The Press Box - Beto’s Doomed Campaign, Editing Trump, and the Cable News Sign-off the Week | The Press Box

Episode Date: November 5, 2019

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker discuss Beto O’Rourke ending his presidential bid (03:00), the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week (25:30), Peter Osnos’s piece in The New Yorker on editing Trump (32:1 5), and an update on the 2020 United States presidential campaigns  (40:30). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I released the book of basketball in 2009. I swore I was done. What else was there to say? The book was 704 pages long. I figured out the secret of basketball with help from Isaiah Thomas and used it to rank the top 96 players of all time. I blew up the basketball Hall of Fame

and turned it into a five-level Egyptian pyramid. I figured out the 33 greatest what-ifs ever. I solved every MVP debate. I made the case for Russell over Wilt. I explained why MJ was the greatest ever. I wrote hundreds of pop culture references, at least 250 inappropriate jokes, and God knows how many footnotes. I even drove to San Diego for the epilogue to spend time with Bill Walton.

And when the book reached number one on the New York Times bestseller list, that was all I ever wanted. I was done. I swore to myself, I would never do a sequel. Well, I kind of lied. So much has changed in the NBA these past 10 years. I couldn't help going back. Who could have seen the three-point boom come?

coming. Curry's Warriors going 73 and 9, the Hardin Trade, the player empowerment error, the process, advanced metrics, the decision, Cleveland winning a title? I repeat, Cleveland winning a title? Well, why write a sequel when I could turn that book into a living, breathing podcast, something that juggled interviews and pyramid podcasts and rewatchable game podcasts about famous games? What's my top 100 now? What's my pyramid? What's the new biggest what if of all time? Could the 86 Celtics have handled the 17 Warriors and all those threes? What did I learn from spending so much time over the last years with people like Bill Russell, Magic Johnson, Kevin Durant, Jalen Rose, Isaiah Thomas, and so many others?

Think of it as my basketball book, Coming to Life, in audio form, reinvented, reincarnated, re-tooled, recreated for 2019 and beyond. It's the Book of Basketball. 2.0, it's launching on November 6th. presented by State Farm. See you there. David, the big lead website reports that the Sheridan Group

is exploring a sale of Barstool Sports to a gambling operator. What I want to know is, and I'm picking my words very carefully here, what I want to know is what would post-sale barstool

look like because we have no experience with this with sports writing at all right now. No, sir. No, sir. To take this, I mean, to be really serious about this, it's hard to imagine someone who buying Barstool really understanding the soul of Barstool. I never, sorry. I do say, I mean, I do think that they probably have a better chance of maintaining their identity,

no matter who buys them, because there's not some, like, I don't know. don't think anybody could go to barstoolsports.com and be confused that it is in fact a sports blog and nothing else. You know, I don't think anybody would be under that misapprehension. But yeah, asking Barstool sports to stick to sports, is that where we're going with this joke? Because that could be one of the most just incredibly hilarious and illuminating moments in our modern discourse. No, no pizza reviews in other words? No. No random things about celebrities? No weeks of barstool radio dedicated to the divorces and other personal live

goings on of their staffers and videos of their employees coming out of the shower naked and stuff. No, none of that anymore. We're just going to focus on the core. I'm sorry. I'm glad I don't check my mentions. This is going to be great. Oh, man.

What if the new owner pulled a problematic post from three years ago and put it back on the homepage? to look like there was fresh problematic content still on barstool even after all the uh writers left. Can you imagine all the barstool writers quitting in solidarity? We're all just going to walk away with from our, from our jobs. Oh brother.

What is I just, I just want to know what would happen to taunting barstool gifts. You know, every time somebody publishes something mean about them, you know, you get all the, uh, the stoolies and the mentions right,

doing those Dave Portnoy, I guess. What would that look like after the sale? That's what I want to know. Do you have to get a whole new thing? You just, you just kind of react. I don't even have an out

an out to this, by the way. Should we just? Do you way? Yeah, we're, we're, we are the, you know, post-apocalyptic barstool of media podcasts. This is the press box, a part of the Ringer podcast network.

Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here. We got lots and lots of stuff to get to today. We'll listen to the cable news sign-off of the week. We'll talk about the art of editing Donald Trump and hit a bunch of 2020 campaign updates, including the candidate's Battle of the Bands. But speaking of 2020, David,

we got to start with Beto O'Rourke's decision to quit the presidential campaign. At the beginning of this race, he was at least a very interesting idea of a candidate. He raised a bunch of money. He polled reasonably well. But by Friday in Des Moines, Iowa, he was out.

as O'Rourke explained he had no money and more importantly no tangible support. Listen up. Though this is the end of this campaign, we are right in the middle of this fight. I will do everything that I can to support the eventual nominee of this party with everything that I've got. And I encourage every single one of you to do the same. sources close to the liberal Messiah say he's not going to run for John Corny's Senate seat in Texas, which is pretty obvious when he started talking about taking your AR-15 away and taxing churches. I guess, David, the first question is the what happened one.

I really enjoyed Matt Flegenheimer's piece in the New York Times over the weekend. And a point he made about Beto was that really he was trying to be the nice young man to use the old Mike Kinsley term in this race. And he got out nice young manned by Pete Buttigieg. Who's basically running, is he not a slightly different version of the campaign Beto wanted to run? Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I think that you said it best in your intro. You know, Beto was a really interesting idea of a candidate.

And there wasn't a lot beyond that, right? I mean, people are fond of saying in this day and age, justifiably that Twitter is not the real world. Beto was kind of the Twitter is not the real world candidate, right? It was very charismatic in his way, but I think he was a sort of like second degree charisma. Like if you, you know, if someone was like,

you got to check this guy out. If they, if they warmed you up to him and then showed you a 10 second YouTube clip while you were like waiting in line for a hamburger, you'd be like, holy shit, this guy's, you know, Bobby Kennedy.

But I don't, at the end of the day, you know, I mean, I just don't feel like there was enough, there was enough demand for his candidacy. And there's probably a lot of reasons for that. And I think, I mean, I think that he speaks a lot to the whole field. I mean, we have, with, you know, the exceptions of a couple of the frontrunners, we have a whole lot of people running for the Democratic nomination who, from the beginning

have been touted their favorability is in a one-on-one matchup against Trump. But unfortunately, you know, we don't get to just play out that eventuality for every candidate. only one person gets to go head to head. And getting there is not as easy as, you know, having a viral video or even getting a, you know, Vanity Fair cover shoot or an HBO documentary. There's, you know, there's the actual campaigning and organizing and, you know, platforming. To just go back a second to him being the sort of Twitter's idea of a candidate. it's funny with Beto because it was actually kind of old media in a way remember it was Oprah interviewing him after the Ted Cruz thing kind of encouraging Bradley Cooper I was reminded in

Flegenheimer's New York Times piece encouraged Beto to run for president. LeBron was wearing the Beto hat during a Senate race with Ted Cruz there you know there is this sort of there's this sense with with bedo i think that something happened between that and his actual candidacy the big thing of course being the vandy fairer profile um which you know i almost now and we we milked this for as much merriment as anybody but now that i go back and kind of look at it i almost wonder if if betto got a little bit of a raw deal the quote of course that everybody replayed forever was man i'm just born to be in it this seems like a bona fide kinsley gaff not the fake kind but the real kind because he was just saying

what every presidential candidate thinks every single candidate in this race thinks they were born to run for president yes you're just not allowed to say it and betto said it and i just think it like it kind of you know that man at the front of it of it of course made him sound like the ultimate dude bro which was another big problem with his campaign. But I look back at that and I'm like, that doesn't seem disqualifying to me. Like I'm pretty sure Elizabeth Warren thinks she was born to run for president. I'm pretty sure Andrew Yang thinks that.

I think even like John Delaney thinks that. But he just came out and said it. And for whatever reason, that just hung around his neck forever. It's funny. This is that exact argument are both halves of it. I saw in a little tweet and tweet response today from Blake Hounsel at a, from Politico, I believe. He said, the quote was the media is a cruel mistress, blew up Beto Biano, hope for hope of meeting, it's our expectations, then mercilessly mocked him as he fell.

And then there was a response from none other than Britt Hume, who said, the problem was not our expectations, it was his, the ones that allowed him to imagine he was presidential material in the first place. And I think the truth, I think both. Both halves of that are slightly true, and I do think the ultimate truth is probably somewhere in between. I mean, I think that you're right that all candidates think they were born, I mean, that they were made for it. And I think that the media did, the old, you know, the legacy media did do play a significant role in sort of hyping him up. I don't think that 10 years ago, certainly 20 years ago, 30 years ago, we would have had any idea who better work was outside of a, you know, name in the, in the closing paragraph of a newspaper store.

right? I mean, it was significant that he did as well as he did in Texas, but that's a Texas politics issue. And we're looking for heroes, right? I mean, especially in social media era, it's easy to identify them and to blow them up and to make them national names. But there's some degree to which actually coming up, you know, kind of earning your stripes and coming up through the political machines is a valuable thing, not just for becoming part of the Borg or whatever within the Democratic Party, but like, or the Republican Party for that matter. but for just sort of figuring out if you have what it takes

every step along the way and I think that in some ways he might have just had the perfect situation in Texas and he still may be a force in Texas politics although there's a case we made that he sort of squandered that along the way running for president as well

but I think that it's you know I mean it wasn't just him right I mean you know there was a period where I felt like every time I turned on the TV it was like there was like a national it felt like there's a national call to get Stacey Abrams in the presidential, in the primary, right?

I mean, I don't think anybody's, Stacey Abrams is fantastic. I don't think anybody is, like, looks at the debate stage and thinks if only Stacey Abrams are up there. You know, Andrew Gillum was the sort of third person, the third celebrity back during that, during that congressional race period. And, and, you know, he's actually come up recently, I think, in what he supposedly was having back channel communications with Warren or somebody. but again, like, you know, having, being an, being, almost winning, almost winning a race at that, at a point in time when the country is just so, so energized against the president or half of it is, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's something. It's not nothing. But the idea that that means that, you know, destiny is on your side. I think it takes, you know, that's not going to be true for everybody. Although I will say that what Obama and Trump, both prove Trump's obviously more so than Obama is that destiny is on your side is a compelling political argument right I mean it's like somebody out there is is hope is is is keeping is crossing their fingers hoping that they are that the candidate of the moment and I think that's what

Beto's case was largely but you know for everybody can't be that candidate well and and to just go to Obama I mean forget even destiny just go to Obama's political experience Obama got elected to the Senate in or started in the Senate in 2005 he he's had a cup of coffee and then he almost immediately starts running against Hillary Clinton for Democratic nomination. Beto had been a three-term congressman. And, you know, if he had won that, I guess it gets weird because he'll say, well, he didn't even win the Texas Senate race.

First of all, winning a Senate race in Texas seems like, you know, a little harder than winning a Senate race in Massachusetts or Vermont or wherever. So it's like as close as he got in Texas, seems like, the political equivalent of actually winning in a blue state. But also if he, if he'd won that race and then, you know, basically unpacked his, you know, belongings in the Senate office and then started running for president,

he would have had a more compelling case. I don't, I don't quite understand that. And it strikes me as like, you know, he, you know, especially compared to Trump, he had enough experience. It was just something about the way he run. A couple of theories here for you. Nate Silver says another fairly obvious lesson. Strike while the iron is hot.

if Beto immediately announces a run in November, December to capitalize on Democrats happy feelings about the 2018 midterms, maybe things would have unfolded differently. You remember, he had that long period of indecision where he was sort of thinking about it publicly. Nick Field, our pal says tweets, the post-election medium posts were the turning point for Beto. He came off as authentically indecisive, self-centered, and soft. Campaign writers and pundits read those stories and ran their analysis through that prism. voters saw him the same way his MRI of the soul came back wanting and that was another thing i think that we should talk about which is what how much of authentic beddo did we see in this presidential campaign because i guarantee if you went to him and said if you reran this what

would you do differently i think he thinks he probably got talked out of being his his authentic betto don't you remember when he had to stop standing on the countertops. And, you know, he would make comments, the Vanity Fair thing, he was almost walking back immediately afterward. There was the countertops. He made a comment about his wife, for he's and the kids. That was, that was then he was in, he was almost defensive the whole time. Instead of what powered him in Texas, which was this whole, I don't care, man, I'm just going for it. I'm making no apologies for being a progressive. I'm making no apologies for going to the Reddest counties in Texas. I'm going for it. He never seemed to be

fully embracing his bedoness in the same way when he was running for president. Yeah, I think that's true. I mean, he wouldn't be the first candidate. I mean, he would probably be the last in the line of potentially every candidate whose personal instincts were like entirely tempered or largely tempered by the advisors

and other staffers they have around them. Trump might be the only exception in political history. He obviously was not the same person that he had been. Although, you know, I think that when he first announced his candidacy, we talked on this show about how there was

an incredible lack of substance there and it was up to him to sort of fill in the blanks. I thought he was really compelling in his announcement speech and I didn't mind the table standing although I think it was more of a case where I think that was like weirdly

I think that was just a huge misread. I think that it was an easy punchline but I don't think there were a lot of people I don't think that was a game changer and I think maybe having that easy you know SNL character might have done his candidacy some good, you know. But, but, you know, he did, you know, he did kind of turn down the volume on being Beto,

and by, but he didn't turn up the volume on anything platform related, or at least nothing to make him stand out until it was so far gone that he started, you know, taking people's guns back and, um, there were, the parts of it were, were politically and morally reaffirming, you know, I mean, some of, some of the, some of the, the talk about gun rights and some of, and a lot of the talk about, you know, Trump's racism. There's a lot of that that I thought,

I mean, there's definitely a bravery to it. We all remember when he turned to the press pool, he was like, why do you guys keep answering me questions you know the answer to? And started, like, dropping F bombs or whatever he was doing. But, you know, it did seem like it was a little, like that was a little bit of a last gasp, you know,

and it made it hard to countenance, even the gun control discussion, which, you know, seemed to be rather sincere, but it was hard to kind of countenance that as anything other than just like trying to stand out in the crowd. Well, it was, I will, and in fairness to him, that was right after the shooting in El Paso.

No, it was, no, absolutely. And I think, that's what I'm saying, I think it was, I think there was sincerity behind it. But it did seem like he was just sort of, his best moment seemed a little bit deliberate. You know, he was like trying to, He was just trying to get attention. You were trying to go viral, wasn't he?

Because that seemed like the lesson he learned from the Senate race, right? If I go viral, then that's when everybody starts paying attention to me. And some of that did feel pretty forced. Yeah, and I think that, you know, as significant and as sincere and as important as some of those issues

and some of those points of view are, you know, I don't think that I mean, I think that eventually that that's what he's going to be, or that's what he came to characterize the entire campaign now, not the rest of his platform, which is presumably very, you know, well considered and reasonable. But like as soon as he dropped out, I saw, you know, Republicans tweeting out just a list of his greatest hits, including all that stuff I just mentioned as sort of, you know, evidence A, B, and C, and D about what, you know, why the Democratic Party is going to fail, right? I mean, that's, and I think that. that writ large over the course of the rest of the campaign probably would have done more damage to the whole party. And certainly to him than him staying in the race and trying to continually make, you know, get someone to pay attention to him. It's funny because Beto has qualities that I think we could find pretty much a hundred percent agreement among Democrats that they want in this nominee. One is authenticity, a loaded word I know, but this sort of idea that you, you are, you are, you believe what you're saying. so much that you can say it eloquently and you're not apologizing for it.

Number two, use of social media. Remember, this was a really inviting part of the idea of Beto. Trump is, you know, bombing everybody on Twitter and everything, but here's a guy who knows how to use the tools of 2019 to officially, to kind of fight back. That was part of it. And then I think just the kind of connection to people, you know, what was. so appealing in Texas when he was going and visiting all those dark red counties was I'm just going to go shake as many hands as I possibly can. You know, we've seen that in Warren, right? That's the Warren selfie line, essentially.

I'm going to take selfies with everybody here. That was part of Beto too. So I think, you know, though his candidacy is done and I don't think that campaign will be much remembered unless we, you know, get some weird game change style book that'll have, you know, a couple of pages about it at the beginning, I think those qualities are basically what a Democrat wants in a candidate right now. And it'll be up to whoever wins the nomination to try to channel them as best as they can. Yeah, I think that's right.

I mean, I think it'll be, I mean, I think in some sense, the post-mortland will be interesting. You know, he had a lot of kind of interesting big-name people helping out with this campaign in the early going. But it's a very, the field is so big that you can't just, you know, there's, very few kingmakers back there in the back rooms, you know, and, um, I don't know. I mean, I think that you're right about the authenticity. I think that there's a, there's a huge place for someone like Beto in our contemporary politics. Um, but, you know, I just to bring it back around, I think when you, when you take your shot, and this was a shot, right?

I mean, this was like, nobody would have thought. It doesn't matter if he's born for this. He might very well be, or made for it. Sorry, he might very well be made for it. Um, that doesn't mean he was made for 2019 or 2020. and, you know, he shot his shot. And it didn't hit. I mean, it didn't land.

So maybe next time. Maybe whatever the next thing down the road is for him. What does he do? And speaking of that, you know, because you see, I mean, it's funny because he has this, he has this lane for him where he can just be like, fire up the crowd guy, you know, sort of go around, be your kind of liberal, liberal id speaker that. can speak at college campuses and democratic events and campaign for people the rest of his life. But do you think he has like a substantial act ahead of him?

I really don't know. I mean, you would know the answer to Texas politics better than I do because I think that the answer is probably, I mean, you're right. There's two different things he could do. I think if his goal is really to be a politician and the best into the word, I think it's, I think sort of back to back to the basics right i mean he he needs to work his way back up um from texas and try to turn try to flip the state whether it's you know him running or him contributing or whatever else i mean there's certainly a national spot for him he can you know go work for msnbc or cnn and n or something next week um what about what about heading the dnc it doesn't isn't he

the kind of guy like he can go on television every week he can raise money he can be tireless party builder guy. Isn't that kind of a job for him under a Democratic president? Or maybe not under Democratic president? Just to play devil's advocate, wouldn't you want somebody for that job that didn't run out of money in October of 2019? Yeah, I guess. I mean, I think you're right.

I think that there's a national, I think that that's the right way. I think that in a lot of weird ways, this is the, I mean, this campaign for the, for the nomination is, I mean, there are a lot of deep. D&C chairs in the running over there, right? I mean, you could make that. Yeah, Buddha judge too, by the way. Yeah, yeah. And who's making a ton of money.

But you could pencil, you could pencil half this canids into that job. I mean, you could imagine somebody in that position. I don't think that that would be a terrible, a terrible idea for Beto. Although, you know, I think there might be, I think that there might be better use. I think he might find himself more useful in other positions, you know? I mean, I think that, I mean, it's certainly possible, though. I could also see Beto as an extremely dreamy secretary of the interior, wearing kind of a Robert Redford at Sundance outfit, you know,

with a kind of denim shirt rolled up sleeves, standing in front of an endangered owl habitat, and just selling it, you know, and just absolutely believing it, you know, just all in under Democratic administration. I don't know if that's big enough for him, though. David, I'd like to go ahead and, uh, if we could rank disastrous presidential campaign journalism for a second. Oh, God.

Number three, Gary Hart inviting reporters to follow him around and investigate his personal life. I know that's kind of disputed, but probably still belongs in the list. Number two, Beto Vanity Fair profile. Number one, let Detroit go bankrupt by Mitt Romney. Oh, my God. That's my, that's my ranking. All right, time for the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received.

Beto's out of the race, David, which means Twitter's got Beto jokes. All bettos are off. Beto late than never. And I was reading those. I was remembering we did all these months ago. Yes. And I don't think anyone has beaten Mo Beto Blues. Do you just show me?

If anybody's beating that, show me. Also, Beto luck next time. We would also accept. Thanks to anyway, to Tom Kerstetter for that. I also enjoyed this Beto bit from Twitter. My Chemical Romance and Rage Against the Machine are both getting back together. Clearly, Beto did what he set out to accomplish. Thanks to Alex Hungerford for that.

We talked last week about Twitter banning political ads. Well, Ted Cruz came out and tweeted that CEO Jack Dorsey was taking the wrong approach. Now, nobody seemed to care about Ted Cruz's tweet. So Cruz went into conspiracy mode. he tweeted, hmm, only 169 retweets. It's almost like the 3.4 million people who chose to follow this account never saw this particular tweet. Dot, dot, dot, dot. Wonder why.

It was an overwork Twitter joke to write that this was Ted Cruz's Please Clap moment. Thanks to Brian Gluck for that. And finally, David, did you see the picture of Cleveland Brown's quarterback Baker Mayfield after yesterday's loss to the Broncos, looking despondent in a trench coat in 1980s cop show mustache. It launched the

Baker Mayfield looks like hashtag. So let me give you a few of those. Baker Mayfield looks like the actor that would play either John Wilkes Booth or Edgar Allan Poe in a reenactment scene for a history channel documentary. Baker Mayfield looks like

Chris Hansen just asked him to take a seat. Baker Mayfield looks like Gardner Menshoe who looks like Baker Mayfield. Baker Mayfield. looks like Sean Penn stunt double from the Falcon and the Snowman. You must see that movie to appreciate how real that is.

Baker Mayfield looks like he just ran down to the corner for a pack of smokes but didn't grab his wallet. And finally this from ESPN's Kevin Van Valkenberg. Baker Mayfield looks like he was cast in the newest David Simon project, ink-stained, an HBO series about the 1970s newsroom with a Toledo blade where he'll play the Metro Reporter who gets an anonymous tip that's about to change everything.

thanks to be trained for that one. If you dragged Baker Mayfield for his quarterbacking and then dragged him for his mustache, congrats, you made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. Before we hit the notebook dump, David, let us take a moment for a quick break. For over 115 years, Oras has been making purely mechanical watches

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Of course, that's along with Ors's century-long and change commitment to making inventive, high-functioning Swiss-made watches that serve a real purpose, and at prices that makes sense, the best possible watch for the money, comprised of four worlds, diving, aviation, motorsport, and culture. Oris' watches are made for everyday wear. Orris is the longtime favorite of people who know watches because of what they represent. It's always a great time to buy a new watch, but the holiday season is quite possibly the most perfect opportunity to give someone with a suave new watch. Check out O-R-I-S dot-C-H-slash press box to find the Oris watch that matches your style. That's O-R-I-S-C-H-slash-Pbox. All right, David, in the notebook dump, I want to send you up with the cable news sign-off of the week. this comes to us from Tate Frazier,

Ringer alum Tate Frazier. It's from the Jesse Waters Fox News TV program. And when it's Jesse Waters, man, you know that there is going to be an absolute meticulous vetting of the guests. Here he was talking to Mike Rittland, according to his website as a former Navy SEAL who served in Iraq and trained dogs for use in military action. That is all very relevant to the news.

But what about the way Ritland ends this interview? for your service. I appreciate it. Absolutely. If I could, could I throw a PSA out real quick? Real quick. Just the remarkable nature of these dogs and them being highlighted in the news creates a huge demand by people that frankly shouldn't have them. If you see the coverage and you decide I want one of these dogs either buy a finished trained, you know, fully trained and finished dog from a professional or just don't get one

at all. and Epstein didn't kill himself. Wow. What was the first sort of, uh-oh moment there when it was like, can I throw out a PSA? That's what I thought you were going to, I haven't even heard that before. That's what I thought the gag was. And that other one just came out of left field. That's fantastic comedic work there.

If you're on a national TV show doing an interview, should you be allowed to just freelance like a message at the end of your interview? Is there not like a seven-second delay? Or is that person just like That person not on duty during the water's hour Or whatever it's called? I feel like we've seen phony cable news interviews before Where somebody somehow gets past the sensors And just does something completely ridiculous.

Yeah, like on live TV during a tragedy or something. You know, when there's some sort of interest, national interest in not running a delay. But that just seems bizarre. Right, but this is like a different category, right? where you give a totally normal interview. Like this guy really does train dogs, but then you just tack on just something really wild right at the end.

Yeah. It's like, it'd be like invite. I mean, yeah, you're right. It'd be like inviting like the former chair of the DNC or something on just. And you're not really familiar with them.

But like it looks like the resume adds up. And then he just yells Baba Booie as they go off the air or something. Well, it's like if, you know, if outside the lines where. still around a daily form. And Jeremy Shapp was, you know, having you on about wrestlers and unions or death or whatever. And at the end, you're just like, you know, JFK Jr. is still alive and living on an island and, you know, somewhere. I mean, you just like, what?

He just gave a totally normal interview. That is wild. On the subject, David, of editing Donald Trump. Oh, yeah. There was a big New Yorker piece out by Peter Osnos, who I know you know or worked in the, in the sphere of. Yes. Peter Osnows, a legendary reporter, first of all, and then book editor. He went to Random House in 1984.

And in this piece, he writes that Cy Newhouse, who owned Random House, told Osnows he really wanted to do a book with a certain multi-millionaire named Donald Trump. So this was a normal. Donald Trump was sort of still a growing concern in American life at this point, 1984. The way they pitched him a book was, and just stop me here when this starts to go out of of normal celebrity book publishing. Osnos and Newhouse went to Trump's office and brought along a proposed book cover. So the way to get the celebrity to do it was to mock up a fake book cover with the celebrity's picture on it.

Osnose writes, Trump liked the cover but said his name should be larger. Is that normally what happened? Don't you just give the celebrity a bunch of money and say, let's do the book? Do you have to show the celebrity like a proof of concept kind of thing like that? Isn't a big face? I know that there's a lot of, some, some, some, uh,

percentage of our listenership that thinks I'm trying to talk myself into Trump said, please don't read this that way. But I can definitely appreciate a man who likes to have, who likes to, you know, hold an actual book or book-shaped thing in his hands to, to be won over about the prospect. No, I think it's pretty straightforward. It's just like, you know, you can, you try to, when people are recruiting basketball-free agents, they put together fake highlight reels of their time with the new team, you know? It's when they, I'm sure someone has been talked into doing a movie before by seeing like the giant broadside poster or the billboard that they're going to put up on Hollywood Boulevard. Yeah, I can imagine that happening.

Although as someone who's designed his fair share of book covers, make the author's name bigger is one of those things that you hear over and over and over again, often from the author. And it sort of makes you want to pull your hair out. So this is like Trump, if he were a basketball free agent, walking into the arena of the team that's courting him. and the team has like their announcer there. Exactly. Now playing for the Golden State Warriors. Yeah, no, I got that. By the way,

awesomely, 80s touch in this article is Trump sitting down with the head of Walden Books, which is then the biggest bookstore chain in the country. Yeah, those were the days. Yeah.

Osnows continues that at a December 1987 book party, quote, I found myself shaking hands, these are Trump friends, with Mike Tyson, Barbara Walters, Barry Diller, and Norman Mailer,

who had been, surprisingly a close friend of Roy Cohn. So Norman Mailer came to the book party for Trump's The Art of the Deal. Joni Evans, who ran Random House, Osnose Wright, told me that Trump called her at home a few days before Christmas to say he wanted a thousand copies of his book delivered to Aspen for an upcoming ski vacation. Donald, it's Christmas, Evan said, all the warehouses are closed. Figure it out was Trump's command. He offered the use of his plane. And Random House did indeed deliver 1,000 copies.

of Trump's book to him over his ski holiday. Osnos and Trump decided to do a sequel to the book, which is a huge bestseller, sold a million copies in hardcover. The sequel was called Surviving at the Top. And David, this is an, I just gave you an awesomely 80s detail. Here's an awesomely 80s detail. When Trump spoke at a bookseller's convention ahead of surviving at the top came out, he followed by one day a random house party for Gene M. All,

author of Clan of the Cave Bear. Oh, my God. So that was a best seller list at the time. The day after Trump's triumphant bookseller convention speech, Osnows, quote, picked up a copy of the Wall Street Journal, which featured a front page story about Trump's finances. To summarize, they were a mess. He was billions of dollars in debt.

So Random House has signed up. I am the smartest man in the universe book by Donald Trump. And the day after Trump introduces this book to booksellers, the Wall Street Journal reports that Trump, is not the smartest man in the universe. The CEO of Random House tells Osnose, get this book out fast. He is a wasting asset.

The book still sold reasonably well. The title was changed from surviving at the top to the art of survival for paperback because Donald Trump was no longer at the top. And I did want to run this by you, David, just in terms of how booksellers and book publishers, I should say, think about the people they work with. Peter Osnose writes,

I am often asked if I regret having been the editor of the book that made Trump a national figure. The answer is no. I was trained in journalism and Trump was a terrific story. I was tasked by Cy Newhouse to manage him on that first book. On the second book, I was working with a successful repeat author. So essentially what he's saying is, I don't regret making Donald Trump into this giant national figure because there were books to be sold. Is that pretty much it?

and I did what as a book publishing person my job is, which is to sell books by a famous person. Yeah, I mean, it's a... Yeah, I mean, I find it hard to get too up in arms about this. I mean, first of all, it's a really wild counterfactual, right? I mean, this is... There's nothing in these books that would lead one to think that we were going to end up with the presidency that we have now. And even if so, there's nothing in the books that...

is inherently problematic in that way, right? Or, and even if there were, would you, should you have been expected to be that cognizant of that at the time? I mean, it's, it's all sort of bizarre. I mean, listen, full disclosure, I mean, I worked for a place for a long time where a very popular right-wing talking head basically kept the lights on to the rest of the stuff we published could continue being published.

And, you know, you sort of have to make your bones about that or whatever. but I think it would have been a different story if the stuff we were publishing was inherently problematic. It wasn't. I mean, it was just, if the byline is problematic, I guess that's something you got to work with your therapist

or your, you know, higher being about. But I can't, I don't. Fortunately, book publishing pays so well that you'll have plenty of money to therapy. Yeah, exactly. No, I just don't think that, I mean, listen, it would have been, if you want to take exception to publishing Trump's campaign book, okay.

I don't know if I agree with that at all, but fine. you can make that, you can make a coherent argument. If you want to go back in time and, you know, kill the art of the deal in the crib, I mean, that seems a little bit unnecessary. It's kind of the, kind of the alternate kill-hiller scenario. Yeah, exactly. You're just sniffing out Trump's book deal.

No, I think, no, I think that's right. I mean, to sort of say, like, you published Trump's book, therefore you're responsible for the Muslim ban. That seems like a rickety thing. Though, by the way, Tony Schwartz, who wrote the art of the deal has been basically apologizing in serial fashion for the last couple of years for doing that. And he's, and he's, I'm sure, you know, helped his own personal brand by doing that. I mean, no, I mean, that's, and that's totally fine. But, I mean.

What I was just saying is that I think it, when we, when we hear both publishers, there's this thing of that's slightly different, I think, from journalism, though journalism is certainly guilty of this is what's important is that it will sell books, right? Like, what we're evaluating here, unless it's like, you know, a, a, a murderous dictator. What we're, what we're evaluating here is not, is Trump a genuine business genius?

What we're evaluating is, will a book positing that Trump is a genuine business genius sell a lot of books and sell a lot of copies? And that, that is actually the question. And I don't know that anybody really got much past that, you know, in terms of whether it was the ghost,

ghost writer or the publisher or anything else like that. Anyway, it's always just fascinating to me. Campaign 2020 updates, David. I want to start to you with what I'm going to call the panic of the moderates. We've been heading toward this ever since Biden started stumbling around and Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders were near the top of the polls. There was going to be a panic among Democratic moderates who didn't like the ideas that Warren and Bernie have didn't think those ideas can win or both. And today's occasion for it is new polls from the New York Times and Siena College, which shows.

that Donald Trump, despite being incredibly unpopular, is not that far off in the key states Democrats need to win the election. Joe Biden, even with Donald Trump in Michigan, Bernie Sanders only plus two over Trump in Michigan. Elizabeth Warren minus six against Trump in Michigan. Biden has narrow leads over Trump in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Warren is only even with Trump in Pennsylvania in Wisconsin. Sanders plus one plus two. So essentially, and then Trump, you know, doing quite well in other swing states like Florida, Arizona, North Carolina. And I think the point here is that, wait a minute, do the Democrats really have a candidate who is going to beat Donald Trump? I'll take you to Jonathan Chatespeas in New York Magazine today. He says there are many reasons the

party's mainstream has failed to exert itself. Biden's name recognition and association with the popular Obama administration has blotted out all. alternatives and the sheer number of center-left candidates has made it hard for any non-Biden to gain traction. Candidates with strong profiles like Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar have struggled to gain attention and proven politicians like Michael Bennett and Steve Bullock have failed to even qualify for the debates. Dot, dot, dot. The only avenue that has seemed open for a candidate to break into the top has been to excite activists who are demanding positions far to the left of the median voter. So what Chade is there laying out is, on the one hand,

there are structural problems for a moderate candidate to go and sort of challenge Biden for the nomination, along with Warren and Sanders. But the second way is the only way you get attention in this Democratic field is by being more liberal. So there's this, what he's saying is a perverse incentive to be more liberal, which is push more liberal candidates to the top. What do you think of that? I mean, I think that's definitely true. I mean, this isn't, I think that there are a lot of, there are a lot of issues that are getting brought up in the debates on the campaign trail that are rather small bore in comparison to at least, you know, primary races in cycles past.

things that are definitely you know direct kind of direct pleas sort of to the to the very most the most liberal parts of the party and certainly some of the candidates

are doing that themselves to try to make some noise because they know they can get a little static get a little attention get a little pushback that way and we talked about that a little bit with Beto and some of his more distinct stances

and I think that in At the end of the day, I mean, listen, I think that there's a lot of ways in which it's going to be a real net negative for the party. But without going into too much detail on that side, I think, I mean, I think that that's right. I think that, I mean, listen, I mean, Michael Bennett and Steve Bullock and the people like that, I mean, they certainly got attention. I don't think, I don't think you can say they didn't get any attention. I just don't think there's any appetite for that. I think that, you know, tacking to the right was completely. impossible, but it is sort of the inverse of what's going on now.

But I think more than anything, what we're seeing is, you know, Biden is taking up so much of the oxygen in the middle. And also, I mean, so some of this is really practical, I guess is what I'm saying. Biden's taking up so much the oxygen in the middle. Sanders and Warren are taking so much oxygen on the left. And to impede, but I think Biden's, Biden's taking up more, I mean, has more gravity, I think sort of comparatively in terms of just like what the platform. positions, what he stands for, institutional, whatever.

And I think when people, when people kind of snipe at Warren or snipe at Sanders to try to differentiate themselves, they get stuck into this, you know, middle of the road Biden vortex and he kind of, and they just kind of disappear into his shadow a little bit. I don't, I don't, I think, I think that Chate's broader point is right. I mean, I think it's, but I think the, the even more broad point is that it's really hard to stand out in a field of 10 or 15 people. And, you know, with the party the way that it is, and especially with the base, the active base the way that it is,

there's only certain ways you can get attention at all. Semi-related to that point is Pete Buttigieg, who has put himself forward as kind of like, I'm the moderate who's not Joe Biden, who's much younger and has different ideas, said on Showtimes the Circus that he thought this was a two-person race now for the Democratic nomination. Let's listen to that.

I think this is getting to be a two-way. It's early to say it. I'm not saying it is a two-way. But I think... But you see that. You see it's coming into focus. You and Warren. Yeah, and certainly a world where we're getting somewhere is that world, where it's coming

down to the two of us. Obviously, there's a lot of candidates and a lot of things can happen. But I think that as that happens, the contrast become clearer. Look, the contrasts are real. They're substantive, respectful policy contrast, but they're real. First of all, it's interesting you say that, right? So you accept the notion right now that it's kind of Warren against the field, really? someone's trying to become the alternative to Warren right now, right?

Yeah, I think it's shaping up that way. And so the former vice president of the United States is like, in your mind at this point already like gone? I would say this. Either he is the unstoppable frontrunner and we can all go home or he's not. And anybody who's in this race is here on the assumption that he's not. Buttigieg has been trying to walk back the, it's down to me and Warren thing basically since he said it. Way too interesting, by the way. to say publicly during a presidential campaign

whether you believe it or not. Yes. That's another thing that whoever believes that, you can't actually say that. Yeah. I mean, the weirdest thing is that when I listened to the clip, after reading about the clip, I was sort of, well,

underwhelmed isn't the right word, but I sort of, I can sympathize with his reasoning, right? I mean, if, I actually think that there's some validity, especially from where he's coming from to say, like, the only way forward is to, I mean, the only path forward is to hypothetically write off Joe Biden.

You know, I mean, just like get him out of the way. Mm-hmm. And then at that point, I mean, listen, this is one of those things that you said it's too interesting. I don't know that it's too honest to say. I mean, maybe he's being personally honest. I think if you pulled a lot of political reporters anonymously, they'd probably get to exactly the same endpoint that he reached in that interview.

I don't think it's that controversial. It's the sort of hutspa that I guess it's. that's controversial. And I will say that going back to the previous conversation, the interesting thing that Buttigieg has done, like, is, is what you said it, is he's carved out the space as the moderate who's not Biden. And I think that contra, a lot of the other people running the race who are more moderate, Kamala Harris, who I know we're going to talk about, maybe fits this mold, more moderate candidates who are trying to paint themselves as more progressive than they are. He's sort of said, no, no, no, I'm a moderate candidate. And if you're having

any trepidation about Joe Biden, but you like his sort of general stance, I'm your guy. But yeah, I think it's, I think that, you know, people are going to always take issue with any candidate that seems to be self-assured or overconfident or whatever you want to say. I mean, I'm made for this, you know, Beto's thing was, you know, example one, A. And I think that, you know, this will, it'll be interesting to see how how Buttigieg sort of comes out of this. If I were him, I wouldn't back down. Or maybe I would try to just explain it once and try to move on. But, um. Oh, yeah.

Because it's so, it's so dumb. I mean, this is another one where it's like, what it's, you're, you're spot on by comparing it to Betta. What, what is, what are all presidential candidates doing at all times? They're either trying to establish themselves to the frontrunner or they're trying to establish themselves as the single alternative to the front runner. Those are the two lanes. That's what everybody in this race is trying to do. And Pete Buttigieg just said it out loud.

He's saying, I think Warren is a frontrunner and I think I am essentially the alternative to Warren. Yeah. That's what everybody's trying to do. then we have to act like we get the vapors when he's a, uh-oh, uh-oh, you know, who does he think he is? Yeah, exactly. Like, what would you have him say? He's like, well, here's the way I see this shaking out. I say, we're all in the way of the next debate and all the other candidates get trapped in an ice storm and they can't make the stage and then I just win by default. Right. I mean,

there's, you know, like, there's not, there's not, if you don't see yourself winning, then what are you doing? Yeah. No, I completely agree. Speaking of Kamala Harris, yesterday the California senator qualified for the December debate. That's pretty much the end of the good news because her campaign has been coming apart lately, been laying off staffers low on cash. She has essentially ended her campaign in New Hampshire. Politico's Trent Spiner, no relation I don't think to the guy who plays data on Star Trek, went looking in the various Harris campaign offices in New Hampshire and comes up with this.

Quote, in Keene, the office in a storefront, on Main Street was dark. Chairs were folded up and a bag of Cheetos and Halloween candy sat on one of the number of empty tables at the front of the office. Harris apparently going to preserve her South Carolina campaign machinery and she's going all in to try to show well in Iowa, including spending Thanksgiving in there. That's always the, that's always the final. I'm going to spend the holiday here.

That's how committed I am. This is another what happened, David. Campaign pulled well. At the beginning of the summer, 20,000 people showed up for her announcement in Oakland. And now she's sort of in this kind of, you know, she's certainly, she's certainly in the zone where professional, respected political reporters aren't paying a ton of attention to her or treating her a little bit like Beto where there's like this campaign doesn't have its act together. What do you make of what's happened to Kamala Harris? That night, I don't know, I think it was the first time that Maya, Rudolph portrayed her on Saturday Night Live when they were doing the debate bit.

And Kate McKinnon was playing Elizabeth Warren and side by side, first of all, Maya Rudolph did the most pitch perfect but scathing impression of Kamala Harris is just sort of like the seductive mom basically. And it was, you know, it's like a brandy in one hand and a cigarette in the other. And it was just like it was. That sounds like every Maya Rudolph character. Exactly. It was. But it was, but it felt, but it just felt. so spot on. And yet it wasn't, there was no, like, there was no backbone of, like, what makes her a great person or a great candidate. There was, there, there was no, like, affirmation inherent in it. But it was just so, it was just so perfect after, you know, we

had kind of seen her kind of chuckling at herself in the, in the debates and, and sort of seemingly missing the point a couple of times. And, and, and, but that play side by side with Kate McKinnon, who was doing an immaculate Elizabeth Warren impression, but the sort of impression that makes you like Elizabeth Warren more. It's sort of hard to say. But like just putting those two, putting those two impressions side by side, it was just like, oh, Jesus, like one of these people could be present and the other, I mean, if you had never seen the campaign, if you never seen the real people, you would say one of these people could be president and one of these people is a joke, right? And the impressions that they, you know, that they're going to do of candidates on SNL

are not like literally meaningful in any sort of way. I mean, they certainly could be. I mean, Sarah Palin would probably like to have a word. But I think that that kind of speaks to something broader, which is that, you know, what we were all sort of reading, the subtext that we were saying out of Kamala Harris was, with the exception of the first debate, it just didn't seem like a particularly meaty, particularly, you know, well-considered campaign.

And I think there's some of the better-or-work stuff in there, too. Or it's just like if you're running, I mean, despite, like I said, despite Obama, despite Trump, if you're running a sort of, you know, insurgent campaign, if you're relatively, relatively new on the national political scene, I think you got to come with a lot more than what she was perceived to come with, you know, and at least with the impression that she gave on the national stage in the various debates and what TV time she got. And again, there's just so many candidates that somebody, I mean, you know, I said about Beto, long ago that I moved back to New York a little over a year ago, and one of my first memories was seeing a better work poster

and like a townhouse, a brownstone apartment in downtown Brooklyn. And I just thought it was wild. But like if you can go from that, from having that kind of reach to like wealthy people in New York City and not be able to fund your campaign through the month of October, then that, I mean,

but I think that has a lot that talks about fundraising, but also talks about just how much, how many different candidates there are to spread your, money around, you know, and there's a lot of people who could have been very energized about Kamala Harris three, four months ago that are now just putting all their money into Elizabeth Warren or to any of the other number of candidates. Pete Buttigieg, anybody. And for, you know, whatever reason, her candidacy just didn't kind of hold people's attention to the degree that it seemed like it might. A couple of other quick notes on Friday. Andrew Yang hosted something called Yangapalooza

in Des Moines, Iowa. Yeah. He was joined on stage, David, by Weezer's Rivers Cuomo. According to Spins, Mark Hogan and Madison Bloom, Cuomo played Buddy Holly, along with covers of TLC's No Scrubs and Toto's Africa. Meanwhile, meanwhile, a week ago, Jack White opened for Bernie Sanders in Detroit. Oh. White played a bunch of white striped songs and a Dylan cover per Rolling Stone. White said that he supports Sanders as promised to abolish the electoral college because that quote is the reason we're in the mess we're now. So who wins the presidential battle of the bands? Yang or Bernie

Sanders? Oh, man. I mean, I'm a big Jack White fan, so, you know, and I'm certainly more sympathetic to Bernie Sanders than Andrew Yang. So I'm going to, I would give him the, I mean, he wins the David Chewaker primary, but man, Rivers Cuomo covering TLC's no scrubs to a crowd of Andrew Yang supporters is so pitch perfect. It's so spot on that I, you got to kind of, I think that,

I think that might be your winner. I think so. We talk about being on message during a presidential campaign. How, I mean, that's as on message as humanly possible. Yeah. There's just no way. I also came across this. We got a December Democratic debate, which is scheduled for Thursday, December 19th.

Guess what? That's the same Thursday that Star Wars, the rise of Skywalker, opens. So I want to ask two questions. One, is there anyone under the age of 90 who works of the DNC? And do you understand that we can't watch Warren and Bernie duel for the fate of the galaxy when we're watching Ray and Kylo duel for the fate of the galaxy? You cannot happen at the same time.

But here's my actual question to you, David. Which candidate will have the most persuadable voters watching Star Wars instead of watching the debate? So let's guarantee. let's just right off the bat nobody that is voting for joe biden will also be at star wars thursday night there's close to zero people but who will lose the most eyeballs do you think to the rise of skywalker oh man that's hard that that that feels right that does feel right um quote david shoemaker but it's i just think

Who's going to lose? Yeah. Who's going to be there? Okay, so you say not Biden. No way. I assume like Bob Eiger is a Joe Biden Democrat, but he'll probably be out there on opening night. The, I mean, I feel like Andrew Yang has, his audience is probably like 99% Star Wars fans, but also like 99.9% people who will stay home to watch him in the debate, weirdly. Yeah, he is not qualified for the debate.

Oh, he hasn't? All right. It's just the four front runners in Kamala at this point. Who's going to, who is it going to be? I mean, I think Bernie is a weird one. I mean, because there are a bunch of, like, Bernie, I seriously doubt Bernie is familiar with the Star Wars universe, but a lot of Bernie fans strike me as fans of the Star Wars universe.

I bet that Bernie's, like, campaign staff are huge Star Wars fans. They see, I bet that, I mean, they seem pretty, like, rather, like, convertively young and plugged in and, you know, clearly, and they're all nerdy if they're working for political campaigns. I like Chris's idea, Buttigieg. 37 years old. I mean, David, is that not in the zone of dads who are currently foisting Star Wars fandom on their kids?

And I'm not talking about anybody in specific here. Just completely notional. I just, yeah, this is just something, something about that. Anyway, time for David Chubaker guess is a strain pun headline. Friday's headline was all. All a gourd. All the gourd. Listeners, Ryan Scott and Jerry Shaw thought it should have been Gordian knots.

Like the... Wow. That's good. Yeah. Pretty good. Andrew Cuts went with Gordian yacht. And Megan Maruko says it should have been Pump King of the Sea. Pump king of the sea.

Today's strain pun comes from Joseph Duroski. The headline appeared in the British Medical Journal. Boy, that is a generic name. But he learned about it from CNN.com. Let me read you a little of the article about CNN, from CNN, I should say. A package of marijuana has been retrieved from the nose of a man 18 years after he smuggled it into prison. According to the team who reported on it for the British Medical Journal, the man received drugs wrapped in a balloon from his girlfriend who was visiting him in prison.

He placed the drugs in his right nostril in order to evade detection from the guards, but was later unable to retrieve the drugs after pushing the package deeper into the cavity. The man, quote, suffered chronic sinus infections and symptoms of nasal obstructions in the years following the incident. Over the next 18 years, the package developed into a rhinolyth, a stone that forms around a foreign body in the nasal cavity. That's all you get, David. What was the British Medical Journal strained pun headline? So just to be clear, this is the British Medical Journal. this is the British Medical Journal's headline and not the CNN headline.

That is correct. I don't know that it's not going to change what I'm thinking, but I mean... You know the British Medical Journal style as well as you know Esquire from the 60s, David. Come on. Oh, man. So am I looking for a slang term for marijuana here? Is that a place to start? Is it going to be like a Reef for Madness joke here or more of like the weed pot? Jim, please cut the clip of slang term for marijuana for the end of this podcast. I cannot wait. I see you with you with that. Yes, David, that is what you're looking for.

Ganges. I'm trying to think. The ones of my youth. Herb would be a... Just remember this is a medical journal. Chronic? Chronic? Is it the chronic or chronic illness?

Chronic... Sorry. No? A little more down. Just right down the middle here. This is a medical journal. No need to get cute. Weed.

Even more down the middle. Dope. Pot. grass What if I give you joint Joint? Oh, oh

Why can't I think of it? I feel like it's right to, I tell you're going to reach out and grab it. Famous saying maybe with Joint. Sorry, time's up, David. What is it? How do I not know this?

A nose out of joint. You know, when you get your nose out of joint. Yeah, I know, I know. It doesn't quite work. It should be kind of joint out of nose, right? But a nose out of joint. That is the British Medical Journal, Strain, pun headline.

And he is David Shoemaker. And I am Brian Curtis. Research by Crislaw made a production magic by Jim Cunningham. We're back Friday, bright and early with more lukewarm takes about the media. And David will try to do a better job. See you then, David. See you later, Brian. Looks like the actor that would play either

John Wilkes Booth or Edgar Allan Ho in a reenactment scene for a history channel documentary. David? Looks like Chris Hansen just asked him to take a seat. David? What are you doing? Looks like Sean Penn's stunt bubble from the Falcon and the Snowman. See that movie to appreciate how real that is.

David looks like he just ran down to the corner for a pack of smokes but didn't grab his wallet. Indecisive, self-centered, and soft. What are you doing? David looks like Mike Tyson, Barbara Walters, Barry Dillard, and Norman. Orman Mailer, who had been surprisingly a close friend of Roy Cohn. Wow. JFK Jr. still alive and living on an island. If they, like, if they warmed you up to him and then showed you a 10-second YouTube clip while you were, like, waiting in line for a hamburger, you'd be like, holy shit, this guy's, you know, Bobby Kennedy.

Rolled up sleeves. Yeah. Standing in front of an endangered owl habitat. Yeah. No, I completely agree. But who will lose the most eyeballs, do you think? Work with your therapist or your, you know, higher being about, but. No, sir. No, sir.

What are you doing? Uh-oh, uh-oh. The only way you get attention in this Democratic field is by being more liberal. So am I looking for a slang term for marijuana here? Is that a place to start? Is it going to be like a reaper?