The Dispatch Podcast - The DeSantis Dilemma

Episode Date: November 18, 2022

With Donald Trump officially running for president, Ron DeSantis faces a twisted decision tree. Sarah, David, and Kevin are here to make sense of it. Plus: how should the U.S. respond to the deadly missile incident in Poland?  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isgar, this week, joined by Kevin Williamson and won David French. We will talk about the latest Hill leadership fights, and I don't know, why anyone should care what it says about either party, perhaps. Of course, Donald Trump announcing for president in 2024 this week down in Mar-a-Lago and the missile strike in Poland, what we know, what we don't, and we're, our foreign policy between the Russia and Ukraine conflict goes from here. Let's dive right in. Kevin, if you just fell into a coma for a week and totally missed all of the hill squabbling fights over,

McConnell versus Scott and Will McCarthy pull it out and with how many votes and what's Nancy Pelosi going to do? Would you be any worse off in life? Well, actually, that's not far from where I, where I am. In terms of my political news reading, Republican leadership fights are right near the bottom, so I'm sort of expecting you to carry this part of the podcast in some ways. But you're the perfect person to ask then. You don't seem to care. Why should anyone else? Not very much. The Rick Scott versus Mitch McConnell thing is kind of the whole conflict in the Republican Party in miniature in some ways that you've got, you know, McConnell, who's this more, you know, old-fashioned traditional sensible politician and Rick Scott, who kind of bounces all over the place, who used to be kind of an old-fashioned sensible politician. I maintain that he was a really, really good governor of Florida and who kind of went crazy when he became a more national figure as people.

sometimes do. The end. The end. David, I think what I find interesting about the McConnell versus Rick Scott fight, and let me back up and do a little table setting here. So Mitch McConnell, the minority leader of the Republican Party and really the highest ranking Republican in the party at this point,

spent billions of dollars, raised billions of dollars, spent bigillions of dollars in the midterm elections propping up Senate candidates that he then would publicly criticize, not by name, but saying that while, you know, House races might rise and fall on a wave, Senate races were very much, you know, more idiosyncratic and candidate quality mattered. And that candidate quality line stuck in the craw of some people. Rick Scott, former governor of Florida, senator from Florida, was elected by his fellow Republican senators to run the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

It's a one-term post. You serve one cycle, two years, and you inherit some staff, but you also get to hire like basically all of your campaign staff folks. You raise a ton of money into it. You have a lot of power of which races to fund and how much to fund and which pollsters to use and all those things. things. And Boyd did Rick Scott. And Rick Scott basically used it as opposed to antagonize Mitch McConnell through the primaries. And then in the general, there was no pretense about it. Rick Scott was just

a chihuahua going after the Mastiff and constantly barking at Mitch McConnell. And they would do it through their AIDS, their former aides on Twitter, on TV. It got pretty, I don't know, childish, schoolyardish, whatever. It's like sort of, I lost track of sort of keeping score of who was really landing any good punches and stuff like that. But now, fast forward to after the election, Rick Scott challenges Mitch McConnell

for minority leader in the Senate. It goes down. Rick Scott gets 10 votes. They're anonymous, but we know, for instance, that Ron Johnson is the, you know, is the one who put forward his nomination. Okay. So here's what I find interesting about it, David.

Like so many other fights within the Republican Party, this never seemed to be about any policy differences. No. Rick Scott may try to argue that there's some policy difference out there that he's championing. But the closest we ever got to a policy fight was that Rick Scott put out his agenda for a Republican Congress that nobody else signed on to

said things like, everyone needs to pay taxes. Well, that, of course, immediately got flipped as an attack ad for every single Democratic candidate that Republicans wanted to raise taxes on, you know, half of Americans. It also talked about changing social security, so that was in every Republican. That just ad. I didn't hear a single interview where Republicans didn't say, sorry, where a Democratic candidate didn't say Republicans want to end social security. That was all based on Rick Scott's policy agenda. But they weren't really policy differences with mainstream Republicans. It was just that Rick Scott thought he was being super clever with his quasi contract for America. And you can argue whether

that was needed or not needed or clever or not clever. But the point is Mitch McConnell was like, I'll be majority leader and it doesn't matter what Rick Scott says. Yeah. To the extent that Rick Scott was in this leadership fight representing the MAGA wing of the party, to me, It was all vibes. It was vibes about fighting and being angry and fighting and the anger. And Mitch McConnell is sitting back and being like, I've done this for 30 years, y'all. Mitch McConnell, by the way, was also a former... I thought for a minute you were also going to say, I've done this for a thousand years, y'all.

A thousand years. My turtle shell has kept me safe this whole time. former NRSC chairs, by the way, a fun note. Bill Frist, Mitch McConnell, Elizabeth Dole, and Steve Daines will be the next one from Montana. Anyway, David, that's all to say. Is this an interesting fight? Does it tell us something about the future of the Republican Party

and the strength of the MAGA wing and whether, if these aren't policy differences, if it's not really an argument over what direction the Republican Party goes in terms of what it will deliver to the American people, and what they run on in elections, what is this? Yeah, this is damage control in a lot of ways by the Scott slash MAGA slash Holly wing that's essentially taking a disastrous showing

and trying with zero credibility to pivot it back to Mitch McConnell. My favorite episode in all of this was the Josh Holly tweet of the Republican Party is the old Republican Party, party is over and something along the line or has been destroyed and I was thinking something along the lines of this is like the arsonist who's outraged at his own fire um this is this is a wing of the party that absolutely flamed out just absolutely flamed out lost some elections that were not unloosable obviously because they lost them but they demonstrated how what seemed like unloosable elections could be lost, and then immediately started furiously spinning it back to Mitch

McConnell, which Sarah, as you know, very well, is a very old play in the sort of populist Republican playbook. So they just went back and they just ran the same old play that they've been running for a really long time against Mitch McConnell. And the thing is, you know, outside of a few tweeters around the Federalist, nobody was buying it outside of, you know, some of the hardcore MAGA-right folks who, among other things, will not blame, even though McConnell raised and spent what was the number somewhere in the neighborhood of $400 million, will not blame the man in Mar-a-Lago who raised $100 million plus and spent, what, around $15 million. And so this is just running a really, really old sort of populist playbook against Mitch McConnell.

But at what point do people realize, wait a minute, the Trump wing is the establishment wing now. It is the establishment of the GOP. And it's got to look at its own mirror. This is not where the GOP failed them. They failed the GOP. And so, yeah, I'm interested in it mainly to see how much resonance it had, not because it mattered, as you said, regarding policy, but how much resonance did it have?

And not that much. 10 out of 48, one person absented or presented themselves, whatever that correct word is. So 10, though, 10 out of 48, ain't nothing. No, just with McCarthy, what it was at 30 something out of? 33, yeah. now that was like 33 out of 180 or something so that was a lower percentage that defected but to me there really should have been McConnell's line though by the way right is that you shouldn't be the minority leader because you're running for a minority leader because it's 10 out of 48 not 10 out of 52 right fair enough uh so my favorite by the way uh like memeish thing on this consultant senator it's official we failed to take the senate a spite of such an easy map. Rick Scott. I guess our plan to challenge Mitch is laughable now. What do we do? Consultant. And then it's a video of this like guy in a suit looks like he's at some sort of

religious revival going, let's do it anyway. Yeah. It struck me as frivolous. It really did. I mean, flailing. It struck me as flailing. And it doesn't surprise me that 10 senators would flail. I mean, this is the GOP we're talking about. The only other one that we know for sure is Josh Hawley, who was one of the 10. So Ron Johnson, Josh Hawley, I don't even know whether Rick Scott gets to vote for himself. Presumably he does. So maybe that gives us three of 10. On the Mitch McConnell side, we know that Tom Cotton nominated him. So that gives us at least one name over on that side, which is interesting. But Kevin, thinking about the Hill, Kevin McCarthy ate Mitch McConnell

Like in a zillion ways Kevin McCarthy ate Mitch McConnell Mitch McConnell Doesn't care where the tides are flowing Mitch McConnell, Mitch McConnell, Mitch McConnell's, right? Cocaine Mitch is also the Honey Badger Well, the thing I like about McConnell I mean, there are many things like about Mitch McConnell

But he sort of is the politician These other guys pretend to be The guy who really is ruthless, remorseless, capable of carrying out a kind of five-year plan when these people talk about, you know, fighting, they're talking about Twitter and stuff. But, I mean, to do what, you know, this sort of thing that he did with Merrick Garland, for instance,

that takes, you know, some real chutzpah. You don't just, you know, get up in the morning and become that sort of guy. You know, you have to spend years purging yourself of a soul to become that kind of a ruthless politician. Mitch McConnell would march through Georgia. You know what I mean? Yeah, I think he probably would.

I don't know why anyone wants to be speaker. I was honestly, it's kind of a goofy job. I did like the little miniature theory for a while that Trump was going to try to get himself elected Speaker of the House, which I thought would have been fun. And I like these weird, ancient constitutional technicalities that you don't actually have to be in the House to be Speaker of the House, which I think we should make, Dave.

Remember the Ted Cruz is Speaker Movement? I don't. No, I think I somehow either missed or forgot that. Oh, God, I'm so sorry you missed that. Yeah. That happened. I don't know. Ted Cruz might actually be a good speaker at the House. You know, but at some point, they're going to have to deal with the fact that 2016 seems to have been a one-off thing and that Hillary Clinton was a really bad candidate.

It was an unusual year. Donald Trump was a celebrity, which is really the thing that mattered most, I think, in that election, got elected president. And that experiment seems to have gone awry. And since then, what we've really seen is that the, the Republican coalition, such as it is, between these old, you know, quote-unquote establishment types, old-fashioned Republicans and the new kind of right-wing maggot populists seems to be a losing coalition. It's not something that does particularly well at the ballot box. And so at some point, they're going to have to really figure out what to do about that, either how to rearrange their

coalitional priorities or whether they actually do want to win elections. You know, a lot of this stuff I don't think is actually even about wielding political power. It's, you know, it's essentially theater. A story I've, I know I've probably told too many times before, but it seems to be really representative of this kind of weird moment where I was at dinner, it's been a few years now with someone who was this, you know, kind of magatite guy, and he was, you know, raging about the establishment and how much he hates the establishment and the establishment hates him.

And he's at war with the establishment and says the word establishment 16 times in the conversation. He said, dude, you are the chair. of the Republican Party in the state of California. If there is such a thing as the establishment, the chairman of the party is the establishment, right? And so we're right about that and that the MAGA people have been the establishment for a while now.

They actually have believers of power and they're not really doing a particularly good job wielding them. David, McCarthy, you know, right after on and right after January 6th, Heisman Donald Trump and then came right back. And he has been the embodiment to me of the French revolutionary

where are my people going, I must lead them. And maybe that's a sign of a good politician these days. As the party's realigning, as it's going through this transition, maybe that makes Kevin McCarthy a survivor. But it doesn't make him Mitch McConnell. And so I find it interesting

that there's the revolts in the two houses by the Rump Caucus is really different to me. Yeah. It feels different to me as well. And then you have Matt Gates coming out and saying, I don't care what just happened in the caucus. I'm going to vote against McCarthy for Speaker. When the time comes to vote on the floor. Who knows if he will. Who knows? But who do they want? What do they want? Well, this goes back to Kevin's point. Theater. What do they want? They want us doing exactly what we're doing right now. Now. Yeah, exactly. They want, let's do it, want it, they want what we're doing exactly right now, which is talking about, oh, my goodness, what is Matt Gates going to do?

And it just really does go to the flaw in the, one of the terrible flaws in the GOP, that I'm seeing signs of hope that people are realizing these flaws and they're now reevaluating the arc of the last six years. I mean, the, let me bet it this way. This idea that Donald Trump was a transformative political figure for the GOP who is going to then build this enduring winning coalition that argument has foundered on the rocky shoals of reality in a lot of people's minds a bit more than even two years ago.

It's, and part of me wonders, it's Jonah who uses this phrase and doesn't it come from Hemingway originally that a company goes bankrupt? Jonah does come from Hemingway. originally. This phrase, isn't it a hemming way phrase? Companies go bankrupt slowly, then suddenly. Kevin will know, but I think Fitzgerald. Someone talks about going bankrupt gradually and then all at once,

the way one falls in love. Oh, see, I knew you'd know. I'll still. I could be wrong, though. Someone may get me. I'll look it up and then I'll feel bad. Don't worry. A lot of people listening are going to look it up and let you all know.

Yes, they are. They're going to correct me. And now I wish I hadn't rolled it. dice on that one without being entirely sure. I'll just go ahead and continue misquoting it and misattributing it. But you get that. It was Abraham Lincoln who said it on his Facebook page. But you get the concept.

And I've been kind of wondering as the Trump GOP has taken blow after blow after blow and not retreated, does there a point where the next blow is the one that's the that causes that sudden collapse. And I don't see signs of it yet, but it's closer than it's been. It seems strange to say this. It feels closer than it's been since the January 7th, 2021. I mean, it feels like there's more discontent with Trump right now in the GOP

than there was on January 7th or 8th, 2021, not at the McConnell level, but more at the regular Republican level. level. So, you know, I remember how fast that dissipated. I know. Well, but here we are. It's more than a week since the election.

And people still seem discontent. So maybe, maybe, I don't know, but I do not dare hope. Kevin McCarthy also has a real problem. If he's looking at, and again, again, I still can't believe that we do not know the election results in several of these outstanding races still. but a 219 house, which is sort of an every man, a speaker situation, by which I mean that any, well, single or two or so people in the House of Representatives are going to be able to hold Kevin McCarthy hostage. I don't see how anything happens under those circumstances because whether it's Matt Gates or Lauren Bobert or Marjorie Taylor Green or the more moderate. you know, calmer people, they can also hold him hostage.

How would anything move forward? And what would be the incentive of a Matt Gates to go along? Like, the incentive's always going to be to stick out, especially because you're in the House of Representatives and you don't get of a lot of attention regardless. You're like the middle child who's finally got something to hold over everyone. I don't think that's going to come up until they find something they want to move forward. Well, they want to move forward on like investigating Hunter Biden, for instance.

yeah i guess the investigations they'll want to do something with but um did i miss something or they just not really have a legislative agenda well the republican party doesn't have a platform so yeah to the extent there is a house there's no foundation underneath it not that anyone cares about party platforms that much but they are a thing they are a thing but you know one of the the other sort of long-term things going forward is that the trump phenomenon if you will really laid bare this big gulf and priorities between different wings of the party. And that is something that really is

an actual real political issue that's going to have to be figured out over some period of time. And my own view of this right now is that the Republican coalition doesn't really make any sense as a political coalition. The various factions within the party

don't have enough in common in terms of a policy agenda to really come up with one that will give them all very strong incentives to cooperate. incentives that are stronger than the incentives to be a goofball in Congress and to give dumb speeches and to do, you know, kind of minor league Fox News punditry stuff as a member of the House or as a senator. And unless they can actually figure out something on that front,

and it certainly wasn't Rick Scott's, let's raise taxes on poor people program, then they're not really going to come up with something that they can organize themselves around. And at some point, you have to do that because, you know, Trump could get away with being a personality because he's a big personality. But personalities like that are actually in really pretty short supply in politics. I mean, who's the next most interesting person in the Republican Party after Donald Trump in terms of being a kind of celebrity figure around whom you could build a personality cult? Kevin McCarthy? Dwayne the Rock Johnson. Yeah, that guy knows better, I think, than to put an R-next to his name. He's doing the Michael.

Jordan thing of and try to play both sides as long as you're selling product to everyone. I mean, Dr. Oz was probably the highest celebrity name ID person. Probably, yeah. But, you know, when you're a big personality, you're people like Rick Scott, and Rick Scott knows he's not a big personality. And I know this because I talked to him about it. I interviewed him a couple years ago before, I was going to he's still governor, I guess. And I asked him, you know, why don't people like you?

You've got a really good record in office, but you're not a very popular politician. And he essentially was, well, you know, I'm not a very likable person. I got this face and this is what I have to work with. And this is sort of, you know, I don't have that particular kind of touch and charisma. And he didn't say it exactly that way, but he more or less said that. And so you don't have a personality cult you can build. You don't have this kind of champion phenomenon that you actually do at some point have to come up with a policy agenda.

Otherwise, you're just dealing with people who have all of their incentives there's a rivalrous, right? Because every advance for some person in this group is at the relative cost of everyone else in the group. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is the consequences of not having life insurance can be serious. That kind of financial strain on top of everything else is why life insurance, matters. Ethos is an online platform that makes getting life insurance fast and easy

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same thing. This was, you know, he does this, what, 20% of the time? This was a teleprompter, calm, medicated Donald Trump's speech. He read all the things he was supposed to read, gave all the arguments, and some of the arguments were interesting and more Donald Trump-esque than teleprompter-esque. For instance, that the reason that Republicans lost the midterms, not him, not the candidates, not Mitch McConnell even, the reason was because Republicans haven't felt the full pain of a Biden presidency yet and the economy's about to get a whole. whole whole lot worse, which is, I don't know, I don't know how that's going to sit with a lot of

people. Not to mention, the economy is pretty bad. So if this wasn't enough, how much worse does it have to get for Donald Trump to win in 2024 under his own theory of the case? You know, the room was pretty chilled out to, I'm told reliably, that at some point too many people were leaving or trying to leave. And so they just blocked people from leaving anymore, which is awkward. But this gets to a larger strategic question for the Republican Party. There's plenty of polls at this point, not plenty, but we now have two at least polls that were run a month ago and this week showing that not only has Donald Trump lost altitude with Republican primary voters, but in fact, like a lot, double digits. So in the one CNAUGov poll that everyone's passing around,

they broke out cross tabs for conservatives, Republicans, and Trump 2020 voters. Now, of course, this is self-identifying. So from a month ago, Donald Trump was up 17 or something on DeSantis a month ago. So now DeSantis is up 18 points with conservatives. he's up seven points with Republicans and up 11 points with Trump 2020 voters.

Now again, just because I have to do this, let me put an asterisk next to this poll. When you use cross tabs, which means breaking out those smaller groups, the margin of error just statistically increases quite a bit. So don't read too much into the difference, for instance, between 7 and 11. Those are all the same number, statistically speaking.

But the trend line is very clear. Donald Trump was way up, double digits, almost 20 points, now DeSantis is up, almost double digits over Trump. Here's the problem that I see, though. Okay, either Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination, in which case I think most Republican operatives would tell you for structural reasons and operational reasons, there's not really a path for Donald Trump to win the general election at this moment. All of that, of course, could change.

and it would be a dogfight for sure. It's not a gimmee for the Democrats. If Ron DeSantis wins the Republican nomination, he will either win it because it is more like the Obama Clinton 2008 primary. There were plenty of other candidates in that race, John Edwards and others, but nobody paid attention to them. Everything was put into the narrative of Obama versus Clinton, and that allowed Obama to get the momentum to overtake Clinton.

He was the change candidate. it. She was the, you know, boring vanilla ice cream and everyone liked the new flavor. That's how DeSantis wins. If it's just 2016 Republican primary all again and it's Donald Trump versus the field, DeSantis can't get, you know, his grip on the ground because everyone else is going to be shooting at DeSantis to try to overtake him to then overtake Donald Trump. That didn't work in 2016. There's no reason why I would work this time. But okay, Ron DeSantis wins the Republican nomination, David. Donald Trump doesn't disappear at that point.

Donald Trump either tries to run a third-party race, which will be potentially tough. There's sore loser laws in a lot of these states. There's the ballot access problem, which I've talked about before. He'll have the money for that, but not the organizational side for it. Certainly not the lawyers that you need for it.

He's got the best lawyers. The best lawyers. What am I saying? Or he will simply do what he did to like, you know, Joe O'Day in Colorado and constantly tell people not to vote for that person. And even if Donald Trump has fallen so far in the estimation of the Republican base voting bloc,

it's hard for anyone to explain to me how he doesn't peel off 2%, and Ronda Santas will not have 2% to lose in a general election. So how does this all work, David? You have asked such a good question because this is one thing that I've been thinking through a lot because the conventional wisdom, which has emerged in the last several years, is that you shoot your shot, right?

You know, and the cautionary tale is Chris Christie in 2012. He had a lot of momentum. And then people said, you know, but you're young, Chris Christie. You know, why throw your hat in the ring now? And he didn't. And his moment passed. So there's just this really hardened conventional wisdom that says, shoot your shot when you have your shot.

You can't know the environment in two years, three years, whatever. But I don't know that anyone's faced this decision tree, which is, okay, I could beat him and he could torpedo me in the general election and would likely try and would likely try. So I'm not actually facing anything like what you would call as a truly normal decision set. I still think DeSantis shoots a shot. I still think he does. But he's got to be sitting there thinking this is a riskier enterprise than any sort of normal calculus because I know and should presume that when I win or if I beat Donald Trump, you will not have a scene of the two of us lifting our arms together at the stage of the Republican National Convention.

There is not going to be a handing over of the baton. There is not going to be a barnstorming tour through the Midwest. with DeSantis and Trump campaigning together. And so under those circumstances, am I walking into two buzz saws? Buzzsaw number one, the primary, where he'll try to destroy me. And, you know, there's some,

there's already indications that Trump is trying to spread really malicious rumors about DeSantis that nobody is repeating in the press, responsibly so, because there's no basis for repeating them. I'll just say, by the way, that because of DeSantis's, you know, background in law school,

like I am good friends with a lot of the people who knew him well in law school and like, I don't know what Apo you're going to get on this guy. And I won't say that about a whole lot of other people I know who are in elected office. Right. But DeSantis may have problems, but that ain't going to be one of them.

But it just goes to the extent, the extent to which Trump will try to destroy him, not just beat him, but destroy him. So that's the decision set that he has. he's got so much momentum and so many people are kind of begging him to do it. I still think he does. But Sarah, you raise a really important question.

Does he lose by winning potentially when ordinarily, again, given the national environment, given inflation worst has been in 40 years, given that Biden is unpopular, no real prospect to make him popular, given that a ton of Democrats are still not wanting their own president to run, even after a historic midterm where his party defied expectations,

it all seems to be right there for Ron DeSantis. But what an unusual situation he faces. And like I said, I still think he does it. But this has got to play on his mind. It has to play on his mind. Kevin, what do you make of the upcoming fight big picture? Then maybe we'll dive into Trump's announcement in the specific. Sure. I think that DeSantis versus Biden and two and a half percent inflation and two percent real GDP growth is a really hard fight for DeSantis. I think if inflation is at 10 or 11 percent or there is a fiscal crisis or there is a very, very sharp recession that DeSantis has a very good shot. I think in that environment, Trump has a shot. I think that when times are very difficult economically, people tend to rally to demagogues. And Trump, you know, in that,

speech he gave where he did something uncharacteristic, which was say something true, that it really is the case that a lot of people haven't felt as much economic pain as you might have expected, given the situation and that things are likely to get worse and more painful. And that will change people's political attitudes if it happens. Donald Trump obviously is hoping that happens because he knows that that's the sort of environment in which he will thrive. You know, I can already tell that somebody out there is like whispering to him about Teddy Roosevelt and making a third party run to torpedo the Republican if it's DeSantis, and that's very likely what he'll do.

I think DeSantis has a couple of ways to make him go away. And that, you know, so Trump and Trumpism are all based on humiliation. That's kind of the basic psychology of what's going on with them. And so you have to beat him with humiliation in a way where the humiliation just hits him and gives his voters an excuse to separate from him, not one that humiliates them all as a group and makes them feel their link with him more intense. intensely. And the two ways you go about doing that, I think if you're DeSantis, one I've mentioned before, which is emphasize the size of his victory versus Trump losing in, in 2020, and versus

Trump, the best case for him in 2020 would have been a very narrow victory. So coming out and saying, look, I come out in here, I deliver these crushing 19, almost 20 percent victories, no matter what shenanigans they get up to in Broward, they can't cheat their way out of it. You get the sort of election denier types on your side that way and the kind of, you know, winning, winning, winning types on your side that way. And you bring everyone in in a way that gives them the thing that Trump promised them, which is not only a victory, but a victory that raises your collective social status in a way that humiliates and degrades your opponents. The other that I think is really still out there in Republican primary circles is that DeSantis became a. culture war mascot because of COVID stuff. And there are a lot of people out there who are still really spun up about those things. And that's a real weakness for Trump because he pretty well went

along with the, you know, consensus on that stuff. There are a lot of people out there who were saying, you know, why didn't he fire Fauci? Why didn't he do something else? Why didn't he do this? Why didn't he do that? And I think that between those two things, if DeSantis really wants to take out, you know, the, the blackjack and beat Trump so badly that he just goes away, those are. Those are those are the instruments he has to do it with. I kind of suspect he might do that. I think DeSantis is a very calculating politician. I think he is someone who's willing and shown himself willing to do stuff that he's not

necessarily instinctively comfortable with if he thinks it'll advance his agenda in an important way. I think a lot of his culture war stuff has basically been play acting. It's not something that comes naturally to him and that he's okay with doing more of that kind of play acting if he needs to. And so I think that Trump is in a kind of vulnerable. position. But yeah, I think the trick is that you don't, you can't just beat him and leave him around to be a third party candidate or to be a menace. You have to beat him so badly that he goes

away. And I think that's a doable thing, but you have to be ruthless and cruel to do it. And I suspect DeSantis has those qualities. That wasn't a joke. Why are you all laughing? Between your description of Mitch McConnell and Ron DeSantis, You want to think of what I think of Mitch McConnell. Do you remember in the scene in Silence of the Lambs where the psychiatrist is talking about Hannibal Lecter attacking the nurse after he fakes a heart attack and his pulse never got above 85

even when he ate her time? Like in the whole time Mitch McConnell was gutting Merrick Garland, I guarantee you his pulse never got above 80 assuming he has a pulse. I just, I had dinner with someone last night who didn't know the cocaine Mitch thing. And so I just had the joy of expose

opposing someone to the, you know, godfather, was it Scarface or Godfather? Anyway, with like the thanks for playing with, you know, cocaine falling down around Mitch. And then I didn't even see that their campaign shirts that year said cocaine Mitch. And then on the back it said, Team McConnell, cartel member. That is nice. David, how does this interact with the Georgia runoff? it's no longer for control of the Senate Donald Trump has announced

we've all moved on to 2024 who does that help more between Warnock and Walker I'm going to say Warnock but that's a super tentative conclusion I do think the fact that you cannot sort of browbeat

pro-life Georgians who have reluctance to support Walker into saying this is the Senate this is the Senate this is so important starts to make it more Roy Moore in 2017 territory than it does. You know, this is the fate of the Republic territory. But look, Sarah, I'm the furthest thing

from sort of the turnout pro. How does Georgia turnout tend to work in runoffs? What are the relative turnout machines compared to the Democrats and the Republicans? Because this also seems to me to suddenly move towards a more normal election, compared to the 2020 runoff, when the 2020 runoff was taking place in the atmosphere of this Stop the Steel hysteria, it feels much more muted right now. And of course, 2020 was

control of the Senate. Everything feels more muted. So I'll just punt it back to you. Wouldn't, what makes me kind of nervous about the conclusion that Warnock has the advantage is wouldn't a more traditionally red state sort of have the bigger default turnout operation than the more true than the than the Democrats more with the Republican sort of default back towards a more a greater natural majority in a pre-Stacey Abrams Georgia absolutely yes in a post-Stacey Abrams or current Stacey Abrams Georgia I don't think so I think your instinct is right that this helps Warnock. Turnout will be low in this runoff compared to what it would be if it was

for control of the Senate. And, you know, there was a focus group that, I think Kristen Soltes Anderson ran. It was fascinating to me. It was basically Trump 2020 voters in Georgia talking about this, what it was like, eight people or so. And two of them were like, I'm not voting for a walker. It just makes me feel gross. I'm not going to do it. This is in the general election. And she said, okay. But if it goes to a runoff and it's for control, the Senate. They're both like, oh, yeah, then I'll vote for him. Those people are going to stay home. Yeah. And the Warnock crowd, I do think still has a better message, which is, if you don't

want Joe Manchin stalling Joe Biden's agenda, vote for Raphael Warnock. He replaces Joe Manchin as that 50th vote. I'm not saying that gets everyone out of bed in the morning, but again, in a low turnout race, it's a decent message. And the Abrams folks did something really fascinating to me in 2020 that seems to have made a big difference in that runoff and remember in that runoff there was just endless money right like whatever blank check levels of money so this might be a little different but maybe not that much i still think there'll be plenty of money they paid their volunteers and in terms of effectiveness we know for instance like yard signs not very effective but you have to have them um direct mail effective

but in terms of effectiveness per piece of direct mail or per dollar, you know, middling, television ads are up there, whatever. But when we actually have academic studies on the most effective thing you can do, it's always person-to-person contact. Telephones are at the bottom, door knocking is above that. But the number one, by far, and it's not even close, like three times as effective as the next most effective thing is talking to your friends. if you actually know someone and have a relationship with them

and you run into them at the coffee shop and say, by the way, I'm voting for Raphael Warnock and I really think you should too. Here's why I'm voting for him, X, Y, Z. We know that's far more likely to persuade people. And so what they did, both the Osoph and Warnock campaigns in 2020, was they paid people to do that. And I think they believe it was very effective

as they were looking back. And, you know, we're talking at the margin here. To the extent they run that again, I think it could make the difference this time. It'll low turnout race, especially. I think it's a version of the often misunderstood Philadelphia practice of walking around money, as they call it. Yeah, this one's legal. Well, people think of that as being bribery. And sometimes it is.

Sometimes it is just paying, you know, homeless people, 20 bucks or a pack of cigarettes to go vote. But often it's more like what you're talking about, of channeling money to people who are community leaders, people in neighborhood groups, and paying them essentially to go door to door and talk to people and engage in that sort of direct person-to-person advocacy, which is, as you note, is very, very effective. I've always been surprised that more campaigns around the country don't just do that. You know, 25 years ago, I mean, you know a lot more about campaigning than I do, but it seems like 25 years ago campaigns were a lot more financially constrained than they are now.

Having campaigns that are, as you say, blank check campaigns, there's a lot more of those now than they're used to being. It's easier to raise money in lots of ways. and being able to go out there and get a really high return on a relatively low amount of spending. You know, again, these Philadelphia campaigns, the walking around money would sometimes be, you know, $5,000, $7,000, something like that. Not huge chunks of money in some of these, you know, local races. Yeah, I mean, maybe multiplied by four or five different, you know, projects and payouts, but still you're talking about five-figure sums, not six or seven or eight-figure sums.

Seems like an intelligent thing to do. I think George is tough, though, in a lot of ways. There seems to be something interesting culturally going on there. You know, 30 years ago in Texas, there wasn't the weird cult of Texanness that we have now that has a particular kind of political valence to it. You've seen a similar change going on in Florida, which is actually, in terms of voter registration, a pretty closely divided state, but it's developing this sense of itself and its own particular political culture that has a particular kind of political expression, which means electing Republicans right now. I think Georgia's going through it in the opposite way where you're seeing a kind of cultural transformation of Georgia where Atlanta has a bigger cultural footprint in the state than it used to. And the Georgia sees itself as being not a kind of habitually, reflexively, right-wing sort of state. It's a state where people want to understand themselves as being a sort of more cosmopolitan, less of the kind of old South attitudes and heritage.

I think Republicans are going to have, are going to find Georgia more difficult. ground than they used to. With Amex 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. Terms and conditions apply.

Learn more at amex.ca. slash Y Annex. Last thing that we really need to talk about, David, do you want to give us the latest update on the missiles that land in Poland? two people. Initially, everyone believes they're Russian. Now there's reason to believe they were Ukrainian defense missiles trying to ward off Russian attacks. Right. So Russia launched another wave of missiles aimed at Ukrainian civilian targets, including Ukrainian infrastructure targets. A missile lands in Polish territory, Hills 2. Immediately the question is, was that a Russian

missile. And there's a massive amount of significance if it's a Russian missile hitting Polish territory, not just for the obvious reasons that the war is spread in a tangible way outside the borders of the combatants. It raises Article 5 questions, even setting aside Article 5, which I always thought it would be unlikely for Poland to trigger Article 5 unless they felt that it was a deliberate strike. And a deliberate strike would seem to be more precisely targeted in a meaningful military or logistical target. It also raises questions about what would Poland do? Because Poland is on the power curve of one of the more powerful NATO militaries.

So would Poland take direct action even without invoking Article 5? So it starts to raise all of these questions. But this is fog of war stuff. You should always take a beat when you hear a report from the front or hear a report of a strike anywhere. always take a beat because the fog of war is a very, very real thing. So then it emerges that, well, this in all likelihood was a Ukrainian missile fired to try to shoot down the Russian missiles because the Ukrainians have been begging for more air defense to stop these Russian missile attacks and drone attacks that have been

really crushing their infrastructure. So it was a Ukrainian missile. So the reality is under the law of armed conflict, that's still Russia's, responsibility. In other words, that's because the Russians launched the attack, Ukraine's self-defense, the gone awry, so long as Ukraine didn't intentionally target Poland, which of course it didn't, is that that still Russia's responsibility, but it's not an Article 5 in Article 5 territory. So now Zelensky has come out and said, no, no, no, this is not a Ukrainian missile. It is a Russian missile. I mean, I don't know how to adjudicate the decision.

dispute, I haven't seen the intel. You haven't inspected the missile. They haven't inspected the wreckage. It seems likely to me that the NATO story, that this is a Ukrainian missile that went awry, given sort of the size of the blast and given the randomness of the targeting, seems to make some sense. It also could, you know, could still be a Russian missile gone awry. But I think the really key issue, the really key question going forward is what does this say for Poland's involvement and then with the hovering background of NATO's involvement. And it seems as if the sort of crisis moment of the attack has passed that so long as NATO, regardless of what Zelensky says, so long as NATO settles on this is a Ukrainian. missile and not a Russian missile, I would not look for a dramatic escalation either from Poland

or from NATO more broadly. So it seems to me that sort of the crisis point has passed. And look, I can totally understand why Zelensky, and if in doubt, say it's Russian, because even if NATO doesn't get involved, it helps him if Poland retaliates. It helps him a great deal if Poland retaliates. So, but my guess, and this is again a guess from several thousand miles away is this is not going to fundamentally change the dynamics of the conflict. Kevin? I'm glad to see that the decision making seems to be slow right now. You know, we often, I think, fail to appreciate the functional institutions that we have. and NATO is one of the functional institutions we have that, I think, is often grossly underappreciated.

We've been talking about NATO for the last six years, as though it were just a matter of who spends what in terms of their percentage of their GDP on national security. There's a lot more to NATO and its mission and its issues than that. I kind of suspect that we'll find that this was a Ukrainian missile, just from what I've been reading about this. It's a crazy world right now. It could be a North Korea missile for all. You know, those are flying all over the place as well, too. But I agree with David, it doesn't really matter. You know, it's wars aren't like police investigations,

but it is the same kind of principle where you rob a bank and the police are chasing you and the cop car hits somebody. You get charged with murder, not the police, because you cause the situation. And when you have a situation like this, it is easy for things to spill over borders. You know, we as Americans sometimes forget how close things are together in the rest of the world.

You know, we don't have a lot of, we don't have 16 other countries within a two-hour drive from our borders. But Texas does have Arkansas right there, and we don't forget that. Build the wall. Yeah, I dislike the way Ukraine is becoming a political issue in the United States,

and maybe I'm getting ahead of the conversation here a little bit. I think that that is giving voice to a particularly, regressive and destructive, but very old and not at all unpopular vane of political thinking in the United States. But if it does make us slightly more circumspect and less likely to make quick decisions than it has at least one happy consequence and that I can take some comfort from. I mean, that's a good question, David. Where do the politics of the Ukrainian conflict go from here, especially when we think about the

bringing it back to the very first part of our conversation. The fractures in the Republican Party, and particularly the Republican House, almost more than the Senate. You know, does this missile matter? Does this a vibe shift within the Republican Party at this point? I don't think the

missile matters. I think it matters if it was a, if it was determined to be a deliberate Russian strike. I think accidental. But even an accidental Russian strike wouldn't really change where they are. I don't think that would fundamentally change the dynamics. I think here's the interesting question to me.

And there's a lot of discussion about the Hastert rule. And I've heard some discussion about the Hastert rule. In the one area of policy, wait, tell us the Hastert rule. The Hastert rule is essentially, and tell me if I get this wrong in the details, Sarah. But the Speaker of the House will not bring to the floor of the House to a vote a measure unless it has the support of a majority of his or her caucus.

So if only a minority of Republicans and all of the Democrats support legislation, meaning it would pass, the Hastert will say, well, McCarthy shouldn't bring it to the floor because only a minority of Republicans support it. It's not a rule. It's more of a norm. It's more of a habit. And some Republicans are wanting Freedom Caucus type Republicans are wanting a Hastert rule for McCarthy to apply a Hastert rule because he could form, he could increase his working majority by working with Democrats to pass actual legislation. There's not too many areas in which there is an actual policy agenda that McCarthy would do that with one big exception, big exception, world historic exception, and that's Ukraine.

because Biden isn't going to go to the lame dot Congress and ask for all the money that's necessary to fund the Ukraine war in perpetuity. It's coming in chunks. And so he's asking for another chunk of spending in all likelihood that will pass or at least be guaranteed to pass by the time the changeover of power occurs.

But what I'm really interested in is the long-term commitment of the United States Congress to funding Ukraine. Because Ukraine's resistance depends on two variables. It depends on Ukrainian valor, which seems set in stone at this point, and Western weapons of which the vast majority are American. Now, if Ukrainian valor, Ukrainian valor is the key reason for Ukrainian success, but if we withdraw support,

all the valor in the world can't compensate for a loss of material and equipment and a war against a great power. And so we are indispensable to continue your Ukrainian resistance. And right now I'd be, it's going to be very interesting to see for me in the first vote on Ukrainian aid in the new Congress does the number 57 increase. 57 was the number of Republicans voted against Ukrainian aid. And then also don't forget, there's another number hovering out there, 30. Those are the progressive Democrats who signed onto and then hastily withdrew a letter

calling for direct talks with Russia over Ukraine. And I think there's still more solid than the 57, but that 30 indicates that there is a latent caucus within the Democratic Party that might not be willing to continue funding Ukraine indefinitely. And so I think that's the one policy area where I think, and it's a world historic policy decision, where you Republican divisions could really prove consequential depending on how much beyond 57 that number moves. Because if it stays, let's say it's 65 now. Let's say it's 70. That's still a minority of the Republican caucus and the Hastert rule would not come into play. Let's say we start getting into triple digits. You know, at that point, at that point McCarthy's got to show some spine if he's going to continue

supporting Ukraine. And to my view, that support for Ukraine is the single most important decision that this Congress is going to have, that we know this Congress is going to have to make between now and 2024. David, it seems to me, and I want to get your opinion on this before we go, but Republican hostility toward Ukraine and American involvement in that conflict is much more intense and serious than is progressive opposition to it. Progressive stuff seems to me just like habit, you know, we don't like American involvement because we have permanent Vietnam complex and the military and industrial complex and we're 1960s pacifists and all that, whereas the Republican thing is something new that has a particular kind of

cultural urgency to it that seems to me a more of a formidable force. Yes, I think there's no question, both at the grassroots and in Congress, the Republican opposition is more intense without any question. You have thoughts to know why that is. Why have these people on the right turn this way? So many thoughts, Kevin. Well, it's not just that they like to see Putin on horseback without a shirt, right? I mean, it could be that simple.

Right. Well, you know, so, and also it's related to thoughts as to why the Democrats have suddenly got more hawkish. It goes back to 2016. And in 2016, the, you know, a narrative emerged that Vladimir Putin wanted Donald Trump. So that Vladimir Putin put his thumb on. the scales. There is a lot of evidence that he put his thumb on the scales. There's not much evidence that it mattered, you know, that this idea that he ran a bunch, you know, that Russian

intelligence put some memes on Facebook doesn't mean that there was any impact. I mean, there was a, you know, Facebook was a wash in memes. And the fact that some FSB folks might have funded a Jesus arm wrestling Satan meme here and there doesn't mean that that's the reason that that Donald Trump won, but we have a lot of evidence that the Russians, to the extent that they had any influence, tried to exert it to ensure a Trump victory or try to help a Trump victory. That's going to make a lot of Democrats really angry at Putin. All of that was only magnified throughout the Mueller investigation as you get more information about Paul Manafort, for example, be in contact with an alleged Russian agent. You get information that Donald Trump

junior, Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner met with a Russian lawyer, with the understanding that they would be receiving information from the Russian government to help. So that flips it. And then you begin to have this background culture war issue of in the sort of Tucker fringe of the right, which is Vladimir Putin is anti-woke, that he is, and you can go back and you can read stuff from Rod Dreher's blog. You can go back and read a lot of stuff. You know, the contrast that Ted Cruz put out of the Russian recruiting ad versus the American recruiting ad for the military. And so Vladimir Putin becomes sort of this avatar of anti-woke, masculine defense of Christian civilization, whereas Ukraine, which in the Trump's fevered imagination, Ukraine was

actually sort of the source of the whole Russia conspiracy to begin with. In sort of the fever swamps, there's some particular animosity against Ukraine. And so then there's this feeling that Ukraine and Russia is a stand-in for woke and anti-woke. And so all of this, it's like a toxic stew that if you're very online, this is for the very online cohort, because your average normal everyday Republican is like, yeah, Russia's bad. We support Ukraine. You know, like you're normal Republican. What the, Putin's anti-woke?

what are you talking about? But in the very online set, this turned into a really toxic brew. And then it has since filtered through sort of Republican entertainment and Republican infotainment, I should say, with Tucker relentlessly hammering it. You know, like Matt Walsh of the Daily Wire

was putting out that he thinks Zelensky is a psychopath who's trying to drive us into nuclear war. Like there's this sort of churn in the pop culture, right anti-Ukraine and so you can literally watch the polling numbers for ukraine deteriorate on the right and it's it's really disturbing to see all right with that in 1926 ernest hemingway wrote the sun also rises how did you go bankrupt bill ass two ways mike says gradually then suddenly all right hemingway it was uh before we go that's what i get for being

a contrarian. We will not have an episode next week because we would otherwise be taping this on Thanksgiving, which means I need to know the side dish you are most looking forward to at your Thanksgiving this year. Kevin, his brow is furrowed. Man, that is not something I thought about very much. Actually, one of the good things about Thanksgiving in my wife's family is that her father typically makes pasta bolognese the day before and uh which is i think which i think is superior

to turkey in most ways although i do like turkey a lot of people don't i think it's hard to cook right but um it's what's the meat and the bolognese ah what is it beef i guess or sausage or something i don't know some people use like a pork beef mix it you know i don't ask i just i just go up where i'm called for dinner yes i'm not a cook all right a strong day before Meal choice, David, to you. Oh, oh, definitely 100% of the time. If you say green beans,

I'm going to be so mad. Oh, Sarah. Green beans are delicious, by the way. Have we not met? Have I ever talked about a vegetable, ever? There's definitely a joke there, but I'm not going to, I mean, Steve isn't even on this pod to defend himself.

I, it's always the same for me. I just, it's old Southern comfort food. It's mashed potatoes. It's not even a classic side dish for Thanksgiving, but... Yes, it is. Mashed potatoes.

What do you mean? Well, yeah, probably. Yeah. It's not one of those. It's not dressing. It's not cranberries. Turkey and dressing. Not stuffing?

Turkey and stuffing. Yeah. I usually think I say dressing. I say stuffing. Is that not right? Kevin, am I wrong? Have I been wrong for 53 years? It is a big regional variation in the South.

We tend to say dressing. Thank you. I feel right. I feel vindicated. It goes in the bird. You stuff it. Well, what do I know? I thought that Fitzgerald wrote that line. So, uh, um, all right. So mashed potatoes. Fascinating. Oh. Yeah, mashed potatoes.

Here's the stuffing versus dressing map. It has Texas in the dressing color. I don't, I don't agree with that. I know. Yeah, you're right. And it definitely. You're not from Texas. You're from a big city. I grew up in Fort Bend County, sir, in Richmond, Texas with 2,000. and people. My third grade class had eight humans in it. Okay. I thought you were from Houston for some reason. I went to high school in

Houston. Right. Okay. So you're you're the suburbs. You're not like something, you're a small little country. No, no, no. I went to high school in Houston as then I moved. Right. Okay. All right. My extended family Thanksgiving, absolutely famous for its roles.

So I am really, really looking forward to the roles. They take basically half the day to make. They're a huge, deal. And the rolls are definitely the very, very best thing. And then the next day, make them again, but this time they are cinnamon rolls. Another great, can you call another meat aside? So we usually supplement the turkey with a honey baked ham. Yeah, side ham. And yeah, yeah, side ham. Okay. And with that, we hope you all have a fantastic, amazing, Thanksgiving, filled with the gratitude of the season. And we will. Sidehams, apparently.

And sidehams. We hope it is filled with sidehams. All of the real and metaphorical sidehams that you can eat. And we will talk to you again in a couple weeks. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online. Whether you're building a site for your business, you're writing, or a new project, Squarespace, brings everything together in one place. With Squarespace's cutting-edge design tools, you can launch a website that looks sharp from day one.

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