The Dispatch Podcast - Did Americans Ever Really Care About Policy? | Roundtable

Episode Date: January 19, 2024

Sarah, Steve, Jonah, John, and Mike Warren look ahead to the New Hampshire primary and the chances for a Haley-DeSantis upset. The Agenda: -Why people still vote for Donald Trump -The appetite for No Labels (McConaughey/Hanks ticket?) -The geriatric rematch -The Houthis, Pakistan, and Iran -The Jewish ripples -Beer brats redux: definitely worth your time Show Notes: -New Hampshire live event Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Sarah Isger with Jonah Goldberg, Steve Hayes, John McCormick, and drum roll, Mike Warren straight from New Hampshire. Mike, we're obviously going to start with you. What's the mood? The mood is, is the primary over yet? That seems to be what Republicans are asking. Donald Trump wins big in Iowa. He's ahead in all the polls. Nikki Haley is actually rising in the polls. It's just, she's not rising enough.

And Donald Trump is topping out of over 50%. So there's definitely a sense from the sort of Republican operative class here in New Hampshire that it's kind of over. But also, if you go to these Haley events, there's some energy here. She's got a full day of events on Friday, on Saturday. Judge Judy is coming on Sunday to rally for Nikki Haley in New Hampshire. So there's a sense here that it's maybe Haley's last stand and people who are worried about the party renominating Donald Trump are sort of viewing it that way and trying to see if they can. you know, stop it here, but there's not a lot of, there's not a lot of hope.

Okay. What's her best case scenario on Tuesday night, New Hampshire? Yeah, her best case scenario is that a bunch of independents, including independents who generally vote for Democrats, but who will be eligible to vote in Tuesday's Republican primary, come out to support her. You know, I've talked to somebody who's doing a bunch of work. They have a little bit of money to send out mailers and text messages to those type of voters. And he says, if we can get everybody to come out at those levels, we can get her within 5% or 10% of Donald Trump. And, you know, it's not ideal. I don't think that's enough.

But we'll see. I mean, I guess that's what she's hoping for to have all of those voters who don't want Donald Trump to give the nomination, no matter if they're a Republican. or independents or independent leading Democrats to come out for. So their best case scenario was still a second place finish. Yes. And you've been hearing both Nikki Haley and Governor Chris Sununu, who is the governor here in New Hampshire, who is with her almost every stop. As popular guy, has been reelected three times as governor here.

They've been sort of moving the goalposts from, you know, she's not fighting for second place, which is what she was saying before she got third place in Iowa. to, you know, she wants to do better. She said this on Thursday night at the CNN Down Hall. She wants to do better than she did in Iowa. She got, what, 19% in Iowa. She's pulling somewhere in the 30s here in New Hampshire. She's going to do better than she did in Iowa.

So that's sort of, that's not the most difficult hurdle for her to jump over. Jonah, you know, coming in third in Iowa and then second in New Hampshire is actually good momentum, except for the fact that the person who won Iowa in New Hampshire is going to be the same person. And we've never had a nominee for either political party that hasn't won Iowa or New Hampshire. So I guess the question is, so what, if she comes in second, even a relatively close second in New Hampshire? Why is that a path forward? It's not. It's not. I mean, Like, it's the idea that she's going to build Mo by coming in second in a two-person race in South Carolina or a distant second in a two-person race on Super Tuesday doesn't work, right?

So I think they're thinking here is, there are only two scenarios. One is the DeiS X McKina thing, which does seem to loom over this entire thing, right? everyone seems to think that there's a non-trivial chance because there is a non-trivial chance that something takes Trump out of this race. A criminal case is the most plausible one, a health emergency, a sudden, sudden onset reasonableness and sobriety among the Republican electorate, which is the least likely scenario. But so, like, people want to have some sort of, they want to stay in it to win it, is the sort of theory. And I get it, but you can still do that by suspending your race.

And the other part of it might be that they actually think they still might have a chance here to win New Hampshire. And if they actually do win New Hampshire, if they set the expectations lower, then it actually does seem like a big mo moment and they have nothing to lose, right? If you're thinking, well, I want to stay in it. If we say we're going to win here and don't, then I got to get out. If we say we're going to come in second and we win it, then that's big, and we can ride that. So it's sort of like make the best of a bad situation scenario. But as it is right now, you know, like two weeks ago, I chastise you ever so politely in chivalessry

for preemptively doing post-mortem talk about why Trump won the primary is going to be the nominee. it does not feel at this juncture to be nearly so irresponsible and uncivic to start having that conversation. It sort of feels like I used to do very poorly in school because I would just write the answer on the bottom of my homework and I wouldn't show my work. It feels like you, like all of my teachers, got mad that I didn't show my work even though my answer was right. And you know what? My teachers were right, but so was my answer. So I don't know, man. John, what are Republican primary voters saying in New Hampshire right now. What are they, what are the policies they're interested in? Why are they supporting Donald Trump? Why are some supporting Nikki Haley? What,

are they talking about most? Yeah, I thought it was interesting. I was on the ground in Iowa and the, you know, the Nikki Haley supporters I talk to. Now take it with a grain of solid. These are very highly energetic, active and informed people. You know, there are 1.7 million voters in Iowa in the 2020 election and 110,000 of them showed up to caucus. So the Nikki Haley voters I spoke to, They all knew to a person exactly what they were going to do if it ends up being a Biden-Trump rematch. You know, several of them said they'd vote for Biden. I heard some no labels talk, none of the above. You know, the Trumpers that I talked to, I kind of talked to a few of them, you know, what exactly, you know, were they thinking about to Santas?

And someone said, yeah, they really, you know, I like his governing. You know, he really did a great job with COVID. You know, but the end of the day, just Trump's under attack from the media. And, I mean, maybe are they repeating what they've heard on the media, the conservative media, to justify a vote they were I was going to make? I don't know, but this is what they are saying. They're actually, you know, using this. He's been unfairly maligned on this and this and that, the media, you know, the indictments and such.

So, yeah, I mean, it's interesting in the fact that, you know, what the Nikki Haley voters do in this likely, very, extremely likely Trump-eyed rematch, and among the highly informed caucus goers I talk to, they all seem to know exactly what they're going to do. Steve, there was an interesting op-ed in today's Wall Street. Street Journal by Jerry Syb, what Republicans used to believe. I'll just read you a couple pieces of it. As Ronald Reagan was wrapping up his successful 1980 campaign for president, he gave a speech offering an expansive and idealistic view of America's role in the world. Quote, let it also be clear that we do not shirk history's call that America is not turned inward but

outward toward others, still willing to stand by those who are persecuted or alone. And then he goes on to note, from trade and immigration to entitlements and the government's role in the country, today's GOP stands in strikingly different place compared with the party led by Ronald Reagan, either President Bush, or presidential nominees, Bob Dole, John McCain, and Mitt Romney. Why? I think in large part because of Donald Trump. A couple of reasons. One, I think when you look at the positions that used to define the Republican Party,

they were positions that Republican Party leaders held, and Republican Party rank and file, I think to a certain degree held as well, but in many cases they were sort of following the leaders. And I think, you know, one of the chief mistakes that I made heading into the Trump era as I looked at the Republican electorate was to believe that when Republicans called themselves conservatives, it meant the same thing that I meant when I called myself a conservative, that they were deeply committed to these policy decisions and that that drove their choices in, you know, House races, Senate races, gubernatorial races,

presidential elections as well. It turns out they don't care as much about policy as we thought, and we've seen that reflected in the polling. We've spoken here about how, about the times when pollsters have asked Republicans about free market health care plans. and versus sort of socialized health care plans or state-driven health care plans. And the responses are generally negative to the big government health care plans.

But if you tell them that that's what Donald Trump favors, they flip almost directly. And you can get two-thirds, 70 percent of Republican voters backing a health care, a set of health care policy proposals that are not that far from Obamacare. if they're told that that's what Donald Trump wants. I think we've seen Trump because the party has become more occulted personality drive these policy preference changes over the past eight years. It was an interesting moment. I was at a Ron DeSantis town hall in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire on Tuesday or Wednesday. I guess it was Wednesday.

And he took a question about Nikki Haley and her policy position, And what DeSantis is very clearly trying to do is frame Haley as the rhino in the race, the squish. He's someone who's sort of a globalist rhino. He uses a lot of the language of the Trump-loving right. But he did so in particular on foreign policy and national security, which I thought was interesting. He spent a good moment on Nikki Haley's comment that the United States needs not only a Department of Defense, but a Department of Offense. And DeSantis took that opening to make an argument that basically she just wants war everywhere all the time.

And that that is no longer where Republican voters are, have to be choosier, don't want to be involved in all of these places. And I think we've seen that shift. Most of the shift has been driven by Donald Trump and his policy preferences and the Republican Party's sort of cult-like devotion to Donald Trump. All right, I want to disagree with Steve and see where the rest of you fall between the Steve versus Sarah theory of the Republican Party. So my theory is that actually Republican voters will get behind whatever their nominee or the leader of the party is saying policy-wise, meaning the policy was never driving the voters, that the voters were driving the policy, if that makes sense. And that the reason that we're seeing this big shift is, for the same reason you're seeing shifts globally, right? The 2008 financial crisis is a good explanation. it's probably not the only one, but that is driving the realignment between the two parties

along educational lines. It's why the Republican Party is becoming more racially diverse, for instance. It's obviously not policy-driven. It's something else driving that. So Donald Trump, in that sense, yes, they are supporting those policies because of Donald Trump, but that's way too narrow a focus. They're supporting it because Donald Trump is the leader of the party. Why is Donald Trump the leader of the party? Because of those larger tectonic clobes. plates moving across both parties, and that if Ronald Reagan had come out and said he was for big government, Republican primary voters would have been far more in favor of big government than as well. So let's go around the horn on the Steve versus Sarah theories. Let's start with

Mike Warren in New Hampshire. Sarah, I think you're right in a general sense. I do think so much of this has to do in particular with Donald Trump the person. I mean, everything about Donald Trump as a celebrity, as a sort of idea in the public's mind, in his own sort of approach to politics and demagoguery and always being able to kind of sense where the id of a crowd is and going in that direction is so important. I mean, I guess if Donald Trump didn't exist, Maybe our political tectonic plates shifting would have created him somehow, but I don't really buy that. I think you had to have somebody like him to sort of address those big shifts that you're talking about. And I do wonder if somebody of his political talents, who was of a different bent on some of these issues, might have been able to change, subtly changing.

the direction in a different way. Maybe it would still be more populous, but it would be different on some other things. I mean, so I guess what I'm saying is it's dependent on the personality just as much perhaps as on the sort of environmental factors that you mentioned. Joan, I guess part of this question is, does policy matter or is policy just what people tell themselves to rally their team? But it was always going to be team sports first.

Yeah, again, I think this is one of these things that everybody's a little right on. It's not a binary thing. It's like a multifactorial kind of thing. I think Mike makes a very important point that a lot of this stuff is immune to ideological or strict policy analytical analysis kind of stuff because Trump does not care at all about policy, right? with the exception of like some immigration stuff and one or two at trade both you know where on immigration he's two-thirds right but bad at talking about it and um on trade where he's four-fifths wrong and worse at talking about it um he just doesn't care like you can you can you can find youtube videos of him changing his positions week to week on dramatic issues going from free market

to socialist in in sometimes in the same paragraph right and I think that his celebrity, his 110% name ID, the fact that he had incepted himself into the minds of Fox and Friends viewers for years has made people care less about policy than they ever have before on the right. I do think policy mattered to more voters 10 years ago, even seven years ago than it does now. And I think Part of this has to do with the fact of the psychological sort of corruption that having to support Trump has inflicted on the right. You see it in pro-lifers. You see it. I think one of the things I will predict here is that you're going to see it on gun issues at some point where

he will, you see it on judges, me, you can go down a list, right? He will change his position and the voters have to go with them. I don't think Reagan could have become a pro-choicer in like 83 and held on to a lot of his voters. It would have caused a civil war in the Republican Party, right? I think if George H.W. Bush had, you know, one of the reasons he lost in 1992 was because he went back on his no new taxes pledge, right? Some of this policy stuff used to matter more. And I think it matters less now because we've had sort of a political generation that gave

up on trying to impose or defend a consistent ideological line from Trump. because he has none. And instead, the default position from talk radio right to cable news right to a lot of think tank right, you know, is I just trust his judgment. His instincts are right. And I'll go with him. If he says it, it must be right, because that's the only safe harbor to avoid getting attacked by Trump world.

And that has an effect. That has a corrupting effect on an ideological, and essentially an ideological coalition. That said, like, you can change, you know, I used to, I used to make this argument. about what happened to the tea parties. I think the tea parties were sincere for the most part. I spoke at a lot of tea party rallies. People would carry around their pocket copies of the Constitution and of Friedrich Hayek. They wanted to believe that they were ideologically serious people. And I think part of the thing in miniature that happened on the right was that because they got, they still got called racists for it. They just kind of said, screw it. You know, and they became

much more radicalized and much less committed to sort of ideological commitments and much more committed to just beating the other people, and Trump became their id. And the damage that is done to people when you have to defend somebody who's so hard to defend is you just lock in. You just don't want to hear any criticisms, and you don't want to hear any arguments. And that's why the GOP right now doesn't care about arguments and policy. I don't think that'll last forever. But Jonah, see, to accept my worldview, my explanation of how campaigns and politics actually works in the United States, you're missing the entire point, which is George H.W. Bush didn't lose because he broke his promise on no taxes because of taxes. He lost because of that because

it was weakness. It was giving into the other side. It was a failure to play team sports. Right? So it was never the policy itself. You have to reimagine the whole thing. Yeah, I just disagree with that. Look, it's obviously true for some people. I mean, this is my point. It's sort of like, why are Jews liberal? Well, for some Jews, it's because of this, and for some Jews, it's because of that. It's an overdetermined phenomenon. There are definitely people out there on the right who just want strong-like bull president, right? And you meet them all the time, and they want manliness and testicular fortitude and all that kind of stuff.

And then you would meet other people who are like, hey, you know, he's killing me on this trade policy, or he's killing me on what he's doing on taxes. And it's a large coalition, human beings have diversity to him. I don't think that this retroactive we only ever cared about strength and vigor thing makes any sense if you look at who won a lot of primaries going back the last 50 years. I mean, George H.W. Bush did not get the nomination because he exuded manly, you know, testosterone rich, you know, alpha maleness. Certainly going back to what were their options? Al Haig? Right?

I mean, yeah, look, but I just think monocausal explanations of these phenomena, I think, are always going to have problems. And I just think it's a checklist thing and there are, they're going to be, it contains multitudes. But I think directionally, you're both right about a lot of this. It's just that it's just not one explanation for any of it. See, the other reason that I don't think policy can actually be a good explanation for how campaigns or politics work. is because the two parties' platforms have always been internally contradictory. It's always been just a coalition

to put together 51% basically or as close as you can get. It hasn't been about a coherent worldview. But Steve. So I'll disagree with you with that too, but we can take that in a skiff another time. All right, all right. Skiff coming then.

John, jump in. Yes, a few straight thoughts. Generally agree with Jonah that this is, you know, it's both. I mean, Trump, well, why do Republicans care, you know, care less about why have they abandoned entitlement reform well trump won the primary basically by getting a third of the vote in the primary and then he set the tone for the whole party uh he set the

i mean that's why that happened and then even on other issues like uh you know you look at the abortion issue in iowa i mean iowa is like you know evangelical central you would think you know this is where mike hockaby won this is where uh you know tag cruz and rick santorum one you'd think if there was one issue where desantis could have made some inroads it was hitting trump for you know now saying that the heartbeat laws are terrible. It didn't move the needle at all. So that just shows, I mean, and so what did the, you know, Trump voters say? What does someone like Bob Vanderplatz?

How does he explain that? Just that, well, they're loyal to him. They know this guy. You know, the loyalty runs deeper than anyone issue. And they can be loyal to him because of Roe v. Wade, but, and you can see this in the polls, too. So I wrote about this last week, you know, 70% of Iowaans support their heartbeat law, Republican.

70% of Iowa Republicans support that. But when asked, do you disagree with Trump on saying it was a terrible mistake? it's somewhat a different question. Only 52% would disagree with them. So there are 16% of the 18% of the party unwilling to disagree with Trump, even though they support a law. So that just shows you like the normal pull of partisanship on the minds of voters. And just lastly, I do think that, you know, Trump is so abnormal.

Sometimes we don't look at him in his position through the normal lens of partisanship. I mean, I do think that if, you know, I don't know, if this is Barack Obama running after losing one term, you know, 50% of Democrats would still support him just because he was their guy. They knew him. They would still stick with him. In the same way, George W. Bush, if he lost in 2004, ran again four years later

after, you know, financial crash and everything, I think that, you know, yeah, half the party would have been with him just out of loyalty and the fact that he is only pulling 52%. You know, obviously he's running away with the nomination, but he is a weak incumbent if you look at them through that lens. Steve, where I think that Trump himself, sort of in that great man theory of history has changed the Republican Party

is that in my theory where policy isn't what matters but these coalitions and all, you know, these other factors, it was also still about winning. Like who is the candidate who was most likely to win? I do think Trump has fundamentally changed the Republican Party

because that is not a metric anymore. So while I don't think policy was ever a metric, I absolutely think electability was and that Trump has convinced the Republican Party that losing is winning and that electability is no longer should no longer be a metric as compared to fighting the other team on different grounds that maybe aren't the election itself. Yeah, I guess I'm, I mean, I'm not sure where everybody

really falls on this, on these two polls. I think the polls aren't as neatly defined as as your frame suggests. Fair. Totally fair. Like, I don't, like, I don't, like, I don't think you really believe that policy never mattered, which is effectively what you just said. I certainly, my own position is, Okay. I mean, fair enough. I think policy mattered more in the Reagan era than it does today in terms of rank and file Republican voters. I definitely think that while some Republicans were frustrated with George W. Bush's capitulation on the no new taxes pledge, most of them were just really frustrated that he was raising taxes and that he said he wasn't going to raise taxes. And this was sort of an inviolable. policy preference of Republican. But you're just sort of stating that as fact. Like, how do we prove that mine's wrong and yours right? Because I'm stating it.

That's why you're wrong. We should know that you're wrong. But I think if you look at where, I think your leadership point is spot on. I mean, I think we have seen Republican rank and file follow these. of the Republican Party on policy, to a much greater degree than I anticipated, again, at the beginning of the Trump era, I think if you look at, we shouldn't underestimate, undercount the importance of other elected Republicans following the leaders in these ways. I mean, the extent to which we've had, you know, top Republican officials, elected officials, just change

positions overnight on some of these issues is extraordinary. I mean, Rand Paul was asked just yesterday. Trump put out a statement on truth social, which essentially says presidents should have total immunity, not essentially, actually explicitly says presidents should have total immunity all the time to commit whatever crimes they want to commit because that's the only way to govern properly. That's not an exaggeration. That's actually what it says. And you have somebody like Rand Paul who was asked about this. Rand Paul, the country's probably best known libertarian, is asked about this and said, well, I haven't had time to look into the specifics.

What? Rand Paul needs to look into the specifics of a claim from a would-be future chief executive that he can do whatever he wants, commit any crimes that he wants. This same Rand Paul, who led the filibuster against Barack Obama for wanting to supposedly drone American citizens in Starbucks. It was like the craziest hypothetical that people didn't really, I think, care about, but this was Rand Paul taking it to Barack Obama. The other one, you know, is Marco Rubio.

Marco Rubio, John, you know, was very early in his reporting on Marco Rubio, and I spent a lot of time with him. I sort of embedded myself in his campaign for Senate when he was first elected. This was something he ran as a Tea Party Republican. I mean, that was his sort of main credential. That's the way he described himself. He was a small government guy. He was a free market guy. When he launched his 2016 presidential campaign, I was in Iowa with him. I was in New Hampshire with him. Do you know what he led with policy-wise when he started his stump speeches in those two places, lowering the corporate tax rates, making the United States competitive on a global scale economically by making friendlier corporate tax policy. That was what he led with literally

in Iowa. And now you've got Marco Rubio endorsing Donald Trump, who's running against the globalists and free markets and running on protectionist trade policies. I mean, Marco Rubio has, you know, now favors industrial policies, willing to sort of shrug off free markets. This is somebody who has totally changed his basic ideological outlook, at least the way that he presents his basic ideological outlook, to be in line with the leader of the party right now. So I do think that it's the case that I overestimated

how much ideology mattered to rank and file Republicans and to elected Republicans over the years. And it is certainly now the case that people are willing to just go where the leader is, I think more than they had before, in part because of this accelerated information environment we live in. Before we move on to the next topic, if you want to hear more conversation about this, Steve Jonah, Mike Warren, and I were just in New Hampshire for an event up there for dispatch members and the Josiah Bartlett Center for Free Enterprise. And it was a really fun event.

You can catch the video of the event on the dispatch.com, if you're a member, or listen to the skiff. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is, the consequences of not having life insurance can be serious. That kind of financial strain, on top of everything else, is why life insurance indeed matters. Ethos is an online platform that makes getting life insurance fast and easy to protect your family's future in minutes, not months. Ethos keeps it simple. It's

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than either of the two parties right now for the first time really in history. But the number two is Republican. People self-identify more as Republicans than they do Democrats. This is pretty much the reverse of what it used to be when you and I got into this world. There were more self-identified Democrats than anyone else than Republicans, then independents. Also, when you ask voters within each party, how happy they are with their potential nominee. Republican voters are far happier with Donald Trump than Democratic voters are with Joe Biden and it's like not even close.

When you ask voters who's a greater threat to democracy, Democrats, edge out Republicans with voters. So I want you to talk a little bit about the left's choice and this third party option, whether it's actually going to be viable this cycle in a way that it hasn't been now that we really do have the two nominees at least for the time being.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's, I mean, the frustration with these two is what it's all going to come down to. And I think actually it's going to be the politically disengaged who are going to decide this. You know, right now there's a really interesting, you know, CNN report, Biden officials talking to CNN saying that something like three out of four undecided voters still don't believe that it's going to be a Trump-Biden rematch. So I don't think we really know how this is going to shake out until that's really locked in. I think after New Hampshire, that'll register, right?

I think all the news will come out that, yeah, Biden's got this thing, Trump's got this thing. So, yeah, I mean, Mike Warren wrote that great piece for us recently, just on, you know, the actual movement that's happening among no labels to get on the ballot lines, you know, RFK juniors, surprisingly high poll numbers. I think there really is an opportunity for someone to pull off a large percentage, a pro-like percentage. I'm still very skeptical, very, very very. very, very skeptical that a third-party candidate would actually win any electoral votes.

But, you know, I'm willing to be shocked and surprised. But this election could be very, very different. I talked to a lot, like I said, a lot of Nikki Haley voters, you know, while some were ready to vote for Biden, others were talking up no labels. They're definitely going to have a unity ticket, ready to go in March. So, yeah, I think there is a real, real appetite for that. Steve, there's a, there's good news for the no labels type. efforts. Ballot access, they've actually put in the time earlier than other efforts in the past

where it's like, oh, no, I don't like these candidates. We're going to run someone else. And then they forget that you actually have to have your name on the ballot. No labels has been putting in the work on that, which is impressive. But you still have a problem with it, which is how electoral votes are allocated in this country. It's state by state except for Nebraska and Maine, which do do do it by a congressional district, but basically you still have to win a state in order to get any electoral votes. So doesn't it seem more probable that a third party, even a very popular one, would be not getting any electoral votes? Yeah, I mean, I think that's possible. I think we start the beginning of 2024 and look ahead to the next 11 months. And because of the

underlying volatility, things that seem unlikely or not possible may become possible pretty quickly. You know, and I think we can look at the last eight to ten years of politics, I've really longer, look at the past 25, 30 years in American politics and come to the conclusion that a lot of things that seem unlikely eventually happen. There were a couple polling results over the past week that I think bode well for a no-laborate type candidacy if we see a Trump-Biden rematch. There was an entrance poll of Iowa caucus goers on the Republican side asking, I mean,

that was who they were, of the people who voted or participated in Republican caucuses in Iowa, some 31 percent said that they found that they would find voting for a convicted felon troubling or disqualifying. I don't remember the exact language. So basically one out of three Republican caucus goers. If that's the case, come next fall, that would sink Donald Trump, even against an enfeebled Joe Biden, if they stay there. If a third of those Republicans found, if a third of Republican, the Republican, the Republican

electorate found voting for a convicted felon, if Donald Trump is in fact convicted of a felony problematic. Again, that makes him, I think, a very difficult, it's difficult to see him winning. So where do those voters go? I mean, we've talked here before about the pretty consistent polling that people don't want this Trump Biden matchup. I was with David Drucker yesterday in New Hampshire Nikki Haley event and he asked a couple who had emerged from the event or actually tried to get into the event and couldn't because there were too many journalists in a small little coffee shop what they thought about, you know, why they were there for Nikki, what they thought about the general election. And they said they were not going to be voting for Donald Trump or Joe Biden

in a general election. And this woman said, I can't believe that this country is looking at the possibility of two 80-year-olds running against one another. And Drucker very perceptively asked her husband is standing next to her. And how old are you, sir? And he says, 85. But they made very clear in this, in this conversation that they had with Drucker, where I was just eavesdropping, they were not, they weren't doing it. So they were going to either stay home. He said he was going to stay home. We'd go out and vote for a third party candidate, but they were not going to vote for Trump and Biden. I do think given the level of frustration, and I would say discussed, with the possible Biden-Trump rematch, a good no-label's ticket could be competitive and a good

no-label's ticket could win electoral votes. Jonah, last word on third parties. Actually, first word on old people. I just want to make one quick point about the old people thing. One of the weird disconnects between young people and old people is that old people recognize the limitations of old age in candidates, in themselves, in life. Young people, because they're, as a statistical matter, dumber and less experienced than old people are more likely to overestimate the abilities of young people to do things. And so you get young people who think that young candidates are awesome and terrific and don't lack experience because they don't value experience.

And old people are like, I know what it's like at 80 or 85 to try and get out of bed on a cold day. I can't be president now, you know? And so I think I just think it's interesting because there was an attempt for a while to sort of raise the ugly specter of ageism in these conversations. And the problem is that a vast amount of old people are the ones leading these arguments about how age is actually an irrelevant factor. Look, I think third parties could have a big effect.

I think low voter turnout can have a massive amount. effect, there's going to be so much discussed with, first of all, the candidates, but second of all, the ugliness of the campaigns where, you know, because the essence of Trump political strategy is, I know you are, but what am I? Right. He wants Biden to be impeached so he can say he was impeached too. He is constantly talking about a Biden's the real threat to democracy. right? So you're going to have a race with two people screaming at each other that they're the real Hitler. And that's going to lead a lot of voters to say, I want no part of this. Some of them will say, okay, I will give Robert Kennedy Jr., Liz Cheney, Cornell West, somebody a second or a third

look, but then a whole bunch of other them are just going to stay home or write in, you know, some random name. And so it's so hard to game out because low voter turnout makes Trump's smaller slice of the electorate a possible majority of the actual electorate, right? I mean, he has a ceiling of 46, 48 percent of the electorate. Well, in a really low turnout election, if all of them show up, that could be 52 percent of the people who vote and he could win the popular vote. So it's just really, really difficult to game out a lot of this stuff. But yeah, there's a real opportunity. It requires a real personality that people can rally behind. If Tom Hanks got into the race as the No Labels guy, I think it would be a Hank's presidency in 2025. See, I've been saying

Matthew McConaughey. I feel like we're on the same page, except that I think Matthew McConaughey might actually consider it if they asked, but there's been no indication that No Labels is looking outside of the usual suspects, has there? John? I, Mike and Drucker have really, really been much closely talking to interviewing, covering the no-label thing. So I don't have a great read on outside the box. I've just seen the reporting that they've done on that. So yeah. Yeah, I think they're looking for people who will appeal to voters as experienced and credible so that they don't come off as kind of flaky. But can I give you my more cynical? Yeah, sure. At least for that group, they're appealing to people who are big,

donors to no labels like that their focus group is the very people who are no the most no labely people and funding the effort um you know with money yes but also with sort of you know time and energy and attention not thinking about the electorate as a whole who has no idea who joe mansion is and has even less of an idea of who larry hogan is and their whole point is they do not like the current system so why in the world would they elect two people who are very much entrenched in that system yeah I also think, I think it's a very good point about the donor capture, you know, like your focus grouping possible no labels candidates to no labels donors. Yeah.

And the people who are no labels donors love Larry Hogan, right? That's right. As do I, but like. I do too. Harry Hogan is an honorable and decent man and I'd be happy to have him be president of United States. That said, because it's funny, you say that because I had a similar take, but I didn't think about the donor part of it, which is that if you're really into the no labels argument, part of your critique of why Trump became president is this celebrity unqualified for the job,

but celebrity name ID thing. And so the idea of actually leaning into that by doing it again with an Oprah Winfrey thing feels like you're betraying your exact critique of what got us Trump. And I can see that being limiting to their imagination as well. I think that could be limiting. I mean, I think that the donor thing. could certainly be a factor. But if you look at the kind of people

that they are talking about, these are also people who by definition are willing to jump from the two-party system that has probably served them well, but making a critique of the two-party system in effect saying this has gotten us to where it is. I mean, I would expect that whoever is the no-label's nominee would make the kinds of arguments

that Jonah's made, that we've made about the primary system, about the bad incentives in politics. So I think you would have someone while maybe born of that system who are distancing themselves from it, which I think could have so appeal. Look, I'll just say that I don't really care who's on the top and who's the VP slot between Tom Hanks and Matthew McConaughey. Probably Tom Hanks on top, but it really, I don't feel strongly.

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payments directly through your site. 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 let's move on uh steve obviously coming to you to explain to us what is happening with iran at this point the huthis respond there's pakistan this is all it's moving pretty quickly and yet we seem very focused on other things in this country yeah this has been a weird week uh with respect to iran um but i think it highlights sort of the the the the danger

that you have with an Iran that seems sort of on a hair trigger at the moment after having provoked this potential wider regional conflict. You had the Biden administration finally respond to provocations from the Houthis with what was a pretty serious set of counterstrikes, and the Houthis seemed to be somewhat chastened in what they're doing. They haven't stopped their attacks, but they're certainly less frequent. The, you know, the question of how Iran is looking at, I think, is still open at this point. But for months since October 7th massacre in Israel, the Biden administration had been, you know, not only telegraphing through policy choices, but actually stating outright that they were afraid of escalation to regional conflict and that that was constraining their responses to Iranian bad behavior. And what I think that did was give an effect a green light for Iran to continue and even escalate its bad behavior.

And that's what we saw all of that coming on the heels of three, almost three years of conciliatory policy choices from the Biden administration, I think, left Iran thinking that it had a lot of room to maneuver. And it has maneuvered in that spirit. it. The Pakistan, the series of events with Pakistan this week was interesting, unnerving, and I think ends in a place that makes it kind of hard to understand what happened. The Iranians struck what they called terrorist camps inside of Pakistani territory. The Pakistanis responded, striking what they said were terrorist efforts inside Iran. And there was, I think for a moment, this fear of these regional powers, one of them, nuclear, one of them potentially or on the verge of of being nuclear armed states, real escalation in the region.

Then both governments, which are both experiencing in sort of different ways, some domestic instability, domestic political concerns, went kind of overboard to say, hey, we don't want this to grow. We don't want this to expand. There was a statement suggesting that I think it was on the Pakistani side saying that the Iranians were a friendly government, that they didn't really mean any additional harm, but they had to respond and they didn't want to sort of sit back and do nothing. I don't know where this leaves us, particularly with respect to Pakistan and Iran, but I do think it suggests that the Iranians are sort of looking for ways in which they could be losing face internationally and looking weak to their domestic political opponents

and potential rivals. So it sets up a situation where I think, you know, more instability is more likely than further stability in the coming weeks. Yeah, I mean, Jonah, what's been interesting about, that is that, I mean, this is my theory at least, it's not the foreign policy that affects American politics, it is the domestic effect

of a foreign issue. You know, so October 7th, I think, you know, if we had had then an election in November, very much could have affected American politics, not because of what was going on in Israel, but because of what was going on the United States,

because of what was going on in Israel, if that makes sense. So I guess, you know, looking at the Houthis, it's sort of like, well, you know, know, maybe if shipping got delayed in your Amazon, you know, same day delivery wasn't working, that could have a big effect. But, you know, more seriously, like, truly, if people are worried about a war with Iran, it could have an effect. Not because they're so worried about Iran, but because they're worried about their sons and daughters fighting Iran. Yeah. And I think, harkening back to our discussion earlier in the podcast where I brought up George H.W. Bush's No New Taxes Pledge,

and you said that hurt them because it seemed weak rather than because of the policy stuff. Foreign policy is an area where the perception of weakness affects domestic perceptions a lot, regardless of the actual policy issues, because we've got this lizard brain thing about how our commander must be strong in world and fight and all these kinds of things. Well, and peace through strength actually worked very well. For sure. Yeah, no, look, I'm okay with that bias because I actually think it's one of the things that brings you peace and security is actually... you know, I keep harping on this point is that all the people out there screwing with us,

we shouldn't be worried about them escalating. They should be worried about us escalating. And in that world, we won't need to escalate nearly as much. And the delay in striking the hoodies and no one even talks about striking the blowfish has been a real. Oh, Jonah. So bad. Everyone's going to love that. Everyone.

So bad. The comments are going to blow up with other dad jokes. Yeah. Okay. So I just want to read one thing because I think it's sort of interesting. I had a friend of mine the other day text me this ridiculous lead from the New York Times. And I wanted to read it on air when we were doing this segment. And then I discovered that it no longer is the lead of the New York Times story. But this was the original lead before I guess it was ghost edited. I don't know. Maybe there's a correction on the site somewhere. In an expansion of hostilities rippling out from the Israel Hamas. war. Pakistan said on Thursday that it carried out strikes inside Iran a day after Iranian forces attacked what they said were militant camps in Pakistan. Now, the new lead on this New York Times piece does not say rippling out of the Israel-Hamas war because, in fact, those ripples had nothing to do with the Pakistan-Iran conflict. Look, it's all the Jews fault, Jonah, and we're not quite sure why or how. Don't worry about it. Rippling. That's what we're

ripples are. You don't know why ripples happen. So, like, this has been, I write this column every few years where journalistic shorthand is often the Middle East conflict is always Israel, whoever, right? There are books called the Middle East, you know, the Middle East conflict reader, and it's all things about Israel. Meanwhile, there have been a lot of wars in the Middle East between countries that aren't Israel all the time for reasons that have nothing to do with Israel. And I do think that, to the extent if there's more destabilization in the Middle East that is not actually related to Israel, that could have domestic problems for Biden because it will seem like, especially to his base, his support for the Israel-Hamas conflict, which is the single explanation for

everybody who sides against Israel for everything bad in the Middle East. I mean, like Saudi Arabia can't have democracy because of what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. You could see that feeding into, I think, an unfair narrative against Biden and an unfair narrative against Israel, but it has real appeal to a lot of journalists who write about, who want to blame our policy towards Israel for everything going wrong in the region and everything going on domestically. All right. Before we move on to Not Worth Your Time, question mark, I want to propose then to tie this entire podcast together my new evolutionary biology theory. It's going to bring it all together. Just wait for it. Steve, the reason.

that Republican voters like Donald Trump is actually an evolutionary feature that Jonah referenced briefly the lizard brain thing that's actually that humans over time recognize peace through strength has worked to keep them safe. They wouldn't have called it that,

but that strong leaders who seem very threatening have generally led to fewer wars with their neighbors. And those humans obviously were then more likely to have more humans. And so our little lizard brains are actually attuned to someone like a Donald Trump.

Now, of course, not all evolutionary features work out well in every situation. But now I feel like I have a grand unified theory of Donald Trump sort of flicking this like part of our brains

that actually is evolutionarily wired for a Donald Trump-like figure. I mean, if Donald Trump is the sort of natural end of natural selection, people might want to do some rethinking of what natural selection means. Look, I mean, I think it takes a lot to come to the conclusion that what Donald Trump

represents in the policy sense, to go back to our earlier discussion, is strength on the international stage. No, no, no. Don't get too far into the details, right? Because evolutionarily, it's the reason that sugar tastes good is because you wanted more calories you can't get into like which sugars and why it's like no no like things that make you fatter taste better things that are green vegetables don't taste as good that's not because they inherently have any taste whatsoever it's just what our brains now tell us based on evolution so same

thing right donald trump taste good to certain human brains because evolutionarily those types of people uh were more likely to lead to further generations so i'm not sure i'm tracking exactly um if the argument is donald trump projects sort of brute strength that it's most basic i can understand your argument people are drawn to that people want to be protected people in you know at a time when they don't trust institutions when they look in around the world and see threats they look at somebody like donald trump he's fighting for them he's on their side And it's most basic, I mean, I do think that that's part of the explanation for what we're seeing Donald Trump. I would just say as maybe an asterisk for people who still care about policy or pay attention to such matters.

Donald Trump was not a uniformly strong, quote unquote, strong president on the international stage. You look at sort of the softs he made to Kim Jong-un, his attempt to negotiate with the Taliban. he now says he would negotiate with Iran and, you know, offering concessions all the while. I don't think of him as a particularly strong president, even if he did some strong things, like take out Qasem Soleimani and beat his chest over NATO. Yes, and as it turns out, having double cheeseburgers over and over and over again may not be good for you either, even though they taste delicious. Okay, not worth your time, question mark.

so I did the brought off Scott and I here for the Packers game it obviously was good luck Steve so you're welcome and for those who have been writing in about the results of the brought off you're going to be surprised and maybe disappointed

so first of all we had four groups the control group was just brots on the grill then we had beer only beer with raw onions and beer with caramelized onions and first thing I will tell you is absolutely each group you didn't you couldn't do a blind taste test because it was so obvious like the

flavor just absolutely was in every single brot every single element of the flavor um you could just taste it entirely which is really cool and makes us want to experiment more with different uh test subjects now uh different brots different beers different onions who knows because that unlike you know brining a turkey or something where you're like oh maybe i can taste that something had been done to it Like, this isn't like that. It's like a one-to-one flavor transfer. But as it turned out, the winner of the brought off was the control group. It was just the brought on the grill.

But then taking the caramelized onions that had been simmering in the beer and putting those on top. So basically beer caramelized onions on a plain grilled brat with the mustard of your choice. And we did have three different mustards as well. So I don't know, Steve, if you think that's sacrilege. As I said, we're now going to do more testing, really drilling down on each of those variables. And switching the beers, which I think is important. Different beers can produce different results as well. I'm interested in John's take, too, since he is a Wisconsinite from northwestern Wisconsin.

I guess I'm, I mean, I'm... This is interesting also. So Steve, wait, which part of Wisconsin are you from? I am for a while with Tosa. Okay. So you're from the bottom. bottom. John, you're from the top? I'm from 40 minutes east of St. Paul, Minnesota, but my parents are from the same suburb of Steve Hayes. Okay. And then Scott is from the middle, basically.

It's middle south, right? Middle south. Yeah. But like, you know, south of Green Bay. Yeah. So just a couple thoughts. And I was surprised and encouraged by the feedback that we got on the broad segment last week. A lot of people have lots of thoughts. and maybe it's because we all just want a distraction from the other stuff. But I sent Steve pictures at like every step of the way. I was like, here are onions. I will say, I will say, you look like you did this very well. I mean, your caramelist onions were on point.

The whole thing looked pretty great. I'm interested that you came to the conclusion that you did. I think I would never probably have come to the same conclusion. I don't think I would have ever chosen a simply grilled brought over. brats that involved beer in any in any way. I would, I would, I was out of town last week. Sarah graciously invited me over to partake in the experiment, but I couldn't. I would like to join you at some point to actually watch how this happened. The main, we got a, a great dispatch supporter. I won't use his name because I'm, I'm not sure I have permission to, but who's written back and forth with me on this,

a number of times, and he makes the very correct observation that the reason that you want the beer involved is because it allows the brats to plump up, and then you can, then you can get the char on the outside without losing the juiciness on the inside, which gives it the snap that you want when you, when you bite through. If all of this, if grilled properly. So that's why I like the beer-soaked brats with, I usually, as I said last week, I usually do some combination of caramelized onions and raw onions in the simmer and then take them out, cook them almost all the way through, take them out, flash them on the grill, pretty high, higher than most people probably would recommend. So you get the sear and you get the snap when you bite into them. That's sort of the key. I wouldn't think, and I'm interested in how this worked for you, Sarah, that the simply grilled brots would give you the same.

juiciness, and the snap that you want. So first of all, my in-laws introduced me to something called snappy grillers that are white hot dogs that look really disgusting. And I never realized until this moment why they might be called snappy grillers. But now I think I follow that. I don't understand their point on the world. Like hot dogs are better than snappy grillers and broths are better than hot dogs. So why do snappy grillers exist?

John, do you all have snappy grillers up in your neck of the wind? Never heard of them. Okay, interesting. Steve? So not to get too deep deep in the sausage world, but here we are. So there's probably the best, my favorite sausage maker in the world is a company called U-Zingers in Wisconsin, based in Milwaukee. And they have, you know, they don't do sort of traditional hot dogs, but they do weaners that have a very hard casing. And almost all of their sausages have this kind of hard casing. weeners, when you serve them to kids at first, the kids don't like them because the casing

is too hard and it's too snappy. You have to really bite into it. And when you crunch it, like, you know, you know that you've gotten through. But the, so kids don't like them at first. Kids don't like them at first, but they, they love them when they get used to them. I say, I don't know that those are snappy grillers like John. I've never also heard of snappy grillers, but it seems to me that's an apt description of what usingers actually does, and they're great. Sounds like a dude who plays the banjo. So I actually think the snappy grillers were usingers, but I'm not sure about that. We'll see in the comment section. Well, then if you didn't like him, you were just wrong. Okay. So also in the comment section, and John, I'm curious if you've

ever tried this. There was some suggestion that at least for the purposes of the experiment, we should also try the equivalent of a reverse sear. So grill first and simmer in the beer. after and that that would also be interesting. I'm curious about that. I'm also curious if maybe we simmered too long, Steve. And so there was actually too much beer flavor that was overpowering these simply delicious broadness. John, do you have thoughts on that? You know, I've only, I adhere to tradition. Usually that is just, you know, boiling that in the beer and then grilling. I have only on one occasion just grilled brats on the grill. I did a whole 30 a year ago with my wife. And it was quite good because, you know, while the beer gets that, you know, the plumpness, the juiciness, on the grill,

it's just the fat soaking in the fat. It just, you know, so it was quite good. So, and I stick to, you know, sauerkraut, mustard, you know, raw onions, the basics. I've never done anything fancy like caramelized onions. But, you know, a taste test sounds like a great way to figure this out. Jonah, do you have brought feelings despite not being Midwestern? But coming from another area where sausages are quite popular. I love brots. I feel incredibly excluded from this entire conversation. But then again, I was not up to speed on this whole parboiling brots and beer thing and has caused a lot of discussion here at home with my wife, who let us not forget, went to Marquette. Yeah. Oh, there we go. And was a, uh, a, uh, a, a fixture, a mainstain at Wolski's Tavern.

So, uh, did she close Wolski's, uh, she has had many cars, many times, thicker. Um, and, um, so, uh, I'm intrigued by all of this. I'm still a little dubious about the necessity of all of these extra steps, but, uh, I'm open to it. So I, I, I'm going to have to do my own experiments with this. It sounds like we're going to have a dispatch party, invite everyone over and we'll do this the right way. And, uh, just to update, I did. figure out snappy grillers, interestingly enough, are not Wisconsin-based. They are Syracuse based, which makes perfect sense because my father-in-law is actually from Syracuse originally and then moved to Wisconsin. So he's bringing over his Syracuse roots into Wisconsin. So

thank you dispatch listeners for joining. Don't forget to check out our event with the Josiah Bartlett Center, video and audio available for dispatch members, and also just a special thank you to the Josiah Bartlett Center for their incredible kindness. During this podcast, I have been eating the chocolates from Dancing Lion in Manchester. I don't know if chocolates are okay to eat for breakfast, but that's why I'm an adult and not a child anymore. And these are incredible. You know, sometimes we plug things because they're sponsors ahead of time, and sometimes we just want someone to sponsor us. So Dancing Lion, I'm just saying I am available to sponsor for you to sponsor me because these were really good chocolates.

So thank you, Josiah Bartlett Center. And I received two bottles of very nice Spanish wine from Duke, Drew Klein, and our friends at the Josiah Bartlett Center. And Jonah got a pretty good, pretty nice box of cigars out of the deal. I did indeed. So that was great. Okay, cigars and wine, fine. I'm just going to read you this.

At Dancing Lion Chocolate, we craft 20 to 200 of each truffle or bonbon using some of the world's rarest chocolate. Each creation in this box is a limited edition work of art. We will never make it again. You'll find a photo and description of each. And then when you go to that website with the photos and description, it gives you the date that it was made. And it's right.

Like they're never going to make that again. It's crazy. Wow. Yeah. Dancinglion.us, what's in my box. All right, guys. We'll see you next week. I'm going to be able to be.