The Dispatch Podcast - Feminist Cul-de-sac

Episode Date: March 11, 2020

Sarah, Steve, Jonah, and David discuss the state of the Democratic primary after Joe Biden puts more distance between himself and Bernie Sanders, the team then take a feminist detour, and finishes with the effect coronavirus is having on the economy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch Podcast. This is your host, Sarah Isger, joined as always by Steve Hayes, David French, Jonah Goldberg. This week, we have to talk about last night. Is the Sanders campaign over and where does Biden head from here toward November? And coronavirus. I guess the topics really wrote themselves this week. Let's dive right in. All right, Jonah, exciting night last night.

Maybe, kind of. Not totally unexpected, though. Joe Biden does very well in Michigan, in Missouri, in Mississippi. Bernie Sanders does win North Dakota. It looks, it's a deadlock tie right now in Washington State, but even assuming Bernie pulls this out. Will Democrats cancel the debate on Sunday? Let's put it this way.

I think Biden shouldn't do the debate, but he shouldn't be the one to get blamed for canceling the debate, right? Okay. So I think it gets canceled. I think they'll use, I have this mega galaxy brain theory about what's going to happen, where which I will admit smaller solar system brains on Twitter have also come up with that Biden is basically going to run a front porch campaign which is I wrote a comic for the only time six weeks ago to longer than that way that two months ago saying that

that's how he should run basically he doesn't do well on the stump there are too many risks because he can have gaffes the people like the idea of voting for Biden. It's sort of like John Kerry in 2004. Every time he went into his state, his poll numbers went down. And once he left, they went back up because they like the idea of voting for somebody other than him. This is sort of what Jim Clyburn said last night. Yeah, that's right. He said he shouldn't do the debate. They should limit his public appearances. Let him pick and choose when he does stuff. And I suspect that the coronavirus is now the great excuse for that. I'd love to be out there with the people but wink wink i am like right in the middle of the most vulnerable population for this

thing and people shouldn't gather blah blah blah blah blah and i think that would work so i think i think they do cancel it david you talked a little bit about this in your newsletter this week about that perhaps what we're seeing in the collapse of the sanders campaign isn't the collapse of this big progressive movement that was so strong in 16 and has petered out but rather that we overestimated the strength of it in 2016. Well, you know, I briefly mentioned it in my newsletter, but you thoroughly examined it today at thedispatch.com. So I'd encourage everyone to go read your analysis of it. Yeah, I mean, I think at this point, it's kind of clear that this is what happened, that when it narrowed down to Hillary and Bernie pretty early, if you didn't like Hillary, you were

voting for Bernie. And that meant that there was, it seems there could have been a pretty strong miscalculation by Democrats regarding the strength of some of Bernie's progressive ideas, that they miscalculated the extent to which their own electorate was sold on Bernie versus how many of them were voting against Hillary. And look, the strength of this idea that you've articulated on the website, I mentioned in my newsletter. Some other people are picking up around the country, I think is illustrated by the incredible numbers that we're seeing. This isn't Bernie losing by a little. If I put on my James Carvel hat and LSU shirt for a minute, this is a wallop in y'all. I mean, this is a thumping. I mean, this is, there is nothing close about any of this. This is a giant repudiation of Bernie. It's pretty obvious. that Biden is not the polarizing figure that Hillary Clinton is and has always been. So, yeah, I mean, this is a real reevaluation on the Democratic side. And I, you know, projecting forward into the general is perilous at this point because it's only March and there's a lot that

can happen between now and then. But I've tweeted several times. I'll believe Trumpism is a thing when he beats somebody not named Hillary Clinton. And it could well be the case. And this is something to be watching. It could be, it could well be the case that we really overinterpreted this populist Republican swing in part because Donald Trump was running against Hillary Clinton. But, you know, that remains to be seen. One quick note, if there is a state that ever proved that Jonah's loathing for early voting is a precisely right. I'm looking at the numbers from Washington right now with 67% reporting. Elizabeth, it's 32.7% Bernie, 32.5% Biden and 12% Elizabeth Warren. That, you know, that actually is a statistic that'll probably get used in talking about early

voting from now on because it hasn't been, you know, a day or two, like around. on Super Tuesday, which I think is tough. Like, this has now been six days. I prefer the phrasing it'll be used in talking about how Jonah was right. That's how I phrase all, everything, though. So, like, that wouldn't narrow it down too much. See, David did it correctly. The significance out of Washington State is how right Jonah was.

So, Steve. That's how everybody's thinking about it. That's exactly. We should. Turnout-wise, we now have quite a few states to look at. And Iowa was interesting because turnout really didn't go up. It was about three points. And the places that actually had higher turnout were places that Sanders lost.

It was pretty confusing there when we only had the one state to look at. After Super Tuesday, we saw massive turnout much closer to 2008, actually, in some of these states. But it was in Biden-winning areas. And in fact, Sanders' share of the youth vote, he still did very, very well. course. But his share of the youth vote was declining. And I mentioned all that because, A, turnouts the game in a lot of ways heading into November. But also, does this mean that the Democratic Party is actually now the centrist party in the United States as the Republican Party has shifted, right? Yeah, it's probably a little premature to say that. I mean, I, for one, did buy the shift

that we thought we saw in the Democratic Party with Bernie's strength in 2016 and the way that candidates, at least in the early months of the 2020 Democratic primary, were campaigning. It's, you know, looking back on this now, there were indicators that some of this must have been apparent to the candidates themselves, or at least more apparent than it was to me. You know, you remember, Pete Buttigieg was sort of an early endorser of. Medicare for all. He was more or less behind the Green New Deal and then later kind of shed

those positions and a number of other much more progressive positions to try to reposition himself as sort of the non-Burney if there was going to be a non-Burney. So it does make you wonder whether the campaigns themselves were seeing this a lot earlier than we were. Look, I mean, you have to just, I think, stop for a second and remember that all of this supposed strength that we're seeing from Joe Biden, I mean, the strength is the strength, right? The numbers are the numbers. He's dominating. As David says, these were, a lot of these were blowouts. He is not, we've seen this kind of dramatic shift in conventional wisdom. Two weeks ago, he was dead, of course, and everybody was writing him off. Myself included, I thought there was highly unlikely that Joe Biden would be able to. amount to come back. I thought everything was pushing towards a Bernie nomination or just some kind of a convention fight. But the shift in conventional wisdom goes from Biden is dead to Biden is inevitable as the Democratic nominee and, you know, a very, very strong and formidable general election candidate. That may be true. And certainly there are other things that have changed

underlying issues that have changed over the past two weeks that I think benefit Joe Biden, the coronavirus, the economic challenges that we're seeing now and likely to see increase, make him a better candidate. But all of the underlying weaknesses of Joe Biden are still there. I mean, there was a reason he was unsuccessful in his previous presidential campaign attempts. There was a reason that he was struggling as badly as he was when there were more candidates to pick from. I think Democrats sort of collectively, and I think if you're a Democratic voter who wants to the strongest challenger against Trump, you have to point to the other candidates who got out, decided that Bernie was not likely to be their best candidate. And

obviously these candidates stepped aside and there was this consolidation. It doesn't erase the fact that Biden, you know, on things like debates, things like campaigning, content. contemporaneous. Speaking is just not a great candidate. Yeah, look, I agree with all that, except the one thing I would add is that once he won South Carolina, and then certainly after he won Super Tuesday, the change of the conventional wisdom about his prospects of being the presumptive nominee were math-driven, not punditry, not like wishcasting or anything like that, because the Democrats have proportional allotment of delegates, it just looked really hard for putting to do it.

The translating that into, where I agree with you entirely is translating that into, and now he's going to be a really formidable candidate, you know, part of the problem with that is, I think the fact that Hillary actually won the popular vote, people keep forgetting that is hugely significant. We used to not care about the electoral college very much because if you won the popular vote the math dictated that you would carry the electoral college so it was kind of a relic and then because of the big sort the two kind of diverged from each other and so it's now much more possible to to win the electoral college as long as you keep the margins kind of low if Biden if these numbers to be interpreted from last night and from Super Tuesday are an indication of just how anti-Hillary

is so much of the electorate the Democratic electorate was then presumably It's not crazy to say he gets 2% more in a general election. And that is enough to swamp the electoral college issues. No question. And if you have, I do think if you have, you can imagine, you know, Joe Biden asking Barack Obama to basically super glue him to Biden's side over that final month, regardless of who he picks as his running mate, which has, I think, some potential to help. But if he asked Barack Obama to basically be everywhere that he is, you could see, he has a lot of making up to do with the youth vote.

I mean, the one place where Bernie, Bernie didn't expand those numbers, as you point out, Sarah. But he dominated Biden in those younger cohorts. His share was the same, but the turnout was lower. Right. No, no. His share actually did go down by double digits in a lot of these states. Oh, that right? And the turnout was lower.

So the turnout dropped by about three points in most states for a youth vote. But Bernie's share of it in Virginia was about 13 points lower in North Carolina. Okay. I stand correctly. But the point still stands because there's a huge gap. There's a difference between 67% he got of the youth vote in 2016 to 555% of the youth vote we got in 2020. That's what I was getting at, I dismissed vote. And I think that has implications, short-term implications for how the Democrats treat Bernie.

I mean, I think it will be increasingly clear that the math suggests he's not going to be the nominee. And at some point, you know, you can't keep up. I think it's almost literally impossible at this point that he could get the plurality. if you just assume that Biden gets 25%? Right. And Bernie got 75% everywhere? I don't know that Bernie can make it up. There's one asterisk on all of this, which is Arizona and Florida are still coming up,

and that has a large Latino population. We're talking about the youth vote, but of course Bernie in California doubled up on Biden with the Latino vote there. Latest polling, David, has Biden up with the Latino voters in Florida. Not totally surprising given that that's a – A lot of – that's a very mixed Latino state there. Arizona, he is closing the gap with Sanders, but Sanders is leading in the Latino vote in Arizona. You know, is that going to be Sanders' hold to life?

I don't think he has one really, but to the extent that, I mean, there's any at all. I mean, I suppose he could put some hopes around Arizona, but Florida is a big enough state. it just swamps whatever happens in Arizona. And Florida looks to be just a perfect storm for Biden. So you have a lot of older voters in Florida. They're swinging heavily towards Biden. You have a lot of suburban voters in Florida. They're swinging heavily towards Biden. Bernie has undermined his own appeal to Hispanic voters in Florida by his little Castro dalliance that he had a couple of weeks ago. I mean, this is, for the preceding 65 years. Decades. Yes, and for the preceding 65 years. And so this is something that, you know, if you're Bernie, this is in a normal candidacy, this is when you end it, I think. This is when, for the sake of party unity, you say, you know what, not only am I losing badly, not only have I been thumped, in the short term going

forward, Florida, Georgia is coming up. Georgia, he'll get walloped again in Georgia. there's zero indication that he can come back, and his only hope is to try to so thoroughly humiliate Biden on national television on the 15th, that he, which would not necessarily give him the math that he needs, but would be more likely to mean that the Democratic nominee would be weakened going into the general. And in normal candidacy, this is where you really sit down and you think hard about calling it quits. I mean, for example, in 2008, after it became very clear that McCain, now again, Republicans had more winner take all, but it was pretty clear, pretty early on after a very hard-fought

early phase of the primary that Mitt Romney just wasn't going to get it done, and he stepped back. But I don't think that Bernie is that regular, well, of course, he's not even been a member of the Democratic Party for decades. So the idea that he really cares about the Democratic Party as an institution here, if I'm the Democrats, I've got a little bit of a problem because I don't want Bernie debating Biden in the next few days. I don't want that at all. There's zero upside for the Democratic Party for that taking place. But as you saw from Twitter last night, if you're looking at Bernie Twitter, those guys were crying out that this thing was rigged even as he was getting crushed. And what was some of the evidence it was rigged? Well, some of the evidence is they were taking pictures of people in line in Michigan State, for example, precincts when the networks called the vote for Biden. Well, that line of people would have snaked all the way to Des Moines for it to make a difference in these numbers. And that's how big a route this was. But the anger at this sort of perception of it being rigged is still out there. It would explode if the DNC leans on Bernie too much.

And so there is a problem there. And the Democrats are trying to rely on Bernie to lose gracefully. And I'm not sure that's going to be a great bet. Though it was interesting that last night, Bernie's campaign pretty early on in the night, put out a statement that he would not speak last night or make any public comments about the results, which is normally a we're considering our options moving forward type statement. You know, David Siders in Politico had this line that I just, I don't know how to put it better. It wasn't just the results of the primaries on Tuesday that spelled the end, though they were miserable for Sanders. It was the realization that, for the first time, Sanders campaign had no excuse and nothing better to look forward to.

Right. I mean, that's a pretty good line. Can I commandeer the moderator role here for a second and ask Sarah and her feminist ally, David, a question here. So let's circle back here. Like Hillary Clinton clearly, you know, for the reasons David and you and I have talked about, you know, quite a bit was a singularly unpopular politician in 2016 and lots of blue-collar Democrats just didn't like her or weren't enthusiastic about her.

we don't need to recover that but the only reason it's sort of relevant can i throw in one number on that sure so she had the most unfavorable uh you know over half the country had an unfavorable view of her double digits higher than john mccarrie in o four or john mccain in 08 both who lost right um and hers was you know double digits higher than either of theirs she was the second most unpopular candidate ever to be one of the major party nominees. And Donald Trump was the first. Correct. Yeah. So the story, you know, part of the problem that coming out of 2016 is a point that Seth Maskett at University of Denver has been making is that they don't, there were so many reasons why Hillary lost that it's impossible to focus on a single one. So there's no theory

for why 2016 lost. And without a theory of why she lost, the Democrats were scrambling for a theory about how to win sort of like the generals and the last work kind of thing. One of the things that I found really remarkable in the last week was Elizabeth Warren's withdrawal sparked particularly on MSNBC. It was like watching Iranian state TV when Khomeini died, just rending of cloth

and gnashing of teeth and everyone, it was funereal and they were all on all day long. Sexism is what killed Elizabeth Warren. The glass ceiling is still there. where all those kinds of, no one said that about Amy Klobuchar. No one's saying that the reason why Tulsi, who's still in the race, by the way, isn't catching on because of the toxic masculinity of Democratic primary voters. So how do you adjudicate this question of why is it there's a certain slice of very successful women

who think that Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren are the avatars of womanhood, but other female candidates aren't, and why can't people just dislike these? women without me disliking all women so you know it's funny jona i did not pick this bone with you off our pod i saw you write about it in your newsletter and but i thought about doing it and now i'm going to pick it in front of all of our listeners it's like i just drop the bone in front of you so go for it what are you saying jona drop the bone in front of her that's just so um you know So let me recast Jonah's point that he made in his newsletter, which was basically he really dislikes Elizabeth Warren. He doesn't dislike Amy Klobuchar so much.

And that's proof that therefore his dislike of Elizabeth Warren is not based on sexism, but rather all of these other factors. Or at least I want to hear someone explain it to me why I'm sexist about disliking Elizabeth Warren but not Amy Klobuchar. I'm here for that. Okay. Bring it. First of all, and I've made this point many, many places. Of course, there are a lot of things that Elizabeth Warren did. wrong in her campaign. She did not lose because sexism only. Obviously, that would be way,

way too simplistic. And to your point about Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton did not lose because sexism only. You know, the reverse of what you said about we can't pinpoint what she did wrong, so it's hard to find any one thing, because all of them also explained it. If she had fixed any one thing, she probably could have won. However, I do think there is something about second wave feminists who are all about the same age. Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton fall into this second wave feminism model that in particular culturally, politically, I can, you know, really, really pissed men off. Let's take like fatal attraction. I think Glenn Close is actually a really second wave feminist figure in that movie. She dresses like a man. I like it. I agree.

because I love Anne Archer in that movie. Right, she's, she dresses like a man, she has a deeper voice, and, and right, she's, I mean, a villain, right? She was a lunatic. Yeah, she burnt the bunny. She boils the bunny. Oh, my God. And Elizabeth Warren, I'm now comparing them to bunny killers. I'm very interested to see where this is the best, it's the best defense of Elizabeth Warren I've ever heard.

This is a fascinating feminist defense here. Sarah. Please continue. Yeah. You're interested. Women's plain us, baby. Whereas, I would argue that Amy Klobuchar, Nikki Haley, for instance, are this next generation where actually they are very comfortable with their femininity and the role

that being a woman plays in their world, second way feminists were very uncomfortable with it. It's why they didn't wear makeup. It's why they dressed in non-feminine clothing. And so femininity was always this problem for second wave feminists, not another tool in their kit. And so the reason that you don't mind Amy Klobuchar or Nikki Haley or these others, there is, it's maybe sexism is the wrong term.

Maybe that's too broad. Yep, you like them and their women. Or like them just fine. But there was something particular, I think, about the type of femininity and womanhood that Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren portray, because they were having to break through some of what was still there post-1960s that men find deeply uncomfortable. You can look at the gender gap in Elizabeth Warren's Massachusetts numbers.

I think you can look at some of the media coverage as being very different between Elizabeth Warren and a Joe Biden or other people in her age group. And so, yeah, I think it comes into electability. It comes into Hillary's unfavorables. I get that there was baggage the whole time. But, you know, the reason that Bill Clinton lost his reelection in 1980 for governor of Arkansas really might have been that, you know, people thought he had this upity East Coast bee of a wife who wouldn't change your last name and was insisting on working at a law firm. So can I jump in on this?

Yes, my feminist ally. Yeah, we had a good conversation about this on our podcast. And I think there's two things true at once. I think there is different, there is less tolerance for certain kinds of personality types in women that you would have, then in men. So I think you could have the exact same personality type. A woman has it, and there's less tolerance for that. than you would see in a man having it. So I do think that that is that is something that is you know, goes to Sarah's point about this sort of second way feminism and one of the things

that feminists have gotten angry about is some of these aspects of second way feminism. They would say well there's analogs in the way men behave that are fine and yet we're despised for the similar analog when a woman acts like that. I do think there is a point there. But what I would dispute is that it would have that that point has anything material to do with Elizabeth Warren's decline. So whether it was a factor on the margins, maybe. But her decline wasn't this barely eking out a loss. I mean, she went from a frontrunner position in October where she was looking like she was in a commanding lead or at least in a place of real contention with the exact same personality type to absolutely, and you can look at the 538 averages

and real clear politics averages to really falling off. And what are some of the things that happened around that time? And one of the central things was when asked very direct questions about this Medicare for All plan, she really, and often just embarrassingly dodged, just embarrassingly on national TV. There's nothing about personality type there. She just dodged it. And then when she finally came out with a plan, the interesting thing to me is a lot of the people who are, can I use a millennial term, standing her now, you know, who are standing her all over MSNBC? Can you translate that for us, Gen Xers. It comes from an Eminem song where he wrote about a super fan named Stan. And so now it's turned into a verb. To stand someone is to be their biggest like over the top kind of creepy

stalkerish fan. But it's not meant to be creepy anymore. Right now it's a compliment. And now it means like super fan. Yeah. Yeah. And my most perhaps one of my most embarrassing things, if I actually cared about knowing what young people says, I did not know what the word was until I first heard it from New York mayor, de Blasio. And I was like, oh, crap. Groundhog killer, de Blasio. Anyway, I'm sorry, David. You didn't actually kill the gun.

But anyway, some of the people who are really... Groundhog, truther. Some of the people are really taking, who are really lamenting her loss now. Let's go back to the book of lamentation. So lamenting her loss now were people who, when she came out with this Medicare funding plan, it came, it went over with these guys. like a lead balloon. I remember looking at this Medicare funding plan, and I thought, this thing doesn't, this thing is, is so bad. I feel like it's gaslighting us. And I thought, I want to read

somebody. Yeah. David, all of that can be true, but every candidate has problems. This is why these discrimination lawsuits are so hard and everything else, because there's always something else you can point to. I totally agree. I thought she should have run a very different two-income trap campaign and she didn't and I can point to that as well but it doesn't mean that other candidates didn't make mistakes who then you know Joe Biden has made plenty of mistakes but it was yeah I mean Joe Biden's in a different I think he's in a different starting position than her but true and the mistakes that she made say to go from frontrunner to with these identifiable inflection points dropping precipitously and then say sexism is a material again

And the words key, material part of that. I just don't think it's a material part of it. And I think that the mistakes that she made sort of went to the heart of how she was pitching herself to voters, right? I mean, I am this person of integrity and I have plans. I know my stuff. You're going to like my stuff. And then she's asked, as David says, she's asked these very basic questions. And I don't think it's probably that people were, you know, familiar with the details of her Medicare

for all plan and we were upset that she wasn't defending, you know, one provision or another. It's just that she was so obviously not being straightforward about these things. And on the one hand, you know, she's not, she's not the first politician to be less that straightforward. But I think built on the history of her difficulties with the truth, the fact that she had lied. I mean, she, you know, look, look at the, all of her Native American claims. I mean, she stood by them. She chastised people for criticizing her, even raising questions about her original claims. And, you know, eventually she ended up apologizing for that.

That's a pretty big, for the average voter who may not be paying attention, that's a pretty big deal. I don't think Sarah disagrees with any of that, right? Nope. Yeah, I just, and I saw it's weird. I'm the one who brought this up. I hijacked the podcast, and I'm the one who's most convinced by her argument. I think there is something gendered to. Elizabeth Warren's frequency, I'm more interested in why she gets this...

The benefit of it with a certain subset of the media who don't feel the same way about Klobuchar or Kirsten Gillibrand or Kamala Harris. There's something about Elizabeth Warren that screams, I am the Joan of Arc of chicks, and I just don't get it. I'll tell you another frustrating part, speaking of that, which is I saw this, you know, sit-down interview. this isn't the first time this has happened, where they get these, you know, women who have worked for some of the female candidates together to talk about these issues. And I'll tell you how many of those I was invited on in 2016 when I worked for the only female candidate as the deputy campaign manager, not the press secretary. So there's not only a double standard within the system

as a whole. There's a double standard within the Democratic Party. I do think it matters that Elizabeth Warren made it the furthest. She was the last woman to drop out. And I think there was this like, ah, shucks. Realization. Tulsi is still in the race. Okay. Okay. We have a groundhog truther over here and a Tulsi truther over here. I think here's the biggest picture I can paint you. We have not had a woman president. And there are many reasons that I'm sure we could all point to for why that maybe specifically in any given year hasn't been the case. But over the course of American history, when we talk about rights, let's take voting rights, all men were given voting rights before women.

It is not surprising to me that the country was more comfortable with a black man being president than a woman yet. And so they're absolutely, for all of the other reasons. I take your point. Look at that black man as a candidate. And then compare that black man to the two women we're discussing here, Hillary, Clinton, Elizabeth. Because those are the only women that were able to make it through. They're horrible candidates. They were terrible, awful candidates.

I got to tell you, they were, I know I'm not allowed to say this, they were unlikable. Barack Obama, whatever you thought of him, Steve. He pitched himself as likable. And I didn't agree with, I don't know that there's a thing I agreed with Barack Obama on, but he was far more likable as a candidate than Hillary Clinton. ever would be, and Elizabeth Warren was. You found him likable because you're more likely to find men likable. Really?

Did you find him more likable? No, I mean, wait, let her answer that question. Did you find him more likable? We got some serious cross-examination going on here. Sarah, you've got to reiterate here. Was Hillary Clinton or Elizabeth Warren more likable than Barack Obama? I'm just interested. Genuinely curious.

I'd be prepared to be called a racist. Oh, sure. He picked a white candidate. The dispatch goes. By the way, I just want to say that there's one data point that also, I think, needs to be entered that makes me... Totally letting it off the hook, by the way. Is that, I'm a feminist ally here. I'm coming to a rescue.

Wait, coming to my rescue is not a feminist ally to say. Jonah, the term is white-nice. You couldn't defend yourself. Hold on, little lady. I'll take care of this. No, I think that my distaste and hatred and animosity for Beto O'Rourke is gendered. That I think there's something about his behavior as a dude. It's like a dude bro.

It's something I hate in men that makes me sympathetic to you. Maybe there's just something in some women that I dislike. And the fact that there's something in some men I dislike, like everything that Bato O'Rourke says and does. he's kind of like pajama boy come to life makes me think that there's something here but anyway we should probably move on since we're all going to be dead

in a week from coronavirus Steve's never going to let me down if I don't answer this and Steve again I will take your question a little bit broader the only women who can make it through to the point of being able to run for their party's nomination had to run through such a gauntlet in the first place that

you had to have certain personality traits to get that far and then those personality traits are deemed unlikable when you get far enough, if that makes sense. And I think actually you can look at CEOs like Carly Fiorino, who was the first to be of Fortune 50 female CEO. I think you can look at Supreme Court justices, the number of women Supreme Court justice who don't have any children,

for instance, compared to the general population. Like, we're, this is a huge self-selecting issue of women who get to the very, very top of their profession, and then we deem them unlikable. So, okay, well, we're very sorry for those of us. Mark me down as unconvinced on the last point. I'm sorry. Thank you for going down the feminist cul-de-sac.

We have turned around. We're heading. Title of a new podcast coming to you from the business. The feminist cul-de-sact. Hosted by Jonah. Who can rescue you if you need it. Hey, I went to an all-women's college. I can talk.

On the plus side, men seem to be dying at a higher rate from coronavirus than women, slightly. It's a professional transition there. so obviously coronavirus is the number one issue in the news across the board we're finally starting to see though some tangible legislative political proposals for what to do on the economic side as tests finally are getting out we have millions of tests now that you know on the checkbox of triage problems we're getting through some of the public health ones now we have the economic ones. Steve, despite not being my feminist ally, payroll tax proposals, delaying April 15th tax day. There's been various suggestions along these lines. What do you both make of them in terms

of will they help, but also the likelihood that any of this happens? Yeah, I mean, I think either of those proposals could conceivably help forestall a recession. The question to me is whether they're wise, and whether they're wise, particularly in the context of our overall fiscal picture. I mean, it should surprise no one that the first thing that the government wants to do. I mean, those are some core Republican proposals right now. There are also Republicans who are pushing, or at least floating, flat-out bailouts broadly, but specific bailouts to travel industry, hospitality industry, the industries that should have probably planned for maybe not something like this,

but for these kinds of challenges. And Democrats, I guess, unveiled their plan or parts of it this morning, Wednesday morning, and it has, as you might imagine, a good number of sort of giveaways as well, bailouts as well. I think you can make an argument for some of the tax relief. I'm not sure each of the tax relief proposals is likely to have its own problem, right? If you do a payroll tax cut, which I'm for in basically almost every circumstance. I think it's a good idea.

That will help people who are collecting paychecks. It doesn't help people who aren't collecting paychecks or people who are collecting paychecks in different ways. So you worry that you're helping some people and maybe not helping people who might need it most. To me, the bigger question is what is the proper role of the federal government in terms of forestalling these economic problems when I think we can point to at least part of the mishandling of this whole situation by the federal government in causing some of these or exacerbating some of these economic problems. What could the federal government have done sooner?

Well, I mean, certainly had the tests, right? And that's not a small thing, right? If you look at what's happening right now in South Korea, the reason they've been successful is because they're testing at an extraordinary rate. And they're taking the necessary steps after they have identified people who are carriers. The United States hasn't done that. We are, depending on which expert you believe, two weeks, maybe three weeks behind South Korea. and that is going to have massive, massive effects.

I think people want to shrug off the lack of tests or the problems. I think it could have very serious and long-lasting consequences. David, Chuck Grassley said right now the payroll tax holiday is not needed and it doesn't have bipartisan support. Right. Do we get there? You know, it's really. tough to say. I feel like some of the conversation about payroll tax, the conversation about

economic stimulus feels to me to be a sideshow. It really feels like a side show if we don't get a real handle on the true extent of the presence of the virus in our society. And because you can do a payroll tax cut, you can do a payroll tax holiday, but if the virus really is moving through our society, people aren't going to be going to any malls with this extra cash. Amazon warehouses, are they going to be running at full capacity if this thing is moving through our society? So it seems to me that absolute job one is getting a handle on how bad is it and taking the steps to do something about that. And again, I'm glad Steve brought up Korea. I'm looking at the numbers right now of their aggressive response. So if you

go back to February 20th, they had diagnosed a total of about 45 or so cases. They began to see huge growth in the number of cases diagnosed positive tests peaking with 909 positive tests in one day. Well, that went all the way down by March 10th to 131. So think about that. Between February 29th and March 10th, which is, you know, 10 days, you go from 909 to 131, increasing the chances that what you had in South Korea is a really a momentary blip of real anxiety, followed by decisive public health response that ends the crisis to where there's not really so much of a need to take these dramatic economic steps. And that should be our priority. I feel like if we can get this handle on flattening this curve in the United States, that's going to do more ultimately for

public confidence in the economy. It's going to do more for industry or commerce than throwing several hundred new billion dollars of deficit finance tax cuts onto the plate. Now, you know, is there are there certain kinds of targeted relief for industries and communities specifically hard-hist hit? I would be open to that idea. But as a general rule, I feel like if we're going to be talking about this, the economy so much, I feel like that's kind of part of the problem. Right now, our focus needs to be on public health. Stock markets come back. GDP can grow again.

But if we don't have a sense of what we're dealing with and we now have many more tests out there, test kits out there moving into circulation, but we're still way behind on that. I mean, just way behind. And so to me, let's get the public health issue under a better sense of what the public health issue. Then we can talk about payroll tax cuts, but consider me skeptical about how effective that would be if we don't have the public health issue under control. Jonah, if we do see that curve bend down, let's say two weeks, not 10 days, and the curve is bending the other way and we're down to the number of new infections, you know, see. significantly lower than they are today, will this have just been a blip that doesn't matter economically or politically in six months? Yes, if that happens, but I have zero expectation that will happen.

Because no matter what, even if, you know, even if all of a sudden that special Geneseecois that Donald Trump has, because his uncle was a physicist at MIT, kicks in and he completely tackles us the right way. The number of new cases is, as a fact of math, is going to explode in the next two weeks because we haven't done much testing. And so those cases, the actual infections already exist. And like the drunk looking for his car keys

where the light is good, we're stumbling around not knowing where they are. Once we start testing on a South Korea level scale, we're going to shine a light on these things and they're going to be tens of thousands or at least thousands more. So we can't bend the curve down until we know how high the curve is

and we're not going to find that out for like a week. That doesn't mean we're all going to be like living off a canned goods and drinking puddle water in a month. But Jonah does that anyway though. I mean, I do that on Saturday nights, but it's it's going to get

it's as an expression of the math, it's going to look a lot worse before it gets better. And that's why I agree with David is I think one of the reasons why people don't trust Trump on this is that he's constantly whined to steer the conversation, to the extent you can stay on topic at all about it, steer it towards the economy, how the Dow, he was telling Peter Baker, you know, hey, we were like we were shoo-in to get hit 30,000 on the Dow before this and all that kind of stuff. He's really pissed off. He feels like he's been robbed of a good economy.

I kind of understand that as a base lizard brain kind of thing. But it's not reassuring to the public if when they want to hear about, is my grandmother going to survive this? And he's saying, hey, look, you know, only old people get this. People should still go to work. That's a real problem for him. Yeah. And when he's talking about the economy, he's talking about the economy because he's talking about himself. Right?

He's talking about his political prospects. I mean, that's what he cares most about. We've seen this again and again and again. He wants to keep the cruise ship off of San Francisco because he doesn't want the numbers to go high because the numbers wouldn't be good for him. I mean, this is the way that Donald Trump views things. It should surprise absolutely no one. And that is, I think, a big part of the problem. It's not just that he hasn't been saying the kinds of things that one would want from a leader in this moment.

He's been doing, in my view, almost the opposite at every turn, downplaying the severity. of the flu, I mean, he was tweeting out two days ago that this is basically just nothing worse than the common flu, I think, was the phrase he used that he put out those numbers. Meanwhile, you have the people who have worked on infectious diseases for decades, for the careers, in virtual unanimity saying, this is so much worse than the common flu. The potential for catastrophic results here without the government taking things seriously is a big problem. And we have seen emerge over the past week, maybe week or two, this partisan divide in how people are perceiving this threat in the same way that we see this polarization

in every other aspect of our lives. The difference here is that there are potentially serious health consequences to this partisan divide. Right. This isn't an opinion on whether you trust the news, this is, you know, whether you're still going out and licking doorknobs. Right. I mean, if you have, if you have people. That's the other thing Jonah does on Saturday. If you have people constantly telling you that this is really nothing to worry about it. Remember, Rush Limbaugh said it was the common cold. You've had, you know, a wide variety of people on the center right saying, no big deal, don't worry about this. This isn't really a problem. This is an attempt to get, you know, Democrats in the media to get. You know, Donald Trump. They're just using this. They're exaggerating this very common basic, non-threatening thing to get Donald Trump. And you have people believing this. I had a conversation with a friend who was trying to get his father to take this seriously and said basically, my dad

isn't listening to me about these things because he's listening to people who are telling him it's no big deal. And this guy was in some level of anguish that he was not able to convince his dad to take this thing more seriously because his dad was potentially in a, you know, one of the people in a threatened class. And, you know, it's about a double digit, more than double digit. Sixty-two percent of Republicans see news reports about the seriousness of the coronavirus as, quote, generally exaggerated, which is double Democrats. Yeah. And this is the problem. I mean, you know, if you're going out in a group setting or you're going to get on a train to New York city or you're getting on a flight. The problem is the people who aren't taking this stuff

seriously and aren't taking the necessary precautions. And if they don't think it's serious and they're not, you know, self-quarantining or avoiding groups or not taking these trips, they are the problem. Right. So you hear a lot young people saying, well, it's not dangerous for me. It's not. I think I just said that. Yeah. But no, I mean, but there's this, um, this. This very strange, how I put this, it's kind of a die marker for the ill health of our civil society, where you have people, it's sort of lighting up how some people are just simply, you know, I don't want to go full sore of Amari and trigger David here, but there is this sense in which, you know, people are revealing their actions. atomization in a way that is kind of depressing. David, something that I read that has been sitting and just circulating in my brain is that I've often thought that the black swan term is massively overused.

There's a lot of things that we're like, oh, that's a black swan. Like, there can't be that many black swans. And someone said, this is a gray rhino, as in we knew an outbreak would happen at some point every year that there's a flu. We're looking at the H and N factors to see when it will happen that an avian flu jumps directly to humans and skip sort of the pig route and all of the science that's behind this. None of this is new. We've known this for two decades. And yet, here we are acting like this is a Black Swan public health event and economic event. Right. I mean, you know, we have such a short memory these

days that we think of these things. It's almost as if because there's so much of the sort of the media class, the professor class, and also the professor class, so much of sort of the opinion forming classes of the U.S. are so focused and centered around this one particular website, Twitter, that you almost start to feel like, does anyone remember anything that occurred before Twitter existed. And it seems as if we have such a short memory about infectious diseases, we have such a short memory about various public health crises. And I wrote a newsletter yesterday plug for the French press, become a member of the dispatch.com,

and you can receive the French press, where I said, look, this, one of the problems that we have is this is a, a crisis that requires a lot of trust in a very low trust time. So you're having to try to trust officials in the Centers for Disease Control and various state public health officials. You don't know who these people are. You're having to trust expertise in the quote unquote deep state when you've been conditioned to not trust anything that comes out of the deep state. You're listening to media figures when not only have you gotten reason not to trust media figures because there have been individuals who've made major mistakes over the past several years, you also have this manufactured distrust where it's in a lot of people's partisan interest to try to make you

disbelieve everything that you hear from mainstream media sources. And so the numbers are actually more troubling than that sort of top line of do Republicans and Democrats, for example, have different views of the severity of this. When you dive into those numbers, what you see is that Republicans and Democrats, not only do they have different views about the severity of this, what they now have are different views about how they're actually going to behave. So it'd be one thing if Republicans saw it as serious but not quite as serious and we're going to engage in the kind of social distancing and steer clear public spaces in the same way that Democrats would just with less, you know, they're just a little less alarmed, but you have material differences,

18 point difference between Republicans and Democrats as to whether they're going to avoid a sporting event or a concert, 16 point difference between Republicans and Democrats about other public places like restaurants, shopping malls, and theaters, social gatherings with friends and family, 13 point difference. This is actual human behavior that is materially different that's, I think, and large part driven by media diet. And I'd also be remiss if I didn't note also that on the fringes of what you might want to call sort of the greater Trump grift economy, you're seeing this really weird and gross minimization of this because it's only allegedly only going to hurt people

are 80 and above, as if their lives are not valuable. I mean, there was this tweet string from Candace Owens and you say, why would anyone care about what Candice Owens is tweeting? Well, she's got well over a million Twitter followers. She's got a level of pop cultural celebrity. I even saw a really gross video put out by the pastor of one of the largest megachurches in Ohio, which began with this. What's only older, really old people and people who are already have their heads. health compromise, so you're going to be okay, which is a very strange position to lead with when one of your main concerns as a pastor is to care for the least of these. The bruised read,

he shall not break. That is a, that is a, you know, a powerful scripture. And what we're talking about is a disease that afflicts and will break the bruised reads in our society. And to have circling around the fringes, this, A, it's not a big deal. Or B, if it is a big deal, well, it's only those older people, it's just gross. And look, I mean, going back to the, you know, Jonah brought up the SORAB stuff, I have been talking about the decay in our culture for years. Where I differ with somebody like SORAB and some others is I don't think a top-down imposition of Catholic integralism is the answer to cultural decay.

I'm just trolling you. But we do have a cultural problem. problem, and some of the grifting and crass strains of the larger right wing are contributing to it to it. And to end on a note of cultural decay, so I think we're all spending less time out and about. Conferences have been canceled. Our schedules have freed up or at home on the couch a little bit more. What, Jonah, are you binge watching with your free time? You know, it's funny it's like like there's this TV series Hana which is based on the movie and it's actually really good and she's raised sort of the little girls raised in the wild by her father

and she trains them to be a killing machine and like to be ready at like the age of 15 to just drop into high stakes like violent spy world Jonah my feminist ally and I uh I kind of feel like I've been training my whole life for the self-quarantine regime. I've gotten really good at drinking alone. I know how to binge watch in ways that other people are new to. I'm truly a great endorseman. And I'm a germaphobe. I'm like a passionate germaphobe.

You were made for this moment. It really was. It's sort of like John Keegan, the military historian once explained how the intersection of the bolt rifle, like the Winchester or Remington rifle, the Plains Indian, and the horse in the latter part of the 19th century created the greatest warrior

the world had ever seen. And I feel like that with me for people who have to stay home. So anyway, to answer your question, I would say it's hard because I've already binge through so much. That's the problem. Then maybe you're not made for this moment, right? You didn't pace yourself.

Maybe the times aren't catching up with me. It's a gray rhino, and yet you did not save something for this gray rhino moment. There's a lot of good stuff that's just coming online, but it's going to be weekly. I think I'm going to start rewatching Better Call Saul from the beginning. So great. Because this latest season, the second time in a row, Vince Gilligan has managed to create two television novels that have a beginning, a middle, and an end with a story arc that manages to even. make the slow conversations utterly compelling. So that's where I would start with.

And the best, the best characters. Yeah. I don't know. I don't binge watch much. I don't watch much. When I watch TV, I usually try to catch like an episode of Dateline. That's my really, really guilty pleasure. Catch the mistakes you might have made when catfishings, teenage girls.

Open myself up for that one. I'm tempted, I'm tempted by Game of Thrones. I have not seen a minute of Game of Thrones but David and Jonah liked it So I figure I won't watch that Then first forces probably don't have any Maybe Battlestar Galactica No probably not that either

Balser Galacta was great First two seasons Oh fantastic Jonah I disagree on the finale You need to find the websites though that tell you what order to watch things in Because there's some side pieces basically That you need to For Battle Start?

Yeah No I was totally kidding There's no chance I'm watching Battle So, look, in a hundred years, what I watched. Did you think I was serious? Oh, I'm sorry. I thought that was. Try Luther.

Sarcasm. Idris Ilba, Luther. It's a BBC show where he's a cop in London. Great, gritty, dark crime stuff. Really? Really good. Or just the Sherlock with Benedict Cumberbath. So Sherlock was, Sherlock is one.

Sherlock is one we've been talking about. My wife and I watched, we have not done Sherlock. We will actually love those. We did, we watched Broad Church. Yes. We've seen Broad Church? I thought it was spectacular. And I think there's another season.

and coming, but maybe not for a year. That's one of my very favorite things I've ever watched. Sarah, can I jump in with actually good television? Oh, God. Praise yourself, listeners. Memphis Grizzlies, reruns, more sci-fi. The 1970s. He just watches the first season of the office over and over.

Justice League. Cartoon? So I know Jonah's watching these because I listen to the Remnant faithfully, and he's already had a discussion about it, But Star Trek Picard must watch. Very good. Enjoy it very much. That size is all of us, Steve.

Was that a blasphemous sigh out of Steve? It was. No, I'm sorry. Was that audible? I'm sorry. He's not sorry. Star Trek Picard. I'm about to start Altered Carbon season two.

I enjoyed season one. Not for all viewers. It's pretty gritty. I'm watching Dirty John, which is this. show true crime show and Netflix based on a wildly popular uh la times podcast series that is really good uh so i i'd encourage you to watch that and also was a dateline episode that'll get you started it was all right well all of you were wrong my husband and i have started the sopranos which we

did not watch in real time oh sopranos is fantastic overrated this is my point we prepared for the gray rhino we saved the sopranos for a time such as this when we knew we would need something to do other seen the wire that's a whole separate conversation about so what happens when one spouse has seen something and the other hasn't and how you then like yeah he enjoyed it he wants to rewatch it but then like for me like I don't want him being like oh wait hold on like no I like experiencing things together I mean that's a whole philosophical marriage discussion I think yeah Thank you so much for joining us on this, several cul-de-sacs. There were some cul-de-sacs this week.

Appreciate it. And please do subscribe to the podcast, leave a rating. It doesn't just help us, and it does, but it also helps others find our podcast. And join us at the dispatch.com. We'd love to have you. We love sitting in the comments section. You'll find that they, especially on David's pieces, are particularly fun places to live and work.

And we'll see you again next week. Three, two, one. Jesus, David. Wow. That was awesome. Wait, did David hit it? He just might be on a bigger delay today. Wow.

Because David, from our end, it looks like you have a neurological disorder. Not a great clapper. Let's try one. All right. Just to make sure that's what it is. Three, two. Three, two, one, clap. What are you guys doing?

I clapped. I got nervous. It's like parallel parking. This is where, by the way, if we were live streaming this, this is just gold. Like, people would love this, that we can't clap. It was because he wasn't doing his video game. You got distracted.