Speaker 1: There we go. Yeah, now we're just waiting on. We're
Speaker 1: gonna get robbercy and witness protection. Also, like Peter, ask
Speaker 1: not what your country can do for you, ask what
Speaker 1: you can do for your country.
Speaker 2: Mister garbachaw tear down this wall.
Speaker 3: It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Stephen Hayward.
Speaker 3: I'm James Lillax and today we talked de roy to
Speaker 3: Schera about demographics, democrats, the election, So let severs was
Speaker 3: a podcast.
Speaker 4: Remember this.
Speaker 5: Our enemies are your enemies.
Speaker 6: Our fight is your fight, and.
Speaker 5: Our victory will be your victory.
Speaker 2: Nothing you can come in a way of saving our
Speaker 2: democracy that includes personal ambition. So I've decided the best
Speaker 2: way forward is the past, the torch for new generation.
Speaker 7: Welcome everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast.
Speaker 5: Number.
Speaker 3: Well, I've been waiting for this for years. It's the
Speaker 3: number of the area code of the house where I
Speaker 3: grew up, seven oh one. I still remember my I
Speaker 3: remember my childhood, my childhood phone number seven on one.
Speaker 3: I probably shouldn't say it, but I had the same
Speaker 3: My parents had the same phone number for decades, which
Speaker 3: is a by gone A a by gone time, and
Speaker 3: B a sign that I probably had a stable upbringing,
Speaker 3: which I did, which makes me the high bound person
Speaker 3: resistant to change that I am today I am? Did
Speaker 3: I say James Lilas Minneapolis? Yeah, Rob Long Gotham. People
Speaker 3: in New York hate when they say that.
Speaker 7: Too bad. Stephen Hayward is an in Frisco, so I.
Speaker 3: Can even complete the bicoastal injury. Steven Hayward was sitting
Speaker 3: in for Peter Robinson. Welcome guys, What a week again?
Speaker 7: Where to start?
Speaker 3: I'm going to go with a big cliche, and the
Speaker 3: big cliche is, okay, if you had a bunch of
Speaker 3: crazy right wingers shown up in Washington, d C. With
Speaker 3: a giant statue of a class shade Jew with a
Speaker 3: big nose and horns and blood dripping out of his mouth,
Speaker 3: and they defaced all the monuments and wrote to angry things,
Speaker 3: I think we would be having a conversation about civil order.
Speaker 3: But we're not the people who do. Who descended and
Speaker 3: had basically a fascist Jew hating rally and defaced a
Speaker 3: whole bunch of things.
Speaker 7: And I hate the defacement.
Speaker 3: You know, some got arrested and charges dropped, and Kamala
Speaker 3: Harris has deplored the violence. But whether or not she
Speaker 3: would advocate for these people to be actually clapped in irons,
Speaker 3: are sent off to the Who's goal is something I
Speaker 3: suppose we'll find in her new I forget. Has she
Speaker 3: reincardinated herself as the old iteration of tough on crime?
Speaker 3: Or are we still in the twenty twenty mode?
Speaker 7: What do you think is?
Speaker 5: Which?
Speaker 3: Which one are we going to see in this election cycle? Guys, Steve, oh,
Speaker 3: you want me? You want me to go for dicta Right?
Speaker 6: Well, I mean I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm in the camp that thinks we're about to get
Speaker 1: a rerun in some ways of the Night eighty eight campaign.
Speaker 1: You may remember the Ducaucus argued in his famous speech,
Speaker 1: this selection is not about ideology, it's about competence, which
Speaker 1: meant he wanted to disguise his ideology. And according to
Speaker 1: some polls he was seventeen points ahead of George H. W.
Speaker 6: Bush.
Speaker 1: Bush ended up winning by eight. She had almost twenty
Speaker 1: five percent swing. And so right now there's a big
Speaker 1: surge for Harris. Her approval ratings were up fifteen points.
Speaker 1: She's up maybe above water, above fifty. But I think,
Speaker 1: I mean, among other things, she's going to try and
Speaker 1: straddle her past record, and I don't think she'll be
Speaker 1: able to get away with that once the Trump campaigns
Speaker 1: opens up on her. And like Ducoccus, I think she
Speaker 1: has her own Willy Horton problem. You know, we've got
Speaker 1: the receipts of her urging people on Twitter to donate
Speaker 1: to a bail fund for the Black Lives Matter rioters
Speaker 1: in Minnesota in twenty twenty one of whom was bailed
Speaker 1: out and went out and murdered someone just like Willie
Speaker 1: Horton thirty some years ago. And I think he's going
Speaker 1: to have a hard time. She'll lie about it, the
Speaker 1: media will cover up. By the way, last point, I
Speaker 1: you know, the media is trying to give fake news
Speaker 1: a bad name right now the way they're covering up
Speaker 1: for her past. Right, she was never called the borders
Speaker 1: are never But even though what Google will bring up
Speaker 1: thirty one thousand mentions of Kamela as the borders are.
Speaker 1: It's unbelievable. Although you know, I've been joking that maybe
Speaker 1: they're right. You really can't be a czar unless you're
Speaker 1: from the Tsarist region of Mother Russia. Everything else is
Speaker 1: just sparkling Habsburg aristocracy.
Speaker 8: Well, she was a bizarre in the sense of the czar.
Speaker 8: You know, they they presided over chaos. They didn't write much.
Speaker 8: So yeah, there's a little that.
Speaker 7: What did docacas in Was it the dandie and a
Speaker 7: helmet in the tank moment.
Speaker 5: Or was it?
Speaker 8: I was also that there was no I mean, it
Speaker 8: was a change election kind of, but there was no
Speaker 8: argument for change in eighty eight because the things were
Speaker 8: going great. And I mean the hard part about his
Speaker 8: you know, campaign histories and looking for signs in the
Speaker 8: past for me is that we've never had so many
Speaker 8: candidates running for higher office that so much of the
Speaker 8: country despises, not is indifferent to, not doesn't know, but
Speaker 8: actively loads. And so you have this sort of bizar
Speaker 8: the Democratic side, you have this bizarre kind of like
Speaker 8: a you know, cultish thrill, like they're all kind of
Speaker 8: in their weird zone where they think it's going to happen.
Speaker 8: Everybody loves her. They know people hate her.
Speaker 5: And they hate the Democrats, and they hate what they
Speaker 5: did on the border and they what they did it
Speaker 5: in crime and the Yeah, these Republicans saying he's gonna win,
Speaker 5: My guy's gonna win. Buy a landslide. Don't know, everyone
Speaker 5: who hated him still really hates him. That's a whole
Speaker 5: lot of people.
Speaker 8: So the best way, which is which is not the
Speaker 8: case in eighty eight that nobody had ever heard of
Speaker 8: Caucus and people were indifferent at the worst. To George H. W. Boyce,
Speaker 8: they are indifferent. So this is going to be a
Speaker 8: really interesting few months. What's fascinating about it is that
Speaker 8: I think the one thing we're gona be able to
Speaker 8: take away from historically is that.
Speaker 5: We now know I think.
Speaker 8: I mean, however Kamala Harris does, She's not gonna get trounced.
Speaker 8: She's gonna do. You know, She's gonna either win or
Speaker 8: lose by a small amount. And that's probably what Trump
Speaker 8: will winner loses by it. Right, And we're going to
Speaker 8: discover is that these things go on too long that
Speaker 8: you can't actually in the middle of the summer throw
Speaker 8: in a candidate and have an election.
Speaker 5: Kind of other countries do this too, for a slightly
Speaker 5: less important job.
Speaker 8: But like, yeah, I have an election in November a
Speaker 8: few months later, and everybody's happy with that. Like, I
Speaker 8: don't think anybody's going to be complaining, Like, well, I
Speaker 8: really wish that had started a year ago. Like most
Speaker 8: people are like, man, yeah, these things go on too long.
Speaker 8: We're gonna this is this is an experiment in that
Speaker 8: and I suspect that I don't know how we how
Speaker 8: far you can take this in terms of political logic,
Speaker 8: But I suspect that we'll discover that they go on
Speaker 8: too long and that it and I think there's a
Speaker 8: secret desire, not to desire, but I think they're happy. These
Speaker 8: political operative class of people are happy to have the
Speaker 8: candidates despised. It's easier because then you're only going to
Speaker 8: win by like a few points anyway, right, that's their
Speaker 8: whole goal in the in the brain trust of the
Speaker 8: Democratic Party Republican Party. That point is that I want
Speaker 8: to win by one. Right, That's how smart I am.
Speaker 8: I can win by one.
Speaker 5: So if you do that much except run negative bads,
Speaker 5: you can see the guy which everybody prefers because it's easier.
Speaker 8: So I feel like we're in a really good political
Speaker 8: science laboratory right now.
Speaker 5: That will be interesting to see it unfold.
Speaker 3: Well, when you say that everybody despises them, wrong, I
Speaker 3: think you've completely misjudged the electorate. Everybody loves Kamala Harris.
Speaker 3: This is what we've learned in the last week we're
Speaker 3: besotted by her. We had an opinion piece in my
Speaker 3: paper today which began the antidote to Mega is feminist
Speaker 3: laughter right away, sort of coming up against the contant
Speaker 3: an oxy North make America.
Speaker 5: The joke, how many feminists to take the Screon light
Speaker 5: bulb right?
Speaker 7: That's not funny, that's not funny. That's right.
Speaker 3: So her laughter, says the piece has become a national
Speaker 3: contagious laughter, has become a national symbol of collective healing,
Speaker 3: affirming the powers of joy to unite community across bitter
Speaker 3: divisions of culture and identity. So the fact that she
Speaker 3: laughs and it's not put down as a Hillary cackle,
Speaker 3: I guess, is going to be the thing that carriers
Speaker 3: her to mass affirmation. So I think you're misjudging that,
Speaker 3: just as you're misjudging the fact that a lot of
Speaker 3: people who are voting for Trump are doing so with
Speaker 3: complete admiration of his messiah like stature. I mean, in
Speaker 3: other words, yes, I think you're absolutely correct. I mean,
Speaker 3: one of the big things on Twitter this week is
Speaker 3: the strange things that jd Vance has been saying about
Speaker 3: women and cat ladies and single cat ladies and the
Speaker 3: rest of it, as if this is a demographic that's
Speaker 3: on the costpin. You know, he could just need a
Speaker 3: little nudge to shove him over to vote Trump. But
Speaker 3: now he's done it. Now anyway, Stephen, Well.
Speaker 1: Look, it was nice having an honest and objective news
Speaker 1: media for at least a month. I think we can
Speaker 1: file it away for the future. Right now they're back
Speaker 1: to their old mode. Look, I do think also I
Speaker 1: was going to say this about people despising Trump. Certainly
Speaker 1: the Democratic base in the media do. But you know,
Speaker 1: his approval ratings have actually been rising a bit ever
Speaker 1: since the shooting. And I think for the same Reagan
Speaker 1: reason that Reagan's did in nineteen eighty one. The knock
Speaker 1: on Reagan was he's a Hollywood cut out, He's not
Speaker 1: really a real person, he's a creature's staff. And his
Speaker 1: response to that dispelled all that. And likewise, with Trump,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people who may not like
Speaker 1: him still, but they don't they no longer think that
Speaker 1: he's also a fraud of some kind. I mean, he showed,
Speaker 1: you know, as we saw that day, we saw the
Speaker 1: real Trump emerged, I think, and more people respect that
Speaker 1: and That's why I think you still give him the advantage.
Speaker 5: I would say, probably give him the advantage.
Speaker 8: But I mean, I just I think all the Trump
Speaker 8: supporters and the Kammala supporters have the same kind of
Speaker 8: delusional quality that when they're surrounded by people who love
Speaker 8: the guy or love their guy, they just think that's everybody,
Speaker 8: We're going to win, and they just forget that these
Speaker 8: are polarizing politicians who have very very very poor, clumsy
Speaker 8: maladuat ways of appealing to the center, and they turn
Speaker 8: people away, they turn the Democrats and the Republicans, and
Speaker 8: it's a hard thing because you wake up and it's
Speaker 8: down now, it's going to be August through September. You're
Speaker 8: running in general, and you wake up and you're like, okay,
Speaker 8: well now I got to get those people back. And
Speaker 8: the goal of the opposing campaign is to point out
Speaker 8: that you are an extremist and a weirdo, and often
Speaker 8: that's unfair. But in this case, I think both of
Speaker 8: these campaigns have a very good point. They've got a
Speaker 8: lot they can talk about, and I just, you know,
Speaker 8: running for the presidency is not running for them to
Speaker 8: be the you know, the lead on a Fox News
Speaker 8: show or the lead on the view well.
Speaker 5: People to vote.
Speaker 3: But I think this is I don't want to say
Speaker 3: bubble dog, but maybe the people who look at this
Speaker 3: a lot and think about it a lot think this way.
Speaker 3: I think the average Trump and the average Harris voter
Speaker 3: do not think that everybody is absolutely raw run thinks
Speaker 3: that person is great. They're probably where most most Trump
Speaker 3: voters know that half the country doesn't like them, and
Speaker 3: most of the Harris voters know likewise. I think, you know,
Speaker 3: the absolutely gung ho people guess may be subject to illusion,
Speaker 3: but so it ever is I mean, well.
Speaker 8: I mean the good news for the good news for
Speaker 8: the people for the Trump side, I mean the sunniest
Speaker 8: perspective on the Trump side is that they actively they
Speaker 8: realized that the abortion issue was a killer and a
Speaker 8: killer for the Republicans, especially in those swing states, and
Speaker 8: so they in the platform they try, I can neuter it.
Speaker 8: And so the Democrats are now trying to resurrect it
Speaker 8: and make it still an issue, and it kind of
Speaker 8: isn't is because at the top of the ticket, there's
Speaker 8: some there's some there's some daylight between the two of
Speaker 8: these guys. So that that is that I'm just talking
Speaker 8: about pure politics, right. That was actually kind of smart
Speaker 8: on the Republican side to come up with it to
Speaker 8: try to tame their weirdness a little bit. And then
Speaker 8: on the Democrats is up to them to attain their
Speaker 8: weird It can be harder because their weirdness is basically
Speaker 8: the city of San Francisco and which you could never
Speaker 8: put or the state of California, which you can't point
Speaker 8: to really for any reason.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 8: So there, but but I again, I think the problem
Speaker 8: with both these parties is the same, which is that
Speaker 8: they they love show business so much that they think
Speaker 8: they're in show business. So they think that having a
Speaker 8: really popular being a really popular Fox News talk show
Speaker 8: host or being you know, getting clappier on the view
Speaker 8: is going to be as a sign of some kind
Speaker 8: of political momentum, which it's not. You need seventy million
Speaker 8: people to lose the presidency. The other guy's gonna get
Speaker 8: seventy five or eighty, right, So that's a lot of people,
Speaker 8: and those people aren't watching cable news.
Speaker 5: They are normal and they are sort of in the center.
Speaker 1: Well, okay, but it's gotta hard if you do the
Speaker 1: last two election cycles in twenty sixteen, the double haters,
Speaker 1: the people who didn't like Hillary or Trump, they broke
Speaker 1: for Trump by you know, five to three or even
Speaker 1: two to one. In twenty twenty, just the reverse, the
Speaker 1: double haters maybe didn't hate Biden as much as they
Speaker 1: should have, but went the other way. They retired to
Speaker 1: Trump and the chaos and all the rest, and Trump
Speaker 1: still almost won. So now it's where those double haters
Speaker 1: are going to go. I think you're right, Robin. A
Speaker 1: lot of those double haters are not cable news and
Speaker 1: view watchers. But I do think you are seeing not
Speaker 1: only is Cambella trying to move to the center, but
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party is trying to help her out. Two
Speaker 1: things in the last couple of days. One is Gavin
Speaker 1: Newsome yesterday.
Speaker 6: Issuing on the border.
Speaker 7: Camps stunning.
Speaker 8: Okay, wait, can we just can you just explain that
Speaker 8: to me because I was reading it today and I thought, well.
Speaker 6: What, yeah, Well, I think it's two things.
Speaker 1: One is, you know, new some to his credit, did
Speaker 1: call for the Supreme Court to reverse the old Boise
Speaker 1: case that prevented governments from and so that was what
Speaker 1: was done by a Supreme Court. Now Newsom kept silent
Speaker 1: and by praising them, but he's now acting on the
Speaker 1: new legal regime that they're allowed. I think that means
Speaker 1: that he's a trying to help Kamala Harris in the
Speaker 1: meantime by saying, see, we can fix California or b
Speaker 1: he thinks he's going to be the candidate in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty eight and he needs to help fix California or
Speaker 1: he's doomed. But another little one that probably got by
Speaker 1: most people is Shared Brown in Ohio, the incumbent liberal
Speaker 1: Democrat is in great trouble there, tough race. He came
Speaker 1: out a couple of days ago saying he would vote
Speaker 1: against the Biden Administration's climate plan because it would hurt
Speaker 1: Ohio energy workers and manufacturing people. That's the sign of
Speaker 1: a Democrat in trouble, trying to run away from the
Speaker 1: progressive agenda, which they always do in election years. But
Speaker 1: I thought, ah, they're trying to neutralize some of their
Speaker 1: progressive baggage.
Speaker 7: Well, we'll get to that in a second.
Speaker 3: By what we should do right now is be grateful
Speaker 3: that we have a fascinating person to talk to.
Speaker 7: Rui Tu Sierra. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. I'm
Speaker 7: you know, from North Dakota to what Do I Know?
Speaker 3: Roy is the Senior Fellow of the American Enterprise institutionary
Speaker 3: focuses on the transformation of party coalitions and the future
Speaker 3: of American electoral politics. Co founder and politics editor the
Speaker 3: Substack newsletter The Liberal Patriot.
Speaker 4: Welcome right sar having me interesting times?
Speaker 3: Know that they are Chinese. Curse all that. Well, let's
Speaker 3: go back to two thousand and two, which seems like
Speaker 3: another era, another civilization. You co authored The Emerging Democratic Majority. Now,
Speaker 3: last year you and John Judas teamed up again. You
Speaker 3: published Where have all the Democrats Gone? The Soul of
Speaker 3: the Party in the Age of the Extremes? So what
Speaker 3: were you noticing in the early aughts and why did
Speaker 3: the demographic trends do what they did over the past decade.
Speaker 9: Well, in the early book, the two thousand and two book,
Speaker 9: The Emerging Democratic Majority, we're looking at the ways in
Speaker 9: which the sort of underlying terrain of American politics was
Speaker 9: changing in ways that seemed to favor the Democrats in
Speaker 9: terms of demographic shifts toward non wide voters, the rising
Speaker 9: importance of professionals and their realignment toward the Democrats. Shifts
Speaker 9: among women voters, shifts in the more dynamic metropolitan areas
Speaker 9: of the country, the fact that Republicans seem to be
Speaker 9: at a step with sort of increasingly liberal social attitudes
Speaker 9: and were doubling down in a sort of uncomplicated Reganism
Speaker 9: or almost libertarian approach to economics that really wasn't consistent
Speaker 9: with where a lot of these voters were coming from.
Speaker 4: We thought that would give them a bit of an advantage.
Speaker 9: Then we described what might be their emerging philosophy as
Speaker 9: progressive centrism, which could take advantage of these changes and
Speaker 9: make them an attractive package to the shifting availability of voters.
Speaker 9: But we also had a caveat in the book which
Speaker 9: is widely ignored, about how you still needed to maintain
Speaker 9: a very significant share of white working class voters because
Speaker 9: they were still a huge sector of the electorate, particularly
Speaker 9: in some very important states, and even though their relative
Speaker 9: weight in the electorate was declining, you still needed to
Speaker 9: maintain a strong minority and not lose too much ground
Speaker 9: among these voters. So that was widely ignored and sort
Speaker 9: of the triumphalism of say, the Obama victory in two
Speaker 9: thousand and eight, and essentially what our book is about
Speaker 9: the new book is about whereof all the Democrats Gone,
Speaker 9: is tracing the ways in which Democrats have kind of
Speaker 9: blown in a sense, their opportunity because they're losing so
Speaker 9: many working class voters, not only white working class voters,
Speaker 9: but now non white working class voters, and they've just
Speaker 9: become a party this much more dominated by the views
Speaker 9: and culture and priorities of relatively liberal, college educated voters,
Speaker 9: and that makes some less attractive to working class voters
Speaker 9: who aren't as enthusiastic about how the country has evolved
Speaker 9: in their fate in life as some of these Democratic
Speaker 9: supporters are.
Speaker 4: So that's a.
Speaker 9: Very broad brush where we're at today, where the Republicans
Speaker 9: are increasingly a working class party and the Democrats increasingly less.
Speaker 5: So, hey, really, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 8: In my career in TV, we used to say that
Speaker 8: the only way to become a number four network is
Speaker 8: you first have to be a number one network.
Speaker 5: That's how you go. You go from number one and
Speaker 5: number four. You don't go.
Speaker 8: You don't slip down the ladder because you just suddenly
Speaker 8: you wake up one day and you've lost. And so
Speaker 8: I did you mention Obama? Because I think it's fascinating.
Speaker 8: A two thousand and eight smashing popular vote victory fifty
Speaker 8: three plus percent, and then in twenty twelve he lost
Speaker 8: a lot of votes. But you know, you start, you know,
Speaker 8: it's like you start with twenty billion dollars and you
Speaker 8: lose five billion dollars, you still got fifteen you know,
Speaker 8: you don't notice. It did seem like there was some
Speaker 8: leakage there in twenty twelve that in twenty sixteen became fatal.
Speaker 8: Still pretty tight, and we were just talking before you
Speaker 8: got here, Steve and I were talking about like twenty
Speaker 8: six twenty sixteen, twenty twenty, still pretty tight.
Speaker 5: Elections ten it was seventy eight thousand.
Speaker 4: Another type one this time. I wouldn't be surprised.
Speaker 8: But you're also that also matches something else happening in
Speaker 8: the country, which is an incredible volatility. I mean, I believe,
Speaker 8: fifty nine years old, most of my life there was
Speaker 8: one speaker of the House, tip On, you know, and
Speaker 8: there was one party that ran the House, and that
Speaker 8: was the Democrats. And since then, yeah, that's ninety four, right,
Speaker 8: it's been Yeah, Nancy, Nancy Pelosi has been speaking of
Speaker 8: the House twice, like that's crazy, you know, goes back
Speaker 8: and forth, and we talk about on election night and
Speaker 8: even in the in the midterm elections, we talked about
Speaker 8: the control of the House and the Senate the way
Speaker 8: we never used to do that. We entering because of
Speaker 8: these demographic ships. Is just a period or are we
Speaker 8: in it or are we coming out of it? Or
Speaker 8: is it just about to get a lot more interesting
Speaker 8: of just political volatility that we haven't seen in this
Speaker 8: country for a century and a half almost, That's what.
Speaker 9: Yeah, well, I think we're we're basically in that era
Speaker 9: and it's not clear when we're going to get out
Speaker 9: of it. I'm writing doing a big paper now with
Speaker 9: my colleague you Ball even at at Ai on the
Speaker 9: evolution of party coalitions. We call it party politics without Winners,
Speaker 9: tracing the history of party coalitions in the United States
Speaker 9: and the general tendency of politics to be you know,
Speaker 9: sort of reflected in there being a dominant majority coalition
Speaker 9: and a coalition that's trying to become the dominant majority,
Speaker 9: but nevertheless you know, the dominant majority in print. It's
Speaker 9: but as political pallprint what's going on, and it's sort
Speaker 9: of widely acknowledged to be to be such. But we're
Speaker 9: out of that era now, and we have been for
Speaker 9: an era like that for quite some time. Going back
Speaker 9: to the cut points you were talking about, where basically
Speaker 9: we're sort of fighting on the fifty yard line of
Speaker 9: American politics. Things can swing back and forth, you know,
Speaker 9: many times, just because nobody really does have a dominant majority.
Speaker 9: And what's peculiar and interesting about our current eras you
Speaker 9: could argue that, and we do argue this that not
Speaker 9: only does neither party seem like they're forming a dominant majority,
Speaker 9: they don't necessarily even seem that interested in it. I mean,
Speaker 9: they're so beholden to the extremes of their own parties.
Speaker 9: The people who dominate those parties are not really thinking
Speaker 9: very strategically and clearly about how to form a dominant majority.
Speaker 9: So the strategies that could lead to that are sort
Speaker 9: of closed off intellectually in other ways. And I think that,
Speaker 9: you know, that's where we are now.
Speaker 8: It sometimes seems to me that they misunderstood what the
Speaker 8: president office of the presidency is that you you're not
Speaker 8: the prime minister. You win the election and you take
Speaker 8: the office, and all.
Speaker 5: The people do is can yout the microphone you only
Speaker 5: get the gabble, you get the microphone. Now you have
Speaker 5: to You are by definition a wheeler dealer.
Speaker 8: You know, a moderate Democrat, Rhino Republican. If you want
Speaker 8: to be successful, you need the party as the president
Speaker 8: of the United States. We also also have heard for
Speaker 8: years that demographics is destiny. That's something that was demographics
Speaker 8: is destiny. But if you look at the you look
Speaker 8: at the the map right now, if you're a Republican,
Speaker 8: you're looking at a lot of second third for even
Speaker 8: first generation Hispanics voting Republican. You're looking at this large
Speaker 8: South Asian population seems to be leaning conservative.
Speaker 5: Our demographics destiny definitely not.
Speaker 4: And that was a widely.
Speaker 9: Mooted about this interpretation of what John and I rot
Speaker 9: and some other people.
Speaker 4: We never thought demographics was destiny.
Speaker 9: We never thought that Democrats, because of these changes, had
Speaker 9: a sort of lock on the presidency and political domination
Speaker 9: generally going forward. There was a question of the terrain
Speaker 9: changing in such a way that favors you, but you
Speaker 9: still have.
Speaker 4: To take advantage of it.
Speaker 9: And one way to think about this mathematically is, in
Speaker 9: a sense, demographics is destiny only makes sense if you're
Speaker 9: thinking about it in all else equal.
Speaker 4: Context.
Speaker 9: In other words, if the groups that favor you are
Speaker 9: increasing and the groups that don't favor you are decreasing,
Speaker 9: then all else equal, that's very good for you. However,
Speaker 9: even if say the amount of non whites in the
Speaker 9: voting electorate is increasing, if their support level for you,
Speaker 9: their margins go down, that can cancel out the effect
Speaker 9: of having more people in that bucket.
Speaker 4: And that's what people.
Speaker 9: Repeatedly forget about this, you know, the sort of the
Speaker 9: issue of demographics and how they affect politics. You really
Speaker 9: have to take intoccount not only just of how many
Speaker 9: people are in a bucket, but how many how those
Speaker 9: people in the bucket are voting, and whether it's changing
Speaker 9: from what it was before, and if it is, that
Speaker 9: can really change, you know what the calculus, so to speak,
Speaker 9: that as these changes manifest themselves in the electorate. And
Speaker 9: I don't know how many times I've explained this to
Speaker 9: various reporters or what have you, but.
Speaker 4: It seems to I don't know, there's some problems with it.
Speaker 4: They just like, there, isn't that great for the Democrats?
Speaker 9: Well, okay, yes, all else equal, but look at what's
Speaker 9: happening on the ground. Look at where these voters are
Speaker 9: coming from. Look at how they view the Democratic Party.
Speaker 9: Look at their margins.
Speaker 5: I mean, look at I mean, isn't it part? I mean,
Speaker 5: don't you?
Speaker 8: I mean I'm going to change. I have one question
Speaker 8: for you about Trump in a sense, because I feel
Speaker 8: like Trump represents a psychic break with the Republican past
Speaker 8: in a lot of ways. Sure that probably if you
Speaker 8: are running, we're just talking about Sure, pure branding. If
Speaker 8: you're running, a brand is a good thing, right, because
Speaker 8: there are people who are going to vote for Republican
Speaker 8: for the first time that wouldn't have voted for you know,
Speaker 8: some Republican who looks and sounds like me. So that's
Speaker 8: probably a good sign for the branding of the Republican
Speaker 8: Party that it is changing and shifting. The downside for
Speaker 8: the Democrats seems to me that they're doubling down on
Speaker 8: the stuff that got them into trouble and has got.
Speaker 5: Them into trouble for years, which is the kind of
Speaker 5: twee academic stuff that Jim carvill I think rightly and
Speaker 5: correctly identifies as the killer Yeah, Alcolie lounge talk, right.
Speaker 5: I guess my larger question is, if you're.
Speaker 8: If you live in a culture that is obsessed with
Speaker 8: race and obsessed with demographics. There's a lot of downside that,
Speaker 8: but one of them is if you're a political professional,
Speaker 8: you tend to just think that that's your job is
Speaker 8: to identify who the people are live in this district,
Speaker 8: and you already know how they're going to vote, instead
Speaker 8: of marching around and knocking on doors and finding out
Speaker 8: what those people really believe. So, if you are a
Speaker 8: politician running for the mayor here in New York City,
Speaker 8: and Eric Adams is a terrible mayor, but he was
Speaker 8: a fantastic campaigner, marched around it and he talked to
Speaker 8: a bunch of older black ladies and he said, what
Speaker 8: do you care about? And they said crime. He said,
Speaker 8: what else do you care about? They said no, no, no,
Speaker 8: it's crime.
Speaker 4: Crime.
Speaker 5: And he ran on that very successfully. He seems like
Speaker 5: the only.
Speaker 8: I think democrat on a national stage who has actually
Speaker 8: listened to voters instead of putting it in a category.
Speaker 5: Is that. I know, that's interesting.
Speaker 9: I think there are others who they're not quite as
Speaker 9: much national figures. I mean, Charrelle Parker and Philadelphia ran
Speaker 9: in a pretty similar way.
Speaker 4: For some of the similar reason.
Speaker 9: But I think it is true that in terms of
Speaker 9: people have a national profile, we've seen very little, a
Speaker 9: lot of reluctance to say things that are really off
Speaker 9: the reservation as far as today's Democratic Party and its
Speaker 9: activists and you know, the certain we call the shadow
Speaker 9: Party in our book John Judas and I who you
Speaker 9: know that, the number of foundations, NGOs, activist groups, you know,
Speaker 9: the various parts of the media who the moment you
Speaker 9: deviate from, you know, the current consensus about how to
Speaker 9: approach an issue like crime or immigration or race or gender,
Speaker 9: they're on you like a ton of bricks.
Speaker 4: So there's there's a reluctance to do that.
Speaker 9: I mean, you can look at even people like Gretchen
Speaker 9: Whitmer or Josh Shapiro, who have you know, sorts quasi
Speaker 9: national profiles, and you know, if you look carefully at
Speaker 9: what they say, they strike a moderate tone, in a
Speaker 9: pragmatic tone at times, but really it's hard to see
Speaker 9: the areas in which they've really in a big way
Speaker 9: departed from the Democratic consensus. And that's certainly true of
Speaker 9: the leaders in Congress, your Schumer's and your Colosia Now
Speaker 9: hackem Jeffries and so on and so forth. I mean,
Speaker 9: the Democratic Party in a national level is dominated by
Speaker 9: an approach on a whole vector of issues that is
Speaker 9: actually pretty far from the media and working class voter
Speaker 9: and they're very reluctant to And why do they do that? Well,
Speaker 9: I think you know, there's pressures within the party. I mean,
Speaker 9: part of it is too, I think, never underestimate. You know,
Speaker 9: where do people live and who do they talk to? Right,
Speaker 9: they live in a bubble, you know, they don't talk
Speaker 9: to people who have different points of view than them
Speaker 9: very often, And the extent they're aware of them, they
Speaker 9: tend to write them off as you know, the great unwashed,
Speaker 9: the deplorables, the reactionaries in the heartland. They're racists, they're sexists,
Speaker 9: they're transphobic whatever.
Speaker 4: I mean, this is like not a really.
Speaker 9: Productive way to understand what voters in America really think.
Speaker 9: That on the one hand, you're talking to people who
Speaker 9: agree with you all the time, but on the other
Speaker 9: ignoring the other people because you know they're they're not
Speaker 9: even worth talking to. They're not they're not they're not
Speaker 9: some of the good people, they're the bad people. So
Speaker 9: I just think that that really handicaps the Democrats in
Speaker 9: terms of taking advantage of the ways in which while
Speaker 9: Trump has been a path breaker in terms of making
Speaker 9: the Republicans more of a working class party, breaking apart
Speaker 9: the old three legged stool that included sort of more
Speaker 9: libertarian economics, you know, it's them. I mean, people forget
Speaker 9: about how important it was what he said about Medicare
Speaker 9: and social security in twenty sixteen, and of course what
Speaker 9: he said about trade and you know, manufacturing and offshore.
Speaker 4: I mean, these were things that are pretty different than the.
Speaker 5: It was to be crazy as a classical liberal.
Speaker 9: I'm like, no, yeah, yeah, said, well that's bad juju.
Speaker 4: But it really worked with the owns.
Speaker 5: He totally did it, totally did quiet their rob.
Speaker 9: But but then the other side of it is Trump
Speaker 9: is Trump, and they're not able to to sand off
Speaker 9: the rough edges of some of the pro working class
Speaker 9: appeals and sort of present a more moderate but nevertheless
Speaker 9: pro working class.
Speaker 4: Right. I mean it's hard to do.
Speaker 9: I mean, or in classes frantically trying to push them
Speaker 9: in that direction. But you know it's not under his
Speaker 9: control basically to try. The Republicans need you know, less
Speaker 9: trumpy Trump.
Speaker 1: Really it's a Steve Hayward out in California, and I
Speaker 1: want to draw back and take a longer term perspective
Speaker 1: on things and not just the current moment. I always
Speaker 1: enjoy listening to you in reading you, not because you
Speaker 1: necessarily say things I agree with, but because it seems
Speaker 1: to me you have the disposition of the older optimistic,
Speaker 1: happy warrior liberalism of John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey.
Speaker 1: And that's why I want to bring up your book
Speaker 1: that you published in twenty seventeen, you know, at the
Speaker 1: beginning of the Trump Darkness, your book The Optimistic Leftist Right.
Speaker 1: And I have a couple of particular questions about that book,
Speaker 1: and I think it's playing out. But in addition to
Speaker 1: I want to add a different fort of field theory
Speaker 1: of what ails the Democrats that that doesn't disagree with
Speaker 1: faculty lounge dominance.
Speaker 6: Of the party.
Speaker 1: I actually think the turn that hurt the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: happened in the seventies when it went from being the
Speaker 1: party of you know, you know, the doctrine under John F.
Speaker 1: Kennedy was growth liberalism. That was the doctor of their
Speaker 1: political economy. And again Humphy the same way in the seventies,
Speaker 1: you started getting Jerry Brown, Jimmy Carter talking about the
Speaker 1: limits to growth, and I think that accelerated what was
Speaker 1: already a you know, a latent strain of redistributionism in
Speaker 1: democratic politics. But I think that I think that has
Speaker 1: made the Democratic Party more sour than it used to be.
Speaker 1: And now, is that too broad a generalization or do
Speaker 1: you think some of that maybe is onto something.
Speaker 4: No. I think that's that's actually pretty fair.
Speaker 9: And first of all, Steve, I want to thank you
Speaker 9: for being aware of that book and abeat it. I
Speaker 9: had a bombed basically it came out after you know,
Speaker 9: Trump got elected, and so I mean, I'm optimistic, laughtist,
Speaker 9: but I do think you're capturing some of what the
Speaker 9: book was trying to talk about. And I think, you know,
Speaker 9: in retrospect, I was way too optimistic in a sense
Speaker 9: about the ability of the Democrats to pick up on
Speaker 9: what you might call a pro growth, optimistic approach to
Speaker 9: political economy and toward reaching voters. I thought they would
Speaker 9: maybe do a better job. I don't think they did.
Speaker 9: As we've seen, They've gone down various rabbit holes which
Speaker 9: don't have much to do with that. But I think
Speaker 9: the fundamental point that I was making is the connection
Speaker 9: between in a sense, growth and.
Speaker 4: Progressivism, growth and the good society.
Speaker 9: If you want people to feel good about their fellow humans,
Speaker 9: if you want to have enough resources available to do
Speaker 9: the good things you want to do in terms of,
Speaker 9: you know, sort of making the country a better place,
Speaker 9: you goddamn well need you know, relatively fat as economic growth,
Speaker 9: and you need to figure out a way to do that.
Speaker 4: Now, you know, I might dissent a little.
Speaker 9: Bit from my own prescriptions in the book about how
Speaker 9: to do that, but I think the fundamental idea is
Speaker 9: very sound, right. And Democrats, I think, as you're pointing out,
Speaker 9: they're really not that interested in growth quad growth anymore.
Speaker 4: They disparage it.
Speaker 9: They think it's you know, it's like consumer society man,
Speaker 9: and it's ruining the earth man. I mean all that
Speaker 9: kind of stuff. But you know, this is like should
Speaker 9: be mother's milk. This is this is how you know,
Speaker 9: the sort of the boom after World War two has
Speaker 9: a very non trivial relationship to all the good things people.
Speaker 4: Like about that thirty year period.
Speaker 9: It doesn't happen without that level of economic growth.
Speaker 4: So so I do think that and you know, I
Speaker 4: look at Kamala.
Speaker 9: Harris, right, I mean back to today, I mean, is
Speaker 9: she the pro growth candidate? I don't even know she
Speaker 9: ever at the word even you know, passes her lips, right,
Speaker 9: I mean, it's just not her thing, and it's not
Speaker 9: really for I think most leading Democrats what they think
Speaker 9: about a lot and certainly I mean they're I mean,
Speaker 9: in a sense, what I was writing in twenty seventeen
Speaker 9: was a precursor of what is now called abundance economics. Right,
Speaker 9: supply side progressive is so it's basically coming out of
Speaker 9: that same bag, you know, a little bit early. You
Speaker 9: never as a premature you know, like supply side progressive
Speaker 9: or something, but definitely on the side that you know,
Speaker 9: we need growth and we need a lot more of it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean it was Ghima yoursing.
Speaker 3: But you actually have as studies of d growth now
Speaker 3: which people use people their fingers and figure out how
Speaker 3: to wait and make our lives less abundant. How what
Speaker 3: I want to know is how much of the Democratic
Speaker 3: Party at the at this point is completely infected by
Speaker 3: the idea of scarcity in abundance and how much of
Speaker 3: them are just simply paying lip service to it because
Speaker 3: they believe that that's the thing that they should be saying.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 9: Well, I think the latter definitely is a big part
Speaker 9: of it. There's a lot of preference falsification going on
Speaker 9: there and sort of a b a sense to what
Speaker 9: people think they need to say aboutomic issues and about growth.
Speaker 9: But I do think there's a ton of people out
Speaker 9: there who who believe in this stuff, and I think
Speaker 9: a lot of it is driven by something I've written
Speaker 9: a lot.
Speaker 4: About climate catastrophism. I mean, it is very difficult to overestimate.
Speaker 9: The influence of the whole climate issue on the changing
Speaker 9: attitudes with the Democratic Party toward energy and economics. I
Speaker 9: mean it's totally hegemonic, right. I mean, you don't get
Speaker 9: Joe Biden saying this is you know, this is an
Speaker 9: existential risk. This is worse than nuclear war. We've got
Speaker 9: ten years to solve it. I mean these are absolutely
Speaker 9: bonkers points of view on energy and economics. But because
Speaker 9: they dominate the Democratic Party and because they have such
Speaker 9: a strong relationship to the issue of growth and how
Speaker 9: do we get it, I think it does cast a
Speaker 9: p number of negativity am on the very idea of
Speaker 9: growth because you know, God, I mean, you don't have
Speaker 9: to be like know a lot of energy economics, their
Speaker 9: economics area to at least have an intuitive sense. Our
Speaker 9: growth is based on fossil fumists. They will not disappear
Speaker 9: very fast, and in fact, if you try to zero
Speaker 9: them out fast, they'll actually be bad. So if you're
Speaker 9: you know, sort of halfway aware of the world around you,
Speaker 9: I mean, your attitude as a Democrat who thinks climate
Speaker 9: change is the most important issue might be well, so
Speaker 9: be it. Then we'll have less growth. No, you know,
Speaker 9: that's that's fine, will save the planet. Yeah, and yeah,
Speaker 9: as you're pointing out, you know, the growth, right, maybe
Speaker 9: that's really what we need, you know, like, which, of course,
Speaker 9: is is so insane that you know it's it's amazing
Speaker 9: anyone affiliated with the major political party would.
Speaker 4: Think these things.
Speaker 7: Deep is a booming is a booming thing?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 1: Well, well it's well right now, really the the what
Speaker 1: I mean I'm following with great interest the abundance economics
Speaker 1: or supply side progressivism, but that caucus right now is
Speaker 1: really you Matty Glacias ez Recline, our friends at the
Speaker 1: Breakthrough Institute and small but mighty well that's right, I think,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think the parallel would be you may
Speaker 1: not like this, parent, Well, it's a little bit like
Speaker 1: the supply side economists on the conservative side of the seventies.
Speaker 6: I said, hey, we should be for growth and tax
Speaker 6: cut out of theory.
Speaker 1: Okay, one of the things in your book is that
Speaker 1: you say, I mean, the broad banner was we need
Speaker 1: to think about ways of reforming capitalism.
Speaker 6: And so here we are about seven eight years later
Speaker 6: or nine years later.
Speaker 1: And you know, I've been joking that if rip fan
Speaker 1: Winkle were rewritten by Washington Irving today, the figure would
Speaker 1: wake up with Karl Marx's beard, because all of a
Speaker 1: sudden you have a lot of conservatives, at least the
Speaker 1: trumping nationalists, attacking finance capitalism, attacking big corporations.
Speaker 6: I'm like, this is where I'm be a little bit
Speaker 6: like Rob. I'm like, what has happened here?
Speaker 1: So anyway, either there's some observations about that, or maybe
Speaker 1: say a little bit about one or two things about
Speaker 1: about reforming capitalism.
Speaker 6: And then I have one more last question after that
Speaker 6: for you.
Speaker 9: Right, well, the really I mean the big question I
Speaker 9: mean on the you know, sort of going off from
Speaker 9: the growth theme is how do we what should what
Speaker 9: are the policies that we need to develop you know,
Speaker 9: high productivity growth capitalism, right, not just you know growth
Speaker 9: per se, because you actually just had a lot of
Speaker 9: people labor force, like we're doing a immigration and you
Speaker 9: know that gets you some growth right there. But no,
Speaker 9: we need you know, a dynamic period of rapid productivity
Speaker 9: growth that will then you know, allow for you know,
Speaker 9: the rise and living standards of the great majority of
Speaker 9: the population.
Speaker 4: So how do we do that? Now?
Speaker 9: I think, you know, I would argue, and I did
Speaker 9: in the book, and I think, uh, you know, certainly
Speaker 9: the people like Lauren Cass and so on, or are
Speaker 9: close to those some of those national conservatives would say,
Speaker 9: we do need to reform capitalive and change the way
Speaker 9: it works.
Speaker 4: We do need an industrial.
Speaker 9: Policy, We do need different policies toward the working class,
Speaker 9: and so on and so forth. If we're going to
Speaker 9: do this, we need different trade policies. So I think
Speaker 9: it's all a very healthy conversation. I'm not sure that
Speaker 9: anybody's really figured it out. I mean, you could argue,
Speaker 9: I mean the Democrats have made a big deal, for example,
Speaker 9: out of and it's true they have made a sort
Speaker 9: of break from what is loosely called neoliberalism. You know,
Speaker 9: it's kind of a very vexed term if this avariety
Speaker 9: really knows what it means. But they're definitely doing something different.
Speaker 9: I mean, they're definitely changing their economic philosophy and the
Speaker 9: amount of money they spent, the so called investments they've made.
Speaker 9: I mean, it does represent a kind of industrial policy
Speaker 9: and a new new approach to American political economy. But that,
Speaker 9: as I've said many times, just because you know it's
Speaker 9: industrial policy doesn't mean it's the right kind of industrial policy.
Speaker 9: Industrial policy is a long history in the United States.
Speaker 9: Some have been successful, some have not. In some ways,
Speaker 9: You've had an industrial policy practically ever since the founding,
Speaker 9: but it's done in different ways, and it's had differential effectiveness.
Speaker 9: So just because Democrats are willing to break with, you know,
Speaker 9: so called ioliberalism and do stuff that's different, doesn't mean
Speaker 9: it's necessarily going to work.
Speaker 4: I mean, look at the whole.
Speaker 9: A vector of things that supply side progressivism is concerned
Speaker 9: about it have essentially been untouched. We still have the
Speaker 9: same regulatory environment that we've had. We still have you know,
Speaker 9: it's still too damn hard to build stuff in the
Speaker 9: United States, and there's still all this crazy like climate
Speaker 9: you know, change overlay among all that policy, which just
Speaker 9: doesn't make any sense. I mean, it's not that's not
Speaker 9: how you produce high productivity, high growth capitalism. It's the
Speaker 9: way you satisfy the various you know, lobbyists andos and
Speaker 9: now emerging economic interests that are very committed to this stuff.
Speaker 9: So so, but then on the Republican side, I mean, look,
Speaker 9: Orn guests can say whatever he wants, but what Trump
Speaker 9: does and what his administration does are probably going to
Speaker 9: be very different things.
Speaker 4: And I'm not even saying Orn has figured it out.
Speaker 9: Are people like him, but I think there they make
Speaker 9: interesting points in their serious thinkers, But I think the
Speaker 9: problem is a vehicle that they're in a sense attached to,
Speaker 9: you know. I mean, I think it's a real leap
Speaker 9: of faith that think. You know, if Trump gets in
Speaker 9: the next four years, we'll see a renaissance of you know, effective.
Speaker 4: Policy thinking on economics, because I.
Speaker 9: Just think the party is too fragment and disorganized and
Speaker 9: that's too many different strands of economic thinking in And
Speaker 9: then besides, it's going to be headed by Trump and
Speaker 9: you know.
Speaker 4: What that means.
Speaker 1: Well, one last broad question for you, Ruie. It's an
Speaker 1: old question I want to reask. You probably won't remember this,
Speaker 1: but I think if I have this right, about fifteen
Speaker 1: years ago, when I was an AI and you came
Speaker 1: over one day for a panel, right, and so that's
Speaker 1: you know, that's when Obama's in office, riding high and
Speaker 1: Donald Trump was not yet even a glimmer in Roger
Speaker 1: Stone's eye. And I asked you the following question. I
Speaker 1: want to see and I remember your answer. I want
Speaker 1: to see if your answer is the same hour has changed.
Speaker 9: You're holding me to it if I ever said what
Speaker 9: you you think I said.
Speaker 4: This is funny.
Speaker 1: The question was what are conservatives right about an issue
Speaker 1: or domain that liberals may not pursue very clearly?
Speaker 6: And you gave me an interesting answer, and I want
Speaker 6: to reverse it on you also.
Speaker 5: Do you remember well I.
Speaker 4: Do not remember, but you bet you better tell me.
Speaker 6: I'll tell you.
Speaker 1: You said you said the family conservatives were right about
Speaker 1: the importance of the family, And I think maybe you
Speaker 1: had in mind sort of you know, sixties and seventies
Speaker 1: leftists who not necessarily the feminists but people who thought
Speaker 1: the family was like less important than something or other,
Speaker 1: and I thought, yeah, that.
Speaker 4: Was all boloney. Yeah, well, the question I agree with myself.
Speaker 1: Okay, I don't know if there's a is there a
Speaker 1: new issue you think conservatives are right about? Well, however,
Speaker 1: you understand conservatives these days?
Speaker 9: Yeah, sure, Well, I mean I think there are a
Speaker 9: couple of obvious things to add to that that I
Speaker 9: probably wouldn't have said at the time because it was
Speaker 9: a different era. I mean, I think it's almost a
Speaker 9: little hard to remember how quickly the Democrats.
Speaker 4: Have evolved from like old school.
Speaker 9: Anti discrimination kind of liberalism to the kind of illiberalism
Speaker 9: we have today and the highly ideological approach to issues
Speaker 9: like race and gender. And you know, I mean back then,
Speaker 9: I mean you could actually envision Democratic politicians talking about
Speaker 9: law and order, talking about border security. But over that
Speaker 9: period between when you ask that question and today, the
Speaker 9: Democrats have evolved in such a way as a lot
Speaker 9: of issues are off the table. The whole language in
Speaker 9: which you have to talk about things has changed. I mean,
Speaker 9: for one of a better word, wokeness of some variety.
Speaker 9: It's really taken over the Democratic Party. So conservatives criticize that.
Speaker 4: All the time, and you know what, they're right, Well,
Speaker 4: they're just right about this.
Speaker 9: The second thing, I'll add a second thing here, which
Speaker 9: I definitely over underestimated at the time and wasn't thinking
Speaker 9: about a lot. Was I do think that some of
Speaker 9: the criticisms of the excessive regulation of the economic system
Speaker 9: and the barriers that were to development in a lot
Speaker 9: of places and to economic dynamism were correct out all
Speaker 9: of it, because I think there was a certain let's
Speaker 9: just blow blow everything up kind of.
Speaker 4: Attitude and regulation.
Speaker 9: But the idea there was too much, particularly environmental domain,
Speaker 9: I think, is what is a sound criticism.
Speaker 4: And I agree with a lot of conservatives on that.
Speaker 6: Well, I know we have to let you go.
Speaker 1: But the follow up question is I often ask conservative
Speaker 1: thought leaders what is the left right about or partially
Speaker 1: right about that we don't perceive. So I'll let you
Speaker 1: ask you what are conservatives not get that liberals believe
Speaker 1: that you think we conservatives have wrong or I'll just
Speaker 1: stop there.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 9: Well, it's a little Yeah, it's hard for me with
Speaker 9: to do this, I think just because I'm too immersed
Speaker 9: in that world. But I do think that some conservatives
Speaker 9: don't really give liberals enough credit for you know, having
Speaker 9: some serious ideas about uh, you know, sort of how
Speaker 9: how economies work, the role of public investment, the role
Speaker 9: of trum, you know, the importance of the safety net.
Speaker 9: I mean, in a sense, I think they just think
Speaker 9: all liberals want to do is spend money, right, It's
Speaker 9: just their thing. They're just like they're crazy that way.
Speaker 9: But there's actually a method to their madness. There's a
Speaker 9: rationale for it, and that's not completely crazy, and it
Speaker 9: does have a lot of historical backing, and in a
Speaker 9: way it's you know, it just one should assume good
Speaker 9: faith rather than bad fit. These people are just all
Speaker 9: grifters and hustlers. There are people who are trying to
Speaker 9: seriously think about the way in which society can be better,
Speaker 9: and you know, then you know, it sort of bleeds
Speaker 9: eventually into not only what do I mean in a sense,
Speaker 9: it's not just what conservatives may don't understand that well
Speaker 9: enough about liberals, but this just gets to core political, economic,
Speaker 9: philosophical differences between conservatives and liberals, which get on my
Speaker 9: soapbox here a little bit. I think we'd be much
Speaker 9: better off debating those fundamental questions, you know, and trying
Speaker 9: to figure out you know, here's your view, here's my view.
Speaker 4: We got a little bit.
Speaker 9: Different economic philosophy rather than you know, that's your tribe,
Speaker 9: this is my tribe. You know, you're a tool of state. No,
Speaker 9: you're a tool of Satan, you right, I mean, just disagreements, sir,
Speaker 9: and we did, like actually talk about them, because people
Speaker 9: to talk.
Speaker 5: Can I get a little philosophical though?
Speaker 9: Sure?
Speaker 8: Absolutely I agree with that all that the policy debates
Speaker 8: are great, I like that, But there has to be
Speaker 8: a fundamental I guess agreement that that the future is
Speaker 8: going to be better than the past, that the American
Speaker 8: future is always something to look forward to.
Speaker 6: Really is subtitle to his book.
Speaker 1: I should have said that subtitle optimistic Leftists is why
Speaker 1: the twenty first century will be better than you think?
Speaker 5: Yeah, and also but also think why today is better
Speaker 5: than you think?
Speaker 8: And if you can't look at the world around you
Speaker 8: now and realize, oh, actually, the best day to be
Speaker 8: alive on the planet and the history of the planet
Speaker 8: is today, and tomorrow will probably be incrementally better than
Speaker 8: yester than today.
Speaker 5: We used to have that.
Speaker 8: That was the bedrock of every presidential campaign every national
Speaker 8: leadership fight, it was I've got a better future a
Speaker 8: plan for you than this guy.
Speaker 5: But no one said, boy, are we in big trouble?
Speaker 8: Boy is this are we a Nobody ever said, boy
Speaker 8: are we a nation of criminals who've stolen land and
Speaker 8: terrible and almost all those things?
Speaker 4: Right? Hey, check your privilege, dude, you know right right
Speaker 4: where we're exactly.
Speaker 8: But where where can we go to get that back?
Speaker 8: I mean, I hear a lot of that on the
Speaker 8: Republican side, a lot of the sort of doom constantly.
Speaker 8: I mean here, of course, that's that's the mantra of
Speaker 8: the Democratic Party, is their national anthem, which is that
Speaker 8: we suck, so to speak.
Speaker 5: Where do you where do you go to get that back?
Speaker 9: Well, that's a great question, you know, I think Steve
Speaker 9: will probably recall from my book, I was all over
Speaker 9: that whole general idea that we've lost our optimism, and
Speaker 9: related to that that people vastly underestimated.
Speaker 4: How much better things are today than they used to be.
Speaker 9: People didn't have much real understanding of the actual changes
Speaker 9: in living standards, that changes in you know, sort of
Speaker 9: discrimination whatever. I mean, like, actually, this is there's a
Speaker 9: lot of things that have been improved, and you have this,
Speaker 9: like and I wrote about this in that book, you
Speaker 9: have this bizarre situation where even though things are obviously better,
Speaker 9: I mean.
Speaker 4: Obviously there's been rising inequality.
Speaker 9: Okay, there's some problems here, but they've just they've taken
Speaker 9: leave of their senses in terms of understanding how most
Speaker 9: people live their lives in this great country of ours.
Speaker 9: And I used to be at the Economic Policy Institute,
Speaker 9: which fervently documents the underside of the American economy. And
Speaker 9: I and I was okay with that in the sense
Speaker 9: that I think, you know, they were Their data was solid.
Speaker 9: There is an argument there to be made, there were problems,
Speaker 9: but the general, the general approach seemed to be denied
Speaker 9: that anything ever got better at any time. And I
Speaker 9: just thought that was whacking. I mean, most people, you know,
Speaker 9: believe in the American dream. They want the American dream
Speaker 9: to come true. They have optimism they will attain it,
Speaker 9: and you're not speaking to that. People want to believe
Speaker 9: in the future. And if you're telling them, you know,
Speaker 9: not only is today terrible, the past was terrible, and
Speaker 9: the future is likely.
Speaker 5: To be terriblen and the rising seas I mean this is.
Speaker 9: Not how you I mean back to the issue of
Speaker 9: how you form a dominant coalition, right, You don't form
Speaker 9: a dominant coalition off of you know, that kind of approach.
Speaker 9: You really you unite people around their quests. Were a
Speaker 9: better tomorrow. This is not rocket science, you know, but.
Speaker 4: That we have lost we have lost track of that.
Speaker 9: And part of the mythology that underpins the incorrect approach
Speaker 9: is what you're alluding to wrong, that nothing ever gets better,
Speaker 9: you know, it's all it all sucks all the time.
Speaker 9: And besides, we stole the land from the Indians and
Speaker 9: there were slavery and stuff like that.
Speaker 7: So it's the classic Walt Disney approach.
Speaker 3: There's a bright, new, beautiful tomorrow, and I agree with that,
Speaker 3: and I agree with Rob at the same time, though, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean overall, yes, trends are up, things are great,
Speaker 3: all these you know, the arrows are pointing in the
Speaker 3: right direction.
Speaker 7: It's great. But in the last four years, the light
Speaker 7: today twenty twenty four in my city is not better
Speaker 7: than it was in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The combination of COVID and the social violent street upheavals
Speaker 3: that ripple through the whole country after the death of
Speaker 3: George Floyd have made this an empirically provable worse place
Speaker 3: than it was before.
Speaker 7: It's not unlivable. It's a beautiful place and I love
Speaker 7: living here, but it's not what it was before.
Speaker 3: So telling people, actually, you know, things are better because life, expectancy, discrimination,
Speaker 3: et cetera, et cetera. These things are all getting better.
Speaker 3: That's true. That's a head thing. The hard thing and
Speaker 3: so many people in America is that there are corrupting elements.
Speaker 3: There are things that have just fallen apart from disuse
Speaker 3: or indifference, and that that optimism has to be measured with,
Speaker 3: you know, not to sit back, but roll up our
Speaker 3: sleeves and we have to figure.
Speaker 4: Out that it's fair. I completely agree with that, and.
Speaker 3: I agree with you you're saying before about how having
Speaker 3: policy discussions, but I don't think that right right now
Speaker 3: is having a policy discussion. Wants to have a discussion
Speaker 3: on the existence of the safety net. It is the
Speaker 3: nature of it and the knock on effects of it.
Speaker 3: I mean, so we can have a discussion, for example,
Speaker 3: about what happened to the nuclear family in cities when
Speaker 3: the state stepped in and took the role of the
Speaker 3: fathers to say that is not to delegitimize the idea
Speaker 3: of having a safety net a welfare system to help
Speaker 3: the poor.
Speaker 7: But we can't have that argument because.
Speaker 3: That argument somehow turns into cultural hegemonism and a whole
Speaker 3: bunch of bad ideas that we're not supposed to say.
Speaker 3: In other words, what I mean is we need another well,
Speaker 3: we need another you lots of views, and we need
Speaker 3: another and we probably need another twelve hours. So we'd
Speaker 3: like you to commit to a series of marathon podcasts,
Speaker 3: right yeah.
Speaker 9: All right, yeah, yeah, Okay, we'll figure it all out
Speaker 9: then we will.
Speaker 3: But thank you for coming today. And I know we've
Speaker 3: taken a lot of your time and we want to
Speaker 3: take more of it more of it in the future
Speaker 3: as well. So the book, which everybody should now go
Speaker 3: out and read because you have an appetite for it,
Speaker 3: is Where have all the Democrats Gone? The Soul of
Speaker 3: the Party in the Age of Extremes? Roy, thanks for
Speaker 3: being with us today, Hey.
Speaker 4: Thanks for having me. It was a really fun discussion.
Speaker 3: Yeah, great fun. And I know I did my typical
Speaker 3: thing there by making a speech in the form of
Speaker 3: a question and then get getting rid of the guests,
Speaker 3: so that I can have the I can have the
Speaker 3: illusion of the intellectual superiority and challenged just to hang
Speaker 3: in the air there family like a perfume. Before we go, though,
Speaker 3: we got a couple of things and one I'm going
Speaker 3: to hand off to Rob, which tells you that Ricochet
Speaker 3: is not just a bunch of guys yammering on a podcast.
Speaker 5: It's human beings who what is that? Let's be honest,
Speaker 5: it is it is.
Speaker 4: It is that.
Speaker 3: But it's also human beings who get together and have
Speaker 3: fun and probably talk about anything except politics.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you know, look, I mean the great thing about
Speaker 8: Ricochet is that it exists as a kind of a
Speaker 8: thing you can listen to, which was this, and we
Speaker 8: hope you enjoyed it.
Speaker 5: And it also exists as a thing on the line,
Speaker 5: on the on the internets, which we hope you join.
Speaker 5: But it also exists. These are nice people and they
Speaker 5: want to get together. We have meetups.
Speaker 8: Is a German Fest meetup in Milwaukee last weekend of
Speaker 8: this month, so actually it's this coming weekend, and then
Speaker 8: we have one schedule in Saint Louis in early October.
Speaker 5: That's gonna be amazing too. Saint Louis a great city.
Speaker 8: The way to do this is to show up, and
Speaker 8: if you can't make it to one of those, join
Speaker 8: Ricochet and put up a little note and say, hey,
Speaker 8: how about a meet up in my region at this date,
Speaker 8: at this time, and people will show up because Ricochet
Speaker 8: members won't get together and the last couple of meet
Speaker 8: us have gone to I think, and Perry may correct me,
Speaker 8: or Charlie may correct me. I think we talked about
Speaker 8: politics for like an hour an hour and a half.
Speaker 5: We were in New Orleans, and there's a lot to
Speaker 5: talk about New Orleans, a lot to do in New Orleans.
Speaker 5: So it is a way to sort of like, you know,
Speaker 5: there's a big, wide world out there, and it's a
Speaker 5: lot about life that is not about politics, although you
Speaker 5: know I would.
Speaker 8: There's another more fun that's sitting around with a bunch
Speaker 8: of people who are smart and funny talking about politics.
Speaker 5: So there's that too, but no, we're more about more
Speaker 5: than that. So if you've enjoyed this podcast, join Ricochet
Speaker 5: and join us irl as a kid, say, and you
Speaker 5: never know who.
Speaker 3: Will show up, because you never know who's out there
Speaker 3: in the Ricochet podcast audience, I mean audience podcast. I said, podcast.
Speaker 3: That's maybe the best word I'm going to use for
Speaker 3: us going forward, podcastic podcast. Steve, you're a music guy,
Speaker 3: and I know Rob is too, but I don't think
Speaker 3: of Rob as a music guy, which is I don't
Speaker 3: know what.
Speaker 6: I don't know why.
Speaker 7: Perhaps because we've never discussed it, or he's a show
Speaker 7: tunes guy.
Speaker 5: You've never heard me singing. That's the thing.
Speaker 7: We'll go to keep it that way.
Speaker 10: So.
Speaker 3: But I have talked back and forth with Stephen about
Speaker 3: various elements of pop music, the more cerebral elements, mind you,
Speaker 3: the progressive groups, the Italian progressive groups. I mean, you
Speaker 3: can have an we could have an hour long podcast,
Speaker 3: Steven and I quote about progressive influences in the seventies
Speaker 3: and such. But Steve, let me ask you this. When
Speaker 3: you look back to the music of your youth, when
Speaker 3: you look back to the groups that you followed, were
Speaker 3: you one of those guys who noticed what kind of
Speaker 3: instruments they were playing.
Speaker 1: Yes, in the case of a couple of semi obscure
Speaker 1: prog rock bands like Gentle Giant, they played like seventeen
Speaker 1: different instruments, the five of them in the band. By
Speaker 1: the way, progressive rock is Jody Boondam put it was
Speaker 1: rock and roll that went to college, yes, which I like, right,
Speaker 1: so right, yeah, I didn't pay attention to that.
Speaker 5: I don't rock and roll that had pronouns, right.
Speaker 3: I don't mean whether or not they had a fife
Speaker 3: and a sack butt. I mean whether what what kind
Speaker 3: Like that's a rickenbacker that he's flying. Yeah, that's what
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 5: Do you do you play an instrument, Steve?
Speaker 6: No, My wife does several, but I don't.
Speaker 7: James, you what do you play?
Speaker 5: You play something?
Speaker 3: Right, keyboards and guitar as a matter of fact, although
Speaker 3: nowadays it's mostly just pounding away on since and the
Speaker 3: rest of it. But I mentioned that because you know,
Speaker 3: in those days, it was incredibly important to know exactly
Speaker 3: what those guys were playing and what kind of sound
Speaker 3: they got out of it, and what I mean, like,
Speaker 3: there's my man, he's got a Gibson SG with a
Speaker 3: double cutaway. That's got that's that's got a certain sound reason,
Speaker 3: or he's got a strat and he's got a strat
Speaker 3: with a twang bar. And then Elvis Costello shows up
Speaker 3: with the telecasters like what's with that weird little neck
Speaker 3: thing there. I only mentioned this because there's a Ricochet
Speaker 3: listener here in front of the podcast who sent me
Speaker 3: a song that he wrote and performed and did the
Speaker 3: video for too, And I'm looking at it and I'm saying,
Speaker 3: I remember Beck when you played a Gibson, and now
Speaker 3: you here you are with us with a Fender. Anyway,
Speaker 3: the Guy's Blue Oyster Cult basically, I mean, I mean
Speaker 3: there are other members of it that, but you cannot
Speaker 3: have called without Buck Dharma. And when Buck Darma sends
Speaker 3: you a text and says, hey got a new new
Speaker 3: one the would you like to hear it? Yes, I
Speaker 3: would like to hear it. And I told him, well,
Speaker 3: first of all, my next Diner episode is sort of
Speaker 3: all about music and how the people that you meet
Speaker 3: change what you listen to. And I advise everybody to
Speaker 3: listen to that because we're going to lead. You know,
Speaker 3: I realized I'm spoiled where that particular episode is going.
Speaker 3: But since we have more of a reach here, I
Speaker 3: want everybody to know that Buck Dharma's got a new
Speaker 3: song out. It's called the End of Every Song, and
Speaker 3: it has this melancholic feeld with this of not just
Speaker 3: a song but the song being this civilizational project in
Speaker 3: which we all have such an investment, not that it's over,
Speaker 3: but that sometimes when you feel that there's something diminishing
Speaker 3: in the greater country around you, it's time to redouble
Speaker 3: your efforts to preserve and keep and reinflame those cities
Speaker 3: of civilization. City's unflame with a rock and roll. So yes,
Speaker 3: we're going to go out with a song, and it's
Speaker 3: I advise everybody to go to YouTube and listen to
Speaker 3: it and admire the little video that he that he
Speaker 3: put together for it, and thank him for being a
Speaker 3: Ricochet listener, and thank all of you for being a
Speaker 3: Ricochet listener. And that doesn't mean that everybody has to
Speaker 3: send us a song and.
Speaker 5: We'll play it, but you know it, that's what it means.
Speaker 7: I'm sorry, Rob it right, Rob is right. Send us
Speaker 7: the song. We will play it.
Speaker 3: After all, after seven to one hundred and one podcast,
Speaker 3: we're going to need something for the next seven hundred.
Speaker 3: So yeah, send us your songs, send us your reviews.
Speaker 3: If you will, go to the Apple podcast thing or
Speaker 3: the spot of where wherever you get your podcasts and
Speaker 3: give us those five stars because it helps service that
Speaker 3: and of course as Rob, one of the founders, would
Speaker 3: tell you go to Ricochet and join go to the
Speaker 3: member side and find out the conversation of the community
Speaker 3: you've been looking for all your years on the interweb.
Speaker 3: I go there every day. I'll see you there, Stephens.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, Rob, go before we go yep.
Speaker 5: Predictions because it's okay, we say this is Friday prediction
Speaker 5: one pm. Oh, who's what do we want? On going
Speaker 5: to choose for be her running mate?
Speaker 6: A white guy?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Right, that's an easy part.
Speaker 5: Is the first smart political move she's made in a
Speaker 5: long time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's talk that she wants our guy here, the
Speaker 3: governor of Minnesota, Yeah, which I find interesting because he's
Speaker 3: I guess he's seen outside the state and outside the party,
Speaker 3: is just the most you know, white bread, kind of cool, smart,
Speaker 3: he's a teacher, he's got National Guard experience, to all
Speaker 3: the boxes. But I'm of the opinion that I think
Speaker 3: probably Minnesota is going to go for her anyway, and
Speaker 3: so the enticement of the locals wouldn't be that great.
Speaker 3: So I don't know what he brings to the ticket necessarily.
Speaker 7: Hmm, we'll see. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I have I mentioned that to my wife the other day,
Speaker 3: and she thought that I was that I was just
Speaker 3: huffing tester's glued from a plastic sack.
Speaker 7: It's like, what are you kidding me? I said, no,
Speaker 7: you're seriously being considered.
Speaker 3: And then I had to show with the stories, and
Speaker 3: she once again realized that she should listen to me
Speaker 3: in our household.
Speaker 5: And my guess is.
Speaker 1: It'll be Roy Cooper from North Carolina. People say Shapiro,
Speaker 1: but I've said this before. I don't think today's Democratic
Speaker 1: Party can tolerate a Jewish running mate.
Speaker 7: And isn't that a strange thing to say? Yes, well,
Speaker 7: it could be Shapiro, but unfortunately the party hasn't.
Speaker 11: Unfortunately, yeah, right, who again, the parties have switched a
Speaker 11: lot that was that was definitely a Republican theme in
Speaker 11: the well forever, well including now, except for later.
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 5: I think Mark Kelly, I'm gonna say a bailon.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's the other possibility.
Speaker 5: Astronaut, you know, veteran, you know.
Speaker 3: All right, So all right, so just to our producer,
Speaker 3: we've we've done that. Now let's redo it and do
Speaker 3: all the other names, and then you can cut in
Speaker 3: the one.
Speaker 7: And she choosers. Yeah, here's me.
Speaker 5: We'll just drop in the correct one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, here's me, three two one. I know you're gonna
Speaker 3: think it's crazy, but I'm pulling for Tim Walltz. I
Speaker 3: think it's just gonna happen. Okay, so drop that in
Speaker 3: and then we'll do.
Speaker 5: You have to say things like, here's what I'm hearing, James, Well, James,
Speaker 5: what I'm hearing.
Speaker 7: What I'm hearing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, I don't know what you're hearing, but here's
Speaker 5: what I'm hearing. As if we're hearing anything. That's what
Speaker 5: every reporter always sys. It drives me insane. Here's what
Speaker 5: I'm hearing. You're not hearing anything. You're on Twitter like
Speaker 5: everybody else.
Speaker 7: But we're still live. Yeah we are still never mind,
Speaker 7: never mind, never mind. We'll see all the comments, said
Speaker 7: Ricochet for a point, but bye. The fire is.
Speaker 10: Out and spent the warth barol. This is the end
Speaker 10: of every song man sings the golden wine drunk. The
Speaker 10: dregs remain.
Speaker 12: As bitter as worm wood and salt as pain.
Speaker 4: This cisy hell over res.
Speaker 13: This sisy.
Speaker 4: Resound, see yellow resol.
Speaker 10: And help and hope have gone away of love into
Speaker 10: the dream oblivion of most things goes to go along
Speaker 10: with us until the end. This was a loved woman,
Speaker 10: This perhaps a friend.
Speaker 13: Cyri City, sizy Sele.
Speaker 12: With pail and indifferent eyes, we sit and wait for
Speaker 12: the drop curtain and the closing gait. M. S. S.
Speaker 6: Ricochet joined the conversation.