The Dispatch Podcast - The Tragedy in Uvalde

Episode Date: May 27, 2022

On Tuesday, an 18-year-old gunman fatally shot 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. Our hosts are here to discuss the latest updates and what comes next. Sarah, Steve, Jonah, and David then turn to this week’s round of primaries. What did they learn? They finish by discussing the latest from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. What does Russia’s Black Sea blockade mean for the world?   Show Notes: -The Dispatch: “After Uvalde, What Now?” -Uphill: “Mass Shootings Reignite Gun Control Debate in Washington” -French Press: “Pass and Enforce Red Flag Laws. Now.” -The Sweep: “A Focus on the Problem with Primaries” -TMD: “A Big Night for GOP Incumbents” -The Dispatch: “Georgia Republicans Stick With Kemp by a Wide Margin” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isger, joined by Jonah Goldberg, David French, and Steve Hayes. We will start with the latest updates out of Yuvaldi, as well as the political fallout and whether potential legislation is really on the table this time. And then we'll move to Georgia, what we learned from this week's primaries. And finally, Ukraine, Finland and Sweden want in NATO, Turkey's opposition, and the blockade in the Black Sea. Let's dive right in. Steve, I think the question at this point that everyone's looking at is, will anything happen this time when there's been so many this times? Nothing happened after Sandy Hook. Nothing happened after El Paso. Nothing happened after Charleston. There's so many towns now to name.

Will Yuvaldi be different? I think there are reasons to be skeptical. The proper lawmaking in this area as well as any others would mean that legislators take their time, study the issues, take a firm grasp of this and don't just react to. a crisis or a tragic event like this and push something forward. That's not the way that our lawmaking works these days. It's all sort of jumping from crisis to crisis. And fair to say that probably the best laws don't come out of that kind of legislating. Having said that, as you point out, Sarah, because there have been so many of these,

we've been having versions of this conversation for so long. we have a pretty good idea of what the options are. And the question I think is whether there's the political will to do something. You've seen Republicans, some Republicans who have been engaged in these kinds of talks before are engaged in them once again. You have Republicans who have not been very actively engaged in these kinds of talks before who have seemed to indicate a willingness to engage again. Chuck Schumer has, has given conflicting indications of what he wants to do. Initially, there was a quick move to, to push hard. Then there was sort of a Schumer taking a step back and saying, look, this is about November. We'll have these issues

decided in November. And I think there's no reason to believe that we'll have, anything big and lasting come out of this, but there's more conversation, particularly in the aftermath of both Buffalo and Evaldi, than there has been for a while. David, some of the issue here is we still don't know. There's a whole lot of things we don't know. And I think one of the points that I've been frustrated on is this idea that whatever solution you propose has to have solved the last mass shooting. If that is the constant refrain, I just don't see how anything ever moves forward. In part, because in moments like this where there's actually maybe some will for political

action, there's still pieces we don't know the answers to, but also that I think with every single one of these, there's no one answer. And so to me, you either do an all of the above strategy. where you're trying to prevent the next shooting, not the one that already happened, or it's going to always be easy for the opposition to say, well, this wouldn't have helped.

Or the vast majority of mass shootings don't involve X problem. How do you get around that and what are the solutions, the solution's the wrong term? And what are the potential options that are on the table realistically that could make some dent moving forward?

Well, I don't know that that's entirely true anymore, Sarah, that we, that among the solution set, that there is one that isn't at least targeted at what we know about most mass shootings. So one of the saddest things about, you know, our modern American life right now is that we've had enough of these mass shootings to do significant longitudinal studies. And there's a National Institute for Justice-funded study came out. about a year or so ago that looked at the last 50 years of mass killings. And here's what it found. It found that in most cases, so nearly always the individual was in a state of crisis at the time,

and in most cases, they engaged in leaking their plans before opening fire. So that's in most cases. Now, this leakage issue is very obvious in school shooting cases. In 2018, I wrote about this and my newsletter, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey put together a team that looked at each of the deadliest school shooting since Columbine. And it found that the killers had engaged in openly engaged in extremely troubling behavior before every shooting. And this is not, as we're learning more about the Uvalde shooter, there's no exception there. You know, it's everything from weird personal behavior like cutting his own face up. quote, just for fun, driving around town, shooting at people with a BB gun,

consistent police, neighbors report a consistent police presence at his home. Buffalo mass shooter, police in June 2021 took him into custody briefly after he made a threat about shooting. They even ordered a psychiatric evaluation. He was hospitalized after a day and a half. So in all of these situations, you're looking at individuals who've radiated problematic behavior. just radiated it. And that's why I go back to, I'm like that guy, you know,

there's almost every college campus has that street preacher who just won't shut up, you know. I'm like the street preacher who won't shut up about these red flag laws because there's something that's tailored for what's actually occurring. In other words, if you say, what do you do about mass shootings? You have vague stuff like mental health issues. You have people say background checks or assault weapons bans, but the vast majority of mass shooters get their guns legally and the vast majority

use handguns. And so you say, what about these mass shootings? And I say, well, in the majority of them, people leaked their plans before opening fire. We know this. This is studied. This is known. And that's why I think red flag laws have become increasingly popular. There are 19 states now. But you got to know about them. You got to enforce them. In New York, there was a red flag law. And it didn't stop the Buffalo mass shooter. It wasn't used. It wasn't utilized. But in Florida, they passed a red flag law after the Parkland mass shooting, and it's been used about 9,000 times. I just looked it up this morning. Right now, as of this moment, there are more than 2,800, you know, red flag restraining orders

in place right now or extreme risk protection orders, whatever you want to say. And then the other thing about him is they actually do have some bipartisan support. I mean, Governor Ducey believes in a version called Severe Threat Order of Protection. just last year, Rubio and Rick Scott introduced legislation asking for a grant program for state red flag laws. Even Texas Governor Greg Abbott considered them in 2018. Mitt Romney just told the New York Times that he believes they're helpful. So I'm not going to say it's going to happen.

I'm not that naive. But of all of the menu of options, this is the one that is most targeted at what the crisis is and has the most bipartisan support. Jonah, the NRA holding meetings, a whole bunch of Republicans using guns as a political wedge issue in past elections. You know, Democrats want a national gun registry or they want to confiscate everyone's guns.

And then you have moments like this where you wonder whether it will still be a wedge issue moving forward, whether there'll be enough people in the middle, enough moms, whatever, to say it's not worth this. Why do the, why does the base keep winning these fights?

I think, well, there are a bunch of reasons. One is that the, that it's easier to defend the status quo than it is to change it. Right? Just think of the filibuster, right? You need more votes to change the law

than you need votes to, to keep the law from being changed. So that's part of it, right? The status quo bias of things. Part of it, and I'm not a big fan of this argument in the constitutional setting or in a lot of reform proposals from the left, but I think as an objective matter, the fact that this disequilibrium between, you know, what the left will call minority rule, which I think is the wrong way to think about it, but red states are,

The Senate Democrats, the Senate is divided 50-50. And my understanding is that if you just divide the country to people who voted Democrat or come from Democratic states versus Republican states, Democrats represent about 40 million more people than Republicans do. And I don't follow from that that we should get rid of the Senate or we should have, you know, get rid of the filibuster or any of that kind of stuff. But as a political matter, it illustrates how gun control stuff can, be incredibly popular in major urban blue states and really not have that much of a political

impact on the politics of red states. And so I think that's part of it. I also think, you know, and I know you know this, so I'm not saying that you don't, but like when you talk about when you raise the NRA, I get, and I don't want to descend into the squalor of media criticism but it is really remarkable how when um the issue of abortion comes up the language from the media is about women even though women tend to be more pro-life than men and that there are lots of pro-life women it is women it is voters it is the american people and when the issue comes out to be guns it's the gun lobby right and the arguments the insinuation seems to that when it comes to guns, the will of the people

is being thwarted by a tiny group of bad actors who are against all goodness and against the will of voters. And if you just, as a mental exercise, imagine changing that rhetoric, switching that rhetoric around on the issue of abortion and talking about the abortion lobby as if it was... And I think the facts support that framing just as well

if not better for abortion than they do for guns in the sense that the abortion lobby is locked the Democrats into what is considered an extreme position by the average voter and yet you don't talk about that way. The NRA has never been weaker. The NRA is a

corpulent, corrupt, failing institution. Its power does not derive from money. It does not derive from the profits of the gun industry either. Its power derives from the fact that they're pretty good at doing party functions like organizing and mobilizing and educating voters. And the simple fact of the matter is is that there are tens of millions. There are an

enormous number of people in this country who own guns. And there are probably even more people who know someone who own guns and generally support the right to bear arms. And when you frame these things in the populist framework of these out-of-touch elite nefarious forces, is manipulating our politics, it makes things more poisonous. And I think that it would be helpful. Like, I agree with you entirely. Everyone wants to go for the silver bullet, no pun intended solution to these things. And that's stupid because it's impossible.

And I don't think David is arguing, I think I take David's point very well, that red flag laws at least touch on a vast number of these cases. But even you wouldn't say that it's going to make, if we had red flag laws tomorrow, that were written by you, that it wouldn't. eliminate mass shootings because mass shootings are a complicated phenomenon and that people are determined to murder people they will find ways to murder people all we can hope to do is lessen and ameliorate the problem and get on a better path but when you talk about these when we talk about these things where people would much rather have the issue than the

solution it's it creates the kind of environment where everybody falls back on their talking points and no progress can be made because in that kind of environment, the perfect is the enemy of the good. I think your point about the NRA is really important and one that if this podcast can provide some value to folks who are trying to understand the right out there, understanding what the NRA is and what it isn't is really interesting because I think most people who are just casual political observers think the NRA is incredibly powerful, incredibly well regarded on the right that you can't cross the NRA if you're a politician

when in fact the NRA certainly for the last 15 years or so has been a follower, not a leader on a lot of gun issues such that, I don't know, it's sort of met with some eye rolls, I think, on the right more than anything. And yet it's because of its reputation

from the 80s, 90s, it remains this talking point for the left where it maintains the status that it simply doesn't have on the right anymore such that I think the two sides are missing each other when they talk about, again, to your point, Jonah, why legislation can't happen? The left is like, oh, it's good, the NRA

and the right's like, what are you talking about? Yeah, I mean, one analogy to think about it this way, the left talks about the NRA, the way I talk about the sugar subsidy lobby in Florida. because the average voter in Florida could not give a rat's ass about sugar subsidies, but they're like five incredibly rich, powerful vested interests who own a vote on sugar subsidies in every congressman and senator that they send to Washington because they just have so much behind the scenes clout and donation power.

That's how it works for sugar subsidies in Florida. It's not how it works for the NRA. The NRA is powerful because there are a lot of pro-gun and pro-second amendment voters in this country, and we've made guns into a stupidly, I think, a culture war issue. Yeah, the NRA would go away tomorrow. Tomorrow the NRA could vanish. And the gun debate in this country would not change materially. And the political realities would not change materially.

And the NRA is doing about as good a job as any organization can possibly do to just go ahead and commit suicide. Yeah. Because it's one of the worst run, most corrupt, most venal institutions you're going to find out there. I mean, the best relationship you can give somebody these days is just find someone who loves you unconditionally, like the, so unconditionally, like the NRA board loves Wayne LaPierre. It's unreal. I want to do a little AO crossover here because the Supreme Court's got an enormous amount of attention in the last few weeks, obviously, over their upcoming abortion decision. We have the leaked draft, yada, yada, yada.

But what's overshadowed is that they also have a major Second Amendment case that's going to be decided now in, you know, two, three weeks putting the political spotlight once again squarely on the Supreme Court as if it wasn't already, you know, as a ping pong in our political debates, this case, for those who haven't followed this, aren't big A.O listeners. So the Second Amendment says you have the right to keep and bear arms. In 2008, the Supreme Court decided a case called Heller that said the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep a gun in your own home. Now, there can be restrictions on that right, but that is the right enshrined in the Constitution. Now, fast forward to 2022, this case is the question of what does bear mean? Do you have a constitutional right ever to take a gun outside your home, bear that gun. And David, again, I just think when we talk about our institutions and the importance

of three functioning branches of government, Congress, not functioning. The executive, like a bloated version of functioning, like overfunctioning in the bad way. And now we're going to have the Supreme Court the absolute focus of the abortion debate and soon to be, I think, the focus of the gun debate. and you know part of this is the supreme supreme court's fault when it comes to the gun debate um it punted and punted and punted for a long time on any gun decisions uh and so this was incredibly overdue um you know we talk about after the after the heller decision which established all us all heller established was an individual right to keep a weapon in the home for self-defense that that's it it didn't go any further than that didn't deal with the bare arms uh aspect

of it. And then you had all of this gun rights litigation for year after year after year. And there's this saying in the law that, well, sometimes the Supreme Court lets the law mature a little bit before it goes ahead and grants another grant cert again. Well, in this case, the law had matured enough. I mean, it had gone through puberty, it was driving around town, and still no, there were no cert grants. So this is an over new cert grant on a case with really unfavorable, I mean really unfavorable facts for sort of the gun control community. It involves a New York State licensing scheme that seems to be basically utilized to allow celebrities to own guns. And if you're a regular person, it was going to be really, really hard, or not just to own, but to carry a gun

in New York. And if you're a regular person who's going to be really, really hard. And so I fully expect the Supreme Court to strike down this New York law that essentially puts in the right to bear arms outside the home in the hands of state officials who use subjective criteria to determine whether you can exercise a constitutional right. I expect that to be struck down. The big question is how broad of a ruling? Because there's a world where this is really limited that just says New York, you can't do what you're doing. You've got to allow people to bear arms in certain circumstances outside the home. He kind of leaves the lower courts to sort it out again. And then there's another one that says, hey, the right to bear arms.

is going to allow you to carry a gun outside the home, except in very limited circumstances. And, oh, by the way, here's the constitutional test to apply to all Second Amendment cases, which could be the much broader version. And so we'll see. I think either way, the larger media may not understand the nuances of the decision.

And so there will be a lot of times, Sarah, for us to educate to the public on advisory opinions. Another plug for the flagship podcast. Steve, on this podcast, we like to also talk about whether things matter. Will this actually move any voters? Will one party benefit or be harmed by taking the quote-unquote wrong stance on an issue? When it comes to abortion, I've made the case that I don't think there's any voters left to move on the issue. And so I don't think you'll see a huge, you know, asteroid impact dinosaur extinction.

regardless of what the Supreme Court does in June. The Supreme Court, the shootings, whatever else, are guns an issue that everyone is also sorted on, or can guns still move voters? I think they can still move voters, and in particular because of the current political context, if you think about the things that made Republicans strong in 2021 and allow them to continue their strength,

one of the main factors is parents and frustration with what's happened in schools, particularly as it relates to COVID. And, you know, you certainly saw that in the turnout in Virginia and the support for Glenn Yonkin and his gubernatorial bid. And that seems to be a real animating force behind the Republicans' strength right now. Obviously, there are lots of other things. We don't want to falsely attribute Republicans' good polling right now.

to a single cause. I mean, inflation and unrest overseas, what have you. But I do think parents have a lot to do with it. And there does seem to be in the aftermath of something as horrific as Evaldi, this just sense that this cannot keep happening. And, you know, if you've taken the time, I know a lot of people who have just decided I can't, I can't watch this news. I'm out. I'm checking out. I'm not going to pay close attention to it. But for the people who are paying close attention to it, you watch the videos, particularly as we learn more about what the,

what law enforcement didn't do as the shooter was attempting to get into the building and then either barricaded himself or was pinned down in the building, depending on the version of events you believe. And there are these videos of parents desperate to go in. and try to get their kids because law enforcement wasn't doing it. And it's to watch these videos, I mean, videos taken by the parents themselves,

and to read these accounts, you can just, it's almost physically painful to put yourself in the position of wanting so badly to go in and save your kid, and in some cases, being restrained and maybe detained by law enforcement on the way there. Those kinds of stories and the broader kinds of emotions that these things evoke in parents, I think, is quite powerful. And, you know, a lot of this is just anecdotal over the past few days talking to folks in my part of the world.

But the question you get again and again and again is, why can't we do something about this? Why can't we do something about this? And I think it's really important for people to understand what both. I think what all three of you said earlier, there is not going to, there is no panacea. There is not a silver bullet. There isn't going to be an easy solution. If there was one, we would have had it. But that doesn't mean that there can't be any solution.

And I think to the extent that Republicans look like they're blocking attempts at solutions here, that could be a political liability. How much of one, you know, I think the overriding issue set will relate to. Joe Biden's failed presidency and the economy and concerns about what's going on overseas. But if we see more of these and if Republicans seem to be the obstacles to even having good faith discussions about this, I do think that's a political liability.

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alabama lots to dissect here jona do you want to give us your high-level takeaway as you woke up wednesday morning with all of this new information you said aha now i know um well it's funny I mean, it's not funny, but it's weird. I was talking to Steve about this. You know, Tuesday night, the actual flagship podcast of this company had its 500th episode Palooza, and I completely missed the shooting. I didn't know about it until later, and it was amazing how the shooting, I was just say amazing, because that implies it's wrong.

It was remarkable how the shooting just completely crowded out coverage of the primaries. And so I actually felt like I had a better grasp what was going on from the primaries because I wallowed in the rancest of punditry from Chris Stairwell and A.B. Stoddard beforehand. And it turned out that we were pretty right about what was going to happen. This is a point that Chris made. It's a point I made on the solo remnant this week. It's a Yuval of In point. I think what is becoming more and more clear largely because of Trump's continued

misunderstanding of how politics works that he has maneuvered himself into being in effect the leader of a faction of the Republican Party rather than the de facto leader of the entire Republican Party. That doesn't mean, look, you've had leaders of factions be the most important figure in a party forever, whether it was Southern Democrats in the Democratic Party for a long time or new Democrats in the 1990s,

or in the Republican Party, you had everything from, you know, what Steve Hayes likes to call the cheese curd years of the Wisconsin Mafia running the Republican Party. And so you can still be the establishment, but with Trump, in part because he insists on being backward-looking

on the 20-20 big lie stuff, he has basically set himself up for a, where he is the leader of the Trumpy faction, which is no longer, defining of the entire party, at least in the sense that people feel free to campaign for people that Trump didn't endorse. They feel free to say we should look towards the future. And I think that that is sort of one of the major takeaways. The other major takeaway, I would say, is that we are also seeing, just as he's the head of a faction, that that faction is not necessarily

purely pro-Trump, that there is this MAGA faction of the Republican Party that is independent of the, to some degree of the cult of personality of Trump. I really think the Kathy Barnett race was fascinating, where she insisted, she ultimately came in third in Pennsylvania, but she figured out how to talk about how she was MAGA, and MAGA is bigger than Trump, and said that, you know, Trump is the establishment. Sean Hannity is the establishment. They're the swamp. And when Trump was president,

we didn't move towards his values. He transitions toward our values. I'm not sure that's actually true, but it's a good talking point. And you get the sense in some ways that Trump is chasing the... He's like Dr. Frankenstein chasing the monster through the village

rather than leading it. And that dynamic is going to get interesting in the months and years to come. All right. So, David, we now have Ohio. We have Pennsylvania, to some extent. At least we have initial results. And now we have Georgia. Where is the Republican Party headed post a Trump presidency?

Sarah, I'm getting a disturbing sense of deja vu. And here's my disturbing sense of deja vu. if you have a multi-candidate a truly multi-candidate primary the trump base is significant enough to secure trump allied victories time and time again or at least catapult you know the trump endorsed candidate into the lead i mean there's no one who thinks that dr oz would be winning the pennsylvania senate race if it weren't for donald trump's endorsement so if you have this 2016-ish version of political life, where you've got multiple candidates, Donald Trump is going to be the dominant force. What do we have in Georgia? Mono e-mano. It was one-on-one,

time and time again, with a Trump-endorsed candidate focused on Trump's favorite issue, which happens to be an issue that while a lot of Republican voters are, will tell a pollster that they don't think the 2020 election was legit. They're not circling their wagons around that is their primary political issue. So you had mono-imano focused on where Donald Trump is weakest, and so what's going to happen? You're going to lose. He's going to lose in those circumstances, and he lost big.

And he didn't just lose a humiliating, you know, dunk on his opponent election in the gubernatorial race. He lost Secretary of State, Raffensberger. Because Raffinsberger now is, so far as I know, the first elected Republican who absolutely directly took on the president in the most unambiguous way possible and has won a primary. Kemp just kind of tried to ignore Trump and focus on Purdue and be governor.

But Raffensberger, there was nothing ambiguous about what Raffensberger did. And he won. He won re-election. So I think the lesson there is one-on-one races where Trump is ranting about his pet issue, that's where he's at his weakest. Now, Sarah, going forward, what does that say for 2024? I don't think we'll see a one-on-one.

And I think we'll see a one on maybe four or five. And if that's the case, then it's more the Ohio, J.D. Vance, Pennsylvania, Dr. Oz situation, unless the Purdue Kemp gubernatorial or Raffinsberger Heights, Secretary of State race. So that's my somewhat pessimistic take that we will not have learned. our lessons. Steve, I know we don't do rank punditry on this podcast and gross speculation, but I actually am curious about your take on something, which is, in part because I agree, we're not going to see it.

If it were a Trump versus DeSantis Republican primary in 2024, who wins that? I think DeSantis wins that right now. 100% agree. You project that out. I think DeSantis wins it about it. right now because Trump wouldn't be able to help himself in talking about I mean he he will be relitigating 2020 until 2024 is is finished I mean and and probably well beyond that you know these these Republican Party intra-party straw polls are are not worth a ton

but DeSantis beat Trump in a Wisconsin GOP straw poll at their convention last weekend which I think is sort of an interesting indicator. I think there are a couple other things that are worth just remarking on. First, I think David's right that we're likely to see heading into 2024, more Republicans. I don't think it'll be a one-on-one. I think you're, and I've long thought, you're going to have a number of Republicans who run against Trump, regardless. Assuming that Trump decides to run, you have Republicans who are going to get in. I think that's a sign of Trump's weakness.

These people wouldn't do that. They wouldn't have imagined to do that a couple years ago. And now I think you're, you know, you've seen in the past week, Mike Pence take pretty forceful steps away from Donald Trump. Pence is, he's gone sort of back and forth. He did what he did on January 6th for which I think the more we learn about what he did on January 6th, that's sort of an aside. more incredible it becomes. I mean, the details about what was going on behind the scenes to get

him to make the decision opposite, the one that he made, pretty incredible. Forever deserves credit for that. But then in the months after that, he sort of tacked back to Trump. He defended the Trump administration, as you'd expect him to do as a vice president, but was pretty friendly to Trump. And in a series of interviews and speeches over the past three weeks, he has taken a much, much darker tone toward Trump and sought that separation, gave an interview to Jonathan Martin of the New York Times, and made some pretty pointed remarks about Trump looking backward. He had this appearance at a rally for Brian Kemp in Georgia on Monday the night before the Kemp Purdue faceoff.

Remember, Trump had, unseating Brian Kemp was regarded by virtually everybody because of the way Trump talked about it as one of Trump's top priorities in the 22 midterms. You rarely hear Donald Trump talk about beating Democrats in 2022. You hear him talk all the time about beating Republicans, he thinks, are insufficiently loyal. Camp was one of those, and Pence showed up. I think we're likely to see a number of Republicans jump in and run against Trump regardless. I think that's a sign of Trump's weakness and his sort of slipping grip on the Republican Party. the second question on whether there will eventually be a head-to-head that would make it,

you know, very different than what we saw in 2020 on the Republican side, I think it's possible. I mean, in 2016, I think it's possible. Look at, look at what happened at the end of the Democratic primary in 2020. You know, there was this prolonged fight. Bernie Sanders, who was sort of a, in some ways, like a trend. Trump figure had a small but very vocal and active and loyal support following that could help him win these early primaries and gain momentum. And at a certain point, the party said, enough.

And I think there are enough Republicans given, if you have Republican candidates taking shots, criticizing Trump on substance, for months and months and months, I think if you get to the point where it looks like Trump could win like he did in 2016, there would be sort of a collective step back like there was among Democrats and choosing Joe Biden. On the Democratic side, Jonah, we had the race in Texas, the runoff between one of the most conservative Democrats in the country and a Bernie Sanders staffer, AOC endorsed candidate, But it looks a lot like Pennsylvania, actually.

The race is separated by, you know, just over 100 votes. What are we, what's happening on the other side? What are Democrats supposed to make of that? What does that mean for the future of the Biden agenda? Do progressives get to claim victory that they're getting close to knocking off incumbents, whether they came up maybe a little bit short on this one? Who wins the battles over there? Yeah.

I mean, the Quayar thing is so complicated because he had some serious ethical things that he still hasn't explained, right? He hasn't explained the FBI raid on his house yet, has he? Or am I misremembering this? But I think it's, generally speaking... It happens, Joe. It does. Screws fall. It's an imperfect world, as they said in Breakfast Club.

I think that the whether he survives or not it's emblematic about how the I don't think you could ever call Claire a new Democrat in this sort of DLC mold but he was like a moderate conservative Democrat or is

and they're being purged from the party but they're not actually being purged from the voting roles among Democrats and because the average Democrat is actually to the right of a lot of these people. And so it kind of feels a little bit like, I mean, let's put it this way. I think Stacey Abrams has been, her political power has been wildly exaggerated.

She ran once in, and had a really good showing in a really great Democratic year and still lost. And as a political candidate, when you see her say things like, Sure, this is a great, what was she say this week? It's a great place for business, but it's a terrible place. It's the worst place to live. I keep giving this advice to people on the right and the left, as if I'm a frigging political consultant, but it just seems kind of obvious to me that normal voters actually don't want to hear people say America sucks or their state sucks, you know, and being told

that their country is bad. And I think that there's a sort of a rough, not perfect analogy, but sort of parallelism between what's going on with the Democrats and going on with Republicans is that people outside the mainstream are, for the most part, winning with Georgia accepted on the Republican side, winning the internal battles within their party that are going to place them at odds with the majority of voters that they're going to need in general elections. So the sociological nature of the two groups is very different, but I think the dynamic is sort of the same. I think the more interesting story that going on on the Democratic Party is that it's really just starting to spill out like an overfilled bathtub that Joe Biden's not going to run again and that no one thinks it's smart to have Kamala Harris as the person to run instead.

Biden can't actually say he's not going to run again because the second you say that you're a lame duck, your entire cabinet scatters like a clouter of cats when you've dumped a bucket of mice. in the room, and they're all going to go their own way. And so the internal problems of the Democratic Party in a weird way, I think, are actually, the stakes are higher because of what's going on in a Republican Party, like Maastriano, if he's elected governor, would be very, very bad for the country.

But the dysfunction that's building in the Democrats, I actually think, is worse than it is on the Republican side. This is a shocking moment because Jonah just made a really important point. Mark it down. This is vastly under-discust. And I realize why it's because Joe Biden is still president and there's no formal indication that he's not going to run again.

But the extent to which we have these two sort of parallel conversations taking place in the country in Washington, there's this one conversation that's taking place in front of the cameras and on the record in the media. And it's, you know, either an assumption that Biden is going to run again or a discussion about whether Biden might run again. And I will say just having talked to a number of notable Democrats over the past, let's say, three weeks, nobody thinks Joe Biden is running again. Nobody.

It's sort of conventional wisdom among Democrats that Joe Biden is not going to run. and this very quiet jockeying that's taking place on the Democratic side right now is sort of well known in those circles. I'm surprised we haven't seen more written about that. If only I could, if only I knew of a place where you could write such a piece based on really good reporting, I'd write something. David, I have an analogy for you speaking of the Stacey Abrams race because now a lot of, when you think about the general election,

a lot of folks are focusing on this Brian Kemp versus Stacey Abrams rematch as almost a precursor to a Biden-Trump rematch or something like that. And to me, it looks a whole lot more like the 2014 race between Wendy Davis and, was that Greg Abbott or was Greg Abbott? Yeah, Greg Abbott, I think.

And Greg Abbott, where she spends $36 million, tons of it raised nationally taking money away from other 2014 races that people could have donated to but they really thought they could turn Texas blue and she comes up short by 25 points that's a lot right I mean you're the election person but well but Sarah anything over 10 I'm not supposed to pay attention to I heard it's true so all I hear you say is by 10 points yeah I think that could be the Georgia gubernatorial race. I really do. Oh, I mean, you know,

she almost won in a wave blue year when Kemp was coming out of a pretty contentious Republican primary and she's not in nearly the same position.

Not nearly. And if Georgians are tired of election conspiracists, they're not going to vote for her. I mean, she is only the most famous Democratic election denialist out there.

So she's coming in. She's, if anything, she has substantially weakened her position. Georgians have had four years of Kempa's governor. They seem pretty happy with his performance. He hasn't been in the spotlight as much as Ron DeSantis because he hasn't picked the same kinds of fights necessarily that Ron DeSantis has. But he's been in his share of fights. And I think it's just going to be a, it's,

it's absolutely going to be a cakewalk for him, is my prediction. And the Democrats will pour millions of dollars, millions of dollars into that race, the way they do every six years into unseating Mitch McConnell. It's amazing how much money has been wasted in the state of Kentucky, taking on Mitch McConnell. And in Texas. I mean, the turn Texas blue stuff has been raising money for Democrats for 20 years. Now, what I think people don't talk enough about is that it's

been raising money for Republicans, too. Both sides have an incentive to gin up these general elections in unwinnable states. Because otherwise, who would donate on the Republican side? If it's an easy race, no big deal. And this is like the full consultant employment act. So, yeah, it's a waste of money. It takes money from other races. You know, when you're talking about national democratic donors, email list, even big donors,

that's money that could go to a winnable race. but also it raises money for the opposition too. But you know, I'll say, you know, one thing quick to Steve's point, a lot of smart Democrats I know have a dark view of the future, just dark view of the political future, because they look at two things happening at once. One is the way population trends are going, the popular vote majority that they have to win

to reliably win the presidency just keeps getting bigger. And the other thing is that the, so therefore you have to, run races that are going to appeal to middle of the road voters, and the party is increasingly captured by people on the far left. And so you have to moderate more, but all of the cultural pressure is to moderate less. And with an electoral challenge that just grows every year, at least under, you know, if presuming current, which is always a dangerous thing, but presuming current trends continue.

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Uh, I'm looking into it. Stress less about security. Choose security solutions from TELUS for peace of mind at home and online. Visit tellus.com slash total security to learn more. Conditions apply. All right, let's move to Ukraine. Steve, give us the latest about where the fighting has moved, what's happening with some of these neighboring European countries, and as I mentioned at the top, the blockade. Yeah, there have been several interesting developments, both diplomatic and

military over the past several weeks. I think, you know, clearly that we've seen a pretty dramatic shift in the fighting and a change in the way that Russia is approaching. the invasion. I think it's fair to say, based on what we saw at the beginning of the invasion, based on the way that Putin had to raid his forces before the invasion, based on some of the leaked documents we saw come out after the invasion, that Russia wanted to invade, take over, control Ukraine, and implement regime change. That, it seems very clear as not happening. Now, the fighting is not entirely, but mostly focused on Donbos, in the Crimean Peninsula, the places where Russians had effectively taken over in 2014.

And the fact that it's more geographically isolated gives the Ukrainian leadership more room to maneuver, I think, on the diplomatic front. The Ukraine has certainly gotten a massive influx of weapons and promises of weapons, from the United States and from other Western countries, their view is that they still don't have everything they need. Their view is that there are still shortages and that they're not getting exactly the kind of military equipment that they need. But they're certainly in a much better position

to actually fight the Russians than they were at the beginning of the conflict. So in that sense, I think the original objectives of Russia just seem to have been pretty well thwarted at this point. And the question is how does it end militarily? You had Vladimir Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, say that he expects to engage in conversation in negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, told the Ukrainian people they should expect that this will end in part because of those negotiations. He did not say what many, some Western leaders would like him to say, which is,

we'll sort of throw up our hands and agree to give up the territory that Russia is controlling. And I don't think he should say that, but he did say that he's willing to engage in negotiations. And then the final point on the blockade and potential food shortage is a big piece in the Economist this week. And the economist has really done a good job of reporting the sort of food implications, the global food production implications of the Russia-Ukraine war from the beginning. sort of sounding the alarms. If you go back and you look at the pieces, they're sort of dramatically increasing what they're saying about it. And they had a cover story a week before this week called the coming food catastrophe because of Ukraine's inability to export grain

and oil seeds and Russia's as well. And the estimate that the economist has this week is that the cost of high cost of staple foods has already raised the number of people who cannot be sure of getting enough to eat by 440 million people, 1.6 billion. Unless something changes, that appears to be the path that we're on. And there's no reason to believe at this point that something is going to change in the short term. I feel like Zelensky is now an difficult place, Jonah, because he's a victim of his own success in so many ways. You have the United States intelligence apparatus saying that, you know, Keev could fall in three days from when Russia starts the invasion, and we're now three months later.

You have Zelensky's own intelligence chief saying that they'll take back the land by force, you know, Crimea by force. And that's the only way. And at the same time, I don't think that's how this ends. This isn't just going to be that Ukraine eventually pushes Russia out. I don't think Putin can tolerate that. You just have hanging over all of this nuclear weapons. And yet, how does Zelensky go to the negotiating table and give up any Ukrainian land in order to attain peace when there's been

so much momentum behind him internationally and in his own country and success that wasn't expected. Yeah, I think there's a very solid chance that you'll be able to ask me a question that sounds remarkably like that in a year. It's not what I'm predicting, but it is entirely countries have had low intensity border wars for long periods of time sometimes and um i think the one of the thing you know so just to back to piggyback on something steve was talking about with the blockade it is really important to keep in mind what the russians are doing with the blockade is they are denying food to the world as a way to leverage getting out of sanctions in a way to leverage starving countries to support them in the UN.

And by, because if they can keep Ukrainian food coming out, it raises the price of food. So all of a sudden, it's a commodity play like oil, where it raises the price of Russian food, because Russia is also a breadbasket. And then Russia can bribe countries that are literally starving with food to get them, to get their back at the UN and to oppose sanctions and all that. And it is a... Can I just jump in real quick, Jonah, and just say, you have Russian officials in the past couple of days who have said this.

I mean, it's not even, it's not a secret. It's a really important point. And they've effectively said, look, if you're friends with Russia, you'll be fine, which is an extraordinary thing. So they're doing something profoundly evil, and they're weaponizing starvation for their own benefit. And so I think... that in a perverse way, this whole potential for a military stalemate for a period of time

makes the sanctions part much more important because the only way Russia gives in is not because they are sending disproportionately, demographically insignificant people to Vladimir Putin into their deaths, right? The traditional Russian young people aren't being conscripted. They get out of the draft. They aren't joining the army. They are not being sent out there.

These are minority populations wildly disproportionately from the hustings and rural parts of the country, or the empire, if you prefer. And he is willing to turn that into a charnel house for quite a while. And so the pressure needs to be even more acute on the elites in Moscow and in St. Petersburg. And that only comes by holding fast on the sanctions. And fine, selling wheat to, you know, to Somalia to get their vote at the UN. Kudos to your

brilliant diplomatic strategy. I don't know that that actually gives you the upper hand against all of Europe, the United States, Japan, and the majority of the UN in terms of getting out of sanctions or getting support for permanently annexing parts of a neighboring sovereign country. And so anyway, I think the diplomatic game, as much as I hate talk of diplomacy being the most important thing in the world, is going to become really, really important if Ukraine can maintain serious military pressure for a significant period of time. David, three months in, there were predictions about how this could dramatically change Europe, politically and sort of its posture toward Russia or even toward China, has it?

Well, I would say Finland and Sweden petitioning to join NATO is a pretty dramatic change. I mean, these are countries that were very stubbornly. Neutral is not the precise word, but quasi-neutral, very stubbornly outside the NATO orbit for a very long time, including during the height of the Cold War. So that's a pretty significant change. I think while I'm not sure that the right in France would have triumphed in the election, I think that it was a broader election victory for Macron, even though he's not super popular than there might otherwise have been. I think the expansion of German military spending is a significant change. So yeah, I think that you can point to some pretty measurable things that would say, there are measurable things that have changed in Europe. Now, the thing I want to say, though, there's a couple ways to look at what's happening right now. And I'm not sure one of, and I'm not sure which one is correct, but I'm leaning towards one of the options. And one way to look at it is to say the Russian war and Ukraine has

essentially failed and we're kind of in a day new mall phase. In other words, the basic lines are set and we're going to be sort of deciding over the next several weeks and months sort of where the conflict is when it peters out. In other words, when you essentially reach the stage that we reached in the Donbos

in after 2014 of here's a line of control, you know, and this is something that we've seen. And then you kind of start to negotiate an armistice on that basis like you had in Korea where neither side, South Korea never really admitted that it was going to give up its desire to control all of Korea. North Korea never admitted that it wants to give up desire to control all of

South Korea. They just stopped fighting for a while. That's one option, and it's an option, but here's another one. We've just reached the end of the beginning. In other words, when you have wars between nation states, they occur in waves. You have large offensive operations, followed by counteroffensive, followed by respite, followed by large offensives. And this was a pattern, you know, in World War I, you would have the initial German push in 1914. And you had in 1916 huge offensives in Verdun and at the, you know, in Verdun and at the at the Somme. And you had it just offensive after offensive going back and forth.

And, you know, when you look at what Russia is doing, just digging into this fight in Eastern Ukraine, using overwhelming firepower with now reports coming out of Eastern Ukraine that Ukrainian forces are being stretched to the breaking point. Part of me wonders if we're not at the end of the beginning. And it's going to be a combination of a blockade strategy and periodic major offensives designed to break the will of Ukrainian resistance. And you might say, oh, well, the Ukrainians have proven that their will will not be broken. Well, they haven't lived under a year of intense shelling, two years of intense shelling.

And so that's why these, these urgent demands from the Ukrainians for more howitzers now for MLRS rocket systems all of that is absolutely critical because the Russians can eventually just grind them down the the ammunition and arms requirements of a modern war like this are staggering and the Russians are pouring what they've got into the fight and the Ukrainians need an equivalent degree of supply on our end and I you know I don't know how this comes out but i'm not convinced that we are in the wars denouement i'm more i'm more thinking we might be at the end of the beginning steve obviously address whatever you want of what jonah and david uh have said but i have another uh speculation philosophical question for

you in this topic which is looking back when um when zalinski right before the war started but everyone believed that Putin was about to invade, you know, February 19th, I think it was, when he then flew out of the country to speak to other European leaders, and there was a thought he might flee at that point, right? That he was not going back. And instead he said, I woke up in Kiev and I'll go to bed in Kiev tonight. And by the way, we've had plenty of reports of the dozens of times that Russian forces have tried to kill Zelensky and failed. Is this a great man theory of history example where if Zelensky had left the country or if Russian forces had been successful in those initial 2448 hours in killing him,

that we wouldn't be talking about limiting this to the Donbos region, but in fact, Ukraine would be under Russian control right now? Or is that just us sitting here at the moment enjoying Churchill in a T-shirt? And the Great Man Theory of History is wrong. Yes, such a great question. I tend to think it does pretty dramatically bolster the Great Man Theory of History. We can't say what the Russians would or wouldn't have been able to do militarily in the absence of a figure like Zelensky or Zelensky himself, but what we can know is the effect that Zelensky had. And it wasn't just that he said, I'm staying, we're fighting, which I think it took a population who was ready to make, to sort of stake that claim, ready to fight.

I mean, we'd seen, and we've talked about it here before, in the aftermath of what happened on the Maidan in 2014, you had a population that said, we're done with this, enough of this. and that spirit from those protests really did bleed out into the country, and I think caused them to kind of stand up. But there's no question in sort of a broader symbolic way, but then in ways that matter far, far more than just symbolism, Zelensky made a difference. You go back to, remember when he addressed the British Parliament, and then immediately you saw a change in the approach from British parliamentarians. You saw, and then he did this sort of

throughout Europe, right? Did it, did it, spoke to the U.S. Congress. And every time he spoke, he took this incredibly aggressive tone, which was essentially, thanks, that's not enough. That's not going to do it for us. You've said never again. You've made these promises for more than half a century, and now you're watching, we need you to do more. And he said it again and again and again. And then those countries stepped up. And I don't think it happens without Zelensky. I don't think any of that happens without Zelensky. I think much easier illustration of why the great man theory of history has merit. It's not all explanatory by any stretch of the imagination. Social history matters. Geography matters. All sorts of things matter. It's not Zelensky. It's Putin.

right because at the at the basis of the great man theory of history is that it's not necessarily that they're all great it's sort of like we can't like americans in particular cannot understand these days that saying someone is it like american exceptionalism isn't necessarily a compliment or like you can't give you can't give times man of the person of the year to a bad person right because we can't acknowledge that bad people are influential but you know Hitler and Stalin got man of the year in you know eras past and these were not like full-throated endorseance of Stalin and Hitler um I think you could it's entirely possible that some other leader of

Russia would have made this incredibly bad miscalculation but it's also entirely reasonable to say that this was probably Putin's own screw up that he owns this that this was him and you could take the next 10 most likely like if Putin got hit by a car 10 years ago the next 10 most likely people to have replaced him would not have done this. And so he maneuvered history in a way that changed world events that don't have to do with underlying cold

historic and personal material forces or anything like that. And that's the essence of the great man of history thesis is that individual leaders matter, that leadership matters for good or for ill. And I think Putin kind of demonstrates that almost better than Zelensky does. And with that, we're going to do

an abbreviated, not worth your time today, because I hope that our topics today, I don't know, highlighted in their own way, how unimportant so many other things are. I went into this thinking it would, it would to me highlight the frivolity of the herd depth trial, which we mentioned last week, so it doesn't really count. And talked about A.O. And talked about A.O. So here's what I think is not worth your time this week. After the shooting, you know, we taped and advisory opinions within the hour as that news was coming out. And for those who listened to it, I had some trouble getting through the top of the show as we were explaining what was happening. And that has not particularly gone away. It's still pretty difficult. I've had trouble reading the news about it.

And so as a result, I'll open Twitter, scroll through, see a photo, see a video, can't watch it, have to get, you know, out of Twitter. And so I haven't been on Twitter this week. And boy, I got to tell you, Twitter is not worth your time. It is simply not necessary. My week has not been worse off. It has been better. I will go read full news stories about a topic rather than simply see quick. takes on Twitter, and I don't feel particularly worse off for it. And instead, my mental health is much improved by not seeing sort of the overly emotional

draining. And again, I understand it's not even people of bad faith. I think some of these have been very good faith tweets, but you know, one person I saw on Tuesday tweeted, I can't stop thinking about the last moments of these kids' lives. That's,

you know, I understand I understand thinking that. obviously. And I even understand the impulse to share that thought. But if this is hitting you really hard, if anything in the news is difficult for you to sort of manage with, then Twitter's not helpful because you don't need to be reminded of those thoughts that are already rattling around in your head. So not with your time this week for me. Definitely social media. And with that, thank you so much for listening. Again, if you want to hop in the comments section become a member of the dispatch and we'll see you there otherwise we will talk to

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