Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 90: Bloodhound Gravel Gang (w/ special guest Alex Pareene)

Episode Date: March 29, 2019

Alex Pareene (@pareene) stops by to talk about his latest piece in The New Republic, "Nihilist in Chief," about Mitch McConnell's complete and absolute transformation of American politics over the last 3 decades. Check out Alex's piece here: https://newrepublic.com/article/153275/mitch-mcconnell-profile-nihilist-chief Check out Tarence's article here: https://thebaffler.com/latest/get-real-ray And subscribe to our Patreon here: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

What do you think about... I want to know, what do you think about Mike Gravel, the meme? Not the candidate. Mike Gravel, the meme. I don't think I know Mike Gravel, the meme. I know the candidate. Are they indistinguishable? The candidate.

You're talking about the candidate that's speaking truth to power? It's a classic case of speaking truth to power. Classic case of speaking truth to power. I love speaking truth to power i love speaking truth to power i do it every day as alex uh my girlfriend uh which you know that just clarifying for the audience uh yes i do fuck uh has a has a brewery in our hometown it's's Yellow Springs Brewery. Yeah. And their tagline is Crafting Truth to Power.

And every time I see that, I just want to... I don't even like speaking truth to power as a phrase. Yeah, that's even worse. Much less crafting truth to power.

Dude, that is bad. That is so bad. I find the Mike Gravel thing interesting because I think in 2019 we finally have reached the singularity

in politics to where we now have candidates as sort of cultural signifiers. They're not even really... I mean, to me, the Mike Gra Gravel, like I don't really get the impression that anybody's really serious about him. Let me ask you a question. Are you just, is this the long-winded way of saying that you're not hashtag Gravel Gang?

I guess I'm not a Gravel Gang. Wow. Well, the only reason why is because it just feels kind of like a meme. It feels kind of like gritty, you know? Remember when everybody was like trying to appropriate gritty as like a meme. It feels kind of like Gritty. Remember when everybody was trying to appropriate Gritty as a leftist icon? Mike's saying all the right things, standing for all the right things, and then we're just going to find out

that he had dinner with Milo. I think he literally did. He's been on a few right-wing, I think he's even been on a few like anti-semitic podcasts well this is interesting this is this is interesting because i feel like and it's just like even like what you were talking about like how your brother was telling you that your mom thinks you're a neo-nazi man there is to the uninitiated there is a thin line you know what I mean?

That's right, everybody. I received the devastating news this week that my own mother thinks I'm a neo-Nazi. Well, I wish I would have had my brother on the show to explain this. But apparently she was trying to explain to him my beliefs while they were at a restaurant. And she was pointing at the cashier or the waiter or something behind the bar and was like, see that right there? Terrence believes that the government should pay that guy's wages and then nobody else will be able to make any money. And as a result, I'm a Nazi.

Not even a Nazi, a neo-Nazi. Like, what? Come on, Betsy. Yeah, I was trying to probe him. I was like, did she think that I support Hitler? Dude, I don't know. It really disturbs me. Do you think there is a sort of effort?

I don't know by who. I mean, you know, liberals, conservatives, they're like everybody. That wasn't a little McCarthyism these days, it seems like, with the quote-unquote resurgence of the new left. Oh, yeah, yeah. quote resurgence of the new left oh yeah yeah but do you think there is a concerted effort by people that know better to try to uh tether the left to nazism like people that aren't initiated in this and like understand yeah how it works to like sort of i mean i guess what i'm trying to say is like you know it's just kind of like the both sides thing. You know what I mean?

Or, like, how liberals will sort of equate, you know, the left with, you know, or just say, like, the radical left is just as bad as the right-wing extremists. Yeah. Well, I think that they see a form of authoritarianism. they see a form of authoritarianism to them. It looks like to them, like all authoritarianism is the same, I guess.

Yeah. It's the same reason that like people always do the sort of body count with like Hitler had X amount of bodies. Stalin had Y, Mao had Z. And I think that people see authoritarianism like across the board as like an expression of the same sort of anti-human impulse or whatever when in reality I mean like it's like the nuance is actually way like the thing about Stalin isn't like you know you can't really like you know romanticize him as like bringing the sort of socialism, you know, you can't really like, you know, romanticize him as like bringing

the sort of socialism into, you know, the only thing you can really give him credit for is beating the Nazis in World War II, which good on you, Joe. That's good. We contain multitudes, you know. The thing about- You don't always get it right. Right, right, right. Joe didn't always get it right.

Right. The thing about Stalin is he's no different than Mitch McConnell or any of these other people. He understood that you have to eliminate the political opposition if you want to bring your plan into fruition. He was just a dumb brute. And the only way he did it. Just force. Well, yeah, did it with violence and force.

Mitch ain't built like that. Yeah, exactly. He just has money and just wields that money to big dick people. wields that money just to big dick people. Well, and the thing is, like Mitch and other people, you know,

you know, Stalin was probably closer to like a Nixon type figure. You know, just brute, just a dumb brute, just like pure force

just try to eliminate them that way. But like McConnell and others are sort of savvy enough to know that like the true elimination of the opposition

is to basically make them irrelevant. To make them irrelevant in the marketplace of ideas? Make them irrelevant in the marketplace of ideas. I love saying shit like marketplace of ideas. Yeah, I do too. I think that shit is awesome. No, I don't know, man. I don't really know what I'm talking about.

That was a good way to reach and tease our interview today. I just need to say, though, that my mother does not think I'm a neo-Nazi because of anything I've said in terms of my beliefs about ethnic groups or race or anything like that, white supremacy or whatever. You brought it up.

You dug me into this hole. You dug the hole out from underneath me. Jesus. She thinks this because she thinks that, and I assume that other people are like this too, there are people out there who think that a society in which people can't just make money hand over fist in an unregulated way, people don't have that freedom and liberty to do so, that that is a totalitarian society bordering on Nazism.

I'm not going to insult your intelligence and tell you whatever. My interpretation of that is that I would like to live in a world that is totalitarian enough to say, yeah, you can't live like that. I'm sorry. We cannot just have unhindered growth

that gobbles up the fucking environment and people's lives and health and stuff. And I think the only way you can do that is with a strong, coercive government. I might change my opinion on that someday. And, you know, maybe we can get to a place where we can, I would like to have a society that's more of like a sort of anarchist society where there is no government or anything like that. You know, we can, there's maybe, if there is a government, it's more of an administrative thing.

But if we're going to get through the next couple of decades of the worst impacts of climate change, like we're probably going to need a very, very strong government to do that. So week to week, it's funny because, you know, we talk about this amongst ourselves all the time, Week to week, it's funny because we talk about this amongst ourselves all the time. Some of our friends out west think we're bourgeois sock dams, and some of our friends on the east coast think that we're hillbilly tankies. A point for our friends on the east coast this week after that. I guess you're right. But I guess what I wanted to say is that, you know, obviously, like, you know, Nazism is a... It's not nihilism.

We don't think you're Nazism. Okay, all right. You're going to need to go on an apology tour here. I don't think anybody thinks you're Nazism. All right, man. I'm telling you. Except the woman that gave birth to you, apparently. It fucked with my head

because I'm like, does this person, does she just hate? You don't even have the haircut. Oh, you're right. She's gonna hear this anyways. You have to take it

a little tighter on the sides and back if you want to be a nonsense. Yeah, you're right. Well, it's like, you hear that and you're like, okay, like, does she hate me?

Like, you know, she loves me, obviously, but like, as a person, maybe she just doesn't think too highly of my opinions. Well, no, I think she loves, maybe she just doesn't think too highly of my opinions. Well, no, I think she loves you. I just think that she wants to beat you in the marketplace of ideas.

The ultimate battleground. Interesting. Man, that's a thing. Well, I think it's another reason why it kind of fucked me up. If you don't have a family in which anybody really agrees with you politically, it's just incredibly isolating. And you're just like. Oh, yeah.

And so you'll think, you'll know, you'll have conversations, you'll have arguments, you'll have debates, you'll have this, that, the other. You'll be like, oh, I made some real headway this time. I did, you know, I was a good ally. You go away feeling good. Then your little brother comes to visit you and you really took five steps back. Man, mom thinks you're a Nazi, man. So, well, but anyways, all right, so I teed us up a second ago, and then I-

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to derail us. No, I derailed us because I had my own neurotic meltdown. my own neurotic meltdown. But to tee up what we were just talking about, our episode this week is about Mitch McConnell. And I think you'll like it. It's a good, honest look at politics. Dude, I've had like three hours of sleep. It's a good

honest look at the marketplace of ideas. And what happens when one contestant shows up with none but an insatiable thirst for power? That's exactly right.

That is exactly right. And so our guest this week is Alex Perrine. Yeah. Who wrote the source material for this week. If you haven't checked it out, go check it out. It's at the New Republic. And it's called The Nihilist in Chief. Pretty good.

I listened to the audio version, and the guy that reads it is like, he's got this very... It did really add a lot. I listened to it twice driving. It added a lot of gravity to the piece. That guy was like... Yeah. But Mitch had no core beliefs. Well, it made me think I could have a future. You looked into his eyes, and there was no soul there to be found.

have a future and you looked into his eyes and there was no soul there to be found one of his dude i get comments all the time that says you should be an audiobook narrator i was talking with our buddy libby from time to time and i i wouldn't put these out there on main street to blow anybody's spot up and i'm flattered in a way but another way it's slightly weirded out that people will write me and want me to say things and read things. And one of the stranger ones that I've ever had in my life was, and I've told you about this before, is I had somebody that wanted me to read from John Meacham's biography of Andrew Jackson.

Really? Yeah. I don't know if you've ever told me that. I've never told you that. It's literally probably on a podcast episode and somebody's like, oh, yeah, he did, episode 39. Y'all are my memory at this point. No, we have not done a good job of cataloging the show at all.

What episode is that? I don't know. But anyway, yeah. Why that book specifically? I have no idea. Interesting. Other people want me to record a voicemail message. I don't know.

There you have it. Well, my friend Madison, shout out to Madison. She's listening to this. She had never really listened to this before. And she texted me the other day. I'm trying to find the text message. It was basically just like, oh, yeah. She said, I don't even want to know what Tom looks like because his voice is sexy as fuck.

From time to time, people will say that I sound like Matthew McConaughey. Yeah. What they don't know is that I sound like Matthew McConaughey. Yeah. What they don't know is that I look like Jeff McConaughey. That's okay. Before we get started with this interview, two things. First of all, I plugged it at the end of this episode, but I'm going to plug it again. Fuck it. I wrote something in the Baffler

that I want you to go read. It's about rural... It's about getting real about rural America. It's not a retreading of our episode from last week. It's all new ideas, folks. Got new ideas in that motherfucker. They managed to get the Hobbs High Fight song in there, too. Hell yeah.

Oil Derek's at nine. Yeah. And, um. I'm acquainted with that. You're acquainted. You're familiar with it. Yeah. So go check that out.

It's at the Baffler. And then, the second thing is go subscribe to the Patreon. We have a good episode with Tanya this past weekend. It was a pretty funny episode. I thought it was pretty goddamn hilarious. So go subscribe to the Patreon.

We have weekly episodes there every Sunday. You know, you're cleaning your house, cleaning your car, sitting around in your ass. I don't know. Whatever you like to do on Sunday.

Hang out with the Trillbillies. Bring the Trillbillies into your Sunday. Come hang out with us a little bit. Do that a little bit. Bring us into your marketplace of ideas. We'll hang out with you. So $5 a month. That's P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com slash Trillbilly Workers Party.

And let's get started on this interview with Alex Perrine. And enjoy. Ever since this race began, Dee Huddleston has been running away from his record. But now Kentucky is closing in. Against school prayer, give away our Panama Canucks. Dee runs and Dee hides, but we're going to catch him. It's time you face your record. Mr. Green and Barco, no wonder he's running from his record.

But he can't run forever. We got you now, Dee Huddleston. Switch to Mitch McConnell for U.S. Senate. Alex, I got to tell you, I appreciate you just taking a cold call from a stranger and coming on their weird show in eastern Kentucky. We've been wanting to talk about Mitch McConnell for a while. We just never really had the source material. And so now we did, and we're like, well, let's pop on this

and see if we could get Perrine to come on. Yeah, it's my pleasure. I would much rather speak to you guys about Mitch McConnell than go on MSNBC or something. And I'll take that. You know what? You might actually need to start going on MSNBC, though, because I was reading about how Maddow's ratings have just completely tanked,

I guess, since the Russiagate and stuff. They plunged. It was like they made a bet. They went all in. And I don't know, man. Somebody needs to teach the liberals how to gamble. Yeah. I agree.

I had a cousin that lost $10,000 one time betting on Southeast Missouri State and Austin Peay in college basketball. And the hilarious shit is that he played the over in that game, and he only got the over because he went to triple overtime. That's tantamount to putting all your eggs in the rush gate basket. Yeah. For sure. Betting on college basketball is the craziest thing you can do,

in my opinion. It's a fickle mistress, no doubt about it. Again, thanks, Alex, for being with us. And I guess we'll just open it up talking about our guest is Alex Perrine, who I guess, Alex, maybe you could just introduce yourself a little bit. Sure, yeah. I'm Alex Perrine. yourself a little bit sure yeah uh i'm alex barine uh i'm uh right now i'm a freelance writer um and i have uh worked a lot of places i was a columnist for salon for a few years i was the editor of

gawker i was at splinter uh deadspin a couple other places but uh mainly i'm a writer and an editor uh from minneapolis originally living in brooklyn now for a few years. This is also good for our – we're trying to get all the former Gawker writers. Yeah, that's true. We've collected a Brendan O'Connor and a Nana Merlin. Oh, yeah, I saw Anna just did your show, yeah. Yeah, I was tired of shit. You guys are like Pokemon at this point. So anyway, what we're going to be talking about today is uh alex's piece in the

new republic called the nihilist in chief of course talking about mitch mcconnell and like i mentioned earlier we've been wanting to talk about mitch mcconnell on this show for a little bit never had the source material and then alex brought it to us So to open it up, Alex, you open up this piece talking about Mitch's response to the shutdown was to take to the Washington Post op ed section to deride a set of modest proposals by the Democrats, which has sort of always been his M.O. to paint even the most toothless thing the Dems propose as tantamount to Stalinism. And before we get into the banal, evil, all-destructive reign, I wanted to talk about the ways the loyal opposition aids and abets that reign. So our question is, what missteps do you see the Dems sort of consistently making that feed into McConnell's way of doing things. The main thing that was apparent during the Obama years, especially, was the Democratic tendency to sort of pre-compromise, which they did a lot under the assumption that a

show of good faith would be met with cooperation or even appreciation by Republicans. So, you know, and I think by the end of his second term, he had mostly given up on this. But a lot of his tenure was sort of marked by this pattern of trying to find middle ground with people who didn't actually have any interest in finding middle ground with him. And then so now, you know, now that Obama's out of power and Mitch is much more powerful, I think that the main Democratic sort of tendency commitment to to keeping his political power and denying it to Democrats.

Yeah. One of the things that stuck out to me, you know, while reading this is that McConnell, you know, for all intents and purposes, I mean, he doesn't have a core, as you say, at one point. But he does have a vision, which is more than the Democrats have. And so, you know, it they bargained to get was ostensibly not, I don't know, it's like the thing that the Democrats wanted to enact was a series of tax cuts that the Republicans actually favored, but the Republicans actually went out of their way to obstruct it. Yeah. Yeah. So there were a couple couple things that were going on

there and it was you know it was actually this sort of um mess that lasted you know over a year but um the obama administration having sort of basically decided they had solved the recession um wanted they wanted to pivot to austerity and like they wanted to do austerity economics and republicans did everything they could to block it that was the insane part um they you know they wanted uh uh they wanted to shift to balanced budgets um and they were open to spending cuts they wanted a grand bargain they wanted to compromise and and um it culminated basically with um simpson voles which was supposed to be this bipartisan commission to come up with a grand bargain of spending cuts and tax revenue raising as well, which is where the Republicans kept losing their minds. But at its core, Obama was telling them over and over again, he was open to making Social Security less generous,

to cutting benefits for future retirees which is you would think like the ultimate conservative dream they they've been wanting to to kill these programs or gut them or turn them over to the private sector or turn them over to the finance industry they've been wanting to do variations on that since you know the social security was enacted um and uh the the credit for blowing up those deals usually goes to John Boehner because he couldn't control his caucus and because he ended up rejecting his last deal with the White House. But McConnell was the one who, you know, he did his specialty, which was fading into the wallpaper and just letting other people have these arguments

while he just sort of waited to see what would happen. But he never signaled, like if he had said, you know, you'll get a couple of Republicans on board, we'll be on board if you promise to adopt this change to Social Security benefits, if you promise to not touch these tax rates. Like the White House would have jumped at the opportunity, but by just sort of refusing to even involve himself in the negotiations, he like dealt Obama a political loss while also just turning his nose up at what theoretically would have been a policy win for Republicans.

Yeah. It's interesting. Like before we came here, I was dropping my brother off at the airport and I was like, and he was asking me like, Oh, what are y'all going to, who you're interviewing today? What's it about? And I was like, Oh, well, you know, it's about Mitch McConnell and my brother's not totally out of touch. I mean, he's, you know, he's in college right now. He's pretty smart, but he was, he was like, I don't know who that is. It's like, I just think it's interesting.

Mitch would be thrilled to hear that. Exactly. Absolutely. He would be delighted that your brother can't even remember which one he is. Yeah. So it's like this really crazy thing. It's like, you know, Mitch, he's sort of like, as you put it, like he's got these very sort of simple ambitions, you know,

getting his name on a building or something. Yeah. But at the same time, like I think his central preoccupation is reshaping politics, but doing it in a way that isn't obvious. Like he's just sort of, I don't know, like as you said, he fades into the wallpaper. Yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, he has it's, you know i i say he has no core and and i mean that he doesn't i don't think he's particularly married to the set of policies we

associate with modern conservatism um because he never you know he didn't evince any interest in them before he was a senator and he only sort of insulated from from small D Democratic oversight. that like the engine for this would would have to be um just sort of enabling uh the rich to get much more control over the democratic process and so then that's what he's sort of spent most of his career trying to do since then yeah yeah yeah and it's interesting one of the things that i pointed out here when we were putting these together is like one of the things that the liberals love to bemoan about mcconnell's obstructionism toward what they thought was this great progressive agenda that obama was laying out toward the end of his second term that that uh uh you know that obama was trying to get inactive but the reality is that mcconnell even blocked obama when he was being cooperative um like what

we were just talking about with some of the Republicans' supposed signature policy goals. And I was wondering if you could just talk about that stuff a little bit more, maybe dispel some of those liberal myths around, like, the Democrats' dealings with McConnell toward the end of Obama's second term. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, a lot of it is what I just talked about, sort of with Obama wanting to pivot to austerity, but that was largely in his first term. But I think, you know, he had sort of stopped trying by the end of the second term to get anything resembling an agenda through the Senate and was sort of trying to govern by other means.

But I do I look at something like the Merrick Garland thing, actually, as a really interesting example. Because that was another, you could look at another example of sort of pre-compromise, where Obama picked someone who Republicans had previously said very complimentary things about. So he picked someone who, you know, in another political reality, Republicans would have been fine with allowing to get on the Supreme Court. And McConnell was really, you know, it was his idea to just say, we're not even going to have hearings on this guy. I'm not going to force you to vote no because we're just not even going to take up the nomination. And that could have backfired, actually. And I think it was like it's looked at now as incredibly cunning.

I describe it that way, too. It's like it's looked at now. It's incredibly cunning. I describe it that way, too. But there is a there is a universe where if Trump had lost, like everyone had assumed he would at the time, McConnell trades a 66 year old, extremely moderate Democratic appointee to the Supreme Court for someone Hillary nominates is much younger and probably more liberal. So he could have actually lost on that. And at that point, everything would have come down to his ability to spend literally an entire presidential term trying to block a Supreme Court nomination. He would have tried, but that would have been an incredibly tall order. Right. Well, this just occurs to me as you're saying this, Alex.

The reason why McConnell is a good gambler as opposed to the liberals is because to gamble, you have to know what you want. He knows what he wants, but the liberals don't know what they want. They never knew what they wanted with the Russia gay shit. It's just totally, they don't inherently have any vision.

What they wanted was for the difficult political decisions to be taken out of their hands by a third party. That sort of is what they want. Yeah, that's absolutely right. Well, you know, it's interesting. I think that from our perspective, you know, where we live, like, you know, you could ask, like, how does Mitch McConnell keep winning?

You know what I'm saying? You could ask, how does Mitch McConnell keep winning? You know what I'm saying? Because where we live, I go to some of these black lung meetings with former coal miners and stuff. Every guy there hates Mitch. Mitch is hated in eastern Kentucky, which is really shocking. That's interesting because you would think it's a stronghold. You think it's eastern Kentucky and the hillbillies that no halting lexton louisville from getting their way but not with mitch mcconnell yeah no mitch mcconnell's base if you call it that is like in the sort of

greater louisville area you know like the sort of suburbs and stuff like that but yeah he doesn't really have a lot of that's interesting and i was wondering i actually was kind of wondering uh like because my impression from the outside is that he just sort of drops into the state every six years to like campaign. Well, he does. He does. You can see him at the Pine Mountain Grill in Wattsburg, Kentucky once every six years. You can set your watch back. And he gives the same talk about how he helped get U.S. 23 or was it 119 through there so they could get the coal trucks in and out yeah yeah but yeah I mean I think uh um you know I I read a little bit about his first elections um and you know his background was um was Lexington like that's why he was such a moderate and even almost a liberal yeah um when he first ran because he was running to to to represent a pretty liberal city uh he was

running for like the county executive judge but it was like you know he had to win over the city to win yeah um and then he made his hard right turn a lot later on like a really a lot later on so i think his roots were always like at first um he wanted to be the sort of anti-busing candidate because it was the 70s and that was sort of the single biggest wedge issue but he was even too moderate to really push that um and but i think later on he definitely like he's much more a suburbs guy than like he was ever like what like what people sort of imagine uh i think like a kentucky politician would be he's like he's a product of the sort of well reasonably well off white suburbs all the way yeah absolutely yeah totally well and and the

thing is is like so it's a it's a combination of like he has culled a very specific sort of you know base again um i think senate races are so strange because it's you know it's like you don't really have to win the whole state you just have to win certain sort of yeah you gotta i mean yeah you gotta you gotta you gotta turn out you gotta turn out enough people to to beat whoever you're on again right but every person that the democrats put up against them is just hilariously pathetic like the last person that ran against them is 2014 it was allison londrigan grimes who was the former secretary of state for Kentucky. And it's hilarious now to think about how that like this recycled, like rich kid, daughter of like a former Democratic kingmaker.

Yeah. Was like was like there was so much energy behind her. Like she was the one that was getting ready to do this. Yeah. Yeah. And she didn't have anything. Again, no vision. It was just like mitch it was like republicans light um yeah you know and yeah i mean he's got and so he's you know he's always gonna have um this enormous war chest and he's like he's also like a sort of

notoriously willing to get down in the mud with his opponents. And, you know, he was, Roger Ailes was one of his earliest ad guys. And, you know, he's like, he's a notoriously dirty campaigner, but like, yeah, I mean, I do think also like Democrats are just not putting forth, you know, they're, they're not willing to try anything other than the same sort of people who they think used to work in the past and so it's like you end up going with name recognition and you end up going with like

um well you know this sort of candidate could win a statewide election in 1996 like maybe that'll work again and like obviously the political realities in the ground have changed a lot yeah was was roger was roger ailes the uh genius behind the bloodhounds commercial yeah yeah that was a it's funny because they they they sort of broke up because ailes they both thought they deserved credit for winning the race so like ailes was like ailes was like mitch didn't give me enough credit and mitch was like i won that on my own so like they actually they didn't actually keep working together after that which is actually pretty funny that's fucking hilarious that's the weird paradox of conservative the conservative movement right you've got so many

egos in their room yeah yeah yeah it's for some of our of our uh buddies that we've had done a little bit organizing with on different things had this grand idea a few years ago they were going to take some bloodhounds of their own to dc to confront mitch or maybe it was his kentucky office it was his kentucky office yeah yeah because like you know like i see a sort of like tepid lukewarm democrats in kentucky like they try to do the what about isn't thing with mitch like they try to do the gotcha thing and so the Mitch. Like they try to do the gotcha thing. And so the thing that they do a lot is like, he's never here in his state. And it's just like, that's, you know, none of these people are like, nobody cares.

Like if you're a rich or go ahead. Yeah. One of the defining characteristics of McConnell is like, he's just immune to that criticism. Like it just rolls off him. Totally. And people try it. You just try it with him and i don't even like they're democrats love uh the hypocrisy charge because it's sort of like they like to own you by your own logic and like they're now they're dealing with politicians who

are just immune to it because voters don't actually like they they can sort of they can already see through it i think voters sort of know what kind of man he is, even ones who vote for him. And they're just like, find a different angle here. That one's not working. Well, and so that's the thing about your piece. You're not trying to pull the curtain back and show us who McConnell actually is or whatever. You're trying to show how adept he's been at completely reshaping and transforming the sort of, you know, sort of political institutions to purely court capital. Like that's really that, you know, and there's two things that you point out in the article,

like the two things he's most consistent about is campaign finance and the judiciary. And and so, you know, i i just think that's interesting like i guess could you talk a little bit about that like what you're saying is basically like he's essentially like defanged the senate like he's made it completely um i don't know it's not really a legislative body anymore it's uh it's essentially like he's moved that to the judiciary yeah yeah and that's that's one of the ironies um of his career was that he he did he always um he's always wanted to be uh the senate majority leader and he um always wanted to be spoken of in the same way that people like lbj were but yeah like the end result of his career is that the senate is where like almost any political proposal just

goes to die you know like they could democrat or republicans republicans couldn't get their own um they couldn't get their own health care bill through their own senate they nearly failed on the tax cut which is like the only thing that they live for at this point as a political party is tax cuts. Um, and, uh, um, like really all it exists to do is stymie, um, like potentially progressive things from happening. Like that's the job of the Senate is just to, to stop good things. Um, and you know,

I would imagine that those earlier masters of the senate had slightly higher ambitions than that but like that's that's the only possible end result of of using every parliamentary maneuver you can to um install a reactionary judiciary and and just enable um an endless amount of of money in elections like that's the only possible result so it was all sort of inevitable that it would come to this. Yeah. Well, it's like, there's just a really great quote in here that you have, like, as compared to, like, the sort of neocons.

Like, the neocons wanted power in order to use it to shape the world. McConnell wanted to shape the world into one in which he continues to have power, and he did. And it's like, and that's, again, it goes back to him, like he actually has a vision, and he's worked very hard to implement it over the years. I don't really have much, there's no question there. It's just the...

Yeah, totally. I mean, yeah, the comparison with the neocons is funny. Or even you can, you know, comparing the movement conservatives, I think like his vision is a lot narrower than um the movement conservatives because they actually wanted for a transformation of society um and he like he got it he got his transformation already his transformation was sort of legalistic and it was um economic and he basically got it uh and he doesn't have a you know uh the neocons wanted to sort of exercise american power abroad and when the iraq war looked like it was going to hurt republicans

in the polls in 2006 mcconnell went into bush's office and he said let's pull out that is fucking amazing to me i never knew that yeah he just he went and it's in bush's it's in bush's memoir actually and yeah mcconnell was like um look like, this Iraq thing, it's not working for us. It's going to hurt some of our guys in their elections. Like, let's cut our losses. Well, yeah, no, he has like a sort of long-term agenda that he's trying to implement. And yeah, I don't know. It's, you know, I guess a question I have about it is like, what do you think that bodes for the future of the conservative movement?

Because like, as you point out, in the 2016 GOP convention, he was basically booed by, you know, the more sort of evangelical set. And like, after Trump and McConnell, like, is there any is there any glue that sort of binding? Because, you know, you have another like a quote in there about like Trump basically won because he was able to make somehow it's like weird brain addled way made a coalition of people who hate Republicans on one hand. And on the other hand, people, Republicans who still vote for Mitch. Yeah. And so it's just like I just wouldn't. on one hand and on the other hand people republicans who still vote for mitch yeah and so it's just like i just wouldn't yeah that's what i think a lot a lot of political analysts forget about when they're asking why trump won was that he brought in people who hate republicans into the

tent um i don't know if he'll be able to recreate that he might but it was like actually like he you know he ran as the guy who was beating up on all the other republicans and then so he's going on tv at all these debates and just like just completely destroying all of these unlikable republican losers um and then meanwhile in the background like he's got federalist society guys telling him here are the judges you're going to pick and with mitch's with mitch's advice and consent um they're they're saying like here's how you signal to all the people who vote based on judges that you're on their side um but he said the future like this is actually funny like the republican party has been saved from from some sort of reckoning twice now um and what keeps what the glue that's keeping it together is victory yeah uh and and you know and money like money is sort of the fuel of the engine money's fueling these unlikely victories that sort

of keep this coalition from cracking up it should have cracked up after 2008 um it should have cracked up with trump winning the nomination that should have been the second thing that cracked it up and both times like thanks in large part to huge huge huge amounts of money flowing through the system uh they managed to to win these surprise victories. And that's what sort of keeps it going. Yeah. Well, you know, I think the craziest thing to me about Mitch McConnell is that I think he understands better than anybody else in D.C. how deeply unpopular conservatives are in this country. Yeah.

Yeah. I think, yeah yeah i think he knows and that's why the smart republicans who do know that like um they have a couple like there are some republicans who after who's been spending years saying like like look at you know look at the demographics everyone under 50 hates us that's not sustainable and uh um but you know mcconnell's like his wing of smart republicans is like yeah but we can block a lot of these people from you know getting to the polls so we can we can stop that we can demoralize them um and we can overwhelm them with money and we can we can't keep this up forever we can keep it up long enough to like to win in the short term and that's like he's a short i mean he really is he had a long

game but he's a short termist at heart like he he's like um obviously not concerned about you know the future right he would be he would be a very different sort of person if he had if he was worried about what america will look like 100 years from now totally totally yeah totally and you know i think it's the, you know, for a guy that's put so much emphasis on electoral politics, this strategy is sort of packing out the judiciary and getting all of, you know, his and Trump's picks ran through the express lane and all this stuff

that sort of, like, is going to pad them out for a generation. Yeah, yeah, and that's it, yeah. Yeah, like, you know. That's kind of their death rattle, right? Like, that's all they've got. Yeah, and it's in. Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of their death rattle, right? Like that's all they've got. Yeah. And it's in a funny way, too, like that. So he's ensuring the future of their politics being successful, mainly through the judiciary, having a veto on everything other future coalitions will try to do for decades. But like, that's, you know, that's, that's a hollow victory for the people who signed up for conservatism based on sort of, um, almost rapture like ideas of their side finally winning grand culture war,

you know, like they, they, they, they signed up, uh, to defeat the libs, um, culturally. And, uh, and Mitch is like, you know, we're, we've won we won but what that victory looks like is Betsy DeVos will never have to pay taxes on when she dies you know her heirs are going to get every penny of that

with the Uncle Sam touching it right exactly I guess one thing I'm curious about I'm going to play a little like fictional speculation here, speculative fiction. It's like, okay, so like let's say, for example, that a Democrat does win in 2020. It's hard for me to say whether it's Bernie or someone to the right of Bernie. for me to say whether it's Bernie or someone to the right of Bernie, but what is Mitch's sort of stranglehold on the Senate bode for an executive branch that's run ostensibly

by a progressive? Do we have to look forward to another four years of an Obama-type situation, or can Mitch's power be broken? Can it be broken? Can it be? Can it be? I mean, it could be, but it would take it would it would take really a lot of. Pretty unprecedented and and like extreme moves, I think, and the number one, I mean, you know, the number one thing have to do is is find a way to devolve the power of the senate um it's like it's just an absurd it's an absurd legislative body that like doesn't really have um no no other like stable liberal democracy if there are any left but none of them have anything like the senate the the house of lords had its

power stripped from it 100 years ago basically um and. Um, and, uh, you know, I, I don't like, there are like a lot of ways you can do that, that are, um, that would not require a constitutional amendment. Um, I think like you'd have to start looking at like adding States and other things like that. Um, but you know, the best thing you can sort of hope to do is like win 50 plus one senators and repeal the filibuster and then go from there and like i think that's what you would really end up having to do and like ideally i'd like to see a world where like all the senate does is it's just like um you know uh a rubber check on on or a just a like a

confirms judges for presidents and like like let's let the house actually do the legislating and shit like that but i don't know it's actually like this is a this is a challenge for like political scientists a lot smarter than me to figure out like how do we get rid of the senate without like uh having to rewrite the part of the constitution that says we have to have it yeah yeah yeah well again it just sort of bring it back to what we're talking about earlier. Like, it's incredible to me how Mitch's move isn't necessarily to make the Senate stronger. It's to make it not work, because as you say in the piece, it's much easier to simply make things not work if the only outcome you care about is electoral. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And like I do, you know, I think like he's obviously not going to do this forever.

And someday there will be a different Republican leader who will have a different vision. And at that point, things might work differently. But like the. For the, you know, for the foreseeable future, like it's hard to see how a Democrat gets around him. And, you know, he is actually like getting up there. so but senators also have been known to serve till they're 110 so who knows no guarantees um yeah uh what else you got down there tom well no we kind of we kind of hit on all my do we things that i laid out here yeah i was when I was thinking about this part about the Senate and how it's sort of been this body that all the most ambitious people that don't quite have the chops to be president or something like that have utilized.

I was also thinking about, too, and I know this is kind of dumb, but the Dick Cheney movie. Yeah. Yeah. You know, how he kind of found the back door to power by, you know, redefining the vice president. I kind of wanted to talk about that, that kind of stuff a little bit, like how guys like Mitch, you know, find the hacks sort of to power. It's like what I was saying. The Senate is such an idiosyncratic institution for a country this large to have a non-proportional national legislature that is so small, gives each one of those individual people a lot of power. Yeah. And and, you know, the way they're elected, like he's obviously like he's not like I can't do anything about the fact that he's winning his election beyond throwing money at whatever uninspiring candidate the Democrats put up against him. So it's because of the idiosyncratic nature of a legislature that is so small for such a large country that it's not proportional. So it's not has no bearing on on what the actual sort of opinion shifts in the

country actually are um and like he's only electorally accountable to the population of one state um like i you know i can't do anything about him being re-elected over and over again right except for right to the write magazine articles about him. And so it attracts people who want power, but know they couldn't win it, like by actually winning over a majority of people. Right. You know, and that's like Mitch McConnell is the epitome of someone who like knows he could not go out there and sell what he's trying to sell and win

over 51% of the country. Like he's well aware of that, but he knows he just not go out there and sell what he's trying to sell and win over 51 percent of the country. Like he's well aware of that, but he knows he just has to win over. First, he has to win over whatever portion of Kentuckians vote. And then he has to win over his own colleagues in the in the in the Senate GOP. And that's actually the most surprising thing about his career has been the fact that he managed to win over his own colleagues in the Senate GOP. has been the fact that he managed to win over his own college in the senate right he was not he was not like he was not a beloved figure in the senate gop before he became majority leader by any means um john mccain and him like fought they fought and fought about campaign finance reform viciously and it got personal um and and like really said something about how he radicalized the republican

party that by the end you know m, McCain was not opposing him for leader. Like, I think the votes for leader are behind closed doors, but there was never anyone running against him. No one. He ran unopposed. And McCain was never like this guy who I think is personally corrupt and who fought my one of my main policy proposals should not be the leader. proposals should not be the leader so i don't know that like uh he he found a way to get in there and and and like make the senate the place to enact his his agenda yeah yeah you know another thing about those guys too like you know we were just talking about dick cheney and then of course mitch mcconnell like they come from states that are sort of like marginal and like don't have any real big tv markets not that like mitch now would need like a ton of money to run but like in the 70s before he married elaine chow you know kentucky was

probably a pretty ideal place to set up shop because you know like what's your biggest tv market like the cincinnati area or something like that you know yeah totally yeah and like i mean he's i think he's prided himself on out raising his opponent every time he's run for anything but like that meant a lot that's exactly what you're saying. Like that, that was a lot smaller amount of money back when he was first running for stuff. And so you can get people who, you know, like it's, it's, it's easier to get control of a,

of a party apparatus in a, in a state like that. That's where it's like, these things don't require as much money, you know, like California is, and you know, Texas is an incredibly difficult place to run for anything. Um, but, uh, yeah, you can, you can sort of get through in the, in the mid side, the mid size States that don't have mega cities in them. Like you can, you can, you can definitely like advance pretty far. Yeah. Like I know a lot of people that run for shit in West Virginia do that. They kind of stay away from the DC,

like suburbs of West Virginia, like the Harper's Ferry kind of Shepherdstown area. Right. And kind of, you know, kind of filter down into Charleston and stuff where it's a little cheaper to, to get in on the ground floor. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. That's a good strategy. Oh, yeah. But, yeah, none of these guys' bios, like, where are they born? And it's like, you know, fucking Kansas, you know, or Texas or wherever. It's never West Virginia or Kentucky. Right, right.

Well, Mitch wasn't born in Kentucky, which he was always sort of sensitive about when he was first running for stuff. Yeah, he's from Alabama, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Oh, I actually did not even know that until just now. Yeah, we sent them Bear Bryant. They sent us. Not a net positive.

Yeah, not a fair tradeoff, really. Well, yeah, I guess if we're talking about abolishing things, the Senate's got to go, but i feel like states probably also yeah i mean like yeah it's there you know we can keep them for like uh historical like for like you know just for as like a historical thing but like they shouldn't they should not be a way that we elect presidents and and uh manage the senate like those borders which are already sort of effectively like they don't you know no one is checking your papers when you're crossing state borders. Right.

But, yeah, it's like, it's a crazy way to divide up management of the country. And, you know, the fact that federalism is mainly now just a sort of byword for how conservatives want to impose their policy without having to win national elections. Right. Like, that just goes to tell you, who it serves you know like that's that's all important exactly it just serves business interest yeah and it's like it's crazy that like you know because of uh the the way we do regulations and like we have we have states that are tax havens yeah like we have like international tax havens like Yeah. Like we have international tax havens. Like Delaware, I think. Yeah, you can go to the Cayman Islands. You can go to Delaware.

Yeah. Yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah. It's an international tax haven. It's wild. Yeah.

It's absolutely insane. Well, I think that was all the questions I had. But I don't know if you wanted to talk a little bit more about the Senate, Tom. Well, before we part, I'd like to play a little game called what could all of our branches of government look like if we, you know, we talk about abolishing the Senate, abolishing the states and all this stuff. Like if you two had to recreate this sham of a country, what would the structures look like? What would you keep, throw out, et cetera, et cetera? Well, I think you'd have to have a comprehensive overhaul of the judiciary.

I mean, I think that you would have to rethink entirely our approach to law and jurisprudence and everything. And then obviously, I mean, I think that like, I don't think that there's anything wrong with the sort of parliamentary type of governance system. I mean, you know, in a country that isn't ruled by capitalism, I think it could be a pretty good instrument for democracy. Yeah, I mean, I actually think the Westminster system, Westminster parliamentary system is maybe the most elegant way we've come up with to do representative democracy. And then, so if you want to do representative democracy, I feel like

that's probably best practices like and and if you combine it with basically like proportional representation um and i think actually i think if you look at like it's this isn't like maybe i'm wrong but i think new zealand actually has like uh ranked choice voting and parliamentary democracy and like generally like the outcomes are a little bit more reflective of what people actually want than they are here. Um, but yeah, I mean, if we're talking about like, uh, reshaping society and really it's like a root and branch, like, you know, we get, we have to be sort of figured like, uh, you know, if we're, we have to actually get a judiciary that, that believes in applying like any of those constitutional amendments that are supposed to prevent the,

the police from illegal search and seizure and, and cruel and unusual punishment. It's like, it's wild. It's all that. It's just ignored. So it's like, you know,

obviously we will, we'll dismantle capitalism. And then once we're done doing that, we'll figure out first things first, like who's going to be, yeah. Who's going to be in our, yeah who's gonna be in our nice new congress well yeah you have to figure out a way to detangle um yeah the last 150 years of

jurisprudence from uh capitalism and i don't know it yeah it's i i struggle i struggle with this a lot because like in my head I'm like, at what point does, like, sort of cultural beliefs end and actual sort of policy begin? Like, for example, I think, like, culturally we're a very punitive country. But, like, I don't know, like, if you're talking about, like, uprooting this. You kind of undersold that a little bit. Yeah, you're right. I unders understood that a little bit yeah you're right i undersold that a little bit yeah i mean that's actually that's actually a question i struggle with too

because i do think like a lot of people who care a lot about criminal justice reform don't always grapple with the fact that like culturally as a country we really hate criminals and what we're like and we sort of use them in america we use them as um in as the the socially and politically acceptable version of an underclass basically right like and so you know it's it's okay to do anything to criminals and like that's a lot of stuff is democrat like democratically popular and that's that's the hard part and i do actually i think things i think things are are the culture is finally shifting on that a little bit. I see signs that that's changing, but it's hard to uproot that. Yeah, yeah. No, it will be difficult.

It can be done. But, yeah, the Jacobins tried it, you know, and had their Republican baptisms and whatnot. Yeah. Jacobins tried it, you know, and had their Republican baptisms and whatnot. But yeah. Well, I don't know. Does that what are you about you, Tom? Does that does our does our sort of speculative whatever measure up to your standards? I think we should abolish the states, abolish the Senate, abolish state governments. They just hold such an inordinate amount of power.

Yeah. I feel like and I feel like we could just keep the state lines so everybody can have their own little tribal thing. Yeah, but people can still, yeah, I can still root for the Vikings. Right, yeah. It's like, that's not good. People can still buy Y'all Stars shirts

with the shape of Kentucky on it that says home underneath. Yeah. Yeah, it's just you wouldn't have Matt Bevin or Hal Rogers or Mitch McConnell to sort it. Right, right, right. Yeah. Well, hopefully they make us king tomorrow and we can do all this in a minute.

I heard Mueller just decided that, actually. That was in the report. That's the last thing in the Mueller report. There's this podcast I know in Kentucky. I really like their ideas. Should have fucking known. Doing some good stuff down there, young bloods. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Hey, Alex, thanks so much for coming on, dude. I appreciate your insight. Yeah, thanks. And I've always enjoyed your writing. And it's good to meet you sort of in person. Yeah. If you want to say again where your writing can be found, Alex. Yes.

So the Mitch McConnell piece was in the New Republic. It's in the print magazine. You can read it online right now. But if you wanted to buy a magazine for nostalgia, you can go buy a magazine. And you can see more a magazine um and uh uh you can see uh more of my writing there sometimes and i actually will should have something in the next issue of the baffler magazine as well and then uh you know if you know just look for me on twitter i'll tell you i'll tell you where to find it yeah terence you got something in the baffler today i've

got something in the bag plug that i'll real quick while we're listening to this week. Well, I do have something in the baffler today. It's about rural America. And it actually kind of ties into this because the weird sort of like world that we live in means that like aspects of rural America actually have more political power over the rest of the country. It has more, you know,

there is a sort of disproportionate political power. And we were just talking about that. The fact that like you have senators from a state, uh, with the population, the size of a city block in Chicago or something will have more power, um, than the representatives from those places. Um, but yeah, no, I guess the whole point of the article is that rural America contains the resources, the goods, the materials. You know, timber, coal,

oil, food. And so that's got to be, you know, the flow of that from the rural provinces has to be maintained at all costs, because that's where the profit comes from. So anyways, that's... I'll check it out. Yeah.

I'll read it. It was a response to Paul Krugman's article last week. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's cool. Where he was getting real about rural America. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, anyways, so yeah, I didn't mean to step on your plug there, Al.

No, of course. You feel free. It's your show, plug your stuff. Great, great point. Good point. Well, thanks again, Alex, and, you know, we'll have to do it again sometime. Yeah, totally. It was fun.

All right. Thanks, man. We appreciate it, and we'll talk to you soon. All right, cool. See you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Then when the hurdy-gurdy man came singing Hurdy-gurdy, hurdy-gurdy, hurdy-gurdy, hurdy-gurdy Hurdy-gurdy, hurdy-gurdy, hurdy-gurdy, hurdy-gurdy Hurdy-gurdy, hurdy-gurdy, hurdy-gurdy, hurdy-gurdy Good night.