The Dispatch Podcast - Your Midterms Questions, Answered

Episode Date: November 4, 2022

With less than a week before the midterms, Sarah, David, and Jonah come together to answer your questions: Can voters push their parties to be better? What’s the best way to engage with your representatives? When is Nick Cattogio joining the pod? Plus: the panel reacts to Biden’s Democracy in Peril, Pt. 2 speech. Show Notes: -Sarah’s piece for POLITICO about the GOP’s election laws -Sarah, David, and Jonah’s report for the National Constitution Center Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isger, joined by David French and Jonah Goldberg. We will start with President Biden's speech this week on democracy once again. And of course, we're going to answer all of your questions about the midterm elections. Let's dive right in Jonah. The president gave a speech this week, not with sort of a Star Warsian backdrop at Independence Hall. This time it was at Union Station, though you wouldn't have known that.

It was really just a blue curtain with some American flags. Better lighting, as they say. But the speech was largely a rerun of what he had said at Independence Hall, democracy under threat. That's why you need to vote for Democrats, attacking MAGA Republicans. He opened, of course, though, with the attack on Paul Pelosi. What did you think? Yeah, I mean, so I have, like, a really big rant that I want to do is, like, a G-file on this,

which is probably off of the punditry train, so I'll save some of that for later. But I think, first of all, we were just talking about it before we started recording, the advanced people clearly overcompensated in the other direction where it's sort of like from the from the Philly speech to this it's like Emperor Palpatine moves to the Ramada right and it felt like you know annex conference room B at the Ramada by the airport with some more with some extra American flags

which is sad because Union Station is beautiful it's historic it's two blocks from Capitol Hill but you had no way to know that watching. I would love to see it. Maybe we can get some of the dispatch to do it. There could be some good reporting there about, because it's such a bad, was such a bad setup.

Maybe they were terrified of reports of them clearing homeless out of the Union Station to have the shot that they wanted, right? Because the place really is kind of overrun with homeless people these days. Anyway, I think it was a weird speech. If you read the Politico write up on it, their position, their reporting on it was that this is just something that Biden felt that he

needed to do for America. And there were a lot of Democrats who, or at least it was surmised that there were a lot of Democrats who are struggling right now in various races who are like, why are we focusing the nation's attention back on this guy who's increasingly, who's increasingly unpopular again in the closing days of the election or the campaign? I mean, good news on that front, there was a World Series on, there was dinner to eat, there were walls to stare at, paint to dry, I don't think that had huge viewership. It was not carried on any of the networks. It was carried on cable news.

Yeah. I mean, so I could see, maybe they see something, I doubt it, but maybe they see something in the data that says that this is a base turnout kind of message that reminds the true believers of what's at stake and all of that. but I doubt it. And I think it was more just sort of this is Biden thinking he's doing something important for history. It could be that Biden thinks that he's not going to run again and he wants to be on the historical record of having warned America about the terrible things that would happen. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that's possible. And there's some point in the idea of that.

I just think, and this would be my future rants, you know, strong letter to follow about this is that philosophically, it's a hot mess. You cannot say he has all these lines in there about how you can't only love your country when you win. You have to abide by the results of elections. And if you don't, and if you believe that, you have to vote for my party or you don't believe that. Right? There's an internal contradiction there that is kind of unsustainable. That makes sense to everybody who already believes it, but annoys the hell out of people who feel like they're being bullied to vote on this. issue rather than inflation or crime or all the other things. So I think it was a political

misstep of the first order. It's so funny that you say that because that's exactly what I took from the speech, this idea that democracy is under threat. These people want to take away your right to vote, both with voting restrictions that Jim Crow 2.0 speech that he gave in January in Georgia and that they also won't abide by the results of the election. And the way we're going to know that democracy has been saved is when only this one party can win. Right. So there's a few ways to go here, David. But let's just start with the democracy under threat. There was a poll that asked what people's number one issue was in determining their vote. Most important issue. The economy, of course, had 40%. But threats to democracy came in at number two with 14%. So yes, huge, huge gap. and several other issues were clustered in that low single or low double digits, high single digits. On the one hand, I think it's important to note that this is people's number one issue.

And it's very hard just in sort of the technical aspects of polling to keep reading lists and stuff to ask about number two issues and number three issues. So I always find it interesting because people seem to think that then threats to democracy is everyone's number two issue. But that's not what that says. It says that 14% of people think that it is the number one issue in the country. We don't really know what people's number two issue is after the economy, which would be really interesting to me because certainly Republicans think it's crime and Democrats think it's abortion. And then Republicans then will talk about inflation and Democrats think it doesn't make sense

to talk about inflation. So they'll move to the number two issue for at least folks that they think could be pulled over to their side. But if we then break apart the threats to democracy folks and start asking, define what is a threat to democracy, 45% will say that Trump is a major threat to democracy. This is of all Americans. 28% will say that the Republican Party is a major threat to democracy.

33% will say that the Democratic. We'll say the Democratic Party is the major threat to democracy. And then when we break that out for just independence, so take out the super partisans on each side, because that can really skew a poll question like this. Are we getting to a statistically significant sample here when you're talking? Yeah, yeah, fair. So of the independence, 23% view the GOP as a major threat to democracy. 31% say that Democrats are the major threat to democracy.

And so if you sort of bake that into Joe Biden's speech, he's talking about the only major threat to democracy is coming from the Republican side. That is simply not reflective of how Americans view the threats to democracy that are currently in their sort of zeitgeist world. And David, you always have your finger on the pulse of American culture. constantly what should we make

of that discrepancy that here in D.C. Threat to democracy equals attacking Republicans but in the rest of the country that's not what that means. Right. And that's not been the case

for, you know, since before January 6th because the people who were storming the capital in January 6th were not thinking they were overthrowing democracy. They were thinking

they were protecting democracy from a stolen election. The people who are arming themselves and putting on body armor and going to watch ballot boxes in Arizona are thinking they're protecting democracy, that they're making sure there isn't wide-scale fraud here. So it's a language that codes a certain way in a certain crowd definitely. I mean, amongst sort of, you know, elites in the center right and the center left,

threats to democracy means MAGA. But in the larger world, there's been a huge amount of concern over election fraud on the right, which, what is election fraud, but a threat to democracy? And so both sides here are thinking they're defending democracy through their actions. Now, look, I think obviously, as I've said, only 50 million times, the run up to January 6th was just full of absolute incredible. delusions, but it is still accurate to describe that delusional belief was based in an idea that they're responding to threats to democracy. And I think for some, a lot of folks, threats to democracy is one of those things that Sarah, you and I both in our newsletters on Tuesday, not only did we include the same Saturday night live video, which is relevant

in this conversation. We did. We did. We also started our newsletters with the statistic that 80% of Americans view the other side is a threat to the country, right? And so that's where we are, is that... David and I have mind-melded too much. Apologies. Well, all in between was really different. Oh, good. Yeah, it was all very different in between.

Yeah, it's funny, I wrote it, and I was like, oh, there's a sweep. Let me read the sweep. Oh, interesting. Well, describe the SNL skit real quick for everyone. Yeah, the SNL skit is hilarious. It's a group of Democrats, and it's set like as a horror movie. And the horror starts out that Joe Biden is running again. And they react to that as if like one of the murderer from scream has come in the door.

And then as they receive a rumor on a cell phone that he's not going to be running. And then the escalating horror is each new person that they think might run from Kamala, where someone says Kamala and another cast member slaps him and says what is the matter with you this is hilarious and then Pete and they're screaming

and Bernie and they're screaming and then that culminates in Hillary and they just lose their minds they're terrified and then that circles back around and says wait wait Biden Biden again is that okay which kind of gets to the

lack of fervor around Biden which is really more of an indictment of everyone else. So anyway, you know, in what you're talking about when you're talking about threats to democracy, for an awful lot of folks really means the other party is really bad. That's, I think, what that phrase means. Also, look, I don't want to go in a rant mode,

but I... Go, do it. No, no, no, no. But like, like, the cynicism involved And we are not alone in this, but the I told you so's that we have every right to cash in for years to come on Democrats spending tens of millions of dollars on election denying candidates, helping election denying candidates get the Republican nomination who are now going to win. And at the same time, Biden gives a national address where he talks about how these people are threats to democracy when his party helped get them the nominations. and help get them elected, gives away the store on the whole idea that this is all high-minded in the idea of protecting democracy.

Like, if you had the commissioner of Major League Baseball talking about our game of baseball, our national pastime, and then in secret, not even in secret, in plain view, doing everything you could to make sure the Yankees won the World Series every year, you know, it undermines the credibility of what you're talking about. if you're talking about the fundamental integrity of our democratic system, when you're only talking about it as a means to get a partisan victory, and you're doing things where you're actually elevating people who are a threat to our democratic system. Yeah.

On the hunch that it's a, I'll be a narrow partisan advantage. It is so cynical and grotesque. And I'm just done hearing from people claiming that, like, oh, this is just normal politics. You can't make both claims simultaneously. You cannot. I want to talk about the other aspect of his threat to democracy speech, which was voting restrictions. And this is quickly becoming almost like my rant against campaign finance reform. So rant or-

But, you know, he gives this- When do I get my turn? He gives this speech in January in Georgia, refers to these 19 states that have passed voting restrictions as threats to democracy, wanting to sort of end the right to vote, refers to those laws as Jim Crow 2.0, doesn't mention the fact that four of the states have Democratic governors, doesn't mention the fact that he actually never reached out to any Republicans to try to see if there was any voting laws that could be passed. The questions that plagued him afterwards about attacking all Republicans and not having picked up the phone to call Mitt Romney,

we're buried there. So fast forward, and, you know, Stacey Abrams, who has been sort of on the forefront of voting rights activism on the left, still saying that these are voting, vote suppressing laws. Now, we, however, also have early vote numbers that show turnout really, really high this time around. Stacey Abrams has a response to that that I think,

is actually important, which is, here's her quote. We proved it in 2018, and it remains true that turnout does not dispel voter suppression. Suppression is about barriers to access, but the antidote to suppression is overwhelming the polls with your presence, and that is exactly what voters did in 2018. It's what they continue to do in 2020 and 21, and is what we are seeing in 22. But it is wrong to suggest that there is a correlation between voter turnout in voter suppression, because suppression is about barriers. She's actually right about this, by the way, that, like, on the one hand,

what the response to voter suppression laws has been is to say, you can't let this stop you. Here's all the ways that you can make sure that your vote can be heard. We've got to turn out and vote so that we can overturn these laws. On the other hand, if they didn't present any barrier to voting and they weren't suppressing anyone's vote, you would also see high turnout. So it's an unverifiable thesis either way, kind of, which bothers me. So I'm at a loss.

We have academic studies which show that these laws make no difference whatsoever to turn out that show that the idea that high turnout helps Democrats and low turnout helps Republicans, also false. We have states that have all mail-in voting, for instance, with high turnout. Some are red, some are blue. And of course, then the results of the 2020 election totally undermine any claim that there's a partisan advantage to high turnout, for instance. President Trump lost at the top of the ballot, and then Republicans overperformed all these other places showing that the turnout alone was simply not predictive of partisan advantage. And then when it comes to these specific voting laws, just to go over a few of them again, I'll pick on Georgia for a second.

Georgia changed their law to mandate 17 days of early voting, including at least two Saturdays, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. And Massachusetts has 11 days of early voting during regular business hours, which isn't defined. New York has nine days of early voting, but from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. The Joe Biden's bill that he sent to Congress only had for 14 days of early voting, but they would have been required to be open for 10 hours on those days. At the same time, Georgia also has automatic voter registration, unlike Minnesota, a voter doesn't need a reason to vote by mail, unlike Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, Delaware. So which one is the state that's suppressing the vote?

Is it Georgia, which has 17 days of early voting for eight hours, or the president's voting bill, which only asked for 14 days of early voting, but with 10 hours. And what about, you know, the automatic voter registration or the no-excuse vote by mail? And how do we factor that all in? Jonah, I think this is really hard to pull apart. But what I don't think it is is a threat to democracy. Right. Right. I wrote a column about Vladimir Putin's speech the other day. And one of the, you know, he keeps talking about how he hates liberalism, you know, classical. liberal democracy and all that kind of stuff and that it's this hegemonic imposition of our values

and America's trying to have a hegemonic imposition of our values on the world. And the more you think about it, it's sort of garbage, right? I promise I'm getting to a point. Like, I was thinking about this in terms of, like, the law. There is literally no other ideal in the world that appeals to all human beings other than the basic idea of a fair trial when it comes to, like, legal stuff, right?

you know that the right that the that you get the defendant gets the right to self-defense right all that all these kinds of things you can say that's liberal you can also just say that's what all human beings kind of want there's a lot of play around the world among places that we say have the rule of law about how they implement the rule of law you know napoleonic code has one way of going things and all that kind of like little things at the margins the same thing is true with democracy all around the world places have there's a lot of variety in the ways of countries do democracy and there's a lot of variety in the way that states do democracy. There is no sort of international organization that would look at

the differences between Georgia and New York and Massachusetts and say, well, we have an authoritarian country over here or an undemocratic country over here and a democratic country over there. And it is either just, again, total cynical B.S. where they are trying to scare members of their own coalition into thinking the rights are about to be taken away, or they're so drunk on the Kool-Aid that they actually can't see these pretty obvious distinctions and they just, they, they're so deep in the bubble that they can't understand that what they're talking about actually doesn't make sense in the real world. And there's another thing about this, which is, look, on Stacey Abrams case specifically,

The whole thing was brought to a federal judge by her own organization that she found it. A judge appointed by Obama, too. An Obama appointed judge who held, what, a 20-something-day trial with 50-plus witnesses. And at the end of the day, all of her claims were dismissed. And what was most interesting about it is, even though you had all of these resources poured into this trial, they couldn't actually bring forward any voters who were unable to vote because of Georgia's restrictions. There was one voter and one part, one count in the complaint that was unable to cast a vote, but that was because she had time restrictions from her nursing facility.

And so she only had about 15 minutes or so to cast her vote and wasn't able to do it in that time. That's, and Stacey Abrams lost by 54,000 votes. that's by five times as much as Trump lost Georgia. And so, you know, and then to think of how Stacey Abrams was turned into a hero of the left after 2018. I mean, this is somebody who was cast as the president of the United Federation of Planets in Star Trek. I mean, she became a pop culture icon

and was an election denier. I mean, she literally said, I, you know, I didn't lose fair and sense. Square. It was not a free and fair election. It was, and then, so I'm just adding that on on top of Jonah's rant about the, about the pouring tens of millions of dollars into supporting election denying Republicans. And then Sarah's rant about the, you know, Jim Crow 2.0 that wasn't. The real issue here is not vote casting. It is vote counting. It is certification of votes. That is where the problem is.

In 2020, we did not have a problem with the vote casting. We didn't even have a problem with vote counting, truly. We had a problem with vote certification as a result of wild conspiracy theories in Donald Trump. But I have to say in the last few weeks, the Democrats have been doing a phenomenal job of telling me or of reaffirming to me why I'm not a Democrat. And that's a, considering I'm not going to vote for a lot of Republicans, that doesn't strike me as great that at the same time you're talking to somebody who's not going to vote for a lot of Republicans because of obvious issues with a lot of Republicans and then giving me no reason, none to vote for you is pretty, that's a pretty remarkable political feat,

I'd have to say. Unless you were an Ohio voter. I think Tim Ryan, like I listened to Tim Ryan the other night in the J.D. Vance thing. I was like, I'm not saying I'd vote for Tim Ryan, but I certainly wouldn't vote for J.D. Vance. And like, I was like, if this guy actually voted the way he's talking right now,

I could vote for Tim Ryan. I mean, that's no problem. But other than that, he's like literally the exception that proves the rule in terms of Democrats. I mean, like, think about Federman. Yeah, it's a tragedy for the Democratic Party that Tim Ryan will no longer be an elected office. He is one of their most talented message.

and one of the last remaining Democrats who seems to be able to speak to and attract non-college-educated voters in a way that Democrats, that used to be their strongest suit. I mean, in that sense, he's got a Bill Clinton-esque touch that nobody seems to value anymore, unfortunately.

He, I think, will close the margin in Ohio. J.D. Vance and Tim Ryan will certainly be a lot closer than the gubernatorial ticket at the top, but will it be enough to get Tim Ryan over the finish line in this environment? Probably not. And before we leave this subject, I will put in the show notes a piece that I wrote that runs through all of these voting laws.

I read all 19, clumped them all together, including the parts of the voting laws that are either unnecessary or maybe even negative when it comes to the counting of the ballots, as David mentioned. So if you are curious in that, check the show notes. All right, moving to the midterms. I'll stick with early vote real quick and just a second little rant on this talking point that I keep hearing from folks on the left

saying that early vote is showing that the polls are wrong and that Democrats are doing really, really well and that there is no red wave and Democrats should expect to win big on election night. Yikes! What? That is a real misunderstanding of early vote. Oh, yes.

I have done various hits on ABC of late where that was a topic. And my face is like, what? So, first of all, if this were 2006 and you were seeing a huge, partisan discrepancy in the early vote numbers, that would be very interesting that they contradict the polls by that much. It would definitely make me question whether the polling was off. However,

in 2022, in a post-pandemic world, there's a few things going on. One, more than 40% of Americans say that they're going to vote early. That is wildly higher than what we were looking at in a pre-pandemic 2018 world. For instance, in 2010, by the way, 26% said they were going to vote early in this same poll. So we're now nearly doubling up on that in 10 years. But second, we also had this huge partisan divide and early vote now, where Democrats are way more likely to vote early than Republicans, largely because of what happened in 2020 and COVID

and the messages that the two parties were sending, and somewhat related to that, the message that Republicans specifically are talking about in 2022, telling their voters to wait until the last possible moment to go vote even on election day so that the theory goes, the people committing fraud won't know how many votes they need to add and stuff into the ballots, which regardless certainly means that some chunk of Republicans are not early voting. they're going to wait not only for election day,

but even in the evening on election day to try to overwhelm the fraud. Parallus strategy. Terrible strategy for, I mean, many reasons. Things come up if you wait until the last minute and then your car breaks down and you don't get in line. Also, again, it's very frustrating because if Republicans win,

it will be seen as evidence that that strategy is what did it, that the people committing fraud couldn't instead of like oh yes but the economy's bad every historical trend low approval numbers so that's not great uh but jona just to do a vibe check where's your vibes right now um on politics we'll be specific um my vibes are i got i got i have a heavy load of vibes in my life these days but on politics um i generally think uh republicans that the becoming home phase gave a lot of people on the Democratic side

a lot of false hope in September or so and we are now seeing a regression to the mean I know the rhetoric in American life is weird and the candidates suck in so many ways but what we're actually seeing right now strikes me as pretty normal

where in the first term of a president, an unpopular president, the midterms go badly. And so the headwins are all against Democrats. And I think the Republicans get fairly close to the average since 1992, which is, what, 24 seats in the House, something like that. And they take the Senate by 52 seats. Wow. David, I had Christmas sold to Sanderson on the Remnant this week.

And she had a great reminder that is just worth repeating on this podcast, which is when you look at these polls and they say, for instance, you know, it's a 46-43 race, which means the Democratic candidate is up by three points. And then on election night, we're all shocked when the Republican wins. There's something else you need to notice about those numbers. 43 and 46 don't add up to 100. And in these, especially two candidate polls, some polls include the third-party candidates, but a lot don't. That difference is made up by undecided voters. And the only way you can hold that poll to so-and-so is supposed to win by three points is if you presume that the undecided voters will break evenly between the two candidates. That rarely, if ever happens, undecides tend to break, they break late, and they break in one direction.

It doesn't mean that all, you know, 10%, 6% break in the same direction, but it'll be a 60, 40, 70, 30 break. How do you see them breaking, David? I mean, look, right now I'm actually in some ways preferring this new vibe theory of politics to the endless. Well, you know how I hate lanes. I mean, there's all sorts of things I hate, but vibes I'm kind of down with. I'm cut it down with that. I prefer it to this endless parsing of the polls

because right now we don't have a lot of reason to be confident through recent history in polling. But here's the problem, Sarah, about the vibe theory for me. I live in a neighborhood that's 85% Republican. The vibes here are always red. You wake up, you look out the window, red vibes. You go to sleep, you look out the window, red vibes. Red all around.

And so I'm trying to. to get my vibes from, you know, sort of what's going on trying to pick up data points all around from, you know, all around the country. And look, everything I'm seeing is saying breaking red, right? Everything, everything that I'm seeing is saying breaking red. Is Oregon in play right now? You know, those kinds of questions are very real at this moment. So, you know, I'm with Jonah. I, it would be a real surprise to me, a combination of a vibe surprise and a polling surprise if the Democrats pull it out. And then where are we left?

What are we left with Sarah? We can't have polls anymore. We'll have learned vibes are wrong. So what do you go by? Does that end the era of rank punditry? And we just all wait for results at that point because we can't trust. Wouldn't that be a treat? See, this is why I actually like the fact that the polls have been wrong.

and I think that there's a whole, you know, academic paper to be written about the rise in American turnout in elections in 2018 and 2020 and 21, and what we're about to see in 22, which is that the declining trust in polls is increasing people's desire to vote. Because if the polls are usually spot on in the race is, you know, five or six points, your incentive to vote is relatively low. if, however, the polls are wrong by sometimes large margins. And then look, yes, I'm using polls are wrong kind of in quotes. And that's a whole different thing about, well, the polls weren't wrong because the undecided voters. And you don't actually poll late in the election, A, because it takes time to get the poll from the field through, you know, all the data that you need and then put it out.

It's also expensive and also what's the point? So you end up with polls on election day that were three weeks old, generally, at least two. So yeah, so that people are now feeling like their vote matters more because they can't trust the polls and that that is a good thing. I like it. Okay, we're going to push back on that a little bit. Love it.

I would love for people to get rid of polls, right? I honestly would. I think it would be good for America. From the same way that as a thought of experiment, not necessarily constitutional matter, I'm more sympathetic to mandatory voting than I've ever been. Because the reality is that the, the deciding factors in elections are turning out the turnout from your base rather than going for the median voter.

If you had mandatory voting in this country, there are more voters in the middle of the bell curve than there are the fringes of the bell curve. And so the extra enthusiasm of the fringes gets washed out. I like that in theory. I just think there are huge constitutional problems with forcing people to vote. But similarly, if you got rid of polls, politicians not knowing. where the base really was or where people were would actually have to go out and say things that they actually believed in and then hopefully people rally to them

come election day. So I'm sympathetic with all that. At the same time, as someone who has been an anti-voting fetishist for 25 years and have written a gazillion columns on this, I keep hearing how voting is a sign of a health of a democracy. This is like a fundamental assumption of a lot of people that low voter turnout means our democracy is bad and high voter turnout means our democracy is good. We've been having a lot of high voter turnout

at precisely the moment everybody is getting their panties in a bunch about the death of democracy, not a coincidence. Countries where everybody feels like there's an existential crisis and if I don't vote, the country could end, turn out to vote. I would rather people say, oh my gosh, a very special episode

of Matlock is on, I'll skip voting because things are going so well. And so I, high voter turnout makes me nervous. It doesn't make me excited. I hear you. And I agree that that is the other thesis that is persuasive to me, that people are voting because they think so much is at stake. Yeah. That the difference between the two parties and the two candidates that they're voting for are so far apart. And that one is past to doom and one is path to everyone gets a unicorn, that that's why there's high voter turnout. But isn't it also possible that that's not the case. That's not why people are turning out more. That in fact, they don't see a lot of difference between the two candidates and a lot of respects in terms of what policies they'll pursue.

And instead, it's that they actually think their vote matters more than it used to. But, David, I want to get to some of our questions because we're already talking about some of the questions that we've got. So we're going to do some lightning questions to get through as many as we can. Jonah just said that he might be in favor of mandatory voting. Here's a question from our commenters. Since the elections themselves, with their never-ending greed for money and attention, incentivized dysfunction,

what reforms to the election process would you favor to incentivize integrity and governing over non-stop campaigning? We three collaborated on a paper on precisely this point, just to begin clear. We did. We could put that in the show notes, too. This is for the National Constitution Center. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's a really good question. I'm guessing that the question goes beyond sort of electoral reforms into more structural reforms. Look, you know, some of the things that we talked about in the paper and that we've talked about a lot are here's some sort of big better reforms. One, make Congress great again. I think this is a really important aspect of our democracy is right now. branch of government that was supposed to be the most powerful branch is in practicality, the least powerful branch, which then means that the presidency is sitting at the top of the

pile. And most of us actually don't cast a meaningful vote for the person who actually runs the now most powerful branch of government. I think that has upset the entire system a great deal. So we have a number of proposals to make Congress great again, including some that require judicial intervention that we're already seeing underway at the Supreme Court, paring back to the power and authority and discretion of the administrative state. I think those things are important. When it comes to sort of the electoral reforms that folks like to talk about, I happen to be a fan of things like jungle primaries of ranked choice voting,

of mechanisms that can get us past a, and it's not just everyone says gerrymandering. Look, if you got rid of gerrymandering, thanks to the, sort, you'd still have a giant number of safe seats, just a giant number of safe seats that where all of the same incentives would apply. I don't think you can take a situation, for example, in North Georgia, where Marjorie Taylor Green is, and turn that into a competitive district. I just don't know that it's possible to do that. So there needs to be measures that take us from a position where we're not constantly thinking. It's this inescapable binary.

And one thing I like about ranked choice voting is it does force us to think about more than one candidate. So I do like that. But to me, the real issue here actually isn't governmental structure. That is not the real issue. I was listening to a really interesting podcast. I was listening to the argument on New York Times where it was a fight. This, Sarah, this is right into, these are words you love to hear,

a fight over the malign influence of small dollar donors. Woohoo! Yeah. It's really well done, but what kept coming back around to me was all of these reforms are designed to try to fix the effects of an electorate that is extremely angry and high. highly polarized. And at some point, in a democracy, there's only so much you can do to fix problems caused by your electorate, right? And so we have to be able to be honest about where

our culture is right now. And that number that says 80% of Americans view the other party as sort of an existential threat to the existence of our country, that's more of a, you know, if we're talking about your general voters, that's more of a me problem than a you problem. And I don't have great ideas for fixing that me problem part of it. All right. Next question is coming to me because I am the one of the three of us who has worked on the hill before.

What is the best method of contact for my congressman? I write often, mailed letters and emails, and occasionally receive a reply, but I am guessing he leaves the letter reading and writing to his staff. Is phoning more effective? Is contacting him a waste of my time? No, no. Let me tell you how this works behind the scenes. Basically, for a lot of offices, either daily or weekly, the congressman or woman will get a report of what constituents have

called, emailed, written, whatever about, pro and against on various issues. Now, if you call, that's just going to get into that tally, the report tally. If you write an email or a letter, then they will create form replies if there are sort of enough people writing about that issue. That actually takes staff resources. Someone has to think about the person's position on it. So I would always write because you want to incentivize them having to know

that they've had to create that response to lots of people writing about that issue. The most important thing you can do in contacting your congressman, though, the most important. You must be a constituent of them and you must show that you are a constituent. That report will not include non-constituents. They won't respond to letters that aren't from constituents. So writing to someone else's

congressman is a waste of your time. It also depends what you're calling about, right? If you're calling about your kid who's been falsely arrested in Myanmar, that's one thing. If you're talking about like your views on gun control, that's another thing, right? Sorry, to be clear, this was on voting against NATO and funding for Ukraine. So policy questions or issues with your congressman. If it's constituent services, very different. And, yep, most congressmen are very good at constituent services because that's how they get reelected.

I would go to your, go to your, I mean, you correct me if I'm wrong about this, but like if you have an actual specific problem, like, of the sort I was recommending, go to their office in the district and talk face to face to someone. Yep. The district office director is hired for the purpose of constituent services. So definitely go into the office and talk to that person and ask for the, the district director. Okay, Jonah, this one's coming to you

because we got a lot of this question. Can all a pundit start participating in the podcast? Okay, I want to be very clear about this. I sent the day it was official, or maybe the day after, I sent Nick an email, who I've still never spoken to on the phone even. So we don't know that he exists.

This could be, remember, wayside stories, sideways stories from Wayside School, and the new kid shows up and he kind of smells weird and he's wearing a coat so they keep taking the coats off and eventually it's like hundreds of coats

they've taken off and it's a rat and it scurries off in the end. So, no, but I have to say, look, as someone who has been fairly much, pretty reclusive over the last 25 years, you know, and I spent about 10 years like Howard Hughes with Kleenex boxes

on my feet in my basement writing books. Game respects game. And Nick, like makes me look like the host of the price are right. I mean, it is, it is impressive. But anyway, I sent him a note, and I said, I know you're nervous about, because he's done no, like, video or audio media for his career. We've never heard his voice. And I said, hey, look, I know you want to get your sea legs, just so you know, I'd be happy to have you on the remnant. You could do as many takes as you want. We can, you know, it's recorded. We'll make it as easy as possible. The only thing I request is that you do,

the remnant first and not advisory opinions. This is a Yale law graduate. Yeah, my email came about 10 minutes after that and was all the reasons why he should do A.O. instead of the remnant. So anyway, he knows I will

go back at him soon. I just want to give him some time and some space to get used to things. And I mean, it would be unfortunate if it had turned out that he had the kind of voice that makes your ears bleed or something like that, but I don't think that's the case. So we'll see. All right, David, you're getting three questions sandwiched into one. Oh, okay.

They are all versions of this question. What is the clearest way to inform both political parties that their candidates are terrible and they need to do better to get my independent central Pennsylvania vote? But a more specific version of the question is, if I don't want to vote for either the Republican or the Democrat Senate candidate on my ballot, which of these strategies will be most impactful? Vote for the libertarian, possibly forcing a runoff, but do we really want to be promoting, prolong this campaign wreck? Write in another name, would it matter whose name, abstain from voting in the race altogether? The only thing I beg is that you do not abstain from voting in the race altogether. I think that's fine, but I don't do that. I write in.

That's how I respond to this, as I write in. And, you know, You know, I think of the most effective example of either A, writing in or B, abstaining is actually the Roy Moore, Doug Jones race in Alabama. If there's one message the Republican Party got in 2017, it was, don't nominate Roy Moore again. Right. And did the Republic shake at its foundations? Because Roy Moore was not junior senator from Alabama? did the conservative movement quake because it couldn't win that lawsuit

was the right undermined? No, no, no, no, no, no. But I'm not going to say the Alabama Republican Party seriously upgraded from Roy Moore because Tommy Tuberville has some problems, but he's not Roy Moore. I do think that when you're a member

of a constituency, because Nick, talking about Allopundit, Nick had a really good piece a couple of weeks ago where he said, this is the dynamic on the Republican Party right now. It is the far right that will walk if it doesn't get what it wants. And then it's the center right that is staying. It's saying, well, there's an R there. What am I going to do?

And so if you are the party that you're the ones who are going to walk and another group isn't, you know who runs the place? the ones who are going to walk. Not to quote Dune again, or it's been a while since I've quoted Dune, but Jonah will appreciate that. That what is it, the power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over the thing?

Talking about the spice, of course. Right now, what you have is a situation where the GOP is essentially held hostage by a faction, a faction that is all too eager to say, yep, we're out unless you fulfill these these these demands and I think the folks on the center right who seek and I well I keep saying center right the folks on the right where they're your center right middle right far right but who still value character who still value integrity who still value the rule of law who still

value honesty if you say these fundamental values are non-negotiable for me now you have a real contest for control now you have a real fight because right now it's completely one-sided The reason not to abstain in my view is actually the Georgia 2020 election where 28,000 people voted down ballot and didn't vote for president. Look, we happen to know that because Georgia was then put under so much scrutiny and the Secretary of State kept repeating that number. But for the most part, it's really hard to discern abstention versus you just didn't vote at all and you stayed home. So in terms of sending a message. That's actually a really good point. And I think that probably sends the sharpest message, right?

It's like, these are Republicans, but they don't like you. Yes. I mean, that's a really good point. Can I hijack for a second to ask Sarah and David a question? And if you want to get to the question that we got from readers about the Kentucky abortion amendment, you can fold that in. I'm kind of fascinated by this question. If, you know, David and I are old, I mean, we're not as old as David, but, you know, we're old. And for our entire adult lives, we've been told that abortion is this issue.

that sustains the Democratic Party and that the backlash against throwing, overthrowing Roe v. Wade would be enormous. And we are now seeing going through the polls that you mentioned at the beginning that it's really just not a particularly important issue one way or the other for a lot of voters. The latest Wall Street Journal poll had suburban women breaking for Republicans decisively, even though they were way up for Democrats not too long ago. what does it do to the infrastructure of both what does it do to the sort of the general positioning of both parties if it turns out that repealing Roe is just not the earthquake electorally that a lot of people took as an article of faith it would have to be going forward

David I'll let you take that except to say that I think we already had so much self-sorting on that question for the last 25 years or so, that Roe being overturned in 1996 would have had a much more earthquakey effect than Roe getting overturned in 2022, where it's not going to affect people's votes because they already moved into the party of their abortion position. Remember, we had Republicans for Choice

that was raising bigillions of dollars in 1998. It shuts its doors a few years ago because there are no Republicans for choice in any meaningful electoral sense, there is one Democrat in the House of Representatives who is pro-life. Henry Quayar, who has faced increasingly perilous primaries from pro-choice Democrats.

Now, he has won in all of those, and he represents South Texas. But for the most part now, if you're a Democrat, we already know your pro-choice. If you're Republican, we already know your, quote-unquote, pro-life. Those terms, of course, have lost a lot of their meaning. So then when Roe gets overturned, you won't see the earthquake because it happens slowly over 25 years of people moving into that political party already.

So to add to that, I think we have decades of experience with the following phenomenon pre-dops, which was for all of the talk about abortion amongst partisans and sort of base voters, very few voters prioritized abortion in their vote, very small percentage. And of the small percentage who prioritized abortion, They tended to be more pro-life than pro-choice. So whereas elite sort of Democratic Party circles were very focused on abortion, your grassroots, not so much. Really on both parties, there are some interesting evidence that, for example, evangelicals

voted more for Donald Trump over immigration than abortion, for example. So we had a lot of experience before Dobbs that said abortion might be a big topic of conversation on Twitter and in fights in dueling op-eds, but it is a low-priority issue for voters and of those voters who do prioritize that they tend to be more pro-life. Now, everyone hit, put pause on that, and right after Dobbs, Saren and I talked about this,

I remember, and said, it'll be very interesting to see if that continues. Did Dobbs change things? And this is going to be an interesting data point, but it's going to be corrupted by one thing, which is this. Here's an on earth two, the Democrats do this instead of what they're doing now. On earth two, Democrats say all of the evidence says that the pro-life position,

the more, the more hardcore pro-life position, like my pro-life position, is a minority position. Most Americans are for a beginning and, you know, later in the second trimester, restrictions beginning later in the trimester, but are not for restrictions first trimester, let's sort of circle our wagons around the position where most Americans are, okay? The Democrats have not done that at all. If anything, what they've done is they've circled their wagons around a position that's less popular than the hardcore pro-life position, which is essentially no restrictions. So Federman says no restrictions. What puzzles me

beyond imagination is Raphael Warnock running in Georgia, which is a pretty pro-life state that has a heartbeat bill and voted for the Protect Women's Health Act, which really enables abortions all the way up to the point of birth virtually on a minimal showing, a minimal showing by a health care provider that they believe it's not just in support of the physical health of a mother, but the emotional and mental health of the mother. That's an extreme position that a very low percentage of Americans hold.

And so the Democratic Party has taken this, this Dobbs moment, and from a political perspective, to me, they've just fumbled it. They've just botched it completely by circling their wagons around a position that is far less popular than the most, some of the more stringent pro-life positions. And so that's where you see this dynamic we have in the parties where they're so captured by their hardcore. base on an issue that they have feel like they have no wiggle room to move to where a majority of Americans are. But, you know, even now, I do wonder truly, honestly, how hardcore are Republicans on pro-life issues. So, for example, Ron DeSantis is behind Donald Trump as, you know, the number two guy in the GOP right now by a pretty far bit. But it has absolute control of over his legislature.

And yet, not only does Florida only have a 15-week ban, Florida has become kind of a destination state, it appears, for abortions post-Dobbs. It's had more abortions, an increase in abortions post-dobs. And if abortion were a central issue, truly a central issue for Republicans, I think you would see a lot more attacks on DeSantis asking questions like,

why aren't you as pro-life as Brian Kemp, for example, in Georgia, a heartbeat bill. So I do really wonder for both parties outside of the core activist base how much of an issue abortion is really, how much of a priority it is really. And then there's just the utter political malpractice of the Democrats by taking an issue that could potentially redound to their benefit and then adopting a position more extreme and less popular than your opponent's position. All right. Let's keep going. And Jonah, this is actually a related question. Will there be any negative economic fallout for the state level abortion or social conservative restrictions that are being passed in red states? Or maybe vice versa in blue states. How will that play out at a state level?

Yeah, it's an interesting question. I think I was just talking about this with Starwalt the other day on the remand. Not this specific point, but like the general rule is states that are getting older are getting redder. And states that get younger are getting bluer, right? It's like if you have college-educated kids moving into big cities, you tend to move Democratic. If you could see, I think, various states, if they truly abandon, you know, If they truly put in pro-life policies, moving, you can see a lot of young professional women just not going there, right? Or saying, I'll go someplace else. Like, this could be a real problem for places like Austin, I would think.

So I think there's that. But beyond that, I'm hard pressed to think about it. I mean, I think Stacey Abrams did not do herself any favors saying that, you know, the right to abortion is basically about economic. personal economic empowerment or whatever in that kind of thing. But I'm hard-pressed to think of something other than that. All right. Question to me. On presidential campaigns, who foots the bill for the travel of reporters? It's always been something I've wondered about after seeing journeys with George.

Yep, the reporters do. The news organizations have to foot the bill for those things. It includes meals, hotels, plane flights. And if you are flying on a private chartered plane of the candidate, you actually have to pay for that as well. They work out a rate. You don't just divide up the cost of the chartered plane exactly, but it can be very expensive, which is why you see news organizations cutting back on their reporters traveling with candidates, A, because it's very expensive, but B, because what they're getting from traveling with the candidates becomes diminishing if the person is simply saying

the same thing at every campaign stop, for instance. But yes, those embeds that you hear about, especially in general elections. It is expensive, the care and feeding of the embeds who are bopping around on that campaign plane. Okay, joint question here. I'm going to mash two together. Who's next in line after Mitch McConnell? Would that be a good or bad thing for conservatives?

And is there anyone like Paul Ryan left in the house? David? I don't know. about this actually there's been so little talk of sort of reasonable successors so I'm going to just

completely punt this one David's passing so I think you know right now as I put it the other day on the run and Mitch McConnell David probably remembers there was this time in the 1970s when one man

bands were like maybe because of the gong show or something, considered like really cool. You know, this guy with like the accordion and the Glockenspiel and the symbols and all this and all that's Mitch McConnell. He is the entire one-man band to the establishment. And I think that he wants Thune,

does talk that Thune wants it. I think Thune is an honorable man. I used to make jokes about Thune when he was more ambitious 15 years ago and made a lot of puns about how it was too Thune. But I think he wants to replace McConnell I think McConnell would gladly hand it off to him or Cornyn, who is the other sort of adjunct to the establishment.

And of course, Rick Scott wants it, but he also wants to be president one day. And I think his malpractice as the NRC, head of the Senate campaign committee, was an attempt to sort of make moves on McConnell. But, you know, the problem, I think part of the problem for Rick Scott is he's got sort of an uncanny Valley problem. He doesn't come across, he comes across as surprisingly lifelike, which is to say not entirely, he's a little animatronic. And I don't think that he is the right face for the Republican Party.

Interesting about that, Jonah. Lots of rumors percolating right now that Rick Scott has ambitions for the White House. and is planning a White House run many other sort of dark horse white house candidates that I'm sure we'll talk about as soon as the midterms are over, but Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchison also in that list of

dark horse white house aspirants. All right, here comes our real lightning round. What is a down-ballot race? State Attorney General, Secretary of State, legislative control that you will be watching on election night. Jonah Goldberg. Oh, I guess I got to say, I'm spacing a,

the name right now, but the, am I remember the Arizona Secretary of State, right? It's just because the election denying stuff is a real problem, despite all of our pooh-pooing on Biden's speech earlier, and the idea that Carrie Lake will have coattails for even crazy or more irresponsible person is just not great. David, a down-ballot race that you'll be watching on election night? I'm going to say it's going to be lots of down-ballot. for the reason that Jonah identified, I'm very interested in the Secretary of State elections on the, I'm very interested in the GOP success and Secretary of State elections where you have

sort of the actual election conspiracy theorists on the ballot. How are they going to do compared to top of the ballot races? Are voters going to be aware enough to turn on them? Are voters going to care enough to turn on them? Or a voter's going to vote them in because they're like. that. I think that that is going to be a very interesting and potentially very disturbing development on election night because, you know, for again, to echo what Jonah said, for all the critiques we had of Biden's speech, there is a problem, as we said earlier, especially when it comes to the vote count slash vote certification side of things that was revealed before January 6th

and has persisted in the Republican Party since January 6th and is very dangerous and so I'm going to be watching that. And the last question, what upset are you calling? The person specifies not necessarily something you think will happen, but if there's a big upset, what will it be?

For me, no question, Washington State Senate race I'm watching and that Oregon governor's race, those two would be big upsets for me. I'm going to go before David grabs it. and say Lee Zeldon beats Kathy Hockel. I'd say the upset that would surprise me, but as possible, is Ryan beating Vance.

That's one going in the other direction. I agree with you completely on the others, but Ryan beating Vance would be a real surprise. And at this point, Carrie Lake losing almost feels like it would be an upset. So, you know, those are two upsets in the other direction. that I think are possible but not likely. See, I know from the advisory opinions podcast about the chess stuff

that you have a listener who plays chess, who goes to law school, who had to explain to you guys what an upset is. True. True. He wrote us an email after the podcast. He was like, I'm sorry if that was a dumb thing to explain. We were like, no little future associate, you're doing great.

It had very trading places vibes sort of when they explain to Eddie Murphy that bacon, as you might find, on a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich. But anyway. Well, we've run out of time for a full not worth your time, but this weekend will be daylight savings time once again and not worth my time.

It's sort of the opposite reverse here. There is a bill pending in Congress and we were so close. There was a moment where it looked like we might not have to keep switching our clocks twice a year. anymore. But as this Sunday will teach us all, that didn't happen. So boo, Congress, boo! Pass the bill. Thanks for listening. We will talk to you again next week when the midterms will have happened. Oh my gosh.

Sorry I had to get up for a second there, but I heard cat cries, and Gracie was stuck outside, and there's a, there's a neighborhood bully cat, Chester, and so you have to, like, respond immediately. Yeah, yeah. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change. and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is the consequences of not having life insurance

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