Speaker 1: Make sure that I get it right. It's ruly to
Speaker 1: Shara to share Teshierra.
Speaker 2: It's a Allen on the screen. But whatever, yeah, all right, changed.
Speaker 1: That one, and then we welcome back to the podcast.
Speaker 3: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask
Speaker 3: what you can do for your country.
Speaker 4: Mister Garbaschoff, Tear down this wall.
Speaker 1: It's the Ricochet Podcast with Charles C. W. Cook and
Speaker 1: Stephen Hayward. I'm James Lillings. Today we talked to Luie,
Speaker 1: to Shara, Liberal Patriot.
Speaker 2: How did we get here?
Speaker 4: Because the mainstream wing of the party is scared the death.
Speaker 5: Of the Moon wing.
Speaker 2: They won't speak.
Speaker 4: Up and they don't stand for anything anymore. All they
Speaker 4: stand for is whatever UH is against whatever President Trump
Speaker 4: stands for.
Speaker 2: This is I think typical of Trump the man.
Speaker 4: This is the kind of character or lack thereof who's
Speaker 4: now president.
Speaker 1: Welcome everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast, episode number five hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy four, Not just Kidding, seven hundred and fifty four.
Speaker 1: Join us at ricochet dot com. You can be part
Speaker 1: of the most stimulating conversations and community on the web.
Speaker 1: It's the place you've been looking for ever since they
Speaker 1: plugged this thing in. I'm James Lollox in Minneapolis, Cloudy Misty,
Speaker 1: and I'm joined by Stephen Hayward in California and Charles C. W.
Speaker 1: Cook in Florida. And as I say, we have the
Speaker 1: entire country covered. Gentlemen, how are you good? Good? How
Speaker 1: are you could be better? Last week I had absolutely
Speaker 1: no opinion about cracker barrel whatsoever, and never been to one,
Speaker 1: never never set foot in one, had no desire to
Speaker 1: set foot in one. But now I've got an opinion
Speaker 1: about cracker barrel. We'll get to that in a second.
Speaker 1: Last week, I wasn't really thinking very much about over
Speaker 1: the road truckers and exactly what problems some of them
Speaker 1: may face. And now, of course, first and foremost in
Speaker 1: my mind, both of these things are things that have
Speaker 1: been bubbling around on Twitter for the last week and
Speaker 1: have yet to really hit the news, but I think
Speaker 1: they will now because Marco Rubio has made a statement
Speaker 1: that the government is going to suspend all renovation of
Speaker 1: the cracker Barrel restaurants. No, I'm sorry, he's going to
Speaker 1: suspect they're going to suspend the people coming in to
Speaker 1: get driver's licenses from other countries. CDLs, And I wonder
Speaker 1: what you guys think about this, because what's interesting to
Speaker 1: me about it is the speed with between this issue
Speaker 1: surfacing and actual government action seems to be new but
Speaker 1: also a defining characteristic of our age. Before we would
Speaker 1: have a blue ribbon commission that would turn out a
Speaker 1: white paper at the end of it, and recommendations would
Speaker 1: be made and it would work its way through dot
Speaker 1: and eventually there would be something and nothing would change.
Speaker 1: But now it's sort of like, which.
Speaker 3: I look, long haul truck driving, actually any truck driving,
Speaker 3: but especially those longer haul the bigger trucks, which require
Speaker 3: a different classification of license. That's not an easy job.
Speaker 3: And you know, my brother was a teamster. He drove
Speaker 3: one of those trucks for a while and he used
Speaker 3: to say, and my perception when I drive out on
Speaker 3: say a Interstate five in California, is that, you know,
Speaker 3: there's a I'm not sure if it's the bell curve
Speaker 3: for truck drivers is the right phrase for it, but
Speaker 3: they are short of good qualified Almost every truck, especially
Speaker 3: independent line or even the big chains like Hunt Brothers
Speaker 3: or something. They'll have big banners on the truck saying
Speaker 3: drivers wanted call one eight hundred, get paid right, and
Speaker 3: a lot of those jobs pay six figures pretty fast.
Speaker 3: For whatever reason. I think because it's a lonely job.
Speaker 3: You know, you're away from your family. They're under a
Speaker 3: lot of pressure to get your destination in time. On
Speaker 3: the other hand, and now all have GPS widgets in them,
Speaker 3: and so your maximum hours are capped, and so anyway,
Speaker 3: I think it's kind of a miserable life. And I'll
Speaker 3: bet that a lot of trucking comp and he's pick
Speaker 3: a lot of people at the margins who are, shall
Speaker 3: we say, if he drivers? And my observation is the
Speaker 3: quality of truck drivers I see on the road. Some
Speaker 3: of them it's not what I remember when I was
Speaker 3: younger and putting in a lot of miles on the road.
Speaker 3: But there's more of them. The other thing, if you
Speaker 3: ever want to see, I should take a video sometime
Speaker 3: if you take Interstate five out of Los Angeles north
Speaker 3: up toward what we used to call the Grapevine, and
Speaker 3: there's a couple of very steep hills, and the truck's
Speaker 3: all bunch up there going up the hill at about
Speaker 3: twenty five miles an hour in low gear and it's amazing.
Speaker 3: And of course, you know, we know Long Beach is
Speaker 3: one of the leading ports in America and a lot
Speaker 3: of that ends up on trucks going all over the country.
Speaker 3: But the truck traffic is just enormous these days. And
Speaker 3: I've never looked for data to see how much it's grown,
Speaker 3: but I'll bet it's been quite substantial in the last
Speaker 3: twenty thirty years.
Speaker 1: My father was a truck driver. I mean, he owned
Speaker 1: the oil company gas business in Fargo, but he drove ry.
Speaker 1: He loved to drive semi. He could find I mean,
Speaker 1: he could climb into a cabin and look at that,
Speaker 1: you know, sixteen years and he could find the right
Speaker 1: one could he could back up up a double tanker
Speaker 1: to a loading dock to get product filled. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just amazing. So I respect that. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, one of his drivers had a diabetic episode
Speaker 1: back in the day and actually started driving the wrong
Speaker 1: way on the other side of the highway with oncoming
Speaker 1: traffic with a full load of number two in the back.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, that was a disaster reverted. So yeah, it's
Speaker 1: always been a dangerous job, but it seems to be yes,
Speaker 1: they aren't getting enough so we have more accidents. We
Speaker 1: have more guys who are going down hills just jamming
Speaker 1: on the brakes and sitting letting the engine throttle. At Charles,
Speaker 1: we would have to ask you about your opinion about
Speaker 1: LORI drivers, wouldn't we You would?
Speaker 5: You would? Do you know?
Speaker 6: I actually said that word on my trip to Pigeon Ford's, Tennessee,
Speaker 6: and my wife said, don't say Laurie like that. Normally
Speaker 6: she likes my accent and linguistic foibles, but this time
Speaker 6: I think that one was not attractive, so she said,
Speaker 6: don't say Laurie. Don't But I did say Laurie anyhow. Yes,
Speaker 6: this story which happened in Florida is horrible. A family
Speaker 6: was wiped out. I think there are some obvious government
Speaker 6: interests here. One of the problems, beyond truck driving proficiency,
Speaker 6: about which I.
Speaker 5: Know very little, is English speaking.
Speaker 6: That is the complaint that I have heard from people
Speaker 6: over the last three or four years.
Speaker 5: It's always pooh poohed.
Speaker 6: I submit that it won't be from now on, but
Speaker 6: I've heard it said over and over again that we
Speaker 6: have a big problem in America because there are a
Speaker 6: bunch of illegal immigrants who do not speak English who
Speaker 6: drive trucks, and they can't read the signs on the road,
Speaker 6: and that's very important if you're expected to know where
Speaker 6: the runoff lane is, or look at the gradient information,
Speaker 6: or see where the way station is located. So I
Speaker 6: do think that that's a problem. And I say this
Speaker 6: having come fresh off speaking at a naturalization ceremony here
Speaker 6: in Jacksonville yesterday. I was the featured speaker at the
Speaker 6: big citizenship ceremony.
Speaker 5: Was very moving.
Speaker 6: But of course everyone who went through that and followed
Speaker 6: the rules has to display a proficiency in English. And
Speaker 6: there's a good reason that we have these expectations. So
Speaker 6: I don't know enough about it to give you a
Speaker 6: white paper answer, but I do think reformers in the cards,
Speaker 6: because that was a horrible thing that happened, and it's
Speaker 6: not something that came out of the blue. It's an
Speaker 6: odd thing to have been told about, but I have
Speaker 6: been told about this problem for years. People have brought
Speaker 6: it up, and now we have this this tragedy.
Speaker 1: Well, one of the things that came out of the
Speaker 1: blue was the rating of John Bolton's house. John Bolton,
Speaker 1: of course, a man who possesses the best, most accedence
Speaker 1: in Wilford Brimley. I think he bought it from him,
Speaker 1: actually or actually no, I think it's more he's up
Speaker 1: there with the sam Eliot quality. In any case, Bolton
Speaker 1: got rated. BI director Cosh Ptel said on Twitter, of course,
Speaker 1: because that's what we say these things, is that no
Speaker 1: one is above the law. I FBI agent's on the mission.
Speaker 1: We're hearing that phrasing awful lot. Trump said, I don't
Speaker 1: know anything about it. What's going on here? I have
Speaker 1: no idea.
Speaker 3: I don't know if it's some kind of payback by
Speaker 3: some people in the Trump administration. We know that Biden
Speaker 3: was sloppy about keeping documents, and you know Trump, like Lise,
Speaker 3: you know, I know John a little bit. My office
Speaker 3: was right next door to his at AEI way back when,
Speaker 3: and he always.
Speaker 2: Struck me as someone who's not sloppy.
Speaker 3: I mean, he always had a neat desk, he was
Speaker 3: always worth long hours, was always very precise about things.
Speaker 3: So I'd be surprised if he was sloppy about keeping documents.
Speaker 2: But I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, who knows. I'll be curious to see if
Speaker 3: we ever find the affidavit behind the warrant at some point.
Speaker 1: His persistence in the national political theater is something of
Speaker 1: a mystery to me. But I gather that he's getting
Speaker 1: more currency lately because he's not exactly a fan Donald
Speaker 1: Trump and Charles, what do you take of this? Is
Speaker 1: this more authoritarian payback? Or is this as somebody said, well, look,
Speaker 1: if you're going to take on the deep state in
Speaker 1: all of its manifestations, doesn't hurt to go after people
Speaker 1: in your own party first, just to show that it's
Speaker 1: not partisan. Although although.
Speaker 6: Wow, that one I'm not sold on. I don't think
Speaker 6: Donald Trump thinks they're at the same party. Right, How
Speaker 6: long have you got? This is a really complicated issue.
Speaker 6: The answer is there is a Steelman case for this
Speaker 6: which goes something like this, John Bolton did it. He
Speaker 6: is not the president, therefore is not protected by his
Speaker 6: ability to declassify information and all the Supreme Court case
Speaker 6: Trump for the United States, we do and should prosecute
Speaker 6: people who violate the rules surrounding classified information.
Speaker 5: No one is above the law. That's the steel Man argument.
Speaker 6: That might be completely irrelevant in this case because this
Speaker 6: could be political payback. The worrying possibility is that the
Speaker 6: Trump administration simply hates John Bolton is still smarting at
Speaker 6: having been targeted by Joe Biden and wanted to make
Speaker 6: somebody who doesn't like pay. The broader thought that I
Speaker 6: have given that I don't know any more details than
Speaker 6: you do, is that the original sin here was James
Speaker 6: Comy's treatment of Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton was guilty of
Speaker 6: violating the law. Now I am open to the idea
Speaker 6: that that is a bad and in some sense unconstitutional law,
Speaker 6: the Wilson ere Espionage Act, and that it was not
Speaker 6: in the public interest to prosecute her. But James Comy
Speaker 6: found a loophole and he used it to let her
Speaker 6: off the hook. And then that loophole was not applied
Speaker 6: equally to everyone. Joe Biden got the advantage of it,
Speaker 6: although there was another excuse with him. Donald Trump did not,
Speaker 6: And I don't think you can run a country like this.
Speaker 6: So when the Biden one broke, my view was you
Speaker 6: can't touch Biden because you didn't touch Hillary. And when
Speaker 6: the Trump one broke, my view was you can't touch
Speaker 6: Trump because you didn't touch Biden and you didn't touch Hillary.
Speaker 5: And I still hold that.
Speaker 6: So if we are talking here about equal crimes alleged
Speaker 6: crimes which I don't know.
Speaker 5: Then my view will be the same here.
Speaker 6: You can't touch Bolton because you didn't touch Trump, and
Speaker 6: you didn't touch Biden, then you didn't touch Hillary. I
Speaker 6: think James Comey did something really really bad. Was that
Speaker 6: rather than try and establish a rule of prosecutorial discretion
Speaker 6: that was broad and clear and could be applied to everyone,
Speaker 6: he's simply made up the law. And when you make
Speaker 6: up the law, you create really difficult scenarios for your successes.
Speaker 6: And that could be what we're looking at here. So
Speaker 6: I am, in a sense giving you a non answer, James,
Speaker 6: I'm all the way from could be still manned, could
Speaker 6: be complicated, or could be tyranny.
Speaker 1: It's one of the three. There's more no touching in
Speaker 1: that last thing. You said that in a Fargo Lutheran
Speaker 1: church in nineteen SISO. So is there anything more to
Speaker 1: say about this? Or should we move along to other things,
Speaker 1: such as the Trump find being tossed half a billion?
Speaker 2: Guess not well before we do that, James, or maybe after.
Speaker 2: I don't care.
Speaker 3: I thought Trump was going on a ride along with
Speaker 3: a DC police or National Guard last time. I haven't
Speaker 3: heard anything about it. I mean, my joke was Trump
Speaker 3: has gone from just trolling the left to patrolling.
Speaker 1: Against the left. Yeah, I know. I mean there was
Speaker 1: an MSNBC or an ms NOW person who was saying
Speaker 1: the other day that before he decided that he said
Speaker 1: he was going to go on the right along. They
Speaker 1: said that when it came to d C crime, Trump
Speaker 1: thinks he's Batman. And I thought, that's not a very
Speaker 1: good argument to make people like Batman. You want to
Speaker 1: make the case that he thinks he's bane. That's something else.
Speaker 1: But people kind of like a rich guy with lots
Speaker 1: of tools who goes around at night and keeps the
Speaker 1: bad guy and drows them off roofs. Anyway, So should
Speaker 1: the fine has been tossed? And what is that that that?
Speaker 1: I mean, everyone is still going to call him a
Speaker 1: fellon thirty four counts, et cetera. But now the fine's tossed.
Speaker 1: Is that indicate that there might be success on the
Speaker 1: appeal because it's still appealing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it looks to me like it's going to fall
Speaker 3: apart like the Georgia case against him did. And I
Speaker 3: don't know, I kind of expected this all along. The
Speaker 3: one question is what took the court so long. The
Speaker 3: New York Court of Appeals whatever their high court is called,
Speaker 3: it usually works with great dispatch.
Speaker 2: So and apparently it's a split ruling.
Speaker 3: I haven't chased it down yet, but my guess is
Speaker 3: this is the first big step to the whole thing
Speaker 3: going away.
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Speaker 1: at Ali, welcome back to the podcast. RUI to share
Speaker 1: on He's a senior fellow with the American Enterprise Institute,
Speaker 1: co founder and politics editor of the SUBSEAC newsletter The
Speaker 1: Liberal Patriot. He was a founding fellow of the Center
Speaker 1: of American Progress and co author The Emerging Democratic Majority
Speaker 1: in two thousand and two. More recent publications have included
Speaker 1: The Optimistic Leftist and Where have all the Democrats Gone? Welcome, well,
Speaker 1: thank you, glad to be here. A lot of talk
Speaker 1: this week about how the Democrats are losing some of
Speaker 1: their customary support, that they are pulling horribly with young men.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, there seems to be a
Speaker 1: move from young men to the Republican Party. As somebody
Speaker 1: else was pointing out this morning, that they got a
Speaker 1: Karen problem, and they refuse to acknowledge it. Problem is
Speaker 1: that Karen's are their base, and Karen's vote all the
Speaker 1: rest of these things. So the change in their appeal
Speaker 1: seems to have been rather size maicing, tectonic, and it
Speaker 1: shifts due to a variety of reasons. So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: ask you if indeed you see that big of a shift,
Speaker 1: and if you do, if you share what the writer
Speaker 1: of pinning as the reasons for it. Mainly a sense
Speaker 1: of cultural disdain, looking down, being scolds and no fund
Speaker 1: and all the rest of that stuff, right.
Speaker 7: Right, Yeah, No, I do think they're in a bit
Speaker 7: of a pickle. I mean, I think the data is
Speaker 7: pretty clear in this. Obviously, we all know what happened
Speaker 7: in twenty twenty four A and what so many Democrats
Speaker 7: kidded themselves could never happen, That Trump would actually do
Speaker 7: better in the selection they'd ever done before, and there
Speaker 7: would be this shoe, these huge shifts among working class Hispanics, Hispanic.
Speaker 2: Men, young men.
Speaker 7: You know, there is even shifts among women who were
Speaker 7: just smaller than among men. So it was generally an
Speaker 7: all around, you know, clock cleaning by Trump. Since then,
Speaker 7: we've seen Democrats fail to really break out. Despite all
Speaker 7: the vulnerabilities that Trump is as evidence and a lot
Speaker 7: of the things he's done, they just aren't very popular.
Speaker 7: The overreach on a variety of different issues. People don't
Speaker 7: have much faith in the economy, even despite the fact
Speaker 7: they elected Trump to some extent to fix the economy.
Speaker 7: None of that has elevated the Democrats, who have historically
Speaker 7: low favorability ratings. They don't have much of a lead
Speaker 7: in the generic congressional ballot when if you compare it
Speaker 7: to twenty eighteen, they were already far ahead at this point.
Speaker 2: And just for recently, of course.
Speaker 7: There was this huge I mean, and people who follow
Speaker 7: these data kind of knew a lot of the stuff.
Speaker 2: Anyway, there's a big data, deep data dive in the.
Speaker 7: New York Times about voter registration trends over the last
Speaker 7: period of time, both up to twenty twenty four and
Speaker 7: even since twenty twenty four, and it's all bad, bad,
Speaker 7: bad news for the Democrats. I mean, they're just losing
Speaker 7: ground everywhere to Republicans, particularly in important states. Somebody actually
Speaker 7: crunched the data and looked at, for example, what's happening
Speaker 7: with young men and young women. I was just looking
Speaker 7: at this today, and among young women, those willing to
Speaker 7: register as Democrats has declined only slightly. But among young
Speaker 7: men it's just cratered. It's now under thirty percent, whereas
Speaker 7: it was close to fifty percent not that long ago.
Speaker 7: So so something's going on here, you know, it's Dylan said,
Speaker 7: But you don't know what it is, do you, mister Democrat.
Speaker 7: I think some of them suspect it, but I do
Speaker 7: think that they're quite reluctant to really embrace it, understand it,
Speaker 7: actually try to fix it. They think if they just
Speaker 7: change the subject, or they turn up the volume in
Speaker 7: economic issues, or they talk about abundance, so what have you,
Speaker 7: this will do it.
Speaker 2: And I do not think that's true.
Speaker 7: I think the critique that they're culturally out of step
Speaker 7: with the median working class voter and indeed the bulk
Speaker 7: of the population is just true. I mean, that's true
Speaker 7: in a variety of issues. You know it's true from
Speaker 7: voting behavior. We know it's true from where they're losing ground.
Speaker 7: I mean, this is a party whose national profile and
Speaker 7: the people who run it and the people who are
Speaker 7: associated with it are simply not the same type of
Speaker 7: people who they want to vote for them. And they
Speaker 7: have a series of cultural attitudes that in fact does
Speaker 7: translate into disdain for the great unwashed of these United States.
Speaker 2: And I think, you know, people aren't dumb.
Speaker 7: They sense this, they know this, and they realize not
Speaker 7: only was that true leading up to twenty twenty four,
Speaker 7: and this is what I just wrote about on The
Speaker 7: Liberal Patriot. There's not a lot of change since then, right,
Speaker 7: I Mean, basically they've only backtracked very slightly. On some
Speaker 7: issues where people have tried to break from the pack,
Speaker 7: they've been immediately slapped down by the activists and other politicians.
Speaker 7: And where the real action is in the Democratic Party
Speaker 7: now is basically amping up your resistance cred And that's
Speaker 7: why Gavin Newsom, the dreadful, dreadful Gavin Newsom, has actually
Speaker 7: like broken out of the pack.
Speaker 2: I mean, they've sent these poles mean anything at this point.
Speaker 7: He's clearly benefited from his willingness to do anything and
Speaker 7: say anything to maximize his resistance profile. So I think
Speaker 7: that's what plays within the Democratic Party now, but I
Speaker 7: think it's actually not what would play with the broad
Speaker 7: electorate as we move, you know, toward twenty twenty eight
Speaker 7: and beyond. I mean one way to one way I
Speaker 7: summarize it is they still we're at a populist moment,
Speaker 7: a populist age, right, and they still don't get it.
Speaker 7: They still are not willing to be in touch with it,
Speaker 7: to acknowledge their weaknesses, which go far beyond not having
Speaker 7: you know, the best economic program or something.
Speaker 2: So I think that's where we're at.
Speaker 7: And again, like I see little evidence that they're changing
Speaker 7: their tune very fast. In the piece I was just
Speaker 7: alluding to, I called it two three many sister soldier movements.
Speaker 7: That's soldier moments. That's what the Democrats need, and I
Speaker 7: think that's true. They need to profile themselves as a
Speaker 7: different kind of Democrat, and to do that you have
Speaker 7: to break ostentatiously and directly with the forces in their
Speaker 7: party and specific individuals and groups. We were pushing this
Speaker 7: slow to say so really, let.
Speaker 2: Me jump in right here.
Speaker 3: First of all, it warms my heart as an inmate
Speaker 3: of Gavin Newsom's stand that you call him dreadful. I
Speaker 3: heard Mark Halpern yesterday saying he right now, in Mark
Speaker 3: Helper's judgment, is the front runner for twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 3: But you know, when I read your piece yesterday, one
Speaker 3: too many sister soldier moments, I had a flashback because
Speaker 3: it seems to me the Democratic Party has been there before,
Speaker 3: and I'm thinking of that time after George H. W.
Speaker 3: Bush won in nineteen eighty eight. I don't know if
Speaker 3: you remember the book by Peter Brown, the reply to
Speaker 3: it even right well, there's one quote from here to
Speaker 3: share with you and listeners, and it's of the young
Speaker 3: Democratic governor of Arkansas, and as a long passes about
Speaker 3: how you know Jesse Jackson, who younger listeners may not know,
Speaker 3: was a real contender for the nomination in nineteen eighty
Speaker 3: eight and panic the Democratic establishment as much as Bernie
Speaker 3: Sanders did twice, and he quotes Bill Clinton here saying,
Speaker 3: I have never believed Democrats need to distance themselves from
Speaker 3: Jesse Jackson. I think the Democrats need to disagree with him.
Speaker 3: And of course that's what Clinton did three years later.
Speaker 7: Right well, I think, you know, it's like kind of
Speaker 7: a semantic distinction.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think he really did distance.
Speaker 7: So he did his intervention at Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition.
Speaker 7: I mean, it wasn't saying I hate Jesse Jackson, but
Speaker 7: the message couldn't have been clear.
Speaker 3: So right, well, my question is is I don't think
Speaker 3: that person is Gavenusom, but is there somebody out there?
Speaker 3: And more to the point, if you strip away all
Speaker 3: the sort of social and cultural baggage drowning Democrats right
Speaker 3: now and they get back to an economic message, what
Speaker 3: is that message? I mean, I'm a fan of the
Speaker 3: abundance people, but I think there's some limitations to that.
Speaker 3: Although you know, I can't make their conference next month, unfortunately.
Speaker 3: I know you'll be there, but.
Speaker 2: I'll be there case.
Speaker 3: So that looks very promising to me as a policy
Speaker 3: wonk that I am. But beyond that, what is the message?
Speaker 3: What could work for a sensible democrat, say, I rot
Speaker 3: Emmanuel who if he gets out of the witness protection
Speaker 3: program for disagreeing about the transgender business. Right, what's the
Speaker 3: message going to be?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I don't know. I think that's a you know,
Speaker 7: it's an excellent question. I mean, I do think that
Speaker 7: even a better economic program is merely a necessary but
Speaker 7: not sufficient condition to rehabilitate themselves without the cultural shift.
Speaker 7: I think even that won't go anywhere, no matter how.
Speaker 2: Good it is.
Speaker 7: But they do need dad say something about and what's
Speaker 7: their plan for the economy, what's their plan for national development?
Speaker 7: What's their plan for moving the country forward economically? And
Speaker 7: I think right now the abundance people are having a moment,
Speaker 7: that's clear.
Speaker 2: But whose moment is this? Right?
Speaker 7: I think this is a moment within the elite democratic discourse.
Speaker 7: I think it's a moment within you know, those who
Speaker 7: control the commanding heights of cultural production, right, they're willing
Speaker 7: to countenance. The Ideamocrats have screwed up some things. There's
Speaker 7: too many rigs, need more housing. Even our sacred clean
Speaker 7: energy commitments, you know, are are falling under the under
Speaker 7: the sway of all these regulations which you're holding it back.
Speaker 7: That's a really bad thing because then we're all going
Speaker 7: to die if we don't have more clean energy.
Speaker 2: So I think that's real. I think it's happening.
Speaker 7: But what is its cachet among normy voters who might
Speaker 7: be interested in voting for the Democrats. What is its
Speaker 7: cachet with the working lass, both those who are still
Speaker 7: in the Democratic Party and those who have left it.
Speaker 7: I don't think it's really high. I mean, I think
Speaker 7: this is an elite discourse. I mean, even though I
Speaker 7: support various aspects of it, I do think that it's
Speaker 7: it's it's kind of problematic in a lot of ways.
Speaker 7: I can use that terrible term. It's just it's not
Speaker 7: focused on the working class. It's not focused on abundances.
Speaker 7: Most people would define it who are not coast to
Speaker 7: liberals who live in big metropolitan areas, right, that's what
Speaker 7: they care about infield housing, fifteen minute cities, more wind
Speaker 7: and solar blah blah blah. This is not what people
Speaker 7: care about. People care about more stuff, being richer, having
Speaker 7: a big ass truck, living in the suburbs. They want more.
Speaker 7: And when you say abundance to a normal person, to
Speaker 7: extent they even understand the words.
Speaker 2: That's what they think. Oh, great, you're gonna there's gonna
Speaker 2: be more stuff. Tell me how do we do this?
Speaker 7: And let's say, oh, we have to change the zoning regulations,
Speaker 7: and then we have to make sure that this uh,
Speaker 7: you know this, this wind and solar project goes through
Speaker 7: and you know, much less time than it used to.
Speaker 7: And I don't totally do I don't think people are
Speaker 7: say what you want what I mean? In a way,
Speaker 7: it reminds me of the reformicons back in the day,
Speaker 7: when we had an interesting set of ideas which certainly
Speaker 7: could have been an improvement, and where the Republicans were
Speaker 7: at the time, but it was again, it was part
Speaker 7: of the elite discourse.
Speaker 2: It never really percolated down to normy voters.
Speaker 3: Yeah I was one of them, by the way, and
Speaker 3: we get would we get run over by the Trump
Speaker 3: train in a hurry?
Speaker 1: You did?
Speaker 2: You did? The tire tracks are still your back man.
Speaker 5: Hi, Really, it's Charles Kirk to speak to you again.
Speaker 6: So I have a question about how you get from
Speaker 6: where the Democratic Party currently is to where you would
Speaker 6: like it to be.
Speaker 5: I use you in the VU form. I don't think
Speaker 5: it's your responsibility.
Speaker 6: On the right, we have a certain autoimmune deficiency in that,
Speaker 6: for understandable reasons, we don't like the media, and we
Speaker 6: also distrust a bunch of institutions, health institutions, for example.
Speaker 6: But sometimes that leads us to believe nothing that is
Speaker 6: said by a figure in authority or of expertise, and
Speaker 6: sometimes that can lead to really bad outcomes. And so
Speaker 6: if those who know what they're talking about are opposed
Speaker 6: to something, then that just gets discounted and it can
Speaker 6: be quite difficult to advance reforms within the framework. On
Speaker 6: the left, it seems to me that the autoimmune deficiency
Speaker 6: is a sense that compromise is allowing in evil or
Speaker 6: bigotry or racism or whatever. And if you look at,
Speaker 6: for example, immigration, you see this all the time. For
Speaker 6: most of modern American history, at least since the nineteen
Speaker 6: thirties forties, it was accepted that we have debates over
Speaker 6: who comes in, and sometimes the consequences are ugly, and
Speaker 6: sometimes they weren't, and sometimes we wanted more and less
Speaker 6: and different. But that was something we debated. And in
Speaker 6: the nineties when Clinton was president, you had Barbara Jordan
Speaker 6: who was in the same party.
Speaker 5: People who were more in favor of open borders, right.
Speaker 6: But now the idea in a lot of the party
Speaker 6: and certainly culturally, is that any immigration enforcement whatsoever, forget Trump,
Speaker 6: any enforcement is racism, xenophobia, bigotry, or whatever. And that's
Speaker 6: the sort of autoimmune deficiency, and that it prevents compromise
Speaker 6: or moving forward. And my question is how do the
Speaker 6: Democrats as a party get past that, because the average
Speaker 6: Democratic voted doesn't seem to me to be of that
Speaker 6: view at all.
Speaker 5: But no politician.
Speaker 6: Seems to be able to stand up and say, well,
Speaker 6: we need to compromise on this, this, that and the other,
Speaker 6: or debate this, that and the other because they get
Speaker 6: called names and they're terrified of being called names.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 7: No, obviously there's a lot to that. I mean, who
Speaker 7: are who are the Democrats these days? Certainly if you
Speaker 7: just look at everybody who votes for a Democrat in
Speaker 7: any race, or even people who party ID at least
Speaker 7: leans democratic. I mean, there's certainly a lot more diversity
Speaker 7: than you see among the people who seem to be
Speaker 7: calling the shots in the Democratic Party.
Speaker 2: I think that's true, But I think the farther up
Speaker 2: you go in.
Speaker 7: The food chain, right from the activists to the people
Speaker 7: who run party organizations, to the people in the NGO,
Speaker 7: so the people in the foundation, to the people who
Speaker 7: control the media discourse who lean democratic, the people who
Speaker 7: who contribute the most money, the people have the loudest megaphones,
Speaker 7: the biggest voices. In other words, the hupper middle class
Speaker 7: professional liberals who really set the tone for the party.
Speaker 7: They're just way more of them than they used to be,
Speaker 7: and they're way more liberal than they used to be.
Speaker 7: And they are the ones who make the trains run
Speaker 7: on time. They're the ones who are in the institutions
Speaker 7: that really are responsible for giving the Democratic Party the
Speaker 7: cultural legimity it has. And why should they change? I mean,
Speaker 7: they feel these things are moral commitments. Plus they owe
Speaker 7: their position to some extent from reading chapter and verse
Speaker 7: from the Bible we currently have, So again, why should
Speaker 7: they change. It may not be optimizing for the Democratic
Speaker 7: Party as a whole, but they don't see it that way,
Speaker 7: and they're really optimizing to some extent their own individual
Speaker 7: position in the labor market or in the cultural discourse.
Speaker 7: So I think, yeah, I mean, it's a long winding
Speaker 7: way of saying I think it's really going to be
Speaker 7: hard to change because I think the people who could
Speaker 7: most directly change the discourse are not going to do
Speaker 7: it willingly. And then you know, it would really come
Speaker 7: down to a sense, it's not going to be upswelling
Speaker 7: from the ground up of more moderate Democrats.
Speaker 2: I just don't think that's going to work.
Speaker 7: I think you would have to have, in the context
Speaker 7: probably of the presidential contest moving into twenty twenty eight,
Speaker 7: someone who's willing to break the crockery and thereby shift
Speaker 7: the discourse.
Speaker 2: Is willing to take a chance.
Speaker 7: I mean, I think the most probable outcome is they're
Speaker 7: all going to be herded toward you know, who's the
Speaker 7: biggest resistance fighter. I mean, I already see it happening.
Speaker 7: I mean, look at even someone like Andy Basheer, right,
Speaker 7: the big moderate from Kentucky. What is his big applause line.
Speaker 7: It's because he vetoed hateful bills against the LGBTQI plus population.
Speaker 7: I mean, this tells you a lot about where even
Speaker 7: moderates feel they have to go at this point within
Speaker 7: the Democratic Party debate.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, you brought up.
Speaker 7: The issue of immigration. It's really quite extraordinary. I mean,
Speaker 7: they got totally hammered on the issue. Everybody saw it
Speaker 7: was a massive failure. But now that Trump is actually
Speaker 7: shut down the border, there's no support for that whatsoever,
Speaker 7: other than even maybe even there's not even a lot
Speaker 7: of acknowledgment that it's happened, because the real concentration is
Speaker 7: on the ice raids, the pickups, the deportations.
Speaker 2: I mean, people.
Speaker 7: Uniformly Democrats and Democratic activists are apoplectic about this. This
Speaker 7: is a police state. This is completely unjustified. There's nothing
Speaker 7: good about it. Well, there are obviously stuff that's happening
Speaker 7: that's kind of noxious, But on the other hand, what
Speaker 7: is their program for deportations? So they would believe in deportations. Obviously,
Speaker 7: if someone can come here and if they stay for
Speaker 7: three weeks, they can stay here forever. That's not a
Speaker 7: viable strategy, right, that's not The incentive structure is all wrong. So,
Speaker 7: and this is one reason why people don't trust the Democrats,
Speaker 7: because even though they may pick up on some things
Speaker 7: that are happening that people are viscerally apt and seem cruel.
Speaker 7: They don't trust the Democrats to trend, you know, sort
Speaker 7: of move on from that to an actual workable immigration
Speaker 7: program that what, as you say, decide who gets in
Speaker 7: and who doesn't and would stick to the rules. I
Speaker 7: think voters have no faith in the Democrats for that
Speaker 7: at this point, and I think again, breaking out of
Speaker 7: that will be really hard for all the reasons we
Speaker 7: just we've just been discussing.
Speaker 3: So Ry, can I ask you a different question about
Speaker 3: another about economics and populism?
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: In addition to that amazing New York Times story about
Speaker 3: the voting problems, there was also this week, uh, the
Speaker 3: latest series of headlines I can go back to and
Speaker 3: feature stories in the Times. I want to call it
Speaker 3: up here about oh shoot, I'm having a trouble here.
Speaker 2: No, here it comes.
Speaker 3: Here's the headline, abolish the Senate and the Electoral College
Speaker 3: packed the court? Why the Left can't win without a
Speaker 3: new constitution?
Speaker 2: Now could go wrong? What could go wrong? These are
Speaker 2: great ideas, right?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 3: Yeah, aside from the merits or I think demerits of
Speaker 3: all those ideas. I have a simple question, which I
Speaker 3: have various answers, both psychological and philosophical for it, but I.
Speaker 2: Want to hear yours. Okay, My question is, well, wait
Speaker 2: a minute.
Speaker 3: The Democratic Party dominated American politics for fifty years in
Speaker 3: a New Deal era. They did just fine under those rules.
Speaker 3: So why do we need to change them now? Well,
Speaker 3: because they're not dominating politics anymore. They're actually losing elections.
Speaker 3: And so I mean, you know, the partisan conservative Republican
Speaker 3: will say, and I joined them half the time, is gee,
Speaker 3: now that you're losing, what's your answer? Change the rules
Speaker 3: rather than change your message or adapt to it. But
Speaker 3: I mean, is that a is there some merit to
Speaker 3: that objection? I mean, I want to hear from a
Speaker 3: smart social democrat like you about how we should think
Speaker 3: about By the way, I've got a whole file of
Speaker 3: Times articles like that the Constitution is obsolete, we should
Speaker 3: get rid of it, it's an obstacle to change and
Speaker 3: so forth.
Speaker 7: Now, wasn't there someone who wrote an op ed in
Speaker 7: the Times a while ago? I think this is before
Speaker 7: the twenty four election that advocated turning DC into seven
Speaker 7: hundred and twenty eight different histories, all of which would
Speaker 7: have their own senator or something. I mean, there's been
Speaker 7: a lot of right, there's been a lot of wacky stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're here.
Speaker 3: Sorry, here we Here are four more headlines that I've collected,
Speaker 3: all from the last two years. The Constitution is broken
Speaker 3: and should not be reclaimed all New York Times elections
Speaker 3: are bad for democracy.
Speaker 2: Now, that one was just who could argue with that?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: And then but another more serious one is the Constitution
Speaker 3: is sacred? Is it all so dangerous? In other words,
Speaker 3: I'm an old fashioned person who reads the Federal's papers
Speaker 3: that said, you know, Madison Hamilton's saying, you know, if
Speaker 3: the rule of law is going to replace the rule
Speaker 3: of men, that means our fundamental legal document must be
Speaker 3: an object of reverence by the people. They use that
Speaker 3: word reverence right now, I'm kind of old fashioned devote,
Speaker 3: devote on the founding, but I'm kind of seeing a
Speaker 3: loss of reverence for the Constitution among many progressives. I'll
Speaker 3: stop there.
Speaker 7: Yeah, okay, obviously that's that's true. And I think your
Speaker 7: point earlier about well, why would they be saying this now?
Speaker 7: And they really did just fine with the rules, and
Speaker 7: you know, long ears of American politics.
Speaker 2: It really isn't that complicated.
Speaker 7: It's like you say, the wrong people now have too
Speaker 7: much influence, and the wrong people have too much influence
Speaker 7: because of the way our constitution's structuralway or institution. Therefore
Speaker 7: we need to change that so the right people will
Speaker 7: have more influence.
Speaker 2: So this is I mean, this is basically insane, I think.
Speaker 7: I mean, the very fact that Democrats progressives would toy
Speaker 7: with this stuff, it's just an indication they're you know,
Speaker 7: they're they're running out of room, they're running out of
Speaker 7: they're desperate, they're flailing, right. I mean, this is what
Speaker 7: you do, and you can't think of anything else to say,
Speaker 7: Let's just change the prigand rules. See, I know the
Speaker 7: guy who wrote that op ed you you were mentioning earlier.
Speaker 7: You used to write for the New Republic, the first
Speaker 7: one you mentioned, he's look, I mean, he's this is
Speaker 7: a kind of wild you know, progressivism, unhinged type stuff
Speaker 7: that plays very well in significant sectors of the party,
Speaker 7: and it's playing better now as the trumpetmen stration goes on,
Speaker 7: because you know, people are in full resistance mode. How
Speaker 7: could this terrible thing have happened? I mean, there was
Speaker 7: like a window of maybe two months where Democrats seemed
Speaker 7: a little chase in well, maybe maybe we did screw
Speaker 7: it all up, Maybe we really do need to change
Speaker 7: a lot, And they say, nah, we don't need to
Speaker 7: do that. We need to change the constitution. We need
Speaker 7: more people like Zora and Ondani. You know that'll totally
Speaker 7: solve the problem. So I just think that all the
Speaker 7: indicators are now flashing red, as it were, on their
Speaker 7: ability to reinvent the party. So I don't expect anything
Speaker 7: to happen anytime soon. And you know, we may have
Speaker 7: to go through another presidential cycle where they do even worse.
Speaker 2: I can easily see that happen.
Speaker 3: That was the story arc of the eighties into the nineties,
Speaker 3: right as you've finally lost enough elections by a lot
Speaker 3: that a talented person like Clinton came on. By the way,
Speaker 3: I just have to say, and then I'll shut up.
Speaker 3: I like the way you framed the beginning of your
Speaker 3: answer about you know, the right people the wrong people
Speaker 3: reminds me of that great Yes Minister scene where Sir
Speaker 3: Humphrey Applebee says to Bernard says, you know what happened
Speaker 3: when the right people don't get power the wrong people
Speaker 3: get it.
Speaker 2: Such a great show.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I am interested in patriotism.
Speaker 1: My question, that's my question. Now good, we're all dying
Speaker 1: to ask this, right because the term liberal patriot warms
Speaker 1: my heart. When I was a liberal in college in
Speaker 1: the eighties, Democrats new republic style democrat, I suppose we're
Speaker 1: all patriotic. We loved America. It was, you know, the
Speaker 1: phrase that Rush Limbaugh would later use, the greatest country
Speaker 1: on God's green Earth. We would nod along too, because
Speaker 1: we understood a little bit of history and a little
Speaker 1: bit of American exceptionalism. Could see exactly why this was
Speaker 1: a great endeavor. What people get, I think nowadays, not
Speaker 1: from the you know, from the Democrats who may work
Speaker 1: you know, in their city, you know, in various civic roles,
Speaker 1: but from the intellectual heavyweight to the party is sixteen
Speaker 1: nineteen is the original sins of this country that make
Speaker 1: it uniquely bad, and that to be a patriot is
Speaker 1: to align yourself with an enterprise that has caused all
Speaker 1: manner of horrors on humanity. Because the isms of the colonialism,
Speaker 1: the Sexismombia, all of this stuff. This is a bad place.
Speaker 1: You can be patriotic about an ideal to which we
Speaker 1: might ascribe should it happen. But the idea of accepting
Speaker 1: this flawed structure, this crooked timber, is something great and
Speaker 1: being proud of seems to be lost in the party.
Speaker 1: And when they try it, it's not authentic because how
Speaker 1: much of the ideological energy comes from colleges and comes
Speaker 1: from the people who have their degrees and the books
Speaker 1: and all that stuff, which there's a little use and
Speaker 1: seems to ignore history. Liberal patriot how many of you
Speaker 1: are there?
Speaker 7: Well, I would not say we're a majority at this
Speaker 7: point and left of center circles, but you know, we're
Speaker 7: growing slowly, I think, I hope, But I do think
Speaker 7: you're right that the whole issue of patriotism and its
Speaker 7: identification and lact thereof with the left has become like
Speaker 7: a mega problem, and it wasn't really so long ago.
Speaker 7: I mean, Obama is really pretty different than the way
Speaker 7: the center gravity of the Democrats, certainly Clinton. You know,
Speaker 7: there's nothing wrong with America that can't be fixed by
Speaker 7: what's right with America. That stuff is like borderline, you know, problematic,
Speaker 7: racist and all that kind of stuff. So it's funny
Speaker 7: you bring this up, though, because I just put out
Speaker 7: a big report with Rick Callenberg at AI called Bobby
Speaker 7: Kennedy Liberal Patriot, where we basically make a big deal
Speaker 7: in this in this report, and there should be an
Speaker 7: article about this coming out in the Free Press. That
Speaker 7: you know, Kennedy is just so different from the way
Speaker 7: Democrats comport themselves these tastes. He was unabashedly patriotic, you know,
Speaker 7: pro family, pro working class work over welfare, against.
Speaker 2: Crime, law and order.
Speaker 7: You know, I mean, he was just a different cat
Speaker 7: than we have nowadays running around in the Democratic Party,
Speaker 7: and he was unapologetic about it. He was trying in
Speaker 7: a sense to rescue the party from its evolving trend
Speaker 7: away from a lot of these values and bring black
Speaker 7: and white working class voters back together and the party. Tragically,
Speaker 7: of course that was cut short, and who knew who
Speaker 7: we would have worked. But I think he's an interesting model,
Speaker 7: and you know, he suffused a lot of what he
Speaker 7: did on his various policy positions with the fundamental idea
Speaker 7: of patriots. Even the way he treated poverty was patriotic.
Speaker 7: Like in a great country like this, you know, the
Speaker 7: United States of America, we should be able to have
Speaker 7: a decent standard of living for everybody, and people should
Speaker 7: pay their fair share because it's patriotic. He always that
Speaker 7: was kind of his touchstone, and I.
Speaker 2: Think that's totally lacking now.
Speaker 7: I mean, you brought up the sixteen nineteen project, because
Speaker 7: to me, that was a bit that really was a
Speaker 7: bit of a cut point to me when it came out.
Speaker 7: I mean, I know a lot of people went gaga
Speaker 7: over in liberal circles. So my first reaction is, are
Speaker 7: you kidding me?
Speaker 8: This is terrible and you can't believe you're doing this
Speaker 8: is gonna alienate us from normy voters and it's not
Speaker 8: even true. I mean, this is a terrible way that
Speaker 8: this is a terrible way to conduct yourself. But it
Speaker 8: was the New York Times, the official.
Speaker 7: Arbiter of you know, civilized discourse, that was like foisting
Speaker 7: this on the American public, at least the American educated public.
Speaker 2: And I was I was appalled.
Speaker 7: I could not believe it, and I said, oh man,
Speaker 7: we're in for it now. This is this is I mean,
Speaker 7: things that have already been going south on a lot
Speaker 7: of this stuff. But I just thought, not only the peace,
Speaker 7: but who promulgated it, and the rapture with which it
Speaker 7: was greeted in most educated left leaning liberal circles.
Speaker 2: It's just just amazing. I was like, Oh, well, I
Speaker 2: guess we're not in Kansas anymore. Wow.
Speaker 1: Those of us in the right take a look at
Speaker 1: things like the sixteen to nine project, take a look
Speaker 1: at the way that the culture has shifted in the
Speaker 1: overclass and what their ideas are, and we see, to
Speaker 1: use all the cliches, the results of the long march
Speaker 1: to the institutions where now you have colleges, museums and
Speaker 1: the rest of them are ascribed to a particular sad
Speaker 1: of ideological precepts. And now when we try to push
Speaker 1: back on that, such Trump is trying to do with
Speaker 1: the Smithsonian, that's regarded as trying to change an objective
Speaker 1: reality to fit the criteria of dear Leader. When a
Speaker 1: lot of us are looking at this and saying, no,
Speaker 1: it's rewriting the plaque under the picture of Valley Forge
Speaker 1: so that it doesn't say that the result of the
Speaker 1: victory was the expansion of the country and the exclusion
Speaker 1: of the Indian I mean, investing absolutely everything less narrative.
Speaker 1: I mean, do you guys see it that way? I mean,
Speaker 1: you're rational, sensible man. Do you sometimes see these things
Speaker 1: and say, why must this suffuse absolutely everything? And it's
Speaker 1: not wrong to get back to a more positive sort
Speaker 1: of accounting of these things without having to rub people
Speaker 1: noses in the filth of American history every second. Of course,
Speaker 1: I'm not making a question, I'm just ranting.
Speaker 7: Right, No, I mean I agree with that. I mean
Speaker 7: I think it's become a huge problem. I mean, we're
Speaker 7: just talking about the sixteen nineteen project with the exemplar
Speaker 7: of this, and it gets back to Charles's point about
Speaker 7: the sort of autoimmune disorder or something.
Speaker 2: I mean, you.
Speaker 7: Cannot in Democratic party or liberal circles admit that there
Speaker 7: might be something to what Trump is doing, you know,
Speaker 7: to the universities, to an institutional like the Smithsonian, because
Speaker 7: by definition, what he's doing is nothing but a drive
Speaker 7: for white supremacy and authoritarianism. I mean, there's no gray areas, right,
Speaker 7: I mean, it can't be like he's overreaching.
Speaker 2: In some ways.
Speaker 7: This happened, you know, he went too far, but you
Speaker 7: know there was a lot of stuff that needed to
Speaker 7: be corrected.
Speaker 2: I mean a lot of this stuff is crazy.
Speaker 7: How they're rubbing people's noses and you know, they want
Speaker 7: you to think about the terrible stuff before you can
Speaker 7: think about the good stuff, and in the process, people's
Speaker 7: sense of you know, a country that is worth identifying
Speaker 7: with gets lost. And I think you know, Robert Bella,
Speaker 7: I think once talked a long time ago about the
Speaker 7: civil religion that's America, right, that's important to unifying our country,
Speaker 7: and it's you know, attached to various symbols, to various holidays,
Speaker 7: to various stories and myths.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's a good thing. That's a good thing.
Speaker 2: That civil religion needs to be revived.
Speaker 7: And one thing that's peculiar about the Democratic Party today
Speaker 7: is there adamantly one hundred and fifty percent opposed to
Speaker 7: anything like that. They do not want people to feel
Speaker 7: good about their country. They do not want people to
Speaker 7: buy into, you know, a glorious vision of their country,
Speaker 7: because that's what MAGA does.
Speaker 2: Man, that's right wing. You know, so many things are
Speaker 2: right coded.
Speaker 7: Now that again, if you are a Democrat and you
Speaker 7: raise some of these issues, say, well, clearly a lot
Speaker 7: of this was bullshit. Basically that the left was doing
Speaker 7: what people in the universities did or was it. I mean,
Speaker 7: your persona on grata immediately, you are just you know,
Speaker 7: you're just basically shilling for Trump, you're Trump enabling.
Speaker 6: So who in elected office is getting this right? You said,
Speaker 6: even Andy Bisheer, Is anyone getting this right? In the
Speaker 6: Democratic Party? Do you see any Clintonian figure on the
Speaker 6: horizon who can pull the party back?
Speaker 2: I'd say no at this point. I think they'll have
Speaker 2: to emerge.
Speaker 7: I think there are people out there clearly who probably
Speaker 7: have a view that is fairly might be fairly close
Speaker 7: to reality of what's going on, but they're afraid to
Speaker 7: say it. I mean, you think preference falsification is off
Speaker 7: a problem for people in bureaucracies or corporations or whatever.
Speaker 7: I mean, upon politicians, it's huge. They hide a lot
Speaker 7: of what they think frequently, and you know, because they
Speaker 7: think it's in politic to say it. So there probably
Speaker 7: are people out there Ruben Diego, for all, I know,
Speaker 7: there might be others who are like, realize, you know,
Speaker 7: we're lost. We really have to be out front about
Speaker 7: that we stand for something different. There were different kind
Speaker 7: of Democrats, but they're afraid to go through the Sister
Speaker 7: Soldier moments that I outlined in my piece that might
Speaker 7: actually underscore that. You know, the person who comes closer
Speaker 7: to it, oddly enough, is Betterman.
Speaker 2: I mean, Betterman has been well, this is crazy. You know,
Speaker 2: we can't before this. You're nuts, you know.
Speaker 7: But he's he's a you know, realistically, he's a marginal
Speaker 7: figure in the Democratic Party universe, even though I get
Speaker 7: a kick out of him. But you know, Jos Shapiro
Speaker 7: is the other guy from Pennsylvania, right, And Jos Shapiro
Speaker 7: is a perfect example of someone who probably has reasonably
Speaker 7: sensible instincts and a lot of stuff, but is way
Speaker 7: too measured, way too cautious to really get get out
Speaker 7: there and do it at least I think needs to
Speaker 7: be done to get out of the ideological prison they're
Speaker 7: in now.
Speaker 2: I think he.
Speaker 7: Will cautiously try to feel his way to the nomination,
Speaker 7: and I think in the process, he liked the rest
Speaker 7: of them, will be hurted toward toward Nusimism. Right, Gaba,
Speaker 7: Newcism has really opposed to Trump. I'm opposed to Trump,
Speaker 7: you know, so I think realistically that's where we are.
Speaker 7: I mean, it pains me to say it, but that's
Speaker 7: how it looks to me.
Speaker 1: Folks. You can find more of this often at the
Speaker 1: Liberal Patriot, the Substack newsletter that Roy is one of
Speaker 1: the co founder and the politics editor of, and you
Speaker 1: should and you should subscribe because you will find interesting
Speaker 1: ideas counter to your own and sometimes intersecting with. And
Speaker 1: it's important to understand the smart liberal patriots on the
Speaker 1: other side of the political aisle so that we can
Speaker 1: figure out what we can do down the road together.
Speaker 1: And of course, you know, in slight conflict over some
Speaker 1: of the things, work will never because you guys are
Speaker 1: just wrong.
Speaker 2: That's for another podcast.
Speaker 1: That's another podcast, and that would be fun. But I've
Speaker 1: enjoyed I've enjoyed this very much listening to what you
Speaker 1: have to say. And it's been great to talk to you, Roy,
Speaker 1: And good luck with a Substack and we hope to
Speaker 1: have you next time you come up with a book.
Speaker 2: Absolutely happy to do it. Thanks all right, bye bye, right,
Speaker 2: okay bye.
Speaker 1: And that was indeed a pleasure. But here's the thing, folks,
Speaker 1: we got to figure out is that there's conflict and
Speaker 1: then there's football conflict. And we have football conflict to
Speaker 1: tell you about. Charles, tell them.
Speaker 5: It's of the virtual variety. Don't worry.
Speaker 6: You don't have to be drafted into the NFL, sign
Speaker 6: up for a college team, and to the transfer portal
Speaker 6: or any of that. But if you are a Ricochet
Speaker 6: member and then you can take part in this year's
Speaker 6: fantasy football extravaganza. And if you do is, if not
Speaker 6: the best part, at least a good part. You might
Speaker 6: even win some money. You might win fifty bucks if
Speaker 6: you win the league. If you go to Ricochet right now,
Speaker 6: you'll see on the right hand side of the site
Speaker 6: there is a link. It looks like a football, so
Speaker 6: it's fantasy football on it. You can't really miss it,
Speaker 6: and that will explain everything. The draft is going to
Speaker 6: be not tomorrow but the Saturday after that. The time
Speaker 6: is on there, so are all the rest of the details.
Speaker 6: There is an address that you can email expressing your interest,
Speaker 6: so go do it. You have eight days to.
Speaker 5: Sign up and take pop grand.
Speaker 1: Well do that. And while you're at Ricochet there by
Speaker 1: the way, if you haven't been there before signing up
Speaker 1: just to scrape some cash out of us, it's fine,
Speaker 1: you might take a look at some of the other
Speaker 1: things that we have. It's great when a piece from
Speaker 1: the member feed, which is for paying members only, and
Speaker 1: by paying members. I mean, it's not going to break
Speaker 1: the bank, don't worry, and you get more than you
Speaker 1: get a lot when the member feed, stuff goes to
Speaker 1: the main feed, just to show you what ricochet is
Speaker 1: all about. Yes, there's politics, there's podcasts on intellectual property,
Speaker 1: there are pieces about motherhood. There's a post about a
Speaker 1: guy who's accusing his power company of maybe stealing his juice.
Speaker 1: There's my diner, there's of course, and then there was
Speaker 1: a post that I absolutely loved by Gary McVay, one
Speaker 1: of our one of our great writers on the site,
Speaker 1: who's talking about the rarity of television moving to film
Speaker 1: and spends a lot of time talking about Jack Web,
Speaker 1: and one hundred comments later, we're all talking about the
Speaker 1: sprockets and the frame rates of kinescopes and thirty five
Speaker 1: and sea. It's nerdy, it's wonderfully pop culture in a
Speaker 1: way that you haven't seen before. And it's just it's
Speaker 1: so ricochet to me to see something like that where
Speaker 1: you can talk about what happened yesterday, and also the
Speaker 1: fact that Jack Web was not a stupid man. He
Speaker 1: hired Julian London. So go to ricochet dot com and
Speaker 1: you will find everything there, in addition to meetups, of course,
Speaker 1: because that's the great thing. If you are a human
Speaker 1: being not a bot, you can put out a little
Speaker 1: call and Ricochet members will come to you, and you
Speaker 1: can sit around and drink and have hamburgers and enjoy yourselves.
Speaker 1: And if my memory serves, probably talk about everything except politics.
Speaker 1: When we get together, we talk about all the other
Speaker 1: wonderful things in lives. Well, what is left to go?
Speaker 1: Let's see Trump's going to go. He's going to put
Speaker 1: an end to mail in ballots, which I think is
Speaker 1: a good idea. I don't like them. I think they
Speaker 1: lead to harvesting. I think this trend where we just
Speaker 1: have all kinds of loosey goosey stuff for Oh, voting
Speaker 1: is going to be over seven days. Oh it's going
Speaker 1: to be ranked voting. Oh you can mail it in. No,
Speaker 1: you go to a place, you show them your ID,
Speaker 1: you sign a piece of paper, you go into a
Speaker 1: little hacked off porta potty, and you make your marks
Speaker 1: in the oval, like the Iowa Basics test. That's how
Speaker 1: you vote. Now, maybe that makes me a boomer I am,
Speaker 1: but I think that I think Drum's right here. No
Speaker 1: mail in voting. You're here.
Speaker 3: One little trivia point that I always like to bring
Speaker 3: up is, I don't know. It's twenty five or maybe
Speaker 3: even thirty years ago now that Jimmy Carter and I
Speaker 3: think James Baker got together. It did some kind of
Speaker 3: commission on voting, and one of their findings was, we
Speaker 3: shouldn't have mail in voting. It's just too prone to
Speaker 3: fraud and manipulation all things you just said. And that
Speaker 3: was the Saint of Jimmy Carter putting his name to
Speaker 3: that report. That always gets forgotten in these debates about it,
Speaker 3: that even the Saint Jimmy Carter of Plains, Georgia was
Speaker 3: skeptical of mail in voting. One reason for that, by
Speaker 3: the way, is that he nearly lost his first rate
Speaker 3: race with the state Senate, I think in nineteen sixty
Speaker 3: two or sixty because of some fraudulent votes in this district,
Speaker 3: and he had to go to court to get them invalidated,
Speaker 3: and so he won by fifty votes or something. So
Speaker 3: he has a long memory of what voting fraud can do.
Speaker 5: Can we must?
Speaker 6: I think we split up the beginning of Trump's tweets
Speaker 6: in the middle. The beginning is correct, I also disliked
Speaker 6: mail in voting, although I will note that it works
Speaker 6: fairly well in Florida. I dislike all voting that is
Speaker 6: an election day voting in person, and would apply exemptions
Speaker 6: only for military overseas. So on the merits of it,
Speaker 6: I basically agree with you James, and you Steve and
Speaker 6: Donald Trump. But the mechanism Trump suggested for implementing this
Speaker 6: was a'tistrophically unconstitutional, and he did use the phrase the
Speaker 6: states have to obey the federal government as represented by
Speaker 6: the president.
Speaker 5: Now, hang on a minute.
Speaker 6: So I am a conservative, and one of the things
Speaker 6: that I like about the federal government is that it
Speaker 6: is a charter of enumerated powers, and the states retain
Speaker 6: pretty much all control over everything that the federal government
Speaker 6: has not been given. Another thing I like about the
Speaker 6: federal government, as contrived by James Madison at al. Is
Speaker 6: that decisions about what the federal government is allowed to
Speaker 6: do are made by Congress, not by the President in
Speaker 6: most cases. So in one fell suoite there, having gone
Speaker 6: from a very sensible position, which is mail and voting
Speaker 6: as bad, Donald Trump has articulated a view of power
Speaker 6: that would have made Woodrow Wilson Blush, and I don't
Speaker 6: want that power to be in the hands of anyone.
Speaker 6: I don't want it to be in the hands of
Speaker 6: Donald Trump, and I don't think anyone who likes Donald
Speaker 6: Trump wants it to be in the hands of the
Speaker 6: next Democratic president. We saw what even Congress tried to
Speaker 6: do last time around under Biden, which was abmolished the
Speaker 6: Philip Buster to take over the entire electoral system to
Speaker 6: permanently advantage Democrats. And it is just worth pointing out that, yes,
Speaker 6: he's right on the merits, but if he were to
Speaker 6: try to do that, it would be and should be
Speaker 6: struck down by the Supreme Court. Clarence Thomas presumably would
Speaker 6: write a coruscating opinion of the sort that he has
Speaker 6: written before when this was presented to him.
Speaker 5: So yeah, correct idea. When he says he will lead
Speaker 5: a movement, that's how he starts.
Speaker 1: I'm with him.
Speaker 6: I hope Trump does a leader movement against it. I
Speaker 6: hope he persuades the country to change how it votes.
Speaker 6: He can't do on his own.
Speaker 1: Problem is problem is is that you're absolutely right, but
Speaker 1: with almost everything it seems to me that Trump is doing.
Speaker 1: I mean, we could be again the show by saying
Speaker 1: this is a this is a wise This is a
Speaker 1: good thing to be done. It should have been done
Speaker 1: a long time ago. The fundamentals are sound, but I
Speaker 1: don't like he was how he's going about it. Most
Speaker 1: people don't care because nothing was done and now something's
Speaker 1: being done, and that's the norm erosion that I worry about.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, I mean, you go back
Speaker 1: and forth on this and say, well, let me sort
Speaker 1: of how bad of an apologist for a post constitutional
Speaker 1: United States it might be coming here because I say
Speaker 1: that I'm glad it's being done. I grapple with these things.
Speaker 1: But a lot of people will grapple because they're happy
Speaker 1: to see ICE doing what they should have been doing
Speaker 1: all of these years before, which is enforcing the border
Speaker 1: and getting criminals out of the country, et cetera.
Speaker 6: Well, there's nothing wrong with that, of course, that's reasonable.
Speaker 6: I would just say that one of the things that
Speaker 6: has slightly disappointed me over this one, right, is that
Speaker 6: if the Joe Biden had said on Twitter or elsewhere,
Speaker 6: the states have to do what the federal government says,
Speaker 6: through me, the representative of the federal government, your president.
Speaker 5: I mean we'd have gone and flicked the safety off rifles.
Speaker 1: Like, come on, Stephen, last question before we go here.
Speaker 1: Have you ever been to a cracker barrel? You know,
Speaker 1: I don't think I ever have. They don't They don't
Speaker 1: have very many of them out here in California. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure I've ever seen one out here. I know
Speaker 1: I've seen them elsewhere. But you know, I'm worried now
Speaker 1: about the slippery slope.
Speaker 3: We've lost Aunt Jemima, We've lost the you know, the
Speaker 3: the Indian lady on Land of Lakes. Butter, I'm worried
Speaker 3: about Crackerjack.
Speaker 2: That could be next.
Speaker 1: Well, as he's a tired and sort of early twentieth
Speaker 1: century naval uniform. So there's a militarism there extend. You
Speaker 1: know that that was the time when the Great White Fleet,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, the White Fleet was, you know, it
Speaker 1: was doing bad things in the Philippines. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: think get rid of him and just keep hugged the
Speaker 1: dug whatever the dog was named.
Speaker 3: I do know how cracker Barrel can turn it around.
Speaker 3: This is obligatory. Well, they need to obviously start an
Speaker 3: ad campaign with Sidney Sweeney because you know, just because
Speaker 3: the crack.
Speaker 5: Of barrels, yes, jams, yes.
Speaker 6: Now I want to know you think of crackerball because
Speaker 6: you are the great collector of Americana, so you must
Speaker 6: have a take on this.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean I have no cracker barrel stuff. As
Speaker 1: I said before, I've never been into one, never had
Speaker 1: a particular desire to do one. I find suicidal brand
Speaker 1: changes to be fascinating because they took rid of the
Speaker 1: guy in the rocking chair. He has a name, he's
Speaker 1: part of their whole corporate mythology. They got rid of
Speaker 1: him in favor of a bland logo with the words
Speaker 1: cracker barrel are too small, driving me nuts. But what
Speaker 1: they're doing there is they're sort of getting away from basically,
Speaker 1: you know, explicit chatty iconography from the eighties and the
Speaker 1: nineties and the rest of it would have worked, but
Speaker 1: it's dated. To them. Everything is dated, everything's brown. They
Speaker 1: don't like the clientele because they're old, and so they
Speaker 1: want to bring new people in. But the people that
Speaker 1: will be brought in by a brightened up place are
Speaker 1: not the people are going to go to cracker Barrel
Speaker 1: in the first place. I mean, they're in a difficult position.
Speaker 1: They have to satiate the desires of the old clientele
Speaker 1: at the same time bring in some new people to
Speaker 1: look around and say, I feel somewhat hip. Now this
Speaker 1: is a modified look at what my grandma's kitchen used to.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm just fascinated how chains die. Chili is
Speaker 1: having a moment at present because they've just done very
Speaker 1: well with their ads. They've come up with some price
Speaker 1: points that hit the right spot, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: Chili's is just big and it's booming. And then you
Speaker 1: look back and you say, what was across the street
Speaker 1: from Chili's, Well, TGIF with that explosion of an antique
Speaker 1: store in the wall motif that they had, and TGIF
Speaker 1: now expires and dies. What happened to Roy Rogers? What
Speaker 1: happened to Shonyes? What happened to Big Boy? What happened
Speaker 1: to driving out on an American street? And there's a fighting
Speaker 1: chance you would see a fiberglass statue of a boy
Speaker 1: in a red and white checked overalls holding aloft her.
Speaker 1: Why did these things die? Why did they change? And
Speaker 1: it's it's an almost spiritual question when it comes to
Speaker 1: commercial America. So I think that cracker Barrel is in
Speaker 1: a hard position. I understand what they did what they did.
Speaker 1: I find it interesting, however, that this fed instantaneously into
Speaker 1: the whole woke, go broke thing because Cracker Barrel at
Speaker 1: one point post twenty twenty, when companies were obliged to
Speaker 1: have a position on the major issues of the day.
Speaker 1: If you remember back in the eighties, Charles Stephen, do
Speaker 1: you remember what the slogan was from the AIDS activists
Speaker 1: silence equals death right, ah right, And that was a
Speaker 1: way of politicizing every corner of America, demanding that if
Speaker 1: you don't say anything about a particular issue, then we
Speaker 1: are going to assume you're on the wrong side of it.
Speaker 1: And Cracker Barrel, which is supposed to be rural and
Speaker 1: Middle America and all the rest of it, put out
Speaker 1: rainbow rockers on the porches of their place to show
Speaker 1: that everyone was welcome. Well, so that sort of inclusion,
Speaker 1: if you want to call it, that sends a message
Speaker 1: to people who previously had never won in a million years,
Speaker 1: wondered what the position of Cracker Barrel was on gay rights.
Speaker 1: And now they're looking at they're looking at a rocking
Speaker 1: chair or as they walk in to have their hotcakes
Speaker 1: and thinking, well, does that mean that Cracker Barrel is
Speaker 1: in favor of puberty blockers for minors? Because if they are,
Speaker 1: I've got a problem with that. And so when they
Speaker 1: did that, that was part of the first problem. And
Speaker 1: then the stripping down on the modernization and getting rid
Speaker 1: of the old guy and the rest of it. Just sorry,
Speaker 1: my mic field down, they got a problem. That's only
Speaker 1: going to say nothing, just repeating myself at this point.
Speaker 1: So would either of you like to repeat yourself or
Speaker 1: would you like to call it a day and let
Speaker 1: people get on with their lives or whatever they're doing
Speaker 1: right now, vacuuming gardenings, just sitting under the porch watching
Speaker 1: the world go by.
Speaker 6: I have a one minute take if I can delay
Speaker 6: people watching the world go by.
Speaker 5: Take it's my take. I don't think it's woke. I
Speaker 5: think it's crap.
Speaker 6: And I think that it's crap because we have systematically
Speaker 6: removed creative people from corporations and replace them with those
Speaker 6: who know how to play the game, who don't actually
Speaker 6: have any talent. And this is true in the movie industry,
Speaker 6: and it's true in the restaurant industry. That woman is
Speaker 6: probably not some hyper progressive lunatic who is trying to
Speaker 6: destroy a crack a Bower because she thinks anything associated
Speaker 6: with the South, a rural America or America's past needs
Speaker 6: to be obviated. She's probably just incompetent and bland. And
Speaker 6: she looked at those designs and says, yes, I love that,
Speaker 6: because everything in her life looks like that. And people
Speaker 6: who aren't like that, which is most people who can't
Speaker 6: play the corporate game that she has played, are looking
Speaker 6: at this and saying that's crap. And now this stock
Speaker 6: price is going to go down even further than it
Speaker 6: has over the last five years, and she's going to
Speaker 6: get fired. And instead of replacing her with somebody who's
Speaker 6: actually talented, they were replaced her with the next person
Speaker 6: in line, who has said all the right things for
Speaker 6: the last twenty three years and has no personality.
Speaker 1: Very good. I agree with you completely. My daughter's inn advertising, though,
Speaker 1: and so I'm here to tell you there is hope.
Speaker 1: There is hope for imagination and true creativity in the
Speaker 1: rest of it. On the other end, mentioned movies in
Speaker 1: television all being crapped more or less. I was paging
Speaker 1: through the pain the other day and then the pain
Speaker 1: and the streaming channel, and then the other streaming channel,
Speaker 1: desperately trying to find something to watch that didn't seem
Speaker 1: formulaic or had stunt casting or a historical casting, and
Speaker 1: the rest of it. And I decided that I would
Speaker 1: give another chance to this highly tottered, highly weighted, highly
Speaker 1: apparently desirable idea Aliens Earth. I don't know if you've
Speaker 1: heard about this, right, Finally they do in a television
Speaker 1: series what they should have been in the third movie,
Speaker 1: which is to take the xenomorphs and put them on Earth.
Speaker 1: But let me tell you something, Guys, stop me if
Speaker 1: you've ever heard of this idea. It's actually turning into
Speaker 1: a philosophical disquisition on the differences between humans and synthetic people.
Speaker 1: I mean, what does it mean to be human? What
Speaker 1: does it mean to be mechanical? I'm stunned that this
Speaker 1: is the only the forty seventh iteration that I've seen
Speaker 1: of this in the last ten years or something like that.
Speaker 1: I want to take Westworld scripts, roll them up like
Speaker 1: in the first movie, and jam them down the throat.
Speaker 1: Whoever wrote this thing, I'm just not there, all right,
Speaker 1: that's enough. I'm ranting too much coffee, too much fun.
Speaker 1: I love talking to you guys, and it's been great
Speaker 1: to do so today. This has been the Ricochet Podcast.
Speaker 1: You can join us, of course, at ricochet dot com,
Speaker 1: where also you'll find links to bank on yourself, support them,
Speaker 1: support yourself. Great idea and if you could leave a
Speaker 1: five Yeah, I was gonna say it wasn't I was
Speaker 1: gonna say you could leave a five star review. I
Speaker 1: don't know why I bother, but I gotta tell you
Speaker 1: it's in the contract. If you could be a five
Speaker 1: star review for us on an Apple podcast, we would
Speaker 1: be very very happy about that. There, I've fulfilled my
Speaker 1: contractual obligation and I now commend you all to the
Speaker 1: rest of your day and we'll see everybody in the
Speaker 1: comments at Ricochet. Four point what Charles, because man, have
Speaker 1: you been tweaking?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 6: I think it's full point twelve point seven right now.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's spoken like a man who knows his business.
Speaker 1: It's been great guys. Bye bye,