If You’re Not Michelle Obama

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the next level. I’m JBL here with my best friends. Sarah Longwell and Timothy Miller of the Bulwark. Hey, any of you guys listening to this or watching it who are in the DC area?

We’re doing a live show. This show right here, but live with a studio audience on November seventeenth, you should come and hang out. It’s gonna be a good time.

If you’re not in the DC area. It’s a lovely time. Preethanksgiving. Get a little lube dust before you ever see your family.

I’m sorry. What?

Yeah. Get a

little lubed up. Yeah. Have a few cocktails and

laugh. Thing for I you know what? That’s fine. Just amazing. Is this like how you feel when someone says strap it on?

It is. I hate it when you say that.

Okay. Well, to be clear, when I say that, I’m talking about strapping on your helmet, your football helmet, go out there and play and get into contact. I was talking about whiskey.

Okay. I was talking about whiskey. But the whole med Atlantic, you should come up Raleigh Raleigh only like a four hour drive from Raleigh. That’s easy.

If you live within twenty minutes, come to it. Otherwise, don’t it’s a lot of trouble now. But if you’re close

to the state live within twenty minutes No.

No. No. No.

And just come. Everybody come. It’s gonna be

November seventeenth. Go to the bulwark dot com slash events. Get your ticket here. I do not want to pressure you, but these things always sell out and we’re close to sell out status already. So if you’re thinking of doing it, go sooner rather than later to get tickets.

Don’t wait for the last minute. The bulwark dot com slash events. November seventeenth, it’ll be fun. I probably will be there. We’ll see.

Okay. Lots of stuff happening. And I wanna start with normally, this is where you we we do the, like, like, the gentleman from Kentucky or, you know, my distinguished colleague. The fuckers at the Washington examiner, who people I’m just not gonna pretend like our friends, a horrible, horrible institution with idiotic writers and idiotic editors and just the worst people in the world. They have a cover of their their magazine, which so far as I can tell is read by precisely zero people.

Where the headline is. We’re gonna put this up on video for the YouTube people. The moderate left is dead. And the cover is a cartoon with a donkey holding a lily in a suit in a in a coffin being carried by six pallbearers who are, a Hamas terrorist wearing a suicide vest and carrying an a k forty seven. A I’m assuming

don’t Interesting.

I’m interested

in what you’re gonna say here, JV. I’ll be careful.

A gay gentleman wearing a rainbow sash in with, like, a little pink top hat tiny pink top hat and a nose ring and maybe transition who could say then a They’re

just a little drag. You know, we got some chest hair, some muscles.

Maybe a little bit of drag, maybe a little bit trans who could say, then a woman, of African American descent also with a nose ring. A lot of nose rings here. I can always tell you guys that the nose rings trigger the trigger the cons. Wearing a BLM t shirt carrying a bag of cash. Like, like, again, like, like, a

cartoon character. From your bank.

Right. From from road runner or Then on the other side of the the the set of pallbearers, we have an antifa gentleman wearing a beanie with a hammer and sickle and carrying a lead pipe, within some dude wearing a a baseball cap that says DCA, I know actually understand that.

Is this the air traffic controller? I don’t I don’t understand this reference.

And then another stupid because DCA is the best of the airports. Of the DC airport.

Democratic communist. It might be a Democratic communist, something. Like, it’s a DSA, DCA.

Well, or, you know, you would think like social damage anyway.

Tommy listening can let us know what DCA stands for. I sense it’s a communist thing.

And another African American gentleman with some face tattoos and not pictured. Doing drawings for some time. Any actual Democratic office holders And I would say it happens that the Democrats hold the presidency of these United States right now. Wow. The the Democrats even even hold the the majority in the United States Senate, the Democrats are pretty powerful.

Some of those guys must have been pictured also.

No. None of them pictured.

And do you think that Joe Biden wears, like, a lot of makeup to cover up all his face tattoos?

Probably. And he always takes his nose ring out before he goes on camera, which is very, very considerate of him.

What about, like, some of the recent Democrats that have been elected? In in swing states. Oh, like Rafael Warren. Was Eric Adams, Raffiel warnock, or Gretchen with the Josh Shapiro. Is he pictured anywhere?

Not pictured.

Any kind of just sort of center left Jewish men pictured. Don’t see

any of those people here. Anyway, this is a they’re, like, two things going on. And the first is the There’s like

more than two, but

The first part of it is the absolute ignoring of the political party where the people holding actual power do things like attempt coups, you know, so the ignoring of that and then the pretending that let’s as anybody who has followed the bulwark carefully over the last few weeks knows, there are, in fact, lots of problems with the far left. And the the Hamas sympathy stuff is real and exists in in horrifying ways out there on many American college campuses and in other parts, but this has no foothold within the actual main body of the Democratic party itself, where in fact the attitude is the opposite. It’s not like the rest of the Democratic party is just sort of like looking away and, you know, the the actual Democratic party is is going as hard pro Israel as well as the Republican party wants them to be. True facts.

Yeah. Let’s not let’s not say words like there’s no foothold. There’s a little bit of a foothold. Right? And so I said

no foothold in the main body of the democratic party. Fair?

Like in Congress? I mean, there are some There’s some bad things that some of the Democrats are saying in Congress. I think I can count them on one hand, though. And just do I need a six or seven? You might

need it on the

phone.

Yeah.

Okay. So I don’t wanna overstate it because then our we can’t make our point as crisply as we need to make it, which is that in the Republican Party, the vast majority voted to not certify an election, whereas in the actual Democratic party, and in fact, they’re helping just elected a new speaker who tried to orchestrate throwing out the votes, disenfranchising people so their votes wouldn’t count. Whereas, Joe Biden, and the vast majority of Democrats, including a bunch of people who are up for reelection as moderate Democrats right now, actually hold office. So it’s not that there’s none, which I don’t wanna overstate it. But it is the vast majority.

I wanna expand on that in two ways. One is, if the Bulwark out of fake magazine that nobody read, you know, and we put out a cover that said the moderate right is dead. You know, the people pictured would be like

Donald Trump.

Of the house.

Speaker of that. You know, how

many for the for president? Well, you know, the

Ron Vasantis, the guy who’s running second.

And the president. We got a rhythmic who was running third for a while, you know, until recently, we’ll get to. You know, and like there would be actual real people with power on the picture, not fake cartoon cares. Maybe we would put like one cartoon character of Hornman on there. But then again, he, you know, breached the well of of Congress.

It wasn’t just like a fictional you know representation of a character who happened to be on the street in Portland. Anyway, that that that’s one thing. The other thing that I think is it is just I think it’s lost in in the rhetoric of all this is there are actual primary elections that we can kind of judge this stuff to see how much of a foothold people have. Like there is there is real world data in this that there is no example that I can think of. Let me not say no example, to be precise like Sarah Longwell.

There are very few examples of the times where rep when you look at a Republican primary and you think the more mainstream person, the more moderate person feels like the stronger person in that primary. Brian Kemp is the one that comes to mind. They’ll call him moderate as like preposterous. I mean, he would in the In two thousand ten, he would have been seen as a hard line social conservative Republican, which he is, but because he didn’t go in with the coup, Brian Kemp is maybe an example in Rafinsberger. Maybe there are a couple other examples.

But generally what you have in the is a power dynamic and a primary is the more moderate king that has to kind of pretend like they’re a crypto maga freak. In order to have a chance to win while the Maga freak just gets to be their unadulterated self because they know that’s what what the party wants. Right? So we so we have these power dynamics it’s Republican politicians are very, very scared of primaries from their right. There are no mega politicians with maybe the exception of Lauren Bobert because she was grabbing hogging beetlejuice musical who are like concerned about a primary from the center and I don’t even know how concerned she is.

So that’s up. On the democratic side, I guess some people in Congress are concerned about a primary from their left Chuck Schumer, people you might be a little concerned that AOC or somebody might challenge them. You see these one off situations, but not really. Like you don’t see a ton of examples of Democrats just feeling like they have to vote for Medicare for all or something or else they’re gonna be successfully primary from the left. There have been a couple Crowley AOC.

There have been a couple, but not not very many. And right now we have a new story out today that shows that actually there’s some the squad now faces concerns about primaries from the right and this is something we’re gonna be covering. I know Jamal Bowman looks like he’s gonna get a a primary Corey Bush, potentially Omar. But will any of those work? I don’t know.

Will that like that all remains to be seen, but we have seen that the the DSA prosecutor in San Francisco get recalled. We’ve seen mayor’s race. You know, again, not every mayor’s race in Chicago, the more liberal one in New York. The market’s not right. So so again, to serious point, it’s not like there’s no stronghold of the far left, but, like, the mainstream Democrats and the moderate if you wanna use that word Democrats like are holding their own in these inter party fights and winning many of them recently.

Again, maybe that made all change to twenty nine. I don’t know. Maybe the, you know, the drag guy with the with the nice chest hair and muscles and the Hamas Terrace end up like winning primary twenty twenty eight on the democratic side and and we’ll assess that at that time. But like that is the thing here that I just think gets totally law. And just like the notion People would laugh if you’re like, oh Marjorie Taylor Greens can get primary from by a Paul Ryan type.

You know? Like, that’s literally what’s gonna happen to Jamal Bowman. Jamal is getting primary by, you know, like, just a old school Central Left, New York Machine Democrat. Okay. Like, we’ll let we’ll see how that how that turns out.

I’d be worried if I was Jamal Bowen. I I don’t think that Alyssa slotkin’s worried that she’s gonna get primary by Rashida to leave.

I mean, there’s a a broader general thing going on and a hyper specific thing going on. I wanna talk about the hyper specific thing for a moment, then I’m gonna throw to you Sarah for the broad general thing. The Washington examiner criminology is something that I am personally deeply familiar with. So let me just tell you guys what’s going on. When I said that nobody reads this magazine, I mean, it literally I mean, you are out there listening to this on the internet, I would defy you to find a single piece ever written about the Washington magazine or any article therein contained.

It has never happened. The whole magazine is being produced for a single guy, and that’s the the owner of the Washington examiner name is Phil Ansha. I think he’s a very old, very silly conservative man who happens to be worth about twelve billion dollars.

And So just as a quick aside, Revfoot, Anchez, because I really enjoy this. Also own Cochella. And so, like, really, he’s done more.

Staple Center.

Yeah. Yeah. He’s done more to elevate the cultural left that the that the Washington examiner decries that like almost anybody in America by by owning Coachella. I mean, the dominance of the cultural left in this country. But he does spend a lot of money on a magazine.

Nobody reads to, like, make him feel better about that.

So that’s nice. So so Phil inches hates Donald Trump. But, of course, loves Republicans. And he doesn’t read this magazine, but he does look at the covers. And so a cover like this is designed to make Phil Anne Schutz feel good about signing on with whatever needs to be signed off on on the Republican side.

That’s what this is all about. But there is the broader thing happening too. Right, Sarah, which is that this is how Republicans talk themselves into, especially at the margins. Right? Like, boy, I don’t really like Trump and but I the the the Democrats are so bad.

Right? And so they talked themselves into, but, you know, I read somewhere on Facebook that there is a school with kitty litter boxes in the the bathrooms, and that’s that’s insanity. I have to vote for the election denier. Right? I mean, isn’t that basically the dynamic?

Yeah. Although when you said specific, I thought you were gonna say something I thought you were gonna talk about the fact that the cover for it could have been about. Right? The fact that there is right now in this moment a problem on the far left with sort of seeming to both sides the terrorism. Right?

Like, that’s the essential problem that one would think that they were trying to get at, but instead they did two things that are weird. One is they sort of threw every caricature of the far left on the cover to make it about sort of something different. And two, they declared the center dead at a time when it’s very much alive and in fact has been sort of thriving in this particular moment. So that’s what I thought you were gonna say specifically. Now at a macro level though, it’s about both sides.

Right? It’s about creating the impression that both sides are morally equivalent because they’re just both so filled and dominated by their extremes. And crazy people. Now I’ve seen some articles that plot that sort of try to argue that that’s where the democratic party is heading Right? But I don’t know that people like, there’s this idea of, like, well, Joe Biden dies.

Like, he’s the last line of defense as this very old man. But that also, to your point, sort of ignores the fact that this new bench of candidates that is so promising is a bunch of swing state governors who are sort of relative moderates. Now I think sometimes from the conservative standpoint, you might think Well, moderate used to mean that there were, you know, pro life Democrats, and that doesn’t exist anymore. And I think that that is actually part of conservative psychology is that there are certain things that are orthodoxy in the Democratic party, and you would get primary. If you are a pro life democrat, or if you voiced and espouse that you thought gay marriage was wrong and you would vote against it, you would probably draw a primary in the Democratic party.

But because it’s orthodoxy on sort of like economic issues or just on the sense of being like kinda normal. Right? Like Gretchen Whitmer is a pretty much a normal person. And that’s where it’s so dishonest. The caricature because it’s it says, like, Joshua Gretchen Whitmer don’t exist.

We are governed by these Hamas loving kids on college campuses. Which is false.

Just a little history lesson on this for everybody listening now. Again, it’s always good to be vigilant, and people and Democrats, I think should feel free to fight within their own camps on all this stuff, you know, side and and be concerned about what’s happening. But look, I lived as in twenty ten know Sarah Longwell lived through this. There was a series of Republican primaries where insane people beat normal people. This was I’m not a witch.

Christina Donald over my camp This is Sharon Angela in Nevada. This is Ken Buck when Ken Buck was insane, beating Jane Norton. Right? Like this, like, we

could do is now the voice of reason.

Yeah. And then in red states, right? This is Rand Paul, beating our buddy, Trey Grayson. You know, I all all of this happened in twenty ten. Like, where and and from there on, usually the craziest, as Thomas Massey said, usually the craziest son of a bitch in the race won the primaries and last the establishment candidate was really talented, really good at pretending to be crazy.

Right? Like, you know, and so the it just the power and the energy has been on the right side of the Republican party in actual elections in real life for six years before Trump. Got there. And, you know, may maybe not a coincidence. The first election after Barack Obama was elected.

You know, maybe there’s something to that. Right? So that What’s the

leakage there, Tim? What do you think it was? That that cuts Hard to say. It’s really hard to figure that out.

I know. There’s a lot to think about spending. A lot of conservative spending. But, the you know, that that could have happened in twenty eighteen. Right?

We saw the pussy hat rip protests and you didn’t know what that was gonna turn into. Right? Baltrunk gets elected and maybe in the the Democrat become so radicalized by this in twenty eighteen that they go and throw out their establishment, Hillary Clinton type Democrats, and put in a bunch of squad members. And then I blitz, like, it happened in a few tiny house districts in like New York City. And so, again, maybe this will happen But I I think that this is wish cast.

That I I know I know that this is wish casting from the Phil and Shits Boys, like Bud Boys. Right? Like, not this is not based on evidence.

And that twenty eighteen election, actually, where some of those people got him, actually, there was a wave, though. It was far outnumbered by the moderates that got collected. That was the that was when they elected all these women who were like helicopter pilots. Right. You see, I at Abigail’s fan burger and Mikey Cherell and Alyssa slotkin.

And so, yeah, this is, it’s a fantasy of the right.

I would say one one other thing that is slightly hopeful. So I we a great piece on the site, by Chris Deaton, one of my old buddies, about precisely this problem? Like, what happens if the Democrats wind ups are coming to to demagoguery in the long run. And I would say one encouraging thing to see is that The Democratic establishment has done a pretty good job of co opting a lot of those folks. AOC is much more responsible than she was when she first came in Congress, John Federman has turned out to be a pretty, pretty solid and responsible guy.

Bernie Sanders?

John John Federman’s like bordering on neocon territory lately.

Right. I don’t know what happened. I don’t

know what happened post stroke, but I don’t know. He’s like kind of the ghost of Michael Hayden spoke to him. Michael Hayden’s alive, by the way. Hello. Hello, Gerald.

Biden very successfully co opted Bernie. Right? Bernie could have become, like, a guy way out on Biden’s left to just sort of taking shots and dragon. Instead Biden, like, brought him into the tent. And so the the centrist Democrats have been so successful and so powerful that they’ve not completely and not totally, but then a fairly good job of bringing those those people out of the far left the elected ones, and and into the the main body of the democratic party, into the tent.

And that’s pretty helpful.

Just to argue though against this and sound like a Republican, perhaps a second, though. I do think we’re Democrats struggle is on the hyper local level. Like, you do still see, like, in California, they’re still passing really nutty stuff. And, like, Gavin Newsom actually vetoed some of the, like, the worst stuff, which was good. But, like, there is still in the cities, right, the people who are governing cities, like, there are problems with that.

And people do see them at the local level and think like, okay, Democrats talking about, like, weird stuff. And so I just I don’t wanna let them off the hook entirely because I think a lot of times the people that, like, average people are exposed to, on the democratic side can be doing some weird things. But that is why the cover looks like it does.

I think that there’s some weird liberals in their life. I don’t know that

a lot of these

people are upset on the merit because they’re like that my state senator in Berkeley is really is really extreme and I’m really upset at Joanna Higginsbottom. I don’t think most people know that they’re state senator is. You know?

No. But I think they know who their mayor is.

Sure. Yeah. There’s some bad mayor.

And, like, and their and their city council members.

There’s three hundred thirty million people, right, in this country. Like, you’re gonna this is the problem. The problem is that if there is one bad liberal with a lot of Twitter followers, saying bad things, that person is gonna be elevated to become the face of the Democratic party. And, you know, it’s I don’t know. Like, all we can do is take the world as it is.

Look, have you ever been to a luncheon? You know, it’s hard to hold a party in a gym and not have a few crazy people come to it. Okay? I mean, like, you know, even, you know, we we can do we can do it at Bulwark Live events, Washington, DC, the bulwark dot com slash events. Because, you know, we’re we’re deep, but it’s very challenging.

One last thing on on the modern times for, I interviewed Brandon Pressley, who’s running for governor of Mississippi. And and I do think the Democrats can do a much better job than this because they did not just do this in the Louisiana governor’s race we just lost. To Jeff Landry, who’s a who’s a lunatic. But in Mississippi, I got this guy Brandon Pressley that is running at what Sarah was talking about, the old school moderate democrat. Pro Life, you know, like not super keen on, you know, trans surgeries for youth and, you know, all, like, all all of that sort of stuff, an old school culturally conservative populist right Democrat.

And we’ll see and that there are mixed polls and stuff. We’ll see how much better he does, but he is an interesting guy. He’s running in it. And it was again not a situation. We saw this with Larry Hogan and Charlie Baker’s what I didn’t write about, but that’s relevant to the thing.

Maybe that would happen. Maybe he gets in there, but but we had John Bell Edwards in Louisiana for eight years. It’s not like there was a lefty DSA person that’s like, we know the the democratic convention in in the red state. We gotta throw out Brandon Pressley and put in nose ring person. Right?

Like, I think Democrats are super excited about Brandon Pressley to bite is, you know, differing views on some of those culture issues. And and, you know, maybe it turns out that that he wins. It buried in the article for you JBL is a pretty good million dollar man Ted DBosy. Should call out.

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Alright, Sarah.

Well, I just wanted to cap off this moderate democrat thing. Have congressman Tim Ryan on the focus group pod this weekend, and this is what we talked about because there’s also a Kentucky governor’s race and Andy Bishier we did a bunch of focus groups with bashir Trump voters and it’s so interesting listening to these voters, like, first of all, they all call him Andy. They’re just, like, on a first name basis with this guy. And there was a guy in the group that was talking about, like, You know, I don’t agree with him on the issues of, life. This guy was was pro life, but and knows Andy was sure if not, but he’s just he’s a he’s a nice guy who I think cares about us he’s a good governor, and the extent to which Andy Bashir, and they all called him Andy.

The extent to which he has clearly made a personal connection with people. He talks about economics, all the time. Like, he really tries to lean into, and this was sort of Tim. You should let go listen to the podcast. Tim Ryan was amazing.

He is excellent. But, like, the thing that he preaches really is just sort of economy, economy, economy, you know, not putting these cultural issues front and center. And I think that there are a lot of Democrats that are doing that to great effect in,

like Including Joe Biden.

Right? Including Joe Biden. Yeah.

My boy. Laser eyes Joe. Okay. Speaking of centrist Democrats, we got an Arizona senate poll. I know it’s a little weird to be talking about state level senate polls.

But it came out this week and it was interesting because Kirsten Cinema is up for reelection. She is no longer a Democrat. She is now a very fashionable independent and in a three

way race anti Halloween. Did you say this? She’s anti She’s anti grown ups dressing up like Halloween. She thinks it’s weird.

I’m sorry. Miss dress up like, is anti home?

She thinks it’s weird for growing up. Let me have just let me have some joy in my life. Okay? There’s nothing personal about Kristen sentiment. But if you’re out there, you’re saying, oh, your grown up shouldn’t be doing this.

Just just take a breath. Okay? Like, well, life insurance.

Maybe senators shouldn’t wear poofy skirts. With, like, fashion choices. And I just wanted

her poofy skirts. I always loved her kind of

whimsical looks. Listeners, you gotta stay all the way to the end So Tim can tell you about his Halloween costume because it was epic.

We’ll give him the call.

Anyway, Ruben Gaygo, the Democratic presumptive nominee is in a three way race at forty one percent, Cary Lake, the presumptive Republican nominee, at thirty seven percent. Kirsten Cinema, the sitting US center at seventeen. That’s really something, isn’t it? Can you remember a sitting US senator pulling third. Like, this did not happen to Joe Lieberman.

When Joe Lieberman was getting drummed out of the party and ran as a independent, he was not pulling twenty points behind second place. That’s nuts.

Well, what’s nuts about it is how much she seems to be pulling from Prairie Lake?

Eight and eight. So within the two way

Oh, eight and eight. Wow.

In the two way race, we go to forty nine forty five in in favor of Diego. So

Wow. Straight down the middle. I do think that’s super telling. So

that is interesting. Right? She’s an independent. She pulled deeply from Republicans and Democrats.

Think it’s a reverse no label situation with her. It’s eight and eight. And the interesting thing is this goes back to my red dog Democrats article from twenty twenty. It’s like, the salient issues for a lot of voters right now are are are your and it goes to your up down j v l is up down issues not left right stuff. Right?

It’s like is this person anti democracy? Is this person a lunatic? Like, it’s not going down them on, you know, a specific list of issues. And in a lot of ways, like, cinema has just from a on a policy perspective, you would think she would take from Diego, but, like, on a vibes and presentation perspective, she’s taking from Republicans. And Carrie like being a total loon is is certainly helping, with that regard.

Oh, see, I I think the reason takes from Republicans is because she there are a whole bunch of Republicans in state who do not wanna vote for Lake, and they don’t wanna vote for a Democrat. And the cinema now is like an off ramp for them.

Yeah. But cinema’s also done what their favorite thing. What’s the one thing Republican voters like no matter what kind of Republican they are.

Owning the lives, corporations.

Poking Democrats.

Yeah. Sorry.

He needs the Democrats. Yeah. So when she, you know, she makes Democrats mad, which means that, like, a of Republicans thinks she’s good, like, automatic.

This is a better way to put what I was trying to say. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And Carrie, like, running again after losing Like, there’s a bunch of people who

made up their She’s governor.

No. Yeah. She’s a city of her.

She’s actually the one who the National Guard in Arizona takes orders from Sarah Longwell other woman may sit in the mansion, but she’s just a puppet.

Well, normie, Republican voters have decided how they feel about Carrie Lake. And, like, Kirsten Cinema would just be, like, a good off ramp for them. Like, that is sort of where the no labels idea it does kick in is, like, I there might even be a bigger anti carry lake coalition I don’t know how they’ll feel about Diego is they get to get to know him more. This is like a first impression snapshot poll. It’s not like a deep, I know these people poll.

But it does seem to belive the fact that a bunch of people are out on Lake right away.

It’s also fun to note from for JBL that the people are always wonderful and thoughtful. Is that there is at least eight percent of the Arizona Electric that looks at Carrie Lake and says, you are a lunatic, ma’am. You are like such a lunatic. I’m gonna vote for the fairy lady who used to be in the green party. But if my only option is a Democrat and you, I’m coming back to the lunatic.

Eight percent that had just

That’s really something to say.

See Carrie Lake for who she is clearly. And yet we’ll still vote for her if if the, you know, if push comes to shove, that’s nice.

Can I just say I just basically, I don’t think that’s true because remember, Katie Hobbs, right? She’s the most boring candidate on the face of the planet. Right? And she’s still outperformed Joe Biden in Arizona. Like, that’s how my, like, like, centrist Normy Republicans in Arizona than McCain voters, they don’t like Kerry Lake.

So do you guys think cinema sticks it to the all the way to the election? So if you’re her, I, you know, I always think about incentive structures. Is she incentivized to go and get fifteen percent and coming third as an incumbent senator, or is she incentivized to just say, you know, f you guys, I’m outie. And go start making a bazillion dollars in corporate boards as she already told the people she could do.

I know what she’s gonna do. Yeah. She’s gonna be the VP ticket on this on the no labels candidate. Yeah. Because mansion won’t do it.

Think mansion’s gonna run as an independent or something in West Virginia. Because if he’s not at the top of the ticket at no labels, he’s not gonna do it. And they’ve already said they’re gonna put a Republican at the top of the ticket because they wanna project like who they’re gonna pull from as Republicans, even though that’s not what will happen. With the John Huntman Kirsten Cinema ticket, which is I think where we’re heading.

Boy, Tim. Luckily, the best that could happen would be that they’d put John Huntman at top of that ticket because that guy

is He could do the entire campaign in Mandarin.

Yeah. I think that what we’ve seen from the from that, just shot out of a cannon Dean Phillips campaign that we that happened last Friday that nobody’s that nobody’s talking about and doesn’t actually exist when I’d see that from from John Huntman. So that would be nice.

Candidate skills. So you think she’s gonna go straight to presidential race? I think that’s a very solid bet. So let’s talk Dean Phillips. Sarah, can I put a quarter in the machine?

And I just wanna hear you go on this.

So this is actually a thing you could do. If you go to YouTube, you will see that Tim did like a good sixteen minute segment just on Dean Phillips that I watched because I needed it. Monologue. It’s just like straight to cameras. And I

had a lot of thoughts. Okay? I had the whole weekend, a lot of simmer because he launched on a Friday, and I was in New York for, for stuff. It’s like I couldn’t tape it on Friday. So I had the whole I had three days, two plane flights to just kinda let it all just kinda

let your rate build and build and build.

So I would be you know, I wanna talk about this, but I do think it would be fair. I would be repeating both a lot of what Tim said, but also Tim is speaking for me in this context. Like, I would just say both of us are very much on the same page about what an awful idea it is, how strategically it makes no sense. The people who are for this for the idea of, like, And what sorry, Tim. I’m just gonna let you know.

No. Don’t do it.

Please. I’m I’m honored.

Tim did a good job up front of, I think, saying something that both of us have said that anybody listen to this cast knows, which was that we think a year ago, this was like a thing maybe people should have thought about. Like, the signs of the focus groups were flashing red. But then, you know, Also, like the midterms turned out well. Like, we are now in a couple of wars. Nobody did it at the time and decided not to.

Like, So doing it right now, like, Dean Phillips, this is my point, actually, not Tim. Dean Phillips denounced on the same weekend that Mike Pence dropped out. Because this is getting out season, not getting in season. Right? Like, it’s just the timing is too late.

It’s too late. And then even if you were gonna do it, okay, couple of things you wanna do is, one, announce with a guy who’s basically just a forty year younger version of Joe Biden. So he’s got no criticism. Like, exactly. He’s, like, he’s a big fan of Joe Biden, but it’s just about his age.

So now he’s just running a campaign. Just drawing attention to the age thing. That’s it. Like, he’s got this enough a whole lot of substantive.

And inflation, which is helpful.

Yeah. Right. Super helpful. Then second of all, the Steve Schmidt thing is preposterous. Look, as much as I would love to go on to a glorious career of, you know, advising Democrats, maybe someday, but I think, like, right now, if you’re gonna run a presidential campaign, you don’t go higher some high profile never drunk Republican who, by the way, has, like, a lot of baggage and a lot of, like, stuff who sucks up.

Like, more stories have been about Steve Schmidt at this point than have been about Steve Phillips.

He has higher name ID, I think.

Higher name ID. I’m

sure of it.

Yeah. Certainly among,

like, several I just wanna just I just wanna interrupt on this one point about you working for that. I don’t want people to mistake this again. My whole complaint with the Dean Phillips thing is that this is that the candidate is wrong, the strategy is wrong, and the strategist is a grifter Right? Like, like, every, like, all of the specific elements of it are wrong. Right?

It’s not the idea is not necessarily wrong in a different time with a different candidate with a different strategy. But, like, this is is is what is specifically galling. Look, I’m retired. Okay. I’m retired, but it but Sarah seems like she might not there’s a democrat out there that’s like, Hey, I’m a democrat running in a red state.

I’d love to get Sarah Longwell board for some thoughts, you know, like it’s a as a adviser or Hey, it’s the general election coming up, and we need a hard knuckled lesbian former Republican to start taking it to the Republicans and help our campaign with that. Yeah. Okay. Right. Sure.

There are times and places for all those. I’m not saying that, you know, Sarah can never have a job in politics again. That’s not, I it’s maybe true for me, not for her, not for other, never trumpers. But, like, if Dean Phillips calls me, like, literally the first thing I’m saying is, okay, who’s who do you have? That’s not me.

Right? Because, like, like, you need you’re running in a democratic primary, a stent ostensibly a democratic primary. I where Joe Biden won on the basis of his, really strong performance with Bulwark Democrats. You’re gonna hire a white Never trumper who’s never had to even think about getting black votes in his entire life as your main strategist. Like, that’s idiotic from start.

Why would the strategy accept that? And then you’re gonna let them do press conferences and interviews for you. I think the whole thing is just is just outrageous. And and and it is just such a scam And, like, the best thing I can say about it is it seems so incompetent that I don’t know that it’s gonna be meaningfully different from Mary Ann Will Saletan. In a way that harms Joe Biden.

Predict, it won’t. And in fact, it’ll be if we count Rfk Junior, Mary Ann Will Saletan and END Phillips, Dean Phillips, who is the most theoretically serious person of those, would finish behind the other two. My view.

If there’s a vote.

If there was if there was a vote, if there was a primary vote in New Hampshire over this from South Carolina.

The only thing is is, like, I like Deepgram. Deep Phillips could have been, like, a decent nominee, like, ten years from now or five years from now, whatever.

No worry, camp.

Why I don’t The guy decided to fire bomb his own career. I mean, I don’t know what these guys are thinking. The people who are calling for a primary challenger right now, Just stop it. It’s over. I’m sorry.

I wish things were different, but you gotta knock it off and, like, play the ball. Is it late?

And that’s Barack Obama. Well, unless Michelle wants if Michelle or Oprah wants to if you’re not Michelle or Oprah, just stop. Like that or the rock. Michelle Oprah on the rock. That’s the list.

Those are the three people that could possibly get in the race right now, but everybody else is a no. I know. And I used to say it’s like George Pete. Zinda maybe. She I don’t think she’s thirty five.

I I just say this about George Pie Blush again. And he ended up doing some stuff in this campaign that I really didn’t like, but but I like him personally. Right? That and I was saying I don’t think that it’s necessarily a bad idea that George P Bush runs in Texas. He just shouldn’t run-in a Republican primary.

You know, like and try to out Maga his opponent. Like that’s just a strategy that’s not gonna work. There’s nothing personal about him. I I had to do interviews about this all the time when I had to do the whole throat clearing thing. I feel that way.

I don’t know Dean Phillips personally, but I feel the same way because politics seem totally fine. Most of the things that he’s saying besides like a couple random cheap shots he’s taking a joke right and, like, I I agree with. But like, This is stupid and harm and and harmful. Harmful. It’s worse than stupid really.

It’s a it’s actively harm. It it it would be actively harmful if it worked. The best the best that can happen is that it just totally blows up on the launch pad, which it seems to, like, it might have.

On the other hand.

Okay.

If this is who Dean Phillips is, then isn’t it better to know now than in ten years when he tries to make a serious run at something bigger?

No. Because this is earnest on his part. Like, this is Right.

He’s gonna get his, and he probably won’t hurt Biden. And so it’s better to know. No. Okay. Whatever.

I don’t

know. Yeah. Whatever. Yeah.

Alright. Humans are complicated.

Now we can really fight. Mike Pence is out, as you said, Sarah Longwell I would like to put a proposition to the group. Mike Pence accomplished something very positive with his run for president. He did not do any harm. He acquitted himself very honorably, and he attempted to Both draw a clear distinction on what he thought about where the party was going and to draw a line in the sand and bring Republican voters back from the abyss, and then when it was clear he couldn’t do anything, he got out on time so that he would not contribute to Donald Trump running away with the nomination.

All of which is great. Mike Pence, the hero we deserve.

I don’t even know what to do with that. I

He’s fine JBL. He’s fine. It’s also fine. He’s not he’s not the hero we deserve. But, like, is it good that he got out?

Yes. Is it weird that he got in in the first place? Yes. Is it weird that he gave Trump cover for four years? Is it is that bad?

Yes. Does that is entirely offset by him doing the right thing when push gave came to shove in terms of a constitutional crisis. I don’t know. But there was no constituency for him. The voters actively hate him.

Many of them, as you may recall, wanted him to be hung from a noose. They built the contraption to do it. And so I think that, I’m not sure what judgment he made the thought he ought to do it. You know

where I’m going with this. And and, we’re just I’m just going straight to fantasy politics. I will JVM, I will put on the Mike Pence T shirt JVM Mike Pence, if it’s, you know, if it’s October, if it’s, you know, fifth forty eight weeks from now, forty nine weeks from now. And Joe Biden’s on a stage in Wisconsin, and then it’s like What is that? You know, it’s the WWE thing.

You know, some music comes on. It’s like a Christian rock song. It’s a Christian rock song. It’s Is that Mike Pence’s music? And, like, he walked out on James.

It’s Mike Pence. He’s got the tube chair.

And he’s like, Joe Biden might wanna kill babies, and I might not like him, but he’s better than the other guy. And then he walks off stage. That then, okay. Alright. Then I’ll come full circle on Mike Pence.

So I don’t see that happening, and so I’m not gonna let myself fantasize about Mike Pence, even though he might like that. And, you know, it is what it is. My other thing is that not my party this week is I’ll I’ll just say one sentence. The trajectory of the two mics is very telling. We’ll get back to the Washington examiner to cover about like what is what is really true about the Republican party?

Well, the trajectory of the two mics tells you thing because Mike Pence Johnson are literally the same person. They’re living like they’re in the same marriages. They have the same beliefs. They have the same speaking style, like They are doppelcanakers for one another. One is out, one is speaker.

The only difference was January sixth. That’s it. That’s all that matters.

And JBL? Yeah. I I there’s gonna come a time. Mhmm. Jim is right.

Fifty ish weeks from now or maybe before. In fact, probably before.

But my principal is based

on Donald Trump. Yeah. Whitney adores is Donald Trump, and then we’ll talk, my friend. You know what?

Look, I wouldn’t put money on it. I think there’s a chance he doesn’t endorse Trump.

I’d also think there’s a chance of that.

Like, maybe a one in four chance. That Pence refuses to endorse him.

So you’re seventy four percent. Pence endorses trump, twenty five percent. No endorsement one percent endorsement? Is that your breakdown? Basically.

Basic. Basic. The hero we need.

Yeah. What? I’ll tell you what.

Biden himself ought to be personally courting pence pretty hard.

So I agree.

He ought to be on the phone with him. Three fifteen, warm

cup of milk, Mike Pence call every night.

Bringing him to the to the White House asking for his help on some initiative. Right? Find some important like disaster relief initiative and put Mike Pence in charge of it and ask him to help, like, he and Barack Obama go out and raise in George Shelby Bush, go and raise money for hurricane victims, tomato victims or something. That would be that would be something that would be Yeah.

That’s on the vault. I’ll I’ll

be passing

along my Mike Pence contacts. Do you start inviting him? But I

I really do mean this. I mean, so following the the end of the Trump administration, Mike Pence was basically complicit in all of it, and he could have run as DeSantis here. Like, he could have chosen to jump into the DeSantis lane and really run full Maga. Instead, he basically repudiated all of it. I mean, he gave the his big time for choosing speech about populism versus Reagan conservatism

for him.

Mother. He gave a chime for choosing speech. He gave gave a speech. It was long. And, you know, he tried.

Like, he really did try. He I think that he earnestly believed that the party was and that the voters were what he thought they were. And I think he was genuinely surprised to find out that You

guys should do us you guys should do a chat sit down fireside chat. We try to make that happen? I think you and Mike Pence should do a hundred percent.

Listen, I’m the only one in America who’s ever written nice things about him. No. Nobody else has. Mother. Alright.

Guys, we’re about to get out of here, but first, I promised you some candy. Tim, you sent me pictures of your fantastic

Thank you.

Fantastic Halloween.

I posted it to threads dot net. So people that want to join threads can see it are applied go to my feed and click on my replies. I did I sent it to Chris Hayes. He needed a pick me up. He requested a pick me up over on threads.

This is what happens on threads. People are just trying to you know, just warm each other’s souls, you know, rub each other’s backs, you know,

get each other hand

when they’re down. It’s like the good Samaritan social media feed. That’ll last about a month. You might as well come while, you know, while the glory days of threads are happening. So I did send it so people can look at this.

But I went as, jail Rudy Giuliani I was trying to manifest.

With the with the hair dye running down the side of your face,

which is a hair dye. I had the jail costume my little shot glass for all of my for my whiskey. I was carrying around. It was pretty good. You know, it took people a little while to get it.

Out on the street. Yeah. It took people a little while to get it. I was I was hoping for, like, overwhelming positive. But, yeah, yeah, we’re in Louisiana.

So I did, like, four people really, really liked it. You know, I had intense and and intense compliments from my four people, but I bet everybody else was like, why you look like? What what is what’s the weird marker on your face for?

You did look a little bit like one of the stuages. Like, it took me a second until I saw I it literally I took once I saw it coming down your face, I was like, oh, I see.

Thank you. I appreciate it though. People so people judge themselves. I’ll take constructive feedback. I don’t I’m not, you know, my self worth is not defined by my costumes.

But, well, you know, my self worth is defined by Sarah Longwell I don’t think Sarah knows how to put YouTube videos on faster than one point o speed. So she listened to fourteen minutes and twenty seconds of my rant about Steve Schmidt and and did not reread one single word of your tryout. So that is something that does

more more my I also had a costume for Halloween, but only Sarah got a picture of it. No one else gets no one else gets to see my Halloween costume. Why?

Yeah. Why? Because JBL worries about, you know, people judging his big it was a very tight. He’s in a very tight little superhero thing. And you know what?

I thought he was

Was there some loose stuff you’re worried about? No.

This is this is the worst part of it. It’s like the pants are, like, sinbad Jeannie baggy.

Oh, yeah. And

then the show, you know, you you order these things from Amazon and who knows?

That wasn’t a sinbad Jeannie, by the way.

And it was, anyway, un unimportant.

It was white.

Sarah got to

see it.

It was it was white and tight. I love it.

I like to see that.

Something. Alright, guys. Good show. Long show, go to the Bulwark dot comevents, come hang out with us on November seventeenth in DC, hit the subscribe button. If for some reason you’re not getting our newsletters, go over while you’re at the Bulwark, give us your email.

We’ll send you all sorts of good free stuff. You know, commercials on any of our written product, no ads, get on with all of them for free. I don’t know why you wouldn’t do it at this point. Trends. We’ll see you Sunday.

I do read the triad. I read it this week.

Once, there are five of them every week. Bye.