The Dispatch Podcast - Texas Governor Fights Vaccine Mandates

Episode Date: October 13, 2021

To quote the great Ozzy Osbourne, “We’re going off the rails on the crazy train.” In today’s podcast, our hosts look at Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s ban on vaccine mandates, the DOJ memo aimed at school boards, an update to the January 6 committee, and President Biden's slumping numbers among independents. And finally, what does all of this mean for 2022 and (even though it’s way too early) 2024? Show Notes: -Abbott says businesses control their merchandise -Abbott says businesses cannot control who is vaccinated in their store -Merrick Garland letter -National School Board Association letter -McAuliffe: "I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach." -Tragic homicide story over vaccines in Maryland -Daily Wire Loudoun County story -“We Came So Close to Disaster” - French Press -Eastman Memo: “It’s Real and It’s Not Spectacular” - Advisory Opinions -Bill Kristol and William Baude -The Sweep on Biden’s polling struggles -Ezra Klein and David Shor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isgar, joined by Steve Hayes, Jonah Goldberg, and David French. This week, we are talking about the Governor Abbott vaccine not mandate. We will talk about the Biden DOJ memo aimed at school boards and public officials, the January 6th select committees continuing investigation, and end with President Biden's numbers dropping among independent. Independence. Let's dive in. David, as you put in our text messages, all the Texas things. Well, how about one big Texas thing? Because there's a lot of Texas things going on all the time. your home state, Sarah, is always interesting. So I want to read two tweets here, and then I want to go write ping pong right back to you because this is your state. So why we have to start with you?

All right, this is tweet number one from Governor Greg Abbott dated October 10th, 2021, 4.32 p.m. for those keeping precise score at home. California mandates, gender-neutral, oils for large retailers. Not in Texas. In Texas, it's businesses, not government that decide

how they display their merchandise. Okay, that's one. Next one. The next day, October 11th, 2021, 6 p.m. I issued an executive order prohibiting vaccine mandates by any entity in Texas.

I also added the issue to the special session agenda. The COVID-19 is safe, vaccine is safe, effective, and our best defense against the virus, but should always remain voluntary and never forced. So in Texas, Sarah, businesses have the freedom to display their merchandise. They do not have the freedom to keep their employees safe from COVID. Huh. What the heck? Well, David, it was 26 hours later. Obviously, it's a different political environment. True. This is, there's, there's a few ways to look at this. I'm going to take the

political angle because I feel like, you know, Steve's going to be all substance and Jonah's going to be big picture. So I'm just going to stick in my nice little lane. This is a 2024 move against Ron DeSantis. They are still living in a world in which Donald Trump may not run for the Republican nomination. And it will be Abbott versus DeSantis in that Trump executive serious lane. And Ron DeSantis, frankly, time and time again, has outmaneuvered Abbott on not just culture war stuff, because I don't think this quite fits into the culture war paradigm exactly, but on top shelf media narrative. And here's an example where Abbott finally out maneuvers DeSantis, I think, in his view. Like, think about the tech bill. Florida got out first with an

anti big tech bill. Abbott followed just last month. And so many other examples when it comes to schools, sports, yada, yada. So interesting political move by Abbott. You know, he has a race, a re-election race next year in 2022. I think it also tells you how unconcerned he is about that race. There's no pivoting to the middle going on here? Look at the special session. Look at the Texas abortion law. I mean, none of that is a pivot to the middle by any means. Voting, abortion, big tech, vaccine anti-mandate.

So I think it tells you about the politics right now that Abbott's team certainly doesn't think Texas is trending blue, let alone turning blue. And they see, in fact, Governor DeSantis of Florida as their main competition nationally. So can I follow up super fast with a question politically? Okay. So my question is, it seems to me, though, that he's still thinking about the base of the base, of the base, because Texas isn't really all that below the national average in vaccinations. This isn't what you would call an anti-vax state in the same way that Mississippi is. It's not even as low as Tennessee.

This doesn't seem like something that is playing for even a broad GOP base of support. This seems, couldn't this also be primary focused against Allen West? He has no serious concern about Allen West. And David, part of what you just said, it fits, I think, very well into my narrative, which is, yeah, because this isn't really about Texas. I think nationally in these individual states who's voting in primaries and it's the base of the base of the base.

And especially in those early primary states, the Iowa caucus, I mean, it's a caucus. It's not even a primary. You've got to be really basey to want to go out in very cold weather and stand in a junior high gymnasium for several hours to caucus. And how do you get your message out

to a national base that doesn't live in your state? You've got to already get into that media bloodstream of what's being talked about. Abbott did a masterful job of that with this announcement. He is in the media, the national media bloodstream, where the base of the base will hear it. His message in 2024 is going to be something to the effect of, we did it in Texas, regardless of whether it needed to be done in Texas.

So, yeah, I don't think he's thinking about Alan West at all. He has no real primary threat coming from Allen West. all right um well let's do the the framework that sarah just suggested she did political stuff steve substance stuff substance stuff i think he has a problem i mean for exactly the way that you framed this discussion um you know it's it's one thing to claim i mean texas has spent years marketing itself as a place for businesses to come and to do business unencumbered by the state in touting the state's eagerness to allow businesses to operate as they see fit, to work in a lower tax environment, to not have the kinds of regulations that are present in other states.

And yet, he is saying, in effect, you can't run your business the way you want to run your business. I think there's a charge of hypocrisy. I think in this political environment, where you have so much of the base that you and Sarah were talking about spun up about these issues. It's, you know, it's this oppositional inclination on both the right and the left. It is easy to see him making that as a political argument without really much concerned about philosophical consistency, the latest in a number of these kinds of arguments that we've seen from Republican elected officials. They care more about making the political argument and putting themselves in a better political

position than they do about any charges that we or others or their political opponents might make that they're being inconsistent. Jonah, big picture stuff. So I had a friend that. that we all know here, but it wasn't on the record, so I'll just quote, a prominent journalist friend that we all know, uh, sent me that, um,

that Abbott tweet and said, I have a theory. It says, everything they used to say about the base wasn't true when they were saying it, but it's true now. Um, and that the base has sort of, it's become self-fulfilling prophecy that they've sort of,

they've sort of become, uh, the unfair, uh, caricature that, uh, that was once leveled at them. And I, I, I appreciate your Abbott tweet, but I want to do you one better. Oh, please. This is from the, uh, you know, uh, possibly Donald Trump's running mate in 2024, Charlie Kirk, um, he, oh, I know what this one is. reject tyranny catch the freedom flu and he wrote freedom flu as a hashtag um so now not getting the vaccine refusing to get the vaccine that's for cucks that is for you rhino squish guys now you actually affirmatively must get infected with the freedom flu to truly prove your manhood

And I think, I mean, I think Sarah's political analysis is entirely right about this, is that these guys don't, they don't care about arguments to persuade even moderate Republicans. It's all about getting the intense crawl over glass voters that dominate the base. And these voters are so dominant that it caused me to recently write about how maybe Conservatives should form a third party to punish the GOP for, you know, descending into grotesque assinity. And so I don't have a great big picture here beyond to say that the stupid, it burns. It burns very hot.

And it is amazing to me how a base that a decade ago was demanding conservative purity is now cares not a wit about conservative purity and cares entirely about performative buffoonery and

the thing that disappoints me about Abbott is that you know Rick Perry you have to give him a bit of a discount because he kind of grew up as a sort of

yaha kind of guy but his e-ha was kind of authentic right it was part of his actual personality Abbott's faking it There's no way he believes half the things he's doing are actually like smart or sound or principled.

It's just craven, pandering, and boob bait. And that's why we can't have nice things. Next up, I want to talk about the Department of Justice memo related to FBI investigations against threats of public officials. So this starts, in some ways at least, with the National School Boards Association asking the Biden administration to do something and let me read the sentence

that I think has everyone's, you know, hackles as these acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes. The Garland Justice Department

responds with a memo that basically says, yes, we will launch a series of additional efforts in the coming days designed to address the rise in criminal conduct directed toward school personnel. Here's the quote from Garland. Threats against public servants are not only illegal, they run counter to our nation's core values. Those who dedicate their time and energy to ensuring that our children receive a proper education and a safe environment deserve to be able to do their work without fear for their safety. David, you have written about this and you and I have even had a slight disagreement

about it as well but it is undoubtedly the conversation happening with parents right now, particularly on the right side of the political spectrum across the country of is this now criminalizing

parents complaining or holding their school boards accountable is this a massive overreaction? Is this intimidation? Is this threats by the Biden Justice Department to back off the CRT conversations. And I think it ranges the spectrum of parents who are genuinely concerned and wondering what this memo means for them to not less genuine.

Yeah. I mean, I think the idea that this is intimidating parents into silence is is disabused by the fact that nobody is being intimidated in silence here. This is a classic, Sarah, the more I've looked at this, This is one of these classic to America information tunnel moments because if you are on the right side of the spectrum, you have been told by virtually everyone, and I'm going to read a tweet by Christopher Rufo, breaking Attorney General Merrick Garland has instruct the FBI to mobilize against parents who oppose critical race theory in public schools, citing, quote, threats. So this letter follows the National School Board Association's request to classify protests as, quote, domestic terrorism. Now, that's not what the letter does, and that's not what the NSBA request said, but that's the narrative that is coming on the right, that we have robust disagreement in public school boards. Yeah, people are mad.

Yeah, people are rowdy, but that's First Amendment activity and action. and here comes the DOJ to intimidate. And if you actually look at the NSBA letter, it's really not a good letter. No, that sentence I read, I find silly. Yeah, it's not a good. And here's why it's not a good letter. It's not just the sentence that you wrote.

They didn't do that. I didn't write it. I mean, sorry, said. We're making me here. Whoops. Sarah, why were you doing that? Sorry. It's not just the sentence.

you read, it is that they didn't do their homework. I mean, and why do I say that? Because there's a whole other side of the spectrum that has highlighted and surfaced all kinds of really disturbing threats directed at school board officials and people who testify in ways that the base of the base of the base, the really angry base of the GOP doesn't like. And in fact, some of the stuff has happened in my own home county where we have had school board officials threatened. We have had people who testified in favor of masks in school very aggressively approached right outside the school board meeting. We know who you are. We will find you. You will never be allowed in public again. We know where you live in other places. We know where you live.

We're going to stalk you. We're coming to your house. We've had people come to houses armed. We've had, I mean, so there are actual things that are going on that are way beyond we're just rowdy at a school board meeting. And so I think if you drill down to the substance of the letter, if you drill down to the substance of the letter, this really goes to the public trust question. Because the substance of the letter says, one, you affirm the right to engage in spirited debate, correct. Two, threats against public servants are illegal and should be prosecuted, quote, when appropriate, correct. And three, they also promised to convene meetings with local law enforcement to discuss strategies for addressing threats, window dressing. So the letter is kind of a

placeholder. It's a, yeah, you can protest, no, you can't threaten, and we're going to hold some meetings. But when you're in the information tunnel, there's two things going on at once. How dare you even mention prosecution against these wonderful, though, rowdy, patriotic Americans? And then the other one is, doesn't that seem a little anodyne when people are having armed protesters coming to their house, when there are direct threats to stalk, when people are getting in mail death threats? Isn't that a little light? So I think this is a real to America's moment, and one of the things that we have to understand is that, yeah, rowdy protests at school board meetings, so long as they're not violating applicable law, that's First Amendment protected expression. Absolutely. Nobody should be suppressed from yelling at their school board members. Number two, however, a lot of this has crossed a line in much the same way we've seen it cross a line with secretaries of state during the election challenge. with congressmen and senators during the impeachment vote.

And look, people on the right need to wake up and realize that is going on. But instead, they just act like it's not. So, Jonah, a letter from the attorney general cannot change the law. Not what it does. This was a messaging memo from the Biden administration and from Attorney General Garland, sort of taking sides on this debate. And this is where David and I kind of disagree. I think it was meant to take sides.

I think it was meant to be a political statement. It wasn't adenine, anodyne? Anodyne. Adonid. Adenoid. Adonid. I've been listening to an etymology podcast recently, and now all my words. It's British, so I can't even understand half of what they're saying. It was meant to have a political purpose. And I just think it was bad politics.

because I think it had far more of an effect on the right than it did on the left. And let me just read you what Senator Hawley, speaking of 2024 ambitions, said. Joe Biden has directed the FBI to investigate parents like this, referring to a dad who is making the rounds on Fox News related to a daily wire story

about his daughter being sexually assaulted at school. This is who Biden and the left want to silence, not criminals, parents. If this Garland memo isn't a deliberate attempt to chill parents from showing up at school board meetings, I don't know what is. So my question to you, Jonah, is, did the Biden folks not think through this? Like, why hand the right such an easy talking point that doesn't really do anything to help, quote, unquote, their team? That's actually a good segue for my topic, but which we'll get to in a little bit. but the short answer to that is because

I don't think the Biden team is very good at what they do and I think that I'm more on your side than I am on David's on this one I think it was it was political and bad politics and that doesn't mean that the right wing narrative that these are all just Norman Rockwell painting peaceful protesters is right either

but you know this is a point that Charlie Cook you know, often makes, uh, British Charlie Cook, not poster Charlie Cook, um, that a lot of Americans think the FBI is like the super police, right? That, if the, you know, that if something's a real crime, you call in the FBI, because they're the real cops, you know, they're the ones who, they're the ninjas of the law enforcement world. And that's not their role. And almost everything that has been alleged about the real abuses. And I think David's absolutely right. There's been real abuses. Those are jobs for local law enforcement. If they're happening in Virginia, it's a democratic governor. This, I think that the part of the problem is that the Democratic Party nationally

and in almost every other regard is so beholden to the teachers unions and the education establishment that they have almost a Pavlovian response to pandering to them. And so I think that like, Like, if the National Association of Retailers had sent a letter to the Biden administration, and there have been enormous and well-documented cases of retail cashiers being horribly treated by customers and all that kind of stuff because the pandemic is making people crazy, the Biden administration would not say, or the Garland DOJ would not leap to and say, we're going to look into this. And it has the feeling of special treatment

and special pleading for the teachers at a moment when teachers are so unbelievably, I shouldn't say teachers, teachers unions and education bureaucrats are so unbelievably unpopular with people because of school shutdowns, masking requirements, and now this CRT stuff. And so I just think it was bad politics

followed by a kind of double standard bad policy, even though for sure, I agree that the letter itself from Garland was kind of anodyne and that that he stood up for free speech in the letter. But the signal that people took was the justice department is calling me a domestic terrorist. And that was so foreseeable. I think the protests increase rather than decreased because of this. So even if it wasn't political, it was bad politics. Well, can I let me ask a question. I've already acknowledged that I have not studied up on this as much as you guys have.

So rather than weigh in, let me ask another question. Let's stipulate that it's bad politics. I won't dispute that from your perspective. Could this be what he intended to do? I mean, could this be, as you say, in service to the teachers' unions? Could it be that he wanted to send this signal

that they think these parents are, are real threats and that they that they might in fact have to be extra tough. And that this message that he's sending wasn't an accident and wasn't a stumble, but was precisely what he wanted it, which is to say, it's not that, you know, right-wing critics went in and grabbed this language and made it a big thing so much as it was the actual intent of the letter. surely the Biden administration three weeks before the Virginia governor's race that is tightening every single day did not want to gin up the enthusiasm for the Republican side, though, right?

I mean, that would be some kind of stupid. But if we accept your framing of this current moment in American politics, which is everything's about getting your base out, right? Yeah, except I don't have the accidental effect. I don't think this riles up their base nearly as much because there's none of that fear element, right? Now the right has this like, now they're sending the FBI for you. If you even think about complaining about your schools.

And of course, it doesn't help that Terry McCall have been publicly at that debate said, I'm tired of parents. I don't want to get the quote wrong, but it was loosely. I don't think parents should be telling teachers what. to teach or something like that. Yes, yes. Yeah, that was. So, I mean, I agree with you, Stephen. Like, I don't think McColliffe's point was a misstatement exactly.

I think he's used to saying that to his crowd and getting a good reaction. But I just don't think they thought through because I don't think they're part of the ecosystem, right? To David's point, it really is to Americas. They are simply not in the ecosystem that they're not in. and I don't think they understood what they were creating. And this has now become, the memo has become a huge talking point. I mean, I have just a mother's group of school-aged children. Obviously, mine is not school-aged.

And this is what they're talking about is this memo. And they're, you know, I just don't think that could possibly be what the Biden folks intended. And to Jonas' point, maybe, if they did, luff, that's, that was not smart. in my view. Because if Yonkin wins in Virginia, the Republican nominee in Virginia, I think you can trace it not like one to one to this memo, but to the atmospherics of things like this memo. Well, and they were already talking about schools. It was already a prominent issue. Absolutely. And this feeds that narrative. Yeah. Let me, as the least professional political pundit here, let me give you my perspective.

on I, A, I grieve on at least based on all the data we have now or at least what we perceive that the memo did not have its attended effect. But I do think there is something going on that there is a sensible view on the Democratic side that goes like this. If we need to highlight how radical the Republican base has become, they are, if you're voting for Republicans, you're voting for people are anti-vax, you're voting for people who want to ban books, and you're voting for people who threaten school board members' lives. Okay? What, that was a lousy way of sending that message, because it's, as it's been obvious, is that it was immediately turned into the Biden school board, I mean, the Biden DOJ is trying to criminalize dissent. The Biden DOJ is

trying to chill dissent. But there is a point at which, and I don't know when this point will occur, there is a point at which this relentless, the relentless atmosphere of threats that is coming from part of the right is going to go beyond, it's going to go beyond threats and somebody's going to get hurt. It just feels inevitable at this point. And so one, I think,

one of the issues here is that you've had i mean i can just jump in sorry david real quick yeah i mean you've you've had uh incidents of of people there was one last week where somebody uh went out and i think shot his brother because his brother was uh pro vaccine um and this person the shooter was anti-vaccine you started to see these things pop up yeah i do think there was a and if there's a political objective to this that was fumbled this was you know this was what they're trying The past they were trying to complete is there is a real atmosphere of threat against public officials who defy the GOP base. And that is a real thing.

That's a real thing. And that letter, in part because the NSBA letter asking for it didn't do its homework, that letter was a ham-handed attempt to highlight a real thing. Yeah, just so I'm not making this up, there's a Maryland man who allegedly killed his brother who was a pharmacist, not a doctor, saying that his brother by being a pharmacist and administering vaccines was, quote, killing people, unquote. So I think you're starting to see this happen.

And I'll just say there are probably other issues at work between those two brothers than that top line summary. Just because, like. Hopefully. I mean, maybe. I don't know. I guess I don't make that assumption. People are so fired up about this.

vaccine stuff. No, I agree. But like, even if you're crazy anti-vax, like there are pharmacists out there who aren't your brother that he could have shot. I mean, I don't mean to make light of it. It's just like it's, you know, it's like the old bear hunting joke. This really isn't about the hunting at some point when you're talking about people killing family members, but we don't need to get two in the weeds on that.

All right. Before we leave the topic, I want to pull back the curtain a little on our discussion before we headed into this topic, which was that Daily Wire story that I mentioned about a student who was allegedly sexually assaulted in the bathroom in a Loudoun County school. That is also getting a lot of attention with, at least right now, the online crowd, Fox News, primetime crowd. And we decided not to discuss it because we don't have all the facts. We'd like more reporting on it before we discuss a story like that. But for me in particular, and it's something I try to emphasize to my friends and family,

when something fits so easily into a pre-existing narrative of the day, you really have to question, like, that coincidence. And, you know, we've had defamation lawsuits against Tucker Carlson and Rachel Maddow, where their defenses have been. The information that we present on our show is obviously opinion. we don't necessarily present facts on our show, and I just like to reiterate that. So perhaps this is the topic we will revisit in the future,

but I just thought that I wanted to share that with our listeners. And we'll pop the link into the show notes. It's a subscriber-only piece at the Daily Wire right now, but if people are interested, we'll make it easy for you to get it. Oh, so if you go to Google News and type in Daily Wire and a couple of these phrases, it'll come up. summaries of it will come up somewhere. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss,

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it builds trust. Protect your family with life insurance from ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash dispatch. That's E-T-H-O-S dot com slash dispatch. Application times may vary. Rates may vary. But all right, let's go to our next topic. Just another super calm, nothing to see here. January 6th. Yeah, I would say January 6th plus. I wanted to revisit a French press that David wrote last week, looking sort of what we've learned about the attacks and the extent to which

there was an actual plan. And just to refresh people's memories, on the day, on January 6th, you know, we all watched as the riot, the attacks on the Capitol took place. Then things calmed down a little bit. The Senate reconvened and did its duty. And in the middle of all of that, we posted a short story about Rudy Giuliani making phone calls at the president's behest, trying to get senators to slow down the process, trying to get senators not to do what they eventually did on that night. So after the violence, one of the president's top advisors was still making these calls trying to slow things down. And the question was, was Giuliani freelancing? Was this part of a bigger pattern? And was this actually a plan? Did he just want to slow it down with the hope that

slowing it down would keep the inevitable from happening? Or did you want to slow it down because they had intended to do things with the delay. And from all of the reporting that we've seen over the past, in particular over the past several weeks, it's become abundantly clear. There was, in fact, a plan. And this was a plan that was devised at the highest level by the president, with the president's involvement. David, you wrote about that last week. Can you just bring us up to speed on what we've learned and why you think it matters? Yeah. So there's been kind of a narrative that's emerged after January 6th, again in the right-wing media tunnel, that this was a spontaneous demonstration, or the demonstration was planned, but the walk

to the Capitol and the attack on the Capitol was just spontaneous. Things got out of hand. It's a one-off. Don't need to really think about it too much. But the reality is here, what we have is January 6th representing a culmination of a series of efforts that would have provided vice, that purported to provide Vice President Pence with the legal pretext for invalidating the election. And so this kind of connects with an advisory opinions podcast that Sarah and I did a week or so ago called the Eastman memo is real and it's not spectacular. But here is what, here's what essentially happened. And we don't need to go through all of the history here. is that there's kind of two parallel efforts going on at once that are behind the scenes prior to January 6th.

The one is the White House. So a Trump aide reaches out to John Eastman, who is the founder of Claremont Institute's Center for Constitutional jurisprudence, a former law school dean, law professor, member, a head of a federalist society practice group. So respected conservative scholar and asks to him to write a memo about the January 6th certification that would provide them with options. And so Eastman writes a two-page outline and then a longer memo. And the two-page outline provides a basis for which Eastman says essentially Pence can make Donald Trump president on January 6. So then Eastman comes to the Oval Office on January 4th with Trump and Pence. Now, Eastman says he did not actually urge Pence to rule Trump president. He said that people, that what he wanted done was that for Pence to delay the certification so that other state legislatures could, quote, look into the matter and apparently perhaps certify an alternative slate of electors. but he did, in black and white, provide Pence with a memo that purported to give him a constitutional basis to nullify the election results and declare Trump the winner.

At the same time, there is a drama playing out in the DOJ. There's a DOJ attorney named Jeffrey Clark, who's essentially threatening acting attorney general, and this is Jeffrey Rosen's job. if he didn't use his power to press key state legislatures to appoint an alternate slate of electors. So, and I'm going to read from a Senate, my majority staff report on this incident. It says, Clark eventually informed Rosen that Trump had offered to install him in Rosen's place and told, in other words, fire Rosen and put,

make Jeffrey Clark acting attorney general, and told Rosen he would turn down Trump's offer if Rosen would agree to sign the, quote, proof of concept letter. This was a letter to Georgia, urging them to overturn the election result. Clark's efforts culminated in an Oval office meeting, or Rosen

and some other DOJ officials informed Trump that DOJ senior leaders would resign if Trump carried out of his plans. So essentially what you had is not, you had a mob in place, a potus-backed legal memo

providing the pretext for the mob, a mob providing a muscle, and we were literally Mike Pence just simply saying yes to a legal memo crafted by a law school dean to trigger an unbelievable constitutional crisis. And so I think it's very important for people to understand January 6th was the culmination of a comprehensive effort to overturn this election direct. by the White House that included placing intense pressure on the vice president of the United States and senior DA officials, including the acting attorney general. And we were literally, basically any one of them from saying yes away from a profound crisis. So, Jonah, what David has just related to us is nowhere to be seen if you're, I mean, this is a theme of this podcast, if you are in the right wing information tunnel. You probably are unaware of all of these things

or to the extent that you're aware of them, and this is where I want to go next, you're untroubled by this. What we're watching now in the aftermath of what David has walked us through. And I'm confident that we will be getting lots more information on what happened on January 6th specifically. But importantly, what the president and his advisors did before January 6th. We're filling in this big picture. And while I think we're not likely to see cooperation from some of the president's top advisors, I do think that the January 6th commission is getting help from and information from lower level staffers who were in a position to understand what was what was taking place but we're looking now at efforts across the

country I think some to local and organic others organized by Steve Bannon and others kind of in in Donald Trump's orbit to make changes to election processes and election officials, sometimes by resorting to the kinds of pressure taxes that we talked about in our last discussion, how significant is this? I mean, we haven't talked about this for a few weeks. And on the one hand, I don't love to go back and rehash September or January 6th and dwell on Donald Trump. On the other hand, when you have new evidence that comes to light like this, it feels pretty darn significant to me. Am I being alarmist about this? No, not at all. I mean, like, we talked about this when Sarah was missing, because we talked

about all the cool stuff when Sarah's not around. You know, when we're talking about the Kagan op-ed and Robert Kagan, prominent neo-conservative foreign policy guy, wrote, you know, this thing about how the coup is, is ongoing right now. or the attempted coup is going and going right now. Very similar to what Kevin Williamson wrote in the New York Times about, I think that was the title of it. The coup is still happening or something like that. And I think it's right.

I mean, we knew, it's funny. So I just did a podcast with Brian Reedle about the debt stuff. And one of the problems with talking about debt and deficit is it's the same freaking conversation every time you have it. It's just the numbers are a little bigger. And it's difficult to say something new about something that has been such a slow-moving, obvious problem for so long. It feels a little like that with the January 6th stuff in that everyone has already priced in their opinions on this. And now they are in a groove where new facts come in.

And if you're already of the opinion that people are making too big a deal about all this stuff, they just bounce off of you. you know and if you are of the opinion that um you know Trump is guilty of what he's been accused of you know I think I wrote a piece on November 11th or something like that this was always the plan you always wanted to steal the election we knew that by their reaction to the fox call about Arizona um and there has been you know nothing has moved me off of that sense is you he wanted to steal an election after January 6 he should have been impeached on January 7th and removed from office and and barred from public life

January 10th, as far as I'm concerned. The problem is we're just, it's like we're, you know, adding more cars to a traffic jam doesn't make anything move faster. Adding more information to this doesn't make it any more obvious to those people who have eyes to see it. The ongoing stuff is deeply, deeply concerning. And I have a real problem with a lot of my friends on the right who don't want, who'd rather make a big deal about a lot of stuff

that Democrats are doing that is bad and talk about infrastructure and all these things, which is bad. And I agree. I've written a lot about infrastructure. But like, this is happening in their own house, right? This is happening in their name to a certain extent. And if you agree, broadly speaking, that what they're trying to do is not just wrong, but kind of evil or not even kind of,

just plainly evil, You have more of an obligation, not less of one, to talk about it and say something about that. Where I get off the bus a little bit is with the certainty that everybody has. Like, a lot of these people, I mean, let's be clear, a lot of these people are clowns and buffoons. You know, Steve Bannon is not the strategic genius he thinks he is. And just because he wears many layers of shirts doesn't change that fact. And so the fact that these guys are trying to do. all of this stuff doesn't mean that they will succeed. And it doesn't mean, and it certainly is not

so certain that they will succeed that I think conservatives and Republicans should drop all other concerns about spending, debt, deficits, critical race theory, all of these things, and join some weird pro-democracy coalition that basically gives Democrats' permission structure to do whatever they want without making any compromises. Like, it's just, it's not how politics is going to work. You're not going to get a lot of people to join it. And you're going to discredit a lot of conservatives and Republicans who the right needs to have some credibility on the right to call BS on the stuff that's going on.

So it's just a complicated thing. It's not a straight line projection into the future. And it requires, but it does require a lot more sunlight and condemnation on the right, for Sure. Yeah. So I agree with you entirely on that. I mean, I think it's, it's crucial to continue to scrutinize what the Biden administration is doing. I think particularly as things continue to fall apart, and he governs to please the left side of the Democratic Party. It is, I don't see it as any kind of a solution to sort of throw in with Joe Biden. And a very interesting conversation my old boss, Bill Crystal, does these conversations with Bill Crystal.

He had one with University of Chicago professor William Bode, who has been a guest on advisory opinions, where they talked about what we've learned and what the implications are. Absolutely fascinating. And Bode, at the end of the podcast, we put this in the show notes as well, makes the point that we're taking sort of false comfort in the idea that right now there really seems to be only one political party doing this. But as we continue this and justify the means politics that we're going down, we should take no such assurance that Democrats won't do the same kinds of things in the future, which I think raises this to a new level of concern. But on Jonah's

point, Sarah, what strikes me is, I guess is the contrast at precisely the same time that we're learning these things that David lays out, making it incontrovertibly true that this was a plan that however buffoonish we might think it was, they attempted to execute a plan to steal the election. This is not like a gray area anymore. That's what they were trying to do. We know this today with far more detail and with far more certainty than we did on January 7th. And I agree that Trump should have been impeached then. And yet, this past weekend, Senator Chuck Grassley,

running for re-election at the age of 88 in Iowa, appeared on stage with Donald Trump at a rally in Iowa. You see Donald Trump's approval rating, I think in the latest CNN poll among Iowa Republicans at something like 91%. You see Lindsey Graham, who made that speech

in the Senate well, aggrieved by the fact that he had contributed to what happened on January 6th, now saying this past weekend, I am pushing a draft Trump movement. What gives? Why are Republicans doing this? So, first of all, the politics, right?

You already cited the reason they're doing it. The base turned out not to care. It's why they cared at the beginning, and then they didn't. It's just a replay of 2015, 2016, all over again. These guys think that they understand their base, so they try to get out ahead of them, and then it turns out the base isn't behind them. And so it's like a new version of the French Revolution. There go my people. Instead, it's like, here we are going. No one's behind me. We're going the other way. However, I do think there is one thing outstanding that could at least still change this direction. I think I have maybe more profound

concerns about 2024 than the three of you, which is hard, by the way, it's not to say y'all don't have concerns. I just, I feel mine so deeply. I would find it hard to believe that anyone's feeling them more deeply than me as I see trying to replace election officials, secretaries of state, potentially flipping some of these governors. You know, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin governors will all be up in 2022. I actually don't think a lot of those will flip. But regardless, to make the very long version of my concern shorter, if you send in two slates of electors, the one that the governor signs off on is actually the one that is considered official. If the two houses can't agree, I'm very much skimming over some of the legal details here.

And it's a little like David's China game theory point. If you know that the other side isn't going to accept the results of the election if their guy loses, and by the way, both sides believe that. The Biden supporters believe that the Trump supporters will not accept a Biden victory, but the Trump supporters very much believe, and I think with some good evidence, that the Biden supporters will not accept the Trump victory. If you believe that, then you start moving into preemptive strike mode. And if you believe that both sides benefit from a preemptive strike, then you're better

off preemptive striking their preemptive strike. And you move back and back and back and back before the election, way before the election. And that's where my deep concerns come from. So here's the one thing that I think could potentially... And we're seeing those preemptive strikes now. I think that's what this is. Yes. Yeah.

David and I talked about the legal issues around executive privilege as the January 6th Select Committee sends out these subpoenas. They have subpoenaed for testimonial evidence from Bannon, Mark Meadows, Cash Patel, Dan Scavino. But they have also asked for documents and the what-nots from the National Archives. Here's your fun cocktail party thing that you now get to impress people with. Donald Trump's records are not at the White House. They're not in the possession of Joe Biden or the White House Council. They've actually all moved to the National Archives. And so when Donald Trump sues to have them not turned over to Congress,

he will actually be suing the National Archivist. And we have some precedent for this. Richard Nixon sued the head of the Government Services Administration. Back in his day, the GSA had these documents. The thing that the committee is very interested in, as am I, and I think it could change because of the nature of it are the draft videos of Donald Trump's statement that he put out on January 6th.

In the afternoon, late afternoon, if you remember, he finally put out a video that said, I love you, but go home. We have reporting, including from ABC's Jonathan Carle, that the previous drafts do not include anything about going home. We don't know what else he says to his supporters. We know that his staff refused to release those versions of the video. I think that those will come out. I do not think he will be able to

assert executive privilege over those. They will go to the committee. It will take some time if there's lawsuits, et cetera. But when they come out and you actually have a video of Donald Trump that day that is everywhere, because it will be played everywhere. Even, you know, Fox News, et cetera, will be playing that video, maybe defending it, but they will be playing it. It's too good of visual. It's too good of audio. It will remind people of that day. and potentially, and again, I haven't seen the draft videos, but it could paint Donald Trump in quite a different light for some of these people.

Will that matter? Let's say it happens. I don't know if it'll matter, but I think it's the last thing that can change the trajectory that's a known known. Like, we know that video will come out. There's obviously known unknowns, you know, dinosaurs coming back. You know, they're trying to bring back the woolly mammoth in Russia.

Like, that could obviously have a huge. impact. But I'm kidding. But that's the no known is this video draft. Can I chime in on from red land here? This is, so I live in an 85% Republican neighborhood, deep, deep red America. And people are divided. You know, this is the thing that you don't get from watching Fox and all of the stories about anti-CRT this and all of the anger at the school boards and the anti-vaxing like the Greg Abbott, people are divided. People, a lot of people don't like stuff like what Greg Abbott is doing. They don't like the anti-vaxing.

They don't like how radical the base is becoming. But the people who don't like it are mainly being quiet. They're pulling back. They're withdrawing. And I think one of the aspects, and this goes to Jonah's column this week, is what do they do? What do they do? It is just a myth that all of Red America is monolithically united here. There is a lot of deep discomfort with what politics has become

and what the base has become even in your own communities. And so the problem is one side of this is disproportionately heard in part because they make it costly for you to disagree with them. And so people don't need that in their lives. They don't need to have that kind of. of problem. So they just, they just pull back. I want to add one point to that, because I was just ranting about this this morning on Twitter, actually, because I watched a segment on Morning Joe, the 10,000th such segment where Joe Scarborough goes on a rant about something. And then

he goes around the table interviewing people who violently agree with him. So you're right, Joe. Here's another reason why you're right. And you get the same dynamic across cable news to watch. I mean, This has been a problem for five years with Fox, is that you would think watching Fox that every single conservative Republican in America had no problem with Donald Trump. And you would think watching MSNBC that every single liberal Democrat type person in America hated Donald Trump, hated all Republicans, all agreed on whether it's defund the police or whatever. And this is a huge problem in the culture because the institution,

that are supposed to signal to Americans, both, you know, like Fox is supposed to signal to Republicans, what Republicans think, and also signal to Democrats about what Republicans think, and vice versa with these other networks. And so when you have monolithic agreement on everything, among everybody who has an R or a D associated with them, you give the impression that there is no space,

between Elon Omar and every other Democrat. You give the impression that everybody agrees with Charlie Kirk or Madison Cawthorne about everything. And that stifles dissent. The most interesting arguments in America right now are intra-coitutional, between the wokes or the Marxist, whatever, and the liberals, between progressives and moderates,

between fusionist conservatives or traditional conservatives and nationalist type. and you get no representation of those serious disagreements for the most part on the mainstream conveyors of of politics instead it's the only debate you get is is really dumb hyper-partisan stuff where a bunch of conservatives dunk on a liberal or a bunch of liberals dunk on a conservative and it reinforces tribal loyalty and bubble thinking because they must think No one else on my team feels bad about this. So I must be weird, so I better stay quiet.

It's a huge problem. And politicians react to that. I mean, that is why Chuck Grassley is there. That is why you have Donald Trump at 91% approval. I guess I'm just to wrap this up. I'm more alarmed today than I was on January 7th by a good measure because as it's become abundantly clear that Donald Trump and his top advisors had a plan that they executed in an attempt to steal an election, you are seeing Republicans who know better move back to Donald Trump. And it tacitly

endorsing what they're seeing. It's very worrisome. With MX Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot trackside. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Pre-sale tickets for future events subject to availability and varied by race. Turns and conditions apply. Learn more at amex.ca.com. All right, but related to this conversation is Jonah's topic, which is Biden's slumping approval numbers. And I think there's a lot of interesting conversations to be had around this. So let's squeeze them all into 15. minutes. Sure. I'll be very brief in the setup. Things not going well for Joe Biden. He's cratering with independents, moderates. I personally think there was this Quinnipiac poll about last week,

but there are lots of polls out. CBS has a new pull out. He's doing bad with independence. A lot of people talk about how it's the pandemic response. If people agree with that, we can get into that. But I think one of the most telling things in that Quinnipiac poll was disapproval about the withdrawal from Afghanistan, only in this regard. Like, remember with Obamacare, there was a, you know, when it pulled badly, the left would say that's because it doesn't go, a lot of liberals think it doesn't go far enough. And so you got it from both sides. His polling on the border is very bad, but there are liberals who probably think he's being

to cruel at the border. There is no, like, left-wing criticism of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, right? There's no, like, oh, he's getting it from both sides because he didn't do it badly enough. And so my point is that, like, that I think is a really good indication that a lot of people just think he's incompetent that or that think, you know, and they also turns out that a lot of people don't like to lose wars and that Biden misread the polling on this, because a lot of people said, yeah, I want to get out of Afghanistan when they thought in their head, that would be cheap and easy and it wouldn't look like a loss, not, oh, will be humiliated and the Taliban

will get back in charge and al-Qaeda will run rampant again. And I think that's sort of emblematic of his broader problems. He just seems to be not up to the job. And it's creating a headwind for Democrats in places like Virginia. So I'll go to Sarah first. How bad is the problem for Biden generally? Is there plenty of time? It's a lifetime between now and the election, of course, is the thing all pundits have to say. And how much

of a bellwether is Virginia? Does it really matter that much? Or does it local, because so much Washington media lives in Virginia, does it get more attention than it deserves? It's like weather hitting New York. All of a sudden, it's raining in New York and the whole country needs to know about it. If there's

anything political happening in Virginia, we all must pay a lot of attention. Let me just run through some numbers here. So Hillary Clinton lost independence by four points in 2016. Joe Biden won them by 13 points in 2020. So huge swing to the Democrats in the independent vote in four years. By June and July, Joe Biden has lost altitude with independence, but he's still up three points. So he's gone down roughly 10 points since election day. But then Afghanistan happens, just August in general happens, COVID, you know, September. Now he is underwater 16 points with independence. So that's a 19 point swing from this

summer. And of course, a near 30 point swing from his election, nay, a year ago. So, I mean, that's just an enormous change. Now, let me give you. the flip side of this, which is, if you go to Donald Trump's numbers at this time, when he is elected, his approval rating is roughly even. It's 47, 45 when he takes office, 47 disapproved. So he's a little bit underwater. By this time, he is at 60% disapproved, 35% approve. And of course, in 2022, Republicans do very, very, very well, unexpectedly well, like, expectantly. Well, like, Expectations-wise, they, like, blew it out of the water, but even not just expectations-wise, the Senate was, I think, a big win.

So I think what's different here is the swing, right? It's the shift in Biden's numbers. It's that there's a moment in which we see it happening. It's more tied to, like, something reality-based, whereas Donald Trump basically gets underwater in those high 50s and low 60s, like, right away. It doesn't really change then. So I do think that's a problem. But here's my question to David French.

I'm going to steal your Mike, Jonah, because this is a debate I was having about the Virginia governor's election. If you are, and by the way, Jonah, just your point on the debates we should be having publicly, the intra-movement debates, I just want to take a bath in that point

and luxuriate in it. It is so true. And I'm going to be thinking about it the rest of the day. and be frustrated. So, David, this is kind of related to that, actually. If you were a moderate, of either, you know, center left, center right, I'm not sure it matters. And you think your vote matters.

You have a strategic voting mind. Do you vote for the Democrat, Terry McAuliffe, to deflate the Trumpist Republicans and make them think better about the direction they're headed? or do you vote for the Republican, Glenn Yonkin, in the hopes of sending an immediate message to the Biden administration, that they need to drop this, you know, progressive caucus nonsense, moderate immediately so that they have some chance of beating Donald Trump in 2024. How would you strategically vote? I'm very curious. Okay. So, number one, I don't vote strategically like that. I just I think that's part of the problem because what you end up doing is you end up minimizing the significance of the individual on the ballot who could be horrible for the significance of the message that you send by putting the R or the D by the person that you're sending to Washington or to the state house or whatever so I have a simple formula for

voting. It is, does the person have the character that is commensurate with the office that they seek? And do they support the policies broadly that I support? You have to pass both. If you don't pass either one or one or the other, you just don't get my vote. And I think the message voting, one of the reasons why we have some of the worst people in Congress right now is message voting. Scott Desjardet, right? The next district over from me, We, I say we, because I was there at the time, I didn't do it, but my neighbors tossed out a pro-life, pro-second amendment Democrat in favor of a guy who'd had affairs, had paid for abortions, had plied patients with drugs, had according to court documents, threatened his ex-wife with guns, to send a message to Washington. And so that's, I just reject that. I say, look at your candidates. Do they have the character that matches, the need, of the office? Do they have the policies that match your values? And if that's, that's your

analysis, right there, Sarah, full stop. This is why I keep writing in Mitch Daniels. I think that's worse than David's Avengers takes. That is so unsatisfying. Sorry. All right, so I didn't know that Sarah was going to give me back the mic. Sorry. So, Steve, there's this raging debate among Democrats and data crunching types that was sort of broke out into the open with a big piece by Ezra Klein about this guy David Shore that basically makes the case that I have been making, be quite honest, for a very long time now, which is that the Democratic leadership is enthralled to is very online, very in a bubble, thinks that they are messaging to real Americans when they talk about things like birthing persons and Latin X and all of this kind of stuff, when in fact what they're doing is they're messaging to very woke, very online, professional sort of master's degree

radical types and that in fact it turns off normal voters normal democratic voters and um i i had never heard this term until fairly recently but it's called popularism not populism popularism um how much do that what do you think of the argument and also how much of that do you think factors into joe biden's woes because 1990s political you know where i grew up in the 1990s 90s politically, the whole point of Democrats winning was signaling, was the sort of Clintonian triangulation stuff, which even Barack Obama did, was signaling to people that you're not part of the hard left. That's how Biden ran. It ain't how he governed. But where do you come down on this? Yeah, so I think you were right. I think this is a big problem for Democrats,

and I think it's a big problem for the country, in part because of what we just talked about, in part because we're seeing where the Republican Party is going right now and Democrats by embracing popularism and the sort of on the arguments of the most online left are further marginalizing them and likely to cede additional power. I mean, I think if you look at 2022, long way to the election, as we said before. I should just clarify really quickly for this term thing.

I may have misused the word popularism, but to be clear, popularism with David Shore believes. He believes, popularism says don't talk about to fund the police. Popularism says, say popular things. Say popular things.

And even if you believe in unpopular things, don't talk about them. Because when you talk about them, even if you make great arguments for say you're a position on immigration, merely talking about immigration, pushes voters to Republicans. So just don't talk about it.

You can worry about the policy later, but like talk about things that people want to hear about. That's the argument. Yeah, and I think we're seeing, look, I think we're seeing from the Biden White House. If you go back to the discussion that we had about the DOJ memo, to the points that you were making, raising something that they think is likely to be popular with their base

and energizes of Republicans. You know, if you look at the White House chief of staff, Ron Clayne, there's sort of a parlor game in, Washington. And we have made far, far, too many references to Twitter on this podcast. But I'm going to make another one. But they're all disparaging, disparaging. So that's, that's a... I mean, mostly. Yeah, mostly. I like people who are not on, on Twitter. But there's this parlor game in Washington where people are paying very careful attention to what Ron Claim, the White House Chief of Staff, likes on Twitter. And he spent...

a lot of time and attention. I think at this point he knows that he's signaling things with his likes and he signals things to the online left to say in effect, hey, we're with you, we're with you. But it extends to governance. I've talked to, I think I've mentioned this here before, I've talked to leading Republican elected officials who've been in the room with Joe Biden discussing things like the COVID relief package, the infrastructure package. And what they will tell you is they sit across the table from Joe Biden, and he makes, he seems to engage them deeply. He seems eager for bipartisan compromise.

He talks like, you know, Joe Biden of the Senate 25 years ago. Let me be a dealmaker. Let's figure out how you get a little, we get a little, and we can come to a compromise. And then when they leave, the White House staff, very interested in sort of online leftism, scuttles it all and you get additional governance from the White House to the left. The big point I would make brings together our last discussion and this one.

You look at the 2022 elections and it's not a foregone conclusion, but highly likely that Republicans do very well in 2022. Historically suggests that they would do well. You look at Biden's approval, suggests that they would do well. You look at worries about the economy. You look at the issue set broadly, and Republicans are in a good position to do well. They are doing that by embracing, by reembracing Donald Trump and Trumpism. Kevin McCarthy's been very clear about this. The National Republican Congressional Committee is sending out fundraising emails saying,

if you're saying we need to draft Donald Trump, saying if you're not, if you don't respond to this, you're not a good Trumpy Republican, there's been this institutional. re-embrace of Donald Trump. I think if Republicans do well in 2022, it makes it very easy for Donald Trump and the people have embraced him to say they did well in 2022 because they embraced Donald Trump to create this causal argument that I think will be appealing to a lot of elected Republicans and therefore drive them deeper into the arms of Donald Trump and to a further embrace of Trumpism. David Shores' argument about where Democrats are, it's worth going to to Ezra Klein and reading the article.

If you look at his modeling suggests that Democrats are in trouble, not just in 2022, but really for the next decade. Yeah, so let me just read one part of this David Shore article. And obviously, yes, we will put it in the show notes that I found really interesting and nuanced, actually. He's talking about the defund the police slogan. And he's saying, we raise the salience of an ideologically charged issue that millions of non-white voters disagreed with us on. And then, as a result, these conservative Hispanic voters

who'd been voting for us, despite their ideological inclinations, started voting more like conservative whites. And the reason that I think that's so interesting is it's not, again, it's the rational voter theory being stupid per usual. It's always pretty stupid. That these people were voting for Democrats, even though they disagreed them on any host of things, as we all vote for a political party that we probably, hopefully, don't agree with on every single point. But if you raise and make salient the very issues on which they don't agree with you, instead of the ones that they do agree with you, you are doing something very stupid. And as he, as sure put it, if you look inside the Democratic Party, there are three times more

moderate or conservative, non-white people than very liberal white people. But very liberal or white people are infinitely more represented. That's morally bad, but it also means they, meaning the moderate or conservative non-white people, will leave. Now, there's plenty of pushback against Shore, certainly on enthusiasm, turnout modeling. Like, there are lots of people in the Democratic Party

that don't agree with Shore. But just on that popularism point, if you know that large chunks of your voters don't agree with you on certain topics, Why would you keep talking about those topics? You can still believe those things. They don't mind that you vote on those things, you know, propose laws on those things once you're in office.

They just don't need to be reminded of it every day or else they start second guessing who they're voting for. So a really interesting piece, David Shore, sort of seen as a unpopular profit after he was canceled for a tweet that he had. I mean, the whole story, it's too perfect, right? He is the perfect poster child for this. So I know I'm a broken record about the Latinx thing because I think it's just so emblematic of everything

that's stupid about the Democratic Party. But, you know, most Latinos don't even know what Latinx is, never mind, use it, right? And those who know what it is don't like it. And there's only like three or four percent that actually use it actively. And yet Democratic politicians constantly use it and they think that they're signaling to a large constituency

favorably when in fact what they're doing is they're signaling to a large constituency saying we're not like you right we speak this weird shibboleth drenched elite talk that makes you sound like a pointy makes you sound like a pointy-headed jerk and don't forget the reason for it is because they have genderized words so you're also insulting their language right and it's like and as steve can attest having lived for a year in Spain degeneralizing genderizing Spanish is just not going to happen. And so, but anyway, the reason I bring it up is that there's this, you know, so it sends a signal to a lot of Hispanics, but also a lot of whites, that these people talk funny.

They've got an agenda that's not my agenda. And it doesn't win you Latinos. It probably loses you more Latinos than it wins you. But the other, MSNBC apparently has some Hispanic-focused TV show that's on Week which is where they put all the shows that they don't care about the low ratings. And there are these commercials that they're running for it. I think they're fantastic because there's this, there's this Latino woman, you know,

I don't know anything about her, but she's like promoing a show and she's talking about getting more Latinos and prominent places and culture and blah, blah, blah, blah. And she says, so I'm speaking here to Latinos, Latinx, and she's now what she's done there is basically turn Latinx into its own sub-ethnicity, right? It's no longer doing what it's supposed to do, which has replaced Latino and Latina. Now it is for that tiny, tiny subset of super-woke blue bubble dwellers, it's signaling, I'm speaking your language too, but also the language of normal Latinos

and Latinas out there. And I think it gets, it just sort of gets to the heart of the dilemma for the Democrats is they got to speak to a very elite audience, very highly educated audience. and they're baffled that when they do that, they turn off less educated or just plain normal voters. And that's their problem and they've got to figure out how to get out of it. And David Short, whose models have been incredibly predictive in the past. In 2022, actually, says that the Democrats have a 50-50 shot of holding the Senate. I would put that a little higher.

I think they will hold the Senate. But in 2024, his model predicts a seven-seat loss. for Democrats, which is just mind-blowing. So that is where we will end today. Thank you all so much for joining us. Don't forget to tell your friends about this podcast. If you're enjoying listening to it, you can get the word out also by rating us, leaving a little note.

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