The Dispatch Podcast - Fallout of Kansas Rejecting Abortion Amendment

Episode Date: August 5, 2022

Sarah, David, Steve and Jonah are back for an action-packed show today including the primary elections, Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, and the demise of al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri on Sunday. Will tensions over abortion issues cause bigger voter turnouts in the future? Plus: The Senate overwhelmingly voted to approve Sweden and Finland for acceptance into NATO on Wednesday with a lone dissent from Sen. Josh Hawley.   Show Notes: -The Sweep: What We Learned -TMD: Another Blockbuster Primaries Tuesday -The Current: Killing Zawahiri: How the CIA Hunts Monsters -TMD: Tensions Flare in the Taiwan Strait Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isgir, joined by the original crew, Steve Hayes, David French, Jonah Goldberg, and boy, do we have action-packed show today. Obviously, we had the primary elections last night, including the Kansas abortion ballot measure to talk about, plus plenty on the foreign policy side to discuss Nancy Pelosi goes to Taiwan, the Biden administration with a big victory targeting Al-Zawahiri and the NATO. vote that happened in the Senate last night, one Republican voted no on Finland joining. Let's dive right in. David, I'll start with you about the vote in Kansas. What do you feel like you actually learned about how abortion will affect the midterms

politically. Yeah, that's a really good question. And a lot of what I learned about it is from this newsletter called The Sweep that had some really, really good points on this. Let me put it like this. It isn't the outcome that I think was surprising. It was the turnout. And that is what I think is significant. So what happened is there was a pro-life measure put on the ballot in Kansas because Kansas had Supreme Court, state Supreme Court authority that limits the ability of the legislature to regulate abortion. So the purpose of the amendment and the ballot measure was to give the legislature the authority to regulate and perhaps even ban abortion. The amendment itself was kind of a mess. It was poorly written, but it was specifically put on the ballot in this period

to help ensure its passage because it was, you know, Kansas is a red state. This was in a primary, so you're going to have fewer voters normally. And so the thought was this was a sure thing. Turns out it wasn't and that it was pretty resoundingly rejected and it was resoundingly rejected with a really large turnout, a turnout that was above the turnout that voted in both the Democratic and Republican primaries. on Tuesday. So what does that say? What it does is it gives me pause about a thought I've had really since Dobbs and in the lead up to Dobbs, which was that while broadly speaking,

Americans support abortion rights, in other words, my position is in the minority, broadly speaking, Americans don't prioritize voting on that, that the people who really prioritize voting on abortion, are more concentrated on the wings of the debate, and more pro-lifers tend to prioritize it than pro-choice folks. But what gives me pause here was that turnout told me that perhaps that's wrong. Perhaps what's happening after Dobbs is these issue polls that indicate that abortion is pretty low are not reading the room correctly, and that, in fact, more people are focused on abortion, and the more people who are actually focused on abortion and vote on abortion, you're going to get a sort of a broadly pro-choice outcome, not an extreme

pro-choice outcome, but a broadly pro-choice outcome. Now, the caveat to that is this was sort of the ultimate issue poll. It was a ballot measure. It was you put that issue in front of the voters. It did not necessarily tell us how voters are voting when, on the one hand, they want to send a message about inflation or want to do something about inflation, but they're also broadly pro-choice, which one of those things is going to be most important to them? But at the end of the day, when I look at this and I think about it from a pro-life perspective, the thing that was most sobering to me was the turnout in the election. Steve, I've, you know, was saying, up until now that all the data we had didn't seem to support the idea that abortion was going to

make much of a difference in the midterms. This is the first data point, I think, that shows that perhaps it is having already some political effect. On the other hand, it's Kansas, which is kind of an inscrutable state in some ways. It has a Democratic governor, but it voted for Donald Trump by 15 points. Is this just sort of sui generous and maybe we should put it to one side? No, it's, I mean, Kansas is a red state. We should be clear about that. I mean, it had a Democratic governor, but it's a red state and it's a pretty deep red state. Remember, there was a book written about it. What's the matter with Kansas 10, 15 years ago? Jonah loved that book, judging by his facial expression. I'll return to that. But the whole premise of the book was that Kansas voters were conservative against their own interests. So Kansas is a pretty red. state. I agree with David. I think this is a pretty striking outcome. The caveats that you included in the sweep and people should read the sweep and your analysis of the vote there,

if they haven't, we'll put that in the show notes. I think your caveats are important. It's important not to extrapolate too much, but I think it's hard to read this as anything but a pushback. It's true that the language was muddled and that it was confusing. If you read the actual language. It's hard to know exactly. I've read it several times and I'm not sure what it says. Like if I'm still not sure what it says. Right. And it's so it's possible that some number of Republicans in particular who went into the voting booth were unclear if they were unfamiliar generally with what was happening were unclear about what exactly they were voting on. But it's worth noting there were nearly $30 million spent to on voter edging.

campaigns before this took place. So I would bet that a good number of people did know what they were voting on and that this is the outcome. I've read a couple of pieces from fellow pro-lifers who, that are downplaying these results, saying really the language is so crazy, you can't read anything into it. And really, we shouldn't think much of this. I think that's a mistake. You know, as David says, there are a range of views in the Republican Party on

abortion. And certainly, as he's written and others have said for a long time, there are a lot of Republicans who believe in exceptions, who wouldn't want abortion banned outright. And I think the Republican Party generally and the pro-life movement in particular ignores that reality at its peril. Jonah, what is the matter with Kansas? All right. So let me just say. clear the decks here. What's the matter with the question, what's the matter with Kansas is this? I have all sorts of problems with the Thomas Frank book. I've written about the

Thomas Frank Frank book in two different of my books. Remesh Penuru who is from Kansas, I think every single day sticks a needle and a voodoo doll of that book. But my complaint here is that there is a whole generation of people now

in Washington and in punditry. who think the phrase, what's the matter with Kansas, was coined by Thomas Frank 15 years ago when it was a direct and deliberate rip-off of William Allen White's famous 1896 editorial for McKinley called What's the Matter with Kansas, that basically a lot of people think won the 1896 campaign for McKinley. And it was a, and I agreed with that one,

because it was a diatribe against Kansas voters voting for free silver and signing up for the William Jennings-Bryan crazy train. Now, with that out of my system, because I've been hearing this on every single cable channel for the last two days, and a host of bloggers are all doing it, and it just drives me crazy. All right.

That said, I have a slightly different take on all of this. I agree that the rewarding of the thing was garbage. Fine. I guarantee you there were 10,000 or 100,000, and signs all over the place saying vote no or vote yes and explain what no meant and what yes meant. And I'm sure there were countless television ads that said it. So I doubt there's a huge number of people who went into the polling booth who wanted the legislature to be able to ban abortion and then because they misread the language of the thing voted the way they didn't intend to

vote. I just I think, I'm sure someone did, but I think it's probably at best a rounding error. And perhaps a wash on both sides. Right, exactly. Yeah, that's a good point, too. Because it's not, just to be clear, it's not that it's poorly worded in one direction. Right. It's that it's a word salad.

Because Kansansans value both women and children, the Constitution of the state of Kansas, does not require government funding of abortion and does not create a secure right to abortion, to the extent permitted by the Constitution of the United States, the people through their elected state representatives and state senators may pass laws regarding abortion, including, but not limited to,

laws that account for circumstances of pregnancy resulting from rape or incest or circumstances of necessity to save the life of the mother. Okay. Yeah, so like, and as you will often point out in other circumstances, the margin of error is a plus or minus, right?

So you're right. It could have canceled out either way. I tend to think that people are overreeding this in two different ways. While at the same time, I think it's very significant. I'm not trying to downplay it too much. I just think there's a lot of wishcasting going on. First of all, in 2022 and November, there aren't going to be a lot of ballots that have issue questions about

abortion on them. And people are going to be asked to vote for this party or that party. There are going to be some, though. Some, sure. Right. But I don't think the midterms hang in the balance on that. Second, I bet you, if you had a clearly worded referendum that said abortion should be banned at 15 weeks or 20 weeks, after 20 weeks, whatever, That might have passed, too. I think that in some ways, this was a vote against more drama. That the idea of having this polarization and freak out stuff and having the crazies go wild and the legislature, just voters, a lot of voters weren't in the mood for it.

And understandably so. The last thing I would just say is that we are seeing something that we talked about on here before that I think is a sort of a fascinating thing that historically could have huge consequences is we are seeing the separation of two factions on the right. There was the anti-Roe faction and there was the pro-life faction. And there were a lot of pro-lifers who were anti-Roe and there were a lot of anti-Roe people who were pro-life, but now you kind of got to choose. And the anti-Roe people look at what Kansas did and say, Okay. Saw that coming. That's okay. And the pro-lifers are like, this is a historic defeat for us. This is terrible for us and all the rest. I'm much more on the anti-Roe side of these debates. I wanted this stuff to go back to the states. I think it's going to take time to rack up serious pro-life victories on a state-by-state basis. But that's the way you should rack them up. And the right is going to have a big argument going forward because you can tell, you can smell it. In the air, the political consult,

saying, maybe we shouldn't talk about this stuff too much anymore. And, you know, with the changing nature of the GOP coalition, where you have a lot of non-college working class people from single-parent homes moving into the GOP column, you could see a cultural basis for a more ambiguous position on abortion coming too. So I think it's going to be a long, nasty fight for a while. And we're going to see a lot of things like this that are victories for the anti-Roside, but defeats for the pro-life side.

You know, out of 350 million people in this country, there's probably, I don't know. I thought you were saying is Nina Totenberg's favorite conservative. Sorry, I'm never going to let you off of that. We're going. You know, I haven't even heard it. I just, like, keep seeing messages about that. Okay, what happened? I don't know.

Nina Totenberg said my name. No, she went to the well. You know, Nina Totenberg is famous for finding conservatives who will, uh, out their own side. And there was Sarah juxtaposed. The weirdest thing about it was she took the anti-Aelito

position more or a lot, so at least that's the way it was framed, against Akele-Lamar. Which, it was just sort of like, what is going on here? Yeah. Perhaps a little out of context there. Actually, this dovetails nicely with what I'm going to say, which is

you know, there's maybe like seven other people who think this way about this issue like me, which is, you know, I think very separately from how you feel about abortion is how you think that it should be decided at a policy and legal level. So I thought Roe was wrongly decided and therefore it should be sent to the states. But I actually meant that. So for me, Kansas is a win regardless of the outcome because it actually was then decided by a vote of the people in a ballot measure, no less, which is even better, direct democracy on that question.

Great. So setting aside the win for the pro-choice side or the pro-life side, it's actually a win for the Constitution and for what we say we're doing here, which is self-determination and self-government on all but the fewest number of things that we do as counter-majoritarian measures, like speech, where we protect unpopular speech

against the majority or religious practices against the majority, things like that. So in that sense, I think Kansas is a big win and a vindication of the post-Dob's regime where people actually get to decide this question for themselves. Also, interestingly, as the pro-choice side crows about this big victory, I believe Kansas bans abortion at 20 weeks with some exceptions after that. And they certainly ban the specific procedure, which is sort of colloquially known as a partial birth abortion. So Kansas's abortion law isn't particularly liberal. This isn't, it's not New York.

It's not California. So I didn't realize that. So the current abortion law bans it at 20 weeks? It was 20 or 22, yeah. So wires, I mean, like I literally heard people on more, like Claire McCaskill on Morning Joe talking about how this is so great for Missouri because the Underground Railroad can still get you to get abortions in Kansas. That's sort of medium malpractice if that's right.

Like, I have not heard that before. Kansas law allows for an abortion up to 20 weeks post-fertilization or 22 weeks after the last menstrual period. So the no voters were also voting for the status quo, which was... Which, by the way, you look at ballot measures, anyone who works on ballot measures just from a political operative standpoint, and they will tell you status quo all always goes in with a pretty sizable vote all by itself, setting aside whatever the issue is, because by and large, people are pretty happy with the way things are. And so when you look at,

for instance, these gun control, you know, background check ballot measures in really blue states that for some reason don't do well or underperform Hillary Clinton like they did in 2016, in California, Washington or Oregon, I forget which one, there were like four of those. It's a lot of that's the status quo bias, that status quo, whatever the status quo says. is, goes in with like five to ten sometimes points on its side. So if anything, the ballot measures that do succeed are really impressive because there's actually pretty strong headwinds on just let's leave it the way that it is. But yeah, I think on this case, neither side should be declaring victory except for the seven people who are with me that it's just a win for process. And process

is great in this country. And actually, the whole point of our constitution is process. Well, it really highlights, I think, a point that a lot of folks were missing after Dobbs, which was the whole focus of the political side of the pro-life movement for so long was get rid of Roe, get rid of Roe, get rid of Roe, that a lot of people had translated that into their minds as that then bans abortion or that then ends abortion. That's very far from the truth. I mean, the Gutmacher study showed that if you overturned Roe, abortion would still 90% of abortions would still occur because of existing state laws

and where abortions happen and where abortions are legal. And what this reminds pro-life folks is that overturning Roe wasn't the beginning of the end. It was the end of the beginning of the making of the case. Because now you have to make the case to your fellow citizens about what kind of laws they should vote for and pass. Wrong, David. Instead, we're going to do common good constitutionalism where five dudes get to decide what the common good is for everyone else

and that's the end of the story. Yeah, I forgot about that. So you don't need to convince anyone, no persuasion needed. In fact, we're done with persuasion in this country. The experiment was fun. Persuasion's stupid and miserable and nobody enjoys it.

Now, one big interesting question to me is heading into 2024. DeSantis signed, what, a 15-week ban in place and is so far resisting any... has so far sort of gone quiet on will he go further than that? And here's the question. The 15-week ban regime is probably the sweet spot of public opinion in the United States. But it is not where the Republican base is at all.

And DeSantis has become the phenom that he is by really zooming in on what the Republican base wants. And so it's going to be interesting to me to see how he's going to defend himself in his right from the right in a primary if he sticks with the 15-week regime when he's got a Republican legislature, many of them asking for him to go further. I mean, yes and no, like not to like throw numbers at you in a podcast format, but 450,000 Republicans voted in Kansas, 275 Democrats voted in Kansas. But 625,000 no votes, which means you've got to make that up with both people who are unaffiliated with either party, so couldn't vote in a primary, and Republicans. So a lot of Republicans in Kansas, like maybe in the hundreds of thousands, maybe aren't as far right on this issue as the sort of you would have thought for 20 years ago. Steve?

Yeah. Yeah, Jonah and I got a note from a very sharp, politically active, conservative out in Washington state, who said, for what it's worth, the abortion issue kicked our ass out here. There was some polling apparently that suggested it moved voters, Democrats who were running there and in some primaries spent a lot of time and money talking about abortion, trying to elevate it to an issue that would be on par. with the economy. And at least this smart guy thinks there's reason to believe that it worked, at least in some limited way. We need more data points. Kansas is one. I think maybe there's more to learn from what happened in Washington. But it's not a nothing thing. And I think pro-lifers who are downplaying it and pretending shrugging it off and pretending that a couple hundred thousand people voted the way they did because the ballot language was unclear, I think they're fooling themselves.

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All right, Jonah, a lot of other primaries on Tuesday night, like lots. What's the one that's sticking out in your head a few days later? What mattered? Oh, I mean, the one that rankles the most, at least for me, is Pete Meyer and Michigan. And can I just get a ruling? Because I thought I was pretty confident. His last name was Meyer.

The store chain is called Myers, which is a family store chain. And yet I've listened to a bunch of podcasts and cable shows. And people are like, I think it's pronounced my, meager, me or? Oh, God. Definitely, Meyer. Okay, that's what I thought. But I was like, at some point, you're like, how could these people be confused? I listened to the commentary podcast and I got like, I think, three different pronunciations

of it. And I've met his dad. Like, nope, definitely Meyer. Well, that settles it then. Yeah. And anyway, so that's the one that rankles for all the obvious reasons. Meyer voted to impeach, the first freshman to vote to impeach a president of his own party in American history. He did it for the right reasons.

He has not gone full Liz Cheney, right, in the sense that he's kind of kept his head down and tried to be a good party guy while at the same time. standing by his, you know, his courageous vote. And the Democrats poured a huge amount of money into boosting his back guano crazy opponent. And, you know, as you guys know, we get a lot of flack for criticizing Democrats about this saying, why are you letting Republican voters off the hook? I am not letting Republican voters off the hook. Shame on them. I think there was a terrible choice I've never been the let the people decide

and I've always been for the let the people decide about various things. I've never been one of these people who thinks and therefore wisdom and their wisdom resides. They voted for this guy who's a sort of an election denying Goober and this is a general and I believe that this is a district

that Biden won so it is basically sacrificing a guy who according to Democrats did something profoundly heroic and civic-minded and patriotic to replace him with a guy who, if he wins, becomes another

part of the crazy caucus in Congress. And I just think it's a shame because I think he, you know, I've talked to him a few times. He takes the job really seriously. He takes his responsibilities and his oath really seriously. And he was a valuable voice on porn policy stuff. You know if I had some disagreements

with it. Okay, I'm going to push back on three fronts here, Jonah. And then the rest of you should get in, too. One, On the Democrat side, they will say, first of all, the district has also been redistricted. This is now a plus 9D district, potentially. And so if they got the other guy, this wasn't a close call. The crazy guy will lose now. They will have a Democratic seat.

And even if Peter Meyer's great in many respects, he's still a Republican and a Democrat is better. And they weren't taking some risk with democracy. That's the Democratic side. Two, on the mid-Republican side, they would say, you think this was all about the impeachment vote? It wasn't. He took several other votes that were simply way, way too moderate. He was a very, very moderate Republican,

one of the most moderate in the entire caucus. Those guys are always going to be vulnerable to Republican challenges. You're picking one vote and saying that that was the referendum on that. It wasn't. Three, the far-right people will say any Republican was going to lose this seat. So it didn't actually matter. So we might as well send a message to, you know, these like wishy-washy Republicans. Again, set aside the impeachment vote. Like, stop voting for Joe Biden's agenda. And we were going to lose the seat no matter what. Okay. To which I respond.

And Siri Adam, the first one, if you were talking about pre-2016 or pre-2020 politics, I would say, man that's hardball but that's you know uh i don't like it i don't think but it's i also don't think i think it's utterly defensible on on on on on hardball practical politics grounds democrats i mean i'll put it this way a week ago um when the crazy guy in maryland won the nomination for governor dan cox westmore the democrat who got the democratic nomination he's on TV, on Morning Joe, being asked about this. And on the one hand, he says, oh, look, you know, it wasn't, you know, all the Democratic ads did was inform voters of who this guy was. And, you know, and I don't think that made the difference anyway. And, you know, and just sort of lighten up.

And then a minute later, he's like, but this guy poses an existential threat to democracy. he is going he he can win um we have to we have to run as if he is going to win we have to do everything we can to stop him that is essentially the democratic's position is that when criticized it's this whole mont and bailey thing where when criticized they say oh we were just doing this little thing anyway there all these others that kind of stuff and then when they're allowed to give full flower to their or full voice to their you know campaign rhetoric is this person um is poses an is like a meteor posed at democracy barreling towards us and we must do everything to stop them you can't have it both ways logically or morally on that on the second part okay so like he

was a moderate voter on various things i'm one of these people who's always defended rhinos in and i don't think he's a rhino but like you know like scott brown in massachusetts has to run as a moderate republican in massachusetts the people i have contempt for i've always had contempt for, were the conservatives in deep red safe districts or states who took no chances and never swang for the fences, but then denounce these people who had to take risks way out in frontier country politically. I think it's pretty clear Meyer had a better shot of winning. And I also just don't buy that there are a huge bunch of strategic voters out there who said, oh, let me vote for this crazy dude to send a strategic message about, you know, not voting for

the Biden agenda, let's put it this way. But for Myers vote to impeach Trump, I think Meyer gets the nomination this week. Steve. It's not this complicated. This is a brand new member of Congress who, within a couple days of being sworn in, took a, a vote of conscience. He could have voted the other way. Virtually everybody in his conference did. He struggled with the vote. He talked to people he respected. He decided, knowing full well that it could cost him his political career, to do what he believed, to vote on principle, to act on principle. He has defended the vote several times, many times, since he made it, including a couple times here on this podcast. This is what you want legislators to do. This is what you hope all

legislators will do. The fact that so few of them do it is one of the reasons that we're having the problems we're having right now. Democrats have spent 18 months screaming about Republicans giving into Trump about Republicans' political expediency, caving to political expedients, doing anything, sacrificing their principles on the altar of Trumpism. And they are doing exactly the same thing. That's what this is. Megan McArdle has a very good column about this in the Washington Post today.

When Democrats do this, when they say this doesn't matter, none of this stuff matters, we're going to do what we need to do. yes, on the one hand, as Jonas says, on the one hand, we think democracy is imperiled by these MAGA conspiracy theorists and we need to do everything we can to keep them as far away from office as possible. And then on the other hand, they say, but here's a half a million bucks. Good luck to you. It deepens the cynicism that everybody has about the system. And it ought to, it ought to make people more cynical.

I think this is sort of the textbook example of why people hate politics. And I think it's dangerous for the Democrats to be doing it. And I have a particular problem with never-Trumpers who have been talking about the importance of democracy, framing their arguments as pro-democracy, who have attacked Peter Meyer. They're criticizing, they're sort of shrugging their shoulders at what Democrats have done. They kind of stipulate, yes, this is, this is bad. They shouldn't have done it. And then they attack Peter Meyer for not being pure enough, for whining, for crying.

I think it's outrageous. I think Peter Meyer is an admirable guy. The people who heard him on these podcasts know why. And as Jonah said, I have pretty profound differences with him on national security issues. But I trust because I've seen him, I've talked to him, I've seen him make these arguments, that he's arguing from a position of principle. That's what I want everybody to do, Democrats and Republicans. That's not what happened to you. Okay, David, I assume you agree with almost everything that Jonah and Steve said.

So my question to you is, does this matter? Right? There's the argument that on the one hand, this was a get in line message. On the other hand, two other Republicans who voted for impeachment in Washington state survived their primaries in total maybe four of the 10 will come back. Some retired. Some were redistricted out of their districts, which has nothing to do with their impeachment vote. They were redistricted out by Democrats like Adam Kinsinger in Illinois. I don't know. Sometimes this is politics, right? As I said when we talked about this briefly on advisory opinions, nobody is saying,

that the Democrats shouldn't have run someone against Peter Meyer because out of gratitude for his impeachment vote. Yeah, I mean, you try to beat him if you're Democrats, you try to replace him. We try to win the seat back. To be clear, that wasn't always the way.

There used to be an agreement between Republicans and Democrats that they would not run against leadership. And that has now gone by the wayside, obviously. But it's actually pretty recent that that's the case. So when you say nobody thinks Democrats

should have not run a candidate, I do. I actually think that if you want to be principled about this, that you should have basically not that no Democrat should run, but in terms of air support from the D-Triple-C or the DS, you know, that no one, I guess Romney is the only one who voted for impeachment in the Senate, but from the DNC, these campaign committees, PACs, etc. Yeah, I think they probably should have put their money elsewhere. Well, I'm not even willing to go that far, but I, I, I would say, you MAGA, crazy. No, but I would say, look, what they did,

and the thing you said last week about this, I think, is key for folks. Their ads that they ran were not ads that said, Gibbs is too radical for Michigan. He would practically storm the Capitol. He's a conspiracy theorist. He's a, you know, they didn't do that. They said, he's too conservative.

He's for patriotic education. You know, this was not a negative ad in a Republican primary that they ran. And I wish some of these folks in the never-Trump world, fellow never-Trumpers, would stop saying that this was a negative ad run against him in a Republican primary. It was not. And- Anybody who's watched the ad, by the way, David,

Look, to describe it as a negative ad is just not accurate. It's not accurate. I think people who have seen the ad, if you're describing it that way, you're not being accurate about it. It was an ad. I mean, it was an ad you run when you're trying to get the guy elected. That's the kind of ad that you run. If you want to run an ad that says he's really ridiculously radical in this swing district, There was lots of material they left on the cutting room floor,

a ton of material that they left on the cutting room floor. And look, I mean, I think the idea that four out of ten come back of the ten, if that's the way it all ends up, I think that's really bad. I think that's really bad. And here's another thing that I think is really bad. I think it's also really bad that when you have this radical primary challenger, where was the air support from Republicans for Peter Meyer? Where was any sort of support from leadership for Peter Meyer?

I mean, so, you know, there's a lot of blame to go around here. Republican primary voters, heck yeah, they have blame. Republican Party establishment, heck yeah, it has blame, and the Democrats, and the Democrats. And I think the reason why the Democrats, the part with the Democrats that sticks in your cross so much, is that they're going to turn around and say Gibbs is, a threat to democracy. It's that cynical flip. That's what makes it, it doesn't mean that their action was more important than the action of the primary voters. It just means that their action was more cynical than the actions of the Republican primary voters. And that's

what really rankles me. Yeah, I mean, I think the comment about Republican primary voters, at least for my position, and I think a position of most people here, of course that's the case. Of course they deserve fault for voting for an election denier. I mean, if you have criticized election denialism in the past, it goes without saying. And we say it a lot anyway. I do think it's worth noting that there are some Democrats who are speaking out about this. There have been some. David Axelrod on this podcast earlier this week said Peter,

saw his oath as more important than his career, and he voted for impeachment. The Democratic Party should not be lifting up election deniers and making common cause with Trump and his vengeance tour to knock off people who voted for impeachment. There have been others. There were some former Democratic elected officials who put out a letter earlier this week, criticizing this, and some current elected officials. We've had some reporting from Audrey Falberg and others on staff talking to them saying, hey, this is really bad. We shouldn't be doing this. So it's good to see. I wish those voices were louder and I wish there were more of them, but it's good to see that some of them are saying. 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. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at mx.ca. Slash yanex. Steve, I'm coming to you next. A lot of foreign policy stuff here. Let's start with Al-Zawari's very timely demise. Yeah, this was a good moment for the Biden administration and a good moment for the country.

Zawahari was sort of the intellectual backbone of al-Qaeda. He helped merge his Egyptian Islamic jihad with. Osama bin Laden's fighters a couple decades ago made helped make al-Qaeda, build al-Qaeda into the global force that it became, gave it sort of guidance and gave fighters inspiration and had been a bad guy. He'd been involved in the planning of a number of attacks against the United States, the USS Cold, the bombings in East Africa, the embassy bombings in East Africa, the 9-11 attacks, and well beyond. So this is somebody who definitely had it coming. We had a good conversation about this on the dispatch live. It's a big moment. It's a good thing

that he's dead. The obvious question is what was he doing in Kabul? And the fact that he was in Kabul in a neighborhood that was policed by senior Taliban officials, where senior Taliban officials lived reportedly in a house that was owned or had some association with Saraj Haqqqani, who's the acting interior minister of the Taliban. Reportedly there were checkpoints set up that you were required to pass through to get to this area of Kabul Taliban checkpoints. So he wasn't there by mistake. This is what many, many people said at the time that the U.S.

withdrew its troops from Afghanistan, that it's a fool's errand to try to separate the Taliban and al-Qaeda. And they work hand in glove. That's what we've seen. There was a UN report out earlier this summer that al-Qaeda has much more operational freedom and is building and growing in Afghanistan as a result of, the withdrawal. It's a good thing that we could get the intelligence to conduct such an attack, and you heard President Biden say this bolsters his case for an over-the-horizon counterterror capability. But we didn't, we don't have the kind of intelligence we had when we had

boots on the ground there. We, I think we'll be paying for that for quite a while as we see Al-Qaeda continue to grow. I'm going to push back on one thing there. I mean, I don't know what Steve's take on it, but like on Biden's. This idea that this proves that we have the over horizon ability to fight al-Qaeda and Afghanistan

at best is unproven because we don't know how we found out that Zawihiri was there. There's reason to believe, I mean, I'm not saying I know this, but I think it is a plausible theory. that basically the Taliban sold us to Zawahiri.

We were in talks last week about bailing out their central bank or something along those lines because of the humanitarian crisis there. And then a few days later, we just happened to get this just gold intel about Zawahiri being on a balcony at a certain time of day. And we have no, as far as we know, no assets, on the ground one way or the other. But the timing doesn't work there, just to jump in. Because we've been tracking him at, we've been tracking his family at this location for months

and tracking him at this location for weeks. So it's entirely possible. I think your broader point is fair. It's entirely possible there was some kind of what Klan kitchen the other night called a drug deal where the Taliban sold him out. I don't think that's the most likely scenario, but it's possible. Yeah, but my only point is, like it happened recently. There's not, this, without knowing why he was there and how, you know, without, you can be behind,

and it could be at a classified hearing, but like how we found out about this, you know, without spotters on the ground. I mean, like, there's enough questions about all of this. Plus, you know, Biden had said, you know, the war on terror is over when he announced pulling out of Afghanistan. And just so, to my only point is that there are. a lot of legitimate questions asking about this that influence whether or not this proves his contention that we can do over the

horizon stuff in perpetuity going forward and it calls into question the idea of getting out because if the Taliban was giving a dacha and affected the head of al-Qaeda, then it kind of proves that

al-Qaeda was still a problem in Afghanistan to begin with and that they were giving safe haven to terror. David, should Nancy Pelosi have gone to Taiwan? Yes, yes. And double yes, the instant Taiwan told her, I mean, the instant China told her no. That's fair enough. But, you know, is this the Archduke Ferdinand?

Is it going to be worth the consequences? I don't think this is the Archduke Ferdinand. That would be very surprising to me if it was the Archduke Ferdinand. And I want to be clear. I'm not suggesting that they're going to kill Nancy Pelosi when I'm suggesting is sort of this straw that broke the camel's back and leads to a large hot war where everyone's like maybe that specific problem wasn't worth the squeeze. Yeah, you know, in some ways we're getting some deja vu because one of the realities of the Cold War era was that there was just

this constant bluster out of the Soviet Union. You better not. You better not do this. You better. So there was always an argument, well, wait, we should, we shouldn't do X or Y or Z because it's provocative. And so if you're looking at a foreign power that China's very powerful militarily, very powerful economically, and it's always aggressive everywhere all at once, then what ends up happening is you have to pick your spots and you have to choose when and how you're going to push back. Because you can't, it is not an option. It is very, very dangerous, in fact, to always yield to the bluster. That is extremely dangerous. History has taught us time and time and time again that if you're constantly yielding to aggression, you're going to

encourage more aggression. And in your desire to avoid war, you're going to end up making war more likely. At the same time, you don't sit there and push back every single time. You pick your spots. And I think the combination of Russian aggression in Ukraine, which really does snap your mind back to reality, that this era of great power struggle, the era of great power struggle is not over. When the Soviet Union fell, that did not end the possibility of great powers going to war with each other. And this Russian invasion of Ukraine snapped a lot of people back into reality that said, wait a minute, in it, the era of great power aggression is back. And how do we stop it? How do we prevent what happened in Ukraine from happening to Taiwan? And there's a number of ways that you do that. And one of the ways, though, that you do that is you begin to make our ambiguity, or our strategic

ambiguity, a little less ambiguous. In other words, you make it known to China that we do have deep ties to Taiwan. We do strongly support Taiwan, and strategic ambiguity is a lot less ambiguous, the more it looks like China is getting actually aggressive. And what's one of the ways that you do that? A traditional way that you signal support for an ally is a high ranking delegation goes to visit. Now, the thing that complicates this, of course, is that there's indications that the administration didn't want her to go, but they didn't exert their will. quite enough to make Nancy Pelosi not go. And the other thing that's interesting is this happened at a time

when there were a lot of U.S. forces in the Pacific. There was a major naval exercise going on, a major naval. So you had the Reagan, you had the America, you had the Tripoli, all right there close by. And so that diminishes the risk. Now, does it increase China's hostility down the road? you know, look, the conventional wisdom has been for a long time. If China thought that they could take Taiwan and succeed in taking it and holding it,

they're going to do it. It's not like they have a moral qualm about this. So anything that tells China that the risk calculus is maybe greater than you think it is, in my view, is a good signal to send, even if they pitch a tantrum about it. All right. Last topic, because I don't want to give it short shrift. Steve, there was a big NATO vote in the Senate yesterday. dividing the Republican caucus to some extent. Give us an update. To a very little extent,

there was one Republican. As it turned out. There was one Republican who voted against admitting Finland and Sweden to NATO, and it was Josh Hawley who gave a speech that I thought was much more performance than persuasion trying to stand out as a NATO skeptic, making an argument that I think is rather absurd on its face, that if we allow Finland and Switzerland, Sweden into NATO, it will distract us somehow from China. Pretty ridiculous argument. I think it is interesting to me that you had the Republican Party so unified in this moment. And the vote overall was 95 to 1.

So unified in this moment. Like Rand Paul. Yeah. Mike Lee, who's been skeptical of deeper NATO engagement. And I don't think that happens, obviously, with. without Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But it's a long way from where we were just a few years ago with Donald Trump's repeated attacks on NATO.

As I've said before, I thought Trump made a valid point generally about NATO members making good on their pledge to spend their requisite level on defense and national security. But a lot of his attacks, I thought, were misguided. And you heard Republicans flirt with those. Some of some Republicans amplify those Trump attacks. At least for the moment, that appears to have disappeared. We'll see how long that holds.

Jonah. NATO. Does it matter? Like, does it really matter what countries are in it if, you know, are we really not going to defend Finland? Although, that being said, we haven't, we have defended Ukraine. we haven't defended Ukraine. There's sort of two ways to look at that, I guess. Yeah, I mean, I mean, I think they don't matters enormously. I think Finland and Sweden are actually pretty impressive, given their size and their

reputations, pretty impressive military, you know, assets. You know, arm neutrality is so different than sort of just pacifism. Like Switzerland would be very hard to conquer. and similarly Sweden and Finland they have a long history of understanding the threat to their east and so I do think it matters as a military thing I think it matters

I think Steve's point about how we've moved on from the should we get out of NATO thing to we're now talking about expanding NATO is pretty significant in such a short order of time short period of time and I don't even take Josh Holley

his opposition to it as a as a sign of something because if there was a serious undercurrent of seriousness, which is a terrible locution, serious undercurrent of seriousness, but if this was a serious movement about

opposition to this, if this was, if his arguments actually had purchase about how this is going to distract us from China, then of course Rand Paul and Mike Lee would be out against it. You know, Mike Pompeo be out giving speeches against it.

Ted Cruz would be, you know, tweeting really clever gifts against it. None of that is going on. And I think whether the average American really thinks NATO matters that much, someone who really thinks NATO matters is Vladimir Putin.

And, you know, this is a very big deal for Europe fixing some of its free rider problems with America providing the umbrella security for it. But, you know, just as quickly as things changed in the last two years on the question of NATO, things can change again. So, you know, it requires vigilance. But NATO is a hugely successful and important institution that was saved from

obsolescence by Vladimir Putin. Yeah, you know, I think the 95 to 1 vote speaks volumes. At the end of the day, people are able to recognize a tremendous strategic gift when it's staring at them, unless you're wanting to immediately run on Tucker. And so this was an obvious vote. And just to put a pen on what both Steve and Joan have said, Sweden and Finland have quite capable militaries. Sweden in particular has an indigenous arms industry that's really, really impressive. And they're going to integrate very seamlessly into the larger NATO defense. structure. They're a real value add. This is not a situation where you have like, you know, a Montenegro or a country that has zero, zero capacity to add, but is taking a, you know,

but is getting an enormous benefit from NATO. These two countries add to NATO. They, they add to NATO's defense capabilities. It's a tremendous loss for Vladimir Putin over the long run. And, you know, NATO is arguably the most successful defensive alliance in history. It's hard to think of a more successful defensive alliance than NATO. And to see it get a second life and an expansion, I think, is a big win for us. Now, that's not to say that that's going to dictate how the war in Ukraine goes. Got lots of concerns there. But in the big picture, the addition of Sweden and Finland, that's a big win for the United States

and for its allies. And that'll be all from us today. Instead of a not worth your time, we want to send our thoughts and prayers and condolences to the family of Congresswoman Jackie Wolarski and Zachary Potts and Emma Thompson, who were all killed this week in a car accident. You know, a lot of people come here to dedicate their lives to public service to help make this country just a little bit better. And it's worth remembering that. And thank you to their families for the service that they gave all of us. This is a lot. SquareSpace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online.

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