The Ricochet Podcast - The Republican Edge

Episode Date: July 12, 2024

Joe Biden is adamant about staying in the race. It's a fitting move for the leader of a party that has lost its long-held advantage in voter identification. Beyond the Polls host Henry Olsen joins James, Rob and Steve Hayward to dive into the Democratic Party's dilemma, the global political realignment, and the here-to-stay Populist Era.- This week’s audio: A trio of Biden gems in a week full of them

I turn on the burner to make some eggs, and I turn on the wrong burner. It goes tick, tick, tick, tick, and it goes whomph, right, like it should, and then I turn it off. Then I turn on the other burner, and there's no tick, tick, tick. And the coffee maker isn't working. And all the power in the kitchen is gone. Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

It's the Ricochet Podcast. I'm James Lylex, back again. Stephen Hayward sitting in for Peter Robinson. Rob Long is with us, and we're going to talk to Henry Olson about politics and elections, domestic and foreign. So let's have ourselves a podcast. And now I want to hand it over to the president of Ukraine, who has as much courage as he has determination. Ladies and gentlemen, President Putin. I wouldn't have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president, because I think she's not qualified to be president. So let's start

there. Did you ever watch the debate afterwards? I don't think I did, no. Welcome, everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast. Let's see here. What number is it? It's number 699. Whoa. I think we ought to stop after this one and then just leave everybody with a shave and a haircut and no two bits. But no, we'll be cruising to 700 sometime soon.

In the meantime, we're here for an hour to discuss things small, large, and great. And speaking of great and large, I'm small. We have Stephen Hayward sitting in for Peter Robinson and Rob Long as well. Now, Rob, we know that you are in Gotham. My daughter hates it when I call it that. Oh, really? Where are you? I'm on a little island off the coast of Massachusetts. Okay, you can go straight to hell.

I'm sure it's absolutely beautiful. Well, it's been a little bit foggy, but it's lovely today. I want to wrap this up so I can go to the beach, but go ahead. We have fog on the island where all the rich people are gambling about, no doubt, wearing white with little parasols and having gin drinks. Sounds great. Stephen, where are you? I'm on the foggy and cool central coast of California, where today, by the way, I am identifying as Peter Robinson. Oh, okay, good. Well, would you have to do that? Why would you do that?

You can't just do it. You can't just say you're Peter Robinson. You have to put some effort into it. So, you know, I'm looking at you in the Zoom here. You're not wearing a sweater that's carelessly knotted around your shoulders. So let's get to that. Well, last week I was in Glasgow, which is interesting meteorologically because sometimes it doesn't rain. It actually happens. There's like 45 second intervals in which the sun blares through, which is great. But now I'm back in Minneapolis on a beautiful summer day. And here we are barreling towards the election, wondering exactly what's going to happen. uh joe biden had a big boy conference news conference yesterday so um i did not actually see it i was working on something else but i assume steven it being your job rob it being your pleasure you uh you you saw it and

you have thoughts do you have thoughts you know i have to. I did not see it. I just read about it. And I actually feel like it's more interesting. What I wanted to read about, it wasn't really what happened. Because I don't, my feeling about this is simple. That every American, certainly I do, and I think every American except the very young, have a familiarity, unsought after familiarity with um decline in old age right either our parents or our grandparents or our uh relative i mean we all have had that experience um and we know what we're looking at so the question isn't do we know what we're looking

at the question is does president dr jill biden know what she's looking at and whether the enough democrats know what they're looking at and i i think i think the answer is no i mean it doesn't look at this point like no this guy's gonna looks like he's standing for reelection in November, which is bananas to me. And just the pinnacle of or the nadir of where we are as a country, where we. Yep. I mean, say what you like about Trump. He's not a normal dude. He's a weird dude with impulse control and all sorts of emotional problems. And Biden is completely it's got cottage cheese and scrambled eggs up there and uh robert f kennedy jr is a crazy person it's like that we only have mentally deficient people running for

president of the united states of america and i should say that's efficient i mean yeah i i mean trump may be a short-fingered vulgar, as Spy famously called him, but he can count to five without using them. The other day on Twitter, somebody was saying, you know, you're saying Biden's in decline now. You guys were saying that four years ago. guy all these years ever since the 80s know the baseline and and know that this this this adult joe gill figure is is not the biden that we knew so yeah we knew four years ago and four years on it's mortifying uh so you know we all know this steven uh tell us something new yeah well i did watch the whole thing out of professional duty and it's it's like watching a high wire act at the circus with the wind blowing and you're riveted to see if he's going to fall. And there were a lot of wobbles. But I guess the consensus is he cleared a very low bar. But that's not very reassuring.

So first of all, some highlights from yesterday, if you missed it. Before the press conference, at the end of the NATO meeting, he has Zelensky standing next to him. And he says, now I want to introduce the president of Ukraine, President Putin. And then he walks two feet off, says, oh, wait a minute. And he comes back and he sort of catches himself and tries to make a joke about it. By the way, Putin could be president of Ukraine in the not too distant future. So maybe he's got in his old age, he has second sight. Correct. And then very early in the press conference, someone asked him about uh you know if you were had to stand down are you

confident um that kamala harris could win and be president something like that and he says i wouldn't have picked vice president trump if i didn't think she wasn't qualified i mean it was just this total syntactical disaster and and then calling Harris Vice President Trump. And it sort of went on like that. But the questions were mostly too polite, I thought. I thought they should have had a harder edge about why did your staff conceal this? Things like that. They didn't do any of that. And mostly what he did was filibuster with obvious canned speeches on foreign policy so it's sort of lean on and there weren't many questions about nato or the summit or foreign policy most of them were about the political problem and he sort of dodged all that but there weren't any complete car crashes

like you saw the debate so i think that means that the democratic agony is going to continue for the indeterminate future i love love the idea. Okay, sorry. I was going to say, and Rob, you can speak to this. I love the idea that is being brooded about now on the left and the liberal side, that what we saw yesterday in a Joe Biden that was not debate quality, that once again reminded this man

really is a modern-day Metternich. Oh, yes. When it comes to foreign policy, Joe's got it. He just has just has that innate nine-dimensional chest this guy you know inherent understanding of these things which i find i mean i'm trying to think of an issue on which this man has been correct my entire lifetime of observing him this guy who after 9 11 i believe was talking about uh what was he saying that you know we should send a bunch of money to Iran. We should, you know, send them 200 million dollars or something like that. Let's partition Iraq up. I mean, I don't get it. But anyway,

you were going to say. Well, that is the strangest thing. I mean, partly is the idea that this guy, who, I mean, even if you're a supporter of his this guy's the most political hack he defines political hack he's been in politics for a one thousand years he's only been in politics he's had failed runs for president he was a joke for a long time this guy is not a statesman he's been wrong as you say run that everything especially in foreign policy

and of course in legal policy but i I'm just talking about foreign policy because it's sort of nonpartisan, right? I mean, I disagreed with everything he said when he was chairman of the House Judicial, I mean, the Senate Judiciary Committee, but those are partisan disagreements I have with him. But he's wrong on the commander-in-chief level, and somehow he's been turned in by some of his now dwindling number of supporters but still supporters as this great grand old gentleman this great statesman thank you for your service to this nation this guy is um about as dirty a crook as they come in the white house and that's saying something i mean he's i mean even if you love him you have to say the guy is guilty of influence peddling at the most extreme degree.

And somehow people are deciding he's a great hero. And, you know, it used to be this that we used to say this thing about politics, right? Hey, politics ain't beanbag, we'd say. Yes, you know, this is like you want a friend, get a dog in D.C. Like all that stuff is because it's tough. People are tough. It seems like the cushiest, non-tough job ever. Because nobody would let this guy drive home from the restaurant.

Nobody would let this guy run a company. Nobody would hire him to do anything. In a real tough world that we live in, this guy would be fired. Every company or everybody I know who runs a company says the same thing. Look one the rules is with hr uh hire slow fire fast meaning don't wait if you think it's going to get better it's not going to get better take your time in hiring somebody which of course we do in this country we take nine months practically but fire them and and even if it's like a little unfair it's okay even if his feelings are hurt uh it's okay uh this guy should have been dumped and we'll find somebody else is what the democrats should have been saying and they

haven't and to me it's like well anybody anybody listening to this podcast who's has a job to turn in that performance you know be gone i think he's actually worse than being wrong and being a crook i think he's been pernicious to american politics for a long time and i just point to one thing that has plagued us ever since the mid-80s remember in 1986 he gives a quote to a newspaper and i don't remember the exact words but it went something like if president reagan sends up robert bork i'd have to vote for him because he's qualified and i'm not Ted Kennedy. He did that as a direct quote. I'm not Ted Kennedy. A year later, Bork is nominated. Biden became Ted Kennedy,

switched on a dime, stretched out the hearings to enable an unprecedented personal attack campaign against Bork. And that has poisoned our judicial politics and many other ways ever since. He's responsible for that. If he'd said no to Norman Lear and the lefty groups that said we have to attack Bork and they've done a normal confirmation hearings within a month or, you know, eight, six weeks, we wouldn't have some of the poisonous politics that has spilled out to other agents, you know, other aspects of our ever since. He's responsible for that. That was a decisive turning point in American politics, much for the worse. People who talk about how we're dangerously polarized today, they ought to point a really that she liked Joe Biden because he was a he was a kindly man. He was he was a kindly man who radiated empathy. And I said, you're thinking of Neil Kinnock.

And she didn't know what I meant. And I had to explain this. I had to explain who Joe Biden has been all of these years. What you are seeing is the diminished nerve version that you're right, that the perniciousness is there. And we have been suffering from it ever since. We woke up after Bork with a ringing, hounding head. Speaking of which, got to tell you, there are times, you know, when you have a great night out and you just don't bounce back. Yeah, it's hard to bounce back like you did when you were 20. You know, I'm not 20. And there are times you go out. I mean, it was just

on a great vacation. I was at a pub where the selection of ales and whiskeys is extraordinary, you know. So you got to make a choice, really. Either have a great night or a great next day. And you know how it is when you're out having fun. But, but, but, but, but, that choice does not exist when you get Z-Biotics. Z-Biotics, pre-alcohol probiotic drink. It's the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was invented by PhD scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking. Here's how it works. When you drink, alcohol gets converted into a toxic byproduct in your gut. And it is this byproduct, not dehydration, that's to blame for your rough next day. Z-biotics produces an enzyme to break this byproduct down.

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So you can get the most out of your summer plans and feel great by stocking up on pre-alcohol now. Go to zbiotics.com slash ricochet to get 15% off your first order when you use ricochet at checkout. Zbiotics is backed with a 100% money back guarantee. So if you're unsatisfied for any reason, and I wasn't, they will refund your money, no questions asked. So remember, head to zbiotics.com slash ricochet and use the code. That's right, ricochet at checkout for 15 off and thank zbiotics for sponsoring this the ricochet podcast and also for our good times and now we welcome to the podcast henry olson senior fellow at the ethics and public policy center the author of the four faces of the

republican party and the working class republican he is the host of the podcast Beyond the Polls, which you can find at this thing, I understand it's called Ricochet.com. Henry, welcome. Well, thank you for having me. We've been talking about Joe Biden and the fact that maybe it's just us. I know we're partisans here, and sometimes that blinds a man to the truth, but we're starting to get the suspicion that the man is a little bit old and and feeble in the brain i know i know i know it's a grotesque extrapolation but ever since i don't know six seven eight nine months ago i've always been

thinking you know what they're gonna they're gonna dump him before the convention or at they're gonna swap them out for gavin newsom and uh gavin will win tell us how you think They're going to swap them out for Gavin Newsom, and Gavin will win. Tell us how you think this is going to play out up until the convention and beyond. Are we seeing another 68? Are we seeing something unprecedented? Crystal ball time. Yeah, well, by definition, we're seeing something unprecedented because no one has dropped out this close to a convention in, I think, history. Certainly not somebody during the primary era where delegates are not controlled by bosses but are instead controlled by voters. I think that what's going to happen is the pressure is going to ratchet up, that there are a lot of senior Democrats who think that Joe Biden is not the person who can beat Donald Trump. And not only

that, that he is the person who can give the Republicans a massive wave election. And they're not going to stop. That doesn't mean Biden's going to give in. He holds the high ground. But, you know, if you have more and more Democrats of elected office at different levels come in and say he shouldn't be the candidate, and maybe you finally have Nancy Pelosi or somebody like that bite the bullet and go out in front and make Biden's position politically difficult and untenable, you could see him dropping out. I think it'll happen before the convention rather than after but never say never uh you basically have uh until september uh if you want biden's name on off the ballot and if you just want to tell democrats vote for electors and trust them well heck you could even wait until october or so and then swap them out to the rnc but dnc henry as i've got a couple questions one is are they

right i mean it i just have to ask this because it seems like everybody nods when you go there's no way he can win um are they right is there no way this guy can win no way uh i mean you know like or just the risk is that we're really rolling the dice here i mean it's already a high wire act with both it was a high wire act for both of these candidates when we thought both of them had, you know, one of them didn't have scrambled eggs up there. But now it's even higher wire, I think, if that's an actual phrase. How high is the wire now for them? Yeah, the fundamental problem is that Joe Biden is the most unpopular president in the history of polling, which is to say that at this point in a president's first term, no one has lower job approval ratings, period. Jimmy Carter wasn't worse than this.

Donald Trump wasn't worse than this. So you've already got somebody who by all rights should be losing in a landslide. He's not losing in a landslide because of Donald J. Trump, who is also incredibly unpopular. But then you've got the fact that now you have a person who is simply prone to being incapable of stringing three sentences together. Right. Yes, Biden did okay at the press conference yesterday. There's no guarantee that over the next four months there won't be a freeze up on camera. There won't be another moment like the debate. There won't be extended moments like the debate. Everybody knows that. So you combine the two things together and you say he could pull out of it, but it's just not realistic to think so so my so my follow-up there is have we i mean part of like building any kind of team political or otherwise right is that there's a bench and if you look at the republican primary there was a pretty deep bench i mean the the primary voters voted for i to me the most risky of the candidates, but they had a bench. They had people

to choose from. I had my favorites, not the current presumptive nominee, but I certainly had my favorites. But we could argue a whole bunch of things that nobody would say, I'm not sure this guy's ready or that person's ready. The Democratic bench is much thinner. House races and you lose Senate races and you lose state houses. Isn't this aren't aren't they reaping this sort of bad showing season they've had for the past decade or two? Or am I just going too far? I think they have a stronger bench than you're letting on. But I think the problem is, is that they've got a weak manager and they've got a weak assistant coach, and they're not really willing to rip the Band-Aid off and say, let's clean house. You know, if this, to continue the sports metaphor, if there were a new owner in charge, the manager, the general manager, and everybody,

this Keith Scout and the person who sells Cokes would be out the door. But that's not the case in the Democratic Party. Look, the fundamental problem the Democratic Party has is it is beholden to a left that is wildly out of step with the sentiments and values of the American Center, they're not willing to Suppress that left and drive it out of the party or limit its influence So it means it is continually the tail that doesn't wag the dog in the way the tail wants, but wags the dog enough that people notice. The fundamental fact that no

one's talking about except me is this is going to be the most pro-Republican electorate since the Great Depression. The Democrats since the Great Depression have always had an edge in voter identification surveys, in exit polls, in general polling. That's not the case anymore. Guys, this is historic. Republicans will have been ahead in either the straight party identification or the leaned party identification, including independents who say they lean to one party or another, in the Gallup poll for over two and a half years. That's never happened before. Henry, hold that thought about the Republican edge for a moment. What I notice is, I don't want to take you back to 2016 for just a moment. What I notice is the polls are still really have a wide variance right now.

There's some showing Trump with a six, even eight point lead nationally in key states. And then there's a couple of them out the last few days showing Biden even or ahead by a point. I don't want to get off into the weeds of polling methodology because we'll drive listeners crazy. But here's the question. In 2016, I think you were the first person to notice and make a point that every time Trump did something stupid, attack the Gold Star family or the Access Hollywood tape. His numbers would tank five, six, seven, eight points. But Hillary's didn't go up. And that's when you were saying, hmm, this is interesting. And then Trump was, over the next week, Trump would improve by like a point a day. And then, of course, we know how that turned out. It looks to me like something of the same

is happening here. I don't see Trump's numbers, however you want to wash out the variation, going up very much. You see, as Biden's going down, that is the thing that says to me, Biden's not out of it. You know, we're having this great gooey schadenfreude happy time right now watching this disaster, but could he sneak up on us the way Trump snuck up on Hillary? Yes, and I'm glad you made that point. That is exactly what's going on, is Trump's not going up, Biden's going down, which means that just like Trump, with his incessant foot-in-the-mouth disease in 2016, would drop and then people who didn't want Hillary would come back once that faded from view, you could say that that'll happen with Biden.

The question is, will this fade from view? That, you know, with Trump, at some point you just incorporated the fact that this guy has virtues and flaws to being a presidential candidate that we've never seen before. And he ultimately benefited from the fact that people really, really didn't want Hillary, that enough people really didn't want Hillary, that they really held their nose and voted for somebody they didn't want to win. And that's the question for Biden. But this gets back to the how it's different, which is that what we saw in 2016 is people incorporated Trump's eccentricity and they would react to specific examples of it, but then they'd come back, which meant that the eccentricity itself was not fatal. Do people feel that about the president's mental capacity?

Follow-up question on the Republican edge you point out. Two parts of this. One is, okay, you have a discount that Trump has got negatives almost as bad as Biden, and that can account for the fact that he has a hard ceiling. But second, I know you've seen a lot of the state-by-state polls showing a lot of Democratic Senate candidates, in particular, running ahead of Biden and running ahead of the Republican challengers. And so that makes me wonder, is this Republican edge not yet showing up? Or the follow-up question is a parallel that Rob brought up a couple of times the last couple of weeks, which is, because in some ways, this election looks like 1980, when it was neck and neck. Sometimes Ronald Reagan was trailing. He usually was ahead by a point most of the time,

but sometimes trailing. And it broke big at the end when people decided after the debate that, gosh, you know, he actually looks fine to me. And Carter really is. Okay, so it was a 10-point win in the end of the day, well beyond the margin of the last public polls. So it looks to me like either the Republican edge is overstated. Oh, by the way, in the Senate races in 1980, as you know, being history geeks, you had six or eight Republican candidates who are way down in the polls who won, right? So do you think we're looking at, at this date, a possible rerun of a 1980 surprise where Republicans pick up six, eight Senate seats and Trump actually does win by six points or something like that? Or do you have a hunch on it right now? Yeah. With respect to the current Senate polls, I've written about this for National View Online.

I will worry as a Republican, as an analyst, I don't worry because I can read the polls all the time. But as a Republican, I would worry if we're on October 1st and that's still the case. Why? Name identification. Every one of these Democratic senators has an edge in name identification. So what you're seeing is that when you look at the polls, Republicans like the Republican, Democrats like the Democrat, and independents are going to the incumbent. Why? It's the name they've heard. What we know is that over the next few months, Republicans will spend tens of millions of dollars in each of these states, and by October 1, they will know the Republican as well, or at least the hard name ID will be pretty close to the hard name ID of the Democratic senators. Ask me on October 1st

how far Democratic senators are running ahead of Joe Biden. Now, I've looked at the numbers being, you know, nerd squared. And typically, Democratic senators will run a couple of points ahead of the president in the modern era. So if Joe Biden does bounce back and he's down by one nationally, that probably means he's running even in Pennsylvania, which probably means Joe, Bob Casey will be ahead by a point or two. I don't think that absent a massive candidate meltdown by Republicans, and I think Steve Daines, the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, has done a good job working with President Trump to make sure there are not going to be Dr. Oz's and Herschel Walker's this time. These people may be bland.

They may be inexperienced. They may largely be self-funders, but they are not fatally flawed in the way these other people were. So what we know is that Democrats are only going to run a couple points ahead of their president. So that makes Biden's standing crucial, which explains the freakout. Biden losing by four nationally means the possibility of as many as eight Senate seat losses, including West Virginia. Biden losing by one nationally probably limits those losses to between two and four. You know, Rob has some questions, I think, that have to do with U.S. politics. I've got one that shows that my mind ranges far, far more. You're a continental, James.

Very continental, man. So we'll get to that in a second. strategy which is trump is awful people hate him he's uh unstable he has impulse control problems he's going to say do something stupid um the republican party yeah republican party is now in the grip of uh kamikaze uh politics in that they would rather lose and you know hold dear to their crackpot views that are unpopular with americans and i thought like you know that's a that's a pretty uh that's not a crazy strategy it's not a strategy that i would use but it doesn't seem insane to me um the opposite seems to be happening you saw a very forceful trump i I mean, I was watching the debate, the debate with a bunch of lefties from public radio. And, you know, he made good points and they go, that's a good point. He made a really good point on abortion, I thought. He made a really good answer on a lot of these things. And he kind of held himself in check. And at one point he kind of looked at, he did a take, he looked at the camera and said, I have no idea what that guy just said. That sentence means I don't think he does either. And he kind of looked directly in the camera, kind of Jack Benny style, which, you know, he's very talented at that stuff. So he seems to be in control of himself. The Republican Party platform seems to be a throwback, almost, like you're looking at it and it feels like it's 1988 again or 1992 again. What happens if the Republicans have their act together?

First of all, Donald Trump has been demonstrating for the last year and a half that he is a more disciplined candidate than he was in 2016 or 2020. Anyone who was surprised by the debate stage hasn't been watching, you know, the old liberal bumper sticker if you're not angry you're not paying attention if you're surprised at trump's relative self-control you're not paying attention and this gets to the incredible bubble that so many progressive activists live in look two things one rally the base and split the independence by scaring works when you have an advantage in partisan identification. It's a recipe for loss when you don't have. Yeah. Democrats have never run a national campaign without holding the high ground. They still

think they hold the high ground. Rally the base, split the independents, means Donald Trump wins by two to four points nationally. It's also hard to scare people that this is the democracies on the line. But, you know, we're going to let this old man kind of like totter his way to November. That doesn't seem those two things cannot both be true. More important than the choices, the fact is the numbers show people aren't buying it. Democratic voter registration has been declining in virtually every state that tracks it during the Biden administration. They're losing hundreds of thousands of registrants. Partisan identification in polls has been declining throughout the Biden presidency. This has nothing to do with Joe Biden's age. This has to do with people look at what's on offer. They hear what the Republicans are saying and they don't drink

the progressive Kool-Aid. And that is not something that is getting through to these people because they have drunk the progressive Kool-Aid. That's why I think that if you ripped the Band-Aid off and put on a ticket of Gretchen Whitmer and Raphael Lornak, they would have the credibility to say, we're turning a new leaf, we're a new Democratic Party, blah, blah, blah. It would be trying to do here, and this gets into the elections don't just happen in the United States of America. This is Jacinda Mania from New Zealand, where they got rid of the leader a few weeks before their election.

And suddenly this new, fresh, young face made people think, hey, this is a new labor party. That's what I would do if I were the Democrats, but it requires courage to do it. And an organization which they've never had well uh yeah that is will rogers uh right statement uh i don't belong for the people who i don't know the same yeah i don't belong to an organized political party i'm a democrat but um yeah fundamentally what you just have to do is is say um we are willing i'm willing to blow up my political career, potentially, to blow up the president, because that's what's in the interest of the party. And nobody's been willing to do that so far, but we've still got a few weeks to go. So I know James wants to come in. I just have

one scenario to pitch to you, which is, I'm rethinking all of my political fears. So this is my pitch. I was talking to somebody last night about this. She didn't seem to be, she was completely convinced, but I feel that's probably because she was an ardent partisan Democrat. It's entirely possible that Donald Trump in his, what will be his second term, his last term, will be like every other president in his second and last term. And we'll be be thinking about legacy not so much the fight but the legacy am i going to get on a stamp am i going to get on a statue am i going to get win over the people who don't like me how big can i be and that's to me i mean i could be reading tea leaves as i almost always do wrong lee but it seems to be that is the the his ability now to like shut up

to let a pretty anodyne boilerplate republican platform get passed through to kind of behave a little bit a little bit suggest that he's thinking well you know he's not gonna be able to run again if he wins um he going to have four years to become something other than a very controversial, you know, kind of tainted president. He's going to have a chance to become one of the great presidents, a two term president. Is that am I crazy? No, no, I don't think you're crazy, but I think Donald Trump's entire life is built on a couple of things. One is bringing the name Trump to name Trump to every conversation possible. And three is doing so by flaunting conventional wisdom throughout. He he's going to build the biggest building.

He's going to build the biggest casino. He's going to sleep around and dispense with his wives he's going to be the guy who makes it without conforming to expectations and i look and i think if donald trump were going to be the person who wants to be popular and conform he would have done that in his first term it would that would have been the easiest thing that's what people were kind of hoping is hey now that you've made it maybe you can be presidential so i look at this and i think yes donald trump wants to have a legacy he wants to have his name in the center of every conversation he wants that proverbial statue and he believes he's going to do it by being the most direct, confrontational, victory-focused, ruthless president that we have seen since Franklin Roosevelt. Remember, one of my favorite lines

from Franklin Roosevelt is from the Madison Square Garden speech in 1936, when he's under attack from the Liberty Lobby and so forth for destroying America. And he says, they are universal in their hate for me, and I welcome their hatred. That's Donald Trump. Yeah. Well, FDR was pretty successful, so. Yeah, last time I checked. Yeah.

Henry, last Monday I was in a hotel room in in uh in the uk enjoying my morning coffee watching the television and there was a bright-faced young woman from labor all happy and talking about the new labor and how they're going to fix the country and sort everything and then they had the conservative spokesman who was a a rather portly fellow with an excessive number of jowls, who was named Lord Pickles. And I'm looking at this, and I'm thinking, well, you know, push comes to shove, I'm going to go with the Pickles, sir. But this bright new face of labor, not sure I'm believing it.

I spent a fortnight in England, and I'm the kind of guy who reads the Telegraph, so take that for what you will but dismaying to see what happened and how everybody said seems to have said well yes we know that essentially labor is probably lying to us and they're going to drive the country off the cliff economically in terms of energy policy and the rest of it and probably can't fix the nhs but on the other hand you know the tories have just really cocked things up explain to us exactly what happened over there briefly and and why it matters because it does and maybe throw in france and france for the uh for the fun of it too yeah well you know it certainly matters for britain and it matters for us look what happened over there was in 2019 the tories had done something that nobody else had been able to successfully do, with the possible exception of Donald Trump, is that they were able to lean into the global realignment, which is that upper the conservatives did better among the social classes that are less well privileged than the ones that are more privileged.

They blew it up. They blew it up and they basically blew it up intentionally, although they didn't. You know, the intention would actually give them a direction and a thought that they did not possess. Fundamentally, they won an election in 2019 making promises they did not believe in and did not intend to keep. They did not intend to bring immigration down to the net 10,000s. They did not intend to level up working class communities and working class people by tilting the public policies in their favor. They did not intend to take on the Tory shires and begin to force them to allow more homes to be built in the most economically vibrant part of the country, London, which has massively high home prices because of restrictive zoning in the most economically vibrant part of the country, London, which has massively high home prices because of restrictive zoning in the Tory areas. They did not intend to do what they said.

And the voters finally figured that out, that this was not a problem of Boris Johnson having a lapse of judgment. This is a fundamental problem with the Tories. And so what you had was people who wanted competent public services went to the center left. And for people who wanted the old promises, they either didn't vote or they went to Reform Party. And that's what happened. This was not a vote in favor of Keir Starmer and Labor. It was a vote to say, you are incompetent and dishonest, and we want the door to hit you very hard on your way out again can they come back from that well it's kind of like joe biden i can always say can but you know fundamentally in a democracy to quote somebody who steve would know you know public opinion is everything

you know abraham lincoln said it james it. Oh, well, that's what leads to my follow-up question, Henry, which is, to people who go beyond the headlines, which you do, you'll notice something quite odd about both the British and French elections. I think it's correct that Labour received fewer actual votes than they did five years ago. And second, it was 34% of the total vote, and yet they got 412, two-thirds of the seats. The old Lib Dem party, they got, I think, 12% of the vote and 71 seats, and Nigel Farage's new Reform Party got 14% of the vote and, what, five seats. So, you know, here in this country and in a similar situation in France, here in this country, all the quote unquote reformers say, oh, our system is so undemocratic, you know, gerrymandering for the House.

The Senate is undemocratic. And of course, they hate the Electoral College. Here's a system where you have this massive number of seats with only a third of the vote. And then similarly in France, the question I'm coming to is this. It seems to me that, although it's correct that you kicked the Tories out for being so incompetent, but it does seem to me that these parliamentary majorities you see are wildly out of step with the European public opinion. I mean, I think in France, all you've done is postpone and make more likely the presidency of Marine Le Pen three years from now. So, I mean, in the 90s, Bill Clinton, as we all know, moved to the center after he understood public opinion was not with him. It doesn't seem to me that the laborites in Britain, or certainly not in France, they understand that they're wrong against public opinion,

and aren't they setting themselves up for even more populist furies in the next three, four years? It's pretty much globally. I mean, what are the establishment, to be frank, what are the establishment Republicans think? Well, we can wake up and from from the political version of the Dallas dream season and Pam Pam will go in and see Bobby's in the shower, and Trump never happened. Look. Good Lord, you're showing our age, Henry. Okay.

Well, I usually show my age. I don't know what you boomers are talking about. Yeah. Hold my beer, okay? Yeah. Look, this is happening globally because there's a class of people who legitimately see that the people who run their countries don't care about them. They care more about their own values than the traditional national values. They care more about their own economic benefits than anything that flows to their broader citizens.

And this elite class exists. We know people in it. It spans left and right. And they have now had 10, depending on the country, 10 to 15 years to see and read the mood of their people. They refuse to do it at this point. They're not going to change. And so the question is, do you think that doing more of the same old little twink here and there of the post-1990 left-right consensus will solve the problems of the West? If you do, well, you know, I want to have some of what you're having, but you would fit very nicely in the elites. I think the entire world, developed world, is focusing for a populist showdown. I think that's one of the things that bedevils the inability to see why Donald Trump can win.

And center-right parties that want to lean into this and actually become new center-right parties can profit. Those that don't go the way of the Tories, go the way of the establishment old guard Republicans who, you know, dream for 2008. You know, it's kind of like going back to your high school reunion and thinking that you can still fit into your letterman's jacket. You know, it's just not going to happen. So, and Henry, I know we got to let you go, but one question, sort of a larger American history question. Are we living through something that 20 years from now, 30 years from now, people will talk about a big transformation period in American history where the parties are out of gas, where the traditional pathways have got to go? And we look at the past and go, know they're the wigs the roundheads

the cop whatever we had all those parties we had all those ideas we had all those movements and we think of them as eras that ended um is this book is this what we're living through just we've been end of five days after the 2008 election i was in los angeles five six something like that and i was with my then young, now middle-aged assistant. And I said, let's go up to the top of the Bonaventure, Hotel Bonaventure with its revolving bone. And I had a drink and I said, the reason I want to do this, of course, this person was too young to remember why or know anything about this, is that in 1980, I did this after the Reagan election, and the Reagan era is over. The Reagan era has been over since 2008. The post-1990 era has been over since 2008.

We are in the middle of what we will look at as a 30 to 40 year movement that is on par with the rise of social democracy from the end of the 19th century to its final triumph as the dominant force after World War II. We are maybe not in the middle of it. We're only in the third of it, maybe. Maybe it's the end of the beginning and not the beginning of the end. But this has been going on. There is no populist moment. It is a populist era. And the only question that remains is how will it end? It will end with a fundamentally transformed West. The question is, is it a fundamentally transformed West that we want to live in or one that we don't want to live in. And that is the only question that elites really ought to be trying to answer. But of course, that's not the question they want to answer,

which simply increases the likelihood of strong, rapid, and perhaps misguided populism. The question the elites want to have answered is what exactly is going to be on the menu when the first day of Davos because I have a peanut allergy and my wife doesn't like shrimp. I think the next statement that's going to come out of Davos is let them eat

gluten-free. Right. We'll have to see. I hope it is the West that we recognize and not live in the pod and eat in the bug and that sort of thing, but we'll have you this is podcast number 699 henry we're going to have you on for podcast number uh 1398 uh where we'll discuss exactly what has become of the west in the meantime thanks it's been a pleasure talking to you and hearing your insights and everybody go to his podcast at ricochet.com and read the books.

Henry, thanks. Thank you. Thanks, Henry. Before we go, a couple of things. First of all, Rob's here. So Rob's going to be happy to tell you about all the meetups. And he's going to, I think, he's going to every single one of them. He's going to be winched down in a breeches boy.

So what's coming up? Well, of course, that's the benefit of being a member of Ricochet. You get to go to the meetups. There's one, the German Fest meetup in Milwaukee, which is coming up actually weekend of July 26. And then there's one scheduled in St. Louis on October 3rd. So there's only two on the docket right now. That can change in an instant. You could change that by joining Ricochet and picking a weekend or picking a day.

Post it, and people, your fellow Ricochet members, will show up, and you guys, I guarantee you'll have a great time. It is always fun to hang out with Ricochet members. They are always lots of fun to talk to. It is not all politics in fact the last one i went to i think i don't think i really had a political conversation with we had like we had one like we'd want a dinner time at the table we had one um and it was just kind of casual but uh it's really more about um the big wide life and world that we live in which uh goes beyond the momentary politics it was music and movies and architecture the last last one that I was at, and not a word about politics, because there's just so much more to life.

Of course, nothing affects us as deeply on a pocketbook level or a street safety level or all that stuff, but still, there's something about getting together with like-minded people and not expressing the like-mindedness that is all a ricochet to me. That's a very good way to put it. Stephen, why don't you host one out there in your Cali zone and report back? I'm sure people would love to congregate and hear you expound on your tales of the world. Speaking of tales of the world, there's a note here in the rundown. And yes, we do have a couple of lines that are suggested to us by our producers perry big thumbs up um it says james lilac's european sojourn well my friends a

nobody cares and b it's the entirety of my diner this week but it's it's not i went here and then i did this it's it's it's because who cares? It's just various thoughts, observations and moments from Europe, which is a different place. But I love the UK and I absolutely now adore Scotland. But I have to say this, the power of images, the power of deep fakes, the power of falsehoods, the power of belief. really drives this home, like sitting on a big boat and realizing you've paid $45 to be driven out into the middle of Loch Ness. This whole industry that is putting out ships and selling souvenirs for the Loch Ness monster all seems to be based on a grainy 1930s picture where somebody like like took a pen and drew in a sea monster and so everybody deeply wants to believe and piles one after the other sun up

to sun down these ships are filled with people and i was laughing at myself for a couple of reasons one uh i wanted to do it i really did i. I had no illusions whatsoever. But there's just something about if ever the Loch Ness Monster comes up shrugging sort of and saying, yeah, I've been there. And it is beautiful. And it is terrifying when they tell you the and a long time to get back. And we saw all sorts of Scottish highlands and this and that and yarns and cairns and battlefields and the rest of it, all narrated by we, Dennis McCafferty, who steered the enormous bus with one hand as we went down these twisty roads at 50 kilometers, while he gestured with the other at empty battlefields full of, you know, coups, telling us that blood was spent there and the Campbell's and the McDonald's, and they're still angry about it. But what amazed me, and it shouldn't have because I've traveled a lot, the bus stops were to walk across this bridge to go to the boats that will take us out there. And it's not a far distance, but between the bus and boarding the boat, my wife found a store that she could just nip into for a second and have a look.

And having done so, she found a sweater. I don't know a man in the world who doesn't think, I'm at the bus, I must get to the boat, and you go to the boat. That is your first priority. But she sees this little shop, and I'm just going to look in for a second. And I'm just going to look in for a second. And I'm like, why? You're not walking around in rags. You have clothes.

God knows you have enough Skype. But I don't, of course. I just, off she goes, and then I just have to wait. James, I reject your gender conformity 100%. But I will say this. You clearly have been duped by the global elites because you think that the Loch Ness Monster does not exist. That's just what they want. The Davos crowd wants you

to believe. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Probably so. Yes. Would you... Don't look too deep. Don't peer too deeply into the midnight waters. But I'm disappointed, Rob. I thought our theologian in training would say that the fascination with things like the Loch Ness Monster speaks to the deep, innate desire of human beings for some kind of transcendence and mystery. Instead, you said it was default.

Well, my default is always going to be to teach James. That's true but so i just i know you got to run jace but i do want to ask because i've been in this position a couple times and it is always weird but really fascinating to be in a foreign country when they are in the middle of an election yes and you kind of see how that goes it was uh it's always really um interesting um and like how they what what they think about the mechanisms, and certainly in England, or UK, it's interesting because of their parliamentary, their elections

are always so weird. There's always some weird lunatic running as well. But it's always kind of a strange thing. You think, oh, well, elections are run, here's how they go the way we go. But they don't. And, I don't know, it's a kind of a tourism only

political nerds would engage in but i'm and i'm uh i'm jealous that you were there for that it was fun but on the other hand it was sad because my heart you know i i have emotions towards the british isles i love the place i have i mean my second favorite place on earth is the town of walmerswick it's my it's my second home and i'm invested in it all doing well and it just feels as if they've taken a path taken a uh taken a choice that um i i i mean granted i read the telegraph but the news is not good over there there's not a good feeling about the way the country is situated and the problems seem um large and insoluble and again the political class is you know as henry was talking about just just completely blew off their ability to do anything about it now where where i go to walrus there is there is a sense of being not besieged by the outside world, but that it is somehow a, it hasn't hit there yet.

The energy prices are ridiculously high. There are things I complain about. But the problems that beset the country and the big cities haven't gone there yet. And a lot of America feels like that, too. So, yes, it was fun to be there, but I mean, it's fun to be sitting in the bar and a guy walks in with his dog and everybody's, you know, you're looking at the dog

and then you look at the guy. Oh, he's a movie director. Did those things about Missions Impossible. He lives around here. That's right, I forgot. And then another guy walks in and oh, it's that guy who wrote the movie. It's just an amazing town.

It just is. uh nobody bothers the people who are there famous it's just it's just part of the atmosphere anyway babbling like i say you thought that was dull listen to the diner this week i'm really on a tear no it sounds great uh yes indeed um anyway so okay i gotta say one of the guys that i met because he's friends of my friends he uh he's jesus of nazareth in the movie in the 1980s uh tv miniseries do you remember that guys oh franco zeffirelli anthony anthony burgess script writer yeah um it's very interesting when you talk to actors and you want to ask them one little thing, but you really don't want to say, here's this role for which you were known 30, 40 years ago, so I'm not going to see you entirely through that prison, but I just have to know. And then once you ask that question, of course, they go on for 17 minutes because they're very happy. I didn't even get around to the fact that he played Gustav Mahler in Ken Russell's version of the Mahler biography.

I didn't even get to that. Anyway, enough. We're done. Listen, folks, what you ought to do is go to Ricochet.com and sign up because it is your place for fine, fun, civil, center-right conversation on the internet. As I keep saying, you'll be wondering where it's been all your life when you go to the member feed because that is really more social, more interesting, more of a community than any place I've been on the web. And you need to go to Apple

Music. Give us five stars because we are been asking you to do that for 699 times and it's, you know, maybe 700 will be the charm, but that's next week to find out. Maybe Peter will be with us next week. Maybe not. If so, Stephen, it's always a pleasure to have you here. Rob,

likewise, always a pleasure to see you guys' face. Good to be back, and we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet 4.0. Next week! Next week, fellas. Ricochet! Join the conversation.