Doug Balloon, Phillip Bump & Nancy Northup

had on the midterms. But first we have Doug Balloon, not his real name, who you might know of as Twitter's funniest barely parody account, The New York Times pitch Pot. Welcome too, Fast Politics, New York Times Pitchpot, thank you, thank you for having me here. We're very excited. I told Mac Greenfield my long Sufferings Fast that we were going to have you on the podcast, and he was like, oh my god, The New York Times pitch pot is going to be on the podcast. We'll do my best

to live up to expectations. I guess tell us a little bit about your story, because you weren't always the New York Times pitch Bond. No, so I was Doug j on Balloon Boos for a long time, and then I sort of started to get interested in Twitter. I don't know, like maybe not that not not very early on, maybe two thousand fifteen or so, And uh, I didn't like it that much at first, and then I started to really like some of these humor accounts, like, um,

what's the guy that? The Jeff Jarvis guy, what's this? Yeah? Real Jeff Jarvis. By the way, can we just I want to stop for a minute and explain to people what balloon juices. Oh yeah, so Balloon Juices that. It was a really interesting blog. I think it really is kind of more comment er driven than anything else. This guy John Cole started it, I don't know, two thousand to two thousand three, and he was originally conservative and

a big supporter of the Iraq war. Well, someone has to be hard to find someone who was a big

supporter of the Iraq war. Yes, continue sorry. Around the time of the Terry Schiavo stuff, he started to feel really tortured sort of about continuing to support Bush because he thought that the Terry Skiava thing was so ridiculous, and so he was always very good with commenters he was a very good sense of humor, so even though he was a conservative, he had a really mixed kind of bag of comment or it's probably most of them

liberal actually, and a lot of them. A lot of the you know, give and take of the blog was people in the comments just ripping him, and I thought it was really funny to watch, and so I came in. I decided that what might really annoy him was if someone just took like the dumbest writing arguments they could and just started hrenting them, parenting them this completely since

you're away. So I did that for a while. It became sort of a popular feature of the blog, and then eventually I told him it was just a joke, after he had done his full conversion to being level. Then I was like, I don't really, there's no point in me doing this anymore, because you know, my my work,

my work is done here. And then a little later he asked me to join him on the blog, and then more people joined, and it's sort of a I guess it's a blog that is, you know, kind of normy liberal in general and kind of you know, tough on people and sort of really most famous for having really brutal comments, you know, like I would write things that I thought were okay and then the people shredd

me in the I think that's all writing. Unfortunately, the spectually these are sort of especially it's funny because I see people, like with a lot of Twitter followers, you know, something fun of and people will offer a pretty mild criticism and the replies and they'll just get so mad about you, like that for example, oh really, you don't say, yeah, I don't get it, because I would write things that people even more or less agreet with what I was saying,

and they still would just destroy me for how I how I said it and then like the meanest possible way. And so it was good preparation, I think for for Twitter. And then on Twitter, I kind of I really like these humor accounts and I really liked I really like the Jeff Jarvis guy. Although I like Jeff Jarvis too,

I don't think the account was especially targeting him. And I happened to have that name, and I got to really like this account called Federalist Pitchpot, and then there was a Reason Pitchpot, which in some ways I liked

even that or they were different. Federalist pitchpot was hard because most of what Federalist pitch Bot was doing was taking, which this is a valuable lesson for me I learned later, was taking stuff, but the federal is actually sad and kind of making it a little bit less offensive, like Tony also making it funny, you know, and he would have these contests like which is the real head just a fake headline, which it would always be, which everyone

wasn't really quite as a threatening or as offensive as the other one. And Reason Pitchbot was I thought, a really funny take on Reason because it was again actually not really quite as crazy as Reason is. It was Reason as written by the idea libertarian, who is a kid, like anineteen year old kid living in his parents basement

all day. Yeah. I just really liked them. And then I was like, well, I always have this thing where like, if someone does something I really like, I think maybe maybe I could do this too, and then other people

would enjoy it. And so I've always had this fixation with The New York Times, you and everyone else, right, well, just the particular style of it always sticks in my head, you know, I remember I don't know why I remember this so well, but I think like my sophomore year of college, they had an article about n w A. I remember saying things like Mr Cubes, you know, gretty lyrics and stuff like my roommate and I just thought

it was the funniest thing. The whole way was written with Mr Cube and Mr Dre and the gritty lyrics and all, you know, all these sort of New York Times tropes. And I don't know why, just after that I got into this thing of trying to talk like the New York Times all the time with with my roommate who also also did it, and uh yeah. So then I was like, what could I do that would be kind of funny, like a pitchpot. And then I thought, I know what I'll do. I'll do New York Times

pitch bot. And I started doing it and it wasn't very you know, people didn't get like a great reception at first. But then a conservative journalist that I keep in touch with were both really big Rolling Stones fans, and we kind of bonded over that was thing saying this is a great bit. You were born to do this, you gotta keep doing this. So I was like, all right, maybe I'll try to actually devote a little bit of

energy to this. Then I did a tweet about this is like March maybe, I did a tweet about you know, those sources close to Jared and Ivanka kind of tweets, right, and it blew up and I got a lot of followers, and I was like, oh, this is great. That's and that's when I started to really good into it. And also I was very lucky in that I got I have really good repliers, right, right, replies were great, and

that's what kind of keeps it going. Well, that's what why the internet is great, right, is because you meet great people who are really smart, and then that's really interesting. Yeah. So you're born of the time of the Iraq War, right, that's when you got into this, which was in many ways a simpler time, right and a less deranged Republican Party. I mean, have you been surprised to watch the change there?

You mean becoming more deranged? Yes, more deranged? Not really, No, it's about what really I think that's the thing is that for people like me who were well, I mean not just that I didn't actually spend that much time reading crazy right wing stuff myself on the internet, but I follow a couple of guys I followed. Steve am Is one of them, not particularly popular blog. I think Oliver Willis is another one, and maybe and there was

a couple of others too, mostly smaller blogs. They're like would really spend time watching Fox News, and not even just watching Fox News. I think Fox News wasn't really it was a little bit behind the curve, I think

in terms of being totally crazy. But um, these sort of reading crazy right wing blogs and stuff, and uh I read their stuff, and I started to realize there really is this thing going on in the party where you know, you have the leaders like Mitt and McCain and Buscheur's to all to some extent terrible, maybe Romney

less than the others. A lot of what they're actually doing is trying to keep the really you know, the really loony stuff, trying to kind of tamp it down, you know, either to win elections or because I just disagree with it, I don't know. And uh, reading this these blogs, I started realized that's really the dynamic and

eventually the lid is probably gonna blow, you know. So I didn't think that Trump was gonna win the primary, but I wasn't that surprised that he did, you know, um, and I really think that a lot of the media, almost all the mainstream media, they really had their head in the sand about what was going on the Republican Party, right, I mean, look at you know, all these people that you probably know from being a Polard who were former Republicans.

They all say that about themselves, right, they all say, I really had except the once they didn't. They did see it coming. I didn't really know. I didn't really know what was going on, right, They didn't realize that it could get so much worse than it did. But I know, I'm not I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised at all. Right, all right, so let me ask you right now, what's happening? I mean, what do you think it feels like there's a readjustment in the Republican Party

right now? I'm not saying it's better. Does it feel to you like there's something happening now? Trump is sort of going against Trump? Yeah? I think so. Yeah. So I think that it's really hard to say because at the elite level, definitely, Yeah, But I don't really know what's going to go on with the rank and file. So I'll tell you what I think is that there is a little bit of a movement against him right now. But he's not campaigning, he's not on Twitter, he's not

doing all the stuff that he's good at. Number one, number two. I think their plan, right, I think the plan to have him not be the nominee in four involves getting behind someone who's a lot like him, right. I mean, if it was like, we're gonna rally behind Mitt Romney and or or even Marc Arubia, who I like, but he's not like Trump, it would be different. They're not. They're rallying behind the Santis, who is really a lot like Trump. I think so in that sense, I don't

think there really is that much of a change. Now do people at the times? Do they find you adorable or do they find you annoying? So I think it varies. It's interesting. So what's his name? Jonathan Martin one time showed up. This is a really phn of them, but

this was the highlight William like career. I had this bit I did where a guy from I had this thing once when I asked people to tell me good local stuff, you know, to help me with the diner Safari tweets, and one brought this really great thing about in this Indiana diner, everyone has three questions, and how's the bread of tender loin? Second is house is the quarry hiring? And the third is like, do you really think that Don McNeil was the victim of the Wolke

mob or something? And so I started to do this one all the time, and I don't do it that often. It's not quite as easy as some of the other templates, but I do it. And I did one, and Jonathan Martin, clearly must have hated my account for years, showed up and blocked quoted me and said, I guarantee they don't call it bread a tender loin, and try harder. I mean, it was a highlight for me because they do call it bread a tenderline. Is the whole thing was based

on a guy who lives in Indiana, you know. And then million people showed up in their replies and said, yeah, they do actually call it creddit enderline in parts of Indiana. And so clearly he hated the account. Yeah, clearly it clearly it got under his But he was really one of the ones. I'm really aiming it at too. I really don't like his reporting, and I really don't like

the New York Times political reporting in general. I heard though that I have a reader who has a friend who's on the who's on the editorial board, and he said his friend loves the account and actually want wanted me. I'm not gonna tell you the guy's name, I obviously, but he wanted me to to start to do a couple where I made fun of him by name, but actually I liked all his writings, so I couldn't figure

out a way to do it. That's amazing. I mean, that's the thing that I think is interesting about the New York Times pitch pot is it struck me that you started going for the editorial writers, but you moved to the political car and that that actually, ultimately that the editorial pieces were not in your mind, is problematic as the straight political coverage. Is that true? Right? While there's two things right, One is that I think they're

political coverage is worse. I think that they're I started to read their editorials and they're not that bad and to me in a lot of ways, yeah, relative to political reporting. Also, though, I will say, part of it is that his opinion writing goes. I started to find all these ridiculous sub stack people to be so much worse. Well, now I sort of felt like, which would I'd rather do?

Make fun of Tom Friedman for some kind of stupid but probably not that wrong pro free trade piece, you know, the fun of Glenn Greenwald for some insane thing about Ukrainian Nazis with bio all this whole thing, I don't know why this drugs me so much, This whole thing of all these people with no training of medical traine any of any kind, talking about why they think the lab leak is real, Like it's just so ridiculous to me, you know, and it's much more I mean, who do

I really I really don't like saying Nick Christoph or Brett Stevens, but but they don't do things that are quite that stupid to me, you know. And so I sort of lost interest a little bit in the editorial board when the when I was confronted with this, the insanity of the substract bros. Is the problem with normal, normal political reporting. And I don't want to call anyone out because this is a problem. I think it's more of a mainstream media problem and less of a New

York Times problem. But because the New York Times is the most famous, they get most of the gruff. Do you think that part of it is that there is this inherent bias against appearing liberal, which helps elevate the far right in a way. Yeah, I think definitely. Yeah. I think they're obsessed with not appearing and I think it has I think it it works in various ways, right,

One is that they elevate conservative voices. I think the other is that they do believe that the things they conservatives saying are stupid and they can't really relate to them at all, and so they don't hold conservative arguments to a high standard, you know. I mean like if some liberals, like if some liberal happened to be saying crazy stuff about the border, not that the liberal would

they'd say, well, actually, statistically blah blah blah. Also, they're only coming here for jobs, so if you just had to stop the employee, you know, they pick it that, they pick at the argument. They don't do that with conservative arguments. They're just like they just they just sort

of repeat them, you know. Right. Part of it is because they don't even they think that they're probably so stupid that there's no point in trying to pick at them, and so they don't take conservative arguments seriously, and that actually leads in a weird way to them just repeating them. No, No, I think that's right. I mean, is it's weirdly a function of being liberal causes these straight reporters to come off as more conservative. Yeah. Yeah, And I also don't

think that they're that. I mean, I think that they're very culturally liberal, you know, like they watch white Lotus and they like to eat proving food and stuff like that, you know, but they're not exactly but I don't think we care that much about about working people, you know, I mean necessarily, and so I think they're very conscious of being culturally liberal people, you know, from the Selachord or blah blah blah, And so that makes them take

a funny attitude I think towards towards sort of what they think of as heartly and conservatives, right right. I mean fundamentally, what you're discussing is a kind of fatis ization of the heartland. Yeah, it can go in different directions. I think, like I don't really mind the ones where they go I don't really mind them if they sort of treat that people with some kind of respect, Like if they go and they go around and they eat the local specialties and say they're good or something like that.

I like that kind of thing. But what I don't like is a lot of it just sounds like, oh my god, these idiots in this healthscape, the stupid things that they're saying, you know, and yet somehow the fact that these idiots in this healthscape are saying stupid things really reflects a failure of democrats to get to them. That's sort of the vibe that I get from a lot of it, and I think it's it's very bad, I think in a lot of different ways. Yeah, it's

very interesting. I think that this idea of like this kind of inability to connect with the with the fantasy because it's not even real, right, with the fantasy of quote unquote regular Joe's is um super interesting and problematic for probably all of us. Right, I mean, you're a math professor, right, Yeah, But I lived in fly Over Country. I live in I mean, you know, I grew up

in a very rayal area. I wouldn't say that I totally you know, I mean, I I am an upper middle class person living in a very liberal neighborhood and so on. But I don't think that people who live in areas outside of outside of the coasts really do have quite a strange disconnect with people in fly Over Country because we live there ourselves and probviously were economically and culturally different than some of the people that live nearbias.

But yeah, we drive through their neighborhood sometimes we you know, see see I see, I see the kind of people that in our time seems to you know, mock or or elevate depending how you look at it, all the time in my regular life. And so I think there's

a geographic It's not just a cultural class issue. It's a geographic And this is something, by the way, I know a lot of local reporters, not just here, but actually various ones, like from Ohio told me they like the account stuff, and I talked to them, and I think they they're journalists too, very good journalists, honestly, and I think that if they wrote these articles instead, they would be much better articles. Thank you so much, New York Times, pitch Pot. I hope you'll come back. I'd

love to. Philip Bump is a national columnist for The Washington Post. Welcome to Fast Politics, Philip Bump, Thank you very much. So I wanted to talk to you about the Constitution. Sure, great McCarthy decides he's going to start Congress when and if he becomes speaker with the reading of the Constitution, then this weekend, Donald Trump, there were a lot of crazy truth this weekend, but one of them called for a set aside of the Constitution. Can

we talk about that? Yeah, no, absolutely, And he then tried to sort of backtrack and say, well, I mean the whole constant, you know, I mean the way that he does things, but yes, just the parts he doesn't like. He called the termination of all rules, regulations, the articles, even though it is found in this Constitution. There is no world in which Trump has ever sort of held responsible for what he says. Yeah, I mean that's I mean.

I was actually, uh, something that I'm sort of working on today is all the times that people said, okay, this is it that Donald Trump's gone too far? I mean the point that we've had two in the past three weeks, right, I mean, like, yeah, I mean this is someone who obviously, since July, the Republican Party has been hoping he'll just sort of go away, uh, and not really interested in sort of tackling the problem themselves.

I I at one point in time analogized it to the TV show Holders, in which the Republican Party just sort of let their house fill up with garbage and someone had to come in and be like, hey, guys, your house is full of garbage, and you're like, well, yeah, but we just, you know, we sort of make do and we just sort of live with this household of the garbage. But you know, it seems very clear that they're not going to actually tackle the problem themselves. So

let's go further with this, because it's strange. I mean, it seems to me like there was a scandal which was Trump having dinner with Kanye and a white nationalist right, so that the scandal was like, oh my god, Trump had dinner with Nick quinte Is while Kanye was in the middle of an anti Semitic tear which has continued un debated. And then that scandal was interrupted by another scandal, which was this weekend Trump saying that whatever, you know,

throwing with the constitution. I mean, do you find this to be I mean, this reminds me of the Trump administration a little bit. Yeah, No, I think that's right where you sort of had them sort of stacking on top of each other. I do think that one of the things we've been seeing, and I think Donald Trump is is very attuned to this. One of the things we're seeing is we are actually getting I think, people being more willing to more quickly step up and say

things that are critical of Trump. Again, it's often kind of passive or want and you know, it's not necessarily the sort of, you know, vociferous denunciation that you would hope for if you have a former president who's saying that the Constitution should be set aside so that he

can be reinstalled into into the presidency. But you are seeing it, and I think that Republican Party is slowly coming to terms with the fact that maybe they're actually getting to the point where Donald Trump might be fitted from the scene where you know, we're starting to see polling where Donald Trump isn't really doing that well against

potential other candidates. He still got a path to the nomination, certainly, but I think the Republicans and Trump are very aware that this is not what it was, and it may not even be what it was, right, I mean, that's the big question part of his the way he sort of was able to win the nomination was to be a kind of joke, right, and to ride that free media into the White House. I mean, don't you think there was a sense of that? Yeah, I mean I

think that there certainly was. It was the case that Donald Trump attracted a lot of attention because he was a novelty. But I really think that the the way in which Donald Trump won the presidency or won the nomination was that he basically just parroted back the nonsense that he heard in conservative media to a base to

consume that media. You know, mainstream Republicans weren't saying the things that that you saw him right bark, because there were nonsense and lies, you know, and and dishonest you know, and you are things that that were mentioned by Shawan Handyon Fox News. Mainstream Republicans were happy to have those people be their allies, but they weren't necessarily saying that things about immigration that you would see in the far

right conservative media. Donald Trump said it, and so that's how he got the reputation among Republicans as being a truth teller, because he just said the nonsense that was be he himself was picking up out a conservative media

and feeding and back to Republicans. So yeah, I mean, I do think that obviously he benefited from this sort of novelty status in sixteen, but I really think his success originated, and people forget this to some extent, it started with the blowback from his speech, his announcement speech in June, when he got into that giant fight with Univision, he got into giant fight with Macy's, and that drew a ton of attention to his rhetoric on immigration, and

a lot of Republican parts are like, oh, yeah, this guy is finally saying the things in immigration that I want people to say because they've been seeing the Fox News And I think I think that was the primary thing that that sort of gave him the momentum that he needed to win. Yeah, No, I think that's that's right.

So this time around, he doesn't have that advantage. I mean, do you think that's true or now he does not have the distinct advantage of being the only guy who's going to say the nonsense and far right media since a lot of Republicans say that nonsense, including Rohanda santiss.

He does, however, have the advantage of having a much more robust constituency that he did at the outset, and so he ends up sort of in the same place where in he had this core base of people who really supported him, largely because of the factor that I

was just describing. Now he still has that base. It's not a majority of the party necessarily, and you know, obviously a majority of the party views him positively, but I think that it is not necessarily a majority of the party that wants to see him win again in

four based on polling. But again, depending what field looks like, he may not need a majority disupport him at this point and work again, win the nomination right because of the electoral college, No, just the nomination because of the way that the primary process works, and then just wait until everyone else has sort of winnowed out, and then he becomes sort of a you know, he wins enough when you take all the states for delegates and he's

back in the back in the driversy. That sounds just great. So I want to talk to you now about if you were online this weekend, or maybe you had a life. I was online this weekend, So I was able to absorb the Twitter files, which was this weird, which was this weird I don't even know what it was. It was Elon Musk, you know, giving us the real truth

through mad to hee be. But basically the net net of it, which is the story you just wrote, was that Hunter Biden's that the suppression of this New York Post story about Hunter Biden's lap top may have cost Donald Trump the election discuss. Yeah, so I think there's two components here. There is the component that Elon Musk is focused on, which is this idea that Twitter behaved with a heavy hand that sort of reveals the way that tech is out to get the right right. You know.

I think it's certainly is clear that there is cause to have a debate over whether or not Twitter acted properly when it when it, you know, muffled this New York Post story. But I don't think that what is revealed by the Twitter files supports Musk's argument that the

right is being unfairly censored. But then, because this is inherently not something that's terribly important, you know, I mean the idea that Twitter, which you know, a small fraction of Americans use for a brief period of time kept people from sharing the story that's not hugely consequential in

the grand scheme of things. It doesn't have First Amendment implications, as a lot of people sort of insist that it does, and so it has become this sort of mantra on the right that this was a thing that kept from winning, which by itself is just nonsensical based on everything we know about about why Donald Trump lost in But this is elevated of the course of the past two days because it is a way of making it seem as though the Twitter files are more important than they are.

I liked the the Elon tweet where he said this is a violation of the First Amendment, and then the sort of like his Internet support system. You know, all of the Twitter people who are like Elon fans uh said yes, and violation of the First Amendment is you know, akin to treason, and I think you can violate people's amendments. It's okay. The dialogue here has been pretty deranged, right.

It's sort of fascinating because all the people, all the people who are now saying, yeah, this doesn't really tell us anything new, are the exact same people who two months ago were like, Yeah, your new verification scheme is going to backfire and blow up in your face, right, Like, there are a lot of people who know how Twitter works and what it does and what it's done in the past, and who understand it way better than does

Elon Musk. Elon Musk has been very effective at building you know, one of the things that Twitter is good at is allowing people to exist within echo chambers. And what Elon Musk has done since he took ownership of Twitter as he's really he has both pushed away people who are you know, skeptical of him, and he has embraced people who adore him. And so he's just sort of increased the volume of people who can participate in

these echo chambers. And so I think, you know, the response to these Twitter files as being way over the top, just really really way over the top and insisting that there was some massive discovery here. I think that that's particularly noxious on Twitter simply because Elon Musk is involved, and he has done such a good job of inflating the universe of people who agree with him on the

social media platform. Yeah, I mean that is what's so incredible. Yeah, it does seem like the discourse has gotten stupider, which I never thought possible. Sure, it's an achievement in its own right. Absolutely, Yeah. Do you think there'll be another Twitter file? But because we were promised more Twitter files? Yeah we were. I mean, I I would love to have been inside Matt Taieb's brain as he is reading this stuff, because I like to think that he still

recognizes when nonsense is nonsense. You know, maybe that's just me being overly optimistic. I like to think that he sort of read this stuff. I was like, well, there's not a lot here, but I'll do my best, right,

And so I'm curious. I don't know who is responsible for the second cash of Twitter files, and maybe Bari Weiss, and I like to think that she's currently you know, if she is the person who's sort of doing the second review, that she is currently in the same position just being like, Okay, how do I milk this and the attention that it's going to give me? Well, at the same time recognizing me there's probably not a lot here. Who knows. I may be proven wrong, maybe there's some

bombshell in there. I'm sort of skepticled there will I thought it was sort of interesting that it was like people were so agitated about it and so excited, and it was like a conviction that there was something in there.

But if you read it, you're like, and especially when you if you look at the tweets and you see where they matched to their you know, these inappropriate pictures of hundre Biden, which in themselves, I mean, it's not it doesn't really you know, yeah, I mean it's it very much is in keeping with this recent pattern we've seen in which, you know, it used to be the right will get worked up over when they managed to own the Libs, and then it's sort of evolved, and

I think it's sort of a turning point here was that the Santists Martha has been here in Nantucketria, which island it was when he sent the immigrants there. Martha's when you're not nntectic because a lot of Republican donors live on Nantucket. Very good, okay, but the response from the island was sort of like, Okay, you're welcome, and you know, we'll deal with you. And but it was

still treated like this massive own on the Libs. And I think that we're sort of in the same territory here where it this is just because it has been presented as being a known on the libs by people who wanted to be known on the libs. Then everyone's saying, how we in the libs, even though the libs are like,

well not really, yeah, not very own. Do you think it's true that there's this idea that Elan is sort of rediscovering all the things that Twitter has discovered, So like, he had this verification system and then there were all these fakes, so now he has this new verification which is like different color badges, or maybe he's not going to do it at all, and then you know, he had this you know, he didn't want to have content moderation, but then you know, he brought Kanye back, but then

he had to ban Kanye again. I mean, do you think he's sort of relearning everything that they have learned in the early days of Twitter? Well, I hope he is, honestly, you know, there definitely is sort of an ontogeny recapitulates bylogeny vibe to this whole thing in which he's sort of re going through all these evolutionary steps that already existed.

I think fundamentally Elon Musk is a person who has taught himself that he knows better than everyone, and so he came in to Twitter and had this sense that they must be doing everything wrong and stupidly and he could fix it. And now he's just sort of very gradually coming back to where they were. You know, I mean, honestly, it's the world's most suspensive done and grew experiment. Right.

He got to the top of that first hill and was very confident, knew everything about it, and now he's heading backed down and you know, maybe eventually he'll he'll rise back up and expertise, but you know, he just he just he just fundamentally didn't understand what the platform was for and about. And he really really believed this nonsense about conservative voices being shut out on fairly and so on and so forth, and that's driven a lot

of his decisions since. Yeah, it's amazing stuff. So you talked about this Georgia runoff and the idea that early voting isn't as diagnostic as perhaps many in politics treated to be. Can you talk about that, because it's like early voting isn't diagnostic and pulling isn't right. So basically, we have nothing to go on. Well, pulling is a little more so, because at least you're you know, you're you're able to wait things appropriately and you know how

people are saying they're going to vote. The challenge with early voting is that in Georgia in particular, one of the things that we've seen in the past couple of cycles is absolutely was the case in Georgia and elsewhere that if you looked at the mail ballot, if mail ballot was really really big, that was really really good for Democrats, because Democrats are voting big by mail, especially at the height of the pandemic in twenty. But what we also learned in twenty is that it was hard

then to engage what election is will look like. And of course early voting tells us one thing, election day tells us something else, and we don't know anything about

election day tell election day. And so when I went back and looked at the numbers from the run off in one involving our fail Warnock, and then the numbers from last month's general election in Georgia, and really what we see is, yeah, I mean, we should expect Warnock to win the early vote by double digits and we should expect hershell Walker to win election day by double digits. And the question is, just you know what happens when

he subtracted one number from the other. And so saying that Warnock is doing well in early voting, yeah, he better read right, and there's no evation he's not. But that doesn't tell us that he's gonna win lose, right, Interesting, But then at least the midterms will be over, thank god. Indeed, Philip talk to us about you are baby boomer buck? Sure? So I have book coming out in January called The Aftermath, The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future

of Powered American. Essentially, what it does is it looks at both the scale of the Baby Boom, which I think a lot of people sort of under recognized, just this massive, massive shift to the American economy and American politics that last this day. But what it means as the baby boom starts to fade, as baby Boomers dying as millennials and gen Z sort of assents I'm gen x or I always leave us out intentionally because no

one cares about us. A good pluses. But so the book is sort of an exploration what happens with politics, what happens with the economy, what happens with culture, and what can we not foresee happening? And of course it's got a lot of data, lot of data analysis and and hopefully helps shed some light on this very weird moment, which I think is really heavily driven by generational shift that overlaps with racial shifts and all sorts of other factors.

So interesting. Thank you so much for joining us. I hope you'll come back in January. Anytime you want me. I'm happy to Nancy Northup is the president of the Center for Reproductive Rights. Welcome too fast politics, Nancy Northup, it's great to be here. Molly, We're so excited to have you. You are the head of the Center for Reproductive Rights. Can you give us just a quick sort

of TikTok of what is happening right now and reproductive rights? Yeah, and let me just start by saying that the Center Reproductive Rights, you know, we're lawyers, were human rights advocates. We work here in the United States but also around the world to ensure the reproductive rights are protected in laws fundamental human rights. We argued the Jobs case in the Supreme Court. It's been a harrowing several months, but

you know, we haven't missed a beat. We have been back at it, filing cases in state court, pivoting from federal court to state court against the trigger bands and the attempts to resurrect long enjoined meaning blocked cree row abortion bands, as well as you know, moving forward on the whole new era of states protecting this right in

their state constitutions, which is an exciting, exciting frontier. So, you know, my bottom line and thinking about the Dobs cases, the Supreme Court and all the folks that were behind having Rover verse are going to rue the day that they did, because we're going to make sure that we end up with stronger protections for access to abortion care and the whole range of reproductive healthcare that we had under the crumbling regime of Rowe freed up. This is

great to hear, and I love your attitude. Let's talk about what the mid terms look like for choice. Yeah. Well, I think one of the things that you know was so important was to see how these ballot initiatives played out, which you know got some but not a ton of attention before the mid terms, but abortion was literally on the ballot in five states, with Vermont and Michigan and California asking the voters to put protection for reproductive rights

into their state constitutions. And then in Kentucky fighting a ballot initiative that was designed to make sure that their constitution did not protect abortion rights, and a Montana initiative it was all about stigmatizing abortion, kind of a trial balloon to see if they could go for banning it

in their state constitution. Everything of one of those the attempts to restrict abortion rights defeated in Kentucky and Montana and Michigan, California, Vermont enshrined in their state constitutions and maybe not surprising in California and Vermont, but a big, big deal in the state of Michigan. And before that even you had the state of Kansas. Absolutely and there were so many doubters about the state of Kansas before the vote, thinking there was no path to victory. Kansas

voters proved otherwise. And you know what people often don't focus on. They focus on the politics of like did these prevailer get defeated? And again we're now six referendum since Dubbs, and everything of one of them has broken four abortion rights. The setup Reprotective Rights one the case that established the constitutional right to abortion in the state of Kansas several years ago. And it's really strong protection.

I mean, even when it came down, it protected the right to abortion Kansas, stronger than the federal constitutional right at the time and so stronger today. It's a very strong right. And the people in Kansas said, hell, no, we don't want our rights taken away. So you're a fancy lawyer who did law review and who rights and things. And I'm curious to know, besides leading this organization, I'm curious to know, is there a world in which we American women can have a protection that protects us now

nationally our choice? I mean, is that possible? Or is the end of jobs really the end of national abortion rights? Oh? It absolutely is not. I Mean one of the things that people are waking up to is the fact that Congress has the power to address the abortion access crisis. And the Women's Health Protection Act was introduced a decade ago in the US Congress because we could see even during President Obama's administration, and Ginsburg is still on the

Supreme Court, Kennedy still in Supreme Court. We could see what was happening at the state level. I mean at the time, it felt a lot like you know, crying in the wilderness right to get people to listen a

decade ago, but it was clear. So the Women's Health Protection Act introduced a decade ago and building support, and what it does is guarantee our right to receive abortion services and a right to provide abortion services free from bans and you know, medically unnecessary restrictions and all the things that have been piling on and piling on for years even before the Court reverse jobs. So the Whim's Health Protection Act would re establish the right to abortion

in every state. And it passed the House of Representatives twice in the past year, and it got to forty nine votes in the Senate when the Senate voted on it right after the leaked opinion came down. So you know, it is going to be important for even as we fight these state battles, and it's important that these state constitutional rights get developed in court and through ballid initiatives, but ultimately, ultimately there's got to be federal legislation to

ensure this right across the country. Do you think not having passed the E r A was a mistake that sort of opened the door to some of this or do you think it didn't have anything to do with us. Are you talking about the r A back in the early eighties, the failure of that campaign. Yes, I'm the daughter of a feminist, so I always think about, like our failure to pass that after bro and if that

might have compounded some of our troubles. Of course, I mean there was a whole crescendo towards you know, gender equality that was coming up in the nineteen seventies, and you know, one of the things I did, you know, in my early years, was work on the what's called the r A countdown campaign when time was running out. And uh, it would have been a huge difference the ARRA to pass. But you cannot blame that as a

failure of the women's movement. You have to remember what the composition of state legislatures were right in the early nineteen eighties. They were predominantly male. You know, women were not being elected to office then in the numbers they are today and even now, I mean there's nowhere near gender pair in any legislative house, and certainly not in the Congress. So you know, not for lack of trying, not for lack of trying. You know, it is tough

to amend the Constitution. And the reality is the Republican parties which did its stance on the e r A. Can you say a little more about that. Yeah, I mean the whole story of how you know, women's rights and reproductive rights was politicized. I mean people forget that.

You know, when Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford were running against each other for president in ninety six, you know, Gerald Ford was the pro choice candidate, and and you know Carter was personally opposed to abortion, and so you know, this had been a very strong bipartisan issue and it still was. But the decision by the Republican Party to politicize the issue of abortion rights and push back against the e r A began, you know, with President Reagan

to be turning the tide. And one of the things just to go back to the you know, ballot initiatives that we've seen since the Job's case, but they make clear, i mean, we know that the majority of the American public supports abortion rights, and what these balot initiatives making clear, states including you know, Kansas and Kentucky and Montana is that when voters can vote on the policy preference, write their policy preference, it's you know, we want to keep

our rights right. When it's confused with you know, candidate preferences and party affiliations and so forth, because the issue has been so politicized over the years, you know, you see different outcomes in terms of who may be in the legislatures, even though the policy preference of the voters is give us. This is to us as a clean policy issue, we want our rights. And I think that's quite an interesting place to be right now. So let's

just talk for another second about the mid terms. It seems like there's a lot of sort of Monday morning quarterbacking saying that actually Dobbs really helped Democrats. Do you think that's true. There is no question that abortion rights was a resounding issue with Democratic voters and independence right. It was a really, really important issue. And I know it was frustrating to you because you were clear about it leading into the elections, and it was certainly you know,

we don't get involved in electoral politics. We're a nonprofit organization that works on this from a policy and human rights perspective. But it was certainly frustrating to me as somebody who knew how important this issue is and how it resonates with the American public. To hear like Dobbs, you know, was nobody really cares? That was amazing exactly, And certainly the voters came back and said, heck, yeah

we care. So I think it's really really important. And again I was in Michigan the night of the election because of the ballot initiative there, and but we saw in Michigan right reversal of the majority in the Democrats took the the Senate and the House in Michigan. Of course the statewide offices um were won by the Democrats, and you know that was huge. And I'm sure the fact that the voting on the policy preference for abortion rights, which was on the ballot, you know, made a big difference.

And then just to you know, conquetize what it means for you know people, I was with our longtime client, Renee Chilean, who runs three clinics in Michigan, the Northland Family Planning Centers, and you know, we all had tears in our eyes when the ballot initiative passed amending the Constitution because we have represented Renee for thirty years in ten cases in Michigan, fighting against the restrictions upon restrictions upon restrictions, and all of a sudden, now the words

reproductive freedom are in the language of the Michigan Constitution, and it is really clear how strongly it is going to protect that right because the only thing that can be considered in legislation is the woman or pregnant person's health, not these other concerns that the Supreme Court had allowed it its jurisprudence to allow restriction upon restriction, and that's a big difference. I mean, those tears were in Renee's eyes because it means that she can provide the healthcare

free of these restrictions going forward. Obviously we stell have to implement the provisions in the Michigan you know, constitution, but with the legislative change, that really should be a path forward. I just want to get back to the Stabs decision for a minute. Trump had said he was putting these three Supreme Court justices on the court to overturn Row. We almost sort of saw this coming. But when the case, when the Job's case was argued, were

you surprised at just how zealotous. They were. Yeah. So December one last year, when Julie Recommen and our litigation director argued the case, I was stunned by the questions that were coming. I mean, we knew when they took the case that the writing was on the wall, because there was no reason to take a case that's so clearly Mississippi's fifteen week band clearly violated O versus Wait and even the ultra conservative US Court of Appeals for

Fifth Circuit had struck it down. So the law was blocked. So the Supreme Court taking it meant that it was of a mind to do something about that. And so but the questions that came during the hearing, you know, shouldn't we just be neutral? And what about the fact that you can drop off your babies at firehouses? Doesn't that alleviate the you know, the burden of parenthood. Yeah, that was an incredible, incredible question. It was an incredible question. So it was clear that the die was was cast

during that December one argument. So we were prepared for it, although we still didn't know whether the court would uphold the Mississippi ban, but say they weren't reversing row versus way, which it wasn't an intellectually, you know, honest possibility, but it was one that we were frankly concerned about because the worst of all worlds as they actually overturned Roversus way and the public doesn't realize it. Yeah, it's so interesting because it's like, that's what John Roberts want exactly.

That was his opinion, which is, I'm going to uphold the fifteen week ban, but I'm not reversing Roversus way. And there's no way to do that because in all the cases for fifty years from Row on, the Court was clear that ultimately a state can't ban abortion pre viability, and fifteen weeks is way before viability. So it was over turning Row and there would have been no there would have been no you know, guard rails. Everything would

have just build anyway. It would have been slightly slower, but not too much slower because as you well know, and uh, your listeners probably know, you know, Texas had already banned abortion. In another case we argued in the Supreme Court last year, spid Spight, after six weeks, Oklahoma had banned abortion altogether because they took the vigilante law of Texas at six weeks and they said, let's just

make a total band in Oklahoma. So you know, already the writing was on the wall, but it would have been more confusing, you know, for the voters. And I think the fact that it's just what the Court's done with Dobbs is clear. And I think it's also very very important that we not let anyone forget how outrageous

and wrong the DBS decision is. And so people should just walk around with the following things in their brain at all times, which is that what the Jobs Court said is if you didn't have rights in eighteen sixty eight, you can't have them today. And the other thing is that it completely erased women and pregnant people's experiences. The decision mentions legislative bodies six times, it mentions women's bodies

zero times. So those are the two things. Everybody wherever you go needs to talk about those two things because it's absolutely outrageous. I just want to get back to this idea for a minute. One of the reasons my row was decided so unilaterally was because of the high level of women who were dying a sceptive uterus is and you know, the doctors who refused to treat miscarriages.

We're seeing that come back, right, Will you talk about that? Yes, I would say where we're seeing it the most now is women who are miscaring, so they are not getting the standard of care in hospitals, which is to complete a pregnancy termination if a miscarriage means that the pregnancy is not viable and you do not want the patient to go into the risk of you know, sepsis and

infection and dying. What's different from the pre row era, which is what is making this entire post offs thing different, is the availability of medication abortion right, so people are not going to back alleys and having coat hanger abortions.

You know, you can selfly safely manage an abortion getting from a reputable provider, pills on the internet, terminating a pregnancy, and so it is actually masking how many people are getting abortions in states where abortion is not legal, which is great, it's hugely important, although no one should have

to be in this gray area of the law. If you're a person accessing that care, and the people who are helping someone you know, get that care can be in the cross hears of the criminal laws in these states and it's so partant for people to realize just how draconian, you know, the criminal laws are right. And I also think this idea that you know you have women,

I mean, we heard this. We've had people who run abortion clinics on this podcast and they've talked about this idea now that in a lot of these states where they've banned abortion, they won't treat women who are having mischaracters. So you really are you have women who desperately need medical assistance who are not getting it because of something

that doesn't even have anything to do with that. That is absolutely correct, and it is absolutely outrageous and unacceptable, and it's and it puts the you know, it makes the point about why you cannot use the criminal law to regulate medical care in this way. You have to be able to have providers and patients, whether they have a pregnancy that they are looking to go to term with or a pregnancy that they want to end, they have to be able to provide standard of care. Pregnancy

is a high risk proposition. It is a normal process of life, but it can also be life threatening. And politicians and the criminal law, you know Texas, they're enforcing a you know, ninety nine year pre rod band in the state of Texas. That cannot be hanging over the head of a healthcare provider when they are trying to give their patients the best care. Nancy, thank you so much. I hope you will come back absolutely, thank you for keeping on the issue. Thank you great, Thanks so much,

Molly John Fast Jesse Cannon. When Kevin McCarthy is not having to pretend he doesn't know what Donald Trump says, comes up with great policy ideas, really truly chefs. Kevin McCarthy is not yet speaker, but he's hoping to be. One of the things that Kevin McCarthy is doing is, uh, how do you say this in ways that are not curses? Oh? Wait, we can He's Marjorie Taylor Green's I want to say consigulatory,

consiguliary lap lapdog bitch. Anyway, Kevin McCarthy is doing everything he can to try to make the maga's vote for him. One of the things he's decided that he thinks will serve him is he's going to defund the military. Yes, Kevin McCarthy, or he's called by Trump myke Kevin is threatening to defund the military if the vaccine mandate is not lifted to fund the police. Wasn't a dog, hey man, don't threaten me with a good time. This is a great message for them. This is really, really is good.

Stuffy defund the military, Okay, So Kevin McCarthy feels it very unfair that members of the military should be vaccinated against COVID. Members the military are vaccinated against many, many, many viruses and diseases that people in America aren't because of the many exotic places they go. So Kevin McCarthy is making this COVID exception is really silly because these people are getting vaccinated for things that are much less occurring than COVID. But Kevin McCarthy wants to take a

stand against vaccines. And remember anti vaxers are a rich and full part of the Republican Party. And uh so, Kevin McCarthy has decided he will defund the military unless Joe Biden removes the vaccine requirement for military servicemen. And let's remember who's the queen of the anti vaxers in the Republican Party as more proof of that. That's who actually runs the party, Marjorie Taylor Green, And that is our moment of gray. That's it for this episode of

Fast Politics. Tune in at every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to your 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. H