The Dispatch Podcast - Coronavirus Machismo

Episode Date: May 13, 2020

Sarah, Jonah, and David discuss Joe Biden's lead in the polls, the special election in California, what is "Obamagate," and the future of social distancing and coronavirus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isgert, joined by Jonah Goldberg and David French. Steve Hayes, our fourth chair is out today, but he'll be back next week. This podcast is brought to you by The Dispatch and ExpressVPN. Visit The Dispatch.com to see our full slate of newsletters and podcasts and make sure you subscribe to this podcast so you never miss an episode. Today we'll be talking about the special election in California and Joe Biden's steady national lead with his front porch slash basement campaign? What is Obamagate? And then we'll turn to coronavirus and the future of social distancing with a little from Anthony Fauci's Senate testimony yesterday. And don't worry, I make sure Jonah gets to rant on quote, coronavirus machismo. Let's dive right in. I want to start with a headline out of CNN that Biden's lead is the steadiest lead on record for a really long time.

So basically, he's leading in polls by an average of six points. Not only is he up by six points in the last month or so, but the average of polls since the beginning of the year has him ahead by six points. Moreover, CNN reports, all the polls taken. since the beginning of 2019, have him up six points. This is the steadiest advantage running against an incumbent since 1944. I don't want to get into who's winning in November. I think there's too much that can change between now and then. But we had an election last night in a few states, but the one that I think we should focus on is this Mike Garcia, who looks like he will be elected, in this California, this very blue California congressional district.

It's been held by Democrats since 1998. Katie Hill won it by nine points in 2018. Hillary Clinton carried the district by seven points in 2016. And currently, Mike Garcia, who's a defense industry executive, is running ahead of Assemblywoman Hill, sorry, Smith, Assemblywoman Christy Smith by 12 percentage points with 76% reporting. No question that this was also a coronavirus election. They mailed 425,000 ballots to every registered voter in the district.

About 139,000 of those have already been returned. There were also drop-off places, two dozen drop-off boxes. And there were in-person voting places, although as of mid-afternoon yesterday, only about 200 voters had visited the in-person. David, is this the future of voting and does the fact that a Republican flipped this seat foretell something that this six-point steadiest lead in history isn't telling us? We'll exercise extreme caution over the results of one congressional race conducted in the midst of a pandemic. But to the extent that we'll draw any conclusions at all about it, I think we also need to note that this is, as Katie Hill's district, this is one where she resigned in scandal.

So you have a race conducted in the aftermath, the immediate aftermath of a democratic scandal. And in the midst of a pandemic with an enormous amount, a much greater amount of vote by mail. And so about the only thing, I'll say two things about it. One, I'm a little bit surprised by the outcome. Two, I wonder if this does anything at all to move the needle on steadfast Republican opposition or overwhelming Republican opposition to vote by mail. It will be very interesting. That's exactly my thought, by the way.

Like, this idea that vote by mail was going to hurt Republicans, the numbers of who returned their ballots heavily favored Republicans. and makes sense. Elderly voters, people who don't want to go to polls. Right. And, you know, that elderly voters demographic is going to be a demographic that's diligent, this is the demographic that diligently votes as a general matter. This would be the demographic that diligently sends in their vote by mail. It's also the demographic, if we're going to be drawing the larger, broader national conclusions, where Trump is slipping and seems to be slipping in support, in their support, by a pretty considerable amount.

As for Biden's steady polling lead, again, you know, there's so many uncertainties between now and November, but it does seem to be a sign of the times that in national politics, the idea that they're going to be wild polling swings, maybe for the time being, kind of a thing of the past. I mean, we've talked before that, you know, my view is that Trump has a really high floor of support and a pretty low ceiling of support. And I feel like that's pretty much the same for Biden. I think he's got a slightly higher floor of support for Trump and a slightly higher floor of support than Trump does. And that's probably responsible for this steady polling lead. Now, that's not going to tell the tale when it comes necessarily to turnout, et cetera,

et cetera. But I just think in this highly, highly polarized time that the wild sort of polling swings are a thing of the past absent something that we just cannot foresee. So, Jonah, there's, you know, there's Democrats who are very pleased with the Biden in the basement campaign, make this a referendum on Trump. And there's Democrats who are very worried about that strategy, does this California election tell us anything about sort of, if you don't campaign, what happens? Yeah, I mean, I'm kind of with you guys on the Katie Hill thing, or the California race. I am very reluctant because this is all we don't have all the results in yet, right?

I mean, this guy's clearly going to win, but. It'll be days also, by the way. This is not, we're waiting a couple hours because of the mail-in vote thing, which would happen in November as well, most likely. We have several more days where the mail-in ballot had to be received by yesterday, but it will take a while to count them. Right. Also, California's record of conducting timely elections is only marginally better than France's record of defending against Germans. So you've got to like, you know. So, but my point is, is that I'm a little surprised by the outcome, too.

Certainly if that margin holds, I think candidate selection probably is a big deal here and then all the other stuff that you guys were putting in there. I'm reluctant to think of it's that much of a bellwether in part because congressional candidates basically are going to run the way they're going to run no matter what right now. The question is really, and I don't know anybody, I mean, I'm open to correct. from you guys, but I don't know anybody who thinks the House is in play. So the question is, how much of a bellwether is this for Senate candidates? And I'm just not sure you can extrapolate that much out of it. I think the Republican hold on the Senate, which is very worrisome to me, is in trouble. On the Biden thing, I have to do a full disclosure here in that six months ago, I think.

I'll have to figure out the date. I was way ahead of the curve. I was, I mean, it's difficult to exaggerate my sagaciousness. Wait, is your full disclosure a humble brag? No, it's just a straight up brag. And so I'm committed to, I'm committed, you know, it's like, you know, when you get a prediction right, and then you just want to defend it against any new facts that might, like, undo the brilliance of your prediction. So I wrote this thing, like six months ago, arguing that Biden should run a front porch campaign. that no one really wants to hear from him.

No one really cares about him. They like him as the generic Democrat. They like the idea of him more than actually him. Very similar. I mean, not as bad as like with John Kerry, who in 2004, every time he went to his state, his poll numbers in that state went down. And then when he left, they went back up because people like the idea of voting for a Democrat more than that human toothache who was John Kerry. and but Biden's very bad public speaking these days he's he's and the idea of like just letting

your surrogates do your stuff for you makes a lot of sense for me with Biden as the candidate you know if Biden could do the stuff that David Axelrod and Pluff want him to do of these like barnstorming rabble-rousing you know kind of things that would be great but as I always say there's always a non-trivial chance that Joe Biden is going to yell get these squirrels off of me and this completely blow up his campaign. And so you want to be very careful about the words that come out of his mouth and in the order in which they come out. And so, and we know to a certain extent that, I mean, so now we're, forget front porch

campaign. It's now a roper dope thing, right? I mean, the genius of roper dope is, you know, Muhammad Ali just hangs back and lets the other guy tire himself out punching you. Trump is actually like publicly begging for Biden to get out of his basement and go on the road. There's a reason for that. He needs to demonize his opponent. He spent so much, you know, he just gets back to the thing that me and David have been banging our spoons on our high chairs about for a really long time.

The, you know, Trump's success in 2016 had an enormous amount to do with how much the right had loosened the peanut butter jar on Hillary Clinton for 20 years. And then he comes along and just this little extra twist and, you know, and thinks that it was him who, like, demonized Hillary Clinton and ran up her negatives. And they need to do the same thing to Biden. We know from the primaries that he just does not have the negatives that Hillary Clinton had. Right. And that's a real problem for Trump, I think. I'm not saying it's insurmountable. I'm just saying they know it and they want them out there, you know, screaming weird things in Esperanto to even the plane.

field. Two things. One, I think that the California election is not a bellwether at all for blue districts suddenly flipping red. I think it is a bellwether, though, for coronavirus voting. And if that were to continue into November, I think it is very relevant for likely voters. Like, we do likely voters based on people showing up to polls right now. And so all the polling on likely voters will have to shift to who is a likely mail-in voter. And I think that's where something like last night becomes really relevant. And if I were a consultant on one of these Senate races, for instance, I would be digging, like, deep into these numbers, albeit 400,000 registered voters in the state or in the district. But still, like, let's find out who overperformed and underperformed compared to where they would have been in a walk-in voting, likely voter model.

That's a really interesting point about, like, what is the psychology that makes you likely to, actually get off your ass and walk to a polling station, but not put a piece of mail in the mail? I mean, that's interesting to me. I have no idea what the answer to that question is. Well, and also, I mean, are we going to face a situation where if anything, if there's any real moving of the needle on vote by mail between now and November, you're going to have blue states that are by and large going to be moving towards vote by mail, and red states that by and large are not. I mean, I don't sense a whole, I don't sense much momentum at all in red states. I don't sense much momentum at all in red states to move to vote by mail. So it's going to be fascinating if the pandemic is still

going, what will that do for turnout? Because one of my thoughts is what happens when if red states stay red but with lower turnout because people are a little bit more concerned about going out and they have less access to voting by mail? And blue states that stay blue, but they have a higher turnout because they have more liberal use of vote by mail, could that result in greater popular vote disparities without necessarily, you know, affecting the outcome, ultimate outcome of the election. Yeah, let me give you another example, which is you're going to have swing states, Michigan, North Carolina might be kind of good examples that have Senate races. And then you're going to have states like Kansas and Arizona, which are less swingy, but have these very, very

important Senate races. And so in that way, you can compare it a little bit more to a special election, where people are going to be driven in turnout by the Senate race itself, not by the presidential race. And so how does vote by mail affect what would be an overall lower turnout than a pure swing state, similar to last night's election? Not that similar. Again, mind you, this is one congressional district in California that will sink into the sea, I'm sure soon. But Arizona might be a little swingy. On the presidential election, Arizona is, might be a tad swingy.

It's not looking too swingy, David. Okay, since y'all brought this up, we were going to go coronavirus. I can't believe we let all of these swingy jokes and puns go by without once referencing Katie Hill's own swinginess. But I just, whatever, go on. I was going to go swingers. like, you know, deep track 90s movie. It's a little bunny, and you're just, you need to go kill the bunny. Yeah, we're going to go coronavirus.

I'm switching it up. We're going Obamagate next. Oh, Obama. Because you know we're talking about the president's strategy, him begging Biden to get out there. And he has, at least in the last several days, seems to have switched from really attacking Biden to his, well, there's been two real catchphrases that have come out. One is transition to greatness. We'll get to that later. But the other one is Obamagate. There were tons of tweets on Mother's Day on Sunday about Obamagate. And then he was asked about it at his press conference

on Monday. What crime do you think the president has committed by Phil Rucker of the Washington Post to which he said, you know what the crime is? So, David, what's the crime? Well, the short answer is there's not a crime. The longer answer is what is the longer answer is what is Obamagate? What is this thing? And I think there's sort of a hard version of Obamagate and a soft version of Obamagate. And Tim Miller has a really good piece about this. And I've heard the hard version of Obamagate literally for years now. I think the first time I heard the hard version, the hardcore version of Obamagate was about in 2017. And here's the paragraph that would describe the hardcore version of Obamagate. And it's that four years ago, there's a

global conspiracy comprised of President Obama, Biden, James Clapper, Jim Comey, and this is from Tim's piece, much of the FBI, the DNC, a company called CrowdStrike, multiple foreign intelligence services, and a collection of Ukrainian oligarchs to undermine Donald Trump by planting a phony conspiracy theory that he was colluding with Russians to win the 2016 election. These deep state operators framed several Trump officials fabricated evidence in spite on the campaign with the end goal of committing the biggest fraud in American history in order to derail Trump. That's hardcore Obamacate. I've heard many people tell me that version.

Up next on Lou Dobbs. Exactly. The soft version of Obamagate, which is going to essentially be this argument that, you you're seeing gain traction, like there is a collection of people in right-wing media for whom the Russia investigation, what they call the quote-unquote Russia hoax, is sort of the central fact of our time. And that what they essentially will do is say, now that the Russia hoax has been exposed, then any investigatory action undertaken to examine whether or not there was communication between the Trump team and the Russians is inherently illegitimate.

And so if you find out, for example, that there were meetings in the Obama administration about what to do about continuing an investigation of the Russian interference in the election and its potential interface with the Trump campaign, that's going to be, that is going to be evidence of wrongdoing. So that's sort of the softer version of it. But in a way, it's more pernicious because I think that the sort of the Russia investigation obsessed folks on the right have done a really pretty good job of creating the impression that absolutely nothing untoward happened at all in the Trump campaign, that the entire investigation was an investigation of nothing. How successful are they? I was just not long ago, as I had a conversation,

with a guy who watches a lot of media, watches, you know, a pretty sophisticated observer of politics, not the kind of person that you would think is conspiracy theory prone at all. And I just went through some of the absolute facts, things that absolutely occurred, like Michael Cohen lying to Congress, concealing his efforts to, you know, land Trump Tower, Moscow, Roger Stone lying to Congress about trying to secure a line of communication with WikiLeaks, Manifort serving as a foreign agent of Turkey, I mean, of the Ukraine, Flynn serving as a foreign agent of Turkey, the, you know, the meeting in Trump Tower. And he looks at me and says, oh, that's all been disproven.

Like, wait, what? And so I do think that there is this sense that any, any critique or any concern about the actions of the Trump campaign are now part of the Russia hoax, when, when if you really want to get, if what is the Russia hoax actually, well, you know, the short version of it would be something along the lines of what the Steele dossier line outlined, which has been about as thoroughly debunked as a document can be. But so hardcore Russia hoax is like the Lou Dobbs thing that Jonah said. But you got to, I think, and that one is a little bit of a head scratcher. But what you've got to watch out for is this idea that any evidence

that comes out over the next weeks and months that the Obama administration was keen on examining Trump campaign contacts with Russia as being somehow inherently suspect. And I think that's a bridge way too far. Jonah, is it effective on the one hand? And two, is, Were we always going to get to Obamagate, or is this a coronavirus-created sideshow? Oh, I don't. It's an interesting question. I think we were always going to get here, but I think the precipitating cause of this wasn't coronavirus. It was this Flynn stuff.

Right. Um, and if, if the Flynn, uh, if, if Barr hadn't done what he done, uh, uh, we would But you're assuming, I guess, you're assuming that Barr dropped Flynn sort of out of the blue. Uh, no, not necessarily out of the, that's right. I mean, I guess that's right. I, my point is is that I don't think, if Barr was going to do this, he was going to do this whether or not we were in a Pam down, is my assumption. And if the claim is by somebody, for all I know, the editorial board of the New York Times, that he only did this because Trump was getting bad press during a pandemic, well, that's a scandal. That would be outrageous if Barr did that, right?

But if Barr does not believe on the merits that this case should have been dropped, then the political climate shouldn't affect it one way or the other. But my assumption giving Barr the benefit of the doubt is that whether he's right or wrong, you thought this thing was such a hot mess that they were going to. to drop the charges. And that was like this last, you know, you could always, for people who are heavily invested in the Trump, on the other side of the Trump, Russia stuff, they go, say, well, what about Flynn? Well, what about Flynn? You know, look, there's at least, at least Flynn proves something about the either gross incompetence or tackiness of a lot of the people in the orbit of

Trump, sort of like Manafort, who, by the way, is being sent home because coronavirus. Yeah, David, by the way, plug for advisory opinions. At some point, we need to talk about some equal protection violations and who's getting released during this and who's not. And, you know, there was a opinion out yesterday of, you know, an 85-year-old who's not getting released because he hadn't exhausted his administrative remedies. It's a whole thing. Yeah, and that's the truth. But just very quickly, I think we would have gotten to some version of Obamagate no matter what because it is one of Trump's central fixations. And they need, I think you were saying this earlier in the virtual locker room, they need to bloody up the Obama image and the Obama record since basically Obama stand-in is running.

And I do think that this at the margins helps them. there are a certain wavering Republican, you know, independent voters who, for whom the embarrassment of Trump's behavior is a major reason why they don't want to vote for him. And they are very receptive to the idea that this, that they're giving in to the media when they say they don't like Trump. And this probably makes those people a little stickier for the, for, for, as Trump voters. in certain places, because, you know, basically the, everyone's being asked to choose. Are you, you know, a globalist defender of the New York Times? Are you a defender of the president? And that some reason that binary choice works on some people. I think that's a good point from Jonah, because I hear an awful lot of people who are major Trump waivers saying, I just can't either

vote third party or vote for the other party because the other side is so bad. And usually Exhibit 1 for that is the attacks on Justice Kavanaugh. But the more, you know, Exhibit 2 for an awful lot of people is the quote unquote Russia hoax. And I think that the more that is put out there, the more that sort of stokes this view that the other side will do anything at all to win. They're that bad. They will corrupt the law enforcement and intelligence apparatus of this country to win. And it's that sort of here's more evidence of how bad they are, which gets an awful lot of

reluctant people to say, yeah, binary choice, those people are awful. I also think it factors in, and Trump himself has said this several times, that he was, you know, quote, robbed of his first two years in office, or maybe the whole term, because of it, that they cast a shadow over his presidency from the second he walked in, and therefore his legislative agenda was derailed, you know, his relationship with Congress was derailed, that this cost real things in his agenda. It's a little similar to the nationwide injunction argument, right, that like the courts prevented also his agenda from going forward. And so the argument would go something like he needs a second term because the Russia hoax and these nationwide

injunctions took his first term. And I think that could be persuasive. It could be persuasive. I also think it is not entirely, but sort of like ivory soap, 99 and 44, 100th percent wrong, just on the merits. In that, you know, some of us remember vividly. bill Clinton's reaction to all of these investigations and not just the ones for the impeachment stuff but you know whitewater and all that and what he did was he compartmentalized and got a lot of things done because he just was sort of like you know the president can chew gum and walk at the same time Obama did a lot of that kind of thing too the idea I mean like from from someone like you or David or me or, you know, someone who's not all in and committed to the MAGA myth-making,

I think there is some merit to this idea that it chewed up a lot of his presidency. But the problem is that when you hear from the MAGA people, they tell you how great he is and how he accomplished all of these things. And then they also want to say that he was distracted, and as a presidency was eaten up by the Russia hook stuff, Trump is the one who let it consume him. He was the one who was obsessed with it. It was his white whale. He

is incapable of compartmentalizing. And as just a matter of political analysis, you know, I was just listening to some stuff from the Niskanen center about Trump's, you know, first legislative year. There's

some reason to, there's some evidence to suggest that he got more done because of the Russia hoax stuff. Because first of all, it distracted the media so, like, they could open up Anwar, they could do all of these things that we wanted to do for a long time. Club the baby seals. No one will notice.

And all of the Republicans were like, holy crap, I have no idea how long this thing is going to last before it completely goes off the rails and smashes into an orphanage and blows up in a mushroom cloud. Let's pass as much crap as we possibly can right now. So,

sort of as a matter of analysis, but also as a matter of, like, defending Trump, I just, I don't buy the argument. The injunction stuff, I think, is completely different. But if Trump let his presidency be eaten up by the Russia pro, it's because he fired Comey and because he could not stop talking about it. Okay, then from a strategic standpoint, Biden's unfavorable numbers have ticked up in recent weeks. Some are attributing that to the sexual assault allegations.

They've ticked up among Democrats. So in that sense, that's working, right? If you're the Trump campaign, you want Biden's unfavorables to go up. But also, some of that's going to take care of itself by partisanship. And Jonah, to your point, the conversation we were having in the virtual locker room. But you know who's wildly popular Barack Obama? And it's how Biden survived the primary in some of those darker moments by tying himself to the most popular Democrat in the country.

country. And, you know, this, in 2019, Gallup had the two most, what man that you have heard or read about living today in any part of the world do you admire most. And tied were Barack Obama and Donald Trump. And so. By very different. Venn diagrams were very far apart from each other, right? They're pretty far apart. But if you're the Trump campaign, what's really important, important if I were on that team would be to drive down those numbers as well. And so, David, I guess, sort of to your point, if you can make the soft version of this stick, these people will do anything to win. They're not good actors. And Barack Obama, you know, let's take that 18% of most admired person in the world and get that down a few notches before Biden can really run as the

heir to Barack Obama's legacy. You know, I think that would be. effective even if you're only driving it down by a couple points. Yeah, I mean, when you're talking about the kinds of margins that we have seen in presidential elections of late, moving the needle along the margins can be the difference between winning and losing. And, you know, Trump would want to say, do you want, his message would be like, this was a corrupt machine. You want to bring the corrupt machine back into power. I mean, and that's going to be a very, very consistent argument. And And look, I mean, I kind of, you know, earlier you, I kind of laughed at the hardcore version of Obamagate, but there were some, there were some bad things that happened, that the steel dossier becoming such a part of the public consciousness, such a part of, to at least some extent, especially when it came to Carter Page, some of the briefings to Trump and to Obama, you know, that's one of the most malignant documents in modern American political history. And it was a piece of Hillary Clinton oppo that she subcontracted out that contained faulty intelligence at best, outright foreign misinformation at worst.

And it really corrupted the public conversation a great deal. And so I do think there's stuff to point out and there's stuff to condemn without any question. But I think what's so important about what's happening right now is like just listen to everything you just said. it was about Hillary Clinton's campaign. What the Trump campaign has to do now is tie it to Barack Obama and his administration, which is a pivot from 2016 or even 2018, where it was, he was still talking about the Hillary team and how corrupt they were. He's got to make this land on Obama's doorstep now, which is a change. It's a nuance. Yes. And one thing I'd also add about the Tara Reid situation. I do think the Tara Reid situation has hurt him.

in an interesting way, above and beyond, is this true or is this not true? Above and beyond, did he do it or did he not do it? And I think one of the ways that it's hurt him is that, you know, he's really running on this soul, you know, let's bring back the soul of America, let's restore character to America. And then you just see this massive collection of Democrats quite obviously. And look, I know that there are limits to pointing out the hypocrisy. point. But her quite hypocritical. I mean, just remarkably hypocritical compared to their treatment of Justice Kavanaugh. And it just puts kind of a stench out there. It just, it's, is this true?

Is this not true? You know, as I look at, it's one of those things where I can't say it's more likely than not it's true. There are so many problems with the story. It's just sort of in that I don't know. I just throw my hands up. But what I do know is not one of these people standing behind Joe Biden right now would be giving the same benefit of the doubt in any way, shape, or form to a Republican. And that sort of creates sort of a stench of, wait a minute, are we really restoring the soul of America here? Or is this just more of the same? Well, I also think it fractured within the Democratic Party because you're talking about those who spoke out about Kavanaugh but didn't. to speak out about Biden. There are a number of challengers, for instance, in primaries, Democratic progressive

challengers in primaries who very much are saying they believe Tara Reid and are being very consistent, but that's fracturing the party. And Jonah, on this point, to me, I think when we look back at the Tara Reid episode, I think David's point is well taken. But I also think it is showcasing some of the weaknesses of the Biden campaign. They're not particularly nimble. They dilly dallyed around for several weeks deciding how to respond to this. And when you, you know, I love these political documentaries, but one of the things that will strike you on some of them more than others is on the Hillary documentary that just came out in a decision making, there's like 30 people in that room. I don't know how you make good decisions with 30 people in a room. And I feel

like the Biden campaign might have 45? No, one gets that sense. And it's always worth remembering the guy ran for president before and did really quite poorly. Several times. Several times. So I think that this is one of the reasons why I again go back to the salience and wisdom of my front porch campaign thing is you just, in part because if you have so many advice, If you start going on the road, you're going to start taking different advice from different advisors just sort of in a, you know, more or less everyone gets their turn to be wrong kind of way. And they're going to make a lot of mistakes. And when you have this, as you were describing it at the beginning, this unbelievably unprecedented six-point lead in the polls, lethargy can not only be, it can, it can be. risk aversion is an understandable smart strategy,

but the problem with risk aversion is that it's right every time except the times where it's wrong. And like on the Tari Reza, there's just no nimbleness. They've just basically had to have the Democratic Party close ranks around him. His answers, I thought his answers on Morning Joe were actually pretty good. I think that, though, that he is uniquely vulnerable to this, because he has a position that says even when people are that we should never think that someone's making these things up except when they make them up about him, which is a problematic position

for a Democrat to have. So I don't know. I mean, I go back and forth about this, but I agree with you that, that let's say if the coronavirus disappeared tomorrow, I think we would see that this campaign is not quite ready for prime time. If they actually had to get out there and organize events and put him on the road and have him speak a lot to different groups and say things that would get him into trouble and how would they respond to the gaffs and he would have lots of gaffes and how would he respond to the hypocrisy of the Trump campaign attacking his gaffes, which is a thing, right? I mean, that's one of the things that drive, has driven a lot of people crazy about Trump is that

he is utterly impervious to the charge that he's the last person in the world to condemn people who say weird things, people who are accused of sexual assault and all kinds of stuff, and that hypocrisy causes a lot of derangement on the left and parts of the right, but it works for him. And like, every time politician tries to deal with that fact, it almost always blows up in their face. And so I think in some ways the coronavirus is great news for Joe Biden's candidacy. Let's take a quick break and hear from our sponsor. Okay, so we all know how ExpressVPN protects your privacy and security online, right? But here's something you may not know.

You can also use ExpressVPN to unlock movies and shows that are only available in other countries. It's not just Netflix. ExpressVPN works with any streaming service, Hulu, BBCI player, YouTube, you name it. There are hundreds of VPNs out there, but ExpressVPN is incredibly fast. There's never any buffering or lag,

and you can stream an HD, no problem. ExpressVPN is also compatible with all your devices, phones, media consoles, smart TVs, and more, so you can watch what you want on a personal device or on the big screen, wherever you are. If you visit my special link right now at expressvpn.com slash freedom, you can get an extra three months of ExpressVPN for free. Support the show, watch what you want, and protect yourself with ExpressVPN at ExpressVPN. dot com slash freedom. Well, speaking of the coronavirus, let's turn our attention that direction.

Yesterday, Anthony Fauci, along with other members of the task force, testified. I'm going to sort of do a little Frankenstein quote here of what he said. If states or cities or regions disregard the government's checkpoints on when it's safe to pull back from mitigation measures, there's a real risk that you will trigger an outbreak, that you might not be able to control, which, in fact, paradoxically, will set you back, not only leading to some suffering and death that could be avoided, but could even set you back on the road to trying to get economic recovery. We would almost turn the clock back rather than going forward. At the same time, Florida and Georgia, two of the states, to quote unquote, open up

first, Florida has seen new cases declined by 14 percent this week compared to last. week. Georgia's fallen by 12%. Interestingly, Nevada, by the way, leads the pack with a 44% reduction and not surprisingly, several of the hardest hit states that therefore embraced very aggressive lockdowns earlier. Michigan, New York, and New Jersey are all seeing around 30% reductions this week. David, you enjoyed the testimony. You had thoughts, you had feelings. Yeah. So one thing, a lot of people are talking about this exchange between Rand Paul and Dr. Fauci about schools reopening and Rand Paul essentially saying, you know, you're not the be all end all. And Fauci had a very effective response to that, I thought, which was, you know, essentially was basically stating

who he was and what his expertise was and what his expertise was not and that he's not a policymaker. He's not an economist. And it really, I think, got to the heart of, it got to heart of a lot of the anger that's out there at Dr. Fauci, why it's unwarranted. And with Dr. Fauci, I think, very effectively explaining why it's unwarranted. Look, I think the reality is this. If Dr. Fauci is correct and you're about the science of the spread of the disease, and it's an if, one of the things I think we keep forgetting is this is a novel coronavirus, We're learning a ton about it as we go. We, you know, three months from now, we might look back on this dive and have learned that

the coronavirus is much more susceptible to warmer weather than we knew. I mean, there's just a lot we don't know. But if a leading scientist is saying, I think there's a risk of A, B, and C, terrible things happening. And if you're a policymaker in good faith looking forward, looking forward in time and saying, what should I do about the economy? What should I do about schools? Or if you're members of the public who are thinking about that and you're just your personal activity and your personal life, what do you do? That scientific advice that Dr. Fauci has, even if it is not a legal

edict, it has implications. And I think that that's one of the things that we're really going to be struggling with is this balance. And it's not just policy. it's people. So I'm living in a state that is opening up where Tennessee is opening up. I'm not going to say it's opening up more than any other state, but it's on the leading edge of that. And I've been out more lately than we've had, I've been around small gatherings of people much more lately. And it's really interesting to see just how human beings in a very red part of a red state are reacting to this. And I would put it like this. eight to nine out of ten people that you encounter are being separate. Masking is not that common down here, but you see a lot of it, especially in places where people are going to be in close contact with each other inside. But eight to nine out of ten people are separating. Eight to nine out of ten people are absolutely changing their behavior.

About a one out of two, one out of ten, two out of ten, in my experience, not aren't separating. They're kind of performatively hugging and handshaking and getting close kind of as this I ain't scared kind of thing. And part of me thinks that, okay, if the good news is vast majority of people have adjusted their behavior, that tells us good things going forward as far as risk mitigation and the absence of a lockdown. But it doesn't take too many people getting really unlucky with the one out of ten or the two out of ten for it to spark an outbreak. And so, you know, I keep going back, I keep going back to Jonah's really good podcast he had with Lyman Stone, which, and I know we've mentioned it 50,000 times, but one of the

most effective pandemic, one of the most effective pandemic responses is just in quality information. And it just feels like to me, when you look at some of the the continued downward arcs of infection, part of that, a big part of that, even in states that are opening up, is I think people have just absorbed the lessons of this virus. And if it absorbed the lessons of how to prevent the spread of a communicable infectious disease, something that we haven't really had front of mind. And I hope that continues. My fear is that as we keep going week after week, hopefully.

with infections decreasing that people will start to forget those lessons. But we'll see. Jonah, to follow up on David's anecdotal point, his data, interestingly, his anecdotal data is about right. So I have two different polls here. In mid-April, about 81% of Americans said we should continue social distancing. That number is dropping, though. support for social distancing has slipped 16 points among Republican voters,

seven points among Democrats, and 12 points among independents. That being said, still about 80% think it will not be safe for gatherings of 10 or more until midsummer, including nearly a quarter overall who don't think it'll be safe until 2021. Only about 20% say they believe such gatherings are safe now or will be by the end of this month. There's two things in that that really stuck out to me, but perhaps the most, I think that the political one, the divide is getting much, much bigger in the polls than we've seen in April. Like May is going to be the month that you join back up with your partisan tribe and head down that road on coronavirus.

A month ago, half of GOP voters said they were more worried about public health than the economy now fewer than two and five say their concerns about the physical dangers of the virus outweigh their fears of a free falling economy. That's a 13% drop. The percentage of Republicans who said it was more important for the government to address the spread of the virus and the economy fell 22 points from 65% to 43% versus the overall, if you include Democrats and independents, a 15 point drop. Democrats, on the other hand, are significantly more worried about public health, 72% to 16%. Whereas Republicans are more concerned about the economy, 55% to 38%.

Independence, of course, always split the difference right in the middle there. So where is this headed? Because it doesn't feel like it's headed in a good direction. Once you start splitting on partisan lines, especially on a public health crisis, on when to reopen the economy, on should you get together in big groups. on collective action problems. So, and I want to just note my patience here, when you introduced this segment,

you said you had a Frankenstein quote from Anthony Fauci, and I was really disappointed because I was hoping you were going to talk about how Anthony Fauci afraid of fire, ah, or something like that. But, because I don't know what the phrase Frankenstein quote means, but I really like it. I'm sorry. I meant that I mashed together and paraphrase little bits of that to make it one from parts. I got you. Yeah. So like Abby normal brain. I get it. Okay. So second of all, one point, so I see the same data that you've seen, you know, you have it at your fingertips. I don't. But I,

the one question I have about this, which I am fascinated by, is, what would be the breakdown of these things if it was a democratic president and everything else basically who was equally polarizing? So, hey, Barack Obama. Because I remember vividly how much Republicans were freaking out about Ebola. I mean, freaking out about it coming here.

And there is this thing in in psychology about fear of contagion is like one of these things that is the you know if you read jonathan height on moral foundations theory and stuff the the part of the brain that thinks about political hygiene or religious hygiene very very close like basically the same as the part of the brain that thinks about hygiene itself and this is why there's so many like the whole thing about the other is a lot of it has to do with cleanliness of your group and contagion from an out group and that kind of stuff. And I think that partisanship can trigger some of this stuff for a permission structure for how you talk about things. And so it's entirely possible to

me, I don't know, because I could give you another theory that, of course, Democrats are more deferential to public health experts than Republicans are because they believe in expertise and they believe in science and the technocrats and all this crap. But I do wonder that if things were reversed, the idea that Obama was bringing in disease, which is something that Trump hyped with Obola, if this stuff wouldn't play the other way. Like, is this a psychological phenomenon that is triggered by partisanship, or is it a partisan phenomenon that has a little bit to do with psychology? I don't know. That said, you know, it's worth, it just seems when we were talking, when I was listening to David talk, it. I would like to know whether if you get 80%, you know, 70% of people basically acting the right way on good information, does that bring the R&OT down below one?

Right? I mean, because if the thing was, if the infection rate was two or three times, one person gets it and they can give it to three people back when the status quo was we still have. had basketball games in large public gatherings, and everyone was on trains with not wearing masks, presumably even 80% of the people really changing their behavior is going to have epidemiological results. And I just don't know what they are. So it's entirely possible that you could still have 20 or 30% of the population behaving somewhere between slightly irresponsibly and total jackasses and still see the infection rate go down, which would be. better than a lot of alternatives.

But I do think that this is now just getting baked into the partisan structure here. Trump is signaling in very unsubtle ways that he wants everyone to pretend as if the virus chapter is over. And if you don't do that, you are lending aid and comfort to the bad people.

And meanwhile, a lot of Democrats are playing at the exact, opposite way, almost just as irresponsibly. I'd say almost, not entirely as irresponsibly. And so I think this is going to be, you know, baked into the cake for a while, and it is going to be heavily, heavily dependent in terms of its political consequences on what actually happens with the epidemic. And if there's a big spike in November or October, you know, all bets are off.

This goes back to, I mean, we've been saying this kind of on this podcast from the beginning. the real fight is against the virus. The real battle for the economy is the fight against the virus. And what happens with the virus is going to be the primary, you know, that's going to be the primary driver. I mean, for all of the talk about models this, models that, what's happened with the virus in this country has been awful. Like March 13th, that's just two months ago. the total deaths in the country from this virus is 48 and two months it's now gone to 83,425. I mean, that's just awful.

And if that awfulness continues or sustains, then the idea that we'll reopen or go back to normal in any meaningful way is just going to be total fiction. And one last thing on this, I'm going to be very interested to see if we continue. to maintain sort of like that 70, 80% discipline on social distancing and taking, being careful, et cetera, what will that do to the flu season? Because we just kind of live our lives with the flu. It will be, I'm just going to be interested to see if that's going to have unforeseen consequences in some other arenas as well. We've reached the favorite part of the podcast where I say something that triggers Jonah into one of his rants. I try to leave it to the end. It's sort of like my own marshmallow test. Sometimes

I fail, as you guys know, and I trigger him too soon. But, I mean, today is perfect, right? I've made it to the end, and I'm ready to trigger Jonah. A guy named R.R. Reno, who I hope you will explain who that is, because I did not know, many of you may, tweeted yesterday, By the way, the World War II vets did not wear masks. They're men, not cowards. Masks equals enforced cowardice. Jonah, over to you. I am going to take the high road you.

What? In part, because I don't like to be seen as predictable. No, but seriously, so I will take the high road in the sense that I will give full disclosure. I am not a fan of Rusty Reno's. I think that Rusty Reno deserves a good deal of blame and criticism for a lot of the corruptions on the right these days. It's also a little personal. I'll just put it out there. I'm trying to keep detached.

But, like, I don't have a personal problem with Adrian Vermeul, and I feel the same way about Adrian Vermeul, who's this guy that you guys probably learned, you know, administrative law from at Harvard. But Rusty Reno attacked me in pretty personal terms in the pages of First Things, saying that I'm quoting, this is a paraphrase, but that I symbolize everything that is decadent and wrong in Washington and American politics today. And let's take this moment to footnote. He is the editor of First Things, and how would you describe First Things? First thing is, first things is a venerable Catholic intellectual magazine, sort of the Catholic commentary magazine, what commentary did for Jews, first thing sort of does for Catholics. I mean, obviously there's some apples and oranges there.

But it was Father Newhouse, as Richard John Newhouse, who was a brilliant and wonderful man. It was his baby for a very long time, and he's basically, Reno's sitting in his chair. And so anytime somebody says that I symbolize decadence as a way to then go on and defend the behavior and statements of the president, never mind his coteries of, you know, lick spittles, mopers, and all the rest, I am going to take particular offense. And so he is this guy who has, he's trying to get the new deal to be popular again. He's trying to get statism to be popular again. He thinks liberal democratic capitalism has run its course, but he's not as smart about it as Danine, Patrick DeNine and some other people. And he's one of these guys who also has, was it Northerlinger who called it, COVID machismo?

They've, they've decided that the real. real test of manliness and courage, and there are quotes about this from all sorts of talk radio people on the right to, he's not alone, is to not wear a mask, even though on the science, the whole point of the mask is to help other people, and to protect other people. And it is a social signal, but they think it's a social signal of cowardice and government tyranny. And I think there is something profound, and I think about writing this about this today, but there's something truly perverse about the pro-life movement, increasingly taking this position that we have to write off and act as if we're being courageous and doing so, large numbers of old and vulnerable

and sick people to death in order to save Donald Trump's re-election chances and the market economy. Now, I like the market economy. I broke a whole book about how much I like the market economy. But these jack wads have been talking about how markets and liberal democratic capitalism have run their course and don't matter. We need a lot more state planning for the common good and the highest good. And yet the second the market, you know, the Dow is threatened, they're like, well, it's Logan's run time for the oldsters. And they're perfectly willing to live as if an act as if the Paul Ryan throwing someone, off a cliff in a wheelchair thing was actually the Republican position, all in the name of Trumpism

and 14th century French administrative law of garbage. And I find it so intellectually incoherent and morally repugnant that when I get lecture to about how I'm the bad guy and I'm the decadent guy, it makes me perturbed. That's all I have to say. Perturbed. Yeah. So, Jonah and I have the distinction of being absolutely extremely aggressively attacked in first things. So we both have our history with first things. I agree with what Jonah said. Let me add a couple of things. And this echoes back to one of the conversations, Sarah, you and I had on advisory opinions, plug, is the new right. And Reno is proudly a member of the new right, however you're to define it, it contains multitudes, but he's one of the more, he's kind of on the authoritarian new right side of things, really has an issue with a bizarro world version of performative, deranged masculinity. It is kind of, it's a real element of this. You see this extreme grandiose tweeting about their own bravery and confronting the culture wars, this great.

grandiose posturing with really, and when you think about it, because masking is about protecting other people, not about fear for yourself, you just see how nonsensical it is. You see how arbitrary it is in some ways, because you can easily, easily make an argument that, hey, this is how we boldly move out into the public while caring for people in a pro-life way is we're going to go ahead and mask and don't you tell me that this doesn't look right because I'm just going to do what's right. I mean, no, but no, there's this very strange, and if you are unfortunate enough to spend a lot of time on Twitter, you see it all over the place.

It is this very aggressive way of communicating, this grandiose attachment of basically what your temper tantrums to masculinity. It's very strange. It's a deep perversion of what masculinity is. And the truth of the matter is a lot of it is wrapped up in the person of Donald Trump, that there is this sort of view that his extreme verbal aggression, not that he's shown any other kind of aggression, he had an opportunity to do so in Vietnam and chose to dodge the draft, but this kind of verbal aggression, this kind of insulting, this kind of mocking,

and this emphasis on the appearances and trappings of a particular kind of of angry male persona as masculinity is really leaking into and infecting the new right. And it's, you know, if I could, if you could concoct in a lab, if you could concoct in a lab, people better designed to validate feminist critiques of the right and feminist critiques and left-wing critiques of the pro-life movement, you could not do any better. It really was about controlling women's bodies. Right.

I mean, you couldn't do any better than I'm going to have, I'm going to not only disregard the lives of the weak and vulnerable amongst us, I'm going to do so through this performative, truly toxic masculinity. I mean, the damage that's being done here to the pro-life movement, the damage is being done here culturally, I think is actually pretty significant. And not to mention, the gender gap is increasing from 2016, where it was around 20 points to, at least in the last poll, it might be as high as 34 points. Maybe not a coincidence. So Greg Ransom, who's the guy who runs Taking High Seriously on Twitter, which is a pretty intense Twitter feed if you're not particularly interested in taking Hyatt seriously.

but I dig it and he said I'm roughly very I'm frankenstein paraphrasing he said the real galaxy brain game theory interpretation of all this is that all these people

who are going full gorka and talking about how it's manly to avoid wearing a mask it is the real game theory interpretation is they're all doing this to get the masses, to get herd immunity while they stay bunkered like the people in the front cars of Snowpiercer safe from all of this.

And they'll emerge from their bunkards, having written off, you know, a few hundred thousand oldsters and made a bunch of young people sick, but then they won't have to worry about getting it themselves. I'm not saying that's true, but I like where his head is going on. that's sometimes how I feel as like I know that some people are going out and opening up but with four weeks to go I'm very much hunkered down some concern about the virus also it's not that comfortable to move so you know sitting in a recliner feels good that I enjoy it speaking of masculinity I mentioned at the in the intro to this podcast that Steve Hayes

did not get to join us today he'll be back next week um I thought our my question to you two at the end of our podcast today would be where is Steve Hayes wrong answers only Jonah well you know so this is a tough one because I've spent a lot of time with Steve Hayes over the last 18 months or so and I know it's like this big joke on the podcast oh isn't it funny how annoyed Jonah gets when he talks about Spanish wine I'm telling you it's not schick. It's not schick at all. I really, really can't stand hearing about Spanish wine. I think it is among the least interesting topics out there. I would have to like wildly psych myself up to be blasé about it. And so I was thinking about, you know, well, of course he's going on a

tour of Spanish wineries or something like that, but that's, it's too easy. It's low-hanging fruit and it's too difficult to make me angry. I suspect that where Steve is, is he is going on a cheese curd taste testing mission, and it's a difficult thing to do while social distancing properly. But, you know, there is also the possibility that it has something to do with chicken wings because he's the only person I know who, and then this is a true fact. His three favorite staples of food are tater tots, chicken wings, and cheese curds, and yet somehow the fourth in that quadrad of proper elite nutrition is Spanish wine.

So it's involving something like involving all of them. All right, David. I'd like to imagine that he was doing something really super cool, like perhaps getting a first glance at the Snyder cut of Justice League. But Steve's not nearly cool enough to do that. Steve doesn't even know what you're talking about. I know. Isn't that unfortunate?

Isn't that unfortunate? Or perhaps seeing extended. versions of the UFO tapes that the Navy keeps releasing. Yeah. Maybe he took Rusty Reno to heart and is going

maskless into a bunch of old age homes. Just a freaking own the lives. Oh, see, that was going to be a version of mine. So on our Slack channel, Steve is very much the Karen when it comes to social distancing and mask wearing.

And so I think that there's a good chance that Steve has taken the day to go around to all sorts of public parks and beaches, the mall, and is taking photos of people and yelling at them and telling them that he's going to, you know, call the authorities if they don't get six feet apart. I did see a great TikTok of a brother, you know, brothers who like troll their little sisters when there's like a boy over or something. So he's yelling at her from outside the door and he says, don't forget, six feet for coronavirus and three feet for Jesus. So I think that's what Steve's going around doing today. So here's a question.

So we know what a Karen is. That's the person who's publicly shaming you for, you know, not social distancing. What is the name of the person who's running around trying to hug you or to shake your hand to show that he's so, he ain't scared? Sounds like it should be rusty. Yeah. That's a rusty. Pulling a rusty. And that way we could get the gif of, of Kramer from Seinfeld going,

Rusty! That had to do with a different kind of horse's ass. Thank you all so much for listening this week. We'll be back next week with Steve, wherever he may have been. And if you have the chance, please rate us on Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcast. It really does help us. We love your feedback. And we just so appreciate you and hope you're doing well out there.

We'll see you next week.