Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discuss the top political headlines with some of today's best minds. And Governor Gavin Newsom has proposed a twenty eight amendment to the United States Constitution to end America's gun violence crisis. We have a star studded show today, a show of shows.
Former White House Chief of Staff Ron.
Plain joins us to talk about the importance of implementing the Biden Agenda in the next two years. Then we'll talk to senior editor at The Atlantic, Ron Brownstein about the Supreme Court's huge voting rights decision. But first we have the host of the Enemy's List, the One, the Only,
the Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson. I had to bring him back because a because we love him and also because he is our favorite, but also because Trump just got indicted again, and I feel like, if Trump gets indeted, you've got to get the band back together, and that includes the One, the Only Rick wils.
You know, it is texting with a friend of mine a little while ago, chess like, what do you think how many courthouses do you think he's going to be in this year? And then it was like you know New York, LA or New York, Atlanta, d C. And Miami and she rides back. So he's a rapper. I got I got woes in many in many area codes.
Trump has been charged with seven counts, including the Espionage Act.
I just want to say, because I am jaded, cynical, worn out, broken, old, tired, and I've been to this goddamn rodeo too many times before. Everybody gets their yips on and declares victory and ushers in a thousand years of prosperity and light. They're doing this in Miami. If y'all haven't been to Miami lately, it is very Trump is hey white hot lava pit of insane, lunatic, over
the top maga isma. It is so cuckoo kachew. It is so batshit, It is so crazy town that indicting Trump in Miami with a Miami jury, I would rather plunge thirty thousand feet out of a plane without a parachute.
So let me So, why do you think he was indicted in Miami and not in the district Because he could have been indicted in the district right well, And I'm.
No attorney, I just play. I just I just play a relatively smart country caveman on TV occasionally. I'm not an attorney. But but the reason that I'm given to understand is they believe that an argument about venue would have been fatal to them since all the actions, all the criming took place in Florida. While DC is the place that the national press would have loved to have the story to take place because it makes it easy, right,
it just didn't. I mean, they're they're going to do at Miami, and I'd just like to welcome all I'd like to welcome all the reporters. You think Miami is a dream.
City in Miami, I look.
Forward to seeing you guys send in South Florida in August when it's one hundred and five degrees and four billion percent humidity.
So, but here's my question for you.
So they're gonna this is gonna now be the next two years of Trump lawyers fighting with the DOJ.
Yeah. Look here here's the other problem. They were saying, you know, we don't want to do this in three months of a primary. Well guess what, it's not gonna happen. Yeah, So let's say he gets indicted on Tuesday. Then the clock starts. It's not gonna happen. Even though Miami, even though southern district is considered a rocket dock and a fast mover. Blah blah blah blah blah. They're going to take thirty sixty ninety days. However, long before they bring
him to trial, they will delay. They will have a billion motions to delay. It will go back and forth. This thing will be in front of a lot of Trump drudges, by the way, just so everybody keeps their heads on straight. He really stacked South Florida. As this thing regresses, I think you're going to see that Trump. It pushes further and further and further and further into the Republican primary season. And look, I just I am skeptical that at some point either Lisa Monico or Merrick
Garland doesn't say shit, this is silicing really bad. Like it looks bad that they waited as long as my personal opinion, But that's just me. I'm not a lawyer and I'm not the Justice Department. For if I was, that would be a much sterner approach to these sort of matters. But long story short, I mean you were now seeing I think the most interesting story about this
is God Save Me, Molly. I watched I don't know, seven or twelve minutes of Fox TV tonight just because I had to see what the what the crazy was doing. It had Tim Scott saying that we need to pray for America because Donald Trump's being persecuted by the Deep State. Blah blah blah. It had Pastor Robert Jeffers assuring us that God himself would protect Trump because you know, he's the godliest president we've ever had. Harris Faulkner looked like
she was going to weep on TV. You know, Bongo Bongino is like raging like it, like he's hopped up on the cocktail, asteroids and meth amphetamine. The all of these people are losing their minds. And my favorite thing is that you're going to see all two favorite things. I get to the second one in a second. Here.
What you're going to see is every Republican candidate is going to come out tonight or tomorrow and say, oh, the deep State and remember Garland politicized or trying to cover up Hunter Biden's laptop, and that's why they're Biden Crime family. You're going to see all that apparatus on the right, and not one of these goddamn people will
say the word. They will not say. You know what, I'm not going to vote for Donald Trump if he's the nominee because he's been indicted the on espionage like fucking spies who go to prison for life, and and by all accounts and his own admission, he did it. I'm not going to vote for the guy. Because they don't.
They don't want to cut their their legs off and say, well, I'm not going to support the nominee, even though that means that they're all telling you they're going to support an indicted man who is indicted in a serious prosecution for a serious federal crime that if anybody else did it, they would go to jai, do not pass go. And so it shows you the lie of the entire Republican field. And I've said this now to a couple of reporters,
and I mean it. They are trying to make horseshit into a horse race, right, They're trying to pretend that this doesn't exist, that all the nominees are want to be nominees, or who are out there who say things like, of course I would consider pardoning Donald Trip, like Vivec said today, True, we should clarify. Vivec now said he's pardoning. Oh, I'm sorry he's pardoning. Well, frankly, that makes it worse.
Well, he hasn't even been charged yet, right or he and we hasn't. The indictment hasn't been unsealed.
Well, there is an indictment. The all the reporting is as of this recording is saying the indictment will be he will be you know, when he's presented on Tuesday, he will be taken into a court room and the indictment will be unsealed. But I think a lot of the reporting is coming from people who are very well sourced down there, including Hugo Lowell and others. And so
you're going to see all these Republican candidates. They will there's a litmus test now, and that litmus test will be have you promised to either pardon Donald Trump or have you promised to have Merrick Garland and Jack Smith eaten by tigers? And you saw it tonight, by the way, where Charlie Kirk comes out and says, we're going to Miami on Tuesday, and if you're not there, every Republican candidate, or we're going to make you an enemy, right.
I mean this is the brilliant thing about Trump World. And by brilliant, I mean you know they eat clue, but brilliant. They have figured out that they're just going to make this about their guy versus everyone else. So like, it's not their guy broke the law, it's the law is coming after their guy, and it's.
Going to be a straight And I think this is going to kill all the other candidates. And it just.
Continually molly, molly. These other candidates were already dead. They just don't They're just too dumb to lay down and start stinking like roadkill. They were already dead. Not one of them has a chance in hell in this political environment, including Jeff Ro's pup meat puppet Rond de Santis. Okay, he has no fucking chance the party.
I feel like if he gets higher lefts he might have a shot.
I have a feeling if he showed up in a glamorous ball gown with.
Long sleeves, with some long gloves, opera glass, long sleeves, long gloves, a feather boa and some sparkly heels.
I mean, there's a lot going on there.
If he could get a little tanner, he might.
I mean, perhaps this is really just about getting the right shehd of orange.
It well could be, because if you saw Trump's video on Truth Social tonight, he was the color of a furniture polish from the nineteen seventies that would have fit a kitchen that was decked out in the colors of muca, avocado and burnt.
Goal is to always look like.
You know, the fact that the fact that people call him yam tits does not go unnoticed.
I have not noticed that, but I think that is our So while we do the very serious legal analysis that you think you know us for.
We will leave it on the word yam tits. Again.
This is obviously we can tell this is not cable news. Let the record show Rick Wilson is bowing and saluting and saluting, and so.
Ron Klain is.
The former buying White House chief of Staff. Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Ron, good to be back.
When you came on the first time, we were just starting up this new podcast, and now you have had a wildly successful tenure as White House Chief of Staff, discuss discussed well.
Thank you, thank you. You know, really, when your White House Chief and staff. You get blamed for things start your fault, you get credit for things that you don't really And I'd say we had a great team at the White House, were the President obviously leading the effort, and I think the results earlier credit to my colleagues and to the President. I was just fortunate to be involved in it and play a role in it. So I'm proud of what we got done in the first
t years. There's a lot of work left to do, a lot of work left to do in the next year, is a lot of work left to do in a second term for President Biden. You know, I'm proud of what we got done, but more focused on what needs to be done.
So I want to ask you one of the things that I thought was really incredible, and again, is this a function of the Biden White House being really good at what it does? Or is this a function of Republicans being really bad at what they do or perhaps
a combination of both. But the dead ceiling drama, which was of course created by Republicans, but could have really I mean, I really felt like there were people out there Republicans who wanted to kind of kill the Biden economy in the hopes of getting their guy elected in twenty twenty four. I mean, did you think there was that kind of t.
There was obviously a big gap between the Republican build that passed the House and what the President was willing to do. And I think that my former colleagues in the Biden White House did a good job of managing this situation. And some credit goes to the Republicans who, in the end did agree to vote for.
The bipartisan compromise.
We've always done the Presidence willing to compromise and find middle ground, and that's what.
He did here.
He came up with a solution that protected his achievements. He said no to cutting back on the Inflation Reduction Act, he said no to cutting back on critical things we needed for our economy, and agreed to damp and spending. And kudos to.
Those Republicans who went along with that. So all's well, that ends.
Well, So I want to ask you, and also, I mean I thought, what was incredible is now this is not an issue till after twenty four.
Yeah.
Well, I think if you're going to go through this, you don't want to go through this regularly. You want to make sure that we can protect our economy, and right now there are a lot of risk.
To economic growth.
But we're seeing continued economic growth in our country, really good employment growth, low unemployment rates, boom and manufacture, and so we want to keep all that on track, that's for sure.
It is interesting to me there have been a lot of like really quiet things about an administration has done that are not exciting but are actually quite exciting, like the Chips Act and a lot of this manufacturing in the United States. They're kind of the things that Trump pretended to do, a lot of them. Will you talk a little bit.
About some of those, Yeah, I think I think that's a good point, Molly.
I don't know.
If President Trump said he'd have infrastructure week, he never got infrastructure done. President Biden did. As a result, we're seeing massive investments in our infrastructure for the next ten years, not just bridges and roads, but also connecting everyone to high speed, affordable internet and getting all the lid pipes out of our system so that people can have healthy water no matter where they live. That's I think a big achievement and a historic achievement. I think the Chips
and Science Act is going to be really critical. For too many years, we've been importing the microchips that are the critical elements of high tech manufacturing and high tech products and things like cars and TV sets and everything like that. They're all important to the United States. The President said, no, we're going to make these things here.
We're not going to be dependent on foreign suppliers.
If we headed the crisis like the COVID crisis where supply chains got backed up, we want to make them here. And so he worked with Republicans in the House and Senate to pass the Chipsack, which is going to invest in chip fabs all over the country, in a lot of forgotten parts of the country to create jobs, good six figure jobs, even if you know a four year
college degree, making the fundamentals of the new economy. And because of that, and also because of the Inflation Reduction Act, which is investing in solar power and wind power, we're seeing a manufacturing resurchen in the United States. We're creating more manufacturing jobs in the US at any time since
the nineteen seventies. Now those manufacturing jobs are good jobs people can raise families on, and we'll restore our industrial strength as a manufacturing country, and I think that's important for our economic future.
So now we're in this incredibly awful GOP primary where Republicans they're starting to kind of get their message against Biden. And I seem to remember in twenty twenty people saying, wow, it's very hard to defeat an incumbent, and if the economy is good, you know that it would be very hard to defeat Trump, even though wildly unpopular or twice impeached. You know, at that point it was just one impeached.
But it doesn't seem like people couch those kind of questions about Biden quite the same way.
I think my one consistant thing is Joe Biden's always underestimated. It was underestimated in the twenty twenty campaign itself, and people thought he couldn't get the nomination and people thought he couldn't beat Trump, and he did both. And he's been underestimated in the twenty twenty two midterms where people thought we were gonna have a red wave and he managed to lead the party to historic victories in twenty
twenty two. And he's been underestimated again if people think, look, it's gonna be a tough campaign It's gonna be a hard campaign. I don't think anyone takes it for granted, but I do think he's going to beat Donald Trump a second time, or whoever the Republicans wind up nominating in the end. Seems like Trump's the most likely candidate. But whatever they wind up doing, I think the President will get re elected because he has a good connection with the American people.
He's done a good job.
You'll have an agenda, They'll be persuasive to people, and I think the choice is going to be a compelling one again as it was in twenty twenty.
So I've been a.
Believer for for a long time, and I'd rather be an underdog than an overdog. Let people underestimate him, Let's hit him with another surprise this time.
I was one of many people who just did not think you would ever win the primary. I just think that this has sort of worked for him, his quietness. But the other thing that I'm so shocked by is that just this narrative that he has brainworms is like a favorite narrative on both the left and the right
in the media. And the Wednesday that the Egene Carroll decision came out, I had the MSNBC on in the other room, and I was listening to this press conference and I didn't know who it was, and whoever was being interviewed was like nailing this reporter right, was like, well, what's in the bill? And I thought, and I went into the other room and it was Biden, and I just wonder, does he ever get exonerated from this thing he doesn't do?
I don't know, Molly.
I mean again, I think people do underestimate him whatever reason. I think he's performed very well as president, and so I think, you know, he'll keep on doing his job his way and run a campaign like he did in twenty twenty, very effective campaign, and let the pundits say what they may. The voters have sided with him, and hopefully you can keep that going.
Do you feel the age issue with something? Again, pundit's talk about a lot. I grew up during Ronald Reagan, so that was an issue, but not quite. I mean, do you feel like it's a real issue or do you feel like it's a kind of pundit issue.
Do you think.
Voters care, make some voters care. I think the question is do they care about it more than they care about abortion rights? Or voting rights, or democracy, or the economy or healthcare, and so it is.
It's a question voters raise. It's a question that I think should be answered.
By the president's performance, and let the voters raise it and then let them make the final decision.
I mean, what are the things now that the Biden administration can work on. What they don't control the Congress, but they do still control the Senate.
Yeah, I think.
Look, I think they have to most hardant thing they have to do is implement all the things the president passed in the first two years of his term. So it was good to pass then infrastruction build. Now we have to stick get building on all those things, and that we're in the bill. Build the bridge is, build the roads, get rid of the lead pipes, connect people to the internet with high speed internet. So there's a
big work job there. There's a big job on imploming the Inflation Reduction Acts so that we get these solar projects and wind projects built and we start to have new renewable power all over the country. Because of the Inflation Reduction Act, We're going to have a construction of new electric vehicle battery plants all over the country, and we need to get that going, we need to build the plants.
So we need to.
Hire the people to build the electric batteries and equip the electric cars, and build the charging stations, and you know, take the things the president did these first years and make them reality. And that's a lot of work and involves the entire government. And that's one reason why the President had a cabinet meeting the other day to kind of monitor where that was going and offer more direction on that to his cabinet.
You know, I think there's a lot of economic.
Opportunity for our country to create jobs here, to lead the world in these new technologies, and that's what the President's intent on doing, and that's going to be a lot of the work of the next two years.
One of the things that just happened is that there was the Santis campaign. I know, you'll be shocked to hear this is using AI for an ad of Trump hugging Fauci. You could not have happened to a better whatever anyway.
I mean, I think one of the things.
That worries me a lot is that there really hasn't been a ton of congressional and again, this is congress. You can't necessarily speak to it. But I'm just curious about your opinion. There hasn't been a lot of tech regulation, at least when it comes to social media, and now we have this AI. I mean, do you think that there is a world where this gets done? Do you feel like this is high on people's agenda? Do you have thoughts on where Biden.
Is on this?
Well, the President laid out his principles for artificial intelligence a couple weeks ago at a high level meeting with senior executives from the industry at the White House, and I know he's going to continue to work on that and make sure this new technology that the Marria people get the benefit of the new technology and what it can do for us in terms of proving the quality of healthcare and helping us to fight climate change without the negatives of the new technology.
I think it's very important.
Look, I don't think campaign should pay campaigns made ads that told lies before there was AI. They gonna make ads that tell lies after there's AI. Campaign should make ads that tell lies. That's not technological issue, that's the campaign's issue. I think we need to harness the benefits of AI without suffering some of the negative consequences that even the creators of AI have raised as public policy issues.
Your job is chief of staff is probably one of the most important jobs in the world. What is the part of your job that is the most misunderstood.
That's a great question.
I don't sure how many people understand it or even care so misunderstood me. Yeah, yeah, I appreciate that, kind of like a head team coach. As I said at the outset, I think people will ascribe to me a lot of the results.
Good and bad.
And I think what people are saying, how much of the job is really recruiting staff and motivating staff and taking the spears when things don't go well, but hoping to spur the staff onward. You know, the results we got were because of a great team, a diverse team.
The first time ever in history that the White House staff was majority female, first time ever the majority that the senior staff was majority female, with high representation of African Americans and Hispanics and AAPI people on the staff.
So I think, you know, a lot of it to.
Me was making sure we hired the right people, making sure we had a diverse team. It's absolutely critical. I had a talented team and I think we delivered that.
So on the last episode, we had Justin Wolfers on the podcast. He's a professor with the University of Michigan, very smart, and he just said this stuck with Jesse, both Jesse and I. He said that we have a recession vibe, but that we don't have recession job numbers and we don't have many parts of this economy are actually.
We don't have a recession. We have a recession vibe. I think Professor Wolfers is right.
I think you turn on the TV, you listen to cable, all you hear is the recessions coming. You've been hearing that for a year. Look, it may come. I can't it can foresee the future with the crystal ball. But we've been telling people that for a year, that the recession is just around the corner. No wonder people are unhappy with the economy because they've been told they should be unhappy. In fact, reality is, we have, for the first time in our history, eighteen months of unemployment below
four percent, eighteen months in a row. We have the lowest Black unemployment in history, one of the lowest Hispanic un employment numbers in history, the lowest female unemployment number in history. People have jobs, incomes are rising, they're prepictly rising for the people at the lower end of the spectrum are often ignored. So the President said he build a recovery from the bottom up in the middle out It's exactly what's happening with a surge of manufacturing. So
none of this is a recession. And I think there's just a lot of bad talking about the economy out there that is definitely hitting people's psyche.
Do you think that there is a chance for the Biden administration to message more on the economy or do you think it's one of those things where that there's been so much bluster about the economy from previous administrations that people don't listen to that.
I think it's hard to message through it, but I think the president has to opt out this afternoon in the Wall Street Journal that lays out his economic message very clearly and persuasively. The facts are the facts, and I hope people will continue to focus on the facts, and I hope the administration continuities to sell this message. But where we are, which not a perfect economy, prices are too high. People are still feeling squeezed by that.
I understand that. But if you think about where we were two years ago when Joe Biden took office, who were lined up in parking lots to get a box of food in the back of their car. An employment rate was almost ten percent, a labor participation there were people in the workforce was down significantly. Now our businesses are open, our schools are open, we have a resurgence of manufacturing like we haven't seen in this country in forty years or more.
And those are.
Facts and realities that hopefully the ministrition could continue to communicate and we'll eventually break through the voters.
Do you plan to go back into Biden world?
I'm going to volunteer and help on the camp, you know, in my spare time, and whatever I can do to help, I will, and we'll get present reelected and then we'll see. I am definitely enjoying a better life now, being outside, not having a twenty four to seven job, one more time with my kids, and a little better health for myself. That's what I'm doing now. But I'm definitely going to put my heart and soul into hoping to make sure the president gets reelected.
What do you think about Jeff Science, who has your job now.
Just doing a very good job. I think he did an excellent job of now getting this debtlimit thing. I think he's filling some gaps on the staff because of the departures. He's doing a good job on that. I have a lot of confidence in Jeff's leadership at the White House.
The bagels. Do you think the bagels are good? Are they as good as New York bagels?
I think the bagels are excellent. I'm trying to lower my blood sugar because I don't eat as many.
As I do.
Call your mother bagels you ready, bagels are quite big bagels. I will say it's hard to compat with New York bagels, so they're very very good.
Yeah, okay, good. Thank you so much, Ron, and thank you for coming on.
Thanks for having me. Molly, keep up your good work. Thank you so much.
Hi, it's Mollie and I.
I'm wildly excited that for the first time, Fast Politics, the show you're listening to right now, is going to have merch for sale over at shop dot fastpoliticspod dot com.
You can now buy shirts.
Hats, hoodies, and toe bags with our incredible designs. We've heard your cries to spread the word about our podcast and get a tow bag with my adorable Leo the rescue puppy on it. And now you can grab this merchandise only at shop dot fastpoliticspod dot com. Thanks for your support. Ron Brownstein is a senior editor at the Atlantic.
And author of Rock Me on the Water.
Welcome back to Fast Politics. My favorite, seriously, actually my favorite. I'm not even lying, Ron Brownstein.
Hey, good to be here. Thank you.
First, I want to talk to you.
Today was a sort of you know, the few sentences make me more anxious than Supreme Court decisions coming down. But this actually was a really exciting Supreme Court decision. Will you talk a little bit about what it means and what it is.
Turns out, Mollie, that there's some footnotes somewhere that says, every time there's an orange sky in Washington, D C. Roberts Court will decide before the Voting Rights Act. It was a stunning decision. There has been very few through lines more consistent in John Roberts's era on the Court than his determination to whittle back federal protection for voting rights.
I mean, it's a crusade that he was involved in all the way back to the Reagan administration Justice Department, and certainly in a whole series of cases, most important, which of course was Shelby County a decade ago that
eliminated preclarentesce under the Voting Rights Act. He has in all sorts of ways led decisions even before the current super majority, as Mike Waldman calls it, that reduced and retrenched federal voting rights protections, including one written by Alito Bernovich a couple of years ago or maybe even last year, that severely weakened a section two, the remaining section of
the Voting Rights Act. So it was surprising, to the point of almost stunning, that Roberts and Kavanaugh joined the three Democratic appointed justices today to basically strike down the Alabama congressional map that diluted voting power for black residents in the state about twenty seven percent of the voting age population, but only one of the seven congressional seats was drawn in a way that could elect a black representative, and they said no, And rather shockingly so, there are
multiple other cases that are to varying degrees. You know, as I wrote a few months ago. First of all, there is an extraordinary amount of posts redistricting going on. I mean, there's a lot that's still in flux in a lot of different ways, having to do with state elections and state supreme courts, but also federal lawsuits. And there are Voting Rights Act or other claims of racial
discrimination against maps in multiple states. This could affect not only Alabama, but potentially Louisiana, maybe Georgia, even Texas, South Carolina, although I see Dave Wasserman thinks those last two may be more difficult by the logic of this case. But nonetheless it's a very significant ruling, particularly in an era where neither sign can get very far beyond to eighteen.
You know, if we were back to when I first started covering politics in the eighties or even the nineties, when it was not unusual for one party the other to amass over two hundred and thirty or even over two hundred and forty, or in fact, in the eighties over two hundred and fifty seats, you know, the possibility that four or five seats might be affected by a Voting Rights Act decision would be interesting, but not this positive. Now it could easily tip the balance of power.
Yeah, and in fact, a lot of people, including myself, believe that had the New York redistricting not been thrown out and Cuomo not had his last laugh by having a nonpartisan redistricting, we might have a democratic House today.
You know, it's the combination, really, as others have said and I've written, I think it's the combination of a democratic majority state Supreme Court in New York throwing out a democratic jerrymander, and a Republican majority state Supreme Court in Florida not throwing out even more egregious republican jerrymander. Those two things combined probably tip the majority in the House infuriating.
So I want to ask you just one line.
I know you're not a court watcher, Well you're you know this isn't exactly what you do. But are you surprised to see brickhap There have been whispers that Kavanaugh may not be as conservative, and again this is faint praise as Amy Comi and Gorsuch. I mean, do you think there's anything to that or do you think this is just a whim Well?
I think you know, in general, you have a conservative supermajority that is moving law to the right on a whole series of fronts and will continue to do so. But what this says to me is that Kavanaugh is receptive to Robert's concerns about not seeming entirely to be enlisted in the kind of political infantry of one party. And I think, you know, we've seen other suggestions by Kavanaugh elsewhere that you know he is concerned, he shares some of Robert's concerns about the legitimacy of the Court.
I don't think this changes the fundamental trajectory of the Court. I mean, it's likely we're going to see something on
affirmative action. The thing about the Court that I've written a couple times is that we we are in a situation that is a lot like the eighteen fifties or the nineteen thirties, where essentially you have a majority of the Court that was appointed by the dominant political coalition of an earlier era that is systematically working to block the agenda of what is becoming the majority coalition in
the country today. So, in the eighteen fifties, seven of the nine Supreme Court justices had been appointed by slaveholding Democratic presidents at a time when the new Republican Party was becoming the majority party. In the country by opposing the expansion of slavery, and that court in dred Scott basically made the core agenda of the new Republican Party unconstitutional by saying that you could not ban the extension
of slavery to the territories. And then again in the nineteen thirties, same thing when Roosevelt and the New Deal coalition was becoming the majority, clearly the majority political coalition in the country. Seven of the nine Supreme Court justices when Roosevelt took office had been named by earlier Republican presidents, and they systematically in the early years blocked the agenda of this new majority until you have the switch in time that save nine and nineteen thirty you know, nineteen
thirty seven, and they kind of switched. And I think something of the same thing is happening. I mean, you have six members of the Supreme Court that were nominated and confirmed by Republicans who represent the parts of the country that are least touched by demographic and cultural change, and they are systematically ruling in a way that imposes the values of that red America on blue America, which
is reflecting of the demographic change. And I just think this caller is going to get tighter and tighter in the years ahead. If this majority with today is a notable exception, keeps telling these diverse, more secular, more LGBTQ younger generation that you can't have any of the things you're voting for. I don't know how that ends, you know. I mean, like I said, the first time in the eighteen fifties, we never got to see how this would play out because we kind of had a civil war interrupted.
And then the second time, the court kind of abandoned the effort to stop the agenda of the new majority. But you have this very conservative majority that they may be in place for ten more years. And if they keep telling these young generations, which we're going to talk about in a minute, that are becoming the dominant block and the electorate. You can't regulate carbon emissions. Religious liberty should allow people to evade civil rights laws. States can't
regulate guns. Red states can restrict what is taught in classrooms or restrict treasure. If they keep doing that year after year after year, you're going to see pressure build up in a way that in those earlier instances. Ultimately we've found a way out. Although certainly the first one the Civil War. It's not exactly a.
Right a way out, yes, but I do think it's a really good point that there's a real conflict between what the Supreme Court was installed to do and what the American people will let them do.
And again, I mean, especially.
If you look at younger generations. I mean, this court is systematically positioning itself against not only the priorities, but in many ways the identities of the generations that are that are growing in the electric because they are the most diverse generations in American history. They are the most likely not to identify with any organized religion, they are the most likely to identify as LGBTQ, you know, and they are the most likely to be concerned about things
like climate. And you have this majority that reflects very much another America that is kind of on the opposite pole of all of those things. That is going to I think, you know, over a period has been you know, really since Roberts but potentially for at least another decade, trying to impose the values of one America on this other growing America. And I just think that is I mean,
who knows how that plays out, but Roosevelt. Roosevelt talked about the phrase he used was the dead hand of the Supreme Court, and Robert Jackson, who was one of his justices on the spree Quart was later the Nuremberg prosecutor, talked about how the Supreme Court is always the revenge of the prior coalition on the new majority coalition because people serve so long. That is very much what we are living through now.
Jesus, that's so interesting. I hadn't heard that.
So let's talk about Ron DeSantis. You were a really really interesting piece about Ron DeSantis, because what's so interesting to me, and the thing I had been thinking about for so long about Ron DeSantis was he seems like such a bad candidate. I was kind of wondering why the National Review crowd had gotten so excited and galvanized behind him so quickly, and I thought it was just trump Ism without Trump. But you had a pretty interesting take, right.
I think your answer is probably right for why the National Review crowd is behind him, Not so much the net Trumper's but kind of one degree off. In the Republican Party, they don't believe you can beat Trump except by emulating Trump, really, but they.
Like what Trump does. I mean, the fascism is not.
They just want somebod who can win. While doing all that, I thought Desantus's first speech in Iowa, his kickoff speech and an evangelical church outside of des Moines really encapsulated both what Biden has to fear and what might save him in twenty twenty four. Above all, I mean, the reality is that we are moving deeper into the election season without an appreciable improvement in Biden's approval rating. Right, he is still stuck closer to forty than even forty five,
much less fifty. And you know, you continue to see a big majority of voters saying they question whether he has the physical and mental capacity to handle a second term. I mean he has gotten a lot done. I mean he continues to prove himself a really effective legislative president. But the combination of inflation and age, I think, is this big cloud that inhibits his ability to kind of sell these accomplishments to the public.
I want to pause for a minute here and have real talk with you for two seconds, because I think you and I have very similar political leanings, but you have much more history and I think much more informed. But why are his approval ratings. Why are is numbers so bad when he actually is clearly I mean, just at every.
Very effective president.
Yeah.
Well, as I said, I think there are two principal reasons. I think inflation colors everything on the economic side. And I think inflation is clearly the reason he's not getting more credit for this great job growth and as well as the manufacturing boom that he is and the investment boom that his agenda has put in motion. So I think inflation kind of eclipses a lot of the other things that could benefit him by the end before twenty twenty place. But I think I think it's and I
think it's the age. I think people many of the Democratic polsters and strategies that I talked to are frustrated but now resigned to the doubts about his age, not really dissipating by or. I think they were more optimistic when he took office that the voters would see him being effective and that would kind of dispel the concerns about whether he is physically and mentally up to this. But it hasn't right, and if anything, they are remaining
remarkably stable. And I think it's those two things. Myself inflation and age that prevents him from getting credit for what he has achieved. That doesn't mean, however, that in the literally half dozen states where you're going to be spending eight billion dollars, that you can't sell those achievements more than we see in a national poll. But I do think that for Democratic strategists, the concerns about Biden's age have proven more durable and harder to dispel than
they hoped originally. So like, so to go back to DeSantis, then, I mean, like, if you start off, if you watch DeSantis's first speech that he gave in Iowa, the first fifteen minutes with the occasional Descentian flourish about medical authoritarianism or cultural Marxism. Notwithstanding that the first fifteen minutes was a pretty generic Republican case against Biden.
One of the things that we've seen with DeSantis is that he is very involved in COVID.
Do people really give a shit about COVID?
Still he does do COVID, but mostly he does. You know, the cost of living is too high, crime is too high, the border's out of control, and they messed up withdrawing from Afghanistan. It was fairly generic. I mean, it was like what any Republican nomine he would deliver it. In some ways, it was even more generic than that Molly in the sense that it's what any out party, the party out of the White House, is always going to say. The President has messed things up, and I will make
them better by reversing his policies. And like, after fifteen minutes, given where Biden's rover rating is, you could imagine there were a lot of swing voters who are kind of nodding their head, going yeah, you know, you know, I kind of thought things were going to be better, and I'm not really happy about the way things are going on this that or the other front. But Desandas didn't stop there. I mean, he kept talking for another half hour, and the next half hour was kind of the woke Olympics,
almost to borrow from his phrase. I mean, it was we are stopping transgender girls from competing in sports, and we are not backing down to Disney, and we are standing up against DEI, ESG and CRT. I kept thinking of the song from Hair. You know, LB Goal took the irt and we banned abortion after six weeks, and we made it so you could have concealed Caro, you know, no one, you know, one needs a permit to carry
a gun. And you know, it really struck me that after fifteen minutes that a lot of swing voters might be nodding yes, that they're not satisfied with Biden's America, but after another thirty minutes, they might be questioning whether they really wanted to live in the America that DeSantis was sketching. And you know, that is basically what we
saw in twenty two. I mean, how did Democrats win governorships and Senate races in states where Biden's approval was well below fifty where three quarters or more of the public described the economy in negative terms, and where majorities said they did not want Biden to run again. That should not have happened by historical yardsticks. Why did it happen.
It happened because there was an historically unprecedented number of people who said they disapproved of Biden or were dissatisfied with the economy, who voted for Democrats anyway because they
considered the Republican alternative too extreme. And it seemed to me listening to desanis you saw that in just one hour speech both the risk to Biden that you can make a case to voters, well, you know, things aren't going as well as you hope, it's really time for a change, and then by the time they get finished, like, is this really a change that you want? And I thought it was just an excellent kind of distillation of both the strengths and challenges facing the Republicans as they
move forward. And by the way, of course, Dessantus's choice is that he is trying to run at Trump from the right to the extent differentiating from Trump, it is always maybe maybe always to his right. So from the point of view of Democrats, you know, this could not be unfolding in a better way. Either Trump wins or DeSantis wins by making himself essentially even even more clearly identified with Trump business.
It tends to be that they don't throw out the incumbent unless there's something really wrong.
Yeah, well again we have not. Traditionally, the best yardstick of what the incumbent is going to get is his approval rating, right, and when people are dissatisfied with the incumbent, they find a way to swallow whatever reservations they have about the challenger. In nineteen eighty first presidential race.
I wrote about it all.
Carter put enormous effort into making Reagan unacceptable, and certainly in ninety two Bush there were ads with buzzards like you know, on these apocalyptic landscapes in Arkansas, with like buzzards. You know, he tried to make Clinton unacceptable, but because voters did not want to continue on the course they were on, they ultimately found a way to get to convincing themselves that the alternative was acceptable. As I remember writing in ninety two, stability is risk. That was the
challenge that Bush faced. Well, you know, that could happen again. I mean, you know, I mean, if Biden's overrating stays in the low forties, there's no question there is a risk that he loses, because historically the odds have been
that he loses. But the twenty two president is the reason Democrats are not lighting their hair on fire, because we saw exactly this model tested where we're talking about states where Biden was in the low forties and Democrats won gubernatorial and Senate races, which is very unusual in modern political history. And it was because these Trump style candidates were viewed as two extreme and so if you're thinking about Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Arizona the states
and maybe Nevada. Maybe those six some combination of those six states are going to pick the president in all likelihood. We've just run the test where Democrats were able to win not every state wide race, but most state wide races in all of those states at a moment where Biden's overratting was at a level where they should have lost. And so that's why I think Democrats are relatively sanguine
about where things are. But again, as I said earlier, the persistence of unease with his age, I think is unnerving to some of the Democratic strategists. So Linda Lake, who called for him in twenty twenty, laid down an important marker in that story to me where she said Biden did not have to get to fifty percent approval to win reelection. In her view, that he only needed to be viewed more favorably than his alternative. You know, like Biden says, don't judge me next to the Almighty,
judge me next to the alternative. And that's the first time I've heard anybody around Biden say he did not need to get back to fifty approval to win. So just kind of file that away because it does suggest that they are looking at the dynamic we saw in twenty two, especially in these key states.
Thank you so much, We ran way over because you're so great.
A moment and thick.
Cannon I judged fast. So the Supreme Court actually did something good today.
And funny enough, we really see how much Republicans fuckery does that work from it?
Yeah, so pretty interesting development. Everyone is completely pleasantly shocked, just as keg.
Stand as we lovingly call him.
And Justice Roberts sided with the liberals on the Court basically saying it's unconstitutional to have a sort of racist jerry mander for lack of a better word. And so here we are because the House is so tight, and the because the seats are so tight, this four seats or five seats could actually change the makeup of the House.
And this is political report.
In the wake of the Scotus Alabama decision, we're shifting five House rankings to in the Democrats direction. It's very likely two formerly solid red seats will end up in solid D. So if those five seats all shift and nothing else changes, Democrats will win the House, and we like that because Republicans and the House are stupid.
This is our moment of fuck right. That's it for.
This episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.