The Ricochet Podcast - In the Demo

Episode Date: July 26, 2024

Back in 2002, Ruy Teixeira took note of demographic trends that spelled good news for the Democratic Party's 21st-century prospects. Just two decades after the release of The Emerging Democratic Majority, he found himself wondering something else entirely: Where Have All the Democrats Gone?  With what appears to be the coronation of Kamala Harris, he and the gang consider how pessimism, disorderliness, and faculty lounge talk have thrown America's political coalitions for a loop.Plus: Steve, James, and Rob finally get a chance to respond to the news that broke shortly after they wrapped last week; they make a couple of predictions for the VP's VP pick; and James calls on all Ricochet rhythmists to send the songs! (Buck Dharma kicks things off with "End of Every Song")- Opening sounds: Bibi Goes to Washington, Biden “Becomes” Washington, Kamala cracks up

There we go. Yeah, now we're just waiting on, we're going to get Rob or see in witness protection also, like Peter. Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Stephen Hayward. I'm James Lileks, and today we talk to Roy Teixeira about demographics, Democrats, the election. So let's have ourselves a podcast. Remember this. Our enemies are your enemies. Our fight is your fight, and our victory will be your victory. Nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy. That includes personal ambition. So I've decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation.

Welcome, everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast. Number, well, I've been waiting for this for years. It's the number of the area code of the house where I grew up, 701. I still remember my childhood phone number, 701. Well, I probably shouldn't say it, but my parents had the same phone number for decades, which is A, a bygone time, and B, a sign that I probably had a stable upbringing, which I did, which makes me the hidebound person resistant to change that I am today. I am, did I say, James Lylex, Minneapolis? Yeah. Rob Long, Gotham. People in New York hate when they say that. Too bad Stephen Hayward isn't in Frisco so I can complete the bi-coastal injury.

Stephen Hayward was sitting in for Peter Robinson. Welcome, guys. What a week. Again. Where to start? I'm going to go with a big cliche. And the big cliche is, okay, if you had a bunch of crazy right-wingers showing up in Washington, D.C. with a giant statue of a cliched Jew with a big nose and horns and blood dripping out of his mouth and they defaced all the monuments and wrote to angry things. I think we would be having a conversation about civil order. But we're not. The people who descended and had basically a fascist Jew-hating rally and

defaced a whole bunch of things, and I hate the defacement, some got arrested and charges dropped. Kamala Harris has deplored the violence um but whether or not she would advocate for these people to be actually clapped and irons are sent off to the who's gal is something i suppose we'll find in her new i forget has she reincarnated herself as the old iteration of tough on crime or are we still in the 2020 mode what do you think is which which one are we going to see in this election cycle guys steve oh you want me oh you want me to go first right yeah well i i mean i i don't know i'm in the camp that thinks we're about to get a rerun in some ways of the

1988 campaign you may remember that dukakis argued in his famous speech, this election is not about ideology, it's about competence, which meant he wanted to disguise his ideology. And according to some polls, he was 17 points ahead of George H.W. Bush. Bush ended up winning by eight. So you had almost a 25% swing. And so right now, there's a big surge for Harris. Her approval ratings were up 15 points. She's up maybe above water, about 50. But I think, I mean, among other things, she's going to try and straddle her past record. And I don't think she'll be able to get away with that once the Trump campaign opens up on her. And like Dukakis, I think she has her own Willie Horton problem.

You know, we've got the receipts of her urging people on Twitter to donate to a bail fund for the Black Lives Matter rioters in Minnesota in 2020, one of whom was bailed out and went out and murdered someone, just like Willie Horton 30-some years ago. And I think she's going to have a hard time. She'll lie about it. The media will cover up. By the way, last point, the media is trying to give fake news a bad name right now the way they're covering up for her past right she was never called the border czar never but even though what uh google will bring up 31 000 mentions of kamala as the border czar uh it's

unbelievable although you know i've been joking that um maybe they're right uh you really can't be a czar unless you're from the czarist region of Mother Russia. Everything else is just sparkling Habsburg aristocracy. Well, she was a czar in the sense that the czars, you know, they presided over chaos. They didn't do much. So, yeah, there's a little of that. What did Dukakis in? Was it the Dondi and a helmet in the tank moment?

Or was it? Well, I was also that there was no i mean it was a change election kind of but there was no argument for change in 88 because the things were going great um and and and i mean the hard part about his you know campaign histories and looking for signs in the past for me is that we've never had so many candidates running for higher office that so much of the country despises not is indifferent to not doesn't know but actively loathes and so you have this kind of bizarre democratic side you have this bizarre kind of like a you know cultish thrill like they're all

kind of in their weird zone where they think it's gonna happen everybody loves her they know people hate her and they hate the democrats and they hate what they did on the border and they hate what they did in crime and then you have these republicans saying he's gonna win our guy's gonna win by a landslide don't know everyone who hated him still really hates him that's a whole lot of people um so the the best way which is which is not the case in 88 that nobody had ever heard dukakis and and people were indifferent at worst to george hw which they were indifferent so this is going to be a really interesting few months what's fascinating about it is that i i think the one that we're gonna be able to take away

from historically is that um we we we now know i I mean, however Kamala Harris does, she's not going to get trounced. She's going to do, you know, she's going to either win or lose by a small amount. And that's probably what Trump will win or lose by, right? And what we're going to discover is that these things go on too long. That you can't actually, in the middle of the summer, throw in a candidate and have an election. Other countries do this, too, for a slightly less important job. But you have an election in November, a few months later, and everybody's happy with that. I don't think anybody's going to be complaining, like, well, I really wish I had started a year ago.

Most people are like, yeah, man, yeah, these things go on too long. This is an experiment in in that and i suspect that um i don't know how we how far you can take this in terms of you know political logic but i suspect that we'll discover that they go on too long um and that uh it and i think there's a secret um desire not desire but happy i think they're happy these the political operative class of people are happy to have the candidates despised it's easier because then you're only going to win by like a few points anyway right that's their whole goal that in the in the brain trust of the democratic party republican party their point is i just want to win by one right that's how smart i am i can win by one so you don't have to do that much except run negative pads against the other guy um which everybody prefers because it's easier uh so i

feel like we're in a really good uh political science uh laboratory right now that will be um um interesting to see unfold well when you when you say that everybody despises them raga i think you you've completely misjudged the electorate everybody loves kamala harris this is what we've learned in the last week we're besotted by her uh we had an opinion piece in my paper today which began the antidote to mega is feminist laughter now right away you're sort of coming up against a concept make america what's that old joke how many feminists have taken a screw in a light bulb right that's not funny that's not funny that's right so her laughter says the piece has become a national contagious laughter has become a national symbol

of collective healing affirming the powers of joy to unite community across bitter divisions of culture and identity so the fact that she that she laughs and it's not put down as a Hillary cackle, I guess, is going to be the thing that carriers her to mass affirmation. So I think you're misjudging that, just as you're misjudging the fact that a lot of people who are voting for Trump are doing so with complete admiration of his messiah-like stature. I mean, in other words, yes, I think you're absolutely correct. I mean, one of the big things on Twitter this week is the strange things that J.D. Vance has been saying about women

and cat ladies and single cat ladies and the rest of it, as if this is a demographic that's on the cusp, and, you know, he could just need a little nudge to shove him over to vote for Trump, but now he's done it now. Anyway, Stephen. Well, look, it was nice having an honest and objective

news media for at least a month. I think we can file it away for the future, right? Now they're back to their old mode. Look, I do think also I was going to say this about people despising Trump. Certainly the Democratic base and the media do, but you know, his approval ratings have

actually been rising a bit ever since the shooting. And I think for the same reason that Reagan's did in 1981. The knock on Reagan was he's a Hollywood cutout. He's not really a real person. He's a creature of staff. And his response to that dispelled all that. And likewise with Trump, I think a lot of people who may not like him still, but they don't, they no longer think that he is also a fraud of people who may not like him still uh but they don't they no longer think that he is

also a fraud of some kind i mean he showed uh you know as we saw that day we saw the real trump emerged i think and more people respect that and that's why i think uh you still give him the advantage i would say probably i give him the advantage but i mean i i just i think all the trump supporters and the kamala supporters have the same kind of delusional quality that when they're surrounded by people who love the guy or love their guy, they just think that's everybody. We're going to win. And they just forget that these are polarizing politicians who have very, very, very poor, clumsy, maladroit ways of appealing to the center. And they turn people away they turn the democrats and the republicans and it's a hard thing because you wake up and you it's down now it's gonna be

august or september you're running a general and you wake up and you're like okay well now i gotta get those people back and the goal of the opposing campaign is to point out that you are an extremist and a weirdo and And often that's unfair. But in this case, I think both of these campaigns have a very good point. They've got a lot they can talk about. And I just, you know, running for the presidency is not running to be the lead on a Fox News show or the lead on The View. You're going for 70 79 people to vote.

But I think this is, I don't want to say bubble talk, but maybe the people who look at this a lot and think about it a lot think this way. I think the average Trump and the average Harris voter do not think that everybody is absolutely rah-rah and thinks that person is great. They're probably aware that most Trump voters know that half the country doesn't like him and most of the harris voters know likewise i think you know the the absolutely gung-ho people yes may be subject to delusion but so it ever is i mean i well i mean the good news for the good news for the people for the trump Trump side, I mean, the Sunnis perspective on the Trump side is that they actively they realized that the abortion issue was a killer and a killer for the Republicans, especially in those swing states. And so they in the platform, they tried to neuter it.

And so the Democrats are now trying to resurrect it and make it still an issue. And it kind of is an issue because at the top of the ticket there's some there's some there's some daylight between the two of these guys so that that is i'm just talking about pure politics right that was actually kind of smart on the republican side to come up with to try to tame their weirdness a little bit and now the democrats is up to them to tame their weirdness harder because their weirdness is basically the city of san francisco and right which you could never or the state of california which you can't point to really for any reason um you know so so there but but i i again i i think the problem with both these parties is the same which is that they they love show business so

much that they think they're in show business so they think they're having a really popular be a really popular fox news talk show host or being you know getting clapper on the view is going to be as a sign of some kind of political momentum which it's not you need 70 million people to lose the presidency the other guy's gonna get 75 or 80 right so that's a lot of people and those people aren't watching cable news they are normal and they are sort of in the center and well okay but that's gonna be hard if you do the last two election cycles in 2016 the double haters the people who didn't like hillary or trump they broke for trump by you know five to three or even two to one in 2020 just the reverse. The double haters,

maybe they didn't hate Biden as much as they should have, but went the other way. They retired Trump and the chaos and all the rest, and Trump still almost won. So now it's where are those double haters going to go? I think you're right, Rob, that a lot of those double haters are not cable news and view watchers. But I do think you are seeing, not only is Kamala trying to move to the center, but the Democratic Party is trying to help her out. Two things in the last couple of days. One is Gavin Newsom yesterday issuing an order to clear out the homeless camps. Stunning.

Can you just explain that to me? Because I was reading it today and I thought, wait, what? Yeah. Well, I think it's two things. One is, you know, Newsom, to his credit, did call for the Supreme Court to reverse the old Boise case that prevented governments. And so that was what was done by the Supreme Court. Now, Newsom kept silent about praising them, but he's now acting on the new legal regime that they're allowed.

I think that means that he's, A, trying to help Kamala Harris in the meantime by saying, C, we can fix California, or B, he thinks he's going to be the candidate in 2028 and he needs to help fix California or he's doomed. But another little one that probably got by most people is Sherrod Brown in Ohio, the incumbent liberal Democrat, is in great trouble there. Tough race. He came out a couple days ago saying he would vote against the Biden administration's climate plan because it would hurt Ohio energy workers and manufacturing people. That's the sign of a Democrat in trouble trying to run away from the progressive agenda, which they always do in election years. But I thought, ah, they're

trying to neutralize some of their progressive baggage. Well, we'll get to that in a second. But what we should do right now is be grateful that we have a fascinating person to talk to, Roy Toshiera. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. I'm, you know, from North Dakota, so what do I know? Roy is the Senior Fellow of the American Enterprise Institute. Roy focuses on the transformation of party coalitions and the future of American electoral politics. Co-founder and politics editor of the Substack newsletter, the Liberal Patriot. Welcome.

Thanks for having me. Interesting times, no? That they are. Chinese curse, all that. Well, let's go back to 2002, which seems like another era, another civilization. You co-authored the Emerging Democratic Majority. Now, last year, you and John Judas teamed up again. You published Where Have All the Democrats Gone? The Soul of the Party in the Age of the Extremes. So what were you noticing in the early aughts? And why did the demographic trends do what they did over the past decade? Well, in the earlier book, the 2002 book, The Emerging Democratic Majority, we're looking at the ways in which this sort of underlying terrain of American politics was changing in ways that seemed to

favor the Democrats in terms of demographic shifts toward non-white voters, the rising, you know, importance of professionals and the realignment toward the Democrats, shifts among women voters, shifts in the more dynamic metropolitan areas of the country, the fact that Republicans seem to be out of step with sort of increasingly liberal social attitudes and sort of were doubling down and sort of uncomplicated Reaganism or almost libertarian approach to economics that really wasn't consistent with where a lot of these voters were coming from. We thought that would give them a bit of an advantage. And we described what might be their emerging philosophy as progressive centrism, which could take advantage of these changes and make them an attractive package to these shifting availability of voters. And we also had a caveat in the book, which is widely ignored, about how you still needed to maintain a very significant share of white working class voters because they were still a huge sector of the electorate, particularly in some very important states. And even though their relative weight in the electorate was declining, you still needed to maintain a strong minority and not lose too much ground among these voters.

So that was widely ignored in sort of the triumphalism of, say, the Obama victory in 2008. And essentially what our book is about, the new book is about, where have all the Democrats gone, is tracing the ways in which Democrats have kind of blown, in a sense, their opportunity because they're losing so many working class voters, not only white working class voters, but now non-white working class voters. And they've just become a party that's much more dominated by the views and culture and priorities of relatively liberal college educated voters. And that makes them less attractive to working class voters who

aren't as enthusiastic about how the country has evolved and their fate in life as as some of these democratic supporters are so that's in very broad brush where we're at today where the republicans are increasingly a working class party and the democrats increasingly less so hey really, thanks for joining us. Um, uh, in my career in TV, we used to say that the only way to become a number four network is you first have to be a number one network. That's how you go. You go from number one to number four.

You don't go, you don't slip down the ladder because you just, you just suddenly you wake up one day and you've lost. And so I, cause you mentioned Obama. Cause I think it's fascinating. A 2008 smashing popular vote victory, 53 plus percent. And then in 2012, he lost a lot of votes.

But, you know, you start, you know, you start with $20 billion and you lose $5 billion, you still got 15 million, you don't notice. But it did seem like there was some leakage there in 2012 that in 2016 became fatal uh still pretty tight um we were just talking before you got here steven i'm talking about like 2006 2016 2020 still pretty tight elections 10 20 well it was 78 000 likely another tight one this this time i wouldn't be surprised but but but you're also that also matches something else happening in country which is in incredible volatility i mean i'm 59 years old most of my life there was one speaker of the house tip o'neill and there was one party that ran the house and that was the democrats and since then i remember that yes it's 94 right it's been you've had nancy nancy pelosi has been

speaker of the house twice like that's crazy you know goes back and forth and we talk about on election night and even in the in the midterm election we talk about the control of the house and senate but we never used to do that are we entering because of these demographic shifts this just a period or are we in it or are we coming out of it or is it just about to get a lot more interesting of just political volatility that we haven't seen this country for a century and a half almost that's what it feels yeah well i i think we're we're basically in that era and it's not clear when we're going to get out of it um i'm writing uh doing a big paper now with my colleague Yuval Levin at AEI on the evolution of party coalitions.

We call it politics without winners, tracing the history of party coalitions in the United States and the general tendency of politics to be, you know, sort of reflected in there being a dominant majority coalition and a coalition that's trying to become the dominant majority. But nevertheless, you know, the dominant majority imprints its political pawprint on what's going on in this, you know, sort of widely acknowledged to be to be such. But we're out of that era now. And we have been for an era like that for quite some time, going back to the, you know, cut points you were talking about, where basically we're sort of fighting on the 50-yard line of American politics. Things can swing back and forth, you know, many times, just because nobody really does have a dominant majority. And what's peculiar and interesting about our current era is you could argue that, and we do argue this, that not only does neither party seem like they're forming a dominant majority, they don't necessarily even seem that interested in it. I mean, they're so beholden to the extremes of their own parties.

The people who dominate those parties are not really thinking very strategically and clearly about how to form a dominant majority. So the strategies that could lead to that are sort of closed off intellectually and in other ways. And I think that, you know, that's where we are now. It sometimes seems to me that they misunderstood what the office of the presidency is. You're not the prime minister. You win the election and you take the office and all the people do is hand you the microphone. You only get the gavel is can you the microphone you only get the gavel you get the microphone now you have to you you are by definition a wheeler dealer you know a moderate democrat rhino republican if you want to be successful you need the party as the president

united states um we also also have heard for years uh that uh demographics is destiny that's something demographics is destiny but if you look many people was here. Demographics is destiny. But if you look at the, I don't know, if you look at the map right now, if you're a Republican, you're looking at a lot of second, third, even first generation Hispanics voting Republican.

You're looking at this large South Asian population seems to be leaning conservative. Are demographics destiny definitely not and that was a uh widely uh mooted about this interpretation of what john and i wrote and some other people we never thought demographics was destiny we never thought that democrats because of these changes had a sort of lock on the presidency and political domination generally going forward. There was a question of the terrain changing in such a way that favors you, but you still have to take advantage of it. One way to think about this mathematically

is, in a sense, demographics is destiny. It only makes sense if you're thinking about it in an all-else-equal context. In other words, if the groups that favor you are increasing and the groups that don't favor you are decreasing, then all-else-equal, that's very good for you. However, even if, say, the amount of non-whites in the voting electorate is increasing, if their support level for you, their margins go down, that can cancel out the effect of having more people in that bucket. And that's what people repeatedly forget about this, you know, the sort of the issue of demographics and how they affect politics. You really have to take into account not only just of how many people are in a bucket,

but how many, how those people in the bucket are voting and whether it's changing from what it was before uh and if it is that can really change you know what uh the calculus so to speak uh that as as these changes manifest themselves in the electorate and i don't know how many times i've explained this to various reporters or what have you but it seems to i don't know there's some problems with it they just look there's more hispanics isn't that great for the democrats well okay yes all else equal but look at what's happening on the ground look at where these voters are coming from look at how they view the democratic party look at their margins and look at i mean come on isn't it part i mean don't you i mean i i i i'm gonna change i have one question for you like Trump in a sense, because I feel like Trump represents a psychic break with the Republican past in a lot of ways.

That probably if you are running, we're just talking about pure branding. If you're running a brand is a good thing, right? Because there are people who are going to vote for Republican for the first time. They wouldn't have voted for, you you know some republican who looks and sounds like me um so that's probably a good sign for the branding of the republican party that it is changing and shifting um the downside for the democrats seems to me that they're doubling down on the stuff that got them into trouble and has got them into trouble for years which is the kind of twee academic uh stuff that jim carville i think rightly and correctly identifies as the killer yeah faculty lounge talk

faculty lounge talk right uh i guess my larger question is, if you live in a culture that is obsessed with race and obsessed with demographics, there's a lot of downsides to that. But one of them is if you're a political professional, you tend to just think that that's your job is to identify who the people are who live in this district. And you already know how they're going to vote instead of marching around and knocking on doors and finding out what those people really believe so if you are a politician running for the mayor here in new york city and eric adams is a terrible mayor but he was a fantastic campaigner he marched around and he talked to a bunch of older black ladies and he said what do you care about and they said crime he said what else do you care about they said no no no it's crime crime crime yeah crime and he ran on that very successfully um he seems like the only

i think democrat on a national stage who has actually listened to voters instead of putting them in the category. Is that, I know that's unfair. Yeah, that's interesting. I think there are others who, they're not quite as much national figures. I mean, Sherelle Parker in Philadelphia ran in a pretty similar way for some of the similar reasons. But I think it is true that in terms of people of a national profile, we've seen very little, a lot of reluctance to say things that are really off the reservation as far as today's Democratic Party and its activists and, you know, sort of we call the shadow party in our book, John Judas and I, who, you know, that penumbra of foundations, NGOs, activist groups, you know, various parts of the media, who the moment you deviate from, you know, the current consensus about how to approach an

issue like crime or immigration or race or gender, they're on you like a ton of bricks. So there's a reluctance to do that. I mean, you can look at even people like Gretchen Whitmer or Josh Shapiro who have, you know, sort of quasi-national profiles. And, you know, if you look carefully at what they say, they strike a moderate tone and a pragmatic tone at times. But you really it's hard to see the areas in which they've really in a big way departed from the Democratic consensus. And that's certainly true of the leaders in Congress, your Schumers and your Pelosi and now Hakeem Jeffries and so on and so forth. I mean, the Democratic Party on a national level is dominated by an approach on a whole vector of issues that is actually pretty

far from the median working class voter. And they're very reluctant to. And why do they do that? Well, I think, you know, there's pressures within the party. I mean, part of it is, too, I think never underestimate, you know, where do people live and who do they talk to? Right. They live in a bubble. You know, they don't talk to people who have different points of view than them very often. And the extent they're aware of them, they tend to write them off as, you know, the great unwashed, the deplorables, the reactionaries in the heartland, they're racist, they're sexist, they're transphobic, whatever. I mean, this is like not a really productive way to understand what voters in America really think. That on the one hand, you're talking to people who agree with you all the time, but on the other, ignoring the other people because, you know, they're not even worth talking to. They're not some of the good people. They're the bad people. So I just think that that really handicaps the Democrats in terms of taking advantage of the ways in which, while Trump has been a pathbreaker in

terms of making the Republicans more of a working class party, breaking apart the old three-legged stool that included sort of more libertarian economics um you know he's i mean people forget about how important it was what he said about medicare and social security in 2016 and of course what he said about trade and you know manufacturing and offshore i mean these were things were pretty different than the it was driving me crazy as a classical liberal, I'm like, no, we have to cut Medicare and cut Social Security. That's bad juju, but it really worked with the voters. It totally did. It totally did.

Quiet there, Rob. But the other side of it is Trump is Trump, and they're not able to stand off the rough edges of some of the pro-working class appeals and sort of present a more moderate but nevertheless pro-working class right i mean it's hard to do i mean oran cass is frantically trying to push them in that direction but you know it's not under his control basically they need a trump this is need a trump the republicans need uh you know less trumpy trump yeah really it's uh steve hayward out in cal. And I want to draw back and take a longer term perspective on things. And not just the current moment. I always enjoy listening to you and reading you not because you necessarily say things I agree

with. But because it seems to me you have the disposition of the older, optimistic, happy warrior liberalism of John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey. And that's why I want to bring up your book that you published in 2017, you know, at the beginning of the Trump darkness, your book, The Optimistic Leftist. Right? And I have a couple of particular questions about that book and how you think it's playing out. But in addition to, I want to add a different sort of field theory of what ails the Democrats that doesn't disagree with faculty lounge dominance of the party. I actually think the turn that hurt the Democratic Party happened in the 70s when it went from being the party of, you know, the doctrine under John F. Kennedy was growth liberalism. That was the doctrine of the political economy. And again, Humphrey, the same way.

In the 70s, you started getting Jerry Brown, Jimmy Carter talking about the limits to growth. And I think that accelerated what was already a latent strain of redistributionism in Democratic politics. But I think that has made the Democratic Party more sour than it used to be. Now, is that too broad a generalization, or do you think some of that maybe is on to something? No, I think that's actually pretty fair. And first of all, Steve, I want to thank you for being aware of that book and maybe reading it. It kind of bombed, basically. It came out after Trump got elected.

And so, I mean, I'm optimistic, I'm optimistic. But I do think you're capturing some of what the book was trying to talk about. And I think, you know, in retrospect, I was way too optimistic, in a sense, about the ability of the Democrats to pick up on what you might call a pro-growth, optimistic approach to political economy and toward reaching voters. I thought they would maybe do a better job. I don't think they did. As we've seen, they've gone down various rabbit holes, which don't have much to do with that. But I think the fundamental point that I was making is the connection between, in a sense, growth and progressivismism growth and the good society

if you want people to feel good about their fellow humans if you want to have enough resources available to do the good things you want to do in terms of uh you know sort of making the country a better place you goddamn well need you know relatively fast economic growth and you need to figure out a way to do that now you know i might dissent a little bit from my own prescriptions in the book about how to do that but i think the fundamental idea is very sound right uh and democrats i think as you're pointing out they're really not that interested in growth quad growth anymore they they disparage it they think it's you know it's like consumer society man and it's ruining the earth man man. I mean, all that kind of stuff. But, you know, this is like should be mother's milk.

This is how, you know, sort of the boom after World War II has a very non-trivial relationship to all the good things people like about that 30-year period. It doesn't happen without that level of economic growth. So I do think that, and, you know, look at Kamala Harris, right? I mean, back to today, I mean, is she the pro-growth candidate? I don't even know if she ever, the word even, you know, passes her lips, right? I mean, it's just not her thing. And it's not really for, I think, most leading Democrats, what they think about a lot. And certainly, I mean, in a sense, what I was writing in 2017 was a precursor of what is now

called abundance economics, right? Supply-side progressivism. It was basically coming out of that same bag, you know, a little bit early. I was a premature, you know, like supply-side progressive or something, but definitely on the side that, you know, we need growth and we need a lot more of it. Yeah, I mean, excuse me for a second, but you actually have studies of degrowth now, which people just keep with their fingers and figure out how to make our lives less abundant. How we what I want to know is how much of the Democratic Party at this point is completely infected by the idea of scarcity and abundance and how much of them are just simply paying

lip service to it because they believe that that is the thing that they should be saying now? Well, I think the latter definitely is a big part of it. There's a lot of preference falsification going on there and sort of a be a sense to what people think they need to say about economic issues and about growth. But I do think there's a ton of people out there who believe in this stuff. And I think a lot of it is driven by something I've written a lot about, climate catastrophism. I mean, it is very difficult to overestimate the influence of the whole climate issue on the changing attitudes of the Democratic Party toward energy and economics. mean it's it's totally hegemonic right i mean you don't get joe biden saying this is uh you know this is an existential risk this is worse than nuclear war we've got 10 years to solve it i mean these are

absolutely bonkers points of view on on energy and economics but because they dominate the democratic party and because they have such a strong relationship to the issue of growth and how do we get it, I think it does cast a penumbra of negativity among the very idea of growth. Because, you know, you don't have to be like, know a lot of energy economics or economics period to at least have an intuitive sense. Our growth is based on fossil fuels. They will not disappear very fast. And in fact, if you try to zero them out fast, they'll actually be bad. So if you're, you know, sort of halfway aware of the world around you, I mean, your attitude as a Democrat who thinks climate change is the most important issue might be, well, so be it then.

We'll have less growth. You know, that's fine. We'll save the planet yeah and yeah as you pointing out you know degrowth right maybe what that's really what we need you know like uh which of course is is so insane that you know it's it's amazing anyone affiliated with a major political party would think these things is a booming is a booming field yes well well it's uh well right now really the the what i mean i'm following with great interest the abundance economics or supply-side progressivism. But that caucus right now is really you, Matt Iglesias, Ezra Klein, our friends at the Breakthrough Institute. Yeah, small but mighty. Well, that's right.

I think the parallel would be, you may not like this parallel, it's a little bit like the supply-side economists on the conservative side of the 70s. They said, hey, we should be for growth and tax cut and out of theory. Okay. One of the things in your book is that you say, I mean, the broad banner was we need to think about ways of reforming capitalism. And so here we are, what, seven, eight years later, nine years later. And, you know, I've been joking that if Rip Van Winkle were rewritten by Washington Irving today, the figure would wake up with Karl Marx's beard. Because all of a sudden you have a lot of conservatives, at least the Trumpy nationalists, attacking finance capitalism, attacking big corporations. And I'm like, this is where I'm a little bit like Rob.

I'm like, what has happened here? So anyway, either make some observations about that, or maybe say a little bit about what are two things about reforming capitalism? And then I have one more last question after that for you. Right. Well, the real, I mean, the big question, I mean, on the, you know, sort of going off from the growth theme is, how do we, what should, what are the policies that we need to develop, you know, high, high productivity growth capitalism? Right. Not just, you know, growth per se, because you actually just add a lot of people labor force like we're doing with immigration.

And, you know, that gets you some growth right there. But now we need, you know, a dynamic period of rapid productivity growth that would then, you know, allow for, you know, the rising living standards of the great majority of the population. So how do we do that? Now, I think, you know, I would argue, and I did in the book, and I think, you know, certainly the people like Oren Kass and so on, who are close to those, some of those national conservatives, would say we do need to reform capital, to change way it works we do need an industrial policy we do need different policies toward the working class and so on and so forth if we're going to do this we need different trade policies so i think it's all a very healthy conversation i'm not sure that anybody's really figured it out i mean you could argue i mean the Democrats have made a big deal, for example, out of, and it's true, they have made a sort of break from what is loosely called

neoliberalism. You know, it's kind of a term, very vexed term, everybody really knows what it means. But they're definitely doing something different. I mean, they're definitely changing their economic philosophy. And the amount of money they spent, the so-called investments they've made, I mean, it does represent a kind of industrial policy and a new approach to American political economy. But that, as I've said many times, just because it's industrial policy doesn't mean it's the right kind of industrial policy. Industrial policy has a long history in the United States. Some have been successful, some have not. In some ways, you've had an industrial policy practically ever since the founding but it's done in different ways and it's had differential effectiveness so just because democrats are willing to break with

you know so-called neoliberalism and do stuff that's different doesn't mean it's necessarily going to work i mean look at the whole kind of vector of things that supply-side progressivism is concerned about have essentially been untouched. We still have the same regulatory environment that we've had. We still have, you know, it's still too damn hard to build stuff in the United States. And there's still all this crazy, like, climate, you know, change overlay among all that policy, which doesn't make any sense. I mean, it's not, that's not how you produce high productivity, high growth capitalism. It's the way you satisfy the various, satisfy the various lobbyists and now emerging economic interests that are very committed to this stuff. So but then on the Republican side, I mean, look, Oren Kess can say whatever he wants.

But what Trump does and what his administration does are probably going to be very different things. And I'm not even saying Oren has figured it out or people like him but i think they're they make interesting points and they're serious thinkers but i think the problem is the vehicle that they're in a sense attached to you know i mean i think it's a real leap of faith that they you know trump gets in the next four years we'll see a renaissance of you know effective, effective policy thinking on economics, because I just think the party is too fragmented and disorganized, and there's too many different strands of economic thinking in it. And besides, it's going to be headed by Trump, and you know what that means. Well, one last broad question for you, Rui. It's an old question I want to re-ask.

Okay. You probably won't remember this, but I think, if I have this right, about 15 years ago, when I was at AEI, and you came over one day for a panel. Right. And so that's when Obama's in office riding high, and Donald Trump was not yet even a glimmer in Roger Stone's eye. And I asked you the following question. I want to see, and I remember your answer.

I want to see if your answer to the same hour has changed. Oh, man, you're holding me to it. I'm willing to deny and erode if I ever said what, and I remember your answer. I want to see if your answer to the same hour has changed. Oh, man, you're holding me to it. I'm willing to deny in a row if I ever said what you think I said. Go ahead. That's fair. This is funny. The question was, what are conservatives right about an issue or domain that liberals may not perceive very clearly? And you gave me an interesting answer, and I want to reverse it on you also.

Do you remember? I do not remember, but you better tell me. I'll tell you. You said the family. Conservatives were right about the importance of the family. And I think maybe you had in mind sort of the 60s and 70s leftists who, not necessarily the feminists, but people who thought the family was less important than something or other. And I thought that's a good answer. Yeah, yeah, that was all baloney. Yeah, I agree. Well, now, the question I often ask... I agree with myself. Okay, I don't know if there's a... Is there a new issue you think conservatives are right about? Well, however you understand conservatives these days? Yeah, sure. Well, I mean, I think there are a couple of obvious things

to add to that that I probably wouldn't have said at the time, because it was a different era. I mean, I think it's almost a little hard to remember how quickly the Democrats have evolved from like old school anti-discrimination kind of liberalism to the kind of illiberalism we have today and the highly ideological approach to issues like race and gender. And, you know, I mean, back then, I mean, you could actually envision Democratic politicians talking about law and order, talking about border security. But over that period between when you asked that question and today, the Democrats have evolved in such a way as a lot of issues are off the table, the whole language in which you have to talk about things has changed. I mean, for want of a better word, wokeness of some variety has really taken over

the Democratic Party. So conservatives criticize that all the time. And you know what? They're right. They're just right about this. The second thing, I'll add a second thing here, which I definitely over underestimated at the time and wasn't thinking about a lot was i do think that some of the criticisms of the excessive regulation of the economic system and the barriers that were to development in a lot of places and to economic dynamism were were correct i mean not all of it because i think there was a certain let's just blow everything up kind of attitude to regulation. But the idea there was too much, particularly environmental domain, I think is a sound criticism. And I agree with a lot of conservatives on that.

Well, I know we have to let you go, but the follow-up question is, I often ask conservative thought leaders, what is the left right about or partially right about that we don't perceive? So I'll let you ask that. What do conservatives not get that liberals believe that you think we conservatives have wrong or I'll just stop there? Right. Well, it's a little, yeah, it's hard for me with to do this, I think, just because I'm too immersed in that world. But I do think that some conservatives don't really give liberals enough credit for, you know, having some serious ideas about, you know, sort of how economies work, the role of public investment, the role of trying, you know, the importance of the safety net. I mean, in a sense, I think they just think all liberals want to do is spend money.

Right? It's just their thing. They're crazy that way. But there's actually a method to their madness. There's a rationale for it. And it's not completely crazy. And it does have a lot of historical backing. in a way, it's one should assume good faith

rather than bad faith. These people are just all grifters and hustlers. They're people who are trying to seriously think about the way in which society can be better. And, you know, then, you know, it sort of bleeds eventually into not only what do I mean, in a sense, it's not just what conservatives may not understand that well enough about liberals, but this just gets to core political, economic, philosophical differences between conservatives and liberals, which get on my soap we got a little bit different economic philosophy rather than you know that's your tribe this is my tribe you know you're a tool of state no you're a tool of satan you're right i mean they're just disagreements here and we can like actually talk about them i know that's what i like about being an ai because people are willing to talk can i get a little philosophical though sure absolutely um i agree with that all that the policy debates are great i like that but there has to be a fundamental i guess agreement that um that the future is going

to be better than the past that the american future is always something to look forward to. Oh, and Rui's subtitle to his book, I should have said, the subtitle, Optimistic Leftists, is why the 21st century will be better than you think. Yeah, yeah, I'm all over that. But also, I think, why today is better than you think. And if you can't look at the world around you now and realize, okay, actually, the best day to be alive on the planet in the history of the planet is today. And tomorrow will probably be incrementally better than yesterday than today.

We used to have that. That was the bedrock of every presidential campaign, every national leadership fight. It was I've got a better future plan for you than this guy. But no one said, boy, are we in big trouble. Boy, is this a, are we a disaster? Nobody ever said, boy, are we a nation of criminals who've stolen land and it's terrible and all those things, right? Hey, check your privilege, dude, you know? Right, right.

Where, exactly, but where, where can we go to get that back i mean i hear a lot of that on the republican side a lot of this sort of doom constantly and i hear of course that's that's the mantra of the democratic party it's their national anthem which is that we suck um so to speak where do you where do you go to get that back well that's a great question um you know i think steve uh will probably recall my book, I was all over that whole general idea that we've lost our optimism. And related to that, that people vastly underestimated how much better things are today than they used to be. People didn't have much real understanding of the actual changes in living standards, the changes in know sort of discrimination whatever i mean like actually this is there's a lot of things that have been improved and and you have this like

and i wrote about this in that book you have this bizarre situation where even though things are obviously better i mean obviously there's been rising inequality okay there's some problems here but they've just they've taken leave of their senses in terms of understanding how most people live their lives in this great country of ours. And I used to be at the Economic Policy Institute, which fervently documents the underside of the American economy. And I was okay with that in the sense that I think, you know, they were, you know, their data was solid. There was an argument there to be made.

There were problems. But the general approach seemed to be deny that anything ever got better at any time. And I just thought that was wacky. I mean, most people believe in the American dream. They want the American dream to come true. They have optimism they will attain it. And you're not speaking to that. People want to believe in the future and if you're telling them you know not only is today terrible the past was terrible the future is likely to be terrible we're gonna all

drown in the rising seas i mean this is not how you i mean back to the issue of how you form a dominant coalition right you don't form a dominant coalition off of you know that kind of approach you really you unite people around their quest for a better tomorrow this is not rocket science you know but that we have lost we have lost track of that and part of the mythology that underpins the incorrect approach is is what you're alluding to rob that nothing ever gets better you know it's it's all it all sucks time. And besides, we stole the land from the Indians, and there was slavery and stuff like that. It's the classic Walt Disney approach.

There's a bright, new, beautiful tomorrow. And I agree with that, and I agree with Rob. At the same time, though, I mean, overall, yes, trends are up. Things are great. All these, you know, the arrows are pointing in the right direction. That's great. All these, you know, the arrows are pointing in the right direction. That's great. But in the last four years, today, 2024 in my city is not better than it was in 2019. The combination of COVID and the social, violent street upheavals that rippled through the whole country after the death of George Floyd have made this an empirically provable worse place than it was before. It's not unlivable.

It's a beautiful place, and I love living here. But it's not what it was before. So telling people, actually, you know, things are better because life expectancy, discrimination, etc., etc., these things are all getting better. That's true. That's a head thing. The hard thing in so many people in America is that there are corrupting elements. There are things that have just fallen apart from disuse or indifference.

And that optimism has to be measured with, you know, not sit back, but roll up our sleeves. And we have to figure out how to do it. That's fair. I completely agree with that. And I agree with what you were saying before about having policy discussions, but I don't think the right right now is having a policy discussion, wants to have a discussion on the existence of the safety net. It is the nature of it and the knock-on effects of it.

I mean, so we can have a discussion, for example, about what happened to the nuclear family in cities when the state stepped in and took the role of the father. To say that is not to delegitimize the idea of having a safety net, a welfare system to help the poor. But we can't have that argument because that argument somehow turns into cultural hegemonism and a whole bunch of bad ideas that we're not supposed to say. In other words, what I mean is we need another, well, we need another you, lots of yous, and we need another, and we probably need another 12 hours. So we'd like you to commit to a series of marathon podcasts, right? Yeah. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We'll figure it all out. Then we will. But thank you for coming today. And I know we've taken a lot of your time

and we want to take more of it, more of it in the future as well. So the book, which everybody should now go out and read because you have an appetite for it, is Where Have All the Democrats Gone? The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes. Roy, thanks for being with us today. Hey, thanks for having me. It was a really fun discussion. Yeah, great fun. And I know I did my typical thing there by making a speech in the form of a question and then getting rid of the guest so that I can have the illusion of intellectual superiority and challenged just to hang in the air there faintly like a perfume. Before we go though, we got a couple of things and one I'm going to hand off to Rob,

which tells you that Ricochet is not just a bunch of guys yammering on a podcast. It's human beings. What is that? Let's be honest. It is. It is. It is that,

but it's also human beings who get together and have fun and probably talk about anything except politics. Yeah. You know, look, I mean, the great thing about Ricochet is it exists as a kind of a thing you can listen to, which was this. And we hope you enjoyed it. And it also exists as a thing on the line, on the internets, which we hope you join. But it also exists. These are nice people and they want to get together.

We have meetups. There's a German Fest meetup in Milwaukee last weekend of this month. So actually, it's this coming weekend. And then we have one scheduled in St. Louis in early October. That's going to be amazing too. St. Louis is a great city. The way to do this is to show up.

And if you can't make it to one of those, join Ricochet and put up a little note and say, hey, how about a meetup in my region at this date at this time and people will show up because ricochet members want to get together uh and the last couple meetups have gone to um i think that uh and perry may correct me or charlie may correct me i think we talked about politics for like an hour an hour and a half. We were in New Orleans, and there's a lot to talk about in New Orleans, a lot to do in New Orleans.

So it is a way to sort of like, you know, there's a big wide world out there, and it's a lot about life that is not about politics. Although, you know, I would there's nothing more fun than sitting around with a bunch of people who are smart and funny talking about politics. So there's that too. But

we're about more than that. uh if you've enjoyed this podcast join ricochet and um join us irl as you can say and you never know who will show up because you never know who's out there in the ricochet podcast audience i mean i audience podcast i said odd cast that's maybe the best word i'm going to use for us going forward. Oddcast. Steve, you're a music guy, and I know Rob is too, but I don't think of Rob as a music guy, which is, I don't know why.

Perhaps because we've never discussed it. He's a show tunes guy. You've never heard me sing. That's the thing. We're going to keep it that way. But I have talked back and forth with Stephen about various elements of pop music. The more cerebral elements, mind you. The progressive groups.

The Italian progressive groups. I mean, we could have an hour-long podcast, Stephen and I, about progressive influences in the 70s and such. But, Stephen, let me ask you this. When you look back to the music of your youth, when you look back to the groups that you followed, were you one of those guys who noticed what kind of instruments they were playing? Yes, in the case of a couple of semi-obscure prog rock bands like Gentle Giant. They played like 17 different instruments, the five of them in the band. By the way, progressive rock, as Jody Bodden put it, was rock and roll that went to college. Yes.

Which I like, right? Right. Yeah, I did pay attention to that. I don't mean rock and roll that went to college. Yes. Which I like, right? Right. Yeah, I did pay attention to that. I don't mean... Rock and roll that had pronouns. Right. I don't mean whether or not they had a fife and a sackbutt. I mean, whether, what kind, like, that's a Rickenbacker

that he's playing. Yeah. I mean, do you play an instrument, Steve? No. My wife does. Several, but I don't. James, what do you play? You play something, right? Keyboards and guitar, as a matter of fact. Although nowadays it's mostly just pounding away on synths and the rest of it.

But I mention that because, you know, in those days it was incredibly important to know exactly what those guys were playing and what kind of sound they got out of it. I mean, like, there's my man. He's got a Gibson SG with a double cutaway. That's got a, that's, that's got a certain sound or he's got a strat and he's got a strat with a twang bar. And then Elvis Costello shows up with a Telecasters. Like what's with that weird little neck thing there. I only mentioned this because, uh, there's a ricochet listener here, a friend of the podcast who sent me a song that he wrote and performed and, uh performed and did the video for too. And I'm looking at it and I'm saying, I remember back when you played Gibson and now

here you are with a Fender Strat. Anyway, the guy's Blue Oyster Cult, basically. I mean, there are other members of it that, but you cannot have cult without buck dharma and when buck dharma sends you a text and says hey i got a new got a new new on the uh would you like to hear it yes i would like to hear it and i told him well first of all my next diner episode is is sort of all about music and how the people that you meet change what you listen to and i advise everybody to listen to that because we're going to lead, you know, I realize I'm spoiled where that particular episode is going, but since we have more of a reach here, I want everybody to know that Buck Dharma has got a new song out.

It's called The End of Every Song, and it has this melancholic feel to it, this of not just a song, but the song being this civilizational project in which we all have such an investment. Not that it's over, but that sometimes when you feel that there's something diminishing in the greater culture around you, it's time to redouble your efforts to preserve and keep

and re-inflame those cities of civilization. Sorry, cities on flame with rock and roll. So, yes, we're going to go out with a song and I advise everybody to go to YouTube and listen to it and admire the little video that he put together for it and thank him

for being a Ricochet listener. And thank all of you for being a Ricochet listener. And that doesn't mean that everybody has to send us a song and we'll play it. No, it's what it means. I'm sorry. Rob's right. Rob is right. Send us the song. We will play it. After all, after 701 podcasts, we're going to need something for the next 700. So yeah, send us your songs. Send us your reviews, if you will. Go to the Apple podcast thing or the spot of wherever you get your podcast and give us those five stars because it helps surface that and of course as rob one of the founders would tell you go to ricochet and join

go to the member side and find out the conversation of the community you've been looking for all your years on the interweb i go there every day i'll see you there steven is up oh yes rob go what before we go yep predictions because it's okay we if we say this is Friday 1 p.m. Who's Kamala going to choose to be her running mate? A white guy. Yeah. That's the easy part. That's the first smart political move she's made in a long time.

There's talk that she wants our guy here, the governor of Minnesota. Yeah. Which I find interesting because I guess he's seen outside the state and outside the party as just the most white bread kind of cool, smart. He's a teacher. He's got National Guard experience, ticks all the boxes. But I'm of the opinion that I think probably minnesota's gonna go for her anyway and so the enticement to the locals wouldn't be that great so i don't know what she what he brings to the ticket necessarily but we'll see i don't know i have i mentioned that to my wife the other day

and she thought that i was that i was just huffing tester's glue from a plastic sack it's like what are you kidding me i said no he's seriously being considered and then i had to show her the stories and she once again realized that she should listen to me right in our household my guess is it'll be roy cooper from north carolina people say shapiro but i think i've said this before i don't think today's democratic party can tolerate a jewish running mate isn't that a strange thing to say? Yes. Well, it could be Shapiro, but unfortunately, the party has a Jewish problem. Yeah, right.

Whoa! Again, the parties have switched a lot. That was definitely a Republican theme forever, including now, except for later. I don't know. I think Mark Kelly. I'm going to say Mark Kelly. Yep. That's the other possibility.

Astronaut. Right. You know, veteran, you know. All right. So, all right. So, just to our producer, we've done that. Now, let's redo it and do all the other names, and then you can cut in the one that she actually chooses.

It's going to be another episode obsolete in 48 hours, right? Exactly right. Here's me. We'll just drop in the correct one yeah here's me three two one i know you're gonna think it's crazy but i'm pulling for tim waltz i think it's just gonna happen okay so drop that in and then we'll do you have to say things like here's what i'm hearing james well james what i'm hearing what i'm hearing yeah i don't know what you're hearing but here's what i'm hearing as if we're hearing anything that's what every reporter always says it drives me insane here's what I'm hearing, as if we're hearing anything. That's what every reporter always says. It drives me insane. Here's what I'm hearing. You're not hearing anything. You're on Twitter like everybody else. Are we still live?

We are still live. Never mind. Never mind. Never mind. We'll see you all at the comments at Ricochet. Bye! The fire is out and spent the warmth thereof This is the end of every song man sings The golden wine is drunk, the dregs remain As bitter as wormwood and salt as pain This is the end of every song This is the end of every song

This is the end of every song And health and hope have gone away of love Into the drear oblivion of lost things Ghosts go along with us until the end This was a loved one, this perhaps a friend This is the end of every song This is the end of every song This is the end of every song We sing This is the end of every song The end of every song

The end of every song guitar solo With pale and indifferent eyes We sit and wait For the drop curtain And the closing gate This is the end of every song This is the end of every song This is the end of every song That we sing

This is the end of every song Ricochet! Join the conversation. This is the end of every song Thank you.