The Dispatch Podcast - Crime and Drones

Episode Date: May 5, 2023

The inevitable David French joins Sarah, Steve, and Jonah to discuss the new Dune trailer... uh, I mean, this week's news, including: -Drones over Moscow -Is Kevin McCarthy "free at last"? -Will we ever be able to discuss violent crime like adults? (Read Jonah's Wednesday G-File and despair) -Is there hope for sane, centrist Senate candidates in '24? (Read Sarah's Tuesday's The Permanent Campaign and despair) Don't forget: become a member of The Dispatch to enjoy all our newsletters, exclusive podcasts, live events, and other goodies (all while making sure we get to keep the lights on!). Exclusive for members: Jonah, Steve, and Chris Stirewalt share war stories from Fox News and discuss what went wrong with media. Podcast & video available now to members of The Dispatch! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isger, joined by Steve Hayes, Jonah Goldberg, and drum roll please, David French, back in action for this week. We're going to talk about the Kremlin drone attack, Ukraine, how Kevin McCarthy might fit into that conversation. We'll also talk about the narrative around violent crime and how we're supposed to think about crime as a political topic, as a media topic. And finally, we've talked a lot about the 2020.

presidential race, but what about that Senate map? Let's dive right in. Steve, there's plenty we don't know about the Kremlin drone attack. Can you just fill us in on where we are at this point? Russia has claimed that Ukraine, and now apparently the United States is behind a drone attack that resulted in explosions above the Senate dome at the Kremlin. Very few details about this and very few details about this coming from the Russians, but many, many accusations coming from the Russians. I would say it's not entirely implausible that this could have been something that Ukraine did.

Ukraine has been known to launch drone to tracks, drone attacks in the past. We've seen Ukraine with targeted assassinations in the past. So there is at least some precedent for an attack of this nature if one were inclined to believe the Russians. It's also very smart not to believe the Russians on just about anything they're saying with respect to the war. I mean, these are the same people who've denied ongoing. attacks in major Ukrainian cities that the Russians are conducting denying them as they're unfolding. And I think most people, if you read analysts both in the region and here in the U.S., who've looked at this, believe that this is likely some sort of pretext for either a coming

assassination attack on Voldembourg Zelenskyy or increasing Russian attacks throughout the rest of the country, something that would counter the Ukrainian coming offensive. And there's also some chance that it was Ukrainian or Ukrainian sympathizers, right? I mean, there's plenty of open questions about how something like this happened. But regardless, David, it certainly throws a lot of chaos into the conversation. Yeah, maybe. Like, this is a real war, you know, and the idea that. Ukraine might have attacked the seat of government of the government that attacked it

doesn't strike me as, oh, my stars. I can't believe this escalation. Heavens to Betsy. Yeah, I mean, if it was Ukraine, I wish it had been more successful. I mean, the thing that's interesting to me is, look, Russia launched an aggressive invasion of Ukrainian territory that is included from the beginning massive use of even precision-guided munitions against civilian targets, right? It has targeted apartment buildings. There was a blast and curse on yesterday that killed people in a grocery store. I mean, we can go again and again, and that doesn't mean that Ukraine should target grocery stores. It means that Ukraine is in a war against a nation state and hitting the seat of government of the hostile power is a fair target in a war of this sort.

And so this sort of, you know, pearl clutching by the Kremlin is a little bit much. I mean, we know they've been trying to kill Zelenskyy for a very long time. So I'm mildly interested in who did it. I'm not sure what Russia is laying the pretext for, except if Russia did it, or people allied with Russia did this or on Russia's behalf, you know, are they laying the groundwork for additional mobilization,

trying to justify additional mobilization? But I'm honestly looking at all this in frankly any story of potential Ukrainian attack in Russian territory. And I'm thinking, don't play Russia's game here. Russia launched what is all but a total war against Ukraine. It's the only thing keeping it from being a total war in the classic sense of it

is they have withheld the use of weapons of mass destruction. But targets have not been off limits. They have attacked Ukraine's infrastructure comprehensively. And if Ukraine had the capacity and the ability to respond with some deeper strikes into Russia, we'd have seen that already, and that's fine. That's what you do when you're defending yourself from a hostile foreign power.

So I kind of feel a little bit like this whole whodunit is a bit of a so what in a way. Look, if Ukraine didn't do it, I totally understand them saying they didn't do it. I tend to think they didn't do it because the drone was such a, have you seen the video footage of the actual attack? It looks not like a drone attack, like a drone attack, but a fireworks attack. And a dud at that. A dud, right. And so it was very, very ineffective. I tend to think if as a actual Ukrainian attack, it would have been more effective.

It would have been more destructive. But honestly, I've been scratching my head at the consternation, at the idea that Ukraine would have attacked Russia in this way. This is a pinprick response by comparison to the comprehensive attack on Ukrainian assets that the Russians have launched. So count me in the camp of being totally unconcerned if it was Ukraine

and just wishing it had been more effective. Jonah, I want to turn a little bit to the domestic politics of this. Speaker McCarthy and his first foreign trip as Speaker of the House said that Russia should pull out of Ukraine. And we've talked about this before

that that's not an obvious position for a person in Republican leadership, the highest-ranking Republican, arguably, an elected office to take, there was an interesting CBS poll that asked a Republican, likely Republican primary voters. And the Republican presidential primaries in 2024, would you prefer to vote for a Republican candidate who supports U.S. aid to Ukraine?

42% yes, 58% no. what should I think about Kevin McCarthy going out on a limb there at least according to this poll well I think first of all when Tucker Carlson got fired I think Kevin McCarthy

started shouting free at last free at last hallelujah free at last and I don't think we would have heard this from had Tucker still been there so this is where the only sort of I marginally disagree with David's take on this

is that I do think it would be a problem if Ukraine decided to attack the let's put this right if you crane if the Kremlin's press release were accurate which one should always assume otherwise that this was a deliberate attack on the Kremlin to assassinate Vladimir Putin

I think that would be a mistake not because as as Texans like Sarah say he doesn't need killing but because it would screw up the alliance structure that Ukraine has by making it really hard for a bunch of Western capitals to keep supplying, right?

And it would go against some of this sometimes ridiculous stuff from the Biden administration about not giving offensive weapons to Ukraine, which is like incredibly dumb to me. But I don't believe that that's what Ukraine tried to do. I don't believe that they tried to assassinate Putin. I kind of think that they probably didn't launch these things. It might have been Ukrainian supporters inside.

They certainly didn't come from Ukraine because they only can go. The drones that we saw do not have a over 300 mile range, never mind the ability to get past all the air defense stuff. So on the domestic front, I would like to think that part of it is the Tucker thing, but I think a larger part of it is that maybe Kevin McCarthy is privy to some information that suggests Ukraine is about to do something that is going to arouse a lot of sympathy from a lot of Republicans.

There is, I think it's kind of counterintuitive, but there is this weird tendency that Ukraine becomes more popular when it's winning and less popular when it's losing. And I think that's morally kind of gross, but we saw similar stuff during World War II with public opinion in the UK. And so I think that maybe Kevin McCarthy knows, first of all, I think maybe he's actually finally saying what he believes to be true.

And I also think that, you know, the fact that he said this stuff in Israel and in Taiwan suggests that he knows that when he's talking to small foreign allies that depend on the United States in large part for their security, it's not really popular to say, let's throw this other country under the bus that's relying on our help, right? And so I honestly think that the Republican antipathy towards supporting Ukraine is very shallow and very, very susceptible to changes in the headlines and the zeitgeist and Ukraine's fortunes. And I suspect that that's what McCarthy is sort of looking at. Steve, I definitely want you to respond to that last point about how. shallow or deep, you think the Republican polling data, for instance, on Ukraine is. But I do want to read this back and forth with Kevin McCarthy and the Russian reporter when he was addressing the Israeli Knesset.

And you know that you don't support the current unlimited and uncontrolled supplies of weaponry and aid to Ukraine. So can you comment, is it possible if in the near future the U.S. policy regarding sent weaponry to Ukraine will change? Yeah, I'm not sure. The sound here is not good. he say, I don't support aid to Ukraine? No, I vote for aid for Ukraine. I support aid for Ukraine. I do not support what your country has done to Ukraine. I do not support your killing

of the children either. And I think for one standpoint, you should pull out. And I don't think it's right. And we will continue to support because the rest of the world sees it just as it is. Do you think that's a fair assessment of where Kevin McCarthy has been for the last several months? I mean, Kevin McCarthy's been in a couple different places for the last several months, so I'm not sure we're able to really reduce it to a sentence or so. I mean, if you take the actual literal words of the reporter to frame the question, the beginning part, I think, is accurate when he says, you know,

McCarthy doesn't support the uncontrolled, and there was another word in there. Unlimited and uncontrolled supplies and weaponry and aid to Ukraine. Well, that's basically what McCarthy had said when he said, I don't. I don't support a blank check. But that Russian reporter also said the current situation or something, which is the uncontrolled unlimited. And, of course, that's not the current situation. It's very much controlled and very much limited. Yeah, I mean, I think Jonah's right.

Actually, I do think there is sort of a Tucker Carlson element here. I mean, there's no question that Republicans have softened on their initial support for Ukraine taking on Russia. And I think part of that is driven by the skepticism we've heard from Donald Trump. Part of that is, you know, listening to people like Tucker Carlson literally say, I'm on Russia's side. And some of it is just in this, you know, era of negative polarization. Joe Biden is for it. So they're against it.

And I think we don't have to overcomplicate it to a certain extent. I think they want to criticize Joe Biden. And you can see this in some of the specific critiques that you've heard from coming from congressional Republicans, some of whom criticized Biden for not nearly doing enough being way too late, not being effective, and others of whom criticized Biden for doing way too much and, you know, muddling the U.S. response, et cetera, et cetera. I think there's a, I think, I think U.S. public opinion plays a role in the way that Republicans are thinking about and talking about Ukraine, but I continue to believe that the so-called arrival of our new sort of neopacifist or

non-interventionist or libertarian moment has been tremendously overstated again and again and again. Most Republicans in Congress are for supporting Ukraine. Most Republicans in Congress believe that the Russian invasion was unjustified and appalling. They want to roll back Russia. They're not for negotiations that would cede Ukrainian territory to Russia. You take a look broadly at where congressional Republicans are on Ukraine, and there are far more of them who are close to where Joe Biden is than close to where Donald Trump is. David, I think I disagree with Steve on this.

And I'll tell you why, because I would have agreed with Steve on it 10 years ago. and to me Ukraine feels echoey at least of where the Republican Party, the elected Republicans were, the RNC was about immigration in the aftermath of the 2012 election, right? The RNC autopsy I'm thinking of here, comprehensive immigration reform, get this off the political campaign talking points and like, let's move on, it's not helping Republicans. And then come 2016, it's like, no, no, you guys just didn't understand Republicans, the actual voters. They're in a very, very different place than you are on immigration.

And so I wonder a little bit whether Ukraine reflects more of that. Yeah, Steve is factually, of course, entirely right of where elected Republicans are, where, you know, the D.C. will look, this is what makes sense. And here's why it makes sense. Yep, all that's true. but it doesn't mean it's that that 58% of Republican primary voters saying that they don't want to support a candidate who supports A to Ukraine is soft. It might be harder than we even think. Yeah, I'm going to agree to an extent.

And I do believe that at this point amongst the sort of the base of the party, the infotainment-consuming primary voting base, the opposition to Democrats on Ukraine has hardened into the more dovish position. In other words, it is less aid. However, I don't think that's an immigration style departure from the Republican Party or from the Republican establishment

because there was another negative polarization motivated response to the Biden administration where you could have taken on the Biden administration that would have been consistent with the recent past in the Republican Party, which is that Biden has been too soft, that he has been having to be reluctantly dragged into providing the kinds of weapons time and time again that are necessary to turn the tide of this fight. And you do see this criticism. It is out there. The dispatch has published some of this criticism that says, look, yeah, the Democrats are mishandling this, but they're not mish the way Tucker Carlson is telling you

by being too hawkish. They're mish by not articulating a theory of victory, not articulating in-goal strategy, not providing the kind of weapons that are going to be necessary if that strategy is pushing Ukraine at least, or pushing Russia at least back to the start line. And look, there's even in the relatively recent past, ample evidence of base Republican voters being upset at a Democratic president for being too

dovish. There was an enormous amount of criticism early in Obama's counteroffensive against ISIS, that this was a gloves-on fight, not a gloves-off fight that Obama was fighting, that he was artificially restricting American and gate rules of engagement in a way that was dragging out the fight, that there was a lot of support for Trump. Trump in 2017 when he amped up the fight for ISIS. So it seems to me that the difference between the immigration fight is that there is in this negatively polarized era, there is a negatively polarized way of supporting Ukraine and opposing the Biden administration that is consistent with longstanding Republican hawkishness

particularly against Russia. but that ship feels to me like it's sailed. That's where I'm going to agree with you, Sarah, that the negative polarization point against the Biden administration has hardened into dovishness that the Biden administration is too aggressive against Russia as opposed to the more traditional critique of democratic approach to Russia

that it's not aggressive enough, which is the place where I am. It's just, I prefer, I infinitely prefer Biden's position to say Tucker's position, but I think Biden has not ultimately gone far enough in supporting Ukraine. So here's where, since I introduced this idea that the support is soft, let me explain to you all your wrongness. I'm amazed no one has brought up, like what I was thinking of about why I said I thought this was soft, which is that, which was Biden's pull out of Afghanistan.

And we talked on here a bunch of times about how, sure, Trump's position about pulling out of Afghanistan polled well. People said, I don't want to be there. You know, and there was a bipartisan thing. All of the no blank check for Ukraine people today were the same one saying, let's get out of Afghanistan. And then we pull out of Afghanistan

and we're embarrassed and humiliated by the half-assed and cowardly way that we did it. and all of a sudden, everyone hates it. And like, it turns out that Americans, as I must have said here, a hundred times, you know, Americans don't like to be at war, but they really hate losing them. It's very much like people did not want to get back into the Middle East with ISIS until they saw a video of a couple Americans having their heads cut off.

And then all of a sudden, it's like, you shouldn't have pulled on Superman's cape because it's go time. And I honestly, I think when, Ukraine launches the counteroffensive when we start getting more mass graves of kids and whatnot from all that kind of thing, a lot of Republicans who have been like saying that they were against it are going to be like how Bill Murray talked to his girlfriend in Stripes and said, you know, one of these days Tito Puente is going to die and you're going to say you loved him the whole time. They're going to be just an enormous number of people who are going to be

retroactive Ukraine supporters if Ukraine wins. or has a major victory. And that's what I mean by it being soft. It's just there's a lot of follow the good news, bandwagon effect involved in this stuff because most people aren't actually following Ukraine one way or the other. And so they're very susceptible to events.

Yeah, let me, I can jump in with a few numbers. There was a Gallup poll that was released in late January that actually walked through some of this. thinking about the Ukraine conflict, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, do you think the United States is doing too much to help Ukraine? Not enough for the right amount. Republicans, 50% said not enough for the right amount. Forty-seven percent said too much. The second question is, would you prefer the U.S. to, which would you prefer the U.S. to do in the Russia-Ukraine conflict? Support Ukraine Ukraine in reclaiming territory, even if prolonged conflict. Fifty-three percent of Republican. end conflict quickly, even if it allows Russia to keep territory 41% of Republicans. So there's a definite split, but I guess I look at those numbers in this environment of negative polarization and think, well, pretty strong support from Republicans. Glass half full for Steve.

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Volvo.com. All right. Let's move on to our next topic, which is crime in the United States, as a reality, as a political topic, as a media narrative, all of it. And I want to talk about this story coming out of New York, in part because there's so much, we don't totally know about what happened, but here's what we do know. A man got on the subway. He is screaming, I don't have food.

I don't have a drink. I'm fed up. I don't mind going to jail and getting life in prison. I'm ready to die. He was clearly frightening other passengers, but he had not assaulted anyone. As one person who was videotaping, it said,

it was a very tense situation because you don't know what he's going to do afterwards. At that point, a 24-year-old man grabbed him and put him in a chokehold. As a result of the chokehold, the man who had been screaming died. We don't know actually a lot about the 24-year-old who put him into a chokehold.

Police have questioned him and released him. He has not been charged yet. The investigation is continuing. The mayor of New York has weighed in on this. You have people sort of across the spectrum weighing in. And again, we don't have a ton of facts on this. The man who died was black. There's some people speculating

that the 24-year-old is white because he looks white on the video. So, of course, then the conversation turns to race as well. But to some extent, the race conversation isn't nearly as interesting to me as the sense in the United States that violent crime is rising. And the right side of the spectrum, very much believing that as a political narrative, and the left side not believing it, as a political narrative,

and you have large chunks of the media that breaks down into right and left, falling into those camps as well. And, you know, Steve, when we had talked about this beforehand, I had said that it reminded me a little bit of the COVID coverage where sort of afterward,

people were like, well, we didn't want to cover it because it was what Donald Trump was saying, which is a pretty bad reason not to cover something. And so I was curious, Jonah, actually, why don't we start with you? What was your, what is your take on how we talk about violent crime in the United States?

Badly. Because, and I just wrote a G-File with this, but like, first of all... I loved your G-file on this. We should put it in the show notes. It was really well done and nuanced and interesting and weird. Like, I have no problem with people saying, because I lived it, right? like New York in 1980s and 90s was more dangerous than it is today.

So what, right? I mean, like, if, like, the first obligation of the state of the government is to protect people in their property. It's like just protect people from violence. And so, like, if your car is being hijacked at gunpoint, you know, and the cops come and say, yeah, we're not going to do anything about it because, you know, this is so rare compared to the way it was 10 years ago, you're not going to accept that, right?

So there's this sort of this what aboutism with statistics that I find kind of exhausting. At the same time, I think that there is a tendency that if there isn't a comfortable narrative about the proliferation of guns, about racism,

the media doesn't want to cover crime, right? It's like when they cover gun violence, if you listen closely, it sometimes sounds like these guns burst into a place and killed a bunch of people. Right? rather than the people pulling the triggers. We have to do something about gun violence. No, we have to do something about violent people

who have guns, which is a slightly different thing. And, you know, we saw it, remember last year, there was the Walk a Shaw Christmas massacre at that Christmas parade. And I happened to be driving, listening to it in real time. And when they thought it was white terrorism or white supremacy or Islamic terrorism, it got all this coverage.

And then when it turned out to be a crazy black guy, they're like, moving on. And I think that, the crazy black guy part, I'm not being entirely glib about this, it's not just black guys, it's crazy people. I think one of the reasons why crime feels scarier now

is the unpredictability of it. Is that there's good reason to believe that a lot of people with mental health issues are getting more violent than they once were or that violent people with mental health issues are freer to commit violence than they once were. And as we talked about a bunch of times here, I also think COVID makes people crazy, right?

Pandemics make people crazy for all sorts of reasons. And it explained all sorts of like rudeness to cashiers and crazy driving. I mean, it's a whole bunch of things, right? And so you could see how that would fuel people who are on the bubble of craziness to begin with. Or I'm sorry, people who are neurodivergent, I think is what I'm supposed to say. And so there's a real Fox News effect in all of this where Fox, you can rightly claim, overcovers or overhypes the issue of crime and also lawlessness at the border

and all that kind of stuff and we can have an argument about what a responsible good amount of coverage for these things would look like. But because Fox makes a big deal out of it, other networks don't make a big enough deal about it. Right. And so you get this really stupid kind of

one side is overly concerned and the other side is overly dismissive. And the, and there's, I suppose we've got to all tune in to, you know, PBS NewsHour, for all I know, they're covering that correctly. But, you know, my bedtime, I go to bed early, but not, I don't live the lifestyle or watch that. So there's just basically nobody is like tuning in to figure out how to calibrate this stuff properly.

And it makes the debate very asymmetric and weird and difficult to talk about. I mean, David, we have people who have been killed on New York Subways by homeless people who then turn violent and I think there's this sense of the tension between and you know you and I've talked about this on our niche podcast advisory opinions you knew I had to get it in once Steve I just like that you've now finally recognized that it's a niche podcast you're not even you're not even pretending

no I think that was an accurate description I commend you for your candor obviously the flagship about you know taking this in the context of the gun debate for instance, you have within the left people who want more gun laws and gun restricting laws, and those same people also don't want to put money into enforcing the gun laws that we currently have. They wouldn't phrase it as not enforcing the gun laws that we currently have, but that's the result when you don't want to enforce, quote unquote, low-level sort of regulatory crimes, you don't think people should be incarcerated. A lot of those, you know, stop enforcement.

frisk and all of that. Stop and frisk is most often used for guns. That's why you hear cops say, like, well, he was walking with a, you know, sort of limp on his right side. So I thought he had a gun in his right pocket. I saw a bulge. All of those are about guns. Yes, sometimes they are also about drugs. I want to acknowledge that. They're often about guns that are illegally held by people. So if you, it's hard to have it both ways. And I think people sense that. And so when you're on the subway, you don't think the police will come. If they come, they're not going to do it. anything. I'm not surprised, but I think this is a really bad effect of what happens when people think that law and order has broken down in their communities. They take it into their own hands

and putting someone in a chokehold for 15 minutes is going to result in death more often than not. Yeah, boy, this is such a many-layered issue. Let me say something that's a little bit cynical about human nature, but I think it's true. And that is when we're looking at crime, I think the average person is concerned about crime when it's, say, gang violence, like a drug dealer on drug dealer. They have innumerous sympathy for victims of, say, domestic violence. But it's not front of mind issue for them unless it crosses into this category of I could be a victim. Unless you're in an unstable relationship or unless you're in a very, very dangerous neighborhood,

you don't think of these other categories as impacting you. But if you are in a city and you see unstable homeless people around you, that's a scary experience. That's a nerve-wracking experience. The mass shootings, the idea that at any time and any place, your kids could be under fire, you could be under fire, that's terrifying. And so the bottom line is people are looking at the degradation of order in the streets and it's really, it makes them really nervous

for a lot of good reasons. And many people have been in that situation, especially in big cities in the U.S., where you're around a person who's obviously unstable and nobody knows what to do about it and the police aren't around. And so in that kind of circumstance, I think there's a lot of grace for somebody

who's going to grab someone. I don't think that there's evidence that this person was wanting or trying to kill, the homeless person, that they were just trying to grab a hold of them in an MMA move, and maybe they thought they could put them to sleep, make them pass out. But there is an enormous amount of concern, and I'm going to say rightful concern, when you go into these city centers and you're encountering people who are obviously unstable, and some of these obviously unstable people have killed other people.

And so, yeah, if someone is there and someone is yelling, I don't care if I die, or whatever the exact quote was, that is a terrifying situation. It's a terrifying situation. And the fact that somebody intervened in a way that was designed to try to incapacitate this person rather than kill them,

I think it's understandable to an awful lot of people. It's understandable to me that they would do that, that they would try to intervene. I don't think we don't have evidence that the intention was to kill him. You know, I've seen this person referred to and not, you know, as potentially maybe an ex-marine, someone trained in combatives,

someone who was trained in the ability to incapacitate somebody. But I don't think there's evidence that he intended to kill him and the fact that he killed him while not intending to, there could be some rightful law enforcement consequences for that.

But the bottom line is, and these big city governors, I mean, the mayors, they know, they get it. Public order is vitally important. It is terrifying to people to be around openly unstable individuals, particularly with law enforcement, not present. And the cities have to prioritize this.

They have to. Or, you know, no amount of media narrative or no amount of media attempts to discomfort with the narrative is going to blunt the rightful public outcry. Steve, this is from Tore on Twitter. A homeless man yelling on the New York City subway is normal. We see that all the time. What's not normal is for a Marine to sneak up behind him,

put him in a chokehold, and unalive him. That's not justified. The Marine could have just done nothing. He should be charged. Is this the other media narrative? I'm not surprised that that's Tore's view. Tore has strong views about a lot of things, and he's known to express them.

Look, I think that, you know, one of the things that seems notable to me or potentially notable to me, and I think we're smart. You were smart, Sarah, to start this by saying, there's a lot we don't know, and we should continue to repeat. There's a lot we don't know. We could learn things that change some of the details we're talking about right now.

But to pick up on David's point, it wasn't just that this 24-year-old ex-Marine thought he needed to intervene to either protect himself or protect others on the subway car, but two others did as well. So there were two other people who thought, this is enough of a threat that we as a group should get together and restrain this guy. It doesn't mean they were right, but I think it's a reflection of the sentiment in the moment.

And I find that important. Look, there was a poll. I think it was done by Politico not long ago, a poll of America's mayors, and 50% of them thereabouts, said that public safety was their number one concern. And most of these are Democrats. So this is not a Republican talking point, which I think, you know, I've heard journalists seem to go out of their way in recent weeks to suggest that this is a Fox News-driven scare tactic, that this is just fear-mongering in advance of an election. I mean, it may be that. I mean, that's probably an element of some of this.

But that doesn't mean, as Jonah suggests, that this isn't the reality. There's a very good report from our friend Charles Lehman at the Manhattan Institute. He put out a sort of a plan for modernizing our criminal justice system. And he leads with some statistics about violent crime and looks at violent crime and spikes in violent crime also talks about the polling of people's attitudes toward violent crime and walks through 60 percent listed crime is very important to their vote. It was the top vote getter, three and four voters described violent crime as a major problem, et cetera, et cetera. And then he follows that by saying these fears about rising violence reflect a real trend over the past three years. And while it's not the case that we're back at sort of 1990s-level violence, we have seen an increase in violence, particularly violent crimes over the past three, four years. And it's notable. People see it.

And you don't have to be a Fox News. viewer to worry about it. I don't watch Fox News. I don't really watch. I don't actually, I don't think I ever watch Fox News. I sometimes catch Brett Bear's show, but otherwise don't watch Fox News. But I'm paying attention to what I see in the reporting on the police blotter as I go in and out of Washington, D.C. And I left an event that we did the other night, drove home toward Maryland and four blocks away, there was a carjacking. These kinds of things are happening all the time. Or stories that taken by themselves don't tell us much,

but taken as a group can help to tell a broader narrative. You know, the high-profile case of the Washington Redskins running back being carjacked in the middle of a day in D.C. just a few blocks from CNN's headquarters and then another person being carjacked in the same location three hours later. That's the kind of thing that people are going to get nervous about.

David, I want to focus in on this narrative in one specific place on one specific issue. San Francisco and shoplifting. So Nordstrom announced that it was closing stores in downtown San Francisco. And look, the reasons for doing it were pretty clear. A spokesperson saying that Nordstrom's closure

underscores the deteriorating situation in downtown San Francisco. A growing number of retailers and businesses are leaving the area due to the unsafe conditions for customers, retailers, and employees coupled with the fact that these significant issues are preventing an economic recovery of the area. That was according to the mall that Nordstrom used to be in.

But Nordstrom, of course, isn't the only one. There was a big announcement that Whole Foods was closing a location that it had just opened a year ago after making, I believe, 360 emergency calls to police over a one-year period. This also

comes on the heels of 20 other major stores closing since 2020, including anthropology, Office Depot, CB2. But, David, it's really easy to take all that and say, crime is out of control in San Francisco, shoplifting's out of control. That's why all these stores are going,

And as they said, and then once the stores go, then even more economic activity is curtailed, and it's this, you know, vicious cycle for San Francisco. Possibly. But the statistics don't quite bear that story out entirely, do they? So there's been a 23% increase in property crimes between 2020 and 2022, spikes in burglary and theft,

along with that, you know, 23% rate. rise. But violent crime has been about the same. There's been 12 homicides in San Francisco, about a 20% increase compared to the same period the previous year. That's a lot. This is, you know, a 23% increase has a lot in property crimes. Don't get me wrong. But it's also not what it might feel like, which is a 1,000% increase as hordes of humans shoplift from all these stores, there's not really that either. How are we supposed to take the data and match it up to the stories of individual incidents like Steve was talking about, an NFL player being carjacked, in broad daylight, in downtown

DC, you know, the sense that people have, some of the reporting that we have about these store closures, for instance, and then the data is kind of like, yeah, there's been a little bit of an increase. Yeah, well, you can go to San Francisco now. and if all you do is watch Fox, you're going to think you're walking into sort of a Mad Max hellscape. And you'll go in some parts of San Francisco,

wow, are really going to be shocking to you. A lot of it is going to look normal, a lot of it. But so how do you adjudicate this? Well, look, when you're talking about all of these businesses that are moving out of those areas, they're not doing it because of a political, narrative. They want to make money. If they had some sort of inherent anti-San Francisco bias or inherent anti-progressive bias, they would not have opened the stores there to begin

with. I mean, they, they want, obviously want to be in the city. They absolutely have invested in the city and then find that whatever level they're at right now on property crimes, it's not sustainable. So whether that additional 20% sort of kicked it over into non-sustainable, or it was unsustainable before and now it's just really, really unsustainable. I don't know. But the fact that these commercial establishments that wanted to have a presence in parts of the city have found it not sustainable to me as dispositive in this argument. You can't sit there and scold your retailers and say, well, you've got to, you've got to stay

here even if you can't make money in this location and your employees are afraid. that you can't do, that is not a sustainable way of governing a city. You have to have enough public order to where retailers will feel confident that their merchandise is reasonably safe and their employees, more importantly, are reasonably safe. So the argument of her charts and graphs and statistics is interesting. I think it's worth having. But the bottom line is, at the ultimate end of the day,

the citizens' perception of public safety, including your corporate citizens, ultimately is the perception that really matters. And I'm sorry, it's difficult to go to San Francisco and stay there for any length of time, especially in the downtown area, without having a troubling encounter. It's just difficult.

And that's new. That is new. You know, not a lot of people necessarily remember how bad New York was in the 1980s and before Rudy Giuliani, before Mayor Giuliani. People forget Mayor Giuliani for that matter as well, but it was, there is no amount of political scolding that would have made you feel safe in New York at that time. And there is no amount of political scolding that's going to make you feel safe in parts of New York and San Francisco and other cities right now in this day. And that's the issue.

you these that, you know, governors and mayors have to deal with. And you cannot chart and graph your way out of this perception of, and the actual experience of engaging with unbalanced people. And they've got to do something about it. We should also make mention of the broader environment as it relates to policing. You've had police officers retiring at a higher clip than you had in the past, you have police officers who are more reluctant to make arrests because they think if they make arrests, the offenders won't be prosecuted by people that, by prosecutors who are soft on crime.

That's the only way to put it. I can't, I don't think I've, I've talked about this before on this podcast, but I have a friend who's a retired police officer in suburban Milwaukee. And we got together not long ago, and he was telling me these stories about the numbers of times he would arrest, sometimes literally the same individuals, for car theft or, you know, violent attacks or, you know, burglary. And they would make these arrests, assuming that these individuals would not be prosecuted. And you talked me through some specific details. And, you know, at the end of it, he said, why am I doing this again? Like, I'm going to arrest the same people.

There was a group of teenage boys who were known in Milwaukee for stealing Kia's and Hyundai's, which is now a bigger thing across the country. And these boys would be arrested. They'd be taken down to the police headquarters, walk out of the police headquarters, which they assumed that they would be able to do it. In some cases, take photos of themselves and post them on social media, sort of boasting that they'd gotten busted again

and nothing was happening to them. And as my friend said, what's the incentive for a police officer to make the arrest? You're putting yourself at danger, you're starting a confrontation. There's just no upside. So they're not making as many arrests either.

There's an interesting statistic about Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department of Washington, D.C., making 41% fewer arrests per officer this year than over the past several years. So people aren't getting arrested, and when people are getting arrested, many of them aren't being prosecuted. That's a huge problem.

Jonah, I want to give the last word to you. How should we think of this tension on the left between not wanting to look soft on crime, obviously, wanting to have fewer guns on the streets, but also not wanting to have as many confrontations with police and citizens, not wanting to incarcerate people as often or as much or for as long. How can you have all of those in one political party? How does that work?

I think it's difficult. And I think part of it is just a old-fashioned failure of leadership and honesty. you know, like, and I normally don't follow up calls for honesty by invoking Bill Clinton. But Bill Clinton was actually very good about talking about these kinds of tradeoffs and talking about, you know, the way he, I mean, it was all sometimes too clever by half and all that kind of stuff. But the way he talked about welfare, the way he talked about crime, acknowledged that there were lots of people in his coalition that don't like crime, right? And I think that a lot of what we hear from Democratic politicians is part of, it's sort of the knock on of the bubble effect that we talk about a lot on here, is that it's very online, it's very attuned to MSNBC and thinks that, you know, the, that, you know, the same crowd that thinks Latinx is a thing that real Hispanics say is the same crowd that thinks that all minority. only care about over incarceration and not about like the fact that their mothers can't get to a grocery store without getting mugged or they can't get to a grocery store at all because the grocery store is all closed in their neighborhood because they can't afford to stay open. And I do think that there is room for a Democrat to speak to this kind of stuff intelligently in a way that would win over voters.

But we live in this sort of, you know, it's two bubbles fighting with each. other turning off a lot of the people in the, a lot of the normals in the middle. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online. Whether you're building a site for your business, your writing, or a new project, Squarespace brings everything together in one place. With Squarespace's cutting-edge design tools, you can launch a website that looks sharp from day one. Use one of their award-winning templates or try the new Blueprint AI, which tailors a site for you, on your goals and style.

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through their own eyes. Light the path to a brighter future with stellar lenses for myopia control. Learn more at SLOR.com. and ask your family eye care professional for SLO-Stellus Lenses at your child's next visit. All right, last discussion here, the 2024 Senate map. So, Republicans have managed to recruit fairly popular West Virginia governor, Jim Justice, into the Senate race. Best name ever.

Interestingly, it sort of pitted, of course, the two different parts of the Republican. party against each other. You sort of have the more, I'll call them establishment Republican campaign organizations backing Jim Justice. You have senators like Ted Cruz backing Alex Mooney, who's a congressman in the state. But regardless, at this point, Joe Manchin is going to have a serious Republican challenger if he decides to run again for that Senate seat in a state that Donald Trump has won by 39 points. Joe Manchin in his last re-election, one by three points, which on the one hand is a lot in West Virginia for a Democrat. On the other hand, that doesn't feel like a lot.

That feels like a small cushion. In Arizona, Kristen Sinema, of course, has left the Democratic Party, which makes it a three-way race in Arizona between a Republican. We don't know. Kristen Sinema is the independent. And the Democrat will probably be Ruben Gallego, who's a progressive Iraq vet congressman there. Arizona, unlike, for instance, a Georgia or some of these other states that have runoffs where you have to get over 50% of the vote, Arizona's first past the post.

So you could have an Arizona senator elected with 34% coming out of 2024, which makes that sort of a fascinating post-party race, potentially, for Kristen Cinema. But something that really struck me is when there was a poll recently of the top 10 least popular senators in their states. So this isn't nationally. Just within your own state, within your own constituents, who isn't doing very well? Mitch McConnell was number one. Okay. That's fun. But five of the ten were these sort of heretic senators, I'll call them.

Joe Manchin, Susan Collins from Maine, the Republican, Kristen Sinema, Lisa Murkowski, the Alaska senator who has won as a write-in, right-in, rate choice voting. I mean, every new idea Lisa Murkowski has used to great effect. And Mitt Romney, that's sort of fascinating to me as we had into 2020. I was curious if y'all had specific races you were watching, interested in, as these start to shape up, as people start to announce for, you know, different nominations. Steve, which race are you most into? Well, we saw this week an announcement video put up by Colin Allred in Texas.

And, you know, already the sort of democratic hype machine is in overdrive. So this is going to be the man who finally, he turns Texas blue. He's set to take on Ted Cruz in 2024. Look, I think Democrats have reason to be more optimistic about him than yet another run from Beto O'Rourke, right? I mean, Beto O'Rourke was openly and aggressively progressive. I think they hoped that he could get the base out, but he was out of step with a lot of Texans. And yet he only lost in 2018 by 2.5%. If you believe that Colin Allred is going to run his race in Texas the way way that he's portrayed himself in this three-minute announcement video, he's going to run as

a sort of middle-of-the-road bipartisan compromiser who's really out for, to work for the people of Texas, and he's likely to depict Ted Cruz as someone who's just out for himself. I thought the opening video was reasonably effective. It's one of the few places in the country, given the map, Democrats are defending 23 seats. Republicans are defending only 11, and none of those in very difficult places. Right, when Texas is your biggest pickup opportunity. Texas or Florida is regarded as the Democrats' biggest pickup opportunity.

You can imagine that Colin Alred will break fundraising records in his run against Ted Cruz. So I think that's an interesting race. Sort of from the beginning, other places you're starting to see whether you're talking about Alex Mooney and Justice in West Virginia, whether you're talking about Jim Marchant announcing his bid in Nevada. You're starting to see the same dynamics that we've seen over the past several cycles with sort of Trumpy election denying super MAGA candidates versus more establishment friendly candidates. And, you know, the real. wild card is who's at the top of the ticket. I think it will be what should be a banner year for Republicans in the Senate in 2024 could be a bad year for Republicans in the Senate in 24 if Donald Trump is the Republican nominee. I just want to spend a second on Texas because obviously it's my home state. I've worked many, many races in Texas at this point. So I find

the whole thing really fascinating. David Biler's over in the Washington Post. had this great piece about the sort of plague that small dollar donors have on both parties, but that the plague is a little bit different. That on the Republican side, it tends to feed more extremist sort of right-wing candidates. Whereas on the Democratic side, it feeds pipe dreams. Yeah.

And fantasy candidates. Beto O'Rourke is an interesting example of that because it's not a pure pipe dream. As you said, Steve, he got within 2.5 points, but he did break fundraising records it was the most expensive Senate race to date at that point he outspent Cruz

in that year I think three to one I mean three to one against an incumbent so yeah he got within 2.5 points but it's not like you can say if only he'd had another $10 million literally there was no more money

you could put into that race that was going to make any difference and it was still a 2.5% race It's close on one hand, but maybe not on the other. So a few questions that I have about the Allred candidacy. One, Beto O'Rourke, even if you really don't like him, had some magic in a bottle there. Fundraising magic, charisma magic, tapping into this progressive small dollar national donor base. Will Allred be able to do that.

Because you're right, Steve, there's going to be plenty of national donors that put money into that race because it'd be fun to take out Ted Cruz, why not? That's worth $20 million. What about the other $80 million that, you know, a sort of Beto-esque candidate could be able to raise? Will he be able to do that? And that's just going to be that magic question. I bet he will.

I'd be willing to make an actual bet with you. No, no. We've got enough of those going. I would bet he will. Look, he's a former NFL player. He's a star football player at Baylor. He's a civil rights attorney. I mean, he is a, you know.

But you got to actually do it. A very good on-paper candidate. And certainly the Democrats I've talked to are beyond excited that he's stepped up to run. So, but that's the first question. Does he actually have the charisma and magic aside from the paper? And then two, I think his biggest liability, which I say politically, not from my actual, how I wish candidates worked these days. He has a record. he's not just a former NFL player who's, you know, famous a la, maybe a Herschel Walker.

He's actually been a congressman and that means he has a voting record. And so he can run whatever sort of opening ad he wants. But the fact is he's going to have all of these votes that Ted Cruz is going to be able to beat him up on and how their campaign deals with that and, you know, sort of parries that within Texas, I think will be really interesting. And maybe more to the point, if this is another, frankly, another Beto O'Rourke or another Amy McGrath race where nationally, you have Democrats pouring money into a pickup seat in Texas. I mean, the number of times this is the candidate who's going to turn Texas blue. My first race was in 2002.

I've been hearing it since then every single cycle, and it hasn't happened yet. So, you know, if those national donors put in 80 million into Texas, which I don't think would be crazy at all, in fact, I might be underestimating exactly how much money is going to go into that state. That's $80 million that doesn't go to defending incumbents. I know you don't like Joe Manchin, national Democrats, but you know who's going to replace Joe Manchin? A Republican, right? You don't get AOC as your West Virginia Senator if you beat Joe Manchin. You get Jim Justice. You get Alex Mooney. And so that's what David Byler's point was in the Washington Post is that that money is fungible. It could go to actually winning races, defending races. Think of all that.

congressional races that it would make a huge difference in. So that's, I'm super into that all red race for all of those reasons. David, what's your race, du jour? Well, let me just pile on the Democratic tendency to, to go after, chase the, chase the impossible dream, although I'm going to say Ted Cruz is not an impossible dream. It's an improbable dream. Yeah. But it's, there's a profile here.

Somebody's like, I'm a fighter pilot. But why won't Republicans vote for me, you know, Amy McGrath and Mitch McConnell? Or I'm an NFL guy. Like there's sort of this profile of somebody who's maybe more sort of stereotypically read on their biography that, you know, the Democrats will pour that money into, mystified that Republicans keep voting for Republicans. But, yeah, I think there's a, I'm interested in Texas for the reasons that you said, but I'm not that interested. I'm actually looking at the map, easily the one I'm most interested in is Arizona, easily. I think that Mansion is going to have a real tough time winning in West Virginia.

It's tester up in Montana. He's going to have a really tough time in a very, very, very red state. But this Arizona dynamic is absolutely fascinating to me. It looks like Kerry Lake's about to jump in, making the Republicans might then put forward the least effective possible candidate for the general election doesn't seem to be any sign that Gallego is backing away, that he would likely get that Democratic nomination,

and then you're going to have Kirsten Sinema as an independent. That is, this is really going to test the proposition that says, wait, there is a lane for a third party candidate. And I found it interesting, Sarah, when you talked about five of the ten least popular senators, were five of the ten most independent senators. And it makes sense, right? Because they don't have their own party.

They don't have the other party. And so nobody likes them. Exactly. I get it. I don't like it, but I get it. And this is part of the tension with our two-party system right now. In the abstract, you will have a bunch of people who will say, I don't like the two parties.

I wish we had more than a binary choices. Binary choice is the worst. And then you have something that's not a binary choice, and everyone's like, binary choice, please. You know, it's the things that people will say in a conversation about their frustration with the party system does not reflect the things that people do in the ballot box. And that's why the Arizona situation is going to be so interesting to me.

It's going to really put to the test whether there is, in fact, this lane for somebody who's going to say a pox on both your houses, who's not a crank, who is actually a sitting senator, who has real political skills. I mean, this is, it's going to be fascinating to watch it unfold. Jonah, race du jour. Well, you got, David kind of stole my thunder on the Arizona one. I do just as a matter of sort of,

because I can just envision the sort of title, Manchin versus Justice. Which I just think is awesome. No, I think the way I kind of think about it is like Tester in Montana, if I have to pick a different state, it's weird. He has managed to be, you know, I think he's coming up before his fourth term, or that's what the race will be for. And he is culturally red state and ideologically blue state.

And has worked for him for a while. And, you know, Mansion was always sort of, culturally red state and ideologically purple, you know, I mean, he wasn't all in on the sort of culture agenda of the Democrats. And so it'll be just sort of interesting to see if this is the last, you know, depending, you know, a lot of this is contingent on Texas, but if this is, you know, this is the last gas of having senators from different parties from the way their states voted for president. We have seen that linkage grow stronger and stronger and stronger.

It used to be when we were growing up, including even when Sarah was growing up, it used to be that if you were, that there are plenty of states that voted for Republican but elected Democratic senators in Congress, and that has been increasingly rare over the last few cycles and this may be the end of it,

which I think historically is pretty interesting. And so that's sort of what I'm looking for is across a bunch of these races is to see whether or not the sort of the big sort has now gone all the way down ticket for good. All right, Steve. We'll pick up a bet on Texas down the road a little bit. I would also bet I don't think

I don't think Christian Sinema's going to end up running. So I think it'll be a Carrey Lake, Ruben Gallego race, yes. Now that's a hot take. And Republicans will be left with Carrey Lake as there. Carrie Lake, Carrey Lake as their nominee. She was just in Hungary for a... Is she going to step down from the governorship to do this? Oh, yeah.

She's claiming Carrie Lake was claiming that, you know, the globalists released COVID to keep Donald Trump. from being president. That's who Republicans will have at the top of their ticket in Arizona. All right. Last up, worth your time, question mark? So I'm going to channel some Andy Rooney here.

For those of you who might be old enough to remember Andy Rooney's segments at the end of 60 minutes, I get that restaurants have to close at some point. I do. But when they're instituted, in your own life. How are you supposed to handle that?

Since I was one year old, I had been going to a restaurant called the Swinging Door in Richmond, Texas, about a mile from where I grew up. And if you live anywhere near there, you should go in like the next week or so because they're shutting down after 50 years of being open.

It is some of the best barbecue that you're going to have, not just in the area, like maybe in the state. I take everyone there, so to my parents. But it's not just that, it's ambience, it's the checker tablecloths, it's the windmill in front. And I don't know. It's making me really sad. Is it worth my time to bemoan change?

Jonah, I feel like you're going to be with me on this. Yeah, so I'm hugely with you emotionally. I, as a kid, growing up in New York, there was some establishment. Lickman's Bakery on 86th in Amsterdam. I remember when I was about five, I said to my dad, we should have President Nixon come here and declare this the best bakery in the world. Because that's what presidents do. Is there the ones who get to decide what the best bakery is?

And so I'm totally with you on the nostalgia thing. I can't let go of it. Intellectually, I try to fight nostalgia very, very hard. But emotionally, I'm completely down for it. and I think you just have to sort of, you know, given, you know, and my daughter has huge problems with this, but you just have to sort of, you know, keep the memories going and live with it because it's life.

And the problem is you cannot make your mental health and your emotional happiness hostage to whether or not some business stays afloat. So you just have to learn how to deal with it. Now, David, who thinks he's still a teenager, I think David's not going to care one bit about places closing that were important parts of his life and childhood. I think he's going to be like fast times at Ridgemont High here, just moving and grooving.

Shrimpitarian creative destruction for everybody. Nobody in this group says fast times at Ridgemont High quite like me. No, I'm as sentimental as the next person, Sarah? I mean, come on. Absolutely. An institution closes. Yeah, that's sad. We didn't have too many of those in my town growing up unless you considered the McDonald's an institution. But Steve, you're a little bit of an enigma to me. I don't know where you're going to fall on this. On the one hand, you don't like new things. On the other hand, you're not exactly, you know, soft and cuddly the way Jonah is. I mean, that's true.

That is very true. I'm just unsentimental org. Yeah. Oh, look, I mean, I think it's sad. I think you grew up with attachments to certain places, and when they leave it feels like a part of you leaves with them. There was a place that we used to go to in college pretty much every Saturday or Sunday called the Monon Grill in Greencastle, Indiana. that was just this incredible, you know, breakfast. It was not just breakfast, but breakfast place.

And, you know, so many memories were there, as we talked about the shenanigans from evenings prior. And you don't have that anymore. And that's, you know, that there is a certain sentimentality that attaches to that. How's that, Sarah? How's that for soft? Not very soft.

No. I mean, not quite a cactus. there, didn't quite there. A certain sentimentality attaches to that. That is... Yeah. That's about as clinical as sentimentality I've ever heard. He's like Spock talking about how there's something pleasing about these tribbles.

Who's Spock? Exactly. All right. With that, thank you all for joining us. If you want to hop in the comments section, you can become a member of the dispatch, or you can leave us a rating and a comment, you know, wherever you're getting this podcast, so that other. people will be more easily able to find it.

But regardless, you can do none of those things and we'll still talk to you next week. for him. Oh, do you not hear me? Um, y'all, y'all can't hear me? I mean, the amazing thing is it's just like, I don't want to jinx anything, but like,

my Wi-Fi always works great. And I never brag about it. I have really had not had tech problems with real related to this for ages. It's true. Then again, you're on the show so rarely that it's not a good data sample. I've been on every week for like the past two weeks.

No, I missed I missed last week. I missed last week.