The Dispatch Podcast - Brittle Regimes

Episode Date: September 1, 2023

Steve and Jonah join Mike as he takes over the host’s chair in this week’s Dispod. The trio discuss China’s version of manifest destiny and: -Biden’s economic outreach -Big dollar donors desperately scanning the Republican field -Kari Lake being a loser (and proud of it) -Mob rule of institutions -Vivek: worth voters' time? Show Notes: -Jonah's China piece for The Dispatch -Scott Lincicome’s newsletter on China -Poll: Georgia Republicans are unusually skeptical of Trump’s 2020 actions -David Brooks NYT column Nikki’s the one -Steve's Animal Spirits moment -"Not Donald Trump" NBC Poll Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I am not Sarah Isger. I'm Mike Warren. That is Jonah Goldberg. That is Steve Hayes. We are going to be talking about China and the Biden administration's efforts to change that relationship. We'll be talking, of course, about elections. We're now a week out from that first debate. Has anything changed in the Republican field?

And we'll be talking about, yes, impeachment. and what is going to happen in Congress with Biden? All that coming up. All right, China. So, Gina Raimondo, the Commerce Secretary in the Biden administration, just wrapped up a three-day trip in China. He's the fourth Biden cabinet member in the last couple of months to visit China, sort of an attempt to reset relationships between the United States government and Beijing. And this is coming at a time when China's economy is kind of going through a struggle.

Jonah, you wrote your column this week about what's going on with China's economy and whether or not the rest of the world should care, should, you know, does this matter? What's going on? What are your thoughts at the moment on what's going on in China and how the Biden administration is trying to navigate it? Yeah, so, I mean, there are a lot of different things going on. I did not write about the Gina Romando Biden outreach stuff too much,

but China's economy has, the string has run out, it seems, on it. Now, that doesn't mean it's going to implode and there'll be helter-skelter and fighting in the streets and the regime will be overthrown as much as I would like to see that last part happened. The big picture stuff is that Xi Jinping has basically decided that the era that Deng Xiaoping ushered in where he said, it is glorious to get rich, is over. And some of the things that Xi has done based on that conclusion have been positive. He did crack down a lot on corruption, and there was a lot of corruption, and that's one of the reasons why he had a good reputation in China was that he was considered somewhat incorruptible, in part because his wife is this super rich pop star, but if it had stopped there, that would probably be all for the good, at least for the Chinese for the most part. The problem is, is that he basically has a vision of China, of Chinese nationalism, and of an idea of sort of a Chinese version of Manifest Destiny, that, They are the natural hegemons of at least their region, if not the world. And this is China's moment in the sun, as the Germans might have said, at the beginning of the 20th century.

And so he is pursuing a course of wringing out femininity, weakness, all of these things in the economy, decadence. He tells young people who have lost youth unemployment in China is through the roof. So it's so bad that even the normally unreliable Chinese statistics bureau agency, whatever, that releases this stuff, has just decided it's not even going to try releasing these numbers on consumer confidence and on youth unemployment. I guess they're so bad. The last official estimate in June was that it was about 23%. There's a good reason to believe that if you include all young people, it's closer to like 50%. And that's just deadly for the economy.

But I think the interesting thing and the important thing for policymakers is that China's loss of economic competitiveness is not necessarily. It's a good thing politically for America. It is a bad thing economically for America. And the reason why it's particularly worrisome is we need to get the causation right. It's that China's turn towards nationalism is the thing that is primarily driving its space. by its crashing economy. And that turn towards nationalism is what Xi really wants, is to be able to confront America. They're preparing for a war with America and the West before 2026.

They are preparing to take Taiwan by force if necessary. And so everyone who wants to cheer, including a lot of people like me who say, yay, this proves economic planning sucks. And it does. The downside to this is that China's inward turn towards. towards a more aggressive and belligerent nationalism is a far, far bigger threat to the United States and the world order than China getting rich

by making rubber shower shoes. But that would seem to suggest that the Biden administration's sort of efforts to keep engaging China economically or in any of these spheres is a good thing, right? Riemondo, the first Commerce Secretary and I think on a long time to actually visit China, you know, tried to encourage more investment in China.

And she didn't really come away with a lot of big wins, except maybe agreements to have more conversations and meetings in the future. How do we evaluate the Biden administration's attempts here to keep engaging economically with China? at a moment when they are, China is turning inward, as you say, and becoming more nationalists. Is that, is it a futile attempt? No, I'm torn on this and I'll let Steve jump in, but I just very quickly. One, I actually give the Biden administration fairly high marks grading on a curve.

The effort to get Japan and South Korea to sort of double down on a real alliance, the increase in Japanese military spending, the work in the region has been pretty, good. And if this, if this Japan, South Korea stuff holds, that's a really, really big deal and will be a coup for the Biden administration. I think at the same time, the problem is it would be bad for America, the American economy, and the Chinese economy. If we just willy-nilly said, okay, we're not going to have any more economic relations with China. That would help them lean into this turn towards nationalism. And what the Biden administration is trying to do, I think generally rightly, I don't

have to agree with everything that they've done, is say, hey, look, let's keep this as sort of like an economic competition thing and not turn it into a military competition thing. Because a military competition thing is bad for all of us. And I think that's really hard to do when Xi has replaced basically all the leaders in elite positions in China with devotees of what they call Xi Jinping thought, right? They're basically somewhere between ideological acolytes and political hacks that are loyal to Xi's personality-driven

dictatorship rather than they are to the general interests of the Chinese people or the economy. And the only hope is, you know, the old rule of thumb is that the Chinese Communist Party is more afraid of It's almost as afraid of the people as the people are of it. And if they really go into a deflationary crisis, which seems very possible, if they have a massive debt crisis, the pressure from the people to restabilize the economy may actually be the way we at least delay a military confrontation with China for a while. So the effort is laudable. But Steve, what about the effects?

I mean, has the Biden administration made any progress in pursuing American interests in China with all of this going on over there? Your thoughts? Well, I think it's a bit divided for the reasons that Jonah suggests. I mean, I think they would like to challenge China's growing aggression, you know, send signals that we wouldn't sort of sit back and let them take Taiwan. all of the things that the Biden administration can do to sort of seem tough and be tough, they would like to do. But it's complicated by the fact that if China's economy really goes in the tank, very few would be effective as much as the United States. Interesting argument from Scott Lynch to come this week in his terrific newsletter about the Biden administration maintaining and extending some of Trump, Donald Trump's tariff policies.

to send, to sort of send that signal. But of course, then there are the economic impacts, which are not strong. I mean, I think, you know, one of the problems, well, let me step back. This has been, I mean, I agree with Jonah that, you know, part of what we're looking at here is she's attempt to impose to encourage this Chinese nationalism. A lot of this is maybe even longer term and more structural economically. If you look at the demographic shift in China towards where you have an older population aging out of the workforce, you have the so-called re-skilling of the Chinese labor force where you have people who have been working in manufacturing turning to, say, delivery. or technology or service.

These have been things that have been in motion for a long time. There was a McKinsey Global Institute study on these changes and how they were accelerating, I don't know, this was like two and a half, three years ago. So a lot of this has been in place and we're now seeing it. I think part of the challenge today is what's happening inside of China and with the population in particular. It is the case, as Jonah says, that the Chinese government is trying to cover up the nature and the extent of some of these problems, just as they did with COVID when they went back to zero COVID policies. And the populace understood that the propaganda they were being fed

wasn't true. And I think you're seeing some of the same things now where you have this reluctance to spend plummeting consumer confidence. And the Chinese government putting out televised propaganda showing, you know, shopping malls that are full and people spending, spending, spending, that's not going to make people spend if they don't feel like they can spend. If they're worried about sort of future economic uncertainty and think that they don't have money to spend right now. I think that, you know, among the many questions, you have political questions, you have economic questions, geostrategic questions and economic questions, but I have real questions about the politics inside of China. I agree that we're not necessarily looking at some kind

of regime collapse, but I do think the regime is more brittle than many people would have predicted three, four, five years ago. You saw this with the public COVID protest when zero COVID was imposed, there were protests and they weren't isolated protests. We had seen isolated protests on a variety of issues over the years in China, but these were protests that would start in one place and sort of travel. They were contagious. You're seeing on a much smaller scale some of the same kinds of frustration among the Chinese populace with the government and the government policies percolating. And the question is, if the, the, the, the government loses the confidence of the people,

further loses the confidence of the people, can that contribute to additional instability in a way that really might have longer-term consequences? Well, let's turn our attention then from the domestic situation. And China to the domestic situation here in the United States. I said at the top of the show, we're a week out, a little more than a week out, from that first Republican debate in Milwaukee. Steve, you were there. Everybody is sort of

still kind of recovering from what do we know, what do we think about who won? Did it change anything? The time period now has given us a sense of really who succeeded and who didn't. And I have to say, I'm a little surprised by some of the polling following that debate that has borne out something I think all of us were sort of surprised to see, which is that Ron DeSantis did okay by himself. He didn't crater in the way that I think we all thought he might, after watching what I thought was to borrow a word, a sort of listless performance by the governor of Florida in Milwaukee. Steve, what are your thoughts on sort of the ability of DeSantis to kind of keep it going, at least at this point.

Yeah, I think you've correctly highlighted what a week's worth of time has told us about the public reaction to the debate. I certainly didn't think Ron DeSantis had a great night and didn't think he had done anything to elevate himself, particularly among these non-Trump competition. Others had a more positive view, more favorable view of DeSantis, and you saw some polling and some focus groups that thought he had a reasonably good night. The rest of sort of the immediate analysis seems to have borne out largely. Nikki Haley had a pretty good night.

Vivek Ramoswamy was polarizing, but certainly has thrust himself further into the heart of the conversation. He's getting a lot of attention. He's doing a lot of media. He continues to, I think, make himself a bigger, give himself more attention from the, from Republican primary voters. Look, I do think, you know, you have to look at the numbers. People thought Ron DeSantis had a good, did a good job.

He seems to be, they seem to be in a more comfortable position. He's, you know, there's been consistent talk of Ron DeSantis polling better in private polling in Iowa than the public polling might suggest. I've been having conversations with people who have access to those numbers now for probably four or six weeks. He said, look, if Iowa really matters, and we all think Iowa really matters, DeSantis is doing much better than the public polls there and public national polls would suggest. So I think that's giving, that's sort of booing the enthusiasm of DeSantis voters. But on the big question about what the effects of the debate, I don't, think it changed the trajectory of the race in any significant way.

You know, maybe it gave the non-Trump candidates more time to talk. Maybe it certainly has caused the press, the media to cover them and their ideas more, which is probably on net a positive for those candidates, positive for Republicans, positive for the country. But it doesn't feel like anything sort of fundamentally. changed about the race as a result of that debate? Jonah, Steve mentioned Nikki Haley sort of coming alive in that debate. And I think the polling does suggest she's getting a little bump here.

And earlier this week in dispatch politics, we reported on the kind of maybe fickleness is a good word to describe the way that kind of big picture, sorry, big dollar donors in the Republican Party are still waiting to see, do they really want to get all the way behind DeSantis? Maybe Nikki Haley gets a second look. She's certainly been trying to get big dollar donors to help her back her Super PAC. Now that we're a week out, have things changed for Haley? And as she sort of have an opportunity here to take the mantle from DeSantis as the other non-Trump alternatives. I think her chances of doing that are better than they were before the debate.

I think she's gotten high marks from a lot of people. Some of the people she got high marks for, I'm not sure help all that much in the Republican caucuses. I mean, personally, I really like and admire David Brooks. But when David Brooks writes a New York Times column saying, hey, donors, Nikki's the one, I don't know that that is what moves people in the Iowa caucuses. Yeah, no, I think she definitely helped herself. I think she also helped herself in the sense that she is now a target for Vivek Ramoswamy.

And generally speaking, look, Vivek Ramoswamy has his fans. But if you were going to divvy up the proceeds from who benefits from being attacked by Vivek Ramoswamy, Nikki does Nicky is a net gain it's a net gain for her to be attacked by Vivek and but that said I agree with Steve I mean

I think the debate was really consequential and just sort of demonstrating that Asa Hutchinson God bless them shouldn't be there I think it was very interesting Chris Christie's strategy of not going hammer and tongs against

against Trump, and I think it's because he thought this was an opportunity to reintroduce himself as a full-spectrum candidate, and he makes a strong case that, you know, things are looking good for him in New Hampshire. We'll see. I've heard that, I heard that from him in 2016 too.

But I think against the backdrop of the fourth arrest in Georgia, the mugshot, and the hurricane, the debate has really receded in the rearview mirror. And I think DeSanta, however much DeSantis helped or hurt himself in that debate.

I think he helped himself a lot more with the hurricane and particularly the way some of the media have covered his handling of the hurricane. And what I would hope his advisors would take from this is that his actual advantage in this race is to be a guy that you can be Trumpian like but is actually kind of a normal. And his real value at is he knows how to be an

administrator and good government stuff. And he's checked the boxes on being anti-woke and who's going to, you know, no one's going to get at him on that kind of culture war stuff. So if I were him, I would start pivoting to saying, hey, look, I get stuff done. I don't bring a lot of drama. I handled that mass shooting, you know, that racist mass shooting. I took booze for it, but I did the right thing. I refused to do politics with the hurricane.

The AP called me a racist as a result and shame on them. But I'm staying focused on doing the things that I said I was going to do. and serving the people of Florida. I think that's a much better campaign message than a lot of the very online Twitter nonsense that he's got dragged down in. And you can see that they believe this, right? I mean, you don't hear Ron DeSantis speaking woke very much anymore.

Remember, when he launched, he launched on Twitter and had this sort of parade of anti-woke folks echoing his arguments about his candidacy. And he's really backed off of that. least, I mean, I don't think he's backed off of it from a policy perspective or, you know, his positions, but he's certainly not emphasizing it the way that he's emphasizing. Look, it seems to me that Ron DeSantis' campaign was always better off making two arguments, one on effectiveness and the other on electability. Whether you liked or disliked Ron DeSantis and what he did in Florida,

he was effective. He got stuff done. He could point to that. There was an obvious. contrast with Donald Trump, who talks a lot, pisses people off, tweets a lot, says ridiculous things. He got some stuff done. You know, I think if you're a Trump supporter, you can point to tick off a certain list of accomplishments. And every Trump supporter I talk to does that when I make this point. But on a lot of the big things, on a lot of the things he campaigned on in 2016, he just didn't get them done. So that sort of, to me, was always the most obvious place for Ron DeSantis to go with his campaign rather than spend, you know, weeks and weeks bolstering his anti-woke credentials. And then the other, obviously, is electability. And you can point to 2018,

2020, 2020, and what Donald Trump did to Republicans broadly, Donald Trump's troubles in 2020, and contrast them with Ron DeSantis' landslide victory in 2022, which not only, you know, was a contrast to Trump's own electoral record in 2020, but really control. contrasted with a rough day that a lot of Republicans had across the country. He is in a unique position, I think, to make a very effective electability argument. But the problem is it required him to campaign on Trump having lost in 2020. And his team, I think Ronda Santos himself, didn't want to piss off the Trump base. So they made a calculation early on that what they were going to try to do was to peel off

some of the hardcore MAGA base, the 30, 35% of people who were Donald Trump devotees above all. They were going to try to split that base and then capture whoever else in the Republican electorate they could to try to put together a coalition that would help them basically win Iowa. They haven't had much success on that. I mean, the numbers don't suggest that you've had a big defection of rank and file Trump. supporters, even if you've had some, you know, conservative prominent Trump influencers or media entertainers who have switched from Trump to DeSantis, there's not much indication that he's had success splitting that the Trump rank and file base off. I think, I mean, it feels like he's now trying to broaden his case and appeal to the, you know, if you look at the, the, the, the, uh,

CNN NBC poll of likely Iowa caucus goers, there's a big chunk, some 57 percent, who are open to candidates or eager for a candidate that's not Donald Trump. And I think there's an opening there for Ronda Sandus. Maybe this is the beginning of his attempt to take that opening. 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

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But, you know, I was struck by, Jonah, you mentioned the hurricane response. It did look as sort of grim as it is. It looked like DeSantis was much more comfortable in that sort of executive situation. He know, you know, Floridians know about hurricanes. Florida governors, it's probably the first page in the handbook that a new Florida governor gets from the previous governor how to deal with hurricanes it's like snow removal in new york or chicago it's just something you have to do right or you're screwed exactly um so he felt it looked like he was in his element even even with the jacksonville shooting uh and and the

sort of flack that he got in the moment um he looked like he was in control and and sort of like the the figure that you know fox news viewers fell in love with uh when he was showing up every you know other day on Fox to sign some new bill or to to stand up there and make some pronouncement during COVID, much more comfortable than, say, you know, eating something at the Iowa State Fair. It seems like a pretty good setting for him to make that case. And I thought it was sort of oddly helped by Joe Biden, who was given an opportunity yesterday to ding DeSantis. I don't think he would have taken it, but he was asked by some reporter, you know, about, I don't even know what the question was, something about he's

running for president, he's, you're running for reelection. What about the politics of all this? And Biden, you know, took the high road as we would expect any, most anybody to do, maybe except Donald Trump, and said, you know, he's doing a good job. You know, we're talking with him. He knows what he's doing. We're trying to help. In a way, it elevated DeSantis, in a way that he has not been able to be elevated so far in this campaign. But I want to go back to the electability thing because it does seem, Steve, that this is a difficult, and Joe, to jump in on this as well, it is maybe a difficult case to make to Republican primary voters about being more electable than Donald Trump.

And it's not just the fanatic belief that Trump never lost in 2020. How could he lose in 2020? to Joe Biden. There's no way he could lose in 2024 to Joe Biden. But there's actually some polling data that suggests that Trump could beat Joe Biden. Economist UGov poll Biden 43, Trump, 44. Yes, that's within the margin of error. It's not some resounding victory here. But there are other polls in recent days and weeks. You'll look at Biden's job approval in that same Economist poll disapprove plus 16. Biden's in a tough position. And, you know, a lot of Republicans think anybody could beat him. Why not Trump? Isn't that a pretty big hurdle for DeSantis or Nikki Haley

or anybody else who wants to challenge Trump that maybe Trump could win as the nominee? Sure. I mean, I think that's the, I don't think it's the primary argument we haven't seen Republicans, that has kept Republicans from making this electability argument, but it is. And as long as Trump continues to poll reasonably well or close to Joe Biden, it complicates the electability argument to be sure. And, you know, look, there's, there's, if you look at the numbers around Joe Biden's presidency, there's a reason that even somebody who is as unpopular with the general electorate as Donald Trump is, is competitive. I mean, Biden's approvals are in the low 40s, sometimes in the high

30s. He's the right track, wrong track is almost three to one wrong track. I mean, there's all sorts of metrics that we can point to that have been meaningful in the past that would suggest Joe Biden is a very, very, very vulnerable incumbent. I do think, though, if you're Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley or others, the Trump's electoral problems are not hypothetical. Like, he cost Republicans in 2018. He cost Republicans in 2020. I mean, talk to Georgia Republicans. The way that he campaigned, the way that he talked, the people who associated themselves most closely with him, didn't do well in 2022. So I think there's a very strong fact-based, reality-based argument to make that Donald Trump is an electoral problem

for Republicans who want to win the White House in 2024 and down-ballot Republicans more generally. There's also, there's a very interesting analysis this week in the Washington Post from Aaron Blake, who contributes to the fix, talking about contrasting Donald Trump's popularity and other views that Georgia Republicans have of Donald Trump with Republicans across the country. And one of the conclusions, it's an interesting argument, we'll pop it in the show notes. He doesn't sort of, he doesn't pretend that this is sort of monocausal. But one of the arguments he makes, and I think it's pretty effective, is it matters when you have strong conservatives and Republicans saying that Donald Trump lost the election. It changes how people think of this. And you've had Brian Kemp, Brad Raffman's Berger, others in the state. party making this argument that Donald Trump lost and that he's hurt the Republican Party in some

ways. They've poured cold water on his crazy election conspiracies. They've fought him in court when necessary. They have pushed an argument pretty consistently since November of 2020. Donald Trump didn't win. And I think that's part of the reason that Georgia Republicans have a different view of Donald Trump and of his position in the Republican Party, whether he won or lost. the 2020 election, then people elsewhere. I would like to think that this might be a model for other Republicans, the many of whom will say to us privately, of course you lost. The conspiracies are crazy.

We all know this. To say those things in public, to make an argument, to use data. Jonah, this is a argument for institutions sort of holding the line or sort of pushing back against the mob because I read that Georgia piece that Steve just cited. I've done reporting in Georgia, talked to county chairs of Republican parties. They know why they lost those two runoff elections in 2021. They could see the data. And I compare Georgia, a place that has had a strong Republican governor holding the line on this, a lieutenant governor at the time who was holding the line on this, a secretary of state, but also a pretty robust business community, lots of big corporations

that are headquartered in Georgia, in the Atlanta area, who sort of serve as a bulwark against kind of the mob part of the Republican Party. You compare that to say Arizona, which looks a lot like Georgia, a swing state, Republicans have been winning, and now Democrats have an advantage. And besides Governor Doug Ducey, who was going out of office by then, there wasn't a lot in the Arizona Republican Party, business community, sort of institutional side of Arizona life and politics to really push back against this. You mentioned Steve, you know, losing and being aligned with Donald Trump as a loser. But look at the two losers in Arizona from the last cycle.

Carrie Lake and Blake Masters both potentially running for Senate in Arizona after losing races that any other Republican should have won. So, Jonah, talk a little bit about just the way that kind of these stronger institutions can can really help push back against that mob rule that has really taken over a lot of parts of the Republican Party. Yeah, I mean, the people listening with their dispatch podcast bingo cards have. have so saturated the square with Sharpie ink about me talking about weak parties that I don't think I need to do that whole. Give us one more. Why not? Hey, you know, hit us again for good for old times.

But I mean, I think, you know, and this has been a peeve of mind for a little while. And it's, and it's something my friend Noah Rothman has written about recently for National Review. You know, one of the reasons why the ranks of independence are growing so much is that both parties have this, the animal spirits in the parties, the people who show up and boo or cheer or shun or welcome, they're basically telling anybody that if you don't completely agree with the crazies, you're not one of us. And so people are like, well, then I'm out of here, right? And so Carrie Lake, you brought up Carrie Lake, is still about as perfect an example of this phenomenon as anybody. She was in striking distance of winning when she ran for governor. At a rally, I don't know, 10 weeks, 10 days before the election, something like that.

She says at a rally, is there anybody here who voted for John McCain? And then she says, it doesn't matter. We don't want you here. There's no place for you here. Now, I mean, I've ran to about this before, but like, if you know anything about politics or you think about politics for two seconds, people who show up at your rally, particularly people who voted for the most popular Republican in the state for the last 30 years, they're interested in voting for you, right? They want to vote for you. Maybe they need to hear more. Maybe they were just there to check it out, whatever.

Maybe they've been going to a lot of your rallies, but you never said this before. and to say, hey, you voted for this guy who won a Senate seat, I don't know, what, five times in this state as a Republican. And it was a Republican nominee in 2008, most famous Republican politician outside of Barry Goldwater since World War II. Yeah, if you voted for him, you're not a real Republican anymore. It is so astoundingly profoundly stupid. It is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is so stupid that conspiracy theories that think,

okay, she's actually taking money from Democrats to destroy, destroy the Republican Party, have at least superficial plausibility absent other data. And, um, this writ large is the problem with the GOP and to a certain extent, the Democratic party, it helps that Joe Biden, it helps the Democratic Party that Joe Biden is president because, you know, as, as problematic as Joe Biden is, The presidency is so important to getting things done for your party that people suck it up and take one for the team to support a president, particularly a weak president that you need to get reelected.

But the animal spirits, you know, in the Democratic Party, the Bernie Sanders crowd, the AOC crowd, the Elizabeth Warren crowd, they very much would like to whip ideological conformity and political conformity on the entire party. And they do it pretty well in some regards on things like abortion. But on the Republican Party side, it's as if success is a sign that you sold out. That if you won a battle, that means you compromise somehow, which means you're impure, which means that therefore you're a sellout in a member of the establishment. The only way to be sure that you're a real, really one of us is to lose and lose badly, right?

And so just on this electability thing, I think Steve's right about the, you know, the various vulnerabilities that Donald Trump. has, I think, but I think you're right, Mike, that it's, it's hard to make this case to normal voters because what they see is the symmetry between the unpopularity ratings, right? So like nominally, Joe Biden's approval rating is 39% or 42%, whatever the number is, right? And then they see that Donald Trump's is 39% or 42%. They say, oh, okay, so it's like even Stephen. What they don't internalize and really comprehend is if you ask those people in the middle

who don't like either candidate if forced to choose between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, who will you vote for? And they break pretty decisively for Joe Biden. More people will vote. When was the last election where more people didn't vote

against the other party than for their own party? And in an election where you're going to have a guy sort of like, remember in Jaws where you're just taking all the barrels and you can't just keep him from going underwater?

He's going to have conceivably a conviction in them and the idea that a felon is going to win more votes than an amiable grandfatherly out of the loop

kind of senioritis sufferer strikes me is unlikely and it's just not supported by the polls where I think Biden has a real vulnerability which I think we're going to get to a little bit in the next topic

is on the corruption issue right now more people think Donald Trump is corrupt because there's a lot more evidence, concrete evidence that he's more corrupt. But that doesn't mean that they're not going to find evidence with this Hunter Biden stuff that could at least cancel out those issues for a lot of voters. And I think the Democrats are whistling past the graveyard and doing themselves a real disservice by dismissing these concerns out of hand as just more Benghazi nonsense when, you know, as Steve and I will tell you, we don't think Benghazi was all nonsense.

I was on with Karen Finney on CNN the other night, and I like Karen a lot. But she was saying how, you know, all this stuff about he's too old. It reminds me of all the stuff we heard in 2016 about Hillary Clinton's emails. And she made it sound like that was a reason to dismiss the concerns about Biden being old. Well, first of all, vastly more people are concerned about Biden being old. We just have this new poll. You know, it's like three out of four Democrats are concerned about Biden being old. But moreover, the stuff about her emails is arguably why she lost the election.

If they had taken that stuff more seriously, maybe they wouldn't have lost the Donald Trump in the first place. I think it is just a profoundly unsurious country right now that we are on the precipice of nominating two people so unfit for the office. again. And it's why we can't have nice things. 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, you're 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 tailorses.

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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. Presale tickets for future events subject to availability and varied by race. Turns and conditions apply. Learn more at amex.ca.ca slash Yanex. Well, let's talk about that Biden corruption element. Jonah, you were just talking about animal spirits of the party,

and that just immediately puts me in mind of the House Republican Conference. I want to read the lead to a New York Times story that can get us into this. This is from this morning. We're recording this on Thursday. Facing the prospect of a politically damaging government shutdown within weeks. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is. offering a new argument to conservatives reluctant to vote to keep funding flowing. A shutdown would make it more difficult for Republicans to pursue an impeachment inquiry

against President Biden or to push forward with investigations of him and his family that could yield evidence for one. This seems like from Kevin McCarthy's perspective, you're playing with a lot of fire. You've got fire in both hands and maybe like in your, you got the, the stick on fire in your mouth too and you're just trying to like uh i don't know try to get through it all uh Steve like McCarthy said earlier this week uh that uh he sort of gave voice to the fact that impeachment could be coming soon what are the prospects of that and uh just what do you make of kind of this game that McCarthy's trying to play uh within his own conference

so that's a very important question Mike and I'm going to answer it but first Because we've had, what, a half a dozen references to animal spirits so far, I have to ask if either of you all listen to Wolfpack? No. Band? Okay. Well, I'm grateful for all the mentions of animal spirits because since the first one, there's a song that Wolfpack sings called Animal Spirits. They did it live at Madison. Square Garden that's been playing in my head for this entire podcast. We can probably link to that

in the show notes because I know people will be very interested in that. I think it's funny because you know, just, just to figure it, I'm pretty sure, not positive, but I'm pretty sure Animal Spirits is a John Maynard Keynes reference to the economy. Right. For sure. So I thought that was a liquor store that I went to in college in Nashville. We all have different associations with Animal Spirits. Volfeck is actually very good. But it replaced. the song that was playing at the beginning. I had this song in my head for the entire day. I don't know who sings it. Maybe DeBarge. It's called I love your smile. And it is, I mean, it is one of the worst songs I think ever written. And it's been in my head for some inexplicable reason. It was in

my head for like three hours. The whole drive-in, everything. So I'm now singing animal spirits in my head. We're going to get you the best doctors, dude. He's going crazy. Back to the question. This is also a useful device to totally avoid the question. Nobody remembers what the question was. I can just answer whatever I want now. No, on the question and what McCarthy is doing on impeachment.

I mean, I think this is, remember when we were looking at Kevin McCarthy and the deals that he had to make to become Speaker of the House? And we said, boy, this kind of craziness, this kind of chaos and this kind of deal making. is going to lead to really weird and interesting things when Kevin McCarthy is in fact Speaker of the House. This is exactly what we were talking about at the time. Because what he's trying to do is appease the Freedom Caucus types and other Republicans, you know, who live and run in red districts by going after Donald Trump. They want to, I mean, going after Joe Biden, they want to take on Joe Biden. They've been paying attention to the Hunter Biden story for a long time. They've been watching Jim Jordan on Fox News tell them that this is sort of the

height of corruption in Washington, D.C. They want to see, particularly in a context where Democrats and in their view law enforcement is going after Donald Trump, they want that retribution. They want these investigations. They'd love an impeachment. So in that sense, Kevin McCarthy is delivering for them what they want. And as you said in the setup to your question, Mike, he's hoping to extract something from the, hey, play ball on the shutdown and we'll go after Joe Biden or will at least launch an inquiry. The challenge for McCarthy is there are, I believe, 18 districts currently held by Republicans that Joe Biden won. I could be wrong on that number, but it's a chunk. It's a chunk. And these are Republicans who are saying, wait a second,

You're going to launch an impeachment inquiry into this president. Most of the people in my district supported. That makes them very, very nervous. And some of them have been articulating their frustration directly to Republican House leadership. Others have been making it clear, usually less sort of boldly and less with their name attached in interviews with the media. But it sets up this real difficulty for. for Republicans. Taking a further step back from that, you know, one of the things I think Donald Trump would like, probably many Republicans, is to make it look in the context of these Trump

prosecutions. Like, everybody does this. Just politics is corrupt. Yeah, they're going after Trump, but they're going after Trump because they're frustrated with him, not because of what he's done. and by the way, everybody's corrupt, and this is how Washington is, if they can neutralize these questions about Trump's abuse of power and trying to steal an election, by making it look like everybody does it, I think they believe that that will be to their advantage, particularly if there are economic challenges and amid the questions about Joe Biden's age. Jonah, without sort of free associating about the music in your head,

can you tell me what you think the electoral impact of an impeachment would be? Does this, does it boost Biden in a way with Democratic voters who may be sort of, have soured on Biden over the last couple of years, feel like, oh, he's not really living up? Is it rally the Democratic troops in the way that Donald Trump's problems, legal and otherwise, seem to rally Republican? yes okay great oh no no you have more you have more yeah no i'm happy to leave you there but no uh yes but right there's the the the problem if there's if they if the republicans can't really nail the case right if they can't really connect the dots with these and and i think there are real dots i mean i really do i think these these 20 shell corporations payments to your grandkid the

changing versions of events from Joe Biden. These are real things, right? And the, you know, the pseudonyms and emails, I mean, as you pointed out, we were talking about this in Slack, it really depends what's in the emails, not just that they exist, which I agree with. But there's real smoke. Whether they can find the fire that connects it to Joe Biden himself in a meaningful way remains to be seen.

I think they go forward with an impeachment inquiry regard. And I think if they have an impeachment inquiry, they probably go forward with impeachment if they can get the last, you know, a handful of Republican votes of like moderates from Biden districts that don't want to do this nonsense. Certainly I think McCarthy would do it if he could if he could get the votes. And so if they don't find anything real, if it does look like, well, you impeached our guy, so we're going to impeach your guy, which some people are actually making that argument. I mean, I've heard Republicans say on TV shows, you know, using words in basically this order that because they went after Trump and those impeachments

were unfair, we've ruined the institution of impeachment. So now we have to do it to Democrats. And like, that's a really bad argument. And he admit it. He admit it. Yeah. I mean, they're saying the quiet part out loud. And if, and if it looks like that's what they're doing, I think it's really bad for the Republicans, it'll play out. much the way a government shutdown does, which is the person who forces it. The party that forces it usually gets the blame for it. But I think there's a non-trivial chance

that they actually get the goods. And if they get the goods, if they can actually prove something like a bribe, something like a really indefensible business arrangement, then I don't know how the Democrats can renominate him and also talk about Trump's corruption. And so I feel better about, in some ways, I feel better about my early predictions on this podcast

of taking the field over DeSantis, Trump, and Biden than I have in a little while. I'm still not going to join the weird niche podcast that Sarah and David do, because I don't want to be held accountable for such predictions. But I think everybody's more vulnerable than the conventional wisdom holds. All right.

I think we've got time for a quick, worth your time. See, I don't even say question mark because it's implied in the tone, which I say it. Go F yourself, San Diego. This guy is a broadcasting pro. Totally. Yeah. This is the real stuff.

Well, we talked about him a little earlier, but I want to know, is Vivek Ramoswami worth our time? time. And I want to preface all this conversation by saying an article by Stephanie Murray in the Messenger contains a quote that really jumped out at me. This is from a quote from Ramoswamy campaign CEO Ben Yoho to the messenger. He said, quote, our job is to somewhat day trade attention, if you will. And I think the Google trend lines, this is after the debate, the Google trend lines are a good indicator of if you're succeeding at that. Vivake is succeeding

at capturing the attention of the American people and how we realize that is what people are searching for online. Jonah, is even having this conversation that we're having right now just playing into Vivek's hands? I'm torn about this. On the one hand, I really don't want to talk about him anymore. I don't think he's a serious person. I think he showed his hand that he doesn't care about being a serious person. But having spent four years of a Trump administration where I think the President of the United States was an unserious person,

simply because someone is a vacuous, twisted attention-seeking fraud doesn't mean that we might not have to take them seriously from time to time. And so I feel it's beneath the country to be taking very seriously. I think it's beneath the Republican Party and conservatism to be taking him seriously.

But, and I don't think he deserves as much time as he's getting these days, but you can't rule out that from time to time you have to talk to him, talk about him, at least to just remind people about why the things he's saying are so stupid and so ill-founded in any actual conviction. Steve, is it beneath you to talk about Vivek? It's not. You know, this is, again, sort of pull back the curtain. Mike, as you know, this is a conversation we've been having internally at the dispatch.

Yes, it is. This is true of a lot of things in this day and age. We've had this conversation. I think we may have even had a worth-your-time segment about Marjorie Taylor Green. How much do you pay attention to these people who, you know, either are on the fringes of American politics or should be on the fringes of American politics? That's a huge distinction. It is a odd thing. No, no, that's, I mean, in so many ways, that's like the challenge of our time, right?

I mean, that so many of these people who elitists like the three of us think shouldn't, you know, they don't, they don't know anything. They're doing, you know, bad performance art, which it sounds like Vivek's CEO sort of acknowledged that this is just an intention getting undertaking or at least that that drives the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the. outcome here. You don't want to give attention to people like that because it encourages everybody else to do the kinds of things that will get them cheap attention. And I think it degrades our political discourse. On the other hand, this is a guy who made the stage, right? I mean, he was on the debate stage. There was no question, I think it was clear even before the debate started. But once the debate started and you saw him give these strong, authoritative answers that were easy to understand, easily digestible,

and usually sort of titillating the right-wing populist fringe, that he was going to be seen as having a very good night, that he was going to be getting more attention. And I don't think that's great. I agree with Jonah, though. I mean, the one thing it does is it allows people who care about policy, care about issues to push back on some of his really ridiculous arguments. I mean, the stuff he's been saying about foreign policy is, you know, it doesn't come from sort of, at least there's no indication, I should say, that it comes from kind of a long

thought out anti-interventionist philosophical place, which I have a lot of friends who are anti-interventionists, non-interventionists, who have been making the same arguments for decades because they truly believe them

and they've spent time thinking about them. And they, you know, it's not where I am, but they make a coherent, concerted or principled case. That's not Ramoswami. Like he makes, he's making this up as he goes along.

It's one day he says one thing, the other day he, the next day he says something exactly the opposite. He does it on matters of little import, like whether Donald Trump should appear in the debate. I don't care. Yeah, he would be a coward if he doesn't show up to, I don't, you know, I don't care if he shows up or not. It's understandable that he wouldn't want to. To big things like threats from Iran, like the nature of the regime in Russia,

you can't have somebody kind of playing it by by ear the way that he does because unfortunately I think we saw over the four years of the Trump administration doesn't always work out very well well I think paying attention to Vivek is worth our time if only because he's there he has some kind of following and paying attention to him as you and Jonah Steve have both laid out, you know, does give people the opportunity to actually evaluate what he's saying. I'm reading to my almost nine-year-old oldest son right now, the Lord of the Rings. And all of this put a particularly important piece of dialogue from the book into my mind, because, of course, we would love to be talking and considering presidential candidates

who are talking at the highest levels about important policy disputes and not just flim-flam artists. But as Frodo said to Gandalf, I wish it need not have happened in my time. Gandalf replies, so do I and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that has given us. All we have to do is decide Steve and Jonah what to do with the crummy Republican primary slate. that this moment in history has given us. So with that, I will say it is worth our time.

And thank you for spending your time with us here at the Dispatch podcast. Become a member at The Dispatch. Join us. And we will talk to you next time. I'm going to be able to be.