The Ricochet Podcast - You Can Re-Count On It

Episode Date: November 20, 2020

Two weeks after the election and we’re still deep into re-counts, ballot challenges, and other legal machinations. To help us sort it all out, we asked Powerline’s Steve Hayward to sit in for Rob Long and (as John Lennon famously said) give us some truth. And to give us even more truth, we welcome Sean Trende , Real Clear Politic’s Senior Elections Analyst. He takes us through many of the legal... Source

I appear to be broadcasting from very near a supernova. I have a dream this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. I never say anything I can't prove. And President Trump won by not just hundreds of thousands of votes, but by millions of votes that were shifted by this software. I'm the president and you're fake news. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Stephen Hayward from Powerline sitting in for Rob Long. We'll be talking to Sean Trendy about Georgia and Antonin Scalia, the younger. So let's have ourselves a podcast. I can hear you! Welcome, everybody, to the Ricochet Podcast number 522. Rob Long, gone. He's flaneuring somewhere in an undisclosed city, and I'm sure striking a note of grace and civility and urbanity

as he walks around and sniffs the cuisine and the rest of that. You know, Rob is doing the Rob thing. He'll be back next week, we hope. Sitting in for him this week is Powerline's own Steve Hayward. Yay, Powerline. Minneapolis blog, I should note. You know him from writing at Powerline and own Steve Hayward. Yay, Powerline. Minneapolis blog, I should note. You know him from writing at Powerline and hosting the Powerline podcast as well, but he's also the senior resident scholar at the Institute of Government Studies at UC Berkeley

and a visiting lecturer at Berkeley's Bolt Hall Law School. You know, it seems to me that we only get law professors from Berkeley. I thought that you was the only one. It turns out, of course, that Steve and you are two. You guys must, you're really doing something to change the liberal progressive notion of Berkeley, aren't you, Steve? Well, John wanted a fellow inmate to keep him company in the asylum. That's really what happened. Okay, so the two of you are tapping messages on the wall. I get it. Morse code, as you're discussing. Yes. You know, you're communicating the works of Frederick Hayek as you tap, tap, tap. Peter, welcome. You are, I assume, in sunny California as well. I am. I have a fake background up because I'm in the spare bedroom.

There's a dog on the bed behind me, and it's just too... I mean, hominess has a place, but it's too homey. You can't have to trust me on that. Too dang rumpled and homey and full of's too homey. You can't understand that. Too dang rumpled and homey and full of things. I know. I can't get my virtual background to work. Anybody watching this Zoom feed notes that I appear to have drained every single corpuscle of blood from my body because I'm just looking ghastly white. But it's not the case.

And, again, we're all here assembled, and the republic creaks along at its usual pace. And, gosh, front page of the minneapolis tribune today says trump seeks to overturn to nullify election in normal times you would say that's very bad now a lot of people are just shrugging and say good luck with that dude so let's uh let's take a look here where we are in the election according to sources who spoke with the washington post trump campaign's last big idea is to force the states to delay the certification of the election results. All the all the votes thus paving the way for supposedly loyal Republican state legislators to disregard the vote and appoint their own electors. Gentlemen, what say you of this?

Oh, I'm full of questions for Steve. But actually, I'll make one or two comments and then steve will correct me and amend my i will yield my time to you my honorable colleague and you can amend correct and amend the record uh the note that the press has taken i haven't seen the the strip this morning of course because i'm here in california but where was it i think it was the new york times headline yesterday that Trump is interfering by inviting a couple of Michigan legislators to the White House. As I understand the Constitution of the United States, state legislatures are explicitly charged with choosing

the electors. How state legislatures choose to do that is under the Constitution and under all the case law that has accumulated in the couple of centuries since, up to the state legislatures. If there were a trial taking place and Donald Trump tried to interfere with a witness, that would be witness tampering. That would be interference. That has statutory standing as a crime. A president of the United States talking to state legislators is not illegal, whether it's politically wise or unwise is a separate matter. It's not illegal.

It's not improper. The state legislators are not beholden to him in any way. So I just the press, we can come to this again. This to me is the emerging theme of the moment. The press isn't reporting. They're just not even interested in the underlying facts of the case. There's no explainer I have seen anywhere in any media on the Constitution, on the role of the state legislatures and so forth. They're just spinning. Well, that's a really new development. Yeah, exactly. So here, I have a question for Steve, if I may, because I know that Steve, I am a faithful Powerline reader, and so I know that Steve has been following not just the results of the election, but the results of the results,

so to speak. Yesterday, there was a remarkable press conference, 90 minutes or so. Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal counsel, former mayor of New York, of course, and Sidney Powell, I think in conservative circles, a very well-known and well-respected defense attorney, there were other speakers, but they led, and they charged relatively specific charges, I believe, compared to what we've heard until now. They made specific charges of vote tampering. They said they have a couple of hundred affidavits of poll workers in various states, and they also charged Dominion, which is the name of a company that makes voting software and machinery, as I understand it, both, that's used in more than 20 states.

They charge that Dominion was involved, not people who use Dominion, but the company itself, as I understand the charge, was involved in tweaking the software such that millions, Rudy Giuliani said perhaps 2 million votes, were shifted from Biden to Trump. And I want to turn to, here's my comment on that. First, the press conference is of intense interest. It's the president's general counsel. It is also a luridly good story. There's Rudy. He's an older man now. There was hair dye trickling down his cheeks.

He was huffing and puffing. Sidney Powell spoke with immense passion. The press gives us none of this. They have decided. I looked around for a written report on the press conference. I could only find it in the Washington Examiner. My personal response is this thing is overwrought. They're desperate. It feels that way to me. How can you make charges like that against a standing, a company of good repute? Now they've, I think they've opened themselves to defamation charges. Paul Mierengoff said that on Powerline, I believe. And then I come up short and say, yes, but i would never have believed that the fbi was capable of subverting its proper role and going after a city so i guess what do you make of the specific

charges but also what do you make of this moment i'll sum it up this way pat moynihan was famous for saying you're entitled to your own opinions, but not to your own facts. And I found myself yesterday thinking, I can't even get the facts. The feeling that we understand what is actually happening is dissolving all around us. I just feel as though I don't know where to place my feet with regard to just understanding what's happening. Steve. Yeah, well, first of all, like James, I am shocked, shocked that the media isn't reporting fairly or accurately with any depth at all on what's going on. You guys have gotten used to it. I still am shocked, but I'm slowing you know, you're you're

you're you're boyish looks, Max. You're continuing naivete about the world in your advancing years, Peter. I'll just put it that way. We have a big problem here that goes beyond just the election, but it's connected to the falling trust in institutions of all kinds, whether it's the FBI, Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security. Supposedly for several years now, they have been after possible hacking or people playing funny games with our digital voting systems. I'm skeptical of claims on this large a scale. Yes, right. Right.

And explain why you're skeptical. Well, because it would be too obvious if you're shifting four, five, six million votes. Now, I've seen people make these statistical claims, but they do tend to remind me of the dueling claims about what's really happening with COVID-19. Right. You'll see what chart from one source and a chart from another one of their contradictory. You have to sort through what the methodology is. And some of these statistical claims, I think what I've seen so far and I haven't seen everything. It's hard to do. I don't think they hold up to that magnitude of a vote. So what I've been saying is, and it won't be popular to a lot of listeners, is I'm saying Democrats stole

this election fair and square. You know, they've always cheated at the margins. And it's usually just a few thousand votes, usually for local races, sometimes a statewide race like Minnesota in 2008, which James remembers, the governor's race in Washington a few years ago, governor's race in Maryland 15 years ago. But the margins, especially in Michigan, I think Pennsylvania, they're beyond the margin of fraud, I think, one man's opinion. I missed the press conference yesterday. I was on airplanes coming back from the East Coast. I was in Washington, which is really a dismal place right now. It's all boarded up in a ghost town. And so this is a problem. I do think, last thought, and I have millions of them, but last thought for now, I do think we may have seen a turning point in the last 36 hours.

Last night, Tucker Carlson abandoned ship. And why would that? Explain how he did that. Just give us a moment, Joe. Right. Of course. What? Tucker Carlson invited, what, Sidney?

Sidney Powell. Sidney Powell, and she not only declined to come on, and they said, I want to hear what your evidence is for these claims. And she finally said, stop bothering me. Why would you want to turn down an invitation to the number one news talk show host in the country right now? Someone who's inclined to be on your side. Ah, Stephen, because you don't understand,

that would tip her hand. That would tell everybody what it was. And the fact that Tucker didn't realize that was that they got to him. The most depressing thing that I saw yesterday was after somebody posted the Tucker Carlson interview with hundreds and hundreds of tweets that followed that said that, all right, we've lost him too,

that the new Fox desire to be MSNBC has corrupted him as well, and he's only in it for the money, et cetera, all right, we've lost him too, that the new Fox desire to be MSNBC has corrupted him as well, and he's only in it for the money, et cetera, et cetera, which is just dismaying. Because, I mean, how many years have we been living with either the left saying, any minute now, there's going to be the evidence, Fitzmas is coming, the more required, any minute now, we're going to know exactly what's, you know, the exact character of the cloven hooves that Donald Trump has tucked under the White House desk. And it never happens. It never comes. Both sides, there's this belief that right around the corner is going to be the bombshell.

And the Sidney Powell is just the latest thing. We've been living in this state of suspended hope on the edge of it for so long that eventually you just say, I'm sorry, put up or shut up. Put up or shut up put up or shut up now the incuriosity of the media as we were talking before and steven was saying is a curious thing because if you remember before the election we had the most fragile system possible the russians could hack it the chinese could hack it the iranians could hack it anybody from bulgaria with a with a 386 intel pc could just simply call up our system, glance at it in a way and crash the entire thing. Why the phone, the, the, the, the postal service had been utterly corrupted.

Donald Trump's winged minions had gone out there and stolen and reprogrammed machines, taken away boxes. You were seeing tweeted photographs of people who'd scrawled this machine kills fascists on the side of a post-op. So having been told before the election how the Republicans were going to steal it and that everything was just so hackable, now within a just like that, we were supposed to turn around and say, oh, oh, the system is robust and clean and fair and the rest of it. Pay no attention to what we were saying before. They may be right. I mean, they may be right in that it wasn't hacked, but I refuse, I refuse to memory hole the things that they were saying going forward about this. I'd like them to be, I'd like the media to be consistent despite their ideological predisposition.

How about that for your naivete of the day? Well, cast your mind back for a moment to the 2004 election. You remember after Florida 2000 Democrats said, we have to get rid of these paper ballots that confuse people in Palm Beach. Let's have electronic voting. Okay, fine. Then in 2004, you remember the midday exit polls were wrong, saying John Kerry was our next president.

Then Bush won Ohio by 125,000 votes and the left went nuts. And their chat then was, the Halliburton hacked the Diebold machines right right right and we risk sounding like that i say we are just i generally risk sounding like that if some real evidence isn't produced and when would would the evidence be produced in other words we've got certification i think did did georgia certify yesterday they announced the results the point i'm trying to make is it is single digit number of days now when the certification the deadlines for certification start hitting in state after state different states have different certification

dates but they either have to certify or as i understand it they have to pass laws it's a legislative matter to change the certification date. It's a matter of state law and state after state. They must change the law to delay the date, I believe. I think that's right. And in states where you have a Republican legislature and a Democratic governor like Michigan, the governor would veto the bill probably. I think you want to work backwards. I believe December 12 or sometime around then is the date for transmitting the slate of electors to Congress. I think that's right. I haven't double checked lately. And that's, I think, the important time to look to work back from. The certifications, I don't know, they could be undone. And Peter, your point that it's up to the legislatures,

here really is a somewhat, I always hesitate to say any part of the constitution is archaic but originally legislatures picked electors back in 1789 because we didn't have instant communications it wasn't clear how much a popular vote would play in a selection of the president but that was the popular connection so although that's still the constitutional rule and should be followed I think we are now looking at as our precedent, the 1876 election, when you had legislatures submitting and states submitting rival slates of electors. Which would, so if you, one more question for Steve, if I may, by the way, you said, look at 2004. I'm sorry. I know you guys have gotten used to the idea of corruption of the press. I'm still shocked. I say go back four years earlier to the election of 2000. The press had had taken sides. It's clear.

But day by day, almost hour by hour, you could read about the vote, the technical challenges you had. Forgive me for saying so, because I actually think Rudy Giuliani is in many ways a great man for what he did in New York City. But you had Jim Baker as the spokesman for the Bush legal team, and it was clear that legal team was buttoned down and serious, and Baker was giving press. You could understand, you could follow what was happening. And now the incuriosity of the press is such that it's very hard for an interested American. Shall we flatter ourselves and call three of ourselves journalists? It's hard for us to figure out what the heck is going on. Okay, so if I may assume that Rudy Giuliani and the president, a fair enough assumption, feel genuinely aggrieved that Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell and the president himself look at all this and say, there's a good chance this was stolen from us. So stipulate that for the sake of argument.

What must they do in the next two weeks? As they say in the House of Commons, I referred to my answer a few moments ago. I mean, they've got to produce real evidence and not just allegations. And it's absolutely it's absolutely right that there's so many anomalies and weird things about the election result that that gives circumstantial weight to the idea that there's something wrong here. But you've got to go beyond that and have real evidence. Got it. What I worry about is that the belief in this or the lack of belief in this is is going to be one of those things that splits the party, the community, the rest of it. And that if you don't buy the idea that the Kraken actually has all of this data and information that proves that Dominion swiped it, then, frankly, you are relegated into the cruise ship icon, Bill Kristol, you know, the demi-moaned of rhinos who actually want to give everything up and roll over for the Dems. And it's not true. It's not accurate. It's not so. We can't make this a litmus

test. We can't. I mean, the country's divided enough as it is. We cannot let ourselves be divided by this question and regard each other with suspicion going forward. You know, when I say that America is increasingly divided, I mean it. And the American Story, a podcast narrated by Chris Flannery at the Claremont Institute, aims to unite listeners with true stories about Americans and the American experiment in freedom. These weekly stories of immigrants, statements, poets, soldiers, athletes, inventors, pioneers, and ordinary citizens reveal our rich history and shine light on the path forward. Each episode of the American Story reminds us of our shared inheritance of freedom and what we must do to preserve it.

Listen to The American Story and rediscover why America is worthy of love. Yes, of love. This week, for example, it's the story of P.G. Wodehouse, a funny Englishman who moved to America, took U.S. citizenship, and titled his autobiography, America, I Like You. You can find that story and dozens more right here on the Ricochet Audio Network, or you can visit theamericanstorypodcast.org

and subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or your own preferred podcast platform. And we thank the American Story for supporting this, the Ricochet Podcast. And now we welcome to the podcast, Sean Trendy, senior elections analyst for Real Clear Politics. He's the author of The Lost Majority, Why the Future of Government is Up for Grabs and Who Will Take It? Before becoming a full-time political analyst, Sean practiced law for eight years. And you can follow him on Twitter, at Sean Trendy, of course. Sean, welcome to the podcast. All eyes are on Georgia. It's all coming down to this, the future of the nation, whether we go socialist or free. It's rather frightening. A lot of people don't know exactly what's going on.

Are Republicans really favored in Georgia? How does that race look on the ground? Nationally, we're not hearing an awful lot, but how does it look there? Well, you know, I think it is still gearing up. You know, people are kind of taking stock of where things stand. But, I mean, I think any analysis of that race has to start with the fact that Joe Biden just carried the state. You know, I think people look at that Senate race and they're like, oh, you know, Georgia has elected Republican senators since 2000. So, of course, they'll elect another one.

But the state has changed. And I think this race starts out as a genuine toss up. Hey, Sean, but I have to ask this question, although I don't want this to absorb the whole conversation. Does Rudy have a case? Does the Trump campaign have a case? I don't think so. I will say, I heard towards the tail end, someone say at some point they have to cough up the evidence. And that's sort of where I am. Unlike a lot of people, I'm content to let them press their case.

Because if there is evidence of fraud, we should hear it. But I just... Okay. And is Kim Strassel, next question, Kim Strassel has a piece in the journal today saying that we, the world, I think she means the press, but she also means the Republican Party, are not paying enough attention to Georgia. Is that your sense that if the Trump campaign doesn't really have a case, it's becoming, it ought to be viewed as a kind of sideshow, go ahead, let them press their claims, let them discover what fraud there may be, but it won't overturn the election. What matters now is Georgia, and that is not the feeling in the GOP. Is she right about that? I think, I think yes. I think there is a kind of phone.

I do think there's kind of a phony war going on as the parties gear up for these runoffs. Karl Rove has descended upon the state GOP is reserving ad time. So remember, this this this runoff election is in January. So there is time for things to build up. But I think as a matter of strategy, it's time to start getting real about it. I'm going to turn you over to Steve Hayward in just a moment, because I can tell from Steve's eyes that he has pressing questions. First, though, I read the other day, the Democrats have already poured some ninety nine zero million dollars into these two runoff races in Georgia.

And as you said, the election itself isn't scheduled now until January 4th, as I recall, is the date of the two runoff elections. Are they simply going to outstrip the Republican candidates in spending by some two times, three times, four times? Is that the way this is going to go? You know, with the party coalitions changing, Democrats have greater access to money as the suburbanized and upper middle class and rich people gravitate towards the Democratic Party. I think that is probably going to be the new normal for Republicans.

On the other hand, you know, I mean, Jamie Harrison in South Carolina raised one hundred million dollars and lost by 10 points. I think we have to be realistic about the limits of money. So I'm not as I wouldn't be as concerned about it as a Republican as I might might have been 20 years ago. Steve, will you please try to get Sean to say something cheerful? Well, let me. Hi, Sean. Let me take up where you just left off that last question and answer Peter and Sean. And that is seems to, this election will be an excellent case study for political scientists and people like yourself to explore the diminishing marginal returns of campaign spending. I know people still say that television advertising is the best way to campaign. I'm skeptical that the saturation bombing you get in these overfunded races, it really is effective after a certain point.

And so what do you think? Absolutely. Actually, I kind of thought my last point ended on a cheery note. So which is just that if you plot out the amount of money raised versus outcomes for someone, it goes like way up at first. Right. So that's when someone is able to start buying yard signs. They start to be able to hire a professional staff. Their vote share

shoots up. But then for a Senate race, really around $2 million, it starts to level off because at a certain point, everyone's heard your advertisements. You have, you know, as many canvassers as you could possibly want. People have heard the radio advertisements. So, you know, I think once they get $20 million, $30 million on the ground, you're well into the point of diminishing returns. Do voters actually listen to the message? We just had a guy who won the presidency by zooming from his basement and holding outside rallies in which six people were standing in hula hoops, like a whack-a-mole game, okay you can probably do that for a buck 50 i mean it

was that a one-off because you had such a divisive character as trump and you had and you had a complacent media who was content to let biden just sit there and read answers off the teleprompter or is that a new model going forward? I mean, look at these things and say, why are we spending $100 million when one guy essentially with a laptop was able to get to the presidency? Look how badly Trump was outspent in 2016. I mean, by nine figures, and yet he's the president. You know, you look at these races, all these Senate races that the Republicans just won, they were badly outspent in them. And yet, you know, they held their own in the Senate. And so I do if I were looking to invest money in Georgia, you have to get your right. You have to get your message out. You have to get people to know that I would be identifying the people who voted, try to figure out who is

the most likely to have voted for a Republican and invest a bunch of money in harassing them on election day and, quite frankly, before election day with absentee ballots. Try to get as many Donald Trump voters out, as many David Perdue first-round voters out, more so than messenger. I think this is less and less about persuasion in this highly polarized environment than it is about turnout. Right. One last thing before. Oh, right. Before you get to see even one more thing. And that is this. A lot of the ads that we see seem aimed at a certain demographic. They have all of the familiar tropes. They have the voice that says Joe Biden wrong for America. And they have the graphics and the desaturation. And then the eagle appears and the light comes down

and it's the other guy, et cetera. If you're going to get the new generation, if you're going to get them youths, the youths, the kids, they don't listen to them. That means nothing to them. They're all trading in memes and different ironic sort of self-referential constellation of ideas and images.

Is there anybody in the GOP who's saying, look, if we're going to get our brand repositioned for this demographic, we have to learn that these standard ads that cost so much money and go on television, which they don't watch, is not the thing to do. We got to hit them where they live, where they're having fun. Yeah. So I think on tech, the GOP has been a cycle behind the Democrats ever since Obama's candidacy. You will recall in 2000 and 2004, the Democrats were in awe of what Karl Rove had done. And then Barack Obama stepped it up a notch. Remember when you could text to find out who his running mate was going to be?

And like you found out before everyone else, it was Joe Biden. But then he had your phone number. And so he could like pound you to turn out to vote. Republicans are a cycle behind. Like they're starting to get web at, you know, saturate Web ads and things like that. YouTube ads. But I think there does have to be there to get younger voters. Republican, the hipness factor could be updated and not. Sean, could I come in briefly on that point, see what Sean makes of this? There's a friend of mine here who's a Silicon Valley investor who was close to Mitt Romney in the old Bain days.

So he participated in Romney's campaign. And what he told me was nobody in Silicon Valley would go to work for Romney. They won't go to work for a Republican. My buddy was charged with stepping up the tech effort, and he went around to try to hire the bright kids who could help in that effort, and they wouldn't go to work for a Republican. And that was 2004. What do you make of that as just a kind of persistent weight on the Republican side? I mean, it definitely is. You know, and it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If you don't go after the youth vote, the youths, I love that reference. The youth of America. But I'm dating myself by saying I love my cousin Vinny. But if you don't go after the youth vote, then the young college graduates aren't going to be Republican. You aren't going to be able to hire them to go after the youth vote and so forth and so on. So, but at the same time, like it's not, you know, there are people like Patrick Ruffini and Kristen Soltis Anderson and, you know, younger people who understand the tech angle of things, you know, and so it's not completely a lost cause, I don't think, but, you know, there does have to be an update. Well, let me cheer you up, Peter and Sean. I think, although it's a subject for another day, I have a lot of reasons for thinking that the

current and rising generation of young people is going to start swinging to the right. That's a subject maybe for another whole show. No, no, you can't do that to us. Well, I thought we might take it up with our next guest a little bit, actually. Let me ask Sean this, because it's still on point, although it's a slightly different angle. Sean, I want to get your take on this, what I thought was one of the dumbest New York Times stories I ever read earlier this week about real clear politics. The headline for viewers and listeners was, a popular political site made a sharp right turn. What steered it? The story never did give an account of its own question. It was incoherent and superficial. But one part in particular really was about you, I think, Sean, maybe not directly

about you, but they criticized RealClearPolitics for their polling averages and saying, well, their polling averages, including some of these exotic outlier polls that were more favorable to Trump. And I'm thinking that's a criticism. They turned out to be closer to right than all the quote unquote mainstream pollers. So first of all, what do you make of that story in general? I mean, did you think it was as laughable as I do? And what do you say? Did they call you, by the way, to ask you about the polling of averages and methodology real clear? So I'd be a little careful here and kind of take off my, I will be the Sean Trendy hat and not the, I speak for the site hat. There are people who speak for the site and I'm not them. My own reaction to it. No, like I think, I think that piece was written. I know it had

been worked on for at least a month before the election. I know that for a fact because of who was being called. I think that piece was written assuming that we were going, I won't use the French term, we were going to perform poorly in the election, and then we didn't. The French term? Yeah. I know what I mean. Well, we'll just leave it.

Oh, that'll be a premium. That's for members only. We'll post that in a secret place, and you'll have to pay your $5 a month to get the answer to that question. Go ahead. We can do a profanity-laden version for subscribers. But, no, look, I think the idea was that we were going to perform poorly, and we didn't. And so there had to be something to save the story, which is why I think you got that weird intro about we waited two days longer than other people to call Pennsylvania. And even that was a nothing burger. Like we waited two days and then Rudy Giuliani, you know,

said we flipped our call, which we didn't. And within an hour we had corrected him and said, no, this is not true. We did not flip the call. But there was a debate in the election about whether you should use these people like Susquehanna and Trafalgar and Inside Advantage. And, you know, I listened to the debate. And I think there were arguments on the other side, but I think the decision has pretty well been validated. Yeah, do I have time to slip in one more question for Sean? And it's on the polling question, and this also could have gone for hours. I was on a Zoom call about a week or 10 days ago with political scientists, but it also included Peter Hart, well known as a pollster who's been around forever. And I was a little

startled when he said, I think the polling error in this election is the death knell for traditional polling. And I immediately thought of you and a handful of other people who not only look at surveys, the traditional data we get from them, which is now so compromised by methodological problems and the low response rate. But what you do in particular is you look at other kinds of available, I might say, circumstantial data sets and you triangulate. I don't know if that's a very precise or elegant way of putting it. But so first of all- It's a French term, probably. Right. Is Hart right that traditional polling is on its last legs?

And are you the wave of the future? Oh, I like to think I'm the wave of the future, certainly. You know, look, we had decent polling in 2019 and 2017. You know, the polls outside of the Midwest and Florida were pretty good in 2018. I mean, other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play? But, you know, it's not like they can't get elections right. You know, it's kind of just a wind up thing. I'll just say I think there is to get back to the last point real quickly. My last spiel, I think there is a universe of people that think that the range of acceptable public opinion runs from the bulwark to Mother Jones.

That came out in that New York Times piece, I think. And I'm not very Trumpy at all, but 48 percent of the country just voted for the guy. And I think if you try to shut that, the views of that 48% out of, out of circulation, you make things a lot worse than they already are in this country. So we're going to continue to publish those viewpoints and their legitimate viewpoints for 48% of the countries and not apologize for it. Oh, you know, 48% of the country may have voted for trump that doesn't mean that they actually liked him but regardless of that if i'm reading twitter correctly all of those 48 percent of we have to be deprogrammed we have to find a way to extirpate from their brains the poison that made them do this and the people who are tweeting this you know they don't necessarily say it's time for

the gulag and the struggle sessions and the standing up there with the placard that says I am a wrecker. But it doesn't seem to me that they'd be completely opposed to us being hurt into great sheds previously used as chicken barns and having us memorize a chapter and verse the works of Howard Zinn. Hey, Sean, thanks for coming on today. And again, you're a great pollster in the sense that we'll be going forward. And we can't wait to talk to you about the next election. Actually, no, I can't. I'm in no mood for another election for at least two or three more weeks. Let's get into 2021 before we start talking about 2022. All right, talk to you later. Sean, thank you. And, and may we, for our listeners, if you want to know about, if you want to follow Georgia, go to Sean trend, go to real clear politics and look for Sean's latest. Thanks, Sean. Thank you. You know, I was not kidding about those people saying that it's time for some sort of reeducation measure. They actually are serious about it because I mean, the idea that people vote differently, some of us accept that. Some other people regard this as a real problem that indicates that the true work against systemic racism and patriarchy and the rest of it hasn't. Yeah, you know, they won't let us have dental floss, I bet.

Did Rob somehow give you instructions? Because that gracelessness with which you introduced that was indeed rob long-esque what i was going to say steven is that where we may regard them as a mere popcorn hauling our gums to them we are like a shard of a broken dinner plate lodged in their teeth somewhere which would cannot be extracted except with the pliers but no of course when it comes to something stuck in your gums, you're going to go for the floss. You have to, because you can't just work it out. Some people are frequent flossers, so to speak, and other people just floss and they got something

stuck in there. Actually, only one out of two people brush their teeth twice a day, which I find amazing. And the same goes for flossing regularly, which I don't find amazing. There's the old Jeff Foxworthy routine where the dentist asked him, when was the last time you flossed? And Foxworthy said, when you did it, which is off the gate. Well, it doesn't matter what type of person you are. You ought to have, you know, you should have good dental health because that's part of your overall general health. And you know what I'm leaning up to, don't you? Of course you do. That would be Quip. Quip, we love Quip. It's the electric toothbrush you hear about all the time. You may even see it in Target from time

to time. But you know what? It's their sleek, reusable floss pick that you'll want to use next. These guys just keep coming up with stuff. Durable handle is easy to guide because there's none of that wrapping it around your fingers and trying to jam it in there and cutting off the circulation and your nonsense. No. It's a little nice, durable handle. Re-strings with a click. It comes with a compact mirrored dispensing case for on the go. Plus, a single refill pod replaces over 180 single-use plastic flossers. So there's a bit over your teeth and for the environment as well.

You're not a pick person. Quip also has a refillable floss string that expands to clean. So you pair your floss with the perfect electric toothbrush ever made that would be Quip for adults and kids, none better. Quip has these simple guiding features that you need. Like, for example, one, timed sonic vibrations for guiding pulses to help you brush better. I love that because it tells me I've brushed enough. It tells me I'm done. You can personalize your routine, by the way, with over nine premium brush colors. If you're rolling your eyes at that, hey, everything about life is customization. If Apple can come out with the new phones in six or seven hues, don't bark at Quip

for coming out with nine colors. Plus, anti-cavity toothpaste for every taste, like mint and watermelon. And now, you can get amazing rewards just for brushing every day. Rewards for brushing. That's right. Because the Quip smart electric toothbrushes connect to their free Quip app. That's right. Your toothbrush connects to your phone via Bluetooth. Words that would have made no sense whatsoever five or six years ago. So you can earn amazing rewards like free products, discounts.

You track and coach better oral health habits two minutes twice a day. So that's Quip. They also deliver, by the way, brush heads, floss, and toothpaste refills every three months from $5. I mean, you know what you pay for this stuff. Now, from $5 and shipping is free. So you can even save money, skip the store. Bring delight to your everyday brushing and join the over 5 million miles brushing with Quip starting at just $25. And if you go to getquip.com slash ricochet right now, this very moment, come on, you get your first refill free.

That's your first refill free at getquip.com slash ricochet. Spell G-E-T-Q-U-I-P dot com slash ricochet. Quip, better oral health made simple. And as ever, we thank Quip for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. And now we welcome to the podcast Antonin Scalia, Nino the Younger, let's say. Not Nino the Lesser, that would be wrong. Nino the Younger. Who is he?

He's the communications coordinator of the James Madison Program at American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton. He's also the host of the Madison Notes podcast right here in the Ricochet Audio Network. Welcome, if we may call you Nino. Please do. Tell us about the podcast. And I'm sure all of these, you know, these Ivy people want to know how you ended up at Princeton, but I'm more curious about it. I'm still young, though. Tell us about the podcast. Sure. Well, the podcast, like you said, is called Madison's Notes, and it's my pleasure to host the podcast for the James Madison program. We've published 15 episodes so far.

And you'll hear conversations with leading academics, public intellectuals. We have a few podcasts lined up with some important political figures that will be airing shortly. And then we also sprinkle in a few lectures that we had at the James Madison program. So most notably, perhaps, then-judge Amy Coney Barrett came to the Madison program. She spoke about the Constitution as our story. And we aired that on the podcast as well. And essentially what we what we tried to do is focused on first principles in the podcast. We don't want to talk too much about contemporary

politics. We don't want to talk too much about the horse race of politics. But what we want to do is talk about things so that our episodes will be fresh, whether they're listened to a month after the fact, the day of, two years later. So for an example, we had Ilya Shapiro on the podcast to talk about his book on the history of judicial nominations. And we touched a little bit on Judge Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation hearings. But what we really wanted to know was, what is the purpose of the Supreme Court? How has it strayed from that purpose? How have our judicial nomination processes become so politicized? And answer questions like that on the podcast.

That's great, because here at Ricochet, our podcast, it has the staying power of a glass of warm milk at Death Valley at noon. So if you're doing something that can communicate these stories year after year, because they are abiding values and what mattered 200 years ago still has merit and work today. So obviously you didn't go into law school because you want to you want to help humanity as opposed to divide profit off its misery. Got it. That's right. Peter, Stephen. No, I'm just sitting here steaming because what he just described, have you ever heard of a little show I do called uncommon knowledge? This rotten, no good kid is coming after me. Nino, I'm, listen, I'm sending you a pie for Thanksgiving. Eat all of it, will you please?

You and I were emailing about this when I was emailing with Scott about potentially having Madison's notes on Ricochet. Which is happening, right? Scott's a traitor too. That's right. Well, I used Machiavelli's analogy. I said that Peter Robinson and Rick in Uncommon Knowledge. This is sort of this is Cyrus. This is Moses. This is Romulus. This is Theseus. And we are trying to approximate this greatilian. Sicilian. Worse. Worse. This is great. This is great.

Okay, so can I just ask what everybody is thinking right now, which is, is this a way station for you? Are you going to go into the family business? Are you headed to law school eventually yourself? You should know, just in case there's any lingering doubt we're talking to a man whose grandfather was one of the greatest jurists of the 20th and early 21st century former supreme court justice antonin scalia and whose father is now secretary of labor okay so actually this is a sort of this is a this is an honest question sure aside from being much better looking than your dad or grandfather ever were, how do you intend to live up to those two? That's a good question.

I'm 25 years old, so it's a question I think about a lot. But I think that— You're over the hill, dude. Probably there's some Grecian formula in that beard already, right? So, yeah, I think about that a lot. But when I think about my father and my grandfather, the ways in which I would like, if I look back at the end of my life and think, did I live up to the example they set? It will not be, the question I will ask myself will not be, were you a cabinet secretary? Were you a Supreme Court justice? Were you a president, a congressman? What were you? The question I will ask myself would be- How much money did you make?

Right, exactly. How much money did you make? That's the question. And I think I'll beat my grandfather there, but I don't- But no, the question I'll ask myself will be, did you keep your faith? Were you a good father? Were you a good husband? And those are the questions I'll ask myself. They set a high bar, certainly professionally, but also personally, I think in many ways, a higher bar. Would you like to give your personal email address? Because every listener with a daughter, with an unmarried daughter is now saying, oh my goodness, how do I introduce this guy? Right.

Nino, it's Steve Hayward from out in Berkeley, where, by the way, I'm partly at the public law and policy program that John Yoo founded, last week's McRib chairholder of the Rob Long seat. And we modeled it after the Madison Center to some extent. And in fact, say hi to Robbie for me. I actually went with him 20 years ago to one of his first foundation seed grant visits. And after 60 seconds, I thought, why am I here? He had it completely nailed and I was utterly unnecessary. Anyway, did I hear you say during our pregame chit chat that you played their pre-show chit chat that you played safety in the

football team? Yeah, I did. to rhodes college in memphis tennessee a small liberal arts school i know well i know the department yeah yeah any supreme court justices ever go to rhodes two of them yeah two of them uh one we hope has a more illustrious career than the other um but um yeah played football sorry amy coney barrett and who else? Abe Fortas. Oh, really? Oh, so that school has a lot of answering to do still. Yes, we do. My point in bringing that up was not just the personal interest, but I sometimes think of your grandfather as the free safety on the Supreme Court, being the last barrier between sometimes successful, sometimes not, between the leftist touchdown at the court. Right. By the way, a linebacker might be more accurate, but the point stands.

Right. Well, he tackled like a middle linebacker. That's for certain. If you ever get out to California, and Peter, you need to meet this guy too, I seem to be collecting grandsons of great justices because one good friend of mine up in Napa Valley is James Earl Warren, the grandson of Earl Warren, who, by the way, he's in the real estate business in Napa Valley. Peter's jaws drop. It's going to drop even further when I tell you that when he comes and visits me

and John Hugh on the Berkeley campus, he always makes a point of wearing his MAGA hat. Really? Yes. That grandfather is spinning in his grave and can't spin fast enough, in my opinion. Wow. Oh, he has all kinds of great stories. Well, serious spin fast enough, in my opinion. Wow. Oh, he has all kinds of great stories. Well, serious question, though, if I can. Sure.

I think Peter and Blue Yeti wanted me to talk about this with you and James, but especially Blue Yeti. But in any case, the campus climate these days, my perception is things have gotten worse in a hurry. What's it like at Princeton? What are you seeing? Yeah, it's sort of a difficult question for me to answer. I'm isolated from it in really two ways. One, I'm not in a classroom. I'm not a student, and I don't teach. So I'm isolated from it there. But then also just the family in which I was raised, the prospect of being bullied into being quiet was just not something that ever crossed our minds. Except when your grandmother came after you. Oh, no, that's definitely true. That's definitely true. You know, when we would

have family gatherings, of course, my grandfather, he went by Nino as well. And when we would hear my grandmother, Nino, just a chill would run down my spine. But I do think that does seem to be the case that it's gotten worse. In 2015, I think it was, Princeton did adopt the Chicago principles of free expression. And I thought, well, that's a great sign. This must be the Ivy League school that's doing the best job defending the free expression and free thought of their faculty members and their students and their staff. But that seems maybe to be changing. Just this summer, we had some dueling letters going back and forth between students demanding mandatory anti-bias training for all faculty, staff, and fellow students. A letter was written in response to that by about, that was signed by about 20 conservative

students. So you had a couple hundred students sign this somewhat unserious letter demanding anti-bias training, reparations, and the like. And then about 20 students who write in response saying, you know, this is an egregious assault on the purpose of the university, which is to pursue truth. And we need to speak freely in order to do that. And these students, these 20 students were doxxed. You know, their student IDs were shared on social media. They're called racists and bigots. And unfortunately, when I speak with students at the university, the general sense seems to be that there is a pressure to conform to the progressive orthodoxies of the place. But it's not a pressure that comes to bear in the classroom. It's not from members of the faculty. It's from their peers. It's from their peers. You know,

if you don't fall in line, you'll be blacklisted from meeting clubs. They'll call you racist or bigots. You don't know if you'll be able to maintain friendships. And that's something I experienced in my undergraduate, my time in undergraduate studies. But I will say the one thing that sets Princeton apart is we have the James Madison program. We have the James Madison program. We have Robbie George. And that really is a bastion for free thought and free expression. It's not only for conservatives. Our motto is think deeply, think critically, think for yourself. And that applies for anyone who's willing and eager to do that. So we have students who are progressive left-wing people, but they want to think deeply, think

critically, and think for themselves. And thankfully, they have a place to do that at the Madison program. And that's not the case at a lot of other schools. No, we were told for many years that, you know, yes, they're saying crazy things on campus. Oh, those wacky kids and their heedless youth, they always say crazy things. Wait until they get into the real world. Well, they got into the real world and they remade it in their image. They decided that everything that CRT, critical race theory, was going to be the lens through which they would see the world.

And all of a sudden you've got now people in corporations who are being marched into these sessions. And the people in the corporations don't have a James Madison Institute. They don't have anybody who's going to stand up for them. And it's an orthodoxy that if you question this brand new way of completely re-apprehending the world, there's something wrong with you. So I have to ask, what's next coming from campus that's going to infect the rest of the world with these miserable little busybodies and their smelly orthodoxies to make us think this or be cast into the pit of perdition forever. Yeah. What's next? I'm not sure what my hunch is that it's just more of the same and even more aggressively. Over the summer, we had an experience with one

Professor Joshua Katz, who is a liberal professor. He's not a conservative, a respected tenured professor in the classics department. And he responded to an egregious letter written and signed by hundreds of faculty members at Princeton calling for all sorts of things like a committee that would review the work of professors at Princeton to make sure it wasn't racist. Of course, whether or not it's racist would be determined by that committee. They wanted things like extra sabbatical time for professors of color. And Professor Katz stood up to this. He said, no, this is an egregious assault on our free thought, our free expression, the purpose of a university. And he also got in some hot water for calling a student organization now defunct, the Black Justice League. He called them a terrorist organization. And of course, this was unacceptable to the university.

The organization terrorized students. They terrorized students. They would call students racists and white supremacists. So even putting aside, though, whether or not that description of the group was accurate, I think there's no question that had a left wing professor called the Young Republicans group or students for Trump, fascists or terrorists, I don't think we would have seen a similar response from the university. I don't think we would have seen a similar response from the university. I don't think we would have seen a statement from the spokesperson of the university saying, we'll be looking into this. So the hopeful note then is that the leftists who have gone out of college into the world today will be replaced by an even more virulent group who will pack the

previous group into the tumble and send them off to the guillotine and thus the the cycle continues wonderful exactly right you know you know in the in the parlance of social justice just listening to you i'm exhausted uh do the work nino do better i mean i'll tell people all right please do better and uh i don't know how you can really and people will see that doing better is uh you know he's doing pretty good on the podcast and you can listen to it here on the Ricochet. No, it's no good at all, really. You know, after you've exhausted, I actually mean it. Yeah.

Yeah. After you've all right, everybody, this is our message. After you've read and watched the transcripts and visuals, every single uncommon knowledge ever done by Peter Robinson, there's more episodes of that than there are probably of The Young and the Restless. Then you can go to Nino's podcast. Thanks for joining us on the show today. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Nino, take care, but not too much.

You know, when we talk about these people always looking for grievances and waiting to pounce on you if you've said something wrong, it does make you check your six, as they say. I've always written under my own name. I tweet under my own name and the rest of it, so any of this stuff can come back to me. But I, you know, in the interest of being honest, I tweet, I write, and I don't really worry very much. It's all out there. Sometimes, however, you don't want it to be all out there. Sometimes

you want a little privacy. Sometimes you want to gather things within yourself in your own little place and be safe. Like, for example, going to the bathroom in a public place, right? You would close the door behind you. Why? Because you don't want random passerbys looking in on you. That is basic civilization 101. So let me ask you this. Why then would you let people look in on you when you go online? Using the internet without ExpressVPN, a VPN, a virtual private network, is like going to the bathroom and not closing the door, for heaven's sakes. Do you know what your internet service provider does? You know, we're talking Comcast, Verizon. They know every single website that you visit, of course. And what's worse is they can sell this information to ad companies and tech giants who will use your data to target you. ExpressVPN puts

a stop to this. It creates a secure encrypted tunnel between your device and the internet so that your online activity cannot be seen by anyone. I use ExpressVPN for all my devices because of this, not because I'm paranoid, but just because I'm smart. Works on everything, your phone, your laptop, even your routers. So everyone who shares your Wi-Fi can still be protected even if they don't have ExpressVPN. The best part is using ExpressVPN is as easy as closing the bathroom door. You just fire up the app, hit one button, and you are protected. ExpressVPN is the world's number one rated VPN by CNET, by Wired, The Verge, and countless others who know what they're talking about. So if you're like me and believe

your online activity is your business, nobody else's, secure yourself by visiting expressvpn.com slash ricochet today. Use our exclusive link here, expressvpn.com slash ricochet, and you can get an extra three months free. ThatV-P-N.com slash Ricochet. And you can get an extra three months free. That's ExpressVPN.com slash Ricochet. Three months free extra. We thank ExpressVPN for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And now, Stephen, of course, because you listen to the podcast every week, you know that this is the moment when I'm about to introduce a certain post

and there's a sounder and... The James Lydon's Member Post of the Week. to introduce a certain post and there's a sounder and he had it ready he did but it blew out again it's it's like they just play it again because we paid for this three two The James Lydon Member Post of the Week James, can I just ask a question? I meant to ask you this, and now I'm just going to do it. How did you find exactly the same band and chorus that recorded the opening to the Jetsons? Well, there's a certain institutional style, shall we say. I mean, seriously, how do you actually find somebody to do that kind of work?

Well, I didn't commission this, but there are companies that work within the genre. I mean, I had a shout back when I was with KSDP, James Lilacs, and I used to call him the breathy white people's chorus. And you can go back and you can get all of these stuff from radios in the 60s and 70s that's hanging around. And whether or not they're saying, you know, here's the weather. They're all the same. There's a wonderful institutional sameness that comes to it. Now, there's also a company called PAMS,

which had very tailored sounds for stations like WS, which gave you light and lively, different jazzy feel to it. So there are, within the genre, there are some different things, but in general, you know, if they have to, uh, they, you know, they, they,

they conform to, uh, to what, what the genre requires is basically it. So yes, the lilacs post of the week is something that I come up with every weekend. I ship it off the blue Yeti. And,

uh, then I completely forget what it is. And then he puts it in the rundown and I'm not seeing it in the rundown now. So I'm trying to remember exactly. No, I did. I said, I sent it to you. I did. I swear. Oh, for heaven's sakes. It's not there because I didn't send it. Oh, good. Oh, I, I had it. This is what happens when you use a non-union tech department, you guys. I know this is what happens when I do it. Okay. Here, here's what it is. Sorry. It was called welcome to 2030. And it was by I can't pronounce the name because it looks Finnish or something like that.

If John Gabriel were here, he would tell you he excerpted a or she excerpted a an article that the Danish parliament member wrote, which was called Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy and life has never been better and it was a description of how wonderful the future is going to be when we have absolutely limitless energy because of course the sun and the wind when we don't own anything anymore because we've been freed from the tyranny and the shackles of ownership we simply rent everything on demand the trade-off is that we have no privacy because and all the you know the panopticon of the internet and the streetwise security systems know exactly what we're doing all the time. Every transaction is monitored by our banks, known to all. But the trade-off is good because wrapped within this is safety, safety and equality

and egalitarianism and the rest of it. The person wrote, once in a while, I get annoyed at the fact that I have no real privacy, nowhere I can go and not be registered. I know that somewhere everywhere I think and do and dream is recorded. I just hope that nobody will use it against me. This is somebody describing a future of which he approves of having all of his information of owning nothing of being stateless and rootless and the rest of it and connected to the somehow just this, this european project will result in human liberation as opposed to all the old things that we know family community religion city culture all the rest of it and it's a not surprising view of what your 2020 euro socialist mindset wants for us so So obviously that might fly there. Is it going to fly here? Can you see, for example, in America, which is a very big nation, of course, can you see anybody

saying, I can't wait until 2030 when I absolutely own nothing and there's abundance everywhere and I just am a little grain of rice in this centrifuge of wonderfulness? You know, it's funny, James, that you picked that post. I didn't know you were going to pick it, but I saw that post, and I'm surprised that you don't like it, because it seems to me it describes the world straight out of Star Trek Next Generation that you wrongly approve of. That I wrongly approve of. That's interesting, because one of the things that irritated me

about Gene Roddenberry's vision of the future, when you drill down into the details, it was really not all that smart. And I know Blue Yeti starts to get hives when I do this because it's Star Trek. But he posited a world in which there was endless abundance because you could replicate anything. And the great thing about Star Trek is that people stepped up and then made something of their lives in this new world of superabundance. But if you look back at other Star Treks, yeah, they still got money. No matter how you try to eliminate these things, human nature will always come up with a means of exchange. If you eliminate ranking in a children's

soccer game, they'll still come up with who won. If you take away, no, all family structures are equal. There will still be an innate desire to cleave to that which our hearts and our fibers are telling us. So yes, it does sound like the Federation and the rest of it, but no, I don't like it. I don't like it at all. I don't like the part about not owning anything. There's a pride and a maintenance that comes with owning things, and not just physical things, but feeling an ownership of the society in which you are. And these people just seem to me to be little, just things thrown out there who mill around in this thing desired for the design for the davos denizens and uh no sir i

don't like it at all for what it's worth or unanimous on that i mean it seems to the the fight there's going to be a fight will there be a fight driverless cars which no i had first thought of driverless cars is simply a limitless boon. I get to sit in the back seat and I don't have to worry about traffic. I can snooze. I can work. It's just unlimited boon. And then someone pointed out to me, no, no, no, no.

This is already happening in China, apparently, but they're drawing up regulations for handling traffic. And in New York, you can see, look, we, the state, are going to build this algorithm that's going to make sure that there won't be any traffic jams in Manhattan. And that will seem so overwhelmingly appealing that people will quite willingly, so goes the theory, give up the right even to program their own car. Just, I'll get in, you tell me when I should go to work. And driverless cars will lead very quickly to cars that cannot be driven, right? And there's the first real infringement of freedom, which is un-American. And I don't mean that in a sneering way.

I mean, see the USA in your chevrolet the freedom of the open road is something that's been woven into the american fabric of culture and character for six seven decades now so and i thought no no that won't it won't happen that way there will be a fight there will be a carve out for lanes in which people can still drive their own cars or something but then along comes covid and the supineness with which people are saying, yes, sir, I'll wear my mask. Oh, yes, sir. We won't gather here at Thanksgiving.

Now, of course, there's some pushback, but it seems to me that half the population or more is perfectly willing to lay down its freedoms. Oh, absolutely. Do a thought experiment, Peter. Go 10 years, go to 2030, the timeframe in the post James selected. We all have self-driving cars connected to the web and so forth, and there's a pandemic. Guess how they enforce a lockdown then? We all know how they would do it. Right, exactly. I remember seeing my first self-driving car when I was out in Palo Alto. Cruises up and there, sitting in the back, are two little young fellows with folded hands staring down at the little glass devices in their hands. And then, you know, traffic like moves and off they go again. To live your life is just sort of a passive little pod being taken around with these places. Peter's right. There's something essentially American about driving.

There's something, you know, there's the great Steely Dan songs has it about dying behind the wheel will be a lesser will be a lesser people for having. I mean, the decline in the American character can be directly related to the number of people who've been speared like a cocktail olive by the by the, you know, by the, uh, the wheel column when they hit something head on. No, it's great that cars are safe. It's great that cars are smart. It's great that we can develop smart networks and the rest of it, but there is something individualistic about being able to get in and go somewhere and not tell anybody or ask for permission. And that's the part that, and plus just the free animal, just the sheer animal joy of driving.

I mean, if you have generations of people who grow up not knowing what it is, what it is required to drive, what it's like to drive, how to feel at one with this machine is, is, is something that, I mean, we've already lost it because we no longer have the manual shift, but still, still, I know. All right, before we go, one question, Gavin Newsom sort of summed up our entire culture moment when he went to the French Laundry. This very name gives me gives me Ajita and had this wonderful little meeting and said, oh, you know what? It was just nothing. We were outside. We were fine. We were socially distanced. Then we get pictures and it turns out they're jammed together.

They're not wearing masks. And you have all the politicians and the lobbyists and the rest of them doing exactly what they forbade us to do. I'm surprised that anybody's surprised. But what do you think of this? You would love for this to have some sort of revolt where the peasants go to Versailles and demand that this sort of thing change. But no, I think people are letting him off the hook because his general idea about how the rest of us should live is wise. Stay masked, stay safe, stay home. My fellow Californian, Steve Hayward, handled that one. Go. Oh, well, I've been saying for several years now, first, California, it's so far gone, it deserves a governor named Gavin. Second, I was saying when he was elected, trust me, folks, he's going to

make us miss Jerry Brown, as crazy as Jerry Brown was. But third, yeah, I'm with James on this. The French Laundry, I'm going to commit a heresy here sitting in the Rob Long chair, but since you had Mr. McRib last week, I'm going to commit offenses against hot cuisine, and Rob will never miss another episode. But the French Laund laundry is a preposterous place. You know, explain what it is and explain. It's yeah. It's one of these performance restaurants. It's like $800 a person for their prefix menu. It's like nine or 12 courses. Each one is the size of a thimble.

It's always something exotic, like baked face of leprechaun or, you know, seared banana peels with a demi glaze of baby seal tears. And the tiny little bit of wine with each course. It's absolutely ridiculous. And it takes hours. Yeah, I know. And, you know, I just want to rip. It takes hours to get there. It's up in Napa or somewhere. Right. Pretty spot. But I can give you 10 better places to go in Napa for a really great meal. Right. And by the way, the conventions on COVID is the longer you're sitting around with somebody, the more your risk is. So

you go for, what, a five-hour meal or whatever the heck it is at the French Laundry. No thank you, but it does, what's perfect for Gavin, though, it just shows, I mean, if you were writing a comic novel about what an awful presumptuous elitist he is, that's where you would set the scene.

Rob Long wouldn't have put it anyplace else, even though he probably likes the place. We'll get to Peter Robinson's take on that in just a minute here. But before we do, I have to remind you, because we're coming to an end, that it was brought to you proudly by Quip, by ExpressVPN, and American Story. Please support them for supporting us. And you can listen to the best of Ricochet. That's the best of all taken from our 792 weekly podcasts, hosted by some guy named Jim Lillix.

And so you can find it on the weekend on Radio America Network, check your local listings as we love to say. And if you could take a minute or two or an hour to leave a detailed, excruciatingly detailed five-star review on Apple Podcasts, that would be great. That'd be fantastic. I'm tired of begging you to do it. So do it so I don't have to beg anymore because the more reviews we get, it surfaces the show. The more people listen, the more they go to ricochet and the more we all prosper. And the more we're all able then to go to the French laundry and expense an $800 dinner. But Peter, so your view on this also in California, do you think that there is, is this really a story or is this just people shrugging and saying, well, that's our ruling class. And like I say, it doesn't matter what he did.

It's the fact that he says the right things. Gavin Newsom dining at the French Laundry maskless. It has been a long time, years, I think, since I have seen my wife so angry at someone other than her husband. So you like the guy then, Peter. Yeah, he gives me cover, actually. Can I, could I, while I have my, Steve and I don't live that far apart, but we seldom see each other.

I don't know why. When the lockdown ends, we should fix that somehow or other. But could I just ask my fellow Californian one question about, Gavin knew some catastrophe. The Democrats still have more than two-thirds

majorities in both houses of the state legislature which means they can enact tax all right all of that we know that i've been moaning about it for years but are you encouraged at all by michelle steel wins a seat in orange county young kim wins a seat in Orange County. Young Kim wins a seat in Orange County. These are two Korean women run as Republicans and win Democratic seats. Those are take back seats. Mike Garcia, the son of Mexican immigrants. I don't believe that race has been called, but he's up by a few hundred votes in a heavily Democratic district. And then David, I'm going to mispronounce this, I think, but David Valdez, it's a, I believe, also the son, as I recall, of Mexican immigrants in the Central Valley, won back a seat from a Democrat. And I think to myself, this actually may be a glimpse of

something very important, but also something enormously heartening to people on our side, where our fear is in some way or other that we don't really believe it, but we worry about it. that the Republican Party is a party of white people, and they're shrinking as a proportion of the population. The future lies with the Democratic Party. And then here in California, two Korean women and two Mexican, I'm overstating, their sons and daughters, but the Republican, the ideals of limited government and free markets, and it doesn't matter who you are, you're where you came from, actually have been embraced by immigrant. They're not Asians and Mexican, Hispanic.

They don't belong to the Democratic Party. So I just think to myself, wow, sometime in the next decade, I'm putting this to you to see if you agree or if I'm just being naive as I so often am. Sometime in the next decade, the Republican nominee for governor of California is going to be the son or daughter of African Americans or of immigrants from Vietnam or South Korea or Mexico, and it could change everything. Yeah, Peter, I heard you say that last week, and I agree with that. You do? Okay. Yes. It does require the Republican Party to get its act together in a state and come back to life,

right? It's just in such sorry shape. But beyond those candidates you mentioned, and I think you know this too, you had the ballot initiatives. You had several very left-leaning initiatives put on the ballot by the Democratic legislature, and they all either lost or lost badly, in particular Prop 16 that would have rolled back the prohibition on affirmative action. That loss by a larger margin than the original initiative to put that ban in place 25 years ago, it carried the majority of Hispanics in some Hispanic counties in the state, carried Asians heavily. We voted down rent control. We voted down a tax hike on big

business. That was the first step of repealing Prop 13. On the level of opinion in California, the election was a route for the left, and that's even before you get to the congressional seats. However, keep in mind that the left in this state is totally willing to run right over public opinion, even of minorities. You remember Proposition 8 in 2008, where we amended the Constitution to say a marriage should be for a man and a woman, and the federal court, the state Supreme Court, just overrode that and said, sorry, we don't care how many people voted for it. We're just going to overrule that because that's our elite opinion. So we still have that problem to contend with. Maybe we can turn that to our advantage, but it's not going to be easy. What makes it easier to run over people,

of course, is a self-driving car that has been programmed to do so. So there we bring everything to a full circle, I think. We got to go. Stephen, thanks so much for joining us here. You're just so much more fun than Rob. Really. I mean, he's just, I don't know Rob quite as much. So love, love with the sound of his own voice. And Peter, of course, as ever a great joy. Well, no, we love Robin. We'll have him back next week. Steven, you're always welcome as well. Thanks everybody for listening to the Ricochet podcast.

I'm James Lollix. We'll see you all in the comments at Ricochet 4.0 next week. Thanks Steve. Next week, James. In your white lace and your wedding bells You lived a picture of contented new will But from the onlooking fool who believed your lies I wish this grave would open up The bitterest pill is not to swallow But if I can, as they say, come and mark his shadows

Yeah, yeah You're a real up-and-coming broken vow to me A time prescribed to change my misery The thickest spot you're beating hard to get placed Now I smoke, leave my lips to fill the tube When the good to us fell as high as this water The world I gave is a sad color marking shadows When the better is fair, it hides its water. But if I get, there's a sad color marking shadows.

The better is fair, it's mine to take. In the 2400 years, I couldn't feel any more pain. The better is fair, it's mine to take. Ricochet. Join the conversation. That was cool. Thank you. that was fun yeah i do my favorite show every week so it's a thrill to come on