The Dispatch Podcast - David Hogg and the Bully Test | Roundtable

Episode Date: May 2, 2025

Host Sarah Isgur and contractually obligated Jonah Goldberg are joined by Dispatch contributor Jesse Singal and Mike Pesca, host of The Gist podcast to discuss the Democratic Party's identity crisis. Also: Singal broke news on The Dispatch about the Trump administration's transgender policy. The Agenda:—The cajun rages on—Sarah is smarter than her son—We all know a David Hogg—The Dems should thank Trump for the 80/20 issues—The Trump administration and transgender health care for kids—2026 Senate map—Ross Douthat worries about the end of humanity The Dispatch Podcast is a production of ⁠⁠The Dispatch⁠⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including members-only newsletters, bonus podcast episodes, and regular livestreams—⁠⁠click here.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Conditions apply, visit your local Volvo retailer or go to explorevolvo.com. Welcome to the dispatch podcast. I'm Sarah Isker. We've got Jonah Goldberg and, y'all, this is going to be a fun podcast. We've got Mike Peska, host of The Gist and author of The Gist list, and Jesse single, new dispatch contributor, host of Lockton reported and writer of single-minded. And he tells me, y'all, he won a Little League trophy in 1995. I mean,

what's not to love about Jesse single. I want to start where we left off from last week. We went through sort of what does MAGA stand for? What are the MAGA policies? What's going on with Trump foreign policy? Things of this nature. I want to move over to the Democrats now and focus, or maybe use as a jumping off point or a metaphor, the conversation going on between David Hogg, who is the vice chair of the Democratic National Committee now, and James Carville, you know, famous, long-time Democratic operative dude. So basically, David Hogg has taken the quite controversial position that he's going to raise money as the vice chair of the DNC to run primaries against Democratic incumbents. And as Hogg and Carville did this interview together, you know, Hogg basically says,

Well, what do you want to do, James? What do you want to do to fix the abysmal approval rating of the Democratic Party? And James Carville screams, win elections. Since then, James Carville tweeted, just called David Hogg. He reminded me of the story of, after the Battle of Shiloh, Henry Halleck urged President Lincoln to fire Ulysses Grant. Lincoln said, I can't fire him. This man fights. David Hogg fights.

The DNC needs him. There's so much about that that I find perhaps not credulous. But, Mike, I want to start with you. Where are you on this David Hogg, James Carville, you know, continuum of how you're supposed to run a political party? How do you bring a political party back from what some say is the brink of death? Is that even an accurate description of where the Democratic Party is? Or is that where all political parties are after they lose a presidential election?

And is there such a thing as the Democratic Party any more? By which I mean, like, are political parties a thing? Yeah. There's a thing called the Democratic Party. It lives within all of our hearts or 27% of our approval ratings. There is no overlap between where James Carville is and me. If it's a continuum, I just resent the fact that Hogg represents one end of the continuum. What is the proof that this guy has been right about anything in his life? He was in a school that was shot up and it was pretty good on TV because he was in the debate club. And so he kept being, I'll give him the maximum benefit of the doubt and maybe in the seven or so years since then. He learned some political skills, but he has no political sense. And James Carville really, really does have political sense. I don't exactly know what Republicans think of James Carville. I know Democrats sometimes resent him, but they resent him in the way of an old Methuselah-like figure who almost always gets it right. And he's willing to tell them things they don't like, like in the beginning of the campaign or in the beginning of Trump's term, he said,

What the Democrats have to do is just evince competence and essentially do nothing because Trump will self-destruct. You could never tell political actors or really any actors to do nothing. But it's almost always the best advice. Inaction is, in fact, a bold form of action. And Carville wasn't saying, don't actually make speeches or do programs, just don't commit self-goals. So Hogg has a terrible, terrible theory of the case. And I also find that most of the people who are advancing the Hogg arguments are people like me who can't believe how stupid he is or Republicans because it's great for Republicans. It's a great distraction from what Trump is doing. And it might not be fun to say, but again, Carville is 105% right on this one. And more than 100% right because he goes up to the line of saying, David Hogg, you don't know what you're talking about. And I think you might be be a stupid person. He doesn't say that. That's the extra 5%. He says it with his eyes. He's more right than right. Yes, he says it. Also, let's remember Hogg's whole theory of the cases. Let's get old people out of there. And then he's on this tour with Carville, a bona fide old person who tears him limb from limb every media appearance.

Jesse, what about the argument? The, you know, the Lincoln quote, I can't fire him he fights. I mean, David Hogg, like AOC maybe arguably, the theory would go. is great for the Democratic Party because at least he's making the Democratic base feel like Democrats hear the problem or trying to fix the problem. At least he's doing something that like sit back and think of England version, perhaps that James Carville is trying for, isn't going to energize much. Yeah. I mean, I guess it's just, is the question that we need like a more energized base of the sorts of people who could influence like a primary challenge? I guess I'm also confused about the theory of the case here, because it seems like, and again, I think Mike Peska,

I hate to be on the same team as Peska because he's just such a difficult fellow, but like, I think we probably both- And also in Little League, you're very, very selfish play. I'm guessing Mike would agree that a lot of the Democrats' recent successes to the extent they've had, and you have been sort of like moderate, purplish candidates. And we remember after Trump was elected the first time, that first midterm, it was like, you know, know, moms in suburban Virginia who used to work for the CIA, folks like that. And Hogg seems to really want to use this opportunity to take the party in a different direction. And I don't know, it sort of gets into this whole like celebrity thing that makes me uncomfortable where

you see people talk about how AOC and Bernie Sanders have attracted huge crowds to these events. And okay, you know, but they both have political talent. Does that really mean anything? they're fighting. They can fill these small arenas. But I'm just not sure any of this translates to winning this next midterm or the next presidential election. I just, I don't understand what his theory is of how this will help the Democratic Party. Or even if that's his primary concern. Jonah, stick up for poor David Hogg. I recently wrote about David Hogg and I had to confess in dispatchy in fashion to my readers that I am irrationally biased against David Hogg. In like a pajama boy way is how I read it, though. Yeah, Padrama Boy kind of like borderline I want to smash his guitar against the Delta House wall kind of thing. I mean, I just, I cannot, I cannot stand again. I've known kids like that my entire life.

And whenever I visit colleges and I was just at college, the David Hogs seek me out to prove how wrong I am and talk to me as if like I need their advice. I just, everything about him exudes some sort of antiferemon that makes me erratic. So I don't like the guy. Oh, sorry. Can I just read one possibility? I'm a social science guy. Political scientists should measure how much the average voter wants to bully a given figure, like with specific scenarios, like stuffing them in a locker,

smashing their guitar against Delta, whatever, and then see how they do over the next 20 years in politics. Because, like, I don't think Bernie Sanders is bulliable. So anyway, I just want to break in with that. I think that's right. Oh, so, but you raise a good point. Okay, so one of the reasons why I'm so skeptical of this, we need, you know, a new younger Red Brigade, you know, to,

seize power. You know who just filed for the paperwork to run in 2030? Bernie Sanders. And no one's saying, oh, it's time for fresh blood, you know, about Sanders. Look, I got my start in Washington working for a guy named Ben Wattenberg who was obsessed about saving the Democratic Party in the 1970s and the 1980s. And so I have a very soft spot in my heart for the Carvillian Roy Chashera sort of stuff, in part because I've actually come to the conclusion that unless the

Democratic Party gets sane and starts running as a party that wants to be a majority party, the Republican Party will never get sane. You can't just have one healthy party. You need two healthy parties for positive competition kind of thing. So I agree with you guys, and I've written a couple of times, that Carville has the best short-term strategy for the Democrats right now. where I think there's a problem for Democrats. And look, I'd say Hogg is right. The party's too old. Our politicians are too old as a class.

But I just don't think that, like, you know, youthful vigor absent something else is the only answer. Like, you actually need better ideas and better arguments and that kind of thing. And I think one of the reasons why Carville's position is the right one is one that a lot of Democrats don't want to concede this. I think they've lost the plot. I don't, what is the story the Democrats tell about themselves that wins over the median voter? The dissent into identity politics and the wokeism, whatever we want to call it, of the last, you know, decade leaves them in a place where I don't think they, the elites in the party have a good grasp about how to talk to the normie voter the way they once did, the way Bill Clinton could in his sleep, right? I mean, I love this Tim Waltz clip from me speaking at Sarah's old stomping ground, the Harvard Institute of Politics, and he's explaining how he could code talk to white football

watching guys and give them permission structure to vote for Democrats. I knew I was on the ticket. I would argue because we did a lot of amazing progressive things in Minnesota to improve people's lives, but I also was on the ticket, quite honestly, you know, because I could code talk to white guys watching football fixing their truck doing that, that I could put them at ease. I was the permission structure to say, look, you can do this and vote for this. And I put it to you that maybe dudes who talk like that aren't what the Democratic Party needs. They need football watching guys to code talk to people who use phrases like code talk.

You can't imagine a football watch. I'd be like, bro, are you giving me a permission structure? That's awesome. I'm going to vote down. Come on. It makes perfect sense. Let's get some Blue Mission structure for some wings, man.

Yo, cool code switch, cool code switch, bro. Go Pats. Jonah, when Peyton Manning goes to the line and says, Ice Cream Dice 264, that is code talk, isn't it? Of a kind, yes.

Of a kind, sure. Okay, I'm going to John McLaughlin, all of you. Wrong. Mike Pesca answered. No, a special cat, banana. Mike Peska answered this question incorrectly from the beginning,

and then all of you got the answer wrong, which is we killed off political parties in 2002 with campaign finance reform. There is no such thing as the Democratic Party anymore or the Republican Party. There is only the last guy to win the presidency. That's what a political party is now in the United States. They have no ability to pick their standard bears. They have no ability to have narratives of their own outside of that person. And so when you have Joe Biden as that person for the Democratic Party, you are screwed until you get someone else who wins the presidency. Now, it will help to have someone who is nominated for the presidency, but that's not quite the same thing if they can't win,

as we just saw with Harris. So the Republican Party looks strong because it has someone who just won the presidency. The Democratic Party looks weak because their guy who had won the presidency, then lost the presidency and cannot do public events. So that's the answer to the question. You just did that intelligence meme where, like, the mid-wit people are like, David Hogg is bad for the party, and the too smart person is like, what is a political party even? It's not my fault you'll suck. So, Jonah, though, did raise an interesting point all the same, which is, what does the Democratic Party do here? Jesse, you have some reporting that I want us to talk about, because at the end of the day, I think two of the biggest, cultural problems where the Democratic Party is on the wrong side of what we call 80-20 issues,

and I don't necessarily mean that these are 80-20 issues, literally, or that when you break them apart, every single piece of them are 80-20 issues. But immigration and transgender care for minors are two of the areas in which the Democratic Party is just on the wrong side of the polling. And Jesse, you have some reporting on what the Trump administration is about to roll out. Will you give us a preview? Yeah, so this morning, the Department of Health and Human Services, I almost said humor services. That seems like a Mike Peska joke. Not a funny subject. So they released this huge report, more than 400 pages called Treatment for PGAiatric Gender Dysphoria, review of evidence and best practices. I actually don't, maybe it's a different conversation.

I don't think like Democrats lost because of this issue, but I do think this is an issue where like the role of the groups, as some of us call them, really came into place. So there's been this long-running debate over youth gender medicine, over puberty blockers, over hormones, surgery, less frequently. This is for kids who have gender dysphoria. These treatments supposedly alleviate it. And the Democratic Party basically rolled over to a group of activists and medical providers and decided not to look carefully into this subject.

Countries like Finland, Sweden, and the UK did look carefully into it. They all rolled back access to these treatments as a result. So when the Trump administration announced via a characteristically inflammatory executive order about chemical mutilation and so forth that they were going to be looking into this issue, I was really skeptical that we would get a good report as a result. I thought it would be politicized 90 days, which is what they gave them, is not enough time to do something like this usually. But when I found out who actually was behind this report, these are the folks HHS Commission, they're smart people, they're smart skeptics of youth gender medicine. So you have this weird situation where the Trump administration, which I would not associate with good science in general or with the scientific method in general, has produced a credible document raising doubts about these treatments in a way the Biden administration absolutely could have chosen to at any point, except they basically decided to cheer lead these treatments. And I think this just makes this issue even more politicized, even more contentious. And I'm frustrated with the

way the Democrats handled this. I think they are part of the reason we're now in this situation where we have to trust the Trump administration's approach, which I don't think is a good general thing to do. Jonah, I singled out immigration and transgender care for minors. Is there anything else on this 80-20 side I'm missing before we dive into it? First of all, I just want to make one quick point about the transgender thing. I feel you, I've been calling it the Greenland effect for a while. I've been pro annexing Greenland forever, but doing it the wrong way discredits the idea and the position.

And it's sort of the same thing. This is one of the problems with polarized politics is that even when you do the right thing, the right way, because of the general valence of your other stuff. And it's sort of like the rest of the judge in Minnesota. Because of Trump's other stuff with other judges, no one can see it for the fact pattern of that case alone. Anyway, I would say, look, again, it's the distinction between the ideological position. and the way they're carrying it out, I think a lot of the stuff that the Trump administration is doing

on the DEI stuff or anti-Semitism stuff, if people don't look at the details, they're, I think it's probably not 80, 20, but maybe 60-40, American, or Americans who are like, yeah, that stuff went too far. I like that they're doing something about it.

And then the problem is the means of what they're doing, create blowback, right? So, like, I'm for doing all sorts of things to fix Harvard. I'm not sure cutting Harvard's research into pediatric cancer is the way to fix their English departments. But that sort of split is, I think they're on the right, they're happy to have those arguments.

Maybe that's the way to think about it. What are the, what are the Trump thing, what are the things that Trump is doing where he's really happy to be talking about it versus unhappy to talk about it? D.E.I. Immigration, transgender, happy to talk about it. it. Stock market? Not so much. Yeah, so, Mike, I know it's really easy for us to sit here and say that the Democratic Party should tell their base to go F themselves and get on the right side of these issues. But that's not really a politically viable solution if you want to, to quote James Caraville,

win effing elections, right? The base does a lot of things for you. They're your volunteers. They're your small dollar donors. And there are, you know, many of your voters as well, if not a majority of them. So what are you supposed to do when your base is going off one direction and the American majority is heading in the other direction? And I will use as an example of this, or like a reverse example of this, on the Republican side, right? The Republican base was really teed up on illegal immigration, while it looked like the rest of the country wanted moderation on immigration, you have the 2012 Republican autopsy report that says the Republican Party needs to back comprehensive immigration reform, basically needs to get off this issue and tell its base to jump off

a cliff. And Donald Trump proved that, in fact, it was the majority that was a soft majority or not even ever a majority, and that the base was the winning coalition to win an election there. So why shouldn't the Democratic base say the same thing? Well, sorry, I feel you've set a trap for me. You just said that it's easy for us to tell the Democratic Party what to do. But in the previous segment, you said there is no Democratic Party. You're learning. You're learning.

Mike just ended this podcast permanently. He just Kobayashi Marood, the dispatch podcast. I hate that I get that. I hate that I get that. I will. End of war games. is the only the only solution is not to play it is whatever it's it is true that the base has their passion it's also true that a consistently bad form of political advice comes from people who are

on the more radical side of each party advising the party to be more radical so for years on ms mcc the advice was we need someone who gets out the base and excites people sure who doesn't need that And that means, and then they would inject some Bernie Sanders-style socialism. I think it's just bad politics, parties or no, to be on the wrong side of 80-20 issues. But I also think that the salience of those issues changes. So they do ask, how much do you care? And people, though they do have thoughts on the wisdom of youth gender medicine or especially kids in sports, I don't think they're voting on it per se.

But what happens, and this is what every good political advisor should tell people who want to win, what happens is there is an accrual of issues that if you are on the wrong side of people who do vote for you or who could vote for you, it undermines enthusiasm. And especially with Democrats, my analysis is if they are the truth people, once they were on the wrong side of things by asserting untruths, the youth gender medicine was replete with all these about Jesse's reported on this, about things like suicide rate and desistence and just lies that smack of lack of common sense. And then when it comes out that the experts, and remember Democrats are the appeal to experts people, the experts actually disagree with what the activists were saying. It really undercuts your credibility. The same as COVID, right? I think COVID and the lockdowns that extended, you know, schools weren't back open in LA until April of 22. COVID really undercut their position as the expert people. You add it all up, and not only does it hurt your credibility in the ability to win elections, it takes specifically people who would normally be

in your coalition, in your base, and turns them against you. So there are so many, Mahamams is another example of that. I don't know that Democrats did anything wrong, but the reason why it's a potent issue is those are exactly the kind of people who should vote for Democrats. So if you show yourself to have wrong stances on all these issues, that you could call common sense. or you could say, you're just lying. It is going to hurt you. And I don't know how excited a young activist is to get out there in the streets because of many of the issues that we just said.

I think that a lot of them kind of, if gender identity isn't their thing, they swallow and go along. If immigration is their thing, they maybe wonder, why are we taking these ridiculous stances on gender identity? So I think in general, parties or no party, dumb to have dumb stances that piss off voters. Jesse, will you social science us here for a second? Tell us what's going on within the minds and hearts of Democratic voters or potential Democratic voters. I think the maha mom thing is a great example because almost by definition to be a maha mom and this is a make America healthy again mom. I ran into a mom at the playground the other day who literally had the hat. By definition, you basically have to have been a two-time Obama voter to be a real maha mom. It's like in the definition more or less. So how did that happen? I think, like, the average voter is subjected to these weird cross-cutting pressures that are, like, okay, we're all, we are all partisans to a certain extent.

We have a, you know, set of ideologies. I'm not saying this happens often, but in my reporting on youth gender stuff, like, there are, there are parents who really get radicalized because of the perception that the Democrats are wrong on this one issue. And they really, some of them end up voting for Trump. I find that sort of hard to countenance because it's just you have to mortgage so many of your other ideological values to do that. And I think all of this comes back to the fact that there's only a small sliver of genuinely undecided voters in every election and they are very different from folks like us. And it is hard to model their minds. I will also, one other thing I want to say is that I think there's a real asymmetry here in terms of like the radical wing of both parties. So border policy under Joe Biden was very bad for a while, very bad.

It was not because Joe Biden is like an open borders freak. It was because of incompetence and COVID-related stuff and the lack of immigration agreement in the past, blah, blah, blah. The result, though, was Democratic mayors going to the New York Times and, like, launching a war against the administration. There was real infighting there. There was not infighting, like, during the Republican campaign, no one who wanted to stay within the Republican mainstream could say, oh, cat. No one who wanted to stay within the Republican mainstream could say, oh, Trump is going a little too harshly on immigrants. Like one form of radicalism, the really harsh on immigration thing,

is more popular than open border stuff. Similarly with the youth gender stuff, let's just ban it all is more popular than let's let all kids do whatever they want, which was an argument that appeared on the front page of New York magazine. Literally give any kid who wants any medical treatment can get it. So I think that asymmetry and the fact that maybe the Republican Party is a slightly smaller tent, although getting bigger and a bit more ideological, these are all also worth taking into account.

But Jesse, I want to follow up with you on that with abortion. So the abortion is exactly the reverse for the Republicans as immigration and the transgender issue have been for Democrats, meaning it is slightly more popular to say, we're going to allow some amount of abortion than to say ban all abortions. And yet Democrats tried to run on that, and it didn't seem to do a lot. and Republicans have been able to, like, memory whole the whole thing.

Like, we haven't talked about abortion in at least 100 days. This is a weird example, right? Because my sense is in the immediate elections, like special elections, stuff, after Dobbs, the issue did seem to have salience, and there were a couple state-level referenda, like in Kansas, I believe, where the, quote-unquote, pro-choice side did better. And Kentucky, by the way. And Kentucky, yes, yes, yes. I think it just turned out to not be a salient an issue. But I grant that that's a counter example

where like these quote-unquote more radical side seems to be able to get away with it. I have the answer to that. The answer is because Donald Trump spokesman for the Republicans moderated his stance in the same way, or at least verbally moderated his stance in the same way that Democrats need to moderate their stance on trans girls in sports. You need to not be radical, not outwardly radical, and Trump did it, and it neutralized an issue. And that's what Democrats, that's what smart Democrats and James Carville are saying his people should do on transgender medicine. That's a good point. Donald Trump basically sister soldiered the pro-life movement, except far worse. I mean, he told them they were irrelevant. Yeah, and then he's throwing

the groups under the bus for political gain, which the Democrats could learn from, maybe. Well, but Project 25 disagrees with him on abortion. He'll give him a whole bunch of other stuff that they want and then the fact that you're, let's call it a cult or that there's a clear leader actually helps in the messaging. So if the person who's saying, yeah, it's really weird and I don't want my daughter run over by a boy in sports, if that person is the clear leader and is not going to take all the incoming that individual representatives took for saying a sensible stance like that, perhaps infelicitously phrased, it's easier for that party. On this point about the Maha moms becoming that dynamic, right?

That's shockingly common in all sorts of ways, right? So, like, I remember all these liberal types who became right-wingers in effect because of 9-11. And in very short order, they just, it turns out it's very difficult for people to handle the cognitive dissidents of being on a, switching sides for a single issue.

So over time, they just start to absorb the other side's other issues as well for the sake of that sort of popular front mindset. It happened with the neocons who came into the Republican Party in the 1970s because of foreign policy. You know, Charles Crowdehammer became, with very few exceptions, a full spectrum conservative. Same thing with Bill Bennett, who had been a Democrat, Jean Carpatrick, you can go down a long list. And one could argue, just going by his Twitter feed, I don't want to start too much of a Tong war

here, but you could argue that there's a similar pattern going on with people like Bill Crystal, who, you know, is, seems to be just taking democratic positions full suite, at least according to his Twitter handle. And I think there's something about human nature that says, if I'm going to join another team, I got to wear their uniform. And, and so David Horwich just died yesterday. He was another, like, new left guy, right? For sure.

He was a super new left guy. He just wanted to be radical on one side or another. That's the important thing with Harwich. He doesn't change his tactics. He just changed his uniform. By the way, so I just personal victory lap on May 4th, 2022, I published a piece called Abortion Might Not Be the Wedge Issue it used to be and was just pilloried as the dumbest political operative in America for thinking Democrats were not going to win every election forever on the abortion

issue. And I would just like to remind everyone here in 2025 that I wrote that and that nobody cared at the time and nobody listened to me. And for the rest of your life, May the 4th, we'll be with you. That's right. May the Fourth is... Your Jedi Mine trick them on May 4th, correct? May the 4th is also... May the 4th is the day that Carly Fiorina announced her candidacy for the Republican nomination as well. So May the 4th is a great day for me because we announced on ABC's Good Morning America with Stormtroopers in the background.

And I thought, I'm an idiot. I did this. all right jesse single thank you so much for joining us i know you have to go you're in another continent and country and time zone so thank you for being here we'll catch you on the flip side the new bemo v i porter master card is your ticket to more more perks more points more flights more of all the things you want in a travel rewards card and then some get your ticket to more with the new bemo v i porter mastercard

and get up to $2,400 in value in your first 13 months terms and conditions apply visit bemo.com slash viporter to learn more 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.

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It's a single hub for managing your work and reaching your audience without having to piece together a bunch of different tools. All seamlessly integrated. Go to Squarespace.com slash dispatch for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch, use offer code dispatch to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. All right, now you two losers. I want to talk about the Senate map for 2026 because we have not talked about it yet and I know the midterms are still well more than a year away but the primaries aren't and that's going to get started pretty soon, right? That's the whole David Hogg theory. And this Senate map looks very different than the last three Senate maps we've had which heavily favored Republicans. This Senate map, first of all, a Senate map is always hard when you,

You don't have that many retirements. And right now, it is true that Democrats have more retirements. Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois, and New Hampshire all have Democrats retiring. The only one of those that's probably interesting is Michigan. Maybe New Hampshire, maybe. Republicans just have a retirement in Kentucky. Otherwise, it's all incumbents running. But very few Democrats.

seats up to begin with. Georgia, Virginia, Colorado, New Mexico, Oregon are really the Democratic seats. But Republicans have the whole South. Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota. That's Wyoming up there. Montana, Idaho, Maine, West Virginia, Ohio. They're defending in all of those with incumbents. I want to focus on Texas for just a moment. And by the way, I just did that off a map and I just want everyone to be impressed. That wasn't a list. I looked at states and named them. So I think I just passed like first grade. I can tell you that my four-year-old can't do that yet. Ha. But we should tell listeners that you refer to Oklahoma as

other Texas. And I don't think we had to cut that out. Also, bragging about how you're more educated than your own child is there's some disconnect in there. So much smarter than my stupid kid. I know. Look, yeah, I am, I am bragging about that. They're teaching kids a lot these days. Okay. So in Texas, this is shaping up to be fascinating little microcosm of the Republican Party. John Cornyn, who, disclaimer, that was my very first campaign. I worked for John Cornyn in 2002. John Cornyn is up for re-election. Ken Paxton, the Texas Attorney General, is going to primary John Cornyn. Ken Paxton, more aligned with the MAGA Trump world and the Republican Party, John Cornyn seen as, you know, an old school forever Republican, who, by the way, they just hate each other.

It's one of the few examples intrastate where you will see them tweet SHIT about each other with just no holds barred. So they hate each other. There's going to be this primary. And I mean, good money at this moment, assuming Donald Trump endorsed Ken Paxton, for instance, would have Ken Paxton probably beating John Cornyn if the primary were held today. But there's a problem in that Ken Paxton, you know, was. impeached by the Texas House run by Republicans. And he was not convicted in the Texas Senate, although it might be worth mentioning that his wife is one of the members of the Texas Senate. He was accused of all forms of corruption. They just had to pay a settlement out to these guys

that he fired for whistleblowing within the Texas Attorney General's office. Again, all staunch Republicans. So there's a chance here where you have a vicious Republican primary between MAGA, and Republican about to happen, and that if the MAGA candidate wins, that you get Roy Mord, meaning you've got a red state where the Democrats would otherwise have no hope, but because the MAGA base picked such,

not just an unpopular candidate, but like someone with so much baggage that's not going to be easy to explain to a general election audience, they lose the seat. But unlike in Alabama, where that was a special election to fill Jeff Sessions,

remaining two years in the Senate, This would be a six-year term with a Democrat representing Texas potentially. So what are you guys watching in the Senate? What do you make of these types of intra-battles, whether it's David Hogg primaring on the Democratic side or the Ken Paxton Challenge on the Republican side? Is this, is 2026 not going to really be a battle between Democrats and Republicans? Is it going to be each side battling its own intra-demans?

It will be a battle for the soul of America. Now, here's the only problem with the analysis of Texas. And there, to clean up the pieces after Paxon and Cornyn go at it is Beto O'Rourke. Uh-oh. Texas hasn't been one. No Democrats won a statewide race since, like, 92 Lieutenant General race. It's been hundreds and hundreds of elections if you take statewide races into account, all the judges. And in 2002, when I was running, not running, when I was part of Cornon's race, I can't

you how much I wasn't running that. I was like the baby, baby, baby, in turn. That was a turn Texas blue race. The Democrat, Ron Kirk said, like, this is the moment we turn Texas blue and every single election since then. Democrats have poured in tens of millions of dollars saying, this is the year. Yeah. So I hear you, but Alabama had an elected a Republican, I mean, a Democrat in forever, ever. Right. By the way, when you launched the Corning campaign, was it in front of a Battlestar Galactica milieu? Did you, is this? A theme with the micronauts involved with? Micronauts.

Oh, I love the micronaut. Ken Paxon was elected statewide. He is more or less, though embattled, he is more or less a viable statewide candidate. And Roy Moore is seen as a nut. And Republicans were giving away a lot of races to candidates who showed no viability. I think Carrey Lakes in that category. You can maybe say Todd Aiken, remember, acceptable rape. Legitimate rape.

Yes, legitimate rape. that guy. So this was, this was a trend. I don't think it's going to show up in Texas just because of the last hundreds and hundreds of elections and Beto O'Rourke or whoever, Colin Allred, whoever maybe gets the Democratic nomination. So to your bigger question, the primaries are fascinating, because while there are no political parties, there are party primaries and they're going to be important, but I think it's another terrible map for Democrats. And there are two states that Trump one that are held by Democrats, right? Michigan and Georgia. Georgia is very much in play. Ossoff, maybe if Kemp runs. And the only state that a Republican holds now that was won by

Kamala Harris is Maine with Susan Collins. But Susan Collins supposedly is vulnerable and then turns out not to be. And the other weird thing is when we say I did a piece on the gist about this, oh, it's a bad map for Democrats, which they are saying, and it is true. And I went, I went back to the last six Senate maps for Democrats. And they always say that. Maybe I'm listening to too many Democrats, but it seems like it's always a bad map for Democrats. Maybe this goes to what we were talking about in our first segment, the 27 percent or general lack of approval rating of Democrats, or just the Beto O'Rourkeiness of it all, who they actually run. Jonah. By the way, so I was on Bill Marcia with Beto O'Rourke, and I got to say, so different in person than his campaign persona. Like when he

stood on the desk, on the set. What did, uh, what was your opinion of him then? He, he seemed almost shy. Um, it was quite charming the shyness. I mean, when you, because normally when you meet politicians, they talk the whole time. They're kind of sociopaths. Um, he just had none of those real qualities. I, I was charmed.

Uh, Jonah. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, I'm going to sort of do what Pesca did to do earlier with the whole, questioning the premise stuff and whatever when you uh the thing i'm kind of thinking about is what the hell will be different depending upon who controls congress oh good place why the hell do we care yeah so like i know and i mean this in a weird in a weirdly serious way right not just to be a pain in the ass but like the whole phrase first hundred days

comes from FBR. I've been singing this song, Jonah. Yes. Yes. Why are we talking about the first hundred days if there's no congressional action at all? And the whole point was he said, give me 100 days to get legislation passed. Other than what, like, the Laken Riley Act, what legislation has been passed, right? It's all, I mean, Trump even calls executive orders legislation now.

And, like, that makes me want to cut myself. I mean, like, what the hell? And so I think the Democrats are almost, like, betting markets are, I don't know, 80%, 90% chance Democrats take the House. They only need to get seven seats. It would be very weird, particularly if the economy is like this, you know, that they didn't get 17, 27 seats, whatever. And so I think it's unlikely that they take the Senate so they can still confirm judges. They haven't confirmed that. I mean, Sarah, I don't. None. None. We're at none. Okay, so zero, right? None have been sent to the Senate. None have been confirmed. All increases from zero are

infinite so that's like there's a lot of room to grow there but um the point is is like it's weird like these guys other than the big beautiful bill which i think they will probably get um in some form and we'll get bigger debt and all that kind of stuff it's like they just don't care about congress and if democrats get the house it's not like they can stop like they can't stop executive orders right they can do hearings which trump will ignore and that will get another round of congressional of constitutional crisis discourse. But it's just, it's, for the first time in my life, it's just really weird that the stakes of taking Congress

don't feel very high because this presidency doesn't care about what Congress does beyond like the big beautiful bill thing. Yeah, I mean, just to like go over my pyramid here of stability and constitutional change, right? Amendments, three quarters of states, laws are just above that. regulations still have to do noticing comment rulemaking. And EOs are literally like dandelion seeds at the top. They just blow away.

If you can do it with a stroke of a pen, you can undo it with a stroke of a pen. We had a listener comment that said, so if Trump gets rid of the Department of Education with an EO and Congress doesn't do anything in the interim, and another president comes in, January 20th, 29, can they just reinstitute the Department of Education? I was like, yeah, that's, yeah, that's exactly, name any EO that you like that Donald Trump has done, and it could not be less permanent or less important for that reason.

Yeah? I will agree with that entirely in principle, and in fact, but as a political reality, I do think that whether you love them or hate them, some of the EOs that Trump has issued will be politically difficult for Democrats to repeal, like the transgender stuff, some of the because Democrats will have to campaign. They'll be asked over and over again in a campaign. Are you going to reimpose all of these racial quotas and whatever, you know, whatever, pick your parade of horrible.

Paper straws. Paper straws, you're going to bring back papers? Are you going to make my showerhead like, like have, you know, no water pressure again? Is that what you're going to do? Huh? Are you? Are you? And I think a lot of Democrats are going to follow Carville's advice and say,

hey, look, Trump kind of did us a favor by taking all these 80, 20 issues away from us. let's not, let's not double down on stupid politically. And so some of them I think we'll have a longer shelf life, particularly if Vance's is installed as the meditative of the third Trump administration. Okay, so Mike, does it matter? Assume that Joan is right and that Republicans retain control of the Senate but lose the house. Does anything matter about that?

Has Trump wasted some opportunity to actually get legislation? done if he's not going to get it done with a Democratic House? Or are we not doing legislation anymore? In which case, why are we talking about Congress? Well, yes, it matters. And to go back to Jonas' point, the president doesn't care about Congress. Congress doesn't care about Congress, which is your point often, though you didn't say it here. Yeah, I think it mostly matters because the Senate's a six-year term. And so in 28, the senators elected will still be there. and that changes the math. I'll throw in a couple points that I thought of while you were talking. Yes, it is, it is very important or it is very likely that while you're talking and I was listening and Googling. So it is true that the Democrats are very likely to take the House. Here are the odds on the Senate from Polly Market as of now. Republican 69.7% chance to take the Senate. But before on before Liberation Day on April 1st, that was 81%. So, actual events matter. And stock market and tariffs had a big impact there. Point two is where are

truths on the pyramid of causality? And point three is one of the reasons that Donald Trump is setting records for EOs is that Joe Biden set records for EOs. So all we're going to do is have a never-ending EO arms race or one EO big. There's probably a good formula for every EO that a president does, there's a 0.8.0s get undone by the next president. I am assuming the very institution of a next president will be in effect. All right, I want to talk about Ross Delphitz piece in the New York Times this week. An age of extinction is coming. Here's how to survive. Just read a segment of it. Every great technological change has a destructive shadow whose depths swallow ways of life the new order renders obsolete.

But the age of digital revolution, the time of the internet and the smartphone and the incipient era of artificial intelligence, threatens an especially comprehensive cull. It's forcing the human race into what evolutionary biologists call a bottleneck, a period of rapid pressure that threatens cultures, customs, and peoples with extinction.

When college students struggle to read passages longer than a phone-sized paragraph and Hollywood struggles to compete with YouTube and TikTok, that's the bottleneck putting the squeeze on tradition, artistic forms like novels and movies. He goes through daily newspapers, mainline Protestant denominations, elk lodges, sit-down restaurants, shopping malls. When moderates and centrist look around and wonder why the world isn't going their way, why the future seems to belong to weird, bespoke radicalisms, to Luigi Mangione admirers and World War II revisionists, that's the

bottleneck crushing the old forms of consensus politics, the low-key ways of relating to political debates. When young people don't date or marry or start families, that's the bottleneck coming for the most basic human institutions of all. So, Jonah, I want to start with you. A, just thesis-wise, is he correct? Is this an extinction-level event for large swathes of human culture when we talk about the digital revolution? And his point, by the way, is that this is going to last a while. And so, like, don't think that just because it hasn't happened, you know, the internet has been around for 30 years and the iPhone for 20 years or whatever. Like, it's growing in momentum and it's coming now, basically.

Yeah, so I liked the column a lot. I thought it was a good column. I think it's pretty overstated. You know, when Stravinsky's Rights of Spring debuted in 1917 or whatever it was, the audience hearing this modernist music rioted and tore apart to theater. You could write similar things. He'd have to change the names of some products and all that kind of stuff in the 1960s. You could write in the 1930s with the implementation of radio.

These kinds of panics about technological revolutions had basis in fact. They just were exaggerated. And there's not a lot that people thought we were going to lose in 1925, let's say, 100 years ago, that have actually been completely lost. they're less popular, they're less used, or they're more used. I mean, it's, and so I, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's literally the existential panic that Ross is displaying here, because, you know, Ross has a certain Eeyore kind of persona. Um, love Ross, known him for years, my former intern at National Review, but he, he is prone to

sweeping despair, um, of this sort. And I am worried about what AI is going to, going to do. And I am worried that, you know, its net effects will be less great than people think in some areas. And it'll be better in other areas, much like the internet. Like the internet at boosterism, I was a part of all of that 30 years ago. And there's been a huge downside to the internet. But it hasn't wiped out the family. It hasn't swept away the, you know, no one needs to write goodbye to all that in terms of the civilization we had in the 1990s quite yet. So I think it's worth reading. It's worth thinking about.

I think the takeaway that I agree with the most, which is pretty much the theme in my last book, is that if you're not actively trying to protect the things that you love and think are important, you are giving up on them to entropy and decay. And that is true in every generation, regardless of the new doodads. Yeah, Mike, I actually thought, there were a few points that I was like, wait, what? So one is the declining birth rate that he's attributing to, like, online dating. But the declining birth rate is all about women working and having the ability to not have children. That basically as soon as women...

And that trend predates the internet by a gazillion years, yeah. It's not even up for debate. Right. Basically, when women are given the sort of ability to not have children, they will choose not to have as many children. And that's a problem. Maybe they don't know that they'll be smarter than their children. Maybe they worry. This kid at four is going to know more space than me.

My poor dumb kid. He didn't even get 12 plus five right yesterday on the first chance. it took him two chances. Like, how's he going to ever live on his own? How close was he on the first chance? He was one off. Oh, I thought he said maybe Arkansas. Oh, no, wait. He was two off. He said, I said what, I don't even remember now. Yeah, I think I said 12 plus five and he said 15 or something. Like, come on, come on, kid. Did you activate his pain collar? First of all, the birth rate thing, like I'm not saying online dating isn't bad for other reasons, but it has nothing to do with declining birth rates, at least as far as I can tell. The other

weird one, and I know this is so small, but it comes at the very end, and he says, have the child, practice the religion, found the school, support the local theater, the museum, the opera, or concert hall, even if you can see it all on YouTube. Pick up the paintbrush, the ball, the instrument, learn the language, even if there's an app for it. Learn to drive, even if you think soon, Waymo, or Tesla will drive for you. Put up headstones. Don't burn your dead. Sit with a child, open the book, and read. Wait, don't burn your dead. That's not some newfangled technological thing. We've been burning our dead for a long time,

and there's great sort of evolutionary arguments for burning our dead and religions that believe in it that are much older than the burying your dead type. We also used to burn our living, but that's a thing, you know, like, let's bring that back. Right. We're getting simple math problems wrong. This is, and isn't this entire piece of headstone,

or is it more of a pyre for our culture? He does do the thing where he takes all the anxieties, puts a big shovel, throws them into the coal engine, and some of them are apt and some of them aren't. And of course, as Jonah was saying, always been panics. My favorite panic of the past was when they invented or they came up with the idea of putting chapters in the beginning of books, there was a huge moral panic about that. This will make us much less serious. Now, that happens to be true. So wait, wait, wait, explain that. I've never. heard this. I need more. When the books were books and then someone came up with the idea of putting chapters in front of the or like just numbering them or titling them. Separating them in the chapters and putting a table of contents in the front of books. And I should say table of contents or a delineation of what chapters are you could skip. Yes. Yes. Yes. It was going to make us less serious people. And we would think

12 plus 5 is 15. So, yeah, it is the thing where this is what's going on in the culture right now. Here are bad things in the culture right now. One thing causes another. And also, let me throw this out there. As recently as three years ago, there was a major strain of thought that said, you know, for all the amazement slash downside of the internet, we really haven't had that much innovation. If you look at other periods of innovation, are you familiar with this argument?

I think Krugman was saying it. We haven't really innovated that much, and they cite statistics. Cross-country flight takes as much time as it did in 1950, whatever. For the record, Ross Douth, his last book, or previous penultimate to the last book, was called Decadence, and it was basically this point that we're not. Yes. Yeah. Anyway, I'm sorry.

Okay. So this says a lot about the excellent writing skills of the E.R-like Ross Douth. Now, maybe I'm too Tigger-like. I have been accused of excessive optimism. In fact, I have a condition called the Bliss molecule that gives me an endymide. And there are a lot of bad things going on, but not nearly as bad as what Roth says. Ross says, I'll also say that if you know Ross, which you do better than I do, this is shot through with Roman Catholic humanism.

And it is not, maybe he was started writing it months ago. But as I was reading it, I was saying, I think Pope Francis would agree with much of this, even though the Pontefax Twitter feed was firing on all cylinders. Here's what I do, though. I don't just say there's always been moral panics over technology. Some technology really has been transformative. And if you're not trying to get ahead of it or think about it, you're doing yourself a disservice. And I think AI is in that category.

And I don't know the answers. I don't know that government intervention is right. I don't know what the government intervention should be. I don't think that non-intervention is right. I wouldn't default to the boards of Anthropic or whatever, just protecting us. So we've got to pay attention to that, but I have no action items on the end of it. Maybe the best I could do is try to write a column in the style of Ross Douthith, which is a viable prompt to put into Claude, and it'll come out with a decent semacrylum of Ross.

Well, there you have it, guys. To actually, I think, quite pessimistic people at a lot of respects, just taking down a fellow pessimist and saying, the world is great. Everything is perfect. And go about your day. And, you know, burn your dead. Certainly bring out your dead. I'm not dead yet. With that, thank you for joining the Dispatch podcast. Thank you to Mike and Jesse in particular. And unfortunately, I am contractually obligated to have Jonah here. So we'll see you next week. I'm going to be able to be.