Should Democrats Dump Biden?

Welcome to beg to differ the Bulwark weekly roundtable 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 at the Bulwark, and I am joined by our regulars, Damon Lincoln, who writes the Substack newsletter notes from the middle ground, Will Saletan of the Wall Street Journal and the Brookings institution, Linda Chavez, who is of the Nazannon Center, and our special guest this week. Chris Saliza, who writes the sub stack newsletter. So what?

I wanna welcome everyone and mention that this podcast is being brought to you by Better Help. First topic that I’d like to address today is one that you, Chris, have outlined in your great sub stack, namely the special election in New York that was supposed to be neck and neck. The polling suggested, and, of course, in these kinds of races, polling is never quite that great. Nobody has got the money to pay for expensive pollings, but it was suggesting, you know, that they were basically neck and neck And what happened was you had Tom Swazzi, the Democrat win by eight points. So you wrote a piece about what we should and shouldn’t take away from this.

What think are the things that it does teach us?

Yeah. Start here. This is a really intricate political science point. Winning in politics is better than losing. In politics.

Right? So you’re an intricate point. Yes. Thank you. Yes.

Years of study have led me to that Yes. So I always say when the side that does not win says it doesn’t matter, I mean, the truth is, of course, they would rather be on the other side. It it is a seat that was held by Republicans. Yes. It was George Santos, who everybody knows, but it was a seat that was held by Republicans and now is held by Democrats.

That is a switch and in a very small majority that is a pretty big deal. So I think it shows again that Democrats are at a minimum, very good at turning out their base in special elections. We’ve seen this over and over again, whether it’s a house election, Supreme Court, election, a state house election, special elections over the last three or four years, Democrats have consistently over performed. Now, the question then becomes Okay. Well, does that mean that a poll that comes out that shows Donald Trump at forty seven and Joe Biden at forty three?

Does that mean we shouldn’t believe that poll? Because when Robert meets road, Democrats are doing better than Republicans. To me, It’s two very different things. Right? This was a special election on Long Island on a day that it snowed.

With one candidate, Tom Swazzy, who had represented the district for six years. And prior to that, had been a county executive for, you know, a number of years before that, against someone that even Republican, a former Democrat, who even Republicans admitted, didn’t really appear in public and no one knew. We always want it to be all or nothing. You know, it’s either deeply meaningful or not meaningful at all. And I think the truth usually is sort of in between there.

And I think the truth here is Republicans very much would have liked to win. I think in losing, Mike Johnson, the speaker of the house takes little bit of hit. I think Elise Defanix VP bid, she’s from New York, takes a little bit of of a hit. But does this mean that Donald Trump is definitely going to lose to Joe Biden no matter what the poll say. No.

I don’t think so.

Damon Chris mentions that She wasn’t very well known, and she didn’t make very many campaign appearances. And you have to wonder whether a district that had been hoodwinked just recently by George Santos might have been a little wary of taking a flyer on a less well known candidate this time around that who knows how much that may have played into this?

The specifics of this race, it doesn’t surprise me hugely that it turned out the way it did because of what you said, when you’ve just come out of this massive humiliation of having George Santos as be your representative. You know, it could take the wind out of your sails when it comes to, you know, vote mobilization efforts. But then there’s the bigger structural change, which has happened between the parties in recent years, which is that voters tend to vote more when they are highly educated, highly engaged. They pay attention to what’s going on and they feel the stakes are high. Now, Republicans think stakes are high in our politics, but they are progressively from election to election.

A little bit more. The electorate on the right is composed of voters who have not graduated from college, who are not as focused on politics in its day to day intricacies which means that when it comes to an off year election or a special election or something like like this election on Long Island, they are going to be a little bit less likely to be motivated to show up. And so that can consistently gives Democrats an edge because the Democratic electorate at the same time, as you would expect, is going in the opposite direction more highly educated. More engaged and then highly alarmed by the trumpian drift of the Republican party. So those people definitely show up.

And of North Dobbs really motivates democratic voters. So I think the if we’re going to try to extrapolate a and for November, it would be simply this. Are Democrats gonna be motivated to vote? You bet they’re gonna be motivated to vote. The only difference is that when Donald Trump is at the head of the ticket and it’s the presidential race, Republicans will also be motivated to vote.

Then if in no other intervening special election that might come on the scene. So, you know, does that mean one or the other is to you to be ahead. No. But I think it’s gonna be much more even in the intense drive to get the masses out to the ballot place.

Will Saletan, the newspaper to which you contribute, the Wall Street Journal. Their editorial had a, what I thought was a good line where they said Donald Trump in typical fashion showed up after the election to shoot the wounded and said the problem was, of course, that miss Phillips did not hug him close enough and that if she had done so, she would have won. What’s your analysis of the race?

First of all, there is absolutely no evidence to, support Donald Trump’s assertion which makes his assertion this time consistent with almost all of his previous assertions. Yes. But moving on to the race, There are two things I wanna say about this race as a leading indicator for the general election, or maybe three things. Number one, in the twenty twenty general election, three hundred and seventy thousand people roughly showed up to vote. In this district.

In this special, a hundred and seventy thousand showed up to vote, and there is no reason to believe that one hundred and seven is a faithful macrocosm of the three hundred and seventy. This is just another way to reinforce the point, the point that Damon made. Secondly, if you compare the within the Sienna poll findings, for Tom Swazzy on the one hand and Joe Biden on the other. You’ll find first of all that the poll had Swazzy leading Philip by four. Joe Biden trailing Donald Trump by five.

Forty seven forty seven to forty two. That is a consequential difference especially when you consider that Biden won New York three by eight points in twenty twenty. So on the face of it, that’s a negative swing of fifteen points. What are the differences between Swazzy supporters and Biden’s smaller group of supporters? Biden is weaker among independent voters, moderate voters, and especially Catholics.

So here’s Joe Biden a devout Catholic losing to Donald Trump who’s been accused of being many things but never devout Catholic losing Catholics by twenty five percentage points. This is worth paying attention to. So I believe the differences between the Swazzy findings and the Biden findings because they track they’re not spread evenly across the board. They track chunks of the electorate. Point number three, and everybody’s made this point.

I wanna underscore it. Swazzy won by doing something that Biden has not yet steeled him to himself to do. That is to support a really tough immigration policy. Swazi blunted the issue by calling on Joe Biden to shut the border. So it’d be interesting to see how how Biden does against Trump.

A month after he announces that he’s following Tom Swazzy’s advice, but I’m not holding my breath.

Well, Linda, I was gonna ask you about the immigration angle here. And, but also I just want before we get into it, vis a vis this particular district in New York, I just wanna ask you if you happen to see Katherine Rampell’s piece in the Washington Post this week where she talked about all of the benefits of immigration for our economy and, you know, seven trillion dollar infusion of net worth in our economy based on immigration. Anyway, it was It was a good reminder that even at this moment of maximum nativism and hostility to immigration, which is understandable because the border really is kind of is chaotic. It is important to keep in mind that immigration is still a good thing. So let’s get back to New York though because as Bill said, Swazzy decided not to sleep on this issue.

He jumped in and confronted it directly, and he cited the fact that his opponent, the the Republicans said that she would have voted against the deal that, was proposed on Capitol Hill and he held her feet to the fire and said, that was the best deal you could possibly have and, you know, and so on and made her seem like the obstructionist And so what did you make of that?

Well, first of all, let me just say you stole my highlight of the week. I still may use it when we get there. It wasn’t the rationale column the CBO finding. But look, I think Swazzy did offer a blueprint for Democrats on the immigration issue. And while Bill and I don’t see entirely eye to eye, I absolutely can see that immigration is an issue with Democrats not just with Republicans.

And part of that was that the trick that Republicans used to move a whole bunch of asylum seekers and others to cities like New York City worked. It made people concerned and cause those asylum seekers are not allowed to work for at least one hundred and eighty days. It means that they are a burden on the places where they’re sent. So it did Bulwark, but I do think it’s important to note exactly what you said, Mona. And that is that the bill that offered in the Senate, the one that was negotiated by Jim Langford, who is, by the way, one of, I think the either the most conservative or the second most conservative, senator in the United States Center, the one that he helped negotiate was a tough bill that in fact would have changed asylum laws and importantly given president by the authority to close the border.

There are two things that go with that. First of all, in order to close the border, you’re going to get lawsuits immediately when you try to do that. So having legislation that allows the president to do that when the flow is five thousand per day or greater on average over a seven day period or eighty five hundred a day on a single day. That would in fact help president Biden. But the second thing is if Mexico won’t take them back and many of them are not, you know, from Mexico, most of them are not from Mexico these days.

Then you have to do something with them. And, you know, everybody says, Will Saletan them, detain them. What we learned from the border patrol this week They’re out of money. They don’t have room for detention. Yep.

And what would this bill that the Republicans voted down have done? It would have provided more money for detention. It would have created more beds. And so all of these things I think can be turned on the Republicans. If and I hear I agree with Bill Joe Biden has to be willing to do it.

He has to be willing to fashion a message much like Swase’s message that is tough on what’s happening at the border compassionate about people who have a legitimate claim to asylum. But by the way, the, again, the bill would have provided that those claim could be adjudicated at the border. They didn’t have to let people in and let them go all over the country. If that bill had passed it would give Biden the tools And that’s exactly why the Republicans didn’t wanna pass it. They didn’t wanna pass it because it helps take away an issue.

So He needs to have the the will to do it but he has to make it part of his message and needs to run commercials just like Bill Clinton did back in your day, Bill on welfare reform because I saw those ads. They weren’t always running in in blue states, but when I visited my mother in New Mexico, Bill Clinton saying we need to reform Will Saletan regularly and helped him win, voters that he might not otherwise have won.

So, Chris, Elizabeth, do you think that Biden well, leaving us we’ll get to his age and all of that in another segment

But He’s older. I hadn’t I was

not familiar

with that.

Oh, yeah. That was in the news. Yeah. But do you think that he could craft a message? That is, you know, Republicans want me to break the law to deal with the border.

I want to do it according to the law. How about that as a slogan?

I’m always hesitant to think that something that happens in February of twenty twenty four will be on voters minds in November of twenty twenty four. Right? The if if I’ve learned one thing in covering politics, it’s that voters are have pretty short memories and particularly as it relates to legislation or failed legislation. That said, I mean, I do think there’s an opportunity here for Biden. Again, and Linda mentioned this.

Like, I don’t think Joe Biden can say enough times. A bipartisan deal that was struck by one of the most conservative Republicans in the Senate as long with Chris Murphy from Connecticut, a Democrat, a Democrat. That that would by any measure, and there are quote, after quote, after quote about this, would be one of the most conservative immigration measures broadly spoken. Put in place in decades. I mean, if the idea like, if George w Bush proposed this, you’d be like, oh, this is a pretty conservative.

It it is a remarkable thing. I was gonna say how much the party has shifted to the right, but Damon’s on, on with us. And I know he would rightly scold me because the truth of the matter is yes. The party has shifted to the ideological right broadly speaking over a number of years. But in these cases, like, the party has shifted Trump.

Right? It’s not to the ideological right. It’s just Trump. Right? It’s just he doesn’t like it.

Yep. He doesn’t think we should do this. You know, it was like when he was president and they would negotiate this big, you know, McConnell in they would negotiate this big budget deal. And at the last minute, Trump would put out a tweet and be like, I’m not sure if I like this. You know, it’s just his when you are subject to the whims of one person as a stand in for policy positions, which I think is effectively the case with the Republican Party now.

It is a remarkable thing. I mean, even this is a sidebar, but I I I find it totally fascinating. That Nikki Haley is has been portrayed as a moderate rhino on on on anything. Yeah. But certainly on immigration.

I mean, there there’s no world in which Nikki Haley’s views on immigration or candidly almost anything else. Are moderate on a scale that any of us would use. And yet, we’re talking about it as though the races between the conservative Donald Trump and the moderate Nikki Hill. He’s like, that’s just not it’s just not true.

That is the universe we’re living in. You’re absolutely right. And, you know, Republican rank and file voters are not shy, as I said in my piece today, about, you know, accusing their leaders of, selling them out of being, you know, weak need of being, you know, not strong. And, you know, that’s been a constant theme that they have held it against republic of not achieving the goals that the base wants. K?

And now the base really wants immigration reform. They really really really want it so so much. And those darn Democrats and those darn Never Trump Republicans and others, rhinos who won’t give it to them. And this time, guess what? It was Donald Trump who wouldn’t give it to them.

And so they said, please, sir, may I have some more? I mean, it is really amazing. Well, anyway. Okay. Bill, you wanted to get in here.

You’ve got a quibble, I think.

It may be more than a quibble, but I’ll allow, you know, the rest of the panelists and, of course, our audience to judge. I view Linda as much more of an expert on immigration than I am. So I’d like to run this by her. If it’s okay, just, you know, just to see. The Republican position, as you know, is that the president doesn’t need legislation to shut the border because he already has the authority to do so.

I got interested in that point. So I went to section two twelve f of the immigration and nationalization act of nineteen fifty two. And I found the following language. The president is authorized, and I quote, to suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens whose entry he finds would be detrimental to the interests of the United States. K?

That seems like pretty sweeping language to me. Why wouldn’t that statue, which is on been on the books nearly three quarters of a century cover this issue. Does Joe Biden need legislation to shut the border?

Well, first of all, The immigration law is written in nineteen fifty two and the modifications that have made sense, including modifications on asylum that were made I believe in nineteen eighty do in fact make limitations on that unless he can say that there is a National Security Emergency, which is why after nine eleven, he could shut down the border. You know, he could stop people from coming in for a period of time. It’s why under Title forty two, the Public Health Act, He could stop people coming in who actually threatened the help because they might have COVID, but there have been subsequent court cases and lots of battles over what he can and cannot do. And even if he could, let’s just hypothetically say that he could detain all the people that are intercepted at the border because he could detain asylum seekers although again, there’s some court rulings that suggest he can’t do that for Ron DeSantis period, although it can’t be a longer period than most people would imagine. He’s gotta have some place to put them.

So, you know, there are constraints on him. And given the fact even in fiscal year twenty twenty three, one million people were kicked out of the United States. People who were encountered at the border. They were in fact sent back. Most of them now are being sent back under Title eight, which is the broad authority over immigration.

It covers what the president’s authority are. And you’re right. If there were some, you know, national emergency, he might be able to invoke that, but barring something that everybody could agree on. That was a national emergency, you would have all of the immigration advocacy groups, the ACLU and others in court two minutes after, and my guess is you would have a stay. You would not be able to enforce that barring some sort of national emergency.

So yes, he has brought authority. I mean, essentially, that law gives the president, you know, huge authority, over immigration, but it is constrained by by laws, other laws, including the asylum law, and the way in which he does it and what he does with the people are also constrained by court cases.

Okay. This has been a great discussion. I just wanna close with one quick question for Chris, namely what this does to, Mike Johnson’s majority. Is is it so is it the case? I read this and tell me if this is right.

They had a vote to impeach my orcas. If that vote were held after next week when, Swazzy takes a he they wouldn’t be able to win that vote. Is that right?

That’s right. It would be two fourteen, two fourteen, and they would li a tie a tie unlike in the senate where the president of the senate, who’s the vice president breaks ties. There is no tie breaker in the house. So if it’s tied, you lose. If the sixteen votes to elect I think it was sixteen sixteen votes to elect Mc McCarthy speaker were not an indication.

If the failures of Steve scalise and Jim George And all the other people who put their remember that period where everybody and their brother was putting their name forward. Yeah. You know, Tom Tom Emma was the speaker designate for fifteen minutes before Donald Trump kiboshed him. If that didn’t make it clear, then this should finally make clear that, like, there is simply no way to effectively run the Republican Party in Congress? Mitch McConnell, who I think Whether you like him or hate him has a demonstrated track record over many decades of keeping his party in line.

Just look at what people set after the the Ukraine eight vote. I mean, you have Ted Cruz saying, you know, that this guy doesn’t know what he’s doing. If JD Vance who might be vice president, publicly criticizing McConnell, you know, you have the New York Times writing a story about how McConnell, McConnell’s stance on this cost him, and he is weakening as a leader. I mean, there’s just It is not a party that can be led by anyone other than the guy who is going to be the nominee, and you know, and the reason for that is because it’s a cult of personality organized around that person. Right?

I mean, that’s Ron DeSantis hard to lead a party that is, is not really in any a traditional sense that we would define

it a political party.

It is not a political party. It may be group therapy. Massive group therapy or, or a pyramid scheme or something, but it is not a political party because it doesn’t care about actual issues and enacting policies that align with the voters’ wishes. Well, anyway, we’ll talk about that more. But first, let me, say a few words about better help.

During these cold winter months, it’s possible to feel a little low. And so it might be time to think about giving yourself the gift of therapy. We all deal with stress in different ways. If you’re like me, the news itself can be very disturbing. Some of us get headaches others get stomach upset or insomnia.

And so mental stress can really take a toll. And therapy can be incredibly helpful. It is not just for people with serious trauma or major illness. We all need a sympathetic, dispassionate listener, someone with experience and perspective who can reassure us that others have the same insecurities doubts and worries and have overcome them. Therapy helps us to figure out how our own minds may be holding us back.

If you’re thinking of starting therapy, betterhelp is a great option. It’s incredibly convenient because it’s entirely online flexible and suited to your schedule. You just fill out a questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and get started. If that therapist is not a good fit, you can switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. It is the gift that you give yourself.

Make your brain your friend with betterhelp. Visit betterhelp dot com slash Beg to Differ today to get ten percent off your first month. That’s betterhelp, h e l p dot com slash beg to differ. And we thank them for sponsoring this podcast. Alright.

While that was all going on, we also had a huge debate about whether we’re going to continue to be a member of NATO. We saw Donald Trump say do one of his, what we call, sir, stories. And you know you know what a sir story is. It’s and they said to me, sir, they had tear these big generals, they had tears in their eyes, and they said sir. You’re the greatest man who has ever come into the presidency.

Blah blah blah. Those are the sirs stories. I mean, it’s a thing. If you if you look at Donald Trump’s History. It’s amazing how he’s always adds that they called me, sir.

You know, that’s that’s his own insecurity speaking. Anyway, The SIR story this past week was more disturbing than most because he made up this story, clearly made up. Didn’t really happen, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that he said what he said, which is that one of these, you know, leader of a big European country said to me, you mean if I don’t pay my bills to NATO, then you’re not gonna defend me. I’m attacked.

And Trump said, yes. You don’t pay your bills. You’re derelict Absolutely. I won’t defend you. Not only that.

I’ll tell Putin that that he should do whatever the hell he wants. Naturally, Republican voters in the base probably don’t even know he said it, and everyone else is Everyone else is losing their minds. Linda?

Well, first of all, it’s, call to tell if you’re a poker player. It’s something that you do when you’re sort of, you know, it’s like a nervous tick that you have, and it indicates what you’re thinking or doing. And when he tells a lie, his tell is sir. So I think we know that. Look, I think this was really disgraceful.

I mean, you know, Mona, you and I both worked for Ronald Reagan. He is literally like a swirling dervish in his in his grave now. He’s gotta be spinning in his grave. It’s really unbelievable. That the Republican Party’s leader has now come to the point when he is inviting Russia and the leader of Russia Putin who’s a former KGB agent to invade our allies.

You know, obviously he thinks it’s just perfectly fine. They invaded Ukraine and of course, you know, one of the other new faces of the new Republican Party as Tucker Carlson who was a week and a half ago or so over in Russia interviewing of Vladimir Putin, but this is very disturbing and you wonder you know, what our allies are thinking because obviously we’re not coming up with the money for Ukraine that we promised and that they desperately need. And so if the Republican Party cannot be counted on to, you know, basically live up to our chapter, five or article five rather, obligations under NATO, then, it’s it’s a whole different party. It it’s more than the isolationist party of the past because a Republican party used to be isolationist, became much less so under Reagan under under the two bushes, and certainly under the last bush. But, this is a dramatic turn for the worse, and it makes the world a much less safe place.

So, Damon, of course, Trump has always just like he’s always misunderstood tariffs, you know, he thinks that, foreigners pay tariffs, whereas, of course, we citizens pay tariffs Similarly, he completely misconceives how NATO was organized. There’s there really isn’t a kitty that we all contribute to It’s how much of each government’s budget they choose to spend on defense and there have been targets and so on. And, I mean, there is a kitty. It’s small. It’s for, you know, things like offices and stuff like that, but not for the main amount of nato spending.

So he gets that all wrong. And there are many, many other things that we could sort of fact check him on. But my question goes to what Linda just said, which is that NATO is a military alliance, but in order for a military alliance to have credibility relies on a psychological factor, which is not just how much of your budget do you spend on defense, but that when you say that an attack on one is an attack on all, you mean it. And if doubt is raised about that, about whether we mean it, then that destroys the alliance right there, doesn’t it?

Yes. Of course. I mean, just briefly to your initial point about Trump I don’t know if he personally. I mean, he was president. You figure he he knows that he’s lying, but, you know, maybe he forgot and He just believes his own demagogic lies, and so maybe he’s now convinced that in fact NATO is a protection racket And it’s actually that they’re supposed to cough up, you know, a certain amount of money to us that will come to their aid if someone bullies them around on the playground or something.

But, of course, that isn’t how it functions, as you said. It’s it’s it’s just promised targets for how much the members will spend of their GDP on their own defense. And that is a significant issue, but it has nothing to do with whether Article five will be forced, let alone whether we should encourage a hostile power on the border of NATO to start invading, which he invited as a kind of rhetorical ploy and is incredibly dangerous. I mean, in response to the second part of what you said in queuing this up, Mona, I wanna actually address something that that Linda said, which is comparing this to the isolationists of the thirties. And I actually wanna say this is far worse.

In the thirties, the United States had just helped bring World War one to an end. And as a result of that, we were more powerful than we had ever been, but we were still largely a regional power. And there was a lot of dissension in the country about whether we should be involved in European affairs or just kind of let them handle it. And the isolationists of the time were in favor of letting it stay over there. It’s not our business.

We are today the powerful nation on the planet and have been for decades. We are involved everywhere in everything. The entire network security, economic arrangements around the globe. And it’s not like we’re now we have Trump saying, what we’re gonna do is stop time hang out on the on the on the sidelines and decide, we’re gonna be involved here, but not there, and there, but not here, and gonna do it that way. No.

Everything in foreign affairs begins from the present. And at the present, we are incredibly powerful and have a tremendous say and how the world works. And trump to be trying to do this is making a case for positively pulling back from that baseline. And every time you step back from that baseline, you create a vacuum that invites other powers to fill it. And so it is far more ruinous to propose this kind of a strategy now.

Now, people who’ve been listening to this podcast for time know that, you know, I was very much ambivalent about some of the global war and terror. I thought it was in general a good idea to pull back. From Afghanistan, and we can agree or disagree about that. But my case has always been this has to be decided and thought about in a thoughtful careful strategic way where we prioritize and figure out where we want to be and where we care a little bit less about what happens given rising rival powers. And that I still think is a legitimate issue, but it has absolutely nothing to do with Donald Trump is doing here.

He’s trying to rip up the global order that we helped to build beginning at the end of World War II. And this is a five alarm fire here folks. I mean, I really for him to insinuate this at a time where Putin is, I can guarantee you looking at maps of the Bulwark and figuring out land bridge to our bases on the Baltic Sea through through lithuania or should it be Stonia maybe that we go into next. It’s not gonna be Poland, at least not right away. It’s gonna be the Bulwark.

They have strategic interests in making a big, mess up there. And he is guaranteed looking at that and thinking if trump’s in, I think I’m golden. And that is on Trump.

Bill, it isn’t just Trump. It’s Trump in concert with trends that have been brewing on the right also for a while. So there have been these voices in the intellectual, so called, you know, intellectual nationalist types on the right. And you’ve written a a lot. I know you’ve studied these people, but they are already actually casting doubt on the you know, rules based international order that the US inaugurated after World War two.

They are highly skeptical about American power, which used to be the thing that sort of distinguished the left, but now it’s very much, a feature of the right, and Trump is, inviting as everyone has already said. He’s inviting aggression. And you could sort of say, Whatever you may think about American leadership in the world, would you like leadership by Russia, China, Iran, better? Because there isn’t gonna be an absent isn’t gonna be that there isn’t gonna be a world leader. There will be.

It’s just a question of who. Well,

I think your question answers itself, Mona, but my colleague Robert Kagan with whom I’ve disagreed about many things, including the Iraq war, has made an observation recently that I think we all need think about. And he points out he’s a he’s a diplomatic historian among other things, and he points out that great foreign policy issues in American history have always involved conflicts in US domestic policy. And the idea that wise men could get together in a room and resolve these issues taking nothing but the long term interest of the United States into account and basically shutting the people out doesn’t work has never worked. It doesn’t work that way. And so we have to ask ourselves What are the domestic developments that account for this profound transformation in the world view of one of the two major and enduring political parties in the United States.

And there, I think we could point to a series of mistakes spot political elites of both political parties that have given credibility and vigor. To the idea that the United States would be best served by retreating from the world. Do you see a microcosm of that argument in the debate over aid to Ukraine and how it is linked or not linked to the southern border. And the crudest way of putting it is why are we spending so much money on the eastern border of Ukraine while neglecting the southern border of the United States. And tens of millions of people have been persuaded that what they think has gone wrong with the United States in the past twenty years is a function of spending money overseas that should have been spent here at home.

It used to be Democrats who made that argument, you know, to oppose the b one b bomber and a bunch of other things Now it’s Republicans, but we have to add, yo, rather than wringing our hands. Obviously, in the short term, we have to try to prevent Trump from destroying the network of alliances and attachments that Damon properly pointed to. But in the longer term, we all have to ask ourselves some hard questions. About why international engagement has lost credibility, has lost desirability, has lost urgency, for so many million Americans. We have to attend to the domestic foundations of international engagement.

And if we don’t do that, We’re gonna be having this conversation in five years and ten years and twenty years, and it won’t look any better.

Chris, this is in a sense of perennial problem though, and it does come down to poor leadership. I mean, polls show that people when you set up side by side, you know, how much people think we are spending on foreign aid, you know, versus how much we actually spend on foreign aid, you know, people imagine that it’s, like, thirty five, forty percent of our federal budget going to foreign. It went, of course, it’s less than one percent. I don’t know. I mean, I guess you could say, where did people get the thought that that we’re spending more on, on international aid than we are on our own southern border.

Well, partly it’s because they’re being lied to more than that. I mean, you you do have to have control of your borders. You can’t have a sense of chaos and all that. So that’s that’s right. So comment on that if you want, but I’d also just love to get your reaction because there is There was one silver lining in all this this week.

Alright. You you answer that first, and then I’ll get to the silver lining.

All I was gonna do, Mona, honestly, was recommend my former boss who employed me throughout college, George F. Will

Oh.

Wrote wrote a and I’ve been a little bit critical of him at times in that. I I think he He both pines and believes in a Republican party that no longer exists.

Yeah. I know. It’s You

know, but but but I did think to your point about Ukraine, I thought he wrote a really nice piece. I never know. I always say today. I never really know when it ran. I saw it.

Online today. They do. Yeah. Print newspaper, consumer. But I would urge people to read that because I think he does a really good job of exactly your point, Mona, which is contextualizing.

That in truth, this is a crude metaphor, but it is a pretty cheap date to de stabilize Russia via the money that we are spending in Ukraine compared to everything that we spend. And I think people do not grasp that. I wanna make one other quick point. It is remarkable to me that yeah. Yes.

Twenty nine, I believe Republican senators voted against the Ukraine Ukraine aid package. But it it passed with seventy. It is a remarkable thing to me, just having watched the House and Senate, and how they interact, that a bill that would pass with seventy senators. Would be met with a Heisman. Right?

A don’t come here by the speaker of the house who simply believes he does not have the political capital, the political wherewithal, the ability to lead to say, or or the support of his conference, to say, yes, this is an important thing that we have to do. I mean, Mike, you know, Mike Johnson’s effectively said, like, well, it’s dead on arrival. We’re not gonna do anything. I mean, this is not something that passed with fifty one vote. I mean, there’s not that many things outside of naming non controversial things to get seventy plus votes.

And yet again, I just coming back. I mean, I’m writing about this, but I do keep coming back too. It is impossible to be a party leader in a party that lacks leadership or policies, right, in a party that is just about one person. We didn’t talk about this, but look at there are four committee chairman, four full committee chairman on the Republican side, Mark Green from Tennessee being the most recent, who are retiring. If Young Chris Alyssa working at roll call newspaper twenty five years ago, they would never do that.

Mike Gallagher, thirty nine year old, Marine, recruited for the Senate. He’s retiring. You know, he’s seen this as huge as he’s retired. He’s retiring. Because he has a primary challenge from a guy who was a Donald Trump consultant because he didn’t vote to impeach Alejandro Marcus on principle.

Like, this is I mean, it’s I know not everyone’s watching the video, but it’s mind blowing. Yeah. Like, it really is. And I I just think everything, because Bill mentioned this. You can’t talk about foreign policy without talking about about, I think, domestic politics and policy.

And to me, the the lack of sort of any leaders, there is no one there is Trump, and then it goes, there is no one. There is no Mitch McConnell. There is no Mike Johnson. There is no Paul Ryan. There’s no Mitt Romney.

Right? There’s just no middle class. It’s just rankin’ file, and those people are the people who get in line behind Trump.

Yes. Alright. Let us Sorry.

That was depressing.

That was, very accurate. Alright. Let us, move on to our third topic. Also, not a happy one. So when we were last gathered together at the very end of the podcast, Damon informed us about the Robert Her special counsel report that, you know, said that the president was confused and doddering.

And, so, of course, we’ve had a full week since then of commentary and so on. At some of it hair on fire. And, Damon, you wrote a piece for the Atlantic where you said, okay, the Democrats should dump Joe Biden. So make your case.

Well, I mean, it is a contribution to punditry and it’s supposed to starting a debate and a conversation and it seems to have contributed to that. So I’m happy about it. My case is is really Nothing more than bringing some very widely known polling data kind of to the conversation and pointing out that for example, Seventy six percent of Americans and half of Democrats according to an NBC poll from just before the Her report came out say that they are not convinced that Biden is up to the job of being president, both because of age and his energy levels and so forth. So I wanted to kind of point that out that it is not that we can just blame Robert Hur for throwing Biden under the bus that this has actually been a problem for a long time and he’s just feeding into this widely shared conviction. And then I also wanted to highlight his approval rating, which is, you know, bouncing around between thirty eight and thirty nine percent.

It’s been extremely steady with a very long term slow drift downward over time. It stays within a fairly narrow band, but then over the course of months slowly gets lower and that if you compare his approval rating to the approval rating of other presidents at this time in their presidency heading into a reelection fight. He’s not doing well. I mean, I point out that he’s roughly five points behind where Trump was four years ago before Trump lost. Ten points behind Barack Obama at this point, thirteen points behind George w Bush at this point, and six points behind the first George Bush who of course went on to lose.

So given all of this, I simply wanted to say, Hey, I get being risk averse. And is it risky to say we should dump Biden at this incredibly late date when it’s too late to even have a competitive primary? Absolutely. But let’s be honest folks, it is also risky to go forward with a candidate hampered by these kinds of numbers. So obviously, you know, like, I I talk about some people who I think would maybe be better candidates, you can come up with arguments on the other side of of all of those, and we can talk about them if you want.

And and what I’m proposing is effectively an open convention basically Biden dropping out in the next month or two, saying his committed delegates are freed up to vote for whoever they want at the convention. And then a series of votes on the convention floor going on through the night and into the next day. The biggest ratings bonanza for a convention in decades as the country waits on pins and needle to see who prevails as the consensus and then that will be, the candidate going into face Trump and would that person be hampered by that process? You know, I don’t know. It’d be messy.

It sure would be drama. But frankly, given Biden’s numbers, I’m not entirely convinced that the end result by like late September and October once that’s been digested. And processed in the electorate would be that much different. Would that person be below thirty eight percent approval and and actually slightly behind Biden, slightly behind Trump as Biden is right now in head to head polls. Maybe, but I I’m just as likely to think Maybe they’d be a little ahead.

Maybe maybe it would shake things up in a positive way. So that’s been my contribution to the body politic this week.

Thank you, Damon. Okay, Linda. So in Damon’s thought experiment, he didn’t grapple with one thing, which is the Kamala Harris issue. And that is a big deal. The idea that we would have a free, rip roaring contest for the nomination within the Democratic Party, assuming a Biden withdrawal assumes that people would be willing to run against the first African American female vice president.

In the Democratic party, it’s hard to see that that would actually come to pass. The most important voting constituency in the Democratic party in, you know, in primaries is Bulwark women. And, I don’t know what do you think? I mean, it’s it’s nice to fantasize about, you know, Josh Shapiro or Gretchen Whitmer or you know, even, warnock, you know, although I’m not crazy about him. But, anyway, there are others that people who throw out names but wouldn’t it be Kamala Harris whose ratings, whose popularity is even lower than president Biden’s.

Alright. So while Damon was writing his Atlantic article. I was busy surveying some of my former union friends, people who held high ranking positions in labor unions around the country, this last week. And lo and behold, one who really surprised me, came up with a scenario somewhat different than Damon’s in an important way. And that is not for Biden to set aside now.

I think that would be kind of a bloody mess. His suggestion was that he step aside, you know, on the first day of the convention, health emergency, something. It would also require that Kamala Harris decide that she didn’t want to buy or even if she did want to buy It would require some smoke filled rooms or if not smoke filled rooms. I don’t know, tea filled rooms or whatever it is the Democrats to, for enjoyment, maybe some pot filled rooms. I’m not and it would require the the delegates who were there to pick the person.

Now If Kamala Harris were to assume the number one spot, she would lose I think overwhelmingly to Trump. I’ve said that on this show before that I really think that you know there used to be a time when even Al Gore put the good of the country before his own good in the way he accepted the Supreme Court ruling that came down involving Ford in two thousand. Please, someone try to get to Kamala Harris and say put the country first. Maybe she could even stay on the ticket as vice president. But they’ve got to come up, with somebody at the top.

And, Andy Bashir is somebody I keep, pushing. I think it’s got to be a governor. Maybe Gavin Newsom California. He may be too liberal, but I don’t know. I’ve heard him on, the Bill Mars show recently and sounded all that liberal.

He’s been on Fox News trying to make a pitch for the Fox News audience. So I do think

I’m sorry Linda. Anybody who’s who was formerly married to Don junior’s girlfriend

out. Sorry. I agree. I agree that that really isn’t disqualifying, but I think the constitution bonus I’m not sure. I mean, I’ll I’ll start a campaign with you for that.

But I really do think that for the good of the country would be better for Biden not not to be at the head. It isn’t, and he is really diminished. You watch him walk. They keep talking about his stiff gait. I’m sorry that shuffle looks more than a stiff gait.

Yes, he confused his names on this program last week. I talked about amnesty when I met asylum. So when we get up in years, sometimes we do substitute the wrong word. But it’s more than that. He doesn’t have the vigor.

And while I think it’s true that if you look to his accomplishments as president, those accomplishments do take his leadership but they say a lot more about the people around him, and his deferring, to to them. I think he’s just not you know most Americans have made up their minds that he is too old to be president. I think Donald Trump is too old to be president and shows clear signs of dementia, but, you know, the Republican party seems to want

to stick with him. So Meanwhile, Will Saletan. Joe mansion is already auditioning vice presidential picks. Did you see that? He said he was, you know, he would look kindly on Mitt Romney running on a ticket with him.

So what?

Well, if if there’s a third party this time.

What do

you mean? If we already have a proliferation of third party and independent candidates. And I could pretty much guarantee you that because of name recognition and a cornucopia of money that shows no signs of ending, RfK’s existing campaign is gonna be much more significant than any ticket Joe mansion can put together.

That RFP would probably take votes from Trump.

Well, that’s and that I’ve looked at all of the surveys you know, comparing, you know, the two way to the five way, and all of those surveys work to Biden’s disadvantage.

Okay. So what about the Damon linker dump Biden campaign?

You know, when I was a boy, I loved science fiction. We’re in the realm of human psychology now. And, you know, you can argue on the one hand Well, he ought to step down for the good of the country. And if I were more confident that the process Damon outlined would lead to a stronger Democratic candidate in the general election. I might back it as a sort of a you know, a moral proposition.

You owe it to the country, mister president, but as a realistic depiction of what and who has sought the president cease his nineteen eighty eight is going to do. I think it is fancable. And the older I get, and I’m not saying this is a virtue, but simply a self description. The older I get the more I take my bearings about what I think is possible as opposed to what I think might be desirable. Would I like to wave a magic wand and bring Damon’s scenario into existence?

I’d consider waving that wand But do I think it’s gonna happen? I think the only thing that reshuffles the deck for the Democratic Party is a serious and disqualifying health scene for the sitting president of the United States. I’m not rooting for that. I’m just stating it as a matter of fact, That’s my assessment that the only thing that can change this picture is that. So we can amuse ourselves, but I don’t think we’re really describing

it. Can I just add, just add real quick that, I, I originally wrote this piece at, like, two thousand word length for my substack, and then the Atlantic asked me to redo it at half the length? So I honestly don’t remember which was in which piece. But in the original, I think, I did talk concretely about how this could happen and of course it is fanciful, but it wasn’t just waving a magic wand. It was Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Chuck Schumer and anyone else prominent in the party, you can think of going to Biden behind the scenes, sitting down with him and saying, Look, mister president.

You have served your country. You dispatched Donald Trump. Congratulations. But these are your numbers and we need you to do the ultimate sacrifice of your political career for the sake of the country. What do you say, get the hell out of here and Yeah.

Probably, but you never know.

You know, that’s Look, you never you never know. That’s the old Barry Goldwater delegation visiting Richard Nixon scenario. Here’s the problem. Let’s start with Barack Obama. The guy who told Joe Biden at the end of eight years faithful service as vice president that he, Barack Obama, would not support him.

Not only for the democratic nomination, and not only that, he was gonna endorse the other choice. And this is the guy who’s gonna tell Joe Biden to stand down. I don’t think so.

That’s a good point. Okay, Chris. Another aspect of this, I wonder if you could comment on, which is you know, there has not been I think for my entire life that I’ve been following political conventions, the guys who were report on them. The political reporters have always said, yep. We could have a brokered convention, and they were always so excited.

Because a brokered convention is like the dream of every journalist, you know, so many, you know, great stories and drama, It hasn’t happened for my whole lifetime, and I’ve been around a long time. In the in the scenario of a broke not a brokered, but a but but a contested convention. Mhmm. Would there even be the muscle memory in the delegates to even know how to do such a thing in our time?

Yeah. I will admit as a and I put myself firmly in this category. It is a political nerd fantasy of the first sort. Like, you know, like, it goes right along with. I feel like that one and well, what if the electoral college tied two sixty nine to two sixty nine.

Like, those are the several flights. Exactly. Those are the two. I find myself, you know, embarrassingly often agreeing almost entirely with Damon. You know, I know you wanna disagree sometimes, but but I, like, Most of what Damon writes, I’m like, damn, I wish I had thought of that.

And and what he says. And so what I think that would be interesting about it I think the so the reason that conventions are no longer, you know, what they were. I’m trying to, you know, sixty, seventy years ago, is because the party decided Anything that looks like chaos or lack of order is bad. Right? This is a television event, and we want to project unity And they’re they can’t even imagine that the person who is is the nominee that it could ever be anyone else.

Right? Everything, the three days are all geared to that, which makes it from a journalistic point of view, totally worthless. I sort of am on the damage side of this in that Well, I’m with Bill. I don’t think it’s gonna happen. Let me say that.

But I’m on the Damon side of I’m not a hundred percent convinced that let’s say Joe Biden had to bow out for some sort of health issue. I’m not convinced that a contested convention, right? In in which there are multiple options. Would fundamentally hamstring the eventual nominee. First of all, I don’t think people pay you know, I think people, you know, start paying attention a month about before the election.

I don’t think they pay that much attention. They pay more, obviously, to a contested convention. But just not sold on it. It’s the same argument that always goes that while we should never have any primary races because all primaries do is divert tension and resources away from the general election. Well, I would argue, you know, primaries are actually probably a pretty good thing generally speaking in that forces candidates to run for things.

This twenty twenty four Republican primary being a little bit of an exception because it’s not really a primary. But I think primaries can be a good thing. I don’t think you should avoid them. And and for the same reason, like, I’m not totally convinced that if they had a convention at which there were multiple people putting their names forward, and they eventually settled on one that by October fifteenth, we would say, oh, man. That that really doomed Democrats.

It seems to me, like, you know, you could nominate this coffee cup it’s tea, but you can nominate this tea cup as a Democratic nominee. And today, that tea cup would get forty eight percent of the vote. Like, I just don’t there there does there seems to be such small margins. It’s not as though there’s something is going to happen. I don’t think between now and the election where we’re gonna have a sixty forty no matter who the Republican Democratic nominees or even a fifty five forty five election.

So I tend to think we overflow how much that can matter.

Okay. Well, let’s leave that there for this week. And, we will move on to our highlights of or low lights of the week, but first, a word about Babble. One in five Americans have learned a new language on their bucket list. If that’s you, make twenty twenty four the year that you finally check it off.

You don’t need to pay hundreds of dollars for a private tutor or waste hours on apps that don’t really help you speak the language. Babbles quick ten minute lessons are handcrafted by over two hundred language experts to help you start speaking a new language in as little as three weeks. Babbles tools and tips are approachable, accessible, rooted in real life situations, and delivered with conversation based teaching So you’re ready to practice what you’ve learned in the real world. And they cater to your learning style. If you’re mostly visual, can do it all on just visual cues.

If you’re auditory, you can listen and then repeat and the accents are Very good. I must say. So it really helps. And plus, it provides really practical speaking guidance. So it’s Think of it in terms of, like, if you’re planning a vacation to another country and you wanna be able to at least converse a little bit in a restaurant or whatever, you may not even want to completely immerse yourself and be reading their great literature overnight.

But you just wanna be able to converse in a, you know, as a tourist, You can do that with Babbel and, you can do it really, really fast. So here is a special limited time deal for our listeners. Right now, get fifty percent off a one time payment for a lifetime babble subscription. It’s only for our listeners at babble dot com slash beg to differ. So you get fifty percent off at babel dot com slash beg to differ.

It is spelled b a b b e l dot com, and then slash beg to differ. Rules and restrictions may apply, And we thank them for sponsoring Beg to Differ. Alright. We now go to our highlight or low light of the week, and we will start with Bill Galston.

Well, this week, I’m gonna be what the, you know, so the stalinists and the Soviet Union called a stachonavite. You know, because I’m gonna offer both a highlight and a low light. Let me start with the low light. We’ve talked on on this show more than once about Donald Trump’s, you know, threat which he articulated last week to, knock defend, NATO allies that he referred to as deadbeats. And even to invite, Vladimir Putin to attack them.

Well, Donald Trump had six days to reflect on this criticism. And then, last night, that is Wednesday night, before the show, was taped on Thursday, He decided that he was right all along, and so he doubled down. And he cleaned up the language about Vladimir Putin a little bit. But he repeated that if NATO allies he regards as dead beats didn’t quote unquote pay up, he wouldn’t defend them. Which amounts to withdrawing from NATO, by the way, because it is to reject the obligation of Article five collective defense, which is the part of the NATO charter and of the operational meaning of the organization itself.

Speaking of Vladimir Putin, that leads me to a rare highlight featuring mister Putin. I’m referring of course to mister Putin’s contemptuous dismissal of Tucker Carlson as a weak journalist who didn’t have the guts to challenge him, and therefore Putin said it was from that standpoint an unsatisfactory interview. I cannot tell you how much satisfaction I have derived from Vladimir Putin’s depiction of Tucker Carlson It is the first moment of truth that I’ve heard from Russia’s president in years.

Excellent. I’m glad I didn’t mention it earlier. I was going to bring it up, and, I’m glad that I didn’t. That was indeed a highlight, and Tucker Carlson is being more of a useful idiot than on behalf of Putin than anybody I wrote about in my two thousand three book by that title. Okay.

Damon Lincoln.

Well, my choice this week actually is a highlight and it actually appears in, the American Conservative magazine, and, you know, I didn’t expect to be saying those words. This is actually an essay by a guy named Nate Hoffman, who’s a a young conservative. He’s about twenty five or so years old. He got some headlines because, he was hired, after Doing his time at places like the Claremont Institute in National Review. He was hired by the DeSantis Campaign in the communications shop and ended up, having to, well, he was pushed out when the campaign, you know, tried to cut spending, But, that campaign spending cut was tied also to very bad press that came about because the communication shop where this guy worked, put out, this video filled with right wing memes, including the son and rod, a kind of Nazi symbol included with DeSantis in it.

And now Hawkman has denied that he made the had and that he was directly involved in it, but he was he was in the right office, we will say, where that was created. So since then, he’s sort of been on the outs on the right, doing various freelancing stuff and he has now written this essay from the American conservative that’s very interesting thing titled what I saw inside the DeSantis campaign. I recommend it to to listeners if you’re interested in the right and what become. He basically gives, a view that DeSantis was too much of a policy wonk. He just wanted to kind of be a pragmatist and fix little problems here and there, but he had no vision.

The reason why DeSantis was cleaned up and you know, put out to drive by the successful Trump campaign is that Trump has a vision. He connects spiritually with his voters and this shows where the right needs to go. Now, I actually I I engage with Hawkman on, Twitter X, sometimes. And so I, I responded to this and and said to him the other day, like, Well, like, you know, I I have to say, you know, you’re gonna say I’m engaging and, you know, reductio at hit Larum, but, like, This sounds very weimar republic. Like, we need a right wing leader to connect with the the masses, the folk one might say.

In order, you know, with their spiritual, longings and so forth. And he immediately came back, oh, people do this all the time, Biden says he’s fighting for the soul of America. That’s all I’m saying. So, I’m gonna write something about this probably next week, but it is an interesting inside take of the campaign in a very kind of sublimated way. There’s not a lot of like gossip in it, but This is how he viewed the experience of working there and his own account of why DeSantis failed.

So much food for thought in that. And, you know, Hawkman’s an interesting guy, even if I think he’s wrong about pretty much everything he says.

Thanks, Damon. Linda?

Well, I’m just trying to recover from the shock of, Damon, using a piece of the American conservative. I am going to go back to my highlight, which, unfortunately, since we’ve been on, you know, camera the whole time. I couldn’t be furiously searching for something else. So I am going to go back not so much, to the Katherine Rampel column in the Washington Post but rather to the report itself of the congressional budget office because I think it’s really important for people to understand how important an inflow of new workers is into our economy. And you know, if you look at sluggish growth in the US over the last few years.

Obviously, a lot of it had to do with the pandemic, but it also had to do with the that we weren’t in bringing in new people to assume jobs and what the congressional budget office did was to project out what the influx of new people into our country over the last year will mean going forward. So What they determined was that the five point two million job growth, that was experienced in, and I think it was twenty twenty two. Was almost an entirely or at least it was in large part because of immigrants coming into the labor force. And that if you project that out, you’re going to see over the next ten years seven trillion dollars in growth in the GDP in the US economy. One trillion dollars in more revenue coming in.

This is gonna help our deficits. It’s gonna mean that we’re a vibrant economy. But I think it’s also important to know these were not legal immigrants, all of them who came in. Now some of them asylum seekers after one hundred and eighty days, they end up getting work permits, so they are legally here. But a lot of those people who come in are not legally here.

But they still contribute and because they often end up through their employers paying social security tax They actually pay into the system and won’t be able to take out of the system, come their retirement age. So I just think this is important to remember And you know, I’ll agree with Bill here that it’s it is the chaos at the border is a win for Republicans and less Democrats can turn that around. But all of those people coming in are not a bad thing. They actually work and redown to the benefit of Americans already living here.

Yes. Amen. Not only that. They create jobs. That’s the other thing that that people forget to say about immigrants.

They create jobs. They don’t just take jobs. That’s mostly what they

do is create jobs.

They create businesses and so on. So it’s really, it’s a complicated picture, and and you’ve laid it out really well, Linda. Okay. Chris Saliza.

Okay. I’m gonna be brief. I write on post it notes stuff that I wanna write in the future. So I for people watching, on this post it note, I have written two words, Lindsey Graham. Okay.

So, that it doesn’t really need much more explanation, but I will explain slightly more. This is my low light. Sorry. I think everyone will bill offer to highlight and a low light and everyone else to the highlight. I’ll go with the low light.

Look. Lindsey Graham has effectively is effectively unrecognizable from the Lindsey Graham who was a surrogate for John McCain in the two thousand and eight campaign. The last thing that was sort of the last vestige of that Lindsey Graham was his hawkishness on foreign policy and age and Ukraine in particular. Well, this week, he said he was going to vote against and did vote against the Ukraine bill ninety five billion dollars in in in money for Ukraine. Because number one, stop me if you’ve heard this before.

We have to secure our southern border, Donald Trump, and number two, it should be given in the form of a loan. Also a Donald Trump idea. I I I will turn this into a highlight in that I will recommend to people if you have not read Will Saletan piece. It’s a series of pieces on the corruption or whatever word he uses. The the the metamorphosis of Lindsey Graham, I would recommend it, but It is remarkable to me in fifteen years.

Lindsey, he is he is almost entirely unrecognizable from a policy perspective from what he was. And and, you know, he gave a famous interview to Mark Lee Bravitch who I think at the time was either the New York Times or the Atlantic. I can’t remember in which he explained himself by saying, I go where the attention is. I go where the power is, and that really says it all.

Yeah. You know, Will Saletan and I do a podcast for Bulwark plus members. And, this came up on on our podcast this week. The series of articles that Will wrote the corruption of Lindsey Graham is available in book form from Kindle, and you can I think you can find it also on the Bulwark website? It’s fantastic.

But anyway, Will was pointing out that one of the things that Lindsey Graham said when he was surrendering to Trump on all these other issues was that, well, yes, I have to give up my views on x, y, and z because This gives me access. And with that access, I will argue for my, you know, vigorous foreign policy, American strength abroad, etcetera. That’s the price I had to pay. And, of course, we, as we now see, I mean, even that is out the window. It was never about that.

It was always about Lindsey Graham being a senator and being where the action is.

Right.

Power. Yeah. Yep. Alright. Thank you for that.

Alright. I too have a highlight And it is a piece that appeared in the Atlantic this week by Derek Thompson. It’s called why Americans suddenly stopped hanging out. I don’t know if it’s that sudden, but, anyway, he gives a lot of these statistics that people may not, be familiar with. So, for example, In the late nineteen seventies, more than half of twelfth graders got together with their buddies almost every day.

By twenty seventeen, only twenty eight percent dude. So as we have seen, the the advent of the smartphone and the internet has resulted. We think that this is the problem, that that people are spending a lot more time alone, which means on screens, and not with other people seeing their faces, being physically with them, touching them, smelling them, doing all the things that humans evolved over millennia, to do with one another. And, now we’re doing it less and less, and it is really taking a toll on our mental health. I highly recommend the piece.

He recommends that we you know, just as we have learned that in this modern age where we have all the calories we could ever want, and our biggest problem now is fighting obesity because we weren’t evolved. For this kind of an environment, and we have to learn how to take care of our bodies. We have to learn how to take care of our social cells too. Because we didn’t evolve for this kind of atomized existence where we spend so much time alone and not with others. And I think this piece summarizes a lot of important, sociological research that’s been coming down the pike in recent years and gives insight into things like team depression and other problems that we’re having as a as a society and not just us.

But but around the developed world. With that, I would like to thank our guest, Chris Saliza, and of course, the regular panel. I also wanna mention our great producer, Jim Swift, and our sound engineer, Jonathan Siri. And, of course, our listeners and now viewers on YouTube. Thank you very much.

If you can recommend us or give us a rating that apparently activates the magic algorithms, that then causes it to be recommended to other people, and then the word gets out, and more people watch, and it’s all great. So if you could do that, we’d be indebted to you, and we will return next week as every week.