The Dispatch Podcast - Voting as a Marital Crisis | Roundtable

Episode Date: October 25, 2024

Sarah Isgur, Jonah Goldberg, and Steve dive into the latest geopolitical tensions involving Russia, Ukraine, and Israel before turning to Liz Cheney’s influence on Kamala Harris’ political strategy and its implications for conservatives. The Agenda: —North Korea and Russia —Israel update —What if Ukraine loses? —What a Harris administration could look like —Conservative vs. Republican —Liz Cheney —Abortion —Spousal voting —Halloween Show Notes: —The Dispatch Summit The Dispatch Podcast is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including members-only newsletters, bonus podcast episodes, and weekly livestreams—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Sarah Isgir. It's Jonah Goldberg and Steve Hayes. Guys, five-year anniversary. Congrats. It's very, very exciting. It's exciting. We've got the Dispatch Summit coming up, November 12th here at the National Press Club

in downtown Washington, D.C. If you, anyone, listeners, are in the area, you can sign up for it at the dispatch.com slash summit. I'll be having a conversation with Judge Jim Ho, famous Fifth Circuit Judge and Supreme Court shortlister. Steve, what else is on the agenda at this point? Let me just add before I get into some of the details. If you're interested in coming, you should do that right away

because we do not have many tickets left at all. And I expect that we'll sell out probably shortly. Jonah is going to engage in a one-on-one conversation with Paul Ryan about sort of what the next Congress is likely to look like and the future of the conservative movement. You and I are going to talk to Mike Pence about sort of his views on the election, on what happened on the post-election period, prospectively on January 6th, but also on sort of movement conservatism and sort of how he sees this moment. We're going to have a really good panel with Roe Kana, representative from California and Mike Gallagher, probably with another couple people that Mary Trimble is going to lead, our morning dispatch editor about the world, have conversations about Big Tech, about global economy. I think it's going to be great. And probably most importantly, I think that Jonah is most excited about is there's a cocktail party at the end, 430 to 530. So if you want to go and talk to Jonah and ask him about his dogs, you know, see.

if he'll do a shot of rumplements with you. People, you know, speaking with Sarah's panel with Judge Ho, people may be interested to know that Steve was going to do a multimedia thing with his brother as a big television producer, but we just didn't have time because we decided that we had to put

hoe before bro. Wow, Jonah. Wow. I went there. Wow. If you come and go to the cocktail hour, you can get more of those kinds of Jonah jokes in person. You can shake my hand and thank me for that at the cocktail party.

Dear Lord. Before we jump in, as long as we're doing sort of housekeeping, dispatched promotional stuff, we should also mention that we are doing an election night live stream. We're finalizing some of the details on that, but it looks like it'll be from 10 p.m. until midnight, 1 a.m. Until the troops knock on our door. Period. Jonah and Sarah and I, I think I'll be there for most of it because it looks like my ship.

on NBC starts a little bit later and then goes through the night in all likelihood. Jonah and Sarah will be popping in. We'll have, of course, other dispatchers. We'll have the dispatch politics team. And we're going to have guests. The goal is to have a really smart, thoughtful guest from each of the seven battleground states

who can actually walk us through what's happening and provide sort of real details and understanding rather than just kind of vamping and speculating. So we think it's going to be pretty great. excited about it as an alternative to some of the cable shout fests and, you know, campaign surrogate nonsense that you can get elsewhere. So mark your calendars, as it were. Steve, I had this realization in the last four months. I've been to the majority of the swing states. Oh, really? Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan. And what was, I think,

most remarkable about that realization is in a really wonderful way, you would. not have known that there was a presidential election going on in any of those states when I was in them. And I did long drives accidentally through Pennsylvania, for instance, where I went to the totally wrong city and then had to drive to a totally different city. I drove to Harrisburg only to find out that I was actually supposed to be in Lancaster. And why did you go to Harrisburg then? You know what, Steve? Mistakes happen. Things happen. But in all those drives and I, drove for hours in Michigan as well, walked for an hour around Atlanta. Boy, Americans are living their normal lives. Unlike the people on this podcast, we're the problem. Well, you didn't watch

TV, right? Because if you had watched TV, you would have seen probably nothing but political ads. I spent a bunch of time in Wisconsin throughout the fall. And it's great. You can't watch television at all, particularly Packers games are just polluted. The commercial breaks are polluted with political ads, really distasteful. Well, in the spirit of maybe having a bit of a break, before we get to campaign 2024, can we go a little bit around the world? And Steve, could you start us with an update of Ukraine? We've now had reports that there are North Korean soldiers in Russia at this point,

though we don't, I guess, quite know what is happening with that. These reports apparently have been confirmed. North Korean soldiers in Russia. The numbers I've seen are somewhere along the lines of 1500. And this has gotten a fair amount of attention here in the United States. People are, I think, correctly frustrated by this, critical of it. And I am too. I share the frustration. I think it's bad faith. But we should understand that North Koreans have been supplying the Russians with ammunition for a long time. And probably the other help that the North Koreans have been giving the Russians all along is more significant than the provision of troops.

I think the provision of troops in some ways is sort of an extended middle finger. And it's pretty aggressive. But I would say the other support is probably more significant. Yeah, there have also been reports in recent days. There was a story, I forget, who broke the news. I think this was in the last 24 hours that, oh, it was Jackie Heinrich at 5. news reported that the U.S. intelligence community and Pentagon leadership have concluded that allowing Ukrainians to attack deep in Russian territory would not provide them a strategic

advantage and sort of made a, I don't know if it was a policy recommendation or just an intelligence or battlefield assessment that allowing them to do that would be unwise. I can tell you that people who are talking to Ukrainian leadership disagree with that. They've been asking for this for a long time. They're eager to take advantage of what they can with the provision of some of these new weapons. But if the Biden administration is looking for an excuse to not do it, they potentially could find one in this new assessment. Can we also do a little update on Israel, Gaza, Iran, A couple really interesting conversations about this over the past, I don't know, 72 hours.

It is worth, because we haven't spent much time talking about it here, just pausing to reflect a little bit on the unbelievable successes that Israel has had in sort of intelligence and battlefield over the past, really three, four months. If you look back to the late summer, sort of July, August time frame and then move forward through the fall, we have seen a near-taught. total decapitation of two of Iran's proxy fighting terrorist units in both Hezbollah and Hamas. That's important in and of itself, of course, but the way that it happened, I think, will have tremendous psychological effects, not only because it happened so fast, but because these groups were caught so totally unaware. And if you look back at the beginning of this war, the October 7th and the days that followed, there was this real sense of Israeli vulnerability. Israel had been seen as this huge power with the ability to reach into these groups

and into Iran, to elsewhere in the region to protect its interests and its people. And then after October 7th, there was a sense, I think a new sense that, holy cow, maybe Israel was a bit of a paper tiger. I think now, if you look at it one year on, it's clearly the case that Israel has reasserted dominance and that it's, in fact, these terror groups that are sort of reeling don't know necessarily what to do to try to rebuild. You know, anybody who's named who the group puts himself forward as a successor to say Hassan Nasrallah or Sinwar on the Hamas side is dead within a few days. And the Iranian regime seems not to know how to respond either.

I do think that this means that this period is a particularly precarious moment. if you believe that the Iranian nuclear breakout capacity is potentially a matter of weeks or a matter of months. And there's open talk about the Israelis doing everything they can to aggressively degrade Iran's nuclear capability. There would be reason for Iran to race. And I think there are some people in the sort of U.S. national security bureaucracy who believe that that is happening or is likely to happen. It doesn't appear that Israel is ready to go right now. I think some people expected it to happen very quickly after the news of the death of Hassan Nasra. And it hasn't happened.

But I wouldn't be surprised if we see something here in the next, you know, several weeks. So, Jonah, if I were to highlight Russia and Ukraine and what would come after Ukraine, potentially, of course, Poland or other incursions into, you know, NATO allies, China and Taiwan, the Middle East with Israel sort of is the focus. where are you most concerned and where are you least concerned, let's just give it like a three-year time frame? For the next three years, I'm least concerned about Taiwan, which is not to say I'm not concerned about Taiwan, but it looks increasingly like China's economic problems are real, which, you know, there's a large body of historical and political science research that says that makes an incursion into Taiwan more likely, right?

distract the people from their troubles, yada, yada, yada, yada. I just don't think that's the way Xi works. I'm most concerned, I would say right now, about Ukraine because Ukraine is losing. I mean, I just did, you know, almost an hour and a half with my colleague from AI, Ken Pollock, about Israel and Iran and all that kind of stuff. And we got into some of this stuff. But I find it absolutely appalling that the general secretary of the UN is going to this BRICS conference in Russia at a time where we're supposed to be isolating and condemning

and sanctioning Russia. I'm not happy that India and China are going, but the idea that the head of the UN, and in fairness, this guy Gutierrez is a handpick flunky in many respects of Putin's, but still, it is absolutely appalling, and it's a sign that the West, including led by the Biden administration, have not sufficiently ostracized and isolated Putin. And I think I think that is a huge problem because it has all sorts of cascade effects. I agree with Steve that the other aid from North Korea is more important than the troops, but I think the way to look at the troops is in some ways that's a favor of North Korea. North Korea hasn't had, hasn't tested its troops in like 60 years.

They've never been in an actual fight. And this is going, there's going to be a lot. I mean, I've read a bunch of stuff on this, there's going to be a lot of training up of North Korean troops that they get out of this. And that's pissing off South Korea. for obvious reasons. And so I think that, you know, Russia really is, and the reason why I'm less concerned about Israel is Israel's winning.

Ukraine is losing. Israel's winning. And that's good. I mean, the Ukraine losing is bad, but Israel winning is good. Everything gets worse if Ukraine loses this war. And that looks like the most likely bad outcome of those three things right now. It's worse for Taiwan. It's worse for Israel.

It's worse for the West. And it does not make me happy that we were setting this up for where Donald Trump, if he wins, can basically carve up a huge chunk of Ukraine, give it to Russia, and declare that he's a peacemaker. So it's not good. I think that's right. I hadn't really thought of it about it as much as a favor to North Korea. But certainly it is a favor to North Korea because anytime North Korea is seen as engaging and seen as a country with allies, it's better than the isolated, dysfunctional place that we. prefer it to be and prefer it to be perceived. I do agree.

And it's also a favor to the 18 North Koreans who defected already. I should say deserted. We don't know that they've affected. But like there are a bunch of North Koreans who are going to be living in Kiev, I guarantee you in the next six months. Yeah. I do think, you know, not just the actions of the UN head with respect to Russia and Ukraine, but including those.

But I think, you know, even if you are an internationalist, a globalist, as Jonah likes to say, conservative, who thinks the United States should be engaged in the world, should use our power to sort of try to shape outcomes to engage with multilateral institutions, I don't see how anyone can advocate engaging with the United Nations. it has become such a self-parody and the kinds of things. I mean, you know, you look at what Jonah pointed to on Russia, Ukraine, with the BRICS countries, you look at the behavior of senior UN officials with respect to Israel and Hamas. And, of course, you know, Israel's U.N. behavior

with Israel going back decades has been embarrassing. I just don't see how anybody can really regard it as a serious institution at this point. And I think it's going to be something that, you know, if we ever get back to having serious substantive debates about these things in our politics, that's going to require some real rethinking, particularly from conservative internationalists. All right, Jenna, let's move to the domestic implications of foreign policy. You already mentioned your concerns about if Trump were to win. But now let's move to a Harris administration. How do you see a Harris foreign policy playing out? And let's just continue with each of these three. zones? I think Harris would be fine. Well, I shouldn't say fine. Harris, I think I'm least concerned about her approach to Ukraine just because she's kind of bought in. She's surrounded by a lot of the Biden people who are bought in. She might actually lean in more than Biden has. She might not.

I mean, I think the Biden administration has been so afraid of escalation that they've allowed the Russians to escalate on all sorts of fronts. And I have a very easy shorthand for how to conduct these kinds of foreign policy questions. I want everyone else to be really scared we're going to escalate. I don't want to be acting as if we're scared they're going to escalate. I'm more worried about Israel.

I know she studied the maps, but I don't think she knows jack-all about Israel and her political and moral instincts are to listen to the worst parts of the Democratic Party when it comes to Israel. She's fighting it, and I'm glad that she's fighting it, and I'm glad that she is such a mercenary ambition to become president, that she knows

it's in her interest to fight it. I also, look, I think her husband is probably a bit of a backstop about throwing Israel completely under the bus. I mean, we talked about this worst case, best case scenario stuff last week. I think odds are that Harris would be a tolerable but largely politically failed Democratic president. And that means the foreign policy would look like what you would expect from a failed Democratic president.

I don't mean a catastrophe president. I just mean like, you know, the usual mistake, she's not going to be popular. She's not going to have majorities in Congress. but she's not going to blow up NATO. She's not going to try and pull out of all sorts of alliances. And I think that's to the good. On the Taiwan stuff, you know, I honestly, I have no frigging clue what to think about what a Harris administration would look like on China policy.

You know, what is it, what are they called, Bayesian analysis or Akimus Razor or whatever, would just simply say extend the Biden administration policy forward. But I don't know. I mean, I really just thinking about it, I can't remember the last time I read something interesting or revealing or insightful about what Harris's approach to China would be. Steve's doing a slow nod. He's trying to search his memory banks for something interesting that he's ever read about Harris and China,

and you can't find it either. 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. Use one of their award-winning templates or try the new Blueprint AI,

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And when you're ready to launch, use offer code dispatch to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Liz Cheney did a bit of a road show with Harris. This has sparked many a conversation. There's the strategic conversation of what exactly is the strategy of the Harris campaign that she's out there campaigning with Liz Cheney. There's the, what exactly is Liz Cheney's pitch? Because it didn't seem like the pitch was, hey, Harris will actually do stuff for conservatives or sort of reach conservatives where they are.

Tim Wals went on John Stewart's show and basically disavowed anything about Liz Cheney or the Cheney's. But Liz Cheney, you know, I think you've said this, Steve, that like, if you share Liz Cheney's foreign policy, Harris makes more sense for Liz Cheney than Trump does. Why? I mean, she said that. I believe she said that in one of the appearances this weekend, in part because Harris seems willing to, engage with allies and not polish some of our strong men enemies the way that Donald Trump does. You can't look at that and apply that in a broad way because I think Harris has been part of an administration that's been absolutely awful on Iran and downplayed the threat from Iran

basically from the beginning. Of course, now there are, there's there's reporting about Intel U.S. classified intelligence documents that appeared in Iranian telegram channels, almost certainly the subject of some kind of a leak and there's a lot of speculation about where those leaks might have come from. If you believe what I believe about foreign policy, which is that we should use our power to shape outcomes, we should engage in wars only as a last resort, but we should be engaged. We should want to continue the post-World War II rules-based international order because it benefits the United States. And we shouldn't withdraw. We shouldn't paper over. We shouldn't, you know, say nice things about Kim Jong-un because he praises Donald Trump, neither

one of these candidates is great. I think it probably is the case that Harris ends up being more like that traditional foreign policy that, you know, Liz Cheney favors. But I don't think Harris is great either. Okay, I want to spend some more time on Liz Cheney because I have a question, which is, I don't understand why it is so hard for disaffected former Republicans. or disaffected conservatives, whatever you want to call them, who are going to vote for Harris to say the following. Harris's policies for conservatives are bad. But I'm not voting on policy in this election

because I think Trump is a unique threat to larger constitutional order-level concerns, and so my policy preferences are going to have to wait for years. I don't hear that coming out of a lot of people's mouths. Instead, I hear, well, actually, yada yada Harris or yada yada yada my own views have shifted which is not going to be convincing to someone who actually is a Republican or actually is a conservative if you say your views have shifted now that you're voting for Harris well that's not where they are and if you say actually Harris

isn't so bad there's just no evidence for that because Harris herself when asked anything that she might offer a Republican voter and she was asked point blank at some of these events. Hi, I'm a Republican and I don't like Donald Trump. What can you, you know, offer me? And her answer was like, I don't know, like a rendition of God bless America or something. So I don't know why it's so hard for Republicans. I don't know why it's so hard for Harris. If the Harris campaign believes that this is a group that they need to get, why, why, why, why, why, why, Jonah. Hello, the record show. I was the first person in major punditry to make this argument about Liz Cheney.

in the LA Times. How do you find major punditry? Let me get a Blacks dictionary of punditry. No, I just mean like a major columnist somewhere, that kind of thing. I'm sure somebody on Twitter beat me to it, right? That's my point. Or one of those bloggers, those mini bloggers. My point is the problem with Cheney's argument is that for all we talk about,

and I talk about it a lot, how Republican and conservative have become synonymous terms. for a lot of people, they're not. They're two very tightly linked identities. And when you tell people, you've got to be a traitor to Republicans, your partisan tribe, the last thing you want to tell them is, and you need to be a traitor to this other tribe

you're part of called conservatism, right? What you want to do is you want to tell people, give people the argument, give people the ammo to say, look, I am so conservative, I am willing to vote for the more liberal candidate to save the party, to save conservatism, save the country, because this guy is that much of a threat. When you tell people, oh, she's really not that bad on economics or the abortion stuff is not that bad or whatever, all you're really telling them is that you're a liberal and a Democrat,

and therefore you shouldn't be listened to. You need to keep one of the identities in your argument, right? Because you can do it the other way around. You can say, look, I'm pretty liberal now, but I want to save the Republican Party. And I think Donald Trump will be terrible for the Republican Party. You can make that argument. It's a harder one to make in this election climate. But, like, there's a logic to it.

I think the explanation for part of this is that, and listeners should know, we've been arguing vociferously about this in Slack for a week at least now. Yeah, in fairness, you're kind of coming into the middle of a conversation that we've been, the three of us and many others have been having. I think part of it is this is just what. politicians friggin do, right? Politicians are politicians. Politicians, when they take a position, they need to sell it as if they're not, as if they're politicians, right? They need to say nice things about the person they're endorsing. I mean, this is one of the reasons why Trump has

done so much damage to the Republican Party is no one's willing to sort of forthrightly say, sure, I like a Supreme Court justices, but he's a horrible human being, right? They have to say, No, he's actually, actually, he's a pretty good guy, right? Or actually, that's just the way he talks. But in his heart, we know he's right and he's a good person and blah, blah, blah, blah, which are all what social science is called lies. So I think that's part of the problem is that politicians don't know how to sell that argument. And so they fall back on their normal ribbon cutting.

Oh, it's so great to have Ted here kind of, you know, way of talking. Harris is a different creature. I think Harris is doing this the way she is. Because I guarantee you, in the anti-matter universe where there is a left-wing, left-of-center, progressive dispatch podcast, they're all sitting around going, why can Harris commit to our stuff? Why can Harris sell policies based on the left, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. She's not committing to friggin anything, right? She's not giving a closing argument.

I watched that town hall last night. She's asked again and again and again, you know, what would you do? differently than the Biden administration? What would you do? Give us anything. Anything, right? Just make an argument about why we should vote for you. We're bobbing in the ocean. Throw us a buoy. Yeah. I mean, nuke the moon. I'm actually, I have some sympathies for nuking the moon. And, but like, give us an argument. Instead, it's always this, you know, generational pablum that I despise and just sort of, you know, pill fight kind of like nothingness. You can't get anything out of it. And I think that's the strategy. She, she, she, they

think that they want to make this a referendum on Trump, not on her, and they can't, they want to hang any specifics on her. I think it's a wrong strategy. They must see something in the data in all of this. Like, again, with the Cheney stuff, there must be something in the data that they're seeing to justify using her time the way they're doing it and using their precious bandwidth for messaging the way they're doing it. I just would love to know what they're seeing because it's very hard for me to grok. Steve, I want to read you what Liz Cheney said in this Pennsylvania town hall with Harris about abortion and remembering that Liz Cheney staunchly pro-life when she was in Congress, she voted for a personhood amendment.

When asked about it, she said, I think there are many of us around the country who have been pro-life, but who have watched what's going on in our state since the Dobbs decision and have watched state legislatures put in place laws that are resulting in women not getting the care they need. In places like Texas, for example, the attorney general is talking about suing. suing to get access to women's medical records. That's not sustainable for us as a country, and it has to change. And I guess I kind of want to take to task both sides that freaked out over this a little bit. On the one hand, you can believe everything Liz Cheney just said there and still be staunchly

pro-life, as I'm staunchly pro-life, but these aren't the laws, and this isn't the way to, it's, you know, David French's point about do you want to ban abortion or do you want to lower the number of abortions? Maybe that's the point Liz Cheney is making. That would be a great point to make, though, to a pro-life audience. It is a very weird point to make while sitting next to Kamala Harris, who has said that she will not support any limits, including in the third trimester, on abortion. When you're trying to convince pro-lawful, life people to support Harris and your argument seems to be yeah but look how bad the pro life side is and so steve i am left with these somewhat cynical thought bouncing around my head

that harris has said she's going to put a republican in the cabinet and if liz cheney wants to be that republican abortion may well be a litmus test and so is this cheney trying to make her abortion position fit into a Harris administration big tent abortion position instead of trying to actually help Harris win votes? For anybody to look at what Liz Cheney has done over the past two or three years and conclude that what she's really all about is political ambition is insane. Like I think that is absolutely bonkers. We know what she could have done if she wanted to advance her political career. And that would have been to swallow her thoughts on Donald Trump to say little of about January 6th, not to when Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise and others were pushing her

to tamp down her criticism of Trump on January 6th, to tamp down her criticism of Trump on January 6th and sort of go along to get along. She didn't do that. I think she knew full well when she chose not to do that, that she was going to pay a political price for it. She understood that she was likely to lose her race, she decided to do what she did anyway. I think if you look at sort of the broad arguments she's making, in virtually every one of her appearances, and I will say I did not, I have not looked at the transcript. I've seen sort of clips from each of these appearances the other day. So I have not studied her language at each of these three appearances that she made on Monday.

But the appearances that I have seen, I was at the Rippin event with Kamala Harris and Liz Cheney. I also was at an event that she did in support of Colin Allred, the Democratic representative running against Ted Cruz in Texas. And the ones that I attended, she did go out of her way to point out that she has real policy differences with Kamala Harris. In fact, at the Rippin event, she went on to talk about why she considers herself a Reagan conservative and walked through sort of her policy. references and said, this is what's conservative, this is what's conservative, this is what's conservative, and ended by saying, you know, there's nothing more conservative, and I'm paraphrasing here, than taking seriously the rule of law and fulfilling your oath to protect and defend the Constitution. So I think she has gone out of her way to say, I have these policy differences.

On the specific point about the cabinet job, look, I don't have any idea. Maybe if Kamala Harris has elected Liz Cheney, would I end up in the cabinet? I'm very skeptical of. that. I don't think Kamala Harris is likely to do that. But Liz Cheney was asked about, asked that question directly at the event, at the Colin Allred event. And I wrote that event up for dispatch politics, but just flat out of time to include her answer there. But she, I would say, my characterization of her answer was that she was very skeptical of that and said, you know, these positions, these cabinet level positions are positions that, require serious deep thinking and discussion of policy.

And I'm not where Kamala Harris is on a lot of these really important policies. I don't remember if I was inferring that the question was about a sort of defense or state or a national security position or if that actually was the way that the questioner posed the question. But in any case, my impression was that Cheney was very skeptical of the possibility of joining. Harris administration. Now, as I say, maybe I read that wrong. Maybe she ends up in the cabinet of Kamala Harris is elected. But I don't think there's much ground on which to say she's doing the things that she's doing because she's somehow really ambitious. I mean, I think virtually everybody agreed that she could have been Speaker of the House if she would have sort of kept her head down and walked the MAGA walk with everybody else. And she chose not to do that because I think

she was making arguments based on what she believes. When it comes to being a pro-life voter who has you know, qualms with Trump, for instance. I guess I just don't understand the Harris strategy here. If you're going to appear with Liz Cheney and you're trying to reach those voters, this exchange seems particularly odd. What concessions would be on the table when talking about abortion rights?

Religious exemptions, for example, is that something you would consider with a Republican-controlled Congress? Right? So just to be clear, it's a Republican-controlled Congress in this hypothetical. Are you willing at that point to consider religious exemptions? Harris, I don't think that we should be making concessions

when we're talking about a fundamental freedom to make decisions about your own body. Question. To Republicans, like, for example, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, who would back something like this on a Democratic agenda if, in fact, Republicans control Congress? Would you offer them an olive branch? Or is that off the table?

Is that not an option for you? Harris, I'm not going to engage in hypotheticals because we can go on with a variety of scenarios. Let's just start with a fundamental fact. A basic freedom has been taken from the women of America, the freedom to make decisions about their own bodies, and that cannot be negotiable, which is that we need to put back in the protections of Roe v. Wade,

and that is it. Except, of course, that's not what Democrats want. Murkowski and Collins have supported putting back in the protections of Roe v. Wade, which is a viability line, right? that states can make laws banning, limiting, restricting abortion post-viability. But that's not what Democrats want in their law. They want a far more expansive bill, which would also limit, sorry, exempt the abortion law

from the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which is the thing that would, you know, potentially force religious hospitals to perform abortions, maybe even pay for abortions. I'm, I'm just sort of bewildered about how you can have both strategies. Because to Jonah's point about the data, like, well, if the data shows these are getable Republicans, talking about that you would get rid of the legislative filibuster to push through an abortion law far broader than Roe v. Wade with no religious exemptions is going to be a deal breaker for those same voters that you're trying to use Liz Cheney to get. I don't get it. And it's like the one thing she's not a word salad on is abortion.

Well, there's a Jonathan Martin piece from earlier this week that raises and addresses several of these points. And he ends up being very critical of Kamaleras for having basically no give. Like, what's the give? If you're trying to get these potentially getable Republicans, don't you have to say something beyond Donald Trump is bad? And there's a very interesting, this is this piece I'm, I'm, trying to report and write for the website.

I hate to even, like, mention that publicly because I know it will just bring... Right after he gets that Afghanistan piece. This one's coming, y'all. Bring scorn and mockery from these people. But there was a really, really interesting... First, it started as a Twitter thread now. It looks like he's given an interview to the New Republic,

to Greg Sargent at the New Republic. Ben Wickler, who's the chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. And is regarded, I think, by Republicans and Democrats alike. as a very, very savvy operative. I talked to one Republican who's worked in the state for a long time about Wickler, and he said, game recognizes game. This guy's really, really good. And his argument is pretty simple.

He said people who think that the purpose of the Liz Cheney Kamala Harris appearance in Rippin was to win over truly undecided voters, sort of moderate middle of the road, undecided voters, are not understanding what's happening. Those people will decide late and they'll decide on the economy in all likelihood. What this is all about is winning actual Republicans, like hardcore Republicans, Republicans who are so Republican, that it would have been unthinkable for them to support Kamala Harris. But given the arguments that Liz Cheney is making against Donald Trump would consider supporting Kamala Harris, probably somebody like a Nick, all upon it, on our. team and people sort of like that.

And if you look, there's a really interesting breakdown of that vote in Wisconsin. Craig Gilbert, formerly of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, still writes for them quite a bit. But now he's associated with Marquette University and their law school polling unit there, has this breakdown where he found that, and I'm quoting Ben Wickler from this new Republican interview, Gilbert found that of the undecided voters in Wisconsin, half were people who had voted Republican mostly in the past. 10%, one-fifth the number, had voted mostly Democratic in the past. And then four in 10 were actual swing voters, sometimes Democratic, sometimes Republican.

So the job, at least in Wisconsin, but I think this applies certainly to Pennsylvania and Michigan, but probably beyond that, is to win over those disaffected Republicans. It's not to go for sort of, you know, swing voters or Democrats. I think the most effective way to do that is to make a conservative case and to say, I am a conservative. I believe all of these things. I haven't changed my mind. And I think you have to vote for Kamala Harris because Donald Trump poses such a threat. And I think it's appropriate and necessary and I think potentially effective to talk about January 6th. I know people think voters are over January 6th. I'm not sure that's correct.

But also to say, I am still very conservative. I haven't changed my views on all of these things. But despite all that, we can't have a policy debate in this election. It's about keeping Donald Trump from the Oval Office, and that's why you have to support Kamala Harris. I think that's mostly the case that Liz Cheney has been making. I mean, I think people point to the abortion comments. I think there was something else she said

that people use as sort of an indicator of potentially her changing her mind but I think basically she is saying I'm a conservative I've always been a conservative here are the reasons I'm a conservative and for those reasons I'm voting for Kamala Harris during the Volvo Fall Experience event discover exceptional offers and thoughtful design

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Going back to your abortion part, I think the abortion issue is the one issue where, I'm not saying because I don't agree with her. I'm not saying I give her a pass on the substance of it, right? But politically, I kind of, I don't find the way Harris talks about abortion mysterious. They think that for every voter they lose by talking the way they do on abortion, they probably gain one and a half or two, right? And it's actually one of the only things she actually really clearly believes in

and knows how to talk about with actual substantive conviction, given how fake she seems on so many other things, if she starts getting waffly and too clever on abortion, man, are the people on her side going to smell it quick and freak out? And so I kind of give her pass on this. Plus, I think her abortion answers last night in the CNN Town Hall, I was trying to find the transcript and can't find it.

But like, I remember at one point my wife was saying, that was not a bad answer. And I was like, yeah, it sounds like Liz Cheney explained to her how to give that answer because it's about how to like, again, it's about how to talk about how there have been excesses in the wake of Dobbs that even pro-lifers are uncomfortable with. And I think that this gets to, which is a point I think we can all agree on wherever we come down on the fundamental issue of life, there have been some developments that make us uncomfortable.

So, but Sarah, let me ask you something. I talked to a prominent democratic operative type person recently, and just be clear, they're very worried, this person was very worried that Harris was going to lose. But on this stuff, one of this person's theories, they didn't know, but one of their theories, informed theories, was that they see something in the data that suggests wives are looking for permission to vote differently than their husbands

in MAGA world. That was the point of Liz Cheney's thing about, remember, it's a secret ballot. You don't have to tell anybody. And, again, they weren't saying, like, that's a huge number, but we're talking about tiny movements, maybe winning some of these places. And just more broadly, I think, would you agree that, like, all other things being equal, right? Just hold everything else constant. If the gender gap were 100%, wouldn't you as a campaign professional rather have the chicks than the dudes,

right i mean aren't women just better voters yeah women are the majority of voters they're more reliable and so i think they're leaning into their gender gap stuff on that same theory a little bit but anyway what do you think i mean will you vote differently than your husband would you dare do something like that so it's actually funny you raise that because you know as i feel more politically isolated that i have in other parts of my life you don't do realize, like, how much influence your spouse has over you. And I think, of course, I would be happy to vote differently than him. But, you know, as my sort of best friend and the person I talk to the most about such things,

he's pretty freaking persuasive, though, on most things in my life. And so I think there is a reason that most spouses tend to vote together. You know, you're going to share a worldview at some point. And that person's pretty persuasive on their point of view. I mean, I'd be kind of curious how, like, you know, we talk about the death of split-ticket voting and all that kind of stuff. I wonder if there's any data about whether or not married couples vote more alike now than they used to. You would think that it would be, it would emerge, you would think it would emerge organically from the big sort, right? Like people talking about how they'd be upset if their kid married, you know, a Democrat or a Republican, then presumably both parents are on the same page about being Democrats or Republicans.

But I don't think I've ever seen any data like that. Well, and I'll give you another reason why my gut tells me that, in fact, you will see less divergence than in the past, which is as those community organizations have fallen by the wayside and people are, you know, less likely to be members of the Elks or the bowling alone thesis, your spouse has become more central, I think, to your social world. and you know this is like the bobo's in paradise you used to just marry the girl next door she might not have been very smarter she may have been a lot smarter than you but you married her because she was right there and you'd grown up with her now you're far more likely to marry someone who is also supposed to be your peer and best friend and so you don't need all those other friends this is your best friend and so I think couples end up relying on each other a lot more socially than they used to in the past and of course I think that's had all sorts of negative effects on our culture about men, you know, for instance, being very lonely later in life because they don't have male friends because they have their wife, but their wife actually has maintained all of her female friends. And so for any, for all those reasons, and like I'm talking about sort of that, you know, the person I'm spending all my time talking to and socializing with, yeah, he's going to be pretty persuasive to me. I would think

that you would see a decline in married voter divergence. Do you and Jessica vote the same? Assuming she's not pulling the Liz Cheney's secret value. But I think, and not in the Goldberg household, but I think the issue of abortion might be one of those issues that does provide some room for a marital schism at the voting booth. Again, not in large numbers, but insignificant enough numbers in a very, very, very, very, very, very tight election. Scott and I were going to diverge on a bond issue and we argued about it on the car ride to go early vote only to figure out that it wasn't on our ballot anyway. So that was a waste of a fight. Steve, what do you think?

Does Kerry vote differently than you do? I think as a general rule, we've been pretty well aligned over the years. I mean, we come, you know, we sort of similar values and we come to a lot of. a lot of these questions from a similar wrong? A similar place. She's occasionally wrong. Yeah, I mean, I think it's an interesting question. Obviously, you know, the two main factors

if you're looking at this electorate are the gender gap and the education gap, right? I mean, that's likely what we're going to be talking about. When we have a winner, we're going to look back and we're going to look at those numbers, particularly carefully. I mean, there will be all sorts of other different demographic shifts that I think are going to be. interesting and might help us sort of define our politics going forward for the next four years,

next eight years, next 10 years. But certainly the gender gap and the education gap will be one of them. It doesn't surprise me at all that the Harris team wants to lean into that. And to go back to our earlier conversation about the two sort of most important issues, you know, this Ben Wickler, chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, said, you know, basically they're making their final bet on sort of January 6th democracy, Trump as a threat as issue number one, and abortion as issue number two. So I think Jonah's point that it's,

Harris firmly believes, this is a place where she actually has convictions. You can see this. I remember in the debate, remember she sort of had those halting answers to the economics questions, the tax policy questions. And then the second or third question

was about abortion. And she totally hit her stride and answered it fluently and, you know, really, like, actually made a, made a case. I think that reflects her interest in the position. But it is also the case that, you know, she's unlikely to give concessions, even as they pursue, you know, potentially MAGA wives. She's unlikely to give concessions that might win people over on this issue that they think is so important to their base. All right. This is our last episode before Halloween. And so I need to ask you, not worth your time.

Candy corn. It's just not a controversial thing. It's so good. It's addictive. And if you can eat just handfuls of it at a time, that's one of the best things to be able to do. And it's not just candy corn. It's those candy pumpkins. It's all of it.

It's just so incredibly. Do you like peeps at Easter, too? Hate peeps. hate him can't eat them they're very different peeps and candy corn are not the same thing I mean there's lots of sugar you're right there's overlap there's lots of sugar

candy corn is great I know this is a family podcast but candy corns are Satan's turd kernels they're disgusting what's the best thing that you're either you or your kids dressed up for for Halloween some year Well, I guess you don't know this about me But like for most of my daughter's life

We went as different kinds of zombies And my daughter actually took lessons In theatrical makeup To go really hardcore with some of them So like our first We've been zombie airline flight crew We have been zombie clowns Some of my Twitter followers

say I still am. You should put, we should put those pictures in the show notes. I mean, it's incredible. Like, she's, she's unbelievably talented. Yeah. Steve, you've got a brood? I do. I mean, I haven't. Did you do family themes or do you let each kid choose? Yeah, I haven't really dressed up for a long time.

Well, not for Halloween. And they, they, they always, you know, they, the really interesting thing is they it seems to me the kids dress up a lot longer than we did you know by the time you know when I was like by the time I was 12 it was like uncool to wear costumes and to do the do do the whole dress up thing and I think like they dress that they're going to dress up till they're 30 they also do it it seems to me more than we did they do group costumes my daughters will get together with a group of six or 10 and have sort of a theme they'll all be some cartoon thing, or they'll be, I don't know what.

And that was also not something that we did. We sort of did our own costumes. But I don't have any really memorable costumes since my, I think it was my 30th birthday. Well, Nate is going to go as an astronaut this year. And he went as an astronaut two years ago also, but we've really upped the costume. It's far more realistic this year. And Case is going as a. space alien, you know, case is walking now, but like a drunken, you know, creature.

So the space alien thing is pretty fluffy, so hopefully that'll work out well on sidewalks as he falls. And with that, y'all, we are within two weeks of the election, well within two weeks of the election. We only have one more dispatch podcast until election day. So next week, we'll actually have to dig in to some of these numbers that we're seeing. on early vote, on absentee ballot returns, all of that. And maybe that'll be a whole episode of not worth your time. And Chris Stierwald will be joining us for that conversation as well. So tune in next week for Dispatch Podcast.

It's a sort of a replay of how, you know, events on the ground in Afghanistan got ahead of your other piece.