With the news that Donald Trump is allowing the transition to begin, the post-election madness has pretty much come to an end. What will its long-term consequences be, if any? Give a listen.
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
Welcome to the commentary magazine, barely podcast today's Tuesday November twenty fourth, twenty twenty, I'm John POT words the editor of Commentary magazine with me
as always associate editor nor Ross, benign our senior
Christine rose and high Christine again and executive editor
a green wild, high Abe Hodgen. So in case people don't realize at the Trump efforts,
to overturn the results of the election or to challenge the electorate is over
it's all over, but the shouting today I guess at some point: Pennsylvania will actually certify its results and the number of states that will of certified their results. Other people to realise this will will be. The aggregate number of electoral votes will be over two hundred and seventy Joe Biden,
bill. Therefore, in the absence of the electoral college meeting and doing the formal final final tally, Joe Biden is the next presently United States and that an Donald Trump signals as much yesterday by by by authorizing that the general services amidst racial could begin the formal transition process giving by money for transition, giving him office space. And
I wish them that time to set up the meetings so not with a bang but a whimper. The bang was last Thursday. I was obvious. I think it's obvious in retrospect that the horrendous
comic, nightmarish, Rudy Giuliani, Jana, Alice Sidney Powell event with the running make up and the yelling and screaming, and
Hugo Chavez on all of that represented the final bridge too far for this preposterous effort in the way
the election to somehow say that the that the will of the electorate should be overturned because Donald Trump was mad that he lost. So it's kind of a whimper.
Certainly, basically its trump saying: ok, you can start and that's it, and here we are told we been talking about this now for three weeks, and this is three weeks since the election and vinegar. You know
It's done trompe. I mean they shot him and everybody
the sound of my voice, who thinks that from one needs to go, take psychiatric medication. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I've been trying to be nice, I'm stopping being nice, stop it,
pop at your children, your babies, your Weiner, stop it he lost, he lost, he lost
you lost when I say that I was for quite some time now, but I've been saying that he's a baby. Now, I'm gonna,
they, then everybody was standing there still sending me emails about with stupid federalist articles about how you know what it's really weird
Biden got fewer votes in the cities, them Hillary Clinton dead. Maybe that means there's fraud when we know that the reason that Biden won the election is that he got more votes than she
in the suburbs in the
firms which are more important than the city's, because the cities are all democratic anyway. So I don't need you bothering me with your stupid emails.
and how about how there was massive vote of fraud and and and and trump one or bull. We really need to look at this because there wasn't and you're stupid and stop it. I'm sick of you, I mean the programme forces deserve.
Be wrapped across the knuckles a little bit, but I spent most of my antipathy for the anti trunk forces who
have been writing about. Telegraphing and talking about how Donald Trump was gonna break America because he was for
casting artillery
rather his intention to call into
question. The results of the election in September.
everybody knew this was coming, and so we retreated to articles like
Very sprawling conspiracy, theory,
the Atlantic from Barton Gilman suggesting that from
Trump Administration from a campaign officials, lawyers with again from camping, we're telegraphing that they were going to go after state legislators and they were going to try to fill the electoral electors with loyal members, regardless of what the votes were. Nancy blowsy wisdom
CAN president for a minute like biggest these things
were actually written,
and it was always insane and people who taught them
like those in seeing more marked and Poohpooh still to this very day, are sent. You know people who suggest that the guard rails are stronger than you ever gave them credit for institutionally, culturally. Anybody who
displays a kind of confidence in the durability of our tested. Institutions was marked and derided as being an unequal to this
storing, moment and pray frankly,
people are bunch apparent relax. It's not us it's you
and I had a sort of a self righteous assumption on your part of of the fleet.
the sense of decisive importance. We.
What's going on here, is that the law moving parts that you have actual absolutely no control over their doesnt. Theirs is the area of now becoming,
Conventional wisdom that
This election went
It went because of the courage of precisely for Republicans in Michigan Wisconsin and Georgia a day, but this trend than if they had not, they would have stolen this election. Nonsense.
Absolute nonsense. You ve worked yourself up into a fraud.
In any event, this is great. This is great
I'm mad at them. At the emails I'm getting from you know, trompe peoples will believe anything any crap those poured into their ears as long as it confirms our.
I was an you are attacking
we are by the poor, the post office conspiracy,
by the way. Remember the voting machines, we're gonna steal the election for Trump
You may remember that I mean I
all this goes friends of mine were texting me in saying what are you gonna do about this trumpets, gonna steal from the election machines.
What are you gonna do about this yeah? Well, you know I'm the only republican
Servant of the day, no, so therefore it eats email need to fixed air pop. She may help.
It's like well you're, the Jew, how you know what why
Why don't you we pig, you know like add its lead in the woods, not that I'm just trying to use a different whenever I have a question of how much of this is just. You know, typical,
arrangement wishes witches
I think now has correctly pointed out several times in the past. People actually enjoy their arrangement because it you know it gives them a purpose and a meaning and a focus but haven't
how much of it is also this in the sense in which we have defined fascism down for four years right I mean it. It's really struck me as dangerous to talk about fascism, with the glibness that we ve seen on the left lately because it and the lack of historical understanding of what fascism it there's. No,
several ability in my mind between the
such action on the part of certain people who proceed down from to be this unique threat to democracy, omnicompetent and young
as you say, a fascist with this grand design on on America, that you would ruin our democratic institutions, an rippling narcissism,
corporate you're a sense of yourself as being this bulwark of freedom in defence.
you know manning the barricades and defence of this overwhelming onslaught. That is that it is a self conception that is rooted in a really per. Perhaps unhealthy can see
I'm up! Ok, I will do somethin characteristic here you have to actually
tromp a little here, though, because.
He managed to keep up this. I think somewhat. Please,
mystery about how to take his hysterics and shenanigans for four years. No one,
I mean I was fairly certain that he wasn't going to steal the election them in, but but
understand why, to some degree average Americans,
every day, Americans never quite got
and on what his intentions were when he would go
we're out on a limb. I think it's totally there. The question of to take them seriously or literally, was kept alive. Sort of.
toll. Time remains so
even even with here, even with the it all being over that,
fair. I all limit my contentions to the three months preceding the election, which was when things really got dicey and when the trunks
people around and started
envisioning out loud. These fantastical scenarios that never made any sense to me
which we were all good about. Condemning. At the time I mean to AIDS point his his day
you're. If Europeans of conservative sensibilities, not republican conservative, you look at
I've been from the beginning. The chaos agent aspect of his leadership style was exactly what made you go. This is bad news and it is. There is a danger to that, but I don't think the danger was ever fascism that that is a very important point, because the central promise of conservatism of philosophical conservatism, not libertarianism and novel. We consider the right in Europe into the west over the last three or four centuries, but concern
criticism as a philosophy broadly defined, is the maintenance and preservation of order amount
in order in a dark in the darkest sense you know could sometimes if you say that it sounds authoritarian, it means the structures of society and in which we nestle and that are or laboratory
What does ordered, let right ordered liberty is, is it is? It is a very is this? Is the proper may be the best way to put it, but even
even in circumstances where people are less concerned about
pretty, but there is a consistency in conservatism. The idea is that we we live. We are social creatures and we live nestled within institutions and those institutions are constantly under threat, sometimes are under threat from forces of dissolution that come from the laughed and sometimes there under threat forces of dissolution that come from the right. This is why we have these interesting at dilemmas. Debate
disputes about capitalism and what weather is capitalism and annoyed good, or is it a danger because it is as destructive of existing institutions as other forms of economic
but he might be as well- and these are very interesting debates, Amir stuff, that that they're like what? What animates my interest in politics in the largest sense? But the point is that tromp, the idea that you come into break things and to disrupt things now that is not conservative. It may be that you know,
We are there reserve, because the great analysed, let's say, of twentieth
and tree free markets and capitalism. Joseph Schumpeter pointed out that creative destruction is a is a is a force in capitalism, right that that the old that the old is constantly being replaced by the new
New products and new ways of doing things new stuff like that, and that this is not an unemployed good because it can destroy previous industries, throw people out of work cause
destabilization by then it's a natural process right, the Trump people or the.
I'm philosophy in general of the flight. Ninety three election idea is that breaking things and disrupting things is a good in and of itself, even if you don't know what the consequences are gonna be, and that is as far from a philosophically conservative perspective as it is possible
to get its, not liberal. It's not rat sought socialism, it's not that it's something else. It is
I don't know what it is. It sort of NEO listing
with the hope that it's like slash and burn agriculture, which you dont do. If you can do.
who better agriculture? That's more, you know, are properly protected
Well, like you, don't try to burn things down and then hope that out of the ashes green roots grow green sprouts, cop, that's the opposite of what how your support, how people like us generally tend to think about things, and this was grafted onto the american right and it's very seductive rights, extremely seductive. It's extremely.
Tract of thing for people to embrace, and in that sense it
like slightly demonic, because it season,
it sees as on impulses. You now that as Christopher Nolan and his brother wrote in the script from the dark night, like you know, some people just want to see the world burn right. That's the wine about the Joker,
in the dark night. There is also an element of it, and this is among the more
the intellectual class of Armstrong, Trump supporters who
I guess somewhat, paradoxically, are interested in the destruction of things
so that there can be a new,
the imposition of a stronger sense of order right,
drivers, because it's already two out of control and
and and we need
January. Our serve less soft sense of order to pursue imposing its
place outside the eight, nothing more along the lines of european conservatism. Right daddy
the culture war was lost by Serbians and railway lines. L dawning conserve, is itself corrupted and should be yet. No, I think that's import right
that's a fairly new strain of U S here. Right bodes very much. You know I mean I think. In the end, we we're gonna have
Difficulty embracingly idea, which I think is where no one has been going for the last three weeks, that
system did not break Trump, was elected right Trump was elected
That was not a break. That was not the system breaking that you could argue that it was a it was a form of it was the display of the institutional collapse of the Republican Party and and yes or the general forces that created the the you know, the politics in America beat up between the forty yard lines where've, you know these or this
where the America will tend to will tend to fight its battles so close to the metal wine and that their this sub x factor came in
That was under unique circumstances, with a uniquely terrible
graded candidate in Hillary Clinton, Otto mean degraded cause. She was morally or personally degraded. I mean that she was kind of like that as Iraq, of a zero of his Iraq's of ASEAN. Iraq's of you know, Liberalism Clinton is a mobile ism, first woman, ISM tokenism and that somehow net, just none of it, was
was all that attractive, but so what happened over the course Tromp had his trumpetings. He got some things done. He he created a movement behind him.
And he helped create a counter movement that lost the Republicans. The twenty eighteen election lost him
twenty twenty election, and that is the dynamic of american politics which didn't it me into it. Didn't break
and if it didn't even really Ben that much I mean you can argue that you know it bent it out. If you know, Trump was able to
people state his hotel, which no one ever would have imagined. The president would have tried before you know these kind of veto emolument of offences which I think are real and and it's odd that Democrats didn't really press them more impressed on Idiot russian paranoiac theories
instead, but the system didn't break, you know, Bide won the election, he won the election under slightly weird,
come stances because of the way the votes were counted right if the votes, if it had been a more conventional election day in which people actually had to go to the polls because ended, there wasn't a pandemic and there had been less him, another been less at home, voting or whatever.
Where things have been calculated, the wit things were done, the way they were done in Florida. How are you
slice. It then we wouldn't have had the
kind of delays until five o clock in the morning for the votes to come in, to create that
Eight, our narrative, the Trump, was actually winning, and then the election was stolen. There's this theory now that, like what, if
the election have been closer. You aren't we lucky that the election had him in closer
it's kind of like an unfolding viable thought
experiment emulate get. What have you belong had been shot whatever try Limburg ran like you didn't, but it didn't and you're just
erecting these theories to justify in.
The pre existing determination on your part that all this is very fragile,
and, in the absence of you
The fragility might have been exposed by in a forces at work better.
trying to break the system- and you know who
what would have happened. The who knows what would have happened really frustrates me because the answer is you don't, but also also you know,
counter in our counter who I love counter histories, I've a whole counter, history, which I think you guys know about what would have happened if Al Gore had won the election or, if or of George W Bush hadn't gone into Iraq and
You know. I have a whole theory. There George W Bush hadn't gone into Iraq. Al Gore would have been re elected in two thousand for on the grounds that we should have gone into Iraq.
I can make a whole long very,
credible argument about this- that the only way for the only way for the Democrats to one in two thousand for would have been to get to bushes right on a few things and that that would have sir broken up
the dam in his his direction. But, of course, there's no way of knowing Rikers counter histories. It's it's fun, but it's like it's. It's preposterous that we do
There was a much closer election in this two thousand was effectively a tide election
Gore ended up winning by about five hundred thousand votes out of a hundred million cast right and that vote tough
tally overtime, email didn't even come in for a couple of months and effectively. Bush one by
five hundred and thirty seven votes in a single state and the system did Ben but didn't break. Even then I mean I was much younger at the time was eighteen, but I remember markedly more public interest in
what was occurring inequalities because only they drank there was no. There is no street demonstrations. There was out there with the amount of in intense fixation on this in the press was not mirrored in the streets.
Maybe we could have had the partisan roles been reversed, but they weren't nobody mistakes were lower. I mean to be to be fair in two thousand
One of the reasons that the election went away. When does that you had to relatively anodyne candidates pushing
or were this? Was not you know a culture, war fight? I was it. It was up. It was, as you know, after the dot com bubble, ear was like it was. It was after the nineties like there was we weren't we weren't under threat, and you know all of them-
stuff so was a different thing, but you know it's not like. It was a jump, all action. It was basically a tie and the tie
it's a Bush and Democrats
really really I'm happy about it. In a lot of them said the Bush was not a legitimate president and
you know, circumstances made that argument untenable after you know, after they passed a huge peace, a bipartisan legislation in no child left behind. In the first statement,
the Bush administration and the nine eleven happened, which made Bush emails,
like a unity president for the first time and then you know, and then we had had their all sorts of ancillary consequences that, but you know this.
Was not that close an election in the end? Like you know, twenty twenty two a book in the popular vote, twenty twelve was closer than this. I mean
we we're heading toward nor Biden, winning by four percentage. Points and Obama beat Romney by three point. Eight percentage point, so it will be
You know to twenty. Sixteen was closer right. That was too percentage points nationally
it's. The same number of electoral votes is twenty. Sixteen,
only run away election that we have had since nine.
Ninety six was Obama. Two thousand eight like this was not a particularly that you know. So we are now talking about elections to take place in the in the
Before five percent range- and we sort of new this and then I'm sorry, I had to go back to the polling disaster, but people got gold over the course of twenty twenty.
the thinking that we were going back into the direction, and I was too into the direction of landslide elections. We really thought that, because the every
piece of available social science data with was suggesting this both an and all the caveats that we learn. Well, don't look at the national polling, look at the state pulling, but the stay polling was also showing you know a landslide victories in in in various. You know, states whereby the vote,
that being half a percentage point of a percentage point- and you know indeed the fine old pellagra get- was eight points and binds favour and
We were all told that this was happening, which is another reason why, oddly enough this fraud narrative has taken hold because it's like,
well you said that Biden was gonna win by aid any only one by force or obviously he probably, what would have lost except east could only steel for percentage points instead of eight another unforeseeable sort of theory that is, that has been laid out.
I have no idea, I would just went totally. I just went out.
It was like I left. I would like to add the president's sir. I'm sorry Christine. You can say that it is important that all of our discussion of this, I think we all agree with aid, that we end- and I remember, is having these discussions. The rhetoric that the press
I didn't used to talk about whether or not he would concede was date.
the danger is that's not how a leader in this country, in a democracy that does function should be talking about the results of an election and
There's really note, there's none of us, I think we're just. We would argue that that was legitimate cause. That was not half what he should have been doing, and it does set a bad precedent that hopefully no one will follow and I,
like that, that that upset me cause. I again
as a conservative, I think he'd part of his job is conserving the executive officers, dignity and
one of the reasons a lotta conservatives dislike Bill Clinton right because their visit there was a decay of dignity of the office and I do think, there's a pretty serious decamp dignity after four years of trapped in a coffin. You know. Yet it did. It was dumb politics,
you're. Here he had a good story to tell it: that's not the story, he told he told this other. This paranoid story
John. I remember you had a calm at the post. You know about an up a month and a half months ago saying
You know Trump is talking himself out of the office
office and ate, and that's that's. That is what happened. It was another angle to this that term, whom we haven't touched on it
hurry sellers was on CNN the other night and he said pretty much there, some paraphrasing cause. I can't find the quote, but it was Joe Biden Approach to this issue, which was once again
Contemptuous of the dialogue on Twitter, you didn't sue his
it is transition team didn't make a big first set of what the other than the foot dragging that was going on? They didn't try to lean on road.
lookin senators and blackmail them morally blackmail them
sang the results of the election they'll. They gave them breathing space, they allowed them to
through these legal challenges to which they were permitted to the point at which it became farcical.
And everybody who is engaging in this sort of thing made clowns of themselves and their case their case,
the legitimacy of the transitional grew stronger with time and if they
done something different. If data pounded the table and rent garments, and does it did exactly what Progressive Tipp Twitter wanted them to do, it would have hardened the opposition. Will
republicans more recalcitrant
regardless of the merits of their case. So the Biden team
it- was once again to ignore the apoplexy.
Typifies social media and had a bit
for outcome. As a result, I'm I'm trying to look the sub because I'm having trouble remembering who wrote it, but, but I think you know into
trump saying that now he has only gonna lose if they steal the election, all that and the danger of it. You know why the danger of it isn't that other presidents are gonna, follow with his footsteps, exactly in my view, the danger of it has to do with like
down ballot. Races like is this. Now, what is going to be expected of democratic
republican politicians by
You know how hard charging bases that what they're supposed to do is say now I this was stolen. These people stole the election. There is the case of the sum congressional candidate in Baltimore. In a thirty points, democratic,
strict Kim classic. I haven't, I have a headache class, ok, who basically lost she ran in Baltimore. She she had a good commercial people really enjoy
but her commercial and then she lost, and she said they stole the election from me.
I mean she lost a republican running in a race that she was never going to win then went with the fraud allegation to say that you lost because of fraud. So you know: is this going to be how local elections are going to be condemned,
by Republicans, because this is how you fight. This is like I mentioned the other day that you know Trump was like. I need to fight cuz, Romney and Mitt Romney and Mccain didn't fight that they were losers and they didn't fight and they didn't fight after the election cuz they lost and you don't fight when you lose you concede. You know. I don't know I mean that's, that's I take for the Dane
is it you could have this kind of like complete collapse of elections are not civil there. Never civil, their horrible people say horrible things about each other. They they you
horrible rumour mills to peddle horrible rumours about each other.
But when things are over like a boxing match, they shake hands, and somebody says I called my
opponents and and
said I want to help you get a wave help our people to do. The right thing is that you know
that I wonder if that's gonna be permissible, where, if you're not supposed to say he ran a good race. I congratulate him on his victory. Look it's not that it's not yet it it shouldn't be permissible! It hit. It is becoming so
but the status quo and partisans on both sides of the Isle entertain this sort of thing mostly to solve their own moons. But what did? What is the legal impulse
issues? Of all that I mean that's, that's the lesson of the cycle is in the last cycle. Frankly, is that it's a transparently false narrative
feels only to people who are already converted? It doesn't convert any one and it is hypothetically dangerous. As it keeps saying there is a theory in which it could be.
Dress, but we have yet to see the danger manifest now it doesn't mean I can't, but we risk-
overestimating its potential for danger and
process under estimating the durability of our institutions.
culture of love of rule of law in this country,
in a way that we will. We take for granted. Look I talk about this before
You know during two thousand and my father was abroad. He was a nigerian resists, the contested election and he got.
Genuine questions about why the military wasn't doing anything. Why are the people in this way there allowing these people
the streets right and demonstrating that the administration is under this profound rat. Why? Why isn't? Why are these
Petitions moving in defence of this political power, that's at risk. Here
The answer is because we have of mature republican culture that we take for granted
no, we don't actually really fully understand because it is so in green and cultural and saying
you know? Can classic saying I lost by twenty points, because this district was stolen from me,
is profoundly silly and is of
It is a value only in so far as it makes you feel better about yourself if you're a supporter of classics, but it has no other bearing.
you don't have a use. I think for whether its came classic saying it about losing her election or Stacy Abrams, saying in a few years earlier about losing the door
the governors raise it
immediately allows you to be something other than a loser. You ve become a victim, and even if the victim is action is completely fictional and you'd. Never take it to court to prove that you ve been a victim cause, as you say, no, if you go to court, its immediately revealed that you know you ve just made this upper. It's it's a conspiracy, if you're on your heart, but he does
give them that, and that is valued in our culture right now being the victim of a systemic issue. Right I mean this is something that if you are on the right or the left, you can invoke in that
maybe is a better way to deal with people who treat elections as ways to mark them for their following in victimization, when in fact they just lost right? Well exemption?
in question. I think you're right now that this is the this helps no one except people with their base, but, as we ve seen, Donald Trump made a gigantic bet that he could somehow run as a boy
Mr President, rather than a reach, our president and everything that that people more convention,
warned about him. We are warning about. You know literate
in January twenty seventeen that his basin
the large enough to win him reelection proved
we true and remember we're talking about it. This even includes him getting ten million more votes and they got in twenty six.
in because the simple fact is that there are more Democrats and Republicans and that he he got every
She wrung every vote out that he could, including some
spanish version of the hispanic road right and then some other people elsewhere, but he did not reach out across his political divide and lost the presidency, but
in the in the house in particular the way gerrymandering has been rendered. The house
you know the republic, Republicans,
and Democrats alike seem unused to the notion that circles
hence as may arise where they would lose elections. It's not even just
the house and you gotta go down too not just the legislative.
But even farther down about county commissioner.
In Pennsylvania, Republicans, did extraordinarily well down our trump lost,
that's the regulators. Republicans are now trying to convince themselves of the notion that Donald Trump on the ballot helped them more than his absence dead and twenty eighteen, and I just frank,
think. That's just a misleading analysis of this election. When you consider how well Republicans did almost across the board, with the exception of Donald Trump, we're? Ok, so
Heaven, Mccarthy, the you know, the the house, Sir, the leader of a hollow guns in the house very interesting peace. They buy Byron York in which Mccarthy ways out how they did so well in the house. There a couple really astonishing numbers, like the toss up the house toss up says rendered by the cook political report, which has a very damaged brand after after this after this election, but nonetheless they had twenty seven house races as toss ups and report.
Begins. One twenty seven of those races think about that class. That's a wave, yet they were
but because of wage inaction yet so the disrupt the distributional effects of that should be just simply as a matter random. Chance, tat
crowds would win half of them. The third item, twenty percent of them
It's one always that that's of course, also if a species of this really bad polling and the fact that they were simply as assuming things on the basis of bad Paul's nationally and extrapolate them locally to that,
numbers, but I will say Mccarthy says that in three or four different cases and remember the Republicans would have picked up ten or twelve or thirteen
Seeds will turn this is all over there. I think there are four cases where he measurably says that trumps involvement, one the seedbed for the for the Republicans and Mccarthy, has no particular reason right now to be to be saying that thus, since most of this is about
the genius things that he did. Interestingly enough, I believe
looking out after twenty eighteen saying, were to white male and we need the. We need other people running and recruiting people to do that, and also throwing money at freshman who were be a freshman republicans, who are the ones who are ours to term Republicans were usually the white people know.
These where they went away from the Democrats. Arm are most endanger, unlike strengthening them early, so they don't get primary tout challenges or that they or that they have enough money that they they
they shot, they shoe away Democrats from running against them, but he does, as I say, he says the Trump one them a couple of seats are. Let me let me pull back and talk to you.
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with access to head spaces- full library meditations for every situation- this is the best deal offered right now head to head space, dotcom slashed commentary. Today. Can I say one thing about near discussion, Mccarthy's autopsy about the election
it's really. It was interesting to me to see all of them
at an agent machinations and the understanding of how you need to early on protect your your vulnerable members and what not as something that report
can party, as an institution is attempting to do in attempting to change how it recruits, etc, etc. While on the democratic side,
the organization doing that isn't the party its groups, like its activists groups like the Justice Democrats, who are actively finding weak democratic, then like picking them off with primary challenges, and it is just an interesting contrast that I will be I'll, be
to see if the Democratic Party shifts its strategy in the wake of this, you know shall lacking that they got in terms of recruitment and protect
invulnerable, incumbents and and the like right. Well, I mean a part. Is thing. Also: is better Democrats snuck up on Republicans unawares in twenty eighteen? They were Republicans were sloppy and careless at the house level and and, for example, did had not done their homework necessary to understand the ballot
harvesting game that the Democrats are going to play in California and they got sandbags and waylay them lost seven thousand and forty five seats in California. They didn't even think we're, particularly at risk because of this new rule that made it possible for others to collect your ballot and bring
to the polling place and in twenty honey, a close that gap you now because
once they saw. This is the whole thing about twenty. Sixteen, twenty twenty that that that again, I don't wanna keep saying I said this before, but
that you know, Biden wins. Michigan Pennsylvania was continent, twenty twenty. Why? Because the election of toys,
sixteen said to them, walk all
we need to do is when you know twenty thirty thousand votes in the pull back, pull back twenty to thirty thousand voters in these states and
we're. Gonna was urban Mass and you can win this election so spent four years trying to win Wisconsin Michigan Pennsylvania and they did just
that, like you, what if somebody pulled a trick,
an amazing track that wins them the election. You then can you
you're able in the in the next go round to correct the mistake
you made by not paying sufficient attention. So that's the other
thing that happened, you know, and so
they'll be some version of this on the deck,
grant exciting twenty twenty two ducas. I think that's a really interesting point. The Christine makes the the just Democrats,
some are following the mandate of the tea party, there they're doing what the tea party did in two thousand and twenty ten
in May and primarily and and and taking downs, more centrist, Republicans and replacing them with activist republicans right so
These are mostly in save seats but yeah. You could really see a kind of showdown with you. Now we have a full
see majority here, don't screw it up
like we are. You know we are. We are in deep trouble and if you
do you know if you make this election, if you try to shift the other, the House Party to the left,
usually in twenty twenty one and twenty twenty two we are.
Maybe
we're gonna, we're gonna be wiped out
but the same lessons are applicable to Republicans in twenty four right before the next presidential race straight now. There is this. There
This notion that Republicans are covering themselves with that Trump lost, but trumpets and didn't, but Trump ISM Cos.
From the suburbs right Trump ISM cost them Georgia for the first time since ninety ninety
two rather in, and there is one of the first time since nineteen eighty six, I may have those reversed, I'm not sure, but either way a generation has passed since the last time or a Democrat one, those states in the presidential level,
and doesn't matter how well you do Trump ISM in the Upper Middle West if it costs you this, the New South and South West right right,
then that's an easy one to fix right. You can do you can do populism without being so pugnacious and aggressive and an racially hostile that that's a sort of thing that turns off
decorated, white, suburban housewives, left the sort of thing. It's not hard not to do. I don't know, I don't know, you know that it's not hard not to do I mean by bad. I think populism comes with that edge. Then that is part
But let me I must acknowledge the suburban wine minds are also very touching, so we just have to
Mummy Levy Lemming, throw this out, which is that there is an idea that Trump lost, but a Trump ism didn't lose or conversely,
which a sort of what Mccarthy saying that Trump one as much.
See lost right. I mean he lost, but he got seventy four million votes. You know which is more votes than anyone got, except for Biden ever
and you know it all that and yes, some you know he may have stimulated this. Eighty million vote surge against him.
But you know he also. You know he also increased his vote taken. The Republicans vote taken all that. Well, what if the reverse is true, what if Trump ISM lost an trump lost, by which I mean that trumps victory
but his defeat, it's hard to imagine him doing better right than seventy four million votes nationally, but part of it was that people didn't like him and part of it was that people didn't like some of the policies that
events, particularly, I would say, the suburban moms with the kids in cages or even if you we want to go back to their Obama, put the kids in cages in the first place, but
the Muslim Ban, Charlottesville
a lot of other stuff like that, and you know, I think that you could make a very
credible argument that that Trump
did as well as anyone could ever have done with himself and with his.
set of ideas and they republican Party,
but being insane to go back to this well, either to him
or to his issue, sat or to somebody else who tries to take on his issue said everyone. Well, I mean
I'd like to think that nobody gets out of its true love it that's why I'm I'm I'm I'm palm, destroying it out as a as thought, experiment. Wake.
Maybe we're Hoboken voters want it, so it doesn't matter what the party shorter shouldn't do. They wanted trumpet twenty, sixteen and think irish from thirty percent of thirty. Five percent of them will lapse absolutely right, but that's what he won
the primary with between sixteen and
That might be all it takes if there is no alternative to rally round of theirs. Nepal, when unifying all in that debate, but there will be there will be a debate about it. Look Biden, didn't win, you know, people, don't
in the primaries with you now, unless they're running
for reelection without opposition, like Trump, did and we people. This is how people, when primaries, with thirty five to thirty seven put Bob Biden, certainly were
by really put sanders away. He still hadn't gotten going. The aggregate vote for Biden wasn't even yet thirty five percent, so you could certainly
have a Republican that spoke some of the language signalling language of Trump in four years, but didn't look like truck. Maybe it's a
woman who is of a minority group, will be hit that someone who doesn't look like Trump and doesn't have his style
still message to that base without being tromp, and that, I think, would be that's kind of the perfect the candidate for the heart.
Our trump bees, even if they don't know yet, because that the person that can win those
bourbon voters, while also still signalling to the base,
old game will be throughout that primary will be to get yet that candidate on the record.
How do you feel about trumped? The man now not
Has he policies, because it always rather man, it's gonna, be. Do you displaced
fishing gratitude for all the time for their later? Ok, look! Let let let's look. Let's talk this through seriously in this way, so all we can see in our in our future is served tromp trumps, their trumpet go away, trumps gonna be there
he's going to have a movement he'll have a tv show he'll do this. He'll have rallies easily endorsed when people are going to want blah blah blah blah, but you know it:
said to you in twenty twelve at the after Bromley lost that that data
tromp was gonna, be the nominee in twenty. Sixteen euro said I was crazy if I said that if I had said that Joe Biden was gonna be them,
in twenty twenty. I'm not sure. You said that I was crazy, but at the at the end of twenty sixteen you know our general fodder. The general kind of conventional thought was.
Democrats, better, look seriously at nominating an african American because that the loss of the african American turn out, as is what what killed Hillary Clinton so
we were then talking about. Like I wrote this thing about how Oprah should be in the nominee. You know that's where what why Kamel Harris, who, as we have seen, is really not a very good politician was suddenly the stuff. You know somebody that everybody will have on their lips and Corey Booker and various other people.
And you know, outcomes outcomes from the bullpen comes Joe Biden. You know a seventy seven, seventy six! Seventy seven year old, you know white ethnic. You know
glad handing politician who had really impressed nobody over the course of his entire political career winning race after race. After races,
safe seat in a in a safe statement, tiny state, and then you know it's being elevated unexpectedly to the vice presidency. Like we don't know, what's going to happen in twenty twenty four, we have no clue. We have no idea what the what the issue said is going to be in twenty twenty four.
If I did you after them, after the financial meltdown, in fact, I thought it was time like there's no way
The republican party is gonna, nominate, a guy who ran a hedge fund after that, after twenty twenty four
hedge fund guy, who created Obama care in Massachusetts, was gonna pay. The republican nominee.
That was insane, but in the end he was the only the everybody else was like unthinkable. That was the weird part.
if there had been a mildly thinkable other candidate who wasn't a lunatic or like ran on. You, know, preposterous ideas or something like that. You know Romney wouldn't have been the nominee. So who knows, but I mean it's like trumps blotted out the sun and and
Just yesterday, the air really did start going out of the balloon,
think I'm the who knows aspect is even more intense this time round. Then then, after any
because really, who knows what the post vaccine awfully post pandemic? U S is gonna be like that that that is at an end.
I utterly different proposition Ankara, yet role, yeah.
Many really is I mean no aside from banger, but I mean I think that look that national mood could shift remarkably em. You know we could have a huge, we could be bankrupt or we can have a huge spurt of you know of economic growth, particular both right or both. Well, I think both is the most likely.
sound cleavage between the people who are doing well in the people who never recovered. How about this about the fact that we have now, we will have let's
Let's assume the things go really well with the vaccinations right we're
I have a revolution in in american medical science led by this, like this is
the space program like we said we need of
see them a year we did it
actually the years. You know the what what
ancillary benefits. Are we gonna gain from the breakthrough in that system
where you now ordinarily, it would take seven years for something like that to be brought to market right,
I mean I don't know people well for one thing. Hopefully, people will be
we'll see the the
danger to some of the school erotic, approval processes for medical devices, for example, even the categorization, a certain things as medical devices that just slow
innovation, I mean that that actually is there
promising is, I think, a lot more average Americans are like. Why would it take six months to get up he protested to see if I hope it well, because that's how the bureaucracy functions,
we're challenging. That would be a very welcome thing, rice that treatments to
conditions like Alzheimer's,
half a dozen chronic conditions, that there are treatments, experimental treatments that are available but
are by no means anywhere near approval and are going
their trials abroad, because that's where you have
the trials and all that stuff, my change yet and the kind of resistance that you have from this classic set of democratic constituencies right the sort of the the tort bar.
the regular Euro serve the over regulatory state,
All of that, if this goes as well as we hope it goes
a lot of their strength, is given dissipate in the face of this overwhelming fact that we started in March and lets say by the end of six,
ten seventeen months later, three hundred
Thirty million people effectively will be met and maybe not have. Maybe two hundred and fifty million people will be vaccinated and what's more, a vaccine vaccines that require you to have two doses of the vaccine. This will be a. This could also be a kind of moment of com
finance American Ree, reassertion of american competence. You know h knows my theory that somehow everything stop,
working right. There is this point at which things
Gordon right, even while things were working serenely right, like you know, remember,
we no longer require we no longer have to hold onto our paycheck. We it's fine with us that the paycheck goes from some theoretical place. Come a computer to to
our computer and then we have money and our computer and then our computer. We pay other people money through our computer and we
barely hold out for a lot of us. We hardly ever see cash anymore. We have essentially gone to a very
close the cashless society a lot of people in the United States and that all happened. While we weren't look,
more didn't, really pay all that much attention and it's kind of an amazing thing. But I'm saying we have this kind of cod crisis of confidence that,
This could really you know what that might not be going away. I mean in the very near term, you could have an extremely stratified society based on income.
young people are recovered, but also whose
getting vaccinated and whose not there has to be some measure of proof.
as the world will open up for the vaccinated people and remote for everyone else, but
Don't there has been some weight, Madame LA removing a choice but see this is different because of a financial crisis. People lose their jobs
through no fault of their own right in a crisis. Things happen to people through no fault of their own, if Americans, if we
Fifty sixty seventy million Americans refused to get vaccinated. Thou
well beyond them.
Then who gets it felt like the ways I love and I'm gonna give you more about glue state governors here I will impose that kind of stratified taken on their respective states. You know what I'm serve. Thinking about this toward the end, not not not that the process of the vaccination itself could be total mass. I'm not saying it. Won't I'm saying that when it's all done.
see, unlike a bomb care, something which is that there was no end game for Abominate righto, a bomb care happen and there was a big mass and it was never really implemented. Now that was the biggest thing that ever happened and they didn't. You know how to design a website and all that was terrible, and so
They could never even claim any measurable results from this. You know gigantic expansion of policy right, but here we will
have this massive national effort? You know to create
seven hundred and fifty million doses of vaccine, which all have to be distributed in different ways in different kinds of freezers in different kinds of places and all that and if it works it'll be the it'll, be the equivalent of sending a man to the moon. Now, maybe people by the time we sent a man in the moon they stop.
caring as much as they they ought to. But you know that was also serve like taking it for granted that we people an already given us credit for coming to the moon, because they ve been watching these space launches for eight years. I just think
I just think yeah, we don't know what the national mood is gonna, be in twenty twenty four yeah. It could be a lot better. Nobody could be like you know, some sort of twenty first century, equivalent to the jazz age.
just you know, people going out, and you know just sort of happy to be
we already have species is right. There was a fantastic facing Europe maggots.
with Red like a lowest long, this backing from from these
your ground party venues where people are
you know I haven't coded parties.
a police knock on the door and like break it up it. It's really is a throwback to the twenties Saul, all cyclical yeah adzes,
as is sort of like there there's a funny thing. If you think back to the summer and people you know like shaming people for being on a beach without a mask, isn't that
women's Christian, Temperance Union. Just like
did you get my letter of twenty three February version of the of that? You know like this whole
culture of shaming people for not behaving in conformity with the rules that you know
Let's face it, we don't even know if the rules are good rules out really granted. We all where mask. But you know if we
red and twenty twenty three, that it turned out that the mass really didn't have that much effect with anybody really be surprised. No rats,
he's gonna be on a millennial, carry nation,
I found through the year
The saloon window
Well, I'm in there you know it's like day
I'm just saying like? I think there is a lot of their there a lot of parallel
Some analogues, too. You know that this.
covered was a is. It was a medical catastrophe that also you know dovetailed very much with, I would say, do gooder leftist, liberalising liberal intolerance patterns that are very long standing about or interfering with. You know it's like that joke about about. You know why why evangelicals? Don't you
dont like premarital sex, because it might lead to dancing. You know, there's a whole. You know, there's a that the design
to take away from other people because they might be having fun when you think that everybody should be wearing black and being in mourning is a is a deep human impulse
Let's just ramp them right, yeah. Actually I don't know anyone
so we will do one more of these this week and then take off until until now
very soon we will be back to you tomorrow for aid Christina now, I'm John passwords keep the candle.
Transcript generated on 2020-11-29.