The Dispatch Podcast - Biden Pivots to Voting Rights

Episode Date: January 12, 2022

President Biden ran his 2020 campaign on the promise he’d bring back “normal” life in America. Almost one year later, there is still an ongoing pandemic, record-high inflation, and a serious lack of food in grocery stores. The gang discusses it all and what it means for the country. Plus, President Biden spoke about voting rights in Atlanta yesterday and the speech aggravated all four hosts. They discuss the speech and how it adds to the tearing of the social fabric in America.   Show Notes: -President Biden’s speech in Atlanta -Stacey Abrams snubs President Biden? -Democrats, Voting Rights Are Not the Problem | Yuval Levin -Tweet that sparked the “worst three-hour drive” debate Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isger, joined by Jonah Goldberg, David French, Steve Hayes. We are going to, yes, we have to talk about COVID. Amacron has changed the situation, certainly, as we head into 2022. Then we're going to focus on the president's voting rights speech yesterday from Atlanta, both the politics of it, but also the substance of what legislation Democrats are pursuing on the hill right now. Let's dive right in. You know, when we talked about talking about COVID, we couldn't even really decide what in particular to focus on. But for me, I mean, obviously most immediately, we don't have child. care. I went to two different grocery stores, none of which had produce, any produce. The grocery store closest to me didn't have chicken, poultry of any kind, no ground beef.

I'm just the politics of this. Set aside the testing or the quarantining. Schools are closed again. Grocery stores don't have food and people are a hold up in their houses. Politically, this seems like more of a disaster than the Biden administration actually even could have seen coming to start out 2022. Steve, thoughts. Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, and this I think will be a theme throughout this episode, including the discussion of voting rights. I mean, the Biden administration, remember, his fundamental promise was to come to office and make things normal again and to return to truth telling and competence. That's what he said. That's what he, that was the argument he made. I think that's overwhelmingly why he elected because he provided that contrast from what we had

seen from Donald Trump. And now in so many different respects of his presidency, he's failing to deliver on that. Some of that, you can make an argument is based more on, you know, broad economic trends, things that he might not be able to control, although I think a lot of the decisions he's made certainly have not helped. But on this, this was one of his main indictments of Donald Trump. They handled it incompetently. They didn't tell the truth about what was going on. And we are at the point now where even people who were once pretty cautious about coronavirus and the steps we needed to take, the sort of go along to get along people, the people who were willing to defer to public health authorities to keep their families safe, but also to do their

part in ending the pandemic have just had it. They're not listening. Nobody's listening to the CDC anymore. Nobody's certainly listening to the Biden administration anymore. The kinds of steps that people were suggesting that the Biden administration take with respect to enhanced testing regimes with respect to vaccine distribution, the kinds of things that Joe Biden criticized Donald Trump for not doing, he has failed utterly. doing. And I think there will be tremendous political reverberations as you see them sort of flailing, trying to come up with some argument for, in defense of themselves and some way to end the pandemic. And David, you know, I've said this to you in our little texts and stuff. I guess at this point,

I'm kind of confused. The vaccine does not prevent. And by prevent, I don't mean it doesn't prevent any. I mean, 100% prevent the transmission of COVID. At the point that vaccine, people can get COVID, give COVID to others, but the vaccine does seem to be nearly bulletproof at preventing serious illness and death. Why are we still doing any of this? Why are their vaccine mandates? Why are we shutting down restaurants and schools? Why, why anything if for the vaccinated, it's going to be like you had. You had maybe something more like the flu. A lot of people have something more like a cold. If you're not vaccinated, you've chosen not to be vaccinated.

You've had plenty of time. Why aren't we done with this? Well, you know, my philosophy for months has been get vaccinated and live your life. And I think that that's where the vast majority of people are, quite frankly, is get vaccinated and live your life. And I do think, though, however, there is a definite interest in certain, in certain, In certain contexts, in certain contexts, vaccine mandates still make sense in the same way that like a seatbelt law makes sense, in the sense that you value human life and that you value the life and health of your workers. And there's certain circumstances where vaccine mandates

make sense. There are certain circumstances where they don't really. And I think that there is overall, it's far better. In D.C. right now, you have to show a vaccine card and a photo ID to go into most businesses. Right. I think that's a big difference between that and saying, telling Navy SEALs, you need to be vaccinated. So, for example, Navy SEALs should be vaccinated. Members of the Marine Corps and the Navy should be vaccinated because your health matters to national security, for example. In other contexts, I think employer vaccine mandates are wise. Should you be vaccinated to enter a restaurant? No, I don't think so. I don't think so. But, you know, what's really interesting to me is where you live just dictate so much of your experience regarding this

epidemic because all of the stuff you're describing of going around where you live is none of the stuff that's going on where I live. The shelves are full. There isn't the main frustration right now is people are just like, are we again having trouble testing? Really? We can't two years into this pandemic get tests seriously. But a lot of this hubbub that you're seeing about schools closing again and the way that people are reacting in certain parts of the country is just not at all, not at all the way people are reacting elsewhere. And so it's for me, it's kind of like I'm just watching, I feel like I'm watching something happen that has no bearing on the community in the world immediately around me. Jonah, why haven't there been political consequences for this? You live in D.C.,

literally the highest infection zone in the country right now. And if my grocery stores are having trouble across the river, I assume your grocery stores don't even have ramen. So it's worth pointing out, just on this grocery store point, we, The grocery stores near me are not in great shape either. It kind of, it was funny. I actually had a weird deja vu experience of my early days when I lived in Prague, just shortly after the fall or Berlin Wall, where like you could find toilet paper,

but if there was a rumor that there was good toilet paper somewhere, you would like run across town for it because like the toilet paper you could find was just not what you wanted. Anyway, it kind of has that mood. Jonah not into the single ply. and um uh from belarus um but um it is worth just explaining to listeners that dc has a particularly strange cultural dysfunction which is that if you say the word snow three times dc area residents think they are about to undergo the battle of stalingrad and they rush to supermarkets and they rush to

supermarkets and hoard and the city doesn't it is the weirdest thing and like and the problem is it's a collective action problem is like my wife's from alaska she's not afraid of a dc snowstorm but she is afraid that all the people who are afraid of a dc snowstorm are going to ransack the supermarkets so we go to the supermarket too to get ahead of the panic buyers which makes us indistinguishable from panic fires um but more broadly you know i agree with david like when you drive across country you realize how much this is really about blue islands in America. And I think that's an important point. But it's also worth remembering that it's, it's not disentanglable entirely because the inflation rate is high for the entire country.

Right. We just, this morning, we should add into the mix that we had the highest surge in inflation in January or in December since 1982. And I think the inflation in a lot of people's minds is inseparable from the general COVID stuff and people who want to have like clear lanes of accountability and and and criticism um don't understand that we're that for normal Americans it's just like things are a mess and I was told it wasn't going to be a mess and and I think there is going to be and Sarah asked is there going to be accountability I think there is I mean I think and again we're going to get to the the Biden voting stuff in a second I think one of the reasons they're changing the subject to the voting stuff is precisely because they got no place else to go and they're looking

at a long bleak winter of no political accomplishments, which is kind of stupid because they set the standards for themselves so that all the stuff they did, they actually accomplished a lot, but they made it sound like if they didn't accomplish 10x of what they accomplished, they would be failures, so by their own terms, they're failures. I think, you know, it is very difficult to tease out the stuff that is and isn't Biden's fault from the general incompetence of the messaging about all of it. And the one place where I think it is obviously Biden's fault is on the testing. They came into office saying testing is a crisis. We have to fix it. That was a year ago. There is no excuse to be caught this flat-footed on the testing. And I think that the

the real danger for Biden is that this backlash stuff is concentrated in the, these blue islands, and you're seeing lots of liberals talking about how they're rethinking their views on all sorts of things, gosh of the school closures, because of the bad messaging. And that's in his, those are behind his, you know, lines of the base. And so I think that's one of the reasons that I have to rile up people on this other voting stuff. I think, though, two issues, like inflation versus testing are very different to me, because the testing, oddly, it made a ton of sense for everyone to have tests a year ago. Now with Omicron, the test makes so much less sense. A, because you're contagious two days before the test will show that you're positive for some

people. B, because the test will show that you're positive 90 days after you've stopped being contagious for some people. Like, if the test is both under and over inclusive, what's the point of having all these tests available? And so, like, it is a problem that the Biden folks said that was super important and then don't have it available. I think it's a problem, for instance, for the business vaccine mandate, which again, my husband argued at the Supreme Court, I am not an unbiased person in this, but to demand that every business with over 100 people provide test to all of their unvaccinated employees and then you don't have an ability for them to get tests or the test prices are going through the roof because of the scarcity. Like, yeah, that's a big

problem politically for an administration. But like from a practical standpoint, I don't know that testing is what it meant a year ago. Compare that to inflation. Inflation, and we have new numbers this morning, right? Like inflation on pace to be increasing at the highest rate in 40 years. I mean, we really are back in 1979 territory. Everything costing more. I don't know why as the president heading into a midterm election where you could lose control of both houses of Congress, you would talk about anything but what you are doing to curb inflation. And again, something that will not help inflation, of course, is all of the COVID shutdowns. Because what led to at least some of this inflation to begin with was COVID shutdowns creating

labor shortages, labor shortages, creating supply chain issues, scarcity issues. And then inflation followed that. There are other causes. I'm not saying that's the only one. But if you're going to do all of those causes again, what? This is a, like, again, set aside economic terribleness. It is politically the stupidest thing I might have ever seen an administration do. Well, you know, the testing thing, you raise, I think you raise a really important practical point, but I think it's just lost in the reality that people want to know if they have COVID. You know, I mean, that's just a bottom line. I want to. want to know what I've got. And there's this COVID test that there is no reason I shouldn't be

able to access. And Sarah, again, we've talked about this a ton on advisory opinions. Testing scarcity makes the test or Vax mandate, the OSHA test or Vax mandate, unworkable. It just makes it unworkable. So, you know, and it's a very real thing for businesses to bring up to say, wait a minute, our rule is we can test and mask or we can mandate vaccinations, but we can't test what? And so, you know, again, there's no, there's really at this point no excuse for this. There's no excuse for this that we can't reliably test. I mean, my wife waited five hours, five hours for a COVID test. And then, of course, the results arrive two days after her symptoms abate. So, you know, that's where we are almost two years into this pandemic.

And so, yeah, it really is the testing issue, I agree with everything you said, Sarah, about the efficacy, sort of now in the Omicron world and a heavily-vaxed Omicron world, it's not quite as urgent as it was in previous iterations of the virus. But it's still, A, inexcusable, be frustrating, and then, therefore, C, I think a disaster. for the Biden administration. Yeah, but I just push back. I mean, I not push back, but I agree with you that inflation and testing are really very different phenomenon. I'm just not sure that they aren't conflated in a lot of people's heads because what people think is this is just no way to run a railroad, right?

I mean, they think that and they see the unavail, unavailability of tests in the context of also the unavailability of chicken thighs and milk and orange juice and this general sense of like this is not the country that I was told I was going to get once we got this guy campaigning on a return to normalcy and said he wasn't going to shut down the economy. He was going to shut down the virus. And there's a lot of things I think that you can't hold Biden accountable for as a strict matter. Like the mutation of a virus in South Africa or wherever it first came from is not his fault. Right. And a lot of the inflation stuff is not his direct. his fault, but you get the sense that he is, that his political responses to all of it are to

double down on stuff that is not tailored to dealing with any of it. I mean, so like we get inflation and all of a sudden the same bill he was pushing for bill back better is now an anti-inflation bill without any meaningful policy changes. You know, and you, you can go, he's done this kind of thing a lot. And it just seems like he's not in charge. He's not in command of the situation and he's letting a lot of young people who follow Twitter push him around. And that's not great, Bob. Yeah, just I would say that the problem to me anyway is less his messaging and more reality. I mean, I think the reality that he's trying to deal with, as you say, Jonah, it's so unlike what he told us reality would be like when he was running for president that you don't

have to have bad messaging or good, bad messaging or good messaging isn't going to make the, the suburban moms who were frustrated with school closures like Joe Biden anymore when they're, when they're not doing anything to change this situation. They're not going to make more tests available. They're not going to bring down prices. They're not going to put bread on the shelves. The biggest problem he faces is reality and the fact that reality is not what it, what he said it was going to be. I think the messaging problem exacerbates that reality and just makes it worse. I mean, you know, remember on inflation last spring, they were not only claiming that it was going to be transitory. This was all going to disappear. I mean, it was almost like what Donald

Trump said about COVID, right? I mean, this is, this is nothing. This is going to go away. It's going to disappear. But they not only said that they mocked the people, including people like Larry Summers, who said, now, you know what, I think this might be a bigger deal. They have done this again and again and again, there's the famous moment where Jen Saki takes a question from Mara Liason of NPR at her press briefing on testing. And Mara says, well, gosh, maybe just send tests to make these tests more available. And Saki very mockingly says, what are we going to do? Send them to everybody across the country. And three weeks later, they were in effect making them available, sending them to everybody across the country. It's that kind of like arrogance in

they're messaging while they're failing on the grappling with reality and the policy solutions to this that I think potentially spells real electoral disaster for the president. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is the consequences of not having life insurance can be serious. That kind of financial strain on top of everything else is why life insurance indeed matters. Ethos is an online platform that makes getting life insurance fast and easy

to protect your family's future in minutes, not months. Ethos keeps it simple. It's 100% online, no medical exam, just a few health questions. You can get a quote in as little as 10 minutes, same day coverage, and policies starting at about two bucks a day, build monthly, with options up to $3 million in coverage, with a 4.8 out of five-star rate. on trust pilot and thousands of families already applying through ethos. It builds trust. Protect your family with life insurance from ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash dispatch.

That's ETHOS.com slash dispatch. Application times may vary. Rates may vary. Well, speaking of that, let's move then to the president's speech yesterday. He flew to Atlanta, despite protest. is too strong a term. But voting rights, activists and groups asked him not to go. He went anyway. Stacey Abrams, the presumptive Democratic gubernatorial nominee for Georgia, asked them, didn't show up, didn't want to be seen with him, said she had a scheduling conflict.

Georgia is going to be the center of the 22 midterms, right? It's a state that Joe Biden won, that's a traditionally red state. There's a Senate seat up for grabs that, If Democrats hold on to it, very hard for Republicans to take back the Senate. Frankly, if Republicans take it back, reasonably hard for Republicans not to take back the Senate. That gubernatorial seat is filled with all sorts of emotion at this point because there's going to be a dramatic Republican primary between sort of the Trump forces versus the, no, the 2020 election wasn't stolen forces in the primary. And then, of course, a redo of the general election against Dacey Abrams, Joe Biden parachuting into all of this to give a speech on voting rights legislation, the John Lewis Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act.

I listened to the whole thing. If I sound worked up today as a whole, it is because I think I'll be very honest. I think maybe for the first time of Joe Biden's presidency, I'm angry. I don't know what other word to use. I'm really angry. I'm disappointed. I'm angry. I'm a little outraged. And I don't use that word lightly. Not Twitter outrage. Like personally, again, I hate when people talk this way. But like I had trouble calming down after the speech and having like a normal dinner, you know, with husband and toddler. Let me read you the part that really got under my skin. And then I want to get y'all's reaction. We will choose. The issue is what we choose. democracy over autocracy, light over shadows, justice over injustice. I know where I stand.

I will not yield. I will not flinch. I will defend the right to vote. Our democracy against all enemies, foreign and yes, domestic. Joe Biden, the guy who ran on lowering the temperature, on competency, on bipartisanship, on bringing the country together after four,

Again, whether you like Donald Trump or not, for not great years for the country in terms of pitting people against one another. And Joe Biden, in talking about two pieces of legislation that members of his own party are not willing to advance, said that anyone who does not support the legislation is an enemy of the country. I don't understand. Mitt Romney was the first person in U.S. history to vote to convict a person, a president of his own party in an impeachment trial. He doesn't support this legislation. Maybe it's not a lack of courage. Maybe he just disagrees with the policy. And maybe he's wrong. Maybe it's good policy. And we'll talk about some of that. But to say that he is an enemy of the United States of America or that anyone who doesn't support this is an enemy, is a enemy. exactly what Joe Biden said he was not going to do to this country. Jonah, up to you.

Once again, I think you're way too easy on Biden. No, in all seriousness, I'm totally with you. I thought it was a reprehensible, demagogic, and totally irresponsible speech. And I think what Chuck Schumer is doing, so let's not just put it all on Biden, is outrageous and reprehensible. I heard him this morning crapping all over Mitt Romney as a sort of a dishonest player in all of this. And the thing is, you would think, if you actually believed that democracy was in peril, you might try to figure out a piece of legislation that wasn't in effect written two years before you thought democracy was in peril. but also that might be written in a way that could get Mitt Romney and Susan Collins

and a bunch of and Lisa Murkowski to vote for it. But there's no such interest whatsoever in doing that. There's in fact very little effort to get it in the kind of shape that would make Joe Manchin who was the secretary of state of his own state and actually cares about this stuff more enthusiastic to do it. It is such an obvious Trojan horse against the filibuster. And when you add in the fact that the other evidence that they have for the return of Jim Crow, which again, I'm just going to bang my spoon on my high chair about this, Jim Crow was not primarily about voting.

You know, I mean, like the discrimination in the polling places was very bad. I don't want to say like it sounds like I'm endorsing it. But it was part and parcel of a system of apartheid that treated certain Americans as less. worthy human beings who got different tiers of justice who could be killed by lynch mobs that to me is worse than the voting stuff and now they're saying they're basically defining jim crow down to like restricting the availability of ballot drop boxes to pre-covid measure levels or making voting as hard as it is in delaware or new york in some circumstances i think the the georgia law was a not worth passing. I don't think it really did a lot that was really vital or important or

anything like that. But to say that it is that if you endorse it and you don't allow the feds to federalize elections in a way that will erase the state's power to do election law, that you're on the side of Bull Connor is just grotesque, manician kind of politics. And what baffles me about it is, I think it's stupid, politics. Because I don't think the thing's going to pass. And you're going to rev up your base. You're going to, you're going to convince it. He is doing in many ways exactly what Donald Trump did. I mean, we mentioned this in the morning dispatch. Donald Trump said there's no point for his his fans to vote because the system is rigged. The logic of what Biden is saying is,

is there's no point for you to vote because the system is rigged. And that's what we're trying to fix. But if we don't fix it, your voting will be pointless from here on out. What a dumb message to send to your own voters when you know it's probably not going to pass. So it's the committing evil in the name of political malpractice is somehow it's a padid de du of assininity that just drives me just bad and I cannot see a defense of it from any angle. Steve, jump in, but also talk about the politics of the filibuster a little because interestingly, I will tell you my position makes no sense, which is that I I like the Senate doing less.

I think Congress doing less at times can be a very good thing for the country. And I like it. I like the counter-majoritarian aspects of the filibuster. That being said, I don't think the filibuster has any sacred power. It was not handed down from the mount. And so I also feel no connection to the filibuster.

Like somehow if they get rid of the filibuster, some norm that, you know, is a sacred part of the American experience is gone either. Well, it's a norm. I mean, it's been happening since the beginning of the Republic, right? So, I mean, whatever, whether you like it or not, it's a norm. And I think, again, to the earlier point, Joe Biden came to office in part by promising to reestablish norms. Joe Biden gave a barn burner of a speech on the Senate floor in 2005, saying it was one of the most important speeches he's ever given in defense of the filibuster. You know, there's plenty of political, hypocrisy to go around on the filibuster. It's hard to come up with an issue in which both sides acquit themselves more poorly than their discussions of the filibuster because everybody just flips. Not everybody, but almost everybody just flips. Debt ceiling and judicial appointments are other ones where it just depends on. Yeah, yeah. And often related, right? I mean, in a couple of cases,

those are related to the debates we're having on the on the filibuster as well. But I see what you tried to do there, sir. I think you tried to distract me. from picking up on your point and Jonah's because you both went too easy on Biden on his speech yesterday. I was so mad. I was absolutely disgraceful. Absolutely disgusting. And it would have been disgusting if it were just from some run of the mill politician.

I don't care whether it was a Republican or Democrat. Just in the manner in which it was so misleading, so incredibly. dishonest for all the reasons that both you and Jonah have laid out that I won't rehash here. I mean, at one point, we've got a fact check going up on the speech on our website here pretty soon, but at one point, you know, Biden talked about remembering that this being the first of the many times that he was arrested. We don't have any evidence that he was arrested in voting rights protests. I mean, just flat out fabrications. Yeah, because he knows. He stopped himself after he'd already said it. Like you could see in his face that he knew he had just said something that just

had no bearing in reality. Yeah. I mean, I would go, I don't think this is just dumb. I think it is so grossly irresponsible to so further doubts about the integrity of U.S. elections at a time when, as David wrote a couple weeks ago in his column, we need everybody sort of on board to prevent the things to make impossible the things that Donald Trump and his team tried to take advantage of when we're reforming our country's elections. We can't afford to have somebody demagogically giving speeches trying to address problems that, let's be honest, more or less don't really exist. There are huge, huge problems in this country. I would wager that voter suppression is just not one of them. You look around and it's far, far more easier to vote everywhere than it ever

has been in the past. If you look at the kinds of reforms that Biden denounced in the Georgia law, they're far more advanced in certain cases than the laws that are on the books in Delaware. And he's pretending that this is some great outrage. You know, we launched the dispatch and said part of what we wanted to do was give people the benefit of the doubt, address people's best arguments instead of their worst arguments, not sort of move instantly to outrage. I think Biden's speech doesn't let us do that because there are, he didn't make any good arguments.

It was all crap. And I think it will have lasting effects. I mean, we can get more into the politics of it. It's hard for me to understand how this was anything but a crass political move to gin up his base before the 2022 midterms because he's failing on all of these other fronts. This is the way he thinks to get people excited. And sadly, I think this is a this is a sort of tried and true play from Democratic playbooks going back years. Janet Reno, when she was Bill Clinton's attorney general, launched a series of investigations into supposed voter suppression

that didn't actually exist. These things didn't happen. We never heard the results of these investigations because the whole point was the announcement of them, was to scare people into going to the polls because they thought their votes were going to be taken away. And it's absolutely disgusting that Joe Biden would claim that people like Mitt Romney or others who have questions about this

are somehow like George Wallace. It was really gross. So, David, I guess my question to you is, I'm not actually sure, first of all, Who was the audience for this speech? Yeah, that's a great question. Nicole Wallace. Second, if the voting rights groups didn't want you there and said that you were all, you know, speech and no legislation,

Stacey Abrams doesn't want to appear with you because you hurt her electorally, not help. Who was this speech for and is Steve right that it's a good way to rile up the base or is the base like so far past it that they don't even trust Joe Biden anymore? and they're kind of smart enough to know that this speech was only to rile them up and not because he's actually trying to get it done. Yeah, I honestly don't know who the speech was for. The basing up at the base, I think, is the idea that this speech, going to Georgia and delivering this speech is going to rile up the base enough to reverse Biden's political fortunes when, let's be honest, he doesn't even have 50 votes on this legislation.

It's not as if he's going in there with the United Democratic Front where, hey, I just have to give it this last rhetorical push and we're going to actually get rid of the filibuster and get something done. He doesn't even have 50 votes. And so for me, it's just really hard to figure this out. It's not hard to figure out his rhetoric, though, because this is Joe Biden. Joe Biden, when he goes to racial issues, he has a long history of this stuff. I mean, remember the put y'all back in chains comment about the Romney Ryan ticket. And I'll say that again, the Romney Ryan ticket. He has one play in the playbook, which is, you're with me or you are with the Confederates and the Army of Northern Virginia. I mean, that's basically the playbook that he goes to.

I mean, literally he says, do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis. And so he has this one play in the playbook. I mean, maybe he thinks it worked in 2012, maybe, but he was also, he had hitched his political star, his political wagon to a political star in Barack Obama who didn't need that kind of rhetoric to become president. And so I don't know exactly, honestly, what he's doing here. There's been some really interesting analysis in recent years that says, or in recent months, I should say, that says, if you really want to know who are the radicals on the Democratic side, well, of course, Twitter, but also funders, funders, Democratic donors, large Democratic donors, are tending to pour money into more

radical causes. And so I think that part of what's going on here is you have a combination of a Twitter base, which is so small that you can't even really call it a base, and an awful lot of funding that is really pouring into these issues and really pouring into this issue in particular in a way that maybe perhaps is deceiving people into thinking that this is something that people care about on the scale of millions instead of on the scale of tens or hundreds of thousands. And I think he's just swinging and missing here, but he's swinging and missing in a particularly destructive way by raising the rhetorical stakes at exactly the time when we just don't need this at all. This is the least constructive because the idea that you look at Georgia, if you're

a Georgia voter right now, the idea that if Georgia's current law stands, that it's anything like Bull Connor or Jefferson Davis or George Wallace, do words have meaning? I mean, these are historical figures who did things in the world. And it wasn't restrict early voting by a couple of days. Well, and this is, I do, we all agree with this point, but I want to put it out there before the comment section blows up. There are academic studies that show that the laws or restrictions the Democrats are pointing to that amount of voter suppression

actually have no such effect. I've put them in the suite for those who want to go read the studies. That, in fact, it turns out people who want to go read the studies, that in fact, it turns out people who want to vote, vote, and things like that don't matter. Now, you know, just because you're willing to wait five hours in line doesn't mean you should have to wait five hours in line. I'm very open to that at the same time. And we've discussed this before, but I just want to mention it in this podcast context as well. Republicans who are trying to fix voter fraud, I've worked in three presidential campaigns overseeing legal teams. It is my job

to get creative about how someone can move enough votes to change the result of a statewide election, how, of course, presidential elections are decided by statewide elections. And I, to this day, have not come up with one. Again, I've written all the ways I've thought of in the sweep another year and a half or so back. I explained how it would work. I explained why it wouldn't work, because basically you'd need like an area 51 level conspiracy with too many people involved. And the only one that I think could work, again, not to sway a statewide election, is to go to your opponent's neighborhood, collect all the absentee ballots you can find, throw them in the trash, which is basically what happened in that North Carolina congressional

race. In the end, they were able to collect what looks like about a thousand ballots. They got caught. By Republicans. By Republicans. It was done by Republicans. Republicans were the offenders. And they redid the congressional race. My point being, both sides are trying to solve a problem that should rate, even if their version of reality is sort of correct, should rate like so far below the fact that there's no chicken or ground beef at my. grocery store and that if there were chicken or ground beef, it would cost 40% more than it did last year, the great bacon shortage, that Chicago public schools were closed for no reason that Jonah's daughter's, you know, college is going virtual, which does make her available for more

babysitting, which I appreciate. But at what cost? I have a political question to change gears a little bit if it's all right so like you've all who had a wonderful piece in The New York Times about how to make Sarah making Sarah's point which is that both parties are subscribing to a narrative that in fact is not reality like it just doesn't exist as a serious problem the either the voter suppression stuff or the voter fraud stuff not saying there aren't anecdotal things but yeah it's just not the metaphysical threat that both parties are obsessed with they're following a fake narrative.

I want to change you also makes another point which I think is a very important one. If you were going to design in the abstract a bad reason to abolish the filibuster to take you could you could almost it's hard to come up with a better one than saying okay imagine Congress is split 50-50

the narrowest democratic control or party control in American history, and you're going into midterms that you are almost undoubtedly going to lose control. So what do you want to do? You want to abolish the filibuster to cram through changes to election laws that the other party, again, misguidingly thinks are more catastrophic than they are, but be that as it may. You also want to federalize national elections, which I do think would be catastrophic. And then, like literally, what, four months later after you actually get this legislation passed, you're going to hand the keys of the Senate to the party that you've enraged

and tell them you don't have to follow the filibuster anymore. What galaxy brain scheme do, what is like the long run thinking that goes into this scheme for Democrats? I mean, unless you honestly believe changing all passing HR1 and the John Lewis thing will forestall

Democrats winning in 2022? Why do this now? This is one of the other fundamental flaws on both sides, by the way. Republicans think

that voter suppression helps them win elections. And there is absolutely no evidence. None. And Democrats think that more

people voting means that that delta is all their people or at least 80% their people. Nope. As again, 2020 showed in many districts, not true. Also, just increasing, you know, sort of bi-Poc voters, people of color voting. Nope. It turns out in Texas and Florida, that didn't help Democrats. So again, real misunderstanding if it's purely political of what either side thinks they're accomplishing. Hey, Steve, can, yeah. Can I make just one more quick point about the discussion of all of this? I mean, you know, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't,

think anybody would point to the four of us and say, wow, this is a bunch of rabid, knee-jerk, partisan Republican types, right? We've spent a fair amount of time criticizing the Republican Party and exactly that kind of partisanship. And these are, you know, the arguments we're making maybe in stronger terms than others might are totally legitimate arguments. You saw Mitt Romney give a seven-minute speech, basically laying this out in a, I would say, a calmer, more sober-minded fashion than we have here today, but making a series of very good substantive points on this. And you know what's basically been missing from the media coverage of this? Those points. I mean, read the New York Times piece this morning. It's a news analysis,

but it's basically an amplification of the arguments that Joe Biden made yesterday and going further. And, you know, you don't see in it the, the, kinds of counterpoints that we're making here that Mitt Romney has made that are totally legitimate and I think you know again we don't spend a ton of time doing doing media criticism so when we do it I hope people pay attention it's the kind of thing that's going to make more Republicans say forget it I'm out I'm not paying attention to this crap from mainstream media they don't they allow Joe Biden to go and pretend that this is Jim Crow 2.0 what bullshit is that this was a rating. This is going to make, this is going to make more Republicans who are paying attention

say, I'm just out. I don't want to listen to them. And it'll drive them further to places like Breitbart, Gateway Pundit, other places that they're going to hear what, what they want to hear because they don't trust anybody else. It's, it kind of sounds like you're making my January 6th point from last week, just a little bit, just a little bit. No, I'm not at all making. I'm not They're not making that point. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex presale tickets can score you a spot trackside. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex.

Pre-sale tickets for future events subject to availability and varied by race. Turns and conditions apply. Learn more at amex.ca. slash Y Annex. Okay, David, I want to move to the substance a little. You can still bring in the politics. But substantively, there's individual. things that this bill does. It sets a standard for how many weeks you have to have

early voting, for no excuse, mail ballots, election day is a holiday, automatic voter registration, same-day voter registration. I think, first of all, I'm in favor of many of those, if not all of them. The difference is that it would federalize all of these standards. We We wouldn't have 50 state elections. We would have sort of one national election with maybe some quirky things in your state. But the fact that this legislation even discusses, you know, how close you can get to someone handing out food or water. And I realize that's sort of a niche thing because they're all worked up that they think that in the state of Georgia you can't hand out food or water to people standing in line. And I believe it's just that it's the same rule as many states have. Some states are 20 feet, some states are 50 feet, some states are 150 feet from the door to the polling place to be able to hand out partisan material that can include bottles of water that have like the candidates, you know, logo on it, et cetera. So this federalizes our elections. I think Republicans have a knee-jerk response that federalizing stuff is bad. I'm not as knee-jerk about

that. I'd like to have a little bit of a conversation on truly whether it's so bad if we have standards for how we hold federal elections, right? They are federal elections for federal representatives. Why shouldn't that be set by the federal government? Now, the interesting question I have is, okay, I'm from a constitutional standpoint, let's get a little advisory opinions going here. So isn't an election of a federal representative or senator really isn't that different from the election of an elector? And a president, presidential elector, and isn't that constitutionally really handed over to the state legislatures the manner of that election? Now, so that's the interesting question that I have here with a lot of

this is there's actually kind of a gray area here constitutionally as to, to what extent can the federal government federalize a presidential election? That's an open question here. And everyone's acting like, well, we can do what we want to do with the presidential election. I do think there's more latitude on senators and representatives, but we can do what we want to do on the presidential election. And I think that that's a very much, that is very much of an open question. And I would say that not all of this necessarily would pass muster. So I think that that's when Republicans say, hey, I'm against federalizing, especially a presidential election, they have a constitutional basis for saying that. That's one of the reasons why I have circled the wagons around the Electoral Count

Act and reforming the Electoral Count Act, which is aimed directly at the part of the presidential election process that is constitutionally, that constitutionally happens in Congress. And so I have a lot, there are several provisions here that I like. I like the idea of an election day holiday. There are, I like, you know, early, I like uniformity and early voting. I'm not necessarily the biggest fan of early voting for a number of reasons, but I like the idea of uniformity and early voting. I like some of these ideas. I have a real question in our constitutional republic as to whether they're constitutional, to be honest. Jonah, you said that you thought federalizing the election was really, really bad. Why?

Um, in, well, for a bunch of, first of all, because I'm one of those Yahoo's who just thinks they hear the word federalizing and they want to flip the safety on their rifle, but, um, but no, more seriously, I, we want lots and it's sort of like fighting the pandemic. We actually want lots and lots of fire breaks in our system where if we see in the case of, pandemics, bad policies being implemented, we can learn from them. In the case of elections, if there is fraud in the current system where it's handled by each state, it's localized. It can be identified. If you have the essentially the Department of Justice as an arm of the executive branch running elections in all 50 states and all these counties, it has been known to, to happen that attorneys general have been partisan figures. I don't want to like shock you guys. And when you concentrate that power in one place, it makes it a lot easier to actually have bad decisions made at scale in a way that you can't have at the local level. And I think that

is a better way to run a railroad. I also just simply think that if you want to federalize a lot of this stuff, amend the Constitution to it. Because like, it's like the, the states are supposed to be sovereign and they're supposed to be the ones in charge of their elections. And I know the federal government has a little bit of a say-so in these things, but the idea of having the feds take it over entirely just strikes me, you know, and I know I am unfrozen caveman non-constitutional lawyer here, but like it just strikes me as is antithetical to the thrust of the constitutional regime that we have. Steve, are you against making Election Day a national holiday? I'm okay with that. I guess I don't have strong feelings about that. Yeah, I guess I

wouldn't oppose. I oppose the what about two weeks of early voting? Two months of early two weeks, two weeks of early voting mandatory two weeks of early voting. Yeah, sure I'm not opposed to it in principle. I don't want the federal government making that decision necessarily. I'd rather have states make their own decisions based on conditions in in their states. Um, I guess part of my question to you, Steve, is that we're moving away from federalism in so many other parts of how our country is set up. You know, maybe two of the only things really left are criminal justice codes are still written by states.

There are very few federal crimes of the people who are currently incarcerated. If you have a problem with mass incarceration, I think it's, what, 85% are in state facilities, not federal, and elections, and maybe, I don't know, maybe it's not working out so well, right? I was going to say, how does that move away from federalization generally working? I don't know, but like if states are no longer, I think, the polity that they were. You don't identify first with your state anymore, the way that you did in 1820 or in 1890, frankly. And so maybe that part of the union experiment, like maybe we're just over it. But maybe people, maybe we'd be in a lot better position if people did, whether it's the state, whether it's their localities.

I mean, look, I mean, there was a sort of fundamental wisdom to what the founders argued about the government closest to the people will govern vast. I mean, I think that's been borne out again and again and again. We can give countless examples of that. I don't see that nationalizing these, it was part of the part of what, part of the problem with our elections is that everything has become a national issue these days. It's like there are no local issues anymore. And you can find people to chin up outrage on any of a variety of national issues, spin them into some kind of angry coalition and look around. These are the outtimes we're getting. I mean, I think that that largely explains

what Joe Biden is trying to do here. And it's not, it's not, it's not, good for any of us. I don't think it's good for any of us. All right. Let's end on a more negative note. Let's be honest. So here's my question. Even more. This has been a relentlessly negative podcast. That's right. The worst three-hour drive in America, David. Three-hour or more, correct? Correct. Yes. That was the original tweet from, yeah. Yeah, there's the answer. to that is absolutely the drive from Nashville to Atlanta. It is supposed to take slightly under four hours with little traffic. The last time I did it, it took me seven and a half hours coming and going both directions, seven and a half hours, which led me to vow to never voluntarily

do this ever again. I don't care how much you broaden the interstate highway system. You could make at 30 lanes on each side in Atlanta. And from about, I don't know, 1.30 until 9.30 at night, it's going to be bumper to bumper. And then in the morning, I guess, from like 5 a.m. till 125, it's going to be bumper to bumper.

It's insane. And then you go through this Chattanooga choke point, which I swear to you, you take some of the highest traffic volumes in the United States of America and just decide suddenly to, to funnel them through one lane. Just one lane. Why? I don't know, but one lane. It is absolutely remarkable. And then you've decided to compound it all by saying, you know what we're

going to do? Eternal road construction. It's not an actual project. The project is the construction. And it has to be there. And it has to continue for at least 20 years. And at no point can you broaden beyond that one lane. So that's the answer to that. question. Jonah. Okay, we should point out that this was from a tweet, which we can put in the show notes that got a lot of talk. And I found it compelling in part because a whole bunch of people were talking about like various drives in Nebraska, which all apologies to certain senators is a pretty boring place to drive through. But the fact is, in my experience, the overwhelming majority of crappy driving in this country is

is way disproportionately east of the Mississippi. And I'll take driving at 80 miles an hour through flat boring Nebraska or or eastern South Dakota or any of that kind of stuff over I-66 or I-95 from Central Virginia trying to get into D.C. on a Saturday, right? As Senator Tim Kane found out. Exactly. Or any place

basically on I 95 in Florida. And so I think that the worst three hours, you know, if you're not talking about just purely a traffic jam like O'Hare to downtown Chicago, but if you're talking about the absolute worst drive in terms of both being scenically unpleasant and physically unpleasant to drive in, I think it's got to be basically that New Jersey. turnpike through Delaware Memorial Bridge before Maryland starts to get pretty, where it is just there's just nothing redeeming about it, except you might, you're in my case associated with going home, and that's the price you pay to go home. So that's mine. Steve? I mean, I do think our West Coast L.A. listeners might quibble with the claim that it's all east of the...

Almost all. There's some spots in California, to be sure. And I-5 coming out of Seattle is terrible, too. But it's pretty. Well, you got close in a couple of your mentions and your rambling comment there, Jonah, you got close to the correct answer. I would say. Ohio Turnpike, right? Yeah. Ohio Turnpike is pretty, actually, I would say Pennsylvania Turnpike, heading into Ohio is really awful. The drive from South Chicago to Milwaukee, trying to get through Chicago. I used to have to do this every time I went home from college in Indiana. And we would time our drives so that we were doing them at midnight so that there wouldn't be Chicago traffic. And there was Chicago traffic every single time. So really bad there. But the correct answer is it's a three-hour drive from Richmond to D.C. And it should only be a 90-minute drive. But it's a three-hour drive on the best days. And as Tim Cain found out, It is sometimes a whatever, 27 hour drive sometimes. I'm now at the point where whenever I'm headed south, I will loop 30 to 40 miles out of my way,

usually to the east and go through Maryland, like stoplight traffic Maryland, in order to avoid 95 south or 95 north. Because if you get stuck, you could be stuck for several hours. at least with the traffic, it's going to take you a half hour longer. You bake that in, but it's probably only going to take you a half hour longer. Okay. So the answer that I, I'm, it's tough, right? Because Austin to Dallas is a miserable drive. It should be three hours, but instead it's usually five. It's, you know, not the prettiest part of Texas, I would argue. But on the one hand, you've got, you've got Buckees to stop at. You've got some great barbecue

to stop at on the way, and you're in Texas. So it can't be the worst drive in America. But on the other hand, you are trying to get to Dallas, so your destination sucks. And so I think that is my pick. Austin driving toward Dallas. You just know you're making life mistakes and you're going to be there for five hours. And, you know, Buckees is great, but Buckees can't fix your destination. Yeah. The stretch to Pedro's south of the border is enough to make you cut yourself.

But like I agree. There's a lot of bad driving out there. Houston to Austin, on the other hand, is one of the most beautiful. It's two hours and 45 minutes. It's a gorgeous drive as you head through the hill country. Ruskas, which is about the halfway point, has incredible Kalachis that you've got to stop for. So there. Thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate all of you. We look forward to the comments section and we'll see you in the comments. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online. Whether you're building a site for your business, your writing, or a new project, Squarespace brings everything together in one place.

With Squarespace's cutting-edge design tools, you can launch a website that looks sharp from day one. Use one of their award-winning templates or try the, the new Blueprint AI, which tailors a site for you based on your goals and style. It's quick, intuitive, and requires zero coding experience. You can also tap into built-in analytics and see who's engaging with your site and email campaigns to stay connected with subscribers or clients. And Squarespace goes beyond design. You can offer services, book appointments, and receive payments directly through your site.

It's a single hub for managing your work and reaching your audience without having to piece together a bunch of different tools. All seamlessly integrated. Go to Squarespace.com slash dispatch for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code dispatch to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.