The Dispatch Podcast - Who Blew Up Nord Stream?

Episode Date: September 30, 2022

As the editors of The Morning Dispatch eloquently put it, Nord Stream went boom. But who’s responsible? Sarah, David, and Jonah leave no conspiracy theory unexamined. Turning to the midterms, they discuss the power of low expectations, ask when spending money stops being useful, and wonder what it takes to be a good leader (or at least a good politician) during natural disasters. Also: the trio displays heroic restraint in today’s Not Worth Your Time, as they refrain entirely from making any kind of double entendre. Show Notes: -Tucker Carlson, literally wall-to-wall on Russian TV -Lizzo playing James Madison’s flute Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host Sarah Isger, joined by Jonah Goldberg and David French. We are going to talk about the Nord Stream pipeline. We'll talk about what we're seeing in the midterms and a little popery per usual with a sprinkle of not worth your time at the end. David, I'll start with you. Why don't you tell us what has happened with the Nord Stream pipeline and what we're supposed to take from that? Well, it's pretty simple, really, what's happened and super complicated about what we're supposed to take from it. So there's been obvious leaks sprung in the Nord Stream pipeline, probably or almost certainly as a result of sabotage. The Nord Stream Pipelines are venting natural gas. I mean, there are huge, I'm sure a lot of listeners have seen online images of bubbles,

huge circles of bubbles in the ocean where the Nord Stream Pipeline is venting natural gas. So that's the simple part. Nord Stream Pipeline almost certainly vandalized, almost certainly vandalized with explosives, unusable at the moment will cost a lot to repair. Now, what are the consequences of that? Well, this is where, you know, there's some obvious and then there's some more subtle. So the obvious is that, you know,

there's been a lot of talk about an energy crisis or the gas weapon being utilized against Europe this winter. Well, right now, right there, because of the broken Nord Stream pipeline, We know that Europe is going to face an energy crunch. Even if it wanted a whole ton of Russian gas, the Nord Stream pipeline was a key way of delivering that gas. So we're going to see an energy crunch in Europe this winter.

And there's now a huge fight over who might have done it. There are some folks on the right, Charlie Kirk, Tucker Carlson, who Rod Dreher, who are basically taking the position of, I think it's America. I think the U.S. blew up the Nord Stream pipeline. They don't have any evidence for this. They're just trying to align incentives that it sort of removes the temptation for Europe to go soft on Russia.

We have no evidence. The United States did it. No evidence at all. That would be, what's the phrase you like to use on Twitter, Jonah? Huge, if true. Big if true. Big if true.

That might even qualify as huge, if true. It might. It might even be Rob Dignagian, if true. Yeah. The other likely culprit is Russia. Russia blowing up the North Stream pipeline, going ahead and wielding the energy weapon. One of the more ominous

potential future scenarios has always been that Putin facing a flagging home front in a struggling war would try to rally his people by casting this much more as a war against not just to give

Ukraine, but against NATO, and thereby sort of waking the slumbering bear within the Russian people, this ability to endure any price and bear any burden to fight a foreign enemy. Another possibility is Ukraine, but there's real doubts about Ukraine's ability to pull that off. Also, that would be, if Ukraine did it, that would be quite a blow against. its own allies potentially. So the smart money, again, we don't have evidence. A smart money says Russia. The conspiracy money says U.S. and there's an outside chance that Ukraine is up to its capabilities and has done something escalatory and reckless that actually hurts his own allies as much as it might hurt Russia. So that's where we are. So explain, I guess, a little more on your

Russia theory. I sort of get the Reichstag element, but wouldn't this have enormous economic losses for Russia? Yeah, I mean, this is one of the things that's kind of strange about this is it's not really clear that if you're looking at the incentives created, it's not really clear any of the cases because you're going to, you know, one of the things you're going to have to think through is, for example, on the theory that the U.S. blew up the Nord Stream because the U.S. has been opposed to the Nordstream pipeline for a really long time is how inflammatory it would be if and when it is

discovered that the U.S. blew up the pipeline, that there's major consequences from that. But yeah, the Russian side of this is a little bit confusing from the sense that says, wait, don't you sort of want the ability to, not just the financial ability to get the money from this, but also the ability to kind of turn it on and turn it off, put, you know, put the squeeze on. Yeah, so they are losing some of that leverage. They are losing some of that revenue. Now, that's not the only means of delivery of natural gas into Europe right now.

But yeah, it is, it's not a neat, clean case. And David, should I assume by the fact that we're not sure that Ukraine would even have the capabilities to do this, that in fact, it would basically need to be a nation state. This can't be a renegade, environmentalist group. Like, Greenpeace can't blow up, nor destroy. stream too? That would, yeah, that's a really good question. I've heard a couple of people speculate about that.

Let's put it this way. We don't know of any environmentalist group with the capability and will to do this, to execute. And there was some. It's also pumping out like. Right. I mean, it's not good for the environment. The equivalent of 5.8 million cars a year of methane into the environment.

It's like. Yeah. Yeah. It's a huge polluter right now. So an environmentalist group, extremely skeptical. Maybe it's an anti-environmentalist group. The Competitive Enterprise Institute did it. All right.

So, Jonah, you have a group on the right who are blaming the United States for this. Russia is playing the Tucker Carlson clip on every news program they can find. I guess I also don't understand that this is the America first crowd but they want to put out there again without evidence mind you it's not that we know who did it but like if we have no evidence then like why speculate that America did it and give the Russians the propaganda of a major American television host for instance blaming the United States how I don't can you square that with America first with for me? don't get it. Yeah, so, like, the America First crowd, there are many rooms in the insul sub-basement of the America First world. And some of them really are much closer to what Jean Grupatra called, blame America First, rather than America First, and which is where isolationism often will take you. So I think some of this is part of the sort of hot house world of anti-eastern anti-Pootenism? Like, we are provoking Russia. We are to blame for the escalation with Russia.

If Putin launches a nuclear missile and reduces Kansas City to radioactive cinders, really it's America's fault, which is sort of the logic you see a lot of places. But isn't that what, I mean, a version of exactly what, again, the very far left was saying after 9-11, it's our fault that they hate us? Yeah, I mean, I'm not a big horseshoe theory guy, But once you buy into certain arguments about isolationism, this is sort of where you end up. And, you know, there's a reason why those guys at Compact Magazine who started off as supposedly being these very conservative people now call themselves radicals, their argument for endorsing Trump in 2024, but it was down to foreign policy. Because there's just something, there's some sort of like equivalent of an earworm that just makes people come to these sorts of positions. you know, the one through line

in the wild inconsistency of Glenn Greenwald is it's always America's fault, right? And that's sort of, I think, the non-negotiable part in all of this. I do want to, like, maybe you guys want to put down some plastic tarp because I'm about to blow your minds. I have a friend who works in the industry, energy industry, who I'll just give them

as a metaphor of the doubt as being a little provocative in tongue-in-cheek, but he floated a theory to me that this was China. And his argument is that this definitely prolongs the war, which is ultimately good for China. It undermines the West and takes their eye off of things like Taiwan. And it basically sets up the ability for China to buy Russia, natural gas on an almost of a monopsonic, is that the right word,

way because Russia can't sell to anybody else. I don't know if that's true, but like if we're going to play the, I certainly don't know if it's true. That'd be cool. If I just had ironclad proof and I was going to reveal it on this podcast.

But if we're going to play the Kuibono game of like who benefits from this, like China, I think you actually make a case actually benefits from this. I think you can actually make a case in a certain way that America does benefit from this. But the risk premium of America actually doing it is so wildly high

because it would so infuriate all of our NATO allies, Europe, that I don't think it would be worth doing in any realistic sense. But just underscore one point, it definitely was sabotaged. There's some people saying maybe it wasn't. There are two pipes, these quote unquote, accidents happen basically simultaneously, which would be a pretty big coincidence. It's sort of like my dad always used to say he always likes to bring a bomb on planes because the odds of two bombs being on a plane are so astronomical.

So I think that basically, to get back to your question about the sort of the sort of NatCon right or isolationist right, I think these guys are just basically stuck in a place where if it makes Putin look bad or makes Biden look good or anything along those wavelengths or makes Trump look bad, they go the opposite way. And it's not a particularly well thought out, you know, philosophical approach to anything. But David, one thing on the accident, because I do feel like that has been totally dismissed by everyone, fair enough, but if it were an accident, meaning. not that like a large sea creature, like the Kraken attacked one of the pipes and then decided

to go attack the other. Fair enough. I agree that that's unlikely with two pipes. But what's less unlikely is there's a screw up on the Russian side using their computer system and they push too much or too little. It changes the pressure and they do it to both because it's a computer screw up. We are never going to hear that because the Russians are never going to say that there was a screw up on their side. And so that's why I'm a little hesitant to so quick, it absolutely couldn't have been an accident because in the United States, I think we'd sort of find out if it were an accident, but I'm not at all confident that we would in Russia. Well, and you said a key phrase, screw up on the Russian side, because if there's one thing

that we have seen, and look, the accident theory, that's why I said it's almost certain that this was sabotage. I don't know enough about pipelines to know if the kind of accident that you just described is feasible. right same right but in general if you push too much or too little and you change the pressure too quickly you can really screw up a pipeline i don't know what caused this pipeline to explode and i don't know what jona well there's just there's one more piece of evidence that pushes towards sabotage i mean i i assume there's a lot more but the place where this actually happened the red paint that said i did it all the uh all these sort of knockoff macdonald's rappers and stuff that were left by the sabotage

tours. No, the place where this happened is sort of in this gray area of international waters between the sort of the Swedish and Danish commercial economic zone things. And so it was at least according to some stuff I read. And also this is, they talk about this a bit on the telegraph Ukraine podcast. It seems like there's a, like this is one of these places where it's sort of like unclear tragedy of the commons kind of who's in charge. of overseeing maintenance of this critical infrastructure kind of thing. And that's also a pretty coincidental place for this to happen. Also, it's an area where there's a weird mix of intersection of fresh and saltwater,

which makes it difficult to send submarines down because saltwater and freshwater buoyancy are different things. So anyway, who knows? And the other thing about the Russia screw up point, when you've got a desperate power here that's well, that's known for, well, let's just say the evidence that Putin's people, example, blew up their own apartment buildings as a pretext for the second Chechen war when you have in Russia is running around playing the Tucker Carlson clip on loop which tells you, hmm, there could be some Russian operations operational mindset here

that is similar to the Chechen apartment explosion or that is just inscrutably bad in some pretty profound ways, which is exactly what led up to, and a lot of the thinking that led up to their incredibly botched invasion to begin with. I was listening to this really interesting podcast, War on the Rocks has done some just great reporting and analysis on the Ukraine war. And they were talking about how fundamentally off Russia had been in judging Ukraine in multiple important ways, but one of them was the total conviction that the Ukrainian government and the Euro-Maden protests that led to, you know, the break with Russia originally, that all of that was just a CIA op. And what they were dealing with was a CIA op, a CIA prop,

that this, that, and that's one of the reasons why Ukraine was perceived to be a house of cards militarily. So there's just a lot of bad, flawed thinking going into the Russian war effort. And so, you know, we could be looking at everything from an idea that, okay, well, we're just going to go ahead and cut off Europe and try to and send Europe a message about how vulnerable they are to us. We're going to blow this up and blame it on the U.S. to see if we can split the alliance. I mean, there's a lot of really screwed up thinking over there in Russia right now. And that's one thing that we've now seen as a result of

the Ukraine war is we cannot ascribe to them a kind of diabolical cleverness that we'd describe to Russia for a long time before the botched invasion. Yeah, there's also, there's a weird thing it's sort of like, you know, one of the things that you,

that Russia proves is that you've got to be very careful about the problem of mirroring where we project the way we think about foreign policy upon them. Russians just, seem really comfortable with almost this sort of a Schrodinger's cat kind of thinking about things where, like, they don't mind people thinking that they murdered people by making them commit suicide, you know? And so, like, he, he shot him, he committed suicide,

shooting himself twice in the head, you know, that kind of thing. They kind of like letting, you know, like the number of Russian officials who've fallen downstairs in the last, two months is kind of amazing and Russia likes to do this kind of gaslighting thing where it's obvious that they did what they did but

and it's like they want implausible deniability to have it in sort of to live in a sort of quantum state where they're basically telling you we did it while at the same time playing relying on useful idiots to buy the ridiculous cover stories about

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That's ethos.com slash dispatch. Application times may vary. Rates may vary. All right. Let's put a pin in this for a little bit and move to the midterms. David, what race are you most interested in right now? Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to kind of go against the grain and say a race that everyone's sort of written off.

I'm still following the Federman Oz race. And the reason I'm following the Federman Oz race is one, I think there are legitimate questions about Federman's health that don't seem to be fully answered quite yet. And the other is, you know, it's in a way, it was one of the ultimate sort of candidates matter race. in the sense that you have this really close state. You've got replacing a GOP senator, a really close state, and it was looking like it was going to be a blowout. And how many times have we seen genuine blowouts in a race of national significance in a closely watched contest

between Republican and Democrat? Was this going to sort of revert to the mean that Republicans are just, going to vote for Republicans. It doesn't matter, you know, if they're, now on the margins it's going to matter. It doesn't, but it's not going to matter at that kind of scale that we're saying 10 point and 11 point leads. And sure enough, it seems to be really narrowing. And I think that's a stand in for a lot of what we're going to see. Herschel Walker, for example, in Georgia. That's another one that I'm watching, which is one of these ultimate sort of candidates matter races. And yet it appears

that I'm not so sure how much the candidates are going to matter. I do think the Blake Masters race in Arizona, that's another one of these candidates matter races. And we all know they do, okay? We all know they do. But the thing that I'm really interested in is this original polling of the Federman Oz race was a Federman blowout, just a blowout.

And I thought that would have signaled something about sort of the Americans sort of saying, or at least Pennsylvanians, saying enough of the gimmicks, enough of the tricks, although Federman's kind of a gimmicky guy, but we're just not going to do

whatever Donald Trump says for us to do. Maybe in the primary, but not in the general. You can't count on us just because, you know, Donald Trump has said he's my guy, but it feels to me like in that race and many others, you've got more of a reversion to the mean, and candidates matter, but not as much as we might be thinking.

Well, a question for both of you guys about just on this. Let's just say Federman didn't have a stroke. Would it still have been a blowout? I don't think so. I don't think so either. Yeah. I think that the fundamentals of Pennsylvania remain. I think that Federman or a Democrat would always be favored to win.

2016 is the outlier, not 2020. And remember, we have plenty of states where they nationally go one way and then their state races get really muddled. I mean, New Hampshire is like the number one example. Republican governors, Democratic senators, and has gone Democrat in the presidenials. And plenty of other examples like that.

We have three Democratic governors in states that have all Republicans statewide electives. So I think you can have sort of the fundamentals of Pennsylvania are that their statewides have been pretty steadily, you know, lean Democrat. Obviously, this is a Republican seat that's open because Pat Toomey's retiring. But by and large, it's, you know, purple-leaning blue, not purple-leaning red, like maybe a North Carolina,

for instance, which is almost exactly the opposite. Yeah, there's also, I mean, I remember reading a, Maybe it was at 538 a couple years ago. There's an interesting phenomenon about the regression to the mean of states that become outliers, right? It's like you can think about it just as a matter of common sense. If a state is reliably Democrat for year on year on year, and then in a fluke, it kind of goes Republican. The Democrats who stayed home are like, wait a second. And they turn out more the next time around because they kind of, they're pissed that they got caught flat-footed.

And so you see apparently there's some good. good studies on this about the sort of the seesawing, the snapping back to the normal trend after one of these outlier years, precisely because the party that long held the state wakes up and realizes, hey, we got to take this seriously. And they actually utilize resources the way they didn't when they were sort of asleep at the switch. Check out Georgia. Yep. I was just about to say, yeah. Those Georgia Senate races, the Democrats have a upper hill climb than they would have otherwise because of what happened in the runoffs in 2021.

By the way, debate season is almost upon us, starting next week. October 6th, we have the debate between the two Senate candidates in Arizona, Mark Kelly and Blake Masters. Then the seventh, the North Carolina debate between Sherry Beasley and Ted Bud and the Wisconsin debate between Ron Johnson and Mandela Barnes later in the month. Georgia, Ohio, Washington, and then ending it all will be Pennsylvania, October 25th. I'm curious just historically because y'all are old if you think that debates matter less than they have before or if debates never mattered. I mean, to be clear, there's no data showing that debates are persuadable events for a few reasons.

I mean, mostly that persuadable voters don't tune into debates. it's largely people who've already made up their minds and then these sort of clips that come out of them are a little bit different. But the debates themselves in terms of people watching the debate tend not to be. But I feel like there used to be a lot more debates. And, you know, for a lot of these, there's one debate, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, North Carolina, Washington. In fact, only Ohio and Wisconsin have two debates scheduled. And even that's not very many. So I'm going to brilliantly not answer your question and raise it and reframe it a little bit. I'm curious to see whether at least in Arizona, in Ohio, I mean, the Georgia debate makes me so nervous and I kind of...

For whom? For everybody, for Herschel Walker and the people who wish him well. But see, isn't this the genius of it? Herschel Walker coming in and knowing his own name exceeds expectations. I think that in fact, the Warnock campaign has made a huge strategic blunder here, allowing Walker to lower expectations by this much. Has anyone walked into a debate with lower expectations? I mean, I compare it to George W. Bush going into that first debate with Al Gore.

Yeah. And George W. Bush crushed Al Gore then in all three debates, largely because of expectations and, I mean, Gore at the very end, right before the first debate, trying to argue that, that in fact, here's the quote, he's an excellent and formidable debater, Gore pleaded, Anne Richards is a better debater than I am. She got a very quick wit and silver tongue and is just as smart as a whip. And he beat her in that debate. I mean, it just, it was so laughable at the time and it really hurt Gore to debate someone who was. clearly not as good a debater as he was.

Right. No, I take that point, but the, but the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, water water one aside, um, what I'm kind of interested in is whether or not the, the, the, the various sort of Peter Thielbacked, NACCON, Trumpy guys. Yeah. Whether they sort of try to follow Reagan 84 and do a, reassure voters that they're not, you know, like, Reagan had to reassure, reassure people. he wasn't too old and with that one line about you know i'm not going to hold my opponent's youth

and an experience against him kind of defused that whole thing these guys kind and like regan in 80 is probably the better example needed to perform in a way that was reassuring because there were still a lot of people who thought he was a bit of a crank um made him performing a way that made him seem presidential against carter and i think that like it'll be interesting to see whether those candidates go into those debates with a pure rile up the base strategy or are some of them going to try and reassure people

and say maybe not I'm not a witch but whatever say stuff that reassures swing and moderate voters particularly a lot of these female voters who are pretty worked up about the abortion stuff and I'm sure it depends on which state we're talking about whether a all base strategy makes any sense at all or not. But it sure feels like at least in Arizona,

Blake Masters has to do something that doesn't make him the same as Carrie Lake. Well, also, he has a lot of freedom when you think about it. When you're going in pretty far down into a debate, you know, you're not playing prevent offense here. Like, he's got to land some wheel punches.

Yeah. Yeah. And so I think you could see some really interesting stuff in that. debate. Well, you know, just going back to the debate question raises the larger issue of what does matter? How many things do matter to shake someone out of voting for Republican if they were going to vote for Republican or voting for a Democrat if they're voting, you know, if they were leaning Democrat anyway. And this really goes to that effective polarization thing, where it is, if it is

unthinkable for the vast majority of Republicans not to turn out and vote Republican, no matter who's there. And this is the thing that gives sort of a logic to a lot of the movements like the integralists or the NACCON folks is if they can win a primary with a minority of the vote, then they're the R, right? They're the R. And they can count on overwhelming support from other Republicans, whether other Republicans have actually bought in or even know about their project to begin with. And it's, in this effective polarization, we really do live in a place where extremely motivated minorities in low participation scenarios can have really outsized influence because they can count on people saying, no, under no circumstances, am I opting out

of this election or voting Democrat? And, you know, Al Mueller, who's the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and one of the more influential Baptist voices was like, it's just unfaithful if you're a Christian and you don't vote and if you don't vote the right way. So it's locking in in that way. And that's why I'm talking about Oz and Fetterman and Reversion to the Mean and candidates matter, but not, they don't matter so much as to completely disrupt the dynamics of this closely divided country. And the generic ballot right now is, on 538 is one point difference. It's, it's Democrats 45.4 and Republicans 44.1.

And you just feel like it's deja vu all over again. By the way, I just want to preempt the comments. I meant prevent defense. I said prevent offense. I do know that, like, what it is. Another thing that we're seeing this cycle that we saw in 2020 is Democrats outraising Republicans. and outspending Republicans in a lot of these races. And in 2020, it was in fact, like, the least predictive thing about who would win the race

of the, let's see, Democrats who outspent their opponents, 1.13, lost 9. Republicans who outspent their opponents, 1-8, lost 0, which is sort of interesting, especially as we look at Arizona and some of these other states, if you're following the spending, Democrats are absolutely doing a better fundraising job. And I've talked about this a little bit before where I think there's an asymmetry

because of Trump on the right that the small dollar spigot for Republicans has, it is Nord Stream 2'd itself. Somebody blew up the middle of the pipeline and everybody's kind of got theories as to who did it. But unquestionably, Trump just called,

causes this suck happening where a ton of money is going to Trump himself. He's not spending the money in the midterms. And the same is just not true on the left. There's no sort of equivalent. They seem to be managing their email lists more carefully. The money isn't getting sort of hold up somewhere. And yet none of that may matter, which I think I like. I guess I'm glad that we reached a point where the candidate who spends the most wins, that's probably a good thing. I think it's because we've moved away from the large donor model into that small donor model. But curious what you think, David. Yeah, that's a good question. I think that I'm just no longer surprised by any generic polling that puts a Democrats up, nor by any fundraising number

that puts Democrats up. Because I think if there's one thing we've kind of established now electorally is that there are more Democrats than the Republicans and the Democrats' demographic is richer in a lot of ways. The very high end right now, the very high end of income in the U.S. is much more democratic than it used to be.

The Democrats' disadvantage is not in numbers or in resources. It's in location. They are hyperclustered in big, huge population centers. And so the Republicans, you know, it's amazing how the conventional wisdom is flipped. It wasn't that long ago that there was this blue wall in the electoral college. Allegedly, now there's a sort of a belief that there's an inherent red advantage.

But I do think there are a lot of inherent red advantages in a lot of these races, even though the Democrats, as a general matter, have more money and more people. and that money isn't going to overcome a lot of those red advantages and a lot of localities around the United States of America. So, and again, with, again, if you go back to effective polarization, seeing 30 ads from your opponent and only 19 from your ally isn't going to be the thing that upreach you from this very deeply seated tribal affiliation. Sort of the definition of diminishing returns.

yeah it's a bit of a non sequitur but um that's what i'm here for um the all this talk we've had of late um it just died on a tiny little bit of america poised for civil war people are going to start shooting each other and all these kinds of things and um we're going to have mass mass violence in the streets um for years now at least david and i have heard from people saying that you know This election is the entire future of the country is online. If we lose it, America's over and all these kinds of things. Next stop, Civil War, yada, yada, yada. It's just worth taking a little bit of a reality check for a second

and realize that either party could demonstrably change the face of American politics by encouraging its voters to move to states to bolster their turnout in those states, right? If Democrats just could tell, if you honestly believe, that the next election, the fate of the country and maybe the world and certainly of democracy weighs in the balance. So move from Santa Monica to Arizona, right? Move from New York City to Pennsylvania. But people aren't willing to do that, but we're supposed to believe they're willing to murder other Americans in large numbers in a total war. It's just one of these things I get very frustrated with when people tell me that, like, you know, I have to support X or I have

to vote for why, and I tell them why I live in D.C., my vote doesn't matter, and they're like, that's not the point. You have to blah, blah, blah. It's like, no, it kind of is the point. And if you're telling me this from Texas, go move to Southern California or San Francisco and start voting for Republicans there if you think the stakes are so high. But don't give me this crap. Anyway, so this brings me to my next topic then, which is the races where money is being lit on fire. And so I'm thinking of Wendy Davis against Rick Perry, Greg Abbott, Rick Perry, who was that back in that 2014 race? Just an enormous amount of money pouring into Wendy Davis.

I think it was $45 plus million, and she lost by 20 points. Also, this woman who ran against Mitch McConnell, what was her name? Amy McGrath, $53-ish million against Mitch McConnell. It was 38% to 58% when all was told. And lots of other Democratic campaigns complained about that because she wasn't raising money from Kentucky, of course. She was raising national Democratic dollars that could have gone to any one of these races

that were actually really close in the end, the Democrats ended up losing. And they were like, yeah, so why aren't we doing more to prevent this? This time around, funny enough, I think it's absolutely Texas again. I think Beto O'Rourke is raising national dollars that that's a nine-point race, and it's getting wider, not smaller.

And then the question is Stacey Abrams. Are Stacey Abrams and Beto O'Rourke, two candidates who had a lot of promise a few years ago and just are not the people for 2022? You know, the Stacey Abrams decline. I'm much more interested in that than I'm in Beto because I think Beto was running in a blue wave year against one of the most unlikable politicians

in the entire United States of America and it's pretty obvious he peaked. It's pretty obvious he was not a super talent. You know, he runs for president and it's just a disaster. So he was not a super talent. He was right person, right time, right opponent and almost did it and couldn't quite do it.

Stacey Abrams was somebody... I mean, we say almost. It was a three-point race. That's not like... Three points in Texas is pretty close. For Texas, it was crazy. But I'm just saying in real life, three points is like not close. Not super almost, right.

Stacey Abrams was almost. And then she went around really persistently, persistently, diligently, competently, squandering all of her credibility. Because she just wouldn't concede the race. You know, she just wouldn't concede the race. And while her race was closer than Beto and Ted Cruz, she lost. It wasn't even subtle. And the thing was, then she got locked into this thing where

I'm the avatar of the victim of Russian voters, I mean Russian, Republican voter suppression. I'm the victim of Republican voter suppression. And then all of a sudden, 2020 rolls around and the idea that you're going to challenge election results gets really out of fashion fast. You know, if you're going to be the Party of Democracy, and if you're going to be the party that says that we honor election results and one of your most prominent up-and-coming stars has never conceded an election that she clearly lost.

I think the air went out of that balloon and it should have gone out of that balloon when she refused to concede. But after January 6th, the air just went out of that balloon and that's that for her. It actually brings me to another question. You know, in a lot of these Secretary of State races around the country, Republicans are putting in a lot more resources.

And I don't just mean money. I also mean sort of boots on the ground, ground game stuff, political operations, better talent, such that, like, they may win a lot of these Secretary of State races and put in people who, you know, could have changed outcomes potentially in 2020 in terms of who the state sends in is certified. And I guess my question is, if in 2024 these secretaries of state send in election, results to Congress that Democrats feel like are fraudulent, are they going to not certify the election? And how is that going to work just rhetorically? How are they going to explain how it was treason and criminal when Republicans refused to certify the election in 2020? But when Democrats do it in

2024, it's because there was election fraud? No, I worry about the problem, to be sure. and I'm and like one solution would be to have the FBI keep a very close watch on chicanery at the state level which is part of their mandate yes the very trusted FBI by the right that's the problem right is that the FBI is not exactly in good odor these days and it would be immediately spun as agents of the regime you know blah blah blah blah blah stuff so you could see things get really ugly really really quickly um I would like to think that at least in some of these states, like I found it very reassuring this Brian Boldock guy, Donald Bulldoch, the guy running for Senate in New Hampshire, that once he got the nomination, he was like, you know, it turns out the election wasn't stolen. I've never seen something happen faster.

It was 24 hours. Yeah, it was amazing. And I suspect that maybe like Sununu said, if you want me to campaign for you, this is what you're going to have to say. And, like, as we've talked about a lot of the very self-serious NatCon, you know, common good conservative crowd, a lot of them are just following a strategy of of skipping rungs on the ladder by embracing arguments that the mob likes kind of thing. There is a tendency in all sorts of realms of life for people to use shady tactics to get

the job that they want and then all of a sudden they go establishment really, really fast because now they have a position of status to protect and a path up the ladder that the conventional route makes more sense to them. Like I remember vividly in the 90s, lots of journalist types playing up that they were Gen X and therefore they had this unique perspective on American life and that's why you need to hire them. And then the second they got in the door, they just started doing real journalism and said, yeah, that was all BS because, you know, that was just me playing on baby boomer generational nonsense. A lot of these guys, I think, play on, have that kind of strategy. And it's not obvious to me that once they have the job, they want to risk

going to jail, committing fraud, getting sued, all that kind of stuff. Some will. And then you just hope that, like, their boss is the governor or whoever, stay on top of it. But there's definitely, definitely a lot of really bad case scenarios that are more plausible than I'd like. Well, you know, it reminds me that line from spinal tap. It's such a fine line between clever and stupid. Right. There is such a fine line between cynical and crazy. And you don't really often know who was cynical and who's legit crazy until the moment of testing. And Although I'm pretty sure Doug Mostriano Over in Pennsylvania, he's just, yeah, yeah, he's just way out there

Hey, you both professor-type law people I have one question for you that's been bothered me for a very long time How where do we get to the point where at the federal level The Secretary of State is entirely a diplomat But at the state level, the Secretary of State is essentially a clerk of elections When did these two things diverge and why do they have the same name? No clue. I don't know the answer to that, but obviously, Secretary of State at the federal level has always been what it's been.

Right. So what's, I guess, more interesting is why did they call it Secretary of State at the state level? And my guess is that when, you know, for instance, Texas was its own country, it did have a Secretary of State as it had the Texas Embassy in London, which is, you know what? I actually think the enchiladas are pretty tasty now. Not a joke. They're good. I've been there. Even though they're like not Tex-Mex, they're like spinach and stuff, but it's delicious.

And for someone homesick, I highly recommend. And then when it became a state, you would just sort of transform that into like, okay, well, we don't conduct foreign policy anymore. And so now we do the business of the state, which involves elections, incorporating businesses, which is what the Secretary of State, at least in Texas does. It would be fascinating now. And then we called a guy in charge of our, you know, oil and gas, the railroad commissioner for obvious reasons. True.

But it would be awesome if our Secretary of State here in Tennessee was in charge of relations with Alabama, Mississippi. How much of it would devolve simply to football? Yeah. And talking smack about football. Negotiating the terms of home-and-home games. Trash-talking neighboring states that actually we might be 48th in education, but you're 49th. There's that Supreme Court case, the Florida-Georgia line case that keeps coming up. I feel like the Secretary of State could like try to negotiate.

Like, we don't have to go to the Supreme Court. What if we share the water? Yeah. Now, we talked at length about it. That was Tennessee and Mississippi, I think, right? Oh, this happens like all the time. Like all the states sue each other over riparian rights, Jonah. Yep.

Yep. And Michigan wants a big chunk of Wisconsin back that they think. was wrongly taken from. Isn't there that war up on the Yupor that they fought? Was that against Wisconsin? I think so. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets

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All right. Last question. I have been glued to my phone yesterday and today trying to get updates on Hurricane Ian, what's happening in Florida. At this point, obviously things are very preliminary. We have an early report from the sheriff in the Fort Myers area saying that he believes hundreds could be dead. Governor Ron DeSantis has said that that is not an official count of any kind. It's based. on 911 calls from people in their homes. Tragically, for those who have been to Sanibel Island, the causeway, the only way in and out of Sanibel Island has collapsed. They have obviously no power. All the cameras, you know, the traffic cams and stuff are out on the island. And so those folks are entirely cut off. I just, it's cliche to say our thoughts and prayers are going out to everyone who is

affected by Hurricane Ian, both that directed on Fort Myer. and it's still moving its way across Florida and up through the rest of the country, which could expect, you know, really record levels of flooding. That being said, this is certainly a going to be a political task for Ron DeSantis. He is in an election year. He's looking at 2024. Rather than focus on that, though, again, I'm appealing to you as olds. Historically, what do you think is the track record of,

these deus machina political events heading into elections so I'll go first I think first of all from what I can tell right because it's basically press conferences DeSantis is doing a very good job he certainly seems in command of what's going on

I don't mean necessarily he can command in deploying resources but he seems in command of the facts he's not quite doing as much touchy-feely feel your pain stuff as some other politicians might that's probably a brand thing or personality thing.

But it seems like he's doing a good job. Yeah, but it's, I'm of two minds about this. And again, my heart goes out. I was texting a bunch of friends who live in Florida. I texted my friend Charlie Cook from National Review last night who lives outside of Jacksonville. And I said, remember, your firearms are useless against the hurricane. but the like you know there are some things where you can you can sort of wing and there's some things

you just know matter an enormous amount politically forget life and treasure and all that kind of stuff governors of Florida know they're going to have a hurricane to deal with and they know that Florida voters can be can forgive a lot but not screwing up response and preparations for a hurricane. It's very similar in New York as an analogy, not in terms of the stakes, to be sure, to snow response. Like mayors can have their entire career as ruined if they screw up the snow once. And mayors try very, very hard to be prepared for that. And so it seems like DeSantis is prepared. I think this is as a political thing, which I agree is still, it's a little tacky to talk about that way. This so far is nothing but an unalloyed good for

Ron DeSantis, he gets this commercial, you know, he gets all the news networks, or at least the cable news networks, to break into, you know, coverage about how he's a fascist to have him do press conferences about how he's getting food and water to old age homes. And it is, it shows them to be in charge. It shows them to be, you know, compassionate to, you know, the extent he can do that. And I have to think that unless there is some major screw up that we don't know about yet. Um, this is going to be just nothing but upside for Ron DeSantis the way it has been for every other governor of Florida who handled these things well. I mean, Jeb Bush was fantastic at dealing with hurricanes. And not only because it's sort of like, what's that old line about, um,

Ginger Roder, Ginger Rogers, she did everything that Fred Astaire did, but did it backwards and in high heels. Jeb would do those press conferences really masterfully and then do them again in Spanish. And it was really, really impressive. And, uh, but um i don't know i just see it as a political win i'm like but see gregg abbott with the texas freezing issue and the power outages um 18 months ago which i was there for wildly hurt him that's right you were if anyone remembers this um my parents came up here thankfully and you were trapped down there after i told you how great it was going to be to go to austin for a couple days but Greg Abbott took a huge hit,

one that I don't think he's completely recovered from. True, but screwing up is a huge thing, right? But my point is... But like, what's the screw up, I guess? Aha, that's my segue. Okay. There you go. Here I come.

Spot the screw up. Go. No. No, the segue is I do think that what ends up happening is that if you... Governors in states that have risks or routine risks like Florida are often in...

inheriting systems that are built up to respond to that risk. And Florida has been, it's what's interesting about Florida to me is adversity has made it a pretty well-functioning machine in some pretty key areas. So, for example, how much would America have been better off if Pennsylvania could account it votes as quickly and accurately as Florida did, right? Why is Florida so good at counting votes now? Well, it's been in the eye of the storm, you know, so to speak. political storm and has really figured that out.

Hurricanes, Florida has figured out how to respond. Now, but, here's the but, there is a level of magnitude of damage that can overwhelm any system. And when you hit that level of magnitude of damage that is in fact overwhelming the system, it's going to lead to backlash and controversy, et cetera. So if you go to Texas and Abbott, you couldn't, I'm sure a partisan could tell me, if only Abbott it had an A, B, and C, sort of foreseen the unforeseeable, we wouldn't have had this. But there was a level of natural adversity that overwhelmed the system. Katrina, we can point to a lot of problems with Katrina, but the moment those levees broke,

when those levees broke, in many ways, the New Orleans was going to suffer monumental. And it was going to be really hard for anyone to look at that and say, boy, we handled that well. And so the same, I think, with Ian, so much depends as, you know, as it rolls past, was this a level of a damage at the level of magnitude that overwhelmed the human systems that have been put in place by Florida? And if the answer to that is no, that as strong as Ian was, this is still within that realm of what Florida, Floridians expect from hurricanes and what Florida is. built to withstand from hurricanes, DeSantis is going to be fine if it was more than that. It almost doesn't matter at some point what DeSantis did because the level of anguish and the level of suffering

will be so great that it will cause blame to radiate all over the place. And so that's kind of how I think about these natural disasters. If they exceed that, whatever that expected tolerance for suffering is, then people get angry. Like debates, expectations are everything. I think what, just a problem spot for a second here in Florida, most people who are old enough in Texas and Florida and along the Gulf Coast have sort of a natural rhythm when it comes to hurricanes.

It weakens when it gets, when it hits land and as it gets closer in. That's not what happened here. And so Floridians saw a Cat 3 hurricane heading their way. it was probably going to weaken when it hit land, maybe just a lesser three, maybe even like lower to a two. And in that situation, you might stay in your house.

And unfortunately, Ian picked up steam becoming almost a category five hurricane as it made landfall on some of these barrier islands. And so to your point, David, the expectation for individuals who stayed in their homes was quite different. And we'll find out, you know, in the coming days,

that fared. All right, we've got a couple not worth your times to go through here today. A lot of things weren't worth our time. But let's start with what wasn't worth Declan's time. Declan is our editor of the morning dispatch. This podcast. Yep. And what wasn't worth his time today was this podcast, as David said, because Declan told us he needed to pick up a friend from the airport. And we're all pretty confused by that. We thought that was over with the age of Uber and Lyft. um spouses sure although we can talk at like how many years of marriage one's like uber's good hon it's right on your phone um but like friends at the airport and sort of not worth your time what are those other things that have died with the new era of technology and what hasn't and how terrible

is declan we'll start with the last question Jonah yeah so and just a harp on the the crucial point here the badness of deckland yeah um my impression impression was that he agreed to do this podcast and then said no wait I can't I have to go pick up someone at the airport which is as excuses go it's sort of it's fairly close to yeah I'm not bringing a date to the prom because my Canadian super mile girlfriend has a photo shoot he saw our topics and was like yeah I'm sleeping in I'm sleeping yeah I'm just not sure I buy it um in my 20s I helped friends move and friends helped me move. And move is a big ask. Like move is, are you a friend? You realize someone thinks you're a real friend if they ask you to move. And I've had a couple times in my 20s

where like, I don't want to embarrass them here. But there were people who asked me if I could help them move. And I had no idea that they thought we were those kinds of friends. I mean, it was just, it was just like, wait, what? You want me to help, you want me to take a Saturday in the D.C. summertime and help you move? Like, like, did you run through all the random strangers on the street? You asked first kind of thing. So I don't know.

I mean, it's like we should, this is the tragedy of Declan not being here is, this would be a great question for one of the youngs, you know, about what in your 20s is like a big ask favor that's still. Like, not a taboo to ask. David? I am going to stand with Declan. What? What?

Yes. How on earth could I write so much about friendship and then say, your dear friend arrives and they want to spend some extra time with you? You know, you want to welcome them in person. You want to spend time talking on the car ride, depending on how long the car ride. And you go, nope, Uber. No, sorry. No, so I think of it like this. No, podcast.

It's not Sunday. I have a job. Well, he shouldn't have said, yes, podcast. Now that's, but on the fundamental priority of picking up your friend, you know, and they're kind of an always say yes ethos around friends. Like, you want to use my truck? Yes. You want me to pick up you from the airport?

Yes. So then the reciprocal responsibility is then don't ask for the truck unless it's like really necessary or don't ask to be picked up unless, you know, it's something that it's super convenient for everybody. But you kind of as a friend, don't you just sort of always say yes? I can't wait until Declan hears this and the sob story that it's going to turn out to be and like that definitely were the assholes. David, so you recently bought a truck. How many times have friends asked for it just in the past, what, it's been four months? No, it's been only a month and a half.

Oh, okay. Yeah, so none yet. but yeah david's trucks available but also everyone in tennessee has a truck there's lots of trucks available here but every time i've owned a truck um it it gets loaned out a lot but i have it but my my son-in-law has asked for it and i've i've let him use it you know multiple times so yeah always say yes always say yes so here's a question for you guys um about and this is this is very dc i will grant you but the question of being asked to blur people's books Does it cause you as much agita as it causes me?

Oh, yeah. Like, say a friend asked you to blurb a book, for whatever reason you don't want to blurb. Like, how do you tell them no? What do you do? I mean, it's a problem. It's one of the best things about my apostasy in the Trump years is fewer people want me to blurb their books. I am about to speak at someone's investiture, another very D.C. problem. and I have so much stress about that.

Sort of the opposite stress. Like, I want to do such a good job and am concerned, like, this is a huge deal for his family, you know? And, like, how am I going to live up to the expectations of this person who I do care a lot about? I had to turn down people when I worked for Carly who wanted her to blurb their book.

And, like, that was really politically fraught because she was running for president. You know, we needed all the friends we could get. So that was bad. And then the thing is, if you're going to blurb, you might want to read it. And that's a time investment. Because, you know, one of the things...

It's a big ask. It's a big act. Because one of the things is, you know, if you say, okay, I'll blurb it, but I'm not going to... What's it about? That sounds good. And so here comes the blurb. And then 18 months later, the book comes out and maybe there's problems with it. It was also my job to read the book, and some of them had big.

one of one book someone asked carly to blurb was like a tirade against women in the workplace I was like did you not think someone would read it like what right and so sometimes you just don't have time to read it as much you know and it's it's yeah you know I'm happy to do it when I have time to read and I like the book I'm super happy to do it it's just a combination of time to read and like the book. Okay. Last, not worth your time, a 200 plus year old flute, crystal flute that belonged to James Madison was taken out by the National Archives and given a play at a concert by Lizzo. And lo and behold, people on the internet had feelings about it. And it fell along partisan lines for reasons that I don't totally understand. I didn't know flutes were like a partisan thing.

For those who can't quite guess which side the partisans fell on, I'll spoiler alert this for you. Republicans tended to not like that Lizzo played James Madison's flute, and everyone else didn't care. And then some on the far left thought it was like this amazing moment in American history to have James Madison's flute being played by Lizzo. Curious, Jonah, do you care one bit? Very little. Very, very little. I mean, I'm sure a CSI team could find the molecules of my concern. It's not zero, but it's pretty low. I don't have to be brutally honest. I did not know that James Madison had the flute. Nobody did. That's sort of the like joke of the whole thing. All these people saying that they care, like you didn't know it existed. And isn't it kind of cool that we now all know that James Madison owned a crystal flute? I don't have a fantastic radar lock on who Lizzo is. Um, and, um, and like what the, the stuff I saw on obviously, this is one of these classic Twitter problems is that the left wingers found the very worst examples of idiot right wingers saying things and then said, see, this is what all the Republicans are saying. Um, and so like I kind of resent even by the vaguest insinuation or association that like some crazy racist jackwad who says that it's desecrating the memory of a white founding father by how. having a black woman play as crystal flute. You know, I have nothing to do with these people.

And so I think it highlighted the worst parts of social media. At the same time, I think it would have been really bad if she dropped it. But presumably she had the permission. She didn't. And she had the permission of the people who owned it or have custody of it. So I think it's kind of cool and not a very big deal. Also, David, did you watch the video of her playing the flute? There's two.

Fine. But like, did you hear her play the flute? Yeah. I thought it was beautiful. She's a wonder, what do you call a flutist? A floutist. A floutist. Although, actually, I was corrected by a flutist at one point who said that that was just like what stuffy people try to call it.

He was a professional flutist in a major city symphony and he said, please call me a flutist. See, as someone who defies convention all the time, I like to consider myself a floutist. I flout you. They flout your conventions. Go on. But you're all squishes here. You're squishes because all I know is if next thing you know, you're going to have black aerial playing that flute

and then I'm moving to Canada because this country is just gone. No, I mean, come on. Like, nobody knew the flute existed. So this idea that I'm incredibly offended at the desecration of this flute that I didn't know existed until this person was excited about it. Right. You know, that's the interesting thing. about, like, I don't know, Lizzo, I don't even know if I've listened to one syllable of her songs.

You have. Okay. May, I guess I have. So, thank you, Sarah. And I, but she was excited about this piece of American history and people were cheering about this really cool piece of American history. And I'm supposed to be mad about that. Like, it just, it just blows my mind that that is something that, you know, people with

not insignificant public voices are going to spend, you know, more than five seconds thinking about, you know, look, it's an interesting artifact in American history, millions of people became aware of it for the first time, a celebrity was excited about playing it and felt honored to play it. Good. Yeah, it's like Hamilton. Like Hamilton was great for America, right? I agree with you, David. I think it is so cool that a major celebrity was excited about a piece of American history, opened up her whole audience to get to hear and learn about it, and the

fact that she lightly twerked kind of. It was more just like a booty shake. The people who are saying she twerk don't actually know what twerking is, but a light booty shake while playing the flute, I think it's awesome. It was like its own trill. By the way...

This was not a religious relic, by the way. No. Yeah, so... It was like vibrato with the flute. The Lizzo song, David, that I think you are most likely to know is the, I just took a DNA test. Turns out I'm 100% that be, that sound familiar? I have heard of that song. I thought you had.

It will not be the last song in a French press anytime soon. There's other songs that I think you've heard of, but that one is her sort of first, first big hit in 2019. And with that, thank you for joining us for another bizarre, not worth your time that was mostly intended to troll. Declan. And you can hop in the comments section and troll Declan yourself. We so appreciate all trolls of Declan. Or you could rate us wherever you're getting this podcast and mention in the rating what you think about Declan's choices there, which will just confuse people who are scrolling through and looking for a good podcast. Or we can just talk to you next week. Up to 200,000 pages of docs may have been seized from Mar-a-Lago.

How did we go from 11,000 to 200,000? We added 100,000. 8,9,000. That's correct. I hate everyone. 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,

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