Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds and one hundred and twenty eight Democrats across the aisle to help Republicans block Al Green's bid to impeach Trump. We have such a great show for you today, the Think Like an Economists podcast. Justin Wolfers joins us to talk about trade. Then we'll talk to Fair Votes David Daily about why rank choice voting is actually amazing and should be everywhere.
But first the news, Molly, I have to say, in our years of dealing with politics, I don't think I've ever seen New York City's elites with their bed like they have today over zor on Mom Donnie getting the Democratic nomination era. It seems the business world and the Democratic establishment are well, really really overdoing the drama about what this means.
It is unbelievably crazy how angry things people are.
Here's what's happening. A lot of people.
Are worried that he's going to raise taxes, and that is really what's happening. I think there are some people who are worried he's not sufficiently pro Israel enough, but I'm not sure what the mayor of New York has to do with Israel particularly, but a well known investor deleted an ex post suggesting mon Donnie's win was a nightmare for billionaire investors, name checking Bloomberg, Ackman, and Low.
It wasn't me who did that, but it could have been. Look, a lot of very rich people are already saying they're going to move to Florida.
If I had a dollar for every.
Time wealthy people got mad and said they were going to move, I would have a lot of dollars.
You'd have a lot because there was actually a study on this one. The last time they said it when Bill de Bungler got elected and guess what, we got even more of them here.
Yes, Now, I want to caution because you and I both are Mom and Donnie curious.
I'm a little more than curious.
You're maybe a little less curious, but I'm very curious about him, and I have a lot of optimism about this.
That's all I say.
But we do want to note that being mayor is really fucking hard.
And you know, it's a lot of shit that you.
Have to do, and sometimes we get excited and then people can't do it now. I don't think that's going to be the case here. But no one has ever been mayor who has ever gone on to anything.
It's just a fact.
As you and I have discussed many times, it's not a job you leave being popular as New York City mayor. It's just doesn't go so well for your approval.
And in my mind, that's the scariest part about this win. But he obviously wants it, and he's quite a gifted politician. So we're just gonna all keep our fingers and toes crossed. But Fox News, I just want everyone to be aware, is now going to go full core press on New York City being a houscape and anything they did to Eric Adams is going to be one hundred times worse to Zoran.
That's funny because Eric Adams was just on news Max because he knows which folks he's running for. So yes, it's going to be a very wild ride from here to November.
It's going to be a terrible general election. Yeah.
I would really encourage a lot of people to, instead of reading propaganda from campaigns, actually read some quotes that some people say, because boy, have I never seen misinformation fly like the last two days on Twitter.
Yeah.
And I would also suggest not reading the New York Post as much as we love page six. You know, we have one local paper, it's a New York Post.
We have two, we have two. Come only news does exist?
Okay, we have one local paper, it's the New York Post.
You know.
Look, I like the Daily News much more ideologically aligned with that. But you know, don't read it. Okay, just read page six and throw the rest of the thing out.
Okay, I'm going to get us onto another subject.
You're not going to cut that out.
Man.
If one thing put.
On, the listeners will be we be hearing that. Bali jug Fast endorses page.
Six, indorses page six, but tells you to throw the rest of the newspaper, and then you're opposed to out.
Thank you.
Yeah, okay. So Trump is going to limit sharing classified info with Congress after the week on I Red's bombing damage because he's very upset that everybody found out that he bungled this.
If you can't read the headline without laughing, then it's a Donald Trump headline. So I just want to point out I know that there have been other things going on, but let's just go through this again. Trump on Saturday decides, unprovoked, that he is going to bomb a Rand's nuclear site. Maybe he does it because he was watching Fox News. Maybe he does it because Net and Yahoo makes him want to do it.
Who even what lurks in the mind of Donald Trump.
But whatever he does, he decides to bomb the nuclear sites in Iran.
He tweets about it a lot.
He decide they have numerous planes going over there, they have decoys. Now we don't know. Trump said he destroyed all of the nukes and that he's the greatest president ever. He also said that he's six four and has a full head of natural hair, and that gets that color from the sun. Okay, so I'm gonna say a lot of the reporting I've read shows that maybe they're back a few months.
Maybe they're not.
Maybe some of the nukes are in other places. Maybe Aran doesn't know where they are. I mean, this has not solved anyone's problems. It's made life a little more dangerous. Then a Monday, Trump declared a ceasefire. Again, not entirely clear if there is a ceasefire, because when you have a white house like this, you can't believe anything they say.
But the point of all of this is Iran probably not very you know, probably would have been better just to have kept them in the nuclear deal like Obama did. This doesn't make any sense. And also Trump now embarrassed and trying to cover for himself, and so he's trying to leak the information that's given to Congress in the hopes that he will look better in the press. Again, I just want to point out, this is so fucked Okay, this is not how any of this is supposed to work.
This is just a completely bad, bad, very dysfunctional way to run a country.
Strongly, so we now have seen Nancy Pelosi backing a Democratic effort to limit Trump on Oran and going to war. I think it's interesting to hear this bipartisan support for this, but don't know where it's going. What are you seeing?
I mean, look, it's very scary to think that someone as autocratic, curious Trump is very aggressive and very angry and hard to reason with. And this seems like a very worrying turn of events. And bombing the nukes is you know, this was an unprovoked assault on another country that was not run through Congress the way it's supposed to be. So Congress has so given up everything to have this presidency. They have really just refused to hold Trump accountable. They did not do due diligence with his
cabinet members. They did not, you know, at every point, they just gave away their power. So anything that Congress does to take back a little bit of power I think is very good. Congress should grow a spine. And by the way, the fact that there's only one person who's really standing up to Trump on the Republican side, Thomas Massey and Rand Paul. You know, you may not like them, you may not agree with them, but those guys have done way more than Susan Collins.
Yes, sounds right. So Molly, you're going to be shocked to hear that there's some corrupt dealing inside the House of the White House. This time it's Stephen Miller, who turns out owns a quarter of a million dollars of Pollunteer stock. That's the high end estiment, I should say. And Pollunteer, of course, is being contracted to do work with Ice.
No, no, it cannot be. Pollenteer is getting a lot of government contracts. We've had so many guests on this podcast, who have told us about the many, many, many government contracts that volunteer has gotten. Look the idea that you could profit while serving your country. This is what Trump wanted in from one point zero and has perfected in Trump two point zero, which is this kind of low level cryptocracy. Now that said Miller doesn't have a ton
of palateer stock. He has somewhere between one hundred and two one hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of pounder stock. And you know, this is like the Elon musk Lesson. We know pollunteer data intelligence mining software. They're not the good guys, okay, And just like with Elon, we're setting ourselves up so that the government is going to be
dependent on a company that is at best nefarious. Justin Wolfers is the host of the Think Like an Economist podcast and a professor at the University of Michigan.
Welcome to Fast Politics, Justin Wolfers.
He Molly, I thought we're going to rename it fast Economics.
That's right.
We're in this such a fucked up moment in American life. You came on a lot to talk about the trade wars. We've now won the trade wars, So that's over.
That was the war the wolf, the trade fl is who I'm going for those of us.
Who have not been living and breathing Donald Trump ruining our economy. Talk to us about where we are right now?
Great question, because actually it's very, very hard to read. So what I want to do is draw a distinction
between what economists call hard data. These are the numbers that come out of the government, and it's things like how much we produce, how many people are employed, what are they paid, what's rolling off the production line, versus soft data when you go and ask people how they feel, and it could be as simple as like are you optimistic about the future of the economy, But it could also be asking a business like do you plan to invest a lot? So soft data and hard data, it's
not a strong distinction, but it's it's important. It turns out right now the soft data are incredibly weak, unbelievably weak. In a recession week, you ask people about their own finances, their families, finances, their expectations for their business, they're miserable. You'll sometimes see some headlines which is business confidence rose, but that's because it rose from like horrific to terrible. So remember, don't think about rise and fall, think about
where we are. So the soft data there is miserable. The hard data is not. Now it's it's not ecstatic, but it's basically saying we're in a pretty good economy where we were in a great position when Trump came to power, and things have kept going. The unemployment rate was low, it's still low. The number of people who have jobs is still growing. The economy had a bit of a blip, maybe not so much. Now here's the problem. It's a really deep problem. Tariffs screw everything up. And
I'm not saying they're bad for the economy. I'm saying they make the economy hard to read.
Here's why.
In the first quarter of this year, everyone knew tariffs were coming, so businesses all of a sudden started importing all the inventory they could get from China, and as a result, the trade balance blew out. But there was a lot of spending. But what they're doing is they're trying to get ahead of the tariffs. So that made business spending and in fact, a lot of consumers that you might have friends who bought a dishwasher or a washing machine or a laptop in advance, So a lot
of spending occurred. Now that spending is not because the economy is strong, it's because they're trying to get ahead. Now, a lot of what they were buying is stuff they would have bought in the second quarter, and so there's an echo effect. Don't believe the first quarter numbers. They're too strong. The second quarter is sort of going to be too weak. Right, So that means we don't actually know where the economy is going in the hard data.
But it's actually even worse than that, because in the middle of all of this, Trump kept messing around with tariff some more. You might remember that lovely weekend where on a Friday tariffs on the European Union were fifty percent and by Monday they were back down to ten percent. I've also got to lie nine coming up, which is the end of ninety and ninety days.
Right, And by the way, do we have ninety deals and ninety days?
I am not going to follow your add brain now. I am going to finish my store, but you do.
But we don't have ninety days and ninety deals and ninety days. I just want to point.
Still going to finish my story, all right, right? An you tell me I'm getting boring.
No, I'm telling you I am completely completely tuned in on what you're saying. Go on, really going, I can test you now, just keep going, God damn.
Okay.
The thing is the present keeps currying around with tariffs. So what could happen is people front run again, right, and that'll screw up our economic data through this year. So we're here from Molly. I don't know.
We're not getting a clear picture of what the data of what is happening.
So when someone says to you, oh, the hard data is all good, you're like, it's distorted by tariff nonsense. So normally what we do in a moment like that is we turn to the soft data. Right with the soft data is it's so bad. It turns out some people don't like Trump. It turns out that he's been
a polarizing figure. And so for the previous fifty years in American life, when you ask someone what do you think about the state of the economy, they would answer that question by thinking about the state of the economy. Now what they do is they think about who's present, whether they like that guy, and they answered that way. So the soft data have become unreliable, which means we're sailing through very, very thick fog. Anyone who tells you they're certain it's good or bad is wrong.
Can we trust the data we get from our government?
Yes, I love that question, Thank you, MOLLI. I want to put in astix. Okay, here's the asterisks. The official data coming from the government, anything that comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Census Bureau, stuff produced by nerds is totally reliable. I'm not saying it's perfect. I'm saying it's the best statistical
guess of things that are very hard to guess. Anything coming out of the White House, which has a history of stretching the truth, lying at best, bullshit and so on, and also in competence, so sometimes they put out falsehoods because they don't know truths, is utterly unreliable. Now, often the White House will be reporting on their understanding of
the official data. But I do think it's important. I don't believe a word coming out of the Treasury Secretary, the Commerce Secretary, the President, the White House Press secretary, or in fact, anyone who's spent more than fourteen minutes contaminated on the White House grounds, but official government data is okay. Second ASTERIXX. There is a little bit of defunding of the government statistical nerds going on right now.
Yes, that's why I am ask that question because that's what I had been told.
Right. It's really a bad idea, because it's really good to know where the economy is.
Right.
Remember I just told you we're galling through fog. Wouldn't it be good if the world were a little clearer. But the thing about that is that makes the statistics less reliable, but it doesn't make them more trumpy. Right, So if you're worried all this telling stories, this is nonsense, This is bullshit. No, And here's the thing I want your listeners to understand. I'm not just a talking head who's just saying a thing. I have so many friends
in these statistical agencies. They're PhD economists, they're super nerds, and I love them, and they're super committed to their work and their craft. And I promise you if they were being asked to distort for political reasons, there will suddenly lots of anonymous Gmail messages appearing in my inbox, and I will then call you, Molly and say, I got to talk to your people. This has got to get out there.
Yeah.
Well, because you are an academic, right I mean a nerd? And well I don't I as someone who's married to an academic, I don't think of it as being a nerd. So we can trust the data out of the government for now and tell us about the ninety deals in ninety days. Also, it's amazing to me, you know who has completely disappeared from the conversation.
You're going to have to tell me because I must have forgotten who they are. Ron Vera, Well that is that is why don't you explain to the listeners?
Because really deep, I'll let you explain to the listeners.
So can I go back to the beginning of that story? Is quite lovely, which is, of course, we know the President Trump hates trade, so he asked Jared Kushner very early on. He said, find me a trade advisor who's also against trade. The problem is that nearly every economist thinks that when you find ways to enrich the life of others and they find ways to enrich your life, that's a good thing. So you have to go shopping to find someone who's on the other side of that.
So Jared Kushner went to Amazon and found a fellow who written a book that said how much he hated China. So that's great, you get racism for free with your anti trade theories. That book was written by a fellow by the name of Pete Navarro, who is now a convicted felon, but at the time was a professor of Economa.
Just had bad ideas. Right.
Look, life is hard to some people. And some people grow up thinking that they're going to be the smartest kid in the room, and they are all the way through high school, and then at a certain point they top out and they become bitter, and they come to believe that they and they alone hold the keys to all truth. So this book that Jared Kushner bought. The author of the book was written by Peter Navarro, who throughout this book keeps writing about how an expert ron
Vara authenticates everything that he says. Now you'll notice if you play a lot of scrabble, that ron Vara is just a rearrangement of the letters of Peter Navarro. So it is true. There are two economists in the world who support what the president is doing. They just both happen to be the same person. How did you get me to start? I'm not bitch or can I'm a person. I like people.
Sure, don't do that to me again, Molly baby? And ninety days ago?
How many times we're going to say something nice about someone? Can we have a nice break?
Okay, say something nice about someone? Vasa Trump is very tall?
You know what? Okay, I'm going to say two nice things, and I'm going to challenge your So the first one's easy, which is I admire J. Powell, who's getting called all sorts of names.
And then that guy that is a remarkable job. He is having a tough, tough job. Yeah.
And when I want to upset my liberal students, and I sometimes want to julp them a little bit, I tell them that the most important economic policy prehaps of my lifetime happened under and was caused by President Trump, and that was the invention of the vaccine. Without the vaccine, we would not be out doing business, enjoying our lives and so on. And so I want to tip my hat to President Trump and Operation warp Speed.
My eighty D is getting bored. Okay, you still.
Didn't say anything nice.
I said of uncle Trump is very tall.
That is mostly true. Okay, deals very very tall.
Yep, that's not nothing.
Go and she and I share a and you share a hair color.
That is sort of go on, continue ninety.
Deals in ninety days, We'll promise by Pinavara and the President and the Treasury Secretary and the Commerce secretary, ninety deals in ninety days. We're about seventy days in right now. We sort of kind of have a deal with the UK. Last time I spoke with your audience. The deal we had was a pre deal. It was a deal to make a deal outline of a deal that subsequently became
a deal. Although in that deal the most important part of it for the British was letting British steal in and that is still being negotiated, so even the deal is still mid deal. So that means we've got eighty nine other deals to go, and that ignores the other one hundred and two countries in the world. And then today we had President Trump over at NATO where he's upset at the Spanish threatening to put extra double tariffs on Spain. So to be clear, he's upset about American
military spending, Sorry about Spanish military spending. So he's decided to impose taxes on Americans. Yes, it's not the most direct way of doing foreign poves.
No, it's pretty crazy.
So look, the deals aren't happening. It's clear they're not going to happen. I think that if people were betting on zero at the end, the White House will pull something out. So it's basically not going to happen. But there is this problem, which is on July ninth, if you don't have a deal, something's going to happen. And we don't. And remember July ninth is going back to
Liberation Day, which we all knew was a disaster. So the problem with governing in ninety day pauses is time keeps ticking and you actually still have to make a decision, and we have no indication so far of a coherent decision being made.
Right now, there are still tariffs in place, and they're like weird. So for example, I wonder if you could just run us through where we are. We have tariffs on Mexico and Canada, but just ten percent right.
Even better than that, which is those guys actually ended up our lowest tariff partners having started the trade war by fighting them, they're actually now my best friends again, which is anything that meets the conditions of the old NAFTA, which is now called USMCA.
Right, because like, oh but okay.
So there's two ways in which tariffs work, and I apologize to your audience for the confusion, but let me just say I didn't design them. There's tariffs that are going on countries, right, and then there are so think about that as horizontal and their verticals, which is tariff's on industries, okay, And so Canada still, I believe Canada and Mexico, I believe is still getting steel and aluminum,
order certain auto parts these industries. So in the words, we've got pharmaceuticals coming and so on and so forth. Those ones, by the way, rest on them much stronger legal basis. Right then, country by country, We've got China right now at thirty percent. We are charging Americans thirty percent for everything they buy from China, and we've got
the rest of the world at ten percent. And unless anyone thinks that any of this is a low tariff raid, I just want to remind you that this would put tariffs at the highest rate in at least fifty years.
It would put us in greater depression.
Right, it depends what day, because they literally are changing the tariff's day by day. Right, would put us four or five times higher than any other industrialized country. So this is not what grown ups do, Mollie. I have a fun thing I want to bring to the conversation.
Mat plase, yes, and then I have another question about I won't have a question about steel tariffs.
Go on, Okay, this is better than steel tariffs. This is Jdevans. So remember, way back when I think it was two days ago, we ate a lot about Iran in the Strait of Homors, which is this very little narrow part where a lot of the oil tankers go through. So jd Vance said, this is a quote, and I just want to get the quote out for people there. He's talking about Iran. Their entire economy runs through the
Strait of Homos. If they want to destroy their own economy and cause disruptions in the world, I think that would be their decision. But why would they do that. I don't think it makes any sense right now. He was talking about Iran. But now just let's think about
how this speaks to the United States. So for us, much of our economy runs through our ports, just as much of the Iranian economy runs through the Strait of Homos, And just as Iran can use its military to prevent ships passing through the Strait of Homos, Trump has been using tariffs to prevent ships coming into the LA ports
and retaliatory tariffs to prevent them from leaving. And so much as those shipping restrictions would hurt the Iranian economy, this is hurting our own economy much as Vance said, This is again is a quote. If they want to destroy their own economy and cause disruptions in the world, I think that would be their decision. That's literally what Trump is doing with tariffs. And remember Vans and but why would they do that? I don't think it makes
any sense. And I think that Evans has done a terrific job in pointing out the aut incoherence of this trade policy.
Yes, correct and also hilarious. Now talk to me about the steel tariffs, because there are steel tariffs that Trump is putting on and they actually are, weirdly one of the few things that Democrats agree with.
So talk to us about that.
Yeah, then Democrats about make me a very very big mistake.
I'm just telling you, and that's my job here.
No, and I appreciate you. Molly. I was like, steel sounds boring, but now I understand why it's important.
Yeah.
Yeah. And also the steel is paid with tariffs on another metal. What is it, Molly, aluminum? Aluminium?
Yes? Go on, go on, go on, go on, yest.
Little Australian American humanity.
Hilarious.
Okay, here's why steal tariffs are a terrible, terrible, terrible idea.
But first explain why liberals, why some Democrats also support them. You might do a better job on that than me, But.
Anyway, tell why they're bad, Say why they're bad.
Okay, what I can say is, you know, back in the eighties, the particularly pro union parts of the labor movement were quite protectionists. So Trump has taken a position that was historically a very liberal position. When I began my teaching career, my left wing students hated it when I talked about trade. Now it's my right wing.
Students, right.
Really important point that Democrats used to be protectionist before Clinton, and then they shifted right.
During was fighting Democrats to get it done right. So I want to let me actually start with a bigger picture point, which is when many people think about trade, they think about like France sends us bottles of wine and we send them cars, that we create the whole damn car and send it over there, and they create the whole damn bottle of wine and send it over here. That's not how it works in reality. We don't have any rubber trees in America, so we don't make the
whole damn car. We got to get the rubber from abroad to make the tires. And it's not just rubber and rubber trees. It turns out that all the different components of the car come from all computer chips might come from Taiwan, and the seats might come from Canada, and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. The moment you realize that, you realize that when you put tariffs on something, you're not just putting tariffs on consumers. You're
putting tariffs on American businesses. So there's two things that are really important about steel and aluminium. First of all, stick they are very very important inputs into other parts of manufacturing. So what that means is every factory around the world can get access to steel without paying a special up charge, except those in America. So what you're doing is you are making American factories that you steal less competitive than any other countries.
They have to pay more because of the tariffs.
Oh that reminds me. Let me make a second point that is obvious to economists but needs to be Some people say, oh, just buy American steel.
There is no American steel.
There is American steel.
Oh.
But the problem is if you're an American steel manufacturer and your customer calls and says, I'd like to buy some steel, you can say, well, you could either buy from me or buy from those foreign guys. And if you buy from those foreign guys, you have to pay
a twenty percent tariff. Right, all of a sudden, now I realize I can jack up my price and you don't have a better choiceh So when you say, oh, just buy American, sure you can buy American, but I guarantee you because steel is traded internationally, it's all the price is going to get equalized. And so as a result, the price of American steel goes up almost one for one with a tariff. So it's not just imports that become more expensive. It's also American steel, it becomes more expensive.
Oh, that makes a lot of sense.
It's called in economics, by the way, the lore of one price. When something is traded internationally, we at one price around the world. Okay, now I want to tell you why steel is a really really bad place for what tariffs.
No, because we're almost out a time, and I want you to talk to us about how the Middle East is going to affect the economy.
Ryan has been fascinating and we all became experts on the Iranian economy and it's been a terrific couple of days learning about it. And a lot of people have said, oh, that Trump is it's a master stroke in the Middle East, and in some sense it is. It hasn't turned into bushes. I raq nonsense.
Yeah, it's been like four days, but yes, And.
I just want to remind you that as of today's Tuesday, Wednesday, whatever day it is, I.
Think it's Wednesday, we are now back.
To exactly where we were seven days ago. The great triumph is that he restored relations to where they had been.
Right.
If that stays, then basically nothing changes right right?
Right?
If that doesn't and Iran's oil production goes down. That's not a big deal, right, because Iran is only two or three percent of global production. The reason we've all learned how to pronounce the Strait of Homus is because that's this tiny little alley where all of the oil, particular from Saudi Arabia goes through, but also the Emirates, and so twenty percent of global oil goes through that. So if Iran were to close that, that would be
a massive decline in the amount of oil available. Now, realize the United States is basically is in fact energy independent, So it's not that we're going to lose a lot of money. But remember what I said a moment ago about the law of one price. It's going to become more expensive for oil, including American oil, right, And so Americans, even though we're mostly buying American oil, are going to
be paying more if the straight up Homewars closes. So that's the real problem is if there's a shock to global oil supply, it's not going to be a big shock to our income because again, remember we actually produce more than we use. But it would be a shock to prices, and so it could potentially have further effects on inflation. But right now I am hopeful that our steady and stable foreign policy will continue to reap incredible rewards.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Justin for adding a bit of levity.
That wasn't liberty, that was the stable foreign policy. Jesus fucking Christ, Thank you.
David Daly is a senior fellow at Fair Vote and the author of rat Fucked, Why Your Vote Doesn't Count.
Welcome back to Fast Politics, David, Oh, it's good to be here, Molly.
Let's talk about rank choice voting. I still don't understand how it works.
That's the truth.
Like I saw the election of Mary Paroda in Alaska congresswoman for Alaska's one congressional seat Democrat one through ranked choice voting. I saw we got Eric Adams. Nobody wanted that through rank choice voting. But now we have mon Dannie, who actually was leading in the polls and is reflective of I think the voting. And this was after the first round. So talk us through how rank choice voting works place.
Sure, Absolutely, rank choice voting really is an effective tool to give voters more power anytime there's a race with more than two candidates, whenever there's two candidates, it's all pretty easy, right, you pick one or the other. Somebody usually wins more than fifty percent of the vote, unless
there's a right end or you know, something silly. But whenever you have more than two candidates, you have the possibility of a spoiler, You have the possibility of a split field, you have the possibility of a non majority winner. And that is, you know, not a great thing. What it does is it takes choice that voters want right. Voters want to have lots of candidates in a race. They want to be able to choose. But when you can only pick one, it makes your life as a
voter exceptionally complicated. Look at New York City yesterday, where you had a field of eleven mayoral candidates. If you want to vote for somebody who your favorite candidate might be fourth or fifth in the polls, So then you have to decide, well, is it okay for me to vote for this person who's fourth or fifth? By doing so, am I really electing the person I like the least.
It's an impossible situation to be in, and you run the risk of somebody winning with thirty five percent of the vote or even less who everyone does not want. So with rank choice voting, what you get to do is put your choices in order. Every race is a little bit different. In New York yesterday, you were able to select your top five and you're able to say, well, I want this person first, this person second, this person third. It's a pretty common intuitive thing for most of us.
We can look at a race with lots of people and you know, imagine how it would play out. Who we like, who we don't like. And it works as simple as this. If somebody wins more than fifty percent in the round, they win, just like any other election. But if nobody wins fifty percent in the first round, the bottom candidates are eliminated. And what happens then is if your candidate is still alive, your vote stays with them. If your candidate is knocked out, it moves to your second,
third choice, and so on. The runoff process continues until there is a majority winner. Really, what OURCV does is it creates a majority winner from a huge field and empowers voters to turn choice into something positive.
Okay, so I want you to explain this rank choice voting is supposed to And I say this because I have really scrupulously avoided getting involved in the Democratic mayoral primary for any number of reasons. But I'm curious ranked choice voting it is advertised as electing the most centralized candidate. Does that bear out from yesterday?
No, I don't think that's right. I don't think RCV does elect the most centrist candidate. I think it elects the candidate with the broadest and widest support. And sometimes that might be a centrist. But sometimes what we saw in New York yesterday is it's a thirty three year old Democratic socialist who has majority support. I mean, OURCV has been used in Virginia to elect Glenn Youngkin. It has been used in Alaska to elect everyone from Mary
Peltola to Nick Beggish to Lisa Murkowski. What RCV does is it creates a majority winner, and it encourages candidates to run more unifying campaigns. I would say that instead of electing a centrist, really, what RCV does is it elects somebody who goes out and talks to everyone. It sets up different campaign incentives. If you can win a race with thirty out of the vote, like you could have in New York City prior to our CV, then the kind of race that Andrew Cuomo ran makes a lot more sense.
Right.
He avoided the press, he avoided the public, He didn't show up at a lot of panels to talk to people, and he thought that his name recognition and money would muscle him through to thirty eight or forty percent in a divided field, and then you would have had a mayoral nominee that sixty percent of people voted against, but you would be the choice. Nevertheless, Mom Donnie campaigned in a very different way right. He built bridges amongst the entire left in liberal universe. He camp in with the
other candidates. You saw candidates campaigning together. You saw Mom Donnie asking his supporters to help raise money for Adrian Adams. You saw the alliances and the cross endorsements. When Mom Donnie was at one percent in the polls back in March, the Working Families Party, instead of endorsing one candidate and coorinating somebody right, they endorsed a slate of four and
they allowed the campaign to play out. If there had not been ranked choice voting, what you probably see in New York City is that there would have been pressure amongst the left liberal candidates to drop out of the race to coalesce around one person, so that nobody spoiled it or produced a winner with thirty five percent. Instead, we got an actual campaign about actual issues. Nobody was telling anyone to drop out of the race, and when the actual issues were discussed and debated, you saw the
candidate at one percent catch fire. And the result is, you know, a fairly seismic upset.
Yeah, you know, that's a really good point, and I don't think I put that together. So what you're saying is that rank choice voting means that it's not the same kind of high stakes situation. So, for example, one of the big problems we have in Congress, among other things, and we have a lot of problems in Congress, and I am here to tell you about them, but one of the big problems we have in Congress is that the name recognition does in fact muscle people through.
I'm thinking of Tom Taylis.
That you can sort of go for your forty one percent or you're thirty nine percent, thirty nine and a half percent, and with Democrats because they're polite and they you know, if you're if you have seniority, you kind of win because people you know. I mean, that's one of the things that I've really been critical about in for Democrats. So the thinking here is basically that because you are ranking, you can keep a bigger field.
You can keep a bigger field, you give voters more choice. There's less pressure on candidates not to jump into a primary, right. I mean, in a race like New York yesterday, people would have been telling a candidate like Mom Dannie to wait his turn. Instead, he's able to run without any fear of being a spoil, spoiler tracting from other progressives or liberals.
In the race.
There's a lot of really good uses for this, and I think what you've identified in Congress is really right on right. What we've seen in Congress is because so many districts, as we've talked about on the show before, have been gerrymandered so that one side or the other
wins in a lopsided fashion. The only competition for these seats is in partisan primaries, and so what you often get is a low turnout summer election that effectively determines the race for everybody, because the winner of the primary goes on guaranteed to November, and that is how you end up with some of the most polarizing figures in Congress.
Right a Marcherie Taylor Grand They.
Won primaries with thirty five thirty six percent of the vote, and then, because the district was so wired one way or the other, they are effectively locked into a race. And then because of the power of incumbency and name recognition,
they can hold on to it forever. Ranked voice voting is an especially useful tool in party primaries, you know, as it is in general elections, but really truly in party primaries where eleven or twelve people are seeking the same seat and somebody can win with a tiny plurality of the vote, it's better for parties and it's better for voters to use our CV.
So where is our CV in getting adapted? Too different?
I mean, what, first of all, the pushback on it? It's interesting, So Virginia has our CV.
Virginia Republicans have used our CV in their primaries. Wow, that's wild, isn't it?
Right?
First of all, why have Virginia Republicans used it in their primaries? Because I don't think of Republicans as and May also has it, and Alaska, So explain to us sort of how this gets adapted, and how this doesn't get adapted, and what this looks like now, and why did Republicans pick it in Virginia.
Republic in Virginia picked it because they were looking at a primary for governor in twenty twenty one that was going to have four or five candidates in it, and everybody was from a different ideological lane. Everybody was at each other's throats, and they realized that OURCV would create a different kind of race, that it would create a race in which the candidate with the broadest and deepest support one and it would be more unifying.
You saw this in New York City yesterday.
As well, right that Andrew Cuomo conceded that race, you know, on day one, and we will see if he runs as an independent or not. But it doesn't look off of his statements yesterday that he's inclined to do so. So you end up without the kind of nastiness and bitterness that you have in a typical intra party primary.
What you would have had in Virginia in twenty twenty one, what you would have had in New York over the last couple of months, would have been candidates at each other's throats, going deeply negative, essentially the other side talking points or the fault to use against them, and just you know, in general bitterness and anger inside the party. Oh well, that that person took a nomination for right, but.
That doesn't happen because you want to be ranked even if you're not the first choice.
Oh that's really interesting.
You're less likely to go nuclear on the other folks, right. I mean, if New York City was using a traditional old school runoff, what you would have seen is all of the Liberals fighting to be the second person going up against Cuomo. Instead of campaigning together and finding common ground with each other and showing up after Brad Lander is arrested, they would have been at each other's throats, and the Left in New York City would not have
been unified at all heading into this campaign. Instead, it's a completely different race. Virginia Republicans say the exact same thing,
that they were able to produce a nominee. Nobody could argue it because there was much more than fifty percent, and they headed into the fall and they beat Terry mccauliffe, right, they pulled off an upset nobody imagine you can compare that to what happened in New Jersey's governor primary a couple of weeks ago, right in which you had Mickey Cheryl win that race, but with about thirty three thirty
four percent from a highly contested primary. Everybody went deeply negative on each other for a weeks and weeks handed Republicans talking points for the fall. New Jersey to be a pretty safe state for Democrats, but Republicans set some blood in the water. There's a lot of money in there. Wouldn't it be better if for the Democrats if they had come together around a nominee and they were using these months to go after the other side rather than try to heal those wounds internally.
Yeah, why don't we do that?
Well?
I think we should, And I think what we're seeing is more and more states and localities understand and the benefits of this as more and more voters use it and like it. There was a Common Cause pull back in twenty twenty one in New York that shows something like ninety one percent of voters found it easy to use and liked it. I think that voters are going to say, why don't we get to use this as well?
And why can't we use it? In every campaign. We're going to be heading towards right a twenty twenty eight presidential primary season sooner than anybody realizes, right, and there could be huge fields on both sides. You had twenty five Democrats back in twenty twenty four, seventeen Republicans back in twenty sixteen. Imagine what an open race on both sides brings out. And we could again see you know, non majority nominees coming out, the kinds of choices Americans
get end up being being weakened. And you know, I mean, all you have to do is look back at twenty twenty in the Democratic primary, right, all those candidates, all of them fighting with each other, elbowing each other out.
Of providing for child that he is still using.
Right, right, when Harris goes after Biden on bussing in the twenty twenty Democratic debates, that's still a moment that Republicans were using against her in the twenty for election.
Yeah, I mean, a very good and salient point. Right now, where is rank choice voting?
Rank choice voting is being used right now in Maine, It's being used in Alaska, it is being used in a number of cities nationwide. Whether it's New York, big cities in Minnesota, big cities in California, Oakland, San Francisco. But it is also being really widely used across Utah. So it is happening in red states, it's happening in
blue states, it's happening in purple states. There is an awful lot of momentum around this because voters recognize it as a tool that delivers them something they really want, more choice, but also ensures that that choice doesn't become complicated, and it guarantees a majority winner. So it encourages bigger, broader, more issue based campaigns. And what we see is everywhere it's being used, voters like it, want to expand it, and I think we're going to continue to see even more of them.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, David, thank you, Molly. A moment.
Jesse Cannon Bally, a whistleblower, is alleging that Trump's DOJ told lawyers to disobey court orders. And you'll be really shocked to hear this about who was leading that charge, amulbo Yes, well, Bali, could you catch the listeners up For those who forget this fellow's name, war per ops confuse him with like a guy with a creole restaurant in New Orleans or something.
Thing Bove is bad, Bov is real bad.
So, by the way, so Bob is up for a judgeship. And that's why some of this is coming out. This whistleblower who was fired by both for refusing to do some of this stuff he wanted. So the guy who was fired was a career a justice partman lawyer who was fired fired after truthfully staying in court that the
administration had wrongfully removed Kilmar Albrego Garcia. You'll remember him from earlier this season when he was deported to Seacott and then the Trump administration said they couldn't find him, and then they said they wouldn't bring him back, and then they said, by the way, I just want to point out they're spending so much money and time on one person, like even just besides the moral and ethical implications of just deporting people because they have they look
like a race you're mad at. Even despite the moracle and ethical issues here, it's just a stupid fucking waste of time, right, I mean, this guy, it would it's just I mean, it's you know, millions of dollars being spent on this guy, and it's just insane anyway. So Bob Trump has nominated him for a seat on the
US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. And now we have this whistleblower who's coming out and saying that Bob said things like we might need to consider telling the courts to fuck you and ignore any court order. I mean, look, we know this was going on behind the scenes, but it's certainly nice to have someone report it. Todd Blanche, She'll remember Todd Blanche. He's the deputy Attorney general and he was also Donald Trump's criminal lawyer, because
Donald Trump only knows four people. The New York Times article describes falsehoods purportedly made by a disgruntled former employee and elite to the press in a violation of ethical obligations. Says Blanche, he actually wrote that on Twitter. Again. Obviously both did this. Obviously Todd Blanche is lying. Has anyone seen this White House? You know? If it's anything like one point, Oh, they're going to be a bazillion memoirs of people who tried to work in the White House
and got traumatized by Trump. I mean, I can't believe we're still fucking covering this. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
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