Peter Hamby: The Mini Dictator Wants What He Wants

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Hello, and welcome to the Bowler podcast.

I'm your host, Tim Miller.

Delighted to welcome back a partner at Puck and host of the Powers That Be daily podcast.

Also, host of Snapchat's Good Luck America.

He's cheating on me and coming at us live from Alabama.

It's Peter Hamby.

What's up, man?

Hey, buddy, I actually want to start with some advice I need from you.

So, yeah, I'm here for a bachelor party for my buddy Eason.

He's never been to an Alabama game, so I sucked it up and came along.

They're playing Tennessee this weekend, as you know.

I have a wardrobe question for you.

You know, I don't want to poke the bear.

I did bring an LSU shirt.

So I brought the LSU shirt I like typically wear with like a denim jacket.

Yeah.

Now that we're on YouTube.

Okay.

That's nice.

So like there's that, you know, just subtle.

It's subtle.

Go to Alabama Tailgate.

I don't want to poke the bear.

It is subtle.

Also, as you know, the handby coaching tree, my dad's from Oak Ridge, who was born there.

I got a smoky shirt.

I would wear the smoky shirt.

Where the smoky shirt shouted.

Because I can't wear a Bama shirt.

I'd wear the smoky shirt.

Rep, you know, Donald Parton had a scare recently.

You know, we got a rep, we got a rep Tennessee.

I like Tennessee.

I don't hate Tennessee as a as an idea, as a state.

Yeah.

My grandparents met working on the bomb at Union Carbide.

They got a great team.

They got a great school song.

Rocky Top.

Can't beat Rocky Top.

Yeah.

Fuck Bama.

Yeah, wear Smokey.

Okay.

Come on.

Good luck.

Don't get too drunk and get in a fight, though, since it's not really your speed.

That's more your speed.

All right.

You're here to discuss mostly politics, politics, as is usual when we're together.

We got elections coming up in a couple weeks.

I want to do midterms.

I'm going to talk about the ballot issue of California where you now reside.

But we have a few news things I got to hit up on first.

The John Bolton, a grand jury indictment came down last night.

If folks want to get into the legal side of that, I would recommend our friend Ben Wittis over at Law Fair has a great piece, Thoughts on the John Bolton indictment, that talks about there's some ways in which it's different than the Comey and Tish James indictment in the sense that there's at least a little bit of a there there as opposed to be as opposed to being a totally sham indictment.

That said, I don't think anybody thinks that John Bolton would be indicted right now if he had endorsed Donald Trump in the 2024 election.

And so it obviously is a political move.

And I'm wondering what you think about it.

Yeah, look, I think you're right that this is different from the Tish James indictment.

It's different from.

the Comey indictment, clearly different from the Comey indictment because Donald Trump was busted sending a DM to Pambondi saying, indict this man.

The evidence, though, if you watch the CNN legal analyst, they're like, this is a pretty credible indictment.

Also, shout out to John Bolton for being extremely on brand as a boomer and using his AOL email address.

I think both of us have worked with older political consultants and you email them at their like yahoo.net or whatever.

So there's 18 counts here.

As the Washington Post pointed out, her name is Kelly O.

Hayes, who's a respected, at least in that world, prosecutor who signed off on this.

Unlike other federal prosecutors who did not want to sign off on the Comey thing, on the Tish James thing, this is one of those things where I, as a journalist, and JVL might hate me for saying this.

This is one of those things I put in a bucket of like in the outrage machine, you got to pick your battles.

And, you know, right-wing, neocon, like, war freak, John Bolton seems like he might have broken broken the law here.

And

there are things to get mad about.

Tish James and Comey are probably two of those things.

But it's very clear that, you know, this, you're exactly right, that this is part of Donald Trump's revenge tour against his political opponents and critics.

You do have to pick your battles.

I will side with the mustache.

I'll take this one onto my outrage list because I don't know that John Bolton's going to have a lot of defenders.

John Bolton's poor wife, like, this is crazy.

I mean, like, the degree of the hassle that they're going to go through, I mean, who knows what the actual punishment will be you know the lawyers fees their house gets raided you know depositions financial but if you break the law that's what happens well but like diddy

I mean diddy I get my point is like the the amount of like kind of ticky tack misuse of classified documents violations and we could do this if the administration wants to do this administration wants to decide okay you know what the two things that we're going to investigate in this administration are unlawful use of classified documents, something we cared very deeply about.

The president had classified documents in his bathroom.

Clearly.

And immigration crimes.

And those are the only things we're going to do.

Because we're not, you know, they don't, no more white-collar crime.

We don't care about that.

There's a bunch of other stuff.

We're going to use the limited resources we have to focus on this.

Then, okay.

I think that probably there'd be some interest.

I think there are probably some other people in the Trump administration that mishandled classified information, I would imagine.

And I think that they would go after them with equal fervor under the law.

I would be totally fine with that.

That is not what is happening here.

This feels like banana republic shit, where one mini dictator comes in and sends the law after his opponents, and the next mini dictator comes in and sends the law after their guy's opponents, and I don't like it.

To be clear, to use a journalist phrase, to be clear, you're exactly right.

But the heart of the matter in this indictment is just

a little more inarguable than the others.

That's all I'm saying.

Fair enough.

I agree with that.

People should read Ben Wittison has gone much deeper on this.

On Venezuela.

So apparently we have special ops in Venezuela and around Venezuela.

Now, the administration's admitted to this.

The head of the southern command is resigning.

I should say that over on, I couldn't get Mark Hertling to come on this morning for a bonus segment, but over on our YouTube and the board takes feed, he's going to talk to Bill Crystal this afternoon.

So, by the time this is up, people can go see, check that out.

And I think Mark Hertling will have a lot of deeper thoughts on this on the military side of things.

But, from like a more political level, it seems like we're kind of planning for a war in Venezuela, which is which I think has obviously substantive concerns, but I think there's some potential political fallout here as well.

What do you make of it?

I'm fascinated by the story.

I'm glad you brought it up today.

Rather than talk about just campaign politics,

this is my Georgetown SFS brain flaring right now.

I thought you did Africa studies, though.

I did, but you know, you hang out with the LATAM nerds.

So

I pick up some stuff glancingly.

Spent some time in South America.

Just read a great book about migration that everyone should read.

Everyone who's gone is here.

Have you read that yet?

Everyone who's gone is here.

I've not read that.

Yeah, it's basically about the history of migration from Central America to the U.S.

and, you know, all the stuff, all the bad stuff in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador that basically led to, you know, the situation we're in today, the lack of immigration policy.

It's literally one of the best books I've ever read, literally.

Big book club week for us.

Frank Feller had book advice in Applebaum.

Yeah, it was written by Jonathan Blitzer, who's a New Yorker reporter.

I think this was on like Obama's best books of the year list last year or something.

But anyway, in school, you don't learn a lot about the history of violence in El Salvador and why it led to, obviously, a lot of bad things.

So, with Venezuela, there's a bunch of things going on here.

Marco Rubio, the threat of war.

Trump's campaign promises to be anti-war.

But let's step back.

Like, this is a huge tragedy, first of all.

And I know you've talked about this.

Who is your boy that you are really campaigning for?

Andre.

Yes, Andre.

So, you know, Venezuela is a petro-state.

They've had terrible leadership, but, you know, in the 70s and 80s, this was a wonderful country.

In the last 10 years, 7 million people have fled.

I think it's the largest migration crisis, largest group of displaced people in the Western hemisphere.

Most of them are going to South American countries.

Some are coming here.

Hugo Chavez, bad guy.

Nicolas Maduro, who came into power in 2013, bad guy.

He was indicted in 2020, by the way, by the U.S.

for drug and terrorism charges.

Joe Biden put a $25 million bounty bounty on his head, some insane number, which basically I looked it up.

It was the same price on his head as was on Osama bin Laden's head.

So known bad guy in both parties, cracking down on opposition, exploiting the oil wealth there, which is plummeting in value.

We need to step back and just like look at the migration crisis.

This is bad.

And so this sort of gets to the outrage stuff with Trump as well.

This feels like a Reagan-era thing, like a Tom Clancy novel, you know, which isn't necessarily good, but we're sending people to the bank.

Going after Pinochet, you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, like a clear and present danger thing, except we're probably pressuring regime change there.

David Sanger is a good explainer on this today.

I generally like trust his opinion here.

This isn't really about combating drug trafficking, even though we're blowing up both.

Don't say, yeah.

Well, I'm just giving you some facts here and for the listeners.

No, well, I mean, yeah, not that neither of us would have any knowledge of this, but my understanding is that most of the drugs that come into the country are not coming from Venezuela.

There's some other countries that are a little higher on the list if we're doing just drug trafficking.

Correct.

Yeah, I don't know anything about that.

But what I hear is that most of it's coming up through Mexico and the Pacific coast, not Venezuelan speedboats.

The Rubio aspect here is very interesting to me.

Marco Rubio has called for going back to, like since he was running for Senate back in 2010, but I think explicitly in 2018, said Venezuela is a national security threat.

We should use military force there.

And Rubio,

this is so crazy to you and me from 2015, all that stuff.

Trump listens to Rubio.

Rubio has a wide berth, a huge portfolio inside the administration.

I'm sure he can boss around Pete Hegseth and tell him whatever he wants.

It's in Rubio's blood to be anti-communist and Maduro.

There's plenty of Venezuelans in Florida.

So I think he's had this hobby horse for a very long time and is happy to flex American muscles against Maduro.

And we should want regime change in Venezuela.

I do.

We should want regime change.

I just don't think that we really, that Trump really cares, but I do.

But this is, but one more point, but one more point on this, though, the anti-war thing, like Rubio does come cut from a John Bolton kind of cloth.

And this also comes on the heels of Trump, for some reason, giving $20 billion

to Millay in Argentina.

$40 now, I guess, if we have a public-private partnership for the other $20.

No, it's $20 currency purchase, and now we're doing another 20.

It's kind of a private-public thing.

That's crazy.

Have you been to Argentina, by the way?

Yeah,

I have not, but Katie went to business school with a bunch of Argentinas, and they were explaining the currency stuff to me down there.

The people just hoard American dollars.

Yeah, like I think there's I went to like a cigarette store and went into the back with the guy that runs the store to do a currency exchange.

This was recommended by our Airbnb host.

It was an interesting experience.

Yeah, I want to go.

Beautiful country.

But I'm flashing back to my conversations last during the campaign trail with those college students, especially the young men who were, maybe a lot of people said they were stupid for saying this when I posted it on social media because everyone on Twitter is right, but they were afraid that they were going to be drafted or that there's these wars like Israel, Ukraine, Gaza.

They were worried that Joe Biden was presiding over basically, you know, a neocon administration that was going to interfere in foreign countries.

And fast forward to now, you have a Secretary of Defense who wants to talk about war fighting and call it the Department of War and talks about how he should be the Secretary of War.

You have Trump giving money to a bunch of other countries, hasn't done anything in Ukraine.

This is the third ceasefire in Gaza.

We'll see if it holds.

I think they're taking a victory lap right now that might be a little premature.

I'm glad the hostages are out.

But anyway, this is just part and parcel of this

piecemeal interventionism.

It is not neoconservatism.

This is not rooted in some like library at the University of Chicago in 1980, you know, where all the thinkers gathered.

And Bill Crystal probably has some thoughts on that.

This is just Trump doing favors or listening to the last person he talked to.

But, you know, he does like to flex.

He does like to use the military where possible.

I'm skeptical that we're going to send troops in, but the fact that he's admitting that we're doing CIA ops is, of course, we're doing CIA ops.

But the answer usually for any president is, I don't know what you're talking about.

And if I did, I wouldn't comment.

And so that is a breaking of a norm, as they say, in the Trump era.

Yeah, to that point,

a couple of things, just because our very smart listeners will comment and email me.

I'm aware that

we're on the side of Pinochet and his coup.

So that was a little misstatement at the beginning there.

But, you know, it's that era.

It has that feel.

It has a Pinochet-style feel to it.

The CIA thing is interesting that he admitted it because there are two other theories out there besides the Rubio theory on why we're doing this right now.

One, Ann Applebaum offered yesterday, which is that being in an actual war with Venezuela makes it easier to do domestic emergency crackdowns.

And that like that's kind of why Stephen Miller is for it.

Yeah, I think you have to correlate it to the deportation and arrests here.

Yeah, yeah.

And I think that there's definitely something to that.

Some other lefty world people say that this is like Iraq again and we want Venezuela's oil.

I wouldn't put it past Trump to want to do a war for oil, but I feel like he would have blurted it out by now, if that's what he really wanted, just like he blurted out the CIA thing.

So I find that to be a less likely rationale.

You have to layer into that theory that he went over to the Middle East and played Wookiee cookie with every single OPEC member.

I think his oil connections are pretty good.

I mean, obviously, Russia is a casualty currently in the global oil supply, but maybe, yeah, maybe he wants oil.

Sure.

Much more on this next week and go check out Bill Crystal and Mark Hartling.

So are you on the record?

You're a no on yeeting boats out of the Caribbean.

I think,

again,

I watched Clear and Present Danger again when I was on leave.

I think it's pretty sick if the CAA does it clandestinely

and kills some bad guys, but like bragging about it, breaking international law.

No,

I'm a no.

Yeah, okay.

It's a no for you.

Okay.

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I want to go to California.

Prop 50, which is the ballot initiative on the redistricting.

You've done a bunch of reporting on that.

I want to hear about what's happened in California in particular and then kind of broaden it out to national.

Yeah, so Prop 50 is Gavin Newsom's response to redistricting efforts by Republicans, mid-decade, a huge aberration, obviously first in Texas, possibly in Indiana, Missouri.

And we can talk more about the voting rights arguments at the Supreme Court and whether that's going to impact, you know, how many seats Democrats can get in the midterms and beyond.

But basically, Gavin Newsom after Texas rising to what he sees as the occasion to fight against Donald Trump.

And I, you know, we text about this in private too.

Right now, both online and in real life, it's hard to think of somebody with the stature and profile who can go head-to-head with Donald Trump more than Gavin Newsom.

And so he understands that as he looks to be running for president.

JB was pretty good on the podcast Tuesday.

JB is doing well too.

Yeah.

And they both have the same issue, I think, which is being blue state governors, like deep blue state state governors but anyway yeah no i think that's right i think gavin's got some problems in california that he'll have to answer for uh jb pritzker i would love your take on another podcast about his gambling winnings because i don't gamble

fucking huge the only bad thing was that the news came out after i interviewed him i just wanted to vibe out with him on gambling how do you how do you win was that gambling over the course of a year he made 1.4 million in net winnings in black and he plays plays cards a lot of it was blackjack i forget what the other card game he plays was i'm a craps man

that is like a lot of action.

And so

I wanted to kind of do some rounders chat with him, you know, talk about the game of choice.

I'm annoyed.

Next time me and JB get together, full podcast on gambling talk.

That's how Democrats win back the Bruce.

Talk about gambling.

So anyway, Gavin with Prop 50 got his super majority legislature in Sacramento to rush through over the summer a new map.

And this map is locked in.

So basically, it writes out five Republican seats to counteract Texas.

It's a huge gerrymander of of the state.

And it's on the ballot this fall because in 2008, California voters and Arnold Schwarzenegger, our friend's former boss,

was leading the charge on this.

It says one of his most prized accomplishments, created an independent redistricting commission.

And that basically took the right to draw congressional boundaries outside of politicians' hands and put it into an independent commission.

By the way, for years, this is what we have all wanted and good government people have wanted.

The left has wanted.

Independent redistricting is what should be the case.

Prop 50 is probably going to win because the multi-million dollar ad campaign, which is how you win campaigns in California because it's so big and expensive, is just like stick it to Trump.

They've got Obama.

They've got AOC.

They've got Warren.

They've got Gavin.

Everyone is on TV saying, if you are fed up with Donald Trump, These ads are also showing like images of like ICE RAIDs in the background and protests, et cetera.

So like the advertising, the messaging isn't just about redistricting.

It's basically just like, this is an opportunity to send a message to Donald Trump.

It's winning in the polls.

It's like 50% to like 35% no with a bunch undecided.

Probably should be higher, honestly.

And this gets to what I was reporting on.

You talk to Latinos, you talk to millennials.

It's an off-year election in California.

We have off-year elections in Virginia and New Jersey.

That doesn't happen in California, really.

So you have to raise awareness about what this is and that you have to go vote and start to return your ballots early, which is what's happening right now.

The interesting thing about it, Tim, to me, is that you've got Republicans who are going to vote against it.

And there's, you know, Democrats outnumber Republicans basically two to one in California with voter registration.

They're all going to vote against it, but there's still a shitload of Republicans in California.

There are also some like good government libs who are really proud.

of the fact that they got rid of gerrymandering.

And I talked to some of them at a fair in Manhattan Beach, Katie's hometown, the other day.

You know, these are like sort of MSNBC viewing moms who care and want to stick it to Trump.

But some of them were really proud and don't want to get rid of it.

And they also don't trust like Newsom and Democrats to give up the redistricting power in 2030, which is what's written in to this prop.

It's written into the prop that they do have to give it up in 2030?

Yes.

So basically, they will either go back to the Independent Redistricting Commission in 2030 or maybe revisit this.

But

the map is locked in.

So Democrats will probably gain five seats at minimum in the midterms because

they're writing Devin Nunez out of the map or his old district at least.

So

the way that I think some of these good government liberals will get to yes is that five-year window.

Like we'll go back after this.

Again, we're in a new era, man.

Like states are rewriting these rules constantly.

Are we going to go back?

I think Gavin Newsom realizes this is the biggest state in the country, the biggest blue state in the country.

You know, all everyone who's listened to this is in DC and New York and the Acela corridor with East Coast bias.

Like, you watch the midterm returns every four years.

Everybody listen to this, big guy.

We're out there.

We're talking the norms.

Okay.

Okay.

So Normie's out there.

You stay up late.

California is the last state to count the votes.

Tons of seats out there.

Gavin realized it.

It's going to pass.

Just looking under the hood, though, it's just going to be interesting for me as a Dork political journalist to see, like, does a working-class Latino person show up for this in an off-year for a democracy initiative?

Because it looks like the coalition currently that's going to push it over the edge, just based on pure numbers, is the typical off-year slash midterm Democratic coalition, affluent, college-educated white people.

There's enough of them for this to win in a blowout, and Republicans and opponents of this measure don't have enough money to compete.

But it is fascinating.

And then if Gavin wins, of course, it's one more notch in his belt as he you know, builds toward that first visit to New Hampshire.

I want to do a little more Gavin talk,

but I want to kind of broaden this out to the national state of play.

I'm not sure it's really sunk in yet for people

how bad the redistricting battle could end up being for Democrats.

And I was a little disappointed with Pritzker when I talked to him on Tuesday that he felt a little bit kind of like, well, you know, we'll see what happens.

There's some issues or some concerns.

And I, so he's not, he's not doing this.

Well, he's a maybe.

He's a maybe.

Illinois already gerrymandered to shit, no doubt.

I get it.

And he's like, there's some members who are worried that like they're, you know, D plus 15, for people not getting the jargon, like that their district, maybe they would have won on average about like 15% more Democrats than Republicans.

It goes down to 8% more, so they become a little bit vulnerable.

They go from having a safe seat to more of a competitive seat.

And that's the only way to squeeze out more Democratic seats in Illinois.

But if you just look at the total state of play with Texas changing, Missouri changing, Indiana changing, other Republican states out there, maybe Ohio, North Carolina is now talking about changing, going around the Democratic governor.

Florida could still do it.

And then there's this Voting Rights Act repeal, potentially, which could be coming.

If that happens early in the year, it seems like it's going to.

The Voting Rights Act

basically provides for majority-minority districts, which means that in the South, like here in Louisiana, they have to have a majority-black district.

If that gets repealed, then Louisiana can redistrict and Louisiana could redistrict in a way that gets rid of the black Democratic district here.

That could also happen in Alabama, a bunch of other states.

Anyway, once you start adding it all up, the five seats or four or five seats that Gavin squeezes out of California with this Prop 50 is great.

Good for Gavin.

Good for doing that.

But there are maybe 25 seats, 30 that the VRA gets repealed, 35 even maybe that the Republicans could squeeze out of redistricting in all their various states.

And it makes the map very hard.

Like even in kind of a wave year, the Democrats, like

it starts to become hard for them to get to 218.

To me, I don't feel like the panic alarm is high enough on that yet on the Democratic side.

And I think that that's probably not a threat if the VRA doesn't, you know, if they can't change the southern states by 2026, but if they can, the math gets tough.

I screenshotted one of my friend's Instagram stories this week, which I never do.

And I text her.

I was like, I never screen grab infographics, but it was about this very story.

And I think you're right.

There should be much more panic and awareness about this.

The Supreme Court, gosh, going back to 2013, has gradually neutered the Voting Rights Act.

Their arguments that they heard this week on Section 2 in that district in Louisiana, that second district.

By the way, I'm curious about this.

You know, Louisiana has a long, rich history of racist politic down there, Tion.

Why are there there two majority minority elitist voice?

I don't know what voice that is, but is there a

what like in South Carolina, for example, you've got that one Clyburn district, yeah, it looks totally gerrymandered, whatever.

Why are there two majority minority districts in Louisiana?

Because I thought the Watts would have uh written in only one.

It's a good question, it's a good question, and and a lot of it is like everything local, still local political stuff sometimes, parochial concerns.

Uh, and basically,

the Republicans could have fought that second majority, minority district in Louisiana and probably won at the Supreme Court already, but they were pissed at Garrett Graves

for being friendly with McCarthy and going against Mike Johnson when he tried to get the speakership.

So it was like, it's kind of all wrapped up in this local politics.

And so they drew out Garrett Graves and they were basically like, well, one more Democratic seat's better than having this cuck that tried to backstab me in there.

It's more complicated than that, but like, that was basically the short of it, which was the Republicans did not maximize the fight, the legal fight on that second district.

But they could end up now drawing out both of them, conceivably.

Yeah.

Okay.

So maybe Ben Wittis is better on this than I am.

But look, Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965.

You know, Kavanaugh, Roberts, Alito, obviously, you know, they were very skeptical of Thomas that, you know, is racism still a consideration when people draw these lines?

This was passed, you know, 70 years ago.

They're thinking, at least, and this has flared in previous cases, including one focused on Alabama a couple years ago,

this thought from the right-leaning court majority that, you know, racism is done is the Cliff Notes version.

So the interesting thing as to whether this would affect this midterm is important.

Remember.

They hear arguments now, unless something is expedited.

And who knows what they would do?

Maybe they would expedite it to get rid of it ahead of the midterms.

But typically, the Supreme Court announces their rulings in June.

So what is June?

June is after most primaries are over.

So you've got nominees running.

It would be pretty hard to turn around dramatically new districts by next fall for the election after June ruling.

And on top of that, something you have to consider is while

Yes, they would probably write out a bunch of majority, minority districts.

And you're right.

Even Even last night, you mentioned North Carolina.

I looked at North Carolina.

I was like, oh, North Carolina is not Louisiana.

It's not Mississippi.

It's not Tennessee.

Republicans do control the state capital.

They don't have the governorship, but they can do what they want.

So there's that.

And because of that, you'd have to write out, if you redo all the districts, sitting Republican incumbents.

And so there's all these like party considerations that you have to deal with.

Yeah, if they don't do it till June of next year, it's going to be, and they can maybe squeeze out a couple.

That's a question.

So, you know, Nate Cohn did a good piece on this this week that I think everyone should take a look at.

And he did the nerd Nate Cohn math thing and basically said

if Texas, Missouri, Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Kansas all redistrict Republican states, and Section 2 is struck down.

And basically, at minimum, Republicans can erase 12 Dem seats.

in the South and Deep South.

That would mean that for Democrats to win the House, they need to win the national popular vote in the midterms next year somewhere between four and a half and five and a half points.

So crazy.

That's a lot of.

House basically becomes the Senate.

House basically becomes the same.

Basically, but I went back and looked, the best comp we have is the 2018 midterms.

That was a blue wave.

Democrats won the national popular vote by eight points that year.

Okay, so maybe they can withstand all of these changes.

It doesn't feel right now, with apologies to Bulwarkian listeners out there, it doesn't feel right now like the same energy is afoot

as 2018.

So then there's 2022, where Democrats, you know, surprise expectations.

Biden was president.

They won the midterm popular vote by three points.

Different dynamics, different incumbent, whatever.

But that would not be enough under this Nate Cohn model to keep up with the House.

So you can do really well in California.

This is the other thing, too.

I double-checked yesterday when I knew we were going to talk about this.

That map that Newsom and and the Democrats in Sacramento wrote, it's locked in.

So it's not like Prop 50 could pass and then they could go back and redo a new map where they add five or six more seats.

It's just five.

All you're getting is five.

So, yeah, it's not great.

Yeah, in retrospect, Dark Gavin maybe should have drawn like an absurd map where like, you know, you have Los Angeles and it's just like little strings that come out of Los Angeles and go all the way up to, you know, Lake Shasta or something.

There's a very funny, like, I don't even call it a barbell district.

It's a district they drew.

People might have seen it.

It goes from Marin near your former hometown.

Yeah.

And it goes, it's a little string up the coast and then it goes all the way up the coast.

And then that entire big block of northern California that no one ever goes to where they just have weed farms and Bigfoot, like it's that.

So it's just like people in Marin who have nothing in common with, you know, the separatists up

northern Northern California.

There's some funny districts that are drawn.

But I did talk to a Democrat in SF, an operative, Yeshua, who, by the way, said he was a huge fan of yours, who said,

He said the same thing.

He's like, Gavin should have gone full dark, just right in 10 seats.

Like, fuck these people.

So, very interesting discussion.

But the best case scenario is that even if they strike down Section 2, it's 2028

that this will really happen in the South.

And then maybe you've got, you know, Newsom and Westmore or, or, you know, some oysterman running for president, and there's a blue wave, and, you know, they save the country.

While we're doing California, just really quick, covered it last week, but it's your state, so I do have to get a take on the governor's race.

Katie Porter seems a little unstable.

Did not have a great interview with Sacramento TV.

We played that.

She was shouting about how she's a leader and wouldn't answer questions.

Antonio Villagerosa is the other candidate.

He's run a lot of times.

I don't sense a lot of excitement there.

How can California Democrats not produce an exciting candidate for governor?

Yeah, I think about this also sometimes with

Florida, obviously more Republican state, but you've got theoretically just like a bunch of young, diverse politicians and you can't go up the ranks.

California is fascinating to me though.

One, I was not surprised when Kamal Harris decided not to run for governor because, you know, she,

in fairness, she's tired.

Like let her do her thing but like why do you want that job is the question and i hear that a lot from democrats in california it's hard it's hard in a sense right you have to manage this huge state you take a lot of incoming you know the palisades burn down and spencer pratt is pointing at gavin newsom and blaming him for the fires it's it's impossible state to manage because of all the competing jurisdictions counties county executives sheriffs city councils like it's just wild but you do have a supermajority.

It's been a pretty fun job to me, actually.

This is also to Gavin's, you know, if you're buying Gavin, if you're long on Gavin, you know, has passed a bunch of stuff and signed a bunch of stuff without objection that can play to progressives at the same time.

There's probably stuff that would turn off swing voters.

So, yeah, the field is pretty whack, man.

It's it's Porter who was the frontrunner, but the frontrunner only notionally, it was like her and Villa Ragosa and Javier Becerra, and they're each at like 25, 26, 20.

And people are talking about Rick Caruso getting in the race.

I don't see a path there.

The state's too partisan.

Padilla is the only big name, Alex Padilla, the center.

If he leaves the Senate and comes back, he's friendly with Newsome.

He would is not famous, famous, but by virtue of the money and connections and credibility in California.

Getting tackled by Ice Helped.

Very, yeah.

That was a good moment for him.

You know, the state's never had a Latino governor.

I could see him doing it and the path is open for him because the Porter thing.

Seems like a better fit than Biden's worst worst cabinet member in Becera and Katie Porter who can't handle a basic interview and the guy that's run a million times.

Like Padilla seems better than all those.

Yes, we Dan Pfeiffer is what I'm pushing for.

There's an interesting for people who want to watch this, Villa Grosa is interesting because he ran one time, I think for governor or senate as like the charter school guy and the labor unions were against him.

But he

could make a play for those, and he had a sex scandal too, those like anti-woke Latino bro types as a Democrat.

But he's like, he's a retread.

And he's 72.

He is?

Oh, he looks great.

Oh, yeah, he's 72.

He's run 100 times anyway.

Yeah.

Well, perma candidate.

But Porter,

I told this to someone working with Porter.

I was like, maybe you could just pitch her as like Sacramento

needs someone really mean to go in and

Sacramento.

Like, oh yeah.

You know.

The Kool-Aid man needs to come in here and fuck shit up.

But she's not dropping out.

Obviously, these whispers have been out there for a long time about her.

I've known people who have applied for jobs for her her and decided not to go work there because of this stuff.

My interactions with her have been great, but like, I also say this to Favreau sometimes when he talks about politicians being great.

It's like, they're nice to you because like you're,

they're supposed to be.

You know, like they're at, and like, that's true with reporters sometimes, most of the time.

But she was always nice to me, but it was not surprising that the other video leaked to Politico because these rumors have been out there for a while.

I wanted to do Gavin 28.

We have so much to do.

I'm skipping it.

Move on.

Maybe we'll get back to it at the end.

I'm tired of talking about Gavin.

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You know you're talking about the DSCC stuff in the midterms.

There's a lot happening here.

The Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, that's the DSCC, is run by Christian Gillibrand and Schumer, basically.

New York senators.

God, they are so electric, aren't they?

Yeah, yeah, really electric.

Usually the job of that committee is to support the Democratic nominee, you know, with fundraising strategy, et cetera, like in a senate race.

Like that's generally the job.

The DSCC is doing this cycle, something the NRSC, NRSC, the Republican one, did in my day back when I was a Republican.

So I'm going to get to that in a second, which is starting to interfere

in the primaries.

They have now quasi-endorsed Janet Mills in Maine and Haley Stevens in Michigan.

Haley Stevens is running against Mallory McMorrow, Friend of the Pod, and Abdul El Syed, who is more

populous lefty, talking about it.

In Maine, obviously, you have Mills running against Graham Platiner, the oyster farmer fella.

And we've now seen, since Mills got in the race, several oppo dumps against the oyster farmer that that I want to talk about.

But just at the biggest picture first, like,

I don't understand what they're doing.

Like, why, why do Schumer and Gillibrand think that this is the moment to interfere in these races?

I feel like it might backfire, particularly in Michigan.

Did the Democratic base want Chuck Schumer telling them who to nominate in a primary?

No, I'm going to play contrarian here, though.

Please do.

The Democratic base is not always right.

The people in mine are not always right.

Chuck Schumer was right not to shut down the government in March.

He was.

And he was right to shut it down this time.

And he had a strategy, and he was right.

This is not to defend either of them.

Kirsten Gillibrand's presidential campaign, gay rights, was

there is no more contrarian take than being coming in on the pod and being like Chuck Schumer.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

Kirsten Gillibrand are nailing it.

That is great.

No, I love that.

We hold space for that take.

That's not what I said.

You're manipulating my words, you former political hack.

So, what I'm saying is, why do we reflexively give credit to Graham Plattner, who has passed the first test test of what you need to do, yes, in 2025, which is get attention and be different.

Okay.

Yes.

That does not mean we need to, or the Democrats need to like rush to anoint a oyster farmer.

Okay.

It doesn't, he has to go out there and win it.

And there is this collective revulsion against Janet Mills in part, in part because she's a Washington establishment recruit.

Yes.

In part because she's old.

What's she like 77?

She'd be the oldest senator ever elected.

77.

However, like impressive career.

People like her.

She's won more votes in that state than any politician running for governor ever.

And like, I just think that the political practitioners, some of whom are terrible in Washington, but some of them are good.

And by the way, it's not like Schumer and Gillibrand necessarily.

Yes, they're putting some stamp on this stuff.

It's the whoever the executive director and like the political operatives are.

The oppo dumps, whatever they are, the Andrews Kaczynski K-File stuff that gets dropped on Plattner this week.

Welcome to the fucking big leagues, dude.

Like, you can't just, this is what the people on the internet need to get over.

Like, you can't just anoint these people and think that, like, they deserve to win the primary in the election.

You have to win in Maine, which is not a lefty state.

There are more unaffiliated registered voters in Maine than there are Democrats and Republicans.

And maybe Platiner becomes a nominee.

And because of his different profile, he comes from the community.

Like, he's been honest about PTSD.

He's a veteran, by the way.

I think people focus too much on the oyster thing and less on the veteran thing.

Like, he's good at the internet.

Maybe he can pull over those fabled, like, blue-collar Trump voters, maybe.

But maybe Janet Mills is the person who's better equipped to beat Susan Costa.

So, like, why does Graham Plattner get the benefit of the doubt?

Because he got a bunch of fucking clicks on his videos this far.

You have to win.

But isn't this the argument for the DSCC not being involved and letting the primary play out?

That's what I'm saying.

I don't even think it's good.

So, you're saying, but sorry, sorry, you're saying what

they recruited Mills?

Yeah, yeah.

The DSCC is working with Janet Mills.

They're fundraising with Janet Mills.

They are obviously involved in these apo-dumps on Plattner.

But there's no primary without, you want Plattner to just walk to the nomination and then they drop the fact that you think there should be armed insurrection and he thinks

they should have a fucking campaign.

Right.

No, I think they should have a fucking campaign.

I don't think the DC strategists should be involved.

And I certainly don't think they should be involved in the Michigan race where I think objectively,

obviously, I know Mallory and I like her personally.

But objectively, to me, she seems like just a better candidate candidate on paper.

I mean, she's she's compelling.

Haley Stevens has trouble doing interviews.

Maybe Haley Stevens is great.

I don't know, but like, I just objectively just watching their performance.

So, and Mallory's not a crazy leftist, and so, like, I don't, I don't understand what they're doing.

And to me, my point is, like, even if they thought,

okay, we need Mills actually, because this Platiner guy, people are very excited about him, but we know more than you do, people of the internet.

This is very possible.

I've heard some rumors that I'm not going to share on here just because, like, I don't know if they're true true or not, but like, there's Scottlebuck going around DC about some Platiner Oppo that's like bad.

Okay.

So, but this is, maybe it's true, maybe it's not.

The OPPA is already out there now.

Like, he posted that if you expect us to fight fascism without a good semi-automatic rifle, you ought to do some reading of history, an armed working class's requirement for economic justice.

Maybe those are good.

I don't know.

Maybe people want that now.

That's not my cup of tea.

My point is, like, I think that they're doing it in a hacky way.

Like, why do you want Chuck Schumer, unpopular Chuck Schumer's fingerprints on this race?

Like, I don't understand.

They should just be fucking neutral and stand back and let, and Janet Mills should hire a good strategist and maybe get a super PAC out there that does this work.

I don't understand what they're doing.

I am anti-gerontocracy.

I am, despite what I'm arguing with you right now, like my inclination is not to trust Chuck Schumer and the establishment.

And this all gives Platiner ammo to run against both Mills and the establishment and Susan Collins.

You just articulated a very important point, which is maybe sometimes the committees with researchers and money

and polls know something.

And the Greek chorus of Twitter and Blue Sky is not automatically correct, in fact, frequently wrong.

They're right about Zoron in a lot of ways, but I just think that we shouldn't assume that this guy who came out of nowhere is just a perfect bulletproof candidate.

You know, people in politics like to use that Mike Tyson term, like everyone has a plan until you get punched in the face.

But, you know, if you don't have a plan for this stuff, like Mike Tyson's going to like fucking beat you to death and eat your ear off.

Like he's got to, if he can survive this and bend the electorate to his will and like explain away some of these posts, it's only October of 2025.

All these things are going to be all over the advertising, you know, then wow, what an incredible, and this this is why we need primaries, right?

I just don't think that like people should reflexively be like, fuck Janet Mills, man, because the oyster guy has some cool videos on the internet.

Like, let us see what else you got.

Yeah.

That's my take.

By the way, on Michigan, on Michigan, it's clear that the NRSC and Republicans think Mallory is the strongest candidate.

Like, it's clear they would think they could beat Syed.

It's clear, like, Haley Stevens has some wacky moments on video.

I don't know why the DC folks put their stamp on her if that's that's what's happening.

Like just not proving up to the occasion.

Mallory's got work to do, obviously.

I will say this though, when we were prepping for this pod, you were like, why didn't the DSCC learn their lessons from McConnell in the Tea Party era?

Yeah.

Like,

guess what?

They went back.

Like, like, Rick Scott, when he was NRSC chairman in 21, 22, stayed out of primaries.

And they lost some big races because of that.

And then Danes comes in in 24 and is like, fuck, like, we were going to elect winners.

And guess what?

They did.

So, like, they

went away for a minute and then they went back.

They lost a lot of Senate races in 24, but sure, but they did better than the candidates were better.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, the candidates were better.

My point was, I'll just be brief because people don't really care about the history of the 2012 NRSC.

I'll just say this: for those of us in the establishment at that time on the Republican side who are worried about far-right candidates who are going to hurt the party brand, and I do not want to compare Graham Plattner to like the witch lady, Christine O'Donnell, or Sharon Angler, some of the fucking awful loons that we were Ovid Lamontaine.

Yeah, the fucking race that the white nationalists that we had to stave off in Mississippi.

I forget his name.

We had to get

Thad Cochran, his fucking corpse across the line before that

Stu Stevens.

Shout out to Stu Stevens.

Before the white nationalist Mississippi guy won.

So we did some work back then.

My point is we had to learn some lessons because the first round through of the Tea Party, they won everything.

And Mitch McConnell was getting too involved.

And he's doing what Chuck Schumer is doing.

And people didn't like it.

People are like, fuck you, Mitch McConnell.

I don't want you telling me who to vote for.

I'm going to vote for this insane person who like writes in feces on 4chan.

Like, that's who I'm going to vote for instead, because they more represent me in the base.

And then eventually, Mitch McConnell was like, oh, wait, I need to be a little smarter about this.

Like, we're going to have some cutouts.

Like, we're going to have some operatives over here and this other group that are going to do that are going to do the dirty work for me.

And I'm going to stay out.

You know what I mean?

Like, you just got to be a little smarter about it.

Chuck Schumer is Christian Gillibrand, don't seem to be very savvy.

McConnell had one, I mean, McConnell, very smart operative, but like at the time, he would also say things publicly like, I want this candidate or that candidate isn't electable, and his people would too.

You know, the host of the Ruthless Pod now.

And

he also was dealing with rivalries like Jim DeMint had, what was it, the Senate Leadership Fund and like Sarah Palin was out there raising money, endorsing candidates, like Adam Kinzinger.

Boy, he was a Sarah Palin guy.

But like the Democrats currently, like

isn't coming out and being like, vote for Janet Mills while he's flipping hamburgers.

There's not like affiliated outside, like Bernie and they're in for Graham Plattner.

Bernie's in for Abdel O Ced, Justice Dems, yeah.

But there's not a lot of like

other Democratic groups like fueling the fire to like get the Christine Quinns in the race, too.

So there's a little, there's some distinctions between then and now.

But I overall, despite our disagreement on the nitty-gritty here, I agree that the Democratic base does not want to deal with the establishment.

And Liz made this point, Liz Smith, on Saki's podcast this week.

Like, it is true that beyond the issue set that's at stake in a lot of these campaigns, Democrats really don't want old people running.

And my colleague, Abby Livingston at Puck, who covers Capitol Hill and a lot of races, is very hot on this.

Like, she thinks that these aging dinosaur members on the Hill don't like, she thinks it's crazy.

They're not walking away.

They don't get it.

They live in a bubble.

She thinks some people are going to get.

This is where it's similar to the Tea Party from a generational perspective.

She thinks that some people are just going to get swept away in primaries.

Like, and then

participate.

State Center and San Francisco NSC is going to primary Pelosi at this time.

I saw it, which is interesting.

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We got to get to the uh upcoming November elections here.

We'll do New York first since we're already talking about the lefty populace.

Uh, there's a debate last night,

which I watched this morning.

I don't know why.

Um, watch the whole thing,

I was on 2x speed.

So Cuomo and the Beret man, Sliwa and Zoron.

It was like, literally, it was 45 minutes before they talked about anything about New York.

And they spent like 20 minutes on Israel.

And it's just like, okay.

There's one exchange though that I thought was pretty important that I want to play for you.

Have you ever purchased anything in a cannabis shop?

And if so, what did you buy, Mr.

Momdani?

I have.

I've purchased marijuana at a legal cannabis shop.

Okay.

Mr.

Cuomo?

No.

Mr.

Sliwa.

When I was shot five times, I've had Crohn's disease, I did use medical marijuana.

Yes.

Dude, Sliwa, the other thing that I said this, I said this to one of our 100 group chats this morning or yesterday morning.

They asked about parades in this debate, and they said, are there any parades that you would not go to of the many parades in New York?

And Sliwa is like, I think the mayor should go to all the parades.

Parades are an important expression of New Yorker's pride.

And then they go to Cuomo.

He's like, I'll go to the parades.

And then they go to Zoron.

He's like, I probably skip some parades, man.

And like people tweeted, someone tweeted it like,

is this an I Think You Should Leave sketch?

It's so funny.

And then the moderator.

And like, I think Cuomo and Sleeva both pile on Zoron, like, which parades would you skip?

Yeah, there's a follow-up.

It's like, can we, I'm going to get a follow-up on what we're doing.

The Dominicans need to know Zoron if you're going to skip.

But thank you for being honest, Zoran.

Like, Like, Zoran's also kind of a like for all his following and his celebrated campaign, and it's been a very good campaign.

He is kind of a nerd too, though.

Like, he, I know he's, I know, I know he's, he's Muslim and like doesn't party.

Uh, you know, he likes, he used to be a rapper, but I feel like he doesn't know a lot about, like, you, not that LCD sounds this was cool, but I remember when you interviewed him, he, like, didn't know who they were.

He's like a little straight edge, you know, but like, I just like the fact that he's

third bred, like, millennial.

I was like, yeah, I've been to a fucking weed shop.

And, like, millennials, millennials, millennials vote.

They did a scare.

Yeah.

No, he's just nerdy.

Yeah, he's a, he's a chuggie millennial.

There's nothing wrong with that.

Here's my, here's Josh Barrow's take.

I'm just going to read it because he, because it encapsulates everything I feel about the race.

Mohodani won the debate for the same reason he's winning the campaign.

He's the only candidate with a coherent vision that addresses New Yorkers' concerns about affordability.

He's the only one that actually seems like he wants to be mayor.

This campaign has been kind of painful for me as a political centrist because Cuomo, the purported standard-bearer of the political center, has no vision and is the architect of many of the policies that have led to the disorder in the city that he now just decries.

He also has personal behavior problems.

Sometimes your side deserves to lose an election.

This feels like one of those times.

I agree with all of that.

And I guess I would go a little bit further, which is like, it kind of hasn't been that painful for me because, number one, I don't live in New York, so it does, the results don't really matter to me.

And number two, Zoran's just likable.

He's just likable.

Those clips are funny.

He's funny.

He's great.

He's trying.

He seems like he's trying.

He is not.

There are strident leftists that support him that are annoying as fuck.

And there are strident leftists who are doing a bad job running other cities, like the mayor of Chicago.

He seems very likable and a little malleable.

And

I don't know.

That's where I'm at on it.

Malleable, yeah.

Like he went, he has apologized to police officers for previous posts he made.

I agree with Barrow.

Barrow sometimes like will.

Write things that I agree with and he just like articulates them better than I do.

Like part of the reason Zoron's winning is all of those things.

It's also that the field is fucking terrible.

Like, it's like the California Gov Race.

Like, someone with talent and a message step in.

And this is also, there are no rules in politics anymore, but there are some fundamentals that I keep going back to.

Like, if you think back to the 2019 primaries, 2020 presidential primaries for the Dems, like people jumped in the race and it was like, I should be president.

Why?

Like, what's your bumper sticker?

Like, whatever it is.

Reminds me of when I met with Scott Walker to interview to do his campaign.

And I asked him, so why, what is going to be the rationale for this campaign?

Why do you want to run?

And he responded to me, isn't that what I'm hiring you for?

And I was like, No, actually, I'm 29.

Wow,

you did the Roger Mudd on Scott Walker.

And now, look at you, you know, you're a content man like Roger Mudd.

No, he's just eating ham sandwiches.

But think about the think about the final competitors in that race.

It was Bernie and it was Biden.

And, like, whatever you think about either of them, they had a clear and affirmative message.

Biden's was a little hazy, like, save the soul of America, right?

Whatever.

But, like, and people were blown away by Trump back in that primary in 2016.

Dude, had a fucking message.

Make America great again.

Build the wall.

Ban the Muslims.

Like you point to these things.

And Zoron has an affirmative message with basically, let's say, three key points at this point, like child care, affordable housing.

I forget what else.

And he's asking for your vote.

He's smiling.

He thinks he doesn't deserve it.

He worked hard.

And all the victory laps that that campaign team took after the primary, well deserved, but like it's not about tactics in the end.

It's like about what the candidate is saying, selling, how he looks, and how he connects with voters.

And like he's, he's his authentic self, and whatever the annoying leftists are saying, great.

But he also, by the way, if he had, if he had been running against, like, if Eric Adams wasn't indicted, if someone other than Cuomo was able to coalesce the Republicans and Normies and Sleewo wasn't in the race, like,

you know, I could, you could see it slipping away from Zoron, but it's a little, it's a perfect summary.

One thing I do agree with you, though, on.

We're never taking off.

Exactly.

Yeah.

One thing I do agree with you on is I tried for a minute years ago to care about New York City politics.

I've lived there twice and I love California politics.

I think we're going to talk about my home state of Virginia.

Like there's not, there's not a lot of learnings for the rest of the country that come out of the New York City race, really.

It's important.

Did Bloombergism take the country by storm after he won three times?

I don't remember.

No,

Giuliani is the same thing.

Like, it's great.

It's great for this huge city.

It's interesting for this huge city, rather.

We'll see if Zoron is as capable of a manager.

Like, he's got to be in rooms with, like, union people, and he's got to be in rooms with business people.

He's got to be in rooms with the cop union.

And is a 34-year-old who, in fairness, to Cuomo, hasn't really had a real job.

Is he going to be okay in those rooms?

We'll see, but he's a good campaigner, at least.

Took Obama a year to get it figured out, really.

And even his people would say that.

All right, we got to do the other Virginia, New Jersey.

As you said, you grew up in Virginia, so you follow that race closely.

I want to talk about the governor's races first and then ask about Jay Jones.

I did a little shtick in

New York.

No, it wasn't a shtick.

I did, I expressed my true feelings in New York about

these two candidates, Spamberger and Cheryl.

And it's kind of like more in sadness than in anger.

Like, I just, I want them to be great.

I love Abigail and Mikey.

We probably don't agree on every single issue, but they're about as close to

the bulwark staff consensus as any candidates are going to be out there in the country.

It's felt a little milquetoast in both cases.

And I think probably both of them will win.

And so maybe this is an unnecessary complaint.

Maybe this is more about my emotional needs than it is about actual campaign strategy.

But I don't know.

It's pretty concerning to me that there's not any like the Democrats still continue to struggle to produce dynamic center candidates.

Yeah, they're really boring.

I mean, by the way, we should say, going back to that midterm discussion, like the generic ballot, still not great.

Trump is unpopular.

Democrats are not popular.

And the only way they're going to become popular is if you have compelling figures who capture attention, like Zoron, maybe Plattner, if he can get through it.

But the Bulwark Dems, who are stars on the hill, right?

Abby El Spenberg, went to my rival high school, Tucker, Mikey Sherrill, you know, celebrated class of 2018, pushing into the suburbs, talked about as future governors and presidential candidates, et cetera.

Not lighting the world on fire on the campaign show at all, right?

And it's not like in the primary,

let me just do a quick breakdown of both of them.

Okay, so Mikey is in New Jersey, Mikey Sherrill, running against Jack.

Citterelli, who ran last time, almost knocked off in a surprise, Phil Murphy.

Different dynamics in these races.

Mikey Sheryl has not proven herself to be like great on the debate stage, not great off the cuff.

Neither of them have.

And maybe that's because

statewide is different than running a house campaign.

It's just more attention.

The issue set changes.

Maybe it's strategic safety.

I do just want to throw out there.

Abigail Snowberg is running against a horrific opponent.

And so it's kind of like,

maybe playing pre-vent defense is the right thing to do.

In that race, as a narrow question of what is the right move for winning the Virginia governor race, which I think is a different question for like the broad question of how do Democrats

have dynamic candidates, right?

Totally.

And I've been saying the same thing.

She's playing pre-vent, she's playing four corners, whatever.

But in New Jersey, it's interesting.

Like I think most people around this race, which is Mike Casherll's got a lead of like six points, okay?

Phil Murphy was winning right now by like eight or nine, only one by three.

I think people think this race is going to get closer in the end, although I do think most Dems think Mike Sheryl's going to win.

It's going to be close.

An interesting reason is the voters there.

Donald Trump only lost New Jersey last year by five points.

There's a lot of Latino voters, like non-college Latino types.

There's a lot of white ethnic folks who like Trump.

Like, it's a different state than Virginia.

Cheryl has been a little more, and Phil Murphy's approval rating is lower than Trump's right now in New Jersey.

So she's basically running as like, like to extend this incumbent Democratic government in Trenton.

So it's like a different dynamic than Virginia.

You're right about Spanberger.

I'm more fascinated by this race because I'm a homer.

In the primary, she was like cutting balls off.

Like she was like, I'm a just win baby candidate, right?

There was a, there's a right to work law in Virginia, and she was asked in the primary, in a Democratic primary, you know, what if you're elected governor as a Democrat, would you get rid of right to work?

She's like, nah, we're good.

And, you know, that stuck its finger in the eye of a lot of people on the left and labor and activist types.

But Virginia is first and foremost.

You land in the Richmond airport, you see a video from Glenn Yunkin, and before that, you saw a video from Terry McAuliffe.

And going back to George Allen, we are a state for business.

Like it is the Virginia way to, you know, be a good business state, look out for schools.

It's like very focused on moderation.

So, okay, I'm like, maybe Abigail will continue to do this and set up a model for other Democrats around the country in the general.

Well, you get to the general.

We have multiple October surprises.

There's the Jay Jones text message thing we can talk about.

Spanberger is like her answer on trans youth and sports, terrible, and she's still dogged by that.

But like, her opponent is a weirdo.

She's terrible.

If Republicans, I was talking to

several Republicans.

Like, there's a world where Republicans win the LG race, win the AG race, and lose the governorship because Winston Earl Sears is so bad and loony.

Yunkin didn't, like, she won her own primary back in the day.

Youngkin's not helping her.

She's just an odd person, and Spamberger campaign has done an admirable job putting her on television.

Isn't a Republican lieutenant candidate, also a lunatic?

Isn't he the guy?

Well, you should like him.

He's a gay,

gay normie, gay moderate.

I mean,

I don't like MAGA gays.

I don't know what makes you think that I would like you seeing me in the outside.

I shouldn't say that.

He's a little less MAGA.

He's a little less MAGA.

He's like, went to St.

Christopher's.

He's like a talk show host.

He just presents as a little less MAGA-y than the other guys.

Anyway, I think the

lower ballot races will be a little tighter.

But Spanberger has, and Mikey Sherrill, I've talked to plenty of Democrats about this, underwhelming campaigns.

Again, playing it safe in Virginia.

Doge is an issue.

Education issue.

And Abigail Spinberger has done what we all said Democrats need to do after Biden loss.

And this is why the trans attacks don't stick to her like they did to Kamala.

She just immediately pivots to crime, safety, and affordability, affordability, cost, affordability.

And she's been doing it relentlessly.

And, you know, Winsom Earle Sears is just running on trans stuff.

And that doesn't, you know, that doesn't animate voters because Abigail can turn the page.

She's not Kamala.

She's not on camera saying transgender surgery.

Think about the government workers in Virginia.

It's just like, it just was

Abigail.

Abigail had won this election before it started.

Yeah, basically, like once she got in the race, but the state always reacts to whoever's in office.

And here we are.

And I think the race will, by the way, we have not had a high-quality poll out of Virginia, unfortunately.

Washington Post, Christopher Newport.

Quintipiak for several weeks now, and we need one.

But yeah, the last serious poll had Spamberger up like eight, nine, ten.

Do you have any Jay Jones thoughts?

I mean, how much do you, does your audience know about this story?

We know.

The fucking Buller podcast listeners know everything, Peter.

They know too much.

I'm begging them to take a day off sometimes, you know, because

you don't need to know everything.

You don't need to know everything about the Attorney General's race in Virginia.

But he sent the text.

For anybody who doesn't know, he's a guy, sent the texts that, you know, basically said that he wanted the Republican speaker of the House to be killed and he'd like piss on the grave of the kids.

And it's like, and he sent insane, insane texts to another legislator, apparently, who maybe he was flirting with, Corey Lewandowski style.

It's just like really embarrassing stuff.

Crystal and I talked about it on either this Monday or last Monday's show, where he was like,

he won very narrowly in the primary.

Bill had voted for the guy on the other side.

And here we are.

This guy was in Richmond thought to be a rising star in the party.

I will say that.

Hired a good team, one up-and-coming telegenic guy and family, running against Jason Miaris, who's the attorney general.

Chris Chris Lasavita client.

Our list Bulwark listeners will know who that is.

Jay Jones, you are a moron, dude.

Don't put that in text.

You're a lawyer.

Don't put that in text.

But also, like, people joke in private with their friends about like, I want to fuck that guy up or, God, I wish that guy would die of a heart attack.

This was like, he kept pushing it.

Like, yes, they deserve to die and feel pain at a moment when.

Unfortunately, polls show this.

Maybe Trump has won the argument here.

Like, people blame Democrats and Republicans equally for stoking political violence in this country.

Again, maybe it's the Trump assassination attempts, Charlie Kirk.

Maybe it's some like shooters out there.

But that was not the case in the first term of Trump.

Most Americans thought the Republicans and conservatives both caused and were the perpetrators of political violence.

That has totally, it's a jump ball now.

Like people blame both parties and the Democratic number has gone up.

And he, this is, by the way, this text is from 2023.

It's not from recently.

But still, it's just like, I can see an undervote on the AG ballot.

This is what I was saying earlier.

Like, I think the Dem's going to win the LG race, Gows Lahashmi.

I can

see some people just leaving that blank, honestly.

At the same time, this is a question.

I love bulwark feedback on this because I talked to my parents about it.

This will kill Jay Jones's career, whether he wins or not.

Like, I just don't see him going anywhere.

But

do you go vote?

in Virginia as a Democrat or someone who just doesn't like the Republicans right now

and make this like moral choice where you're like, I'd rather have this guy who seems like a Looney Tunes guy who's clearly unqualified making decisions as Attorney General, joining lawsuits against the Trump administration.

Like Attorney General of Virginia,

they can be pretty active.

Or do I just not vote and let the Trumpy rising star win?

Like it's an interesting conflict.

I can see in our partisan era, people not thinking about those things at all.

Sarah asked our audience actually at the Bullard Live event and it was mixed and they started arguing amongst themselves.

And then I was like, Sarah, why are you doing this?

Like, we're trying to put on the show here.

So, we didn't, we didn't really work it up.

People, folks, arguably about themselves.

The attorney general is like you have to make a job, you have to make judgment calls, and so I'm not voting for either of those guys.

That's my call.

Anybody that is a supporter of Donald Trump, I don't want to be a top law enforcement official.

Anyone that's wishing death upon children, I don't want to be a top law enforcement official.

So, I don't, I don't have to choose.

Beyond the content of text, they're that are terrible.

You're absolutely right.

These things are about something bigger and it's about judgment.

Yeah.

And like, maybe you're drinking and flirting with another state legislator.

Like, okay, bad judgment.

Like, don't do that.

Yeah, bro.

Sorry.

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Okay, we are one hour into this podcast, and I need to bring out the fact that the government is shut down.

It's so weird.

Like, it's so, like, this is the weirdest shutdown.

Like, it's, the vibes are very strange about it.

I think it's because, like, traditionally, the presidents would not want the government to be shut down.

Right.

And so there's a push and pull where like you have like radical right-wing guys that are trying to shut down the government, they're happy for it to be shut down because they don't want government services to go out.

They don't care about them versus like a democratic administration where they want to keep the government open because they care about good government and they care about such things.

Now we have a situation where it's like

Neither side is really incentivized to come to the table for good reason on both sides.

Like I think the Democrats rightly think they're kind of winning on this politically.

They're raising the salience of healthcare.

They're finally showing they have some backbone.

The Republican side, they're like, okay, well, we'll just not pay for the programs we don't like.

And so it's just kind of like sitting there.

It's a very, it's a very strange,

strange like fight for me.

What do you make of it?

Well, a couple of thoughts.

One, and I wrote about this for Puck.

I think Democrats for the first time.

this year figured out because they were all on the same page from AOC all the way to Hakeem Jeffries up to Schumer, Bernie, whatever, governors too.

Like they came up with a message and then it was the first time they figured out how to use the internet and the creator economy and podcasters to get a message out and not just MSNBC.

And I wrote about how in the first 48 hours after the shutdown, talking to a bunch of sort of data people and Democrats measuring sort of web engagement, like JD Vance got up on stage and thought they had won the sombrero meme argument.

They got fucking cucked, man.

They lost.

Like republic like they didn't have a message no one bought the illegal thing and they were just so cocky to think that like i talked to lean caldwell my colleague about this too

no but we go into as a reporter like you go into the shutdown you're like who's going to like win the like i think a lot of reporters thought that democrats were gonna

lose like the public opinion on this and were surprised that they won and like of course trump controls the government republicans control the government and And the fact that Trump also, in the middle of that, went out and said, I'm going to use this opportunity to fire workers.

Like, what normal person would hear that even in passing and think that Republicans are the benevolent actors, the good government actors in this situation?

The thing with winning the healthcare messaging in the first few days, you know, Taylor Swift's album came out the next day.

Like people, attention spans move on.

Brendan Buck tweeted yesterday there was no stories about the shutdown in the print edition of the Washington Post.

Maybe the New York Times or Wall Street Journal, probably the Washington Post.

But that's wild.

And maybe, Tim, this sounds crazy.

I'm not one of these 750,000 government workers.

I'm not someone who's like relying on certain government services right now that I can think of.

But like, is this exposing?

Airports.

Yeah, sorry, Burbank.

But is this exposing that government shutdowns aren't as big a deal as we've been told about for these many years?

You know,

I mean, I'm going to regret this if there's a fucking plane crash, especially the way they're like

it seems like things are it.

This is what's weird about it.

Things are going on apace.

Well, yeah, because it's like partial, it's not a real government shit, it's fake.

Like, they're just keeping the stuff open.

That's why there's no incentive for anybody to come to the table because anything that's like really annoying, they're just paying for, right?

Like, they're paying the soldiers now.

And so, eventually,

the rubber will beat the road.

And I've already got some emails from people on various things, like people that work at FAA, people that aren't getting paid.

There will be real problems.

And some people are already dealing with missed paychecks and stuff.

So some things are already happening.

But I just mean like problems that are significant enough to force the politicians to act.

Right.

And like, yeah.

Yeah, that guy, like, when I wrote, posted the puck article, again, which was filled with data and evidence, that guy comfortably smug like tweeted at me, like, like the headline was Democrats are winning the message war finally.

And he retweeted me being like, lol,

Go look at every poll.

Like, it's, it's just night and day.

Again, Republican, Democrats need to continue pushing this healthcare thing to get back in the attention economy.

And the other thing people are going to start getting their premiums.

Exactly.

They are already, some people, but more and more, like we're at that time where the new

bills are going to open enrollment starts November 1st and people are going to be like, oh.

Shit.

And we'll see what Mike Johnson does then.

Last thing, you have been hassling me for a year or more about doing a music podcast.

Unfortunately, my podcasting plate is extremely full.

I podcast too much for my take, so I don't have time to do a music podcast with you, though.

I'd love to spend time with you, but I want to give you a chance right now to show people what that would be like.

Do you have a music hot take you want to share with people before we leave?

You sent some notes you want to talk about geese.

I do have a music hot take.

People who've listened to us yap about this before know we have a wide palette and lots of interest.

I have a rant about the bad bunny complaints from the right.

Okay, great.

These

fucking nerd losers who like couldn't talk to somebody at a party in high school or college and it's defined the rest of their life.

Megan Kelly, Ben Shapiro, whatever, complaining, Benny Johnson complaining about Bad Bunny, like as if he's un-American.

Like it is the dumbest shit in the world.

Puerto Rico is American.

There are lots of Puerto Ricans in Orlando, Florida, and fucking New York, wherever you go, you know that.

Bad Bunny is most famous artist in the entire world.

This goes back to like when people, like Dan Quayle would complain.

Behind Taylor.

Behind Taylor.

Not according to.

You think he's more famous than Taylor?

Around the world?

No, he's not.

Well, maybe he is.

According to, sorry, I should say, according to chart metric, like recent albums, et cetera.

He's the top artist, I think, with more songs from an album with over a billion streams over Olivia Rodrigo, over Ed Sheeran, over fucking Drake and Post Malone.

Like this guy, again, this goes back to like Dan Quayle Tipper Gore like grudges I have, but when they were complaining about rap music and end up from NWA all the way through fucking like Tupac or, you know, whatever else, white people are the ones listening to this stuff.

Like white people like Kendrick Lamar.

But also like Bad Bunny's most recent album isn't some just like stupid reggaeton album.

It's like this beautiful like homage to Puerto Rico and salsa music that's fused with like it's fucking great.

And I like, I've come, I didn't like Reggaeton at first.

I went to Columbia a few years ago.

I like read up on Jay Baldwin.

I love Carol G.

Like she's playing at Coachella next year.

Like Bad Bunny is fucking awesome.

And they don't like him because I think he endorsed Kamala.

But the fact that he speaks Spanish is just so, that's the reason, I think, it's just so racist and so dumb.

But also just like, fucking have a drink and have some fun instead of being a stick in the mud.

Like these people are such losers when it comes to culture.

None of them play fantasy football.

None of them fucking know how to gamble.

None of them know anything about music.

Their entire personalities is politics.

And in any other era, we would shove those people in a locker.

It's so fucking stupid.

I love that, bunny.

Go in the locker, Ben Shapiro.

All right, my geese take is this.

If listeners haven't heard about geese, they are the hot, they're the hot young indie rock Gen Z band, basically.

The best way to describe them is they kind of like, they're sort of of like a post-punk.

They kind of have like a vibe of like television.

I don't know if you remember that song, Marquee Moon.

They kind of sound like that a little bit, I guess I would say.

I think somebody's like, it's like the strokes kid, have the strokes guys had kids and they went to art school and got weird.

And so there's a little bit of that.

That's a good way to describe them.

And I was so so, I saw you do the so-so saying.

I was so-so in the first record or two as well.

But the lead singer, Cameron Winter, did a solo record that's unbelievable.

That's good.

That's a good album.

It's unbelievable.

It's really good.

It's emo, it's soft boy.

Like, Like, it's if you're if you want crying boy music, it's it's for that.

Um, the geese record is more is more hard rock and um more punky.

There's a little like curmudgeonly millennial dad thing going.

Oh, I can call myself a dad rock guy now that I've become a kid.

Millennial Dad now, congrats.

You see the Gen Alpha Gen Z kids, like you see some videos of them.

Like they had a pop-up show in New York and people were like jamming out to them.

And like MJ, by the way, MJ Lenderman has sort of captured their attention too.

The older guys, like,

oh, like, there's so many other cool bands that are like better than Geese out there.

But if we can get Gen Z to care about guitars again and fucking noise, because like, I love EDM, I love house music, I love rap, like, I love, like, I love everything, but you go to Coachella, man, there are no guitars, and we need more guitars in our lives.

And if Geese is doing that,

more power to him.

Exactly right.

This is why the take is not curmudgeonly dad.

I'm the opposite.

I had an initial curmudgeonly dad.

Yeah.

I had an initial curmudgeonly feel about it.

Like, it It didn't land with me.

But I spent more time with the record.

The Alpaz de Cocaine, as relevant to the beginning of the topic with Venezuela song, which doesn't mention cocaine at all, is just beautiful and we'll take people out with it.

Not Bad Bunny?

No, we're not taking people out with Bad Bunny.

To me,

that video of the Youngs.

I like it because...

The only argument against us moving towards dystopia and letting your friend Sam Altman and all of these awful, you know, AI slop practitioners ruin everything about our society when I had Cuban on.

His argument was that eventually people will like crave the tangible, right?

And that there will be like a backlash against it.

Yeah.

And after going through a long period where like actual performers that play instruments are kind of like on the outs at music festivals and, you know, EDM artists, I love EDM too, but like that EDM was on the rise.

Like the idea that maybe the geese boys can be a sign that people, that young people really are craving folks that are doing tangible art.

I'm encouraged by that.

Or just getting in a room with people.

This is a Scott Galloway take, but like getting in a room with people drinking, putting your phones down, could be a sweaty bar, it could be like a club in Brooklyn, whatever, and seeing a band and just understanding your, like, that's why we like music in the first place, man.

Like understanding your humanity and the shared experience, you know, and I think we see New York Times sort of style trend pieces about this.

It's hard to tell whether it's real.

Although, the trend of having the dangly earplugs instead of the AirPods you're doing right now, that's apparently becoming clear.

My friend Mike Linton, I was visiting this weekend, my college buddy said he got his

daughter, Olivia, a CD walkman, and she likes to collect tapes.

And I'm like, she's like, I think she's 16, 15, 16.

I'm like, okay, good.

Good.

Like, if the younger folks are figuring out phone habits and managing it by balancing it with tactile real-world experiences.

I root for that more than anything in our society, honestly.

All right, amen.

Peter Hampy, enjoy the football game this weekend.

Go Valls, everybody else.

Go Valls.

We'll see you back here on Monday for another edition of the Bulwark Podcast with Bill Crystal.

Peace.

You can stay with me.

would care.

You can stay with me,

you can stay with me, and just pretend I'm not there.

Like a sailor and a big green bowl,

like a shiller, and a big green coat.

You can be free,

you can be free.

And still

come home.

It's alright.

I'm alright.

You can change,

you can change,

you can change,

you can change,

you can change,

you can change, you can change,

you can change, you can change.

Baby, you can change and still choose me

like you say

and a bed green ball,

like a sale, and a bed green corn.

You can be free,

you can be free.

Just come home,

please.

I'm alright.

That's alright.

This fly.

The Bullard Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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