Bill Kristol: Biden Drops Out of Race

Hello and welcome to the Bullwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
I promised you

a weekend podcast if he did it, and he did it. Joe Biden has in a statement said that

he is stepping aside from the campaign. He will remain in the presidency and focus on

his job there. We did it, Bill and Nancy.
Bill Crystal is here with me to chat about it. How are you doing, Bill? I'm fine.
How are you, Tim? It is. It was Nancy.
Does Nancy get the credit here? Is this the final feather in her cap for the Speaker Emeritus? I think the final feather will be winning in 106 days from now, but this is the semifinal feather in her cap. Totally.
Don't you think she gets the credit? I'm happy to give her the credit. Well, I guess we'll just start.
Biggest possible picture, your initial reactions. I was starting to have doubts.
So I don't know where your head was at, but how do you feel following the news? Was it you I texted when you said you were having doubts? And I said, I thought the silence was sort of a good sign in the sense that everyone went quiet for 12 hours and they must, you know, Pelosi,ries all their surrogates i'm out there like firing off shame on you you were like shame on everyone and then meanwhile while i'm angrily shouting into the into the void they were they were writing a letter so that's good no no they were on the bubble and you put to push them over'm giving you 100% credit. That was a fantastic screed argument.

Let's call it an argument, not a screed.

So I don't know.

What do we even say?

I mean, that Lenin or fake Lenin quote is so overused now, but it is still pretty apt, right?

There are decades when nothing happens and there are weeks when decades happen.

I mean, this has not happened before in American politics, has it?

A prospective nominee withdrawn.

Yeah, I think it's 68. Not after he's gone through all the primaries.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's 68 would be close, I guess.
Yeah, that's true. And then he endorsed Vice President Harris, which I think was to be expected.
He's going to endorse his vice president. The question of whether he and others use muscle to kind of, or muscle's not fair, persuade everyone else.
So whether everyone else just decides it's the right thing to do to coalesce behind her, what do you think? I think it's very likely, but not quite inevitable. I'm going to pause you before we get to Harris, because here's what the president said on that.
He said he'd speak to the nation later this week in more detail about his decision. He didn't really give a rationale.
It was one of the things missing. The letter included all the things he felt proud of, rightly, accomplishments of the first term, I guess the only term of the Biden presidency.
Then he wrote, for now, let me express my deepest gratitude to all those who've worked so hard to see me reelected. I want to thank Vice President Kamala Harris for being an extraordinary partner in all this work.
And then in a follow-up, he wrote that my very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my vice president, And it's been the best decision I've made today. I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year.
Democrats, it's time to come together and beat Trump. And I think that kind of leads us to, there was, I guess, Joe Scarborough was reporting that there was some conversation about that back and forth

about what to do with that

and the thinking was sort of

along the lines of

maybe it would benefit the

Vice President for him not to endorse her

in various ways, but I don't know. What's

your take on that decision?

First of all, when you check your WhatsApp or Signal

or whatever encrypted device you use

you'll see the private note from the President

thanking you for what you've done.

I got mine too. Thank you, Bill, for

Thank you, Bill, for six months ago when you began doing the Morning Trust newsletter for calling on me to step aside. And you got the – but he told me he's also writing you to thank you for jolting him last night, one last step over the line to do the right thing.
Actually, let's just pause there. Let's just pause before we have plenty of time to talk about going forward.
I was a little rude in the article that I wrote just about this notion that this was tough for him and this is emotional and that we need to care about Joe Biden's feelings and all that. And I stand by all that.
I think it was kind of silly to obsess over Joe Biden's feelings. But it is pretty remarkable in another way, you know, that for him to just really just like come to terms with this and step away.
And it's not, it's not nothing. It's not a nothing decision.
I mean, it was something that he should have done. It's something that all of us have been agitating for him to do.
Something that he probably should have done before the primary started, to be real frank about it. And yet, he kind of only had to gut this thing out for another two more weeks.
You don't want to give him any credit? I do want to give him credit because I very much feel that. Honestly, I think he does deserve credit.
Better late than never would be a not-so-gracious way of saying it, but I feel that that's honestly about the situation. I mean, I do wonder if he could have gutted it out, though.
I'm not so certain. I mean, I think you would have had a public statement at some point by Pelosi and Jeffries, and delegates aren't literally pledged.
And I mean, it really could have been unbelievable chaos. And I wonder, it'd be interesting when we see all the TikTok reported, which I have zero insight on what really happened behind the scenes.
How much of it was Pelosi telling him, I'm making this up, obviously, you know, last night, this is going to happen, Mr. President, as opposed to him deciding, look, this is the right thing for my country, or having an honest conversation with his physician, conceivably, about where this, you know, where he might be a year or two or three years from now.
So I'm happy to give him credit. I really am.
And I like Biden. I've always liked Biden.
I've known him for a long, long time. I worked for him and worked to help him in 2020 when he was unclear who was going to win the Democratic primary.
And we enthusiastically supported him in 2020. And on the whole, I think I've been a defender of him even on issues where he's sort of 60%, right? 40%, not so great.
But I've always thought so much better than a lot of the alternatives, infinitely better than Trump, but better than a lot of the alternative Democratic presidents would be. So I am pro-Biden.
I wish he had done this earlier, but maybe it'll work out fine. You know, this 106-day sprint, maybe that's in a weird way, not a bad, might be fine for the country.
And it does, many people voted this out. Sarah, I think was one of the first, right? Trump is now the oldest, will be the oldest nominee ever nominated by one of our major parties.

Yes, Donald Trump, officially the oldest nominee. That is wonderful.
I want to talk about that a little bit more. My one little note that I do have since I wrote the article and I've heard

from a lot of people since the tenor of what I was writing was just about like how irresponsible

the people around him and the family has been just focusing so much on Joe Biden's legacy and

not on like this urgent task at hand. And a of the reporting even as late as this morning like in in the morning news in the Politico and Axios newsletters like pointing to the fact that among people Hunter was advising him and was and was encouraging him to stay and I did have a little birdie share with me after the article was out that like that, there was not the impression that that was actually true.
And, you know, and I think that maybe, you know, that was the unfortunate thing about these sort of things. It's what I understand how people sometimes get frustrated with the political press, like, you know, because it's like, you have to decode what is happening here.
Right. And, you know, it's and to me, it actually makes a lot of sense that there was, you know know a small cadre of advisors around him see some that wanted him to stay some that didn't and the ones that didn't you know rather than wanting to point the finger at the bosses dithering and his famous famously takes him a long time to make a decision um you know uh it's, let's blame Hunter, kind of an easy target.

So anyway, I thought that was a little interesting nugget.

Okay, we move forward.

We press forward.

The question now in front of us,

Joe Biden has endorsed the vice president,

which we said.

And so that takes us to maybe the final installment.

Who knows?

We'll see what happens of the coconut meter.

You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?

Is it Kamala time, Bill? Or do you think maybe not? Maybe the process might lead to somebody else? I think it's very likely Kamala time. Some people will say, let's have an open process.
But to have an open process, for one thing, one or two candidates have to throw their hats in the ring. And it may be that if it looks inevitable, you know, someone who's got a promising future in democratic politics is not going to be the person who gets 14 percent of the delegates against Kamala Harris.
A lot would depend on what I think. So Biden has endorsed her.
That's appropriate. She's as vice president.
Will Speaker Pelosi endorse her? Speaker Emerita, I guess, former Speaker Pelosi. Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer.
There's an there's an obvious latin in high school at jesuit school and i keep calling her speaker emeritus when you are actually correct it's speaker emerita well just because she's a woman yeah i mean it hasn't been one of those before and i mean the whole speaker thing that's an invented title which the democratic conference i think invented maybe the house invented as a tributer when it was controlled by the democrats but not a real thing in a funny way you know what would i guess obama clinton i mean you could imagine one scenario where everyone is on board and it's over 24 48 hours from now i

guess even six hours from now you can imagine another scenario where she's the very very heavy

favorite but jd pritzker's thinking of running and someone else and a few delegates are saying

well let's let's take a look at them all she would still be a pretty big favorite what do you think

I don't know. But J.D.
Pritzker is thinking of running and someone else and a few delegates are saying, well, let's take a look at them all. She would still be a pretty big favorite.
What do you think?

I think she's an overwhelming favorite

I think that they should open it

I think it would benefit her to have an open process

and to win it

James Carville has made that argument very compellingly

I don't like and I'm frankly

turned off by

and so I don't want my analysis to be clouded

by how turned off I am by the argument of

you can't pass her over

you can't And I'm frankly turned off by, and so I don't want my analysis to be clouded by how turned off I am by the

argument of like,

you can't pass her over.

You can't pass over a black woman.

I sent this out,

which people are already upset at me about,

which is fine.

I'm free now.

After all this,

we freed ourselves,

Bill Crystal from,

from having to concern about what other people are upset at us for saying the

truth.

But I pointed out that Mike Pence has been passed over, I over i guess i mean nearly murdered um so worse than passed over i feel like the last vps joe biden was passed over by hillary clinton dick cheney was i guess passed over by john mccain your former boss dan quayle passed over by george w bush nepo baby baby. All those guys are white men, last time I checked.

So it's a stupid reason to nominate her.

There are other reasons to nominate her that make a lot more sense

that I'm happy to talk about, but I don't like that argument at all.

I think the more compelling arguments are, number one,

like the time frame and logistics.

Two, she can take over the fundraising apparatus, the campaign apparatus immediately like starting tomorrow conceivably you know they can start running ads with kamala on them you have a whole team already in place versus having a three-week period where that's all that is in limbo a little bit i don't think that's a life or death reason i think it's something to think about and kind of a unity element to this preparing for a DNC convention that is cleaner. And just the fact that, you know, she hasn't done anything as vice president to disqualify herself.
And she has a long resume that, that is certainly suitable for the presidency. So like those to me are the arguments for just having a clean handoff, but I don't know.
I think it's worth at least talking about. No, totally.
And those are legit. I think there are arguments against the, let's call it the clean handoff or the anointing, which would be the negative way of putting it, which is the flip side of what you said.
I mean, exciting contested convention could ultimately be better for the party than everyone agreeing on Vice President Harris' anointed convention. Maybe not, that may be fanciful, or at least the odds may be too great that it wouldn't just be exciting, but chaotic and disruptive and bittering, but we don't know what the balance would be on that.
I mean, for me, if Biden had said at the end of 2022, I'm not running, I would be inclined to favor others over Harris, but just on purely kind of more centrist, fresh face, successful governors of big Midwestern states kind of grounds, not that I have anything particular against Vice President Harris. And as a former chief of staff to a vice president, who was unjustly calumniated in so many ways and caricatured, I do think it's hard to judge a vice president.
I also think that there's a pretty bigger upside than people think when she now emerges in a weird way. When you've been underestimated, you can prove that, oh my God, everyone said she wasn't up to it.
And here she is being forceful, sort of dynamic, coherent, et cetera. For me, the biggest downside is though the flip side of Biden endorsing her, which is it is a continuation of the Biden-Harris administration to some degree.
And I think it's very important to flip the script as much as possible. So I very much hope that she, and I assume she's watching this, so I'll just say it directly to her, you need to run as your own person, as a fresh start, a new ticket, a younger ticket, obviously in no way disrespectful of or repudiating President Biden and in fact, defending the achievements of his and your administration.
But it cannot be a kind of, I can do a better job than Joe Biden of defending our record. I'm going to go back and explain that the border thing wasn't as bad as you thought.
I mean, none of that. It's got to be Trump is too old, too criminal, too authoritarian.
And me and my vice presidential nominee are a fresh start for the 21st century, whatever. I mean, I think, I just think very important that she internalize the notion that it's a new beginning and not a continuation.

I concur. I definitely agree that the thought that, the baggage maybe, rather than thought,

the baggage from being Biden-Harris, feeling like you have to defend him, he's still the president,

are there interpersonal dynamics working there? You know, I do think that conceivably,

in a perfect world, an imaginary world, being able to say, voila, we have two outsiders who have come in who are young and fresh-faced, that would, I think, probably be better. But that's not our real world.
You have to be practical. And as the week goes on, we'll talk about the various contingencies but just as a from an organizational standpoint there are real benefits to the fact that she is already on the biden harris ticket it can now be a harris question mark ticket which we'll get to next and you know they have the existing cash on hand they have the existing staff in the states you have advertise you know you have have people that can do advertising.
There was an app that I was watching last night from her unsuccessful 2020 primary campaign that got me a little excited, I have to say. Sick of this? Well, think about this.
He's a world leader in temper tantrums. She never loses her cool.
She prosecuted sex predators. He is one.
Grab him by the f***. She shut down for-profit colleges that swindled Americans.
He was a for-profit college. At Trump University, we teach success.
Literally. He's owned by the big banks.
She's the attorney general who beat the biggest banks in America and forced them to pay homeowners 18 billion dollars. He's tearing us apart.

She'll bring us together. This is Trump.
And in every possible way, this is the anti-Trump.

So if that's what you're looking for in your next president, there's really only one Kamala. I hope you're as excited as I am after listening to that.
I mean, that's pretty good. That's good.
That's good. That is something they can, I mean, they can start having that shit turned around by Thursday if they're just moving on to Kamala.
And like, there's some practical advantage to that. Yeah, no, that is good.
And I'd forgotten that. You forget the ads of the people who pulled out before the first first caucus or primary you know but but that she wasn't oh that's not worth getting into 2019 and all that i i she wasn't people are overdoing how bad a candidate she was there are always people who run they just don't catch on there's not a lane other people catch on buddha judge and so forth and they end up not making it and if they're smart out early, as she did, and don't get 3% or 6% or 9% of the vote in Iowa, New Hampshire.
And so they're sort of not marred by that. And she, in fact, was therefore selected as vice president.
So people have overdone how much we can conclude from the fact that she didn't make it to the finals, as it were, in 2020. You know, one thing I was struck by this, and I'm curious what you think about this, just looking at things quickly online for a few minutes.
I had thought a week ago that it would, might hurt vice president Harris that, you know, the, the coverup accusation, what did they, there'll be a lot of reporting now of who knew what about Biden and when did they think he really wasn't quite up to it or did they? And, and how come she didn't ever say anything, but watching Las Vidas and others attack her on that just now on on twitter for we're speaking what mid-afternoon uh on sunday and and just the last hour since she and i made the announcement i think that attack may not work i mean no one begrudges the vice president not you know calling out her boss the president right i think and she didn't go out of her way to gaslight either, I've got to say. She defended him appropriately, I think.
So I actually think if the Trump people go crazy with that, which they may, about how she's part of the greatest cover-up in modern American politics, how could she have not told us about, I wonder if that could, she could answer that in a sort of dignified way, A. And B, I'm not so sure attacking Biden, which is what the Trump people are still sort of doing as he gets out, is very smart at this point.
Isn't there going to be a bit of an upswelling of respect and affection for President Biden here? Yeah, I think that's a big, big loser. You know, I think that's just a big zero as a message.
I've seen a bunch of people, that feels like a Twitter-brained message. I've a bunch of political types try to make that happen, particularly on the right.
I don't know. I think that people are going to be relieved that Joe is not an 81 year old against a 78 year old running and don't want to obsess over like, you know, the intricacies of the relationship between Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
I think the country is going to be ready to move forward from it. I think focusing on that would be a big mistake for the Republicans.
I also think that they're going to end up being totally unable to avoid just their most base instincts, which is the campaign going straight after her on immigration and all the right-wing media figures calling her a DEI presidential candidate or some other racist stuff about how she's an affirmative action president. And so I just think that both of those attacks on her will overwhelm this kind of notion that she was part of some cover up.
There also will be the kind of lightweight. Trump has already unveiled laughing Kamala is his nickname, which doesn't really work for me.
But I do have I do have to mention that I thought the sanctimonious was really bad and that kind of grew on me over time. So you do never know sometimes with these things, but laugh and Kamala, I don't think works, but I think that the Trump against Harris message will be immigration, racial dog whistles, and kind of lightweight, not not ready for the stage particularly related to foreign policy not standing next to putin you know kind of standing next to she like is she going to be tough enough for that i think that will be their their contrast what do you think yeah i'm not so sure that as you say what i just think about it as you say it she's pretty tough she's not a not a kid.
I mean, she's late 50s, I think. I mean, she's attorney general.
She's 59. She was a DA and attorney general of rather the largest state for eight years, I think, if I've got that right.
And then Senator, obviously, for a couple more. And then Vice President for three.
I mean, she spoke at the Munich Security Conference and did a pretty good job. It's a speech, and it was a bunch of meetings.
I knew a lot of people who were there, though, and they were pretty impressed. So the idea that she doesn't know, she couldn't deal with world leaders, I don't buy that for a second, and I don't think people will buy that.
And so at the end of the day, it becomes a more standard, you indict the nominee of the party that's in power that has the White House with whatever you don't like about what the White House has done for the last two years, and that's fair enough. And that you know, that's going to happen on the border, obviously, and on inflation.
And I guess on weakness and foreign policy to some degree. But I don't know.
It's so hard to judge. I've just haven't been through this.
How much of that was Biden specific, you know, in some of the things? Afghanistan, it wasn't that the decision quite, it's not like Trump was for staying there, really. It was the way in which he didn't respond to critics and sort of looked arrogant or dismissive of people saying, wait a second, this isn't going well.
And some of this, even inflation is a little bit of that, right? So to the degree that she kind of gets a fresh start on some of these things, I think she's much stronger than Biden. And I think it's very hard to know.
What do you think? I mean, you've been through this. I mean, no one's been through this, but you've been presidential campaign.
I mean, I don't know. What do we think the polls are going to say in a week with Trump versus Harris? I think she'll do slightly better than Biden because there's some very low-hanging fruit out there of people that are essentially Democrats that were saying that they were not for Biden.
And so I think you get a small bump, one or two points. And then, you know, you get into a fight.
And I think these are kind of the battle lines. We talked about where Trump is going to hit her.
I think that really they are in big danger of overstepping on the DEI attacks, I think, and having backlash. And we saw people do not want to think about this country as a racist country.
You saw all this after George Floyd. Trump really got hurt by going overboard on that.
I think there's a potential for them going overboard on on attacks on her i think the immigration thing will be potent on the um weakness as you're saying i don't know i i think she's going to beat expectations on foreign policy stuff i really do i think i mentioned before i had an off the record with her a while back where she talked at length about foreign policy and she beat my personal expectations just about her a her thoughts on america's role in the world and b also just her you know kind of proclivity for being able to kind of talk intelligently about the various players and you know her time at she's been to multiple munich security conferences and so i think that she's really done her homework on that i think people are going to be kind of surprised about that. So, you know, I think those, you know, are kind of where the Republicans will go.
I think Israel Gaza could be a potential landmine for her, you know, on all this. In some ways, it could be a fresh start that you don't have all the baggage there.
And the other ways kind of we'll see how she kind of talks about that. Going the other way, though, is what people can be going back to that ad and more interesting i mean just hearing the one part from that ad of kamala harris being like i prosecuted sex predators and then trump with the grabber by the you know what audio that's pretty nice um that's pretty compelling i like that they're leaning into that i think that we're so far away from the defund the police stuff that hopefully she'll be able to really kind of embrace the prosecutorial record that she had.
They kind of allude to it here, but back then they were working with Trump University and how she prosecuted frauds and how he was a fraud. There was so much more material on that front now to counter with him then.
And then the one other thing is on the baggage with Biden. Some of that is going to be there.
But just the fundamental Malcolm Gladwell blink judgment is this is a 59-year-old black woman going up against the oldest presidential nominee in history. And the nature of it is different, is fresh.
And so making her carry the baggage i think is tougher than if it was you know biden tim kane or whatever you know it's hard to game out just we're talking and of course everyone will have days or maybe several weeks to think this through in terms of the running mate assuming it is harris is the nominee i mean part of me thinks just as we talk, Trump has the advantage, also disadvantage, I guess, of being the ex-president. That does create the stature gap that he's met with.
I mean, there were horrible meetings, often with Putin and so forth, but he's been at those four NATO summits when he was president and so forth. But she has been vice president.
In a weird way, though, I personally am closer, I think if you give me a chart of people's issues or whatever, you know, to the Shapiros and Whitmer's of the party, then Harris, probably she's a California Democrat, they're Midwestern, more moderate Democrats, probably, though she did have a reputation as a tough prosecutor and all that. Still, I'm probably closer to the others.
But I would worry a little for one of them, that it's a president, ex-president versus a governor, you know, who's in foreign policy experiences to trade missions to abroad or something like that. You can't say that about Harris.
I wonder on the VP pick, incidentally, whether she should think about that a little. Let's talk about the VPs.
Are you ready? Let's just do that. I want to keep open the process of an open process, but I think we both concur that it's almost certainly going to be Harris.
So let's just kind of see. Even's an open process it's likely to be harris so it's still legitimate for us to talk about the vps to me the short list is josh shapiro pennsylvania governor who i interviewed a while back if you guys missed that you can go back and listen to that obviously we're we're big fans of governor shapiro here i think mark kelly arizona senator astronaut uh wife gabby giffords was shot and so has been an advocate for gun violence uh he defeated blake masters in uh the midterm last time you know so he's a little experience going up against this sort of nationalist you know the ivy league nationalist turned populist republican fascist type thing that JD Vance is going to give.
People will throw out Andy Beshear and Roy Cooper as the Southern white governor's safe picks. Roy Cooper was North Carolina's governor, Andy Beshear is Kentucky's.
That to me seems like the short list. And then, you know, then you start to get into, well, do you consider a double woman ticket with Whitmer or maybe Amy Klobbuchar some people throwing out some other you know folks who are good on tv chris murphy or mayor pete jumped to mind as you know kind of second tier options so anyway that's kind of my list maybe go through that the first that first batch bill and then then we'll take it from there i mean shapiro i think and and whitmer except might be a bridge too far.
I don't know if it really matters, but let's just say that maybe it does. So they're the governors of the large states that have to be won, and they both won huge victories in 2022, which is not ancient history.
It's like 18 months ago, right? So, I mean, there's a huge case for them, just as a practical matter. I don't know.
Shapiro doesn't guarantee Pennsylvania. Makes it a heck of a lot more likely, and you kind of can't win the presidency without Pennsylvania.
Michigan's a little less of a must-win, but it's a pretty high in the list of close-to-must-wins, very close-to-must-wins. So I would say that if you wanted to gamble with the two women, Wimmer wouldn't be crazy.
Arizona, I don't know that Kelly wins you Arizona. That state's got other issues, I think, though he is what a good re-election race in Arizona.
I think the strong argument for him is he was a Navy captain, I think, who then became an astronaut, but he's a military guy. So it neutralizes Vance, at least.
Vance doesn't become the only veteran on a ticket. I also think this will sound totally crazy, but I think I noticed I looked it up.
Kelly's just almost about Harris's age. I think there's a case against Trump.
You want Trump to be too old, but I think you sort of want to reassure people that it isn't just, you know, like two people you've never heard of who are kind of, quote, promising coming off the bench, you know? So I think Harris Kelly. Fresh out the womb.
Yeah, Harris Kelly is sort of like a grown-up ticket, but they're each 58 or nine or something like that and that kind of sounds like a hedge fund guy you know Harris Kelly you know yeah that's good yeah that's a good point or maybe a maybe a sort of upscale supermarket or something so one way to think that was well who's actually run well in a presidential campaign who's available and I think that gets you to Buttigieg and Klobuchar, who both ran excellent campaigns in 2020. It happened that they fell just a tad short in Iowa and New Hampshire, and that's what opened it up for Biden to become the centrist.
And then Bloomberg blew up, and then Biden was the only centrist alternative left to Sanders. But they really did run well.
I mean, and very impressive campaigns from nowhere, basically, in both cases, especially for Buttigieg. In another world, I would say Buttigieg, I mean, and maybe I should say it even in this world, honestly, I mean, you know, super impressive, say ran well in 2020 in the cabinet now.
It's a little bit too much, maybe the Biden administration, though, they're both part of the administration. So that's a bit of a negative for pete i'd say uh and then i don't know is america ready for a black woman and a gay man it would it would be it would be interesting i mean i no problem for me but i don't know so my instagram followers would be excited but i don't know that that's the core base um of the party uh yeah i don't know but the pete thing i mean he just we'll put this in the show notes too

he just eviscerated jd vance on bill maher last night and so it's like the idea it is tempting

it is tempting i just think about how fresh we would all feel next week if you go from the biden

interviews where it's like your work when a sentence begins you don't know where it's gonna

end and like then you have harris and pete out there really dropping bombs left and right on

the trump vance ticket there's something appealing about that but yeah i don't know i don't know

Thank you. and like then you have harris and pete out there really dropping bombs left and right on the trump van sticker there's something appealing about that but yeah i don't know i don't know part of me says feels like we're maybe getting a lot a little over our skis it's too much and the only other person i mentioned or type of person but i'll mention one name as an example would be jim stevridi is the former nato commander whom clinton hillary clinton seriously considered in 2016, you know, political in his post-four-star general life and good Democrat.
But I don't know. It probably would be a mistake, actually.
But my mistake, it probably just wouldn't work particularly to excite people. But you could make a case, very dangerous world out there, Vice President Harris' fault that we just said that she has some foreign policy credentials, is basically a domestic policy person.
And it wouldn't be crazy to say, hey, we've got a high power. Someone here really knows what's going on in the world.
And it is a weakness, I think, for Trump that he's going to blow up the entire liberal international order. So those things, people always talk about that.
It never quite happens. And I suppose Jim Stockdale is the one time it did happen for Ross Perot, and that didn't work out so so unless clark aren't exactly yeah no exactly so there's always kind of like a so probably not i guess but i don't know it does provide some gravitas yeah i don't know the thing that that does come back to me is in this era the ability to communicate is more important than ever we're not in a tv ad world anymore, as much as I liked that Harris ad.
And I think that you can move the needle somewhat on ads, but you're going to have to be able to have somebody that can resonate on social media where we know who the undecided people are in this race. They're not the people that pay attention that closely to the news.
So somebody that can get little good sound bites that get onto social media to me is the best case for pete or somebody of that elk it's the thing that has me worried a bit about mark kelly who's not that strong at that you know i do think that mark kelly has a good story though i like the idea of an astronaut you know like in arizona i like him going to wisconsin it's not scary you know all of a sudden it's like the Harris Kelly ticket does not feel, you know, like you were saying, quite as like that. They're not up for the job.
Like really Mark Kelly, Senator, astronaut. And, you know, like the former prosecutor and AG and Senator, you know, I think that the lightweight message gets very undermined by that, but he's not the strongest communicator out there.
I don't, I haven't listened to andy beshear and roy cooper talk enough to know if that's true but my understanding is that neither of them are actually lighting the world on fire either in these kind of environments and so that gets you back to josh shapiro i you to me it just you keep kind of landing at josh shapiro who is the governor of a swing state who can speak who can deliver a coherent message. To me, he's a clear frontrunner.
And I think the most conspicuous, moderate success story in the Democratic Party, I mean, pretty unambiguously on the centrist side of some key things, 15 points he won by 2022 against a very flawed candidate, sure. But still, 15 points in Pennsylvania.
He rebuilt I-95 in 12 days. I mean, that's the one thing people would know about him to start with, which is pretty impressive.
And that's kind of the kind of Democrat you want. Get things done.
Not too ideological. So I'm a huge fan of Shapiro.
And I, you know, I think we may all end up back at him. And not just back at him, but just with him at first.
I don't know. Maybe she'll pick Shapiro.
Maybe if it coalesces behind her, she should pick Shapiro before the convention. So we have two people to focus on, not one.
I don't know. Yeah.
I do worry a little bit about bringing Gaza back into play with picking Shapiro, who has been a vocal defender of Israel. He's Jewish.
But on the other hand, there was a really funny tweet that my friend about like Harris and Shapiro together it's kind of like trying to put Obama into one person like you're like you're using two humans to like to really regenerate the Obama coalition there's something to be said for that one more thing on the two women as I've been mulling this over the past few weeks i was initially drawn to the idea that like maybe you just really make it feel fresh with two women and of course really brings reproductive issues to the forefront which is already a huge vulnerability for trump and vance but the problem for me is that like unfortunately the core group that matters for the Democrats right now, the number one group they've got to make sure to shore up is men, black and Hispanic men, young men of all races, like they are underperforming in that demographic. And so that feels just as a practical political matter, like a risky move when you know that you need to try to win some of these men who have been traditionally Democrats and who, who, you know, are either RFK curious or anti Biden.
You got to win them back. You know, that's maybe not when politics politics, you know, I don't know if you have any thoughts on that.
No, I mean, I guess I'm slightly averse to too much focus on which group you have to win back and you know which candidates going to speak best to the group obviously that's that's politics as you just said and it's very reasonable to think that way to some degree and that's the traditional way politicians have thought ticket balancing and so forth on the other hand this is also a way which if you have a good ticket it's going to lift you some with every group. You know, these groups don't wildly go.
They start in very different places.

So the vote share is very different, but they usually move in the same direction. Usually, not always.
So if you have a good ticket, it'll help with, you know, lower information, younger voters, and with, I think, you know, older voters at the same time, maybe. Unless it's too tilted.
That's where I guess the two women, though, in Buttigieg just would test that proposition because they might just have very divergent appeals and lack of appeal to different groups. So I'm not, I would say on a woman, I mean, this is like, I mean, Mikey Sherrill from New Jersey, who I think was a member of Congress, Abigail Spanberger from Virginia, who's a member of Congress here and will run for governor next year.
Either of them would be fantastic picks, I would say, but they're one step away from probably being at the level where they could do it. Mike Sherrill, a helicopter pilot in the Navy, I believe, super impressive.
And Abigail Spanberger, former CIA. I mean, you get a real kind of toughness there with the two of them, as well as just good political skills and communication skills.
So they're probably not in play, though. Probably not.
We're trying to get Mikey on the pod. Hopefully we'll have her on soon.
I agree. Okay, last thing.
We have a RFK press conference announcement tomorrow. We don't know what that is.
Five o'clock. It could just be that he thinks that he's solved autism and children or something.
But there is some discussion that it might be an endorsement of Donald Trump. I think that emphasizes this kind of question about reaching it with your points well taken about picking a good ticket, about focusing the Democratic ticket, whatever it is, on winning back some of these younger men that have been traditionally Democrats.
I think that if RFK were to endorse Trump, I think there'd be a lot of buzz about how that would be good for Trump, but I think it would be very bad for Trump. So I'm kind of fingers crossed that he does it because to me, to steal from Sarah, Kamala, or if something happens, somebody else is building an anti-Trump coalition.
And so the fewer off ramps there are for people who do not like Trump, the better. I don't know if you have any final thoughts on that.
You know, I didn't even know about this press conference until you mentioned it, but my instinct is exactly where you are.

Now he muddies the waters, and I think his vote was going to drop anyway, and it could end up coming more from Trump. Let him endorse Trump.
Let's just have a clean choice here. Lunatic, anti-vaxxers, 70-year-old or 78-year-old, isn't RFK 70? White men who are pandering to the crazy, demagogic way to all kinds of crazy parts of American society and in really distasteful ways.

I mean, and are distasteful, if we can just be honest, distasteful human beings in their private dealings with people, especially women, but everyone too. and against a decent ticket of people in their 40s or 50s

who have been responsible public servants and who would make you feel okay about having them as president and vice president. I hope he does endorse Trump.
All right, Bill Kristol, you got your wish. Are you feeling good? I mean, you've been banging this drum, banging and banging and banging for years, it feels like.
And you've had much negative feedback. People in the Reddit, the Bulwark Reddit, did not like you a year ago when you were saying all this.
And do you feel any satisfaction? Are you going to have a glass of Chamblee tonight or anything? I feel relief, honestly, and I think it's good for the country and good for the cause of defeating Trump. I guess I feel a little personal.
Satisfaction isn't quite the right word. I really do feel it's more relief and more, but also I do a little bit of the dog that caught the car, right? I mean, now, okay, you and I, and I just want to point out that you're a fantastic PCS and everything.
You're fully out there with, you caught up to me. I just want to say you and I and and Sarah pretty much do, we three dogs, we three dogs have been running in tandem for the last few weeks and we've caught the car and hopefully we can, I don't know what the metaphor is on this, we can steer that car to safety.
Get the wheels with our paws. We didn't fall out of a coconut tree yesterday, okay, Bill, we all, we exist in the context of everything we came before.
And now, you know, we want our dreams. We want our future to be unburdened by those past newsletters and those past comments.
And I look forward to doing that with all of you. We might be back tomorrow.
I don't know. We just jammed this out really quick for you.
The Monday pod on Sunday. We might give you a bonus one tomorrow tomorrow keep an eye on the feed otherwise we'll see you back here on tuesday enjoy what's left of your weekend it's coconut time peace i got a friend named jack look like a bone in a paper sack that's my friend jack come on jack Sm smell these coconuts There's enough for everyone Everyone Jacky likes the smell of cut grass He used to play ball on Saturdays playing in the sun