The Ricochet Podcast - One Hit Wonders

Episode Date: January 11, 2020

Welcome to the first podcast of the new decade*, the new year, and Ricochet’s 10th anniversary year! Great, we won’t have to write that again. This week, Ricochet Podcast Chief Impeachment Pundit and McRib Analyst John Yoo sits in for Rob Long to parse impeachment, the legal issues surrounding the Iran crisis, and we’ve got Luke Thompson, the Smartest Political Consultant in America in the guest... Source

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Terms apply. Bet responsibly. 18plusgamblingcare.ie I'm looking forward to saying I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Boston telephone directory than by the 2,000 people on the faculty of Harvard University. As government expands, liberty contracts. It's funny, sometimes American journalists talk about how bad a country is because people are lining up for food. That's a good thing. First of all, I think he missed his time. Please clap. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and John Hughes, hitting in for Rob Long.

I'm James Lallox, and today we talk to Luke Thompson about Iowa impeachment, and we'll talk about Iraq as well. It's the whole show meal here on the Ricochet podcast. Welcome, everybody, to the Ricochet podcast, number 478, the first podcast of 2020 and Ricochet's 10th anniversary year, I might add. I'm James Lilacs. I have a cold because I got in a plane. I'm joined by Peter Robinson, who is in pain because he attempted to do a Russian kettleball maneuver at the gym. And out of breath is John Yu, we're happy to have, because he is our official Ricochet podcast chief impeachment pundit. He knows more about these things than anybody else

and less about Star Trek Discovery than anybody I can think of at the time. We welcome John to sit in on Rob Long's place. Oh, don't even try. Don't even start. John, how are you? Great. I'm so happy to be elevated from the practice squad, just like half of the Philadelphia Eagles starting lineup, which got squashed last week. Yeah. You know, it's like the Vikings are the same thing. Why play your best guys when you got the playoffs coming?

But then again, you are our best guy. We're happy to have you here. And, of course, the question on everybody's mind now with the events of the last week. Was the attack on Iraq legal? And I wonder if in his last fleeting moment, Soleimani may have thought, this certainly contravenes some international law. At least through this, I'm going to sue them. That's right. I mean, you were teaching a class on the law of the sea.

I think with Soleimani, it was a class of the law of the didn't see that coming. Sorry. I think first, let's at least acknowledge some of the political hypocrisy that went on yesterday with the House Democrats who voted to prevent President Trump from exercising any war powers vis-a-vis Iran, because it'd be like going to war with another country, or because we attacked someone who's thought to be maybe the number two or three leader of Iran. I don't remember any of those Democratic House members or senators making a peep about when the Obama administration launched an air war designed to kill Muammar Gaddafi and overthrow the government in Libya, which Congress never authorized and never approved. So let's just make sure we realize that people who are criticizing Trump now are not being consistent in their principles.

It's another example of the rules apply except where Trump's involved, where there's got to be a massive exception to the normal constitutional standards. But then – Yeah, so, okay, got that. But was it legal? Yes. So when you get to the actual legal question, there's two different kinds of legal issues here. One is the constitutional right to decide whether to use force, whether to go to war. Then there's a second legal issue, which is once you're at war, regardless of how it started or not, what are you allowed to do? And I think on both these counts, what Trump did was fully within

the law. First, you could say, oh, well, Congress should declare war against Iran. Regardless of whether you think Congress has to authorize wars first because as a declared war clause power, I don't think it does, but a lot of people do. Everyone admits that Congress doesn't need to authorize war when you're being attacked, that the president has the right to use force to stop attacks on US forces, on the homeland, on citizens, without any kind of congressional authorization. And the facts show, it seems to me, that General Soleimani and Iran have been in a series of – launched a series of hostile acts against the United States. You could say it started in 1982, but at the very least it started a few weeks ago. You had the

attack on our embassy in Baghdad. You had the shelling of our base that actually killed an American defense contractor and wounded several citizens. Then the second question is, if the war is legal, and Congress is always free politically to say they agree and authorize it, but I'm saying the president constitution doesn't have to. Then the second question is, who's a legitimate target? And this is where I think the Democrats have made a mistake again. They keep calling this assassination and it's illegal. No, General Soleimani is a general. Every member of the enemy armed forces, particularly those wearing uniforms, are legitimate targets in war. They don't have to be engaged in anything imminent against you. You can attack Radar Riley, who's the radio operator for a match unit, all the way up to

the commander in chief. They're all legitimate targets under the laws of war. It's not assassination when you attack, when you try to kill members of the enemy during wartime. It's a good thing you didn't say Colonel Klinger or Corporal Klinger, because people would have accused you that I'm making a transphobic example. And he was in Iraq. I mean it's not as though the guy was sitting in an easy chair in Tehran somewhere. He was in Iraq. And why was he in Iraq?

I don't think that he was there necessarily on a goodwill tour. Right. John, the Democrats in the House did pass this resolution yesterday. Does that change anything? I think that's just like the war powers resolution. Everyone is just going to ignore it. Look, the constant criticism of this view that I'm pulling forward, which describes our practice for many, many decades, is that without the Congress— We should note, by the way, that Thomas Jefferson, when he sent warships to deal with the Barbary pirates, did not ask for Congress to enact a resolution of war.

This goes way back. Just a little historical note for you, John. I mean, you could say the Korean War is maybe the biggest war, but you go well back to the first wars against Indian tribes under President Washington. And there's only been five declared wars in our history. And by some counts, we've had military conflicts that number over 130 in our history. But look, the main criticism of this view is that if Congress's declared war power doesn't mean the power to start a war, the power to turn the key in the submarine simultaneously with the president, then there's no check on the president.

And I just think that's not the way the framers designed the Constitution. I think they thought the main check would be Congress's power to create the military, which means it can create offensive military, defensive military. Right now, Congress has created a military that is only designed to fight abroad. On 9-11, we saw actually our military does very little homeland defense. And the second is the power of the purse. Modern war is so expensive that if Congress just does nothing and doesn't appropriate any new money, Trump will run out of money so fast he won't be able to engage in any extended war with Iran. Well, legalisms aside, let me ask Peter this question. It seems to me

that it's the John Yoo, the Joseph Heller professor of legalisms at the Berkeley Law School. Isn't that your title? Sorry. Is that the author of Catch-22? Emmanuel Heller. Sorry, I knew there was a Heller in there. It's Emmanuel Heller, professor. Maybe the Joseph Heller literary state would like to rename my chair for the right amount of money. It's a necessary discussion, but we're having it because the Democrats are in the opposition party. Yes, exactly. So, I mean, the reality of this is that the reflexive gainsaying of anything that Trump does is part of what the left is all about now. Some of them simply cannot conceive that Trump would do anything wise or correct. And some of them just have to oppose him because that's required of the default intellectual position these days is to oppose Trump.

But simultaneous with this has been this curious sort of fellow feeling with Iran that reveals something else interesting in the Democratic Party. This constant sense of almost protectiveness of the regime. And I don't know if that's because they have some sort of romantic feeling for those people who've been the victims of American imperialism. Because, you know, we invaded in 1953, bodily removed Mossadegh, threw him in the drink, which none of that happened, or it's because they are protective of Obama's legacy and want to have that be held up as something that we should admire. Peter, what do you think it is? Could it be both? Could it be all? Could it be neither? Both all. I have to say, I am still adjusting to this fact. When we took out Soleimani, it's a very tense moment. I understand that. I can even understand commentators saying, as a few people did on Twitter, they said, look, this is a tense

moment. We're going to want to know what went into this decision. We'll judge in some time as we get more facts. In other words, I can see raising questions about how the decision was made. But immediately, Democrat after Democrat after Democrat attacked Donald Trump, and in one way or another, either by implication or in some cases really directly, stuck up for the Iranian regime. And I have to say, I was shocked. When George W. Bush invaded Iraq, the grown-up Democrats, of course, they began attacking him soon enough. But at the moment of the invasion and for several weeks thereafter, they said, once American troops are committed, once the engagement is underway,

we want the United States to succeed. Likewise, Republicans had plenty of reasons to wonder quite why Obama really went into Libya when he took out Muammar Gaddafi, who, after all, had cut a deal with the Americans to give up his weapons program. Nevertheless, at the time that we went into Libya, Republicans were very muted in their criticism. And instantly, instantly, the Democrats began attacking Donald Trump when the man who had just been killed was, as John points out, not some elected official, not some Adlai Stevenson-type figure in Iran, but a general who wore a uniform and was responsible for certain for the deaths of hundreds of Americans and many thousands of other people in the Middle East. If anyone deserved to be taken out, it was General Soleimani.

So what am I doing? Am I answering your question, no, I really, I'm just venting because I'm still, I'm still actually shocked by the response to the attack on Trump. And now that the Iranians popped off a few missiles, I shouldn't put it quite, I shouldn't be quite that dismissive of the Iranian action. Because I. The only thing they hit was a Ukrainian airliner. The only thing they hit was a Ukrainian airliner. The only thing they hit was—exactly, exactly. But apparently, actually, the missiles, they fired in the range of a dozen. Four of them didn't even work.

They exploded in midair, apparently. But several of them actually did strike with considerable accuracy, buildings that we had evacuated. There was enough of a warning that we got our troops out of the way. But it shows that the new accuracy in targeting has even reached third world countries such as Iran now. So that's a little bit odd. Nevertheless, Trump succeeded. He essentially called their bluff. He changed the rules to what they ought to be, which is if you kill our guys, we're coming after you. That's what, to me, it's not Donald Trump who needs to explain why he took out General Soleimani. It's George W. Bush and Barack Obama who need to

explain why they had opportunity after opportunity after opportunity to do so. And knowing that he was killing our people in the field refused to take him out. That's, to me, where the burden of argument has to lie. Okay. Thank you. Thank me, where the burden of argument has to lie. Okay, thank you. Thank you, James, for asking that question, which I didn't answer, but it gave me the opportunity to vent. It's just shocking to me. Right. Well, Peter, in the future, when somebody asks a question you have no intention of asking, you begin by saying, that's a very good question, and then you just simply move on. I was trying to practice John's technique with Laura Ingram. When she asks a question he

doesn't want to answer, he just answers what he wants to answer. It's very impressive to watch, John. That's a very good point, Peter. But what I wanted to say... Can I just make one point about Peter's point? He's like, what's really going on here? I mean, Trump actually doesn't want to evade Iran. He doesn't want to send over large numbers of ground troops. You know, we have 5,000 there. We're adding maybe a few units, but we don't have enough troops there to actually wage a ground war with Iran.

80,000 on the ground in all of the Middle East. That includes troops in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and so forth. 80,000 is not enough to invade anything. Yeah. What he wants to do, and this is actually something he might well be good at, is this kind of tit-for-tat bargaining. And what he's done is he has tried to establish a deterrent. And he's saying, look, and this is where his craziness helps because

don't know exactly what I'm going to do the next time you try to kill an American, either you or one of your proxy militias. We might even try to kill Khomeini, the head of Iran next time, who's the guy behind everything. You don't know. And you might think that these kinds of threats work better on authoritarian dictatorships than they do on democracies because those guys in charge are the few guys in charge, and they want to live for a long time and still be in charge. trace back to Iran, that a tomahawk should go through the window of somebody high up in the government who would make that decision or, you know, go to a refinery or go to a park. In other words, make it personal. It's never personal for these guys. They pay no price for it. It's all done off out in the shadows. And now to actually whack the guy in Iraq and then have them forced them to to issue missiles from their own territory changes the game an awful lot. So the interesting thing,

I was watching this in Arizona and my mother-in-law was watching Tucker Carlson after the event happened. And I could just sort of tell a sort of curiosity and confusion in her. At LiveScoreBet, we love Cheltenham just as much as we love football. The excitement, the roar, and the chance to reward you.

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the Trump base and those who are Trump skeptic and intellectually Trump adjacent but not wanting to be so, I think those people came away from this impressed. Especially since we didn't strike back after Iran followed. I mean, that's what I thought would be the sensible thing to do. And then move on from there. It's not over, but move on from there. And to hear the Democrats say that these ravening maniacs on the right are baying for Iranian oil in World War III, I mean, the next day when I read all of these pieces about the youth of America are terrified of a draft that's going to be World War III, have you been paying attention to anything? First of

all, no. We're not going to invade Iran. The days of rolling the tanks across the plain and having those clash of armies are done. What we do now is targeting things. We are a little bit more meticulous about it. And everybody knows that if we wanted to, we could wipe Iran off the face of the earth. It could be done. We have the power to do so. One thing is we know someone who can't be drafted, which is Peter, because he can't throw any Russian kettlebells at the Iranians anymore. That's true. That's true. But, I mean, do we get any credit whatsoever for the fact that we haven't gone Roman on the leadership of Iran, that we haven't salted the earth, that we haven't struck back massively?

No, because people know that's not the United States. Whatever they say in public and whatever they rant about on MSNBC, that is not who we are. Should we talk about impeachment? Or I think we should, but we're going to talk about that with our next guest, are we not? Because I know that John... John, if you don't mind, we're just going to...

Peter and me will handle the impeachment stuff with our next guest. You don't know enough, John. I just want to talk about cheers and being an undergraduate at Yale with Brett Kavanaugh. Because aren't I filling in for Rob? All right. We'll get to that in a second here. How about this?

How about – Peter, why don't you – why don't you ask John something about John Bolton? It'll be the Clash of Johns or whatever. Well, so can you figure it? Hold on. Let's back up here. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, has still not transmitted the articles of impeachment to the Senate. She gave a press conference yesterday in which she said she would do so in her own time, and that would be soon. Mitch McConnell seems to be suggesting, he gives these cryptic statements, and it's hard to know

quite what's going on, but he seems to be suggesting that he's going to move ahead with the trial and decide on questions on which Democrats have been pressing him, most particularly whether the Senate will call any witnesses after the trial. What do you make of this? Does she have to transmit the articles of impeachment to the Senate before the trial can begin? Can Mitch McConnell just start the trial? Everybody knows what the articles of impeachment are.

They've been published everywhere in the country. Is there some formal mechanism that's necessary? Or could McConnell just start the thing and get it over within a week if he wanted to? It's a great question, Peter. And it's a difference between the Constitution and the Senate rules. So under the Constitution- See, he started with, it's a great question. He's not going to answer a thing you just said. I thought you were going to pick up on that. I was going to say, it's a great question. You're not going to answer a thing you just said. I thought you were going to pick up on that. I was going to say, it's a great question. But in Star Trek Discovery season two, I really enjoyed it more than season one. But it's a really good question because there's a difference between the Constitution and the Senate rules.

And so under the Constitution, the House has the sole power of impeachment. The Senate has a sole right to hold the trial. There is nothing in the Constitution about anything being transmitted from the House to the Senate. In effect, you could say it's much like a bill. When a bill passes the House, the Constitution has to be transmitted to the Senate. Sometimes the Senate and the House pass bills simultaneously. And sometimes they're slightly different, and sometimes they're really different. There's nothing in the Constitution which requires the Senate to wait.

Trump has been impeached. The House has finished its job. The only reason transmission and appointment of managers is important is because the Senate rules say the trial begins when we get the articles and when the House managers physically come over. I see. Well, it could change, you know, McConnell could change that. And the senators, I mean, the Republican senators, the majority could just say, and I actually wrote a piece a few months ago arguing they should do this. They could say, we're going to start the trial now. And they could even say, and if the House doesn't send any managers, then we're just going to render immediate judgment.

We don't even need to have the trial because we can tell these claims don't meet the legal standard for impeachment. And game over. Sincerely, Cocaine Mitch. And he would have to bring that to the floor for a vote, though, to change the Senate rules. But he has 54 votes, so he could do it. And so what McConnell is doing is he's called Pelosi's bluff. It turns out Pelosi, I think like at least John Bolton to testify. OK, now, why is John Bolton?

This gets James actually. This was a good question that we should address. Why is John Bolton to testify. Okay, now why is John Bolton, this gets, James actually, that was a good question that we should address. Why is John Bolton, why is everybody saying John Bolton, John Bolton, John Bolton? National Security Advisor, Trump didn't seem to be terribly pleased with him. He was in there for a little over a year, and he's left. He's not in the White House anymore. Why is John, why do the Democrats want him to testify? So, and let me say, I've written a lot of pieces with John, but not on this, and I haven't talked to him about any of this. But right there, several of the witnesses in the House impeachment investigation said

that Bolton had a very dim view of what was going on in Ukraine. He allegedly called it a drug deal that's going to go bad, that was being run by Mulvaney and that ambassador whose name I'm trying to forget, but I still remember it's Gordon Sunderland. And he seems, if anybody had a number of discussions with President Trump about Ukraine, it would have been him. Now, Bolton, until this last week, refused to testify. And then he just suddenly came out with a letter that said, even though this is still in litigation and blah, blah, blah, and I didn't testify in the House, if the Senate issues me a subpoena, I will show up and I will testify in an impeachment trial. Mm-hmm. And why would he do that?

I don't know, actually, because I think that if, yes, he could show up, but if anyone is governed by executive privilege, which is the right of the president to keep confidential discussions with his aides about national security, military law force matters, it would be John Bolton. So for John to testify would represent the preemption of all these ideas of how we think a president and a White House should operate in deference to any time a House wants to start impeachment proceeding. That can't be a good idea. Because think about if the things are reversed. Suppose there's a president, I don't know, President Buttigieg

or President Bloomberg in charge, and you have a Republican House, and they want to find out everything that a president says to his aides, all they got to do is start an impeachment proceeding. Right, right. So, John, we've got to get a spot in here, but I have one last question quickly because you know the man. Not a legal question, but a question about personality. The Democrats are hoping that John Bolton would say something to spite Donald Trump. Does that sound to you like the John Bolton you know? I mean, he would spite General Soleimani. He hates the enemies of America. But John's also a constitutional

lawyer. That's actually where he got his start as an official at the Justice Department. And he is a big believer in a strong presidency, being the protector of American security. He remembers what happened back after the Vietnam War, when you had the Carter years, when Congress was dominant and our national security suffered until President Reagan came back and restored the presidency. I don't think that he would willingly testify in a way that would damage the long-term interests of the existence of the office of the president of the United States. I keep assuming it. Got it. Well, the longer the impeachment goes on, the more that they can find other things to sweep into the whole effort. I mean, wasn't there some talk in the last weeks that's saying perhaps we will add

the Soleimani assassination to the bill up into the list of impeachable offenses? I mean, can you imagine if Donald Trump had actually given money to Iran, had shipped them pallets of cash? And of course, Seth Meyer, I think yesterday or last night was on television saying that that is a Republican lie that has been debunked, that any money has been shipped to Iran. He may have been referring to the accusation that the money that we sent was used for the missiles, but you know, money's fungible. But maybe he actually just thinks that the charge that money was sent to Iran by Obama is a lie. It wasn't. We did in this pathetic effort to get them on our side and buy goodwill. Buy the goodwill now.

Boy, did we pay for it later, which is an awful lot like credit cards. For decades, credit cards have been telling you to buy it now and pay for it later with interest. And despite your best intentions, of course, that interest can get out of control really fast. Well, with Lending Club, you can consolidate your debt or you can pay off credit cards with one fixed monthly payment. One. Since 2007, Lending Club has helped millions of people regain control of their finances with affordable fixed-rate personal loans. There's no trips to the bank. There's no high-interest credit cards.

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the greatest political consultant we know. That's a quote from Rich Lowry. Rich, I don't know, because Luke writes for NR, National Review, and regularly appears on National Review's The Editor podcast. And in his spare time, he likes to make life difficult for Democratic politicians on Twitter, which isn't hard. They're easily provoked. Welcome, Luke. We got two questions right off the top to ask you. Has to do with all of this is playing. How is impeachment playing with the voters? And how does the Iraqi situation play with the voters? I'm more interested

in the second first. The second because the first is, we all know where that's going. But all right, let's do it. America, impeachment, what are they thinking? What are they thinking? I think this is the million dollar question. And I've seen a whole lot of opinions flying around. The latest craze seems to be that Nancy Pelosi is holding on to impeachment because she knows that Amy Klobuchar is not going anywhere and Elizabeth Warren is going nowhere but down. And so she's going to pass the articles over and start a trial at a time maximally selected to hurt Bernie Sanders and help Joe Biden. I'm not sure I believe that, but I do think that may be why you're getting some Senate Democrats who are no big fans of Bernie saying, Nancy, Nancy, give us the articles now. As far as the press reporting goes, Nancy Pelosi was watching television and heard something John Dean said and, you know,

following the tradition of Richard Nixon, listened to John Dean's advice and wound up, you know, getting in trouble. I think what's going on is that there's a subset of Democrats that are convinced that they're just, you know, over the next hill, they're going to find the smoking gun phone call with Mick Mulvaney or John Bolton that's going to prove criminal intent and have the president, you know, on the record describing in lurid detail his venal and purely political and electoral motivations behind Burisma and Ukraine, and that that's going to break things open. And I think that's why she was holding on to the articles of impeachment. But as a practical matter, in my view, it's done

nothing but muddle their message and make it seem stupid, which is going to make it even harder for her swing seat Democratic members to defend it. Will it hurt enough of them to swing the majority? I don't think so. But certainly if I were, you know, Abby Spanberger or any of the other moderate Democrats sitting in, you know, Romney-Hillary districts, let alone Trump-1 districts, I'd be pretty unhappy with my speaker right now. Luke, Peter Robinson here. Presidential politics, let's go to it because we've got to. It's mandatory at this time of year. The Iowa caucus takes place, we're talking now about the Democratic struggle for the Democratic nomination. The Iowa caucus takes place in February 3rd. The New Hampshire primary takes place on February 11th. We are now starting to talk in single-digit weeks, small numbers of days. These things are going to happen. Biden continues to command the field in polls that poll the nation. Who's ahead in Iowa and

who's ahead in New Hampshire? Well, Iowa looks like a toss-up based on the polling right now between Mayor Pete, Bernie Sanders, and Joe Biden. If I'm a betting man— Elizabeth Warren is gone? She has faded considerably in recent polling. Got it. Okay. Now, I don't know that I would count her out. She has, from the beginning of her campaign, intelligently said, Iowa's the do or die. If I don't win it in Iowa, it's over because Bernie will eat me for lunch in New Hampshire. And frankly, vice versa will apply. Sanders' campaign seemed to need his heart attack to wake them up to this reality.

But it does seem like Warren is fading and fading pretty fast. My sense is that one of those three, Pete, Pete Biden or Bernie is going to emerge. And if I'm a betting man, I'm putting my money on Bernie. Um, really? Yes. Then we go to New Hampshire and Bernie will win in New Hampshire. Will he not? Well, he certainly did last time.

Um, he's got, he's got a strong base in the working class in New Hampshire and he's got a, uh, you know, he's of course from right next door in Vermont, and he has the track record of having crushed Hillary Clinton there four years ago. I was actually in New Hampshire for the primary four years ago, and I wandered into a bar to drown my own sorrows, and I saw three Clinton campaign staffers who looked like they were in a race to see who could die of alcohol poisoning fastest. So one month and one day from today, on February 11th, Luke Thompson, well, you're not quite predicting, predicted if you want to, but you're saying it strikes you as entirely plausible that Bernie Sanders will have won both the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary. And at that moment, he becomes the putative front runner for the Democratic nomination, as though a 78-year-old self-professed socialist will be the front runner for the nomination of the oldest political party in the United States of America. Correct? Wait, Peter, wait, this is John. Wait, wait.

Isn't, you gotta, you're forgetting Bloomberg. Isn't Bloomberg sitting in the United States of America, correct? Wait, Peter, wait, this is John. Wait, wait, isn't, you gotta, you're forgetting Bloomberg. Isn't Bloomberg sitting in the back, counting his money, going, this is all working out as I planned. The farthest left nut job is winning in the early states, and now I'm gonna come in on the airwaves on Super Tuesday, and I am gonna rack it up. Of course it's gonna be Bloomberg.

I'm gonna be a nominate a socialist. Ever since Citizens United, we've been told that money buys politics, so it's going to be Bloomberg, Tom Steyer. Everybody knows this. It has been foreseen it as our destiny. Well, I worked for Right to Rise, so I can tell you definitively that money does not buy politics. Bloomberg is an interesting case. He may be actually looking over his shoulder and seeing Tom Steyer and grumbling because there was some polling out the last 48 hours that had Steyer doing quite well, especially in Nevada, where I'm told from people on the ground,

he's essentially purchased the state's entire billboard inventory. All five of them. All five of them. Yeah, I was going to say, I don't know exactly how well Bill. There he goes. Luke, excuse me. John, you come from Philadelphia. You are in no position to condescend to anybody else in the country, especially Nevadans who have a big. OK, sorry, Luke.

Carry on. We just have to slap. That's all right. Philly, if there are too many empty billboards, we just start shooting at them. I mean, was it for campaign ads? Philadelphia is a lovely city. Take us someplace. Go. Sure. Happy to. You asked if I predicted that that would happen. I don't think I would go so far as to say I predict Sanders winning both and being the front runner. I would say the field against any one candidate. But certainly he has powerful organization. He has all the money

he could want. He has a core base of support. And in Iowa, there are two really important things that people have to keep in mind about the Democratic Iowa caucuses. First, the Iowa Democratic Party electorate, the caucus electorate, is internally very polarized and roughly equivalently between a mobilized hard left wing and a more centrist suburban wing in Iowa. Okay. By hard left, Bernie and Elizabeth Warren and suburbanized, you mean Joe Biden, roughly? Is that correct? Mayor Pete also will play very well with that. You know, he's very polite and he's Midwestern and seems to have been well scrubbed. So there are two blocks of people to contend for, and then there are folks who could go either way within that sort of polarized electorate.

The second thing that you have to understand about the Iowa caucuses is that they're an organizing nightmare. They're an organizing nightmare for two reasons. One, the caucuses are held in the weather that literally killed Buddy Holly. It's awful. It's frozen. It's windy. The roads are icy. You're asking people to leave their homes and go to a place to do politics for an extended period of time. That's an easy ask. Hold on. Luke, where are you from? I'm from Kansas, so just southwest of Iowa. You know that those of us here in the Midwest are a hardy breed who are not set off by things like this.

I know of what I speak. If they're taking a small Cessna overcrowded with the big bobber weighing them down, I can see that. Anyway, go on. That's right. And we shouldn't forget Richie Valance. This is an inclusive podcast. Who are these weird names you guys are throwing around? Okay, millennial. I was going to say, I thought I was the token millennial on this thing.

Even I know Richie Valens and Buddy Holly. John, go ahead, Luke. Do not be deterred by these interruptions from that. Go ahead. The second thing you've got to understand about the Democratic caucuses, and this is different from the Republican caucuses, is that they have real-time runoff voting. So they will do a round of balloting, and anybody who gets less than 15 percent, the people who showed up to the caucus and went and stood in the corner for those folks get to get reallocated, right? And then they'll run another round. And anybody who drops below 15, reallocate it again. Then they'll do it again. And this is all taking place in something like a huge airplane hangar or a gymnasium or... No, much you know sometimes a high school gym um sometimes you know like a church common room oh you know like like a cafeteria people's living rooms in some cases

so there's a church basement in one town and a cafeteria in another town and are they in touch with each other in any formal way no and that's the other thing so it's possible to organize this right so you have to have so there are possible to organize this, right? So you have to have, so there were about, I can't remember the exact number. I think it's 1600 some caucus sites all over the state, which means that you have to have a caucus captain at each of these sites. Who's not only trained to speak on behalf of your candidate and answer questions, but also how to do essentially instant arithmetic to bargain with other campaigns to spread their people around, right? Because it may be better if you're, say, Bernie, and Biden has gotten over the threshold of 15, but Mayor Pete hasn't,

and Andrew Yang hasn't, to say to the Andrew Yang people, well, don't let Mayor Pete get any delegates. Send all your people to me and to Biden, even though we're competing here. Right. So they have to be able to do that kind of arithmetic to try to to prevent people from getting over the threshold, which is a massive training and organizing challenge. And it's why Iowa is such a Darwinian process for Democrats. You can imagine, because you also are going to have to have backup people since people get sick, their cars break down and whatnot. You're talking about having 2,000 highly trained staff to go to, to evenly distributed around the state to run these operations. Otherwise, you're just going to get, you just going to get your clock cleaned somewhere here

and there. And if it aggregates up, you're not going to get as many delegates as you need to come out the winner. So does that, everybody's still with me here? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's much, much, much cleaner from the point of view of a podcast if you just say something outrageous and we get to respond to it. Like the Bernie Sanders is going to come out of there. The Victor, no doubt about it. Isn't that whole process just going to lead to the most committed left wing activists having the biggest say? And doesn't that mean this is good for either Bloomberg strategy or ultimately it's good for Trump, who both want the early states to produce some unelectable figure, No matter what the caucus rules are,

they just seem to be driving towards the most, like the people going to drive through the snow just so they can sit in a nursery school and argue about whether Bernie or Warren are the most principal candidate in the middle of the night. I mean, that's only crazy left-wingers are going to do that. It definitely plays to the base in the party and in both parties. What's interesting is that on the Republican side, the winner of the Iowa caucuses has not historically been the person who secures the nomination. The opposite has been true on the Democratic side. Iowa is a very good predictor of who wins the nomination. Because ultimately, at least in the last 50 years, the Democratic coalition has required a lot more mobilizing than the Republican coalition that has

required a lot more persuading. That's changing, but at least for now, that rule holds true. And so the need to mobilize, agitate, and win over base Democratic voters has been a key metric of success for their future nominee. Luke, Peter here. I have another question for you. Stepping back from purely presidential politics, I heard Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, who knows a thing or two about politics himself, make the following observation. It was this past summer, so I don't want to hold him to it. His calculations may have changed.

But he said this past summer, Democrats keep the House, gaining the White House 50-50. And in the Senate, Republicans have five seats that are at serious risk, and the Democrats have only one. So if they keep the House and win the White House and take on net three seats in the Senate, we all wake up in a different country the next morning. What do you think? I think that calculus is correct. Oh, that's cheerful. Hey, elections have consequences. People need to go vote. The Senate map in 2020 is not great for Republicans. That's because we had a very, very good year in 2014. And I was working at the National Republican Senatorial Committee that cycle.

So I'll say that I'm perfectly thrilled that we had a good year in 2014. The Senate caucus, we do have some difficult seats. Maine is never an easy one, although Maine has been getting redder and is a true swing state now. Susan Collins there is popular, well-known statewide, and it's a small state where you can run effectively a very local campaign effectively. Now, they have ranked choice voting, which could throw a wrench into things. We don't know how that's going to play out. We'll find out. But it does change the political dynamics there a bit. Colorado obviously continues to move left or to get bluer. Some of the demographics there are changing, and the reality is that so long as the president loses Colorado by three points or fewer, I think Cory Gardner's in the

hunt to retain his seat. North Carolina is a similar situation. I think if the president wins in North Carolina, Tom Tillis will get reelected. Iowa, Joni Ernst is a similar situation. I think if the president wins in North Carolina, Tom Tillis will get reelected. Iowa, Joni Ernst is a very, very strong candidate. And the president will carry Iowa by a sizable margin. So I don't think she's in nearly as much trouble as maybe some people like to pretend. We have some wild cards out there. Obviously, we have a contested primary in Kansas. The announcement that Mike Pompeo is not going to run, an announcement that I don't think should have surprised people, but D.C. conventional wisdom is what it is, means that we will have a showdown, it looks like, between

former Kansas Secretary of State Chris Kobach and current Congressman Roger Marshall. That could go either way, but I think with Pompeo out, Marshall probably is the big winner from that. And if I were, again, betting on that race, I would probably bet on Marshall. And the thinking is that Marshall's the more electable of the two. Is that right? It's indisputable that in a general election, Marshall is the more electable. Got it. Okay. All right. Luke, I'm still trying to wrap my brain around Bernie Sanders as the presidential candidate for the democratic. We are, we are a lot closer to Bernie Sanders being president of the United States than most people want to recognize. All right. That is so awesome. But can I, can I ask though, is it, is it because, uh, you know,

if he's winning these early states, but you still have a lot of people in the race that the odds of us getting to a brokered convention are getting greater and greater. And then if that's the case, is it really Bernie who prevails? Because right in the brokered convention, then all these Democratic superdelegates get to intervene, and they could well swing the election towards someone they would want, who I assume is someone who's electable. I mean, Luke, we understand there's a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes that people don't see when it comes to like a brokered convention. Or for example, podcast hosts discussing amongst themselves that I would ask the brokered convention question, but then John, you know,

does it. So the process is often obscure. You're coughing into your Star Trek communicator device. As a person who enjoys chaos and with a perverse sense of humor, I pray earnestly for a brokered convention. I don't know that it's likely to happen because in order to collect delegates, you have to get over a 15% vote threshold. And that's a pretty big threshold. It's going to have the effect of narrowing the field considerably. You know, if you had a situation where you even had, say, a 5% vote threshold, then you're seeing Amy Klobuchar racking up delegates, Andrew Yang racking up delegates, Cory Booker racking up delegates. Right now, the only four people who are in a position to collect a lot of delegates are Pete, Biden, Buttigieg, and, of course, Bernie. That may change if the Steyer polling is real, and it may be real. He's obviously doing well in Nevada and elsewhere. It may change if the

Bloomberg spending kicks in on Super Tuesday and suddenly he's getting into the 15% terrain. But I think where we sit right now, it's unlikely we get to a brokered convention as frustrating as that is to me. If, however, we do, the Democrats change the rules after 2016. Bernie's people were understandably unhappy with the way the DNC handled that race for a lot of reasons, some of them justified, some of them not justified. But one of the things that they secured at subsequent DNC meetings was a rule change that made it so that superdelegates only get to vote on the second ballot, which means that we won't be in a situation where superdelegates only get to vote on the second ballot, which means that we won't be in a situation where superdelegates can swing the vote from, say, Bernie to Biden. But if Bernie

can't clear the 50% threshold on the first vote, then it becomes a different ballgame. And I would only say that there were a lot of rumors about brokered conventions or coups at the convention in 2016 in Cleveland. I was there in Cleveland. It's fun and exciting to think and talk about. But once people start casting ballots, the political inertia rightly becomes overwhelming. And it becomes pretty difficult to plan to sort of usurp your primary electorate without having serious political blowback. Well, then you have the question of who ends up being the running mate. As we always know, it's chosen to balance the ticket. Barack Obama's relative and experience was balanced by the sober gravitas of Joe Biden.

And the Donald Trump's crazy man outside the Beltway mentality was balanced by the sober hand of Mike Pence. Are they going to put in Amy Klobuchar with the idea that Bernie wants full socialism, but Amy will be there to keep him from implementing full socialism? I mean, I'm just still trying to wrap my brain around Bernie Sanders at the convention, accepting that this guy's had a heart attack, for heaven's sake. I mean – See him gripping his chest while he gives the acceptance speech and looking into the heavens and saying, it's the big one. I'm coming to meet you, Carl Vladimir. Anyway, so – Is it really that much stranger than a first-time office seeker whose last job was hosting a reality show?

Yes, because Donald Trump's basic modus vivendi and way of doing things in the world is generally supportive of the American economic structure and the values contained therein. Bernie is a pathology when it comes to the ideas that he represents. And the idea that Iowa voters want this, well, they're welcome to it. But the rest of them are just going to say, no, I say it's spinach and to hell with it. So, yeah, bring them on. Well, I mean, the three most successful third party candidacies have been launched by the Reform Party, the Bull Moose Party and the Socialist Party. So there is an old line tradition of the American. What did Debs get?

Eugene Debs, what year was that? And what did he get? Ross Perot got 19 percent of the Reform Party. That's a high watermark, right? He got 19. I think the Bull Moose got more than that because. Because it was Teddy Roosevelt. Yeah, Roosevelt came in second.

And then Eugene Debs from prison, I believe he got two and a half million votes, but I don't remember what that translated into in terms of population. Okay. Luke, last question. Whom should Donald Trump want to run against? I think Elizabeth Warren would be his dream opponent. Elizabeth Warren seems incapable of not getting in her own way. She has an extremely well-run and focused political campaign. They have recognized the importance of Iowa from the beginning. They've tried to get problems they knew were coming out of the way fast. And they do the blocking and tackling extremely well. Their problem is that they've got a candidate who desperately wants to be liked in the moment.

And so when asked questions, doesn't have when asked questions and the lack of a core commitment says what she thinks people want to hear and then winds up having to backtrack. This is why she's taken, by my count, three separate positions on the killing of Qasem Soleimani, three different positions on health care, even though she ostensibly had a white paper to answer everything, and has both said we need to cut military spending and have more people serve in the military. I don't know how you sort of wrap that, how you square that circle. I think that the health care waffling is what killed Warren because it confirmed in the eyes of a lot of left-wing primary voters what they already suspected about her, which was that she lacked the political courage to force hard change through. Well, it wasn't entirely a white paper. I think 1,024th of it was something

else. I would love to see her too because one of the recent things that she proposed is the moratorium on all construction after 2030 unless it's carbon neutral. And it may surprise people who think that Donald Trump is a complete idiot, but I would love to hear her debate the carbon construction materials with somebody who's actually built something from time to time. Look, we could go on forever, but we won't. So we'll stop now and get rid of you with the usual blandishments about how we know you have to go somewhere. But it's been great fun. We'll see you at NR, and we'll read your dispatches here and there. And a great credit to the magazine, and we're glad that we're having you on the podcast

again. Hope to talk to you soon. Thanks a bunch, guys. All right. Take care. Bye. I'm sorry. I'm just the possibility of a Bernie candidacy. Just the very fact that I got that far is just something that you wish to not consider.

Right, guys? Actually, I take Luke's point that Elizabeth Warren is so wishy-washy, she seems a weaker candidate. I actually think that in some pretty basic way, it would be good for Donald Trump and good for the country if Bernie Sanders were the candidate, then we could just have it out, have it out. Here's what socialism is, and Donald Trump can say, and here is why I am against it. And you know that there would be a certain cleanness about that fight, I think.

Yes. There'd be a real choice. There would. There would. John, do you agree with that, or do you think that sometimes that we actually have to see the thing that we fear and experience it. I was wondering, maybe having Sanders actually be the candidate and win would finally burn out this virus of socialism from all these millennials, like Luke, who talk too long. So like, and think too much, right? Like socialism is just obviously a bad idea. And every country has tried it, has fallen into ruin. Maybe we deserve to have socialism

for years, and it will never rear its ugly head again in our living memory. Or maybe it's our duty as custodians of the American spirit to keep it from happening because of the injurious effects that it would have, like violent, hardcore, misogynist

pornography on the internet. Your kid can stumble into that. It's a wild west out there. We all know about that. But how do you keep the kids away from it? John, you is altogether too much given over to hypotheticals. Actually, you know, what I teach in class is I wish because of our federal system that we had somebody, so I'm state, become a socialist. Making the timeout signal here, guys, that was a segue. Oh, see, I did the Rob Long job. I didn't know that was a segue. No, no, no.

Rob would have gotten it and ruined it. Both of you. Do you honestly? Okay, take it away, James. Well, when I was talking about the bad things that are out there on the Internet and equating socialism with the worst sort of things that kids can stumble across and have their minds warped at a tender age, I was talking about parents wondering what exactly there is they can do, how to keep your kids from coming across that bad stuff,

or just for that matter, how much to keep them from wasting all their time on the Internet. Well, to make sure that your kids stay safe, you need Circle. Circle is the award-winning way to manage your family's online time across all of their connected devices, inside and outside of your home. With Circle, parents can filter what content is allowed, period. And you can also set limits for screen time. You can monitor their history and their usage. You can even reward the kids for good behavior. Just plug the Circle Home Plus into your router. It's very easy. I love the thing. It comes out of the box. It looks like an Apple product. It's all white and serene. You download the app, easy as pie, and then you can keep track across every connected devices.

That's laptops, phones, tablets, smart TVs, streaming devices, video game consoles, all from one place. So since the device is on the network and on your app, you can tell whether or not the kid's sneaking over to somebody else's house and trying to get some extra time on it. I know if I was a kid, I'd hate it, but I'm a parent, so I love the idea. Circle has been getting rave reviews from the Chicago Tribune, People, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, many more. Listen, you do anything for your kids, right? Do something easy that'll keep your family on the right path and get Circle. Right now, our listeners, that would be you, get a limited time offer of $30 off a Circle Home Plus when you go to meetcircle.com slash ricochet

and enter the coupon code ricochet at your checkout. That's $30 off when you go to meetcircle.com slash ricochet and enter ricochet at the checkout. meetcircle.com slash ricochet. Enter ricochet to save $30. And our thanks to Circle for sponsoring this, the Ricochet at the checkout. meetcircle.com slash Ricochet. Enter Ricochet to save $30. And our thanks to Circle for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Well, before we get to something else here,

and we've got lots more to do, I know it's a long podcast. When you got you on, you want to have as much you as possible. I think that's our official motto. We have to have the... Love it. There's no sounder for this, is it? The Lilacs post of the

week. Hard to say in a dramatic fashion with a cold. And you might say, well, which of the fantastic, sprightly conversations of the member post have to do with politics and or political culture did you choose? I chose another one about music. And again, I'll tell you why.

Partly because it was a long thread, and partly, of course, because I was participating in it, which always seems to tweak my judgment when it comes to picking these things. One hit wonders of the 60s, 70s, and 80s by Gumby Mark. It's one of those things, again, that sets Ricochet apart, because life is more than politics. Lord knows, it has to be. And for the Ricochet members to get together and start to swap in all the songs that they used to love from bands

that never had another hit leads you into American cultural history. It revives whether you were young in the 60s, 70s, or the 80s. It leads to arguments about whether or not that band, the Romantics, could be considered a one-hit wonder when actually they had another one,

which was really not really a romantic song, but that's another question. It's a great thread, lots of fun, and lots of great music in there. Life is more than just politics. As much as we love to bang heads and throw pots and pans and hammers at each other, we all get together and talk about stuff like this as well. So if you're not a member of Ricochet, join, and you will find stuff in the member feed that'll keep you up way past your bedtime all right so my pick for the best uh what did i pick for the best what hit wonder oh i think it was the monros what do all the people know i just thought was a great power pop 1983 tune. It has a distinctive style of instrumentation at the time.

And, as I later learned, the lead singer ended up in Minneapolis, where somebody discovered him as a cook in a restaurant. I've been meaning to call him and interview him. It's a good reminder to do so. So, any songs you would like to add to that list before we get to something else here, boys? What about all those guys you were mentioning earlier in the podcast? Buddy Holly and Richie Valen?

Yeah, one hit wonder Buddy Holly. Well, Richie Valen's had La Bamba, and that was pretty much it, right? Yeah, and the big bopper had Chantilly Lace. I thought these guys sounded like they were playing backup to Elvis. That's what I thought they were, no? No, no, no, no. They'd have one hit, and then they'd be put out on the road on these tours,

and they'd show up in these small towns, surf ballroom, the turf, and come on and do their song, and that would be it, which would be great fun. One of the best one-hit wonders was actually by the Oneeders in the Tom Hanks movie, That Thing That You Do. You, doing that thing you do, breaking my heart into a million pieces, like you always do. And you. This is a great song. It's a fantastic song and a great movie, too.

I don't know if you've seen that. So, right. So, Peter, if you can't reach back right away and pull out some song from your childhood. Ritchie Fallon's. I came up with Ritchie Fallon's. That was pretty good. Wasn't it? I'll give you that one.

John, how about you? How about, oh, gosh, like Bananarama. How about them? No, I think they had a couple. They had Cruel Summer. And they also had Venus. Oh, I never thought of this. Vena, you're right.

I was just thinking of Cruel Summer. I think Venus was before Cruel Summer. Yes, Unstumpable was a Nat King Cole song, I believe, wasn't it? Anyway, going across the pond, or actually not across the pond, north to Canada, north to Alaska. That's a Johnny Horton song. Never mind. Record scratch sound. Start again. Harry and Meghan.

Even if you don't care about the royals, and I don't, there is something interesting about this story and our times. And we know that Peter is a keen watcher of the royals. Oh, even I am sick of this one. Harry and Meghan. So the royal family's best I can make it out is this strange mix of immense privilege. But the price you have to pay for that is a kind of self-abnegation. Your day gets planned hour by hour, day by day, month by month, years in advance. You show up at ribbon cuttings, and that is what you do. That is your duty,

because you bring to bear at any time a bridge is opened or a new wing of a hospital, simply by showing up, you lend it a certain dignity and you bring to bear a thousand years of British history. But it's boring. And I can see why it would be boring. I can see why Meghan would rather go to Hollywood and start trading on their status as royals. But you can't do that. OK, that's the that's the issue in some right. You can't you're not allowed to trade on your standing as a member of the royal family.

What they want is all the bits of being royal that are enjoyable, fame, fortune, Elton John flying you places in his private jet, and none of the bits that are tedious, such as showing up to cut ribbons when a bridge opens. And my guess is they're not going to be able to get the deal that they want. Is that enough on Harry and Meghan? I just think it is so ridiculous that a country that claims to be a modern democracy, a modern economy, has a royal family at all. That just sits there, already the richest family in England, if not the world, sits there at taxpayer expense doing absolutely nothing. I can't understand how the British people just do not rise up, strip all those useless aristocrats of all their titles and get rid of the royal family and join the 21st century. I don't see what purpose they serve. Have you ever lived in England? Have

you ever spent any time there? They keep blocking me at the border. I still want to find out what clotted cream is and all that stuff, but I just can't get it. I don't know. I've never spotted eel and the rest of it. I love England and I have no love for monarchies because they are illiberal and they are not consistent with the form of self-organizing that we as a people believe in. At the same time, if I was a citizen of the scepter dial and viewed America as a rude upstart that had been around for the blink of an eye, as opposed to something long and rooted and ancient as the British traditions are, I would appreciate, especially in a time when all other traditions of British culture seem to be kindling to be thrown on the fire for the glee of the intelligentsia.

I would appreciate something that tied me and my times back to those ancient times when people survived at the whim of a king, could be summarily executed by some gouty guy in a bad mood. Let me rephrase that. I would be disinclined to rip up history and just leave them with what? Without that, they are just sort of, I don't know, New Jersey with a picturesque bar. I mean, it's still one of the 10 largest economies in the world, even though they're a tiny itty bitty island with just a nation of shopkeepers. Why do they need to have a monarchy at all? It's just they are wasting money, their deference, and their stultified society.

I would just be sick of it. Let's also mention that everyone here in America rejected it. All of our ancestors left probably countries that had monarchies or aristocracies. We are a country that reject all that stuff. I agree, but there's a standard of decorum that suggests here is something up here to which people should aspire. You, too, can be as cultured and as well-mannered and well-bred and as much of a role model as Fergie. Oh, I had to say that.

That's Fergie. Hey, listen, everybody, this podcast was brought to you by Lending Club and by Circle. You can support them for supporting us, and that'd be a great thing to do because you get great products for it. And we continue to shine in the eyes of our sponsor. Like every other podcast to us on the planet, I will issue a useless plea here for you to go to iTunes. Go to Apple Podcasts. That's what it's called now, iTunes.

That's Old Think, the new OS, Apple Podcasts. Find us. Give us stars. Give us, shall I say, five. Because the more we have of those, the more reviews that we get, the more the podcast gets surfaced, the more people join, the more people discover Ricochet, the more money we have, and the more we're here to talk about Bernie Sanders' run for the presidency in 2024. This time he's serious, and this time he's going actual full commie. He's going to come out with a red star in his chest, wave the hammer in one hand and the sickle in the other and say, I'm tired of half measures.

It's full communism or nothing. In the meantime, John, we understand you have to go off and teach a class now about nodules. I think we'll talk about that. Undersea, not seabed nodules. Yes. Nodules under the sea, which is great. And Peter, you have to go apply some sort of analgesic balm to the nodule that you broke slinging about a Russian kettleball. Yes, yes.

But before I go, I want to quote to that Jacques Aubin, John Yoo, the founder of modern conservatism, Edmund Burke, from the reflections on the revolution in France, the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists and clerks has succeeded. Thank you. You clerk. You clerk. And now you want that to be you want that to happen to England as well. I stick with the queen by by by Jove. E.J. Hill, there is your podcast artwork.

John Hugh and his trademark James Bond tuxedo at the guillotine with the tumble in front of him, his hand on the rope, ready for the blade to snicker down. John, it's been a pleasure. And come back anytime. We'll talk to you probably next week about impeachment. Who knows? Thanks. Go teach.

Go do your. Good luck with your nodules. Yes. Thanks. And I've got a nodule for a nose and and I've got to do something about it right now. We're done. Thank you. Next week, guys.

Next week. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. I like you. I like you. With open hair and tawny eyes. The kind of eyes that hypnotize me through. Hypnotize me through. And I ran.

I ran so far away. I just ran, I ran all I ever made. I couldn't get away. Ricochet. Join the conversation. A cloud of tears above your head. We'll be right back. The cloud is moving near us now. Aurora Borealis comes in the air. Aurora comes in the air. James, I'm sorry I let you down because as Rob Long's substitute practice got, I was supposed to try to interrupt.

It was up to you. you