Brought to You by Johnson Phillips (The Secret Podcast PREVIEW)

Hey there. It’s JBL on the Secret Show with Sarah Longwell today. We talked about the brand new speaker of the house, Mike Johnson. And also Dean Phillips who’s decided he’s gonna run against Joe Joe Joe Biden for some reason. Whatever.

Here’s the show. So, well, we have a Democratic challenger to Joe Biden. He jumped in yesterday. His name is Dean Phillips. He is a handsome man in a tech fest.

I guess following the departure in the race of, Rf k junior. Dean Phillips is gonna carry them in his campaigns being run by Steve Schmidt, who briefly ran the, Howard Schultz. Starbucks campaign, which was can you explain this to me? Cause I don’t understand it. It it I I I legitimately don’t understand it.

If you are a young Democrat who thinks that, like, You know what? I I’m just gonna stop talking. Please talk.

Okay. So here’s the thing. I do understand it. Like, I understand where this is coming from on a number There is a genuine sense of panic, among Democrats right now, about Joe Biden.

Yeah. There should be.

Yeah. I would say, and we have talked about this a great many times. The time to lose your mind about this and freak out was like ten months ago. There was no reason. I don’t know.

I I I guess it’s because there’s been such consistent head to head polling that has got people so worried. And there is, like, There’s when they do it’s not just the national polling. There’s been swing state polling coming out. And, you know, Joe, they are either that even or Joe Biden is a little bit behind or, RFK is getting sixteen percent. And so I think they’re just people feel like there are market signals saying somebody should get in here.

There are also a bunch of people who you know, say, like, well, if there’s so many market signals, and there’s donors, and there’s, like, let’s do this thing. So It is a, I don’t I don’t it’s not really worth talking about the the what is it? A Lincoln project split here, but you’ve do have sort of the the one side of the remnant Lincoln project, guys going, saying, which I think in this case correctly, like, they’re all in for Biden. To the extent where, like, they were critical of the idea of doing anything against Trump in the primary, which I think is stupid. I think obviously, we should have done everything we can to try not to to try to stop Trump at every stage, but also, like, this is sort of about accepting reality.

A lot of what’s going on right now. And I think that, as much as I think it is I am very much in the, you should try all things category. Like, I think that actually people who from the jump assume that they can do nothing about a situation are the worst. Like, that kind of fate of complete attitude is is not for me. But I think that you do have to be, like, aware of the information that is coming your way.

And, like, point at which you see this isn’t working, or it’s not going to work, or the dynamics just are as concrete as they are. Like, you gotta accept that. And I think This is, this is what’s happening in the democratic primary here where just people think Oh, no. There’s still an opening. Like Dean Phillips, and what’s what’s weird about Dean Phillips’s pitch.

And this is sort of why that’s just sort of, like, annoying on a personal level. I know him a little bit. I’ve been, like, on some brave angels panels with him because he’s kinda, like, a moderate d. Nice guy. And I just though these things are he’s like suggesting He is suggesting that he’s doing this to get other people to come in the race.

Right? He thinks what he’s doing is trying to kinda break what is right now a not a log jam, but like a psychological barrier to a good, healthy psychological barrier to the idea that you should challenge the incumbent presence it. Now I think that if Joe Biden ten eleven months ago had said, What what I thought needed to happen, the healthy thing that needed to happen was that Joe Biden stepped aside and said, like, and we’re gonna have an open primary in our party and I’m not gonna endorse anybody or I’m gonna I am gonna endorse somebody, and it’s gonna be, not color hair. Grish and gritmer. Yeah.

Whatever. But, like, I just the level of, to me, Sillingness in naivete around, oh, we’re gonna launch a national campaign against an incumbent president.

In late October.

In late October is really goofy. And we have some friends who think this is a good idea. Like we there are there are people in our world who think like, well, yes, we should have this. I will just say, I if it is in my opinion, that there is nothing but the only outcome here that is possible is that what you do is you you you bolster the narrative. And and to be fair, this narrative’s gonna be there, whether it’s bolster or not, but you you sort of concretize the narrative that Joe Biden is too old and too weak and been too captured by, the far left to win in a general election.

And look, I think that I think that I wish Joe Biden was not the nominee. I just think we’re we’re too far gone. So that’s that’s what I think about it. But There’s an element of ego to this that drives me crazy. Right?

Like, that there’s an opportunity. So, like and I gotta say, I did this. Right? Like, we went around me and me and Bill Kay. Looking for a primary challenger for Trump.

And the reason that we wanted a primary challenger to Trump is not because we thought that they were gonna win. We thought they would weaken Trump going into a general election. And that is what Dean Phillips is gonna do to Biden. He’s just gonna weaken him. And, if look, if there was some sense that, like, maybe Biden was gonna get out, maybe, you know, whatever, But this is, this is some of the this is this is very silly strategy.

It’s destructive and bad, and I am not here for it.

Alright. Let me ask you a question. Yep. This is this is not a leading question. It’s a genuine question.

Yeah. I could see how a challenged to Biden from his left could hurt him. So if Bernie Sanders had primary him, or Elizabeth Warren had primary him. That would have been catastrophic. Having a guy nobody has ever heard of, who’s a moderate, who is unlikely to get any traction at all, Probably doesn’t weaken him, maybe?

Like, is it possible that it has no effect on the race?

I do think so I do think it is strongly that it has no effect.

Okay.

Like, I actually think that Dean’s Phillips might end up being, like, three day story. And

He becomes Mary Ann Will Saletan. Mean, he’s not Mary Williamson, but in terms of his impact on the race and

Yeah. Okay. That he sort of languishes in continued obscurity raises no money And in fact, my guess is is that right now, he is receiving a lot of really, unhappy phone calls from colleagues, from donors, from everybody else. My guess is Dean Phillips may be doing himself in any of Like, the idea that he’s going to raise his profile and, and become sort

of help him long term. Right?

No. It is not gonna help him long term.

This is a shame because as you said he’s a moderate d,

We

want those. Uh-huh. Right. Need more of those.

I like I like Dean Phils. I just, yeah, I think that this probably you know, unlike in the Republican party where there’s, like, a mafia Don who would be, like, truthing that, you know, they’re gonna come take you out the knees Yeah. That’s not how Democrats are gonna communicate, but I do think there’s still an element of You’re doing a bad destructive thing and, like, we are we’re done with you. We’re not gonna help you going forward.

I’m still much more than discerned about no label, as I’m sure you are. Right? And no label

stuff will

mean much more than the the Dean Phillips stuff. Alright. Well, I mean, I’ll here, you can help help me talk through here. I’m gonna do a little bit of service here for you. This next segment is just for you, Sarah, because I’m gonna have you help me talk through the newsletter I’m writing this morning so that you won’t have to read it.

Over the weekend. If you

know what’s funny is that the newsletter that I read the most often is your Friday one because I’ll read it on Saturday morning. Because that’s when I have more time to just sit around and read. And it is so funny to me how often your Friday newsletter is just what we’ve talked about. And it’s clear that you are just using me in the conversation to workshop here. More

shopping ideas. You know, it’s a shame that you won’t read yesterday’s, my Thursday, because yesterday’s was a absolute tour de force. I I’m Tim was like, yeah. That’s really you made a very convincing case.

Well, do you wanna So I did it when I saw, so I gotta say, the last four days, I’ve been, like, in a news. There’s all this news that’s happening, and I’m in a news, like, isolation chamber. Like, I haven’t seen any because I was at a three day democracy conference followed by the live event. And so I was just, like, packed in there. And, I also have, like, a very big thing I’m trying to write that I so, like, every minute I’m trying to do

that.

No. No. No. It’s not it.

Just trolling you. Yeah. Just trolling you. You don’t have to say.

It’s not for the Atlantic. It’s not it’s

not Sarah’s writing this great piece for you. That’s not what it is. That are at all, Jeff.

Not that are wrong. Point is I had not read and I’m not real honest, but when I saw when I saw it quickly come past that the new jobs report came out or the no. No. No. It was the economic growth report.

Showing that and I was like, oh, no. I’m gonna have to really hear about no. First of all, I was like, this is great. Then I was like, JBL’s gonna have a field day with this. Which so please have your day.

No. I so I don’t wanna talk. You can read the piece. It was it’s very, very good. If I I mean, it’s

If you do say so yourself.

I’ve been on a hot streak this week. This week in general, I’ve been crushing it, but yesterday, this was really fantastic. I wanna talk through what I’m writing today, though, which is so there were two pieces of news, which came out yesterday. The first is the, GDP growth numbers.

Yep.

Very strong, stronger than expected, great news. Second Gallup approval rating on Biden in the last month. He dropped eleven points among democrats.

Yeah.

Not I mean, he dropped overall, but But he just so this is not like, you know, oh, it’s Fox News Brain or but, like, these these are democrat. He’s just had One of the most successful months of his administration. He handled a very difficult foreign policy crisis as well as Anybody in America could possibly have done. Inflation has continued to abate, job numbers, job growth last month, up this GDP report up, and eleven he loses double digits among Democrats. And this is so this is what I’m what I’m gonna workshop with you right now.

I want

I want people to hold two things simultaneously in their head. The first thing is that there was never going to be a stronger Democratic candidate than Biden. For a whole host of reasons, anybody you want to say, like, your fantasy democrat, you know, x, a is untested, b is not does not have the advantages of incumbency. C doesn’t have name ID. D can’t, you know, isn’t gonna be able to raise money the way he is.

And e, you their floor is an absolute unknown. Right? I mean, maybe they come on and they just shut the bed. Right? And it turns out that they can’t handle it.

They haven’t been vetted fully. Who who knows?

Have you met there’s this governor called Ron DeSantis? Everyone was sure. They were sure. It’s gonna be great. Not great.

So Biden is the the the best that Democrats had for a whole host of reasons. Two. So we have to hold three things in our hand. Two, because we’re doing video now while he’s holding the other thing out here. Biden has governed for the first part of his administration that we’ve seen yet.

About as well as any of us could have hoped. There have been, mistakes. It has not been perfect. Afghanistan, the student loan debt executive order. You could make a case that the American Rescue plan was either too large and or gave too much money to state municipals, and that this this wound up doing in, you know, increasing inflationary pressure that was already present.

K? Well, not perfect. Lots of problems. But on the whole, governed in a bipartisan manner passed a bunch of legislation that was popular, did it with bipartisan people, And and on issues that are, again, people like. Right?

People like gun reform. People people like infrastructure spending. And here’s the third thing. The mood in the country is so sour. That Biden is gonna be an underdog to Trump.

Mhmm.

He’s just gonna be so all three of these end in the So there are two fallacies, right, two two fallacies of how we look at the world, and everybody has one of them. There is the the fatalism fallacy. It’s me. Right? You look and you just say, this bad thing is coming, and there’s nothing we can do to avoid it because everything is bad.

And then there’s the optimism fallacy, which is if there is a bad thing here, there must be a way around it.

Oh, is that me?

I mean, I’m not gonna judge.

May maybe it’s you. Maybe it’s not. And that’s a that’s

a you question. That’s not a me question. And so I’m I’m very cognizant of my blind spots on this. Like, I understand that I’m a fatalistic guy. Even so, and even really thinking hard about that.

I think that, like, this is where the the alarm lights are flashing red again. And that we have the best possible candidate for the sake of democracy. This candidate has governed very well. And for cultural and attitudinal and vibey reasons, even running against a guy who is terrible, who everybody has seen how terrible who he is, who is under indictment, etcetera, etcetera. The guy who is pro democracy is gonna be an underdog and this is gonna be a gigantic gigantic fight.

And, I don’t know why the vibes are the way they are, but here’s so I wanted to, a, get your your take on those, like, you know, the three things, like my triangle of doom. My try involved him. And, b, I wanna throw one idea at you, which is that the forces of democracy have been fighting this fight now for so long. Twenty eighteen, twenty twenty, twenty twenty two, and they’ve come up aces. Every one of those times.

But there’s just people getting exhausted. Right? And you know, asking asking all of these people this coalition of, like, never trumpers and indies who, like, don’t really tune in and Democrats, and progressive far lefties who aren’t really convinced that Trump is any worse than any normal Republican asking them to all come through again. That’s a big ask. And maybe this time is not gonna happen.

Would it be nice at some point if Republicans could have done any any work whatsoever to try to help, but they have declined to do so. And, I don’t know. Like, maybe this is this is how authoritarians win. Right? They just and Apple mom wrote about this very early.

They just exhaust you. Right? They exhaust society and they keep going.

Yeah. I don’t know if you listen to the, Norlin show, but I talked about this early on, in in relationship to the speaker’s race, right, where Tim was kinda like, well, how how did this happen? After three weeks of fighting and all this stuff and like, you know, all these, you know, Ken bucks that he would never vote for somebody who was an election denier, here we got the guy organizing the efforts to overturn the election, organizing Ken Pxton’s amicus brief to disenfranchise all the voters in the other states and throw them out. This guy gets the nod and everybody votes for him. Why does that happen?

Exhaustion. Right? They’re tired of the voting, and they got worn down. And somebody was like, give me a clean-cut guy with glasses who doesn’t have a record that I don’t have to be about, and I’ll vote for him. And it’s not because the and this is where I think that a bunch of people And either we talked about this somewhere, but this idea that, like, it was a bunch of centrists or, like, a governing wing that was opposing Jordan was never right.

Like, Jordan had just made many too mad personally. There was only, like, one or two people who were opposing him on, you know, insurrectionist grounds. So, yeah, like, that is the hardest thing. The hardest thing is that it’s in look, part of the reason I need to express something about how nobody should listen to the polls right now. The polls right now are meaningless.

And that actually this is why JBL, I think your bucket of like underdog, whatever. I don’t and I’m not saying I’m not saying there’s not underlying truth in it. And obviously like, if you’ve been listening to the focus group pod, I am telling you about a very unenthusiastic Democratic party, very, you know, sort of backsliding, unhappy swing voters. That’s all there. But, like, a bunch of the pieces that go into how people will be feeling by election day just aren’t there yet.

So for example, You know, I’m, on the economic piece just really quickly. Obviously, I was thrilled to see the GDP news, in part because I think that public opinion is a lagging indicator of where things are for real. And so I think that we’re a year out and if the economy continues to improve like this, like Right now, we’re all just like annoyed that people don’t see that on paper, this economy is better. Like, at some point, the on paper kind of does hit people’s sense of reality. And that might not be for another eight months.

But, like, if the economy is really in a good place. That is a big game changer. Right? You

know, in December of twenty twenty four, that’s when people are gonna decide the economy’s great.

I’m gonna say I’m gonna I’m gonna tell it out hope for October. I’m gonna hold out

hope for October. As Trump is inaugurated, he’ll go, see. I fixed it.

Well, let’s talk about trump in this equation too. So trump, I see this all the time on the focus group pod. Like, people have just forgotten what they hate about Trump. Like, he is out. He is not right in people’s faces right now.

He is over there on truth social, misspelling, stolen, and, like, you know, kinda blabbing into the wind. Like, he’s just preaching to a bunch of porn bots on true social. And, like, that’s gonna be different when this guy’s the nominee, and he is going to be back every day with widespread coverage, saying, like, saying insane things. Like, right now, to real to see all the insane things he’s saying as Like, he will ban people coming to the country who do not, believe in our religion. I don’t know if you do you know what our religion is?

Anyway, Not the point.

He’s never been indicted.

He’s never been indicted. We might just we might need to suspend the constitution. Anyway, these are things that normal people are not seeing. Like, they’re just not seeing them yet. And so I just I do wanna urge calm Not here’s the thing.

I don’t wanna encourage Sanguinity, sanguine ness. I don’t want people to be sanguine.

Hey, again. It’s JBL. The conversation goes on from there. You wanna hear the rest of the show, head on over to Bulwark Plus and subscribe. We’d love to have you.