The Dispatch Podcast - End of the Line for Cuomo

Episode Date: August 4, 2021

On today’s podcast, our hosts kick things off with a discussion about New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who refuses to resign despite a damning sexual harassment report and calls from national Democrats, including President Biden, to step aside. They then dive into the CDC’s decision to extend the eviction moratorium again and debate the possibility of a federal vaccine mandate. Next, David talks about the right’s new obsession with Hungary and Viktor Orbán and how it mirrors the left’s fascination with Scandinavia. Finally, the gang discusses the recent dropoff in PAC contributions, and how the rise in small dollar donations may be contributing to American partisanship. Show Notes: -The battle for 1042 Cutler Street -Web/fundraising email loop Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isker, joined by Steve Hayes, Jonah Goldberg, and David French. So much to talk about today. We've got Cuomo, the Delta variant, Hungary, and a piece from Bloomberg to talk about fundraising. Let's dive right in. Months after initial allegations came forward, the New York Attorney General has released a report finding that New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, sexually harassed his employees, those around him, created a toxic work environment, and retaliated against some of those accusers. Andrew Cuomo has refused to resign and made an aggressive pushback. Jonah, does he make it through the week? I kind of think he does.

I'm not saying he should. In fact, I think he shouldn't. I think he should resign. I think I'm always astounded by people who cling to the limelight and power and all these things so fiercely. But does he make it the month, I think, is easier. It's easier to see him leaving within the month because apparently the impeachment process in New York State goes much quicker than it does in the federal government or can't. and I could see if they if it gets to sort of a Nixon-like situation where he sees the writing on the wall and thinks they're actually going to go through with impeaching him, then I could

see him resigning. But it would be the threat of the impeachment, obviously, and not the allegations or any of this stuff that gets him to resent. I do want it. We should stay on the politics and all this or you can go any way you want with it. I just do want to get on the record. I think there's, it's something of a disgrace that as bad and as terrible as these allegations are against him, and I believe them, the fact that no one wants to impeach him for how he handled COVID, and I don't mean the decision to put people in nursing homes. I think that was a disastrous mistake that one could claim was foreseeable, but they were operating in real time with all sorts of contingency and all sorts of unknown unknowns and known unknowns and

yada, yada, yada. The thing that's impeachable is that at a time when the laboratories of democracy were supposed to be teaching people how to do, how to respond to COVID, learning from your mistakes is as important as learning from your successes. And hiding, misleading, distorting data for the sake of his political career and his book sales amidst all of that is far worse than what he's accused of doing with women as heinous and gross as what he's accused of doing with women. A lot of people died as a result of what he did on COVID. Not a lot of people died as a result of his gross sexual harassment. But again, he should resign. He should be impeached, particularly given the standards that he claims to uphold and the Democrats claim

to uphold. So, David, pretty much every Democrat has come out at this point and said he should resign. But what's kind of interesting about it is that back in the day, that carried some real weight with it. If the president of United States, a member of your party says you should resign, like finet, you know, seen over. But now when you know that a call to resign doesn't carry that weight, should we expect more? Is there more that someone like Nancy Pelosi or Joe Biden or these folks who have, again, all called for him to resign? Is there more that they should be doing to actually get him to resign? Is simply saying, like, I raise my hand also for this thing that we know won't affect reality enough, or actually, is there anything they could do?

Yeah, I think it's at this point, look, I'm calling for him to resign is welcome. It's welcome. There's no question about it. But also, given that he has been stubborn to this point and has almost immediately, after the report was issued, put out this really bizarre position statement in response, along with a really bizarre video in response that contained the video in response had a photo collage of him holding and caressing other people leaders that this is just how he is. He's just a handsy guy. And then he had this position statement, though, that then included pictures of other politicians,

including Barack Obama and George W. Bush hugging hurricane victims. I would just like to note when they were hugging hurricane victims, as far as I can tell, none of their hands were inside the woman's blouse touching her breast, which is what he's accused of. So I'm confused on why that picture is relevant to begin with, but please continue. Yeah, in fact, that's exactly something I said in my piece. Notably, none of these pictures included any groping, which was what he's been accused of. And so, yeah, it is absolutely right for Schumer and Pelosi and Biden to do this. It's also until there is actual action, kind of a box checking exercise. Because right now, the way it works and this pattern has been established

for years now, it is simply this. If a politician wants to survive, what does he do? He just doesn't leave. He stays put. And he says, make me go. Make me leave. And this is where the ball is going to be in the court of the New York Democratic Party. The ball's in their court now. They have to make him go. They have to make him leave. They have to make it either actually do it or move so far down that road that as Jonah was saying, he has no real, it's resign or be fired. But that's where we are now. We're in a position. Bill Clinton in 98, I'm not going anywhere. Donald Trump in 2000. I'm not going anywhere. Ralph Northam. I'm not going anywhere. And so when a politician says, I'm not going anywhere. This is when it falls into the lap of, you know, these, it falls into

the lap of the politician's own party, the politician's own party. That's who it is. It's not anybody else who can do it. It's got to be their own party. And so New York Democrats, the ball is in your court. And frankly, if they do it, good on them. It'll be the first time we'll have seen real accountability within a political party and some time. That's a really good point, Steve, on accountability within a part. because one of Cuomo's defenses, which was perhaps the most laughable, actually, like, more laughable than putting out pictures of Bill Clinton also hugging, was this idea that this was part of a political witch hunt, that he was the victim here, that he's the real champion

for women, and they're coming after him, these members of his own party. So as far as what happens next, you have the Westchester District Attorney looking to file charges. Some of the women have been encouraged to file civil lawsuits or to approach prosecutors. But all eyes are really on Albany. The Democratic Assembly Speaker Carl Heasty or Hastie, sorry, Carl, I don't know how to pronounce your last name. He said he can no longer remain in office. We will move expeditiously and look to conclude. our impeachment investigation as quickly as possible.

This feels like a case where the news cycle isn't really going to move along because there are actual things to keep it in the news, whether it's criminal, civil lawsuits, or the impeachment trial. Yeah, we should be clear. There is no witch hunt. I mean, Andrew Cuomo wants us to believe that there's a witch hunt. There is no witch hunt. However, that should not obscure the fact that he is deeply unpopular among Democrats.

among Democratic elected officials, because he is an imperious ass and has been for his entire career. I mean, this is who he is. It's how he operates. He's long elbowed people out of the way more than he's persuaded people. He's made enemies at every turn. And, you know, in a moment like this, I think that's where you'll see that really matter, where he's done something that's clearly wrong. I mean, the sort of the irony of the, of that.

this on several levels and other people have made this point, made it well, is, you know, he was one of these thundering voices in the context of Brett Kavanaugh nomination saying, believe all women, believe all women. Well, here we have 11 women who are not just making claims without any substantiation or without corroboration. Their claims are well corroborated. This report now, you know, nearly 200 pages, documents their complaints in great detail and offers a lot of that corroboration. Including, by the way, not only where he's not believing them, of course not, but where he actually goes after them, tries to publicly smear them, undermine their credibility, retaliate against

them internally and externally. I mean, it goes far beyond, like, simply not believing them at this point. Right. And that's where I was going with this. I mean, the, so you have the acts themselves, which are heinous enough and I think well substantiated, but you also have Andrew Cuomo being Andrew Cuomo in a political sense. This is what he does. This is who he is.

And you're going to have New York Democrats, elected officials to local party leaders, to people who have been, you know, knocking doors for other candidates, read the report and say, not only do I believe these women, as Cuomo, himself asked us to do years ago. But I believe all of the other stuff. I believe that he went after them. I believe that he smeared them. I believe that he encouraged people to lie about them so that he could continue in office. And I think that's ultimately, who's going to defend the guy? I mean, his own lawyers now bailed on him. Somebody who had been a part of one of those smears has bailed on him. He just doesn't have many people standing up for him. And I think that, to go back to

Jonah's original point, and that's ultimately, you know, this week, the guy, I think the guy will not likely resign on his own because he has shown for decades that he is utterly without shame. But I do think he doesn't survive politically. Also, you know, yes, everything Steve said makes perfect sense to me. But there's also like just some nice political revenge. All these guys who've been bullied by Cuomo for years have a chance to take him down. whether they believe the women or not. Like, they smell blood in the water and chomp, chomp. Yeah, I mean, I think, I mean, I wrote about this not long ago.

I think I'm a believer in a non-spiritual, non-theological notion of karma, just in the sense that you build up social capital in the terms of goodwill from people when you treat people properly, when you're a decent person, when you honor your commitments, all of these kinds of things. And if you spend your entire life doing that without an independent base of support, like, you know, one of the reasons that Trump survived is that the base of the Republican Party loved him. And so politicians who didn't want to give him the benefit of the doubt felt like they had to for other reasons. No one loves Andrew Cuomo, at least not anymore.

I mean, Cuomo sexuality had the half-life of a, you know, of a fast decaying isotope. And, and so Cuomo has spent his entire life being a jerk. And when you're a jerk, even, I'm sure there are some Democrats who think, some politicians who, let me put it this way. They probably believe the accusations, but they would rally to the defense of somebody else if Cuomo hadn't been a jerk to them their entire careers. And so why would you lift a finger to even slow things down when all this, all Cuomo is done to you is, you know, treat you miserably. And it's just a good, good example of why some of the best politicians tend to be glad. And George H.W. Bush wrote something like 400 personal notes a year or something like that to people. He was just a mensch. He was a nice guy and people went out of their

way to get his back. And no one wants to go out of their way to get Andrew Cuomo's back because why, you know? When I, when I first graduated from journalism school, this is now, you know, a couple decades ago. The first really long profile piece I did was on Andrew Cuomo's bid for governor in 2000. And it was a piece for the weekly standard in summer of 2000. And basically the heart of the story was that Andrew Colmo had used his position as Bill Clinton's HUD

Secretary to run for governor. And he had taken I won't remember the exact numbers, but something like 60 federal government finance trips to New York to give out goodies, particularly along the Erie Canal, the upstate New York, where he knew he would need to win voters that he probably otherwise wouldn't get. And he was utterly shameless in this, didn't care. The second state with the most Cuomo travel was like California with four trips or something. I mean, it was crazy. It was obvious what the guy was doing. And I tried, they wouldn't give me access to him for reasons we can understand, but I basically

just found out where he was. going and I followed him around to all these places and showed up and put my recorder in his face. And the thing that struck me, and I think this is probably equal parts, his imperiousness and sort of sense that he was untouchable and my naivete as a reporter, he was, he launched a counter campaign. He actually launched sort of a preemptive campaign against George Pataki, accusing Pataki of political travel. Because Pataki took like a helicopter ride somewhere once. It was a nothing thing.

It was exactly the kind of thing that governors do all the time. It was not an issue. It was not a big deal. But Cuomo understood, I think, correctly, that if he made this first attack and made a huge deal of it, all of what he had done for years using the federal government travel to boost his own candidacy would then be lost. in sort of a, he said, he said, fight.

And I remember asking him about this and just being totally shocked that someone could be that nervy, but he was. And, you know, it didn't work for him for a bunch of other reasons. But that's sort of, when I think of Andrew Cuomo, I think of that story because that's, that's exactly who he was. And he's not likely to ever, you know, feel shame or stop and think, boy, what I did was really wrong here. I ought to resign. David, I want you to help me work through something because there are a number of ways in

which Andrew Cuomo is not Bill Clinton, circa 1998. The guys have talked about several of them. One other, by the way, is that Leticia James, the Democrat Attorney General of New York, is not Ken Starr, so he doesn't have that foil to play against the way that Bill Clinton very helpfully did. But, you know, perhaps the biggest thing that is different than 1998 is we've had this Me Too movement. And I'm really confused. And I need you both as my feminist ally, but also a dude to help explain to me, this guy's 63 years old. He's not 93. Like, that's a relatively young age to do the like, oh, this is just the way I am. I grope women because I can't see well or whatever I'm supposed to believe.

Like, as he's trying to just feel his way down the hallway and just keeps grabbing boobs as he goes, you know, one of the things in his defense report that he sent was that he couldn't have kissed the woman in question in his office because his executive assistant was right outside the door. Mind you, his executive assistants are several of the women who are accusers. I mean, so I'm curious what this in your mind means for the Me Too movement. Is this a vindication? Or is it actually a really bad sign that it turned out that like many of these accusations occurred during or after the Me Too movement. So Andrew Cuomo reading the headlines has every opportunity to say, oh, hey, that's weird that women don't like that because I do that every

day. Huh. And like that had no effect. And in fact, the workplace that is being described in this report, circa 2017, 2018, 2019 sounds awful, like truly atrocious in a like 1985 kind of way. And the way that they make you watch sexual harassment videos before you start a new job and you roll your eyes because that's so egregiously stupid. No one would do that except Andrew Cuomo's office. Yeah, you know, the way I look at it is this. Imagine you've got a guy with a enormous amount of power who's had an enormous amount of power for decades. I mean, he's not newly governor of New York. I mean, former cabinet secretary, the closest thing you can come to sort of political royalty in the state of New York and the Cuomo family. And so he's got 30 years.

of impunity or more, 30, 40 years of behaving with impunity on sort of one side. And then on the other side, he's got three to four years of seeing other people face consequences. And what do people go with? They go with they're high on their own supply. I mean, they're convinced, you know, I'm convinced a lot of these guys think that what happened and what they did was welcome. And I'm 100% convinced he believes that, by the way. Yeah, absolutely. Like, there's no mens rea here. He thinks that all these women loved it.

Yes, that he thinks it's welcome because there wasn't some sort of immediate punitive reaction, like an immediate slap or push or something like that. So he's sitting here thinking, well, this, I was there. Everybody liked this. Everybody thought this was great. And now look at this political witch hunt. And, you know, in one of the central insights that people have sort of gained as they've learned, as they've learned more about predatory behavior as a result of the Me Too, the Me Too movement,

is that in fact, a lot of people, when they're being preyed upon, when they're being groped, there's a freeze instinct. There is a, they don't know what to do. They're in a room with somebody extremely powerful who is doing something that they don't like. And they don't, it's not like they can look around and have allies there. It's, they're alone. They're in an extremely vulnerable position and they may try to laugh it off. They may try to, you know, do thing, any sort of actions in the moment that sort of end to the moment without registering a direct, you know, um, response, a direct negative response to this very, very powerful person. And so yeah, that's, that's my view on it is these guys who keep doing this stuff. One of the reasons

why they keep doing this stuff is it doesn't cross their mind that their behavior isn't welcome as crazy as that sounds all right we'll we'll move to the delta variant but one other note from uh the report that i just found incredible and i hope andrew quomo reads it are these sort of real-time text messages from one of the women to her friend as he's doing all these things you know like she'll leave the room and then text her friend and be like oh he did it again and the friend mistakenly um thinks that she's talking about her boyfriend she goes oh my god your boyfriend did this to you. And she goes, no, Andrew Cuomo did. She goes, huh? She's like, I can't, I guess that's better, but it's still really, really bad. And, and, you know, it should be embarrassing to Andrew Cuomo

that, like, this young woman is talking to her friends about both how miserable he is as a person, but also what a joke, what a gross, disgusting joke he is. 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

100% online, no medical exam, just a few health questions. You can get a quote in as little as 10 minutes, same day coverage, and policies starting at about two bucks a day, build monthly with options up to $3 million in coverage. With a 4.8 out of five-star rating on trust pilot and thousands of families already applying through ethos. It builds trust. Protect your family with life insurance from ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash dispatch. That's ethyos.com dispatch application times may vary rates may vary and with that jona let's talk about the delta variant speaking of gross disgusting jokes jonah um where to begin um yeah so we were talking about this beforehand in the uh in the green room as it were and there's just so many different

things going on with vaccine mandates uh rent moratoriums, um, masking brouhaz. So I figure we'll just do this sort of Pope-Haree style. Um, and I'll, as since it's my question, I will, I will take, uh,

interrogators privilege and, and wheel on the lawyer people. Um, some of you may recall that I have in a fixation with, uh, something that George W. Bush did. which is when he signed the McCain Fine Gold Law, he said, I think parts of this are unconstitutional,

but I'm signing it anyway, and I'll let the Supreme Court deal with it. Now, I'm one of these people who doesn't belong to your little cleracy, your little guild of lawyer, priesthood people, who thinks that only the Supreme Court is the guardian of our constitutional prerogatives and constitutional rights.

Congress used to have a maneuver that they use regularly that question the constitutionality of a piece of legislation. If they had an up and down vote said it was unconstitutional. It stopped all debate and the bill was dead. It used to be that everybody takes an oath. Supreme Court justices aren't the only ones who take oaths to uphold the Constitution. The president does too. He doesn't say, I'll punt this to another branch of government and see if I can sneak it over the plate. And so yesterday, Joe Biden said the vast majority, that's not a direct quote, I probably should have had it already, but the

vast majority of constitutional scholars say extending the moratorium is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court has spoken on this, but I found a few key lawyers, i.e. lawyers who will say what I want them to say, who say it might be constitutional. So we're going to give it a whirl. Now, I think this is a violation of his constitutional oath. I think there's an argument for this kind of thing being impeached bull. It's not going to get impeached. You know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That ship is sailed. But, and I'll put it to you, David. What the hell? I mean, you know, look, this is something. as soon it's funny that you brought up the mccane fine gold because as soon as i saw that i thought

about that mccane find gold moment which was a really interesting i thought you know teaching moment for a lot of people that wait a minute it is not the case that the supreme court and the federal courts are the guardians and arbiters of what is constitutional every branch of government has a role in this but look i mean this is this is what what's it called saying the quiet part out loud. Right. This is, this is Biden essentially saying what a series of administrations have said by their actions for some time. It's, you know, going back to Obama, I've got a pen, I've got a phone, and it's going back to some of Trump's Eos around the wall. It's, it's, I can make an argument that this is okay. So therefore, let's roll with it. Let's go with it. And it's part of

the vacuuming up of power to the executive branch. It's part of the dysfunction of Congress. And those two things work together in an interesting way, because I'm not saying it's dysfunctional of Congress not to extend an eviction moratorium. That's something to be debated and decided by Congress. But what I'm saying is that the actual dysfunction of Congress is often used by presidents, whether in a good basis or a bad basis, to say, well, I've got no option but to act here. and just go. And so I feel like the only difference between what we saw with Biden on this and what we saw in Obama, say, with DAPA and Trump with some of the wall EOs was he just said it.

He just said it. The rest of them did it. He said it and did it. The rest of them did it and didn't just say it. And to me, that's what we've got. And do we give credit for that? I don't know about that. is where, by the way, I think there's a big distinction between McCain-Feingold and

this, because Jonah, in our legal speak, there's this tripartite framework where the president is at the zenith of his power when he is acting in concert with Congress. At least in that case, you had a law duly passed by both houses of Congress that then went to his desk to sign. And so I think you have a little bit of a better argument where you say like, oh, I don't know, but on the other hand, I'm not going to thwart the people's house, the Senate, who have passed this if I just think that like, you know, maybe, maybe I don't know, versus Obama saying repeatedly, I do not have the authority to do this. And then Congress not doing it and him saying, I will do it anyway, the same thing happening with Trump. And now Biden, I mean, the language was

incredibly similar where he said, I do not have the authority to extend this moratorium. And then he said, but I'm going to do it anyway. Now, the problem is politically, there is zero downside for a Democratic administration or really a Republican one at this point to kick a political problem to the Supreme Court because then they can say, well, I did everything I could.

All you need to do is blame the Supreme Court for striking it down, further entangling the Supreme Court into these political fights. And in the last year, we saw the public approval of the Supreme Court, drop 10 points, I think that will continue to drop as presidents like Joe Biden, but frankly, like Trump, like Obama, like this isn't new, know that they don't have the authority,

know that they're giving the Supreme Court no choice but to strike it down and do stuff anyway just because YOLO. So, Steve, David said that this wasn't necessarily an indication of the dysfunction of the Congress or the shirking of its responsibilities not to extend a rent moratorium or eviction moratorium. Why isn't it? I mean, it's not like they didn't have a deadline for this.

I mean, I know that we're used to David carrying all this water for the Pelosi Congress, but still, I mean, there's this, I mean, like, why couldn't Nancy Pelosi if this was popular within her own group, if it caused Cory Bush to sleep on the front steps of Congress? And people are giving her credit for moving. Biden on this, which just, I mean, there's a political piece basically saying that but,

but for this crazy left-wing person sleeping on those steps of Congress, they wouldn't have taken this illegal action. Well, I mean, like, let's get her to sleep on the, let's start having campouts on Congress to get all sorts of cool stuff done. But why, why, why can't Nancy Pelosi or why can't Congress have extended this if the Supreme Court told them so a long time ago that they had to. And not a long time ago, too, right? More recently, the Supreme Court told them so. And just for to be clear, my comment was about whether is it good policy or not. I know. I'm giving you one. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Look, I think you can't look at this outside of the context of the broader debates on both the bipartisan infrastructure deal and what Biden and his team have been

pitching as this quote unquote human infrastructure deal. Because the, the, progressives, and Cory Bush is one of them, are frustrated that the Biden administration is putting its weight behind this bipartisan infrastructure deal. And they feel like they've not been listened to. They think this is the wrong path for Democrats, for becoming more moderate. I mean, this is a, I'm making their argument for them. This is what they say. I don't happen to think, you know, some five plus five trillion dollars in spending is moderate. But they're frustrated with the compromises. And I think you're seeing a dynamic in which the Biden administration's just being pressured by these progressives to do what they want to do. And this is, this is Joe Biden

caving. That's what he's doing. And, you know, if you look back at the argument as Obama made, I mean, what David said is exactly right. He gave the speech in September of 2011 to the Council of La Rasa and literally said, I know people would like me to work around this Congress because this Congress is so awful. And I would really like to do that because I agree with you that this Congress is terrible. But I don't have the authority to do it. And we can't just rewrite the Constitution. I mean, it's literally like what Barack Obama said. That was the argument. And I think what you have here is sort of, you know, to Sarah's point, a more straightforward somewhat softer version of that argument, but that's what he's doing.

And I think this is basically a sop to the left. And he's saying, in effect, you guys didn't do it. Nancy Pelosi didn't do it. No harm, no foul. We'll figure out a way to make it happen anyway. And I'm going to at least be seen as sort of listening to you and helping you out. Okay, we should cover just a little bit more of the other delta variant issues here. Wait, Jonah, real quick, before we do that, I just want to give a shout out to a piece that was highlighted in the morning dispatch. It's Washington Post by Eli Sasslow called The Battle for 1042 Cutler Street. And, you know, we see a lot of the stats about how many landlords are, in fact, small owners. But this actually dives into one of those stories on both sides and the crisis that's unfolding with these eviction moratoriums. It's such a good piece. We can put it in the show notes.

but, like, really, really, just read it. It's, it's an important, I think, it's what journalism at its best does. It dives inside a story to give you what's actually happening in people's lives. Sorry, let's move on. It's okay. So, you know, a week ago, we were talking about mask mandates. Now we are in full vaccine mandate mode in certain parts of the country. New York City, Bill de Blasio is basically saying you can't go to a restaurant without proof of vaccination.

we're seeing some of this smaller versions of this in other parts but I think New York is in some ways of Bellwether and I got to say I think I mean you guys can bust out whatever epidemiological talking points you brought to bear this morning that's fine but to me the most interesting thing

that's going on is that I think for the first time in my lifetime we are seeing mainstream liberal pundits, politicians, reporters,

uh, training fire on teachers unions. And if you add in the, um, the war on, uh, you know,

on qualified immunity and, and police unions, um, this has been in some ways, kind of unpredictably in the third act, a really bad time for what is in effect the shock troops of the democratic party, which are public sector unions. And I think it is just, it's, it's, I feel like I should be, you know,

what's her name in the movie Contact, Jody Foster, when she finally sees the alien race, and she says they should have sent a poet. When I see the cast of Morning Joe raining just unbelievable videos, against teachers unions for refusing to get vaccinated. And so I guess I'll go to David on this. What are we seeing, you know, people keep talking about how COVID broke the Republican Party in some ways. Is it just breaking the Democratic Party too? How is this going to play out?

I think this is part of a larger breaking in the sense that what's happening as Delta is spreading and something that we all thought was over is suddenly feeling less over. is that the tolerance for unreasonable people is really diminishing quickly. And so the teachers unions, which are directly, you know, this is getting as personal as it gets to people, am I looking at starting this next school year in a few weeks with kids at home again, with all of the costs that are incurred on my kids or in school? When we know, when we know after all this time that kids are, much safer from coronavirus, even with some speculation or some evidence that Delta's

maybe a little bit worse for kids, that we know that the vaccines work for the teachers. We know that thankfully, COVID is not nearly as dangerous for kids as it is for even people a little bit older. And so this looks like pure unreason. And the flip side of that is you're starting to see also some really volcanic panic anger bubbling against the people who are not getting vaccinated and and that it's not just oh laugh laugh conspiracy theories it you you know you silly silly people it's now you're starting to get just this undercurrent of real anger at this and so I think what's you know

one of the things to go back to something you said Jonah which I think is spot on people are more on edge now. People have a shorter fuse now. And I think you're going to see that erupt in various ways. And the more personal this gets to you, the more likely you're to erupt. And I'm sorry if you can be a loyal Democrat, but if you're, if you've got some union officials saying with vaccines that, nope, nope, we're not going to educate your kids again this year in person, or at least not start out that way. I think that volcanic anger is going to come right up to the surface because it's not just politics anymore. It's your kids' lives and your kids' futures and your kids' mental health. And who cares about, you know, for the time being, who cares about mobilizing

votes in a primary? This is about my kids. And I think that that's where you're going to see some of this anger bubbling up. Well, and I think it's important to note, and maybe this is just all understood, but the central argument of the teachers' unions was, you can't put us in classes with kids who could get us sick. That's what they said. This was a safety argument. And look, I think, you know, for a while, maybe not without reason. I think early in the school year, last year, before we knew as much as we came to know before vaccines were available, you know, there were reasons to be cautious. If you have a teacher who, you know, had underlying conditions, was being told, hey, too bad, suck it up, go back in the classroom.

I think there's a lot of gray area there. I think we're beyond the gray area now. Now you have these same teachers unions who have in a vaccine mandate a way to make the teachers make themselves safe or safer, considerably safer. And all of the science tells us that vaccinated people are considerably safer. And they're refusing to do that. It just suggests that the argument that they'd been making for the better part of a year wasn't the primary argument that this was mostly about other things than what they

suggested it was about at the time they were making the case. I am no longer capable of talking about this issue with any objectivity or political 30,000 foot level at all. as I told you guys offline, my son was sick. We're down in Florida. He was getting dehydrated. I spoke to a doctor who said, you know, it was probably about time to take him to urgent care. We did that. Urgent care was overrun with COVID people and COVID testing. And they told us to go to the emergency room. So we did the emergency room. First of all, the waiting room, of course, is inside. Everyone has to wear a mask. But my son is too young to put a mask on him. And especially when he's sick. and super cranky. So my choice was to wait for over two hours in a room inside where it was like standing room only basically with a bunch of people who presumably have COVID, where the vaccination rates are incredibly low or roll the dice at home.

And so we went home and I am so so angry. I'm just angry. Like I don't know what else to say about it. I, the reasons for not getting vaccinated, no doubt there are a handful of people who have good ones or who had good ones at the beginning. My patients is gone. It ran thin, but now it's gone. You are endangering every child's life. Like we have this virus going around called RSV that's really affecting young children, you know, and so if you're a parent of a young child right now, you're doing a lot to protect them from this, which can, you know, does.

put many, many children in the ICU. This idea that we can't go to an emergency room because there's COVID there is really unfair. And they've written other stories about this that the people being affected are actually not COVID patients. It's people who need medical treatment and can't get it right now because the hospitals are now so, you know, all the hospital beds are taken up, especially in Texas and Florida, with unvaccinated COVID patients. So I'm really pretty angry about it. Don't worry, guys. The brisket is on the mend. He's doing much, much better. We got him better hydrated after he was refusing to eat or drink and had super dry diapers. So all is well here, but I just think it's so unfair. And I think the teacher's union thing

that has baffled me is I understand, I understood the purpose of a union to be fighting for safer working conditions. I don't know, like all these things that unions exist for. I didn't know the purpose of the union was just to try not to work. And when you say that we don't want to go back to work until everyone's vaccinated, and then you turn around and say, but we don't believe in vaccine mandates, and in fact, you cannot mandate the teachers be vaccinated. I'm at a loss. So you just don't want to go back to work.

That's what the union's purpose is. What? Like, I'm done. I'm so done with this. I'm done staying at home. I'm done worrying about my kid who can't get vaccinated. And isn't going to get vaccinated for so long. He's under two years old.

Please, everyone else, like, do just a little bit, just a tiny little bit of your part. You know, when you're talking about the foundation of blue power in blue cities, these unions are used to doing what they want. They're used to acting with impunity. And all of a sudden, they're on a lot shorter rope, or at least should be, or at least there's indications they might be for the first time and forever. and I think they're going to find that rather disorienting. And to your point, Sarah, about how the unvaccinated folks are affecting others,

I had a long conversation with an ICU doc, and he was saying, look, what ends up happening when a hospital gets flooded is it's not just a matter of overworked with too few caregivers and too many patients. It's also that all of the thresholds for care start to rise. It's like you have to be sicker to get into the hospital. You have to be sicker to get into the ICU. And that has cascading consequences down the line. So, yeah, this wave of folks who are refusing the vaccine,

it is not, contrary to what you see on parts of Twitter, that is not just, quote, unquote, their choice that has no impact beyond anyone else. We've just got to get rid of that notion entirely, there are ripple effect consequences, and it's not just that, you know, if somebody doesn't get a vaccine, they still can transmit it. There are rare breakthrough infections, and then they transmit it to others who don't get vaccines. It is not a completely self-isolated, you're in a bubble decision to not get a vaccine. It is something that has ramifications for other people. As my friend Ron Bailey likes to say, just as your right to free speech ends at the tip of my

nose, you know, you can't punch someone in the nose. You can't cough disease in people's faces either. Exactly. But so let's do a really quick lightning round here, and then we'll, I'll give it back to Sarah. Very briefly, will there be federal vaccine mandates, starting with Sarah? No. David? Nope. Steve? I don't think beyond federal workers and the military. As John McLaughlin would say, Steve is correct for agreeing with me. Yeah, it's just too, yeah, no is the answer. They would have too much difficulty on the exemptions. And by the way, I'm not even sure the vaccine mandate for federal workers.

Has that actually been issued yet? Because I kept refreshing the White House website looking for the actual executive order to see how they drafted it. And at least as of yesterday, I hadn't seen it. No, I think part of the problem is an IT thing because a lot of the federal government still use those old five and a quarter floppy drives. And when you get vaccinated, you're becoming magnetic, they're worried that it'll erase large swaths of the federal database. So true, though.

All right. I mean, there isn't a vaccine mandate yet for troops. I know. Yeah. David, when you said you wanted to talk about Hungary, I assumed you meant the F1 race that just happened this weekend because my husband has become super obsessed with F1 all of a sudden and I'm still very confused why driving a car around a Mario cart is a sport. But I think that's not what our topic is. So tell us what it is.

Yeah. So this is an interesting thing and it's kind of this one of these sort of insidery baseball kind of topics. But Hungary is having a moment on the new right. So So Tucker Carlson is gone and spent several days there. Rod Dreher has been, although I don't know that you would call Rod Dreher a new right, but Rod Dreher has been living there for much of this summer. Dennis Prager is going there to deliver a speech. Online, you see a lot of buzz about Hungary and Victor Orban. And the idea is roughly that Victor Orban is kind of a model.

And the way he has run Hungary is at least an example of how you really fight the lips, not the kind of berserkery way that Trump did it, but clever use of power, clever exercise of the levers of power to preserve national identity, protect a country from excessive immigration. and I guess it's really getting a lot of people worked up. And here's where I am on it. I'm reminded of all of the fights I used to have about social policy in Scandinavia until I learned to say to people,

the experience of Norway is of limited utility to understanding the United States of America. So I'll just go to Steve first. is Hungary the new rights Norway or Denmark or Sweden

is this a shiny little European country that has no applicability and we should just pay no attention to all of this or is there something else going on? Well, I think

the new right wants Hungary to be that in many respects. And then making these arguments pretty openly. I mean, Orban spoke at a new right conference. I think it was in 2017, shortly after Trump was elected here in Washington, D.C., and you had a lot of the new right thinkers and leaders attend the conference and sing his praises. But I think there are, I mean, there are lots of reasons, as you apply, that it's not applicable to the United States. You know, Hungary's

very different ethnically, obviously, they've got a different tradition of governance than the United States does. So that's a long list of why it doesn't work. But I do think, you know, there's been this prolonged debate. David, you have been a part of this debate about the liberal order, about liberal democracy and this post-liberal, the emergence of a post-liberal new right, folks who are saying openly what they might have thought years ago, but didn't want to say, but are now saying basically, look, the liberal order on which the United States was founded and still governs itself is anachronistic, no longer applicable. We need to do things differently, and we might have to sort of break down some doors and abandon some of those

old traditions in order to achieve the policy ends that we want. There's this illiberal right, And in that sense, I do think what they're seeking to emulate from Orban should get us to sit up and pay attention pretty carefully. Orban is an illiberal leader. He is an authoritarian. And we can argue about whether he's a soft authoritarian or a harder version that I think some of the left would suggest that he is. But he's been pretty open about this. He's given speeches. He gave a speech in 2014 where he basically said the liberal order doesn't work anymore.

We shouldn't follow that. And this is not somebody who's talking about this in theoretical terms. He is living it. That's how he governs in many respects. He has taken Hungary from 23rd in the World Press Freedom Index to 92nd. He has gone after journalists, his government has gone after journalists in, I think, deeply worrisome ways that I, you know, 10 years ago I would think would never be able to have. happen here in the United States, but now I'm not so sure, given the kind of rhetoric that we've had, particularly from some on the right, about journalism. There's indications that there's

spying software is really spying software that's been found on the phones of journalists, human rights activists, sort of pro-democracy folks across the world. It has been found on the phones of Orban opponents in Hungary, of journalists in Hungary. And it was an interesting Guardian piece a couple weeks ago, correlating the times that the Orban government was looking at the activities of one particular journalist on his phone and requests from that journalist to the government related to investigators. stories. Pretty clear that the Orban government is actively spying on its political opponents and journalists. This is not something we should want here in the United States. And we can have arguments or intellectual debates about Victor Orban and family policy, what he's done with immigration, and whether that's smarter, whether it's sort of a populist dog whistle, as it

were. But we do not want to be emulating Victor Orban here in the U.S. all right so sarah i just want to give some fast facts here so hungary is the size of south carolina and has the population of los angeles county actually los angeles county is bigger population new york city basically is like yeah yeah yeah both of those are bigger than hungry Why are we even talking about this? No, we can't run a country based on how South Carolina's doing. Duh. What?

Well, you just forecast, I was going to pitch to you and say, as our resident person who's always constantly reminding us that these little zigs and zags of online debate are like, what are we doing here? You just answered my question. But I think the comparison between various socialist Scandinavian countries is so spot on because I do the exact same thing when someone tells me about how like, well, it worked in Norway. How do you want me to tell you how different Norway is from trying to rule a heterogeneous population from coast to coast in the United States? And, like, I think the big thing is their immigration policy, it's hard to even explain why maybe something with the borders of South Carolina could, in the middle of Europe, could have different immigration priorities, policies, enforcement, then once again, the entire United States. I actually want to have an immigration debate in this country that is real, but also realistic.

I think we should debate merit-based immigration systems. I think that when we look at immigration systems, looking at Canada, while for a lot of reasons, very much not the same as the United States, let's have that debate, though, about what Canada's doing versus what we're doing. Interesting. I'm happy to throw Hungary into that debate. But it is not some sort of Trump card. Well, Hungary does it?

Oh, okay. Sure. That's cool. You know, yeah, I'm curious what system they've tried and how it's working for them in ways in which they're different and the same. But like the United States is so wildly different. Duh. How is this a thing still? How is this like pick out your country or real communism has never been tried, writ hungry? So that perfect. That's exactly, I should have just said Sarah go. So let me move over to Jonah. So we've got some folks who are really interested in Hungary. Then we've got this little weird or fringe of people who seem to be thirsty for something like, I don't know if you've noticed this little revival of interest in Antonio de Alivares Salazar, the former Portuguese dictator. There's a little tiny bit of monarchical thinking on some of the far.

right. My own thought is that a lot of these people. A little. Well, a lot of monarchical thinking on the far right. What else is common good constitutionalism? A lot of me is thinking these guys don't know how weird they're getting because they're so very, very online. But it's also true that people can be getting weird and it can be ominous. Or maybe they're getting so weird that it's not ominous anymore. Where do you fall on the weird ominous scale, Jonah? Well, I mean, I think, you know, reportedly Michael Anton, the author of the Flight 93 election piece for the Claremont Review, a Trump administration, briefly a Trump administration official is now pining for an American Caesar to follow in the, to carry the torch for, you know,

to pass for Trump to pass the baton in effect to an American Caesar who are really not just literally, not just figuratively, but literally own the libs. And just, historical footnote,

and I just, I don't know my Roman history all that well, but first of all, the Caesar thing doesn't end great by my memory, but second, pretty shortly there after you get Caligula,

like it's not like Caesar lives forever, which is sort of actually something I think most people know. Yeah. also, I mean, like, I mean, like the, one of the things the founders knew really, really, really well was the history of the Roman Republic. And its references to it are shot through federal's papers through the debates. The Constitution in some ways is a part of a long shadow of all of that stuff. And they were decidedly not on the side of Caesar. I just want to be clear about that. So when we hear people talking about how much we have to love the founding and the Constitution, and then the they're calling for Caesarism, there's a, there's a disconnect. So I'm waiting, because you call dibs on this topic, David, so you get to write about it first whenever you do, but I've been chomping at the bit to write about this. I think the comparison to Scandinavia for the left

is very apt. It's worth, and I agree entirely with Sarah that we're very different from Sweden, but it's also worth pointing out that the Sweden and Denmark that Bernie Sanders and crew described are very different from Sweden and Denmark. You know, my friend, Kevin Williams, is worried about this for years. Like, they haven't, you know, the Sweden that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, is it more fitting for a sort of 1950s weird socialist curated Epcot center of exhibit than the actual countries, which have, like big thriving private sectors and do all sorts of things that, you know,

um, you know, are, are not at all applicable to the United States, including like Norway, which has a massive oil infused sovereign wealth fund, um, you know, which, you know, according to like the AOC types, they should just jettison that and have a solar panel wealth fund, which will no longer be called a wealth fund. But anyway, um, I think that another way to think about this, because there's a very long history of this kind of thing on the left. and it's not just with Scandinavia. You go back to Lincoln-Stefans going off to the Soviet Union in the 1920s and coming back and saying, I've been over to the future and it works, right?

Or I've seen the future and it works. And he thought the Bolshevik experiment, as they called it back then, was the wave of the future for America. And I read a lot about this in my first book. And it seems to me a lot of our friends on the right, and I've got to be a little careful about this, because some of the people who are besotted with Hungary are legitimate friends of mine. But it feels very much that they want to go over to Hungary,

they go over to Hungary and they say, I've been to the past and it works, right? Because they are looking at this Potemkin village BS model of how to run a tiny country with nine million people that's landlocked. To me, it's always a dead giveaway about what Hungary's, really about. Forget the corruption and all that stuff that Orban's involved in. When they make fighting against, you know, and I also forget about all the anti-Semitic Soros stuff that Orban traffics with. When they make fighting the immigrant threat, the central, a central organizing

principle of the politics of the state in a country almost nobody wants to immigrate to. And it has very few immigrants, there's something else going on. There's this, you know, demonization of the other thing, the fear-mongering that goes on. I think Anna Alperbaum probably gets quite a few things wrong in her book, Twilight of Democracy. But at the core, her stuff about Hungary, I think, is pretty spot on. It's a corrupt regime that has learned to say really nice things in the ears of socially conservative Americans. And when you bring up this Portugal stuff, I remember, you know, this is one things that drives me crazy, but the new post-liberal Catholic integralist right thing is it is basically a reenactment game of what Brent Bozell, the Elder, was talking about 50 years ago, about, you know,

you start a magazine called Triumph. That was for a sort of ultra-montane theological conservatism that, that, you know, told people how best to live. And they're just replaying the same arguments. And so I I think it's getting, to answer, actually answer your question, I think it's getting really, really weird because when you have these echo chambers where no one is saying, no one that they credit with being right about anything is saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hungry? Really? Like, really? And like, so there's no emperor has no clothes thing. And then it becomes a zeitgeist. And when Tucker goes out and says, you got to follow what's going on here as if it's applicable to the United States. eventually that becomes part of the dogma and then you're not allowed to question it or questioning it means you just don't get it when in reality the people just don't get it are the people who think that we're going to go

the way of the Magyars. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot track side. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Pre-sale tickets for future events subject to availability and varied by race. Turns and conditions apply.

Learn more at AMX. All right, Steve, bring us home. So I want to talk about a report that captures a trend that hasn't gotten nearly enough attention and just get your thoughts on it. There's a Bloomberg story late last month by Kenneth Doyle that described what he called a steep drop-off in political action committee contributions to members of Congress this year. And there was a time, I think, when probably all of us would hear a steep drop off in PAC contributions and think, oh, good. Maybe some of our politicians will be less influenced by big money corporate contributors.

However, what's happened in the time since is we've seen a spike in small dollar donations and a pretty considerable one. I'll use Kevin McCarthy as the example. Doyle writes in this piece, as recently as the 2018 midterms, McCarthy's campaign committee received 3.2 million, 40% of its total from corporate and other PACs, while collecting only 23,000 from donors giving less than 200 each. In the first six months of this year, McCarthy collected less than 1% of his $6.3 million total from PACs, while raking in two-thirds. I'm sorry, one-third, two-point-three million from small dollar donors. Sarah, I'll start with you, since you've lived and worked in this world. Why are we seeing this shift?

So it is one of the most fascinating unintended consequences of a lot of things, actually. But campaign finance reform is one of the things that I, point to in my life of something that, you know, in college, I was like, this is a pretty good idea. And then now when you see where that good idea has led, and I think this is one of the places that it has, I don't know, maybe not. You know, states like Texas and Virginia that have no limits, largely speaking, on individual donations, but full disclosure are actually doing pretty well, whereas the federal government, I would say, from a campaign finance regime is doing very, very poorly. So let me back up and explain some of why this is happening. The limits for

individual donors does increase every cycle, but not by a whole lot. And the lift to getting an individual donor to give the max is pretty high. It's been about the same. You have sort of a major donor campaign strategy. That's where like these funders, dinners happen, and the candidate has to go there and spend, you know, it's like two hours at the dinner, plus the travel time, plus prepping for it. The candidates hate it. They hate making the phone calls. They don't like going to the dinners. Stuff like the Romney 47% thing happens because, you know, they think they're, you know, speaking privately to people, but they're not. And so overall, it's just this, like, miserable experience that no one wants. Now, that

would have continued indefinitely, regardless of how much they hated it, and regardless of how low the limits were because there was no other way. But enter social media. Now, the problem with social media small dollar fundraising is that it's incredibly expensive to raise. So without having the numbers like at my fingertips, large major donor programs probably cost 20 to 25 cents to raise a dollar. Small dollar programs can cost 60 cents. I mean, sometimes you'll see the ones that are not legitimate are like 80 cents to raise a dollar. That sounds like a really bad return on your investment, except if you consider that what you're getting back is your most valuable resource, which is your candidate's time, because your candidate

is not involved in small dollar fundraising. It's all Facebook posts. You know, you may post videos of them on the trail or saying stuff from the news hit or whatever else, but that's not actually costing the candidate's time or it's at least a twofer for their time. And so you don't really care that the ROI on an individual dollar is pretty high because you're getting back your candidates time and you're able to raise in such bulk amounts that paying 60 cents on that dollar, but when you're talking about $20 million, looks pretty good. The result then is that you've seen the exponential growth of digital fundraising and the atrophying of major dollar fundraising. Now, there's an argument that this is a good thing, right? That raising small dollars

from a whole bunch of people is more representative of your voters of the country versus relying on these big donors who represent moneyed interests, corporate interests, all the things that we've heard about of the corruption of large donations. I hear you. But as it turns out, as we're learning, I think now with the, again, just this exponential explosion of small dollar digital fundraising is that no, you are still talking about an incredibly small number of people who make up small dollar donation programs. And they are far more likely to be super online, super tuned in to partisan cable news. And in fact, they don't represent the median voter in the country certainly. They don't even represent the median voter of your political party. But now,

that they are the donors, they are driving the messaging for the campaign because of all those clips that you're going to then use from the interviews, from town halls to use for your small dollar program. So it is a vicious, vicious cycle that is driving the parties more into negative partisan polarization and more catering to the extremes of their base, which are not representative of media and voters. And we're seeing it on both sides. This is not partisan at all, as far as I can help. Yeah, let me, I, there are some things I would probably disagree with in the early part of what you said with respect to how easy it is to raise these online donations. But I think your point is well taken, particularly at the end and what this is likely to mean. The next line of

this Bloomberg piece that I read from just a moment ago had an excerpt from a Kevin McCarthy the appeal, fundraising appeal. Do you want to live in a leftist dictatorship? Or do you want to live in a free society that upholds America's traditional values? It's long been thought, at least by me, that direct mail might be the lowest form of human communication. And this would seem to me when you look at the reversal of the way that candidates are raising dollars, federal candidates are raising dollars, to make direct mail and the kind of red hot rhetoric it relies on to raise money to thrust it even more at the center of our politics, which would seem to me potentially to exacerbate all of the things that we spend so much time on this podcast talking about.

Am I right to be that worried, Jonah? Oh, I think you're being wildly optimistic. Look, I mean, I've been railing against populism for very, very long time. I've been making this argument about strong institutions for a very long time. This is the analog to one of the things that you and I in particular spent an enormous amount of time thinking about and talking about in launching the dispatch, which is, you know, part of our philosophy about why we went the route that we did is that we find the clickbait stuff is corrosive to quality journalism because it basically creates an incentive structure that monetizes making people angry, monetizes hot takes,

monetizes rage and outrage and all of these kinds of things. And it has turned out to be for a few places wildly successful. This is, is the political fundraising equivalent of that. It is the demagoguery monetization project. And, um, you know, when Homer Simpson runs for, uh, office in Springfield, runs for sanitation commissioner, he says, you know, people, there are dogs crapping in our own homes. And we have to pick it up. Did we lose a war or something?

Um, that is sort of the. problem with sort of populist rhetoric. It's based on stupid premises, but that ping certain parts of your lizard brain and make you very, very angry and think someone else is to blame. And if you receive as much of this kind of stuff as I do, you know, because I'm on, I'm on like my old email address is on every single Republican list imaginable. And because I had it for something like 15 years at National Review. And I see this stuff all of the time. And it gets the, it gets to a larger point, which is something that Sarah was talking about is like, yeah, there were problems with smoke-filled rooms. There are problems with vested interests having access to politicians and all

of that. And there are all sorts of worthy reforms to deal with it. But the reforms weren't to gild the parties. That made things worse. What we should have done is made the parties stronger, but more accountable. And when the parties actually have to care about their long-term brand value, when they have to care about their own institutional integrity, not just for the next election cycle or the next quarterly fundraising cycle, but for the long haul, they take responsibility. Instead, it's a Wild West atmosphere.

Chris Starwalt was on my podcast yesterday, and he was saying how J.D. Vansk said the quiet part out loud recently, saying he doesn't need to raise money, the way he used to, because now all he has to do is go on Fox, and he gets a gazillion small donors. And that's fine if he's going on Fox reading the modern equivalent of Edmund Burke's address to the elders of Bristol about how he owes them his judgment and not his servitude. But that's not what he's doing. What he's doing is talking about how dogs are crapping on our carpets, and we have to pick it up because the damn Marxist libs are making us. And

that's going to make things worse. And things are going to get a lot before they get better so buy gold um we are not sponsored by gold so that was not an advertising endorsement david is is jo to write and if he is um is there anything to do about it well i just want to note that so i i while we were podcasting i have received emails from ron desantis and donald trump junior ron dsantis has told me while we were podcasting, that he's not one to mince words, Steve, and neither is President Trump. And that's why I proudly supported Trump when he made this bold statement, the survival of America depends upon our ability to elect Republicans at every level, the survival of America.

So I don't know why you're critiquing these people, because... Are you against the survival of America, Steve? Are you? I mean, that's the big question. We knew that. Right? Yeah. And Donald Trump, Jr., writing on.

on behalf of Marco Rubio says, my father's America First Agenda is on the brink of destruction. Look, I mean, what is there to be done about this? Right now, this is, these guys are giving a segment of the people what they want, and a segment of the people is fueling this in a vicious cycle that as of this moment doesn't show any signs of letting up. And I say this, and I say this again and again,

again. This is not the majority of Americans. The majority of Americans are exhausted by this. This is something that the more in common project and others have tracked for a long time, that polarization is being driven by these partisan wings. There is an exhausted majority. And you know what? None of this is going to stop so long as the operative word in the phrase exhausted majority is exhausted. So long as this sort of majority that doesn't like this kind of leaves the field. I was talking to a guy the other day here locally, and he was staunch Republican,

and he said that after January 6th, he just turned everything off. He stopped watching Fox. He took his social media apps off his phone. He just turned everything off. And this is a great guy. Like, this is a good guy. And he says, my blood pressure is lower.

I feel more peace and I feel more happiness. And one part of me was saying, well, good for you that you could unplug. and sort of restore some more balance to your life. And another part of me was saying, well, crap, there goes another good guy off the grid and leaving the field to, you know, the most fanatical individuals.

And look, this stuff has real consequences. I don't know if you saw a tweet yesterday from the Clarion Project that their polling data indicates a sharp rise in secessionism since the January 6th riot. And with really, there's still minorities, but 44% in the south, 39% in the Pacific, 32% in mountain regions.

I mean, this is getting, the animosity of the engaged is getting real, it's not just getting, it is already really dangerous. And our solution is this alienated majority, but the problem is they're so thoroughly alienated. Yeah, and there's, let me just add one coda to this discussion, was I think it's really important. There was a very good story by Lachlan Marque at Axios,

detailing this and taking, sort of laying out for all to see the relationship between these ideological websites and journalism outlets, media outlets, and the campaigns themselves, Lockland wrote ideological news sites, harvest readers' emails, then rent the lists to like-minded campaigns.

The news sites, get revenue, campaigns get donations, and all incentives are to stoke partisan anger. It is literally the case that this is people profiting off of polarization, both in the media realm and also in politics. And I think you're right, David, unless sort of the non-polarized stand up and push back on this, this is, I think we are likely at the front end of this trend, rather than the tail end. Well, I'm going to end this on a happy note. So, as I mentioned, the brisket was sick.

And we've been dying. I don't understand these parents who are like screen time is bad. No, we've been dying for this kid to get into some screen time. Because when he's sick, like there's nothing else to do and he gets really, you know, punky feeling.

So finally, we had a breakthrough this weekend. And I just want to thank Sesame Street. That's right. Sesame Street is still on TV. And it's on its 51st. now it's its 52nd season. I was in a commercial, a local PBS commercial for Sesame Street when I was four years old.

And so to be able to continue that tradition was a real treat. But like, it's really good now. The music is awesome. I mean, I remember the you've really got a hold on me song from my era when they had like great musicians on. But now it's like every episode has like a cool pop musician. And so I did some research. And it turns out that the music on Sesame Street is often being composed by this group of musicians who help out, including Lynn Manuel Miranda from Hamilton, Chris Jackson from Hamilton, Jennifer Nettles from Sugar Land, Stump from Fallout Boy.

I mean, this is like pretty cool stuff. So if you are also not feeling well, I kind of recommend some Sesame Street. The last episode I watched explained ran. And I was like, yeah, okay, I'm into ramps. Pretty cool. So thank you, Sesame Street, even though you don't sponsor this podcast. You sponsor my life. All right, guys, that's it for this week. We will see you next week. And be sure to rate us, subscribe, all that good stuff. And don't forget, the dispatch.com. There's like newsletters galore. Come join us. This episode, is brought to you by This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. SquareSpace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online.

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