The Dispatch Podcast - Final Push in Virginia

Episode Date: October 27, 2021

On today's episode, our hosts discuss a new proposal from Democrats to tax the unrealized capital gains of billionaires. Is it constitutional? Plus, Taiwan and “strategic ambiguity,” the Facebook files, and who will Virginia elect as governor next week? Show Notes: -The Dispatch: “Washington Should Deter an Attack on Taiwan” -Wall Street Journal “The Facebook Files” -The Sweep: Down to the Wire in Virginia -The Dispatch “President Biden Stumps for Terry McAuliffe” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome back to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isger, joined by Jonah Goldberg, David French, and Dispatch Fantasy Football Commissioner, and maybe he has something to do with the morning dispatch, Declan Garvey. This is going to be action-packed, the billionaires tax, Taiwan, Facebook, and we've got an election in Virginia coming up. All right, let's dive right in. Jonah, how are we paying for it?

We're not. We're not paying for anything. No, I mean, like, when we were talking about this in our red oak line planning room over rich brown liquors, I decided to jump on the grade and take this new unrealized capital gain tax thing that is a backdoor billionaire tax which is a backdoor wealth tax

basically I mean here's what Ron Wyden is proposing this massive proposal to basically tax the 700 richest people in America and not on their income but on their unrealized capital gains, mostly essentially from stocks. And the reason why this is controversial, well, there are a lot of reasons why it's controversial, but the essence of it is that it's, some would say, unconstitutional, which we can get to in a second, but also just simply that it would be incredibly cumbersome to do, be very

difficult to do, how do you fix the price, how do you tax people, on things that on a day-to-day basis the market can change the value of, you know, is it effective? It apparently would only raise about $200 billion over 10 years, so it wouldn't cover most of this stuff. And so it feels to me politically more than policy-wise, just an example of Dems in disarray, that they are flailing, they're trying to come up with some sort of messaging, some sort of talking point, some sort of rationale to get to yes with Kristen Sinema and some others. And it's not actually a very serious policy thing.

Even the head of the Ways and Means Committee says, no way. This is crazy. We'll get to the constitutional question in a second. But Sarah, just as a political thing, do you see this as the way forward? Or do you see this as just more panicking inside the lifeboat? I've been really interested to watch this, because on the one hand, when you have 350,

million people against 800 people, you'd think this would all be pretty easy, right? Like, of course, everyone's going to be for this because it doesn't affect them or anyone they know or really even what they aspire to be. And yet, that's not at all what's happened. And there's something deeply American about that that I think in other countries, like, yeah, yeah, let's take all their money. Hell, let's just take the houses. Maybe they're children in cars as well. And yet there's been enormous pushback to this idea, probably because it's irrelevant, like you said, Jonah. It's just sort of this like side show. So no, politically it does not seem to be working, though I will say as an actual, like if they did it end goal thing.

As a trial balloon to buy themselves more time as they flim flam around and say, we'll have a deal in 30 minutes or less. and by that I mean next month or never. It has bought them time. It has like been this like, hey squirrel. And so as a hey squirrel, it's been very productive. David, you are a

long time fan of political hay squirrel strategies that violate the Constitution. Yeah. So a hobby, really. It's a hobby. So and you are also, you're one of these guys who thinks that the post Civil War amendments are the cat's pajamas.

So, you know, one of the things that a lot of people who are correct say is that the constitution is very clear. It says you can tax income, right? Right. And do you think that if they actually got this through in some form, do you think it would actually withstand scrutiny at the Supreme Court? I don't think so. I mean, this is an expansion of the term income.

I'm stretching the term income to a breaking point because what you're talking about is fluctuating value, sort of capturing fluctuating value in a point in time, and then declaring that to be income, as opposed to the way the income is normally measured, where you actually realize the gain. You sell the stock and you have an amount of cash, an amount of, you have something there in your hands that can be then used to purchase goods, purchase more stock, etc. This is a measure of fluctuating measure of value that is in some areas, especially outside of stock, incredibly imprecise. I mean, how are you going to evaluate, for example, paintings? Does an appraisal of a painting, then all of a sudden mean you

have higher income? Can you imagine what some of our friends at Fox would do if the IRS got into the business of appraising Hunter Biden's artwork? Oh. I don't know. Just watching those hours of primetime television alone. I know. I don't know. That might be the sign of the apocalypse.

But no, it just doesn't fly conceptually. Hey, David. Wait, I've got a more far-flung constitutional objection that we're going to get all sorts of mail from the listeners. but I think it's an interesting thought. What about a bill of attainder? What about this idea that we're specifically targeting individuals at a confiscatory rate that is tantamount

to a non-judicial finding of some sort of, you know, in this case not crime, but penalty. It's never had to be jail time or something, of course. Anyway, do I think it's actually a bill of attainder? no, but if they come up with a Jeff Bezos tax, it would be, right? Yes, right, yes. If it were, they literally named the people,

it absolutely would be. Now, there's plenty of constitutional law examples where they don't name the people, but like if you're a member of the NRLB, you have to take a pledge that you're not a communist. So there's things like that. Yeah, I think that's an interesting concept that they would never get to because they'd have the easier way of ruling.

You're no fun. But, you know, it sort of gets it one of the ways that we, that bothers me about the way we talk about some of these guys and their wealth is that I think we often create the impression in the way that we talk about this, that Elon Musk is sitting on a giant pile of, say, $200 billion in cash. and what he's sitting on is a whole bunch of, say, Tesla stock. And so we'll have these fluctuating battles over who's the world's wealthiest man. And it's just based on sort of the ends and outs of what's happened to Microsoft stock today,

what's happened to Tesla stock today. And you have a stock crash and all of a sudden Elon Musk loses, say, $50 billion. Well, you know, that will climb back over three to four weeks. And I think that just illustrates all of this is, Yeah, it's tangible in any given moment, but it's ephemeral over time until it's realized. And then, heck, yeah, tax it, tax it at an appropriate rate. Right. I mean, you raise one of the great problems with it is that what happens if he's pay,

if Elon Musk pays the taxes at a certain stock price, and then the stock price goes down, does he get a refund from the federal government? Just the implementation stuff on this is very, very common. complicated. Declan, I know you are a frequent victim of the alternative minimum tax. But, you know, just sort of politically, where, you know, why is this, where do you see this playing into what the, the story of the day is, you know, Sarah is saying it's a look squirrel operation. Is the, is the effort to pay for it without, affecting the debt really i mean it seems to me i'm sorry i'm tongue tied um it seems to me that

it's a weird case of debt obsession with the deficit spending with the democrats that is driving this sort of back-ass word um approach to how to get this thing done what do you make of it right no i part of me wonders would the democrats just be better off scrapping this all together and saying it's going to we're going to add 200 billion dollars to the deficit instead of doing this because it's, you know, it's that insane of a proposal. You know, obviously, we've struggled a little bit with how much to even cover it in the morning dispatch because it's pretty clearly out there, pretty clearly insane. I think it's, you know, just as much of a legislation as press release messaging bill

as, say, something like, you know, Josh Hawley's Love America Act, which, if you aren't following, requires at the federal level to dictate what age various students across the country have to have parts of our founding documents memorized. I think that's about kind of on par with the level of seriousness that we're working with here. But at the same time, you know, it's from Ron Wyden. He's the chair of the Senate Finance Committee. And this is something that is being seriously proposed and debated. Now, ultimately, I don't think that it's going anywhere. One, King Mansion isn't on board with it. And so with 50 votes in the Senate needed, that's, you know, an important point. He actually had a really funny quote yesterday.

He was talking at one of these think tanks here in D.C. And he was asked about this proposal. He said, I told Joe Biden, I don't know what happened. This cannot happen. It's really screwed up. And that apparently by Mansions retelling Biden's with him on that, he agrees with. And then also, you know, the unconstitutional points that David mentioned. I'm not, you know, I'm not a lawyer.

but it really gives off unconstitutional vibes, I would say. I just reading about it. And it's interesting, Jonah, to your question, you know, the Democrats' first instinct on this is instead of, you know, maybe scaling back this proposal and this reconciliation bill by, you know, a couple hundred billion dollars, they're jumping to this instead. you know, maybe if you're having to resort to something as unfeasible and crazy as this, your bill is too big and you can't find ways to finance it.

You know, it is fun thought exercise, but I don't think it's much more than that. Yeah, just very quickly on this, because normally I'd be like Mr. It's unconstitutional end of discussion guy, and I think it is probably unconstitutional, and it should be the end of discussion. But the thing that bothers me more about it is the just, and this is why, mentioned the alternative minimum tax. The alternative minimum tax came about in the 1970s, right? And it was supposed to cover a tiny fraction of a handful of people who, because of special loopholes and write-offs and whatever, weren't paying enough in income taxes, like literally

dozens of people it was supposed to cover. Now it covers over 5 million people. And I think that one of the things that people see in this is the potential for mission creep where all of a sudden you can tax the value people's homes in new ways. You can tax people of other assets and the idea that it'll just stick with billionaires is crazy. But the thing that bothers me the most about it is the unintended consequences aspect. If you chase the richest people in the society out of very transparent wealth accumulation in the form of stocks and bonds and into harder to understand stuff like art, baseball cards, you know, land. I mean, you can get into all sorts of things. If you chase all these people because they don't want to be,

they want to get hit by this tax, what does that do to the market? What does that do to people's 401ks? What does that do to the capital structure? I mean, there are all sorts of things. I just don't think Wyden has given two seconds of thought to. I mean, Declan, you're about to say something? Yeah, I think the genesis of this proposal was basically this, I mean, there's been years of demonization of the ultra-wealthy brewing on both sides of the political aisle, to be fair, but, you know, dating back to Bernie Sanders' campaign in 2016. And I think the seed for this idea came from. There's basically a reality where, you know, these ultra, ultra-rich people aren't necessarily making a ton of income and they're able to accumulate

massive amounts of wealth. And then they borrow through stocks and bonds and whatnot. And then they're able to borrow against that wealth to finance their day-to-day living. And that's something that from the Democratic perspective, it's just kind of, this feels wrong. It feels like this shouldn't be right. So let's come up with a, you know, hard-scrabble way to eliminate it. And this is the result of that. Yeah, I feel like I need to disclose a conflict of interest here because I really want to get to Mars. I really want to get to Mars. And the window, the window is closing. And if you're taking $50 billion from Elon Musk in any given moment, I don't see how I'm getting there. So, yeah, to be clear, listeners, he doesn't mean when he says I want to get to

Mars, he doesn't mean like I, as an American, want to get to Mars. He means David French wants to be on the ship that goes to Mars. Yes. Yes. Yes. I want to be the embedded journalist that heads to Mars. We're doing A-O from Mars now. Great. Yeah. No. What about your other conflict of interest, David? Your John Morant basketball card collection puts you in this billionaire status, right? That is true. That is true. So I have a lot invested in this aside from the terrible, poor merits of the proposal. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind.

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if China attacked? And Biden answered in the affirmative saying, yes, we have a commitment to do that. Now, in today's kind of more hostile political climate vis-a-vis China, that statement might not sound all that shocking, but it actually represented a kind of major break from 40 years of the United States' strategic ambiguity policy towards Taiwan, which essentially dictates that although we supply Taiwan with arms to help its self-defense, we are kind of more purposely vague about what actions by China would trigger the United States itself to get involved kind of militarily. And so the White House walked back Biden's statement the next morning saying essentially nothing had changed. But it was actually the second time that this had happened

with Biden over a three-month span. He said something similar in August in an ABC News interview. White House walked it back then as well. And then we get the response from China the next day, which was like crazy, aggressive, as their want to do. They had the kind of typical stuff of, you know, the U.S. needs to abide by the one China policy, et cetera. And then they had this line in there that was, quote, do not stand on the opposite side of 1.4 billion people, which is an incredibly ominous sounding thing. But I'll pause there. David, you praised Biden's comments on Thursday before the White House walked them back. Two-part question.

Do you think that this kind of two-step, which has happened now twice in the past couple months, is intentional? Or has Biden just been misspeaking? And then second question, if it is intentional, do you think that strategic ambiguity has outlived its usefulness? I have no idea if it's intentional. Like, I have no idea at all. I think intentional or not, it's good because there's sort of a strong ambiguity or a weak ambiguity.

And I prefer the stronger version of it, the one where the White House is sort of saying, wait a minute, they're big fella. I know you're chomping at the bit, you know, to make a strong stand for Taiwan. I think the timing of some of this is good. You know, we've had major increase in China, overflights of Taiwanese airspace, sometimes dozens of planes at a time, an increased

sort of sense of alarm amongst defense planners that conflict with China may arise at some point in the relatively near future. Some thoughts that China would be, quote, unquote, ready to invade Taiwan by 2025. So I think pushing that ambiguity towards just a bit more sharpness it's a good thing. What I was having a really interesting conversation about a week or so ago with someone in the Pentagon and they were reminding me

that a lot of this is still very ethereal in sort of in the atmosphere because the reality is as if China was going to attack Taiwan, it would be very difficult to disguise the buildup and the preparations for such an event. You would see it on satellites.

You would see this thing emerging because Taiwan is, quote, a tough nut to crack. There are things about the geography of the island, the defenses of the island, the difficulty of amphibious invasions, that it would be very difficult to do this. And so what would happen in a real world situation,

according to this sort of this theorizing, is that you would begin to see an emerging buildup of large-scale proportion which would then put the ball in our court. And you would then, the ambiguity have to, you could still maintain ambiguity, but there would be soft ambiguity or strong ambiguity. And the strong ambiguity would be,

we build up, we build up. And that's probably what would be more likely to happen and would deter any kind of invasion. And I actually found that somewhat reassuring, the sort of reminder that we're still in a remote hyper, Po land. And we don't actually have the signs of China actually doing the kinds of things that would prepare for an attack. Any time, you know, there's no sign that anything like that is imminent. And that's when it would get very real, very fast. And this ambiguity would have to

clear up very quickly. But if we're going to have ambiguity about our ambiguity, I like the direction Biden is heading towards making it less ambiguous. and more strong. No, that's a, and that's especially a good point about Taiwan being a tough nut to crack in terms of, you know, they'd have to signal this. I was actually, right before we published their, the Center for New American Security, a bipartisan think tank here issued a report outlining war game that some of their, their staffers did.

And they actually presented the idea that instead of going directly to Taiwan, China would start out by trying to kind of take control militarily of Dongshah, which is a smaller island in between the South China Sea and start there and kind of see how people respond to that first. So it'll definitely be an interesting way to, I mean, interesting and scary to see how, if and how this all plays out. I don't think we'd retake Dongshah, but I think you would see a massive military buildup on Taiwan proper, and you might actually see because of the superiority of that, for example, the Taiwanese Air Force overall, you would see China taking very significant losses that it didn't necessarily want to take. But that's all rank speculation, which we

don't like that. I cannot believe that David French just threw Dongshah under the bus. I mean, he hasn't been canceled yet. Can I use my time to ask Jonah a question? question. Sure. Okay, Jonah, I saw this thing from the common good conservatives, the people who were like, let's all move to Hungary, China's actually good. And it said, imagine after the civil war, the Confederates were in Puerto Rico. And China said that we weren't allowed to retake Puerto Rico and we had to just let the Confederate government and military and people hang out living their best lives in Puerto Rico. How would we feel then?

And I just thought it'd be really funny to hear your response. I love that, Sarah. Okay. This is the same crowd that includes people who are against artificial light. I'm against artificial light at night

because our migratory birds are having so many problems, but perhaps that's not why they're against it. Yeah, no, I'm talking about like light bulbs, like moving on from the candle. That's like a thing. The life expectancy is too damn high. That is actually, if you think Joan is joking, that is a thing. Yeah, I just read this piece about how everyone was better off 800 years ago as serfs from some of the people.

I like my antibiotics. And dentistry. And there's lots of things to like about, like. I had a C-section, you know. You could have a C-section 800 years ago. You just couldn't survive it. um so you know tradeoffs tradeoffs anyway so um uh i mean it is named after caesar right so i mean they've been doing them for a while anyway um so uh where to begin

it's really dumb point right and so the and to take it seriously for just two seconds which i'm at pains to do um the the the fundamental moral vision underlying those kinds kinds of comments, sees all the players on the international chess board as morally indistinguishable from one another, right? That there is no moral hierarchy to different systems of government. There is no, except unless they're in charge of them, right? But in this sort of cold real politic understanding of things, the winners of the Chinese Civil War, aka the Han Chinese and the Chinese Communist Party. They have every right to be pissed about Taiwan. The fundamental idealistic principle of the United States for quite a while has been, at least among people who I think

have the better argument, is that we are on the side of democratic countries. That doesn't mean we will go to fight and die for every democratic country under threat everywhere and anywhere at any time without due consideration. But rhetorically, philosophically, financially, if it's a contest between an authoritarian and a democratic liberal society, we take their side and not just because they're more likely to be our political allies, but because they are, in fact, morally superior systems. And the problem with this analogy is that it throws all that by the wayside and to say, well, the Chinese one, therefore they should get to do whatever the hell they want rather than pay any attention. It's sort of like the famous William F. Buckley

quip, which I quote all the time, where he says, where he's talking about the moral equivalence that the Democratic Party played about the Soviet Union in the United States. And he said, look, if you have one person who shoves old ladies in front of buses and you have one person who shoves old ladies out of the way of oncoming buses, it will not do to say they're both the types of men who push old ladies around. And the moral equivalence between Taiwan and China is wrong and grotesque. And it's sort of an intellectual stolen base to pretend otherwise. No, it's more, you know, the Confederacy wins the war and we're all on Puerto Rico,

which, you know, I've been to Puerto Rico, quite lovely. Highly recommend. In the right seasons. Yeah. All right. Declan, you want to finish us off or should we move on? Yeah. So I had one more question for you, Jonah, so kicking it right back in your court. But, you know, specifically with Congress's role in all of this, these decades of strategic ambiguity kind of posturing date back to the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, which was essentially Jimmy Carter unilaterally decided to annul a mutual defense treaty with what we now consider to be Taiwan in order to.

to establish diplomatic relations with the Chinese Communist Party. And members of Congress got really, really mad about that, that they weren't consulted. This is something that needs to exist. And to that point that you were making about Taiwan being democratic, there was a lot of lobbying and pushing going on. And so, you know, there wasn't cable news at the time, so legislators actually passed a law instead and kind of roped in what the administration is able to do with respect to Taiwan, including requirements that it supply arms of a defensive nature

and, quote, maintaining the capacity of the United States to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize Taiwan security. My question to you is, should more of our foreign policy be dictated that way? Should Congress have a more active role in kind of how we treat our relationships with different countries? In a nutshell, yes. But based, baked into the assumptions of the question is an idea that is the idea that Congress, as it exists, as is constituted today, would take its job seriously in that regard.

And so I'm a little more reluctant to see Congress get heavily involved in foreign policy right now when it is such. circus and such a ridiculous institution that doesn't take its responsibility seriously. But the first step towards taking responsibility seriously is taking your responsibility seriously. And so, you know, I would like to see them to take some baby steps before they start doing all this. But you got to remember, the Founding Fathers envisioned a very strong and robust role for Congress and foreign policy. It's Congress that declares war, not the president, you know. It's Congress has to approve all those ambassadors.

It has to allocate the monies for all of this kind of stuff. And the power of the purse was seen as part of this whole, you know, things. And Congress should rightly be the body of government most concerned with maintaining our alliances and support with other democratic countries because it is the most democratic branch of government. But it's also a hot mess. And, you know, the idea that it's going to take all the, do the right thing anytime soon. I'd like to see it, but I'm just not super hopeful. All right. Next up. David, is Facebook the Pentagon Papers?

Oh, my gosh. No. All right. So, anyway, I'm fascinated by this Facebook document dump story. And we'll put in the show nuts, show notes. We'll put in the show notes, we'll put in the show notes, a really good sort of Wall Street Journal site that they've created that, that puts together sort of all of the various scandalous aspects, allegedly scandalous aspects of the Facebook document dump. But there's one that I really want to highlight that, and I want to go to you with this. Sarah. And it's a story that I think just encapsulates a lot of my objections about objections to Facebook. And there are things I object to about Facebook. But this encapsulates

my objections about objections to Facebook. Oh, God. This is like the anti-antevax thing. And I just have trouble following the linguistics. I know. I know. But it'll be clear. It'll be clear. Okay. All right. So this is two quick paragraphs. In the fall of 2018, Jonah Peretti, Chief Executive of Online Publisher BuzzFeed, emailed a top official at Facebook, Inc. The most divisive content that publishers produced was going viral on the platform, he said. Oh, that's a, wow. Okay, that's a fair critique. He pointed to the success of a BuzzFeed post.

Okay, so this is the CEO of Online Publisher BuzzFeed, pointed to the success of a BuzzFeed post titled 21 things that almost all white people are guilty of saying, which received 13,000 shares and 16,000 comments on Facebook, many from people criticizing BuzzFeed for writing it, you think, and arguing with each other about race. Other content the company produced from news videos to articles on self-care and animals had trouble breaking through, he said. So. But the cat memes. Okay, now two things about this. One, if you're having trouble, if your cat content is having trouble breaking through, that's on you, okay that's that's your content problem the other thing is this just encapsulates so much

of what i feel about when i read these social media or destroying us articles it's people telling social media to stop making me so bad because this is buzzfeed saying how dare the article that buzzfeed produced go so viral this is one of my fundamental critiques Sarah about the complaints about social media and tell me, please, why I'm wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. You're wrong.

You're wrong. Gosh. Can't believe they cut that from the sound of music. I found that unpersuasive. But continue. So this actually goes to a fundamental disagreement that you and I have, David, and I am so excited.

We get to continue it here today. You remember back when we, I was comparing the social media companies to the tobacco litigation. And we had a conversation about, well, it's not addictive. And I perhaps pounced on you like my cat on a, well, actually my cats don't pounce on anything, frankly. They're pretty lazy and they're scared of most things. But if they weren't. because I think it is incredibly addictive. They know it's addictive and they do not tell their consumers

how much they know about how addictive it is. Similar problem here, David. You're assuming that we're the problem because all things are equal on the platform. All things are not equal on the platform. The algorithm prioritizes and preferences certain things and it is preferencing the most divisive things intentionally because anger is what keeps people on the platform

makes it more addictive, the more emotional they can make people feel, the more it draws them in and they have a harder time turning off the app, putting down their phone. They know this, and therefore that is why you're very, very wrong. Okay, so, all right,

well, this is not going to be a debate between me and Sarah. we'll continue this Sarah. Oh, yes, we will. But one of my objections is with the word addiction. Okay. The word addiction is a word that has a meaning and it is not things I like to do. It's not even habits. I agree with that. And so I do not believe it is addictive. I strongly disagree with the addiction point. But one of the elements. Especially for adolescent brains who don't have the frontal lobe control that you have, David. Declan, let's not, let's adjudicate this. There's no one else on this podcast. It's just me. I'm appealing. I'm appealing. I pay for this microphone, Mr. Green. I'm appealing to my, our fantasy football commissioner to assist in adjudicating this.

Because one of the interesting reveals here was that in 2018, Facebook actually tried to make the, the platform kinder and gentler. It tried to prioritize and tweak the algorithm. towards more family-focused content and whatnot. And you know what happened, Declan? What happened, David? I'll tell you what happened, Declan. People like that darn BuzzFeed guy who's demanding that Facebook Save America from BuzzFeed

just pushed right on through with their own divisive and hateful content. And so could you explain to the people why Sarah is wrong and I'm correct? And the fundamental problem of Facebook is us is us because what is happening is we're platforming people and people have a lot of problems in the way they that in anger and what when when you're platforming people you're going to get a closer look at who people are and sometimes it's not great see I'm not even

going to set deck on up by that because I trust him to do the right thing here and and defend his generation's health and well-being. yes two things i think you are correct david that oh boy thank you that's it jonah i you you are correct david in that human beings are the problem with a large portion of facebook but at the same time human beings are a problem in a whole lot of other areas and we legislate against that or create rules to, you know, human beings in a natural state murder people. And we have created laws to curb that instinct and curb that. Are you messing with my First Amendment? Are you about to mess with my First Amendment?

No, I'm not messing with your First Amendment. Go ahead. No, I feel like Declan, I think Declan's parents are married, but this sounds like a kid who's very used to pleasing both mom and dad. Yeah, it's a strong, why do you guys have to fight around me? I am I am you will never meet someone more conflict diverse than me it took me three years to build up the confidence to say something to a friend once but I it to that point I don't think I don't like those shoes I mean it was something

totally like anonymous I I will never tell someone they don't like their shoes it just won't happen but what I'm saying is there are ways I guess The question ultimately comes down to, you know, we've seen the Facebook files. Now, what do we do about them? And so if there is an instinct to do something about them, then I think there is an argument that can be made that these platforms are addictive. You know, we wrote about it in the morning dispatch a couple weeks ago and talked to a couple of psychologists, child psychiatrists.

And there is a growing body of evidence, not necessarily that they're addictive in the same way that, you know, tobacco and alcohol or other substances could be, but that there are real issues in terms of, you know, sleep habits, how it affects. And this is a broader problem with phones in general. I mean, I can't remember the last time it wasn't more than five feet away from my phone, honestly. You know, it's just kind of become a part of who we are. It's everybody's first instinct is just to pull it out when you're not doing anything. But at the same time, you know, I think there are concrete reforms that Facebook and Twitter could. I mean, remember when Facebook and Twitter first were released and the timelines, so to speak,

were just chronological instead of the, you know, we talk a lot about tweaking the algorithm this, tweaking the algorithm that. Why not just go back to chronological? And the answer is because that is how the company is, are able to kind of rope you in, keep you going longer. It surfaces posts that they think either one will keep you on the platform, longer and cause you to engage with things, get you angry, get you riled up, or two, will surface things that are just the most likely to stick in your brain and what is that kind

of content. It's intentionally inflammatory. It's, you know, full of half truths and lies and whatnot. And so I would be interested to see what research the companies have about that switch. obviously it's made them tons of money and and you know their advertising budgets have have expanded exponentially since they made that switch but what would you know how much would they lose if they go back to that chronological timeline where you're not you know the no free speech invasions david i promise i won't go there but um you know you're not really losing anything other than the addiction surfacing yes i can i jump in here at some point no I'm going to, I'm going to set you up, Jonah.

No, David. You don't get to keep setting people up. No, this is my conversation, Sarah. I'm going to set you up, Jonah, but I'm the president. I'm going to set you up, Jonah, by attacking. And it's my fantasy football league. I'm just hanging out. One is, yes, absolutely say Jonah stuff.

Number two, I'm getting a strong vibe from Declan. that is akin to something like, wouldn't television be better if it was still in these big coffee table size black and white sets with Leave It to Beaver content? You have a new technology. You improve the technology

in ways that people prefer over the earlier iterations of the communicative technology. I'm hearing, as Declan saying, leave it to Beaver, yes, season six of the expanse, no, is kind of my interpretation. of this. Tell me I'm wrong.

Okay, so I'm not going to wait too deep into Declan's Luddism because one of the problems is we now know is he can't defend himself. So, but I'm, I'm torn on this. Like, let me, I think the comparison to nicotine is wrong for the reasons David is right, in that nicotine is legitimately chemically addictive. But as I've argued for years, Marijuana is not chemically addictive. It is psychologically addictive. I know too many people who fell into using weed as a psychological crutch. And they didn't, you know, they wouldn't go into withdrawal or have the DTs if they didn't have, you know, if they didn't smoke pot every day.

But they just psychologically couldn't handle life without it. And I think there is something better in that analogy to it. I'd like to take a step back and return to my quasi almost maybe sort of half conspiracy theory because right now, like every day I see these ads. I just pointed them out to my wife who finally came back home from a business trip. And every day I see these Facebook ads, which are shot as if there are these, they're in almost like in a therapist's office, a really nice therapist, an expensive therapist office.

And these people are being interviewed. And one after another, they're all Facebook executives. And their jobs are to be, like, there's one with an African-American lady who says, my job is to protect your privacy. Because privacy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Clicet, cliche. And then there's another one who does something else. And they all end with a passionate appeal for Congress to run.

regulate Facebook. Mm-hmm. And so much of this controversy, it feels very, I'm not saying that Facebook, I'm not saying that Facebook orchestrated it to go this way, because some of these stories you wouldn't want come out about your corporation, and you wouldn't want to arouse this much anger.

But at the same time, there's this weird disconnect where, like, everybody wants to regulate Facebook except for like me and David French the Republicans want to the Democrats wants to Facebook wants to and Charlie Cook okay so there are three of us and and yet no one can pull it off

in part because the Democrats want to regulate it crazy one way and Republicans want to regulate it crazy another way and they're not reconcilable with each other And so once again, the great advantage of stalemate and deadlock is the status quo. Because the status quo is better than what any of these guys who belong in the show nuts would come up. Okay. This conversation may continue after the pod.

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slash Y-Anex. Last thing. Virginia, we've got an election in less than a week. Look, this podcast is not a future predicting podcast. Plenty of people can make up their own mind about what's going to happen in Virginia. Of course, I'm curious what you guys think. But I want to give you just some... Are you, though?

Are you actually curious what we think? Not that curious. Jonah, you don't even vote in this state. You're in Maryland. I'm in D.C. Oh, God. I can't tell you how many times we've had this conversation. It's just amazing.

I keep hoping you're in Maryland, I guess. All right. Some fast facts. we have early vote numbers. So 2017 was our last gubernatorial race in Virginia. In 2017, about 190,000 people had voted early by this point. As of right now, we're well over 600,000. Now, based on some voter modeling that I generally trust,

the percentage of Democrats who have cast their ballot in that 600,000 is significantly higher than 2017. In 2017, there was about a five-point gap by this point. And remember, the Democrat won by a lot in 2017. And as of now, whoof, it's like a 24-point gap. There's, you know, the share of white voters has decreased based on 2017 in that number. And yet, people still think that Glenn Yonken may well pull this thing out.

I guess my question to you, Declan, is why do we care about Virginia? Like, is this just something that we care about because, A, we live near D.C. and B, we don't have any other elections to talk about. And it's like a little bonus Christmas day where your parents have to give you presents because it's your half birthday or something? I loved the analogy that Chris Steyerwell, our colleague, put forth in the sweep yesterday about how at the beginning of the pandemic,

Major League Baseball shut down and the Korean Baseball League, because South Korea had the pandemic more under control, stayed open and was playing games. And all of a sudden, there were, you know, I don't know what the actual number is, probably not that many because baseball's becoming more and more niche, depending on how you want to pronounce that. But there were lots more people watching Korean baseball,

than ever before because it was the only thing on that's what's happening with virginia um it's the you know there is the new jersey gubernatorial race happening there's a couple house special elections but um rank punditry needs to satisfy its itch and this is the only way to do that uh at at at this point and so everybody in dc and all the you know cable news hosts in new york are going to spin their wheels and draw really really really dramatic conclusions from this race which is going to, I mean, in all likelihood, going to be decided between, you know, what, three and four percentage points one way or the other. And that will dictate who's going to take the House in 22, which Republicans going to be the nominee in 24, and who's going to take the White House

that year. And so it's, that's sarcasm, if that hasn't come through. So it is, I think, a little bit too much emphasis just because it's the only thing going on. That being said, you know, it will dictate how the parties respond in the year leading up to the midterms to base on this outcome. So it'll be interesting to see, you know, if it's a narrow McCalliff win, you know, I think you've mentioned in the sweep, you can spin every single outcome, every single way, and people should go back and read that. But, you know, it could be Biden's moderate style and tone and nominating a 63-year-old white man and Terry McAuliffe is great strategy and Democrats need to emulate it or Terry McAuliffe should have won by way more. We need to nominate far more

progressive, younger, more dynamic. And so we'll get all versions of that. It'll be the multiverse of rank punditry takes in the days following. Jonah, tell him why he's wrong. Okay, so I'm actually very sympathetic to this position. I actually, this is my premise of my question to you. Then never mind. No, no, no, no. I'm going to push back. I'm going to push back. This was the premise of my question to you. The last time we talked about this was that, okay, it's in the media market next to D.C., so of course, D.C. people freak out about it. And I'm very sympathetic to that as a general proposition. Here's why I think that explanation is insufficient. First of all, Yonkin has figured out a way to not piss off Trump world while also reaching out to non-Trumpie voters. That is significant in and of itself going forward as a matter of just punitry and politics. in America. McCullough came in thinking that he could just run a anti-Trump thing and run away with it. And it turns out that didn't work.

I think also among the most interesting, there are two other points I make. The most interesting development, I would argue, is that for the first time in our lifetimes, the normal democratic playbook of, I'm pro teacher, I love teachers, schools, are awesome. Yeah, yay, yeah, schools. Let's spend more money on them. Isn't working because the cultural climate right now is after 18 months of people being really pissed off at the schools because of how they handled COVID, add in CRT, all these other issues, these culture war, anti-racism kind of things, wherever you come down on it, there is a sense in which a lot of suburban parents feel like they are being denied agency and influence in how their kids are

being raised, and they didn't mind it before, but now they're basically being told things, their kids are being told things that they find really objectionable. And Terry McCullough, despite, and this brings me the last point, Terry McCullough is part of the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party. He was an old Bill Clinton hack who raised a lot of money for him. And for some reason he has absolutely lost any ability to read the facts on the ground and pivot and triangulate in the way that a Clintonian would to just simply read the zeitgeist. And instead, he doubles down on sort of being a creature of the teacher's unions and the political machinery. And it might be good enough to carry him over the top.

But if it's even close, that sends a scary signal to a lot of Democrats that you can't ride. on Biden's coattails, you can't ride on the usual schools stuff, and you actually need to deal with where voters are, even if you think it's illegitimate, and you can't just do what Barack Obama did this week and say, oh, these are all just fake culture war, you know, boogeymen or whatever the phrase was. Even though some of them are, if the people believe, if the parents believe that they're real, and I think they have good reason to believe that some of them are very much real. You've got to deal with that.

And Bill Clinton was a master of dealing with that. Terry McAuliffe has just gone native with the sort of the hackish, you know, education guild of the Democratic Party, and it could cost them the election, and that will send a terrifying signal to a lot of Democrat. So, David, here's why I think Declan is wrong, because this is not the usual Virginia off-cycle race. Terry McColliffe was way ahead in July. And then in August, a bunch of stuff happened.

Biden's approval numbers tanked, Afghanistan, COVID, et cetera. Then the race titans. Terry McAuliffe gives his, you know, the worst debate line ever. I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach. His numbers bottom out with women. Now, here's where I'm annoyed with the punditry, because I think that people actually will care whether Terry McCalliff wins or loses this race

when, in fact, it's over. In terms of what we're going to learn about 2022, we already know it. This race shouldn't be tight. Joe Biden won the state by double digits in 2020. That was a year ago. The reason then, whether he's lost nine points or 11 points in the state,

is, you know, it will determine who's the next governor of Virginia, I grant you. But it's not particularly relevant to 2022 or what's happening with Democratic Party vis-a-vis their own voters. Because what's interesting to me is if you look at those early voting numbers, what's quite clear is that we don't have new people voting. And so to the extent this race is tight and or Glenn Yonkin even wins it, it's because Biden voters voted for Glenn Yonkin. Yeah. So please just go ahead and tell Declan why he's wrong.

Okay. Well, I'm not going to be so mean to Declan because I interpreted all his comments earlier as I'm right about social media. But you just want to get favor from the commissioner and I find that unacceptable despite my thumping by you this week. So, yeah, I agree.

with you, and here's, there's a couple of things that I think are salient about this. One is, because all of our races are to some extent nationalized now, not completely nationalized, but to some extent nationalized. What they, what the tightening of this race illustrates is that, as, you know, I've been arguing for a while, Biden doesn't have that kind of follow, the following, I will, you know, the ride or die following that Donald Trump had. what his, his approval rating is dependent upon performance to a degree that Donald Trump's wasn't. And so he's had a really bad few months, a really bad few months. So it's not surprising

in a nationalized environment that that would start to, that would be reflected in the polling in this race. And then number two, what's really interesting to me, and this is going all the way back to a lot of advisory opinions podcasts that we had during the run up to the election. And that is, you know, you know there's an urban base for the Democrats. You know that there's a rural base for the Republicans, but there's this educated suburb world, which depending on where it is, is going to lean Democratic or is going to lean Republican. But if the Democrats can really capture and hold that educated suburban world that really gave them the election in 2020, that's going to adjust our politics a lot. And I think what Jonah said about teachers unions

and public education, there's a lot to that. And I think that what the Democrats are dealing with is a bit of a perfect storm here. Because if you'd had some of the CRT debates or some of the debates over scandals and individual school districts that you have now, it wouldn't have landed in the same way if we weren't just coming through 18 months, where after, you know, about a two to three or four month grace period where everyone didn't know what coronavirus would do and how it would impact kids and how it would impact schools, people began to learn that, wait a minute, you can have school. You know, this is something that you can do. And then there was an enormous amount of resistance to that, just an enormous amount of

resistance. And I think what you ended up doing was for a lot of parents, the teachers' unions squandered an argument that they'd been making for years that people listened to, which is, we're really in it for the kids. That was sort of the teacher's union position. And the reality became, we're in it for our union members. That became the reality that emerged. And then I think that set the stage for a much more skeptical view towards public education. a much more welcoming view towards alternatives to public education

and then when McAuliffe comes in and he puts the cherry on top of all of that just this perfect cherry which is we're not leaving this to the parents that's not the exact quote

I believe is I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach you don't have it memorized David it's every commercial I know I know I'm in Tennessee

I'm in Tennessee I'm reading it now. I don't think parents should be telling schools what they teach. That's the cherry on top of a Sunday that had been being made for 18 months. And I think that that's where we are. And so that's why I agree, Sarah, whether McLaugh pulls it out by two points or three points, this is not a state that should be that close. Yeah, and I guess I'm curious what changes will actually happen in either of the parties. Because if, as I said, I think unfortunately in our politics somehow winning and losing actually affects people's views on campaign strategy, which is sort of bonkers, right?

The winning campaign did not do everything right and the losing campaign did not do everything wrong, as I like to tell staffers all the time. Nevertheless, if Glenn Yonkin wins, what lessons will the Republican 22 candidates, operative class, candidate class, actually absorb? And what will the Democratic Party actually absorb might not make a lot of sense if you were simply looking at numbers, right? So for instance, to me, Glenn Yonkin, he was endorsed by Trump, yes, but has done everything in his power to Heisman Trump in the meantime while not insulting his voters. and has run on very specific issues. None of this like stop the steel, nonsense, et cetera. So will the lesson be, don't tie yourself too closely to Trump?

Will the lesson be, aha, the Republicans are back and Trump's no problem? Will the lesson be more Trump? You know, if he loses by one point, oh, if only he had embraced Trump more? And then at the same token, the Democrats, I think, you know, they'll be the usual fight. Ah, Terry McCallough should have been more moderate. Ah, Terry McCalliff should have been more progressive. So I'm always curious how the accepted wisdom flows down from facts that are not as easy to pigeonhole

because people generally like to fit the facts into their previous narrative. But one last question for you, Sarah? Yeah. I think what we, the reasonable, the range of. reasonable probability seems to be narrow McCullough win, narrow Young can win. What happens if McAuliffe wins by a lot? Is that even on the table? I know the polling says no. So I will actually put things in order of likelihood today, right? So like, first of all, because Republicans are more concentrated on election day now and Democrats are more concentrated

in early voting, it matters a lot what happens in the last week for the Republican vote. less so for the Democratic vote. So today, I'll just tell you what I think the sort of probabilistic outcomes are. I think it is a Terry McCalliff squeaker win, a Glenn Yon squeaker win, a Glenn Yonken blowout win,

and then last probability is a Terry McAuliffe blowout win because the direction of the numbers tends to be fairly accurate, What tends not to be accurate is it. The poll, of course, is capturing a snapshot from, you know, 72 hours ago or sometimes more. It's a little like seeing light on Venus. We're actually seeing something that happened quite a while ago, what, 45 minutes ago, an hour and a half ago? I don't really remember. But, yeah. So I think that it'll be really interesting, as one person said to me recently, I think there's a chance that Glenn Yonkin wins by so much. We want to I wonder how we ever thought Terry McCall have had this in the back. But I think that's less likely than a squeaker on either side, obviously. Right.

Well, you just also raised a very interesting issue. When I'm on the SpaceX Starship to Mars, how are we going to control for the lag, the communications lag, and the advisor your opinions podcast? Well, Caleb, he's just going to have to cut out every cause. Yeah, that's producer, Caleb. No. No.

Well, Commissioner, we're so pleased to have you on the podcast today. Thanks for making the time. I hope we've curried favor with you so that all of our trades may go through. Appreciate all of y'all. And we'll talk again next week. And next week, we are going to have Virginia results. And you know what? It is a little like my half birthday, although I did not get presents for my half birthday.

But if I had, it would be like this Virginia race. Thank you. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online. Whether you're building a site for your business, your writing, or a new project, Squarespace brings everything together in one place. With Squarespace's cutting-edge design tools, you can launch a website that looks sharp from day one. Use one of their award-winning templates or try the new Blueprint AI, which tailors a site for you based on your goals and style. It's quick, intuitive, and requires zero coding experience.

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