Welcome to the commentary magazine. Podcast today is Monday November. Fourth, two thousand and nineteen. We are three hundred and sixty five days from the election. I am John Podhoretz. The editor of Commentary magazine with me, as always senior editor, Abe, Greenwald Height, Hi John Associate editor Noah, Rothman HI, Noah John and in Washington, senior writer, Christine Rosen HI, Christine Hi John, so uh

this may have been the most important couple of days in the democratic race so far because after much prodding Elizabeth Warren has had to sort of lay her cards on the table, having spent all this time defending Medicare for all, while being accused of not having numbers to support her claim that she could create a single payer government run system without raising a single dollar in middle class taxes, and her proposal has come out and uh. I think I thought,

spend some time sort of discussing various aspects of it, mostly there's there's there's the honesty question right does does. In fact, this plan not raise middle class taxes b. Is the plan workable in any way, shape or form and see what will its impact be on the race going forward? As we see Warren now in the lead in both Iowa New Hampshire and five or six points behind by the nationally Biden still holding, despite all of these incredibly negative attacks and coverage of him, and all that still holding in the high 20s around two thousand eight hundred and twenty nine percent nationally and Warren now up in the very low 20s, but very much up

So the first thing I think Noah is: will it raise middle class taxes? Okay? So the simple answer is yes and the really complicated answer is: oh, my god. You have no idea how much taxes are going to pay so I'm writing on this later. But my overall pression. Getting from a lot of this that I got from reading this plan is a sense of really being offended by how my intelligence was being insulted so consistently over the course of this effort to not fund Medicare, but to demonstrate the veracity of her claim, which is middle class taxpayers will not be paying anymore in income, so the really simple answer is no. You will be paying more in taxes, because this plan defines employer spending on health insurance.

As something that's, not yours, it is compensation. It's part of your compensation it's right so now all that money that your employer spends on your compensation for health insurance immediately becomes and ninety eight percent adjusted for employees, distribution to the government. Really that is sent. Employers should make all the Medicare Contra okay. So to make this really simple right. Your healthcare plan. Generally speaking, you pay seven percent or something like that of your salary that is ordinarily matched by your employer. So it's too level of around fourteen percent and that money will simply be will go from a system that we're is collected by the employer and then use the import. You know if this is in the case of what ninety percent of Americans with health insurance and that it will, it will simply be taken as as it is now, and it will

sent to the government okay, so that money that is collected for the purposes of private insurance will simply translate over into public insurance, which is that which is effectively if you think you can say that it is Nat Nat. If you accept this formula, which we right, which we can get to also, you can say that net net, it's zero percent increase in your in the punch that you get when you're and when your paycheck is deducted when health care is that from your paycheck yeah, but it is going from the private sector to the public sector yeah. So to call that not a tax increase is an act of pressed to do to take

I mean that is that is that is a complete active, misleading you're, taking fifteen percent of Americans salary and giving it to the government, and that's not a, but banking on the fact that most people won't notice it 'cause. You don't see that money in your bank account it's just right. It's like I not even a hint. I is it call it practical, it's not really all that hidden. It it'll also encourage gaming of the system, as firms will break off and smaller firms to avoid this sort of penalty and you'll shift employers around. So the the estimates I mean one of the part of the problem that plagues this entire funding mechanism that we haven't gone to any of it is that its estimates are just Lee off. I mean it assumes the most rosiest of scenarios and discounts the prospect of any

anomaly, minded individuals seeking to maximize their own personal benefit in order to avoid these fees and taxes, and so the notion that hey the top line of this program that that fifty two trillion over ten years is predicated on an assumption that even most other people who examined Medicare for all proposals, don't assume I mean it assumes a much lower cost for Medicare for all. So it's probably a ton of higher than that. Ok, There are two things here so one we have this re purposing of money, that is, that is a matter of a some contractual exchange between employee and employer, an employer and it's simply taken from the employee and given to the government by the employer. Okay. So that's essentially like the like income taxes on words, it's a they will your your our payroll or payroll tax. That's what I

yeah. Sorry, because you never see it right except that stuff. So that's that's number one number two is that most economists will tell you, if they're being honest, that the government, when you cut in a middle man, I'm like the government right, the government will be less efficient in handling the money, then the private sector. Why? Because the government has no incentive to the condom eyes. A lot of the house, though a lot of the difficulty that and is involved in the healthcare system, involves people annoyed and upset, because insurance companies try to make sure that the insurance system is solvent body, not simply approving everything and everything not being sort of politicizing. You know trade negotiating aggressively on price and things like that. The idea that the

government will do that more effectively and more efficiently than than insurance. Companies is belied by everything. We know about government from the big from time memorial that you could ever yeah go ahead and Christine sorry. I was just going to say that points really important, especially when you get into the details of the details about her plan. The thing she's she's touting his benefits. I was looking at the drug pricing stuff. You know, she's very big on how drugs should be cheap and she is buried in there this. This idea that that, if, if, if government will be the one negotiating with pharmaceutical companies about drug prices, and if they don't, you know, cut the price. According to her plan, she's saying that she's going to be allowed, the government will override the patent any pharmaceutical company has on a drug or tax them into

two submission and this this idea that this goes to this idea of efficiency. The idea that that's actually gonna be more efficient process rather than a free market process. It's kind of absurd and, of course, as with all such things is subject to regulatory capture, a subject to write shorts compass, so so you make for the for the people who have to deal with the cost of health insurance or healthcare There is now there will be a one stop shop and that will be the Congress in the Congress will be in the assuming this ever happened. You would have every three months, I'm kind of revision, bill rider, that's attached to something else, to adjust something that will make it possible for some employer in some congressional district or some manufacturer of some health care device and some getting that getting an individual tax break, and then we will have this world in which Congress simply becomes a body that is lobbied by health company by by by the

care system and by the way that will almost become a necessity because of her. If her idea, as as I think it is- is to cut some administrative costs in in ways that that that that she believes she knows how and then to sort of do Caribe further costs just out of the blue. That will cause it kind of crisis. In the market, in less people get exemptions of the of the sort you're talking about. I mean there is back to my really in

salted being feeling insulted. Reading this program, I mean that's the stuff predicated on again on the notion that you can basically price fix and tell hospitals and doctors and insurers that they will accept less and compensation price fix drugs. One of the things we do really well in this country: we don't do cost control very well, but one of things we do do is medical innovation, medical technology and pharmaceutical innovation, and that's one reason why most of the countries in the world don't fare that well in pharmaceutical innovation, particular part, because a lot of them are involved in drug pricing of price fixing schemes and there's a lot of that in this plan. The notion that you can just sort of decree prices and compensation rates- I mean there's a lot of people, don't I know what socialism is, but I mean that's pretty close. Yes, you can decree these things. I mean you

and there are different passive said legislation, but doctors in let us just game this out. Okay, because there is a the ultimate thing here- is that they are going to the government will unilaterally set prices or compensation structures for doctors and hospitals? right and so no problem, no shift in outcomes or change in outcomes or looking at quality of care will be the same here. Yet this is the where the rubber meets the road. We have a very weird thing going on in american Medison Ann in the public discussion of american men,

which is that everybody knows properly, that the system is a mess and that there is a sort of you know. Original sandwich was the use of employers to collect these monies as opposed to a signing the tax break to the individual, so that you then create these intermediate bureaucracies that negotiate and large scale that no one is responsible for their own costs. And it's you know our understands how to construct your works and it's like a huge mess. So we a huge mess. We stipulate that it is a huge mess. Okay, we also have the best healthcare system in the world. Now what that means is that if you take out car accidents, we have the we have, the you know, the oldest part of the the hell, the oldest and healthiest population, with with access without rationing, except by you know, except in the most extreme,

sense of the word: rationing to all health care procedures, all medications, so that much of what we discussed when we talk about health care. Are these extensions of the idea of healthcare to things that are arguably not stuff. That should be adjudicated kid by the healthcare system like transitioning, gender, transitioning and stuff like that, which is what we talk about when we talk about and what the Democrats talk about in their in their debate. Since when we're actually talking about health care, it's not like how do we make sure that an appendectomy is cheap? It's. How do we make sure that that Gender reassignment surgery is covered in prisons, A huge part of why we have the best healthcare system is because, in those social systems that that the left likes to hold up and

say you know this is how an industrialized country should run their healthcare system in those systems. The wait times for patients to see caregiver are enormous and I don't mean wait times as in sitting in the office waiting. I need to get an appointment. You can have a his condition and and and not be, would not be able to see someone for months so back to the middle class taxes that you're going to be paying really briefly. So there's one thing in there. That's particularly owners which the thirty five percent corporate tax rate was well beyond beyond anything in the industrialized world, but the taxes are activity so that they have to pay local tax. And then they have to pay taxes back to us and the easiest thing for a company to do under that kind of a structure is to sell off assets abroad cuz. Why would you pay to set the taxes we don't have to and that's it?

so everybody's going to do that. The most probably the most insulting thing for me in this whole plan was the wealth tax. So anybody who's been following Senator Warren's mini plans knows that the income from this fictitious constitutional wealth tax. It's never going to happen, has already been spent. It's been spent on childcare. It's been spent on education, on debt relief for students, all at he is two trillion so her claim is that the wealth tax she will tax. Let me liquid and illiquid assets of people who have fifty million dollars or more every extra two percent every year. Right so two percent. No. Now in this it original plan three percent for one hundred million or more percent ok. So we can go into the specifics of why this is unworkable and why every five european countries imposed wealth taxes, an remove them and it's unconstitutional, because

He very specific constitutional right. You had to amend articles one right in the minutes. Sixteen to pass an income to men sixteen says that income shall be taxed, which was a revision of article one which says that all monies have to be a portion by congressional district. I believe and direct taxes on direct taxes, so that was ex. That was amended literally by the by the sixteenth amendment, The word income is in there and so a national wealth tax and courts have upheld. It have found that, for example, the estate tax amounts to a transition are a transfer of money in your taxing the transfer, not the existence of the assets riles, okay, so and a wealth

x just so that it is understood. So it is not an income tax right, so income taxes, our tax, that if you have an income of let's say you had it income, not that hardly anybody in America has an income of fifty million dollars a year. You would be taxed at you know the thirty one is at thirty five percent top rate all, but like two hundred thousand dollars of what you make would be taxed at a thirty five percent rate and that's a pretty serious hall. Right so people so the wealth tax is an effort to get at the money. That is not income right which which are which are holdings, land ac things that are not things Voss is all that jewelry. It's all wealth right and the idea, then, is that every person who has this wealth will every year. To have it assessed its value that year, which is called mark to market

left to say what it is worth. Based on some formula with some that you what's the an entirely new field of people who will be doing this and then pay. I can't remember what the number is but the excess, what what the new taxes so and there was also an exit tax, which assumes some human nature that you, with this try to escape right with the your assets just get on a boat and flee, and for those of us who do that legally, there's a forty percent across the board, just graphics. Recent conversation, if you try to leave yet with your at, was the original plan right, so the new so land. Yes, in this health plan, which now finds Medicare for all on top of debt forgiveness, education, universal child CARE center doubles it's now. It's six percent no fans there were just going to double it, but it assumes the exact same rate of avoidance, fifteen percent, fifteen percent of two percent fifteen percent. At six percent I mean anybody who's

even has a passing familiarity with the concept of elasticity is really offended by that notion. You're. Just assuming you have no idea what I'm saying right now. It's also be said why this is important. Is that, while people without Wealth may think. Well what what do I care so let them let them be taxed at six percent. The consequences of a system that were actually impose. This would be so imp. It is so impossible even to begin to think of what would happen every land every landholder in America would seek to liquidate their properties and convert them into cash as soon as possible, otherwise they will be paying just to understand. They will be paying it's a new tax every year.

On land that is lying there fallow or on a painting They have hanging in their living room that, according to the theory of the income tax, the tax, or it has already been paid in two or three ways: one the money, bond initially in salary has been taxed by the by the income tax. There is likely to have been some kind of a local or now sales tax that was levied and now you're going to pay an annual tax simply for owning. Something for the right tone. It right right every year, forever but there's also another issue for Pii agree that I think a lot of people who say you know the the reason focus on whether this will raise money for raise taxes on the middle classes. That I do think

a lot of people who aren't you know who don't have fifty million dollars in the bank shrug when they hear her talk about well taxes or even think that's great yeah? Why not soak the rich? But the larger problem here is picks up a little bit as well on something Abe said earlier about the cost. That her plan will impose on the quality of care. That's where the one hundred and seventy million ought Americans who have private health parents are concerned and that's where I think what she an address and what we're already seeing this in our current healthcare system? But I think it will be wildly exacerbated a plan like Lawrence. Is the concierge medicine problem right? If you. Everybody moved over to a government healthcare system. There is not It will prevent the extremely wealthy from having an a separate concierge medicine style healthcare system that they pay out of pocket and that is going to be wildly better than anything that an inefficient government run healthcare system would be. We do already see this in countries that have the concierge healthcare system in the on the planet earth

all socialized medicine countries. You know what it is, the I did see a nine states. Every really person who does not live in the United States flies to the United States and pays full freight. Yes, I have an operation on their knee or on their kidney or whatever we are that this healthcare system we are in the this is the irony of someone Like Elizabeth Warren who claims to want to reduce income inequality and and reduce this wealth gap. She will she will end up creating a greater chasm in terms of what the see have verses when everyone else has. I think I'm not a big airplane ran fan, but you, if you are, we you know in the dystopic world of ATLAS, shrugged and you can see how this would follow in a world in which you did this and then there was a concierge healthcare plan. Then you would criminalize, Hunt concierge Healthcare and you would make doctors- and you know, places that do these things.

You would outlaw their right to do this and that's where we start getting into fundamental issues of I want to make one point more about the greatness of the american healthcare system, messy though funding is in the fact that we're about to go off a cliff with the baby, boomers retiring and Medicare doesn't and medicate don't have enough money and all of that right is name a healthcare device invented over the last fifty years that was not created in the United States, or cancer therapy right. Well, okay, so there are some cancer therapies that have come from Switzerland and there are some drugs of come from Switzerland and there are some health, your devices that have been perfected or improved in Israel and places like that they're about four countries in the world where there is any kind of you know, medical innovation and none of them is you know, and all of it depends on the United States having this massive RD funding system. That is all part and parcel of this immensely

complicated machinery it is a mess, but nonetheless produces outcomes that you want. You know it's like do we have a problem with you know, Fizer, making you know Oxycontin and getting every you know the FED knowing getting everybody addicted. Well, somebody then events Narcan, which saves people's lives. Imagine a world in which you have one, but not the other. Imagine a world in which, like I I have sleep apnea twenty years ago I got a c pap machine c. Pap machine is a is a device that you know hasn't 10s of millions of people's lives. It's a pretty simple machine. It's cost has dropped over the twenty years that I've had it. The machine itself has been improved and improved, and now we get it was once like half the size of half a table and now there's a little thing that sits on a night stand all of that and it it means because it exists. It means that us

surgery that was very ineffective is no longer even performed where they serve shave, the back of your throat, in order to make sure that your throat didn't close up. While you slept that machine machines, like that, my my daughter had a little had a weird thing called a pda where some of our part of a passage between her long in her heart that is supposed to close up immediately upon birth, one of these sort of miracle things that happens upon birth. That you know suggests there's a guy that didn't in high. Really close and she had to have this little thing put in when she was eight years old. It looks like a tiny little spring, just to fill the hole,

When we went to see the doctor when she was two- and he heard they heard this- he said- listen I mean we could do it now, but they keep improving this all the time, and you know it probably it's actually better if we do, which is eight or nine there's, no, no the only risk if she's older and she can get an infection. It's not you know life threatening. Why don't we wait until she's eight, and you know there they'll be an indie feed, so they had invented a new little coil thing and look for all. We know it cost one thousand dollars. I don't care I mean I'm just saying like that is now her heart, she is done it or not. Passed away, is closed off and she'll be fine for the rest of her life and You know, ten years from now under Elizabeth Warren's plan, be no such thing, No one will invent such a thing because hospitals, rd drug companies, medical appliance-

medical device. Companies are all going to be working for the government. The existence of the Staten, which is not that old you know, has radically by some estimates, reduced up to one slash four of the people who would have died as a result of heart disease, heart disease, who makes absolutely now, you can mention this all the time and then people say not all that will all workout it'll be fine, but the fact is uh aside from everything else and of course the big thing is that the cheapest we're talking about twenty trillion dollars at the cheap in new spending over ten years right, that's new stats! What she admits to right. That's lower trillion dollars a year right, more than social Security and Medicare combined now right, okay, so that's new spending that

That's with all this money coming in from the expropriation of the pay were also I'm. I wanna give Elizabeth Warren, who do it's? Not all new tax increases in her plan there is some cost control provisions, but they're absolutely silly among the notion that we should just spend a lot more money on tax enforcement would an we can recoup he's in trillions of dollars that we just simply let fly because we don't enforce it. Her estimate is roughly forty times what the Cbo estimates we could get from increased enforcement, which is something that Congress is willing to do tomorrow if there was a viable plan that would pass with bipartisan support today and among her funding mechanisms is for his immigration reform, just kind of snapped her fingers and says you know this most of this. If complicated issue that has roiled american politics for a generation will simply be assumed now The other thing is four hundred million. Four hundred billion is what she gets out of that which is comparatively

right. So she claims money from something nonexistent and I believe from what I I'm led to understand, because the Democratic Party is now committed to the notion of universal Healthcare for for illegal that money is not in the that money is not apparently in the plant? So, aside from creating this bizarre new incentive to have people. You know flood across the border because once they hit land and they can stay here and Elizabeth Warren Administration, they get cradle to grave They should cradle to grave healthcare which, while it will not be as good as America, Healthcare is now is certainly better than you would get in El Salvador it. You know, then id so Can it go head? Can I just I just want to interject with one one thing here just because in our partisan times we know we're I've. I've read in the last. You know a few days people calling her her projections.

The cost. You know of fantasy, our friends at the dispatch color a Rube Goldberg machine like trying to describe this but Actually, a lot of the a lot of the arguments with her plan are coming from the center left and left saying you know at least ten trillion dollars under estimating the cost me. The urban institute you've got folks who you know Kessler. Third way, these are folks who are not conservatives. You know they're happy to see more government intervention in the healthcare system, but they are. Calling her to the carpet for deliberately underestimating what this is. That is very important, and it has to be said that this is where we have this idea that a single single payer healthcare

has become now some kind of nearer. I mean I know that Biden says he's not for it and blue Judge says it's not for it and all this, but it has become. This kind of you know accepted doctrine that if you could have it, you would want it, but it's just not really workable. So maybe we can have a public option a little. Some people can try it and then we'll see, but it's not really but look. Theoretically, that would be the best. If we could have total health care and nobody would pay. Right. That would be great. You know it's like just like. It would be great if we could just drink the ocean. You know- or you know, However, that would be fantastic too, but but We have to move on to the telegraph road I just briefly just to have before we get off

Elizabeth Warren I know, I I'm not gonna get off. Okay, okay, I'm sorry! I just wanted to say that she's, you know kind of spent the week I mean should drop this on a Friday because she was very proud of it clearly and she spent the weekend defending it for info in front of reporters and has looked like a fool. She's been singing pushed on the tax issue, middle class. People are going be paying more taxes. Now the only people who are going to be paying more taxes, she says point blank are billionaires, there are six hundred billionaires in America, yes, that's it yes, so only those six hundred people are going to be putting the cost, and if you are in the business of health insurance, which is a pretty, right, like nine hundred billion dollar industry, it's a big big industry. You are going be transitioned by our benevolent government into other insurance lines just to keep you working if you're

health insurance. You can just transition, she assumes into auto life or home. That's what she said. Literally literally. She said this, which is the dumbest thing. I've heard a politician say in a very long time last version of his learn to code as they left. It is wonderful, but it assumes that the assumption I think she she has is that these are everything I mean it's all insurance right, so you pretty much know the game for home and auto if you're in health insurance, but there are very okay, so worn out shoes. So, according to, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, four hundred thousand people work in some form or another in the field of health insurance. Four hundred thousand people. Now you can assume that the I in private health insurance that they work for insurance companies they work for companies in there insurance

planes, departments and all that. So again, I thought the Democratic Party was, you know, terribly worried about job losses. I mean we're talking about we're, not even getting to the point that this will never happen, but it, but the point is that she cavalierly Illinois it's in industry, too late. She also, this is the green new deal. She supports the green deal as it is written right which transitions the entire petroleum industry and everybody associated with it into green energy, a variety of other occupation. Yeah I mean you could just be a security guard for yeah, but right, that's right. That's a whole variety of other programs when she would literally remake the economy and friends and dumped it takes where you work right now, Ross staff that I thought made it had a three click analogy in his column on Sunday, which is that This is like the flat tax that the single pair healthcare, maybe for democratic candidates. What the flat tax became from, like you know,

one thousand nine hundred and ninety six on for republican candidates that Steve Forbes ran in nineteen. Ninety six as a single issue, candidate on a flat tax. Black sex by the way was the signature idea of the origination of the progressive movement that was Henry George Sort of Mass movement in 1880s, for a flat tax which anyway this it's a very interesting thing that this you know, a big progressive, populist movement ends up as a sort of republican efficiency. Talking point by two thousand and eight two thousand and twelve a lot, and pains had to sort of like pale, be essence to the conceit of a flat tax right. This is the only way to do it. You can have a fleet of the one. You know you'll basically said you're, pay, the IRS with a with a card, and you know it says, be fifteen percent for everybody, and that would be so great at nine hundred and ninety nine and one thousand five hundred and fifty

fifteen and whoever you know whatever numbers there are, and it's all nonsense, it's our our goal. Nonsense. It will never happen, but because it became some kind of weird OBS, it's too to Epson Apple kind of conservative, or Roxanne taxation that is now mysteriously vanished. Now that there's a popular actual populous in the White House who doesn't care about any of this um. That single pair is functions as that for Democrat, that it is an unworkable idea in the american system that they're all going to have to sort of pay distance to, and you see this in Ross's colleague, Paul Krugman, who said look. This can ever happen, but he sort of padded Warren on the head and said, but look it's not really about something that could happen. This is all a statement of values and the value. Policy like how our policy should comport with our values so we now have a note,

prize winning economist Lefty Idiot, saying that we should be thankful to Elizabeth. Or in for designing a nonsense plan that doesn't work because he likes the sentiment behind it any that is already signaling that that takes virtue signaling to entirely new level moral in this as far as I can tell, but it a lot of people said it. There were very actions. Have it all weekend Christina had a good observation on that right? Well, it just it just struck. As the you know, the Democrats are becoming that that their policy making is becoming a vast act of virtue signalling. This was what we saw with the green new deal and and aimed correctly pointed out to me on our group text that it this is not just signaling, because the there's a trickle down a fax to these broad claims of policy making. You know virtue signalling, which is that sometimes some of them do get an active and that's problematic and and but but what

strikes me is this weird. You can't really hold women's idea and warns plan- Conveniently in your mind, unless you're embracing consistency, because if it's just an exercise in and moral policymaking, virtue signalling, then what is her campaign for because she can't she could. She could do this in the Senate right. She could sponsor legislation trying to try to do that. This way, her whole campaign is saying: the system is broken and we have to blow it up and start from scratch. That's not that's not about values at all. That's about completely transforming the way our politics and government is work and- and her whole campaign is predicated on this idea that she was a policy giant. You know this She you had ideas, news of and and and particularly her health care plan was. That was the one that was her signature planet now, content in it is, it is just the most risible, humiliating but think about this she's. A giant

Why? Because she was a an academic who did all this earliest work, on the Structural change of american society being on being horribly punitive toward ordinary american work right so, and some of that work was really good, actually had some really good works. Actually, so you know no Everyone has to be a tour family that wasn't true before and you know, corporations are run, You know short term gain and not long term success and there's, ability in all that stuff right. So that was her. And then leading to she was there or position to be the candidate to talk seriously about income. Inequality is a major issue and what is her campaign now about healthcare and the green new deal she hasn't even talking about her own signature issues anymore. None of, this is a- she is simply riding whatever it.

It's a sign of a kind of you know it's weird, maybe it's working for her, so she's gotten to two thousand one hundred and twenty two percent but she isn't who she is like. She's got, Bernie's healthcare plan and she's got a ocis. Judy Lynn? What is hurt? What is Elizabeth Warren? What is the thing that Elizabeth Warren was that made Elizabeth Warren Elizabeth Warren. None of it is even authentic to her doctor choose a particularly authentic person, but none the less that she at least has one form of policy authenticity that is now completely golly from this discussion. I think you get that sense from the really hard core progressives for from Bernie. Sanders is more palatable choice because they they don't really believe that Elizabeth Warren is going to have their backers there she's a nominee that you'll have it to the center and because she's kind of a shapeshifter- and I think, they're right there, one one briefly sentiment abroad. Among

really petulant Medicare for all supporters who are very irritated by this news cycle suggests that even asking about cost is a double standard that exists. Only for progressive Democrats that republican plans are never questioned about store? That's not just cost but like in a lost revenue in terms of tax cuts from and that we should it's not it. The sentiment is what we should be accepting and the I mean, even if you really believe that and you shouldn't, because it's silly the answer to the response to Why doesn't anybody else is planned, get picked apart for cost me. The answer to that is always going to be. The cost is not fifth, the two trillion freaking dollars, it's unfathomable, literally unfathomable number right. So when Donald Trump.

Being unbelievably irresponsible with our defense spending increased our defense spending by two hundred million dollars. Associated with this. There are that's right, there's four hundred and ninety billion dollars in defense cuts which misunderstands by the way, because that's it that's a yearly appropriation verses that like it it doesn't. Even it assumes that every year they're going to be able to pass that right kind receive contingencies, yeah! Well I mean that's that that look all all plans when they say things have to be paid for over ten years. So you know it's like saying that that standard wasn't applied to you know, conservative republican policies is so preposterous. Because people remember very reason that the Bush tax cuts of two thousand and one became a huge political issue after the twenty ten election, is that they were going was in

order to make them fit a complex structural form. They had to go away after ten years and have had to be reinstituted according to so that they were not place there in perpetuity so that they could be viewed as cost effective like that that people you think Republicans didn't want to just simply change. Tax law and have a change forever like they did to twist themselves into pretzels. In order to get this done and that you know sometimes that's hypocritical, but hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue right. That's that's the idea that, you try to do this and make it seem like it's plausible, in order to pay to virtual Cigna for the idea that everything doesn't come for free and that you're, not Pt Barnum, saying: there's a sucker born every minute, I'm going to propose to you a fifty two trillion dollar health care They can never happen so that you can pretend,

discipline so that you can say well, okay, she's clear on that now I can vote for her now. Let's just take a break, let me talk to you about the very toothbrush that I use this morning. As you know, and I think I know as well this morning- quip toothbrush- why Abe and Christine aren't using it? I don't know I'm going to make we're going to make them because It's not that I'm saying that Abe's teeth look, yet they don't look. Yellow Abe's teeth are but they might if he doesn't use weapons. All I'm saying with the patented two minute: four quadrant buzzy every thirty seconds shift your quadrant, where you brush your teeth. So look what makes a better toothbrush a this is. What I'm asking you is it industrial strength powered knows it claims of miraculous. Turning reading to know multiple modes Nostradamus, don't say it's not about the brush and more about how to use it. That's why I quit was created by the dentist and product designers to focus on what actually matters for your oral health healthy or have.

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air or at least electoral prayer. I came out with a extraordinary poll today, five close to six thousand respondents in eight battleground states and the cross to it's very meticulous. Identified everybody they've identified, everything at sixty five percent cell calls. So no one can say: well, it's just home people who were in it and Following a pattern of polling, they didn't two thousand and sixteen where this at this kind of aggregate pull over eight states had a one percent margin of error and what they find is that Trump is in pretty good shape in the eight states that where the election is going to be

contested and particularly in the three or four states, where you know the Democrats really have to flip back to the democratic side. So we've been our going for three years about has Trump has trump Mandy this base has he done. This said how the it's doing in these states. Obviously, in twenty eighteen they did great in the you know they. So that shows that he behind, and all this polling suggests that if the election were held right now, it's a total jump ball. Whether the Democrats are Trump could secure those states an when when the twenty twenty election I have to have

self on the back for a second year, but there's something in that poll. That's that to suggest that those the voters who voted for Trump last time around but voted Democrat in the last midterms will again vote for Trump. Ok, two slash three of them, right, two thirds of that. Okay. So, according to the poll right and I- and I nearly two thirds of the Trump voters who said they voted for democratic congressional candidates in twenty eighteen say, they'll back the president against all three named opponents that Sanders Biden and more more I have to say that at the time I remember I wrote a post after the midterm, saying it doesn't make sense. I could see it doesn't make sense to me that they're voting for Democrats in midterms meant that Trump had lost them

right? However, we don't know what well I mean, but yeah there were shows thirty. Thirty three percent of them have left and gone permanently democratic. I, according to the overall pulling itself that hasn't that hasn't yet push them everybody into the Democratic CAM fair enough, and while this survey is, I agree with the jump ball sentiment for Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Joe Biden does have a distinct advantage in this survey, but well it's not that big, though I think it's like. I mean it's not that big, but statistically significant, but after five points in some sense right, so here's my prediction that my prediction, after all, the democratic folks strategist in stuff, look at these numbers today. Is that we're gonna, hearing once again the revival of the we must abolish the electoral college, O box. Ezra Klein already said this Ezra Klein said this is so unfair according to this. According to this, this is one of these things that proves that, if Republicans

to run even or a little less than even even if they lose the popular vote, sixty five percent of the time they will win in the electoral college, and the simple fact of the matter is this, which is, if the composition of the Democratic Party, that as as this coastal party, has pushed the party so far to the left- that it cannot up that will find itself in deficit in in dust, heavy industrialized states like Michigan Pennsylvania, Michigan, I mean Michigan is competitive in all of these. It's like yeah. It's you can't look yourself in the

since in Michigan his competitive, what happened? How did? How did we let this happen right so and with this now goes to what we've been talking about with Warren and and the healthcare plan which doesn't even get to the cultural stuff which we should also talk about, which is if the Democrats lose in twenty twenty will be because they are too far left there. It is not the case from what we see in this polling that we have, why old in through the Azam for Trump among even these voters who say that they will vote for him, even if they didn't vote for them and involve republican in twenty eighteen. It is. That

the Democratic Party is suggesting that it is unfit to govern in policy terms and in cultural terms, the cultural terms we now Know- and Tom Edsall has done great work on this writing pieces in the New York Times every week or every other week about. This is what we get now comes under the rubric of of political correctness. Right I mean that's because no one else knows how to talk about these things, but it's you know we're gonna, take your church tax exemption away. If you don't think the way we want to we're going to seize your guns were going to make your your. We're going to force your kids to go to unisex bathrooms, we're going to make you pay for gender reassignment surgery in prison. And if your, if you, fifteen year, old daughter has to run against a fifteen year old boy who has long hair and identifies as a girl in a track meet, and he wins because of the Natur,

physical advantage that males have over females skeletally, you got you're, not you're a bigot. If you complain and get the college scholarship, because that's right, so this is a real thing, and you know there is a there's. A group called the american principles project. It's a it's a it is testing out all sorts of messages relating to cultural radicalism in the Democrats and how that can possibly translate into national political advantage for Trump and the Democrats. Walking themselves right into this buzz saw. No. By the way making them. I just want to at the story about, and this group that would that appeared in the New York Times. The headline that was chosen is why conservatives really just I roll every time at the main everyone says: mainstream media bias is a real. The headline was a conservative push to make transkei

in school sports, the next battleground in the culture war? Of course, this is a reaction to a progressive puffs to start this up, but it's always the conservatives are pushing so that that that was one of those little minor. I mean at the risk of like stepping on a land mine son this, so we had a great thought experiment was it and I Stealing from you, I apologize. I don't forget who you are, but if, if you really genuinely believe there are multiple digit gender options and the sports thing is becoming a real problem, then you would suggest a Trans League, like women's League Mail League, translate. But you can't do that, because The people who are biologically male would do better than the people who are biologically female does integrating the conservative critique

but I'm just saying that in in in large picture, what we know is that my in theory, given the fact that Trump is at forty, two percent of forty three percent or whatever in in in public opinion, has never gotten over that, hardly in the course of his presidency and is widely thought of. As being you know, unfit for the Office of court again according to polls, sixty percent of people questions character and all of that, and he has an even better than even chance. According to this poll, which is the most rigorous pole that is, you have been done in this cycle and it's a year away, but he isn't even or better better than even chance of winning the presidency because of the Democratic Party's jumping off like like walking itself off, and logical cliff. No, it's only logical cliff where we're according this in midtown Manhattan in the Georgetown DC.

But it isn't easy logical, cliff in Pontiac MI, it's only logical, cliff in Wilkes Barre PA. It's an ideological cliff in Ohio, which went eight point. For Trump in twenty sixteen, and is that you know what the what is the Ohio has been in the president's camp for the last well the lections or something like Ohio was the bellwether state, so is when is yuri okay back in the day right Well, it changes, obviously, but but the

It's not changing. Is that the that the these twenty Democrats, and now it's narrowing in window in all this- are putting themselves in a position where this isn't like the rom? The you know, saying he's for you know, would severely conservative and that makes it impossible for him to win the election twenty twelve. They are taking sessions that make ordinary people deeply uncomfortable, economically and culturally Biden we'll be able if he were the nominee to have an easier time heading towards the center than some of his other complex? Not even that much of a pen that I mean I what the center, obviously some nominal yeah. You know deference to the yes, culturally aggressive themes, but not as much as this this left yeah. But I mean, for example, like so people, but a judge has been moving. You know has been some going moderate, having tried to run as a totally woke person

in the for and by the way successfully, because it got a lot of money on the coast? It was like rolling in money. This you know guy from no way her from South Bend Indiana, but you know here's the question. Eight eight married gave I, with a kid who's, going to have this husband going around as his spouse? During that. He himself there's a limit to how far he can move to the center, because he personally represents the cultural change in his own person. That will you know you think there was a Bradley vote where people said they will. You know they they would vote for a black eye, but they wouldn't vote for a black eye. You think there isn't that vote for weight when

comes to to homosexuals. You are very wrong in my view. You know we have no evidence to suggest people are much more accepting, but that doesn't mean that that's what they want so. Yeah Biden. I mean that this is where you're going to see a full blown panic on that on that for the next thirty six hours there will be a total democratic I am waiting over New York Times. Another interesting democratic panic among coastal progressives, for whom the democratic voting base has become unaccept not off me. Yes, the gate right there. In this case, we now have some research to suggest that one of the reasons why, but it is african american strength is per, is particularly low and the statistically supported now is because there is some antipathy towards the gate.

Marriage within the african american community were most a lot of democratic right now. We've also saw something: an axe goes over the weekend, which was hysterical, which is that african american candidates for office generate less money from small dollar contributors than do white candidates, which is why you seemed more white people doing better. First of all, the presidential race is a terrible way to illustrate this, because you have plenty of white candidates who have not been able to raise really well you to stop Beto drop out as a, result of his terrible fundraising, has an answer not initially million dollars and twenty initially he did really well. Kamala Harris was two million dollars in twenty four hours after that, when the baby yeah. But this is unless a sentiment abroad that democratic voters who contribute to candidates are a little racist yeah I mean this is

This is the kind of at least you're beginning to see the shades of this server internet seemed turmoil, as the progressive left wasn't getting. Their way really begins to turn on their letters. Well, look at look at look at the reaction to the resignation of Katie Hill right, the the California Cogs, the throw up old California Congress woman caught out with these hundreds of photos of her. They make it whatever right. So she was frog, marched out of the party quietly by Nancy Pelosi, the email me like where you listen. Okay, a lot of ownership of okay, and yet it is in part. And yet the idea is you know, these were public is very you know I mean we are just people today are just so judgmental, and you know We have to do something about this 'cause, so many people are going to come down. The pike with terrable photos naked photo,

of themselves. Well, that's that's how they're rationalizing her fall is not that you be use power which he clearly did. She was under a house ethics investigation when she resigned it's that it's just so terrible for women, because you know we bench porn is so awful as she was the victim here. You know she has this terrible extras battling indoors. She had to play the victim and which was in by the way by people like you, I know MAR and others who, over the weekend, we're meeting in a supportive pictures of her. So that's the thing is that she did. There cannot be responsibility for the fact this the most powerful woman in the Democratic Party, and wisely so with a pretty scolding, I might add, and why did she couldn't accept that? And why did you do it? Because the party cannot afford you know what they're fighting for their lives here and the party cannot afford to have as its public face. X, a thirty two year old woman naked the back having her hair brushed or someone

when I see you picture is, I don't even say seen it so and just is that this is the ultimate existential question which is: can the Democratic Party go to November two thousand and twenty with Elizabeth Warren as its nominee with this health care? and to me it seems like an act of complete suicide based on what we're seeing here. But parties do you know people do you know, there's a kind of the animal spirits take over and we haven't even talked about. Question whether or not a failed impeachment of failed removal? What what the

potential consequences of that will be for some democrats in these very places like forget national polling like if they have to win Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Will the people of Michigan's with these, though the very people that it was talking about? Do they want trump and removed from office? Do they want him impeached? Will this make it more likely that They will vote for trump because they think the Democrats have gone crazy or not. I don't know the answer, but they don't know the answer either and that's why pleo sees prudence until three weeks ago seemed like a very rational approach. Response you get to this overreach from democratic partisans is always well. You know Trump is president and just the existence of his presidency, despite all his nonsensical and ridiculous and oftentimes offensive proposals during the primary didn't prevent him from winning the nomination in order to prevent him

winning the presidency, which just seems like a bad lesson to take away from twenty sixteen, because none of the work trump none of your incredibly famous political neophytes, who benefit from twenty seven billion dollars in free advertising? Whatever was if your? If your pedigree is somebody like Elizabeth Warren's than you are expected to operate at a higher standard of competency end? That is the one get to the question of who in that, if you, if you separate out all the nonsense and the tweeting, and that there's some of that and you were to put in columns what sort of Trump says he stands for and what the Democrats stand for, and you go to the places that are going to decide the election. Who is closer to the you know too? persuade persuadable, voter and closer? This were swale, voter is social

health care, and you know boys running as girls in races and- and you know and by by again paying, for you know, Chelsea Manning surgery in prison. I know, And but yeah open borders with people who get cradle to grave health care. I mean, if that's, what did the end and and the elimination of the car and compassion and of refurbishing every free standing structure in the country and, of course, the other we haven't even talked about fracking, which is you know, american energy independence like removed by- not by a president who decides that we shouldn't have american energy independence anymore, because, as as people in the in the all that we are sitting in right now we're having having trouble accessing natural gas, because New York State just can't deliver it to the down state, where there's an monopoly control over over delivery and they're, just not pulling enough of it out of the ground. They have to get it from

Sylvania, which is actually pulling that natural gas out from your honor New York and in the I can react to them. Yes, in the I drink, your milkshake policy of all time, so I, and you know they have a year and Biden. Isn't that guy, that's the whole point about biting and yet binding, of course still has his profound. You know, then Biden really goes to the question of whether he's fit for office Mentale or you know, whatever that's a whole. Other thing is going to be a big deal. Uh and I would say just to complete the biden- thought that what all of this pulling tells you is yeah. I was a very left wing state,

Biden was actually doing better there than he probably should have given, given the nature of the democratic electorate in Iowa, and we have Warren and Sanders are from neighboring states of new hat. You know. Basically, if you remember New Hampshire was hardly contested in previous presidential cycles, when there was a candidate from Massachusetts in the cycle, because it was a that that that person would win nationally Democrats seem to want him more than they want anybody else and they're they're not being pulled away from him. Like he's, you know down three or four points over three months after bad debates and all sorts of questions about him. They want him or

somebody like him, but they don't want anybody who else is even remotely like him in the race right. The clover charred didn't happen after the last debate. Were we all thought she was pretty good and but a judge is that seven percent- and I don't know you know so there- is that weird thing like the Democratic Party as a whole. Isn't signal pay? You know yeah? Yes, of course they like Warren, because they, you know they they're dead Democrats. They don't dislike turn the way we might just like her. But you know so. This is going to be a really interesting couple of weeks to see how all of this is digested, because also by the way, if, if her plan like doesn't pass the smell test and people hate it and all that doesn't have a deal. Interior checked on Sanders. Also well, there's this we're phenomenal. He has a not totally, but it's a

from planets in legislation. So it's actually something that's been picked apart by and also he's not he's has been trying to cover up the the tax increase right and yeah and yeah and he's he steadfastly refuses to pay put a pay for plan out there, because it's really stupid to put a paper plan out there is little horn is ably demonstrated, but one of the things that the interesting dynamic that may unfold over the course of the next couple weeks, especially leading into the next debate. Is there is this prevailing sentiment in the press that Elizabeth Warren is the candidate to be and when she is leading in in Iowa and New Hampshire, depending on the poll which would make her the prohibitive Canada it. But yet, as you say, Joe Biden's polling in the MID thirties NASH which would obviously translates with high 20s low 30s depending on the Poll Fox NEWS Poll, was thirty. Three, I think thirty one.

Which would translate into a lot of support if he survives past the early states and then just super Tuesday. So Elizabeth Warren has the target on her back, but Joe Biden is still pulling at the top of the pack right. So you know that's why I say it's. This is a very weird set of political facts. Of course, very weird sets of political facts like it was always the case that the Republican Party was more moderate than the than the the presidential elector it was, and so you had that two election cycles of freak shows you know with these sort of ludicrous candidates emerging and then blowing themselves up in emerging and blowing themselves up, and then you had two thousand and sixteen, where you had like twelve kredible candidates and Trump and the kredible candidates got nowhere 'cause they were too kredible and he was you know he was the black swan who was willing to cut through all the

nice to these, but you know it if this New York Times Poll is not a wake up call for demo, not that I know what they can do with. What can they do to wake up? I mean there's no we're not to go in terms of five g, two trillion dollars, I know, but what that? What we're saying is the half. That means they have to go to Biden, and you know what, if Biden, you know sort of says yet again that there Johnson was president before the civil war like that was his latest. That was his latest thing. You know even before the civil war Andrew Johnson was president, but I don't know I mean who k who's going to know

No one's being taught civic. So what do they know? When do they know Andrew John? They think Andrew Johnson was president after John F Kennedy, probably anyhow, so we will. We will bring this session of left wing bashing to it to a close for Christine. And no idea where it's keeping it over.