The Ricochet Podcast - Return of the Working Class Republican

Episode Date: November 8, 2024

Who better to talk to on our post-election victory lap episode than the man who saw it coming? Henry Olsen joins after proving correct in his daring prediction in the New York Post of a Trump-led red wave. We get into how he called it and his detailed post-op report. We also give him the chance to take off his analyst cap to do a little rooting for the team. And, of course, we get into his 2017 book, The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue-Collar Conservatism, where he posited that the unlikely figure of Donald Trump was returning the Republican Party to the foundations that the Gipper laid out.Incogni is your personal data defender, safeguarding you from these digital predators. Use code RICOCHET at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: http://incogni.com/ricochet- Sound clip from the open: Donald Trump "firing" Kamala Harris at his rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. Read my lips. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Stephen Hayward. I'm James Lylex, and today we talk to Henry Olsen, pollster guru who got it right. So let's have a Sosa podcast. Kamala, you're fired. Get the hell out of here. Get out of here. Welcome to, well, well, well, well, sorry. Welcome to the Ricochet Podcast number 716.

I'm James Lylex here in Minnesota where our governor soon will be returning to governate. And I'm joined by Stephen Hayward and by, what's his name? Peter Robinson. That's right, both of them in California. Where I imagine the mood might be joyous or despondent, depending on where you are. Here in Minnesota, people are going about their day. Smiles in the skyway. Life goes on as usual.

Somehow, even though the hob-nailed boot of imminent militarized authoritarianism has yet to descend upon us, it's any second now. And gentlemen, welcome. Were you surprised? I was surprised. I was surprised. I had, in my head, I had thought Pennsylvania might be very, very close. I had given him in my mind before the polls closed, I'd given him Georgia and North Carolina and Arizona. That seemed reasonable to do, but everything else struck me as touch and go. So I was just wrong. And, and, and I was very surprised. I was happily surprised, needless to say.

Stephen? I was not surprised. And... Oh, sure. Easy to say now, Hayward. Well, no, I'll give you a, I'll give you my unscientific, I'll restate my unscientific opinion I voiced here, I don't know, a month or six weeks ago, which was Trump is one of these world historical figures, I don't want to say exactly the same, but like Napoleon, like de Gaulle, who's destined to get the job. That's unscientific, but that doesn't mean it's not true. The scientific answer, Peter, was this. I was watching the polls converging and thinking this is weird, and Nate Silver said the same thing.

And I thought Trump is a candidate who is hard to pull and ronald reagan was hard to pull and they come along once in a while and despite all the pollsters saying we're working really hard to try not to be so far off this time i assumed that even if the polling error had been closed by two thirds that still gave trump a one-point lead in the popular vote, and that was going to translate to a near sweep. And I think it's actually more than that. We'll get on with it with Henry. And by the way, that's the other thing.

Darn that guy joining us in a few minutes. If he didn't have it absolutely nailed, and I've known Henry for 40 years and been following his forecast for 20 years, this was his most detailed and most optimistic ever. And I thought, boy, you can take it to the bank when Henry is that definitive about things. And he turned out to be exactly right. Right. Let me ask you a question. Do you think it would have been different if Ron DeSantis had been the candidate? Because I don't think I don't think Ron DeSantis would have beat

Kamala Harris. You know, I wonder about that that uh first of all i'm actually working on a piece uh before it came on uh you know who the democrats most wanted to run against donald trump that's why they intervene with the law affair and all the other things to boost him peter you may remember this actually james you may too uh this is a well established in history books go back to 1979 the democrat jimmy carter most wanted to run against was ronald reagan we know how that worked out right i think we're seeing a repeat of that for some of the same fundamental reasons as incompetence of democrats and judging the mood of the nation and and misjudging their opposition uh so i don't know about uh peter i mean i thought

here i'm still somewhat conventional i thought another candidate would be a more certain thing than Trump because of all of Trump's baggage. But lo and behold, Trump ran ahead of Republicans just about everywhere, which wasn't true. It wasn't true in 2016 and even 2020. Right. As you had split tickets and whatnot. Some. And the fact that he ran so strongly everywhere and ahead of a lot of Republican candidates tells me that maybe he was the best candidate for this cycle after all. Let me see if I get this right. In 2020, Rob Portman, have I got this right? Or was it 2016?

In any event, Rob Portman, Senator from Ohio, won his race by 21 points. This is 2016. He won by 21 points, and Donald Trump won by 8. Right. This time around, Moreno, Bernie Moreno, won by half a point. Right. And Trump carried Ohio by 6, 7, 8, something like that. So Trump was the major figure.

I, in the primaries, I supported Ron DeSantis, not that anybody noticed. Me too. So I supported Ron DeSantis, and I just thought, let's, the liabilities of Donald Trump are just, he upsets people. He just, let's move beyond him. It's time to move beyond him. Okay. Was I right or was I wrong? We'll never know. You can't run controlled experiments in politics, but the evidence that I was wrong is considerable and it runs as follows. Donald Trump swung Hispanics into the Republican party. Donald Trump, it varies. Overall, I understand.

We'll ask Henry about this. But overall, even among young black men, the black vote isn't up all that dramatically nationally. But there are places where it really jumped. 21 points, as I recall, in North Carolina. Could Ron DeSantis have done that? I don't know. Yesterday, we're thinking about having our house remodeled, which is, it turns out, in California, it takes, you pledge every penny you ever have earned or ever will earn, and you still have to wait a year for the permits to come through. In any event, we're talking with our… Peter, you're going to come visit me on that process, and I'll show you what you get at the end of it.

Yeah, exactly. Okay, thank you. Anyway, we had our general contractor over, and this is a guy who works with his hands, who works with guys who work with their hands. These are working people. And you know what? We talked around the subject very gingerly until he discovered, because most of his clients are not Trump supporters, but until he discovered it was me he was talking to. And you know what? He and his crews look at Donald Trump and say, that's our guy. That's our guy. Does anybody look at Ron DeSantis and say it with the same kind of just automatic visceral

affiliate? I just don't know affiliate i just don't know i just don't know because he doesn't have the galvanic dynamism that trump was displaying in the campaign you know for an old duffer he's got the energy now i think it'd been if it had been harris versus desantis desantis would have come across as a bit staid and a bit wonky he would have been the ducatus of the campaign and i say this again as a de santa supporter from way back um but this was different uh i was stunned and surprised if you'd have told me this was going to happen a year and a half or so ago i would have told you you're absolutely crazy because like peter i would say he just rubs people the wrong way that he's lost the independence that women hate him all of these. He got more women, suburban women, I think went 41-47.

He increased his numbers there. So how much of that is due to just a weary attitude towards people's perceptions of the economy, and how much of that actually is due to the man himself? And the more that I look at it, the more that I think that it is due to the man himself. And it's not a detailed, granular, atomic assessment of the man. It really isn't. It's just a general, wide perception. And this is what politics does.

This is what politics is all about. Most people don't go into the voting booth with a list of things about their candidate in agate type. They don't. It's a gut. It's a gut. It's a swing. Correct. And the moment that he got winged in the ear and stood up and pumped his fist, I thought, well, that's it.

I'd gone from a year and a half ago saying there's absolutely no way, it's insanity to run the man, to, well, that's the moment right there. That's the TR bully moment that is going to do it. And in the end, I think it did. So another question, because, I mean, a lot of what we're going to say has been chewed over again and again and again and again. But I am interested in the what's next thing, because there's two what nexts. There's the inevitable disappointment that a lot of conservatives are going to feel

with Donald Trump when he does something they don't like, and the satisfaction and the perhaps surprise when he does something that nobody ever thought that anybody would. We'll see. But I'm interested in how the left, the progs, the liberals, those groups are reassessing and reevaluating themselves.

Because I'm reading two things. One, well, it's because Harris backed away from her 2019 stuff. She wasn't progressive. True progressivism has never been tried. If she'd done that, she would have got everybody. And then people who have a more moderate bent who are saying, look, you may not like these people now because you've lost them, but there is a reason that you did and it is a wise thing to do to look at why groups upon which you had historically depended moved away what is it about your message and getting through um and to me it would seem that yes inflation

and immigration those were the big things that were driving people and pushing people to Trump because they know what his instincts are. But it also is sort of a general, incoherent, sometimes specific rejection of a cultural drift that people don't like because they regard it as an strange efflorescent that flared out of the ground in 2020 and like a plume of Vesuvius darkened the skies and contaminated everything that it touched. a variety of issues turned into an ideological campaign that sought to upend a lot of things that people believed that characterized this culture. And that was your brilliant riff, James, of, what was it, three weeks ago, four weeks ago, five weeks ago? I'm repeating myself. I'm repeating myself. No, no, no.

No, actually, you're not quite as good as you were the first time through. Everybody's a critic. You did a kind of catechism i really thought in fact i was so i would like to ask our producer perry to make a note of this let's go back and see if we can not at the moment but if we should put it up on the website we should have it transcribed because it was beautiful give james a chance to edit if he wants to but it was a kind of catechism of the things we know trump won't do right right you remember that and he won't yeah he won't come after decent people he won't raise taxes he won't do this he won't do but he won't he he won't try to tell you that your that your daughter should accept should put up with, young men in her locker room. Right? Remember that? I think the cultural stuff was really powerful.

Well, and again, not to hijack this thing entirely, because I'll hand it to you both after this. I, as a form of masochism and enjoyment, listened the next day to a five-hour podcast done by Brits about the election, as it was happening. Oh, my goodness. It's a politics show called The Rest is Politics, and it's part of a series of shows, The Rest is History, The Rest is Entertainment.

But the reason that I listened to it was because one of the people on the panel was Dominic Sandbrook, who is from The Rest of History and is a scholar of American elections to the point where he is so steeped in 1968 and Eugene McCarthy that he can rattle off off the top of his head the entirety of McCarthy's campaign. He went to Minnesota, he interviewed the guys, just great, fantastic guy, Brit, witty. He was the only one on the panel who said, well, they went around and asked for predictions. He was the only one who said Trump because he had a keen, he had an instinctive understanding of what drives American elections. And the rest of them were all appalled that any thinking person could talk about Harris' imminent victory in any other way than to welcome it with open arms, because, as they said, listen to that speech that Michelle Obama made for her.

And Sandbrook would tell them, look, I hate to tell you this, but that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. People don't follow politics or know politics in the way that you and I do. They don't. And so they were absolutely stunned the next day. I listened to the next day's podcast as well. Of course, they were all experts on why Harris lost the next day. I listened to the next day's podcast as well. Of course, they were all experts on why Harris lost the next day. But it was it was that same sort of walled off in a bubble. So people on Twitter are saying, hey, Twitter, if you just if you just hung around on Twitter, you would have

known that Trump was going to win, which makes me think I'm not so sure about that. And it may be possible that Twitter is a bubble as well for the right but they just got it they just were correct this time because it was on the right so do you think then we're going to have a productive conversation about what the uh the future of the left in this country needs to be he said not yet not yet no no no not yet no i think there's precedent for this actually i think we can actually look at history and say how long it takes for the party of the left to rethink matters and they have to be defeated three times margaret thatcher had to win three times before the labor party in britain began the search the soul searching that would lead to tony blair tony blair was a catastrophe in my judgment although for all the opposite i i tend to think he was a catastrophe for reasons opposite to those that people in Britain think he was a catastrophe.

But he was a much more moderate figure and much more electable figure than Michael Foote and Neil Kinnock and all the people who were up against Margaret Thatcher. Ronald Reagan had to win twice and George H.W. Bush had to win once. That makes three defeats for the Democrats before that centrist, Bill Clinton, appears and wins. They have to be clobbered. You can't get their attention by hitting them over the head with a two-by-four once.

Yeah. This reminds me of the old joke the neoconservatives used to tell as they were moving from left to the right in the 70s about the preacher in church who says, oh, I got mugged the other day. They took my wall. I got a bruise, you know.

But I want you all to know that I still have, you know, nothing but kindness and forgiving and compassionate thoughts towards, you know, people who are driven to crime. And some lady in the back of the church says, mug him again. And this is what has to happen. Look, the Democrats are in you know we can do the seven stages of grief or however many they are they're in the denial stage right now and they're very good at that and lashing out of course at uh you know white women didn't do their job who knew that julia roberts said was not going to work and that taylor swift can't swill sway millions of votes right um and they'll have a circular firing squad but i keep quiet

peter i mean back to that 80s example as early as 1988 there's a great book about this um from i i think it was minority party by peter brown a reporter for scripts i think an african-american reporter by the way and he reported on how throughout the 88 campaign there was arkansas governor bill clinton trying to persuade duk no, you have to support the Pledge of Allegiance. And he said, I think we don't have to distance ourselves from Jesse Jackson. Clinton said this on the record. We don't have to distance ourselves from Jesse Jackson. We need to disagree with Jesse Jackson. Four years later, you've got the Sister Soldier moment and all the rest of that harris was utterly incapable of the slightest gesture what what here in california listeners may know we had our proposition 36 to recriminate

shoplifting it passed by two to one harris would not take a position on it when asked about it right uh and and that just you know clinton would have that would have slam dunk for clinton he would have gotten that so we're going to have to see if we're going to another clinton moment for the democrats or not yes if you can't come out in favor of putting people who shoplift away in jail after they walk into the walgreens and fill a hefty black 55 you know court trash bag full of cosmetics uh we're not exactly talking to jean valjean situation here uh but she didn't but she didn't want to be javert despite the fact that she ran on her previous existence as anyway enough of me let's talk to henry henry olson senior fellow with the ethics and public policy center he's the author of working class republican a biography of ronald reagan and the coalition that he built relevant today or not we'll talk about that he's

the host of the podcast beyond the polls which is available right here at your Ricochet Audio Network. And on Sunday, Henry was the guy who called the red wave strikingly accurate. Yeah, darn you, Henry. Henry, you had to have a strange moment, though, when we learned that Iowa was going to go for Harris for 47 points, I think, something like that. So your prediction was, you predicted in the New York Post, 297 for Trump in the Electoral College, 55 Republican seats in the House, 3-7 seat expansion in the Senate, I think.

Look, pretty good. How'd you do that? Oh, well, you know, I just kind of pulled flying monkeys out of my you-know-what and just got it. No, you know, I looked at data. I mean, heaven forbid that we would actually look at data in this universe rather than vibes or my friends who are feeding me information.

I actually had somebody in the Harris campaign feed me information. I was going to be Harris plus five. I was totally wrong, blah, blah, blah. And I got an email at 10.30 at night. I was wrong. Sorry. Okay. The two attributes of Henry Olson at this hour are, one, he's the man who got it all right. And two, he's a man who hasn't slept for 72 hours, would be my guess by about now.

All right. So we can't be the only people who want to talk to you to get all this sorted out. So, Henry, going into Election Day, I have all kinds of things I want to ask about now that it's happened. But at the beginning of Election Day, you were really out on a ledge, and all the polls had coalesced around it's a tie. Well, Trump may be up a little bit, but that's within the margin of she may be up, but margin of the only person who was out on a limb, although she went out on the wrong person who was out on a limb although she went out on the wrong limb was ann seltzer who i'd like to hear what you have to say about that

but you went out on a limb and got it right what did you see about the polls that permitted you to disregard the overwhelming consensus that it was just going to be a dead heat? So what I did was I looked underneath the polls. My podcast is called Beneath the Polls or Beyond the Polls. And the thing is that the polls, top line results, never give you what you need to know. What you need to know is contained in the entrails of the polls. So what I did was I took a look at cross tabulations for partisan identification. The reason I did that is because what we've been seeing in voter registration data and in polling data is something historic. And Gallup pointed to this in September, that people were moving to the

Republican Party and abandoning the Democratic Party in record numbers. So I looked at all of the national polls and found, as they usually do, they agree on what share of Democrats are going to vote for Harris, what share of Republicans are going to vote for Trump, and they have rough agreement on the share of independents. So if you know that, what you know is that the reason the polls diverged is because they assumed different things about how many Republicans and how many Democrats there were in the electorate. And shockingly, I know this is going to amaze ricochet leaders, most people didn't presume there was going to be more Republicans.

So, of course, they thought Harris was going to win. The exit poll, as remodulated this morning, says that it was an R-plus-4 election. That's how I got it right, is followed the data which is to say hey at worst it'll be an even election which is the best partisan score for republicans since 2004 it's likely to be an r-plus election which will be the first time since 1932 i was willing to follow the data wasn't 84 an r-plus hadn't voter registration moved toward the Republicans at least briefly? No? No.

No. Wow. Ronald Reagan, you know, the thing is, you'd win elections by winning Reagan Democrats, people who still thought of themselves as Democrats but would vote for Reagan. That's why you had split tickets for 20 years, is people would say, yeah, I'm a Reagan Democrat. I'll vote for Democrat for Senate, and I'll vote for the Republican for the executive office. And even though on partisan surveys,

you look at partisan surveys, Ronald Reagan changed America, but he changed America by removing the Democrats' decades-long 20 to 30-point advantage in voter identification and replacing it with what we've seen for the last 30 years, D plus two to D plus nine. That meant Republicans could fight, but they were still fighting uphill. This is the first election Democrats have had to fight uphill.

They didn't expect it. They should have. They didn't know how to do it. And what I was saying in the run up to the election is the entire for three generations, every Democrat politician instinctively knew all you had to do was rally the base and split independence, and you win. Kamala Harris won 95% or 94% of Democrats and won independence by two points, and she's going to lose the electorate by two to three percentage points.

Why? Because there's more Republicans now. R rally the base and split the independence no longer works for democrats for the first time since 1932 amazing okay henry so why was why did this happen well the dominant republican was donald j for genius trump what let me let me remind you of, although you being you, you'll know what poll I'm quoting, and I being me can't remember which poll it was. But after the first debate, after the Trump-Biden debate, I found it so striking that there was a poll that showed 7% thought Biden had won the debate, which would lead you to suppose 93% thought Trump did. No, no, no, no. Only 44% gave the credit to Trump, and the rest, almost half, just said, I don't know,

which suggested to me that half the country hated that son of a gun so much they weren't going to give him credit for anything. And yet, while this disliked figure was the dominant Republican, as far as I can tell, as far as I can remember, correct me on this, the election results the day before yesterday were the Republican Party, this historic movement toward the Republican Party, took place. Make me understand that one. So some of you know I've been arguing in favor of a populist blue-collar ship for the Republican Party for about 15 years. Yes, and for about 13 of those years, it was really annoying to me, Henry. I thought, come on, be more libertarian. What are you doing to us? I welcome your conversion, Peter.

There's always room in the church for new converts. Donald Trump is the graphic novel version of what I was calling for. And why do I say the graphic novel version? I think for obvious reasons, and it remains true that on election day, Donald Trump had a 46% approval rate, favorability rating, according to the exit poll, below 50%. He still doesn't have 50%. But what's happened is that because he embraced, for whatever reasons, conservative

populist fusion, he has attracted the blue-collar voters who were always there for the picking, if only you got rid of the notion that they were latent Christian libertarians, which was the dominant theme of the Republican Party for decades. Once you understood that they weren't latent Christian fundamentalist libertarians, but they're actually the same sort of people who wouldn't see a contradiction between liking Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, which is what Ronald Reagan said. Which is what Ronald, and by the way, that was what Ronald Reagan was. He always admired Reagan, Roosevelt. That's right.

And that was the whole thesis of my book, The Working Class Conservative, which was that, look, what you have to understand is that Ronald Reagan was not Franklin Roosevelt's opponent. He was an interpreter. Right. He introduced the idea of liberty into the garden, he introduced the tree of liberty into the garden of Roosevelt. Watch Steve Hayward's face, the great Reagan

historian. Now you're making Steve feel a little queasy, Henry. Well, no, not at all. Henry and I have been through this argument. I think you overstate your point a bit, but it's very arguable and I think compelling in some other ways. Henry has to overstate it to get it through to me. Well, okay, exactly.

I'm slow about this stuff. I'm on team Henry for the most part. Distinguish Trump from Reagan. So what I want to say is that because Trump was able to do that, he was able to Distinguish Trump from Reagan. of country club slash hoover right republicans the overlap between people who you know who look who lionize the captains of industry and lionize the captains of finances better than the rest of us um said well this isn't my party anymore i'm going to go to the party that actually wants to say that people who have achieved things through education and finance are better than the rest of

you and they're now democrats that's the party of the elite that than the rest of you. And they're now Democrats. That's the party of the elite. That's the party of they are now the demographic equivalent of the old Republican Party after the Great Depression. And so Trump attracted these people in droves. And by making the Republican by breaking the Republican Party stranglehold, the stranglehold of Christian fundamentalist, libertarian, neocon orthodoxy, and saying, actually, we can be conservative by introducing some new elements into this. We can actually expand our coalition. So he created the possibility for expansion. And then the Democrats have driven people away

that americans don't you know americans don't want christian fundamentalist neo-libertarian neocon but they also don't want progressively secular neo-socialist internationalism it's like can i have something that's like conservative that's american that's like reagan that's like roosevelt that's like mckinley that synthesis there and so there's a lot of people who did to trump the reason trump won is because he won the double haters which were much smaller but they still existed he won the double haters by nearly 30 points so what that means is that first the democrats the Democrats have destroyed their brand. Secondly, Trump has made the Republican brand

acceptable to more people. And third, there's a massive opportunity to expand the Republican brand that Ronald Reagan won in 1980 by getting people who still thought they were Democrats but didn't like the drift in the 70s to say, I'm going to give this guy a chance. Four years of success,

they said, I'm Republicans now give this guy a chance. Four years of success, they said, I'm Republicans now. Over to Steve in a second, but I just want to make sure I'm underhearing you correctly. This is not a one-off. This is not tied to the person of Donald J. Trump. This is an opportunity to begin a golden age, like the golden age of the 1980s a national renewal economic expansion a political realignment to the center to yes you're nodding bingo bingo bingo how's he how's he yes that's exactly right um can i have a 600 ship navy as well ah you can have a 600 ship Navy as well. Ah, you can have a 600 ship Navy. You can have it. Look, this is the thing is this is a synthesis.

This is not pure populism. This is not the old guard intellectual triad. This is not country club Republicanism. This is a new synthesis that has all of these things thrown together. And Donald Trump will not provide the unifying thesis for that the way Reagan did and the way Reagan's thesis was either misunderstood or consciously ignored by most of the people who call themselves Reaganite. But that J.D. Vance will. J.D. Vance will. Because J.D. Vance has been thinking about it for years.

Yeah. So, Henry, first of all, listeners should know that I've known you for 40 years, which means I have all the receipts on what a hopeless geek you are. And if you think listeners, Henry's been... You want to tell them what I was doing on the beach in Houston in 1988? You know, I was about to mention this being late nights and

dubious establishments, but you have the reciprocal receipts on me for that, so I'll drop it. Hold on a second. Let me interrupt for a second. Just to know what sort of cosmopolitan globalist we are having here. Henry, behind you, do I see on your shelf a collection of vintage Michelin guidebooks? Yes. So you've been around that thing we call the world. Are any of them European?

Oh, James, I can explain that. We found him out. We found him out. Datavose man. No, no. Henry, what it means is, I'll help you, Henry, to save your voice. That's how you decode the demographics of foreign electoral districts, right? There we go.

Right. Yes. Thank you. demographics and of a foreign uh foreign electoral districts right there we go right yes thank you i have been in used bookstores uh with henry when he finds an atlas or you know yeah usually an atlas that he grabs and realizes how it can be used for election uh interpretation doesn't matter what year really even okay um i wrote a great piece on how the Polish electorate can be completely understood by the tripartite division of 1795. Of course you did. I think that goes without saying, though. We're supposed to applaud. Tell us something we didn't know. Yeah, well, all right.

I do have three or four specific questions about election analysis. But I do want to pick up where we left off, which was, you know, the ideological aspects of this election. But you've been on some of the non ideological aspects. Let me go at it this way. You know, this is one of those weeks when I love paraphrasing Conan the Barbarian. You know, the what is best in life to crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentations of their women on The View. Right. That's what I'm doing this week. And, you know, so I picked up The Nation magazine. Of course, they're having a full-fledged freakout.

And there's an interesting article by Jeet Heer. That's the guy's name, Jeet Heer. He sounds like a E.G. Woodhouse invention for Fleet Street. But after attacking Democrats for not being progressive enough, there appears the following couple sentences I want to read to you, Henry, and then have you take it away. Here's Jeet here. The key to understanding the Trump era is that the real divide in America is not between left and right, but between pro-system and anti-system politics. Pro-system politics is the bipartisan consensus of establishment Democrats and Republicans.

It's the politics of NATO and other military alliances, of trade agreements, and of deference to economists. Trump stands for no fixed ideology, but rather a general thumbing of the nose at this consensus. I thought, does Cheat here just realize he endorsed Donald Trump? And that sounds similar to what you've been said about the ins and the outs, Henry. Yeah, I was just going to say, I'm glad that he read my article on the article. It's not left versus right. It's in versus house, which I wrote in 2017.

Right. Yeah. I mean, there is a leftist populism. And basically, that is what he's calling for is a leftist rejection of the system. This is Le France Insoumise under Jean-Luc Mélenchon in France. This is Bundeswehr der Wagenknecht in Germany. This is the Bernie Sanders revolution. This is

Corbynista, which is, we can be leftist populists. The enemy is globalism. The enemy is capitalism. The enemy is Christianity, and so forth. There is a leftist populism. How do you define populism? You're I'm confused. I confess. So I wrote an article in 2011 for National Affairs where I set out kind

of an academic four part test, which was meant to not just answer populism for our age, but tie it to what they call demagoguery in ancient Greece. Populism is four parts. Populism is the identification of a people as a people. The belief that a elite has acquired power at the expense of the people. Third part three, that the elite is unjustly depriving the people of that which they are justly entitled to. And that can be status, that can be political rights, that can be wealth, that can be any number of things. And part four is that the people in the name of itself must dispossess the elites and reassert rightful power in their name and address all wrongs.

That is populism. But the key is the identification of elite as an unjust minority tyrannizing a just majority. And so good populism treats the elites as adversaries who have rights. That's what Jefferson did with the Federalists. That's what Roosevelt did, even though he called them economic royalists. He didn't kill Andrew Mellon or exile them. Bad populists kill, exile, and deprive political rights of their enemy, and that's how you lead to tyranny. So America, I argued, has always been populist. In fact, it's the key to our renewal, is populism rises up, identifies an

unjust elite that has seized power at the expense of minority, you re-seize power, the balance is restored. Donald Trump's in this long-standing two-and-a-half-century tradition. Yeah, so look, I have a simpler and shorter definition, which is populism is when the wrong people or party wins an election. And that's why it can't be left populism. Now it's, you know, more right populism. But I think that's my shorter version of all that. But let me, all right, so this leads to the first sort of 30,000 foot level evaluation of things. You know, a lot of our enthusiastic friends are saying, this is a landslide. And on the surface,

it doesn't look like the Nixon or Reagan landslides of 72 and 84. It's not, you know, 58, 42, it's not 450 electoral votes. However, you look below the hood and you see that Trump improved the most in some of the deepest blue states. You know, he cut the Democratic margin from four years ago by half in California, Illinois, New Jersey, New York. And I guess Trump did better in the Bronx than in Manhattan. This ought to terrify Democrats. And that, to me, does lend some verisimilitude to the landslide narrative. Where do you come down on that? We are one step away from the landslide election.

OK. The landslide election is, all of that is true. And the little things like, remember in 2020, people were talking about the Hispanic shift to Trump, which was real. Trump still lost the Rio Grande Valley, despite a large shift. He still lost Miami-Dade County, despite a large shift. He carried every county, every county in the historically Democrat Rio. This is where Lyndon Johnson stole the 1948 Senate election. Every county now voted for Donald Trump. There's races there that are 99 has spent

99 percent hispanic and donald trump won it and he won miami-dade by 11 points okay so what needs to happen what needs to happen is you need to bring the people who doubted into the fold. Ronald Reagan won 51% in 1980. John Anderson got seven. Ronald Reagan got 59% in 1984. Anderson voters and some Democrats came back because it was success. What did, you know, Franklin Roosevelt brought people into the vote. African Americans voted Republican in 1932. They voted Democrat in 1936. New people came on board because success allowed for conversions. There will be many more of you in four years if Donald Trump plays his role, Peter. Right. More doubters who are now fervent, fervent populist.

I'm glad to have, can't wait for Hoover to raise the flag of populism. I'm sure Gandhi is just burning to do that. He's going to be a populist avatar in Davos. Yes. Now, you know, one person we haven't heard from, I can't resist this, one person we haven't heard from the last couple days, although maybe I've just missed it, is our good friend Ann Coulter. You've been on her show.

She's been on this show. And, you know, Ann's been saying for years now, I don't see why Republicans can't get over this fantasy. They're going to attract Hispanic voters. Never going to happen. What are you going to say to Ann if you get her on the phone? Look, Ann had me on her podcast precisely to say, I'm the problem. I say we need to get back in Hispanic voters.

We can't get them. What we should do is concentrate on whites. What I'm going to say is, too bad, so sad. You were wrong and I was right. At what point can you admit it? Yeah, I remember that. At what point can you admit that you were wrong and I was right? When you can do that, we can have a conversation. But she's

just plain wrong. It was always there. Always there. It was always there. Always there. It was there in the push years. But you couldn't do it on the old orthodoxy because the theory of the autopsy after... Yes, yes, yes. Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead.

The theory of the autopsy was there are these barriers. Hispanics should like us, but we're bad on immigration. So remove the barrier, they're going to vote for us. No, they understood what that Republican Party was about, which was for capital and wealth over labor and work. And they said, no, we don't want that. And I had poll data to prove that. And what Donald Trump says, actually, there's no artificial distinction between capital and work. And guess what? That's the Brilink and McKinley era Republicans,

the only time Republicans have ever been a majority party in this country. You know, and so it's like it was always there. All you had to do was remove the blinders that orthodoxy and self-interest placed in your way. And Donald Trump, having been unpolitical, never had the blinders on. Well, the 2012 aftermath just proves you should never leave an autopsy to morticians. That's really how that happened, I think, right? Let me ask you— I like to say the autopsy was dead on arrival.

Right, right. A couple of questions about the exit polling. You know, I saw the early exit polls come out, and also one particular novel I think you used of them. But when the first exit polls came out and it said the leading issue was democracy, and I thought, remind me how exit polls work. I tried to look up the panel questions and couldn't find it quickly on the Internet, but they give you a pretty selected seven or eight issues i think to choose from so nobody is i don't think very many people are offering that as a spontaneous

what's the most important issue to you is threats to democracy uh the economy makes sense well the one i'm wondering about is i don't believe well you know they used to ask about the environment and they quit doing it more than 20 years ago because most voters are not checking it off it was like two percent so the environment was most important to them. But I'm wondering, Henry, to what extent you think that some of these transgender and identity politics issues played a large role that I think were not asked about in the exit polls? Well, you know, there's a lot of things that may not be the most important thing that are the straw that breaks the camel's back and that is one of them you know is that americans amazingly enough particularly americans in the middle have nuanced views and that if what you want to say is should people be allowed to

become transgender the answer is probably yes should children be allowed to become transgender? The answer is probably yes. Should children be allowed to transition? No. Should people pretend that male and female doesn't exist except as an intellectual construct? And it's like, no. And so it was one of those things that they switched because it hit on a weakness that they had that they could not respond to, that particularly, I would guess, among the last-minute deciders who are not necessarily staunch Republicans, helped give them a reason to say no. And the reason Trump wins, not just because of the partisanship, that was a huge reason,

but because 8% of the people didn't like both of them, and he wins by 30 points. In other words, when forced to choose between the man you didn't like and the the people didn't like both of them, and he wins by 30 points. In other words, when forced to choose between the man you didn't like and the woman you didn't like, they overwhelmingly chose the man. And I'm sure that's one of the issues, which was, this is crazy. And so, yeah, people want to be completely tolerant of Caitlyn Jenner. People don't think that kindergers, I wrote a piece in the Washington Post. Jenner was for Trump, by the way. Yes, no, she's always been a Republican.

She ran for governor of California as a Republican. But, you know, it is that, look, you can say that Caitlyn Jenner should be treated as Caitlyn Jenner, not as Bruce. You know, those of us old enough to remember when Bruce was the decathlon champion in the 1976 Olympics. While also believing that kindergartners shouldn't be introduced to gender ideology. And I wrote an article attacking California for introducing curriculum doing that in 2019 in the Washington Post. And I was literally attacked for being a fascist. Yeah, right. That's the craziness that the moderate, that the middle rejects. If you then turned around and said, as some people on our extreme right would like to say, and we should attack Caitlyn Jenner too, we would drive the people in the middle away. And what Donald Trump was able to do is say, look, I occupy the middle.

I think Caitlyn Jenner is great, and I think it's absolutely crazy that 16-year-olds who go through crises all the time should be allowed to say, I think that I should change my gender and undergo life-changing mutilation surgery. That's one of the things that the left is going to have difficulty with in the coming years. They can't concede the points that the kids shouldn't have the education or the 16-year-olds should not have their breast. They can't concede those things because to do so to them is to repudiate the entirety of their theory. The whole notions of queer theory and all the new ways of thinking about gender, they would have to deny it three times before the cock grows. And they can't do that with global warming and climate change and the rest. They can't concede. And that's good for the right, because it just shows their inability to conceal what

their eventual ends are. Going back, let's go back to 1919. Okay. 1919, the global left had a choice that had never been faced with before, which was to say the success of the Communist Revolution led many to say we should be like them. Let's have armed revolution, let's establish the dictatorship of the proletariat, that's what Marx wants us to do. The vast majority of the global left said no, we actually kind of like some things about bourgeois democracy, we're social Democrats, and that's when the Socialist International broke up into the Communist International and the Socialist International. And you started to have communist parties in the West, and you had social democratic parties.

The left today is faced not with communism in that sense, but you have a group of people on the left who want to transform Western society. They hate Western society, and it oppresses itself in different ways and then you have the majority that wants to reform it in 1919 they made a choice and they said reformers are not transformers and we must be separate nobody in the west has wanted to do that and you can't be credible about saying you're reformers until you reject your transformers. And that bloody battle is what the Democrats have to go through. And if they can't go through it, then we will continue to see people. We will continue to see them.

It's like Amy Klobuchar says, I'm not a socialist. In 2020, they asked, well, Bernie Sanders is a socialist. Can you describe how a socialist is different from a Democrat? She couldn't do it. Yeah, she could, but she was too afraid to do it because the consequences was to split the party. Guess what? You have to risk splitting the party to get to the center. I look forward to adding the regender stripe to the flag. Well, Henry, you are giving me flashbacks to some old drunken conversations we had about the Shackmanites versus the Lovestoneites, which I didn't think those

brain cells still existed, but this really happened, Peter. One last quick question for you, then I want to return, Peter, because I'm enjoying you schooling him. It's just delightful to watch. You did something interesting on election night, and listeners, if you didn't see Henry's tour de force for four hours on election night on Twitter X, you missed something. I couldn't believe you kept going. I could keep going that long. But you did. But you did something I'd never seen before.

And I wonder if it's new. The polls would close. And in 30 seconds, you got the first dump of the exit polls. And the first thing you looked at was the gender divide. Because, of course, the exit polls weren't calling the races in those states, but you picked out a clue there. And what it was was maybe I should let you explain it. But it was, you know, the electorate is 52-48 women to men, but Trump's leading men by 12

points and Harris is leading women only by eight points. And they did quick math in your head and netted it out to an advantage for Trump. Is that something you spotted brand new this time, or have I just missed you looking at that before? By the way, all your predictions were, looks good for Trump here, and here's why, and here's what the margin might be. It was quite amazing, especially in comparison to the network panels, which were so boring and uninformed and cliche-ridden. Well, thank you, Steve. I do this all the time. I don't necessarily tweet about it. The reason I go to the gender thing always is because it's 50 50.

The thing about exit polls is that the cross tabs must always add up to the top line. If they don't release the top line, I can create it. Ah, right. Welling engineering it yes right that's what i meant to say my entire career is built on applying seventh grade math to politics okay so um take that network uh but yeah so so i i always do i didn't talk about it much in the past because you you know, I'm not doing X and so forth. But my audience needs an instant analysis. I can go here's 52. Here's 48. I can quickly do it.

I can quickly create the math and I can do it in 30 seconds and it'll be accurate. Yeah. And so that's why I did it. Not because of anything about the election, because I don't think I've tweeted about in the past, but I do. I have done it when I needed a very quick what's the top line in a close election. And this time it really produced real results. And what you and what you will go back and see is what happens is the exit polls are taken, but then they're always adjusted to reflect the results. Yeah. So what you saw on election night is not what you will find on the CNN board now.

I always hope that somebody took a screenshot so that you can compare it. I'm so technophobic that I or non technologically advanced. I don't know how to take a screenshot or else I would have done. But if you go on now, you know, the exit polls on election night said Harris would win by six tenths of a point. You know, I predicted Harris would win by one point three. But I said if and that was but that was assuming a partisan even split. I said if it was R plus two or more, Trump would win the elect would win the popular vote. And it's R plus four. And Trump is easily going to win the popular vote. So I was direction directionally right and i just didn't want to be so far out on a limb that i was like hanging on by my this it was like some shred of credibility with people who aren't true believers you know uh so so that's

what i was trying to do uh now you go through and i'm sure you will find different numbers that will of course show trump winning by three because that's what he's going to do win by between two and three okay henry it turns out election night isn't over. I have before me the website of the New York Times. Why hasn't anybody, excuse me, I shouldn't say anybody, why haven't Arizona and Nevada been called yet? Well, other people have called Arizona and Nevada. It's because Arizona still has a million ballots out. It's estimated that Nevada may have as many as 100,000 ballots

out, and that's because the peculiarities of their laws that for... But Trump's going to win them both? Yes. There's no conceivable way that the margins he has gets

overturned with what we know about the nature of the ballots that have yet to be counted why the new york times and new york times just follows ap they don't make independent i see okay so blame the associated press for the calls on the new york times website um and the i i had an argument with the ap guy in 2018 i called the race early and I was wrong. It's one of the very few times. And it was because I didn't account for late mail ballots. And basically the guy snarked me and said, that's why we don't call them early. Okay, well, I've learned and you should still be calling them earlier.

Oh, mighty AP. But I understand why they want to be very cautious. You know, somebody from the AP may listen to this. I understand. I'm just a guy. I don't mind being wrong. You've got a whole reputation. You've got a whole business.

Don't risk destroying your business. And that's what they're doing is being ultra cautious. But Trump has... Senate. Senate. Republicans now, according to the New York Times, have flipped three seats and have 52. You would add Bob Casey. The New York Times is not...

Well, I would add Dave McCormick. I'm sorry. Excuse me. McCormick. You would add the loss of Casey. I'm sorry. Excuse me. McCormick. You would add the loss of Casey. I'm sorry. Okay. So Pennsylvania Republican, although the Times slash AP hasn't called that yet, that gets

Republicans to 53. What's happening in Arizona and Nevada in the Senate race? So Nevada, what happened is, you know, late ballots from Clark County gave Jackie Rosen the lead. And what we'll see is how many ballots are left out. We know there are some Republican rural counties that will carve away at Rosen's lead. And we know there are some ballots left in swingy Washoe County, which is Reno and Incline Village on the north shore of Lake Tahoe. And it's narrow enough that I don't think we should call that race i never did call it i

have not called it i will not call it yet that could go either way we'll have to see arizona um it's possible carrie lake could come from behind she is running behind donald trump by three to four points on average which which means that if Trump wins the remaining ballots out by 53-47, she will not win because she will get 49 or 50 percent. She won't close the gap. If the remaining ballots favor Trump 55 to 57 percent, she should get 52 to 54 percent. And there are enough ballots out there that winning by eight points would get her with, you know, I haven't done the math. I'm doing this literally in my head, would get her within the range where she could win. But that's what needs to happen. It could happen. There's a lot of Republican ballots probably still out there.

Not likely, but within the realm of possibility. All right, last question now. I am under instructions from my son, who is a student of yours, although he's actually in medical school. Why is it that the House is such a getting the results from the House, finding out who's going to have the majority in the House is so slow and torturous by comparison with the Senate and particularly the presidency. Why do we still not know who's going to have a majority in the House? First of all, because it's very close. And secondly, it's mainly because of the male states, mainly because of California.

There are so many state seats in California that are closed. If you go on the New York Times site, as I did about two hours ago, and you add up all the seats that Republicans are leading in, they're leading in or have called 223 seats. It's possible that some of those flip with 35 or 40 percent of the vote left to be counted. It's possible Republicans can gain a couple. You know, there's a couple of there's three seats that the Democrats lead by less than 1%, and there's still votes to be counted. So the thing is that California is the main reason for this. Washington and Alaska are also seats that are reasons for, because they count mail ballots late. Oregon, there's a Republican incumbent, Lori Chavez de Riemer, who's trailing by two points, but there are late count and mail ballots there. That's the main reason. But the fact is, if Republicans had a better night

in the East, if they had clearly won a couple of these seats that they're going to look like they're going to come close until, you know, like if they've won North Carolina one instead of losing it by one point, or if they had won Ohio 13 instead of looks like they're losing it by two points and so forth and so on, and that'd be at a point where we could call the house. But it's because of the combination of those two factors. Okay. I have one last question. And then I read, I, I, I, I hand you over to James and Steve and I promise to do that. And the last question is this. Steve McLaughlin Promises, promises. Peter Robinson The bro theme. The bro theme. The Democrats

seem especially resentful of this, that somehow or other, Trump engaged in some kind of sort of bat squeak signals to frat boys across the country and and men turned out in fact there's a hilarious some fraternity someplace where there's a hilarious tweet up a huge number of fraternity boys all dressed up in in their blue blazers and ties and one does a trump impression impression saying camilla you're fired and the rest of them burst into cheers. Okay. Yeah, and they're all the red ties like Trump wears. Yes, yes, yes, exactly. You've seen it.

You've seen it. Okay. So was there something real there to the campaign intentionally? Or is it just Trump? He's a guy's guy, and that just comes across every time you see him on the screen. Yeah, so what I would say is a couple of things first of all um it is amazing that a group that engages regularly in identity politics yeah is resentful when somebody plays identity politics back at them yeah you know which is what was the theme of the theme of the harris Women act as women. Don't tell your husbands.

Women tell your dates on Tinder that you won't sleep with them if they vote for Trump. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You think that maybe if somebody says, I want to be a man, be a man and vote for Trump. How is one legitimate and not the other? And it's kind of like Newtonian politics. You wanted an action, but you didn't want a reaction. What planet do you live in? Well, you live in a bubble, your bubble. So that's point one. Point two is never think of the bros in the way you usually think of the bros. Let me quickly to ask you, Peter. I know you, so who is a bro?

When you say the word bro, immediately give me the description of who is the bro? The bro is, two images come to mind immediately. One we just discussed and little fraternity brothers. Those are bros. The other bro who comes to mind, he's wearing a hard hat. What do they look like? They look jocks they have they have square shoulders they're athletes

they're b students and athletes and they like to have a good time they enjoy a beer they're patriotic uh they watch uh they watch a lot of football those are bros right and i'll bet they're white oh well okay i hadn't thought of it that way but that's my point i didn't think of it that way everything that they are talking about is assuming literally assuming that they're communicating to white less educated or white hyper athletic man um what about latino men yeah no see i i live in california sitting around listening to joe rogan maybe what about black men what about asian men yeah the thing is that it's like a it's this is a corollary of look at the youth vote. How did you get the youth vote? Guys, gals, the youth vote is the least white component of the electorate. If you move Latino men, you're not moving 65-year-olds.

You're moving 18 to 35-year-olds. Of course that demographic move, because it's not your friends. It's not your interns. It's not those people. It's the people you look down on, the people you've never been to. It's the people who are driving your trucks, pumping your gas, who are checking you out at the supermarket and living in the Rio Grande Valley. That's the 18 to 30-year-old demographic. And they also have things that binding them together, cultural things from games to culture, to to the rest of it there are a whole series of tropes that would never enter the consciousness of the uh the royal elite that is a shared culture amongst them that transcends race which is a good thing and a

very american thing that's exactly that's exactly right and they can't see any of that no they don't realize that if you really screw up a star wars series with a particularly overdone heavy-handed message you've alienated a lot of people across not just the white nerds in the basement i mean you can go back and and count a shift to trump by the number of people who were in who were infuriated that warhammer lore had now been readjusted to be more diverse to women i mean these little cultural earthquakes out there that reverberate in ways that they never see coming because they write them off. All they see is that when they hear that the bros are moving to Trump,

they think that they've all set up their ironing boards and they're putting the crease in their SS uniforms so they can go out and do fascist mayhem. No, they just don't want to be nannied at and finger-waved at by a bunch of hectoring women who came from HR to make their life miserable. Anyway. The third thing I want to say is, you know, from a Monty Python perspective. Always the best. There's a skit called the Norwegian Fish Lapping Dance, where John Cleese is standing on a pier. And Michael Palin is standing on a pier, and Michael Palin is standing on a pier.

And to this kind of wimpy music, Michael Palin dances up, and he takes two sardines and slaps John Cleese on the cheek. Ba-ba-da-ba-da-bum-slap-slap! Ba-ba-da-ba-da-bum-slap-slap! Okay, this is the equivalent of what Michelle Obama was doing. And then at the end of the Norwegian fish-landing dance, John Cleese takes out a huge salmon

and knocks Michael Palin into the ocean. And that was Tuesday. Actually, I have to say that I believe it was a river, not an ocean. And on that note of unfortunate incorrectness when it comes to a classic Monty Python skit, I believe we have to let Henry go. Ever a pleasure. And again, I think we managed to drag some stuff out of you.

We know you're reticent sometimes to give your views on things. But listen, folks, more to come. You can find more of Henry at the Beyond the Polls podcast. And of course, the book Working Class Republican Donald Reagan and the return of blue-collar conservatism uh fascinating stuff it's been a joy and i've learned a lot so thanks for joining us and we'll see you on your podcast at the ricochet network thank you very much if i can just interrupt you for a second do you know that your personal data is being stolen at this very moment can you say no that's ridiculous dude ridiculous. Dude, it's data. Okay. Data, data. We all know your data is, is out there. If you're a digital citizen, then your information is out there. And you know that people want to get it and people want to do things with it. Data brokers, they're the modern day scavengers. They gather everything from your name and your aliases to your social security number. Yipes. But fear not. We have discovered an ultimate solution to keeping your data or data out of the wrong hands. And that's introducing Incogni,

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the Ricochet podcast, and for being a new sponsor as well. So Peter has to go. Peter is gone. Well, all of a sudden, it's kind of lonely in here. Henry's gone, and Peter ran ran away and and steven as well i'm still around but uh you know just to the show but well if ladies and gentlemen doing his bit to step into the shoes of rob let me spoil what you happen to

be doing that i can't see long yes steven is still here All right. So you are here. We'll just keep rolling with this then. I have nothing more to add. Everything I have would be superfluous. I mean, Henry just sort of says it all. But I have a feeling, Stephen, that you might have something you wanted to add, some little bon mot, some prediction, some thought to come. What would you like to leave the listeners with? Well, it's a big subject that we can't get into, but I think Joe Rogan is the Walter Cronkite of our age in terms of audience and trust. And I think that's a big takeaway of this election cycle, perhaps.

Okay, well, I look forward to two years from now from Joe Rogan saying that he believes the war in Taiwan has been lost. It's... Never know how these things are going to go. That's interesting. I mean, Cronkite never put himself out there in the way that, I mean, Rogan is an interlocutor. He's a prodder.

He's a poker. I mean, he takes time. I mean, he's not one of those guys who's going to go right for the jugular and try to get the great quote and the rest of it. I mean, Cronkite had the pretense of telling you the way it was, right? He was the Robert McNamara, technocratic, IBM-controlled, all those 1960s things. He was that until he wasn't. And people realized, perhaps, that there had been shading behind it all the way. I mean, I would have thought that he would have said that Joe Rogan was going to be the Rush Limbaugh in as much as he was long form and influential in ways that changed people's minds.

But the Cronkite. Hmm. Is even a Cronkite analogy valid in this world of completely fractured media? Well, I mean, the only reason I say that is because he is commanding this enormous audience. And I think people trust him because he, look, he's the opposite of Rush Limbaugh. He doesn't put his own opinions out there very forcefully. He doesn't make himself the center of attention. He lets people talk and explain themselves.

And if it's correct that he got 100 billion views for his Trump interview, well, that's, I don't know, the networks in a week don't get that many viewers anymore. And so that makes him the dominant media figure of our time. And I'm going to say this is the first podcast election. I think 2012 was the first big data election. This was the podcast election. And Harris, I think, was wise not to go on Rogan, because I think she would have revealed herself after about 20-40 minutes or so to be an absolute intellectual nullity who's been born aloft by political philanthropy for her entire career.

So yeah, that was a smart thing to do. But people also noticed that she wasn't doing it and didn't buy any of the reasons that she said that she wasn't. I mean, they thought, no, she's not doing it because she's not good at that sort of thing. Vance was good at it. I saw a whole bunch of, you know, and again, this is what fascinates me. At the beginning, we were told by Tim Waltz that

J.D. Vance was weird. There's something weird about him. And the weird thing that they were trying to say was because he had somewhat fairly traditional ideas about societal organization when it came to men and women and procreation, marriage and the rest of it, which most people do not regard as weird. But Walt ended up looking weirder and weirder and weirder to people the more the thing got on. And what you got out of J.D. Vance is sitting back there very calmly explaining why we need to stockpile capacitors and transformers in the case of an Iranian electromagnetic pulse that destroys society. I'm going to go with a nerdy guy who's kind of thought about those things a few times before I am about the fellow who's going to make couch jokes and applaud

the various... Well, I'm about to say something about the state of Minnesota that I dastardly because I like it. That's another podcast. It's not going to be the diner. The diner will be coming to you this weekend, by the way. That's me, James Lileks, at the diner, a strenuously non-political enterprise that just seeks to sort of roam about the back rooms of American culture and open up the drawers and diner. You are, of course, welcome to come to Ricochet.com. Join up. It's cheap. Come on.

You're going to want to have a conversation in the next few years about all that goes right and all that goes wrong. There's so much to say in what Henry was talking about, and if you would like to do so, well, that's the great thing about Ricochet. You have to be a member and pay just a little bit to contribute and make posts. And that means that the post quality signal-to-noise ratio is fantastic. Stephen, it's been a pleasure. We'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet 4.0.

And I'm out of here. We'll see you next week. Next week, everybody. Ricochet. Join the conversation.