The Dispatch Podcast - We Can't Get No Satisfaction

Episode Date: February 18, 2022

According to polling from Gallup, Americans are as happy as they’ve almost ever been. Yet their feelings toward the country as a whole are near an all-time low. Why is that? Sarah, Steve, David, and Declan discuss that and more. Plus, in San Francisco, the left seemed to do some self-correcting after a successful recall of a number of school board members. And finally, as Steve promised members on this week’s Dispatch Live, a continued conversation about Rep. Liz Cheney.   Show Notes: -Gallup satisfaction numbers -San Francisco recall election results -What pundits don’t understand about the San Francisco recall | Mother Jones -David on the San Fran recall in The Atlantic -Squad politics backfire | Axios -San Francisco Mayor on The New York Times podcast “Sway” -Local BLM chapter posts bail for man charged with attempted murder of mayoral candidate -Dispatch Live (for members only) -Republican or not | SNL   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 our morning dispatch editor, Declan Garvey. We have plenty to discuss today. We will start with an interesting poll about how people think their lives are going out of Gallup, what the results of the school board recall election in San Francisco might mean for our broader politics. And, of course, an update on Ukraine and the latest there with maybe some Liz Cheney conversation thrown in picking up from where we left off on Dispatch Live Tuesday night. Let's dive right in. So interesting pull out of Gallup, It shows that American satisfaction with, quote, the way things are going in the U.S. is at a 40-year low.

At the same time, Americans' satisfaction with, quote, the way things are going in my personal life is at a near 40-year high. Notable that the people with the highest level of personal satisfaction, weekly religious service attendance, the group Leans Republican, also funny enough, though, the group with the lowest level of national satisfaction also leans Republican. David, I want to start with you. I have some, you know, things that are interesting about polling when it comes to this sort of thing. But let's take it at face value. What does it mean to you to see these two lines diverge so dramatically in recent time? Yeah, I had a two-word thought. And we should get into the polling, some of the polling questions about this because there's some really interesting questions as to whether the, what's happening in the country is actually more of a proxy for what people think about themselves. But we really, that's kind of really peering into people's minds when we don't have the data to peer into their minds.

But I had a two-word thought when I read that. And that two-word thought was boat parades. Okay, and here's why. One of the interesting things about the Trump boat parades was this was a parade of prosperity. Okay, if you're looking at a Trump boat parade, the millions upon millions upon millions of dollars of recreational vehicle vehicles, it's a bad term, but recreational craft on the water, it was remarkable. This was a parade of remarkably prosperous people.

People, you know, if you're in a $200,000, $150,000 mastercraft, that's not where you're living. Okay, that's not where you're living. This is just, this is a bonus. This is an extra. And so what we have here in America, especially in the political classes, the people are most engaged in politics. And this is something that we've been able to measure for a while is people are disproportionately well off, disproportionately educated, disproportionately white, who are disproportionately focused on politics. And this is a group of Americans who are among

the wealthiest and most powerful classes of people who have ever walked the earth, who are at each other's throats. And this is not just a right-wing thing. This is a very much of a left-wing thing as well. And so you have a lot of people for whom their personal lives, they're living out dreams. They're living out their professional aspirations. They are enjoying a degree of prosperity that we've not seen in human history. And they're full of anger. And they're full of rage. And the reasons for this and the precise location for this sort of in their minds and hearts varies from side to side and place to place. But it is a fundamental reality right now that the most energized people in politics, in other words, people most likely to be

pulling apart our nation and polarization are among our more prosperous citizens. And there are issues of respect and their issues of justice and they're, of course, concerns about education and kids, but when you look and drill down into people's lives, what you're seeing is a lot of opportunity, what you're seeing is a lot of prosperity, what you're seeing in, especially in these higher income areas where, again, people are disproportionately focused on politics, is a lot of intact families. It's a, there is a dichotomy there. And, you know, part of it is, you know this is a this is a much deeper question and one you know worth thinking a lot about is that sometimes when you attain your dreams or when you attain the prosperity that you've been seeking

it doesn't provide you with the sense of purpose that you anticipated that sort of deep sense of purpose and so people look for purpose and the purpose isn't in the mastercraft the purpose isn't in the Yukon, the purpose isn't in the 5,000 square foot house, where is their sense of purpose, that deep sense of belonging. And that's where I think people are really diverging from prosperity. That's that divergence between prosperity and purpose. So that got deep. That got really deep, but that's the point.

Steve, when you saw this, did you think it was, for lack of a better term, real? Does this match with what you think has been going on in American politics for the last couple of years? I think it does, generally speaking. We should point out, and we'll put the chart and the graph in the show notes so people can eyeball it themselves. One thing that we should just as a level setting measure do is tell people that there's always a gap, right? There's always a gap between personal satisfaction and the direction of the country. And if you look at this at this line, it varies considerably. It seems that the high point or the point at which they were the closest was in the 2000 to 2004 timeframe when personal satisfaction was 84% people.

So they satisfied with their own lives and 70% said they were satisfied with how things were going in the U.S. I think that was the post 9-11 sort of moment of comedy and unity that we had in the country. So it's not entirely surprising. And now those numbers have shifted dramatically, 85% say they're satisfied with their own lives, 17% say they're satisfied with the direction of the country. I think I agree with everything David said, I would just add another element to this. and I think it has a lot to do with how we consume information and what information we consume. People are looking, they're watching the nightly news,

whether it's local news, whether it's the national cables, whether it's the broadcast networks. News is overwhelmingly negative. Now, that's not necessarily new. News has been negative in the past, and there's a long time, I think, biased toward bad news. But watch, I watch the local news. We get the Baltimore stations.

And it is, it is ceaseless negativity. It is all about, and some of that, of course, might be Baltimore. But it is all about the murders and people at each other's throats and hostility between groups, between individuals. The same thing obviously is true on cable television. I mean, we talked about that a lot on this podcast. So people who are watching cable TV have this sense, develop the sense that everybody's at everybody's throats all the time. I think it's true of the broader media culture as well.

So on the one hand, you have people living their lives, and even in the midst of a pandemic, we're coming out of a pandemic, they've made the adjustments. Their friends and neighbors have made these adjustments. They can look at things like their ability to spend more time with family, think that that's a positive, the earning power, at least before the latest inflation spike has happened, was up.

Generally, you can say, okay, well, these things are going well in my life. And then they look at the way the country's depicted in the media, and it's totally unrecognizable. And rather than think, boy, that looks totally unrecognizable, I don't think that's likely representative. I think too many people look at what they see on the news and say, the rest of the country is in trouble. I'm fine. My little world is good. Things are going reasonably well. We're moving ahead.

But look at the rest of the country and look at how terrible it is. I think that accounts for a lot of this sense that the country's going in a bad direction. All right, Declan. You want to provide some of the alternative here? Because look, here's the fact. If you look at these two poll questions, which have been asked going back to 1980, they haven't run parallel. to each other. But it's interesting because someone actually, I don't need to get into the details of this, but basically forced the two lines to run closer so we could see the changes mirroring in each other. And the two ran incredibly close to each other with a little bit of an exception. Starting in 2015, they did actually have meaningful divergence. And there's a couple ways to think about this in my view. One, as David sort of hinted at, said explicitly, Maybe one of these questions is a better reflection of how people feel than the other.

Maybe people don't want to tell a pollster that their life is crap and they're unhappy. Maybe asking about the country's true broad and we should start asking a question that asks more, how do you think things are going for your closest friends and neighbors or something in between the country and your personal life? But regardless, and this is something I've made the point about issue polling over and over again, I don't think you should ever really take the issue poll question and its actual number at face value. What I think you can look at is the trend. Because if you keep asking the same question and you're getting different answers,

that to me is far more meaningful than the actually 85% of the people in the country are happy with the way things are going in their personal life. I don't know that that's true or that I would believe that just based on the way, you know, this poll. Or even it's only, I mean, my goodness, at one point, only 11% of people thought things were going well in the United States. Same thing. But when those lines move, you can start to think through why. So the two lines tracking very close to each other in terms of when one would go up, the other would go up, when one would go down, the other would go down, up until 2015. And then we did see the lines start to move differently. the country line goes way down among Republicans. And the personal life line seems to more closely just track COVID, right? And still, by the way, goes from 90 are happy in their personal lives pre-COVID to a low of 82. That eight-point shift to me, not that huge. And so that basically

people always are pretty happy in their personal lives, but their satisfaction with the country, when from 41% to 11% largely driven by Republicans, that to me seems meaningful when we're thinking about what this poll actually says about our politics and elections and hope for the future. And you, Declan, are the youngest person on this podcast. Are you hopeful? No, why would I, why would anybody be hopeful about anything? I don't know. It's a, like, Like, I think your point is a good one. The national number has a cap on it that the personal number, I don't think, does. Because tribalism, politics, partisanship, what have you, half the country is going to say things are negative at any one time, pretty much no matter what, on a national level.

Now, that doesn't necessarily translate to your personal life. And also, even if it did, I don't think, you know, people are going to divulge to a pollster. maybe they're wrong. I'm Irish. I barely tell my family that if something's going wrong, I'm not going to tell a pollster. But like, I think that, you know, we see the same kind of sentiment play out in other types of polling. There was an AP poll from last month strictly about the economy. And one third of respondents said that the overall economy was good, but close to 70% said their own personal finances were good, including six and ten Republicans. And so, you know, I think there is kind of that broader, I need to signal that because of my partisanship, I'm going to say this one thing and a combination of I'm not going to tell this pollster everything that they need to feel like they want to know about my own personal life.

You know, Steve, you talked a lot about kind of the changing information dynamics and kind of how that contributes to this. I think that's absolutely right. and also, you know, thinking about, you said that the personal number or the national number peaked 2000 to 2004, you know, obviously I think a lot of that was, as you were saying, kind of post-9-11 unity. It was also kind of when we're making the switch to internet and Facebook was invented in 2004, you know, smartphones started to become ubiquitous a couple years after that. like we have these doom rectangles in our pocket at all times that we're staring at for hours and hours a day that are just you know not only is it um more present in our lives i think we're we're thinking about the news a lot more we're talking about the news a lot more but the types of things that we're seeing you know we never used to see uh all these videos of black men being shot by police because nobody was recording it and now we see that happening all the time and that's contributing

to, you know, it makes it onto the nightly news, but it's smartphones and internet. And, you know, we see pictures of homeless people on the streets. We see these, you know, brawls and massive shoplifting rings and all these things that, you know, may or may not have always been happening. You can argue, we quibble about whether it's getting better or worse, but it's just much more present. And so people, you know, are looking at this, seeing this in their phone. And they're like, oh, the country's going to hell in a handbasket. And, you know, then they put the phone down and go to brunch or go to work. And, you know, my own personal life is pretty good. But, you know, the only other thing I would say about the methodology of the polling is, at least

it seems to me that it's taken every year in January. And so specifically thinking about the last two years, that means one, it was asking about national purpose and optimism like right after January 6th. People are not going to have a super great opinion about the country. then and then this year during the Amicron wave and I think those are two things that got a lot of media coverage understandably and painted a big picture of doom and gloom and gave off kind of bad vibes but if you look at you know polling and economic indicators with respect to Omicron two things that didn't affect people's day-to-day lives very much in in terms of you know their ability to do what they want to do and to function and so you know you know

I think you see that reflected in, you know, because this was taken in January every year, you might get a different number conducting it in June or in September. You know, your point on the, on the media, I think, first of all, I love doom rectangles. Is that, is that new? Is that you? That's a good coinage, if it is. We may have to start using that. Look, in so many cases, perception becomes reality.

And I think you're right to point out, and I hadn't really thought about it. Obviously, we saw the advent of all of these, you know, the growth of social media, the ease with which people were able to get this information. I mean, this was true, of course, before that. I remember when I was, it was the summer of 2000, Declan, you were probably in kindergarten. David and Sarah. I was exactly in kindergarten. I mean, I was joking.

That was meant to be hyperbole for a fact, and it was true. David and Sarah, however, might remember it as the summer of the shark. It was shark attack coverage nonstop, right? So I wrote a piece and an analysis for a website. It was either Tech Central Station or Technopolitics just looking at the data. Were shark attacks, in fact, increasing? And the reality was the opposite. Shark attacks were decreasing.

But there was so much coverage of shark attacks. everybody wanted to be the first network or local news station or whatever to cover shark attacks and people had this sense that if you went walking out during a rainstorm there was likely to be a shark in the puddle you that you walked over because that was the way that this was covered there wasn't there wasn't I'm here to tell you so I mean it was it was a funny story because I got I got asked to be um as before I did much TV I got invited to come on to CNN to talk about the summer of the shark after I had written this piece debunking the idea that it was the summer of the shark and I went on one of those pre calls with the producer and the producer said

you know something like now you know what's your expertise in sharks and I said well I have more expertise in sharks I just think that that there wasn't she's like okay but you're prepared to talk about how sharks are more lethal than they ever have been and how the attacks have gone up and I said no no no no like that's not happening this the opposite is happening in my piece which presumably you have read, was making the opposite point. And they were prepared to have me on to hype the summer of the shark, even though I had written a piece debunking the idea that there was a summer shark. So you can imagine, anyway, after the advent,

and certainly with the prevalence of these doom rectangles and this kind of immediate information everywhere, that that's just fast-tracked. I mean, it's so much faster and so much, so much more available. All right, but David, a question to you. Think about this from a purely political, who gets elected, who even runs in the first place standpoint.

As one person wrote, why voters elect politicians promising sweeping changes, then vote out anyone who messes with the status quo in one graph? You think the country is going in a terrible direction, so you vote for someone who says, I'm going to change the direction of the country. And then when they get into office and try to change anything that affects your personal satisfaction and how your day-to-day life works,

you're like, but I'm quite happy. Just fix the country, but don't change anything about my life. Yeah, that, hmm, that does seem to be a problem in the political approach. It does. And I think what this highlights is,

so a couple of things here. One, some of these numbers are measuring something, the dissatisfaction numbers are measuring something really that is objectively real when you comes to the national condition. Because if you look at the three lows, you see a low in 79, you see a low in 0809 and you see a low in 2020. What's happening in 79? Stagflation, Iran hostage crisis, Soviet invasion Afghanistan, this real feeling that we're on the losing side of this long struggle against the Soviet Union. 2009, what it was going on, 0809, global recession.

And then, of course, we all know what happened in 2020. So there are things that are real that are the, when you're talking about the lowest level there. Not so much in some of the other areas where people are still very dissatisfied, even in circumstances where there is not a lot of objective, terrible news. And it's also very interesting that the numbers really went up right in the early 2000s for a bit when there was something objectively terrible that happened, which was 9-11, but there was also a national rallying and a national sense of purpose. And I think, Sarah, what we've kind of got going on right now,

we've got basically all of America is fitting within, this is an oversimplification, but there's, again, data that bears this out. two groups of fed up people. Group one, which is a minority of Americans, are fed up and they want revolutionary change. And the larger group is fed up with this revolutionary stuff and wants normalcy. And they're both unhappy, and that's how you get down to 11. Exactly. Exactly. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly

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Rates may vary. Let's talk about what happened in San Francisco. So you have three members of the school board with a recall vote. Over 70% of those who voted voted to recall them. The group that was made up of the recall, you know, widely regarded as a very diverse set of activists. A lot of Asian American parents mad about, I mean, some of the things that one of the city council members said. I can't repeat on this podcast, but comparing Asian Americans to slaves who worked in the home of a white master who were treated better than the slaves who worked in the field, but using

much more derogatory language, as you can imagine. They, you know, had the longest school closure of any large American city during the pandemic. During that time when the schools were closed, these school board members were advocating to change the names of schools, including schools named after Abraham Lincoln, for instance, based on historical facts that were not factual that they cited. And lastly, they have, you know, one of the premier charter schools in the country that is a merit-based charter school. You test into it.

David, you and I have talked about Thomas Jefferson High School in Virginia. Same idea as Lowell High School in San Francisco. They changed that to be a lottery. system in the hopes of having more racial diversity, but in the process, of course, basically ending what made that school so special, which was that it was sort of the, at least the kids who could test the best out of the entire city. They just changed that entirely to just a lottery-based school. So a lot of parents revolted. The recall happens. Sixteen percent of voters in the city actually voted. So I think that's important to note, you know, in any recall election,

talking about that many people. But of that 16%, 70% voted to recall. And upcoming, we have a recall election for the district attorney in San Francisco as well, recalled as crime spikes in the city. And that district attorney sort of part of what we're loosely calling the defund the police movement, not prosecuting, low-level crimes, letting people out without bail, things like that. And at this point the Democratic Mayor London Breed saying that she supports putting fewer dollars

into the police department, more dollars into social services, but that it's not working, that they've done all these things, they've tried the things that the defund the police movement wanted to do and it's not working in her city and as she said now quite famously, what a month ago,

you know, enough of the bull poop. I'm working so hard to make this a not explicitly rated podcast today. It's a challenge for you, Sarah. Just say it. Bullshit!

It's all bullshit, guys. Okay, you had a warning to cover your kids' ears, kind of. Declan, is this a meaningful divide that we're seeing now on the progressive side as they're splitting, as they're seeing the political consequences of the most progressive part of the Democratic Party cause problems for the more moderate side? Or look, is this San Francisco and it's 16% of voters, and we shouldn't be extrapolating anything from this? Yeah. I think people are going to extrapolate

things from it regardless. And so we might as well, you know, make the extrapolations responsible as opposed to reckless. So we'll do that in this podcast. But, you know, I think that there are definitely are lessons for Democrats. I mean, I'm, I'm neither a San Francisco resident nor a parent, but I was marginally happy when I saw this news earlier this week. I guess my personal gallop score didn't change, but my national gallop score did a little bit. But no, I think to the extent that these same issues are going to keep cropping up in city after city after city, I think, yes, Democrats can learn a lesson. I think it's worth noting that the last point that you mentioned, Sarah, about the charter school, it's called Lowell, you know,

that really seems to have been the instigating factor with respect to the recall push. The school board voted to pass that resolution moving to a lottery-based system as opposed to merit on February 9th, 2021, and it was, I think, February 16th that the recall outfit kind of stood up and started organizing. That doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, had everything else been fine and dandy up until that point, maybe it wouldn't have happened. But I think it is important when you're talking about these kind of local issues from a national perspective that you take the time to understand what it actually is that is happening on the ground. I think we've seen that a lot with the Canada protests over the past couple of weeks. Like, you know, I just from before I wrote

about it last week, just from kind of absorbing the national conversation about it, I had kind of one general opinion. And then I actually went to research what the state of Canada's pandemic restrictions actually were, and they still have limits on outdoor gatherings in January 2022. Like, it's not, obviously, the vaccine mandate for the truckers was kind of the instigating factor, but there are legitimate reasons to be very frustrated with kind of the amount of control that Canada has, like kids can't or parents can't go to their children's sporting events and all these other things that, you know, were. My favorite tweet that someone put out last week was,

I'm just a boy sitting at my keyboard, reminding Americans that Canada is a different country. I love that one. That's fantastic. Yes. And so I think that's part of the issue that you have when you have these national pundits and whatnot kind of parachuting into these local issues and making everything that happens there fit their own preconceived kind of partisan hobby horses. And that's not to say that I do think that this is a huge vulnerability for Democrats going into 2022 and beyond. I think that, you know, we'll see some of the, we've seen some of the similar fracturing within the left in recent weeks on the admissions issue in particular with respect to the Harvard's admissions case that's going to be heard by the Supreme Court, you know, people are kind of coming around to the idea that this actually is incredibly one progressive writer. read, uh, followed like, uh, said something to the effect of, you know, we don't have to be Henry Ford levels of racist against Asian Americans to promote, uh, equity and diversity in our schools. I saw that. Um, and, and so, you know, I, I think there is kind of a waking up to that.

And, uh, and maybe, you know, San Francisco can, David, I'm sure you'll talk to this, but it's, it's interesting that it's kind of the left policing their own on this stuff. You know, these aren't Republicans, they aren't, you know, despite what the school board members said, white supremacists or what have you, voting to do away with a lot of this stuff. They are parents. They are almost certainly mostly Democrats. You know, they're not anti-vaxxers or, you know, I do think that the pandemic restrictions probably have less to do with it in San Francisco than some of these other more San Francisco specific things, but it is interesting, and there's lots to be drawn from it. So, David, one of the commissioners who was recalled tweeted, so if you fight for racial

justice, this is the consequence. Don't be mistaken. White supremacists are enjoying this, and the support of the recall is aligned with this. People pointing out, of course, that the yes vote for recall was quite racially diverse, including lots of non-citizen immigrants. who were eligible to participate. The white supremacist charge so easily and frequently thrown around by that sliver, I think, of the most far-left progressive side. Anytime there's not popular support for something they want or something doesn't go their way,

the answer has been white supremacy. And that seemed to actually get quite a bit of traction a year ago, two years ago. I'm wondering if we've reached the high watermark of that. I think we have reached a high water mark of that and especially reach the high water mark of that when that white supremacy tag is turned on people who are not white,

when that white supremacy tag is turned on to people who are lifelong progressives who have considered it a central core part of their identity that they have tried to combat racism throughout their lives. You know, I did some reporting on this Tuesday and Wednesday, just trying to dive into, I knew some of the folks who were involved in the effort. And, you know, one of the things about this is it's not, oh, look, the right beat the left in San Francisco. No, no, no, no, no. This is not what happened.

There was no right. Right, exactly. It's progressives beat progressives in San Francisco. And I think the single best thing I've read about it is actually by Clara Jeffrey from Mother Jones, or as some of my progressive friends like to call it, just the mother. And it was a long explainer that it was a little bit of everything that was going on here. This was not just about school closings. There wasn't a clamor to reopen in San Francisco as fast as we did in Tennessee, but they were an outlier amongst outliers. in San Francisco. So even as more cautious districts opened, they were not opening. And it wasn't just

that they were not opening. As one person told me, there was nothing. There was no plan. I mean, there was no plan. And the remote learning, you know, one parent told me the remote learning plan was basically 90 minutes a day. That was that. That was it. That was the education. And so, And then you add onto that the, you know, the school renaming that was a historical mess. You add on to that this George Washington mural, the Lowell School. And it was just one thing after another. And then this is something that I think has not been talked about enough. And it's that racism, white supremacy point.

When people objected and they got called, they were accused of white momming. That was a phrase that was used. white momming because they want their kids to get an education, being angry professional women. It really infuriated people. And I think this Jeffrey line is really good. It says of the board, they prioritize performativeness over performance and they brushed away any critique as coming from people who are insufficiently radical. And so here you have a school district failing and then people raising reasonable objections to this, not radical objections. Again, they're not trying to open as fast as some rural school district in Tennessee. Reasonable objections, and they are called out as racist.

Some of them were doxed. I mean, it was a vicious counterreaction to some of these parents. And it had the exact opposite effect, which, and here's the thing that I think is important. What I think is important is a lot of the extreme wings in our politics have grown very practiced at making life a living hell for people who disagree with them. And it deters a lot of disagreement. And these parents pushed through, and I think that's an important, a very important story. So Steve, let's broaden this a little. You have Mayor Breed saying, this is not working. We've added all these additional resources, the street crisis response team, the ambassadors, the services, the businesses, the buildings, the business.

buildings we purchase, the hotels we purchase, the resources. We've added all these things to deal with food insecurity, all these things, yet people are still being physically harmed and killed. As she explains, you know, the failures of the defund the police movement as it's been tried in San Francisco saying, you know, look, I was for this. I was, I put all these resources into it and it's not working. And at the same time today, seeing a lot of stories with a lot of Democrats anonymously quoted, basically blaming the squad, quote, unquote, in advance for massive midterm loss for Democrats,

abolish ICE, defund the police. This is one line from an Axio story. The hard left politics of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the so-called squad once a dominant theme for vast numbers of elected Democrats is backfiring big time on the party in power. top Democrat tells us. Look, I think you can look at San Francisco and you can make a great, you know, college thesis for all of that. At the same time, is that really why Biden's unpopular?

The squad didn't cause inflation. The squad didn't even cause, I think, a lot of these COVID restrictions. The squad didn't cause Afghanistan. The squad hasn't caused Ukraine. Which one is the better thesis that fits better with the facts in your view? But I would say the squad has less on all of those issues. And Biden has followed their lead. Biden and his staff, I would say, have followed their lead. I mean, they were sort of for a no compromises full pull out of Afghanistan dating back years. You talk about the kinds of spending. Think about the intra-democratic party fights over spending levels. We were talking to, we had just spent two trillion dollars. We were talking about spending an additional three to six, and three wasn't enough. Three trillion wasn't enough.

and caused these, you know, pitched internecing battles among Democrats led by the progressive left. I mean, I think what we saw in San Francisco, to a certain extent, and I agree with both Declan and David, there are a lot of factors. There's always the temptation, particularly from people who aren't paying close attention. And I'm one of them. Let me be clear. I did not do a lot of personal firsthand reporting on this. I didn't do any. There's a temptation to lay sort of a, a simple narrative on top of reality and then extrapolate from that. And I do think it's complicated. But one of the things that seems common to me in all of what we've seen is that this is

an accountability election. And you get the sense that we might be moving into an accountability moment, led in part by parents. Parents have just had it. The kinds of arguments that you were seeing in San Francisco, seem to have come out of a sociology seminar at Berkeley. They're so radical. They're so far apart in many ways from the day-to-day life of people on the ground

in places like San Francisco and other cities across the country, in suburbs elsewhere, that you didn't really need, you didn't have to go far out on a limb to suggest that defunding the police was likely not a great solution to crime, right? I mean, just at a certain point, there's very basic common sense that was gone. And look, to their credit, there were some outspoken Democrats on this. Remember, Alison Spanberger, excuse me, Abigail Spanberger from Virginia, called this out in real time, said, I never want to hear anybody talking about defund the police anymore. That's not

going to help us. And she has been vindicated by virtually everything that we've seen. And since then, just one final point on what David was saying about the quick and harsh turn from, I would say, the hardcore progressive left on some of their erstwhile allies who are maybe feel-good liberals or people who aren't particularly political, but like to think of themselves as liberals. I mean, if you've got people who, I know somebody who was active in Democratic politics, politics for for a while um and then left to take a position in corporate america was just a you know thought of himself as a normal worker in corporate america and was soon sort of

um accosted regularly by the woke left in his company on things that were totally and completely outrageous and i think that the sort of the the realization moment was man I I'm a good person. I think I'm doing all these good things, and it's never going to be enough. And it's never going to be enough in some cases because of who he is. He's a white male. So it's not enough to believe all of these things. You are going to be called a white supremacist if you don't look the right way by some of these people on the progressive left, which turns racism on its head and is its own form of racism.

I think we're seeing a lot of this kind of the average. abstract becoming reality for people who believed in the ideals of progressivism in the abstract. And now when they have to live with things like defunding the police are not excited about it. All right, Declan. I want you to respond to that. Whose fault is it that Democrats are going to lose the midterm elections? Jay Powell's. But I would basically say like London briefs. is gets this, I think. It gets everything that we're talking about. You could argue, and I would

argue that she got it a year and a half too late. But she's not up there saying, you know, maybe some of this was a little, she's up there saying, oh, this is bullshit. And we need to, sorry, parents, I didn't give the warning that Sarah did. But, but, I think by the evolution of Mayor London Breed in San Francisco and Mayor Muriel Bowser in D.C. has been really fascinating. and something that, again, when we sort of look back on this era in 10 or 20 years, I think the two of them will be the people you focus on as they start out in that progressive squad, so to speak.

And then when they're in power and trying to make a real difference and they want to make their cities better. I don't, I don't for a second question the good faith of either of those mayors and they're saying, I tried it. I tried it the way that I wanted to do it. And it's not working.

She supported the recall effort in San Francisco. It's fascinating to me. And then the election of Eric Adams after that. That's right. And one of the interesting arguments that she's deployed in recent months, and she's done a lot of national media lately because she's taken this stand, is that I'm a black woman. I grew up in these parts of the city that are really a massive problem.

And we want it to be better. And she basically called out the DA, who is not a black man for saying, like, don't lecture me about racial equity. It's really fascinating. There's just a whole page of, like, people asking her about the DA and her being, not wanting to basically say, yeah, he stinks. But it's like, she was asked last week, do you have faith in the district attorney? And she goes, you're going to have to ask him that.

Or like, all these are in it. Like, she's not a fan. And she's making it very clear she's not a fan. Yeah. But, you know, so I do think she's a better. by nature of being a mayor, not a school board member, she's a better politician. She knows which way the wind is blowing. And I think you can tell by the stance that she's taking and how aggressively she's taking it that this is going to be a huge issue unless Democrats reverse course.

David, just this week, there was an attempted assassination on a Jewish mayoral candidate in Kentucky. And the far left-wing progressive group that believes in bail reform. In fact, bailed him out 48 hours after that attempted assassination. The Democratic mayor's candidate put out a statement saying that this had victimized his family once again.

The bullet grazed his sweater. I mean, just barely missing him. Terrifying. And that's making a lot of news, right? It's not, obviously, that a more progressive activist tried to shoot, assassinate a candidate for office. But in fact, the news is now that a far left-wing group paid the money with Democratic donor money to get him out back on the street, someone who clearly, by the way, you know, reading any

of his Facebook post or anything else, this person has mental health problems. I actually am not sure how politically driven this was. But is this, again, whose fault will it be if Democrats lose the midterm elections? Is it bailing out would-be assassins? Is it crime spiking in San Francisco? Or is it inflation and all this other stuff that's a little more atmospheric than these specific examples? Can I say yes to all? You can give Bayer Breeds answer. You'll have to ask him.

So number one, the bailing out, bailing out this assassin is outrageous, I think on two grounds. And Sarah, you and I have talked about this before. I am broadly in favor of bail reform, except especially. especially for nonviolent criminal activity. But why is bail that low for a guy who just tried to assassinate a public figure and for a guy who has even the most cursory, even the most cursory examination of his background says that this guy has really profound issue. So why is bail that low?

That's inexcusable, in my view, inexcusable number one. In inexcusable number two, using donor dollars to bail him out as a political statement is absurd. It's absurd. And people look at that and they say, okay, well, you know, and then of course, you know, right-wing media is very much interested in sort of pulling that group of people into the Democratic mainstream and saying this is what they are like, even though, you know, he's trying, he actually tried to kill a Democrat.

But this is all in the mix, that sort of radicalism. And a shrewd Republican Party says, we stand against the radicalism. That's what a shrewd Republican Party does. The current Republican Party says, we've just got our own radicals as well. But that's a whole other conversation. But I think it's all of it. You know, there's a couple of things going on at one time. As I said before, there are a bunch of American people who are fed up with the revolutionary aspects of American politics and what normalcy.

they're also fed up with incompetence, okay? And it is just, I keep going back to this, it is no coincidence that Joe Biden's free fall began during the Afghanistan debacle. There is just no coincidence there. This was a shout to the world that this administration was stubborn and that in a call that there was the president's call to make,

to its core. The way it played out was a disaster. It is no coincidence that even consumer confidence dropped during that time because that was a warning that this administration might not be competent that they're going to have to do a lot of work to overcome. So it's sort of a both and. People don't want radicalism. But at the same time, one of the single most important political reforms we can have in the entire United States of America isn't a program. It's just simply competence. It's doing your job well. And people are losing confidence and competence. So that's why I say it's all of the above. And then if you're really discontent with radicalism on the left and incompetence from the Biden administration, where do you turn? And then that's where

You know, Mitch McConnell is very shrewd, and he knows the one thing that we can, the one thing that we can do to blow this opportunity for a red wave is to be crazy. It's to be crazy. And that's why he's coming out and he's condemning the RNC's resolution. And that's why, you know, a lot of the smarter Republicans are trying to isolate the Marjorie Taylor Greens and all of those folks. But it's very, very, very hard. I mean, what was the recent survey out of 100. 43 GOP candidates statewide in Texas. Only 13 will say the election was legit. So it's getting really hard to contain the extremism. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot trackside. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Pre-sale tickets for future events subject to availability and varied by race.

Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at MX.ca. Steve, we have one more topic before we leave today. But before we even get to that topic, I was wondering if you could just give us an update on Ukraine. I know you believe that hostilities could start as soon as today. Yeah, we've seen over the past couple days after weeks and weeks of weeks of predictions that an invasion or at least a minor incursion was imminent, we've seen actual hot war or or hints of of hot war. There was a shelling of a Ukrainian school by Russian-backed separatists, we think, with some injuries. You've seen attempts at provocation, other attempts at provocation by

Russian-aligned actors. You've seen Vladimir Putin seem to step up his propaganda game. You've got the Russians in Crimean Peninsula saying, or Russian-aligned actors in the Crimean Peninsula saying, we're going to have to get out because Ukraine has actually initiated hostilities. So we're seeing all of the things that we saw before Georgia in 2008, before Crimean Peninsula in 2014, sort of picking up speed. So it looks like whatever chance there was for some kind of a diplomatic path out of this, those chances seemed to be dimming. I didn't think there was really much of one.

The final point I'll make is interesting move by the Biden administration. I tend to think that they've been pretty shrewd in putting out as much intelligence as we can gather on what rush is up to more for an accountability. argument rationale than a deterrent rationale, but basically saying in effect to Putin, we know what you're up to. We're going to make clear that if you do this, that you're the aggressor, and there will be no, you know, we're going to be transparent about this. There will be no question about what happened. I think that's been smart. There's a case to be made that it may have delayed whatever military action we're seeing. But then yesterday in the aftermath

of the U.S. government pointing the finger at Russian back separatists for these attacks, the Secretary of State is going to announce that he's going to meet with Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister next week. I suppose there's an argument to be made for diplomacy until diplomacy is no longer viable at all. But that's a pretty bad message to be sending, in my view, after what we've seen, after these hostile acts from Russia, what we've seen to go and sit down and give them a hearing as they're doing the things that we've been warning about for a long time. And I'm worried it's going to look in retrospect like another, not a green light, but, you know, another signal that the United States is weak

and it's resolved, just as some of President Biden's rhetoric has suggested. So we've started doing weekly dispatch lives for our members. If you're a member of the dispatch on Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. You can tune in, and Steve will undoubtedly have a glass of Spanish wine. My wines tend to be all over the place. Sometimes it's a spin drift, honestly. David definitely Diet Coke. But in that conversation, we said, in fact, we would pick up a little bit of it for our podcast today. And so I want to do that. Steve argued that Liz Cheney is all goodness light, everything right in the world. And I argued that that wasn't true. I think that's a good summary, actually. But Declan, you didn't get the chance to weigh in on this.

Okay, okay, here was the actual argument that Liz Cheney created the environment for Trump's receding power over the Republican Party that we're seeing in the last few weeks. And I disagreed with that, that in fact, if anything, Liz Cheney delayed that receding waterline because it emboldened and strengthened Trump folks when he sort of, quote, won that battle. But Declan, you didn't get to weigh in on Dispatch Live, and I wanted to get your take on the epic Steve and Sarah Liz Cheney throwdown 2022. Oh, boy. Who's your favorite parent, Declan? Who do you I don't like, I don't like disappointing anybody. There's a, Yeah.

You're in the wrong line of work, Declan. It is, it is all. Nothing that I write has my name on it. I just kind of, I steer clear of that, no. But yeah, I, it's difficult. I think that Liz Cheney is correct. I think that she is making an important point. Part of me wonders if given,

And this is a nuanced point, so I'm going to have to try and make it carefully. Part of me wonders that given what she believes and kind of her approach to everything that happened January 6th leading up to it, if what she did was actually the easier thing for her to do than the harder thing. And what I mean by that is that, you know, if this is what you believe and you think that there's a, there's an audience for it, going out and saying it and being very outspoken about it and repeating it and, you know, getting it off your chest and kind of getting it out there is, is one way to handle that. But the downside of that is that you get rooted out of leadership. You get ostracized by the party and you basically get othered. And, you know, Trump is very good at othering. He's going to other anybody who disagrees with him one percent of the time, not just, you know, these massive breaks. But part of me wonders if, you know, the more difficult thing, but possibly the better thing for the Republican Party would have been to keep some of that disagreement private and work to sway members behind the scenes and stay in leadership and, you know, be able to be kind of a role model. not be the right word, but, um, like, look, Liz Cheney, she's very clear about what she thought about January 6th. She was the first Republican to come out and say that she was going to vote and impeach. Um, but she's still able to stay in leadership. And so, you know, that means that

I as a Republican backbencher or whatnot can, uh, can have these feelings and, you know, voice some if I'm asked about it, but not necessarily go out and make that proactive case. And there are downsides to that approach as well because it's too many times we've seen people say, oh, I'm going to hold on to my position of power and stay behind the scenes and persuade people and then nobody gets persuaded. But I think that it is a more nuanced debate than I think what is what is currently playing out. David, my favorite SNL skit from recent history is a Kenan Thompson hosting a game show called Republican or not. and the first guy comes up and he says,

I think Facebook is evil. And both the game show participants are like, because they're spreading disinformation or because they banned Donald Trump? And he says, I buy all my produce straight from a farm. And she says, because you want to or because you have to? And then he says, God, I hate cops. And the guy buzzes in and goes, Democrat, clearly a Democrat.

And Keenan Thompson's like, uh-uh, sorry. he hates these cops, and he puts up a picture of the January 6th protests. The next person comes out and says, on Twitter, my pinned tweet is, my body, my choice. And they say, wait, abortion or vaccines? And it goes from there. But the last person to come out, the third person that the game show contestants are supposed to guess on, says, I'm a congresswoman from Wyoming who, you know, said, who's been endorsed by the NRA X number of times. They're like, this feels like a trick. And she says, my father is literally vice president

Dick Cheney. They're like, no, definitely a trick. And she says, I'm literally a Republican. And so then he like, hesitantly buzzes in. And he's like, well, she's a Republican. And Kenan Thompson says, no, I'm sorry. The Republican Party booted her out of the conference last week. And she's like, yeah, but I'm a Republican. I believed in Republican values my whole life. And Kenan Thompson says, I'm sorry. That doesn't matter anymore.

And it's just, it's the smartest political satire I've seen about the current Republican Party. We'll put it in the show notes because obviously it's funnier when they do it than when I retell it. But David, doesn't that mean that? Cheney didn't have the effect she wanted to if every Republican then had to unite behind kicking her out of the Republican Party? Look, all right. I, you know, I come from a Christian tradition that says that sometimes you just got to say what's true, okay? Sometimes you just got to say what's true and let the chips fall where they may. You know, I can imagine not.

to over inflate Cheney, but just bear with me with historical analogies just for a second. I'm just for listeners. I'm not comparing her. I don't believe she's Isaiah. There's not going to be like, you know, a book of the Bible. But, you know, people say to somebody like these folks that we know from history that we're just saying what's true. And I'm sure there's people around, well, you know, you got to triangulate with the different factions here because you're really tuning out this constituency and you're really alienating this constituency. But by golly, somebody's just got to say what's right. And, you know, that's what I look at when I see with Cheney, when I see with Kinsinger. Are there political critiques to be made if you're trying

to talk about what is the kind of coalition you want to build? Okay, okay. But sometimes you just got to say it. Sometimes you've got to persevere. Sometimes you've got to get to the bottom one of what happened. And then you stand on that to your voters and you say, this is what I did. And here's why I thought it was right. And here's why I led in the direction I did. And it may very well be at the end of the day she's thrown out of office. But the last person who should have regrets if she loses that election is Liz Cheney in my view. I totally agree with everything David said. it's just irrelevant to the argument that Steve and I were having.

So Steve... It's not irrelevant. It's the thing. It's the argument. I agree with you on that. It's a different... Declan, go ahead. You wanted to change the argument.

You wanted to change the argument. And if I were making your argument, I would have wanted to change it too. No, I said that even on dispatch live. No, that of course... I thought the argument was specifically about the political ramifications of it. That's what Sarah wanted the argument to be.

No, you said on dispatch. live that all of what we're seeing now with Pence and with McConnell was because Cheney was able to crack that door open. I believe that true. I believe that's true as well. Last night, Pence defended the censure of Cheney and Kinsinger in a speech. So he backtracked a little bit. Oh, but of course.

Of course, but I don't think that actually would undermine Steve's point. If Liz Cheney cracked the door, then yeah, maybe people would criticize Liz Cheney even though they're walking through the door she cracked. Steve, I'm giving you the last word here because I think I'm a fair debater. I'm going to come back to you to give you the last word. Oh, oh. But something we talked about on Dispatch Live that I thought needed a little more was, and I gave all the caveats on Dispatch Live, so I'm going to do the short version here.

Just caveat, caveat, caveat, caveat, caveat. Was John Brown helpful or hurtful to the cause of abolition? David gave a good answer to it on Dispatch Live, but that's the question. And look, I'm not saying it's actually an obvious answer. I'm not saying I'm even right. But to state it as like fact that Liz Cheney cracked the door, I just don't know that I think there's enough to say that either. Okay, so let me try to bring together Declan's point, David's point, and your point,

answer your question, and then toss it back to you. So I think what Declan was suggesting, Liz Cheney might have done instead, which is, in a sense, stay in leadership, do what she can to bring the party along, is what she tried to do. She tried to do that for years. And I think she, you know, she certainly held her tongue repeatedly over the course of, of Trump's presidency. She sometimes, on the big things, spoke out. The big places that she disagreed with him when he did something that was egregious, when he said something that was outrageous, when he made a policy difference like Afghanistan, like wanting to invite the Taliban to Camp David, she spoke out and criticized it.

So I think what she would say is, I did that. I did that for a long time. I even did that for a little bit after the election. You remember when we had her on our What's Next event, I interviewed her and asked her about what was, you know, what were the early stages of Trump's claims that the election was stolen. And she and I disagreed on this. I said, isn't it? She said basically, look, look, he has every right to the process.

Let's let him go through the process. Let's let the courts do their thing. And then we can deal with it at the end of the process. And I think she would probably say that's what she did. My counter argument was, isn't it really, really important for Republican office holders, particularly Republican leaders, to say, we have seen no evidence the election was stolen, but Donald Trump has every right to do this. Now, it's a small difference, but I think it's a significant one, and we didn't get it enough

from Republican leaders in the post-election period. What made all the difference for Cheney was January 6th, and what we saw from Donald Trump and his supporters leading up to and around January 6th. And she has said this. She said, look, once you have a president stoking in scientific. basically helping to cause a riot, encouraging his people to commit violence in his name so that he can stay in office, that's too far. That's a threat to the Republic. It's a threat to the peaceful transfer of power. And we can't abide that under any circumstances. She was saying

that in the aftermath of January 6th. And at the time, so was every other Republican with a handful exceptions. What's changed is she's still saying it. And most other Republicans, too many other Republicans have flipped, are now in the business of saying, ah, that wasn't that big a deal. Ted Cruz was calling it a terrorist attack and now object strenuously if somebody calls it a violent insurrection. I mean, you've seen this from all of these Republicans. And she's saying, no, no, no, no, no, it was this. It's important. And oh, by the way, through the work that the January 6th committee is, We've learned so much more about the lengths to which Donald Trump and his supporters were willing to go to keep him in office illegally. It's even more important what I was saying than what I'm saying now.

So that's sort of an answer to your point, Declan, and also to David's point where I think she just got to the point where she said something as big as January 6th, a violent attempt to have the president remain in power, requires us just to say and do the right thing and hope that people follow her example, hope that people follow her lead. hope that there aren't the political ramifications that I think she understood there was likely to be when she made the decision. And I think that's why she made the decision. The question to you, Sarah, is, you know, you said then, you said on Tuesday night, and by the way, if you aren't convinced to join us on Tuesday nights for dispatch live, when these things go down the first time, I don't know what's the matter with you. With wine. Sarah, your argument was that she strengthened Trump politically. As you suggest it again today, my argument is there's zero evidence of that.

I don't think there's any evidence whatsoever of that. And I would suggest that just because some other Republicans flipped to make Trumpian arguments doesn't mean he's stronger politically. I think by virtually every measurable means he's weaker politically than he was, you know, a month after January 6th, for instance. And in part, it's because what she has done, is make arguments that created the space for others to be more aggressive. So your example earlier was Mike Pence.

I think that's a good one. I'm bothered on a personal level that Mike Pence would walk it back and sort of praise the censure, but I'm totally unsurprised that Mike Pence would do that. We will see this. I mean, I'd say only maybe Nikki Haley has been more of a waffler on Trump than Mike Pence has. I think he deserves credit for speaking clearly about it before. But what you've also seen is a number of senators, we talked about this on the last dispatch podcast, a number of elected Republicans and others basically say enough.

Some of them talked about it and made the argument in the context of the of the censure. Some of them made the argument more broadly. But I think they helped create the space for, she helped create the space for them to do it. And I think we're likely to see more of it before we see less of it. And she will, even if she is booted from office, we'll deserve a lot of the credit for it. Sorry, what was the question? The question to you, so the question, well, let me ask Sarah the question directly. The specific question to you, what data can you point to?

What are your strongest arguments that what she has done, that the argument that she has made, setting aside the principle of it, which I think we all basically agree on? Yep, yep. What's the evidence that she has strengthened Donald Trump politically? So, no. My point was that in the aftermath of what she did, she strengthened Donald Trump. What we are seeing now is, I agree, Donald Trump having a weekend grip over the party, whether it'll last and whether this is the high mark or just a dip, I don't know.

But I totally agree with you that currently he is at a low point in his strength over the party. My point is, right after she did what she did, I think she strengthened his hand, and I'll get to my data for that in a second. Then there were lots of intervening events, and now his strength is loosening, but not because of what Cheney did. And so that's sort of the distinction I'm making. Now, what's my data that in the immediate aftermath of what she did, she strengthened Donald Trump's hand? Sure, it's a little bit that there were Republicans not wanting to talk about it, you know, saying that the election wasn't stolen. And then when she was, quote, you know, made an example out of, they either shut up or they changed their tune. That doesn't make them brave, by the way. It doesn't even make them politically

savvy in my view. But it is what happened. And so I think that that played right into what Donald Trump wanted. He wanted everyone else to be afraid that he could do to them what he did to Liz Cheney, who now may lose her seat, was going to regardless face millions of dollars she needed to fundraise to defend her seat. And she had the access to a fundraising base, the name ID, a very friendly district in Wyoming that maybe they don't have at home. And so that's the nuance of my argument. She strengthened him by what she did in the immediate aftermath. Now, fast forward six, nine months, whatever it's been. And he's looking weaker. But I think that's more about Glenn Yunkin

endorsements in special elections that didn't pan out the way that they thought so that it becomes quite clear the distinction between Trump endorsing you not that helpful, not very meaningful. Trump attacking you like Liz Cheney, very meaningful. So you don't want to be the nail,

you know, the tallest blade of grass like Liz Cheney. So she was a warning to them in that respect. But look, as I said before, I'm very open to in 10 years being wrong. John Brown, that's why I think the John Brown example is important, because I think you can make a smart, principled, fact-based argument that John Brown actually did bring about abolition. But I think you can also make the argument that he set back the cause as well by helping radicalize the anti-abolition, the pro-slavery crew, and by alienating the soft quasi-abolition folks.

So that's my argument. And I'm sure, Steve, that we will pick this up on Dispatch Live. Again, as I said, if you're a member of the dispatch, you can join us Tuesday nights, 8 p.m. It's on video. We take questions. It's like a little weird, quirky show. And it's not just Steve and I arguing about Liz Cheney. Thank you so much for joining us.

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