The Trump Show
00:07:
(JVL)
Welcome to The Next Level.
00:11:
(JVL)
This is JVL here with Sarah Longwell and Tim Miller of The Bulwark.
00:18:
(JVL)
Guys, how are we all doing?
00:20:
(Tim Miller)
Well, I'm living in a dystopic hellscape of fire and plague in California, but otherwise I'm doing really quite well.
00:28:
(Sarah Longwell)
Oh, I thought you were talking about the Republican National Convention.
00:31:
(JVL)
Also that.
00:32:
(JVL)
Bada bing.
00:33:
(JVL)
We're going to talk about three things today.
00:35:
(JVL)
We're going to talk about the Republican National Convention.
00:38:
(JVL)
We're going to talk about the bizarre paradox of the 2020 race.
00:42:
(JVL)
And we're going to talk about the violence in Kenosha.
00:45:
(JVL)
But Tim is going to lead us off talking about the RNC.
00:48:
(JVL)
Tim, go.
00:48:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah, style and substance, I want to hit on both.
00:52:
(Tim Miller)
And starting on the substantive side, I went into this a little bit after day one in the newsletter while JVL was deep sea diving.
01:04:
(Tim Miller)
And the most noticeable thing for me about the convention from a substantive standpoint has, besides the fact that every single speaker mentions school choice, which I can't even remember when Donald Trump last talked about school choice.
01:20:
(Tim Miller)
So I'm curious what's going on there.
01:22:
(Tim Miller)
But the other substantive thing that I've noticed is that there is this dichotomy.
01:28:
(Tim Miller)
between the two Trumps, the speakers who actually like Donald Trump and actually understand what Donald Trump's voters want and spend most of their time talking about cancel culture and how great the orange God is and talking about how wonderful things were before the China virus came into the country and was the invisible enemy.
01:49:
(Tim Miller)
And then that's the only thing that they mentioned about it.
01:52:
(Tim Miller)
And focus on kind of these populist themes that drove Trump success in 2016.
01:59:
(Tim Miller)
And then you have other speakers, including the president's wife, weirdly, and Nikki Haley and Tim Scott, who either act as if he doesn't exist at all.
02:08:
(Tim Miller)
And their substance of their remarks are all about like interesting things that they've done or interesting or positive kind of traditional Republican-y bills that he signed, like Opportunity Zones.
02:21:
(Tim Miller)
And then completely ignore the main beating heart of Trumpism, the sort of popular cultural grievance.
02:29:
(Tim Miller)
And I think maybe some of that is by design.
02:32:
(Tim Miller)
And they're using kind of Nikki and Melania to appeal to the softer Republican female voters in particular who have left the party.
02:42:
(Tim Miller)
I think that's a tough sell.
02:44:
(Tim Miller)
But I also think part of it is not by design.
02:47:
(Tim Miller)
And they just...
02:50:
(Tim Miller)
have no kind of control over this.
02:53:
(Tim Miller)
I mean, Trump's body language was very bad during Melania's speech last night.
02:57:
(Tim Miller)
Tim Scott's speech very much read like it was written by Tim Scott's people.
03:00:
(Tim Miller)
And so they're just kind of letting a thousand flowers bloom.
03:05:
(Tim Miller)
And if one guy talks about how Joe Biden wants to empty the prisons and the next guy talks about how Joe Biden filled the prisons, like whatever, that's fine.
03:12:
(Tim Miller)
Who cares?
03:12:
(Tim Miller)
Nothing matters.
03:13:
(Tim Miller)
it's Donald Trump.
03:16:
(Tim Miller)
So from a substance standpoint, that's been what stuck out for me for the first two days.
03:22:
(Tim Miller)
Sarah, what'd you think?
03:25:
(Sarah Longwell)
You know, one of the things that I think I tweeted this, but that has struck me is that, you know, despite how anti-Trump I am, obviously I've been a Republican since I was like old enough to formulate a political opinion.
03:39:
(Sarah Longwell)
And
03:39:
(Sarah Longwell)
And oftentimes during this Trump era, there will be things that remind me of why I was attracted to the ideas of the Republican Party, very few of which exist these days.
03:53:
(Sarah Longwell)
But I'm reminded like, oh, I still I believe this thing or that and and still identify with certain when the Republican Party starts to sound like an old version of itself.
04:03:
(Sarah Longwell)
I can I can like remember, oh, yeah, this is why I supported this party.
04:07:
(Sarah Longwell)
I watched this convention, and I have yet to feel even the remotest sense of identifying with these people.
04:15:
(Tim Miller)
The gun couple didn't?
04:18:
(Tim Miller)
The woman in the gun couple family has a lot of similar traits to you, no?
04:22:
(Tim Miller)
No.
04:23:
(Sarah Longwell)
They just it feels like and this has happened, I mean, really in the Trump era where I'm like, these are not my people.
04:28:
(Sarah Longwell)
The conspiracy mongering, the apocalyptic talk, the over the top.
04:33:
(Sarah Longwell)
I mean, look, you can criticize Democrats for a bunch of things on policy grounds, but they just just saying socialism, socialism, socialism over and over is not.
04:42:
(Sarah Longwell)
It's neither a fair characterization of the vast majority of the Democratic Party, which nominated the most centrist candidate in their field, with the exception of Mike Bloomberg, of course.
04:53:
(Sarah Longwell)
Nor does it sort of...
04:55:
(Sarah Longwell)
It just doesn't fit the platform or the way that Joe Biden is even projecting himself.
04:59:
(Sarah Longwell)
I mean, they literally...
05:00:
(Sarah Longwell)
The Democrats just had a convention that featured a number of Republican speakers.
05:04:
(Sarah Longwell)
They are clearly trying to signal being a big tent party.
05:07:
(Sarah Longwell)
So anyway, it's just...
05:08:
(Sarah Longwell)
I just...
05:09:
(Sarah Longwell)
And also, it's funny because it's actually pretty well produced in the sense that it is technically...
05:15:
(Sarah Longwell)
They ended up, despite criticizing the Democrats for this, they filmed everything in advance.
05:19:
(Sarah Longwell)
And so it's pretty seamless.
05:20:
(Sarah Longwell)
It moves quickly from thing to thing.
05:21:
(Sarah Longwell)
But it also gives it the effect of being very bloodless, very produced.
05:26:
(Sarah Longwell)
I'm deeply bored throughout it.
05:29:
(Sarah Longwell)
And the only time you really perk up is you're like, oh, because something insane is happening.
05:33:
(Sarah Longwell)
Like, Kimberly Guilfoyle is...
05:35:
(Sarah Longwell)
screaming at me.
05:37:
(Sarah Longwell)
So I think that's, but that's been odd to me that like it triggers almost none of my sort of Republican or conservative instincts.
05:45:
(Sarah Longwell)
But Tim, I will say when you, I think one of the reasons that the school choice thing is popping just as an observation is probably because right now a lot of people on the right are sort of fighting with their local schools because they're trying to homeschool their kids and pot up with people.
06:01:
(Sarah Longwell)
And so there's sort of like a weird COVID situation
06:03:
(Sarah Longwell)
homeschooling school choice byproduct.
06:07:
(Tim Miller)
I mean, this is like the least important thing, but it's like, it just has been so striking to me.
06:11:
(Tim Miller)
Like, do you think that that popped in their polling or do you think that like the speech writer who wrote all the undercard speeches is just a hobby horse for them?
06:20:
(Tim Miller)
Or do you think it is what you're saying?
06:21:
(Sarah Longwell)
I think, well, so I think, look, the entire, the thing that they're doing, I think they're not doing it particularly successfully, but it's very clear in their intent is that they've got sort of two buckets of people, right?
06:32:
(Sarah Longwell)
That's why it's like a schizophrenic convention.
06:34:
(Sarah Longwell)
There is one bucket that is like, this is the apocalypse.
06:37:
(Sarah Longwell)
They're coming.
06:37:
(Sarah Longwell)
MSM 13 is moving in next to you.
06:39:
(Sarah Longwell)
And those are like face plays.
06:41:
(Sarah Longwell)
But then there's this other suburban women play, right?
06:44:
(Sarah Longwell)
where they focus on like, you know, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott.
06:48:
(Sarah Longwell)
I mean, you know, I don't want to steal JBL's point, but his idea about earth to traditional Republican party.
06:53:
(Sarah Longwell)
Uh, okay.
06:55:
(Sarah Longwell)
Sorry.
06:56:
(Sarah Longwell)
You wrote the Trump, the earth too.
06:58:
(Sarah Longwell)
I did.
06:59:
(Tim Miller)
I wrote it for the triad.
07:00:
(Tim Miller)
So I could see how you could be confused.
07:02:
(Tim Miller)
And I know that you're not a reader of the trial.
07:04:
(JVL)
So that's why she read it, Tim, because you wrote it and not me.
07:08:
(Sarah Longwell)
No, I read it.
07:09:
(Sarah Longwell)
I always read it.
07:10:
(Sarah Longwell)
I just read it.
07:10:
(Sarah Longwell)
I thought it was extremely good.
07:12:
(Sarah Longwell)
Anyway, I think that there is an explicit attempt to appeal to suburban women here.
07:19:
(Sarah Longwell)
I don't think it's particularly well done, but I think that's why.
07:25:
(JVL)
So Twitter informed me this morning that it was masterfully done and that it's working.
07:30:
(JVL)
And this seems to be the consensus on both left and right.
07:36:
(JVL)
Sarah, you have sat through dozens, scores, hundreds of focus groups.
07:40:
(JVL)
Can you gauge potential effectiveness of it for me?
07:45:
(Sarah Longwell)
So I'm doing two focus groups tonight, actually, one with both all with women, but one from Arizona, one from North Carolina.
07:53:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I can't wait to find out if it's working.
07:57:
(Sarah Longwell)
I'm not entirely I'm going to make a prediction that the vast majority of the people are not watching it.
08:02:
(Sarah Longwell)
And that when I talk to them, they will not have an opinion about it, particularly one way or the other.
08:06:
(Sarah Longwell)
But who knows?
08:07:
(Sarah Longwell)
Maybe they are.
08:08:
(Sarah Longwell)
Yeah.
08:09:
(Sarah Longwell)
I think that like here's the thing, right?
08:12:
(Sarah Longwell)
People it's why whenever Trump, you know, does this new tone for like five seconds and the media throws him a ticker tape parade.
08:20:
(Sarah Longwell)
The fact that this looks relatively normal and that Trump is doing things like naturalization ceremonies and pardoning people who have inspiring stories.
08:28:
(Sarah Longwell)
Like it just so exceeds the like unbelievably low bar that we all have for Trump that I think, especially for Republicans, we're desperate, desperate to not look like they're constantly criticizing Trump.
08:40:
(Sarah Longwell)
It's just an opportunity to be like, oh, this is good.
08:42:
(Sarah Longwell)
See, look how normal this is.
08:44:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah, so I've got two things with this.
08:46:
(Tim Miller)
One is that I, here's why I think it might be working, is that there's this group of people, and there are probably some of the people Sarah's just talking to in these focus groups, that like went for Trump, but didn't like him.
09:01:
(Tim Miller)
And for the last six months, all they've been reminded of were all the reasons they didn't like him.
09:05:
(Tim Miller)
Like the stupid press conferences and the gassing of the protesters and the psycho Joe Scarborough tweets and the whiny, you know, no responsibility behavior.
09:18:
(Tim Miller)
And so they've left him.
09:20:
(Tim Miller)
And then now for one week there, they get sort of told, all right, these are the things that I liked about him.
09:26:
(Tim Miller)
And these are the things that scare me about the left.
09:28:
(Tim Miller)
Could that one week of that help claw some of those people back?
09:33:
(Tim Miller)
I think possibly.
09:35:
(Tim Miller)
I'm also interested to hear what the focus groups say.
09:37:
(Tim Miller)
I'm not ready to weigh in yes or no, but thinking about it through that lens, I think possibly.
09:42:
(Tim Miller)
And I do have, since this isn't live, I can say this, it would be breaking news, but just right before I got on, I got a call from the Wall Street Journal who wanted my take on, they're about to break that this naturalization ceremony, at least two of the people were not told.
09:58:
(Tim Miller)
that it was going to be used in the convention or filmed or anything of that nature so if it wasn't cynical enough if it wasn't an illegal hatch act violation if it wasn't a totally obviously cynical ploy to use these ceremonies that the president's administration have been trying to cut significantly how many of them we have and make it as hard as possible for people to have them
10:24:
(Tim Miller)
On top of that, it was cynical on the most personal level and said they didn't even tell these people that they're going to be used as props.
10:31:
(JVL)
Pretty good.
10:32:
(JVL)
Can we talk about the Hatch Act, Tim?
10:34:
(JVL)
Because this is one of those things like, for instance, the Ukrainian begun impeachment hearings where you have what is a clear violation of the law.
10:47:
(JVL)
And the answer is, well, the American public doesn't really care about it, so therefore the violation of the law doesn't matter.
10:57:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah, I actually think that this is more clear than the Ukraine.
11:01:
(Tim Miller)
The Ukraine issue was so kind of arcane and involved kind of diplomatic norms.
11:07:
(Tim Miller)
I do think it was complicated for regular folks to just understand, forget whether or not they care.
11:11:
(Tim Miller)
And then there was all of the extended figures of the Donald Trump extended universe and minor characters and everything in the Ukraine thing.
11:21:
(Tim Miller)
It made it a little bit indecipherable, I think, for people.
11:25:
(Tim Miller)
This isn't.
11:26:
(Tim Miller)
This is very decipherable.
11:28:
(Tim Miller)
Like the president is using the White House for political purposes and it's inappropriate.
11:33:
(Tim Miller)
And like I've said this on Twitter, like the Lincoln bedroom thing.
11:39:
(Tim Miller)
How is this any different than that?
11:40:
(Tim Miller)
Like Bill Clinton was letting his donors sleep in the Lincoln bedroom.
11:44:
(Tim Miller)
Um, it was uncovered by the news outlet.
11:49:
(Tim Miller)
Um, the Republicans made a big stink about it.
11:51:
(Tim Miller)
The media made a big stink about it.
11:52:
(Tim Miller)
And it's, and that stink stuck with them all the way to, it became an issue in Hillary's 2000 campaign against Rick Lazio.
11:59:
(Tim Miller)
I mean, it didn't go away.
12:01:
(Tim Miller)
And it was the same thing.
12:02:
(Tim Miller)
Like the crux of the matter was they were inappropriately using the people's house and
12:06:
(Tim Miller)
you know, for political gain.
12:08:
(Tim Miller)
That's what the president was doing last night.
12:10:
(Tim Miller)
And so I don't, maybe it's true that people don't care about that, but, but I think rather than like reporters being pundits and deciding that maybe they should just report that, that, that what they were doing is against the law and inappropriate.
12:24:
(Tim Miller)
And, and by the way, instead of the Democrats deciding that it's silly, you know, maybe they should hold hearings about it and, and do what Rush Limbaugh used to do.
12:32:
(Tim Miller)
And, you know, about, about, um,
12:34:
(Tim Miller)
about the lincoln bedroom i mean i think that that there's this if the media is going to only decide that something is a big a scandal if it's like a secret scandal or if the other party makes a big deal out of it then like the other party has to start making a big deal out of it or the media is going to start behaving better like those are the two options and so i think the democrats got to start making a bigger deal out of stuff like this and the media's got to start behaving better
12:59:
(JVL)
Sarah, there's this truism that actual voters never care about process arguments.
13:08:
(JVL)
The Hatch Act feels like a process argument situation, the type of thing that people like us get ramped up about but which will move exactly zero votes anywhere.
13:19:
(JVL)
Yeah.
13:21:
(JVL)
Do you agree?
13:22:
(JVL)
Do you disagree?
13:23:
(Sarah Longwell)
No, I actually really agree with Tim's point.
13:26:
(Sarah Longwell)
I think that these things can become an issue if people treat them like they're the issue that they are.
13:31:
(Sarah Longwell)
And this is one of the things where I think, look, I'm not the media.
13:36:
(Sarah Longwell)
But I do think the media has failed.
13:38:
(Sarah Longwell)
in a way where they, just like what I just said about the low bar, he wins with this sort of soft bigotry of low expectations for Trump, right?
13:48:
(Sarah Longwell)
Where they all expect him to break the law.
13:49:
(Sarah Longwell)
And so rather than printing stories about how he is breaking the law and it's a real issue and then creating that as a bigger issue, it's just a straight reporting.
14:00:
(Sarah Longwell)
He's breaking the law.
14:01:
(Sarah Longwell)
If more people made a big deal out of that, instead of acting like
14:04:
(Sarah Longwell)
pundits were there instead saying like yeah he's doing this thing but voters don't care like well voters might care if you if it was made to be the big deal that it is if they understood that it was corrupt right i think like there's no education like voters don't care about it because it's not being framed at all for them
14:22:
(Tim Miller)
So JV, I noticed you haven't provided any takes.
14:24:
(Tim Miller)
You've just been asking queries.
14:25:
(Tim Miller)
And I'm wondering if that's because you were just like drinking a lot of painkillers on your vacation and haven't actually tuned in.
14:32:
(Tim Miller)
And we're hoping that you could get by without anybody noticing that.
14:36:
(JVL)
I had a painkiller last night.
14:38:
(JVL)
I mean, I would say this.
14:40:
(JVL)
I disagree with you guys.
14:43:
(JVL)
I think that this is the type of thing that will not move a single voter anywhere.
14:48:
(JVL)
Yeah.
14:48:
(JVL)
And I believe that that is, I mean, we're going to sound like a broken record.
14:54:
(JVL)
This goes back to our age-old disagreement, which is that I think this is further evidence of the fact that it turns out our entire system of government is just on the honor system.
15:06:
(JVL)
And once both the principals no longer care about honor and the voters no longer care about honor, then we're just screwed.
15:17:
(JVL)
There is no way forward.
15:20:
(JVL)
Nothing works.
15:22:
(JVL)
And, you know, Donald Trump was the guy who discovered that this was all being done on the honor system and happens to be the first United States president ever who did not give a crap about honor, period, the end.
15:35:
(JVL)
And I just find it hard to believe that a country which was told that the president said to the
15:44:
(JVL)
authoritarian leader of China, oh, you're going to build some concentration camps?
15:49:
(JVL)
That sounds great.
15:50:
(JVL)
Go ahead.
15:50:
(JVL)
It's going to say, oh, no, Mike Pompeo violated the Hatch Act.
15:56:
(JVL)
Well, that's a bridge too far for me.
15:59:
(Tim Miller)
Well, JBL, okay, let me just object to that.
16:01:
(Tim Miller)
Why...
16:02:
(Tim Miller)
Okay, everybody likes to use the hashtag because it sounds silly.
16:06:
(Tim Miller)
It does sound silly.
16:07:
(Tim Miller)
That's true.
16:08:
(Tim Miller)
But let's put that part aside.
16:10:
(Tim Miller)
What about the fact that we don't want to kink?
16:14:
(Tim Miller)
That these actions, like holding a political convention and having an honor guard and having them play music feels like a really weird North Korean or old Europe monarchical thing.
16:30:
(Tim Miller)
And, like, that makes people uncomfortable.
16:33:
(Tim Miller)
Doesn't that go in contrast to the whole kind of American spirit of what we want, of what people want?
16:40:
(Tim Miller)
Could we not break through with voters on that?
16:43:
(Tim Miller)
Like, do you really want this creepy wannabe king using the White House for this shit?
16:47:
(JVL)
I don't think there is an American spirit on this stuff.
16:51:
(JVL)
There may have been 10, 20, 40 years ago, certainly, like, 200 years ago.
16:57:
(JVL)
But now...
16:58:
(JVL)
The negative polarity is such that we have, as Adrian Vermeule said out loud, you know, like I said out loud multiple times over the course of the last six months, maybe we should be going back to having a king who really embodies the will of the polity rather than relying on all this election stuff.
17:15:
(JVL)
You know what?
17:15:
(JVL)
He is saying out loud what his side all thinks because everybody has basically decided that
17:22:
(JVL)
that this liberal democracy stuff is all bunk.
17:27:
(JVL)
All that matters is that my side is running things.
17:29:
(JVL)
And you even see this on the left when you have, you know, you look at the polling data on people talking about First Amendment and free speech and then hate speech.
17:40:
(JVL)
There is a lot of, you know, if my side is making the rules, then I'm all for locking stuff down.
17:47:
(JVL)
And I think it's the same thing here.
17:49:
(JVL)
I just think this whole experiment has hit its terminus.
17:54:
(JVL)
The American experiment?
17:55:
(JVL)
Yeah, that one.
17:58:
(JVL)
Tim, I mean, you can fight with him on this.
18:01:
(Sarah Longwell)
I I've been fighting with him about this for months and months and months because I disagree with this.
18:06:
(Tim Miller)
Uh, I think that the American experiment has reached its terminus.
18:09:
(Sarah Longwell)
Yeah.
18:10:
(Sarah Longwell)
I mean, like I agreed to climb as a choice and that, you know, people are, are far too unserious and every, some of JBL's other critiques of it, but the conclusion that he arrives at is that like America's finished and I just, I'm not, I'm not there.
18:23:
(Sarah Longwell)
Um,
18:24:
(Sarah Longwell)
But look, the essential thing here that Trump has done, and we've talked about this a lot, is that he overwhelms the system with corruption.
18:34:
(Sarah Longwell)
The reason that the Hatch Act looks silly is because it pales in comparison to all the other corruption that is omnipresent in the day-to-day.
18:43:
(Sarah Longwell)
And part of the reason that the media doesn't hold his feet to the fire on this is because it becomes impossible because there's just so much of it.
18:50:
(JVL)
Do you remember what Kellyanne said when she was charged with this stuff?
18:53:
(JVL)
Kellyanne Conway literally said, as asked by a reporter, she goes, yeah, go ahead.
18:58:
(JVL)
Have me arrested.
18:59:
(JVL)
This is their attitude.
19:01:
(Sarah Longwell)
Yeah, and they're bad and hopefully and they should be voted out and then we should demand accountability on these things.
19:09:
(Tim Miller)
I just want to go back to the Lincoln bedroom thing really quick, just this analogy.
19:12:
(Tim Miller)
And so maybe you're going to say to me, things have changed in 20 years, maybe, or 30 years, however long it's been.
19:17:
(Tim Miller)
Maybe that's the answer.
19:18:
(Tim Miller)
But this was an abuse of the White House.
19:23:
(Tim Miller)
People complained about it.
19:25:
(Tim Miller)
He got negative media coverage.
19:27:
(Tim Miller)
Bush and Obama didn't do it.
19:29:
(Tim Miller)
Like, you know, that was an example of an abuse of power that there were negative consequences for, and it yielded a result where people stopped doing that.
19:39:
(Tim Miller)
I just don't understand why we can't just do that right now for using the White House for really gaudy, you know, Kim Jong-un-esque political events.
19:51:
(JVL)
So this is actually a pretty good segue into topic two, which is my...
19:58:
(JVL)
The new paradigm that I'm using to look at the election is that this election is essentially a paradox in that we have as clear as we have had and as stable as we have had a lead for one candidate over another going back probably to like 84%.
20:17:
(JVL)
And it has been Biden plus six, seven or eight almost the entire time, even dating to the theoretical matchup polls before Biden was a declared candidate.
20:29:
(JVL)
Trump has never led.
20:30:
(JVL)
He's never been closer than six, I don't think.
20:33:
(JVL)
He may have gotten like five point eight once.
20:36:
(JVL)
And it's been, as Harry Anton and CNN has said many times, the biggest lead by and most consistently by a challenger over an incumbent president in the history of polling.
20:50:
(JVL)
That's the one side.
20:50:
(JVL)
So we know what people think.
20:53:
(JVL)
We know what the voters think about this.
20:56:
(JVL)
On the other side, because of COVID and then because of Trump,
21:02:
(JVL)
we have more uncertainty as to what the actual outcome would be than maybe any election we've had ever.
21:12:
(JVL)
Because all of the polling may turn out to be utterly useless if you have some very large percentage of votes coming in by mail and then aggressive challenges, both at the federal and state level, to disqualify ballots and a prolonged fight over, well, this signature only tangentially matches this other signature on the voter ID and registration card.
21:35:
(JVL)
then you're going to have the problem of fewer polling places, longer lines.
21:39:
(JVL)
You have no idea what turnout is going to look like, where are college students going to be, right?
21:43:
(JVL)
On November 3, are college students going to be at college?
21:45:
(JVL)
Are they going to be home?
21:47:
(JVL)
Everything about the actual vote casting and vote counting is as uncertain as it has ever been.
21:54:
(JVL)
And this puts us in a very weird, weird place.
21:59:
(JVL)
And I find it...
22:01:
(JVL)
actually quite alarming because again, if you were going to say the American experiment is finished, what would be the classic result?
22:09:
(JVL)
The classic result would be a clear majority opinion of the public on one thing and then an election result showing another thing, which is wildly disputed and which has both sides crying foul.
22:23:
(JVL)
This is what failed states look like.
22:27:
(Tim Miller)
Well, I like my new chair and a podcast with JVL because I always kind of feel like I'm the darkest one in conversations with people.
22:35:
(Tim Miller)
But I'm like a bright shining beam of optimism compared to you, JVL.
22:40:
(Tim Miller)
And so I do appreciate that, Connor.
22:44:
(Tim Miller)
I just...
22:45:
(Tim Miller)
I think that you're right.
22:47:
(Tim Miller)
I think that in this sense, there is a potential very, very bad worst case scenario in this election, which is essentially that Joe Biden wins a very close election.
22:57:
(Tim Miller)
There's a lot of chicanery around voting and vote counting.
23:01:
(Tim Miller)
and you know donald trump um uh you know comes out of that actually being a narrow victor and mass protest riots blah blah blah i mean i i don't what is the percentage of that i don't know four two six i'm not sure but i feel like we've had a run of bad luck here so i'm hoping that we don't you know kind of draw that uh draw that card i mean i think that in the more likely results
23:31:
(Tim Miller)
is that either is that Donald Trump wins, you know, or Donald Trump loses clearly and then like whines about the count on Twitter and like send some tweets about it.
23:42:
(Tim Miller)
And then there's like this minority, maybe 18% of the population that thinks for all of eternity that Donald Trump got robbed by the deep state and the elders of Zion and the, you know, pedophile ring or whatever.
23:55:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah.
23:56:
(Tim Miller)
And that's unhealthy for our democracy as well, but it's much more survivable than the situation that you paint.
24:05:
(Sarah Longwell)
Yeah, I mean, I'm actually a little bit with JBL on this, where I am pretty worried about how the election is going to look.
24:15:
(Sarah Longwell)
I think that even, Tim, you know, your scenario there where Trump wins narrowly, I actually think there's a different scenario that's much more likely, which is that all of the polls
24:25:
(Sarah Longwell)
that have surveyed people on how they're going to vote show that people who are going to vote for Joe Biden disproportionately are favoring mail-in ballots.
24:33:
(Sarah Longwell)
And the people who are going to vote for Donald Trump are disproportionately going to show up on the polls on election day.
24:39:
(Sarah Longwell)
And so I think that you set up a scenario where on election night, which is when people are used to having elections called...
24:45:
(Sarah Longwell)
you see Trump doing far better than any of the polls suggested.
24:52:
(Sarah Longwell)
And it starts to look a lot like it did in 2016.
24:55:
(Sarah Longwell)
And meanwhile, there are, for no nefarious reasons, but for a series of bureaucratic reasons, the system is very overwhelmed by the number of mail-in ballots.
25:05:
(Sarah Longwell)
And so people are counting extremely slowly and
25:08:
(Sarah Longwell)
And then there's instances in some places, credible instances, where people mailed in a ballot and they showed up to vote as well.
25:14:
(Sarah Longwell)
And so Trump starts going nuts about the idea that there's fraud, widespread fraud.
25:18:
(Sarah Longwell)
It starts calling for people, you know, for them to call.
25:21:
(Sarah Longwell)
He's already tweeted this, that he wants the election called on election night, which favors him.
25:25:
(Sarah Longwell)
And it just opens up this gray space.
25:28:
(Sarah Longwell)
for there to be things just to look muddled and to not look like Americans are used to them looking and for then tons of litigation to drop and for people to be in the streets.
25:38:
(Sarah Longwell)
And there's this phenomenon now they're referring to as the blue shift, right?
25:42:
(Sarah Longwell)
So if you remember, Kyrsten Sinema on election night was behind
25:46:
(Sarah Longwell)
Martha McSally.
25:48:
(Sarah Longwell)
But as the votes came in and were counted, she became the winner.
25:53:
(Sarah Longwell)
But that was days later.
25:54:
(Sarah Longwell)
And Doug Ducey, of course, certified that election, but Donald Trump was tweeting about how it was stolen and rigged.
26:00:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I think that you're about to see that whole thing happen on a national scale.
26:05:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I think JBL's point about it dramatically impacting what we...
26:10:
(Sarah Longwell)
I mean, these polls are only as good as A, a snapshot in time, and B...
26:13:
(Sarah Longwell)
if all the people who are registering their opinion go and vote that way, um, or, or just go vote and, and like, we're going to be in a weird environment.
26:22:
(Tim Miller)
Uh, so I'll just obviously entered institutions guy and Donald Trump is a man, baby guy and say that I, we had an election not that long ago in 2000 where the result was unclear for many months.
26:36:
(Tim Miller)
Um, and, um,
26:38:
(Tim Miller)
You know, obviously, there's still segments within the Democratic base.
26:42:
(Tim Miller)
It feels like that race was that election was stolen and they bring it up from time to time and they're bitter about it.
26:47:
(Tim Miller)
And it impacts their view of our government and our democracy and our institutions in a way that's unhealthy.
26:52:
(Tim Miller)
But, you know, we moved forward.
26:55:
(Tim Miller)
They didn't then throw their party into the into a dictator ship.
26:59:
(Tim Miller)
Following that, they nominated John Kerry.
27:01:
(Tim Miller)
and donald trump you just said it in arizona like already played this game before and all he does is send a couple of whiny tweets i like he just he hasn't demonstrated that much interest in being a strong man like even his strong man stuff like he wants other people to do you know like the like lafayette square and like what you know miles taylor has been testifying about on the border uh
27:25:
(Tim Miller)
He hasn't demonstrated the will to kind of follow through on this kind of stuff.
27:30:
(Tim Miller)
Now, maybe that all changes.
27:31:
(Tim Miller)
I'm just saying, given what we know now, I feel like whiny Trump tweets and a minority of the Republican base feeling like this election was stolen from them in the similar way to how the Democrats do in 2000, but with having someone spur them on in a much more irresponsible way than Al Gore did to be kind of the most likely outcome from here.
27:53:
(Tim Miller)
So there's sunny side, Tim, for you.
27:56:
(JVL)
So understood.
27:58:
(JVL)
So take away the optimistic versus pessimistic view of this.
28:05:
(JVL)
What I'm trying to get at is that even the most basic arithmetic of this election is totally unknowable.
28:13:
(JVL)
It's a black box.
28:14:
(JVL)
And so we had 126 ballots cast in 2016.
28:18:
(JVL)
And I don't think that anybody could either
28:23:
(JVL)
could do anything more than just make a wild ass guess as to the number of voters we're going to see this time around.
28:30:
(JVL)
I mean, if I told you that the number was going to be 20 million less or 20 million more, we would both say, yeah, OK, those are probably about equally likely.
28:41:
(Tim Miller)
right i mean i agree with that i agree with that it's very unknowable and and by the way just as a quick point the republican strategist that i talked to for that rolling stone thing i mean that's the smart ones like that's their case for winning but it's both of those two options right it's that like covid creates a big dip in democratic voting um but i think that's less for them they were talking less about the fact that they see big enthusiasm and that there's a lot of like
29:07:
(Tim Miller)
you know, non-college white voters that there could be a bigger surge and people realize that might be wish casting, but that's what smart people on their side say.
29:16:
(Tim Miller)
So I agree with you.
29:17:
(Tim Miller)
I don't think even, you know, the people who are the biggest data nerds have a sense for it at this point.
29:23:
(Tim Miller)
Because you have enthusiasm way up with COVID as a massive wild card.
29:28:
(Sarah Longwell)
And JVL, I want to say I really appreciate your take here because I think if you go back and listen to the secret pod from maybe six weeks ago, you will find a bunch of you arguing that Trump has basically no path and me constantly arguing that things are up for grabs because of all of the things with mail-in balloting and how different that was going to make things.
29:46:
(Sarah Longwell)
So I'm just going to fight you.
29:48:
(Sarah Longwell)
I'm just going to fight.
29:49:
(Sarah Longwell)
Yeah, okay.
29:50:
(JVL)
I have totally... You're always right.
29:51:
(Sarah Longwell)
I'm going to declare that a victory.
29:53:
(Sarah Longwell)
Yeah, we'll see JVL thinks he's always right, but I think in this case...
29:56:
(JVL)
What I was talking about was the sort of assumptions that we lived in a world of free and fair elections and that we weren't a banana republic.
30:03:
(JVL)
I mean, this was before the president started talking about moving the election date and started ordering the postural service to disappear sorting machines and stuff like that.
30:14:
(JVL)
I mean, it's just crazy.
30:15:
(JVL)
Okay.
30:16:
(JVL)
Also crazy.
30:17:
(JVL)
What's happening in Wisconsin?
30:19:
(JVL)
Sarah?
30:19:
(JVL)
Sarah?
30:20:
(Sarah Longwell)
So I'm only going to talk a little bit about the facts on the ground on Wisconsin, because I think that they're still, you know, unfolding.
30:29:
(Sarah Longwell)
You know, I was even as we were sitting down, I was trying to figure out, you know, there have been so there were there has there has been another shooting of an African-American.
30:39:
(Sarah Longwell)
in the back seven times uh he is still alive at the moment um but it has set off a new round of protests in wisconsin and last night during the protests um three people were shot and i believe two of them are dead um but during the protests this weird thing happened where a whole bunch of just regular citizens showed up with big guns um and shockingly that ended up uh you know
31:06:
(Sarah Longwell)
not going well.
31:08:
(Sarah Longwell)
But, but the two deaths, right?
31:11:
(Tim Miller)
I mean, two deaths.
31:13:
(Sarah Longwell)
Yeah, that's right.
31:13:
(Sarah Longwell)
Two deaths.
31:14:
(Sarah Longwell)
I think three people were shot.
31:15:
(Sarah Longwell)
Two of them have been killed.
31:18:
(Sarah Longwell)
So, but, but my observation or the thing that I want to talk about besides how tragic all of this is, is that I, I had, I had asked in my focus group now going a couple of weeks back and
31:36:
(Sarah Longwell)
how they felt about the protests, you know, going six weeks on, you know, and, and, and I, I think I talked about them on the secret podcast.
31:44:
(Sarah Longwell)
I talked about them on Charlie's podcast.
31:47:
(Sarah Longwell)
And my overwhelming take was that people still felt very much on this, you know, that George Floyd had been killed and that it was awful.
31:56:
(Sarah Longwell)
And but, um,
31:57:
(Sarah Longwell)
But there was something else in the way that they were talking about it that stuck out to me.
32:02:
(Sarah Longwell)
And it didn't really come fully into focus until I started to see some other data come through that I want to tell you about.
32:09:
(Sarah Longwell)
So one of the things that they were saying in the focus groups was they were all saying,
32:13:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I actually I brought a couple of their statements where I asked, you know, it's been a few months since George Floyd was killed.
32:21:
(Sarah Longwell)
And how do you I just how do you feel about everything that's happening related to that?
32:26:
(Sarah Longwell)
And one woman said, sad about what happened, but I'm sad about the response to it.
32:31:
(Sarah Longwell)
there's good protesting that was done appropriately and well, but I think we're beginning to see already that now there's a lot of rioting and things that are awful.
32:40:
(Sarah Longwell)
My son works in Manhattan and he could see an organization of looting.
32:43:
(Sarah Longwell)
It's nothing to do with injustice or black rights.
32:46:
(Sarah Longwell)
And that kind of thing is just incredible to me.
32:48:
(Sarah Longwell)
Another person said, I have mixed feelings, anger for what happened in the act itself, but also anger about the looting.
32:55:
(Sarah Longwell)
Looting isn't serving the message well, not doing anything for the cause, not adding justice to it, just adding confusion to everything.
33:01:
(Sarah Longwell)
And then somebody else said, I thought it was a horrible injustice, but now it's all a hot mess.
33:09:
(Sarah Longwell)
They're destroying towns.
33:10:
(Sarah Longwell)
It doesn't make any sense.
33:11:
(Sarah Longwell)
It shouldn't be happening this way.
33:13:
(Sarah Longwell)
And it was interesting in this open-ended question how many people automatically jumped to this idea of looting, rioting, and violence.
33:21:
(Sarah Longwell)
Now, of course, part of this is because...
33:23:
(Sarah Longwell)
On Fox News, it is 24-7 around sort of Seattle and Portland and all of the things that are going on.
33:32:
(Sarah Longwell)
But then there was some other data that showed up.
33:34:
(Sarah Longwell)
So Pew came out with a poll recently that showed that violence is now in the top five issues around which people are voting.
33:44:
(Sarah Longwell)
And it is, I believe, 58% of people registered it very highly as one of the things they'd be voting on.
33:49:
(Sarah Longwell)
It was just below COVID, which had 63%.
33:53:
(Sarah Longwell)
And then I went and looked at some data around Black Lives Matter.
33:59:
(Sarah Longwell)
So there had been this enormous surge in support for Black Lives Matter about two weeks after the George Floyd killing.
34:05:
(Sarah Longwell)
People were really on their side.
34:06:
(Sarah Longwell)
And that really came through in the focus groups.
34:09:
(Sarah Longwell)
But since then, the support for Black Lives Matter has re-narrowed almost back to where it was before the George Floyd killings.
34:16:
(Sarah Longwell)
And so I posited on Twitter.
34:20:
(Tim Miller)
Is that true?
34:20:
(Tim Miller)
I haven't seen that poll.
34:21:
(Tim Miller)
What is that?
34:22:
(Tim Miller)
What's that from?
34:23:
(Sarah Longwell)
It's from Civics.
34:24:
(Sarah Longwell)
Civics with a Q.
34:25:
(Sarah Longwell)
The polling.
34:28:
(Sarah Longwell)
Um, so I, and, and, and it's, it's, that's not the only thing.
34:33:
(Sarah Longwell)
The Washington post ABC poll, uh, Philip bump had a piece about this, which I cited, uh, below the tweet that I had that really got picked up by right wing Twitter that wants to say like, yes, this is an issue.
34:43:
(Sarah Longwell)
But what I said in my tweet was that I think that actually this violence, you know, early on, so weeks and weeks and weeks ago, people suggested that perhaps all of the protesting would were down to Trump's benefit.
34:55:
(Sarah Longwell)
Um,
34:55:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I actually said that wasn't what I was hearing from the focus groups.
34:59:
(Sarah Longwell)
And it wasn't what we were seeing.
35:00:
(Sarah Longwell)
People were overwhelmingly on the side of the protesters.
35:03:
(Sarah Longwell)
And it was almost and I even said in the focus groups, especially with these women, more so than COVID, more so than the economy, the racial divisiveness was the thing that was really they were really disgusted with Trump over.
35:16:
(Sarah Longwell)
But I think as time has gone on and the precipitating event of George Floyd's death, that there has actually been a shift in public opinion away from the protesters as we become as as the protests have become divorced in people's minds from the George Floyd killing, even though.
35:32:
(Sarah Longwell)
They're still about racial justice.
35:33:
(Sarah Longwell)
Right now, people just see sort of violence and looting.
35:36:
(Sarah Longwell)
And there's been a couple of really bad instances.
35:39:
(Sarah Longwell)
I mean, there was one instance where the protesters were at a Ronald McDonald house, which had a bunch of sick kids inside with their parents, and they were breaking the windows below and sort of terrifying people inside.
35:49:
(Sarah Longwell)
And so I think I've had this feeling, based on the data and based on what I was hearing in the focus groups, and I'm going to press really hard on it tonight, that this could be a potential vulnerability for the Democrats.
36:00:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I think that it's clearly showing up in Trump's data, because there's a reason this entire convention...
36:05:
(Sarah Longwell)
And Trump has been really focused on this law and order message.
36:07:
(Sarah Longwell)
And it's what they're pushing with their money because they think it's the one thing that shot that they have to really paint this as a violence problem in Democratic run states and cities and tie it to the Democrats and say, well, this is going to be Joe Biden's America.
36:22:
(Sarah Longwell)
Now, of course, the obvious rejoinder to that is, well, this is actually happening in Donald Trump's America.
36:26:
(Sarah Longwell)
And that's obvious, but I'm not sure.
36:28:
(Tim Miller)
The other rejoinder might be that, you know, it was Donald Trump's chief strategist who, you know, robbed his own supporters to build a fake wall.
36:35:
(Tim Miller)
That's Donald Trump.
36:36:
(Tim Miller)
That's, you know, broken the law time and time again.
36:38:
(Tim Miller)
All of his staff members are in jail.
36:40:
(Tim Miller)
It's kind of a weird, weird, weird messenger for the law and order.
36:43:
(Tim Miller)
But I guess the law and order really only means that like black people have to follow the law.
36:47:
(Tim Miller)
Right.
36:47:
(Tim Miller)
Not not rich white people.
36:49:
(Sarah Longwell)
Yes.
36:50:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I stipulate all of that.
36:52:
(Sarah Longwell)
That doesn't change the fact that if support is dropping across the board for protesters, that there's not a kind of recency bias in people's minds where they end up rewriting a lot of the things that Trump did that they were furious about, his overreach.
37:07:
(Sarah Longwell)
Right now, so in Wisconsin, they're sending in the National Guard, not just the Wisconsin National Guard, but Trump is sending federal troops.
37:13:
(Sarah Longwell)
He's been tweeting about it today.
37:14:
(Sarah Longwell)
And so I guess my question for you guys is, do you see...
37:19:
(Sarah Longwell)
A possibility that this could actually work to Trump's benefit and help him with suburban voters.
37:28:
(Tim Miller)
Jamie, I want to kick that one to you because I'm riled up and I'm just like right now my little blood pressure is growing over here.
37:34:
(Tim Miller)
So I just kind of want to let it build and build while you answer.
37:37:
(JVL)
Then I can I can let your tea kettle boil.
37:40:
(JVL)
Yeah, I mean, is it possible?
37:42:
(JVL)
Yes.
37:43:
(JVL)
You know, funny, Sarah, listening to you talk about the movement in the polls on this, I thought about the Ukraine stuff.
37:50:
(JVL)
I don't know if you guys remember, but there was a moment when it looked like there was a huge shift in public opinion on Ukraine, right?
37:57:
(JVL)
It was right after we got the smoking gun letter, I think.
38:00:
(JVL)
Was that it, right?
38:01:
(JVL)
With the good bro-go in it.
38:03:
(JVL)
And everybody was outraged.
38:05:
(JVL)
And then three weeks later, it had just been normalized.
38:07:
(JVL)
Yeah.
38:07:
(JVL)
Like, yeah, this is just a thing the president does.
38:09:
(JVL)
He's a good Republican.
38:12:
(JVL)
We got to support him no matter what.
38:13:
(JVL)
And all the critics just shut up about it.
38:15:
(JVL)
And maybe that's what this is, right?
38:17:
(JVL)
It's, you know, everybody.
38:18:
(JVL)
So what you will get is you will get people, well, I thought that the George Floyd thing was terrible.
38:23:
(JVL)
But but this other stuff with the with with, you know, Jacob Blake, that was I mean, that was very different.
38:30:
(JVL)
Right.
38:30:
(JVL)
I mean, he was he was really, really bad.
38:32:
(JVL)
And, you know, he wasn't innocent the way George Floyd was.
38:35:
(JVL)
And now look what they're doing there.
38:36:
(JVL)
I could absolutely see that.
38:40:
(JVL)
So much of this, I think, God, I'm going to sound like I work for the nation or something.
38:45:
(JVL)
I just feel like it's impossible to disentangle it from race.
38:50:
(JVL)
I mean, all it is is coded appeals to racism.
38:55:
(JVL)
And the racism is so endemic and shot through.
38:58:
(JVL)
I was blown away by, there's a moment in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, one of their pieces about last night's protest, right?
39:08:
(JVL)
Where a guy who seems to be a white militia member murdered two people who were out protesting.
39:15:
(JVL)
And there is a scene which is witnessed by by a reporter from the Journal Sentinel.
39:23:
(JVL)
And there are a bunch of guys with long guns standing on the roof of a dry cleaner and like sighting at people and stuff.
39:32:
(JVL)
And the cops come by and they say, hey, you got to get down off that roof.
39:36:
(JVL)
And the gentleman with the guns say to the police officers, no, we're not coming down off this roof.
39:44:
(JVL)
This is our building.
39:45:
(JVL)
We own it.
39:47:
(JVL)
I have to ask you.
39:50:
(JVL)
What do you think the law enforcement response would have been to an unarmed person who did not immediately comply with a police order to get down off of something?
39:59:
(JVL)
Do you think the police would have said, had it been an unarmed black person saying, no, this is my house, I'm not getting down from there, do you think they would have said, oh, oh, my mistake, I'm sorry.
40:07:
(JVL)
Yes, you can stay since you own that building.
40:10:
(JVL)
We're not going to force you.
40:11:
(JVL)
That wasn't a lawful order we were giving you.
40:13:
(JVL)
Do you think they would have fucking shot him in the head?
40:16:
(JVL)
And this is...
40:17:
(JVL)
All of this stuff is, again, I sound like a crazy radical in this, but I just have run out of other ways to view any of these interactions and any of these political dynamics as anything other than political.
40:37:
(JVL)
Just coded appeals to innate racism on the part of Republican voters and Republican leaners.
40:43:
(JVL)
Am I crazy, Tim?
40:44:
(Tim Miller)
Well, you're asking the wrong person because I'm like, I've turned into a totally nation reading Oakland radical on this.
40:51:
(Tim Miller)
But it's just look, stipulated, stipulated.
40:54:
(Tim Miller)
The looting is bad.
40:56:
(Tim Miller)
Everybody agrees that looting is bad.
40:58:
(Tim Miller)
You know who else agrees?
40:59:
(Tim Miller)
Here's Joe Biden.
41:00:
(Tim Miller)
Just right now, we've been talking about this.
41:02:
(Tim Miller)
Burning down communities is not protest.
41:04:
(Tim Miller)
It's needless violence.
41:05:
(Tim Miller)
Violence that endangers lives.
41:07:
(Tim Miller)
Violence that guts businesses and shutters businesses that serve the community.
41:12:
(Tim Miller)
It's long past time for the presidents to tell militias and street gangs to go home and to stop glorifying people famous for pointing guns at protesters.
41:19:
(Tim Miller)
I mean...
41:21:
(Tim Miller)
you know there's joe biden everybody's like why won't the democrats condemn the looting every time somebody asks joe biden to condemn something he condemns it i got i don't know what more you want joe biden to do so like is a political matter is this gonna work you know yeah probably i don't know it worked last time people don't like looting people don't like
41:43:
(Tim Miller)
You know, uppity black people, you know, who are who are trying to get back there, you know, you know, take back control of their lives.
41:54:
(Tim Miller)
I say that in their words.
41:57:
(Tim Miller)
Right.
41:57:
(Tim Miller)
I mean, yeah, there are racist people out there that look at this through a racist lens.
42:01:
(Tim Miller)
And Donald Trump's, you know, attempts to to try to pit people against each other are going to work.
42:08:
(Tim Miller)
But there are other people for whom this doesn't work.
42:10:
(Tim Miller)
You know, and that's the thing about those focus groups is that for a while, the George Floyd thing was working more than COVID because people were pissed that Donald Trump, you know, wasn't bringing the country together in the face of a grotesque murder of a black guy.
42:26:
(Tim Miller)
And this thing yesterday, you know, with Jacob Blake or two days ago, I mean, he was executed.
42:36:
(Tim Miller)
I know that he lived.
42:37:
(Tim Miller)
I don't understand how he lived in front of his kids.
42:41:
(Tim Miller)
His kids were in the backseat of that car.
42:43:
(Tim Miller)
He had his back to the cops.
42:45:
(Tim Miller)
What were they...
42:46:
(Tim Miller)
I don't understand.
42:47:
(Tim Miller)
They couldn't have tackled him.
42:48:
(Tim Miller)
They couldn't have tased him.
42:49:
(Tim Miller)
They couldn't have held him.
42:50:
(Tim Miller)
What were they worried about?
42:51:
(Tim Miller)
They had to shoot him seven fucking times in the back?
42:54:
(JVL)
If you look at the timeline on this, Tim...
42:56:
(JVL)
Within literally two minutes, like 137 seconds of the cops showing up, they have opened fire on an unarmed guy.
43:04:
(JVL)
And that's the sort of crazy type of thing that can only happen if your police officers are grossly incompetent or willfully malicious.
43:16:
(Tim Miller)
There's a culture where it's okay.
43:19:
(Tim Miller)
I mean, like I said this in the newsletter, in the United Kingdom last year, the police killed three people.
43:23:
(Tim Miller)
Obviously, we're much bigger than the United Kingdom, but there were 1,100.
43:27:
(JVL)
About 1,000 times the size of the United Kingdom.
43:31:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah.
43:32:
(Tim Miller)
I mean, there are multiple countries in Europe where they killed zero people.
43:36:
(Tim Miller)
The police killed zero people.
43:37:
(Tim Miller)
In Japan, the police killed two people.
43:39:
(Tim Miller)
I mean, we don't have to just accept that this is okay.
43:43:
(Tim Miller)
And so, yeah, I mean, some of the looters are out of control, but the guy that killed people in Kenosha wasn't an Antifa looter.
43:53:
(Tim Miller)
He was a white nationalist who came to work with the cops to defend the town against the looters.
43:59:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah.
43:59:
(Tim Miller)
I mean, there are radicals on both sides of this who are acting inappropriately and acting violently.
44:05:
(Tim Miller)
Donald Trump is trying to use this for political gain.
44:11:
(Tim Miller)
And the Democrats should be doing as much as they can to...
44:17:
(Tim Miller)
defray that advantage.
44:19:
(Tim Miller)
And thank God they nominated Joe Biden because he's willing to do it.
44:24:
(Tim Miller)
He's willing to condemn the looters.
44:25:
(Tim Miller)
But they also should defray that advantage by putting this back on Donald Trump.
44:30:
(Tim Miller)
They haven't mentioned Jacob Blake's name for two days at this convention.
44:34:
(Tim Miller)
Has George Floyd been named at the convention over two days?
44:36:
(Tim Miller)
I don't think so.
44:38:
(Tim Miller)
So, yeah, he had a couple of speakers of color who talked about how great Donald Trump is.
44:43:
(Tim Miller)
And that's great, elevating diverse voices.
44:45:
(Tim Miller)
That's great.
44:46:
(Tim Miller)
But this is happening in this country because of the actions of the government and the actions against black and brown people.
44:57:
(Tim Miller)
And the president doesn't want to do anything about it.
44:59:
(Tim Miller)
And even if the Black Lives Matter's numbers have come down...
45:01:
(Tim Miller)
That's a message that's working in the suburbs and working with soft Trump voters.
45:05:
(Tim Miller)
And we saw it.
45:06:
(Tim Miller)
And the Democrats should continue to press that and not not, you know, be like guilt tripped by people about like this handful of Antifa looter assholes that don't actually represent the Democratic Party because the Democratic Party nominated Joe Biden.
45:23:
(JVL)
Sarah, you have this look of utter pain on your face as though Tim and I are turning off swing voters left and right as we speak.
45:30:
(JVL)
Is that is that what's happening?
45:32:
(Sarah Longwell)
You know, it's the thing is, is like substantively, I mostly agree with what you've said.
45:39:
(Sarah Longwell)
But as an analytical matter, right, I am like Wisconsin's a swing state.
45:46:
(Sarah Longwell)
There is, people are tired of violence in general.
45:52:
(Sarah Longwell)
And that should automatically work against Donald Trump, you'd think, in a normal world.
45:58:
(Sarah Longwell)
I'm just not sure that it will.
46:01:
(Sarah Longwell)
Yeah.
46:02:
(Sarah Longwell)
Because I think that Donald Trump is the one braying about law and order, braying about this happening in democratic cities where they seem like they can't get things under control.
46:11:
(Sarah Longwell)
Donald Trump gets to look like he's the big guy.
46:13:
(Sarah Longwell)
And like, I don't know, Midwestern swing voters, that's what I'm thinking about.
46:17:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I'm thinking about how this plays with them.
46:19:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I'm just not sure that it...
46:22:
(Sarah Longwell)
that all of the stuff that you guys just said, I agree with, but I'm worried that the tide is turning.
46:28:
(Tim Miller)
Let's talk about this frame for your, this is a serious question for these voters.
46:32:
(Tim Miller)
So it's just putting on our analytical hats, not, not righteousness hats, but like is the frame of I'm Joe Biden and I actually have called Jacob Blake's family and George Floyd's family.
46:42:
(Tim Miller)
And I care about this and I want to heal the country and looting is bad.
46:46:
(Tim Miller)
And I speak about that clearly.
46:48:
(Tim Miller)
Um,
46:48:
(Tim Miller)
Is that frame worse than Donald Trump's frame, which is that Antifa is running wild and killing your communities, and it's all Antifa's fault, and I've never heard of George Floyd or Jacob Blake.
47:00:
(Tim Miller)
I'm never going to talk about them.
47:02:
(Tim Miller)
Which is a better frame for the voters that are up for grabs in this election?
47:06:
(Tim Miller)
That's a genuine question.
47:07:
(Tim Miller)
I think Joe Biden's.
47:09:
(Sarah Longwell)
Let me put it a different way, because JBL raised something that is exactly what I just said to a Wall Street Journal reporter who was asking me about this question.
47:16:
(JVL)
And I used the journal called both of you guys about different stories, but not me.
47:23:
(JVL)
Interesting.
47:26:
(JVL)
That's okay.
47:26:
(JVL)
I'm used to it.
47:28:
(Sarah Longwell)
I was, I was the whole thing about impeachment.
47:31:
(Sarah Longwell)
This is a really good example of where I felt like Democrats had a real advantage, right?
47:38:
(Sarah Longwell)
Public opinion is like cement.
47:39:
(Sarah Longwell)
It is soft at first and then it hardens.
47:42:
(Sarah Longwell)
And the public opinion was really soft around impeachment.
47:45:
(Sarah Longwell)
Oh my gosh, he did this thing and it was a big deal.
47:47:
(Sarah Longwell)
And it was the public opinion was moving hard against Trump.
47:50:
(Sarah Longwell)
And then Trump dumped millions and millions of dollars in oppo on Hunter Biden and muddied the entire Ukraine question.
48:00:
(Sarah Longwell)
Republican sentiment on it froze and then began to move back in Donald Trump's direction.
48:05:
(Sarah Longwell)
And right now he is pushing one issue, which is the law and order issue.
48:08:
(Sarah Longwell)
And he is framing himself as the person who could do it.
48:11:
(Sarah Longwell)
And he's going to dump a hundred million dollars in swing States talking to white voters about why he's the law and order candidate.
48:18:
(Sarah Longwell)
Now you tell him, and I, so my concern, and it's not a, it's not a like three alarm siren.
48:23:
(Sarah Longwell)
Cause I think you're right.
48:25:
(Sarah Longwell)
Joe Biden is Joe Biden.
48:26:
(Sarah Longwell)
And it's not, he's not, you know,
48:29:
(Sarah Longwell)
handling this the way I think Elizabeth Warren would be handling it.
48:33:
(Sarah Longwell)
But I do worry that it could turn into a vulnerability for Democrats.
48:37:
(Sarah Longwell)
And that's the question I'm posing to you, is seeing the world not as we want it to be, but as it is, could it be a vulnerability?
48:45:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I'll just say one other thing, which is
48:47:
(Sarah Longwell)
I saw the clip of that Ronald McDonald house in downtown Chicago where there was these groups of men that were breaking the glass on the downstairs.
48:56:
(Sarah Longwell)
And, like, I found it very affecting.
48:58:
(Sarah Longwell)
I was outraged that there was just people for no reason breaking the windows and terrifying people with sick children inside.
49:06:
(Sarah Longwell)
And, like, when you know that these voters are seeing that on a loop in the media that they consume –
49:13:
(Sarah Longwell)
So I think it's visceral.
49:15:
(Tim Miller)
What do those guys have to do with Joe Biden, though?
49:17:
(Tim Miller)
I mean, yeah, I agree.
49:20:
(Tim Miller)
I can see that this could be a potential issue for them.
49:23:
(Tim Miller)
And if Joe Biden could wave a magic wand and make everybody stop looting, he should do that.
49:28:
(Tim Miller)
But he can't.
49:29:
(Tim Miller)
He doesn't have any political job right now.
49:34:
(Tim Miller)
Do you really think that the Ronald McDonald House looter guy is going to be able to be
49:40:
(Tim Miller)
tied to Joe Biden?
49:42:
(Tim Miller)
Like that Joe Biden is going to let the Ronald McDonald looters roam free?
49:47:
(Tim Miller)
The crime bill guy?
49:49:
(Tim Miller)
I don't know.
49:50:
(Tim Miller)
I mean, maybe.
49:50:
(Tim Miller)
I could see how that would work for people who are stuck in the Fox disreality loop who are never going to vote for Joe Biden anyway.
49:58:
(Tim Miller)
But for the swing voters?
49:59:
(Sarah Longwell)
I think you're right.
50:00:
(Sarah Longwell)
So here's one thing I'll say.
50:02:
(Sarah Longwell)
I think you're right that it is not at all sticking to Joe Biden at the moment.
50:05:
(Sarah Longwell)
My concern is that Trump is going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to try to make it stick.
50:10:
(Sarah Longwell)
And that is the one area where like Trump hasn't really had a play.
50:15:
(Sarah Longwell)
Right.
50:15:
(Sarah Longwell)
He can't get a toehold on Biden with anything.
50:18:
(Sarah Longwell)
He can't get it with China.
50:19:
(Sarah Longwell)
He can't get it with covid.
50:21:
(Sarah Longwell)
There's just there's nothing.
50:23:
(Sarah Longwell)
He can't get it with the socialist frame.
50:24:
(Sarah Longwell)
This is the one place where I think it is possible that they could lay a glove on sort of Democrats writ large and try to tie it to Joe Biden.
50:35:
(JVL)
So what is the answer for Biden?
50:37:
(JVL)
If you guys were running his campaign and you recognize this as a potential area of vulnerability, what would you tell him to do?
50:49:
(Sarah Longwell)
So it's actually a tricky question because on one side of things, you don't really want to fight on his turf, right?
50:56:
(Sarah Longwell)
You want to be on offense, on the things that work for you.
50:58:
(Sarah Longwell)
And if you're Joe Biden, that's Trump's failures on the economy, on COVID, that he is divisive and that you are a uniter.
51:05:
(Sarah Longwell)
I do think that though Joe Biden should be making it clear, he's issuing press statements in which he stands with the peaceful protesters but condemns the violence.
51:16:
(Sarah Longwell)
I'm not entirely sure it's sufficient.
51:18:
(Sarah Longwell)
But Tim, I'm really interested in what you think.
51:22:
(Tim Miller)
I think that Joe Biden's running a really great campaign right now.
51:26:
(Tim Miller)
And so I haven't actually watched the video that he just put out about this.
51:30:
(Tim Miller)
I just have read the quotes that I read to you.
51:34:
(Sarah Longwell)
Wait, did he put out a video?
51:36:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah, he just did a straight to camera thing addressing the, I mean, addressing the Jacob Blake killing is the point of it.
51:42:
(Tim Miller)
But he also addresses the looting.
51:46:
(Tim Miller)
And I think that's good.
51:48:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah, I think it's good.
51:50:
(Tim Miller)
I think that Joe Biden is doing the right thing on this right now.
51:55:
(Tim Miller)
I mean, I think that they should monitor it and be careful to speak out at times when it's appropriate to speak out and to condemn it.
52:07:
(Tim Miller)
And I think that in the debates...
52:09:
(Tim Miller)
It's going to be very important that he's forceful in condemning this when Trump tries to pin this on him.
52:18:
(Tim Miller)
But I don't know.
52:20:
(Tim Miller)
I've kind of stopped sitting in the chair of like trying to give pundit advice to the Biden campaign at this point because like...
52:28:
(Tim Miller)
Maybe it's been luck or accident or sheer genius of, you know, Steve Ricchetti.
52:35:
(Tim Miller)
But I mean, every move they've made so far has been correct.
52:39:
(Tim Miller)
And I've been pretty impressed by how they've staved off the tendency that literally every other single person of the two dozen people in that primary had to kind of appeal to the lefty Twitter wing.
52:54:
(Tim Miller)
They haven't done it.
52:55:
(Tim Miller)
And so I think stay the course is my advice.
52:59:
(JVL)
Well, that was a good show, guys.
53:01:
(JVL)
Tim, you have always wanted us to disagree more.
53:03:
(JVL)
And I think we hit that mark today.
53:06:
(Tim Miller)
Would you agree?
53:08:
(Tim Miller)
I agree.
53:08:
(Tim Miller)
I like disagreeing.
53:09:
(Tim Miller)
That's good.
53:10:
(Tim Miller)
Nobody wants to hear us all tell each other how great we are.
53:12:
(Tim Miller)
I mean, if they want to do that, then they can look at Twitter.
53:18:
(Tim Miller)
We keep retweeting each other and there are plenty of vehicles.
53:21:
(Sarah Longwell)
Just so I don't get angry emails, to be clear, because this got me in trouble on Twitter, I'm doing this as an analytical matter.
53:26:
(Sarah Longwell)
I'm telling you what I see in the data and expressing a concern that is not my opinion about things.
53:32:
(Sarah Longwell)
I'm with you guys in a lot of the general outrage, but I think I see a shift happening, and I'm worried about it.
53:41:
(JVL)
I'm not sure I believe you.
53:42:
(JVL)
I read what Soledad O'Brien said about you, Sarah.
53:46:
(JVL)
I know what kind of person you are, lady.
53:50:
(Sarah Longwell)
I have been reevaluating my life choices.
53:52:
(JVL)
I ladied you.
53:54:
(JVL)
All right, guys, good show.
53:55:
(JVL)
We will talk again at the next level next week.
53:58:
(JVL)
Peace out.