The Dispatch Podcast - Biden's Agenda Meets Reality

Episode Date: June 9, 2021

With President Biden’s domestic agenda breaking down as he heads off on his first foreign trip, the gang talks about what it will take to get anything done in Washington. One person responsible for a great deal of stress for President Biden is Sen. Joe Manchin. Is he helping or hurting the Democrats? Plus, as U.S. forces begin to withdraw from Afghanistan, Sarah, Steve, Jonah, and David worry what will take its place. Finally: doom porn. Need we say more? Show Notes: -ProPublica tax story -Politico’s story on Biden and Manchin’s ‘Joemance’ -Cicadas vs. the presidential press plane -Joe Manchin: Why I'm voting against the For the People Act -Are We Destined for a Trump Coup in 2024? - Ross Douthat -Americans Are Dangerously Divided on the Insurrection - William Saletan Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome back to the dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isgir, joined by David French, Steve Hayes and Jonah Goldberg. Today, we are going to talk about the stalled Biden agenda, whether Joe Manchin is helping or hurting Democrats, the CIA's role in Afghanistan as it evolves. And finally, is the doom and gloom over 2024 overstating the case? Let's dive in, Jonah, Biden's agenda. Where does it stand? I think it's stalled, stuck, problematic. Just before we started recording this, I saw on TV that the official infrastructure talks have broken down. And I have a, my LA Times column is up at the dispatch.

My basic thesis is that Biden was misled by a bunch of liberal historians who said he could be FDR. He was misled by the fact that his first COVID relief package was very, very popular. And they seem to have assumed that because that was popular, other aspects of the Biden agenda would be popular. it turns out that um not to use your lawyerly like latin stuff but legislation that gives people just big lump sums of cash in their pocket no strings attached tends to be legislatively sui generis and um is not necessarily doesn't tell you about the popularity of other democratic agenda items and um and so my my my question before the house as we

used to say in Oxford-style debating. Is Biden's problem that he thinks he's the president of a country where he has 60 seats in the Senate and a supermajority in the House when, in fact, he has to struggle to get 50 seats? And I put it to you, Steve. Yeah, that's a very, actually a very good way of framing it. I would say, yes, that's Biden's problem. But his bigger problem is that many progressives in his party believe that he is in charge of a party that can simply will things.

into existence. So he's getting grief. The interesting report on CNN from the Democratic Senate lunch yesterday, where Kirsten Sinema said in light of the fact that the talks are breaking down on infrastructure, she was going to make another last ditch attempt. She and Joe Manchin, we're going to talk to some moderate Republicans, try to get them back on board, revive these talks, talk about potentially some other issues in the stalled Biden agenda. And apparently after she left, according to this CNN report, one Democrat, progressive after another, stood up and said, enough. We're done with bipartisanship. This is crazy. We're losing the agenda. This cannot work. Masey Hirono, a Democratic senator from Hawaii, said something like, I'm sick of bipartisanship

or something to that effect. Sheldon White House from Rhode Island, another progressive, offered similar sentiments, the problem that those Democrats face, both in the Senate and then the outspoken progressive caucus in the House, is mass. They can't do that. They can walk away from bipartisanship. If they walk away from bipartisanship, nothing happens. They can pass an infrastructure bill or part of an infrastructure bill on reconciliation, which is the complicated process by which Democrats can pass legislation with budget-related outcomes, but with only 50 votes. So 50 votes plus Vice President Kamala Harris. But they can only do that on infrastructure. Everything else that we're talking about, police reform, the sort of fake election reform bill that Democrats

have been pushing. One thing after another after another dies unless there's bipartisan support for it. So what you're facing is, I mean, in some ways, it is reminiscent of what you had from some Republicans in the 2013-2014 time frame, where Ted Cruz and others would say, we can sort of will Obamacare out of existence, despite the fact that Barack Obama is president. Now, the congressional makeup was different, of course, at the time, and there were ways that Republicans could make their arguments. There were benefits to making the arguments that Republicans made against Obamacare just in terms of. of framing for the 2014 midterm elections. But you can't simply declare that you're sick of bipartisanship and then will the agenda to pass. It doesn't work that way.

So I heard, I know we're not supposed to like key off of TV cable punditry, but that guy, Anan Giaritas, I just don't know how to pronounce his last name. They had him on Morning Joe to talk about this pro-Publica story, about which I think is outrage and one day we'll talk about it but um uh Josh Barrow was also on and Josh made absolutely legitimate means more liberal than I am points about what you could do to the tax code to fix these alleged problems and yada yada yada um and he was talking about how the Democrats might be able to do that when some of these things expire and in Congress blah blah, blah, blah, blah. But it may be even the next Congress to be more possible to get some of

this stuff done. And Anan Jihadis responds, I don't, I think this all misses the point. We shouldn't be talking about what is plausible or possible in one Congress or another. We should be talking about what really needs to be done. Oh my gosh. And, and then he goes off about a wealth tax and all this kind of stuff. And so, Sarah, I mean, I'm long on record saying both parties are determined to be minority parties. Isn't, isn't this a great example of how primary bubbles and blue Twitter and blue and checkmark Twitter bubbles make people disdainful of actual facts on the ground in reality? And that drives so much of the debate is about what ought rather than what is. I also think that they're missing a point on this infrastructure bill. By failing to get 10 Republican votes on the

infrastructure bill, they can still pass an infrastructure bill, probably a bigger one, a broader one, than the one they could get with 10 Republican votes. That was always kind of the holdup, I think, in the Democratic Senate caucus of why they were so upset with this effort at bipartisanship. But what Biden, I think, knows, and I think at least some at the White House know of why they were pursuing a strategy in the first place, is that it's a gateway drug. If you can get 10 Republicans show good faith in these negotiations, there's all sorts of stuff they cannot do through reconciliation.

Reconciliation, to use an overly simplified version of it, you can only do with money, things that are money-based. You can't do it with things that simply change the way laws work. I'm thinking here of qualified immunity, immigration reform, gun control. You can't do any of those through the reconciliation process. You have to have 10 Republicans. By cutting down the infrastructure talks now and sort of cowtowing, I think, to the Democratic caucus in the Senate, because yes, they'll still get an infrastructure deal. They will. It's correct. But they're not going to get any of those other things because Republicans were negotiating in good

faith. The White House has acknowledged that. I think it's pretty clear by their frustration on both sides. That to me is a sign of good faith negotiations when both sides seem exhausted and frustrated. To throw that away when they weren't yet at a stalemate, Republicans were still coming back with new proposals. The White House was still coming back with their new versions. To simply stop talks at this point, I think will signal bad faith to those potential 10 Republicans that you would need on police reform, immigration reform, any sort of gun agreement. And so I think then they're throwing away the rest of his legislative agenda over this. I think that's a mistake.

I think they could have gotten 10 senators. I think you saw like Tim Scott's heart sink when that statement went out from Shelleymore Capito. And in fact, his statement later yesterday was that he does not think that June is a viable timeline anymore for criminal justice reform. That has to be at least in part because you can't then say there's no log rolling going on. There's no infrastructure log rolling of look. Let's do the pay for this other way. In exchange, I'll be one of your 10 votes on DACA. That's gone now. It's a very, very, very short-sighted worldview from the Democratic caucus. And I agree primaries have something to do with

I mean, this is why ranked choice voting, Jonah, it's coming up right under, right under the Election Commission. So I'm excited to see how New York turns out in a week. So I don't want to, because our next topic is the Crown Regent Joe Manchin, and I don't want to infringe upon that. But so, David, do you think what, I mean, it is, I think it's fair to say early in the Biden administration. do you think it's possible though given that the reality the political reality is so much

different than what they came in hoping it would be or thinking it was does Biden have the bandwidth and the flexibility within his administration to actually change gears and deal with the political facts on the ground and or do you think he's just going to keep trying to go big and and come up short i mean he he had you have you You know, this is a guy who was a legislator for 300 years before he became president. So in theory, he's got the bandwidth and the flexibility and the experience to transition from, oh, wait, I'm FDR into, wait a minute, or, hey, I'm FDR to, wait a minute, I've got a narrow, narrow. I'm James K. Polk. Yeah.

Well, James K. Polk got a lot done in one term, but he did. But, you know, to transition into this compromise or mode, and there are some things that are kind of right there on the table if you want to go, if you want to be more modest. I mean, the policing reform bill, they appear to be somewhat kind of in the neighborhood of close. There is a much more openness on the John L. Lewis Voting Rights Act than there is on this monstrosity of H.R. 1. So there are things that are out there. But what he started out with was sort of, you know, not just a home run swing, but trying to go for a grand slam after grand slam after grand slam, including on some bills like HR1 and the Equality Act that were constructed in such a way that they, truth be told, probably you didn't want to have, you didn't have 50 Democratic senators who truly wanted to vote for them. I mean, and Joe Manchin came out and did some folks of favor on the Democratic side of the aisle by saying no to HR 1. So that meant that it wasn't even argument about the filibuster anymore.

So, yeah, in theory, you've got a guy who was a legislator for decades who now can reset expectations and go for attainable goals. But as you were saying, Joe, I mean, there is a progressive base that's operating in some ways that it's a little bit similar to the way some people. part of the Tea Party operated in the Obama era. And it's not just math. It's almost like it's a civics lesson as well. This is just not how the system works here. And it plays great on Twitter, but not to transition too quickly into the Lord of the Coal Soaked Hills, first of his name, Joe Manchin. But they're asking him not just to light his political career on fire.

they're also asking him to do things he probably doesn't really believe them. So, you know, they're not even really appealing to his core beliefs so much as they're just trying to bully him. And I just don't think that's going to work. Well, let us then move on to the first of his name. Joe Manchin is the 50th vote in a 50-person Democratic majority with the vice president as the tie-breaking vote. There is no legislative bill that can really. reach Joe Biden's desk without Joe Manchin giving his thumbs up. We saw that with Nira Tandin's nomination for the Office of Management Budget. And we saw it this weekend when he said he would

not support H.R.1, the For the People Act. What was interesting about that, though, is he said his reasons for not supporting it. He didn't mention the policies in the bill itself. He said the reasons were that no Republicans supported it and that he thought it would cause further partisan division in the country. So my question to you, Jonah, is, is Joe Manchin hurting Democrats because

they no longer have the talking point that it's only Republicans who are obstructionists here, that in fact, you know, the call's coming from inside the house? Or is he helping Democrats because standing a thwart their more left wing, more partisan goals, he's actually moving the party into a more centrist place for 2022 and giving cover to a lot of other Democrats who might want to vote against this stuff but don't want to get the ire of progressives in their primaries or even in their

general election lose base support, which is it? Yeah. So I think it's the latter. I think he is Long term, he is clearly helping the Democratic Party. And if you define long term as the 2022 midterms or the 232 midterms, you know, I mean, if you're going forward, bringing the Democratic Party centerward is good for the Democratic Party. Actually, just bringing the Democratic Party to where the average Democratic voter is, which is rightward from where the Democratic Party, in why. Washington is would be good for the Democratic Party and you know good for the country which is nice too um but this thing I was describing earlier about the sort of the the intellectual civil war on the left which I also think as a mirror version on the right of the is versus otters right the people who want to talk about the way the world should be versus the way the people

want to deal with the world as it is um for for the people who think that They have some sort of green lantern ring and can just apply as much willpower as possible, and that will change everything. For them, Joe Manchin's a traitor, right? And he's because he's not only, it's not just that he's standing in the way of a lot of bad messaging. I mean, that's one of the great ironies in this is I tweeted earlier this morning that you kind of want a remake of the Twilight Zone where the guy comes running up saying it's a cookbook, it's a cookbook, have some centrist Democrat running into the caucus screaming.

It's a messaging bill. It's a messaging bill. Like this was not intended to be legislation in the first place. But for the crowd who takes their own messaging very seriously and literally, they see Mansion as a demonic figure. And it's just so ludicrous to me because, you know, the pack that launched, the pack that was early getting AOC launched,

literally has fundraising emails saying, let's find the next AOC in West, Virginia. And like, the AOC in West Virginia, if such a person exists, is running a lesbian bookstore in some college town and is not like on the cusp of becoming a political juggernaut in a state that voted for Donald Trump by 39 points. And, um, and so I think the mansion is helping. And I, I think that a lot of people who never could under a lot of elite liberals who never understood why Republicans, not necessarily

me, but not Steve and probably not David. I don't know about Sarah because she was such a rabid partisan. But people who never really understood why a lot of like sincere Republicans got really pissed off at John McCain. Joe Manchin is the

Democrats John McCain. It's not that he's philosophically opposed to everything that they want to do. I mean, he's opposed to some of it. But it's that he's not going along with the procedure. roll everybody vote together stuff and that drives partisans batty and it's kind of fun to watch David it's the tale of the two joes here you have joe Biden who wants to be fDR and you have joe mansion saying i'm not going to go along without bipartisan support some speculate that

joe biden doesn't really understand joe mansion or what he wants what do you think joe mansion wants in all of this? Well, one thing, I don't want to dive too far into his head because I don't know the man, but one thing I bet he wants is to remain a senator. So I don't know. I'm just rank speculation here. You've got to show your math on that. Yeah.

And look, I mean, we got to realize how much of a unicorn Joe Manchin is. I mean, how many senators exist from one party when the other party wins the presidential race in the state by, oh, what? What was it, Jonah, 39? 39 points. That's Corey Gardner. Yeah, that's absurd. That's absurd.

It's remarkable that he hangs on by his fingernails. And so there's got to be at least some acknowledgement that, you know, it's, what is it that we can do that can help Joe Manchin remain a senator in the United States Senate, given that without him as senator, all other things being equal, we don't have the majority. And this is the thing that is, you know, I love the John McCain analogy, Jonah. But one of the things that frustrated people about John McCain is they felt like, hey, here's a guy in what used to be a pretty red state, kind of being a maverick for no reason. Now, you know, John McCain had his reasons. But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to look at Joe Manchin's situation.

And to say he's dealing with political realities that no other Democrat in the Senate is dealing with, period. And there is zero understanding of that. There seems to be zero regard for that, zero concern for that, much less whether or not there's the other question of what are Joe Manchin's sort of actual convictions as a human being. So those might figure into this as well. So it just seems to me to be this remarkable exercise in just total disregard for political reality, much less the reality, that if the Democrats want to expand their majority in the Senate, they're much more likely to do it through more people in the Joe Mansion vein than they are in more people in the AOC vein.

I know AOC is in the House, but you get my meaning. this sort of disregard and not just disregard, but contempt, contempt that a guy who has pulled off, you know, a political miracle, might know what's in his interests here. It's just pretty remarkable to me. Steve, the Republicans are in a bit of a precarious position when it comes to Joe Manchin as well. We've talked about the Democrats that they have to have Joe Manchin in order to get anything to Joe Biden's desk. At the same time, if Joe Manchin's point is, I'm not going to pull the country further into negative polarization, more partisanship by passing Democrat-only far-left-leaning bills, the tacit understanding there is that Republicans are willing on some things to vote for Democratic legislation through compromise.

there hasn't been a lot of signs that that's the case. Does Mitch McConnell now, due to Joe Manchin's op-ed or just who Joe Manchin is, does he feel like he owes Joe Manchin 10 votes on something? Yeah, that's a really good question. And in the aftermath of Republicans sort of abruptly shooting down, Republicans in the Senate abruptly shooting down the January 6th commission, where it looked initially, if you did our Haley Birdwilt was interviewing senators several days before the vote, and it was pretty easy to come up with 10 based on their public comments

Republican senators who would have voted in favor of the commission. And they quickly, after Mitch McConnell made clear that he did not want a January 6th commission, one Republican after another, including those who have said publicly that they were inclined to support, it reversed themselves and eventually the bill was shot down. Manchin put out a highly charged harsh criticism of Republicans in the aftermath of that, suggesting exactly, Sarah, what you're saying that Republicans are far too polarized and far too interested in partisan concerns to put the country and an investigation like the January 6th Commission first. So, We've seen that Joe Manchin, in fact, I mean, he's been, if you just judge him by his rhetoric,

he's been far, far harsher on Republicans than he has on fellow Democrats. With Democrats, he's mostly, his rhetoric is mostly defensive. But, you know, it's, it's, there's not a huge mystery here to what Joe Manchin is doing. I think in addition to the fact that Donald Trump won West Virginia by 39 points, you look at where Joe Manchin is, where his voting record is, he's a pretty moderate guy. These are the things he believes, and he's made no secret of the fact that this was what he was going to do, that he wasn't going to jump out and immediately sort of be, jump on a partisan democratic train in order to pass Joe Biden's agenda. In retrospect, it was very interesting. The week after the election, so the election happens, Joe Biden, pretty clear that Joe Biden wins.

there are some, you know, certainly Trump supporters, Donald Trump himself, made claims about the legitimacy of the election. Most of the semi-serious claims were looked at very quickly and dismissed. And then Joe Biden gives this interview on Fox News to Brett Bear on special report on November 9th. So not a week had passed before Manchin gives this interview. And in this interview, he plants the flag. He says, I am not going to be a vote for the filibuster. Period, full stop, end of story, not happening. And I remember thinking at the time...

But have any reporters asked him a follow-up question about that? Well, there's a actually, there's a really interesting discussion to get to there. I'll return to that in one second. I remember watching at the time and thinking, boy, he sort of, needlessly antagonizing this new administration? Why would he do this? He's kind of signaling that he's going to be a problem for them. And there was some speculation at the time that Mansion was doing this to make himself the new, you know, the king, that he was announcing his power, that he was thumping his chest. And it turns out, I think, that he was smarter than virtually everybody who was commenting

on this. He actually believed in what he was saying and did not want to be the guy who was going to do away with the filibuster and thought it was good to sort of get that out early to try to get ahead of the pressure that was coming. It must be said just as a side note, Manchin is not the only person who will not vote to get rid of the filibuster. There are at least a handful of other Democrats who have publicly said this. So all the focus on Manchin, I think, is a little overwrought. But he finds himself obviously in a very powerful position, but he is not sort of ushering in a, he's not doing Republicans, seeking to do Republicans any favor by embracing their legislative priorities either.

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 rating 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 E-T-H-O-S dot com slash dispatch. Application times may vary, rates may vary. All right, let's move on to your topic, David. Yeah, so I'm having some flashbacks, and I'm flashing back to 2011, 2012, when Obama,

was pulling out of Iraq, and you could already begin to see the signs, or pretty soon after the departure of the last American troops, you could begin to see the signs of the coming collapse. And I remember a phrase that was used when ISIS began to rampage through Iraq. Someone said, this wasn't just predictable. It was predicted. And I feel like we're seeing, what we're seeing in Afghanistan. It's a Taliban are making gains. And we're seeing the New York Times had an interesting report a couple of days ago that the CIA was scrambling to try to find a place for its counterterror assets because when you don't have American troops located in a particular place, it's not necessarily the case of the Pentagon is going to create the kind of infrastructure and sustain the

kind of infrastructure to protect CIA outposts as it does for its troops. That the CIA is scrambling to find a place, Taliban continuing to make gains. It feels like what was not just predictable, but was predicted, is happening again. And my question, let me just start with Steve, does it matter? Is there anything that's going to stop this train of the U.S. exiting looks like ahead of schedule, anything going to stop this train where it looks like the Taliban also moving ahead of schedule, will anything stop this? Or are we going to just watch this unfold in real time? I think we're going to watch this unfold in real time.

And it's going to be a human tragedy. I will be shocked if we see any other result than that the Taliban has effective control of Afghanistan, September 11th, 2022. So within a year of the date that Joe Biden gave as the full U.S. withdrawal. the Pentagon put out word yesterday that our withdrawal is slightly more than 50% complete. And as you said, David, we are seeing a pretty dramatic increase in the number of attacks and the kinds of the willingness of the Taliban to be aggressive in its attacks, not to hide what they were trying to do.

There was a long period of time where they tried to attribute their own attacks to the Islamic State and claim that they were not blowing up the peace process, that's not really happening anymore. This is the Taliban who had long controlled vast swaths of rural Afghanistan have been slowly moving into position to take advantage, to take cities in Afghanistan. This is something that our colleague Tom Jocelyn has been writing about for literally a couple of years, in vital interests.

His colleague Bill Rogio at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, they run together a great publication called Long War Journal. Bill Rogio has been tracking this very carefully. And they've said the Taliban are already putting themselves in positions to take the city so that they can take the country so that they can restore the Islamic Emirate that they think they lost in the aftermath of 2001. That's the goal. And the United States has made so many strategic,

and diplomatic errors in this, we don't have enough time to spend on them, to recount them all. But I would say one of the most significant, in addition to just thinking that you can forge a peace deal with the Taliban, when the Taliban wants to fight and wants to restore Islamic Emirate, was sidelining the current government in Kabul. The United States didn't deal with the current government in Kabul. Our putative allies, difficult allies sometimes bar our allies nonetheless the u.s approach was to set the current government the current afghan government aside and negotiate with the taliban and uh make all sorts of i think concessions that led us to this moment but in addition to the actual practical effects of the

concessions telling the afghan people that their government wasn't worth listening to, was it worth being even a party to these talks, de-legitimize the government in, I think, a fatal and probably irreversible way? So, Sarah, we know foreign policy really doesn't matter politically. Short of an attack on the U.S., originating from Afghanistan, some sort of replay, I mean, not necessarily as serious as 9-11, but some sort of enhanced terror threat. at home. Is this issue completely decided politically, even if you see some sort of dramatic, scrambled evacuation of the embassy in Kabul, even if you see some sort of human rights disaster

in Afghanistan, is this not just done strategically? As Steve indicates, is this just done politically? Is this decided? Is this over? Not only that, which I agree with entirely. I actually think it doesn't even factor as a minus points on just the foreign policy ledger. There are a few people in the country who at least foreign policy weighs heavily on their vote. Biden has other foreign policy opportunities. If he can make any of those happen, I think that people consider Afghanistan such a lost cause. They don't even blame Joe Biden for whatever horrible thing will almost certainly happen at this point. If he can come up with some foreign policy win in China, holding China accountable either for their IP theft, you know, committing genocide every day, if they, if he can do something to stop the Russia ransomware attacks, resetting relationships in Europe. Obviously, there's plenty to do in the Middle East. There's always progress to be made in Africa.

The Northern Triangle, I think, is where he should be focusing, although oddly does not actually seem to be focusing much beyond rhetorically in Central America. He has so many foreign policy opportunities. I don't even think this factors as a blight mark on the record, almost regardless of what happens. I do think a terrorist attack on U.S. soil. U.S. soil here domestically, not an embassy, not a military target overseas, would have people looking back at decisions that were made in Afghanistan in these six months? I think short of that, he has nothing but opportunities on the foreign policy front. And Jonah, I guess at this point, you would say he's, what he's essentially doing is he's

carrying out Trump administration policy according to the broad range, broad parameters of the Trump administration agreement, we were talking about bipartisanship earlier. Is this about as close to bipartisanship as we're going to get in foreign policy? It's, you know, it's like, there's actually a lot of bipartisanship in Washington, but it always comes with a monkey's paw curse, right? It's always the bipartisanship you don't want. And I was going to disagree with Sarah's take on this not mattering. only in this sense.

I think it would matter if we saw a massive slaughter in Afghanistan, if we saw, particularly if we saw the interpreters and translators that we couldn't bring home and the other NGO types who, you know, signed up to be our allies and then got slaughtered. I think you could see that mattering politically because it would not be beyond Republicans to cynically exploit it and say this is Joe Biden's policy. But for the fact, that Donald Trump laid down this marker

and got all of the MAGA crowd to support him in doing it and calling it Forever Wars and yada yada yada and sort of the Ron and Rand Paulian sentiments of the right have been given full flower by Donald Trump and so they have no leg to stand on anymore and so one of the greatest gifts that I think Trump gave Biden was other than getting him elected

was giving him a completely free hand and being able to do, I think, an indefensible on the merits, complete bugout of Afghanistan. And when I say indefensible on the merits, I mean, you pick the standard of merit, and I'll give you the argument why it's a bad idea that he's doing this.

But even by the Biden administration's own terms, I think it's a bad idea because they say they want to pivot to major geostrategic, great power, rivalries, and yada yada yada as where you began this thing talking about how we have to pull out all of our CIA and intelligence sources capacities including a bunch of bases like having an airbase at the intersection of Russia and China as we turn to the great we turn to the 19th century

great game and you're a good man gunga den style politics strikes me like just keep the base there as a matter of real politic you know this is like it's hard to replace a bunch of bases um in in that neighborhood as the Times piece you were talking about made mention of so i think in every regard moral geostrategic intellectual all of it it's uh it's a bad idea and there are a few of us who will be able to say we told you this was a bad idea um i do one last point i think the talbot is being very smart in how they're doing this about being you know steve was saying how they were no longer hiding the fact that they're the ones doing this they wanted to seem inevitable not to us although that helps right they wanted to seem inevitable on the ground and if if if if if this seems

like a fait accompli and they're just waiting for the paperwork to go through there'll be much less resistance in Kabul when they're happening it's happening it's happening and at the tribal level too you're seeing people who had long supported the u.s would work alongside the u.s. being forced to make a decision with the u.s. now gone and and saying in effect yeah i don't want to be slaughtered I don't want my family to be slaughtered. So I'm going to either sign up with or not resist the bad guys. It's happening now. And to the extent that they're, I mean, at the moment, what I'm seeing is more, when it comes

from the right, more eagerness to try to take credit for the Biden withdrawal and say, this is really, this is really Trump policy, which there's a lot of merit to that argument. This was the Trump policy. This was broadly the Trump agreement. And so to the extent there's a problem. partisan fight over this. It's over who gets credit for this withdrawal right now, not so much who gets blame for it. When the mass, when the mass beheadings start, the credit taking may die down a little bit. Yes, I agree. Can I make a final, I think really important clarifying point,

to the extent that there's a debate about this in, in the U.S., in our politics, and as you all pointed out, that really isn't one at this point, the debate is not as Rand Paul and others would have you believe between people who want to get out and people who want a massive American troop presence to control the country for a thousand years. That is not the debate. Even people who think the United States should have a presence in Afghanistan in some capacity, believe that it should be a small, nimble, strategic presence. I would say, importantly, a large diplomatic presence because that would help us continue our intelligence channels. But on the military side,

a relatively small presence that would keep from happening what is about to happen. And that does not require, particularly with their support, that does not require a massive troop presence. So you hear this from Rand Paul. I mean, Rand Paul is a particularly bad faith interlocutor on this stuff. But you hear this from critics. of U.S. policy in Afghanistan for the past two decades, that's not what's happening.

Maybe Lindsey Graham believes that, but he's alone if he believes that. Well, it reminds me of the Iraq withdrawal. I mean, we didn't need to leave very many troops at all to prevent the disaster that happened, you know, a brigade, just a brigade. But yeah, and we didn't even have brigade strength in Afghanistan by the time the withdrawal started.

This was a light, relatively light footprint. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot trackside. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Pre-sale tickets for future events subject to availability and varied by race. Turns and conditions apply. Learn more at amex.ca. All right, Steve, are we destined for a coup in 2024?

Sarah, I should just turn that question around to you right now and not even like, prefer. this with a comment. So a very interesting column in the New York Times by Ross Douthit, who often writes very interesting columns in the New York Times, looking at both where progressives are and they're thinking about the kinds of changes that we've seen in the Republican electorate in this post-Trump presidency period. And there are concerns that the changes we're seeing and the changes that Republicans are seeking to bring, particularly to voting in states around the country, that this is, in effect, laying the groundwork for Republicans to steal election, that that is the goal. And doubt that in this column makes the arguments that while some of these changes might

be troubling, certainly not what progressives would like, it's a bit hysterical to suggest that what Republicans are doing here is really just laying the ground. work for for this kind of future election theft. Having said that, Republican states have shifted power in several of these state drives to change voting practices, have shifted power from elected election officials and nonpartisan bureaucrats to legislative bodies controlled by partisans in this case, of course, Republicans. If you look at some of the polling, there is reason to be a little concerned that Republicans, you know, would try to do something. You have 21% of Republicans say the January 6th attack on the Capitol was justified.

31% say that an election loser has to concede defeat. 40% say the January 6th attackers should not be prosecuted. Only 38% say they should. figures come from Will Salatin over at Slate. Fifty-three percent say Donald Trump today is the true president. So we have these internal debates at the dispatch as we think about how much should we be covering Donald Trump? How much should we be covering these concerns? Should we send somebody to do it on the ground report on the Arizona faux audit? So I guess I'll start, I will start with you, Sarah.

is is you're always starting with sarah you're always you know getting a riled up well we wanted we want to get somebody who properly frames the issue before you know going on a hot rant um is he is ross right that these concerns from progressives are over overblown that we're not really facing any kind of um electoral crisis where republicans are preparing to steal elections During the four years of the Trump administration, it was very common to be asked by mainstream reporters, what happens if Trump refuses to leave office? And I was always so annoyed by that. I thought it was doom porn that they were just sort of indulging in this fantasy because it's fun to cover the hypothetical that will get you, you know, the clicks, a fun conversation

over a drink. And at the same time, I thought it was quite detrimental to America to even like ponder such stupidity in my mind. David, you and I covered it on AO several times dismissively that there is no scenario where Donald Trump doesn't leave the White House because he simply ceases to be president when he loses the election. I revisit that now and think that while I still think they were indulging in some doom porn without a lot of evidence, that I think I was too dismissive and I feel very differently based on what has happened in the last six months than anything that happened in the four years before the election. I think Ross Douthit might be too far on the other.

end of this. I think that he is being, he is not actually, I don't think Ross Dow that does glib. So I don't want to accuse him of glibness here. He also didn't write the title, no doubt. You know, a Trump coup in 2024 isn't how this will go down. And so to the extent he's using that as a straw man, sure, I don't think there will be a, quote, Trump coup in 2024 in the way that we generally think of coups in third world countries. Do I think that we are laying the groundwork for half of the country roughly to feel that the electoral process is so delegitimized that it cannot create, therefore, a legitimate government? And everything that comes from half the country not believing that there's a legitimate government. And by the way, I think that is

true whether Trump, if Trump runs, whether Trump wins or loses. Half of the country will not believe this was a legitimate election. And I don't see anything in Ross's column or anyone else making me feel much better about why whichever half the country loses will believe that the election was legitimate. And so is that a coup? No. Does it lay the groundwork for the end of a Republican form of government? Yeah, I guess I think it does. David, what about that?

one of the things that Roth, Ross writes, sort of as he's wrapping up the column, he says, meanwhile, at the state level, the Republican-backed bills that purport to fight voter fraud are obviously partially soaps to conservative paranoia, exactly what Sarah is talking about here, 50 plus percent of Republicans who think the election was illegitimate. But as such, he continues, they're designed to head off cries of fraud, claims of ballots shipped in from China or conjured up in Italy. So you're shaking your head. You're shaking your head so violently it looks like you might injure yourself.

And I will provoke you further by saying, I agree with Ross. I think that is primarily why some of these things were designed. And I had conversations with people in the November, December time frame who were looking at ways to separate Republicans' friends. Donald Trump and said the conservative electorate believes this stuff, other Republicans, non-Trump Republicans have to show that we are listening to this conservative electorate that we're mindful of their concerns without feeding the paranoia that Donald Trump is stoking at every turn. So I know that at least some of them who came up with this plan were, in fact, trying to head off. Were they the minority? Were they naive?

mean, yeah, yeah. I mean, come on. Like, wait. Before, David, David, I, I just, I know you and I have been on wave brain sync compatible for like a couple of weeks now. And so I know you're going to say this, but I just, I have to. That had already happened. States that had already passed all of their voting stuff that they wanted. Wisconsin, Texas, Florida, still claimed election problems in 2020. This is incredibly naive. Sorry, go, David. I mean, let's look at what, so let's look at some of the realities here. You know, look, we, we know that, you know, lightning doesn't necessarily strike twice, but let's just say lightning strikes twice. And in 2024, you have a very similar dynamic

where you have Trump leading going into like 11 or 12 o'clock at night. And then the big cities count slower still because they're big cities and there's the 3 a.m. dump in the 4 a.m. dump of ballots of results. None of this does anything about stuff like that. And also, let's not forget how incredibly disconnected from reality these election conspiracies were. So it's not as if, oh, if we tweak this voter, if we tweak this way that voters vote here in the state, that we're going to stop the bamboo conspiracy? Or what we're, what, was it the report from the New York Times that folks in the administration were wondering about Italian, Italian-sourced interference with the election? I mean, the conspiracies here were

wild, were wild. And so I think what's actually happening is a lot of these bills are, what's happening with a lot of these bills is in a way the legislators are kind of playing their own constituents, because their constituents are demanding. something big to change. And the legislators who are constrained by a number of factors are enacting tweaks here and tweaks there that are, and then they're saying, look, we did it. We did it. Well, they haven't really changed much substantially. Now, I do have some concerns over the changes of control. In other words, who decides ultimately sort of what, how, who certifies the election, who decides when the election is final? Those kinds of things do bother me. But,

But look, I think the bottom line is pretty clear at this point. This is, we are in such a hot house environment with so much end of democracy talk that if the Republicans win narrowly in 2024, the universal message from the hard left will be it was all of the anti-democratic changes that were made by read by these legislatures after the election that did it. If Trump, say, runs again and loses very narrowly in 2024, it is. It is an absolute fantasy world to believe that there would be anything other than a outcry by millions that he was robbed again, that he, millions of people that he was robbed again. And as far as covering things like the audit, I've been like the kid on the high chair, banging a spoon on the high chair, that one of the things that is one of the most important stories in America right now is the radicalization of the GOP apparatus at the grassroots. across the united states it is not normal when you have gop

state gop parties flirting with secession i mean you're getting you're getting state gop and grassroots gop conspiracy theories that some of them and i live in the middle of red america every now and then i hear one and i think i've never even heard that one before and i think that the radicalization of the grassroots apparatus of the gop is one of the most important stories in America. And I think, oddly enough, for all of the, you know, a lot of the sort of paranoia

of the Acela corridor, it's actually undercovered. It's actually undercovered. So this is why we sent our Audrey Falberg to Arizona to do some on the ground reporting about what's happening with the, with the audit. And we have a piece coming out tomorrow that I think will be illuminating in many, many respects and should get lots of attention. Jonah, counterpoint to David's early argument there. Let's say Republicans, including and especially Republicans who understood that the election was not stolen, did nothing. Donald Trump is stoking this. We get to the point where, you know, this latest poll is 53% of Republicans think that the election was stolen. I've seen polls as high as 70% of Republicans. We think Joe Biden is not the

legitimate president of the United States right now. Donald Trump is pushing this again and again sort of anywhere and everywhere he can. And Republican officials respond by saying and doing nothing. They say, you know, president is wrong. The election wasn't stolen. Really, there aren't any concerns here. There wasn't widespread fraud. We shouldn't do anything to fix a problem that doesn't exist. What happens to that 70 percent? Doesn't that drive them further into Donald Trump's hands, or is it the case that when you have responsible Republicans speaking out about these things, you bring that 70% number down incrementally by pushing back on the premise?

Look, I agree with you that you need to push back on the premise on these things, and I think that that, you know, so Sarah used the phrase, which I like, and I actually'll probably use to the dismay of many people to excess of doom porn. And I think that not to be confused with Dune porn, which is stuff themed to the Frank Herbert sci-fi novel, which I'm sure exists. But one of the real problems, not to get more dismaying, but one of the real problems with the prevalence of free access to porn,

particularly for teenagers. I mean, real porn, is that there are now these surveys that show that lots of teenagers think that, like, the stuff they see on porn sites is what sex is really like. And they start to think it's real, and then they start to behave accordingly. And part of the problem with the doom porn, which I'm not trying to do both sides parody or anything like that, but let's be honest, a lot of this doom porn stuff started with Democrats talking about voter suppression where voter suppression did not in fact exist. A. Abrams saying that, you know, refusing to concede and all these kinds of things, there's a lot of this stuff on both sides. And what's on the Republican side is worse and dumber. I think everyone has to concede that and more dangerous. But in some ways, at this point, it does not matter what the Republican leadership thinks, because the Republican leadership

has gotten to the point where they have, they've mainlined this sort of, you know, sort of dopamine addiction with the base where they've been feeding them for so long, riding this tiger for so long, they don't know how to get off. And they don't know how to reason with their own base because they're terrified of their own base. You know, Josh Kroshaarmer has this good piece about how Trump may be blowing the, taking back the Senate for Republicans because he's putting his thumb on the scales with a bunch of candidates that, whose primary role is to be sycophants to him rather than the ones with

the best chance of winning. And Republican, you know, there's a great blind quote in there from a Republican talking about how, you know, from a Republican strategist saying the key is to not, is not to set him off, right? It doesn't mean you always have to suck up to him. It's just that you don't want him to get angry at you. And like, that's supposed to be a Republican strategist, right? That is like, you know, the really inside baseball, clever, you know, kind of thinking is treating Donald Trump like the kid from the twilight zone who has superpowers that everybody is terrified of making mad is now what counts for Republican strategy these days. And I think that, I think Ross is too Pollyannish about this. I think that when, and I think

the people who thought that this was a good idea that's talk about how they're doing election integrity reform didn't realize the monster that they were creating and feeding into because the way people's brains work when they're in conspiracy theory mode is, you know, aha, even they see that there's something there. So that, you know, and then they extrapolate. It's sort of like the release of these UFO images, right? No evidence that they're aliens, allegedly. But if you were a UFO enthusiast for the last 30 years freaking out about how these things

were everywhere and no one was reporting on it and you see these videos and then people say, oh, by the way, there's no evidence they're from outer space, do you think, think that's like you think your position has been weakened or strengthened that they are in fact from outer space. And so when you give people a little concession that's not based in fact a reality to their conspiracy theories, you strengthen their conspiracy theories. And that's worse. And just let me make one quick point just following up directly on that. And crucially, in your scenario, you have people saying there's no evidence of alien life or whatever, however you phrased it.

To me, what's been missing from responsible Republican rhetoric for the most part since the days immediately after the election was that they did not first say loudly and emphatically and repeatedly, the election was not stolen, period. And we want some voter integrity efforts, you know, in an unrelated way to put your minds at ease, whatever. You know, I remember when we had our post-election conference and we had, you know, I think some of the smartest thinkers in the Republican Party, conservative movement,

come before us and talk to us about these things. And I remember on more than one occasion, pressing these top Republicans on that question. You know, the answer at the time in that week after the election was, there's a process here. Donald Trump is entitled to use the process. Let's let him play this out. but my argument then and my argument remains fair enough i mean i didn't think that was really a

serious argument at the time there wasn't real evidence of widespread fraud so you know he could make the claims but i think we all saw where this was was likely going what didn't happen in conjunction with the give donald trump the process argument was the election was not stolen we have seen no evidence that the election was stolen joe biden is the right present people were not saying that and you lose the front end of that that i think is what at least in part feeds this broader uh phenomenon i can tell you this if georgia goes blue again in 24 in part because fulton county puts uh georgia over the top for biden by 30 000 votes or 25 thousand votes again. The absolute last thing that will happen on the planet earth will be that

grassroots Republicans will say, well, that one was fair and square because we reduced the number of drop boxes and streamlined early voting hours. Like that is going to be the absolute last thing that happened. It will be volcanic fury that the legislature didn't fix the fraud. It will be volcanic fury that it's happened again. And that's the final. these state legislators are playing with here is, you know, they're purporting to make changes, which most of them again, I mean, like we've talked about this before, some of the rhetoric on the other side, for example, about the final version of the Georgia bill was overblown. But they're purporting to make changes in sending a signal to the grassroots that something

on the order of, we fix this, we fix this, and then if the same thing happens again in 2024, because, and frankly, it might, because the 2020 election was a high integrity election and Joe Biden just flat out won it. If it happens again, none of this, none of this that is going on right now will matter one bit to the discourse to the dialogue. It will all be more conspiracy theories and fury. This is the frustration of what's going on in the legal conservative movement, I think, playing out in the rest of the Republican Party, which is the Republican, the conservative

legal movement staked its whole philosophy on process. And then when they didn't get the outcome they wanted in Bostock, in June medical, you know, these cases on gender identity discrimination or abortion, they said, screw the process, we want the outcome. And I think that's what you're going to see here. They're claiming now that it's all about the process, when in fact, in 2024, those people who think that they're placating the extremists will find out it was never about the process. It's always been about the outcome. If the outcome is the outcome you want, then the process was fair. If the outcome isn't the outcome you want, then the process wasn't fair. All right, I'm going to end, as I'm going to try to do more often here, with my favorite headline

from today. Goes to the New York Times, a little bit of a surprise there. Cicadas took on Biden's press plane, period. They won, period. And Olivier Knox saying that he hoped Biden would respond with, quote, we've made it very clear to the cicadas that we will respond at a time and in a method of our choosing after quiet, intensive diplomacy.

See, I think they should have gotten Alec Dent to get there early and clear out the cicadas, you know, one at a time with some nice chutney. and eat them. Yes, the backstory briefly is the president's press plane was supposed to be headed to Europe for the G7

and cicadas actually grounded it, which is pretty amazing. Yeah, for six hours, it was a cicada strike. I have been on a government plane that was grounded by a bird strike and it was a bloody, bloody affair. Like a horror movie took place

at the front of the plane as we then sat on the tarmac in Boston to determine whether the birds, the flock of seagulls, as it were, had so badly damaged the plane that we had to get off. It would have been awesome of it was the actual ban that got eaten up in the trim line. All right, with that, thank you all. We will see you next week.

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 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.