Bill Kristol: Easter Egg (T)roll

All right, hello and welcome to the board podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller.
We have 217 days to the 2024 election. It's Monday.
I'm back with Bill Kristol. Bill, how you doing? Fine, Tim.
How are you? I'm doing quite well. And I am excited.
We have to start with the most important news of the day, which isn't about politics. We have what I expect will be the most watched women's college basketball game in history tonight, a rematch of last year's national championship, Caitlin Clark's Iowa Hawkeyes against the LSU Tigers, who were demeaned as dirty debutantes in the LA Times, who were assaulted by a profile writer who didn't understand Kim Mulkey's resilience in the Washington Post.
I like you, Kent Babs. That's just a joke.
We've been, you know, kind of turned this into, you know, goodness versus darkness, you know, in the evil empire, the LSU Tigers defending their title. Should be a marvelous basketball game tonight.
Are you excited? I'm not really. Many people in the bulwark are.
The Bullwark is divided, a house divided against itself. You and your family there rooting for the Tigers and Andrew Egger and his family.
I think his wife went to Iowa. He told me he was dressing the little, the toddlers and the infant up in Hawkeye's gear.
So you guys can hash it out tomorrow. I think maybe a special three or four hour podcast, don't you think? A special three or four hour breakdown of the Elite Eight match tonight, probably.
It's at seven in the East, if you're looking for when to tune in. I will say it's interesting how the narrative and stereotypes of the teams are reflected in the Bulwark House Divided.
People say the Iowa team is like milk and cookies, America's girls. That's kind of Andrew Egger.
The LSU team was slandered as dirty debutantes. I think I fit that role pretty nicely.
So it is nice that even internally we're living to type. So we're pulling for Angel Reese and Flauja Johnson tonight, and I hope everybody enjoys.
Take a break from politics. Enjoy that basketball game here on Monday night.
I think it's wonderful for the sport, and I'm excited excited i got my little girl out in lsu gear tonight i watched duke last night out of loyalty to our daughter who went there and i'm like the only person outside of durham who actually roots for duke out of that family loyalty it was tough it was a tough loss after after getting there as a four seed and having a kind of clear path right they had four seed playing at 11 how that doesn't happen that often. They probably lost to North Carolina State.
That was a tough loss. I also like that Jared McCain on Duke who paints his nails.
He's got a good TikTok feed. I know we're not supposed to be on TikTok, but if you are secretly on TikTok, you should check out Jared McCain's TikTok.
Okay, let's get to business. Well, this isn't really business, actually.
We're going to slowly get into real business. We'll begin with sports, and then we'll go to the politics, the WWE element of politics, and we'll get into actual policy.
There was a kerfuffle over the weekend about Easter and about which candidate for president is more faithful, more reverent, takes Easter more seriously. It seems like it'd be an easy call between the weekly church going Catholic and the, you know, guy who's cheated on all his wives and likes to play golf on Sundays, but not in conservative media.
In conservative media, they were trying to spin it the other way and say that it was Joe Biden who was sacrilegious because the White House put out a statement acknowledging the Transgender Day of Visibility, which has been on March 31st. They put out a statement every March 31st.
It's just Easter changes. I know that, you know, the Eastern Catholic Christians don't really, Catholics don't really realize that the Easter does change days.
So they did not turn Easter into Transgender Day of Visibility. It just happened to land on Easter this year.
Also, there was another controversy, the White House Easter egg roll. They said they can't put any religious iconography.
The children cannot draw any religious iconography on the eggs this does seem stupid to me i concur that that seems very stupid but here's the thing it's that's been the rule for 45 years since 1976 including all the easter egg rolls that donald trump was in there none of the facts though got in the way of you know basically a full outreach cycle governors governor of mississippi tate reevesves, Fox News, this was wall to wall on Fox News, tan suit level coverage of these outrages on Fox News. How do you assess this bill? And how do you even deal with nonsense like this? It is hard to know.
Just one other little factoid, you might feel stupid even talking, you know, in a way addressing it, but whatever. I mean, Joe Biden put out on Easter or for Easter this year, as he has, I gather, the past couple years, quite a religious statement about the meaning of Easter.
I mean, he is a serious Catholic, and he talks about the resurrection and Jesus' sacrifice, which he's entitled to do, certainly, and did. So the idea that Donald Trump takes the meaning of Easter more seriously than Joe Biden is obviously on its face ludicrous.
The other thing that struck me about just kind of following it a bit this weekend is like back in the old days, i.e. 10 years ago, like Fox News might have made something of this and Rush Limbaugh talk radio.
It's kind of a talk radio thing, right? A few backbench members of Congress, the March of Taylor Greens of that day would have maybe said something. The idea that actual semi-serious politicians in semi-serious positions, you know, leadership roles in the House, governors of states would be addressing this, pretending that it's a real thing, that's the real collapse of the Trump era.
And of course, one shouldn't be surprised because Trump is in charge of the Republican Party and the three-time nominee, so why shouldn't everyone follow down his path? But the degree to which everyone is just following down his path is, I don't know, it's not striking anymore, but it is noteworthy, I think. It is noteworthy.
I'm Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House. Everybody did.
Governors. I thought, you know, Jonathan Martin pointed this out this morning.
You're talking about backbenchers of the House. Even as recently as like three years ago, the idea that governors would engage in this kind of thing, like thehips were sort of a the national governors association which is a bipartisan group you know still kind of existed as a pretty useful bipartisan organization where they you know trade best practices etc etc and this stuff is now trickling down everywhere uh to your point on joe biden's statement let's just read it together joe and i send our warmest wishes to christians around the world celebrating the power of hope and the promise of Christ's resurrection this Easter Sunday.
As we gather with loved ones, we remember Jesus' sacrifice. We pray for one another and cherish the blessing of the dawn of new possibilities.
I want to read Donald Trump's statement in a second. It's a little different.
I had an event over the weekend. I was moderating a panel with Reverend William Barber.
And one of the things I was asking him was, I do think that sometimes that the Democrats could wear their religiosity on their sleeve. And we talked about, you wrote, I think, well, about Joe Lieberman over the weekend and his Jewish faith.
Biden does this, kind of. And I do wonder if there is an opening here, just, you know, to kind of counter what I think is a wrong conventional wisdom that Democrats aren't comfortable talking about faith and religion, as a contrast with Donald Trump in an election year, not saying that the Democrats should start grifting and selling Bibles, etc.
But is there, you know, a way to kind of swing the pendulum back a little bit with this? Is this something that Democrats should be just thinking about, at least for Democrats for whom it's a genuine and authentic belief? Yeah, I think so. As you say, Joe Biden is fairly upfront.
I wouldn't say he's not gratuitous in it, but he's a genuine church-going Catholic. And obviously, it's very important to him, clearly.
And maybe people should talk about that more in those communities. there are also chances if one wants to get a little more, God forbid, Machiavellian or, you know, on the level of operatives as opposed to the earnest politicians.
That statement, was it Johnson, Speaker Johnson's statement to distinguish Catholics and Christians? I believe that was actually Trump's spokeswoman, Caroline Leavitt, a failed congressional candidate. So, okay, speaking for Trump, though.
So that's an old-fashioned Protestant view that, you know, we're the Christians and the Catholics are not really good Christians because they follow the Pope and Rome and all this stuff. I don't know, it feels like that's a relic of that in there, but maybe a bit of a dog whistle to parts of the sort of extreme versions of the evangelical, a little even more fundamentalist, right? And someone, I wouldn't, the campaign shouldn't do this, but some Biden supporter out there somewhere should start causing trouble among Catholics that, you know, these people don't think you're real Christians.
Biden clearly thinks, Biden addresses all of us Christians at one point in one of his statements, or we Christians, you know. So he thinks Catholics are Christians.
He does. Andrew Bates of the White House did put out a statement about that.
I think that not Biden, and not Biden team, really, but sometimes other Democrats, I feel like seem a little uncertain, uncomfortable with religiosity and overt displays of it. And I don't know.
Yeah, I mean, I think maybe some ads of Biden in church probably wouldn't hurt either. Okay, just one more thing on the Easter statement.
Just as a reminder for folks, it's Monday. You know, they might not have been paying attention.
I just one more time, Joe Biden's statement, as we gather with loved ones, we remember Jesus' sacrifice. That was a sentence for Joe Biden.
Here is his opponent. Happy Easter to all, including crooked and corrupt prosecutors and judges that are doing everything possible to interfere with the presidential election and put me in prison, including those many people that I completely and totally despise because they want to destroy america a now failing nation like deranged jack smith who is evil and sick mrs fanny fawny wade it goes on um speaking of deranged like what in the fuck i guess what in the fuck is my question bill it's a that answers itself.
I like the fact that me is in the sort of third line of the statement. That somehow says it all too, right? I mean, let's forget about all that Jesus stuff here.
I'm not going to give you a lot of commentary on 2 Corinthians. Speaking of people who sacrificed on Easter weekend, let's talk about me.
Let's make Easter about me. What about the failing nation element? He just tosses that in there too.
You know, in the old days, it was really bad politically to be on the talking down America side of things. I believe we Republicans, when we were Republicans, did a fair amount of attacking Democrats for that.
And the Gene Kirkpatrick in the 84 speech at the Reagan convention way back when, they always blame America first. Now it's totally standard, don't you think, conservative MAGA talking point, that America is a total disaster, made more so by Biden, but kind of a disaster anyway, because of all these trends that they hate.
And that's why they root for, you know, for Russia against America, I guess. Yeah, all right.
Well, in summation, the Donald Trump Easter experience was hating America, separating Christians and Catholics, and selling a grifty Bible to help for his legal troubles. And Joe Biden's Easter was attending mass and sending out a respectful statement about the sacrifice of Christ.
Okay, moving on. All right, y'all.
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We are texting this morning about some Senate polling. I think it's kind of interesting.
It's worth spending a little time about. These are polling averages.
You always take polling with a grain of salt, but in particular, some of these Senate races you can take with a grain of salt because there's a lot of undecided vote out there. But it's still worth noting.
If you look at Arizona, right now on the average, Trump is up four. Gallego is up three.
And so that means Cary Lake is underpolling Trump by four on the ballot and by seven by comparison. So Trump has 48, Cary Lake 44.
In Montana, Trump is at 53, up by 20. The Montana Senate Republican Sheehy is down at 40%.
So he's 13% less than Trump. He's losing to test her by six.
Ohio President Trump is at 50, beating Biden by 10. Bernie Moreno, the MAGA car dealer, he has a 37 on the ballot, and he's losing by six.
So Trump is outpouring him substantially as well. And Nevada, the Nevada polling, I don't really love, but the same thing plays out here.
Trump's at 47. The Nevada Senate candidate is at 37.
Pennsylvania, I think, really good polling in Pennsylvania. This is a good, maybe a clearer example.
Trump and Biden are tied. Bob Casey is leading Davos Dave McCormick by 8, 47 to 39.
So it's across the board. It's also true in Wisconsin, Trump and Biden are tied.
Tammy Baldwin's winning by four. The only counterexample here is Maryland.
St. Larry Hogan is up by four currently in the polls and Biden is up by 19.
So it's noteworthy. It's a trend.
And I think that there are two ways to look at it. Maybe one is that it's concerning for Biden, right? That maybe there's something unique about Biden that people don't like.
Maybe it's age, maybe it's something else. Or maybe you can look at it about just kind of the weakness of how Trump has fractured the Republican Party and how Trump is unique, really, in the way that he can put together that whatever this coalition is, the MAGA coalition.
I don't know. How do you look at those numbers? No, I think both are somewhat true.
I mean, so strong Democratic incumbents, Casey in Pennsylvania, for example, who comes from a family of, you know, that's dominated Democratic politics or politics in Pennsylvania for decades, are running ahead of Biden. Maybe that's not a surprise.
The degree of running ahead in Pennsylvania, in Montana, in Ohio, those are states that Biden wouldn't win anyway. But just the delta, the gap there should be concerning for Biden.
He's underperforming. He's an incumbent too, after all.
He's underperforming strong Democratic incumbents, I would say, Tester and Brown, who are much better than a typical Democratic incumbent. I think Arizona is particularly interesting.
And the other thing I would say is the Republicans aren't well-known in some of those states, so you could argue once their name ID gets up, they'll get closer to Trump's number. Arizona, Carrie Lake does have 100% name ID.
She lost by a very small margin in 2022. So it's somewhat apples to apples in that case, I would say.
And you began with Arizona. Yeah, so let's just, I'll just say these again, so then you can kind of dig in on Arizona.
So Gallego's at 47, Cary Lake 44 that is gallego the democrat plus three and then the same average trump is at 48 biden is at 44 trump is plus four so it's a plus four trump to minus three lake 48 for trump 44 for lake so think of it this way four percent of trump's 48 are deserting when they get to the setup level and going over to gallego which is about one in 10 almost one in 11 or 12 trump voters aren't sticking to vote for gary lake which is a pretty big number actually in it when the polarizing partisan world we live in lake is a trump favorite so i mean it's not like there's a gap between the two particularly so i think it shows that some of that trump it it's sort of heartening in a way some of that trump support some not a huge amount but 10 is really trump specific and if trump ever leaves the scene does suggest that it might not be that hard to transfer to the next generation of trumpists and we've seen a little of that of course in 2022 in the governor's races there then senate races in states like pennsylvania elsewhere. And also, we've seen it in the primaries where DeSantis and Rama Swami tried to beat Trump.
And so Trump is a very effective Democrat. One thing it tells me, though, and this would be, I think, cautionary for the Biden campaign, I was talking with someone about this very senior Democrat over the weekend, who, unlike most of them, actually agreed with me on this.
Trump is a very good candidate. I mean, he's terrible in so many ways, and he's ridiculous.
And if he were more disciplined, he might be even better. But Trump is outperforming what a Republican with Trump's views should be getting.
He's even maybe outperforming what normie Republicans should be getting. It's not like normie Republicans were doing great in 2012 or 2008 and so forth.
So it's just a cautionary lesson against dismissing Trump or thinking that the craziness will certainly catch up with him or January 6th will catch up with him. God knows it all should catch up with him, but people know all of that.
And there's Trump in the numbers you read basically ahead in Arizona and even in Pennsylvania. So the encouraging thing for me, looking at those numbers, I concurring with all of the Biden concerns, you know, you can overanalyze this sort of stuff,

but just broadly speaking, to me, it looks like what we saw in 2016 and 2020 was a lot of the

normie-ish Republican voters, we're not talking about elites now, there was still this delay

and kind of moving over to debt, right? Like the anti-Trump, never-Trumpers are people, the actual voters. What you saw a lot of times was they were voting for, say, Gary Johnson, you know, in the presidential race or third party or something, and then still voting for the Republican for Senate, right? Because across the board, Republicans were out performing Trump, at least in the competitive states in 2016 and in 2020.
You were seeing this where people were like, yeah, they're leaving the party. But then, you know, in the midterms, you're seeing signs that a lot of these people are like, okay, this whole party is MAGA now, you know, and so this realignment, to me, I look at this and say a lot of the realignment is happening, right? Like the types of people that don't like Donald Trump are now saying I'm voting for Ruben Gallego, you can just look at the Senate number and say, it's pretty clear there's a decent number of Ducey, McCain, Flake voters.
You know, that's the only way that Ruben Gallego could be up by three against Kerry. Like they've already, you know, now they're not just never Trump, but they're never Trumpist.
They're never MAGA. You know, maybe they'll vote for Larry Hogan in Maryland.
So I think that's encouraging. So that means then who is the problem? Like why is Trump doing better then? And to me, it seems very obvious that it's low propensity, low info voters, working class voters, people that used to be Democrats, maybe younger voters, maybe, you know, types that don't vote in midterms, types that don't vote in special elections.
And there's something about the Trump kind of brain, it's like this cultural signifier Trump Trump brand slash maybe inflation's part of it slash whatever, slash Biden's age. Like it's these types of voters that are helping Trump in the polls.
Is Trump going to actually be able to turn those people out? You know, these are the softest type of voters to have. Right.
And I think that it's pretty obvious that that is the group that is booing Trump right now. You know, if you look at the crosstabs of any of these polls, I think that's concerning for Democrats if that's a permanent shift, right? If it is like those low propensity, working class black voters, you know, Hispanic voters, younger voters do kind of say, okay, I'm into MAGA now.
Like they need to tend to that crop. But I think that is driving the gap to me.
Those voters are driving the gap. No, I totally agree.
And I think, I mean, the good news is they're a little less, they're less likely to vote. They might be just kind of indulging a kind of whim.
They don't like Biden much as 81 years old and stuff, but they'll come back home, as people say, in September, October. The bad news is, so far, at least, they're open to voting for Trump.
I don't know what new information they're going to get about Trump. That could scare them away.
There could be some. I mean, I was talking to someone about this over the weekend, actually.
He's doing pretty well among younger black voters. Aren't they really aware of what a racist Trump is and how much his supporters are just playing the race card flat out? And I've got to think for even black voters who don't like Biden much and they have some economic stuff in common with Trump and inflation and all.

But I do think it requires work.

I mean, the idea and this worries me a little about the Biden campaign.

They do sort of seem to me have a and this is very, very true of sort of commentators.

So they just discount those numbers.

They're not going to stick.

I mean, can you believe Trump's within six among Hispanics that could never stand up?

Well, it may not stand up in future races, as you were saying, saying, or down ballot. But could it stand up for Trump in 2024? I don't know.
The Trump campaign is not stupid. I mean, they're going to be spending a lot of time messaging those voters.
And they think that's their possible margin of victory. They're looking at these examples you just, we're looking at, right? And they're having the same thought process in reverse.
So I think it really does require work by the biden campaign yeah i concur okay one more example of this type of voter people sometimes like these guys don't exist you know the the people that still need to be persuaded don't really exist well they do exist and some of them are even in trump's cabinet uh former trump defense secretary mark esper said uh late last week there's no way i vote for Trump. But every day that Trump does something crazy, the door to voting for Biden opens a little bit more.
And that's where I'm at. There is a shocking number of people for whom this is true.
To a Daily Bulwark podcast listener who we love, this notion that you need another piece of evidence about Trump's craziness.

But there's a lot of people like that. I hear from them, former Republican friends.
And,

you know, you go through this cycle where something happens, a crazy thing happens,

like, oh, we can't do this guy anymore. And then kind of, you know, a week goes by,

two weeks go by, and they start to come back into, well, maybe I could, or maybe I should

just write in Erdman Burke or whatever. So I do think that this will be a continual fight to keep Trump's crazy on these people's face.
What was your thought about the Esper comments? Totally. We need to expand from never Trump to include never again Trump voters.
And one of the best ways to speak never again Trump voters is what Sarah is doing with the testimonials from fellow never again Trump grassroots voters. Another way is by telling all these people who have a never again Trump inclination post January six, such as post, you know, looking at the chaos or post supporting Nikki Haley or whatever, that you know what, a lot of respectable people who you sort of admire are never again Trump, Mike Pence, Mark Esper, Chris Christie, they all supported Trump in 2020.
They were like, but not supported, they were part of the administration. So, you know, it's okay for you to not vote for the person you voted for twice.
You've been through this. I mean, it's hard in politics.
The best thing in politics to have is to have won the same race before, right? Because voters don't like to change their mind much. They don't like to acknowledge they were wrong.
And so if they voted for this person before, they're going to vote for this person again. That's one reason incumbents win such a massive percentage of the time.
Trump, in this weird way, is an incumbent, kind of. He's been on the ballot twice in a row.
And so never again Trump is a very important, maybe the most important, way to pry away some Trump voters, some 2016 and 2020 Trump voters to give Biden the margin he probably needs, because he's got to be losing some 2020 Biden voters. If you're just an incumbent for four years, people do get annoyed at you in a way they're not when you're a challenger.
So he needs those never again Trump voters. Finally, let's move over to the news out of Russia.
Kharkiv was under a Russian missile attack over the holiday weekend. Congress is now finally coming back after a lengthy spring break.
And Mike Johnson indicated Sunday night that he will likely bring the Ukraine bill to the floor, but will include some innovations. Among the, quote, innovations are that some of the money turns in to be a loan that he wants to seize some russian assets and give that to ukraine instead of american money like okay whatever he wants to tie it to natural gas exports like once you start getting into the details that worries me about timing again but great let's do more national gas exports on board on board with that chip roy when he was asked about all this said that johnson's survival does not begin with bringing a clean ukraine aid bill to the floor on the other side don bacon says he has a commitment to get a vote this guy seems way over his head but the news out of ukraine you know shows the urgency once again yeah totally and i've got to say most of the things he's talking about putting in there i prefer a clean vote on the senate bill bill just for the obvious reason that Biden could sign it the next day and we could get the aid going.
And it doesn't create all the possible complications that adding stuff does. Most of the actual things he's adding are kind of reasonable, I've got to say, at least the ones he's mentioned so far, including the seizing of the assets.
The loan? Well, the loan's kind of silly, but we'll forgive the loan, probably, sort of like Lend-Lease, you know. And the seizing of the assets is not trivial, and I'm for that.

And Biden could do it on his own, but it's probably better enough congressional cover.

But look, I wish it were the clean thing. Congress comes back, the House comes back in a week.
And I very much am in a trust but verify mode on this. And very important to say to Johnson, look, if you can get this through and pre-negotiate this in a sense with Schumer and get it to the Senate and Biden can sign it in four days, that's okay.
But if not, you've got to have that discharge petition in reserve. And I think people like Don Bacon have to be willing to say, okay, you've got a week to work this out, but otherwise we're going with a clean, one of the two clean bills and other bills that are out there.
That's also another complication, but one way or the other, we have to get it done in the next two or three weeks. The good news here is that once again, the responsible governing party it's bad news actually the democrats don't get credit for this but like the good news as far as getting the policy done is that mike johnson could put in like pretty much anything and it would still get signed right i mean like he could include a provision that's like we're going to repeal the transgender day of visibility as part of this don't give him ideas of course i'll put this in and then the democratic base will go crazy and then biden will be pressured and stuff but i mean like literally i just like he's throwing stuff out there he's throwing chum and like what chum can i throw in the water it's the same thing as the immigration bill and the democrats are like fine whatever given the democratic party's reputation and what we've come up with, like the notion that they're like, yes, we will be the ones that no matter how irresponsible you are, we'll be the ones that supports our ally with military aid and we'll go along with your stupid games.
That's noteworthy and deserves to be mentioned. And there's a big reason why this could actually happen, right? Because otherwise you get into a cluster, you know, where you're negotiating back and forth and nothing ever happened.
The Democrats could mention this a little more. They've already done this.
They passed the border bill. I mean, the border plus Ukraine bill in the Senate with, I think, two Democrats discerning or something like that.
I mean, they provided the majority. We're not a majority of Republicans for all these border provisions they claimed to be for.
So, I mean, they've already swallowed hard and passed stuff they didn't like.

It's not even a theoretical question, right?

And so it's funny how little they talk about that.

Does anyone in America know that they actually passed tougher border protections than people

were talking about a few months ago, including we even were pretty tough by Republican standards?

I don't know.

Anyway, Democrats should talk more about that.

Yeah, I feel like we've seen a little bit more. Yeah, they did a good job of the State of the

Union. And I do see this from Democratic senators a little bit more.
But yeah, no,

more is more is more. More is more on this front.
More is more will be true tonight also from Angel

Reese on the backboards and in the hoop. And I look forward to that, Bill.
I hope you enjoy

the game tonight. And we will see you back here next Monday.
I'm on the other side with a mailbag. Thanks, Bill.
Thanks, Tim. Hey, guys.
We're back with the Mailbag segment.

We have been getting some great questions. Bulwark podcast at thebulwark.com if you want to send it in.
I want to do this as much as I can and try to balance some political questions with some more fun or life advice or off the beaten path questions. So we'll do that today.
We'll start with Ray on the serious side. Ray says, Tim, you say that no labels is harmful to Biden and risks reelecting Trump, even though they might satisfy the wishful thinking of certain moderates.
I think this misses the fact that there is some small number of voters who, like myself, have been never Trump Republicans, but are now so turned off by Biden that we can't vote for Biden either. People like me need an off ramp.
So where does that leave me? First, Ray, I just want to say I'm glad that you're listening to this podcast. I want this to be a podcast that represents everybody in the Never Trump pro democracy movement all the way from JVL Biden fanboys to people that don't like Biden none too much.
That's why I had Steve Hayes on recently. I'm trying to get more people to represent that view on.
Obviously, that's not my view, as reflected on this podcast

many times. I think that the bad choices in life happen a lot.
I don't really think this one's a

bad choice, to be honest. I think this one was very clear choice between Joe Biden and Donald

Trump. But if you are of the view that they're two bad choices, I like this happens in life.

You got to decide whether to put your kid into a shitty public school in your district or pay money that is that might be outside of your resources to send them to a private school. Those are really the only two options.
You can't just check out, right? I guess you can homeschool, but you can't just say, well, no, I'm going to pass. There's only going to be two guys.
It's going to be the next president. And you don't have to.
But my suggestion, my strong suggestion is that you have to make a decision between the two choices that are on offer. And here's the thing to raise question.
And a lot of people say this. I hear from people that are no labels curious all the time that they want to have an off ramp, right? That they're looking for some other choice to make them feel good about your vote.
But I hate to borrow from Ben Shapiro, but voting results don't really care about your feelings. And the bad news I have for Ray and for everybody that is in this boat, who I love having listening to this podcast, I welcome you, but I have some bad news for you.
There is no functional difference for you between writing in Joe Burrow or having a no labels candidate that you like. There's no functional difference, except for that it might make you feel better about your vote, right? Because the no labels person or Robert F.
Kennedy Jr. or Colonel West or whoever, they're not going to be the next president.
Joe Biden or Donald Trump are going to be the next president. So if you want to, you know, write in the Pope, do whatever, that's your choice.
But having a third party option is not really an off ramp. It's an off ramp to nothing.
Remember the bridge to nowhere? It's the off ramp to nowhere. So what we have here is a real life decision between somebody that tried to end our democracy in January 6 of 2021, and somebody that's a pretty normal Democrat that has some policy disagreements I have, and has had some failings, every president has some failings.
And no labels providing this quote unquote, off ramp to people like you, is only going to nudge some of those who might come around to Biden eventually. You say you're not going to, maybe we can win you over.
But for people who might come around to Biden eventually, if they're given an off ramp, they might take it. They might take this off ramp to nowhere.
And so that is why we are ringing the alarm bell about no labels having a candidate so often, because we don't want people to feel like they have this fake off ramp, right? We want them to, you know, hold their nose and vote for the candidate that they don't think will bring in an idiocracy autocracy. so Ray thank you for listening we've got some people coming down the pike that I can argue with about this again

we've got some on the books in the next few weeks

so we can keep hashing this out between now and November. All right.
A couple of fun ones. I'm going to try to keep them shorter.
This is from Tim in Baton Rouge. What's up, brother? Go Tigers.
I'd love to know what was the best or tightest widespread panic show you ever attended. Okay, this guy knows me.
If people don't know who widespread panic is, it's like a southern rock band that's like a allman brothers grateful dead mashup and when i went to college as a freshman college i've been a dork i don't know if you learned this about me i've been a dork in middle school and high school i listened to talk radio sports talk radio news talk radio well you know i listen to music i wasn't really big into music and so when you guys which I always appreciate your compliments and your love,

and remember, I do have a Spotify playlist. If you want to know what these outro songs are, if you want to know how I became, you know, so into music, it's really has to do with Winesboro Panic.
And this was a band that me and my friends would go see throughout college, they did a ton of covers. And so they introduced me to a whole range of music I'd never experienced.
My parents, God loved them, listened to, you know, like smooth jazz. And so that wasn't really that appealing to me.
And so it introduced me to, they covered people like the Talking Heads and JJ Kale and the Meters and RL Burnside. I learned about blues and funk and kind of classic rock deep cuts and 80s rock and alternative rock that came out of the Athens alternative scene.
And so I just was exposed to all this new music and realized that actually I love music. I just hadn't been exposed to the right kinds as a child.
And so widespread panic is very important to me for that reason. They're formative in my love of music.
And a lot of my best friends to this day were the friends I went to see those shows with. What's up, little unit? Anyway, my answer to your question, the tightest one I probably ever saw was before the lead guitarist died, Mikey Hauser, when we were in college.
And so it has to be one of the ones before he died. And I would choose August 19th, 2001 in Larkspur.
It's a great set list. Go check that out.
I did see the last Red Rocks run with Mikey. I also saw the Red Rocks show where they did Ain't Life Grand, the whole album all together.
So if you're interested, you can go check out any of those. I wrote about this.
This is, I'm sure, why Tim and Baton Rouge knows. I wrote about my love of music and widespread panic a while back.
We'll put it in the show notes. Okay.
Lastly, we've got our friend Holly. We had a great question for Anthony in Tennessee.
Anthony, you're going to be up next, but I want to go to Holly. Holly does the spoofs of the Next Level podcast.
If you follow Holly Fletcher on threads, go check her out. She wanted career advice.
Dear Tim, I've been at my job for 18 years. I'm almost 50.
It's a good job. It's interesting.
It pays well. It's certainly not unbearable, But my side gig is my passion.
It's taken off a bit, but it's still far from matching with my day job income wise. And the chance it ever will is low.
However, my husband's income is enough to cover our expenses generally with some belt tightening required. And I was planning on leaving my job anyway and no more than five years.
So do I work another five years or do I quit and pursue my passion full time? P.S. I already asked JVL and he thinks I should keep my day job maybe until I die.
But you seem like more fun. I am more fun, Holly.
Thank you for asking. As you might know, I made a pretty severe career switch, maybe not towards 50, but in my late 30s.
And it has been the most fulfilling decision that I've made. Maybe not the most.
I guess that should go to my child and husband in case he's listening. But among the most fulfilling decisions I've ever made, and I recommend it, I will say this.
People say money doesn't bring you happiness. That's kind of true.
But if you look at the statistics out there, if you look at studies of happiness, that is true only after you've reached a level of financial stability, right? And so I think to me, that is like the big question. I don't exactly know what you mean by belt tightening.
But if you're going to be stressed, every time you decide whether or not you're going to eat leftovers or order delivery, like that's a tough life, right? Like if you're going to be arguing with your husband about various financial choices that before had been kind of wrote in your life sometimes that can bring strain right sometimes that can bring tension and so when people ask me for this advice i always say well look i was able to make a switch i certainly would be making more money right now if i was a donald trump ad man like some of my friends are but it wasn't that big of a sacrifice for me because our life is still good like our life is still good we do not we're blessed I do not have huge financial strain you know we're not arguing over over little financial decisions in our household so if you can make this switch and also still be financially stable and financially stable enough to be happy and to not add unnecessary stress under your life, tell JVL to pound sand, go do it. If you need a couple more years to build up the savings, that's okay too.
Two years is not three years. Maybe you can meet in the middle.
I'm a moderate squish. Maybe instead of doing five years, you do two and a half and you split me and JVL down the middle.
Anyway, Holly, you can message me if you want further thoughts on that. I loved hearing from you.
We appreciate your support for the Bulwark.

Everybody else, life is good. Our life is good.
Go Tigers tonight. We're going to be back tomorrow

with your friend, Will Salatin. The people wanted more Will Salatin, so he'll be back

tomorrow and with a special bonus guest as well. Thanks for listening to Bulwark Podcast.
We'll

see you all then.

Watching people roll by Wonder where they're going Hey, what's your job?

What are you knowing? guitar solo Driving to the grocery store Pull my money out Passing by the liquor store Throw my money down Ain't that rare Ain't that rare Hey, my. Pain, love, breath Pain, love, breath

The Borg Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper