationalizing it for? And I don't think the party really thought that far ahead.

where we'll get all of our voters excited and they'll all turn out for us and but they didn't ask why they didn't give really give voters a reason why to turn out is it because of inflation is it because of the afghanistan withdrawal is it because of this these kind of amorphous bills that have not been passed yet and don't necessarily look like they're they're headed that way now after today and so it'll be interesting to see kind of what what shakes out and how this shapes the the internal Democratic fights on that side. David, what are the takeaways for Republicans? Number one, you don't need Donald Trump on the ticket to turn out rural voters.

I think that's a big, I think that's a big winning. Yeah, huge turnout in Virginia was really an interesting point for that. Yeah, and because this has sort of been the message that the Trump rider dies. See, I'm using the term correctly that you taught me, Sarah. You're my rider died. The Trump rider dies have been saying the only way, the only way to get this term. is through Trump or Trumpism. Yonkin is not a Trump is not Trump.

He's not Trumpism. And the rural voters came out. They came out big time. And the other thing is, one of the things that I try to do when I think about elections is I try to think about what are the things that everyone is sort of experiencing? What are sort of the universal experiences of the moment? Forget the Twitter fights. Forget the social media fights or the cable news hits.

What are the universal experiences? So, 08, economic crash. You know, 2012, steady improvement. You know, remember Obama saying GM is alive and Osama bin Laden is dead. 2020, what was everybody experiencing? Everybody experienced it was a pandemic, yes, but the voters were pretty remarkably forgiving of elected officials and how they were sort of navigating, especially of those earlier waters. But everybody was experiencing Donald Trump and experiencing his.

presence on the national stage. Now what is everybody experiencing? Supply chain bottlenecks in lots of parts of the country, halting school at reopenings, a military defeat that has just stared us in the face. All of these things that are kind of the things that everybody is experiencing, regardless of your online or offline status, are really negative for the Democrats right now. They're really negative. And if I'm Joe Biden, I'm sitting here thinking, okay, how is it by this time next year, can I make sure that when somebody orders something, they get it? Like, that's about as basic as you can get.

When they order something, they get it like they could get it in 2019. Because there's this weird feeling. I've literally had people say this to me amongst all of the supply chain stuff and how hard it is to get things. Somebody said to me and it stuck with me, it doesn't feel like America. And in this kind of way that we're used to stuff, it's, it's, and I understood, I understood what he meant. This is an unusual new experience for us. And we're talking about this build back better thing that nobody even knows what's in it. And that's bottleneck in Congress. I mean,

so I think that this, this question about what is it at everybody's going through and what is Washington doing about it? None of that's working for the Democrats right now. The only thing where I kind of disagree with you is I don't, when you say Republicans don't need Trump to turn out the rural, the, I'm not sure that's entirely right. Republicans need Trump not to suppress the rule. I mean, if Trump had said, oh, he's part of the swamp, right, he's, he's a rhino, squish, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, it would have suppressed that vote considerably and it was Trump staying out of the race.

Yeah, like, and like... Which I'm not sure he'll do in 2022. Like, I'm not, because he won't get credit for Yonkin's win, he may try to take credit, but he won't get credit for it. Not internally, right. Right. He will learn a lesson from that too. And so trying to do a Yonkin in 2022, Trump may just demand more. More. Yeah, I think that's right. And so, and like, he kind of followed the political hypocritic of first do no harm, right? And he can do a lot of friggin' harm. And, and so I think, like, Donald Trump would not let, let's say Doug Goosey were running for Senate, which is something he should do.

Yeah. He wouldn't let Doug Deasy. He wouldn't let the roll vote turn out for Doug Deucey. He'd rather take Doug Deucey's scalp. And, and so, I mean, it's sort of a macro version of this, you know, Republicans can't win with Trump and they can't win without him dynamic. like if if he if he actually cared about the republican party um he could really help turn out voters where republicans need them and really help not suppress voters where republicans need them and for but you know more broadly than that i'm a broken record on just don't be crazy

just seriously just don't i mean like people don't don't don't people have so much drama in their lives in the last five years that the parliament the part and that was one One of Barack Obama's great gifts, he didn't actually deliver it as a matter of policy, but as a matter of style and presence, no drama Obama. Right. Was very attractive to a lot of people, particularly for the first African-American president. And I think that was one of the things that was very attractive about Biden was like this sense, oh, it's grandpa, you know, he's going to sit on the porch and whittle most of the time, like a Bartle's and James guy.

While competent. Well, competent. And the competent thing got all blown up. I do think that the competent numbers, I mean, this is a little far afield. and I don't want to be uncharitable about it. I don't think he has dementia. I don't think, you know, he's a basket case or anything like that stuff. But a lot of Americans, they just see a few clips of the guy from time to time.

And all you need is a few clips. And then you see how he screwed up Afghanistan. You see these other things. And I don't think it's like anti, it's ages bigotry or anything like that. We all know people in our families and our lives, some of whom are very old, who are like super sharp. And some of whom are not. And I do think that competent, to some extent, numbers are to some extent, not entirely driven by in part that. So I have a theory on a problem that Democrats have that is not easily solved.

David, you touched on it a little with the Twitter thing. And the problem is not just Twitter. Because Twitter actually is pretty easy. You just tell people not to pay attention to Twitter. You show them the numbers that Twitter is not representative. You know, on my profile, I have pinned. Pew Research found that of the fewer than 50 million U.S. adults on Twitter, only 6% of those Twitter users account for 73% of the tweets about national politics.

That means fewer than 1% of Americans are weighing in on Twitter about politics. Great. Ignore Twitter. But there's a bigger problem. And I think actually both sides have a very different asymmetrical part of this. And that is the pundit class on cable news, of which I sort of consider all of us. Right. For the right, they're too centrist in terms of representing the party. Most of the Republican pundits are coming from a, you know, operative class that is actually far more moderate than the whole, the party as a whole.

On the Democratic side, however, the pundit class as a whole is far, far, far to the left of the median Democratic voter. And so there's a huge asymmetry where the entire pundit class is to the left of the median American voter. But for Democrats, it's a particular problem because it's not just Twitter. It's also the media, which does have an effect on approval numbers, on what's getting attention. And so, for instance, to your point, David, which I think is spot on, Joe Biden should be exclusively talking about what he's doing to fix supply chain issues before Christmas. And instead, they're spending all their time talking about a $3.5 trillion or a $1.75 trillion dollar social safety net bill. Why? Because some of that's being driven by the fact that the majority, I would say, of Democratic strategists that appear on TV are not from the moderate wing of the party.

I just, you know, I think of my own example last night on ABC. And it was the head of the progressive, it wasn't the justice. Democrats, but, you know, she was out of the progressive wing outside group. And, like, yeah, they're going to have very different takeaways from last night's election than David Shore, for instance, who I don't see on cable news. No, I mean, look, I, I tuned in MSNBC, you know, in lieu of cutting myself. And it was, it was Joy Reed, Nicole Wallace, and Rachel Maddow. And, oh, that's so perfect. Nicole Wallace represents Republicans, even though she is center left at best. Right.

Joy Reed is to be far, far left. Right. And Rachel Maddow is sort of like technocratic, hyper-liberal, you know, and they could not, I would put it this way. Poor Chris Hayes had to come in and open himself up to charges of mansplaining to say that there were other contributory reasons for why McCullough lost other than simply racism. And he wasn't denying the racism. He was just saying, well, you know, it's, you know, the normal default is that the

coming, you know, that the party out of, the party in power suffers in Virginia elections. And then you add in all the racism and it makes it even more. I mean, like, it was astounding. And I got into a fight with some people on Twitter about it. And it's not like I think charges of racist dog whistles are completely out of bounds. I mean, you can make the case for them. They're just not really explanatory beyond a certain point. And if you fall into the mode, which I saw a lot on TV and on NPR in the last 24 hours,

if you fall into the mode of picking a mona causal explanation that casts you in the most virtuous light possible and the people you disagree with in the most evil light possible, maybe psychology is working more here than like real serious political analysis. You know, I mean, like, it's like, oh, of course the people who, because like, there's something Declan said earlier about the Democrats, which I think kind of got a little off, which is like, you know, you said how the Democrats are, assume everyone is outraged about X the same way that they are. And I agree that's happening. But there's an added psychological dynamic. It's that they then leap from, not only are they wrong about the level of outrage out there, they leap from. they leap from the assumption that everybody is outraged about this stuff the same way they are

and if they're not it must be because they are pro-January 6th insurrection clansmen who eat puppies on a regular basis right i mean they can't possibly be that they're just wrong or that they're concerned about other things you know and i think huge numbers of republican voters out there which is one of the things i think republicans should take away from this it's a lot of people out there are a lot of Republicans out there are embarrassed by Trump the same way they're embarrassed by their uncle but they'll be damned to have somebody outside the family insult their uncle people are a little Irish about it they don't want to be reminded no offense Declan they don't want to be reminded that you know they've got these guys

you know on their team or that they they they made apologies for this guy and so they just rather him kind of like be in the background, but if you, if you rile them up, they're going to come to his defense and they're going to take offense when you say that you're an evil person if you voted for the guy or if you're not as outraged about him as other people are. Come for the politics, stay for the Irish slurs. Declan, what's the future of build back better, the Democratic agenda in the short term? Yes.

So with regards to build back better, I think there's kind of two different approaches Democrats can can take to this. And it kind of reminds me honestly of something that that we've talked about on this podcast before in the past with the Chinese and respect to Taiwan, not that there's any any moral equivalence or whatnot. But the Chinese, if they, whether they see that they're on the rise and they think that they have the capability to invade Taiwan or they think that they're declining, their population is getting older. And now is the time to take Taiwan because they're not can be able to soon. There's kind of something similar going on here with the Democratic Party and this build back better agenda. If they see the writing on the wall, like, we're going to

lose the next election really, really, really badly, we better pass this stuff now because we might not be back in power, unified control of the government for four years, six years, eight years, and so you kind of start getting down that road. At the same time, a real reason that they're in the position that they're in is because they are doing things like trying to pass a $3 trillion spending bill. And so you had David Axelrod, obviously a Democratic consultant who was very close to the Obama administration on CNN last night was making a point that, you know, if you're a Democrat on Capitol Hill and you're in one of these swing districts, are you, you know, now going to back

off this reconciliation package, which was already barely being hung together and, you know, you relied on the whims of Joe Manchin and Kristen Cinema, if you start getting more people kind of falling into that lane, and I think there's always been more opposition to this stuff than has been led on publicly. I think that Manchin and Cinema are kind of taken one for the team there because they can. But you might start to see this crumble pretty quickly if a lot of people start looking out for themselves, like, oh, that could be me in a year from today. You know, one thing, Declan, that you say, I think that it's a real, I think this is really true and insightful into the psychology of a lot of folks in the Democratic Party, which is

they feel like the structure of the Constitution itself is leaning strongly against them. So that even though they have more people, has been evidenced by the fact that the Republicans have won one popular vote for president since 1992, which is a pretty crazy. thing. I mean, since 1988, since 1988, wow, even worse, which is a pretty crazy thing to contemplate. So a lot of them think we have a giant structural disadvantage so that when we're in power, we've got to do stuff. But the reality is the vast majority of presidential elections aren't about radicalism at all. It's more like, you know, this title of this book that, you know, Jonah's friend, Cass Sunstein, it's called Nudge.

It's much more about Nudge. What is a subtle push in one direction or a subtle course correction? It's not so much about something super radical at all. And then when you overinterpret a narrow victory into radical change, you're completely misreading the room. And so this sort of panic that we can't do it again combined with sort of the euphoria that always accompanies a political victory. that says, look at us, is creating a dynamic where they're completely misreading the room.

And the thing is, I think they'll probably go back to misreading the room a few days from now. Both sides. Yeah. I mean, so it's interesting. I haven't released either yet, but I did a video yesterday for AEI with Jay Koss, who's a historian. It just has a book out coming out soon on, it's a biography of James Madison. And then we did a long remnant about Madison as well. And one of the points he makes about Madison that I think is kind of, I mean, like,

I understood it beforehand, but like the emphasis on it, it kind of clicked for me, which is, you know, the whole design of our system is contra flight 93ism. Yeah. Right? It's like every time someone says the most important election in our history, we always joke, yeah, okay, until the next one, right? But that's, in fact, the Madisonian design, which is that the way you get buy-in and you make progress is it's a bunch of short passes from one election to another election. That was a nod to fantasy football commissioner here.

And you know, and you just, you try to gain a few yards with every election and then you move on to the next one. And that way you get consent to the government. You get regional buy-in because you're having, you're not just having elections. for president, you're having 435 elections for Congress. You're having 133 elections every two years for Senate. And then on the state and local level, every basically year, there are thousands or hundreds of people up for election. And it's a constantly unfolding thing where people are having arguments and you're supposed to weigh in as a voter or as a politician on things. But we've convinced people that in this sort of mythological parliamentary system that we don't

live in that this one election is our one shot to to fulfill all of our dreams. Right. And so you, you, you, and that makes you really reluctant to compromise on little things because there is no tomorrow ever. And, and that's what I think killing the Democrats on this stuff. It's why Trump was elected. It's why Obama was elected. Um, each party that gets in, they swing for the fences because they think this is their last chance to take advantage of power. And then there's a backlash against them for doing it. And then the other side gets in and does the same thing from the other direction.

And it's very anti-Madisonia. All right. Last quick question for each of you. What did you learn last night that changed what you think's going to happen in 2022? In short. David, I'll start with you. Nothing. And what?

Okay, I did want a short answer. I did say that. Because you think that neither part of the question. will change what they're going to do? Well, no, I think the dynamics are so strongly running towards Republicans, and I don't have confidence that the Biden administration will shift course considerably. And I also, by the way, don't have a huge amount of confidence that the kinds of supply chain problems are so easy to fix that you can just sort of say, okay, now I'm going to focus on this and this is going to be

solved. So you think Republicans win the House and the Senate, if the election were held today type thing. I think if the election were held today, the Republicans win the House and the Senate. But a lot can happen. It's just that to yesterday's events don't change that dynamic. Jonah? I generally agree with that. I do think that like the point you were making earlier, Sarah, about how Trump could respond to all this in ways that are unhelpful to the Republicans in 2020. seems very high. Like, he can't, he. It turns out telling your voters to vote was a more successful strategy than telling

your voters not to vote. We did learn that last name. It is weird. Wow. I know. Hot take. But very undispecty. Right.

But it becomes very difficult. Like, you know, Trump prefers positive attention, but he'll take negative attention over no attention. And the less, he, there has to be a certain amount of flop sweat, panic in Trump world about how the lesson a lot of Republicans are taking from this is oh, you just you just don't talk about Trump very much

as long as Trump isn't on the ballot. You know, I mean, got to go back and remember that that 2018 press conference where Trump literally said that like Mia Love lost because she didn't embrace Donald Trump, right? I mean, like, he likes

taking credit for Republicans losing a lot more than taking credit for Republicans winning if it's not clearly the result of his endorsement. So I would expect more headaches for Kevin McCarthy and those guys from Donald Trump than the current euphoric mood suggests. Declan. This might be a little bit of a bank shot, but I think that this, at the Republican operative level, really, really drills down how important the primaries are going to be in the coming months and over the next year because Glenn Yonkin was the only Republican that

would have won this race. There were other candidates running Pete Snyder, also a businessman who was far more aligned with Trump than Yonkin was. And then there's the Trump and Heels woman. That's yeah, Amanda Chase who self-described Trump in Heels. Which is just not a great image. I'm just going to put it out there. Don't people like what they like. Um, but there, there's kind of this, this, um, real threat that if you nominated Amanda

Chase, like, McCalliffe would have won by six percent. We wouldn't have been having this kind of referendum that we're, that we're having. And that changes the entire tenor of the next year. And so if you're doing that, if you're playing this out, you know, hundreds of races across the country in the Senate and the House, can Republicans be disciplined enough to nominate a Yon in these races? And what's in, I mean, the answer

to that, come on. The answer is no. Yeah. But, but, but, but something interesting about how Yonkin was nominated in the first place, because of COVID restrictions, but might have actually been, you know, some, some smoke-filled rooms shenanigans, which,

you know, more power to you. But, um, this was a ranked choice convention in May on like a Saturday where only a couple thousand people were able to show up and vote and it took Yon six rounds of ranked choice voting to pass the 50% threshold and and secure the nomination like this was going to be an Amanda Chase nomination if it was a open primary Republicans rah rah were still mad about January 6th we're going to show it, and it would have fallen flat on their faces. And so I wonder if this kind of spurs either a recollection or a recognition among operatives and party leaders that maybe

we should be a little less democratic in these primary nominations, or among voters themselves being like, we can accept a Yon who might not have been our first. Nobody remembers that he wasn't their first choice back in May, but he wasn't. And look how it turned out. We got this big victory. And so that will require a lot of discipline that I don't have any confidence that we have. But it's an interesting thing to play out over the next couple of them. That's a really good point. I'm glad you brought that up because the one of the big threats to Republicans in 2022 is the primary process to be quite frank. And what we did not have a conventional primary process, yielded Yonkin. And so now everyone is hailing Yonkin as a model for the future. And he came up

despite the move at the grassroots and amongst sort of the core primary voters in the GOP, not because of them. And I think that's going to be something interesting to think about going forward. And with that, the Astros lost the World Series. I am from Houston. Surprisingly, I was, I was okay with it. I feel like, I think I'm the only Houstonian who was deeply upset. and felt totally betrayed by what happened last time around. I grew up listening to AM baseball radio with my dad, and so like,

you know what? You earned that lost Astros. But now, Slate is clean. You've paid your penance. That's right. Do not listen to producer Caleb. He has the worst takes. Thank you so much for listening. We appreciate all your support.

Don't forget to tell your friends about us. and mention it as you're talking about the election at your water cooler etc we'll talk to you soon I've got around my table here, David French, Jonah Goldberg. Hmm, Goldberg. I think I said that wrong. I think I left out the R. I just chucked it up to the usual casual anti-Semitism. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot trackside. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex

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