“Will Haley’s Stumble Matter?”

Welcome to Bag 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 guest host AB Stoddard columnist at the Bulwark and joining me are the usual round table, Damon Linker, who publishes the sub stacked notes from the middle ground, Linda Chavez, with an Escannon Center, Will Saletan of the Brookings institution in the Wall Street Journal and joining us this week are colleague Jim Swift of the Bulwark. So guys, I thought that we were going to have a quiet news free rambling discussion of twenty twenty three and twenty twenty four in the political landscape, but something huge has fallen from the sky, Nikki Haley, in the free state of New Hampshire of all places. Decided to step on her tongue and answer someone’s question about the cause of the civil war and really, really harm herself with her response.

Her response was evasive and nervous. It was not the usual super polished, calculated calibrated, disciplined prepped and ready, Nikki Haley, and It’s so missions were so intentional and so painful. I hope some of our listeners when they joined this podcast have not even heard it yet because they’ve so tuned out political news, but it is important to hear her stumble through it or play that now.

Please. What was the cause of the United States civil war?

Well, don’t come with an easy question or anything. I mean, I think the cause of the civil war was basically how government was gonna run the freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do. What do you think the cause of the civil war was? I’m sorry? I mean, I think it always comes down to the role of government.

We need to have capitalism. We need to have economic freedom. We need to make sure that we do all things so that individuals have liberties so that they can have freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to do, or be anything they wanna be without government getting in the way. What do you want me to say about slavery?

Next question.

So Will Saletan, This is amazing on so many levels. Following this, she basically said that the man in the audience who likely would be an independent Republican, a center right Republican, a I wanna get away from Trump and move this party in a different direction Republican, she called the questioner a democratic plant. What do you make of this, Bill?

Tell you the truth, AB. I am still scratching my head as to how a very intelligent and seasoned politician who’s been through this more than once, who actually bucked a lot of political pressure to lower the confederate flag, from its place of honor over the state capital. How could she possibly do that? And the standard analysis to which I don’t have much to add is that she has been trying to make a place for herself on the political spectrum, where Trump can’t go, but at the same time remain available to at least some portion of the Trump Coalition because she understands the portion of the political spectrum that she distinctively occupies will probably not be large enough to get her a majority of the Republican vote during the nominate contest. And so to avoid giving offense to the targets among the potential Trump voters.

She simply dodged the most obvious explanation for the civil war. And she tried to clean it up the next morning by saying, of course, the cause of the civil war was was slavery. That’s the easy part or something like that. But of course, it was so easy. She should have said it when she was asked.

It was arguably the low point of a campaign that had been gaining both velocity and altitude. Before that comment, I gave her an even chance of either catching or even, you know, exceeding Donald Trump in the New Hampshire primary. Now I’m not so sure, however, a word of caution. This would not be the first time that people like us in Washington have attached more weight to a potentially disqualifying event by a political candidate eight. We did it many, many times.

In twenty sixteen, with Donald Trump, we were wrong every time. I personally think that this is a horrible mistake that betrays at the very least a level of political opportunism and lack of a real moral core that should give any reasonable sit and pause about supporting her, but it wouldn’t be the first time that my fellow citizens have felt very differently about such a matter.

It’s a wise warning. Wisewords Linda, her clean up her damage control comments in New Hampshire at a different event this morning. Were I think revelatory? Just as Bill noted, she said, oh, of course, it was always about slavery. We know that.

That’s unquestioned. Always the case. We know the civil war was about slavery. And then she went on with more word salad and said the lessons of what that bigger issue with the civil war are, is that let’s not forget what came out of that which is government’s role, individual liberties, freedom for every single person, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to do and be anything you want to be without anyone or government getting in your way. That should be the goal of what we always try and take away from that right?

Question, Mark? She’s in the same jam today as she was yesterday, and she will be tomorrow. But what do you make of Bill’s point that maybe that’s just is just fine. With I don’t think it’s gonna go over well in New Hampshire. But do you think this bumps her up in the Iowa polls?

So who the heck knows whether it’s gonna help her in Iowa or not? The real tragedy here is not even just Nikki Haley. Maybe she should watch few Simpson shows. She could learn some American history there, and she could have learned from one of the characters, that slavery was the cause of the civil war. In one of the famous, episodes from that series.

But the bigger problem is that the Republican Party, which was founded around this issue. I mean, there would be no Republican party. Had it not been the dispute over slavery in the United States? That’s why the party was founded. And and yet now the Republican Party seems to want to walk away from that.

I think, you know, once the Republican Party became much more southern based, they seemed to want to embrace the view of the civil war, that is taught in the south and really, you know, is the sort of myth of the loss cause, and they don’t want to own up to the fact that we fought a bloody civil war to ensure that Bulwark people in the United States became citizens that they were entitled to all of the rights of every other citizen in the United States, including the right to vote, and that we could never again have an institution like slavery. I don’t know why that is seemed to be toxic in the Republican Party. It just is a mystery to me and a tragedy. And I for one think that her clean up of her answer was in some ways worse than the original answer. She It certainly isn’t about preserving capitalism.

That isn’t what the civil war was founded on. It was certainly, you know, the idea that there should be individual liberties. Well, you know, since blacks were not considered persons, under the constitutions until the civil war. I don’t even know what she means by that. So it’s just it was such an easy you know, it was a kind of gift question to any normal Republican, at least pre Donald Trump, and for it to be a stumbling block to her.

I think raises real questions about her fitness.

I completely agree. And I think that when people are saying today, maybe she doesn’t understand her history. I mean, I think that she knew Exactly what she was doing, which is why this is so disheartening. Damon, I saw you on Twitter. I refused to call it X, talking about this, and she is not trying to be a general election candidate or a moral leader.

Right? She’s speaking to Donald Trump’s party, and she probably do you think she hopes that she’s going to get a little bit of a boost among the Maga base from this?

Well, I I wouldn’t say that I think she had some kind of calculated political strategy in mind. No. This was happening in real time. She know there was gonna be that question. It’s an expression of how she reacted in the moment.

And I think where the way she reacted in the moment is more negation rather than a positive vision. Like, I want to appeal to, you know, neo segregationists or something like that. I think what happened is she understands the fact, which is the only possibility of her beating Donald Trump in the Republican primaries, which I consider to be completely remote, like, infinitesimally small, but it is it is there in that extent. And that is to somehow peel away. Trump voters from Trump, some of them, not all of them, but enough that she can actually really rise in the polls, substantially rise in the polls, and do it by Super Tuesday, which is gonna be the first real test of how she does with an electorate that is overwhelmingly just Republican voters and in a lot of states where Trump is pretty popular.

And what she did, and her answer was effectively kind of like damage control on that flank. Like, If I come out and give the standard answer that everyone on the show wants to hear her say, which is that, of course, the civil war was caused by a dispute over the legality of slavery. Should it be allowed? Should it be should be allowed and allowed to expand into the western territories or should its extent be stopped And then eventually as the war unfolded, this became actual emancipation of the slaves as a goal for the for the north. This is standard textbook American history by this point.

But in the south, there are people who have never bought into that story, and they are a faction of Republican voters who like Trump an awful lot. And then there are a lot of other Americans in other states, a lot of other Republicans and other states who see any expression of the standard issue American universalism that pretty much everyone, everyone in the planet can become an American if they come here and believe in our ideals, our principles, That’s what it means to be an American, and that certainly extends to the descendants of slavery who’ve been here about as long as anybody in this country. But if she says that, there are a lot of Republicans who will say, listen to Woke Nikki Haley. She’s bending over backwards to get the black vote. That’s what we had Trump for was to show we don’t want that anymore.

And so Nikki Haley thinks, and I think she is correct that if she says the right thing, it will hurt her. So it’s not that I think she thinks that this flub or gaffe or whatever we wanna call it screw up. Is going to positively help her. But she did have a sense, at some level that if she said the right thing, it would hurt her. And that says more than anything you could possibly wanna hear about the state of the Republican electorate in twenty twenty three and I think she’s probably right.

And that’s where we are, unfortunately.

Oh, I agree. I’m not saying that last night in New Hampshire when this happened, She was being intentional, but I think that waking up this morning, knowing she was in a jam, and not leaning in. She did mention today that she removed the confederate flag from state house grounds as governor, but she didn’t really emphasize that. It was this tail end of her multi paragraph word salad, and it was really in my view leaning back in to omission and avoidance. And so that to me is so depressing because it says so much more about her ambition.

And The fact that she doesn’t actually wanna be a moral leader, she doesn’t wanna change the party, and perhaps she’s running for vice president. So that I think was just so telling that maybe she at three this morning said, I’m gonna get a boost out of this by just staying on the side of the Trump, you know, the Trump party view. She really could have cleaned up, I think, with a little more genuine authenticity. And speak to a more general election, you know, audience and to New Hampshire today in my view, she chose not to. So, Jim, It is so fascinating to me that we’re late in the afternoon on the day after this, and Chris Christie has not commented on this.

Now, by the time this airs, he likely will have. But to me, that’s also a big calculation It says a lot about Chris Christie that he just cut an ad, less than a day ago saying he’s in the race because he’s the only one not lying about Donald Trump. He’s the fighter. People are telling him to get out But he’s not defending Nikki Haley, of course, and he’s not rubbing in her face. So it’s so interesting to me that he’s somewhere calculating what to say.

And we know that people are trying to get him. What what does it say about him and whether or not he maybe is pocketing a plan eventually to endorse Nikki Haley and he’s feeling a little weird about that today. What do you think?

Oh, yeah. And, you know, before we started recording the show, all of the kind of usual Chris Christie has to drop out and endorse Nikki Haley pundits were doubling down on on this. And I think it really made them look foolish. And I think Christy, at least, as of the time of recording this, remaining asylum is a wise move. I agree with Damon that Nikki Haley has an infinitesimally small chance at becoming the nominee less Donald Trumpy imprisoned or die, And she’s not going as hard in the paint as Ron DeSantis is to peel off the Maga voters, right, that he could never peel off anyway, because he’s an animatronic robot, bad candidate, who’s not good at retail politics.

She should have been running a kind of general election message in the chances that those things happen, which I think are, likelier than her somehow beating him outright. But, unfortunately, I don’t think there are any disqualifying moments to Republican voters anymore. You know, we think back to John McCain when he would do these, town halls, and he would stand and stare at the person. We always remember the the two thousand eight campaign with the with the birther woman that McCain didn’t, you know, turn his back on her. He looked at her, waited, and then told her she was raw.

The first thing Nikki Haley did when she got the question was turn her back on the voter and walk twenty feet away from him. And, you know, listeners heard that silence while the little clock wheels were ticking in her brain with that word salad. Definitely not a strong moral leader, but I’m not sure it will be fine. I think it will definitely cost her because as you said, she couldn’t say the right thing and she knows she couldn’t say the right thing. But I think that it’s more revealing and important to us in the pundit class than it is to voters down the road.

But it certainly is not helping her in New Hampshire.

Yeah. I just one of the most serious and indelible moments of my entire life was accidentally staying in my kitchen less than forty eight hours after Dylan Ruth murdered nine people at the mother manual church in Charleston who had invited him in to sit in fellowship because they thought he was troubled while they prayed. Before he killed them all. And their loved ones in court offered their forgiveness to him. And there’s just something about that event and the fact and and what it must have been like for everyone in South Carolina, let alone Nikki Haley that I still am stunned by is defining defining moment in her career.

And the fact that she would abandon that in the place of her ambition with a question like that still is just Completely stunning to me. Bill, as we look at the primary and where this goes, we are looking at the Iowa caucuses two weeks from Monday. It is upon us. Do you think I know that we have never seen a lead like Donald Trump has? We’ve never seen cult like hold on a base like Donald Trump has.

Do you think that there’s any potential for any surprise? Anything Ron DeSantis can do does ground game count will Nikki’s Coke Operation ground game count as are are the things that we’re not thinking of that could actually affect the numbers and sort of startle us on caucus night in Iowa.

Well, I think what would startle most people is if she finished ahead of Ron DeSantis. I think that would be a story, and it would call into question I think, the entire premise of his campaign. He has waged a classic Iowa campaign. He’s visited all ninety nine counties. He’s been endorsed by the governor.

He’s been endorsed by mister Vanderplatz, who, is the head of the social conservatives, in Iowa and a very powerful force. And If in the face of all of that, Nikki Haley defeats him for second place, I think he’ll be a dead man walking. I think he is now, but it’ll be obvious to everyone and perhaps even to him that he would be a dead man walking. So that’s the first potential surprise. The second potential surprise, and I think I’ve talked about this before, would be a repeat of what happened in nineteen sixty four.

Where in in nineteen eighty four, I’m sorry, in the Democratic primary where Walter Mandale got to half the caucus votes. Gary Hart came in second with seventeen percent, and he came roaring out of Iowa into New Hampshire. Over took Mandale who had, apparently, an impregnable lead, beat him by thirteen points and turned the race upside down. And until Nikki Haley’s stumble over slavery, I thought that she had a more than negligible chance of repeating that history. I would have to say that on balance, As of last night, Donald Trump’s chances of receiving the Republican nomination, which were already sky high, are now even slightly higher.

So Linda, do you agree with Bill that or the fallout from this in New Hampshire likely means that maybe this helped Chris Christie get more vote and that splits the Christie and Haley vote and just helps Donald Trump in New Hampshire. And if he has that one too, that’s game over. Right?

No, I don’t. I actually agree with Bill that after Iowa, I think DeSantis is finished. And I do think that it’s still possible for Haley to come in second in Iowa, as I said. I don’t know how this is gonna affect it. One of the things I learned in the one campaign I ever was involved in actually, reporting for the ABC affiliate in Baltimore I went out to the Iowa caucuses and sat in the Republican caucuses.

So one of the things I’ve learned in that process, and I’m sure I’d be you know this much better than I is that it’s a kind of weird experience. People do make up their mind in the room. There is some horse trading that goes on, the people who show up. It’s not like showing up and and going into a polling booth and casting your vote. In private without a whole lot of interaction.

It’s very interactive. So I don’t know what’s going to happen in Iowa, but I would not be surprised to see Haley come in second, in Iowa. And I think she’ll come in, second in New Hampshire and how close a second to Trump. I don’t know. But at the end of the day, I don’t think it matters.

First of all, when she gets to South Carolina, despite having been a pretty popular two term governor of the state, she’s gonna get beat by Donald Trump unless, you know, something I don’t know what could happen, except, you know, it’s not time to get him convicted unless he, you know, has won too many cheeseburgers on the on the trail and has, you know, some unfortunate health problem develop. I think Donald Trump is gonna win. And then, you know, by the time we get into super Tuesday, Trump is gonna be the nominee. I mean, I just don’t see a way around that. I’ve been wrong before.

I hope I’m wrong again, but as of right now, I I don’t see a way for anybody to catch up. And I do think, and I said it on this program months ago that part of Haley’s plan, I think, is to perhaps be picked as Donald Trump’s vice president.

It looks like it today. Damon, do you think there’s I don’t wanna assume that you’re gonna agree with everyone. It do you think that there’s any factors we’re not considering Ron DeSantis potentially dropping out do anything for the non trump vote Again, Christy and Haley splitting the New Hampshire vote, and I don’t care if she comes in second and both places. I mean, as Linda points out, that’s that’s the end of her. Trump wins the first two.

He wins the third. Right?

Yeah. I mean, I I pretty much agree with the scenarios that Bill and and Linda walked through on the opening votes. I think for, essentially, in Iowa, you know, she it’s hailing Ron DeSantis are close to tide. I think the real clear politics pulling aggregation, which, of course, has a lag in it because they just add in new polls as they come out. And so if there’s a big move, it still gets kind of weighted down by where it was a few weeks ago with all the previous polls.

But even if you look at a kind of just December polls, it’s close to tied with DeSantis slightly ahead, and and the aggregate says he’s ahead by about two point five. Points, which is really nothing that’s close to within a margin of error. As Linda said, the Iowa caucuses are kinda weird and quirk key and things can happen on that day in the room that shift things by various points. So I wouldn’t be at all surprised if if Haley, finished a solid second above Ron DeSantis, but the thing is that I actually think that’s better for Trump because I think Ron DeSantis goes into New Hampshire looking like a dead man walking, and there are voters fleeing him and looking for somewhere else to go. At least half of them are gonna go to Trump.

Which means that Trump instead of being at around fifty percent in New Hampshire suddenly is at fifty five or sixty. And even if half of those voters from DeSantis go to Haley, that only raises her, you know, up to, I don’t know, maybe twenty five or thirty. So I don’t think that’ll do it. What would do it? I mean, I’ll be honest.

I I don’t think that any of this means Haley’s gonna get the nomination. I agree with Linda that she’s gonna lose and lose big in her home state of South Sarah Longwell, and once that happens she’s pretty much finished. But could she could she possibly do the Will Saletan scenario from nineteen eighty four and Wind New Hampshire I tell you the only way that I think that can happen is if as if Chris Christie drops out in that last week after Iowa and very strongly endorses her because his voters will go to her and pretty much nobody else. They won’t go to Trump I mean, because anyone who’s gonna vote for Christie is is is basically favoring the guy whose entire reason for being in the race is to bash Trump. And that could give her an extra, you know, ten, twelve points.

And that plus the resulting kind of media narrative of of the Haley juggernaut, that could make a difference, and you never know. Maybe the momentum gets her up to Trump’s heels or maybe even slightly ahead. But, and that leaves it up to Chris Christie and, frankly, any of us who lived through twenty sixteen knows. He doesn’t have much of a track record to persuade you to think that’s what he’s gonna end up doing. Those who don’t recall a kind of single handedly derailed Rubio just before the New Hampshire primary, and then promptly dropped out immediately afterwards and became the most prominent early endorser of Donald So, I don’t expect him to do the right thing, but if his goal is to try to bring down trump.

What he really should do is drop out in the last week and, campaign very strongly for Haley in New Hampshire.

Yeah. She just made it so much harder for Christie. If he’s been for several weeks listening to all these people telling him to do this, And he’s been getting ready to sort of run out the string and then do that. I mean, she just made it so much harder for him. So it is interesting.

You are right. The right thing I mean, you guys can tell how sick I am about what she said yesterday and what she said today. But the terrible truth is If the most important goal is to stop Donald Trump from getting the nomination, then you must hold out hope for Nikki Haley. That’s just the truth. Right?

That if everything broke the way we’re describing DeSantis dropping out Christy endorsing her seems most likely to get into a one on one with Trump. And so after all this, what’s really awful about poor Chris Christie having to contemplate endorsing her and all of us, you know, trying to wish on unicorns is that the most important thing to me is to stop him from winning the nomination. And so I would still hope that she would find a way to pull a bunch of rabbits from somewhere. Now, Jim, it’s so interesting listening to historical comparisons, and as Bill also noted, the incredible support that Ron DeSantis has in Iowa, that in any other cycle would mean that he was on the way to a win, to have the governor I don’t believe a governor of Iowa endorsed in the primary since the mid nineties to have Bob Vanderplatz, a leading evangelical leader that is to have gone to ninety nine counties, to have had a well funded effort with the support of those two figures that gets you on the ground, permeating the right places in the right ways, those things used to matter. Are do these things just not matter any more historical patterns, upsets, structural ground game, endorsements, money.

I mean, when you’re looking at the outcome we’re all expecting, are these things just from a bygone era in politics? So they’re not material anymore?

Well, you know, I think we could ask, presidents Rick Santorum and Ted Cruz the same question. I’m kidding. I’m kidding here, but they both had very similar campaigns in Iowa. They were kinda awkward guys that had a very dedicated following. You know, Ted Cruz had his guys wearing forty five football jerseys, you know, as if he was gonna be the forty fifth president.

And, you know, they were running out dorms, and they they had Jeff Rowe Ground game. And Ron DeSantis had Jeff Rowe until recently, it never backed down until he and a bunch of other people backed down. But I don’t think it does matter anymore. I think Trump has changed that dynamic. It still does play a little bit in Iowa, Iowa.

Revenues their status in choosing presidents as does New Hampshire, but Trump fundamentally changed some of the wiring there and you know, we’re we’re talking about percentages, about whether Chris Christie can swing, you know, ten percent to Haley and whatnot. If you add up all of those percentages, it still doesn’t beat what Donald Trump has in any of those states, so it really ultimately doesn’t matter all that much. And one person who we have not mentioned on this, and I’m loath to bring him up, I am in his hometown of Cincinnati Maddie right now is Vivek Ramaswamy. Before the Gaffe, it was reported that he just kind of had gone off the airwaves, and he was maybe gonna go silent into that good night. But he does have the potential to kind of be a Chris Christie of this cycle for Trump and come in, like, the old joke about the suicide instructor What he said to his students was watch closely, I’m only going to do this once.

That was Chris Christie in twenty sixteen. Vivec could kind of come here and say, you know, I’m not going into that good night. I’m gonna go and, you know, try and take Nikki Haley, and popper balloon a little bit. To help Trump because while he is running, we all know he’s really angling for something in Trump. So I wouldn’t be surprised if we heard from Ramos Swamy, but to your point, though, I I think that those traditions are dead, and Donald Trump killed them.

And we’re just kind of watching them slowly slowly go out cycle after cycle.

Yeah. Well, very good point about Rick Santoramant and Cruz and I was really hoping that for Christmas, I got the end of a week where I’m responding and having to deal with him. But maybe maybe you’re right. Maybe he maybe he’s gonna lurk around in the Iowa caucuses and some kind of showing. We need to look quickly at the campaign of Joe Biden.

It is in as much trouble as it was before the holidays. There will be lots of announcements early in the year about how much money they’re sending in ground battleground states and how organized they are with new team efforts and data plans and TikTok strategies, and they’re gonna have all these things that they’re gonna tell us they’re doing to assure the donors that he’s on on better footing. But I’m interested Bill in a piece that was in the Wall Street Journal today about that Annie Linsky wrote about how Biden was pretty blunt during Jimmy Carter’s reelection campaign about the kind of political peril he was in. And I’m interested in in your thoughts We know it was reported in the Washington Post in early December that before Thanksgiving vacation, Biden gathered his top advisors and his team and told him that the holes were terrible and wanted to know what was being done to fix them. It to me, it sounds like denial.

What do you think Biden’s state of mind is? Is there any that you think he can do or will do to try to reassure Democrats or our coalition that wants to stop Trump in the coming weeks or months that They have a handle on this.

I have no idea what Joe Biden’s state of mind is. I really don’t. I would like to believe that he knows he’s in trouble, and he knows that real facts and real issues, not just vibes, are contributing significantly to his troubles, that he’s made a list of those troubles and that he intends to try to address them during the presidential campaign. I hope he understands that this isn’t just a question of changing the narrative or spiffing up the image or reframing the debate I hope he understands that this is not about his campaign. It’s not about his senior advisers.

Ultimately, it’s about him. That’s what I’d like to believe. Because, the alternative it seems to me is almost certain defeat. Unless, Donald Trump is disqualified by events, either legal or physical. If neither of those two things happens and Biden adopts a steady as you go course, the grounds that, well, All of the seeds have been planted for the crop, and there will be a rich harvest in the fall, and all he needs to do is, wait while the plants grow.

I think I’ve beaten that metaphor about as hard as I can.

But it’s a perfect one.

But, but I fear based on having been in and out of six presidential campaigns, that The path of least resistance is always to say stay the course, and advisors are arguing for a change of course are always at a disadvantage. They are always at a disadvantage because arguing for a change of course means that the candidate has made some bad decisions in the past, and candidates typically don’t like to hear that. Some of them dislike hearing it more than others. And, so to take the most urgent issue, Namely immigration. I hope very much that the president is prepared to do what it takes.

To resolve this issue. Because if he isn’t, all by itself, it could defeat him in a close race. As it defeated Hillary Clinton in twenty sixteen. When immigration was the centerpiece of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, I could go through a long list of other problems that he needs to clean up, but that seems to me is the most urgent one and also the one where the paths of the clean up. Is the most obvious.

I mean, Bill, I actually did like your metaphor because the White House and the Democratic Party continues to tell us that when voters, quote, tune in, his polling is gonna improve. When they pay attention to Donald Trump once again, his polling will improve. And they obviously know Donald Trump and and Joe Biden will just be older nine months from now. So it always seems like a very strange strategy. Linda, why don’t you speak to the immigration question about how Biden is a little bit boxed in on kind of how to make shifts in policy with he’s obviously so supposed to be doing that right now with Republicans as soon as they get back from Christmas break in exchange for a deal on security aid for Taiwan Israel and Ukraine.

Do you see any opening where the president could compromise, and it could make a difference at the border that Americans would feel or believe next late summer or early fall?

Well, I think, some of what was happening this week with US officials, including the Secret Podcast and the secretary of homeland, security going to Mexico and meeting with the Mexican president is, encouraging if something comes out of it. I mean, the real problem is to stop the caravans and hoards of people who were showing up on the border to claim asylum. And it does require that the asylum laws that we have be looked at and that some changes be made. But getting that word of people who are trekking through Central America to Mexico, and many of these people are not Central America or Mexicans. They are coming from all over the world.

They’re coming from South Asia. They’re coming from China. They’re coming from the Middle East. And they’re coming because they, I think, rightly read the tea leaves and CNG. A whole lot of people seem to make it through And yeah, they’re not going to be given a permanent chance to stay there, but maybe they’ll be able to stay there for a year or two get jobs in the underground economy because they probably won’t get an opportunity to work legally and be able to make money and send it to their desperately poor families in those countries.

Ron DeSantis you can convince those people to stop coming. And this is where Mexico can play a role All of the Central American countries can play a role because some of the people are coming off, from Central America, but it also requires the kind of effort a PR kind of blitz, and also going after the cartels which have turned to human trafficking as a huge source of income. They are making as much money, I think now trafficking people as they have in the past trafficking drugs. All of that has to be done. And what Biden himself can do to turn this around without the help of others, I don’t think he can unilaterally do it.

He certainly can beef up the number of people who are actually detained because the big incentive to come is that you will only be detained for a short period, especially if you say that you are claiming asylum. And we know that because of the unbelievable backlog in the immigration courts, there are more than three million cases now. Pending in the immigration courts. Not all of them asylum cases, but nonetheless, that many cases with nowhere near the number of immigration judges. So trying to figure out a way to get the word out throughout the world where these people are coming from to try to discourage people from making that effort.

I think is the only way we’re going to see it see something happen. And I do think that there are some compromises that can be made on asylum law. I think asylum law was written. To try to protect people who were being persecuted by their state. These were was not intended to help people who were suffering from the effects of climate change or from the effects of poverty or even of narcot trafficker.

So I think there are some things he can do but whether or not he will ever be given credit, and whether the Republicans actually will see it in their interest, which is the other big problem. Is the Republicans have to agree to something, and many of them would like to keep immigration the number one issue And some portion of those would also like to make sure that Ukraine doesn’t get another penny of of US help. So It’s really difficult. I really feel for for president Biden on this. He’s got lots of other problems but I agree with Bill.

This is probably his most pressing problem right now.

So, unfortunately, Damon, I agree with Linda, but been really kind of haunted by the idea that Republicans wanna make sure that they please Donald Trump and never support any additional military funds for Ukraine. And so I’m very concerned about what’s gonna happen in January. What are your thoughts on I know they are different wars, and they are different political problems. What’s happening in the Hamas is really conflict hurts Joe Biden politically on the left and what’s happening in Ukraine is becoming increasingly harder and harder for Joe Biden because Republican support for Ukraine is disappearing. Even though within the majority of our population, it still has, I believe, around majority support.

So what are your thoughts on what might happen in those conflicts this year and and how Joe Biden can navigate them and what it may do to impact his reelection campaign?

Well, Yeah. There’s a lot in there. I mean, on Ukraine, I have to admit I’m pretty pessimistic at this point. Essentially, it doesn’t look good when it comes to the funding question because, the Republican Party has shifted so far in the direction of opposing any further aid. And and frankly, I don’t wanna really, bash the Biden administration on Ukraine badly at all because I I have great respect for what they’ve been doing now for coming up on two years.

And I think they’ve done a pretty admirable job overall, but it is also the case that, you know, they put a lot of chips on on the counter offensive. There was a lot of emphasis on that with kind of, you know, aid votes keyed to that being the big thing that they were building toward. And then while it was going on, trying to make the case that we need to keep sending aid, because this is the big thing. And it didn’t really work out as, at least the more optimistic supporters of that wanted. And so that put Biden in a a kind of tough spot in trying to make the case and to persuade Republicans to not follow their voters.

A public opinion is leading things here. If you took a poll of office holder, Republican office holders in both houses of Congress, I trust that they would be somewhat more inclined to still continue with aid for Ukraine, but they’re being pushed by their voters who are now supporting, continued aid at only at about thirty or thirty five percent, of the party. And that’s not good. Then on the Israel side, you know, one thing that I noticed in my obsessive tracking of Paul, you know, five thirty eight does a very good aggregate whole, of presidential approval that I check every day. And on it actually so happens on October thirty first.

Joe Biden fell below forty percent aggregate approval. Now he had been below forty percent occasionally on and off over the previous year, but always kind of skimming along like a stone on a lake, at about forty bounced back up a little bit after going down. But he went under at the end of October and has never come back. There hasn’t been a single day since then when he’s been of forty percent. And that is a whole new level of softness in his support.

And, I mean, what, of course, happened three weeks before October thirty first, the Hamas invasion of Israel, which for a few weeks, generated some sympathy for Israel, but the left very quickly once Israel really hit back hard and began their, their assault on Hamas in the Gaza strip, the the left has just gone up plastic with Biden. They despise Biden’s policy on this. And I’m really, really worried mean, I don’t know how many of these third party challenges are actually gonna get on ballots and be factors. In November and the general election, but there is a lot of angry energy directed against Biden over this. On the left.

And I don’t share it at all. I I find most of it pretty contemptible. I kind of laugh and Sume it must be a sci op operation that the the pro Palestinian protesters keep blocking highways near airports and major cities, like, so that they can have maximal chance of infuriating the most people they possibly can. Making people miss their holiday flights. I don’t understand where they took their PR lessons.

But, but what I’m talking about here isn’t, isn’t really about changing American, public opinion in the aggregate, but about solidifying real hostility to the Biden administration, on this. Now I don’t expect that the ground war in Gaza will still be going on next fall. There simply isn’t enough to blow up there for that to be the case. But we still don’t know what’s gonna happen over there. We don’t know if the war is gonna widen, if Hezbollah will strike, if Iran will get more involved at the Houthi rebels who keep firing at American ships and other other, sea traffic coming through the region.

If that continues and we get drawn in or or the Gaza strip, you know, after Israel kind of completes its operation, if Hamas proves that it still has a foothold and can still fire missiles at Israeli cities and leads that to just sort of percolate on as a mess. It could still be a factor in the election next year, and I really worry about that softness on on Biden’s left flank.

Jim, we talk a lot of the Bulwark led by JBL about how well the economy is doing with the exception of prices and how little Americans are accepting that. Is that a diplomatic way of putting it? Gas prices are down. Trends in terms of monthly rate of inflation, growth, down to zero, all of that. These are these are good things do you think that the the American people will feel that there is a lag before it is felt that they will feel differently about the economy.

We will have averted a recession unless something unknown befalls us. And do you think the administration can talk in a different way or a new way about growth in the economy record new businesses beginning, you know, wages keeping up with inflation, any of that in a way that that Americans will hear, or is the economy sort of one more area where Joe Biden can trudge along, working hard and produce good results, but is not gonna be given credit for that politically.

You know, I think a lot of the hand wringing in in our country class about the Biden campaign, if you can even call it really a campaign right now. Cause he’s hardly campaigning. Right? He’s just acting presidential and talking when he gets on marine one before he goes somewhere, and then Fox News talks about why he said the economy is great, and they argue why it’s not all weekend. He’s, you know, he he’s barely really campaigning.

He’s just looking presidential I’m a little bit more optimistic than some of our colleagues, about Biden’s chances. Once the field is cleared and it is a one on one option. Trump first, you know, the reducts of twenty twenty. So I think it has to get worse before it gets better. I was thinking about the movie elf, when Damon was talking about the kind of anger on the far left side, and, you know, the best way to spread Christmas jeers to sing loud for all to hear, and whether it’s Ukraine or Israel or even coming up with a solution to the border crisis.

I don’t think there’s really any incentive for a lot of folks on either side of the aisle to sing loud because they know if they sing loud, whether it’s about Israel on the democratic side, or the border, John Federman is kind of doing it. There’s only downsides to singing loud, and I I think that we’re gonna need to see more leadership from Chuck Schumer because counterpart on the other side of the dome, speaker Johnson, is still learning how to basically do the job. But I do think that we’re gonna need to see Chuck Schumer step because that’s really the only option in Congress showed more leadership than he has.

I think that’s a good point. I do think that he, has not in the last couple of years, leaned into his job and done a lot of speeches on the floor about critical issues that affect the party and the president politically. And I think that he is going to have to step up as much as Senator Federman or more in this critical nine months ahead because I think he has been a little too quiet. Alright. It’s time for highlights and lowlights, and we’re gonna start with Bill.

I’m gonna break my streak of gloom and single out a piece that was published in the New York Times yesterday by Sergei Maemann, who is one of the most distinguished journalists and foreign policy analysts of our generation. And his thesis was that The definition of victory in Ukraine needs to be changed to correspond not only with reality on the ground, but also with diplomatic reality. And that is to say, a Ukraine that emerges from this struggle securely anchored to the West, diplomatically, economically, and militarily with eighty percent of its territory represents a victory in a struggle that’s been going on for centuries. You know, in that zone between Germany and Russia. And, it is time for the Zelensky administration, the Biden administration, and the entire coalition of western Ukraine supporters to throw their full weight behind a series of diplomatic steps that could lead to that outcome.

Eighty percent of Ukraine with the West is a victory for Ukraine and for the West. It’s good enough. It’s the best attainable. And it’s what must happen because every other outcome is worse.

Okay. Thank you, Linda.

Well, we seem to have had a civil war theme on this show, so I’m going to give a highlight of the week that sort of continues on that theme. It was an op ed written by Howell Raines in the Washington Post this week, and it was entitled Here the Civil War history they didn’t want you to know. And I must say, when I see that kind of title, I’m always assuming, oh, well, I probably know this already, and I didn’t know it. So I actually learned, a great deal by this about the civil war in this article, and that was that about a hundred thousand white southerners fought on the side of the union during the civil war. Many of these people were mountain people.

They were kind of subsidized farmers and others who certainly didn’t have money to own slaves and therefore had, no desire, not only to keep that institution, but to spread that institution into the new territories in the west, and it talks about the first Alabama cavalry. Which apparently was very distinguished in its fight under the leadership of General Will Saletan come to Sherman and participate pated in the March to the sea, which included the burning of Atlanta. It was a fascinating piece. There’s actually been a book written about this as well. Although I will say that the book is a little pricey because I think it was a dissertation that was turned into a book.

It’s called true blue white unionists in the deep south during the civil war and reconstruction, and maybe we could send a copy of it to Miss Haley. She could use a little brushing up on her civil war history.

Perfectly timed theme. Excellent. Damon,

Well, for my sub stack, this week, I’m coming up with kind of a list of best of the year. You know, my favorite, albums and movies and books and things like that. And, one category I I have is, best essay of the year. Now I I have to admit that I may have forgotten an essay from last February, and if that’s true. I apologize to all those who write great essays last winter, but certainly the best essay I’ve read in the last several months is from Leon Weiseltier, who is, now the editor and founder of an excellent quarterly journal tied liberties.

It’s basically the length of a book, and it comes four times a year if you subscribe. And he, Whisler chair himself usually writes a long essay at the end of each issue, and the most recent issue is an essay titled the rise of narrative and the fall of persuasion. And it really is a tortoise force of of American letters, the kind of thing that you don’t really see much of anymore, although you used to regularly see in the pages of the new republic at the back of the book that Wezeltiera edited for thirty one years, until, he resigned in the midst of a of collapsed there at the New Republic back in early twenty fifteen. So I very much recommend this essay. It’s erudite.

It it’s full of interesting wisdom and historical anecdotes. And it’s an examination as you can sort of tell from the title of the fact that in our time in our public rhetoric, we tend to emphasize storytelling, which, of course, has its place human life and always has and always will. But weaseltier claims that that it is supplanting the attempt to actually forge arguments and persuade our fellow citizens with arguments instead and that the rise of narrative in our culture is a function of the fact that we despair of the ability to actually persuade anybody of anything. And so we kind of recede into our own positions and then just tell stories about them tweak to ourselves. And, obviously, as you expect, from a piece like this, it’s a criticism of this trend, but also a very illuminating examination of it at all kinds of levels of our culture.

So highly recommended Leon Weisel Tears, the rise of narrative and the fall of persuasion in Liberty’s journal.

Fascinating. Kim.

I’m gonna be a total brown noser here and pick a podcast that we, recorded here at the Bulwark recently, but it wasn’t exactly a podcast. It was someone reading a story they had written, and it was my colleague, Gabeie, Stoddard. Aw. She day after the night my father scared America And our podcast team did a really wonderful job with clips of interviews, a baby’s father, clips from the movie, nuclear war scenes, you should read the story first, and then hear a b tell it. It’s wonderful.

It’s one of the best little narrative things we’ve done, and, that’ll be in the show notes. But don’t listen to it around your children.

Wow, Jim. That’s so nice of you. I really should have promoted that myself, but I didn’t. So that was really wonderful that you did. It’s been a joy to spread my dad’s courage around, and I will have to recommend it also because I think that what the team did with it is amazing and all the old sound to echo, which Jim said is really super cool to listen to.

I am kinda looking back at the year and looking embracing for twenty twenty four. I wanted for any of our listeners who did not read the excerpt in September what Mitt Romney saw in the Senate of McKay Copin’s book about Mitt Romney, Romney awakening, it tells so much about what the Republican elites have done. In the age of trump and why we are where we are, September thirteenth twenty twenty three in the Atlantic. Also, in the Atlantic, Tim Albert’s excerpt of his book. The kingdom, the power and the glory is the name of the book, but on November twenty eighth, he excerpted part of it.

And it’s an article called my father, my faith in Donald Trump. And, again, this work of Tim Alberta tells us so much about what going on in Republican Christian Trumpism. It’s not it’s in the evangelical movement, but it’s not all evangelicals, but it’s what’s going on with the part of the movement that is following Trump. And why they do it, what it means to them, what they refuse to acknowledge, what they disavow, what they reject, and it’s incredibly sobering. And I think that two pieces put together to tell us so much about what we’re up against in trying to defeat Donald Trump in the year to come.

So I think it’s really tough medicine, but I recommend anyone who hasn’t read either that they read both and get to it. It’s very powerful stuff. And I really wanna thank Jim for joining us today. I wanna thank the regulars. I wanna thank everyone, who listened to us today and this year.

Wanna thank Mona Charen for inviting me to sit in for her, and she and the gang will be back next week. Best wishes to everyone listening for health, hope, and laughter in twenty twenty four, and we will see you then. Thanks.