Moral Illness

The holidays are coming up. So bring home a better night sleep this holiday season with Bolen Branch bedding. For a limited time, get twenty percent off your first set of sheets and free shipping when you use promo code beg to differ, at bolandbranch dot com. That’s bolandbranch, b o l l a n d, branch dot com, promo code, beg to differ. Welcome to Bank to differ.

The Bulwark’s weekly round table discussion featuring civil conversation across the political spectrum. We range from center left to center right I’m Mona Sharon, syndicated columnist and policy editor, The Bulwark, and I’m joined by our regulars, Bill Galston of the Bookings Institute in The Wall Street Journal. Linda Chavez of the miss Cannon Center and Damon Laker who writes the Substack newsletter, eyes on the right. Our special guest this week is political scientist, Ruiy Tashira, whose work can be found on the sub tag newsletter, the Liberal Patriot, among other places. So thanks to everyone for being here.

This week, we’re recording when we’ve got just a few days on till the voting on Tuesday. Of course, a lot of people are early voting as well. And president Biden it delivered a controversial speech about the danger to democracy. And it has stirred a debate that I’d like to hear all of your views on. Josh Barrow, for example, who has guest hosted this podcast in the past, wrote a piece taking issue with the whole idea of the speech and he said, and I quote, when Democrats talk about democracy, they’re talking about the importance of institutions that ensure that voters get a say among multiple choices and the one they most prefer gets to rule.

And he says, but what Biden is doing is telling them they really only have one choice available, and he says, this amounts to telling voters that they have already lost their democracy. So I have some views on this, but I’m gonna turn first to Rudy sheriff and see what you think about that argument.

I read Josh’s piece, and I thought it was quite good. I basically agree with it. I think he’s right about that in substance. Politically, I just think it’s also very questionable as a strategy to reach voters at this point. There were some interesting work recently done by Nate Code in the New York Times about what do people mean when they say there’s a crisis of democracy or they agree with that contention.

What do they really have in mind? And it turns out that What most people have in mind isn’t something that looks like the kind of stuff that the chartering classes like to talk about. It has more to do with governmental corruption and effectiveness in the general sense that governance all screwed up. And that’s a crisis of democracy because I can’t do anything. Right?

Not that sort of the kinds of things we tend to talk about with the election in Ayers and the debate around Biden’s speech, and how are we going to solve the crisis of democracy somehow? Are the Republicans really a semi fascist party and all that jazz? You know, that’s not where their heads are at. So I think, you know, Josh is basically right on substance and also I would add on politics. Howard Bauchner:

Damon, I’m gonna turn to you on this the candidate for governor of Wisconsin, just to cite one example, the Republican candidate, said, if I win, Republicans will never lose another election in the state of Wisconsin. That is the kind of thing that Biden is talking about when he talks about the threat to democracy and the majority of the Republican candidates who are running in twenty twenty two who deny the legitimacy of the last election. And, you know, Liz Cheney agrees with Biden in a sense. Right? She’s out there campaigning for Democrats because she does think that the Republican Party at this point represents a threat to our democracy.

So what do you make of those additional factors?

Well, I mean, I certainly agree that there’s a major strand within the contemporary Republican Party that is anti liberal and hostile to all kinds of Democratic norms. That’s a major theme of of our podcast, and I have a whole substack devoted to themes related to that as well. So I obviously think it’s a big problem. The question is whether Biden as the head of the other party is the right person to be leading with that message. And I think it can’t help but sound self serving to have him be the guy saying that because obviously, he and his party will benefit if people follow what he says.

So I have no problem with anybody saying it, but Liz Chaney saying it with Democratic politicians saying it, but kind of the higher you get in the party the less effective, I think it has a possibility of being. And so Biden isn’t a great messenger for it. That’s even aside from what Rui mentioned, which I think is a a valid question of how effective it even is as a political message. But there’s also I would wanna add, you know, another thing that Josh Barrow talked about in his piece which I I agree was a very powerful piece of writing. He talked also about that there’s something that sounds disingenuous about this given that Democrats have not been behaving exactly like they believe this about the Republicans and their two data points on this, if you will, one of which, a subject we’ve also talked about on the podcast.

Here, the fact that in a number of contested Republican primaries this year. Various democratic groups and the party itself have spent millions of dollars boosting the most extremist candidate, the most anti democratic candidate in races on the rationale that they will be easier to beat in the general election. That’s perfectly reasonable, Machiavellian, political strategy behavior, but you don’t eliminate the possibility of that candidate, the Republican winning by doing that. You’re playing, you’re you’re always running a risk when you engage in that kind of jujitsu move. And the problem is if those candidates truly are a threat to democracy.

It is extremely dangerous to be doing that. The other thing is the question, of the choices that the Democrats have made over the last two years about what issues to lead with and we’ve seen in democracies around the world very mixed results, but genuine attempts in Hungary and Israel, not with the election this week, but the previous on last year efforts to create a kind of united front against an authoritarian threat. And you do it by trying to moderate your ideological commitments to be as appealing as possible to everybody but those who are die hard believers in the authoritarian party. And in our case, in this country, that would have meant the democrats running to the center moderating their views on abortion, immigration, government spending, and all kinds of other things in order to try to attract as many ostensible Republicans and as possible to the party, but instead the Democrats have run as if everything is totally normal, end their democrats who just want to enact their agenda. And if that means they’re gonna lose this next election because they did what they thought was right, then that’s alright.

That’s the price to be paid for doing politics. That’s not the behavior you would expect from a party that genuinely believes if the other party wins democracies over. So I do think the Democrats are are in a bit of a knot on this, and I I don’t think it was necessarily a great idea for Biden to make another speech like this on the eve of the election.

So I think we may be in danger of thundering agreement here. Bill Galston, wrong messenger and possibly wrong timing. Right? I mean, I think the message is true. I do think that the Republican party is a threat democracy at this point or at least big chunks of it are.

But for Biden to do this with a few days to go before the voting or even the two months ago speech, when he didn’t emphasize those things for the whole first, you know, eighteen months of his presidency, it just seems self serving. Right? It’s the timing initiates the message. Well, you took the words out of my mouth. Oh, no.

And thundering agreement, I guess, will be the phrase for this segment.

I’m not

sure what else there is to say, frankly. Well, that’s

okay because we’ve got plenty of other things to discuss on this subject. So picking up on what Damon was saying about, you know, the democrats not focusing on the issues that were important to most voters are not moderating there have been a number of surveys that have come out in the last few days showing that when voters are asked, what the most important issue is what’s extremely important? Overwhelming majority are saying inflation, the economy, the cost of living, that sort of thing, jobs, guns ranked third in one survey in political, abortion fourth. And the democrats arguably their message on inflation when they were even willing to talk about it at all was it’s temporary, it’s not as bad as you think, and it’s the fault of greedy corporations. Is there another message that they

could have

done better on Well, they said a couple of other things too. First of all, it’s Putin’s fault. And then somewhat more thoughtful response was, well, it’s a global phenomenon, the subtext of that proposition being, and therefore, you know, there’s nothing particularly wrong that we did because it was like a force of nature. You know, and frankly, there is there is some merit to the proposition that the invasion of Ukraine made things significantly worse than they would have been. And it’s certainly the case that inflation is a worldwide phenomenon, but that is really not to the point.

The American people don’t really care that much what the underlying forces were that produced this inflation. They just want it to abate. They want someone to do something about it. I think it’s perfectly fair to say that the Republicans didn’t have a better plan than the Democrats. And still don’t.

And still don’t and probably won’t. We’re still waiting for the replacement for Obamacare. And I am reasonably sure that we’ll be waiting through a number of big to different podcasts to come, you know, to hear a coherent. Plan out of the Republicans on on inflation. The problem was that there really was no good message on inflation.

All of

the Democratic message meisters now ringing their hands and saying, well, if they’ll only we’d done x or said y, I think that’s all nonsense. The reason that Democrats didn’t engage on the issue was that they pretty much understood that they had a better chance of trying to change the subject then of meeting the Republicans head on on inflation and even fighting them to a draw. And one of the problems with strategists is that they always come up with the same idea if an issue isn’t working for you change the subject, but you can’t just tell the American people to focus on something else. If they’ve defined something of his as a principal concern based on their own experience and not messaging. Then you’re not gonna be able to talk them out of it at sea.

Like the old question, who are you gonna believe? Me or your lying eyes? Well, most people don’t think that their eyes lie nearly as often as political advertisements to. And similarly, there are lots of places where crime is a high profile issue where immigration is a high profile issue. And the administration is pretty much ducked to those two issues for the past eighteen on some of most Democrats.

So what does there say?

Well, Linda, one of the things that the administration could have done, I mean, arguably they made a terrible mistake, which we warned about on this podcast when in real time, when they were doing it, we warned very early about the danger of inflation with that big spending bill that the administration passed soon after taking office. They may have dug their own graves with that because it did create inflation. And the, you know, experts say that the rate of inflation would still be high without that piece of legislation, the American Rescue Plan, but it’d probably be about two points lower, which might have made a big difference. But they also have not done the kinds of things that you recommended. You know, they could have done some reforms to the legal, legal immigration system to fix backlog so that we could have more workers that which would have helped.

And they could have repealed the tariffs that Trump put in place and so on. So is it your sense that they were sunk because of the American Rescue Plan?

Well, I don’t know that they were sunk because of that. I mean, as I’ve said on this program before, the US economy is so large and so complex. That no one man, oh, a woman, no president, in fact can do things that will affect it dramatically in the short run or the long run for that matter. Inflation is going on worldwide. I think there are a lot of phenomenists.

I think one of the most dramatic problems in terms of inflation is the shortage of workers, and that’s why you rightly suggest that one of the things that those of us who favor sensible immigration reforms say is that we ought to be figuring out a way to bring in people to fill jobs that are going wanting now. It doesn’t even have to be an immigration bill where you give people a pathway to becoming permanent residents and citizens. I mean, there are things short of that we could have been doing. That aside, there’s another factor I think that’s going on that we’re not looking at. And we’ve talked a lot about the terrible candidates.

On the Republican side, and it is absolutely true. There were some of the worst people running that one could imagine. I mean, I can’t imagine a much worse candidate than Hersha Walker and yet he’s neck and neck and knows he could end up winning next Tuesday. But the democrats have some bad candidates too. I’m sorry.

If you look at the Arizona race for governor, I mean, Kerry Lake on a fight in that case. But I’m sorry, Katie Hobbs is barely showing up. When she does show up, I don’t want to be too harsh, but she doesn’t sound like the brightest people in the firmament. I’ll tell you that. She was on state of the union a couple of weeks ago.

I thought she sounded just terrible. She doesn’t show up much. She just doesn’t give one any confidence. So

she’s not something she refused to debate. And she refused

to debate in apparently, she’s not doing a whole lot of campaigning. She’s scared and she comes across as a wimp. And I don’t think she’s a good candidate. I’m sorry. I think Federman is that kind of candidate.

Look, I feel very badly for the guy. He, you know, he got hit by a stroke that could happen to any one of us. But they had a decision to make and they decided to stay with him and he has struggled and we talked about this on the program earlier that his debate was not a stellar performance, and you can give him credit for showing up, credit for trying, but he didn’t come across great. And his whole demeanor is one that turns off a whole lot of people. I I don’t know what WAG said this, but somebody was quoting their mother and said.

When it killed the guy to wear a shirt with a collar once in a while. Mhmm. I mean, this, you know, hoodie and the tattoos and Sure. Worth them. Yeah.

Look, that’s fine and appeals to certain voters, but it turns off others. And and the people that turned off tend to be in my age group. And they’re more likely to vote when those whom it turns off.

That’s true. You

know, so there are those those cases. And, I mean, we could go around They could have

had counterlam, the democrats in in Pennsylvania. Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. He was that’s who Federman defeated.

And he’s a centrist democrat just exactly what the doctor ordered kind of like the Tim Ryan who is giving J. D. Vance a really good run for his money in Ohio. And you know,

Mona, you were talking earlier about the threat to democracy. You know, I live in Maryland. Where if you are conservative, your vote doesn’t count for very much. But I’m going to be faced in the governor’s race with Dan Cox, who is a bona fide Magma, you know, maniac doesn’t believe the election was fairly decided, you know, last time around. He’s just, you know, he’s spouted a lot of really crazy things.

But on the other side is West Moore. And I’m sorry, I can’t vote for West Moore. Now my vote doesn’t count for much in Maryland, so the, you know, the election is not gonna come. Down to Helen De Chavez votes. But when Democrats put up very left candidates, you know, they they’ve done it in Wisconsin as well against, you know, Ron Johnson who should have been defeatable.

He was deemed that he was vulnerable republican running. And, you know, they again, they put up the

most left candidate, which gets back to the theme we began with, which is Democrats acting as if this is a normal political time. Right. And they can just put up the candidates who make their little hearts race rather than thinking, you know what? Democracy is at stake. We might have to go with a centrist.

That’s exactly right. Well, you

said it quicker and better than I

did. Let’s close out this segment really with the issue of crime, which is Democrats are taking a real beating on. This is a, you know, sort of back to the future kind of thing for some of us who are of a certain age. And remember that when I was growing up, crime was the biggest well, one of the biggest issues in politics, and it was a huge vulnerability for the Democratic Party, which was seen as weak on crime. There was a piece in the American prospect of this week.

And Stanley Greenberg, long time. I’m sure he’s a friend of yours, longtime Democratic pollster. And he writes, while Democrats were still competitive in the congressional ballot throughout the fall. They trailed Republicans by thirteen points on which party would do better on crime. And then get this.

He says, Twenty five percent of Democrats in October said that Republicans would do a better job on crime.

That’s kinda

grim. Yeah.

No. This this is an area of huge vulnerability for the Democrats. It’s been obvious for quite a while that this was the case. I mean, polls regularly show Republicans preferred by double digits and into the twenties on which party would do better on crime. The Democratic party has been handicapped by its treating this issue kind of gingerly being worried if they talk about cracking down on crime and criminals.

They’ll appear to be somehow racist and sort of enthralled to some extent with what I’ve called the Fox News fallacy. Which is that a Fox News and conservatives are talking a lot about an issue and targeting the democrats about it. And pilluring them, well, there must not be much to the issue. It’s basically made up or otherwise, you’re nutritious. And Democrats are duty bound simply to attack attack attack and eye denied an eye rather than try to grapple with the fact and it is a fact that this is a real concern of real voters.

People hate crime and crime has gone up in a lot of areas of the country. It’s quite obvious. Homelessness is a huge problem. Look, what’s happening in Oregon, what that might do to the races there and the Democrats there. It’s really quite extraordinary.

And Democrats have made very little effort, you know, to to dissociate themselves with the elements of their party that are actually literally are soft on crime. Really are pursuing an agenda that makes it easier for criminals to stay on the street. As I observed in one of my sub stack columns, you know, they had a golden opportunity for what I call the Chesapeakedean moment. After the extremely liberal voters of Sanders’ who said tossed out Chazebudin, the DA, who was viewed as being having a big role in the fact that San Francisco was becoming unlivable in any parts of it. There was too much crime and there was too much homelessness and there’s too much drug use on the street.

People hate all that stuff and Democrats need to rediscover in my view the attitude about crime that was more common a a few decades ago, and that was encapsulated by the great Tony Blair as tough on crime tough on the causes of crime. I think that’s the magic formula. And I think Democrats I think after this election, it’s a little late in the day for them to change now. They really gotta think hard about how they’re gonna approach the issue of public safety and get back in the voters’ good graces on this issue. You wanna

hazard a prediction about what we’re gonna be looking at on, let’s say, Friday morning of next week, because

it takes

time for a lot of these states to report I mean, it is a moving target.

I mean, who knows how accurate the polls are these days. But I think there’s a pretty good argument that if they’re biased at this point, they’re probably biased in favor of the Democrats, not the Republicans. So — Yeah.

— the

underlying fundamentals of the election are clear, they’ve reasserted themselves, proportions faded as an issue. And now I I basically see the Republicans moving toward what used to be the higher end of the predictions twenty to twenty five seat gain. So I think it’s going to be a pretty serious gain of seats for the Republicans. And in terms of the Senate, I mean, it’s really close. But if you put a gun to my head, I say the Republicans probably take the senate to and maybe buy more than one seat.

We shall see. You know, it’s hard. It’s always a hazardist to make predictions, particularly about the future, but I just don’t see any good news for the democrats in the last, like, month. Simple. You know, this is not that good timing for them.

They should have had the election in the summer. Well, you

know, actually, the economy ticked up when everybody was expecting a third quarter of negative growth, we actually had a better quarter but it doesn’t matter because of the inflation numbers. People think we’re in a recession. We’re not, but they do think we are. So Does anybody wanna make any predictions? Go on the record here.

I’m

already on the record, Voda. You know, just because I published an article for bookings just a couple of days ago, placing this midterm in the context of all of the midterm election since Ronald Reagan was first elected president. What I discovered was that there’s a remarkable to nudity among all of the midterm elections that are not conducted in wartime circumstances. So since Ronald Reagan was first elected, if your last name isn’t Bush, your job approval in your seventh quarter of the presidency is between forty one percent and forty five percent. And the average loss in these non wartime midterms has been in excess of forty seats, forty six to be precise.

There are reasons to believe that that would be an unlikely result this time around. Two things, really. First of all, when Biden entered office, there were thirteen fewer Democrats in the House than there had been in twenty eighteen so that Republicans, arguably, in twenty twenty, already made some of the gains that they would have made in this midterm. And secondly, as many people have pointed out, there are simply fewer swing seats that are available for taking in anything except a red wave. So my best guess for the house is twenty five to thirty.

That’s what I’m on the record saying, and I’ve seen no reason since I published that piece to change my mind. My fear is that in the

senate, there could be

some unexpected Democratic losses. In New Hampshire, New Hampshire, Baldwin has been in front in the past two surveys. I mean, a month ago, I don’t think anybody would have imagined that that seat was in great jeopardy. Go to the other side of the country. What’s happening with Patty Murray?

Right? She’s

now on the low single digits. And I don’t rule it out that, you know, that she could lose. I am

not looking forward to Tuesday night. It’s almost thanksgiving my favorite holiday of the year. I get together with my family. I cook. I bake.

It’s fabulous. And one of the things you can look forward to this year are the softest, most luxurious organic cotton sheets from bowl and branched. Bolen brand sheets are made from the finest one hundred percent organic cotton threads on earth, and they make a difference you can truly feel at night. These sheets are so well made. And one thing I really appreciate about them is that they fit the mattress incredibly well so that even if you didn’t do a great job of making your bed, they don’t bunch up.

They just are smooth and comfortable when you climb into bed at night, their signature sheets come wrapped and ready in a beautiful holiday gift box. When you order them for yourself, it’s like you’re giving yourself a great present, and your friends and family will feel the same way. Bring home a better night sleep this holiday season with bowling branch bedding. For a limited time, get twenty percent off your first set of sheets and free shipping when you use promo code beg to differ at bolandbranch dot com. That’s bolandbranch, b o l l a n d, branch dot com promo code beg to differ.

Our next

topic is one that I’m rather dreading, discussing, but it is part of our national scene and it’s important and it’s what happened. When the speaker of the house’s husband, Paul Pelosi, was attacked last weekend. We’re at a place in American life Linda, let me start with you, where this is no longer a situation in which all people have goodwill, you know, leaders rally around and say the right things and express their horror at the this act of violence instead you had Republican influencers at making jokes about it and spreading really disgusting lies about how Paul Pelosi was actually in the midst of a homosexual twist with the guy who attacked him. Yeah. I

mean, it it really is disgusting. You know, by the way, one of the people who tweeted out a response that made that illusion, at least it alluded to an article that made that allegation. Was the new owner of Twitter — Yeah. Elon Musk — Who very appropriately

calls himself chief Twit, which I do like. Yeah. Chief TWIT. He is a TWIT. I

I won’t Given that, he’s verified as a TWIT in my book. No, it is totally disgusting. And, you know, it’s what has happened in this country is we have become really a nasty people, at least many of our leaders. They just don’t have manners. They don’t have decency.

If you are my political opponent, then you are my enemy. They talk about being engaged in the civil war. And by the way, some of them mean that, you know, a shooting kind of war. That’s what they’re looking for. And it really is quite disgusting.

And oh, by the way, the latest news on this horrible attack is that mister DePeepe, who is the man who’s been arrested and and charged with the crime turns out he is illegally in the country. You can imagine that the narrative on the right is going to be all about illegal immigrants and how, you know, California is the sanctuary state and we go. Kick him out when we have the chance, etcetera, etcetera. Now he happens to be a illegal immigrant from Canada. Which is not one of the blankety blank countries that Trump named.

It’s one of the places we’re supposed to get, you know, good people. But apparently, Canada is not sending us their best people according to this story. So it’s it’s really disgusting. One wishes that people could be decent. The one person, I think, you know, Republican who has been pretty good on this is Mitch McConnell.

He has shown a certain amount of decent see, but there are

Mike Pence too. Mike Pence. Yes. Sorry.

Mike Pence as well. And I think for good reason, I mean, Mike Pence, he he has faced these folks himself, so he knows where if he speaks. And but it’s, you know, everyone from the governor of Virginia who, you know, we thought was a more moderate guy. To members of congress, not just the Taylor Greens, but also, you know, others who Kevin McCarthy and others who wanna make sure that we send the speaker home. So it’s really terrible.

Howard Bauchner: Really, Linda

referred to some of these supposedly moderate or supposedly good Republicans and who had disappointing responses. One of them was Chris Sununu. Who was on one of the Sunday shows soon after this news broke. And he engaged in just a long sort of what aboutism thing where he said, you know, that, oh, well, you know, nobody complained about the violence in the summer of twenty twenty, and that you know, only now or are we here? And, you know, that tells you something if even someone likes Sunuu, is reduced to this kind of cruel tendency to disclaim all responsibility to to ever see anything in terms of, look, we’re all Americans and we all have to, you know, denounce acts of violence.

You know, it it really does say something about the state of the GOP.

Yeah. I mean, I think let’s face that the atmosphere is pretty poisonous these days, and it would be better if in reaction to an event like this, people would just denounce it from what it is and and speak of a act by a maniac, and I try to make partisan hay out of it or a partisan points So I I think it’s worth pointing out that, unfortunately, the democrats really do try to make partisan hay out of it. Right? They they basically draw the line between January sixth and Republicans and Maga, and then this completely insane guy who talks the fairies who went out and and went after Paul Pelosi. I don’t think that’s right either.

I think we should just regard it as a tragedy. And that’s what everybody should have checked in on and about. And, you know, one thing that contributes to the poisonous atmosphere is both sides go at each other in this on hinge kind of way. And I don’t think it’s good. I think we’d be better off if the temperature was turned down on both sides, which is not to excuse some of the appalling things that Republicans have said.

But I’m just saying, I don’t think it helps when Democrats basically partisanize this in their own way and for their own purposes. So,

Damon, this is a this is a tough one because clearly, you have to be careful when you say your rhetoric caused this. Right? You don’t wanna hold Bernie Sanders responsible for the crazed guy who went and shot Steve’s police and tried to kill a bunch of Republican members of congress because he was a Bernie supporter. But there does come a difficult moment when the rhetoric is inflammatory. When the rhetoric does encourage violence, when it does encourage people to believe that this is the end of days that anything is acceptable because the other side is so evil.

So where do you come down on that delicate matter? Well,

it is delicate and I take Rory’s point about the kind of the both sides dynamic of this. I do think some Democrats in the wake of this attack were very quick to act as if this guy was like a member of the Proud Boys and was following orders to kind of continue the insurrection of January sixth by breaking Nancy Pelosi’s kneecaps. I mean, if that were the case, then yeah, then I would say, my goodness. We have like an ongoing insurrection here. This is This is a major problem on that level, on the same level as, say, January sixth, and it’s continuous with that.

And although I do worry about something like that happened. This was not an example of that. This was more like like the lamentably huge number of examples that we have in this country of of mass shooters who who hear voices in their head and they get immersed in conspiratorial subcultures that that give them stories and narratives about some terrible thing going on, and then they act out in a violent act, usually with a weapon far deadlier than a

hammer. I

don’t think this was a great example to lead with on that, and it is it is polarizing to do it. But as you say, Mona, we also have the problem of the fact that I mean, you said, I think it was either you or Linda in your discussion of this a few minutes ago, we’re talking about how we have the problem republican politicians who kind of make hay out of this and and kind of ferment more conspiracies about it often with outright. Salacious lies attached to it, and that is all terrible. But of course, the other side of that equation is the people on the right, the voters, who love this stuff. And that’s why those Republican office holders and their media cheerleaders like Tucker Carlson actually feed that stuff.

And it’s a kind of symbiotic, constantly syncing measure of deviance on the right that is just always getting worse. And we saw it enacted in the aftermath of this attack where you saw people right wing writers and then also politicians on the fringes helping to float and ferment this crazy story about a gay lover and the the window was smashed from the inside out. And he was invited in, and then they had a lover spat. And I mean, all of this ended up contradicted by the charges brought against the the alleged perpetrator and then also by his own confession, which was recorded and then released to the public. And it’s all nonsense, but it’s a mutually reinforcing stew of nonsense that is kind of they’re in they’re in cahoots.

They’re colluding with each other. The politicians and the media personalities who benefit from the support of the creteness, masses on the right who love this stuff, and they kind of goat each other on in it. And it’s from out of that stew that a lunatic like this guy kinda draws sustenance and then acts out. And, you know, so if you wanna drain the swamp, you you kind of you have to address kind of the mental health component of it, but you also have to address the the pestilential context in which it gets fostered. And I see no way out of any of that because the the people on the the sides, on the right, you could say it’d be great if, you know, tuckered at a segment of how, you know, actually, we gotta stop this as getting out control and at Marjorie Taylor Greene said, yeah, this has all been fun in games, but now the speaker of the house’s husband is getting getting hit and they were gonna kidnap her and and break her knee caps.

This has gone too far, but of course none of them do that. You know, it’s like an ever sinking ship and there is no bottom. Bill, if ten

years ago, you had told me that I would be disagreeing with Ruvi Deshara because I don’t think it’s quite as much of a problem of both sides as he does. That I think it’s much worse on the Republican side. I would have been little surprised, but here here’s why I say that. Sure. You know, democrats try to profit from this and use it for political ends to a degree.

But Democrats have not nearly to the degree that Republicans have valorized violence. But made a a hero out of Kyle Rittenhouse, invited these two gun wielding suburbanites to speak at the Republican convention. Eric Greitens runs ads showing himself in military uniform, you know, going rhino hunting. On and on, these people not only, you know, say that they are for your second amendment. Right?

They put themselves, you know, be decked with weapons on their Christmas cards.

So this is

a different level. I would

say, yes,

absolutely. But I’ll tell you what troubles me even worse than the valorization of violence. And that’s the shamelessness of the

lies. You know,

because I cannot believe

that

they believe what they’re saying, but there is sort of a live machine that automatically springs into

life. And

moves into action. You know, as soon as something happens that needs to be explained away or turned on its head, I simply

didn’t

grow up in a political world where people just made up things.

Knowing that

they were making things up. It’s the shamelessness of it. I

mean, I’m

really forced back to Joseph Welch’s famous intervention in the army of McCarthy hearings, you know? Have you no decency, sir? At long last, have you no decency left? I’m at a loss for words. You know, what worries me even

more than mental illness?

Is moral illness? This is a moral illness. And I am stunned every time I see a new example of it, this is a kind of instrumentalizing of words, whatever works and the relationship between the words and the world of truth is a purely political one. If a lie works,

use

it to hell with the truth. This is not the way I grew up. It’s not the country I grew up in. I have resisted for decades easy in vocation of phrases like a sick

society.

I’m finding it harder and harder to resist those phrases.

Well, that was

well said. I agree.

Alright. Let us

turn to our third segment now. I would like hear you all on the topic that George Will raised in his column this week. And by the way, we should have him back on the podcast. He hasn’t been here in a few months. So he were at Collins getting a lot of attention saying that for the sake of the country, both Joe Biden and Carmel Harris should drop out and not run for president in twenty twenty four.

And he gave lots of examples of Kamala Harris’ malapropisms and just inability to say anything that makes sense. And of course, he cited the fact that Joe Biden recently showed a level of mental fogginess that was a little worrisome. He was talking about the I’m gonna go to you first on this statement. He was talking about the student loan forgiveness program, and he said, I got it. He was at his fundraiser.

He said, I got it passed. Got it passed. Well, and he mentioned something about the votes. Like, you know, I got the votes for it. Well, of course, there was no vote.

There was no legislation. It was an executive order. And that, you know, that’s kinda worrisome, isn’t it?

Yeah. That that that was that was a little troubling. You know, it’s like he he invented an entire, like, narrative surrounding how that came to be the the lot forgiveness package. I think instead of it being a kind of agonizing drawn out nine to twelve month long saga where he kept extending the moratorium and then eventually just issued an executive order and summarily did it. He created, like, a bill that, you know, was debated in congress, and it barely passed.

But it did, and he signed it and

had a

big ceremony. And maybe, you know, he maybe he imagined. He, you know, used all the different pens and handed them out. I mean, it it really does make you wonder you know, what what his his mental condition is at the moment. I mean, to be honest, I I voted for and continued to be on the whole pretty pleased with the team that came into office with Joe Biden.

And so, you know, he also has a has a habit of saying things that are a little bit off of policy messaging when it comes to foreign policy. Like, I think he’s changed our policy vis a vis Taiwan about, like, half a dozen times in the last year, and every time he does it, like, someone comes out and they say, actually, that is not our policy, and they, like, correct it and change it. And that’s not good. But but it it especially in something like that. No.

No. Is incredibly important in precision, and you want China to actually know where we stand so they know what they can get away with and

what they

can’t. But — Yeah. — you know, it was so George Will’s column, you know, is very well done. The guy still got it. He knows how to write a column.

I you did though. I I must admit as a Democrat. It reminded me a little bit of a very funny Saturday night lives get from last weekend. If anyone here hasn’t seen it, you really should Google it, look it up. It was kind of a Halloween themed skit for, like, three minutes where it shows a bunch of people in a house watching a scary movie and then it becomes this thing about how Joe Biden is gonna be eighty one and twenty twenty four, and it becomes like a horror movie.

And everyone’s like, oh, no. Not Biden. And then everyone’s like, well, wait, who’s it gonna be? Harris. Camel of hairs and they scream about that and then someone sticks like a beetle flyer under the door and they scream about that and then there’s a guy’s staring at the wall and he says, I know the answer and he turns around and he says, Hillary and they all scream again.

And then by the end, they all decide, well, you know, Biden’s not so bad. Yeah. Biden Biden’s okay. Biden has all these weaknesses that make him a less than appealing candidate. Can he possibly win again?

Or was it good for the country if he wins again? But it’s it’s also very easy, especially among, you know, Democrat this is a perennial democratic, you know, thing of, like, having, like, like, a lack of sense in in our ability to actually prevail. And, you know, I I sort of feel a little bit like, okay. Well, instead of who who is it gonna be? Is there somebody better?

And I actually don’t have a great answer on that question. I don’t really know who it would be, but I hope Biden chooses not to run. And I I if he’s going to, he’ll do it probably shortly after the election. And and if he doesn’t, don’t know what to say about it exactly other than it’s gonna be a a long two years. Rui, one

does get the sense. That the reason that even Democratic voters, about sixty four percent of whom said that they would prefer someone else to be their standard bearer, that was a poll taken in July. You get the sense

that really is

about the age thing. I mean, because he’s really I mean, as far as Democrats are concerned, he he hasn’t performed so badly. Right? I mean, he got a lot of things passed, and he’s done pretty much what Democrats like, so other than the inflation problem. But what do you think?

Do you think it really is the age thing? Well, I think that’s got a great deal

to do with it. But keep in mind that it’s not just that. I mean, let’s sort of see what we have to say after the Democrats get some sort of shlacking, you know, this coming election, which seems likely, I think people will that will decrease Democrats’ enthusiasm for Biden, got us a guy who’s got us approval rating in the low forties. Residing over the kind of inflation we’d be talking about. You know, arguably, democrats may some democrats maybe start thinking, well, it’s maybe not enough just to pass a bunch of legislation.

Maybe we need to figure out how to grow our coalition in a more durable way and actually make people think when we run the country things actually get better and not worse. So I I think there is there’s a lot of reasons why people might question Biden’s efficacy as as a candidate and sort of questioned certainly whether he’d be the ideal candidate. That said, you know, I think, realistically, I mean, he has the incumbent. That’s an advantage. People at least think he’s sort of a nice guy even if they think he’s getting a little bit long in the tooth.

Democrats probably would not benefit from a brutal, you know, primary contest about who is gonna succeed him. I mean, historically, this is not good for the incumbent party. To have the deal with that. So contested primaries are never that great. So I think, you know, if you wanna beat the Republicans in twenty twenty four and there seems to be a pretty good ability Trump could be the candidate.

You could do a lot worse than Biden. In fact, Biden maybe you’re optimizing candidate. So this is just a roundabout way of saying, I think there are lots of problems with Biden as a president. I don’t think it’s just his age. I don’t think he said great that he’s preferable to the alternative.

As Biden keeps on saying. But I think that we’re stuck with him. If he wants to run, you know, fine. And he who may indeed be the the vote maximizing candidate for the Democrats against or Republican opponent, particularly if it’s Trump, and that that counts for something. I mean, I hate to be sort of coldhearted political about it, but I think that’s the facts.

Interesting.

So, Linda, you could at least say, well, On one of the great issues of our time, the war in Ukraine, Biden has been very

good. So

it’s good news for Ukraine if he chooses to run again, I guess. What do you think? Well, the

the bad

news for Ukraine is that the Republicans could be in control of both houses of Congress, and that is not gonna be good news. For now, what do you mean? So you mentioned McConnell, who

you praised earlier, it’s still very solid. He still solid on

Ukraine. Mitch McConnell is is is much better. Yep. Yeah. And again,

if it’s got JD Vance and Blake Masters and all of those other clowns in there, yeah, and they’re

not just anti Ukraine, they’re proppant, which is really bad. Look, I sort of come down what Rui does in terms of Biden. I think Biden is too old to run again. I’ve said that forever, and I say that is somebody who’s not that much younger than than Biden himself. I just think that electing somebody in their late seventies is gonna by that time, we’ll be in his eighties is not a good idea.

It really is not. But having just talked about the quality of the candidates who are running as Democrats for governor and senator and other offices. I’m worried that the Democratic Party would end up picking somebody who would be to the left, and then we would have a second Donald Trump presidency. I mean, he might be, you know, elected from a jail cell. It would be my hope.

But frankly, the the wheels of justice don’t turn that quickly. And so even if he’s indicted, I don’t think that would happen. And and I just think that Biden is probably safer in the sense of people being more willing to vote for him this time around. But who knows? I mean, I just am feeling these days like

everything I

thought I knew about politics was wrong, that we don’t know where this country is headed, but it does not seem to be headed in a good direction. And the quality of candidates on both sides of the aisle and their commitment to democratic values and to principles. Just is wanting in all too many cases. Bill, do

you agree with Ruvi that a primary, a contested primary would necessarily be well, I don’t know if he would say necessarily, but that would be bad for the Democratic Party. And Linda sort of implied as much too with her view that the democrats won’t pick somebody, you know, who who can win. They’ll they’ll pick somebody who’s further to the left. If I could have some assurance that the outcome of

the contested primary would produce an alternative to Biden, better than Biden, I might be in favor of it. But not only is there no guarantee of that, but I think the reverse is very likely to be the case. But it doesn’t matter what I think. I’ve been telling people for months that twenty twenty four was gonna be a re batch of twenty twenty. I see no reason to change that prediction and more and more reasons to firm it.

And so the question that really faces us is what is going to happen with you know, a

second contest

between someone who is morally unfit to return to the Oval Office. And someone whose capacity to exercised the duties of the office until the age of eighty six

are in

some question. That is the question. And it’s not a happy question.

You know,

intuitively, I can’t prove this, Mona. I

think

changing horse’s midstream would be unbalanced counterproductive. And it will also be internally difficult because many of Kamala Harris’ supporters are taking the position that she deserves to be the presidential nominee if Joe Biden stands down, that it would represent some sort of unfair treatment of a black woman not to award her the presidential nomination and the kind of coronation. If my question is, should Joe Biden be the presidential candidate or Kamala Harris be the presidential candidate. That for me is a no brainer. And I’m sorry that Joe

Biden

has put us in this position. But let’s be realistic. That’s the question. Where is that delegation

of elder

statesman who can go to the president and say, please for the good of the kind tree — Mhmm. — consider stepping aside and having your vice president step aside too. That’s one of

the many lawsuits that they’ve suffered in the past two generations. All of the gatekeepers, all of the keepers of the seal, all of the bearers of conscience all of the defenders of the national interest and the common good above and beyond partisanship. They’ve died. Or nobody listens to them anymore. Alright.

On

that note, we come to the highlight or low light of the week, and I will start with Linda Chavez. Well,

carrying on the very pessimistic theme that we have sounded on this podcast, I’m gonna talk about couple of things. Antisemitism and the antisemitism that we’ve seen, not just from figures like Kanye West and and somewhat amplifying that the new owner of Twitter Elon Musk and now Kyrie Irving the Brooklyn Nets basketball star who’s been promoting a movie that is an anti Semitic movie. But I want to point specifically to an article which I think hasn’t gotten a lot of attention. And it is about the can Burns series, the U. S.

And the Holocaust. The article is FDR and the Holocaust. It was written by Ron Raygosh. It is in last week’s colette. And I have not seen the Ken Bern series.

I know that you and a couple of the others on the program have I am going to watch it, but I’m glad I read this article first because according to Ron Raydosh, the series lets FDR off too easy in terms of what the United States could have done, in terms of bombing near Auschwitz, the ability to have bombed some of the railroad tracks going into Auschwitz, maybe even attempting to make a run at Auschwitz itself, at least crematoria. While it would have been difficult, it would have risked lives that there was really a lot of anti Semitism in the state department and FDR did not do a good enough job standing up to that. So I recommend this article in last week’s quail out. For

the record, the anti semitism of the state department gets lavish attention by the Kent Burns documentary. But, yeah, the subject of whether to bomb or not to bomb the concentration camps as a very fraught subject that historians are gonna be fighting about forever, I think. But anyway, I will read Ron Raydoff’s piece because I always enjoy his work and it’s always worth reading. So thank you for that. Bill Galston,

Well, having

done my bit for this week shows downward. I wanna point to a piece of good news. Arguably, Ethiopia has been the sight of some of the world’s worst

humanitarian disasters.

In the past two years. And thanks to the intervention of former presidents representing the African Union, the head of Ethiopia and the head of the somewhat rebellious tea dry province, had managed to get together to sign a ceasefire And I think they both mean it. And if so, that will allow humanitarian assistance to flow into to dry once again, where a lot of people are starving, where access to the healthcare systems have cut off almost entirely for everybody except those in the largest urban centers. This does count as good news for humanity, even if very few people outside of Africa are paying a lot of attention to it. Okay.

Thank you, Ruvi. Okay. Well, my highlight would be Lula

beating Bolsonaro in Brazil. And related to that, Bolsonaro being willing to step down. Transition is proceeding. He’s told his demonstrators to stop trying to mess things up. And I think that’s great.

I mean, I think not only he’s a little bit preferable to ball scenario, it’s good to see an authoritarian leader like that stepping aside when he’s defeated in a vote. And hopefully, you know, there’s a model there for some of the

more authoritarian leaning people in our country. So we shall see, but that would be my highlight. Yes. So so their authoritarian accepted defeat more gracefully than ours. So it would

appear Yes. Okay. Damon,

yeah, I

I like that one as well. And this is a a parenthetical point, but it’s it’s definitely In this country, our you know, this is a a global phenomenon on the rise of the kind of the anti liberal right, but there are differences across countries And, you know, the fact that Bolsonaro came within two percentage points of winning, which by the way, in our country with the electoral college, would probably mean it would have won despite losing the popular vote and that he he is stepping down apparently and even spoke out against the kind of grassroots trucker phenomenon of of supporters of fighting it is is a good sign for them and a distressing sign that we we can’t rise to that level in this country because of Donald Trump. I was thinking of bringing up something else, but because Rudy brought up the Brazilian election, I guess, I will bring up the Israeli election as a low light You know, it’s great. They had another election there and it was a free and fair election. You know, I’m not a big fan of Netanyahu, though I feel like he’s been kind of around and or in charge of Israel my entire adult life by this point.

I do need to signal the the really distressing shape of his electoral coalition. I’m not gonna get a bipartisan as to loudly lament the fact that the Israeli left is really, really in decline like into an astonishing degree. The left wing party merits didn’t even make the new Connecticut and the labor party which used to either run or come in a close second to run Israel for decades is now at four seats in the Kinasset. Which is astonishingly small out of a hundred and twenty. There are a couple of parties in Israel on literally the far fringe right that are going to be a part of Netanyahu’s electoral coalition and governing coalition there.

Parties with with roots in in pretty extreme racism and hostility to any kind of minority vote in the country. And the fact that they are now going to be part of the governing coalition there is not a a good sign at all for the health of Israeli civil society. It’s not so much again, at least so far, a a matter of democratic exchange of power peacefully. They had their election and things are going smoothly on that technical side, but emorally speaking, the people who are gonna be running the Israeli government are now, you know, allied with people who are are sort of the equivalent of, you know, did the far fringe right in this country sort of like like a David Duke kind of phenomenon sitting in the government. And it’s upsetting to think about and that this is where we are now, that this is what these are the kind of people who Democratic electorates are are elevating to power these days.

So I’m upset about it. Yep.

The illiberal winds are blowing all over the world. Yeah. And the places that we’re already illiberal in some in some cases, not in all, are getting more so like China. However, I will say that there is one thing that is happening out there in addition to the Brazilian election that is trending the other way arguably. We’ll see where it goes.

But that is the fight of the Iranian people for their own dignity and for representative democracy, which they have wanted for a very long time, and it has been denied them by their repressive regime. But the protests there are just incredibly inspiring. I’m amazed continually, you know, week after week, they don’t die down, they keep going. It’s amazing. I would like to recommend a piece by my cowork colleague, Kathy Young, where she takes on Sohrab Amari he’s one of these nationalist Christian types now.

Though himself was born in Iran to Marxist atheist parents, I guess, and anyway, he’s now a Catholic, but he wrote a piece basically taking issue with the protesters in Iran and Yes. But while he doesn’t like the regime, he’s very offended by all this liberalism. And as Kathy says, between a liberal society that tilts too far toward female and LGBT liberation and an authoritarian regime that impelled the job and allows barely few best in girls to be married to middle aged men. Amari dislikes the liberal society more. And I think that speaks for a lot of the nationalist Christian types.

And it’s a it’s very Very good piece I recommended. Alright. With that, I want to thank our guests, Marie Ducherre. I want to thank all of our regular panelists our engineer this week is Jason Brown, our producer, as always, is Katie Cooper. And most of all, we want to thank our listeners and especially those who are getting the word out about this podcast, which helps us tremendously, and we will return next week as of you.

You

are worried about the economy. Inflation is high. Your paycheck doesn’t cover as much as it used to, and we live under the threat of a looming recession. And sure, you’re doing okay, but you could be doing better. The

afford anything podcast explains the economy and the market detailing how to make wise choices on the way you spend and invest. Avoid

anything talks about how to avoid common pitfalls, how to refine your mental models, and how to think about how to think. Make smarter choices and build a better life. Afford anything wherever you

listen.