The Dispatch Podcast - The World Has Changed

Episode Date: March 4, 2022

As the first week of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine passed, our hosts are here to discuss how the world has changed. Plus, President Biden delivers his first State of Union address and Texas holds the first primary elections of 2022. What have we learned from the last week?   Show Notes: -TMD: “A Nuclear Plant Scare in Ukraine” -The Dispatch: “Will the European Union Admit Ukraine?” -The Dispatch: “The Coming Surrender to Iran” -The Dispatch: “Fact Checking the State of the Union” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isker, joined by Steve Hayes, David French, and Jonah Goldberg. The first votes of 2022 were cast this week in Texas, right alongside the first state of the union of the Biden presidency as things continue to escalate in Ukraine. We'll get to it all. Let's dive right in. Steve, let's start with Ukraine. What's the latest? And we'll move to the politics from there. Well, the latest is that the Russian bombardment of Ukrainian cities continues apace. They have made some progress in the south. They seem to have taken a town in the south.

They're continuing to have some difficulties. moving forward in the north and still have not yet taken Kiev, but they're making progress. I think basically the military progress continues. It's slower than people probably would have predicted, and the devastation is absolutely jaw-dropping. If you've spent any time on social media, or if you've watched any of the network newscasts or spend any time on cable, the scenes that we're seeing play out on the ground in Ukraine are heartbreaking, tragic, infuriating, and there doesn't seem to be any end in sight.

So, Steve, you know, for Americans watching, there's a lot of questions on, one, what would get us involved. So, for instance, a lot of questions on why we haven't done a no-fly zone, which to me I think it's important for Americans to understand. There's no point in doing a no-fly zone. You might as well just declare war on Russia and go in. If you do the no-fly zone, you will have to shoot down a Russian plane, and then we're at war. So, like, it's not realistic to say there's a no-fly zone. The only reason to do that is because we want an excuse to go to war with Russia. And so then it's like, well, what will it take for us to get truly involved on the ground in the air in Ukraine? what if they kill Zelensky, what if they did set fire to a nuclear plant, what if Putin made

more specific threats to launch nuclear weapons? At what point is American involvement going to escalate? It's a great question. I would say for the descriptive reality, the only prospect of American involvement escalating would be if the Europeans get more involved first. I think we've seen a pattern here from the Biden administration. President Biden's made very clear that he doesn't want us to be involved militarily. He was reluctant to send the arms that had been requested earlier. He's been behind the Europeans on sanctions and other non-military measures. And if you look at sort of the way that he's talked about the use of force, if you look at the arguments he made in the Obama administration, remember Joe Biden was one of the holdouts on launching the

attack that took out Osama bin Laden. He's shown himself very reluctant to use military force. And, you know, we should preface this discussion by making clear, none of this is easy. None of this lends itself to soundbite criticism. And you do get the sense that some of the Republicans who are criticizing the Biden administration are doing it more because they want to criticize the Biden administration to enhance their political standing than because they have real concerns about what's going on or more because they they want to score political points. Having said that, you know, I had this conversation with Ben Sasse on Wednesday. And yeah, it's a difficult time.

I think there are, you want to be exploring every possible option to stop what we're seeing on the ground. But it is the case that if the United States were to get more involved, Vladimir Putin is, frustrated. He seems aggressive and impatient. He is either, you know, acting like a madman or, you know, some people who have spent time with him and studied him carefully believe he has gone mad. It's not a small thing to say we need to sort of escalate to take him on. On the other hand, it's hard to imagine the world standing by and watching what's happened continue to take place. And you're seeing conversations from some NATO member countries

about a no-fly zone and about stepped-up involvement. And if that grows, I would look at the other side of the Atlantic. If that grows, I think it will put more pressure on politicians here to at least consider it. David, assume that this just continues as it is for a while. Russia continues to make, you know, I say incremental not to make them sound small, but continues to make military advances, continues to take more ground in Ukraine. The violence level, the destruction level continues apace, but doesn't change, you know, methodology, if you will, like no nuclear weapons, no public executions, as some people I know

are talking about, do we just grow accustomed to this and start tuning it out? In the meantime, the world has fallen in love with President Zelensky, and particularly, I would say America has fallen in love with Zelensky. Does that fade? Does it escalate? Would Putin make such a big mistake as to, what can Putin do with Zelensky, even if he takes the country at this point? Yeah, you know, that's a really good question. I mean, does Zelensky then form a government in exile? Does Putin essentially stop his offensive at some point where he's where he has left the most pro-Western sort of a rump state in Zelensky's hands in the far west? But right now, it looks very much like if you look at the troop movements, particularly in the south, he's heading west. The troops are heading west. They are moving to what looks like cut. off Ukraine from the sea entirely, which means he has to keep moving west. So the question is, you know, does Zelensky, if he lives through this, because the Russians are hunting him, does he form a government in exile? Is there a rump Ukrainian state? Everyone keeps talking about

off-ramps here. What's the off-ramp for Putin? I think the off-ramp in Putin's mind is when he wins this thing militarily, then he tries to rebuild his economy. Step one win militarily. step two, rebuild his economy. And I think that's where his mind is. He doesn't intend to lose this thing. And yeah, Sarah, I think the bottom line is the longer this drags on and less than until you hit the big battles, like the fight in the center of Kiev, fights in the centers of cities, spectacular atrocities, this will fade into the background.

This is the way things go in our news cycles. We don't even keep our own wars on the front page for. very long to tell the truth. So I do think he's counting on this fading in Western consciousness. I think he's counting on this becoming a fait accompli. And to go to, you know, you ask Steve a question about us intervening. And I just want to bring something up here. We are very used to being in a position where if we decide to intervene, that settles the

issue. And that if we intervene in Syria, I mean, if we intervene in, if we intervene in, you know, if we intervene in Libya with even a fraction of air power that settles the issue. If we invade Iraq, it settles the issue, at least for a time. Same with Afghanistan, that we are so powerful conventionally, which we are, it settles the issue. The big difference here is that Vladimir Putin has tactical nuclear weapons. And so the very key question is, can you even intervene here and settle the issue, or will he use tactical nuclear weapons to break up your conventional army formations to such a way that you can't? And that's why, you know, I believe I mentioned

this before. One of the lessons of the Gulf War, and I've got the quote here is from Chris Swami Sondarji, former chief of staff of the Indian Army. One principal lesson of the Gulf War is that if the state intends to fight the United States, it should avoid doing so until and unless it possesses nuclear weapons. And specifically tactical nuclear weapons, which the theory of them is that you can win on the battlefield without escalating to city busting, which is, again, all theory,

because it's never been tried, but I just wanted to interject that, that a lot of our argument about intervening in Ukraine doesn't include the word nuclear weapons. And when we're talking about nuclear weapons, we're not just talking about weapons that are aimed at London or Washington, D.C. We're talking about tactical nuclear weapons that would deny our forces the ability to prevail on the battlefield. Jonah, how much of this affects Americans? Americans are obviously very curious about it.

But when I look at polling of the top 10 issues heading into 2022, foreign policy. policy, Ukraine isn't among them at all. National security is incredibly low on the list. Yeah, I mean, I think it's destined to change a little bit. I think it's, you know, if, look, if heaven forbid, they capture Kiev and haul out Zelensky into what was formerly known as Freedom Square and Behead him, or the equivalent thereof, it's going to be Andrew Jackson in this country is going to come out pretty aggressively. And it'll be reflected in the polls. Moreover, and I know we're going to do a little

touching on the sort of domestic politics and State of the Union stuff in a bit, but like, there is no way that this doesn't cause gas prices to go up. There's just no way. You can't, you know, the pressure is mounting every single day. Republicans have glommed onto it

because they're not really talking, they're not really thinking about policy very clear these days. I know that's shocking to a lot of people, especially including our listeners, but they want to cut us off completely tomorrow from Russian oil. I do too. I'm in favor of that. But when you say it's only 10% of our oil supply, 10% of our oil supply is a massive number.

You know, if the difference between a standstill traffic jam and going 75 miles an hour and a lot of arteries around where Sarah and I live in D.C., um is the difference of 10% above normal traffic or 10% below normal traffic and um uh plus just the uncertainty that's going on that about what this is going to do to oil prices creates an upward pressure we're already in an inflationary moment uh pouring you know shoving even higher gas prices into everything energy costs fortunately we're heading out of winter rather than into it or that would be home heating would be a big deal and so they're going to be costs for america

Inflation is going to go up. Trade is going to be disrupted. The supply line, supply chain stuff is going to be messed up again. And even though we had a really, really good job report this morning, doing everything we can for Ukraine is going to have costs. And so that's going to affect Americans, whether it affects them in a way that turns them off helping Ukraine or says, or says this is the price we're paying to defend a sovereign country. I don't know yet, but this is the first World War II style war that is going to be urban. It's going to be modern looking, and it's going to be on friggin' Instagram. And we don't know what that does to the human brain, right? We don't know what like seeing, you know, I don't mean this in the way a lot of people on the left do, a lot of white middle class-looking European people freaking out with, their kids and their families, dogs and cats in refugee camps, what that does to American politics.

And it could, the pressure, I mean, not to keep coming back to this no-fly zone thing, but like now that all, now that three out of four of us are paid members of the liberal mainstream media, I feel more compelled to point this out, it's the liberal mainstream media that is pushing the no-fly zone more than any other factor. I keep hearing interviewers say, are you still against the no-fly zone? When will you, what could change your mind?

It's very reminiscent of people asking Joe Manston every 12.5 seconds, are you still against the filibuster? Have you changed your mind on Billback better? You know, what is your position? Well, being able to say, by the way, that they're not pushing anything. They're just asking the question.

They're just asking, but they keep asking the question as if it's like a relevant question. And the way I keep thinking about this is, look, if they start going battle, if they do Dresden to Kiev, I don't know that I could even oppose doing something to stop Russia. But at the same time, a no-fly zone is not boots on the ground. It's boots in the air.

And that's the way you should think about it. It is declaring war on Russia. And maybe that's necessary, but at some point, but it's not necessary now. And the way the media talks about it, they make it sound, I keep saying this, like Michael Scott declaring bankruptcy, that if we just say it's a no-flying zone, it's a no-fly zone. It's like, oh, but you know what you said it's a no-fly zone. like it's a gun-free school zone, so therefore you can't bring a gun in. It doesn't work that way.

You have to suppress air defenses. So if you're going to have a no-fly zone, it's not like you just send a bunch of F-22s in the air in F-15s and say, don't shoot at us. You and don't anybody fly, you suppress air defenses. That means air strikes against Russian targets. I mean, this is, you know, people are thinking like it's Kurdistan. It just might be the first step of declaring war or something. It's very strange.

Yeah. declaring a no-fly zone over Somalia looks very different than declaring one over Ukraine. Joan, I want to stay with you for just a second because when we talk about the sacrifices that Americans are being asked to make, you pointed out some very important distinctions about a war in Ukraine. A, frankly, the sacrifices that Americans are being asked to make in the grand scheme of things are relatively small. Our trade with Russia is not there, as you said, 10% of our energy supply. But, you know, our car parts aren't made there, et cetera. Compare that to a potential conflict with China over Taiwan. And this is like not even the appetizer course. This is the amuse

bush of if you want to defend Taiwan. And I'm curious how you, if not Americans, regular Americans, people going about their lives, but the elites in the Department of Defense or anywhere else making some of these decisions are watching Americans tolerance for this. If Americans do then push for a no-fly zone, like are they interested in actually defending some of this stuff? Or if gas price is going up and groceries costing a little more as a problem. Just wait until we cut off trade with China over Taiwan. It's a whole different enchilada. Yeah. And to be honest, and we talked about this before on, I guess last week, but like, I honestly and sincerely believe that the best way

to prevent China from invading Taiwan, at least anytime soon, is by just making Ukraine the biggest imaginable quagmire for Vladimir Putin. You just make it so terrible. You just make it so terrible. for Vladimir Putin. You make it terrible for his economy. You make it terrible for their social standing in the international order. You make them a pariah country. And I don't think that necessarily deters China in the long run from wanting to take Taiwan. But we're already seeing a lot of the financial press is writing about this, about how the sanctions regime we've imposed on Russia is already causing China to reconsider what it means to raise cash reserves. if all of a sudden your cash is meaningless on the international order

and whether or not this might have the deleterious effect of forcing China to try to make the Juan or Raminbi. I never know what I'm supposed to call it. The reserve currency of the world, which I think is a bit far-fetched, but people are talking about it. So in some ways, if I'm one of the globalist elites running the world, I would be very tempted to say let's have a demonstration effect here in Ukraine

so that we don't have to do this with Taiwan sometimes you have to make an example of a smaller country in order to send a signal about what would happen with a bigger country I know that's kind of gross but I think that's that's sort of what the thinking is going on here and in a lot of ways this is sort of like the Spanish Civil War of the 21st century

and the Spanish Civil War didn't end up deterring Stalin and Hitler, but it could have in some ways. It could have. It's more like a trailer for coming. Yeah, we have no choice, but to treat this as if, because if we all of a sudden,

if like say Putin takes Ukraine and waits six months and it looks like it's a fade accompli and there's a little rump state and there's a, the insurgency is kept at bay, the voices for welcoming Russia back into the international order for climate change and for Iran and all these things

will get louder and louder and louder. And that will invite China to take Taiwan more than anything else imagine. Look, we don't have to wait. We don't have to imagine this. The Biden administration state department has issued all of these caveats to its supposed isolation of Russia. It's continuing to deal with Russia on the Iran nuclear deal. Danny Pletka from AEI, your colleague at AEI, Jonah, had a very good piece for the dispatch. website yesterday in which she sort of walked through what what russia is doing she says russia's in the catburn seat in finalizing the the negotiations for a second iran nuclear deal the state department has given guidelines to its diplomats about the ways in which we can continue to conduct

diplomacy with this country that we're supposedly isolating but we're not and i think you know i think there's a problem here for the Biden administration more broadly. Again, with the caveat that none of this is, none of this is easy, but the Biden administration has at the center of its approach to the world, this concept of integrated deterrence, basically a whole of government approach to deterring bad actors from doing bad things. This has gotten a lot of attention at the Pentagon, and it's become sort of a celebrated doctrine by the Biden administration. And Representative Mike Gallagher, who has been a guest on this podcast, frequent guest on the remnant, was in a hearing the other day asking questions of the vice chairman of naval

operations, Admiral Lesher. But if we're doing integrated deterrence very incredibly well in Ukraine, it raises a second question, is, what did we deter? Excellent question, I suppose. So we're deterring any expansion into the NATO territories that were committed to defend? But in a very real sense, I think, would it be fair to say deterrence, we failed to deterrents. we failed to deter Putin from invading, correct? Absolutely.

So there was a deterrence failure. I don't mean this to, like, score a cheap point. I just think that's interesting. That's something we should study. We should understand why it happened. My own view, and this gets to integrated deterrence and part of why I'm skeptical of the concept, is that if it is used to suggest that we can rely on non-military tools,

specifically sanctions, or hashtag diplomacy in order to deter, uncoupled from a credible military threat, then we'll have further deterrence failures. I want to take up the other side here just a second on the Monroe Doctrine, right? The idea that Russia is simply stating its own Monroe Doctrine, similar to what the United States did during the imperialism era of European countries, basically declaring that the hemisphere that we're in was not to be touched by other countries, that we considered that all our border,

and just don't come near our borders, thank you very much. Everyone needs to stay with their own countries. And so there are some folks, foreign policy folks, saying this is just the Russian Monroe doctrine that they're enforcing. And they didn't want Ukraine to be part of NATO. Um, they felt that Europe was increasingly, uh, getting into Ukrainian fun time. And yeah, the EU isn't the British empire, but, you know, it's imperial in its own sense. And so why shouldn't Russia be able to deal with what they see as a threat from Europe moving toward Russia? Um, I'm going to jump in

on this one. First of all, uh, we have about 150 years of Russian and Soviet, uh, propaganda and rhetoric saying that imperialism is bad, that Americans are bad because they're imperialists. And now they're saying because of a now essentially defunct imperial grand strategy from over 100 years ago, they should be able to have one too. Secondly, the Monroe Doctrine really was about dealing with imperial powers in our backyard. It wasn't about colonizing South America. The Ukrainians... It wasn't about us colonizing South America. It was about other countries colonizing. It was preventing other countries from colonizing the Americas in our backyard. Which was a real concern at that point. Sure. But again, that's not what Ukraine, I mean,

that's not what Russia is doing here. They're not kicking the EU or NATO out of Ukraine. The Ukraine is not a member of either. And this rhetoric about people, that people keep bringing up about how it's totally understandable that Russia would have a problem with NATO being on its border, and that's why it should invade Ukraine, which is not a member of NATO, leaves out the fact that the Baltic states are members of NATO, and they are on Russia's border. And if that's the big problem, why aren't they invading those countries instead? What's the answer to that? Well, I think the answer to it is that, well, first of all, because they're members of NATO and NATO keeps them safe. But secondly, the other answer is that

Russia is not, that the NATO thing has always been a pretext. And Mearsheimer and all these realists are full of it when they claim that it is the guiding thing. I'm not saying that they like NATO or they want Ukraine to be part of NATO or any of that kind of stuff. But what Putin doesn't like about Ukraine is that it was demonstrating that it could move towards Europe, that it can move towards democracy, that it can move towards a modern economy. And to do that on Russia's border was a direct threat to Putin's model of government. We had a good piece about this the other day. I think it was Andrew Fink. I can't remember his name. They accidentally in Russia, they released this major intellectual essay about that they, unfortunately, it was time to go off

after a full victory by Russia over Ukraine. And so they posted it a little early. And the essay doesn't really mention NATO at all, not in any significant way. It talks about how Ukraine is part of Russia. It's part of Mother Russia. It's part of the great Holy Spirit of Russia. And that it belongs to us. And this whole idea of Ukraine as a separate country is an utter fiction. And And therefore, this is part of the glorious expansion of the Russian Empire of your. I get that that's the Russia's motivation. I don't get why we should consider it a valid motivation in any way. David, last question on this, which is we talk a lot about, you know, what's the off-ramp for Putin?

As if he wants one, by the way. I've seen no... His off-ramp is victory. Right. I've seen nothing to say that Vladimir Putin is looking for an off-ramp right now. And as we've said, Putin winning gets him what he wants. Putin losing might actually be more dangerous for the world in terms of what he will do if he feels like, you know, he's backed into a corner. So I want to flip the script and talk about what's America's off-ramp.

If the choices are Putin takes Ukraine or Putin launches nuclear weapons at Ukraine or elsewhere, what's our off-ramp to that, to those two choices? Yeah, I think our off-ramp is actually a option C, which is make this hurt, make this hurt for Putin. So in other words, if we can't stop Putin from taking Ukraine, at least certainly in the short term, although there's been, I think, a lot of irrational optimism about Ukraine's ability to hold out here. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's highly unlikely that the real hope here is. is from our side is two things. One, that this solidifies the NATO alliance, not just in the few days

where everyone's changing the Twitter, the colors of, you know, their Twitter photos and all of that. But over the long term, and if this German defense spending increases real, that does matter, so that one, it rallies NATO. And two, that over the long run,

it weakens Putin, that this is a cautionary tale, not a story, not yet another one of Putin's stories of glorious triumph, that it weakens him economically, it weakens him militarily. Now, what's the problem in that scenario? Ukraine still suffers. I mean, the best case scenarios aren't great. That's horrible. It's the best case scenario here, the reasonable best case scenario here, is dark and horrible. And that's why deterrence is so incredibly, vitally important, and when deterrence fails, you're often left with a whole menu of awful.

And we're right in the middle of that right now. Steve, can I give you one more option to weigh in on, which is that we actually do push Putin strategically to expand the war, spread him out thinner, see if he'll go all in on the poker table, and then, you know, sort of, you know, 1980s Cold War strategy, but in a new context. I mean, the, the risks of that are so significant that I can't imagine the Biden administration would undertake them. Yeah, the good outcomes now aren't great. No, I mean, I think we're facing a wide variety of really bad outcomes.

And look, a lot of this, we're, you know, we're talking about this on a Friday morning. You know, we've seen the videos that I've explained earlier. we, you know, we, we sort of are analyzing it in this moment. There is, I would say, grave concern that this turns quite a bit darker and very soon. You know, Marco Rubio, who's the ranking senator on Senate Intelligence Committee, last night tweeted, I can't emphasize enough how much Putin and his risk calculus have changed. He will push Belarus into war, use chemical or biological weapons, slaughter millions, and impose Stalinist restrictions in Russia to avoid humiliation or the perception that he was forced to back down. Now, let's say that Rubio's

overstatings, that this is Marco Rubio's opinion, and it's not based specifically on intelligence briefings that he's gotten. If he's close to right, let's say it's not millions but a half a million, let's say that he does use chemical, weapons. The idea that this gets so much worse, so much more quickly, I think could change all of the things that we're discussing. And there comes a point at which, I mean, I think David and Jonah and you are right on everything that you said about a no-fly zone. Some of the talk of a no-fly zone strikes me as sort of looking for an easy solution. And where we've looked for easy solutions in other places before and other conflicts before no-fly zone was

a thing that we sort of resorted to. It wouldn't work like that, as you all have made clear. But there could come a point at which the risks of not doing a no-fly zone in the context of, you know, day-to-day war that's like what Marco Rubio describes, the no-fly zone option, as horrible as it is becomes less bad than a bunch of the other things that are on the table. And that's, that I think, is what's really terrifying here. 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

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So Texas had their primary on Tuesday. And look, there were some interesting things to come out of it. Some of it, I think, though, is less national trends and more politics still has some local flavor to it, for sure. So, first of all, as many as eight Latinos, including six Latino women, are poised to be the Republican nominees in these congressional districts. A huge shift from, I think, what Democrats were expecting in sort of the turn Texas blue theories of the case that have been going on for 20 years. But not that crazy when you look at the

2020 results coming out of some of those border counties in Texas. At the same time, we saw all of the Trump endorsed candidates at least make it through to runoffs. Trump, however, you have to like sort of factor in there that he endorsed candidates that were very likely to win already. So that 33 numbers are a little misleading. However, he endorsed can Paxton, for instance, for Attorney General, Ken Paxton, heading into a runoff, which is, you know, for a statewide, that's a bad thing that you didn't get over 50% in Texas. He'll be heading into the runoff with George P. Bush. Someone who Trump, you know, again, he endorsed someone else. George P. still tied himself to Trump as best he could. George P. of course, is the son

of Jeb Bush. That's caused some drama in Texas, even though Jeb's a Florida guy. So that's definitely a runoff. I think that everyone will be watching. But there's other factors besides Trump. And so the more that I see national politicians talking about just the Trumpiness of the whole thing, for that attorney general race, Ken Paxton is under investigation by the Department of Justice. He's had all sorts of run-ins with Texas politicians of every stripe. He's just not a particularly well-liked politician in the state. George P. was land commissioner. and, you know, has been in the state, it's not just his last name. George P himself is incredibly well known in the state as well.

Everyone knew he was going to look to move up eventually. So a lot of local stuff going on there, far beyond any national. And then there's the congressional race between, on the Democratic side, Henry Quayar seen as sort of the moderate Democrat incumbent under Department of Justice investigation versus Jessica Cisneros, his former staffer, who is like, Far to the left. Very progressive, future squad member. That's headed in to a runoff. And Republicans are saying great if Cisneros, the progressive wins, they think there's a real chance that they could pick up the seat, which would be a huge loss for Democrats and a blow to progressives. But again, this is a very quay-ar-friendly district. If you look at the map of where he was actually winning, he took a ton of the counties in his district.

just not the most urban populated one. And FBI investigation doesn't help unless your constituents really know you. And what you see is the places where Quayar was sort of most known individually, he carried, the places where he wasn't, the urban part of San Antonio, et cetera. He didn't. So, David, I'll start with you. When you think about 2022, did you learn anything in Texas? Nothing that I didn't just learn from you. No, I, no, I'm not, that's not entirely accurate because I was very interested in, I was very interested in a race that nobody talked much about and for a very online reason. And that is the Dan Crenshaw overwhelming victory in his primary contest. And the reason why I was interested in that is because kind of.

of the very online right had started to target Crenshaw as insufficiently populist, insufficiently, I guess, own the libsish, as insufficient, as more than willing to tell the truth at times in ways that were deeply embarrassing, perhaps to some of the, some of the more performance artist types in Congress, very willing to confront some folks in Congress, like a Marjorie Taylor Green. And there was a lot of buzz. Dan Crenshaw, on the ropes. We've got him now. And he wins. And I think he had something like around 77% in the primary, in his primary contest. And why I find that interesting is it's just yet another reminder for those of us who are in online spaces and are very focused on the day-to-day online

debate. It is so not a barometer. It is so not a barometer for what's actually going on in the grassroots. It's not a barometer for what's going on in, you know, in these primary contests. Now, it doesn't mean that you can't follow people who have real insights politically. Sarah's on Twitter. I follow Twitter and I get insights from Sarah. I mean, I follow Sarah on Twitter. I get insights from Sarah on Twitter. It means, it doesn't mean you can't get insights, but what it means is you, in many ways, you just have to push back past the zeitgeist of it all. I rarely post things on Twitter without data to back up. up my point. Right. I would also note that in the operatives who actually are adding value versus

spreading rumors or wishful thinking. Jonah, another big thing that isn't talked about a lot coming out of the Texas primary is that the left, the media, we're all talking about the new Texas voting restrictions bill and how it was going to cause turnout to plummet, that people were simply not going to be able to vote in Texas, that that was the point, not the turnout numbers we have. 2018, a million Democrats voted, 1.5 million Republicans voted at the top of the ticket for governor. And in 2018, by the way, a contested Democratic primary. So that really drove turnout on that side. 2022, a million Democrats, so same number of Democrats, but without a contested governor's primary, Beto O'Rourke taking just, I mean, 80%. It was some and crazy number.

a mildly contested Republican primary for governor, 1.9 million. So turnout increased by a huge percentage and Republican turnout, in particular, increased by a huge percentage. So we have both sort of the effects of a voter suppression law that Joe Biden is called Jim Crow 2.0, but also are we looking at an enthusiasm gap heading into 2022? It looks like it. And I just want to back up for two seconds in the question you asked, David, about do we learn anything about 2022 that you didn't just tell us? I think one way to think about this is the most interesting thing I learned about from the Texas election isn't about 2022, but maybe about 2032, in the sense that if you have all of these Republican Hispanic women, remember David Shore said that the biggest flippers from Democrats to Republicans, among Hispanics, weren't all of these machismo-loving, you know, want-to-be autocrat types that the media was telling us about. It was actually, it was women, Hispanic women who were moving. If the Republican Party becomes truly competitive with Hispanics,

which it really now is looking like the data can't be denied, that directionally that's true. It's not numerically true yet. That just changes American politics in incredibly profound. found in unpredictable ways. It poses a huge problem to an enormous investment in identity politics going on for 20 years by the Democrats that could blow up in their face, combined with what's happening with Asian Americans, the next 10 years of American politics could look so different than the previous 10 or 20 or 30 years that I don't think anybody's

really put a lot of thought into it. On the voting stuff, I agree. Look, I think there is an enthusiasm gap. We know that because there's an enthusiasm gap. We see it. you know, in polling all the friggin' time. And why Texas would be immune to it is sort of beyond me. It sounds like they did have some mess-ups with the, with some of the voting stuff. But like, again, the idea of that any of it amounts to Jim Crow 2.0 is just, I just think is preposterous on its face.

And you could say to the extent there was big turnout, it's because part of the thing that all of this voter, corruption, voter fraud stuff does is it's been designed to sort of boost turnout. I do have one quick question for you, Sarah, because you were from Texas, and I believe probably so. And there's no other way to be from Texas. What is it about Texas? It seems to have a gift for electing people that people that people don't like. Like, you know, Ted Cruz, my understanding is not particularly popular among Republicans in Texas, and yet he gets reelected. Paxton is not particularly popular, but he could be reelected.

Like, it's just a strange thing that is it, is part of the old West ethos that, you know, he may be a bad man, but he's our bad man. I mean, is that it? Oh, I don't know. The Ted Cruz thing, I think, is probably a little overblown, actually. But if you go back to the original primary in 2012 where Ted Cruz gets elected, He's running against David Dewhurst, then the lieutenant governor. David Dewhurst is ahead of him by roughly, I don't know, double digits, low double digits in the primary, but it heads into a runoff just barely.

Ted gets, Ted brings Dewhurst into the runoff. And then Ted makes up that distance and then some, this is in the Tea Party wave, you know, the height of the Tea Party wave, probably. And Dewhurst was a incredibly wealthy kind of moderate, not particularly charismatic speaker, not that interested in campaigning. Not super into being elected, it seemed. And so it was like all energy on Ted's part. And then Dewhurst ran an ad saying that Ted was a communist. And Ted was like, cool attack ad, bro.

And Ted wins by a lot. And then, okay, so that's how he first gets elected. But then you have all the advantages of incumbency. And any time someone's like, yeah, but so. who isn't well liked. Okay, but let me tell you what it's like to be an incumbent under our current campaign finance system. And like, it is so hard to lose as an incumbent. We should frankly make a much bigger deal when incumbents lose. So, so that's the short story on that, but also fajitas, you know.

It is good. By the way, I only tweet when the data is on my side, too, and the data shows that dogs are good. You know what? Scott Linsacombe, I saw this tweet. And it is like bothered me clearly because I'm going to mention it on the podcast because Scott's not here. So, ha, Scott. Scott Linsacombe tweeting that we shouldn't ban Russian cats from competition. We should ban all cats. Steve, how is this guy still working for us? Actually, I did not know that he had tweeted that.

There's a pretty good argument for a Scott Linsicum raise, actually. Yes, I concur. I concur. Steve, bring some State of the Union into this. the president's at a 37% approval rating according to the latest ABC poll. It's not just that that number is low. It's that it hasn't plateaued off yet. That number actually has continued to decrease since August. And each polling temperature dip, it goes down a little bit. The White House at least hoping that the state of the union could stop the bleeding. Of course, their biggest hope

is that they could turn it around, have a moment in the presidency with the largest audience that Joe Biden was going to have since his inauguration watching him speak, I very much bought into that narrative ahead of time that they would use this to turn the page. And then I was forced to listen to the whole thing by you people mostly. And I don't, did they think that's what they were doing? I'm so confused on now having watched it, what they now thought their strategy was. simply to like get this night over with because that's what it felt like to me they didn't want to give a state of the union maybe i i'm so curious what you think now having watched it the strategy was yeah i mean it so if you if you if you go back and you look at the history of state of the

union addresses it's almost always the the speech itself is almost always the result of pitched behind the scenes battles between various parts of the administration and administration in a white house that want to get their thing into the speech, right? At least during the Trump years, I'll note that it was also which cabinet member was, you know, in favor or out of favor. Yeah, I mean, interestingly, yeah, the Trump years basically, I think they had to cobble together ideas and policies based on what Trump had said either on Twitter or in an interview and try to make it a coherent vision.

I'm not being facetious. I think this is actually what the process of writing the state of the union for Trump was. I was actually part of that process during the Trump years and, in fact, met with the speechwriters for State of the Union with all of our DOJ accomplishments. And it was quite clear that they would mention them as long as they didn't have to mention the Department of Justice or Jeff Sessions. Right, right, right. With this, I think we've never seen that more obvious in the speech itself than we saw with

this speech. because it was, it was just totally disjointed. And it seems to me it tried to accomplish three primary things. One, he knew he had to talk about the war in Ukraine and wanted to try to make the case that it was really important to Americans. I think he failed on that. I think there were some nice moments. There was inappropriate tribute, I mean, an appropriate tribute to Ukrainian bravery, a nice moment with the Ukrainian ambassador to the U.S. But in terms of, making a case, I don't think he really made much of one. He spoke for 12 minutes. Can any of you remember the main argument from that section of the speech? Because I can't. Then that top section

seemed to have just been kind of cut and pasted on the typical state of the union laundry list, which tried to, I think, get the attention of every center-left group in the country to make them feel like the Biden administration, the Biden White House is paying attention to them and is on their side. And there was a very 20-22 vibe to that part of the speech. We are going to make sure that every constituency on the left is mentioned, gets what they want, and we'll come out and vote. And then there was this third section, which might have been the oddest of them all. And the way that the White House was teasing the speech from the beginning, Peter Alexander from NBC News, in the minutes before the speech said the White House is really emphasizing what they're calling

the unity agenda. That's what this speech is about. This speech is about the unity agenda. And if you had listened to that middle section, there was nothing unifying about it at all. You know, I guess we can say that he didn't again accuse Republicans of being effectively Jim Crow 2.0, but he came close. The only thing he said that seemed to approach that was when he said, we need to fund the police and not defund the police. But this unity agenda had things like improving mental health, curing cancer. Well, of course, everybody's for that.

But there's not much the federal government can really do. And it's not actually much of an agenda. So you take those three chunks of the speech. And it's hard to see what they were thinking, other than that they had to put together a speech and this was what it was. But David, you have an audience, a largely democratic audience, by the way. So anytime there's a state of the union, you have to bear in mind, it is Joe Biden's largest audience that he will have had since the inauguration.

But the people who tend to watch are the people who belong to the party of the person speaking. And that was certainly true this time from polling that we have. So you're speaking to Democrats, high likelihood voters, by the way. they're the ones who are causing your approval rating to sink in the last two or three months, certainly, the independents and Democrats, Republicans were already opposed to them, so they can't cause a huge drop in Joe Biden's approval numbers. So you're talking, you have an audience that's the main people that you need to convince about your presidency, and you think, let's do the same state of the union format that everyone

has done for the last 20 years, 40 years, I don't know. I don't explain to me, David, how this made any sense. Why not ditch the format? Ukraine is happening. You have a perfect excuse to ditch the format. COVID coming to an end. I don't know.

So many ways to approach this and say, fireside chat time, guys, not we're going to cure cancer and give everyone insulin. Like he has an approval rating of 60% and everything's going pretty well except for the fact that we haven't cured largely incurable diseases. lot about it didn't make sense. And I mean, I agree with all of the questions or you raise very good questions. And then there's something else that kind of stood out to me. A lot of what the state of the union is. And we talked in Dispatch Live about memorable so-do addresses, which ones were memorable in your life? And I talked about some of the Clinton state of the unions

were memorable for a specific reason. But then, you know, when I was growing up, I remember the Reagan State of the Unions where the first time I had seen it as sort of a rally, the American people kind of spectacle where you highlight the hero in the wings of, you know, in the balcony. And it's just a, there's a spectacle about it that magnifies the presidency. And this is what's interesting to me. And we are watching basketball games, right, that are full to the brim with people. We're watching a football, we went through a football season where everything was was full to the brim. There's something about the way the state of the union was socially distanced that really drained a lot of the, really drained a lot of the magnitude of the

moment from it in an interesting way. And also, I think, sent a message that was out of step with where people are right now on the pandemic. It was sort of, what are you going to believe your ears or your lying eyes when it comes to, you know, where the administration feels that it is on the pandemic because remember all these guys with maybe some Republican exceptions are VACs, boosted, all of that. And it just had a, it hit out of step with where America is right now in this sort of very tangible way. So you not only had the content of the speech, which was sort of out of step with a lot of Americans who are saying, what the heck is going on right now and visually out of step with the lives of most Americans, including in very blue

cities that are packing into Madison Square Garden to see the Knicks lose. And it is, it just was, yeah, I'll just say it again, just out of step for the moment, visually, out of step for the moment in content. And we're already, I think we're the last people in America right now who are actually still speaking about it. That's the other problem. So, yeah, I mean, I don't expect this to have any effect on Joe Biden's approval numbers one way or the other. And so what a missed opportunity for the White House.

What a strange strategic decision for them to make, because I'm not sure when the next opportunity will be. 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 vary by race. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at mx.ca.com. Okay, last topic.

Spring is around the corner. Why haven't we gotten rid of changing the times? Steve, I'm going to start with you. You're a father. How come parents are able to rise up on things like curriculum, gender in sports, and yet we haven't been able to stop. changing. It's not a time zone. I don't know what to call it. The time of day. I just want the time of day to be the same all year. Yeah. So there are there are things that get me really excited and

things that don't. This isn't one of them? This is not one of them. I don't I don't care. I know this is a Scott Lensicum hobby horse as well. The original reason, as I understand it, was to help farmers, right? Well, yeah. And presumably farmers still need that help so that they have more daylight hours. No, because we have electricity and light. Have you ever seen someone farming in Iowa? There's huge floodlights on the tractor. There are, yeah, certainly there are ways to adapt, but it's got to be easier to have more daylight when you're trying to do your job. Having said that, I don't feel strongly about it. I just want people to understand. No, it shifts the timing, of course. assigned to the hours of daylight does not we do not affect the sun as as was discovered uh what was

that 400 600 years ago yet it moves jona yet it moves so uh i want to be clear um stevens wrong um the the originator i believe of daylight savings was actually the uh prussian militarist otto von who wanted to make it easier to keep the machinery of war cranking along and the idea that we would embrace this putrid I this putrid fruit of the poison tree of Prussian militarism outrages me um at the same time my dogs wake me up at the same time a day darker light so it doesn't affect me that much but uh um it should be done away with just because I cannot stand listening to people. Every now and then there's some congressman

who will say we should give the voters more sunlight. And it enrages me at such a profound level that there are people who think that is within the Congress's power to legislate more sunlight that I kind of just want to go scorched earth on everything. Well, everyone, David, has this Sunday, you've got this Sunday still with your normal number of hours in the day. So I just want everyone to enjoy this last weekend of normalcy before the non-normalcy once again takes hold.

On behalf of the eastern edge of the central time zone, I hereby declare spring forward and never fall back. Yes. I'm fine with that. Yes, because when you fall back here in the greater Nashville area, it feels like in late December, it's dark as midnight by 4.30 in the afternoon, which is total absurdity. It's just total absurdity. So spring forward, never fall back. That's where I am. From your lips to God's ears. And by gods, I guess somehow I do mean the United States Congress. Thank you for joining us this week. We will see you in. next week. And in the meantime, if you've got comments, thoughts, questions, jump into the comments section. Believe it or not, we're there, we're watching,

we're reading them all, we jump in from time to time to... Lurking. Yeah, we answer, we like, we dislike. You can become a member for $10 a month and comment your hearts away. It's one of the nicer places on the internet for comments, the nicest, I might say. Also, every Tuesday night,

dispatch live. And every Tuesday night, we have Dispatch Live. Eastern, and I think this week's my week, guys. Ooh, you're in for a treat. 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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