Hi, everyone, I'm Kitty Kirk and this is next question. Ezra Cline is one smart cookie. He's got a podcast with the somewhat unoriginal title of the ezraclined show. Hey, I've got a company called Katy Kirk Media, so I guess I'm one to talk. But he's also an opinion columnist for The New York Times. Semaphore called him the breakout media star of the twenty twenty four election cycle. His columns and his podcasts are incredibly insightful and at
times pretty surprising. He often gives us new, fresh takes on some of the same old problems. Today, I'm very excited to have as my plus one the one the only Liz Plank, who is a feminist writer, commentator. She has a biweekly newsletter called Airplane Mode, which I subscribe to, and I absolutely love Liz. Thank you so much for being my plus one and any of meat today.
Thank you for having me.
I've been on the wait list for a while, so I'm happy to be to be here with you now.
We're having today as our guest Ezra Klein, who I know you're a big fan of. I'm a big fan of as Sema for said not too long ago, he was having a moment. He has an extremely popular podcast, and I always appreciate his point of view. Are you a big fan, Let's hope so because he's listening.
Yeah, I'm a super I mean I'm a super fan. I had the privilege of working for Ezra when I was a box and I still have like an Ezra cleient voice inside my head that pops in sometimes of lessons that I've learned from working with Ezra, Like every time I did get time with him, I would leave with like a really important thing that would stay in my head. And so I'm super super excited to be talking to him today with you.
What are some of the headline issues that you're looking to interrogate with Ezra?
Well, I think Ezra wrote an entire book about polarization, and obviously we think a lot about polarization in the
sense of political parties and political ideology. But recently, just with all of the data that's come out of the election and this huge and growing gender divide, I've been thinking a lot about it in terms of gender, and so I'm very curious to hear his thoughts about how we resolve this growing gap between women and men and us being kind of like each radicalized in our own corner of the universe, and the sort of political landscape right.
Now, well, let's get to it. Ezra Klein, welcome to next question.
Thank you for having me.
I'm so happy to have you. And before we look ahead, I want to look behind us for a moment, because you did get a lot of credit, Ezra for being the leader of the pack saying that Joe Biden must step down looking back on that whole experience, because I know you think highly of Joe Biden, you like him, you think he was good president. Any regrets for leaning sort of the movement to replace him with someone else, I hear.
Me in some ways more credit than I I'd look like I was. I don't think of myself as early or the media as early. Certainly the voters were there
for a long time. A lot of what I was saying in those kind of pieces back in February was that you had had in poll after poll sixty five seventy five eighty percent, which are hard numbers to get in American politics, a voter saying that he should step aside early in the Democratic primaries, you know, or when there wasn't really a Democratic primary, but when there might have been a plurality or majority of Democrats depending on the poll, didn't want him to run again. Go watch
his convention speech in twenty sixteen. There was not a better speech at that convention. I mean, he just took Donald Trump apart. If that guy had run against Donald Trump at twenty sixteen, he would have won by six points.
Because because we league not.
Only by the example of our power, but by the power of our example. That is the history of the journey of America. God willing, God willing, Hillary Clinton will write the next chapter in that journey. We are America second to none, and we own the finish line. Don't forget it. God bless you all, and may God protect our trips come.
You're America. And I think Joe Biden gets credit for doing something that is extraordinarily rare, not just in American politics but in politics worldwide, which is having ultimate political power, having a chance of keeping it right. I mean, he was never that far behind Donald Trump and the polls and giving it up because that was the better thing to do for the country. I mean, I know people who say, oh, he did it too later, he never
should have run fine sale that. But the kinds of personalities that become leaders of nations, these are people who want power, not people who find it easy to say no to power. And so what Biden and in the end, I do think was heroic and historic.
He definitely solidified his legacy and wasn't part of the reluctance for the Democratic Party to sort of acknowledge what was happening and was unfolding in front of our eyes was the fear that there was no replacement, right, that Kamala Harris didn't have the popularity that's required in order
to become the candidate. And it was so interesting. I think if there'd been more time between Biden stepping down and then Kamala Harris becoming the candidate, maybe there we would have had more time to talk about is she electable?
Can you know? Can she do this in America? Get on board?
And it's almost like, because there wasn't enough time for people to doubt it, her popularity sort of spoke for itself. But I'm curious how you see that, how do you explain her popularity right now?
So I think there are two things happening at that time. So one was a lot of people around Biden and the Democratic Party. This was not, in my view, some grand cover up. And the way you know it wasn't a grand cover up is because the Biden campaign team negotiated an early debate. They thought he could do it right. And you know, maybe they were fooling themselves, maybe they were seeing something we weren't. Maybe they weren't accepting things
they were seeing. Some days, there are a lot of ways people sort of can negotiate internally something that is maybe not true or reality they don't want to accept. But I do think that was happening. The view that they sort of knew this was a disaster is not aligned to what ultimately their actions really were, So I think you should believe their actions. But then, yeah, Liz,
what you're saying is true. When I was doing this reporting, the thing that I kept hearing from people who understood Joe Biden's age to be a potentially insufferable political problem was well, the only really likely replacement is Harris, and Harris cannot win Pennsylvania, Michigan, in Wisconsin, right, And that was the view. And Harris had trailed Joe Biden in popularity for much of his presidential term. She was at that point still to my knowledge, if I'm remembering the
polling right trailing him a bit. The Democratic Party had lost a lot of faith in her over the course of Joe Biden's presidency. I said, then, I think it has proven true that that was always a little bit is sterious, and she'd become underrated because nothing had actually gone wrong for her in any very significant way. I mean, she had a kind of bad luster whole interview, but that wasn't enough to explain how far her star had fallen among many sort of Democratic insiders.
I think Estra, just to interject real quickly, I think part of the problem was she was almost in the witness protection program. I think this philosophy of not making Joe Biden available for interviews and not having him interface with a lot of journalists kept her away from the press.
They could have done even joint interviews that reinforced that they had a good working relationship, but I feel like he kept her away from the media, and then when she did interviews like the Lester Hold interview or some other interviews and didn't fare well, it solidified this idea that she wasn't that competent.
I think this one's hard to say. I know that she did an interview with you in January. Commos is not like she does not do many media interviews, right, That is an authentic, I think thing to her. I don't think it's a strong format for her. I don't
really understand why. Oftentimes she's very very good defending Biden after the debate, but in a lot of the media interviews she's given, she will not answer questions that are very straightforward, and she gets tripped up by straightforward to questions in a way I don't understand.
It's almost like she's ticking off talking points.
Yeah, It's like you can watch her firing up the nearest script, whereas in a debate she's excellent, right, And she was good in her interview with you. I remember listening to it while I was trying to think about all this and trying to find interviews of her. So I came across her with you, and I think that's one of her better interviews. So she's definitely capable of doing it.
Yeah, and I still think she often ticks off talking points. It's almost like she's afraid she's going to say something wrong when I saw Kamala Harris debate, I thought, Wow, she did a really good job. Perhaps she'll feel liberated to do more interviews because she's quick on her feet, she has a facility with facts and figures. And then it went right back to kind of sounding scripted in interview situations I couldn't figure out. But anyway, continue your earlier point is raight.
So there was this view that she wasn't up to it. This was a really big thing in the party, to be fair with something that people around Joe Biden were saying in order to fortify his position, and then by the time he dropped out, there was not time for what a lot of people in the party thought they should have, by the way, something Kamala Harris quietly also thought they should have because she thought it'd be better for her, which was some kind of competitive process.
In fact, you advocated that as where you said there should be an open convention so people could really determine who was the strongest candidate against Trump. Given that, were you surprised that her popularity, as Liz mentioned, was almost instantaneous and among Democrats, very very strong.
I wasn't surprised that her popularity among Democrats was strong. I was surprised by how much her overall favorables among the electorate rose. Look, I think we're going to see in the election ultimately, right, if Kamala Harris the election right and she particularly like wins it convincingly, you know, the sense that Kamala Harris was terribly underrated is going to be true. Right, it will just have been true.
And if Harris, if the polling errors in the other direction and Harris loses Michigan and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, then the sense that she is maybe not the candidate, you know, a California Liberal that you would have picked to run in those states, and she doesn't win North Carolina in Arizona, which looked like harter states for her anyway, then the sense that the Democratic Party probably didn't have, you know, the exact person you would have wanted to run in
those states is going to congeal. I am not willing at this junk. I think she's been a much stronger candidate, and I did podcasts about how she's underrated and had always said then, no matter what process you do, she is the most likely candidate out of it. So if you wanted to replace Biden on the ticket as I did. You always had to be comfortable with Kamala Harris being the candidate because she was probably going to win no matter how you did it. And I was comfortable with that.
So I was willing to make that argument at a time some people didn't think it made sense. But look, if Democrats lose this here, there's going to be a lot of anger, you know, if they lose because of Pennsylvania where she didn't pict Shapiro, there's going to be a lot of anger. So you've been around this longer than I have, but I'm always careful before getting ahead of a narrative when we haven't seen the election play out.
If you want to get smarter every morning with a breakdown of the news and fascinating takes on health and wellness and pop culture, sign up for our daily newsletter, Wake Up Call by going to Katiecuric dot com. Let's
talk about Trump calling her mentally impaired. You know, there don't seem to be any consequences for him making statements like that, and gosh, a whole myriad of other insults He does, though, seem to be having a hard time running against her and be slightly flummixed by her candidacy. A friend of mine said, the lummix is flummixed, and so I'm curious your observations on how he's trying to position her and position himself against her.
My observations about Donald Trump's positioning. I think with Donald Trump, you are dealing with someone who is intuitive and not strategic, and that's who he's always been. That people say there's maybe even some age related deterioration in him. I mean, he's not a spring chicken, as I say. I think that's probably true as well his inability to stick to a line of attack on her as a leftist California flip flopper. Will I was speaking a minute ago about
how narratives take hold after elections. If he loses his election convincingly, which in my view is a pretty good shot. The view that he completely blew for him a winnable election because he didn't have a shred of self discipline will take very stronghold. He could have run against her
on election. I'm election on inflation, on the set of positions she took in twenty twenty, where she swung very far to the left to try to out flank Bernie Sanders, there was a the Joe Biden admistration is unpopular and his record is unpopular, and she is part of that administration. I mean the way that a normal Republican candidate, right, if the Republicans had gone another direction and picked Nicki Haley, The way Nicki Haley would run against Kamala Harris is obvious.
It rights itself, and I think most people bet that Haley would have won. And Donald Trump he can only be who he is, and her ability to dangle obvious bait at him in front of the during the debate and say, you know, on his strongest issue, immigration, Oh but you have you know, bored people wandering out at your crowds.
I was going to say his second strongest issue, crowd size.
Yeah, right, And the guy snorts and like pause at the ground and charges that was it wasn't just that he's got that failure in the moment at a debate. It is a core personality problem in him, right, a core temperamental problem that is playing out all across the election.
Yeah, and you brought up discipline, which I think is such an important word. I was watching Joe Rogan's take on the debate to him, the discrediting thing about the debate was his lack of discipline, that she came off as not just more prepared, being able to stay on topic. And to me, discipline is actually a masculine or traditionally masculine quality, right there is definitely and I think we're going to get into it, just the gender divide of
this election. You know, a lot of men are not on board with Kamala Harris and are you know, have been moving away from the Democratic Party for a while now, but it's even more significant in this election. And part of me wonders, like, I mean, watching Kamala Harris her speech at the DNC and some of these media appearances, they almost seem like, yes, she's talking about abortion, she's
talking about reproductive rights. She's definitely speaking to women. But some of these I think soundbites are like for the dudes. You know, her talking about America being the most like lethal force in the world, talking about shooting people if they come into her home. Do you see her kind of signaling to men and male voters in a way that's maybe not as overt as what Donald Trump is doing, And do you see it working?
I probably have a slightly different view and where it comes from. I think there's like a bunch of interesting things to pick up on there. I'd love to talk. I feel like you get a whole podcast on this question of whether discipline is male coded in American politics, and I'd love to think about that. Kummeleris comes out of a black political tradition. She is a moderate law and order black urban politician, right, that's where she comes from in San Francisco, and San Francisco is thought of
as very liberal. In many ways, it is very liberal, but as somebody who's lived there and grew up in California, San Francisco is a city that has always struggled terribly with disorder, right with drug use, with homelessness, with a kind of burbling chaos that often feels like it is only inches from consuming much of the rest of the city. And Harris emerges as a DA there. She runs against
the existing DA as bad at winning prosecutions. She becomes ag of California on a somewhat similar argument, running against some more law and order republican from Los Angeles and right and left, male and female, the kinds of voters Harris like cut her political teeth knowing how to appeal to were voters who wanted somebody who would catch bad guys,
who would put bad people behind bars. I mean the movement, which I think is the cause of a lot of her sort of political instability in twenty twenty, where the Democratic Party wanted her to succeed but had turned sharply against law and order politics, and like that creates this kind of space where she can't be who she really is politically, but never really finds another political identity to inhabit, and then ends up kind of looking correless and having
taken a bunch of positions, she's now walked back from what Harris is reinhabiting here when she puts out these ads where she's you know, stalking across the border and you know, saluting border guards and saying, you know, fixing the border is tough, and so is Kamala Harris and saying if anybody comes into her house, they're going to get shot. Right. If you look at black politicians from urban areas, you know, over the nineties, over the two thousand's,
this is a long political tradition. I mean, go back to the eighties, go back to the seventies. Right, there's nothing actually all that new about it, and it's really that Democrats kind of abandoned it for a period of time, and now she's running at a time when you know she can pick it back up. And even more than that, runn against guy who's a convicted criminal, which allows you to really reinhabit that.
So if that's the case, why are so many young men? This is what I'm fascinated by, and I know Liz is too, are turned off by Kamala Harris. There's an NBC News poll of gen Z adults found that young women favored Harris over Trump by thirty points, while young men favored Harris by just four points. Let's dig into the gender gap for a few minutes, as we what
is happening with young men in this country? Why do they seem to be gravitating or some of them to the kind of macho Donald Trump messaging that we're hearing again and again and that he's going to protect women, which we'll talk about in a moment, but what is going on with young men?
So this is candidate agnostic. I should say. There was a big Wall Street journal piece on this using Biden and Trump pulling a couple weeks, a couple of months ago, and so Biden was hemorrhaging support among young men. That's part of why Donald Trump's knight at the RNC was like like a Vegas show about masculinity, right, like Whule Cogan like ripping off his shirt to you know, for
all the little Trumpsters out there. And you had Dana White, you know, the head of the UFC introducing Donald Trump. I mean the whole thing was the campiest masculinity, like.
Not cho much show man, you just expected the village people.
Yeah, like as a text for Judith Butler, it was extremely rich. So you get that happening. I mean, what's happening with young men? But I wouldn't tell you, I know entirely, and I'd actually really loved he here Liz
as part of it. But there we have had a very sharp in this era of politics and part of the digital politics shift in sort of the moras right, like we talk about the future as female, and we talk about toxic masculinity, and there's like a million descriptions of like how traits that are traditionally male are bad. You have the Home Me Too movement, you.
Have DEI which left a lot of white males feeling marginalized.
Those are that too. You know. You then have the rise of people like Jordan Peterson and Andrew Taate. There's a lot of you know, can you say any of these politically correct things? And all this is sort of like much of it is very good, much of it is natural, right. You know, you're having a feminization of politics and power generally as people sort of push to
have more representation. But that's going to create backlash, right, I mean, that is the nature of every political movement like this that we have ever seen, and you're seeing it, I think specifically among young men. I do think it is somewhat supercharged by the way media fractures, and you have a lot of young men in sort of you know, twitch politics, right, you know, the in sort of sports talk radio, which has become somewhat more rte coded in
recent years. Although that's not all that new. People forget that Rush Limbaugh begins as a sports broadcaster, not as a political broadcaster. Joe Rogan is I think not as right as he is sometimes made out to be. He's a sort of but he is a kind of frustrated masculine id politics, and I would say in general, the Demo Party was not trying to talk to men, and when it was, it was in a pretty scolding, dismissive tone.
The sort of elevation of Tim Walls as a kind of masculinity that can be embraced and rallied behind is a pretty significant change from where things were four years ago, you know, maybe even a bit more than that. So I think we've been through a pretty intense oscillation in politics, not the only one, but one of them that has been really alienating to young men who were coming of age as part of it, and they began gravitating to voices who said, no, you don't have to change everything
about you. In fact, you're great. You know, you should be watching combat sports and saying things that offend people and risk taking and you know, and all the things that that sort of appeal to you, and playing your video games and whatever. And then sort of Donald Trump comes up and tries to embrace that, I think, you know, in crypto and all the rest of it, in maybe
a hamhanded way, but nevertheless a very obvious way. And I think it's actually to the c of Harrison and Walls and the Democrats that they're trying to come up with a sort of counter narrative here. But yeah, I think you're looking at backlash to what was a very rapid and intense ideological shift and change. But Liz has been sort of part of this and been part of the Internet in this period, so I'd be curious for her take on.
That me too. And I wonder also how effective a masculine archetype Tim Walls actually is. Is he enough to sort of mediate some of these feelings of anger among young white men? Liz, your thoughts.
Oh my gosh.
Also, it could just be a whole hour on this. Yeah, to me, Trump was always running as a man, right, And that sounds like obvious, right, But we really don't think about when we think about gender, we think about women, and we've been talking there's so many ways that women's lives are gendered, but like men's lives are so gender too, And back in twenty sixteen, you know, Trump was again, you know, playing up his masculinity in all kinds of different ways. And by the way, Trump is not the first,
you know, candidate to do this. I think amongst Republicans, it's very it's very charged. I mean Mark or Rubio wore heels, you know when he ran for president, I mean allegedly, right, like we don't have any proof, but but to appear taller, right, Trump called Ted Cruz the P word, right, calling him basically a woman and discrediting, you know, sort of demeaning him, using that kind of language of and masculating him. And I think this time around he is doubling down on it. And I totally
agree with Ezra. I think that there's been such a void basically on the left.
And you mean avoid in terms of appealing to young white men.
Yeah, or just talking about men.
Right, you have one party that speaks directly to men, and in very it's not a subtext, it's very overt. Right in twenty sixteen, it was you know, it's harder for men now than it is for women, you know, Trump saying that around the Kavanaugh hearing and sort of post me to. So you have one party that's acknowledging the feelings of a lot of men, and you have the other party that is, I think often completely ignoring
those feelings. And it's almost like the new deplorable, where I think sometimes in democratic circles you will hear someone bring up masculinity or bring up disaffected young men, and it's sort of like, well, those guys are red pill, those guys are almost right, like, we don't even want to try and convert those people. And to me, it's
such a missed opportunity. And as I was listening to your interview with Richard Reeves, which everyone should go listen to, it's a really interesting conversation and I think one of the few conversations where that hold space both for talking about men's what's sort of happening to men and boys in this country and sort of around the world, and you know, holding space for what's happening to women and actually connecting those conversations, to me, has been the biggest
failure here. I think in the progressive movement that a lot of the problems that do plague men have to do actually with patriarchy, have to do with a lack of nurturing of boys and men.
I'll end on this note, but I think that Democrats.
Actually have a lot of policies that are very helpful to men, and they don't message it. And then you know, on the right, I think you have policies that actually might be detrimental to them, but they're very good at messaging. You know that this will help you, and so I see that that as one of the main disconnects.
Well, there's a lot to chew on their Liz. I think you're right though, I feel that they have been ignored and disregarded, and it was just a lot all those things that Ezra outlined coming fast and furiously from me too to now more lost students and met students are women too, as I mentioned DEI and feeling like that they weren't going to get into the school of their choice because of affirmative action. I just think it's a whole crock pot of things that they have seized on.
But I do want to pick up what Ezra said about Tim Walls as a way to kind of balance where the Democrats were going. How do you think he helps Kamala because as you said earlier, a lot of people may second guess the decision not to tap Josh Sapiro. But how does this archetype in your view or is it enough to bring in some of these young, disaffected male voters.
I'll say it's a dangerous time to be trying to answer this question because of the vice presidential debate, which will be his best chance to help Kamala Harris as tomorrow night. So anything I say might end up looking very different one way or the other after that debate.
Well, let's not even talk about the debate, just talk about sort of his candidacy. Writ Largely.
The reason I mentioned the debate because I do want a timestamp where we are, is he probably won't help Kamala Harris here. Vice presidential candidates genuinely don't write. They generally do not do a lot in one direction or another. I don't think Joe Biden.
I would argue that Sarah Palin hurt John McCain.
You can, in extreme conditions hurt right, And I think Jade Vance is hurting Donald Trump for other reasons. But I would be surprised to see Wall's help. I will say I've been a little surprised and frankly dismayed at the way the campaign is using or I will say, not using Tim Walls. I had him on my show like four days before he was named vice president. It's one of my favorite interviews I've done with the politician ever, and we talk about the problems of young men, and
he's great at talking about it. And Tim Walls won that vice presidential slot in large part because of how good he was in the media, how good. He's a rare politician who when you interview him you can see him thinking and responding in real time. And they locked him up the same way they've locked her up.
Why.
I don't understand the level of caution that campaign has. But I would be putting Tim Walls on like Lex Friedman on Joe.
On next question, on next question, even though he's probably speaking, you know, preaching to the choir. But you're right, why aren't they?
But I would have him out. I would have him out on sports talk radio. Right, that's a dude who can talk sports. He ran, you know, he helped coach a team to the state championships. Like, let Tim Walls be Tim Walls. Like let Kamala Harris go out and be Kamala Harris. They're running in very risk averse ways,
which I kind of get. But they're not that far ahead, right, They're not so far ahead that I wouldn't like to see them trying to pick up marginal voters in places where the people who are sort of on the bubble about them might reside well, you're an insider.
Why are they running the campaign this way? As I feel like you've got a lot of sources within the campaign, do you ask them about that? Because I'm very frustrated too, because not only because I want to interview both of these people, but I just don't understand why they are not everywhere. And now I feel like when they do interviews they do so few. The stakes are really high. And it was interesting because just a few days before
Stephanie Rule interviewed Kamala Harris on MSNBC. She had this to say on Bill Maher.
It would be great for her to sit down with you or George Stephanopolis or you Stephanie and gave a succession.
As if she'd sit down.
With you, asked her, ask her no nook.
George W.
Bush twenty five years ago was asked if he could name the president of Pakistan other people. He had no idea, and people said, this guy has no command of a foreign policy, and it turned out to be a pression set of questions. It's not too much to ask Kamala, say are you for a Palestinian state if Hamas is going to run that state?
Okay, yes or no?
And Let's say you don't like her answer. Are you going to vote for Donald Trump?
No, I'm not.
I said, I'm not going to vote.
Not running for perfect, She's running against Trump. We have two choices, and so there are some things you might not know her answer to. And in twenty twenty four, unlike twenty sixteen, for a lot of the American people, we know exactly what Trump will do, who he is, and the kind of threat he is to democracy.
Yeah, that was a weird look for them to choose that right after that. I mean, for all, I know that was decided before. But look, I don't know why they're not. I know that the view of this is many of the same Biden people, right, Her campaign is run by many of the same people, and their view was in interviews don't help them that much, particularly the media, And you know what, I think that's a totally reasonable
perspective instrumentally to take, right. I wish they wouldn't take it, because I do think it is good for people to see the candidates and there's an informative role to sitting and doing I would love to see Kamlah Hairs like she's always welcome on my show to talk about serious economic policy and housing. And I've said that to them
and await the response. But I think a lot of people hear this as special pleading for the media, which is politically because I think they're probably right that they're not picking up like when they go on MSNBC, Right, they're not converting a single voter, right, they are doing that to say they did another interview. They're converting no
one the interviews. Politically, if I were running a campaign, I would want to see is in places where they're trying to get people who do not look at them positively. Right Again, as I was saying, I would love to see Tim Walls going on the kinds of podcasts and YouTube shows where these young disaffected men are a sports talk radio. I mean, Katie, you mentioned a couple of times, you know, not trying to appeal to young white men. They're losing men of color, right, They're losing. They've been
hemorrhaging support among men of color in recent years. So try to go out to the places where the marginal voters you might need are. I think they feel that they are running a bit ahead of Donald Trump, and there's probably more downside risk than than upside risk. And also, and you know this, you've covered you know, a lot of presidential campaigns. Campaigns almost always have the character of the campaigner, right like as any organization does, even if
it doesn't really want to. Organizations take on the preferences, the temperament, the tendencies, the strategies of the people who are at their center. Kamala Harris doesn't like doing interviews. The Kamala Harris campaign does not prioritize doing interviews. She does like doing speeches. They prioritize doing speeches, right. You know.
Donald Trump is doing way fewer rallies, but it is a campaign that likes rallies to the extent that it likes anything any he you know, he likes going on in these sort of weird you know, talkie formats, So he does that. Campaigns Ultimately, whatever even their strategic views are, they end up reflecting what the candidates actually want to do. When you're sitting there with a million things to do with the time of these two people, and you know, you say, hey, you know, Vice President, we have a
couple of ideas for podcasts you should go on. She's like, really do we have like you know, and you've got to really justify it, and what if it goes bad soon enough you stop suggesting that, and you know, like, hey, we've got for more places in Pennsylvania you can make a stop at. And she's like great, Like we're doing that.
Before we dig into jd Vance. And I know Liz has a lot to say about him as to you, Ezra, and the future of MAGA and how he kind of represents a new breed of MAGA. You did a podcast on this, Ezra. I want to ask you about the criticism that she hasn't gotten specific enough in policy issues. I interviewed Hillary Clinton recently and she made the point that Hillary was criticized for being too specific and kind
of suggested there might be a double standard. She said, Trump himself claimed only to have a concept of a plan when asked about healthcare reform and the debate, and Hillary said to me this, I.
Was accused of being too specific, too specific a lot of other things, but certainly that, and I was also I put out a book about my policies, I gave speeches about my policies. At the end of the campaign, nobody knew anything about my policies. And I just think it's a trap. But when I hear people say that, it kind of makes me think, well, compared to what or.
Is something else text there?
And that's right, Katie, I mean, is it like I just need to know more?
Well?
I think part of it is what they're really saying, I just have to be more comfortable voting for a woman and voting for this woman.
So she's basically saying it is veiled secon these demands for Kamala Harris to get more specific about policy when Donald Trump is kind of all over the place. I'd love to get your take on that idea. What do you think of this idea that there may be something else going on and it may be thinly veiled sexism, Ezra.
I think that's ridiculous, honestly, that it's thinly veiled sexism. To want policy details from candidates as somebody who's covered policy among many male candidates, we wanted from them, as somebody who's attacked Donald Trump relentlessly for not having details on his policies. And that's why actually Project twenty twenty five is entered the picture because it offered the detailed Trump didn't, right, I think being vague has actually hurt Donald Trump. I have a different view I think on
Kamala Harris and policy releases though than a lot of people. Look, they just released an eighty page economic policy briefing book, and to be honest, I don't think it's not helpful at all. I don't really care about candidates having one hundred and fifty different policies right, something Clinton is talking about. I do think it was part of her brand that she knew everything about policy, and that was helpful to her in my view, not hurtful to her. But nevertheless,
it wasn't obviously helpful enough. But for Harris, what I wish they had for her, what I wish she had was the two or three policies that it feels like she feels really strongly about. So she is having a lot of trouble, repeatedly trouble answering the question what will you do first? Right, which is a very obvious question. Presidencies are all about prioritization. She sits down this Typa
Dana Bash. This also happened on a Pennsylvania with a local kind of television anchor something, a reporter in Pennsylvania, and she gets this question like, what are you going to do specifically, and she starts to do she's like, well, I'm a middle class kid and I come from here. And the thing she doesn't really have is the couple of policies that it feels burned within her to the extent she does. One where I think this is a
huge exception is Roe. I think you can tell when she talks about Roe that she will do absolutely everything in her power that if you will elect Kamala Harris, she's going to do everything Kamala Harris can do to make sure abortion rights are restored and protected. Right. Maybe she will not be able to do it because it's in a filibuster, but she's also said they get they
should make an exception to the filibuster for that. So that's something where when she talks about it, you can feel that you are hearing this is what this presidency will be about. On economic policy, they have a bunch of policies I can tell you about them. They have an earned income tax credit expansion. Now, they have a six thousand dollars credit for the first year of a baby's life. They've an expanded child tax credit.
Twenty five thousand dollars for first time homeowners.
There's a lot of different things going on.
But even like asking her, how are you going to pay for that? That sounds insane to me.
Well, to be fair, that policy is so weirdly targeted. It is first time homeowners whose parents did not own a home, and then there's an income Like when you read the details, I think they've so micro targeted. I will not be that expensive. We're that But it's also not that good of a policy for that reason. But
I had an old political mentor. I've said this a lot of times this year because it's always in my head Mark Schmidt, who used to say, it's not what you say about the policies, it's what the policies say about you. You could say a lot of things about Donald Trump and its total lack of policy detail, but Donald Trump usually is two to three things he talks about. And the point is not the policy. The point is that he is signaling what he really fundamentally strongly believes.
And I'm going to deport every undocumented immigrant in the country. Is saying I hate immigrants and I'm going to do everything in my power to make America an unwelcoming place for immigrants of all kinds. His universal tariff proposal reflects his belief that America is in a constant zero sum competition with other countries. We are losing that competition, and the way too prosper as an economy is not to cooperate with other countries, but to use our power to
negotiate more and more aggressive deals with them. Donald Trump does not release big, he tailed policy documents, but he talks about a couple things that actually do give you a sense of what he really cares about. What I
would like to see on economic policy. I cannot tell you as somebody who's covered Harris four years and knows her economic advisors and has read her whole policy book and has read her policy speech, is actually trying to do the work here that when she comes into office and she's to decide what to do, right like with her scarce political capital, when she wins the election. If she wins the election, and if she wins the Senate and the House and they have, you know, like a
tight majority, what are they going to really prioritize? That's the question, not what do you think about every policy, but what are the two to three things that really define not just you, but the way you see the problems America has right now. Yeah, Hillary Clinton had a billion policies, and not that many of them said that
much about her. But the thing that her policy said about her is that Hillary Clinton knew what she was talking about on everything, and that was known about Hillary Clinton, and it's one thing a lot of people admired about her and still admire about her. I don't think Harris needs to try to be Hillary Clinton in that way. But having a couple of ideas that reflect who you are and your core concerns in politics, I don't think it's a thing to throw overboard.
What do you think she should say? So, in addition to having this burning desire to be an advocate for abortion rights in your view, and knowing her and covering her, what do you think they are or is that a problem that we don't know and you don't know.
Yeah, I don't think I know on a bunch of issues, and I've done the reporting to try to understand this. I've been very excited to see the degree to which he's emphasized housing affordability. But I've read those policies and I don't think they're that strong. They're very, very tightly targeted it's like an expansion of a credit if you're building homes that are affordable for only first time home buyers.
There's one really good policy in there. It's a forty billion dollar grant program for states and localities that they can apply for it if they have sort of packages of sort of regulatory changes, et cetera.
You're pretty to be Yeah, so we get it.
Yeah, So like that's good. I would like to see that. But I don't think that that policy package when you really read it. If you ask me, is that going to fulfill her promise to build three million homes? I will tell you absolutely not. And I've talked to a bunch of housing experts and they will tell you, if they're being honest, almost certainly not. I don't know on the economy what drives her. She was one of the leaders in the Senate on expanding the child tax credit,
so I could imagine that being it. And she does have a good proposal for expanding the child a tax credit. She doesn't talk about it in the way or with a frame where I'm sure like that's the thing she's really going to try to sell. It could be something else, right for Bernie Sanders it was obviously Medicare for all. For Elizabeth Warren, it was reducing corporate power. There are a bunch of policies that you could tell really drove her on that. I think this is the hardest thing
for Kamala Harris, whose background is in law enforcement. I think Harris is amazing what she's talking about rights. I think that she has a lot of us on safety. I think it would have actually made sense for to emphasize safety a lot more than she has in campaign. But when you ask me what would I like it to be, the problem is this is a hard thing to fake, right. I've got mine. I'm an obsessive about
housing supply, but it's got to be hers, right. And I think one of the problems she's having talking about economic policy is the opportunity economy thing. It sounds pulled right.
It sounds yeah, what does that mean?
Even and every politician is always said they're going to build an opportunity economy. So I'm not trying to be too hard on this. A lot of these policies are good. I love an expanded child tax credit. I believe in expanding the Earning Them tax credit for childless adults, like there's a lot in there that I support. But what they're doing now is they're building out a policy book and not a policy argument, and I would like to see them build out a policy argument.
You mentioned childless adults. Liz, let's talk and by talking about jd Vance. Oh, no, I don't mean. I don't mean no, I don't mean Liz as a childless adult, although she is. But she's written extensively about this, and of course this has become a huge hot button issue, as we all know, with jd Vance and the Childish cat Lady and all that kind of conversation. So Liz, let's talk about jd Vance. What would you like to ask Ezra? What would you like to say about him?
Yeah, you know, I really have loved your commentary about it. Ezra his obsession with fertility right and having children, but having children in sort of the right, right right, because he's against or he's not supporting, you know, the protection of IVF, but he anyway, it's inconsistent, right, But they clearly want a sort of traditional family model. But what I really loved about your take on it is that you compared it to the way that the left feels
about climate change. That it feels like this existential sort of threat. I'm curious like.
Where that comes from.
And is that the sort of thing that resonates with sort of young men and young voters.
This fear that there aren't going to be enough kids.
Basically, Yes, this sort of you know, the whole replacement theory and the idea that yes, we need more children, we need white children essentially, and that come from this nuclear.
Household heterosexual structure.
Yeah, why is there this subsession with fertility and do you think it's working? Do you think it's reaching voters?
Oh, I definitely don't think it's reaching moteries. I don't think these have been politically well sold arguments. Yeah. So on the right there has emerged a sort of overarching macro fear, which is it America specifically, but the globe generally is entering into a kind of extended multi generational demographic collapse, and that the thin edge of the wedge or the tip of the spear is a place like
South Korea. The total fertility replacement rate for a society, right, the number of kids that family should be having in order to maintain the society's population, is called two point one two point two South Korea is a point nine, right, so South Korea is entering into geometric shrinkage that actually
is civilizationally threatening to South Korea. It is not clear what happens after you turn over a couple generations like that, when you have a society build forever, many people are there now it's a big country, and then you have a small fraction of that. America, I'm so worried about getting the numbers wrong. I want to say it's one point seven. It might be one point three. I think it's one point seven. But the thing is it's happening everywhere.
Right.
So Italy, highly Catholic country. I believe their demographical placement is something like one point three if you look at the Nordic countries, right, which when we talk about what are pro fertility policies on the left, we often talk about what they do very very excellent paid family leave, including for men, excellent childcare. They're at like one point one. There are very few societies, really almost none around the globe that are not seeing a very sharp decline in fertility.
And this reflects women having much better opportunities in the world. Right, So you know the sort of opportunity cost of having
children goes up. It reflects birth control right being affective so people can plan out their fertility, and so the right has become kind of obsessed with this right, and it's not a totally crazy thing to worry about that if you just kind of imagine this rolling forward, what's going to happen when humanity just begins shrinking sort of year on year and year on year without sort of
an obvious way to stabilize it. And the fact that no country, not Japan, not South Korea, none of these countries, but there's been a lot of worry about this, has been able to turn these numbers around also makes them nervous.
So what some of these people like Jadvans have come up with is, if you sort of look in these more post liberal Catholic right circles that he's part of, is at least, among other things like scolding people right, yelling at you and trying to make it socially and culturally unacceptable, shameful, embarrassing to not be having children like that's what this thing about miserable childish cat ladies are right.
The idea is that elites in power need to stop talking about how everybody should live like whatever life they find fulfilling, and begin saying that if you are not, you know, coupled up and having children, you're a sort of pathetic, selfish.
Yeah, let's focus on the individual, right, and what the individual wants.
We're seeing so I would say this is it reflects a real thing that I think it is worth thinking about. I do think that you should ask hard questions about societies that have devalued having children in the way that I think a lot have, or cultures that have devalued having children that don't support them that I mean, what does it mean if you don't have a belief that it is worth sort of you know, extending the chain
of humanity out into the future. And on the other hand, to talk about it the way they're talking about it, to think about it the way they're thinking about it is it's often cruel, it's ineffective. I don't think it is thoughtful. Right. They're not working with like the actual questions they should be working with, right, which is okay. If a lot of people are looking at what it means to have a family in the modern era and saying I don't want that, or I wanted it but
can't have it right. Many people, many families, have fewer children than they would like to have. Then what right do like? There are a lot of things you could begin to imagine doing, some of them technological, and some of them you know, financial, right, and some of them societal.
Well, a lot of my daughter's friends say they don't want to have or a number of them have said they don't want to bring a child into the world because they're afraid the world they're bringing the child into.
I hear that. I'm always really skeptical of that one, to be honest, when you think about what the world was like like any time in human history before nineteen fifty functionally, and I mean nineteen fifty in rich countries, right, for most of human history, half of all children died right before their fifteenth birthday, and we brought children into
the world. There's something to me of all the arguments here, the liberal argument that climate change or something else has made the world like too terrible to bring kids into. And then I think about, I mean, you know, my ancestors, like having my great grandparents as they were fleeing from pogrims. Something about that always rought like too much comfort of modernity has affected our thinking.
I mean, for me, it's a financial right.
Like I think sort of what what you're getting to is a lot of policy would actually encourage people to have children and make it, you know, easier. And those aren't the things that JD. Evans is you know, necessarily supporting. Like he's not saying, let's get men parental even let's make sure that there's universal childcare, or that people can afford their groceries and the rent and housing right, like
all of those things are also connected. I think a lot of young people aren't having kids because they can't, not because they don't want to.
This gets to a real schism in the MAGA movement I think, which is interesting and we're thinking about, which is that there's sort of two big streams in what people kind of call Maga or the new Right, And like one side of it is this weird, postliberal, heavily Catholic influenced conservatism that Jade Evans is part of right, and it's very concerned about things like fertility collapse. It
is very concerned about things like abortion. It thinks, you know, we don't have enough virtue anymore, and men can't be men and blah blah blah blah. And then there's this other one, which you know sometimes it is called barstool sports conservatism after the Dave Portnoy site, which is this more liberty libertarian like dudes playing video games and drinking beer and just like want to be left alone and
they don't like the censorious smoke liberals. And sort of during the pandemic and during the sort of post George Floyd moment and the me too moment, these groups kind of came together. But they're actually not not only not, they're not the same. They're not anything like each other, right, They're deeply opposed to each other, right, I mean, Dave Portnoy and that crew do not want abortion banned because it might mean they have to take care of children
they don't want to take care of. And you know this of skepticism of birth control, right that you see on the sort of the other side of the right, the sort of you know, more reactionary, right, they.
Want to ban porn, I mean, the reaction they want to ban porn.
On the first page of Project twenty twenty five, it calls for banning porn. Like that is not where Donald Trump is. Donald Trump wants to ban being convicted for hiding the fact that you slept with a porn star during a campaign. Right, Like, so there's this weird jd Vance Donald Trump like difference here that like Trump chose Vance in some ways this air to maga. But Vance is a very different thing than Trump is.
Well, let me end by asking you this question, and Liz, I'd love you to chime in. Is jd Vance hurting Donald Trump or helping him?
He's definitely hurt him. In my view, it would have been if Trump had chosen Doug Burgram a Marco Rubio, he would be in significantly a better shape today. One he would have been more comforting to people in terms of you know, there's always this question people like, ah, like which Donald? Who is Donald Trump?
Really?
Is he the guy you know that you saw on January sixth, or I actually remember the economy being pretty good in twenty nineteen and a guy like Doug Burghram, a sort of boring business executive, would have been a signal that it's going in that other direction. Right. Whether that single would have been true, we could argue about. I sort of would suggest it wouldn't have been true, but it would have been comforting to people who maybe
needed to be comfort and steady. Gets Vance, which accentuates the ideological extremity, the weirdness of the people, not just not just Trump himself, but the whole Trump coalition that you're bringing back into power. Right, That's why things like Project twenty twenty five matter. Trump can disavow that all that he wants. The thing is, it's all the people who work for him and worked for him and will
work for him again. And JD. Vance is there writing the forward to the book that Kevin Roberts, you know, his forthcoming book, Kevin Roberts being the head of the Heritage fination that you know oversaw Project twenty twenty five. So in choosing Vance, Trump ended up drawing attention to, like the part of his movement that is most unpopular and off putting and unnerving. When his best argument was weirdly given who he is, a kind of stability argument.
But he didn't pick somebody who accentuated stability. He picked somebody who accentuated kind of instability and uncertainty and weirdness. And yeah, I don't think Vance has helped this ticket at all.
I totally agree.
I mean and Let's remember, you know, he pays Jady Vance when Joe Biden was the candidate. You know, it was a very different race and it was sort of a shoe in and so yeah, Jade Vance doesn't reach people that Trump isn't reaching. And to as his point, I think it's hurting him with groups that would otherwise
maybe would have voted for Trump. I mean, when Jennifer Aniston posted about Jade Vance, a person who obviously has a lot of influence but isn't necessarily on your bingo card of you know, who will take a stand or endorse anyone during an election, That's when I knew, like, oh, like he's in trouble, and yeah, he's just He's also like Trump is charismatic at least, you know, and funny and entertaining, and Jade Vance is just, you know, it doesn't even have that. So I don't think Trump is
thrilled about that decision. That would be my guess.
Ezra. I know you have a lot to do. You're a very busy man. Thank you for taking the time to be with Liz and me today. We really appreciate it.
Thank you for having me. It was great to see you both.
Liz, that was so fun. So smart, isn't he.
He's so interesting as always, you know, it's always going to be smart, but it's also he has surprising takes on everything. You know, you think you will have understood an issue, and then he'll come at it from a different perspective.
And yeah, that was so that was so fun.
I really found the gender conversation interesting, Liz, And I know you've been focusing on that axioside A piece just over the weekend, talking about women turning left, men turning right, women going to church less, men becoming more religious than women, seeing it sort of in every aspect of American life.
I find that's so interesting and so troubling. And I think you made a great point that we've just kind of ignored these young men and there is an inevitable backlash to these big social movements that we've seen over the last five years.
Yeah. And I, by the way, feel totally part of.
The originating problem of this, right because I before iended up writing a book about masculine in twenty nineteen, I'd never thought that these issues were connected, right, that the men's problems could somehow be connected to women's problems. I did have that sort of zero sum mentality that we needed to focus on women in order to uplift them and have gender equality.
But I think the more we can.
Connect those issues and realize, I mean, we all have to live together, right, But the more we're able to sort of work on those issues together and build more coalition. And yeah, I think online is not where it's necessarily I was.
Going to say, it's only exacerbating that with these bubbles. And then some of the people that Ezra was talking about that these young men follow and almost worship and are really being shaped by are not necessarily the best messengers. And one of the other interesting points list that I thought as we're made among many was that they should be using Tim Walls moreh That is just the kind
of person who would appeal to disaffected young men. He obviously had extraordinary success as a high school coach and teacher. You know, when you saw all those football players at the DNC, you know, coming on stage, he elicits this profound affection and respect. I agree with him. Where are you, Tim Waaltz get on this damn podcast exactly? Well, although I'm not sure I'm the right podcast, but selfishly I'd like to talk to him, but he should be going
on all these shows. I think I do believe he's being underutilized. And I wonder if the slip he made when he talked about his war record that they're afraid that he's going And I think this caution might be moren out of a fear of making a mistake or saying something that could be manipulated by the far right. But I just I think they're missing a great opportunity here.
And it's funny because you're so right that the campaign is very is being very careful on the one hand, but on the sort of like outwardly, they're taking all these risks right TikTok and on social media they're you know, using the coconut that's.
Also within their control. That you know, that's within their control. They have to give up a certain amount of control when she's faced by a prepared questioner who's going to ask her really specific questions about policy, about her record,
and about her future agenda. So you know, yes, I think they've been great online, but that's so different, and you know, as a journalist, of course, I err on the side of wanting her to be challenged and I've always found that a lot of these politicians, they rise to the occasion when they're asked very challenging questions. That's when they do the best. If there ask these open ended questions, I think that that is when they sometimes stumble.
But anyway, that's my argument. Kamala, you come on this podcast too. Anyway, Liz, thank you so much for being my partner in crime here. It's always great to be with you. And again, I love your newsletter called Airplane Mode, and everybody should check it out subscribe to it because, as Liz often tells us in the middle of our newsletter, it's really important to support grassroots journalism and she works really hard to bring interesting information and insights to all
of us. So thank you Liz for that.
Thank you Katie, You're my hero. This is so iconic to be on with you, and this is so fun. I hope we get to do it again soon.
Thanks for listening everyone. If you have a question for me, a subject you want us to cover, or you want to share your thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world, reach out. You can leave a short message at six h nine five one two five five five, or you can send me a DM on Instagram. I would love to hear from you. Next Question is a production of iHeartMedia and Katie Couric Media. The executive producers are Me, Katie Kuric, and Courtney Ltz. Our supervising producer is Ryan Martz,
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