The Dispatch Podcast - Messy Chaotic Lanes

Episode Date: February 13, 2020

Sarah and the guys examine the results of the New Hampshire primary, dive into the debate over electability and the importance of ideological lanes, and discuss the impact going forward of the move to lessen a sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isger. Joining me as always, David Fredge, Steve Hayes, Jonah Goldberg. Today, let's see what happened in New Hampshire. And talk a little bit about what electability even means anymore. Are there lanes? And then the Department of Justice, the Roger Stone case, and the sentencing memo. What does it say about the rule of law moving forward? Does it matter? Let's dive in. I think we have to start with New Hampshire today. Did the outcome surprise any of you? Jonah, I'm looking at you. Surprise and strong. Like if you told me two weeks ago that these things would play out this way, I would say that would be surprising. But it sort of, it was such a slow rolling thing that by the time it actually was happening and the Iowa results were in, it kind of seemed foreordained.

Do you think at this point, can Warren and Biden come back? No. I don't think so. I certainly don't think, let's be generous. Let's call it a 8.5% chance that Biden will just clean house in South Carolina. And if he did that, it would be a whole new ballgame, right? The narrative would be restored. This would be one of these classic stumbles that you have early in the primaries that you recover from. He's the compact, come back kid or in this case the comeback grandpa and all would be right with the world in Biden land but that's a very unlikely scenario I think Warren truly is just done she's flailing around you know there's this great line from H.L. Mankin about Harry Truman where he said if there were a sizable constituency of cannibals in the United States of America Truman would promise a Christian missionary in every pot. And she's sort of in that role for like the woke left these days,

promising to frog march, Trump and all this kind of nonsense. So I really think it's either another dark horse who comes in out of nowhere, or it's Bernie, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, or Bloomberg. So Steve, here's what I think is interesting. And Jonah just did it. seen it, you know, we've all done it. Everyone's skipping Nevada in all of this. And I actually think Nevada is a very tough state for Buttigieg and Klobuchar because they haven't been organizing this whole time. Whereas in theory, at least, Biden and Warren have been on the ground in Nevada

a lot longer. It seems like we all want to skip to South Carolina as the crucible, but we've still got a thing going on next week. Sure. Nevada has caucuses, which are quirkier than primaries. And I think for that reason, people sort of tend to skip ahead. And you also look at Super Tuesday on March 3rd, which has so many delegates that are available. It's natural to sort of move beyond Nevada. I think Nevada matters, but I don't know that it will end up playing a significant role in the ultimate outcome here. I largely agree with what Jonas said. And Klobuchar has, you know, has the proverbial catch lightning in a bottle moment.

She had a great debate. It worked. She's capitalized on it. She raised $2 million that night. She raised $2.5 million after coming in third, coming in an impressive third. In New Hampshire, and she's now trying to scramble to build organizations in these upcoming states. We'll see if she can maintain that momentum. you know, unclear if she can.

Bernie Sanders is the nominal frontrunner, I think, but he hasn't shown much ability, certainly the first two contests, to grow beyond his natural ceiling. I mean, we've known that Bernie's going to be able to command 25% of the Democratic base since 2016, right? I mean, that was sort of the beginning. So the fact that he's getting that in these first two contests

doesn't necessarily impress. Will he be able to grow beyond that in Nevada, in South Carolina, on Super Tuesday remains to be seen? I think Buddha judges in some ways the most interesting candidate. I mean, if you wanted to make an argument that he was the Democratic frontrunner right now, you could make a plausible argument that that's the case. He's overperformed in both the first two states. We'll see what he does in Nevada. I think he comes in with a huge discount factor in South Carolina.

because people think he won't be able to appeal to black voters. And then you go to Super Tuesday. Yeah, that same problem adheres to Super Tuesday as well. South Carolina, if anything, is just a preview of the states except for California that we're going to see on Super Tuesday, both in terms of religiosity and racial demographics. David, on the religiosity side, though, very few people, myself included, thought that Klobuchar would be where she is. You have highlighted her answer on abortion as being particularly appealing to a highly religious, far more religious crowd in South Carolina than we saw in Iowa

and New Hampshire. Super Tuesday, presumably, I haven't seen the numbers on this, but I would assume also is more religious than Iowa and New Hampshire voters as a whole. Does it actually make a difference? Or is this conservative opining on Democratic politics wishing? Well, there were some actual numbers in New Hampshire that indicated that Bernie won the secular voters in New Hampshire and Klobuchar did overperformed with the more religious voters. So there's some actual data there that indicates that there is some religious factor at work. I think, though, in the Democratic primary where a plurality of the voters are going to be not all that religious, I think with the Klobuchar has some different advantages. And there's, I think she has a real chance here

to catch fire. And I think that her advantages are her other, quote-unquote, moderate lane opponent's weaknesses. So she doesn't have the lack of experience that Buttigieg does. I mean, she's a respected senator. So she answers the question with the experience question with Budajedge. She's a retail grassroots politician, not a billionaire parachuting in with $250 million, an ad, in a populist age. So if you're looking for the anti-Berni vote and you're looking at Bloomberg and you're looking at Buttigieg, there are some pretty obvious flaws that they have that she doesn't have. Now, she has a liability right now, and that liability is time. As you noted in some of her internal discussions, when you get money in, money isn't then immediately instantaneously

spendable. You've got to do something with it. It takes some time to hire up, for example. It takes some time to execute the ad buys, to craft the ads. This stuff takes some time. And so she's got, so it is the 22nd right for Nevada. She has 10 days. She has 10 days to essentially swoop in like SEAL Team 6 into Nevada, capitalize on this momentum and make this case. And I think she can make it. Now, I think they're real problem. Will you back up? Will you back up one second and tell listeners, though, why you think she's appealing to religious voters more than Buttigieg, or Sanders, what her answer on abortion was, et cetera. I just want to lay that ground. Sure, sure. Yeah, I'm sorry for gliding right past that. What she has said is very plainly and consistently two things at the same time. She said that she is pro-choice and she supports Roe versus Wade. But at the same time, she believes in supports restrictions on late-term abortions and unequivocally says that pro-life Democrats have a home in the party.

And this is completely contradictory to what Bernie Sanders has said. Bernie Sanders has very clearly said that being pro-choice is absolutely essential to being a Democrat. And Klobuchar has gone out of her way to say, no, I disagree with that. So she's straddling a line where she is trying to appeal to pro-choice voters. She's, by her acceptance of restrictions on late-term abortion, she is perhaps, alienating the 18% or so fringe of the Democrats who are the most radical on abortion. But that leaves 82% of Democrats who support restrictions on late-term abortions, and some of whom are who are outright pro-life. And by directly appealing to them, in contrast to Bernie,

I think she's setting up a real contrast. And she's also setting up a contrast with Pete Buttigieg, by the way, who, as much as he's called a moderate, is not a moderate, especially on cultural issues. I think this is helpful. It tees up my next question. Jonah, I'm coming back to you on this, because so often in the last six months, year, 20 years, we have talked about these lanes, the moderate lane and then the whatever else lane, the base lane. In this case, now in a Democratic primary, the progressive lane, progressives versus moderates. In 2016, I felt like that largely fell apart, but yet it's back in 2020. How much of a disservice has it done to the conversations we've been having about these candidates, especially as David brings up? Buttigieg has

been put into this moderate lane, but maybe he's not. Klobuchar, you know, it doesn't hold as much as it used to. And it's certainly not, I think, how voters have approached these candidates. No, I think that's right. And I think that was one of the things that Trump proved in 2016 is the lane stuff was exaggerated in the first place. And if you look at like the data of where Elizabeth Warren's voters are going, it's like a third go to Buttigieg, a third go to Klobuchar, and a third go to Bernie, right? And if you were just doing ideological lanes, that makes no sense. But it turns out people have different criteria.

Like some people want, you know, they feel very strongly that the candidate should be a female. And other people feel very strongly. And then again, it shouldn't be a female. And some people think that the most important thing is beating Trump. And other people think, no, the most important thing is, you know, picking, you know, a candidate who sounds like you're sending back soup at a deli, you know, so they go for Bernie. And people are weird like this, you know. I mean, like, there is no, there's no ideological theory of the electorate that makes sense to, say, the editorial board of the New York Times that explains the Trump-Obama voter. but it makes sense to Trump Obama voters.

Right. But I do have kind of this, like, macro thing that I've been pondering, which is that, you know, my friend Luke Thompson, who's a political consultant, he's been arguing that the GOP for the first time in our lifetimes is becoming more and more of a coalitional party, the way the Democrats used to be, and that the Democratic Party is becoming more and more of an ideological party. And so in a sense that the fights that we're now seeing among Democrats are somehow more from, in some ways, more familiar to the sort of the ideological fights that we used to have on the right, say, you know, 20 years ago. I mean, if you look at, if you look at what, you know, the Jonathan Chate pulling his hair out trying to keep the party from nominating the social. list. It's almost a, it's partly an electoral strategy thing, but it's also partly an ideological thing. They're having ideological fights on the left in ways that it used to just be sort of this pragmatic, you know, thing about how do we get power? And on the right these days, we're basically making coalitional arguments. We're making arguments about, well, he's satisfying these segments

of the Republican coalition and therefore we support Trump and all that kind of thing. And I just It's an interesting way that the lane stuff makes different, has different valances than it did, say, even 20 years ago. Steve, thoughts? Yeah, no, I think Jonah is largely right about that. I mean, what's interesting is if you go back to the point at which the dispatch was soft launched in early October. They have a pill for that now. You've seen this pretty dramatic change in the Democratic field. I mean, it's been four months, right?

So back then, in early October, it was Joe Biden at 26, Elizabeth Warren at 26, Bernie Sanders at 15, Pete Buttigieg at five, give or take, and Amy Klobuchar at one, roughly. So four months intervened. And what's happened in sort of our day-to-day political life? Impeachment has happened. There's a killing of Soleimani. The economy's been basically on the same track. But the Democratic field has basically inverted.

since that point. I mean, not it's not an exact inversion, but more or less. So you have the two frontrunners in October basically not viable. If I had to place a bet right now, I would say both of them are done. And you have as front runners, these, you know, Bernie was at 15. Everybody expects Bernie to be at 15 or 20 or 25. He's got his sort core base. And then you've got increasing attention paid to and support for Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar. And maybe we don't, you put an asterisk by everything that Mike Bloomberg is doing right now, maybe Mike Bloomberg. The Lane stuff, though, feels anachronistic in a certain sense.

And I think Jonah is exactly right about this. We've been arguing this from the beginning, right? I mean, at least I've been arguing this from the beginning. This is a pretty far left Democratic field. Like, even the moderates in the Democratic side are pretty liberal. But he just to interject one thing. Biden was never a centrist in the overall landscape. He was a centrist within the context of the Democratic Party.

Right. You know, he was to the left of Bill Clinton and the DLC stuff. He was Barack Obama's vice president. Right. I mean, I know that the revisionist history is that Barack Obama was this major centrist. And, you know, if only he and John Bain and, you know, could have held hands, they would have had a grand bargain and we would have solved all our problems. That wasn't the case. I mean, Barack Obama ran as sort of a centrist rhetorically, but I think

in terms of issues was pretty liberal. Biden was on board for all that. And what struck me is when Mike Bloomberg got into the race for real. Remember, he sort of fainted into the race initially and then said, I'm not going to get into the race as long as Joe Biden is viable. And then Joe Biden struggles, and Bloomberg essentially says, okay, I'm in now, which I think is an underappreciated moment in terms of the Joe Biden trajectory, where Bloomberg decides he's not going to get in because Joe Biden is the centrist in the race, and then decides later he's going to get in because Joe Biden is struggling. I think that reinforced in a lot of minds that Joe Biden was not likely the candidate. But you look at the day that Bloomberg gets in, and I'm a dork, so I

did this. You go and spend a couple hours on his website. Mike Bloomberg is not running as a centrist. He's not running on his time in office as the nominally Republican mayor of New York City and running on his debt and deficit, you know, his fiscal record in New York City. He's running on a bunch of basically woke left-wing policies in the Democratic primary. And this is the guy who's considered to be the ultimate moderate in the field. This is a Democratic Party that even as we, you know, can look at Amy Klobuchar's willingness to embrace or at least not exclude pro-life voters,

this is still a pretty liberal Democratic primary. And the battle's being fought are on the lap. So I'm going to push back on that just a slightly. I see a lot of reactions to this. Hold on David. All right, David. Yes. Yeah.

So first, I want to say, to just double down on this, that this is not, especially on the cultural issues, these are not moderate. Okay. Bloomberg is one of the most hostile candidates to civil liberties in the race. I mean, this is a guy who stuck by his guns excluding mainly. I would not say stuck by his guns. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Stuck by his taser? I don't know. He doubled down on, an unbelievably draconian policy that that New York had that excluded churches from New York public schools. And so that meant that a lot of majority minority churches that did not have a lot of resources to even have a place to meet, had to engage in years of litigation against his administration.

And that policy that he had was a far outlier in the United States of America. Ultimately, it was such a far outlier. Guess who lifted it? Bill de Blasio. It was too extreme for Bill de Blasio. And if we're talking about Pete Buttigieg, I mean, this is a guy who his abortion position is about as extreme as it gets, and his position on religious liberty is well to the left of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Let's just be clear about that. His basic position, as he's articulated, is if you're a big enough organization to, like,

have an HR department, well, his position is, well, I don't want to hear about your religious liberty arguments in hiring. Well, that directly contradicts Supreme Court precedents. There's no moderation there. If you're going to talk at all about moderation, I think what you would call Amy Klobuchar is sort of moderately progressive, but she's still progressive as well. Well, and just to be fair, let's not forget this is a Democratic primary,

and Lord knows that the Republicans and their primaries have run to the hills as well. Jonah, you, I think we're going to weigh in on Bloomberg. I just want to push back a little bit on the Bloomberg fever. A little bit on the Bloomberg thing. I mean, look, I'm not, you know, I'm not waving a giant, oversized foam. Bloomberg's number one thing, you know, over my head. But you are wearing a Mike 2020 polo shirt. Yeah, but he paid me $500,000 to wear this shirt.

And, no, but David's points are very well taken, you know, on all sorts of issues. He is your consummate progressive technocrat. But at the same time, I think he benefits in some ways. It's sort of a mirror image of the thing that Obama benefited from. When Obama talked about the sanctity of traditional marriage and one man, one woman, and all the kind of stuff, nobody believed him. And when conservative said we didn't believe him, oh, you're just saying that because you're racist. and that kind of thing. And then the second he changed his mind,

and Bart, because of Biden, the famous centrist, everyone was like, of course we always knew he was lying, and it's great that he lied because he got him elected and allowed him to make these decisions. I think that there are a lot of people who look at Bloomberg who either are unaware of a lot of the sort of cultural stuff where he actually is a real progressive, but they look at him,

and when they hear him, talking to do it trying to do woke talk they don't believe him they're glad that these they're glad they think he's lying him doing woke talk at least as a woman feels a little like him shaking that dog's mouth um you know the things that was actually impressive i don't think that as a negative with him i thought he showed some real willingness to get in there actually it kind of reminds me of the scene in airplane where the mom from leave it the beaver says you know i speak jive Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

But this idea that he's had some huge transformation on sort of the role of women. And that's like the least woke belief you can have is sort of women beyond being sexual objects. Like this just wasn't that long ago that he was saying outrageous things. People were writing them down, publishing them in little ha-ha, you know, books. So to your point, like, yeah, I think some of this is everyone's like, Yeah, we know, like, Bloomberg, and it doesn't really matter what he says right now, Steve. Yeah, I mean, look, you know, like I said. Defend yourself.

So I go on to Bloomberg's website when he relaunches or what he actually launches, yeah. Not a lot of traffic probably on that website. That's a guy who's, you know, probably his number one accomplishment as mayor of New York City is, he kept basically kept the fiscal house in order. He literally didn't mention debt or deficits on his. website. So this thing that probably most normal people, certainly moderates or centrist's would give him credit for, he's not campaigning on that. And if you go and look at his issues list on his website, it's the laundry list of woke politics, basically. He's run away from stop and frisk.

Now we've had these videos where he's saying some, I would say, problematic to be charitable things about stop and frisk, but those recordings date back, I think, to 2015. But he's not campaigning on this stuff. Like, he's not campaigning on the things that made people think of him as a centrist. He's trying to campaign as a liberal. And look, this is not just me. Let me just make this clear. I may be wrong. I've been wrong before once or twice. The Washington Post had an editorial this week in which they said, in effect, this Democratic Party isn't moderate or liberal. I mean, these candidates are not centrist. This is a progressive liberal field.

This is not a centrist field. But I think that goes to the point that this idea of lanes that somehow you need to be moderate or pivot to the middle for electability was blown out of the water in 2016. And I think it challenges the whole concept of how pundits, at least, have been defining electability. And so when we talk, you know, obviously there's been tons of time spent on whether Bernie is, quote, electable. And there's the argument that he's not electable because he can't pivot back to the middle. And then there's the argument that he is electable because he can energize the base.

We have not spent a ton of time on whether, for instance, Amy Klobuchar is electable because it didn't seem like that was going to be a question we had to answer. But David, on defining electability, what say you? Okay. So two things. I think on the primary, I think we might be eulogizing the lanes a little too much. Let me do a little lane advocacy here because I think that in 2016, what we had was a problem, what we had was a guy with a dominant, he had a plurality, but it wasn't such a dominant position that other people were just willing to get at, we're dropping out and

clearing the field for that one-on-one match-up. And so what we had was constantly, like these three people, you had Kasich, Rubio Cruz, where in a normal time when they're not sitting there thinking that this guy Trump is going to implode, that people are going to wake up and realize he's deeply problematic, that in a normal time, a lot of these guys would have fallen by the wayside, and we would have had this sort of big one-on-one matchup. And I think that the lane argument might have mattered a bit more. But because of that primary was so unusual and people stayed in past their sell-by date in this sort of hope against hope that America goes, that the plurality of Republicans who supported Trump were going to wake up, I think we might

over-interpret those results a little bit. However, I would say that on the electability side of this, thinking in the primary and thinking in the general election, with this phenomenon on a negative polarization are sort of two different things. As soon as that this primary is over, whether it's Bernie, and this is one of the reasons why I've been making the case that everyone who thinks that Trump will just sweep Bernie aside are mistaken. As soon as this primary is over, all of that negative polarization will start to lock in. And so all of those same pressures that were exerted on people who didn't like Donald Trump in 2016 were not necessarily the pressure was, hey, look, you really need to vote for Donald Trump because you've misjudged how amazing he

is. What the pressure was is you really need to vote for Donald Trump because of Hillary. And I think that we're overest or underestimating that effect on the Democratic side. Whoever is going to win this nomination, once that happens, whether they're the Democratic Socialist or they're Amy Klobuchar, all of those voices that are grumbling and mad and upset, they're going to be subjected to unbelievable pressure to get in line through negative polarization. And I don't think we'll see a never-Burney movement, for example, if Bernie wins it. I don't think we'll see, you might have I belong to it. Well, I'm never Bernie from way back from his Soviet honeymoon. But the, you're not going to see a real meaningful never-Amy if she wins it. You're not going to have a never

anybody because of negative polarization. And that's, so I think that's going to be the fundamental question about electability. And then we're going to be into this mobilization, this contest of mobilizing bases. And, you know, on the margins, one Democrat might be better than another. But I think the fundamental reality is they're all going to be largely in the same place. So I'm going to use the moderator's prerogative here to jump in and disagree entirely with everything David said. Sort of a John McLaughlin, wrong. So David is simply wrong. I'm so right.

Ideology is gone. Lanes are absolutely gone. What you mentioned as the Donald Trump didn't get a one-on-one contest is the hope of Republicans by gone. A thing that is still held on to is this hypothetical that never got to be disliked. proven and therefore can still become a dream. But in fact, voters, because the president can now pass so little legislation, the presidency has become a rhetorical platform, a fight for us platform, a do you represent us, rhetorical podium. And so voters aren't looking for ideology. They're looking for how you talk about it, how you feel about it, whether they think you're someone who

represents them. And so to the extent it overlaps with what we think of as ideology, that's a happy byproduct, but it is not what's causing it. And so, you know, Biden falls down and Klobuchar comes up. Ideologically, I'm not sure they're particularly different. Or at least I don't think the reason that Klobuchar is having a moment is because people were like, oh, well, we really liked both of their policies, but Amy's are a little closer to mine in the moderate lane. No, they simply liked Amy Klobuchar at the last debate. It happened to be a week out of New Hampshire. And by God, if you're going to peak, peak three days before New Hampshire, man.

Okay, Jonah, now you can take it on. I'm inclined to agree with you and disagree with David. So there's that. Yay. My goodness. These constantly shifting coalitions on this podcast. So I have a question that I will endeavor not to answer myself. That has been in my head since.

And my friend Mark Hemingway wrote what I will charitably call a very flawed and fairly silly piece about how Trump skeptical conservatives need to be sort of essentially, have not purged, and there are too many of them around, right? But I asked a rhetorical question when I was responding to it, which was, let's say Bernie Sanders wins at all. becomes president of the United States. Do, what do you guys think happens to the liberal commentariat? Do you think it becomes as, you can't say,

problem is there's not a good word analog to Trumpy, because Bernie's already named Bernie. So, do you think, do you think that the liberal commentariat becomes more Sanders E? and becomes sort of essentially socialist the way a lot of the right has become Trump's slash nationalist? Or do you think that the Eugene Robinson's and E.J. Deons of the world all of a sudden discover

that maybe they should not hold their manhoods cheap and actually stand up to a socialist president? Steve? I mean, I don't know how to interpret that. The way you, quite the way you set that out. It's a Shakespearean reference from Henry the 5th. Sorry, I'm a little, St. Crispin's Day. A little delayed on that.

No, I think that, look, there's, there is a rally to the flag, rally to the candidate, rally to the nominee, rally to the president phenomenon, and it's obvious. And I think, you know, if it were the case, hypothetically that Bernie were to become the nominee and then become the president-elect, a lot of the members of the liberal commentariat would suddenly find their inter-socialist, right?

They would say, in effect, well, I have some problems about this, but Bernie showed it could be done, right? So he could win an election doing this. He could make an argument doing this, et cetera, et cetera. So let's seize the means of production. Yeah, so I think there would be a lot of that. Honestly, I think there would be sort of a rally around the flag thing

that would prevail. I'm not convinced, though, that... I guess I'm not convinced that the centrist lanes are as erased as everybody thinks they are. I mean, I don't necessarily... For the record, that's Steve saying, I agree with David. I didn't actually agree with David.

I disagreed with almost everything you just said. But I think a lot of the lane talk, and I hate to sort of revert back to this way of understanding it, is sort of Washington pundit talk. And I know that's not a fair criticism of you, David, for how you make that argument. But part of the job of journalists and analysts and commentators and pundits is to make sense of stuff that's inherently messy and chaotic. And so we impose on the process a framework that may or may not apply. And while it's certainly the case that Amy Klobuchar is, I think, more moderate than a true socialist, democratic socialist or whatever, in Bernie Sanders. And there are grades of difference on specific policy matters, whether you're for Medicare for all

or single payer or Medicare for some. it's a pretty left-leaning field. And, you know, we may have seen the beginnings of an approach to the center. I mean, Amy Klobuchar throughout the process, even when she was at 1%. In debates, has made a pretty pragmatic argument. Sort of, oh, what Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are talking about can't possibly work. And what we really need to do is be pragmatic. But I wouldn't say she's necessarily repositioned herself as the moderate.

She seems to maybe be in the process of doing that now. And it'll be very interesting to me, given the lack of campaign infrastructure that she has in South Carolina. There's apparently some hints of it in Nevada, and she's putting together some of it in the Super Tuesday states. Can she ride that? And do people actually care about that stuff? I tend to think we're in a base election in 2020, more or less. But if I'm wrong about that, we probably will see it in the next couple weeks in a move to Klobuchar. So, David, to prove that I'm a benevolent dictator, I'm going to let you have the last word on this entire topic.

Well, first, I think to answer Jonah's question, you will see a lot of center-left commentators become anti-ante Bernie. so they'll because they what they will have a stage one right right they will have an in and it's all positioning that's annoying we've seen a little bit of that on the right right well and they'll have an endless opportunity to say i cannot believe the western district of texas issued a nationwide injunction against this burney regulation that's really much more moderate than the historical critics at fox news are calling it i mean you'll have all kinds of opportunities for that sort of i'm it's not so much that i'm so with bernie it's just that the right is losing its mind and it responds to bernie and you'll see repeats of some of the dynamics

agreed on the on the right as far as the the lane conversation uh look it is of course messy of course it's messy and you do have the situation where people when one drops out you have people seeming to make what uh from the outside looks like why why are you going from to this candidate who doesn't seem to in your lane, fully grant that, fully grant that. And I also fully grant that in a general election, the can you fight for me or they will fight for me far more, you know, whereas the other person will be fighting me becomes a big part of the dynamic. But whenever Trump leaves office, we're going to have another Republican competitive Republican

primary. And you might have Don Jr. in the I am the embodiment of Trump. Lane. You're going to have a Josh Hawley that says, I'm the Yale populist big government guy. Then you're going to have Nikki Haley who's going to say, hey, I honorably served with Trump. So it's not that I'm against Trump, but I'm going to be sort of shout out to some of the small government Reagan-esque ideas of years past. And they're going to have their own constituency. And I think when you're talking... Is there going to be an actual conservative in this competition? remains to be seen well what i'm looking forward to is avonka running and don junior running two

against fighting for the trump lane so when i think of lanes i think of there is a a core group of supporters who are more highly informed maybe than some others who have a philosophical agreement or maybe just a tactical agreement that dovetails with philosophy then you have a whole lot of other people who bandwagon on or off for various reasons. And I think with Klobuchar, it's not so much when I was going back to first talking about how she might have a path forward. It's not so much because she's going to consolidate a moderate lane. It's much more that she just doesn't have a lot of the weaknesses that some of the other anti-Burney candidates have. And also, I think she's on the likability scale, maybe, and this is super, super subjective, maybe,

just the flat-out most likable person left in the field. And so, and oh, one last thing, just super fast. Can I say, as a long time, as somebody who's seen Elizabeth Warren from her first, when she was the first woman of color faculty member at Harvard Law School, my 2L year, that her decline is America's gain. And I'm very happy to see Elizabeth Warren sliding back in the and may that slide end in her dropping out in the coming days. Okay, I want to pick up this conversation again next week. We'll have Nevada. I want to talk about contested conventions with you guys.

I want to talk about what a matchup looks like between Trump and who we've got left at that point. But we did have other major news this week, and I don't want to give short shrift to it, which is the, I don't even know how to encapsulate. the Roger Stone Turn of Events Sentencing Memo Debacle 2020. David, I hate to come back to you, but here we are as the other attorney on the panel. This has not been a good 24 hours for the Department of Justice. No. But could you briefly walk through the walk-up, if you will, before, get us to 10 a.m. yesterday. Well, so essentially what we're talking about, it's really a pretty simple little scandal.

Roger Stone rolls the dice with a jury. He's convicted on multiple counts. He convicted on lying. He's convicted on, as well, obstruction, witness tampering kind of activities. And the prosecutors in the case ask for a prison sentence under the, under the sentencing guidelines. And I'm blanking on, was it something a long line between seven to nine years, I believe? It was pretty hefty prison sentence for a nonviolent crime. Now, what you have to realize is the sentencing guidelines and provide in the federal, in the federal system, for pretty hefty sentences for nonviolent crimes. I mean, this isn't, issue in the American prison system. And if you want to look at and really break down what could have been controversial about these prosecutors asking for that much time is they requested a

pretty substantial addition to the points. It's the sentencing guidelines. There's a point system that's involved. So you're going to reckon you're going to say this this offense is worth X number of points. Well, they suggested in addition of, I believe, eight points. for his alleged threats to witnesses. Now, why would that be controversial? That would be absolutely routine in a federal criminal trial to add points for threatening a witness. Well, there's a lot of argument as to whether those threats were actual threats or just sort of Roger Stone, engaging in Roger Stone bluster. If you think it's actual threats, well, then absolutely you add those points. If you're sitting there thinking, I do want to add that one of the threats was against

Bianca the dog. And Bianca the dog, which Jonah and I, I think I can speak for or take that very seriously. Bianca is a service animal. She is a lovely creature and threats against her should be taken very seriously. If she wasn't a lovely creature, would you not object? Oh, well, you have to understand that, like, I care about baby eels and, like, my thing at the Department of Justice was Elvers cases about trafficking of baby eels. So I find all creatures to be very lovely with the acceptance.

of cockroaches. Well, I'm glad you brought up the dog, and here's why, because that was such an odd and specific threat that it made me take the, it made me take it a little bit more seriously, perhaps even than the threat, the alleged threat against, you know, the person's life, which did sound like Roger Stone Bluster, but to bring the dog in it was very odd and very specific, but that was, that was the controversy. And so, you know, just to add one point on that, like, I think most of us can agree, it's one thing if someone says, I'll kill you, right? Yeah. You go, ah, he's talking out his ass, whatever.

The second someone says, I'll kill your kid, it's like game over, right? I mean, there's just like a category difference. If someone says I'll hurt you, it often sounds like bluster. The second you talk about hurting someone's dog or someone's kid, it's a completely different thing. Or rabbit. We also have fatal attraction. Yeah, rabbits are marginal. But I think that's a real, I mean, I think it's a real point, is that, that you don't joke.

I mean, you can joke about stuff about hurting someone, you know, and, but when you talk about someone's vulnerable creatures, it's a different thing. Yeah. Okay, so Steve, so we, that great walk-up. So the sentencing memo then, you know, the Department of Justice reverses course quite suddenly. After a Trump tweet. After a Trump tweet, although. Depending on who you believe before a Trump tweet, right? I mean.

Yeah. I think that's more likely, frankly, just of how quickly things can ever move. But regardless, four of the AUSAs who had been on the case, and I actually found this very miscells. leading in the press. A lot of the reporting says four resigned. Right. That's not entirely accurate. Several of those were salsas, which is special AUSAs. They have simply returned to their original posts. One of the AUSAs resigned, and I do think that's a huge deal. This is someone who is leaving their career, their job in protest. That is different to me than I don't want to work on this case anymore and I'm going back to my original office. And I just want to separate

those two. It's not that they don't mean anything, but there's been a lot of Mr. Let me, let me ask you a question, Sarah. So the other three chose to make that decision and to announce it at this particular time. Do you think it's coincidental? Oh, I don't mean that. I mean the seriousness of the announcement is less. It's been reported as if they left their jobs and are jobless. They still work at the Department of Justice. Right, but they chose to make this announcement at this particular time. as some form of protest, no, or is that even over-reading it? Oh, no, I think it is. I just think that the level of protest, this goes to a point that I think I've made to you guys, which is, I think an anonymous op-ed writer should be granted a certain amount of side-eye credibility versus someone who walks away from their job, which I think is the, if you do not agree with the executive branch's decisions and policies, that is your recourse. It is not to leak anonymously. And I think that leaving the case and going back to your original post is somewhere in between.

Of course they did it in protest, but it is not leaving your job, which this one person did. And I just think we should give that more credit. No, it's good to be that granular about the thing. But the big takeaway, at least for me, is four of them registered some form of protest, right? I mean, this is not good. not right. This is unusual and it's out of the normal practices. I think that's the big takeaway here, right? And I think if you put it in context and you look at some of the other things that sort of taken in isolation might cause us to pause for a second or might cause a sort of

a stream of op-eds or might cause us to ask some questions. But all of them together, I think, are more troubling. And I'm talking about the special pipeline that Rudy Giuliani has to Attorney General Barr on Ukraine. I'm talking about the Flynn decisions. I'm talking about the Roger Stone overruling or reassessing. There are a number of things that have taken place in the past seven to ten days that cause a sane, non-political person to stop and say, huh, This seems like this is not actually a universal application of the law, but it seems like, as we know the president prefers, punishing his enemies and helping his friends.

That's the bottom line. Well, and I think you can lump in the Vindman-Sondland issue from Friday as well. Oh, for sure. This is all sort of a post-impeachment narrative that we're seeing. No, it's like a retribution tour. That's what it is. And God knows I left a lot of things off. We could go even deeper and leave.

I think it's very hard for anyone other than the most hardcore super-Trumper proponents to say that this is anything but the president using the law to punish his enemies and help his friends. That's what it looks like. There's sufficient evidence to suggest. that's what's happening. I think to come to the opposite conclusion, you have to set aside a bunch of facts surrounding each of these individual incidents to make your case. But Steve, let me push back a little, which is if the president had simply pardoned Roger Stone, I assume that you would have disagreed with that choice, but you would have thought it was well

within his constitutional purview. So be it, voters can vote on that. this you know the president directing the prosecutorial executive action here is also within his executive purview what is the difference that you are pointing to here and i'm not saying there isn't one i just want you to have to point to yours so because he didn't do the extraordinarily improper thing even if it was well within his rights to do it the somewhat improper thing that he did is okay. I don't buy that argument. I mean, I think, yeah, is it within his rights to do this? Sure, potentially. I mean, I think you could make that argument. You could marshal a fax in a certain way to support that case. The bigger question is, I mean, you know, not to not to oversimplify it,

but it's a basic rule of law question. Are the laws applied universally? Are they applied generically are they implied without partiality and and I would argue at that point actually so you're assuming that I think the pardoning is the bad thing and the this is the less bad thing I actually think the reverse no I know you think the reverse well I don't know that you think the reverse that could have just been a provocative question that you asked I think the reverse and I think the less doing doing the less obviously bad thing because it's sort of is appears less improper doesn't make it a good thing to do if that makes sense. Well, can I?

No, I mean, I think it makes it look more, far more improper because of the rule of law part, from an appearance standpoint, at least, David. Yeah, can I put in, I'm going to jump in with my JA, former JAG officer hat for a second. So on the Vindman point, he, he, when Trump suggested that the military should investigate him, he came very close, skated right up on the line. might have crossed the line on a concept called unlawful command influence that is prohibited by the UCMJ and uniform code of military justice. And essentially it's prevents superior commanders from directing a particular kind of justice in a case. And when Trump did that, I feel like

if I'm a good, if I'm a good trial defense lawyer in the military, I've got a good chance of defending Vindman on those grounds alone. So some of this stuff isn't necessarily exactly in his constitutional authority. Well, you're assuming that what you're talking about is a constitutional limit on the executive in a unitary executive world. It would not be. And you're defending him in a certain context. In a unitary, even in a unitary executive world, because the UCMJ is an act of Congress. So the UCMJ governs the president. And well, maybe yes. Well, certainly yes. But anyway. And for more on this, please tune in to advisory opinions, our other podcast. So I look at it like this. Prosecutors ask for more severe sentences all the time. What you're getting is a glimpse into the really rough world of federal prosecution. And if these sentences are too long for non-violence,

crimes. Let's address the statutes. I do not like a system where everyone else that is not named Roger Stone and is not getting the Trump Friends and Family discount is facing draconian sentences for nonviolent crimes. But if you're getting that Friends and Family discount, which seems to be in play here, well, then here comes the special treatment. And so you can have think piece after think piece saying, man, seven to nine years is way too long of a recommendation for the crimes that he's been convicted of, but they're squarely within the sentencing guidelines and squarely within the sentences as prescribed in the statute. If that's the problem, fix that. Don't grant the friends and family discount. But also, I mean, a quick factual question.

There was almost no chance that the judge was actually going to sentence him to nine years, right? Like, this is prosecutors don't negotiate with themselves, particularly when they think their guy, they're going after is a jerk and deserves to have the book thrown on them. But do you actually think that the judge would have followed the guidelines on this? You raise a relevant point that we haven't brought up, which is simply that it doesn't, it matters what DOJ says, but at the end of the day, it's not DOJ's called. Judge Amy Jackson-Berman, who has been no shrinking wallflower during this administration, but just during her entire judicial tenure, will be the one making this decision, whether she would consider nine years to be reasonable, given that one of the things

that Roger Stone did was violate the gag order that she had put on. And the way that he violated it was putting her picture with crosshairs on it. Was that wrong or just frowned upon? I do think that part of the farce of this whole thing is that DOJ is having one of its worst news cycles in a year for something that is not even really in their control. But aren't we, I mean, so at the risk of really dumbing this down, aren't we, isn't this like some bullshit, like, academic debate? I mean, we know what's happening here.

This isn't about Judge Amy Jackson, Berman Jackson's prerogatives. It's not about whether Donald Trump understands the particular. legalities of his course of action. It's not about any of that stuff. It's about Donald Trump punishing his enemies and helping his friends. That's what this is about. So we can go and talk about all these various decisions

and whether they're acceptable in the parameters of the way that we used to discuss crime and punishment. That's not what this debate is about. The debate is about whether it's okay for the President of the United States, even if in the broadest interpretation of his constitutional prerogatives, is, could basically help his friends and punish his enemies.

Isn't that the question here? Why is it more complicated than that? Well, let me give you the other argument. You know, I've talked to Trump appointees today. And what they would tell you is that if prosecutors do not follow the chain of command and did not get their sentencing recommendation approved as they were supposed to do, and then go ahead and make that public, it is absolutely within the attorney general's prerogative and choice

to say that is not our position we're not giving seven to nine years for threatening someone's dog which was a large part of the upward enhancement as David said and as far as at least the three who returned back to their original positions

conservatives were yelling about this when other lawyers within the Department of Justice refused to work on certain cases that they simply didn't want to work on because they didn't like the administration's positions. So be consistent. Either we expect attorneys who work in the Department of Justice to follow the chain of command and represent what the attorney general asked them to do in cases, including reversing their own positions.

Or you don't have to do that and you can pick and choose and it's up to every prosecutor and every attorney at DOJ to decide what their personal views on cases are. Yeah. So let's just stipulate for the for the sake of argument, that all of those things that you've been told by Trump lawyers are true. That's all true. And it's not clear yet that that's the case, but maybe it's the case. And for the sake of a discussion, let's say it's the case. I agree that it's not clear yet that it's the case. I also will under.

Yeah, and there's a lot of pushback sort of behind the scenes on other aspects of those arguments. But for the sake of discussion, let's assume that it's all true. I think then there would be an interesting, robust discussion on the particulars of this case. But it's not just this case. It's a series of what we've seen in the, I mean, really actually much before the president was acquitted, but in particular since the president was acquitted on these things. He has very clearly sought to target those who crossed him and to help those who worked for him. No? I mean, why is that a crazy thing for me to say? I mean, am I wrong? Am I just

misreading this whole thing? The context is totally wrong? Well, let me, let me provide additional evidence. Set aside everything that was happening at the Department of Justice, Jonah or David, late last night, the president withdrew, actually it was in the afternoon, but it became public late last night, that the president withdrew the nomination of Jesse Liu, who had been the D.C. U.S. attorney during the trial of Roger Stone, who had then been put up for a treasury job, and he withdrew her nomination for this treasury position, which would have been terrorism finance. As far as I have seen, the White House has not put out any argument for new information they received about Jesse or some problem that they'd run into with her nomination.

And as I have been told again behind the scenes, they've actually not pushed back on the idea that this was related to her overseeing the trial of Roger Stone. Can you, so just Sarah, because you know a lot more about this than the rest of us, explain why she's relevant to this broader discussion. Woof. Well, so she's... She was the U.S. Attorney for D.C. overseeing, for instance, the four AUSAs who were talking about, and who, when Roger Stone was

you know indicted and sent to trial she was the one who okayed that she was the one who okayed pursuing it at all I suppose when you think about that and then last month was nominated for a treasury position in what was a somewhat

unusual move though not by the Trump administration it was an unusual move but not unprecedented to then have her step down as U.S. attorney a month ago have her wait for her hearing and confirmation and then a different person who had been working for Bill Barr was put in as DC U.S. attorney who is the one who did reverse the sentencing memo

yesterday. So, I mean, you have to sort of wade into some conspiracy theory stuff that we don't have proven, but you don't have to wait that far. Yeah. So just to change the examples somewhat, they perpwalk Vindman out of the White House with his brother. Right, right. That's all, I mean, like, for Steve's point, that's all you need to know about, like, their cleaning house and punishing people. And people say that the president has every right to have the staff that he wants. They're all absolutely correct.

but if this wasn't punishment why do the perp walk why fire I don't think they're arguing it wasn't punishment no there's a no there's a big split in the Trump administration about this I mean you had Kellyanne Conway out in public basically saying no no no and you had other people Robert O'Brien the National Security Advisor and others

saying no no we'd always plan to shrink the NSC no this is the natural course of events this is what's happening And that's obviously been, you know, clearly undermined by the president's own tweets where he's in effect, I mean, Donald Trump Jr. is saying this is punishment. We're glad they identified who he needed to fire. And then you have the president of the United States in effect saying, I'm glad Bill Barr took this over so we could get rid of the bad guys. That's a paraphrase. Sorry. But that's what's happening here. That's what's happening here. It's like sometimes, this is, I'm sorry to harp on this, but this is one of those moments where I feel like we go so far out of our way to avoid understanding what's actually happening to give the benefit of that out. And look, it's important to do that because you want to exhaust all the other possibilities and you want to lay out the facts in the way that people can understand and appreciate them. But it seems pretty evident, I think, to the casual observer, what's happening here. And to the extent that we ignore that, I think it's not helpful. Okay, so then, David, I'm going to pivot out real quick for our ending question to each of you.

Let's take Steve's point at face value. This was punishment. Vindman and Sondland were punishment. The Roger Stone thing, Jesse Liu, all of it. Yes, it's exactly the wolf comes as a wolf, as Justice Scalia would say. Does it matter politically to him? Does he lose voters over this? Is it relevant in November?

As in, is this just a fun thing for us to talk about in a podcast? But in a week, everyone will have moved on. So I'm going to say, there's this sort of consensus that, you know, LOL, nothing matters. You see this all the time on Twitter. But the fact is it is relevant to him politically because if he didn't do this kind of stuff, If he didn't do these things that were so blatantly disrespectful of the rule of law, if it was so disrespectful of any sort of norm asking American leaders to be honorable, then he would not be bumping around between 42 and 44% approval rating right now.

I believe he topped 50 this week. On which, Rasmussen? I'm talking about the average. as you constantly say only look at the average the average he bumps between 42 and 44 he would not be doing that if he would be much higher than that if not for this behavior what people keep doing they kind of look at this backwards they say because his base doesn't abandon him this doesn't matter no this matters because he has only his base because of this kind of behavior continually and then here's another way that it will matter i believe and this is something I don't think enough people are understanding and realizing. And it's not so much in electoral politics, but it matters in the law. There's more than one law enforcement entity in the United States of America than the Department of Justice. And if I am an ambitious and intelligent state attorney general in states where there's relevant jurisdiction over Trump

administration cronies. I am looking very hard at ways. For example, the New York, New York DA is taking a look at Trump finances in the state of New York. And these things are out of Trump's hands. They are out of his control. And this guy's is a dangerous next evolution. Because for a long time, the policing of the federal government has been left to the federal government by and large. But in theory, there is jurisdiction that a lot of state officials have over federal officials under relevant state laws. And if we get into this business where you cannot trust the Department of Justice under a given president to not grant the friends and family discount, as we're seeing with Roger Stone, you're going to see other layers of law enforcement move into that vacuum.

And I think that that could be a legacy here that could have real consequences going forward. Real-time fact-checking the president's averaged approval rating is currently 43.5 apologies to David. Steve. Yeah, I mean, no, we can talk about this in two different ways. And certainly we can talk about the political impact of what the president does. And I think it's unlikely to have a significant political impact. But, and again, I apologize if I'm being polly-in about this. But doesn't it matter in terms of the rule of law?

Like, doesn't this actually matter? If it's the case, or if it's the case that the president is clearly preferring friends and punishing enemies, doesn't that have some effect on how we all see the application of the rule of law? And even if it's just the perception, doesn't that have a similar negative consequence? I would argue that it does. I would argue that we're being very careful to pretend that there might be some other justification. for what the president's doing, but it's pretty clear what the president's doing here. And he doesn't even pretend this. I mean, you can go back and you can find all sorts of

YouTube interviews where the president himself says, I want to go after the people who went after me. Like, we know that's what he does. If that's happening from the Oval Office, doesn't that have an erosive effect on the broader rule of law? I would argue that it does. And for people who are, who have argued, I think with some justification to this point, look, there may have been some erosions of the sort of broader rule of law imperatives, but we haven't crashed through the guardrails. Aren't you at the point where you're like, ah, she's, this is, this matters for the guardrails. I think it does. To paraphrase, to paraphrase a man for all seasons, you know, if you cut down all the trees but one.

Yes. What are you left with? that's a very rough paraphrase i might add yeah so i might have you all live in on the brain but um because this book a time to build is very useful and it sort of gets in your head about how to think about things um but one of the points the evolve likes to make is that

Donald Trump is the first president in American history to be utterly unformed by the relevant institutions that create good presidential character. He's never a governor, he's never a senator, he was never a general of a commanding, or a military officer. He really actually wasn't even the head of a large business firm. You know, his company, his business is very small. It's run like a family business. More, almost like a mob storefront.

And it's kind of like King Ralph. Remember that movie where John Goodman, the entire royal family, is doing a family portrait, and there's an explosion, and they're all killed. And it turns out that John Goodman is like the seventh cousin twice removed, and he's like a plumber from Ohio, and he becomes the king of England. Okay, I might have roughly paraphrasing. You know King of, you know King Ralph or whatever the head.

You guys know. Like, nobody here is nodding along with Jonah as he describes this thing. Trump has been plucked from a very weird, almost, to even call it a subculture is too generous. It is a, it's really a culture of one. And he is bringing with him, you know, it would be a hyperbole to say Tony Soprano values, but they are the sort of

they're sort of watered down Tony Soprano values he does not he does not know how to formulate the question why is this why might this be a bad idea he doesn't he literally didn't know why he couldn't have an attorney general

who was like his Roy Cone and he's open about it yeah he's open to know it's not like he's trying to deceive us but he's also he's untutorable about this stuff and so people can't tell him no and so I think the real there's a real violence being done to the rule of law but I think the bigger thing is is the as Steve put at the guardrail point because it's going to give permission structure for lots of presidents into the future

to just go with their instincts and their desires because it turns out that a lot of the constraints on the presidency were not actually formal legalistic constraints. They were just customs. And he's blown up the customs. Yeah. I think that is the perfect place to end on. Thank you all for joining. We did this podcast where everyone is off gallivanting somewhere doing work.

And it was a treat. Thank you guys.