Hi, I'm Mollie John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds.
And a new poll says Republicans want someone younger than Donald Trump, you know, the oldest presidential nominee in the US history. We have such a great show for you today, Historian Kevin Kruz pops by to give an accurate historical rundown of the more chaotic moments in presidential conventions. Then we'll talk to Heated's Emily Atkin about the latest inquiment news. But first we have MSNBC columnist and contributor Charlie Sykes.
Welcome back to Fast Politics. Charlie Sykes.
Hey, from one crappy Jew to another, I guess.
That's right, right, I didn't realize you were Jewish.
Well, you know what, I feel like, I'm an honorary horrible crappy Jew given what the President has been saying my father was Jewish, I'm actually not.
But you're Jewish enough for Hitler. I mean that's you know.
And apparently Donald Trump is obsessed with people who change their their racial identity, so I figured more than merrier.
He doesn't like identity politics, except when he does like identity politics, which is all the time.
He's a little obsessed with all of this, isn't he?
You know?
I mean, the whole idea that Kamala Harris is a recent convert to blackness, which was really kind of an amazing moment, an amazing day. Wasn't actually in an amazing week that kept off an amazing month.
Somebody tweeted like, July you were a lot.
It was. I think I tweeted this out. It's hard to remember because so many things happen in July. But a talented historian could write an entire book July twenty twenty four, I mean, just just the month. Problem is that book probably won't get written because lord knows what August Hastember not a berger to be like.
Yes July twenty twenty four is a book, but it's a harm book.
I mean, actually, though it has a happy ending, right.
It certainly had the twists in it. I mean, you think where we were a couple of weeks ago, in terms of the enthusiasm, the energy, the engagement, the optimism. It is as if we live in a completely new world. And by the way, you could really see yesterday I thought that Donald Trump has not figured out how to
navigate this new world. I was listening to some of the pundits talking about why he went to the Black Journalist event, you know, because this is exactly what he wanted to do in you know, X, Y and Z. And I'm looking at that going, you know, let's just set aside the strategy and they try to get inside the prefrontal cortex of Donald Trump. And what you saw was this this aging man with no impulse control, who's
playing his greatest hits from twenty fifteen. It's basically fat Elvis pushed out on the stage and he wants to go back to birthrism two point oh.
Yeah, the birth certificate stuff.
The fact that they brought that out there was just unbelievable.
Well, unbelievable except that, okay, this is who Donald Trump is. He came down the Golden Nesk. He actually put out a statement where he talked about, you know, the controversy around his announcement back in twenty fifteen. He talked about the Mexican rapists. And what I thought was interesting was that he, in his mind wants to go back to twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen and play the same damn cards.
He looks at Kamala Harris and he thinks, I'm going to make an issue of whether or not she's of mixed race, and then all of MAGA tries to play that, and it's like, guys, the world has kind of moved on from all of this.
This is a theory that I want to explore with you. I think one of Trump's big problems, and there are many, is that he's sort of obsessed with what's worked for him in the past. This may be a broader problem that other politicians have, but what worked for him in twenty sixteen was this ability to use this sort of bat his bad qualities to drive a news cycle that
somehow gave him free media and made him win. So, for example, he would say something appalling like the Mexicans are rapist, and it would dominate the news cycle in such a way that it got his base all excited and somehow catapulted him to victory.
And so I just have to wonder if some of this is muscle.
Memory, oh, very very much so, and and maybe a lack of imagination and kind of a reminder that at Donald Trump's core, the man is obsessed with racial identity. I mean, he is a racist. He launched his presidential bid basically on questioning Barack Obama's burke, and so he is going back to that muscle memory. But the problem is is that, you know, and I gave this is you know, you're a seventy eight year old man in clear cognitive decline and you're relying on your muscle memory.
It's like, this may not work in twenty twenty four. And I think the reaction was different. In twenty sixteen. People were kind of shocked and we have to react and we always have to comment. And this year it's sort of like that was pretty pathetic, wasn't it. I mean, that was that was just lame. That was embarrassing. I mean even Scott Jennings on CNN, who's kind of a reliable turd polisher, says that that Donald Trump shit the bed.
I love you for that. Go on, this is more of the content I want.
And Republicans are like, you know, that was kind of embarrassing. Boy, that was it was a lost opportunity. They're not spinning it. I mean, you know, Trump is I crushed it, But he's not the only person who's thinking that he didn't shit the bed yesterday, and so he reminded us of so many things about him himself in a way that
was not flattering. And by the way, we can just get to how he threw jd Vance under the bus and doubled down on pardoning the January sixth, the rioters who attacked the cops.
If they're guilty, and she was like, they were convicted. By the way that moment where he said if they're guilty and she goes they were convicted. We talked about the journalists who did that interview, but like I would like to point out, those interviews are actually really hard because you're in front of a gazillion people.
And you know, it's just hard.
You are confronting someone who really is she's pretty good at confronting people. And I thought the woman from ABC, Rachel Scott, really I mean, she's young, and she just had so much gravitas and you know, she shot back right away they were convicted, which you know, in the moment I could have been like, you know, she.
Was legend yesterday. I mean that was really really effective, and you're pointing something out that is important. This is hard. Those live interviews are hard, and you've seen this with a lot of professionals on the broadcast media who just cannot keep up with his fire hose of insults and lies. And she just kept at it, she kept, you know,
asking the question again, pushing back on him. She pulled no punches whatsoever, and so almost from the beginning she laid out the indictment, and Trump's reaction was just to insult her over and over and over again, and she was absolutely unfazed. And I guess this goes to the I don't know how you feel about this, but there's a debate about should they have platformed Trump, should have invited him, should they not have invited him, and a lot of back and forth. At the end of this day,
I'm thinking, I'm glad they invited him. I'm glad they invited him because they exposed him and this was a good thing.
I really try to not make broad statements like it's good it's bad, because sometimes it's good. What happened there was amazing. And what we saw with him in the debate was that if you can't hold him accountable and you can't at least try to solicit information. I mean, obviously there were other things going on in the debate, clearly, and that was not the headline. But you did see he was able to just sort of say his stuff and go unchallenged, which in it's that is doing him
a favor. So I think that it can work really well and it can also not.
Right right, going back to this muscle memory that as soon as he started raising questions about whether Kamala Harris was really black, you notice that his minions began pushing the same line on the Fox News. I mean, you want to talk about, you know, firing blanks of all the things that he should be doing in this campaign to run against Kamala Harris. And look, there are issues, there are things in substance, and yet he cannot help himself but go after her identity. This is the og
Donald Trump. I'm going way way back, And it did occur to me as I was watching this. Again, this is not new, because nothing that we say about Donald Trump is remotely new. There is really something about black women that triggers him, isn't there? I mean there really is.
Yeah, And again remember he went after the DA in New York.
Well, there was Fannie Willis and obviously Letitia James. But I mean, all through his term, he went out of his way to pick fights with black women who were not necessarily prominent, because that was the fight he wants. In his mind. He's thinking that his base wants the image of the other, of the enemy, of the person that Donald Trump is protecting you from. He would go
out of his way to pick these fights. And now it feels like he's compassed round with all these black women saying you know, we're coming for you, Donald, and it's rattling him.
He has doubled down on this strategy, which is that he's just going to go for his people and he's going to try to juice the turnout so that, you know, he'll have the kind of numbers that can propel him to victory.
I'm not convinced that he.
Has enough people to do that in a high turnout election.
If she has managed to.
Galvanize her base, which is a much bigger tent.
Yeah, you're right.
He clearly is either not interested or has lost interest in going after those swing voters. I mean, you could tell that when he chose jd. Vance And by the way, isn't that working out well for him? This is not going to appeal to, you know, white swing voters in the suburbs of Philadelphia. It's not going to get back women who voted for Democrats during the midterm elections. And he basically doesn't care. He's not talking to the Haley voters anymore.
No, But the question is is enough of America like that?
Okay, let me annoying answer, because I think that's a very interesting question because I think that as Donald Trump has decided that he's going to go after Kamala Harris based on her racial identity, he is thinking that that is what America is. Donald Trump, to his core, believes that American voters are racist, that they are racist, and they will not elect a Asian black woman as president of the United States. So he is assuming that this works. Okay,
so that's his view. I certainly hope that he's wrong. But I want to just kind of step back from the horse race aspect of this, because we don't know the answer to all of this and just say that what you saw yesterday was and I know we've done this so many times, but this man is so deplorable, so pathetic, so deeply dishonest, and so deeply bigoted, and he cannot conceal it at the moment in his life when you would think that prudence would dictate that you
put back from this. And I think what frustrates Republicans is they're thinking, Okay, she is vulnerable, run against her as being too liberal, run against her as you know, having this record, we can do that. Instead, Donald Trump just cannot help himself. And it is like fat Elvis coming out and somebody handing him some new material and he goes, now, I'm just gonna do things. I'm gonna do a houndog thing again. I'm just because that's what I do. And that's what and that's what you see
with Donald Trump. He's going back and it worked with Obama, It's going to work with Kamala.
So here's the question.
Then there's a theory out there, and I'm not sure this is right, that he is trying to steal back the news cycle to get a kind of hysteria going about his racism. Now, she has been much more like Obama with the response to racism than Hillary. And again I'm not trying to criticize Hillary. I'm merely making a point here, which is that when he went after Hillary, and you know, when he went after women in general.
In twenty sixteen, there was a lot of like this is beyond the pales, so disgusting.
What Harris has done has more been like this is him like goodbye, shut it down.
Do you think that's more effective? And also does.
That take the air of the tires or do you think it should be more And why.
I think she's handling this very very effectively. I will confess that I am both surprised and amazed how how well she's doing and the way that she's handling this with incredible deftness. Now heard the commentary saying, well, this is part of you know, Trump's plan to you know, sees back the news cycle and generate this this sort of outrage. And I think it's only half true. Part of it is that Trump just simply can't help himself. I do think that Donald Trump wanted to seize the
news cycle to show himself as strong. I can go into the lions, then I can take the insults. I will give as good as I get because I am strong, because this whole theme of strong versus weak and everything. And I don't think that he thought that I'm going to go in there and I'm going to seize back the news cycle to show what an inveterate racist I am, how out of touch with American demographics, I am, how deeply insensitive I am. I think he thought that it
would come off as strong and maybe trigger something. But I don't think that what you saw yesterday wasn't anybody's game plan, certainly not his. If there was any aid that thought that this is the strategy. Let's go up there and do all those things. Let's let's repeat the black jobs line, let's do you know the you know, let's that's that's let's mock the you know, the black woman questions, all of that, that person should be fired.
The black jobs line.
By the way, when Rachel Scott, I think it was her who immediately said what's a black job? That was an amazing moment too, because she said what's a black job?
And he said any job?
But you knew it was.
That wasn't what he meant, right right. And also you know when they were going back and forth about de I and he and he and he thought, you know, well you define it, which, by the way, as Trump speak for, I have no idea what it means. No, and she does, and he could have thrown her off, but she kept coming back at it. And this is also interesting because a lot of Republicans have been saying, Okay, obviously, you know, calling Kamala a dei hire is not working.
That's a terrible thing. Let's stick to the issues, of which there are many. So what does Donald Trump do? You know, It's like just goes right there. It did feel as if jd. Vance has been out there being as weird as possible, talking about you know, the lonely crazy cat ladies and everything, and you know it's generated this this massive meme about weirdness, and that Donald Trump essentially said yesterday, hold my beer. You think you think jd Vance is weird, I'm going to show you the
original weird and he walked into it. And you can see from the reaction just across the board. I mean, not even Fox News can polish this turd.
And we did see them really get completely fried by that. The part of what's so tragic about Trump is, and I also think it's what's tragic about the Murdoch Empire is there are a lot of people who work at Fox who do not believe those stuff. It's a job Harris Faulkner to some extent, she did this to herself, but you know, there were people who went and worked there when it was normal.
She made a choice and she decided to play that role. And she makes a lot more money than either you or I.
Right, well, that's true or a good point. I can't speak to you, no, Now, I'm sure that's true.
I just generally have reserved my sympathy for people who make less than a million dollars. A Yeve, just that's just me. I just had a thing about.
That, Charlie.
Somebody told me when Harris announced that the first three days would be the most critical. She's so blown past expectations in every which way thoughts.
Yeah, that's absolutely true. And it's not just the first three days. I mean I think the first, you know, three weeks will be a race to define her. The Republicans are going to spend millions of dollars defining her as dangerous and corrupt. In all of those things, she has a chance to introduce herself. And what is remarkable is there were so many low expectations. One of the reasons why people stuck with Biden for so long was they thought that she would be an ineffective candidate. No
one saw this calming. Nobody even among people going Okay, the hype is getting too much. But the hype is real that you could see with the enthusiasm and the energy and the engagement, the amount of money that's coming in.
This is real.
And Molly she hasn't even had her bump yet because the convention is coming up. She's going to choose a vice president, She's going to have this big convention, she's going to give her acceptance speech. And the reality is is that she is doing as well as she is when most Americas still only have the vaguest idea of who she is. So she's introducing herself in a very very short period of time in really I'm trying to
think how it could have gone any better. And you know that I can be a pessimist and a skeptic and a contrarian, and I really can't come up with a scenario which she would be stronger. It won't last. My biggest concern is when she sits down for a network broadcast interview and they play for her some of the tapes of her comments that she made when she was running for president back in twenty twenty, they say, do you still think this? Do you still believe this?
Do you still believe this? And she's going to have to handle that. In the past she has not always handled that well, but she's been exceeding my expectations regularly, So we will see. But if there's a stumble, it will come on that that she will either not handle that well or or I don't even think being a flip flopper is a negative anymore. I don't think people care that much anymore. But that's going to be the test.
But I think that her bump is going to continue through the Democratic Convention, and it's going to be very interesting to see what those polls look like the week after that convention.
Yeah, it's so interesting. And I also agree.
I feel like I would say this and people would be like, you're stupid or a partisan. But I always thought she had become two years into her vice president's tenures, something happened and she became an Obama level RA tour.
Maybe not Obama level because Obama, you know, but I mean really good and Democrats haven't had a really gifted ORA tour since Obama, and I think it just all of a sudden came into place, and because her speeches are really good and her energy, you know, she goes around to all these different places and she's you know, she can really campaign, which is a huge advantage.
Well, and her campaign just feels like it's fully formed. I mean, the themes just came together, bang bang bang, in a way that was very impressive. I mean, the two themes right out of the box. I'm the prosecutor, he's the phone. That's number one. And also then this focus on the future that we're not going back.
Yeah.
Smart, you have campaigns that struggle and flail and flounder trying to come up with themes like that. Speaking of which the Republicans, you would think that they would be ready for this, but I think I thought it was a tell when they when they rolled out that name. She was cackling Kamala or laughing Kamala. Yeah, that's brilliant that she laughs and smiles. That's going to kill her.
Really so good.
Thank you, Charlie, Thank you. It's always fun.
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Kevin Cruise is the publisher of the Campaign Trails newsletter as well as the author of One Nation Under Got How Corporated America invented Christian America.
Welcome to Fast Politics, Kevin Cruz.
Great to be here, Gate.
I wanted you to.
Come on not just because you're a very smart academic and very fancy and teach a Princeton, but because you study pre recent history, and I think that this is a moment when I feel like history informs in interesting ways and we just are not in the American political industrial complex looking at history to take.
Lessons from it.
Yeah, I think that's spare not.
To be too didactic, but that said, we're in sort of a historical times. I'm thinking about, like the precedent to the moment, the having a president who decides not to run for re election, and if you could sort of talk about a little bit more of the sort of story of that, and also because it's not so long ago, but also what the lessons that we could clean from that.
Yeah, I mean, you know, it's never the history is predictive about the future, but often, you know, we see some of the same phenomenon play out in the past, and it's instructive to see how it worked then and what we might take from it and what we can leave behind. So the real precedent here is Lendon Johnson's decision, Yeah, and early nineteen sixty eight where he announced it even
though he was eligible for another term in office. The twenty second Amendment had been passed but didn't limit him because he inherited its first term from JFK. Everybody thought
he was going to run again. Lynnon Johnson's one of the most political or of our presidents in every sense of that term, really thrived on holding the office exercise and power doing good where he thought again and everybody thought, for sure, this thoroughly political animal is gonna day on for another four years, And he stunned the nation in early nineteen sixty eight by announcing But he wasn't going to do it, And it was rationale for that was that he wanted to be free from the campaign in
order to end the war in Vietnam. He wanted to bring it to a successful end. So he bowed out and he could focus on the dunities of the job he already had. But what LBJ did was rather different than what Biden did.
Yeah, that's what I was hoping you would talk about.
Yeah, because I mean LBJ stepped aside, not because of any concerns about his capacity to handle the job. He would die. He actually died the day Roe V. Wade was handed down in January nineteen seventy three, so he wouldn't live much longer. But that wasn't a concern of the time. Everybody assumed he could carry on the job. It was that he wanted to focus on handling Vietnam. With Biden, it's rather different. It's all about his own personal issues, and that's why he announced the woman to
step aside, and with LBJ. When he stepped aside, he did so without handing the reins of power to his byspread it right. Hubert Humphrey become the Democratic nominee nineteen sixty eight, but only after a deeply divisive primary season. Right Jean McCarthy is challenging on the war. Robert Kennedy makes a strong run as well as that assassinated in June nineteen sixty eight after winning the California primary. The August nineteen sixty eight convention is utter chaos for Democrats.
It's not a coronation by any means, and the party is really badly hurt by the way LBJ leaves it behind.
And there is kind of a classic Democrats in disarray military nineteen sixty eight and lets Richard Nixon swoop in and take the White House, whereas Biden has as seamless to handle this aw I mean, what's kind of studying in retrospect is for those weeks when everyone seemed to be kind of rendering their garments in public, it's clearing, at least at the very end, the Biden and Harris teams got together and kind of flawlessly rolled this out
so that Biden made his announcement and then boom, boom boom, a series of endorsements came out, and Harris basically, we had this thing wrapped up in a couple of days. There are going to be no challengers in seams of meeting, barely knock on one clear sailing to the convention, and it's not going to be the chaos that we saw at sixty eight.
Yeah.
You know, it's funny because whenever you hear people talk about how, you know, a dividing convention would be fun and we'll have a mini primary, we'll bring in Oprah, you know, and then we'll have you know, Lady Gaga, and we'll have every person in the world, you know, make this into a complete circus. There is no good historical precedent for circus none.
The contested convention that Blitz primary are all these weird West wing ideas that people have thrown out. They come out of fiction. The real experience in American history of a condestic convention, it's not good.
Can you talk about the other ones?
Yeah? Yeah, So I mean think back to you know, a century ago when the Democrats in nineteen twenty four had a convention that went on for so long. I mean went on like hundreds of ballots, hundreds of ballots to determine who the nomine would be. And finally Will Rogers said it, look, folks, yeah, TAKANDU invited you here for a convention, not to live because it was just they were going nowhere. And this is the same era in which Will Rogers said I don't belong to an
organized political party. I'm a Democrat. Right, So that kind of chaos, right, yeah, oh good, that's democracy. Everybody's finding it out. There's a lot of news interests in this, but it was not good. People weren't excited about the cluster that was going on there, and the results of it were good either. Democrats got hammered in by nineteen twenty four election. Right, So it's not that this generates excitement, it's not that it generates a strong candidate. It generates chaos.
And I think it's notable. But the only people who've really been rooting for a catestant convention for a Blitz primary are Republicans or pundits in the media who are simply want to be entertained. Right, Democrats having one of them.
So back.
What's remarkable is as soon as Biden hass the baton to Harris, the general attitude throughout the left, liberals and the m the let was great, let's go, that's what candaday, great, let's go. The overwhelming amount of donations, the new registrations, the volunteers, the party which is looking for some sense of direction of finality, and they got it.
Yeah.
No, I think that's really important. And you know the Republicans who are like this is rigged.
Let's have a.
Spill off contingent so we can get a convicted fallon back in the White House. Can you talk about those conventions though, because Republicans have had divided conventions and.
They have also been fucking disasters for them.
Yeah, yeah, I mean to think about I mean, the most famous one is that I think sixty four convention where Barry Goldwater took control of the party right and it was bitterly fought. The old moderate and liberal Republicans were living about it, and there is i mean opening of violence on the campaign floor. This is back when we still had large numbers of moderate black Republicans. They
find the experience frightening. There they're getting assaulted by the kind of the Goldwater supporters who especially coming from the South, these old segregationists who are now taken in control of the Republican Party. You know, one of them has this soup set on fire. Jack Robinson, who'd been a loyal Republican for a long time, comes out of convention says, I know what it's like now to be a Jew
in Nazi Germany. That's what that felt like, right. So there's a real sense of chaos and confusion, and of course what happens to the Republicans that year have now a huge defeat. It's a landslide win for were the Democrats who have rallied around when the Johnson with no contest, right, So it's these contested conventions. There's a lot of drama, but it's not good drama. You know, you think it's sixty eight Chicago, you think of either Democrats in seventy two.
It's chaos, right, And that's it might be fun to watch on the outside, it's not fun to live with.
Yeah, And I think that's a really important point. I actually read this weird little book by Norman Mayler about that nineteen.
Sixty four convention.
Yeah, yeah, they just absolutely could not get a handle on things, and there was such division in the party.
I mean, there's a way in which you think about if the conventions are the way in which a party formally introducing itself and its program and it's candidates to the American people, right, And it's in a way it's an audition. And so how well can you run a convention in which things are under your control, You're just dealing with your own allies, you're able to determine the theme, get buffoned around by outside events. Usually that's your audition.
And if you can't get your shit together in four days for convention in terms of being on message, of having a good theme, of making an appeal to the people, well then why should people want to hire you for four years around the country? Right? And so I think that's why these conventions matter. There really are a lot of times people are just tuning in and they get their first impressions of the party and the party's nominees from that convention.
Yeah, exactly.
And I think that one of the things that I've been struck by with this Democratic Party. The left has been unbelievably amazing this entire time.
Yeah, And I think part of.
It is because Biden delivered wins that Hillary Clinton. And I say this really not in my opinion, but as truth is that he delivered wins on certain things that were so broadly progressive. I don't think progressives thought they could have ever gone from Clinton or from even from Obama.
Well, I mean this is if you look at Biden's long career, and as he's drawing his career to an end, I think we can really say this now with some certainty. Look back across his entire Senate career, and Joe Biden is a bellweather for where the center of the Democratic Party is in any one moment. He consistently votes him the center of his caucaus right. And that shows, I think, not that the have certain principles, but that he's willing
to be persuaded right. And that's something that we saw in both the vice presidency but especially during his time as president. Right the left was there standing in the party, not from the outside right. The folks of the Bernie of AOC the squad were freshuring him from the left right, and he moved left and on climate change, on infrastructure,
on labor, judicial appointments, on and on. There's a whole lot of things in which the Leaf got I think a tremendous amount of wins under the Biden administration, and they returned that loyalty when all the centrists and all the money men were doubting that Biden should stay in the race, it was aoc and burning and folks like that who had his back right and again Biden responded to that, I think by finally embracing judicial reform, a long thing that's been a wish list on the left,
and now I think is we're considering this campaign because of their loyalty. So the leftists had remarkable discipline in this in which you know, the kind of the the Joe Manchion Caucaus of the world has been pandicking and flailing around in public. The left really showed they could get the most out of Biden and is stuck with them. And so their support now even apparently for Kamala Harris, who is much more liberal than Biden never was, how
much more leftist than Biden never was. I think it really shows that the strategy is paid off, right that working through the party and being loyal members there, they're being listened to they're making an impact because the president sees them on their left, whether it be Biden or Harris, on their left, as a reliable consistency and is looking to reward that and keep them in the party.
Yeah, exactly, And I think that's a really important point. One of the things that I think is interesting about this moment is we really do have no historical president.
Right.
We've never had a president who was indicted and convicted and still has cases hanging over him, also federal cases. We've never had a candidate like that impeached twice and then a candidate who is the vice president coming in after a one term president who was the oldest person ever to hold the office. I mean, there is no precedent, but maybe there is something that this reminds you of.
Pump's criminality is off the charts. I mean we've got to think about like, as educ candidates, you can't stress us out through our history, and their ambitions are ruined by things that would seem trivial today. Ed Musky seemed to be crying in the when his wife was attacked by a newspaper in New Hampshire that killed his chances. No, So Rockafeller got divorced, remarried. That killed his chances. Howard d even on our own time, yelled a little too loud,
and that seemed to derail. Right. Think of Ducaccus in the helmet, like there are all these little things. Trump is well facing ballanans here, right, Actually he might see jail time. That's amazing. That not a campaign killer, right, and that actually the party leaned into it. And so that is totally imprecedent. But what I think the race is shicken down to and in this moment, it's currently late July, and this may age badly in three days.
You know. In this moment, the campaign is totally flipped, right, And it used to be this battle between two old men, both had a tournament's president. And you're kind of comparing apples to apples with Harrison. She's fifty nine. She's not youngish, but she's younger. It really does seem more like a
generational change, right. I mean, this is a campaign that feels from the Democratic side like nineteen ninety two or from their public eighty right, where there's a really a one side is kind of representing an old guard and looking back, and the other side is one of optimism. And at least in this case, you right, I mean, it really does seem like what Clinton as a candidate
felt like in nineteen ninety two. Mil Clinton felt like in nineteen eighty two against in George W. Bush, but then dol too, right, So they were in a couple of old World War two guys against this baby boomer. And it feels the same way. The new level of energy in the Democratic Party that I haven't seen since Obama in two thousand and eight, it's kind of amazing.
Yeah, I mean, I think that's a really good point.
One of the things that I've been struck by too, is that I actually think her speech when she declared in twenty twenty was really really good. But she has really become an Obama level orator. And I wonder how much because Biden was never an Obama level orator. All of the things he ultimately did when he got in there have been incredible. You know, he was sort of picked in a way because the Democrats felt an old
white guy could be this old white guy. I almost feel like it was sort of giving up on the idea that women or people of color would ever get that office.
That the only way to do this was to beat them at their own game.
Now we have again a gifted orator, someone who can really make the emotional case to voters.
I mean that does seem like a huge advantage.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean the level of energy I think you're seeing from Democrats now is kind of shocking, given the attitude in the last four years and which I think Biden did have an incredible amount of accomplishments, and maybe his decision out to run again will lead to some actual retrospectives and reckoning with his accomplishments of the way in which running for president or second term didn't have people looking at its first term details in that level,
I think that would only help the Democrats. But he was never a great order. I mean, you know, for someone who suffering from a stutter his entire life, right, the level of ority he was able to do is amazing, But it was not his game, And actually I think that's good. What Democrats are looking for that moment wasn't sobody who could shine them a stump, but somebody who could just you know, actually let them forget about the
President for a while. It wasn't Trump's constant, in your face presence, but the other he was getting things done behind the scenes, and there was I think a fear in twenty twenty that the Democrats had taken a risk with a woman candidate in twenty sixteen and they needed to play it safe with an old, experienced white guy in twenty twenty. But there's a way which I think people overread the twenty sixteen results. Right. First of all, Clinton won the popular vote, right, Let's not discount that
she only narrowly lost in the electoral college. But also, Hillary Clinton is a very particular person. She is somebody who the Republicans had been waging a negative campaign against for twenty years. I think people's reactions to Hillary Clinton as a nominee can't be read as a reaction against
a female nominee in general. Right. So it is good to see that the Democrats have, whether they planned on us or not, backed into having a female candidate so soon after Hillary Clinton Austin, because the demographics are there.
If you look at who who supports the party, if you know who does the hard work of organizing the party, there are a lot of women there, especially African American women, And given the issues at stake in this election, I think having someone like Kamala Harris, a racial minority, a woman is really useful because those are people who were the demographics who are in the crosshairs of the Trump plan, right, and so you only have to look at the issue
of abortion rights to really see how this comes out. Right, This is an issue that really should be driving the Democratic campaign, should be because it animates younger voters, especially women. Were going to make all younger voters so who care about reproductive rights and see that contraception and other things are on the chopping blocks soon, really an addictim. Joe Biden was for abortion rights, but he's an old Irish Catholic.
He wasn't really enthusiastic about it, right, even talk about, you know, restoring Row and getting back to the kind of compromise before Harris is all in and restoring Row isn't going to be enough, and so that's about, you know, we're not going back. A chance that broke out kind of spontaneously at her Milwaukee rally is around the point, not just on Rode but on a variety of issues, right, And so you see a real energy there and come through with a different kind of spokesperson.
Thank you, Thank you, thank you. I'm sorry we went so long. I really appreciate you.
Always be talking to you.
Emily i Can is the publisher of a substuck.
Heated Welcome Back, Too Fast Politics Emily for.
Me heated Yay, Thanks Pally.
I'm excited to have you because climate is such a big fucking deal. And it's funny because it's like I was watching this Republican convention where they did not talk about climate change because they don't believe in it. Not believing in climate change is literally like, it's amazing to me because I was one of those people who was completely convinced that at some point, and this is why I'm an idiot, at some point, like in COVID Republicans
would be like, wow, this is real. We should all get vaccinated, and you know, we should really take this seriously so we don't die.
And in fact, the absolute opposite happened.
And I think a little bit that's what's happening with the Republicans and climate.
Yeah.
I remember this very clearly, a strong feeling, even before the pandemic, that Republicans were shifting towards accepting climate change and maybe starting to push for market based solutions. And I remember on feeling very skeptical about that. Not people, they didn't think they were going to do it, but just because I thought that if they were gonna accept climate science and push for market based solutions, it was all going to be a smoke screen for actually doing nothing.
And so I was wrong. But in the work, we.
Shouldn't, I want to specify, we laugh to keep from crying. Oh but yes, so they did not, in fact, try to pretend to give a shit about climate change. In fact, they just kept going.
No, there's no other routes than climate denial and dismantling clean energy progress in the Republican Party. If you're a Republican who wants to tackle climate age that thinks it's real in a real way, there is no place for you in the modern Republican crate. And I feel like the RNC made that very clear. There were at least three chants as I counted, of drill, baby drill.
Yeah, so let's talk about drill, baby drill, because we actually believe it or not drill too much baby drill under a Democratic president. So just explain to us what the drilling landscape looks like right now, and why drill baby drill is actually bullshit, baby bullshit.
But well, we're drilling more on US land than we ever have before. I think that's the one. It's just something that everyone should know, is that a lot of the Republican fear mongering about how the Biden administration has really dismantled the oil and gas in just straight.
He is brought if only yes, go on.
I don't say that with glee or anything. As a person who care climb change, as a climate change reporter, I would say it's probably in the best interest of the global climate for the US to not be drilling so much, but we are. In fact, our domestic drilling is through the roof. That's not entirely because of Biden himself. A lot of these permits were granted before Biden took office. It just kind of so happens that this is a big booing time for drilling in general. But also Biden
hasn't really done anything to prove then. And during his presidency he's approved major major oil and gas projects like the Willow Project, like the Mountain Valley Pipeline, and as you brought up LNG, you know, he liquefied natural gas, which is just I feel like for an average listener, we don't have to go too much into like the process that creates liquefied natural gas turns it into a gas, it turns into liquid, and you've turned it into a liquid so that you can put it on a ship
and export it to other countries. It's easier to transport in its liquified form. So Biden put on these new regulations for LNG that cause new permits for export plants. But new permits for export plants means like it pauses the process, the like six to seven year process of making a plant. So all the plants that are already being built are still being built. So and we have this massive in progress leerngy infrastructure on the Gulf coast
that is still happening. So when you hear republic ads talk about like Biden's destroying the lergy or he's destroying the fossipel industry. Climate at this could only hope that that was I really wish that that's what you sort, Nolan, he's doing. It's based in lies.
It's so interesting to me because you know, when we look at the climate stuff, and you and I've talked about this before, there's a lot of like lying on the part of oil and gas industries because the climate friendly solutions are actually cheaper. Right, So you have wind is free and solar is free, and you know, it's a question of getting batteries that can hold it. But it's you know, coal is like digging into the center of the earth. To get something like liquified natural gas,
same thing, you know, you have to drill. I mean, these are things that are very labor intensive, and so the con here is just to keep saying that it's not ready yet, this.
Idea that renewables like wind and solar are cheaper than gas. It's true over a period of let's say ten to twenty years, the upfront cost is a lot to build the infrastructure, but as you continue to use the energy, because it's from the freaking wind and the sun which us anything, there's not a big continued cost. So yeah, there's like a bunch of studies. I remember one that said if we decarbonize our energy, it could save like
trillions of dollars over twenty years. What Republicans really focus on is that the upfront costs of the transition that they're not willing to pay or don't want to pay, or it's sort of like a thing. It's a capitalism thing. There's always an element of like, I don't want to make the long term good decision. I want to make the decision that makes the most economic sense right now.
If there were no consequence to burning fossil fuels, no environmental consequence, no climate consequence, it would cost less to keep burning fossil fuels this year. It wouldn't cost less over ten years, twenty years, thirty years, And that's just the cost of the energy itself. Because they there is such a high cost of inaction on climate change, I mean in lives and healthcare costs, and infrastructure costs, in natural disaster costs as climate change gets worse that it
just it makes zero sense not to invest in energy transition. Then, knowing all that, it's so crazy, you feel like you're on psychopills listening to the RNCA, because they're like, we're going to dismantle all clean energy investments. They implicitly promised to hault the clean energy transition, which if your conservative conservation, it just makes so little sense. And I think it just illustrates how deeply in the pocket of big oil and polluting industries, this party has become.
It's true.
And I also think more importantly, it does strike me that when you think back to that moment where Donald Trump was in mar Lago with those oil and gas executives and he told them that if they raised him one hundred million dollars, he would let them do whatever they wanted. That's really what's on offer here.
Yeah. Number one, it was a billion dollars.
I'm pretty sure was a billion dollars. Yeah.
And number two, I'm glad that story came out because it makes everything, it gives everything like a bit more of an evil plot villain twist. But I will say that I think that, based on covering the first Trump administration, Trump is gonna do all those things, whether he gets a billion dollars from the oil industry or not. He's
gonna dissle all of Bidy's EPA regulations. He's gonna try to pause all of the investments being made under the Inflation Reduction Act, regardless, that is the clear priority of the people that he has historically chosen to lead these agencies.
You know, he picks these Heritage Foundation people, people behind Project twenty twenty five to carry out what's happening in the bureaucracy, because he doesn't know shit about what's happening in the bureocracy, and their priority has always been to dismantle environmental regulation, dismantle research into clean energy, dismantle research into climate science.
That's happening no matter what, right, right, right, No, now, for sure it should not be surprising anyone. So can you explain to me right now we're in this moment. The next five years will pretty much the damage will do us if it is allowed. Can you explain to us what these five years mean when it comes.
To climate change.
Yeah, So, not to be too depressing here, but if Trump gets re elected, we're not as a planet.
The simplest way that I can put it is that there's a point at which climate change becomes the effects of climate change are to become irreversible. We're at this point, and you can't get us back to a totally safe, free climate change world. That's probably happening no matter whether we get a democratic or Republican administration.
Really, you don't think there's a chance here.
I think there's a very low chance that we don't pass the one point five degrees celsius threshold. Not global warmant, Right, at what point are we stabilizing the climate? I think that under a democratic administration, or under any type of administration that is actually pushing for a cleaning energy transition, we could stabilize at around two degrees celsius or at the very worst, but two and a half degree celsius, which is bad, right.
Yeah, I mean, can you explain to us what two and a half degrees celsius looks like? For those of us like myself who can't totally conceptualize.
That all this horrible heat wave you're seeing during the summer, those get worse, the hurricane become more intense when they hit, wildfire, drought becomes worse. You're gonna see. I think the biggest, most dramatic difference between like one point five degrees celsius and two degrees celsius is that it's the difference between like fifty percent of the coral reefs around the world dying and like ninety nine percent of the coral reefs
around the world dying. There are some solutions in place that scientists are working on to be able to combat that, but that's like a huge difference, And so it's just the degree at which all of those weather events, ocean acidification, coral reefs, the degree of which at which that gets bad. So like two degrees two and a half degrees, you're looking at us at a truly climate change the world. That is pretty bad, and that would cost trillions of
dollars to adapt to. It's already a catastrophe. But I do think that you wins can manage it now because we're already managing it.
Doesn't it mean like sea levels rise.
Yeah, sea levels rise, you're going to be looking at that coastal area of Louisiana is not going to be there. Scientists are pretty darn sure about that if we re celsius, and that won't happen right when we reach two degrees celsius. That happens over larger time scales, but yeah, probably by
within the next fifty per seven years. Now, the thread of a Republican administration and of not doing anything about the business digital scenario is that we start to get into like a three degrees celsius, three and a half degrees celsius, four degrees celsius amount of warming. That amount of warming is almost inconceivable on how that would affect the global population refugee populations, war torn country populations. It's
a really scary situation. Both situations are scary, and I think where we get into a problem is when people think that like a two degree celsius world and a four degrees celsius world are the same, Like, oh, well, we got to throw up our hands because we're going to surpass one point five degrees and then the fight is over. No, Like, every single point one degree of warming that you can prevent on average in the atmosphere is like millions of lives saved, hundreds of millions of
dollars saved. Our inaction has already kind of cemented some pretty bad consequences unless something really really big happens, like a massive global energy transition. So now getting back to your actual question, which was like what does the timeline look like? What does the next five years look like? Or like until twenty thirty. So, in order to stay below one point five degrees celsius, the world has to
reach net zero emissions. So like as much carbon and greenhouse got as as we're putting in the abpisos, we have to also be taking a lot of that out via trees. Lots of trees and carbon capture, which needs to become much much better technology for that to happen. So net zero emissions by twenty fifty. Right, wow, we'll reach that. To get us on track to net zero by twenty fifty, the broad can sentense us among experts, we need to have had our emissions by twenty thirty.
If we're going to have our emissions by twenty thirty, those policies have to be in place of now or within the next four years. Right, it's twenty twenty four, So that's the importance of the next administration. The next administration is really the last administration that we have before that twenty thirty goal of having our missions to get those policies in place. So there's a massive difference between
a Trump administration and an administration for climate. We recently did an article about this, unheated where we really tried to wantify the emission's difference between a Trump presidency and a Biding presidency. We found this great analysis that was done by the climate news site carbon Brief, and what they found and which we verified, which was that it's a difference of about four billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions.
So a Trump administration would emit four billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions more than a Biden administration would be the equivalent of like nine hundred and thirty three coal plants and like nine hundred million gas cars driven for a year. And that is the equivalent to like nine
hundred billion dollars in global climate damages. And what's crazy about those numbers actually is that it's like nine hundred billion dollars in global climate damage is more under a Trump administration than Biden, right, But Biden is still not near the twenty thirty tar right, He's closer to the two thirtyth are yout, but it's still off. So like there's still debt and damages under a Biden administration, which
I think is really important to emphasize. It's like, we're not solving the problem under a Biden administration, but we are preventing way more monetary and human life costs under that administration. It's like we're on a better brack. If you could pick to be on a third track, that was better that you should pick that.
But yeah, Emily, thank you.
You're welcome. I hope that that wasn't too much.
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.