The Dispatch Podcast - Braindead Partisanship

Episode Date: August 18, 2023

Chris joins Sarah and Jonah to discuss the upcoming GOP primary debate. How much will the candidates praise the guy they're primarying? Will there be anything to talk about besides the hedonic treadmill of indictments? Can any candidate successfully be a gateway drug out of Trump? Also: -Biden's shrinking incumbent advantage -Republican Party as a suicide pact -Jonah goes Schlappian on third parties -Eric Adams vs. Joe Biden -"Rich Men North of Richmond" Show notes- -Jonah's attack on small donors -Nick Catoggio's defense of Jonah in Boiling Frogs -Sarah's interview with No Labels on The Dispatch Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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That's Jonah Goldberg. And we have special treat. Chris Steyerwald here with us. Yep, we will talk about the indictment. I don't know how or frankly why, but we will. We will also talk about no labels, third party efforts and the alternative not to do 2020 over again. Is it worth it?

And finally, New York City Mayor Eric Adams. versus President Joe Biden on the migrant crisis at the border. And I'm sure we'll find it not worth your time along the way. Chris, got to start with you. We haven't talked to you in a while. Welcome. It's good to be with you. Excellent, excellent.

As we bring summer to a close, I can think of no better way than with my dispatch colleagues. All right. So we have all four indictments now. Has the politics of this changed at all for you over the course of the summer? Yeah. Look, the Republican Party has immunodeficiency, has an immunosance problem. As Republicans have been thinking about Donald Trump,

they've been thinking about Donald Trump versus Joe Biden, Donald Trump versus Hunter Biden, Donald Trump versus Merrick Garland, Donald Trump versus. Because of our brain dead partisanship, defending your person against all comers is considered virtuous for people who are the kind of highly engaged partisans that participate in primary elections. And so there is a twisted but obvious logic to why the Trump indictments have helped Trump in primary election polling. On the other hand, we are less than a week away from the first debate and the social psychology of the Republican electorate is going to change. Well, I'll put it this way. With my colleagues at News Nation, we did a town hall with Vivek Ramoswamy,

who I refer to as Romney Swami. He has pat answers for everything. He is a very knowing 38-year-old person who seems to have a simple answer for all problems. But I identified him as somebody who this is the kind of person who could be a transition, a gateway drug out of Trump, into thinking about something else. There's a lot of criticism for Republicans like Tim Scott and others who won't say hard things about Donald Trump and won't attack Donald Trump. But of course, the truth is the way that Republicans might not nominate Donald Trump is that as they start thinking about the realities of a general election. They're not going to go from Republicans aren't going to go from Donald Trump to

Will Hurd. They're not going to wake up one day and say, oh, these charges in Georgia have changed my mind about Donald Trump. And now I want to reclaim the virtue of the Republican Party. But what they might do is say, yeah, I like Trump. I'm for Trump, but we need to do something smarter. So I think that process is about to begin. Is the indictment going to come up at the debates more than, like, from the moderators?

Do you think the candidates will actually engage? Well, Jonah Goldberg has a smart theory about the debate, which I will steal now, even in front of him. I will steal the silver from his table as I sup at it, which is, if Trump's not on stage, what does Chris Christie do? Right. So if Trump is not on stage, it's just those polucas out there. Can Christy or others mount an attack on Trump in absentia or will it invariably turn to fighting between them? I think given the Brett Baer interview I saw with Donald Trump

and given my experience with Brett and Martha working at Fox, I imagine that they're going to do everything they can to make it a credible debate, right? They know that the eyes of the world are upon them, so they're going to bring up every question then we'll find out will the attacks on Trump, especially if he's not there,

lead to defenses from the others. And that's going to be the Fisher that I'm looking for. How will the stage divide on pro-Trump versus anti-Trump if he is not there? Jonah, steal your thought back, violently if necessary. So,

See, Adom should put in like various sound effects when this thing when Chris Steele stuff Since Chris was the guy brought up the phrase An Immune Response Problem I've been thinking about this a lot in sort of similar terms I think just going back to the beginning of this for just two seconds

I said this on the Dispatch Live that we did I think the absolute perfidy the sinister, cynical grotesquery of the brag indictment is now coming into focus. Because with the brag indictment, we all agree it was the weakest. Everybody now agrees the week. Now it's perfectly fine at CNN Greenrooms

for me to say the brag indictment was a bad idea. But I got dirty looks when I said that, you know, back when it first came out. And what it did, you know, what do vaccines do? Right? They give you a fake version of the vaccine that creates a response in your body that makes you immune or at least resistant to the real thing. And the Bragg indictment created an, inoculated a lot of the GOP electorate from any indictments going forward. And the problem, again, I said this is another other problem is that, you know, 90% of what Bragg wanted out of that indictment he got by issuing it. He doesn't, and he doesn't. At this point, he could say, oh, for the greater good of the Republic, I'm going to shelve this thing. And everyone would be fine with it because they got better indictments now.

But the political effect of it was terrible. So fast forward to that. This is the hedonic treadmill of indictments? Yeah, pretty much. And so now, in terms of the debate thing, in terms of this sort of immune response thing, Christy is the acid test, right? He is the activating agent on that stage.

And if he goes in there and goes swinging after Trump, Whether Trump is there or not, because those arguments are going to be unpopular with a lot of voters, particularly Iowa voters that these other guys want, are they going to say, how dare you, sir, attack Donald Trump? How dare you, sir, not focus on Joe Biden? Or are they going to say, look, I wouldn't go as far as Chris Christie goes, but these things are troubling and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I just don't know which way it's going to go. And I think it could have a positive or negative effect. I mean, I think it'll have a positive effect no matter what for Christy, right? Because he's, I know we don't talk about lanes here,

but he's the only guy in that space who's going to be on the stage, at least of right now, and Les Hutchinson and Herd get in there, who can attack Trump freely? You know, I mean, Pence's... Right. Not can. Right. Pence's position, I think Ramesh, when we were said it best, was, you know, Pence's position is,

I was proud to serve in this administration that was an enemy of the Constitution. That's just a really narrow lane of argument, you know, for a debate. But I do think there are a not inconsiderable number of Republicans who see everything up to January 6th as excusable or rationalizable, and then that that is the breakwater,

okay, up to here and then not after. that. And if you looked at the new poll from the National Opinion Research Center and the AP on what the floors and ceilings are like for Trump and Biden, you see, so look, the share, the vote share that an incumbent president, basically we're looking at an incumbent versus incumbent race, wants in his own party, is like 90%. If you're 85, you're in the hunt, but 90 is what you want. So Biden clocked in in the 80s. He clocked in at like 82, 83%.

I forget what it was. Trump's number is like 74. And then when you flip over to the general election, the numbers on would definitely vote for, would definitely not vote for. And obviously this is a self-reporting thing and people may not be able to acknowledge their own persuadability.

but, you know, Trump's hard, the hard number against Trump is enormous. It was like 63% or something. The thing for Republicans is this is a nomination of extraordinary value. The way that I think about party nominations, we know the famous story of Bill Clinton in 1992. How did Bill Clinton get the Democratic nomination in 1992? It's because it was perceived as a thing of little value. Mario Cuomo, other heavyweights, said, you know,

George H.W. Bush is going to get a, he's an incumbent, he's prosecuted the first successful overseas war. He's, it's not going to happen. So they stayed out and Billy Jeff got in and wound up with a very valuable nomination. The reason we're still talking about Glenn Yonkin, right? The reason that Republicans are still, have not fully acquiesced to Donald Trump is that they know that this is a, that Joe Biden is a, a perilously weak incumbent. And they, perceive this as a very valuable nomination. So they have not fought Trump to the degree that they could have to this point. And I think the Ron DeSantis experience, which is a terrible cover band that plays in Pensacola,

I think that the Ron DeSantis. The light show is pretty good. That's right. It is. When those smoke pots go off, you're just like, wow, I cannot believe that this is Flora Bamaline. The Ron DeSantis' experience is he wanted to go after Trump's voters without attacking Trump. And he found he could not just drop a bunker buster on Trump's coalition and under the

premise of you can have Trump's policies and attitude without having Trump's criminality and lack of character and chaos. And he failed. And now he's trying to rebuild a coalition from the other side of the Republican Party by trying to attract in conservatives and moderates and mainstreamers to go storm Dracula's Castle. I don't know whether he's. he can get there or not, but the obvious truth about how you could beat Donald Trump, which is start from the other side and then push in and try to persuade out the plurality of Republicans is now obvious. So the playbook is now there. So just one little factoid that I thought we should throw in here for the listeners is in this New Yorker profile, the DeSantis

campaign. They talk about how there was this, when they were doing polling of Republican, you know, voters, they found that 70% of Republican primary voters agreed with the statement, the 2020 COVID lockdowns were bad. And 70% disagreed with the statement the 2020 Trump COVID lockdowns were bad. And I think that that sort of sums up the dilemma for all these people.

This is like if you make any policy point that reflects poorly on Trump, they think it's unfair, untrue, ill-advised, outrageous, but if you just take Trump out of it, they say, oh, I agree with that entirely, which tells you that people kind of lost their minds about Trump, if you'll, I'll punch myself in the face letter for using this word. The scholarship on this is clear, not just for our own time, but throughout the history of public opinion research. And it's gotten worse in the past this century, certainly, but when you put the magic words in,

because when people are taking polls, they're looking for the magic words, right? I'm half listening. I've picked up the phone. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and when you hear the buzzword that points you to which tribe you're supposed to be with on this question, people go line up over there, and that's one of the deficiencies. Not to go to Sarah's detestation of a public opinion research, but this is one of the weaknesses in public opinion. You're making my heart glow, Chris. I've lit up from the inside. Here for you. So, Jonah, there was this interesting little tiff on Twitter

that I normally wouldn't bring up except that I thought it did kind of illuminate what y'all are talking about, right? Mark Theson makes the argument that Trump can't win. Using some of the data that Chris just mentioned that 63% said they would definitely not or probably not be willing to vote for Trump in a general election

and his argument being that's just unovercomable basically and Matt Schlapp a sort of Republican operative very wealthy guy responds and says you know Mark you're a good guy but stop saying this Trump has to win

because he's the only person who can you know fill in the blank fix the problems in Washington drain the swamp. Yeah, deep state, all of that, which I found sort of a baffling back and forth because they're not actually speaking to each other. Theson saying he can't win and Schlapp is saying he has to win. He's our only hope. Those aren't actually responsive. Why are we even talking about this? There's only one, only he can do it. Only one person can bring down the Biden crime family in the deep state. Only Donald Trump is tough enough to to be the very best and win for the Republican party. Anybody else will go down in flames because they're not as tough as Donald Trump,

which is a really remarkable argument for an incumbent president who lost re-election, which is hard to do, right? History tells us it's very hard for an incumbent president to lose re-election. This is an odd argument for that person to make, but it is persuasive for a lot of that. Slap and fairness is not making the argument that he can win, frankly, in the general election. He's making the argument that it almost doesn't matter. It's worth taking the chance that maybe in some dark horse fashion he could win because otherwise they're all the same. DeSantis is the same as Biden is the same as Haley,

you know, that like all of the other possibilities are equally bad, so we have to roll the dice with Trump and he's not going out the electability argument that, you know, Trump might not be the most electable candidate. The reason I find this interesting is because clearly there is something persuasive about that argument to Republican primary voters just inherently persuasive

and it totally undercuts my argument that you need to go after Trump's electability because otherwise voters aren't even shopping at this point. This would seem to suggest that they're not shopping even if you do convince them that Trump isn't the most electable candidate or even electable at all.

Meaning you don't have to prove that Rod DeSantis is more electable at this point. You would have to prove that there is no world in which Donald Trump could beat Joe Biden, which is basically impossible because of the experience in 2016. They're simply not going to believe, like, well, this poll says it would be hard for him to win.

Who cares? 2016 said he couldn't win, and he did. So, you know, Jesus rose again on the third day. Right. So I think part of it is, I mean, part of what you're pointing to is why Democrats would be so smart to nominate a fresh face, right? Because Biden's weakness, people think, well, of course, Donald Trump is a man

a figure. He could, particularly in all these Photoshop things I see on the internet that show him riding a giant horse wearing Napoleon's uniform, it would become much more clear to people if Biden didn't seem so defeatable, even though I think we all know the people who don't like both Joe Biden and Donald Trump break for Biden by a very wide margin. I think that's the what would happen. So one of the main, I don't do a lot of, as I wrote in my book on this podcast, but in my last book, I made this very, I think...

The scholarship agrees. The scholarship agrees. People follow politics as a form of entertainment now. And in movies or TV shows, you know, John Snow doesn't have enough troops in the Battle of the Bastards, but he wins anyway, right? Henry V and on St. Crispin's Day is outnumbered 5 to 1, and yet he wins.

And when you've... And it's totally plausible when you're watching fiction. that this will work because the hero, and we implicitly know that the heroes win at the end of movies and TV shows. That's why we call them heroes. And they're against all the odds. They pull it out because they just want it more

and they need it more and it's the right thing. When you make Donald Trump the hero in some mythopoetic narrative, and then I say, well, look, the polls say, well, that just seems like more obstacles for the hero in the movie rather than like, Real life.

What did the polls say in 2016? The polls said in 2016 Trump couldn't win and he won anyway. And then they say, well, and the polls are wrong anyway. Who cares what the polls said? And I try to point out to people who say, he's the only guy who can win, he's the only guy who can save the party.

He was like, look, he did worse in the popular vote than Mitt Romney did. It's just he picked the lock of the electoral college. And people think that that was because he was such a great candidate. No, it was because Hillary was such a terrible candidate. And Joe Biden kind of proved that point because he outperformed Hillary everywhere in 2020. And since then, Donald Trump has overseen the shrinking of the Republican Party in all sorts of ways.

He lost all sorts of seats, all sorts of states, and people just don't want to believe it. And so I agree with you, if you could persuade people about the electability thing, that's the best argument. It's just much harder to do if you're actually not going to be grounded in sort of empirical stuff. But this is not the phase of any, now this is a most unusual electoral. cycle. But this is not the phase in any electoral cycle when people are making judicious choices, right? This is finding your heartthrob, finding your favorite, finding your Huckabee, finding your person that you connect with and you say, I really hope this person can go the distance.

I really want this to happen. The immunosance defense of Trump accludes that, but we have been very well served by the New York Times, Siena poll, that gives us the topography of the Republican electorate. And there are 25% who are hard, not Trump, and there are 37% that are hard Trump. And then there's 37% that are persuadable. And that hard Trump number, of course, includes 20, 25% that are ride or die, absolute Trump voters, no matter what. But, there is an obvious coalition that could be formed out of those. Now, that's what everybody said in 2016, if they could just get together and do this. But I think the experience of 2016 will inform the choices of those persuadable voters as they go forward. The experience of the Ted Cruz,

John Kasich, you vote for Kasich if you live in this state. You vote for Cruz if you live in that state, the unwillingness to choose, and the unwillingness, for example, and this is a point that Chris Christie has made, this is a point that others have made. The typical lanes of not voters, if all the governors, for example, let's say, had said, you know what, I don't like Ron DeSantis, he's a jerk, but he's a governor. I want a governor to be in there. And you saw a bunch of governors come and collect behind Ron DeSantis. If all of the senators or most of the senators said, Tim Scott, I think we need somebody from the U.S. Senate to be there. If those sort of that choosing takes place, there will be enormous. How much pressure is Ron DeSantis already under

to get out of this election, which is remarkable given where he was in the springtime? But there is an already open pressure, naked pressure, against Ron DeSantis, that says, if this guy doesn't have it turned around by such and so date. And here I'm not talking just about the donors, by the way, who wrecked his campaign by giving him too much money and allowing him to believe that he was inevitable. I'm also talking about the strategic voters of Iowa, of New Hampshire, of South Carolina, and Nevada, we'll see what the heck Nevada does. But for those strategic voters, DeSantis is, the pressure on DeSantis to be out of this race

potentially by Thanksgiving is real. And I think there is a more strategic approach that is being undertaken versus 2016. See, unpopular opinion. I think that if you had a head-to-head race right now, Donald Trump would look even more inevitable. With Ron DeSantis or with anyone. Anyone. Pick your guy. I think that what we saw in 2016, is like on steroids right now, which is that for any given candidate

that you point me to, that person drops out. What happened in 2016 was that about, you know, half, maybe a third, went to Trump. And that was just enough for him to keep building his momentum.

Even though people were like, oh, but when so-and-so drops out, all of their voters will go to Ted Cruz. Like, that just didn't happen. You know, I think that if Ron DeSantis were to drop out, two-thirds of his voters would go, to Donald Trump.

Well, his share is small enough now that I think he's already lost his, I think he's already lost those voters back to Trump. We should just bear in mind what the most likely outcome of the 2024 election is, is that the Republican Party has turned into a suicide pact in which two warring wings have more than sufficient numbers to guarantee the defeat of the party in the general election. that's that's the fact right that if you were if you were drawing this up and I think another way to think about this is who is more likely to have been convicted of a crime between now and the general election Donald Trump or Hunter Biden I think Hunter Biden I think that it's more likely that

Hunter Biden will have pleaded guilty to something and have suffered some consequence between now and then, and perhaps Democrats will have convinced him to go work on an oyster farm on Hog Island for the remainder of the election and be disappeared. Donald Trump, if he is the Republican nominee, will be brawling and battling in Jonah's version, right, breaking his chains, Hercules shatters, brings down the temple as he fights and fights and just drives down his share of persuadable voters more and more and more. That's the most likely scenario. And one of the problems that Republicans have had to this point and why I think you're right, Sarah, today, that's the scenario that the persuadables have not fully accepted yet.

The electability argument doesn't work with people who are not thinking about it in those terms yet, but they will start thinking about it in those terms as they get closer. And as we go from pseudo-sudo-events to pseudo-events, right? As the debates function as a pointer in the minds of the electorate, like, okay, this is actually happening and I am going to have to vote. 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

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Protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash dispatch. That's E-T-H-O-S.com slash dispatch. Application times may vary. Rates may vary. What a run. This champ is picking up speed. But they found a lane.

Phenomenal launch into the air. Absolutely incredible. Air Transat. Fly the seven-time world's best leisure airline champions, Air Transat. I have a question for both of you. Okay. Since Steve's not here, we can actually incorporate references

to popular culture freely without him looking at us like a Bazet hound being offered a great. It's a very good, very good word picture. So in 2016, I made this point about how in the past, there were all these things that if you did something stupid, touch the third rail, whatever,

it killed your campaign. But Trump was like, Godzilla in the original Godzilla movies where there's all these movies where, like, the Army's trying to lure Godzilla into bite some electrical wires, and that will kill him. But it turns out it made him stronger, right? And that was the huge folly of it. It was like the dumb things that Trump did actually made him stronger, picking fights with, you know, Gold Star families and insulting John McCain and all that kind of stuff.

It just, it not only didn't hurt him, it made him more powerful. The other metaphor is Jaws. where you got this monster shark and they put one barrel, you know, the one harpoon with an air barrel attached to it, the shark does nothing. Two, three, four, he can take them all. And, you know, Quinn is freaked out. But eventually over time, it tires out the shark and kills him.

So are these indictments more fitting of the Godzilla parallel? They're making him stronger, at least within the confines of the Republican primaries. or over time will they start to wear him down, slow him down, make him vulnerable and ultimately lead to his demise? Chris? It's your turn. You have to answer the, is Chris Christie Quint or the Japanese Home Guard? I'm in a dark place, so this feels very Godzilla to me.

I mean, it feels very Gulliver's travels to me, really. like you just have metaphor which was trying to avoid but he's been doing gulliver's travels for a while i felt that way the whole time you just have this sort of like giant lumbering thing and we keep trying to throw little ropes over it and it's sort of a joke but it eventually works right enough ropes and it works yeah i don't know that that happens in our version of the story but i agree it happens in that version of the story i i know that there are candidates that we can find through history that truly lead movements. But really, movements find candidates, right?

Right. That's really what happens. Donald Trump and his success was the result of a growing, discontented Ron Paulite. Ron Paul, he is the offspring of Ron Paul's coalition crossed with Pat Buchanan's coalition.

And you have, they find Donald Trump. They alight on Donald Trump. Thinking about what has happened to the Republican Party as, and I do very much appreciate Ross Douthett's metaphor for the Republican Party, the major parties as a fully fueled 747 sitting on the runway waiting to be hijacked. I think there's a lot of truth in that. But what happens,

post facto, we are inclined to attribute political movements to their leaders. But in reality, it's more the other way. I think that the most likely scenario, Republicans nominate Donald Trump and he loses. I think that's the most likely scenario. But that's like two out of five or three out of five, right? That's the most likely thing to happen. but it's not a certainty that it will take place. Donald Trump might win a general election.

That is certainly true. The other thing that is possible. So picture Trump is supposed to be a rain. Let's say that we're true. The reason I do think he'll participate in the debate is for the very Lilliputian crushing kind of energy of I just faced charges in Georgia and I got on Trump Force One and I flew up here

and now I and and come in full Godzilla right to come in F them F you right all of you watching all of you all I don't care and this increases his heroism but to the quint metaphor the problem with that idea is you have to do it over and over and over and over again and that by January 15th it is certainly possible that the show has you watch Trump when he, now we'll really mix our shark metaphors, when he jumped the shark on COVID. Remember, the helicopter lands at the White House? He takes the mask off, standing on the Truman balcony.

And it was like, oh boy, okay. Well, geez Louise, dude. And I think that voter fatigue of Donald Trump is still a real possibility. Again, you're never going to get most of the 37% of hardcore Trump supporters to switch. That is the painful lesson that Ronnie D. has learned. They're not for changing. But in that two out of five probability scenario, yeah, it can happen if there is movement inside the

electorate. And we know the electorate's going to start moving. We just don't know how soon, how much. So what you're saying is, as Tracy Morgan told Kenneth in 30 Rock, you've got to live every week like shark week. Yes. Yes. Yes. Take control your, Sarah. Yes. It's Trump versus Biden in the general election. I had that interview with the chief political strategist over at no labels. And I said this before, but my objection, it's not objection, my side eye at the idea of a third party, a successful, productive third party campaign, threefold.

One, ballot access, it's really hard to get on the ballot in 50 states. and if you can't get on the ballot in basically all 50 states, you don't really have a path forward. They're making a persuasive case that they've gotten on the ballot in 10 states so far, and they're on the path to do that. All right, so let's give them ballot access. Let's just move that into their column, even though, again, I think that's just an enormous, enormous hurdle.

Because, of course, ballot access is run by the two parties that don't want you on the ballot. So they've already thrown up all sorts of obstacles in state laws, and then they'll throw up more when you actually try to maneuver those state laws. Okay, ballot access. Number two. And some of this gets to Stairwaltz, does the movement find the candidate, does the candidate find the movement?

But regardless, to have that snowballing political effect, the only things that seem particularly effective to me are, one, having a celebrity candidate by which I don't mean because celebrities are so great or so popular it's because they have name ID because people feel that they know them and so you're not starting from scratch

and I think that is one of the two paths you have available. So far we've just not seen any third party candidate who would have that kind of name ID where they sort of start on third base and if you're going to have to introduce the American people to a new

person, again, it's just incredibly, incredibly hard. It's part of the reason why Donald Trump was so successful in 2016. He was already a celebrity. People already knew his name. They weren't starting from scratch. All right. Then the other option is you have a policy that you're rallying around. This is the Ross Perrault situation. Nobody knows who Ross Perrault is, but there's a hole in the two parties and there's an issue that people are willing to rally around. And Ross Perrault becomes Oh, and then we've got some Chris Stierwalt plugging to do here in a second on his book. But so three buckets, ballot access celebrity candidate rallying around issue. And so far we haven't seen any of those, right?

The No Labels platform was just sort of saying it doesn't matter really what the issues are. We'll try to find some compromise, move to the middle on these issues. But democracy is at stake, and that's the issue that we're going to rally around. the problem is that while both sides may agree that democracy's at stake is for very different reasons, no celebrity candidate, Joe Manchin, John Huntsman,

Larry Hogan, like none of these count as anything close to celebrity candidates. So Jonah, what is your take on a third-party option for 2024? There's also two ways to think about this. Viable third-party option

can mean two different things. One, viable meaning they will win a general election. Viable option number two is they will have such a profound effect on the election that they get gobbled up, which is what happens with most third parties. Anytime a third party reaches 10, 15%, the two parties are going to gobble up their voters because you have to reach equilibrium. So that in a way can be successful, especially for those issue candidates. Yeah, so I'm in none of the tawdry connotations of this, I'm a little schlappian. on this question

in the sense that you know the argument that you're describing about Slap versus Tessen was basically an is versus aught argument right and I am very much in favor of a third party

candidate who speaks to the middle right that crushes a lot of orthodoxy on the left and the right that rejiggers the coalition that's the more represent where American people are that basically short-circuits the doom loop of negative polarization that we've got right now.

And I'm also very much in favor of nominating and electing someone other than Joe Biden and Donald Trump. So those are my aughts. I really like it, right? But we still have this sort of, and again, this is, is not a reference to schlap, but we kind of have an underpants gnome problem here. In that, you know,

in South Park, you have this thing where it's like step one, steal all the, under, steal all the garden gnomes. Step two, question mark, question mark, question mark. Step three,

total world domination and success, right? I got no problem with no labels trying to create this sort of vital center kind of dynamic where, you know, the, the sort of sane center, hopefully center right in my view

reasserts itself in American politics I'm utterly unpersuaded at this not utterly but I'm largely unpersuaded that they can actually do it and so when people say well but don't you want X and I was like yes I want X but show me how to get X and I just I have not been

sufficiently persuaded and I think this is I'll steal from Starwalt Like all of this stuff about how world is polling showing that people want a, you know, a centrist, the people want this, people want an independent people, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's absolutely true. In the abstract, they want all sorts of things. They want vanilla ice cream that makes you lose weight, right? But what you need is to actually fill in the blank about who the actual personality is.

And that changes everything. And, you know, it's sort of like the polling about the magic word. polling stuff, if you put John Huntsman at the top of this third party ticket, like, it's going to be really hard for me to have any enthusiasm for it whatsoever. Huntsmania, brother. Huntsmania. But if you put Mitch Daniels on there, you know, I'm taking out a second mortgage to help the guy.

I mean, it just, it really depends what we're talking about. Go boiler makers. Chris? So millions of people. are going to vote for neither the Republican nor Democratic nominees for president next year. Millions. In 2016, it was a pretty large number, like 5% of the electorate voted for Eglish McMuffin or Gary Johnson's Bong or whatever.

Those voters were not voting for McMuffinism or Bongdom. They were saying, I want to vote in these other races. I can't vote for these people and I'm going to vote for one of these Jemokes on the grounds and you choose your Jemoke whether it's the Green Party or the Libertarian Party or McMuffendom on the grounds of I feel like this is the message that I want to send

with my vote, right? I'm choosing this person because I want the party that I would be more naturally inclined to support to see my protest. So whatever No Labels does there's going to be, so the number of third-party votes went down, pointing to Joe Biden's success that Jonah alluded to in persuading voters to make the difficult choice, the number of third-party votes went down in 2020 compared to 2016, right? More people held their nose and voted for Biden

among the persuadable elector. There are a couple of kinds of third-party candidates. There are third-party candidates that are protest votes. Now, those, to your point, Sarah, some of those are issue protests. I want you to know that I am a rabid environmentalist and I want you to see that. Or I want you to know that I am a rabid libertarian and I want you to see that. Some of them are just a place to park a vote. Then, and you reference this, Sarah, with the viability threshold. So there's a magic number out there.

It's not 5%, it's 9%, 10%, 11%, that it starts to happen, and then persuasion occurs, right? What Democrats and Republicans are both worried about is not the protest vote number. You put John Huntsman up, John Huntsman goes out, runs a candidacy, and gets 4% of the vote. Those votes don't belong to either party. Those voters were not likely to vote for either one, and those are protest votes. The concern that both parties have is that the weird thing happens. Ross Perrault in 1992 was famous. He was famous because of cable news,

and he was famous because of Larry King. And he didn't really even launch his candidacy. He had a weird, his group that was called United We Stand that he had formed to help POWs, captive POWs in North Vietnam, continued, and it was his no labels. It was across the hall, but he said, well, I'm not, I'm not running, but they want me to run. This group I control wants me to run, and maybe they're going to get, if they get on the ballot in all 50 states, then I guess I'll do it.

But he was, he was famous because of his gift for cable news. And there was also broad dissatisfaction with the two parties that were seen as being too much alike, too much the same, which is not the problem that we have this time. the chances that a if we grant ballot access the chances that someone would move from protest to persuasion is low obviously and it's low whomever it is if if no labels got dwayne the rock johnson right the persuasion the possibility of persuasion still remains pretty low um because no matter what the person ends up with very high name identification just through the process right just as you go, it remains pretty high through the process.

The concern that both of these parties have is a correct concern is that if this starts happening, it could get out of control very, very quickly for these two parties, given the attitude. It's a low probability outcome, but it is an outcome that if you had a gifted candidate and it started to look like, hey, you know, he's only actually seven points, he or she is actually only seven points behind, only in third place. by seven points. Yeah, I heard that's happening. Then more media attention occurs and then it starts to go that way. Could that happen? Could it be a Promethean situation? It gets and it gets out

of control. Very much so. I think the most likely, I think the most probable outcome is that it is a protest vote and that it stays at that three to five percent range. 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

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Workday, moving business forever forward. Okay. Next topic, sort of a lightning round here, because when Ron DeSantis was flying migrants to Martha's Vineyard or Governor Greg Abbott from Texas was busing migrants to New York City, we talked about it on this podcast and treated it like a political stunt. We said we don't like political stunts, even if there's an immigration crisis at the border, et cetera, et cetera. Looking back on it, though, I wonder if either of you have a different view because it has fractured the Democratic Party to some extent. You have Massachusetts, which famously declared itself a sanctuary state, saying that it has a crisis because they have, you know, a thousand people who came to the state that they weren't expecting. You have New York City Mayor Eric Adams now really loudly and interestingly

breaking with the president of his own party on this topic. And this is repeating across sort of the democratic progressive spectrum to various extents. I think it's hard to argue that that would be happening but for the political stunts of Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis. So, Jonah, I wanted to give you an opportunity to revisit a previous take given new information. I don't know how much revisiting I have to do.

I think I don't want to do. I still don't like using poor desperate people as political props. And I don't think you need to have done it to still have gotten this result in the sense that Biden administration is sending people to blue cities now too, right? I mean, it's just not, it's just done more orderly and more organizing their people waiting to receive them and all that. But, yeah, I think the DeSantis stunt, well, the Abbott stunt. I also think it's particularly weird for DeSantis to go shopping in other states for illegal immigrants to send them to third states, right? At least Abbott and, you know, and Governor Ducey in Arizona, you know, did it more responsibly. And they were absolutely right.

And it was actually a very effective, in the long run, it turned out to be a very effective political maneuver to force some, policy perspective and and you know so before we were talking about the third parties and the no labels thing about how I want to see a lot of party orthodoxies crushed probably nowhere is the the need for that in America more acute than on immigration we have two parties that are basically locked into a de facto all immigration is bad and an all immigration is good party and both positions are idiotic and the only way you're going to get to a place

where you can actually have an immigration policy that makes any sense is for Democrats to get off of this idiotic. No one is illegal. All immigration is good. I mean, you had Joaquin Castro when he was running

say that he wanted to decriminalize the border and basically just turn, you know, basically an open borders thing. dumb politics idiotic policy similarly this idea of like you know any immigration is a problem or the sort of the sort of brutal stuff that at least rumored that Trump wanted to do and that you know Jason Miller or Stephen Miller wanted to do is inhumane and grotesque right anyway so like I I think it is a total and complete vindication of these border state governors including the crazy partisan ones.

That it turns out that New York City and Washington, D.C. and Boston, if they're struggling with their massive social service systems to deal with a bunch of migrants, imagine how tough it is for these border states to do it. Chris, final word to you on this topic? Like China. China. Like some other issues, the parties will follow. the voters on these issues.

And the American electorate is concerned about immigration broadly. The idea that elites in both parties had that we were over this question, and this is, you know, now we're approaching 20 years on that, has been demonstrably proven false. Joe Biden's posture on immigration would have been unthinkable. If he had said what he actually is doing on immigration in the Democratic primaries, it would have been an eruption, right?

We're going to keep a form of remain in Mexico. We're going to do this. We're going to do that. It would have been unthinkable because of the potency of pro-immigration activists in the Democratic primary. But Joe Biden has ended up closer to where the mainstream electorate is.

Like with China, both parties are going to continue to move toward immigration restriction because that's where the votes are. It is the necessity. David Frum wrote the piece a long time ago now, but it still holds up. If only fascists are willing to enforce immigration laws, Americans will eventually elect fascists to do it.

and the liability of a chaotic immigration system to just so I can close on being the last thief at the dinner party, as Jonah Goldberg would say, my preference for U.S. immigration policy is to have one, and the chaotic, disordered manner of this that is obvious, every state's a border state now, right? and everybody is dealing with this in different places and it's changing attitudes. Much as we've seen with crime, Democrats will have to respond to it in order to not, as we saw in San Francisco, it voted out of office. So I think Adams is an evidence of an intensification that will continue in the Democratic Party and that Julian Castro and company will not find purchase, not find purchase. in the Democratic Party of the future in the same way that being soft on China

will not be welcome in the Republican Party. Okay. I've got it not worth your time. Question mark. I'm going to start with you, Chris. I feel like you'll be up on this. Okay. But I didn't prep either of you in advance for... Well, I like this. I like the Soussaint of Danger.

There has been a lot of conversation among the pundit class about the relevance, meaning, and quality of a song that has gone viral in the conservative right. Oh, Lord. This is the song, The Richmond, North of Richmond. I assume you've heard this.

You've watched the video? I am familiar with it. I have not watched the entire thing, but I'm, yes, I can attest of familiarity. All right. Is talking about this song and what it represents in the Republican Party or within a certain slice of Americana

or the lyrics or is the song just good or whatever. Is any of this conversation worth our time? What do you think? Oki from Muskogee was an important song because it, and it became very popular because it spoke to a feeling that a lot of Americans have, right? They responded to it because it expressed something,

a feeling that they had. This strikes me as, yes, it has, I'm sure, an intense following among some. This message has an intense following among some and is probably good to bat around. But I think the options in music are now so many, right? If you want to listen to good country music or good hillbilly music, I can give you 10 acts that are active right now that are great and you can go listen to. So I think that the the thirsty quest for

cultural meme moments is really hard to do in music because there's so much competition in the space. Jonah. Okay, so this may seem like a contradiction since I wrote almost 2,000 words about this yesterday in the G-File, but I don't think it's worth talking about.

That is a contradiction. It is not a contradiction because as I explain, I find all of these controversies stupid or boring. The only thing that is of interest to me, is why a stupid, like, let's put it this way. Some controversies are stupid. You have like a meta take on this of like, why has this taken off?

Yeah, some controversies are stupid and boring, but the reason why they become controversies isn't necessarily stupid and boring. So on a textual basis, taking some YouTube stars, he'll, you know, like country music song, you know, both literally and seriously, as if it were an op-ed in the financial times, is ludicrous, but it's interesting that some people are willing to do this ludicrous thing. And the fact that a lot of these new Wright guys are outrage, you know, Laura Ingram, who is, who's connection to the rural salt of the earth people who love this song is entirely abstract, is, you know, going after, you know, my friend Mark Antonio Wright at National Review

who lives in Oklahoma, is from Oklahoma, worked as a roughneck in the oil fields before working his way through college and then joining the Marines. This kid, for criticizing the sort of the implicit arguments of this song is a member of the elite. But Laura Ingram, who grew up in Connecticut and is worth tens of millions of dollars,

is really, you know, she might as well be pumping gas in rural Alabama. And so I find these sort of cultural contradiction arguments interesting for what they say about the stupidity of a lot of our arguments. But on the merits, no, I mean, like, you can like the song and not actually be working for BS pay in the same way that you can like gangster rap without actually murdering people for wearing the wrong colored clothes.

I mean, it's just all so stupid. Left out of Jonah's answer is the most chilling and revealing component of the mentioned chief. which is that Jonah Goldberg had a ska phase. And until I find the photograph of Jonah in a tiny fedora rocking out at a ska show, I will not rest. I will not rest. Joan, I think it's probably for the best that we didn't find each other

during our ska phases. You both had ska phases? Wow. I would venture to say that mine was more serious than Jonas without knowing anything. I think so. Wow. I was actually, I don't know what you, like I was not the teacher.

I was like the dummy or whatever for teaching swing dance at one point because I was sort of fearless about being tossed into the air and dropped. So, yeah, I mean, swing dance, big bad voodoo daddies, all of that. Oh, fake Scott. Okay. But no. But no, no, that's, it was all part of the same. Yeah.

Well, squirrel nut zippers where I think we're talking about two different things. It was the same era. And I think you'd be hard-pressed to find people who were not dabbling in both at that point. But yeah, lots of scotch shows. Sarah and Jonah, Skawdablers. Fortunately, I don't actually like going to concerts because I do not like manifestations of mass enthusiasm

about anything that make me uncomfortable. And so I was spared. You're hard-pressed to find pictures of me. You know, in my brain show. my scah zoot suit or whatever do you still have your mighty mighty Boston's CD probably I mean that's the real test

actually my favorite band was in that genre was actually a band called the pie tasters you guys are this is the whitest and I this is me saying this this is the whitest conversation I have ever been a party too well here I thought I was sure that Sarah was going to not worth our time with us

with the Jew face controversy besetting Bradley Cooper I'm sorry I'm sorry what have you not followed this no NBC which NBC news

which has this weird thing about wanting to come up with super trolly dumb viral content has led the way but daily mail a lot of outlets are in on it Bradley Cooper

is playing Leonard Bernstein and a Leonard Bernstein biopic and he has a prosthetic nose to look like Leonard Bernstein oh no And this is being, this is supposed to be an outrageous anti-Semitic affront. Hashtag Jew face. Hashtag Jew face, like blackface, but Jew face.

And it is the dumbest friggin controversy in an age of dumb controversies that we've seen in a long time. And I just, it's, I have many jokes about this that I just don't feel comfortable making on this podcast. But suffice it to say, I have no problem with Bradley Cookewold. for having a prosthetic nose any more than it would have with someone wearing a weird wig if they're going to play Einstein

or shaving their head if they were going to play Eisenhower. It is the dumbest frigging thing. What about wearing bigger ears to play Barack Obama? Fine by me. I mean, like, I can see why people would bitch and moan about it,

but like, fine by me. It's a mitzvah. It's a mitzvah, Jonah. What you've given us. All right, with that, thank you for joining us on this dispatch podcast. If you liked the show, feel free to become a member.

Hop in the comment section, it's $10 a month. Or just give us a rating wherever you're watching, listening to. Sorry, this podcast. And, yeah, keep walking your dog, doing your laundry, whatever you do while you listen to this podcast. I shudder to imagine what some of you are doing, but very much applaud what others would be doing. Later.

I'm going to be.