The Democratic Party is self-radicalizing. The Republican Party seems unable to capitalize on that. And the country waits to see which radical group will govern it next.
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
Welcome to the Commentary Magazine Daily Podcast today's ruddy June, twelve, twenty twenty, I'm John by words, the editor of Commentary magazine the seventy five year old months, leave intellectual analysis, political probity in cultural criticism. From a conservative perspective, we invite you to join us a commentary magazine dot com. Will we give you a few free reads:
I ask subscribe with me, as always senior writer, Christine rose and high Christine Hygiene
Associate at no Rossman high Noah, I John
and senior writer Abe senior editor a green waldheim. How John we
closing our double summer double issue in the next couple of days. With some extraordinary stuff we will be
laying out to you. I do want to mention one thing for listeners: the podcast, an readers of the magazine. We are instituting,
new monthly column to be called tech
commentary abide,
hence be mags. Who wrote the extraordinary piece we published in
He may issue, I think, about elite panics in the face of disasters and how the refusal to trust the public with its own care and self protection at the time of the crisis is a an enduring problem,
for the leads in the country who think that what they should do with these moments is up, lie and pretend to be more in control than they are and all sorts of things, and we have a problem.
Example of this. In this pretty
amazing Wall Street Journal peace that came out yesterday, a huge investigation into the New York State and New York City Corona virus response. That should, if anything is fair,
destroy the reputation, the on unwanted unwarranted unearned and undeserving reputation of Andrew Cuomo.
Earned over the last couple of months of some kind of Abe, fantastic leader and truth, teller and
he tromp and all that no are you are? You are the first person to spot this peace in my can yesterday you want
talk a about it yeah. Well, I mean, like you said, preferably there would be some.
Exploration of his room
but the really. I don't think there will be in part because it was never.
Really well on in the first place as we ve been saying for months,
he was a stand in for some sort of an anti trump figure. Just now, the existing is mostly tonal the praise it he was generating now for what it was
doing, but I mean this peace answers the question: why was New York City in New York state hit hardest?
than any other state by covered nineteen, and the answer is public policy. Theirs was policy that some of the bullet points in this thing were
they had improper patient transfers. There was disagreement and squabbling
swinging, formal and that administration in New has contributed to an uncoordinated effort and lead
but who should have an isolated to be transferred and tips to mix infected patients with uninfected patients early in this process,
adequate staffing, hospitals needed more intensive care beds and they didn't have enough staff who are trained to understand what they were doing, which led to overlook treatment
overlook patients rather pointed up dying alone in the community,
patients, networks between state city in hospitals were terrible.
There was an over reliance on government for equipment in private sources would have been better more
able to fill those gaps. We talk about this before the reliance on ventilators, which was flawed and use these flight based on false understanding. The viruses excusable, but nevertheless, is not
sufficiently explore the rim, adequate supplies of resources like oxygen and vital signs, monetarism, dialysis machines, hospitals were staff with people who had insufficient protective equipment. Is one paragraph which stuck out at me that I wanted
on one planning lapse, shut up in an improper patient transfers. More than sixteen hundred largely covert. Nineteen patients in two of the state's largest hospital systems were moved from overloaded hospitals to one's less hit.
The spokespeople for those systems. Some patients arrived and worse condition than when they laughed sometimes without names and treatment. Information said doctors and nurses it several hospital, so this was a breakdown
every level institutional, organizational, administrative and ill.
To a whole lot of people dying. So we ve been inundated with these.
Really what can only be described as moral blackmail, emotional blackmail for people who were advocates for very stringent draconian lockdown systems, even as those same advocates for this position were presiding over an absolute decimation, it places like hospitals and
intense senior care facilities and there hasn't been any real introspection or confrontation perfect, where
I would say that the story has it come lap, a dairy effective one of which is that you just it sir. There was this whole
argument being made in March that we needed to these lockdown in order to flat the curve to save the healthcare system from
being overrun. What this story? No Austrian,
Earl today suggest is that it was over run and then did break down and that the add the part of the astonishing death toll was the result of an actual break
down in the system that wet law
virtually unnoticed in an odd way, because there were so many overlapping problems that nobody was really accounting for them.
In real time. It's just that we saw a death rate spiral and, on the other hand, I don't think that that of vitiate the case for the lock downs, you could say that the lockdown were twice as necessary. In part to protect the public from the public policy, decisions that were
he then to these deaths than these hospitals. Now, briefly on- and we talked about this before- and I wrote about it- for the blogger may eleventh, which was won and actually the first takes, which has now become pretty common- that equipment
the Cultural Cuomo, when it is called, will really undeserved
that there's an explanation for a lot of stuff. It's a lot of its pretty bloodless, some of its kind of distasteful and a lot of it was based on flawed and faulty information. So it's
sustainable though now excusable, but its incumbent on the press to just asked this question:
until they get an answer and have declined to do that so much as theirs that this is a failure of the airport.
Class in Europe. It is a failure of the mainstream press as well to decline, to press this issue and get the answers to these questions that the public deserves the quorum.
We a been having these had these daily oppress briefings for an hour, largely all they were these monologues if he would deliver, but certainly at
given moment in these press conferences. Somebody could have stood up it out
the audience and said what about this? What about
What about the other thing instead of acting like they were? We know the m the bubble, gum
sixteen magazine celebrity press staring
lovingly in his eyes and laughing at his jokes will they? You know the press conferences do closed with a question and answer and people have pushed him on things. I've seen it and he gets prickly.
But none of it every was the investigative aspect that that's only now coming out. None that didn't make it into papers and headlines in news reports, but while while it was actually going on,
he was. He was absolutely embraced by media, while this was happening or even there's that there's an incredibly creepy writer around New Yorkers.
Randy York for twenty five years named Amy Sound
literally has been publishing sex fan fiction about her having you know like having an affair with. You know
Andrew Cuomo. It's like in us was to be like us as a parody of fifty shades of grey or something like that, but it captures very precisely this bizarre national love for
Cuomo, an uncommonly unpleasant and now
oh right say, is up as a public figure
for many many years. An incredibly maladroit public figure, who always put his foot and mouth
suddenly found the sweets
solely as a counterpoint to get out to tromp. Can the ideas from Amazon COM
and then suddenly here we were finally with somebody was talking tough and
being serious and giving us the facts, and all of that and the facts, he was giving us we're, distorted and the and the tough talk was all actually self protective and
and up liberals who you know, fell in love with him and one have sex with them, should maybe revisit their desire to have sex with him. This is also a kind of a larger
morning here about bureaucracy. I think because if you look at one of the reasons that reports like the one, the Wall Street Journal
are so important is that in real time
It can be difficult to tease out where the bad decisions are leading to worse consequences and where bad decisions can be learned from an and turned away from an and better
decisions made, but Cuomo is uniquely skilled if you, if you want to call it that, at taking credit when the bureaucracy was producing the results that everyone wanted to hear and defusing blame throughout it like this. This is the thing is that, if a bunch of peace,
Linda system are making lots of bad decisions based on limited information. No one person is to blame right. We know that this is both
can be a strength of bureaucracy, but can also be a real weakness, and I do think that the the lack Noah's right. That, though, that the mainstream presses off
and fascinated by the inner workings of all kinds of bureaucracies. I mean how the cook people spend,
money for his that that's a kind of bureaucracy how the Trump Administration is dealing with. You know this issue or that issue. That is the role of a really good aggressive press is too, is to try to look
the human beings making decisions for good or ill within these systems, and I think that this is a perfect example in the same way that the breakdown of
hospitals in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which we found out years later, were
operating in an extremely terrible ways. In some cases, that is it important investigative role and, I think,
Everyone should read that was region overboard and think about how it might apply elsewhere when these sorts of kind of
the national press has been extremely
tat fall over the course of this Trump administration of ferreting out incompetence highlighting the armed disasters and agencies.
And then creating the conditions in which the heads of those agencies, sometimes even cabinet officials, are compelled to resign and think of how many
design now its most of that is their own fault
We wouldn't even know about that incompetence and mostly, in the end, with a few exceptions in the absence of an aggressive press. So you no good to them. That's a bid that that's not a bad thing, but when, but it should be applied at the state and local level, and it's not really apply
If you have the after, you have also, we know we're talking about commerce handling of this, as if it's in the past, this
still going on he's, he's overseeing the reopening the phased reopening and he's talks every day about the decisions he is used,
making in real time and is going to be making going forward and I
and there's going to be all sorts of disasters, but that as well, so it's not too late for the press to get on board now given, given that the new evidence of his
management of wet, won't look. I think it goes like this that Como advocated Como and end the plaza both opposed lockdown told you will go to the movies said you should read the subway until the minute that they decided that was no longer applicable and then they
became you know harsher coney and supporters of lockdown. I think what what this means is the savage irony here isn't the lock downs were necessary to protect the Yorkers from Andrew Cuomo and build the plaza. That is the story. The story is we needed the locked down because they made decisions in the months prior to the lock downs that lead again, I will withdrew no through no
I would not blame them. It's retrospective blaming to say that they certainly wanted no one to die. They only wanted to do good. You know they weren't interested in in. In things being terrible and that's an important caveat, because it's always we get get back to this- were burnt a wall steadier thing about how it's only after the fact that you see
Pearl harbor was coming, you know, but none of this be agreements. If there wasn't a concerted aggressive campaign to label
who were not being as recalled strict about this
and saw it had numbers that didn't even remotely reflect what New York's experience was, that they were castigated and attacked and blamed for being the source of what would ultimately be.
A genocide on the beaches of Florida and in the salons of Georgia and in the barbecue places of Texas? We all remember that. I mean if that hypocrisy, wasn't there. The really wouldn't be this kind of the effort to
pose some sort of introspection and the press and get them
review their own records.
Would be any impetus for it still happening, I mean it. I still catch some almost daily briefings and every day he talks about how we have to reopen smart intelligently, not like
states that that opened earlier. I, where we now see spikes so he's he's the game is, is on
going where governors didn't ship, ill, elderly iris patients to nursing homes like they did in New York, Crave Edward fat in states like forward where they actually intervened and made sure not to do that exactly it was there wasn't just a buck passing you know it wasn't happenstance, they actually decided not to do it right anyway, looking at the numbers and looking at things, obviously things are very confused at the moment. I it's very hard to tell
where things stand, because in this amazing a world in which people can say wildly contradictory things, including
now, basically implicitly, editors of newspapers and
there's a news organisations through what they stress in any given weak,
it. Suddenly we are back to the oh, my God were in danger from Cove id after you know, two weeks of everybody should go, be going out and protesting and there's nothing that really get route. We're really gonna, say or do to you now to raise. The question, were you know.
Threaten them with the same social suasion that people were threatened with if they dared think that there was something wrong with the lock downs. So we're back to the press warning us about the incredible danger that is posed by
The virus which, according to some, are as we ve been talking about a week. Some members appear to be accelerated, but it's a little unclear it's hard to tell, and a lot of this is a kind of rearguard action against the reopening, and that would be a lot more powerful and potent had it not been for the fact that somehow there was this exception made for millions of people going in the streets of to protest. Yet one of the young, its confusion, because the daily case numbers nationally have been climbing steadily this whole time, yet
daily deaths have been dropping and slowly serves, levelling and and and dropping up tilt. Up to the present I mean yesterday we had AIDS is still horrific. Obviously, but we had fewer than
hasn't debts yesterday and that has been kind of
We ve been at despite the four weeks months, increased the daily cases,
So it is very hard to understand and read, and then of course we have this question, which is that increase daily cases and Rhonda Santa's. The governor Florida said this yesterday that the increasing number of cases in Florida is entirely due to testing. That is his defence of himself and then, of course, you have
Sorry about that! Well, ok, it's not testing is not the issue of hospitalizations and in some places, hospitalizations are also going up
There is also the possibility that, because there is less fear about it,
in an odd way about admitting people to hospitals, because hospitals are far from being. You know over pact there there
their starved for revenue, and all of that that they are much more likely to admit somebody than they were before on the grounds that they might have covered than than they were. You know, like six weeks,
but the idea was go home if we don't really know because we need to make sure that we have beds in case someone comes up with covered. If that makes any sense was that clear was that, like to curl, argued.
Well I got it. Hospitals need patients weather
our medical progress fashion, the needs patients and am I had a very, very depressing conversation. Yesterday with a friend, a man whose
Is this insult and who talks to a lot of sea owes and said basically up wanting it? We sort of like have forgotten over the last couple weeks because of everything else going on
just has to do with the severity of the hit that the economy has taken and will continue to take and that in a because, because our attention was by forced elsewhere and because there was a before all the
happened. There were some good cheer about the possibility that, in other reopening, was gonna, be easier than it looked like
on the one hand, and then, of course, the jobs numbers being better, though incredibly brutal in our last week, on the other
I'm that we just haven't even begun to reckon with the wreckage that is that has there was gonna overtake much of a marriage.
Business I'm worried about small businesses losing three months,
revenue or something like that, that simply can't survive of losing three months of revenue, don't have been, I don't have bank loans, except for the except for the peril protection
stuff if they got it in time, you know don't have lines of credit, dont they're, just there just working
hand to mouth, and you could have this just unbelief,
if a whole string of bankruptcies and, in our case
cessation of ordinary economic activity that is consonant with the coming of depression, neighbours now yeah. I was just
and if you type, I know a fair number of small business owners in this area
do you see in its environs and one of them.
Instead, I think one of the reasons I was trying to explain why a lot of us are so fast
about how protesters were given a pass on the public health issue
Why? It's really really frustrating to see that and to read stories that that ignore that fact- and that's you don't ones while this is on our spoke to said
we gonna do with their Bela hanging on and they were looking forward to the phase reopening which was just beginning here and in some other places too, and then
the concern now. Is that any spike, even a small spike in cases that were the result of all these mass gatherings, will lead the leader?
ship of certainly in my city will lead to more caution
Who is slowing of the opening that they had been barely able to survive to get to that finish line, and that is gonna? Have
even more economic, bad news for them down the line, and I think there will be businesses that struggled and made it through these first few months of lockdown, but in it
cities and in states where they start
slowing the reopening. What can hang on that long right there? There is gonna, be those people who were kind of casualties of the public health hypocrisy that we saw in the last few weeks, and I do think you know that that's a real thing and I think the idea, the effort to to pretend like that, didn't happen and didn't have economic consequences, as well as potential health. Consequence
this is astonishing. Her good well anyway. So, as I say, the real question here is, and then it occurred to me as I have. This conversation was having this conversation with my friend that
the the extremes to which the culture war reignited itself. In the wake of of the George Floyd, even though the cultural was going on with different attitudes towards the toward the locked dancing
everything but the. But this reigniting of issues far away.
From the from the virus about the server the fundamental nature of the fairness or unfairness of american society and injustice and injustice. And all of this. What if that could be seen in in in the in the in the depths of it? Aside from the horror that I really felt watching that Floyd Video and the consciousness that seems to have been raised about,
Some of these issues among the people who were in paying much attention to them that there was a kind of weird flight to safety going on emotional, it, illogical safety that this was about a week. This is a battle we understood right. This is a rare.
So long racial lines along at a illogical lines along partisan lines, along lines of law and order, and all of this the same argument that we ve been having worked it out. You could say for fifty
years of sixty years or a hundred and fifty or two hundred years whatever, and that and that there was a bizarre relief in being able to engage with them all of a sudden rather than
face this unbelievable uncertainty and lack of clarity that is raised by this invisible enemy that can ultimately
we'd, be defeated either by it, missed
obviously going away over time or us developing a vaccine and that the powerlessness of this as a public policy,
cs you and ass a servant as an existential issue for society just has approved, took too much for us to take, and so everybody just leaped on this national crisis, to change the subject to think about something else, anything else other than this also also buyer.
To give them a sense of purpose in tune it. If they provide them a true north, there was there was it there were everything which shapeless and directionless before that right. There is absolutely nothing to hang on
right right. I think one of the reasons that that term
Republicans and the Trump Administration find themselves in uniquely discussion.
Drawing up positions. Is that term at
At best they had a more complex understanding of the issue. Right that the complex the issue was police brutality is a problem. This was bad.
We need to really look at this where met whereas uncomfortable as you are, something needs to be done about at Derek Chauvelin and the cops in Minneapolis,
Maybe we haven't really paid as much attention to this as we should and yet
shouldn't be looting. We need public order, you know, maybe we should bring out the military all of that stuff, which has a more you know. It was a less forceful and potent and easily propagate propagandize are
Since then, the police are bad. American society is unjust. Everybody needs to revisit their priors and change their views and and in a meal
it's in solidarity and quit jobs and give their jobs to other
people and all that which is a which is a pretty easy.
You don't. We ve had enough as a pretty easy thing to advocate what to say and that, unfortunately, because I think actually the the more complicated position
expressed eloquently by a leader who was able to articulate it if you don't give a speech
added, articulated, defended and just repeated over and over and over again could have
a lot not only to defuse the situation but also to create,
the same standard by which to bear
consider all of this and to and to provide a counterweight to the forces
of disorder that seem to have the moral high ground, and that is the failure. That's that's that that is the ultimate failure of the last century.
It's a little briefly yesterday and just a passing sentence, but I want to kind of dwell on it for a second, because I am living furious with the application
Responsibility in this moment from the president on down, because they cannot capitalize on this moment and
the conservative movement is left defenceless. It is
no comfort to me that Joe Biden represents a slightly less radical vision for the Democratic Party in part because he, the Democratic Party he leads us suffused with this kind of radicalism, really does believe,
in the overturning Qana tearing down statues mean over the radical revision of this
your contract and negative social levelling and defend
the police and all that they buying into all that and that's the party that will take control of the levers of government. If you were to win the White House, this president cannot make the case
in favour of what is the majority position, which is order, rule of law, color blindness in society. I gotcha monk had a
at the other day where he was the one that is a is abandoned without girl, a sane, liberal writer of the Atlantic and human.
Observing a young age,
focus group and twenty six
from voters who were there,
or maybe a little reticent to support the president. Now our defensive of his economic record defined
survive and supportive of his record uncovered what they hate. What they cannot defend, not just uncomfortable with, but they actively despise, is the president's inability to
serve as a as a unifying force. His racial rhetoric is abhorrent. Americans hate racial tension, they don't like it,
they wanted to go away. They want to work to reverse all this every pulsing, just as much
It focused so much on the dead enters the majority of this country, hates racial tension and the president not only cannot do that, cannot serve as unified,
force. But what does he do amid all this practice?
all this unrest in cities and the debt and an inter intra party conversation among Democrats about how long Foresman should be paid back in this moment. What does he do the exudes confederate corpses and puts them
pedestal and talks about how great they were in their american euros as the
argued military is talking about ex urge expert gaining their names from places that they don't along. I think
this is something that we in there's been a lot of movement in the direction of that they can all get it. The Americans are generally favourable towards that. That's a concession that I think we can make in deference to the movement to this moment, but we cannot make a concession to law enforcement.
Lawlessness and american cities, which is what is ongoing in places like Portland in Seattle and the conservative movement, has no ability to represent a poll in this debate that, given that the conservative moving
earlier around that there, the rudderless their leaderless their rights
actuary their divided and it's terrifying because they really
should capitalize on this moment right rather than how are you going to do that? We now have the first serious data that helps make the point four
Oh here ABC News. Ipsos pull released this morning Friday morning that sixty four percent of Americans oppose defending the police and key goals
like shifting monies from the police to social workers and others right. That's overall sixty four percent that number than breaks down in fascinating and very discomfitting partisan ways, so Republicans nigh almost ninety percent disapprove of defending the police and redistributing
money right independence. Sixty seven percent oppose the funding the police, fifty nine percent against stripping funding from police departments to boost community based support programmes. Democrats fifty five percent support to funding the police. Forty one percent support shifting money to commute
the programmes. I think this is proven turning rocky, but I think this is briefly mostly attributable to partisanship, because nobody came up with this idea until about two weeks ago and because allotted democratic
Hang in there all Democrats think they should say it is not well thought out position
but it is nevertheless now the position of the Democratic Party the carriage was created. Now it's an exist
and the other two weeks ago, in its the majority position of the democratic party- and I think, what's important here, as you can see,
the political opportunity, those being blown where
maybe, has already been blown
just to say that this is a this, a two thirds issue for the american people. That Democrats are on the wrong side of that in in
because if fifty seven percent of Democrats support to funding the police, but sixty four percent of
Americans overall opposed to funding the police that means of between independence and Republicans, didn't
berries closer is in the seventies or something like that, and so the
the people who are on the other side of that issue should, if this is, can
that is a major issue in November and is considered the major issue in the United States in twenty twenty aside from covered. That should be catastrophic, politically catastrophic. For Democrats
You do not want to be on the other side of something this controversial and yet up. Unless that case, can
pressed in a way that harmonised.
With what no one said, which is that our purpose here is not to re ignite and keep out of a race war going, but to defuse
the race war and to lower racial tensions and to try to find common ground in the United States. Then.
Not only will this opportunity, we belong political opportunity in twenty twenty, be blown by republicans, but all of these happy time,
in the world about how well they are really mean it when they said he wanted to fund the police, just a symbolic thing and all that. Well, you don't want it
we tested as a proposition Elect orally, and if the party that
and the White House in May. When the Senate, its is as a kind of aggregate supports this in theory, then then it will become a mainstream view well
the other piece of this, I think, no is right to point out in terms of a lack of leadership on the republican side is that there are four
while a lot of these democratic voters are basically voting to define policies that democratic public
actions have been enacting with police forces. In majority
democratic cities and and states for a long time. So one thing to point out
it's ok, you wanna do find the police. If you're places have tried this Camden New Jersey tried this. They actually are
with a larger county base, police force and
It did lower their violent crime rate. As a result of this but d, fun police can actually mean more police sprite independent, depending on how you would restriction go with that
and the other thing I would point out is that the idea of moving services,
that shouldn't be social services, that cop shouldn't be doing more
alternatives to to traditional policing. We have tried those two, so in sometimes they work. I think, there's been some really.
Promising results when you look at gang violence and gang in a sort of people who were
my gang members going in going back to these gang members. Now in trying to do violence interruption, we ve had a. We ve had a pretty active, a well funded violence, interruption programme,
you're in DC. There's been a disaster and in all the areas that these funds and raptors had been sent, crime, violent crime has increased. So we do actually, we ve tried some of this stuff,
think a good leader who doesn't wanna, who wants to challenge that rhetoric and one of the things that he or she could do would be to complicated by pointing to actual programmes that have worked and haven't and we're not seeing that from the Republicans at an and no is right to say it's not just trump here we're talking about. You know the state level republican leader.
Return by governors and we're talking about Elect representatives that there is a void there and it's gonna be filled by easy.
And the key in rhetoric on the left that isn't being challenged on the right. The other thing about this, and that also shows the the incompetence on on the part of the GNP that knows talking about, is that there are issues where one party has a majority very
majority and another party? Doesn't that dont really matter much that that issues the wooden motivate them too much, even even though they they they can claim to have a majority in the population? This
not that kind of issue. If you care about having police or not having police we're having adequate pleas for not having adequate, adequate police, that is the precise kind of issue that will
you to go out and vote now. Only that I mean it's instincts tool for conservatives. This is enough
dna. This
really shouldn't be a hard one to navigate,
Ok, so you know again. Otherwise,
turn this into a you know it into a trump bashing session, but I mean this is where the fact the trumpets had. Actually
a conservative and is not a movement conservative that is not a good, has not been a conservative political player for the last twenty five years place.
Real role because learning the vocabulary of american politics and that an end and in hearing
in your own understanding of how to talk about things
lessons that we have been learned over over decades about how about what kinds of messages work on what kinds of messages doesn't you know his his I'm? His instinctively brand of politics has deserted him here, because I would say this that he has defaulting
the notion that at America, in the condition that America is in now will
spawned, to the way that I hated get very parochial here, but sort of like people, and
Darcy Brooklyn responded to bussing in the nineteen seventies
the kind of rhetoric, the kind of like a tough talking law and order? You know you don't send,
percent in the sand in the tanks,
These people are all crazy, liberal,
stars and all that I've been there
parallels I've, a common than your post today that that that discusses the weird expansion of,
The nineteenth sixties, idea of the limousine liberal to the middle class that at one of the things interests is the mass
application of the limousine liberal, the person who advocated a social revolution- and you know,
an egg hostility police are still in the military, all of that because in part as they were totally shielded from any consequences that might arise since they travel everywhere limousines, they have door men, they are private, cops on their on their property and they have nothing to worry about that. You know. One of his temper of the last couple of weeks is that those kind of attitudes are now being suppressed by people who live three or four blocks for from people who are losing the target in Minneapolis or five or six box, and people were burning at Walgreens and they don't know how did they that they believe that their own social justice consciences and all this require them to support, looting or support. This
urge support decay, that's a new kind of phenomenon. They are not the people who are going to save. You know that this is not the same silent majority as fifty years ago, and it requires a different kind of response to a kind of response. Big come on. What is everybody gone crazy? Yes, there are there,
many. Backups was, I said, yes rate was Barack Obama, who said the vast majority of of of wheat. We owe our support and thanks the vast majority of people cops were out there trying to keep a safe. That is not a word. That is something that a leader who had confidence in the ability of his rhetoric to change people's minds might actually
be able to use, and what we have here is the I think it's a very clear understanding that Trump has completely given up on the idea. If he ever had it does that presidential power it has the ability to transcend and change people's minds and the exercise of presidential.
Rhetoric. I can do that, and this moment is being blown in ways that might have a reverberations for decades to come.
I think one of the interesting things about the didn't trump. They have a tweet where he met
gender invoked the silent majority recently, he said good bye,
this makes it all the earlier. It's a favoured right piece of ground that he retreats too
It's it's it's a kind of its really interesting supported by pulling, though in this case you know you got the poles to back it up
what, if he's, got a winding majority and on his left flank. That actually is giving him plenty of fodder to to respond in a way that is as it should.
There should be responding now and that those women we discussed, I wash imposed article the other day. I mean they're, not quiet about what they think they should believe
but they are still persuadable. I think, with good leadership that the more extreme things that their being
that their seeing in hearing and thinking in listening to and wondering about, they are pursuing
eatables I do in and on the coming at this. From from a conservative perspective, I think we're often too quick to say there just read it
the terrible, but they are still persuadable, I think a great many of them are in that's where the leadership vacuum is particularly over here.
Real tension there between the suburban women, who used to be a republican constituency for whom racial tension
is abhorrent and racial unity is a paramount objective and for him
The safety of their family and their children is also a paramount objective. You confuse those two things
it's really not that hard at least rhetoric and policy, its more it's more difficult, but not impossible, but in red
it's really easy bridge to to
browser to to bridge rather ended the president just incapable of it well
came the sound a little. But one of the reasons that this is a weirder moment than the nineteen sixties is that that the anti cop anti military rhetoric and the support for disorder,
Chaos on the left took place,
while the chaos in the disorder were decimating american cities and threatening Americans all over the place as the crime way.
You ve really began to accelerate the late sixties. Early seventys we are operating from a position of relative comfort, because
the cry, even though we're seeing harbour looting and all of that people, I dont think ill of themselves feel ensue personally and secure, because we ve lived for to data for a generation without much crime. Talk to me in four years, when, if things don't change, if the trajectory of of
of what appears to be happening in our politics, continues on this path and we'll see where crime is in twenty twenty.
We will see where it is in twenty. Twenty eight will see what the economic crisis of our time, which is entirely different from the economic crisis in the sixtys, which was rampant, vast inflation.
Which is not our problem. Our problem now is, would be something horribly closer to deflationary depression, but you add all of that together and and right now, you know that the the fire has not been lit, but those very people have this moment at which they can be persuaded, that we are heading off a cliff and they need to come together to stop us from heading off the cliff or they're going to be called upon to act after we fall off the cliff and our country is in an immeasurably worse condition in in in
in subsequent elections- and I I just don't know how much time there is left to do that or whether our political leaders on the right right now are in any position to find the way to direct this properly. I mean we hear that the White House knows that people in the White House know that they have made a terrible hash at this. A we read stories of story, New York Post that Trump intimates are trying to explain to him. He needs to. He needs to ditch bread parts, kill his campaign manager
guy who handles his digital activities and twenty sixteen and then got you know, got the whole shuttle himself in twenty twenty.
But you know honestly, as switching campaign managers in June or July is is. Is that that that's it that's a fatal that that never works? It's actually a sign that you're dead, not that it out you, that's where eurasian the deck chairs on the titanic, but but I do think that there are indications that people know what that's what happened to trump twenty. Sixteen
right. Well, that's true Nathan replaced campaign chairman after campaign chair, that's true, so so when they were dead- and you were right- I mean so a fair enough. So if you want to
Twenty. Sixteen is your model and pulling a rabbit out of the hat is the approach and twenty twenty? Maybe a rather can be pulled out of the hat, but
or a tunnel shift is
salute the imperative here, whether it
are you dare not because the numbers are looking good and if your whole aspect, which is par skills, is just bravado and provocation.
Then you you're missing limits also dropped, so I mean it.
It is absolutely but that's it. But it's time it's not working right. If you didn't look, as I said, you know last week, I think Samuel Johnson quote is very opposite here, which, as you know, depend upon it serve a man is to be hanged in a fortnight of content.
Traces. My wonderfully presumably trunk does not want to lose the selection, and presumably
although we know he can't change, is this. It is that you know like being hanged in a fortnight in front of the entire world, can maybe be the exact
sort of place, and I don't we don't know, I'm just saying: there's a lot of people internalize on the right who internalize the notion that two thousand and sixteen polls were terribly wrong and there's going to be a fantastic shy. Tory effect here that can overcome ten
and because I always until I suddenly, we saw of Mari it needs
you know I did say that you have. You did dozens more around, so I won't believe the pool our our dear friends are up
wrong. Then leave the Poles gets there. Yet
try Tory it out, depending on the shy tory effect. You know tat has then you're out of your mind now but, as I said, the problem, but the Victoria effect, which is the famous people voting conservative, but refusing to tell pollsters cause they don't want to look like idiots or something like that. The problem with the shot looking at the shy Tory effect is that that is that the the problem of disorder and decay in the country, as I said, is very present day
disorder, indicate its involved with covered and with the economic response to covet. Crime is not there yet because we have not yet in most places by the way in the country, there aren't riots and there hasn't been-
moving. You know. I mean that odd thing of course, though, that the joke here the route, looting and rights and softly at are all taking place in places that will go on to ten front. I lit right in just one point of clarification to that. The shy Torreon fact that benefited,
trump and twenty. Sixteen were precisely those suburban white women who are right now expressing their discontent loudly so there's a pension.
Not that it also that if that theory is true, it's not that that's not the case right out of those that aim vote to accept that it is about economic recovery from from covered.
Tromp act, those are the only issues on which Trump has measuring edge jobs and an economic recovery right and public order could become. Such an issue,
to handled well, and if he isn't blame for some of the Sahel disorder. You know and, as I say, part of the reason, if he's slipping, he slipping because people who wanted him to help with social order issues may think
he has done so in an uncommonly bad way, either suburban knights, who don't like him, but would vote for him anyway. Who would prefer a more thorough work,
the more racial reconciliation rhetoric or people on the right who think it just looks like a paper tiger innocent and as an tough enough
All of this said Christine, you were a particularly horrified by violence, a press conference yesterday
which I think was a we aren't, we are in a pretty this year, so unprecedented that we enjoy had. Please explain
mean idea he was just bumbling at a level that was kind of this
to watch. You mean setting aside when you know, if this is your parties nominee for president
actually really kind of difficult to watch- and he was you Know- did getting basic facts wrong. He was, you know,
the thing. Certainly he didn't understand one June thirteenth wasn't me that these are actually basic things if he needs no particular at this moment of of racial tension, and it did kind of
I'm another. The the rumour mail has got Camelot Harris up again as the potential of e choice. I do
It really does speak to the strange import,
this year for the Democrats who they choose for vice president. Look people,
the writer being cruel and saying others his elder abuse. Why are they even choosing this man? I mean if you wanna, if you went up,
that standard than in others. Just as many demented things, you could point to it
they said or done. So I don't. I don't like that tone of of that discussion, but he's clearly
especially we compare him to him in his power
as a senator there's theirs
Clearly, a lack of Christmas and clarity, and it's the energy question in some ways. For me, he just didn't his heart. Wasn't in that programme
So maybe he was just having an off day. It didn't help that he had his mask dangling from the side of one year. There were a lot of optics issues there too, but if those accumulate over time, if more, if more and more of his public statements and press conferences have that tone
I was it. It was the first time I actually kind of paid attention to what a lot of Bernie broke.
They have been set up the left since he served clinch denomination, which is like there's this guy habitat. You know
There is something in opposite about burdens, tone,
approach, which has served him well up till this moment there is, there is a disconnect between that and what is happening now. It was easier to play safe in some respect before everything blew up.
Everyone was demanding that, U way in and say ambitious things about the current convulsions in the country, you know it's kind of hard
two to have a I'm gonna going to sit on the sidelines strategy at the moment. In some ways, its perhaps so
If it's, I understand the defensive impulse here, but because it creates a kind of impressions of that Biden did yesterday, he does seem sort of no match for the moment. In that sense, I that could be. I don't know, I just don't think you can look at the again if it ever. If we're not Soroban, we want to assume that that the poles are telling us things. A weed me
to hear, but not being a major public player in this moment, has done nothing but good for Biden
I know the whole long term argument, which is you can play prevent defence and win and eventually that hotel and you have to go on
gun on the offensive in your own, people are gonna to desert you and feel disappointed new and those at look. The EP, the the
radical element in in in this moment is seems to have no compunction about,
eating its own and eating liberals warrant sufficiently radical, and I suppose at some point that could turn on and on
I didn't, although, if, if you see by
because the only bulwark against you know against the trumps reelection that might cause prudence even in their it. In their approach, though, I see very little reason to believe that prudence as something that's in there in their vocabulary. Up that said, you play the hand that you're doubt if Biden is unequal to the moment. The best thing for him to do is to allow trumped up is it is it have trump remain, as this come colossus figure who you know like Gulliver's tripped up by get out by the ropes that end up being strongly?
his legs and and and thrown down by the wheel occasions, there's this perverse dynamic. That is really very difficult to an probably impossible for a campaign to get its hands around, which is that the candidate that has the most media time suffer.
The more you are in the public eye, the worse, you do
apparently, which is something of the story of twenty sixteen when it comes to Trump, but it seems to apply now to both candidates and so
The commission now for campaigns is to keep your guy your guys head below the parapet. I mean. That's, that's really tough for you to justify, if you're, trying to
check? Well, I don't know I mean I think there is if, if, if the maid
something that you are promising is that you are not gonna run your presidency on twitter, which I think is ultimately what Biden is promising
and returned to normal state, but you know if you want to really be vulgar about it. It's I'm not gonna, be a president by you know, I'm my presence ceasing to be conducted on Twitter Itzhak and be rash impulsive.
You know at hominem insult that what I have everyone, a slice it and that can have a much broader impact that that approach, which is to say
you know what I'm just not going to say that I'm gonna be like a nineteenth century presidential candidate,
never say anything. I mean it was the traditionally united States before the Mass entertainment era,
Really until the whistle stop campaign of eighteen? Ninety six, the president's didn't the presidential candidates didn't speak, that's where surrogacy comes up people smoke for them, but that it was considered vulgar or put whatever to try to sell yourself to the american people. Well, so I mean you know everything
old could be no again and that's the that's effectively the the approach chosen by rating. We had a very different relationship with the concept of ambition. Then yes, it was rather distasteful. Yes,
it's something, much more celebrate. No, I'm not I'm saying you know until until five minutes ago, I would have thought that it was a balloon, a loser strategy, but on the one hand you have to you play the hand your dealt as I said, and if by MS unease is restored,
Lee personally emotionally energetically, whatever unequal to the moment them, then they have to do. You have to do with him what you can and he has to
of what he can the best that he can like it.
And turn into somebody Elsie Campi ten years younger. He can't be that fifty times more fluent whatever I if you had said that Biden would be the candidate for the presidency, who would say and speak the Lee
you know five minutes ago, everybody would have thought you were crazy to was up. He was a person who couldn't shut up for most of his life, but but there we are,
So I guess what that we should bring this week of pod to a close after everybody who has a kids,
maybe already gone through this. I just you know like that. School years ending- and now we are looking at what on earth do with kids for the summer ass though I wish you were, I wish you a fortitude and patience
and and inventive ideas about how to occupy a people in a world where in so many places they are not allowed to be occupied. That's my problem right now.
So to establish our own breakaway toddler republic and like college as and to release all the kids into the wild Rico. Other trapping is grave. Apparently, this morning one of the
One of the supposed like people who were running Chaz in Seattle, which is supposed to have anybody running it.
Has said, don't try to set up any autonomous zones, insider autonomous zone,
this is lands all the way down exactly so, yeah that'll be fun to watch this weekend. The mayor of the mayor of the Mayor of Seattle, saying that its great that there is an area in the city- that's just basically full of peace and love stolen, vague in food.
Who would want that yeah? Who would want that so Christine Christine a Greenwald and no Rossman? I'm John Podhoretz keep the camel burning.
Transcript generated on 2020-08-03.