Make sure that I get it right. It's ruly to Shara to share Teshierra.
It's a Allen on the screen. But whatever, yeah, all right, changed.
That one, and then we welcome back to the podcast.
Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.
Mister Garbaschoff, Tear down this wall.
It's the Ricochet Podcast with Charles C. W. Cook and Stephen Hayward. I'm James Lillings. Today we talked to Luie, to Shara, Liberal Patriot.
How did we get here?
Because the mainstream wing of the party is scared the death.
Of the Moon wing.
They won't speak.
Up and they don't stand for anything anymore. All they stand for is whatever UH is against whatever President Trump stands for.
This is I think typical of Trump the man.
This is the kind of character or lack thereof who's now president.
Welcome everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast, episode number five hundred and seventy four, Not just Kidding, seven hundred and fifty four. Join us at ricochet dot com. You can be part of the most stimulating conversations and community on the web. It's the place you've been looking for ever since they plugged this thing in. I'm James Lollox in Minneapolis, Cloudy Misty, and I'm joined by Stephen Hayward in California and Charles C. W. Cook in Florida. And as I say, we have the
entire country covered. Gentlemen, how are you good? Good? How are you could be better? Last week I had absolutely no opinion about cracker barrel whatsoever, and never been to one, never never set foot in one, had no desire to set foot in one. But now I've got an opinion about cracker barrel. We'll get to that in a second. Last week, I wasn't really thinking very much about over the road truckers and exactly what problems some of them
may face. And now, of course, first and foremost in my mind, both of these things are things that have been bubbling around on Twitter for the last week and have yet to really hit the news, but I think they will now because Marco Rubio has made a statement that the government is going to suspend all renovation of the cracker Barrel restaurants. No, I'm sorry, he's going to suspect they're going to suspend the people coming in to
get driver's licenses from other countries. CDLs, And I wonder what you guys think about this, because what's interesting to me about it is the speed with between this issue surfacing and actual government action seems to be new but
also a defining characteristic of our age. Before we would have a blue ribbon commission that would turn out a white paper at the end of it, and recommendations would be made and it would work its way through dot and eventually there would be something and nothing would change. But now it's sort of like, which.
I look, long haul truck driving, actually any truck driving, but especially those longer haul the bigger trucks, which require a different classification of license. That's not an easy job.
And you know, my brother was a teamster. He drove one of those trucks for a while and he used to say, and my perception when I drive out on say a Interstate five in California, is that, you know, there's a I'm not sure if it's the bell curve for truck drivers is the right phrase for it, but they are short of good qualified Almost every truck, especially independent line or even the big chains like Hunt Brothers
or something. They'll have big banners on the truck saying drivers wanted call one eight hundred, get paid right, and a lot of those jobs pay six figures pretty fast. For whatever reason. I think because it's a lonely job. You know, you're away from your family. They're under a lot of pressure to get your destination in time. On the other hand, and now all have GPS widgets in them, and so your maximum hours are capped, and so anyway,
I think it's kind of a miserable life. And I'll bet that a lot of trucking comp and he's pick a lot of people at the margins who are, shall we say, if he drivers? And my observation is the quality of truck drivers I see on the road. Some of them it's not what I remember when I was younger and putting in a lot of miles on the road.
But there's more of them. The other thing, if you ever want to see, I should take a video sometime if you take Interstate five out of Los Angeles north up toward what we used to call the Grapevine, and there's a couple of very steep hills, and the truck's all bunch up there going up the hill at about twenty five miles an hour in low gear and it's amazing.
And of course, you know, we know Long Beach is one of the leading ports in America and a lot of that ends up on trucks going all over the country. But the truck traffic is just enormous these days. And I've never looked for data to see how much it's grown, but I'll bet it's been quite substantial in the last twenty thirty years.
My father was a truck driver. I mean, he owned the oil company gas business in Fargo, but he drove ry. He loved to drive semi. He could find I mean, he could climb into a cabin and look at that, you know, sixteen years and he could find the right one could he could back up up a double tanker to a loading dock to get product filled. I mean,
it's just amazing. So I respect that. But at the same time, one of his drivers had a diabetic episode back in the day and actually started driving the wrong way on the other side of the highway with oncoming traffic with a full load of number two in the back. Oh boy, that was a disaster reverted. So yeah, it's always been a dangerous job, but it seems to be yes, they aren't getting enough so we have more accidents. We have more guys who are going down hills just jamming
on the brakes and sitting letting the engine throttle. At Charles, we would have to ask you about your opinion about LORI drivers, wouldn't we You would?
You would? Do you know?
I actually said that word on my trip to Pigeon Ford's, Tennessee, and my wife said, don't say Laurie like that. Normally she likes my accent and linguistic foibles, but this time I think that one was not attractive, so she said, don't say Laurie. Don't But I did say Laurie anyhow. Yes, this story which happened in Florida is horrible. A family was wiped out. I think there are some obvious government interests here. One of the problems, beyond truck driving proficiency, about which I.
Know very little, is English speaking.
That is the complaint that I have heard from people over the last three or four years.
It's always pooh poohed.
I submit that it won't be from now on, but I've heard it said over and over again that we have a big problem in America because there are a bunch of illegal immigrants who do not speak English who drive trucks, and they can't read the signs on the road, and that's very important if you're expected to know where the runoff lane is, or look at the gradient information, or see where the way station is located. So I
do think that that's a problem. And I say this having come fresh off speaking at a naturalization ceremony here in Jacksonville yesterday. I was the featured speaker at the big citizenship ceremony.
Was very moving.
But of course everyone who went through that and followed the rules has to display a proficiency in English. And there's a good reason that we have these expectations. So I don't know enough about it to give you a white paper answer, but I do think reformers in the cards, because that was a horrible thing that happened, and it's not something that came out of the blue. It's an odd thing to have been told about, but I have
been told about this problem for years. People have brought it up, and now we have this this tragedy.
Well, one of the things that came out of the blue was the rating of John Bolton's house. John Bolton, of course, a man who possesses the best, most accedence in Wilford Brimley. I think he bought it from him, actually or actually no, I think it's more he's up there with the sam Eliot quality. In any case, Bolton got rated. BI director Cosh Ptel said on Twitter, of course, because that's what we say these things, is that no one is above the law. I FBI agent's on the mission.
We're hearing that phrasing awful lot. Trump said, I don't know anything about it. What's going on here? I have no idea.
I don't know if it's some kind of payback by some people in the Trump administration. We know that Biden was sloppy about keeping documents, and you know Trump, like Lise, you know, I know John a little bit. My office was right next door to his at AEI way back when, and he always.
Struck me as someone who's not sloppy.
I mean, he always had a neat desk, he was always worth long hours, was always very precise about things. So I'd be surprised if he was sloppy about keeping documents.
But I don't know.
I mean, who knows. I'll be curious to see if we ever find the affidavit behind the warrant at some point.
His persistence in the national political theater is something of a mystery to me. But I gather that he's getting more currency lately because he's not exactly a fan Donald Trump and Charles, what do you take of this? Is this more authoritarian payback? Or is this as somebody said, well, look, if you're going to take on the deep state in all of its manifestations, doesn't hurt to go after people in your own party first, just to show that it's not partisan. Although although.
Wow, that one I'm not sold on. I don't think Donald Trump thinks they're at the same party. Right, How long have you got? This is a really complicated issue. The answer is there is a Steelman case for this
which goes something like this, John Bolton did it. He is not the president, therefore is not protected by his ability to declassify information and all the Supreme Court case Trump for the United States, we do and should prosecute people who violate the rules surrounding classified information.
No one is above the law. That's the steel Man argument.
That might be completely irrelevant in this case because this could be political payback. The worrying possibility is that the Trump administration simply hates John Bolton is still smarting at having been targeted by Joe Biden and wanted to make somebody who doesn't like pay. The broader thought that I have given that I don't know any more details than you do, is that the original sin here was James Comy's treatment of Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton was guilty of
violating the law. Now I am open to the idea that that is a bad and in some sense unconstitutional law, the Wilson ere Espionage Act, and that it was not in the public interest to prosecute her. But James Comy found a loophole and he used it to let her off the hook. And then that loophole was not applied equally to everyone. Joe Biden got the advantage of it, although there was another excuse with him. Donald Trump did not, And I don't think you can run a country like this.
So when the Biden one broke, my view was you can't touch Biden because you didn't touch Hillary. And when the Trump one broke, my view was you can't touch Trump because you didn't touch Biden and you didn't touch Hillary.
And I still hold that.
So if we are talking here about equal crimes alleged crimes which I don't know.
Then my view will be the same here.
You can't touch Bolton because you didn't touch Trump, and you didn't touch Biden, then you didn't touch Hillary. I think James Comey did something really really bad. Was that rather than try and establish a rule of prosecutorial discretion that was broad and clear and could be applied to everyone, he's simply made up the law. And when you make up the law, you create really difficult scenarios for your successes.
And that could be what we're looking at here. So I am, in a sense giving you a non answer, James, I'm all the way from could be still manned, could be complicated, or could be tyranny.
It's one of the three. There's more no touching in that last thing. You said that in a Fargo Lutheran church in nineteen SISO. So is there anything more to say about this? Or should we move along to other things, such as the Trump find being tossed half a billion?
Guess not well before we do that, James, or maybe after. I don't care.
I thought Trump was going on a ride along with a DC police or National Guard last time. I haven't heard anything about it. I mean, my joke was Trump has gone from just trolling the left to patrolling.
Against the left. Yeah, I know. I mean there was an MSNBC or an ms NOW person who was saying the other day that before he decided that he said he was going to go on the right along. They said that when it came to d C crime, Trump thinks he's Batman. And I thought, that's not a very good argument to make people like Batman. You want to make the case that he thinks he's bane. That's something else. But people kind of like a rich guy with lots of tools who goes around at night and keeps the
bad guy and drows them off roofs. Anyway, So should the fine has been tossed? And what is that that that? I mean, everyone is still going to call him a fellon thirty four counts, et cetera. But now the fine's tossed. Is that indicate that there might be success on the appeal because it's still appealing.
Yeah, it looks to me like it's going to fall apart like the Georgia case against him did. And I don't know, I kind of expected this all along. The one question is what took the court so long. The New York Court of Appeals whatever their high court is called, it usually works with great dispatch.
So and apparently it's a split ruling.
I haven't chased it down yet, but my guess is this is the first big step to the whole thing going away.
Well, speaking of going away, one of the things you hate to have go away is your money. You know, inflation takes it away, bat investments to take it away. But listen to me about this. Yeah, when it comes to your money, you want to be told the truth. And you got to ask yourself are you being lied to? You know they tell you to defer paying your taxes by saving in a four and one K or an IRA because then you'll retire at all our tax bracket. But if that's true, why are so many retirees in
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com slash ricochet. Bank on yourself dot com slash ricochet, and we thank bank on Yourself. Responsoring this the Ricochet podcast, at Ali, welcome back to the podcast. RUI to share on He's a senior fellow with the American Enterprise Institute, co founder and politics editor of the SUBSEAC newsletter The Liberal Patriot. He was a founding fellow of the Center of American Progress and co author The Emerging Democratic Majority in two thousand and two. More recent publications have included
The Optimistic Leftist and Where have all the Democrats Gone? Welcome, well, thank you, glad to be here. A lot of talk this week about how the Democrats are losing some of their customary support, that they are pulling horribly with young men. As a matter of fact, there seems to be a move from young men to the Republican Party. As somebody else was pointing out this morning, that they got a
Karen problem, and they refuse to acknowledge it. Problem is that Karen's are their base, and Karen's vote all the rest of these things. So the change in their appeal seems to have been rather size maicing, tectonic, and it shifts due to a variety of reasons. So I'm gonna ask you if indeed you see that big of a shift, and if you do, if you share what the writer
of pinning as the reasons for it. Mainly a sense of cultural disdain, looking down, being scolds and no fund and all the rest of that stuff, right.
Right, Yeah, No, I do think they're in a bit of a pickle. I mean, I think the data is pretty clear in this. Obviously, we all know what happened in twenty twenty four A and what so many Democrats kidded themselves could never happen, That Trump would actually do better in the selection they'd ever done before, and there would be this shoe, these huge shifts among working class Hispanics, Hispanic.
Men, young men.
You know, there is even shifts among women who were just smaller than among men. So it was generally an all around, you know, clock cleaning by Trump. Since then, we've seen Democrats fail to really break out. Despite all the vulnerabilities that Trump is as evidence and a lot of the things he's done, they just aren't very popular.
The overreach on a variety of different issues. People don't have much faith in the economy, even despite the fact they elected Trump to some extent to fix the economy. None of that has elevated the Democrats, who have historically low favorability ratings. They don't have much of a lead in the generic congressional ballot when if you compare it to twenty eighteen, they were already far ahead at this point.
And just for recently, of course.
There was this huge I mean, and people who follow these data kind of knew a lot of the stuff.
Anyway, there's a big data, deep data dive in the.
New York Times about voter registration trends over the last period of time, both up to twenty twenty four and even since twenty twenty four, and it's all bad, bad, bad news for the Democrats. I mean, they're just losing ground everywhere to Republicans, particularly in important states. Somebody actually crunched the data and looked at, for example, what's happening with young men and young women. I was just looking at this today, and among young women, those willing to
register as Democrats has declined only slightly. But among young men it's just cratered. It's now under thirty percent, whereas it was close to fifty percent not that long ago. So so something's going on here, you know, it's Dylan said, But you don't know what it is, do you, mister Democrat. I think some of them suspect it, but I do think that they're quite reluctant to really embrace it, understand it,
actually try to fix it. They think if they just change the subject, or they turn up the volume in economic issues, or they talk about abundance, so what have you, this will do it.
And I do not think that's true.
I think the critique that they're culturally out of step with the median working class voter and indeed the bulk of the population is just true. I mean, that's true in a variety of issues. You know it's true from voting behavior. We know it's true from where they're losing ground. I mean, this is a party whose national profile and the people who run it and the people who are associated with it are simply not the same type of
people who they want to vote for them. And they have a series of cultural attitudes that in fact does translate into disdain for the great unwashed of these United States.
And I think, you know, people aren't dumb.
They sense this, they know this, and they realize not only was that true leading up to twenty twenty four, and this is what I just wrote about on The Liberal Patriot. There's not a lot of change since then, right, I Mean, basically they've only backtracked very slightly. On some issues where people have tried to break from the pack, they've been immediately slapped down by the activists and other politicians.
And where the real action is in the Democratic Party now is basically amping up your resistance cred And that's why Gavin Newsom, the dreadful, dreadful Gavin Newsom, has actually like broken out of the pack.
I mean, they've sent these poles mean anything at this point.
He's clearly benefited from his willingness to do anything and say anything to maximize his resistance profile. So I think that's what plays within the Democratic Party now, but I think it's actually not what would play with the broad electorate as we move, you know, toward twenty twenty eight and beyond. I mean one way to one way I summarize it is they still we're at a populist moment, a populist age, right, and they still don't get it.
They still are not willing to be in touch with it, to acknowledge their weaknesses, which go far beyond not having you know, the best economic program or something.
So I think that's where we're at.
And again, like I see little evidence that they're changing their tune very fast. In the piece I was just alluding to, I called it two three many sister soldier movements. That's soldier moments. That's what the Democrats need, and I think that's true. They need to profile themselves as a different kind of Democrat, and to do that you have to break ostentatiously and directly with the forces in their party and specific individuals and groups. We were pushing this slow to say so really, let.
Me jump in right here.
First of all, it warms my heart as an inmate of Gavin Newsom's stand that you call him dreadful. I heard Mark Halpern yesterday saying he right now, in Mark Helper's judgment, is the front runner for twenty twenty eight. But you know, when I read your piece yesterday, one too many sister soldier moments, I had a flashback because it seems to me the Democratic Party has been there before, and I'm thinking of that time after George H. W.
Bush won in nineteen eighty eight. I don't know if you remember the book by Peter Brown, the reply to it even right well, there's one quote from here to share with you and listeners, and it's of the young Democratic governor of Arkansas, and as a long passes about how you know Jesse Jackson, who younger listeners may not know, was a real contender for the nomination in nineteen eighty eight and panic the Democratic establishment as much as Bernie
Sanders did twice, and he quotes Bill Clinton here saying, I have never believed Democrats need to distance themselves from Jesse Jackson. I think the Democrats need to disagree with him. And of course that's what Clinton did three years later.
Right well, I think, you know, it's like kind of a semantic distinction.
I mean, I think he really did distance.
So he did his intervention at Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition. I mean, it wasn't saying I hate Jesse Jackson, but the message couldn't have been clear.
So right, well, my question is is I don't think that person is Gavenusom, but is there somebody out there? And more to the point, if you strip away all the sort of social and cultural baggage drowning Democrats right now and they get back to an economic message, what is that message? I mean, I'm a fan of the abundance people, but I think there's some limitations to that. Although you know, I can't make their conference next month, unfortunately. I know you'll be there, but.
I'll be there case.
So that looks very promising to me as a policy wonk that I am. But beyond that, what is the message? What could work for a sensible democrat, say, I rot Emmanuel who if he gets out of the witness protection program for disagreeing about the transgender business. Right, what's the message going to be?
Yeah, I don't know. I think that's a you know, it's an excellent question. I mean, I do think that even a better economic program is merely a necessary but not sufficient condition to rehabilitate themselves without the cultural shift. I think even that won't go anywhere, no matter how.
Good it is.
But they do need dad say something about and what's their plan for the economy, what's their plan for national development? What's their plan for moving the country forward economically? And I think right now the abundance people are having a moment, that's clear.
But whose moment is this? Right?
I think this is a moment within the elite democratic discourse. I think it's a moment within you know, those who control the commanding heights of cultural production, right, they're willing to countenance. The Ideamocrats have screwed up some things. There's too many rigs, need more housing. Even our sacred clean energy commitments, you know, are are falling under the under the sway of all these regulations which you're holding it back.
That's a really bad thing because then we're all going to die if we don't have more clean energy.
So I think that's real. I think it's happening.
But what is its cachet among normy voters who might be interested in voting for the Democrats. What is its cachet with the working lass, both those who are still in the Democratic Party and those who have left it. I don't think it's really high. I mean, I think this is an elite discourse. I mean, even though I support various aspects of it, I do think that it's it's it's kind of problematic in a lot of ways. I can use that terrible term. It's just it's not
focused on the working class. It's not focused on abundances. Most people would define it who are not coast to liberals who live in big metropolitan areas, right, that's what they care about infield housing, fifteen minute cities, more wind and solar blah blah blah. This is not what people care about. People care about more stuff, being richer, having a big ass truck, living in the suburbs. They want more. And when you say abundance to a normal person, to extent they even understand the words.
That's what they think. Oh, great, you're gonna there's gonna be more stuff. Tell me how do we do this?
And let's say, oh, we have to change the zoning regulations, and then we have to make sure that this uh, you know this, this wind and solar project goes through and you know, much less time than it used to. And I don't totally do I don't think people are
say what you want what I mean? In a way, it reminds me of the reformicons back in the day, when we had an interesting set of ideas which certainly could have been an improvement, and where the Republicans were at the time, but it was again, it was part of the elite discourse.
It never really percolated down to normy voters.
Yeah I was one of them, by the way, and we get would we get run over by the Trump train in a hurry?
You did?
You did? The tire tracks are still your back man.
Hi, Really, it's Charles Kirk to speak to you again.
So I have a question about how you get from where the Democratic Party currently is to where you would like it to be.
I use you in the VU form. I don't think it's your responsibility.
On the right, we have a certain autoimmune deficiency in that, for understandable reasons, we don't like the media, and we also distrust a bunch of institutions, health institutions, for example. But sometimes that leads us to believe nothing that is said by a figure in authority or of expertise, and sometimes that can lead to really bad outcomes. And so if those who know what they're talking about are opposed to something, then that just gets discounted and it can
be quite difficult to advance reforms within the framework. On the left, it seems to me that the autoimmune deficiency is a sense that compromise is allowing in evil or bigotry or racism or whatever. And if you look at,
for example, immigration, you see this all the time. For most of modern American history, at least since the nineteen thirties forties, it was accepted that we have debates over who comes in, and sometimes the consequences are ugly, and sometimes they weren't, and sometimes we wanted more and less and different. But that was something we debated. And in the nineties when Clinton was president, you had Barbara Jordan who was in the same party.
People who were more in favor of open borders, right.
But now the idea in a lot of the party and certainly culturally, is that any immigration enforcement whatsoever, forget Trump, any enforcement is racism, xenophobia, bigotry, or whatever. And that's the sort of autoimmune deficiency, and that it prevents compromise or moving forward. And my question is how do the Democrats as a party get past that, because the average Democratic voted doesn't seem to me to be of that view at all.
But no politician.
Seems to be able to stand up and say, well, we need to compromise on this, this, that and the other, or debate this, that and the other because they get called names and they're terrified of being called names.
Yeah.
No, obviously there's a lot to that. I mean, who are who are the Democrats these days? Certainly if you just look at everybody who votes for a Democrat in any race, or even people who party ID at least leans democratic. I mean, there's certainly a lot more diversity than you see among the people who seem to be calling the shots in the Democratic Party.
I think that's true, But I think the farther up you go in.
The food chain, right from the activists to the people who run party organizations, to the people in the NGO, so the people in the foundation, to the people who control the media discourse who lean democratic, the people who who contribute the most money, the people have the loudest megaphones, the biggest voices. In other words, the hupper middle class professional liberals who really set the tone for the party.
They're just way more of them than they used to be, and they're way more liberal than they used to be. And they are the ones who make the trains run on time. They're the ones who are in the institutions that really are responsible for giving the Democratic Party the cultural legimity it has. And why should they change? I mean,
they feel these things are moral commitments. Plus they owe their position to some extent from reading chapter and verse from the Bible we currently have, So again, why should they change. It may not be optimizing for the Democratic Party as a whole, but they don't see it that way, and they're really optimizing to some extent their own individual position in the labor market or in the cultural discourse.
So I think, yeah, I mean, it's a long winding way of saying I think it's really going to be hard to change because I think the people who could most directly change the discourse are not going to do it willingly. And then you know, it would really come down to a sense, it's not going to be upswelling from the ground up of more moderate Democrats.
I just don't think that's going to work.
I think you would have to have, in the context probably of the presidential contest moving into twenty twenty eight, someone who's willing to break the crockery and thereby shift the discourse.
Is willing to take a chance.
I mean, I think the most probable outcome is they're all going to be herded toward you know, who's the biggest resistance fighter. I mean, I already see it happening. I mean, look at even someone like Andy Basheer, right, the big moderate from Kentucky. What is his big applause line. It's because he vetoed hateful bills against the LGBTQI plus population. I mean, this tells you a lot about where even moderates feel they have to go at this point within the Democratic Party debate.
So, yeah, you brought up.
The issue of immigration. It's really quite extraordinary. I mean, they got totally hammered on the issue. Everybody saw it was a massive failure. But now that Trump is actually shut down the border, there's no support for that whatsoever, other than even maybe even there's not even a lot of acknowledgment that it's happened, because the real concentration is on the ice raids, the pickups, the deportations.
I mean, people.
Uniformly Democrats and Democratic activists are apoplectic about this. This is a police state. This is completely unjustified. There's nothing good about it. Well, there are obviously stuff that's happening that's kind of noxious, But on the other hand, what is their program for deportations? So they would believe in deportations. Obviously, if someone can come here and if they stay for three weeks, they can stay here forever. That's not a
viable strategy, right, that's not The incentive structure is all wrong. So, and this is one reason why people don't trust the Democrats, because even though they may pick up on some things that are happening that people are viscerally apt and seem cruel. They don't trust the Democrats to trend, you know, sort of move on from that to an actual workable immigration program that what, as you say, decide who gets in
and who doesn't and would stick to the rules. I think voters have no faith in the Democrats for that at this point, and I think again, breaking out of that will be really hard for all the reasons we just we've just been discussing.
So Ry, can I ask you a different question about another about economics and populism?
Uh.
In addition to that amazing New York Times story about the voting problems, there was also this week, uh, the latest series of headlines I can go back to and feature stories in the Times. I want to call it up here about oh shoot, I'm having a trouble here.
No, here it comes.
Here's the headline, abolish the Senate and the Electoral College packed the court? Why the Left can't win without a new constitution?
Now could go wrong? What could go wrong? These are great ideas, right?
Well?
Yeah, aside from the merits or I think demerits of all those ideas. I have a simple question, which I have various answers, both psychological and philosophical for it, but I.
Want to hear yours. Okay, My question is, well, wait a minute.
The Democratic Party dominated American politics for fifty years in a New Deal era. They did just fine under those rules. So why do we need to change them now? Well, because they're not dominating politics anymore. They're actually losing elections. And so I mean, you know, the partisan conservative Republican will say, and I joined them half the time, is gee, now that you're losing, what's your answer? Change the rules
rather than change your message or adapt to it. But I mean, is that a is there some merit to that objection? I mean, I want to hear from a smart social democrat like you about how we should think about By the way, I've got a whole file of Times articles like that the Constitution is obsolete, we should get rid of it, it's an obstacle to change and so forth.
Now, wasn't there someone who wrote an op ed in the Times a while ago? I think this is before the twenty four election that advocated turning DC into seven hundred and twenty eight different histories, all of which would have their own senator or something. I mean, there's been a lot of right, there's been a lot of wacky stuff.
Yeah, you're here.
Sorry, here we Here are four more headlines that I've collected, all from the last two years. The Constitution is broken and should not be reclaimed all New York Times elections are bad for democracy.
Now, that one was just who could argue with that?
Right?
And then but another more serious one is the Constitution is sacred? Is it all so dangerous? In other words, I'm an old fashioned person who reads the Federal's papers that said, you know, Madison Hamilton's saying, you know, if the rule of law is going to replace the rule of men, that means our fundamental legal document must be an object of reverence by the people. They use that word reverence right now, I'm kind of old fashioned devote, devote on the founding, but I'm kind of seeing a
loss of reverence for the Constitution among many progressives. I'll stop there.
Yeah, okay, obviously that's that's true. And I think your point earlier about well, why would they be saying this now? And they really did just fine with the rules, and you know, long ears of American politics.
It really isn't that complicated.
It's like you say, the wrong people now have too much influence, and the wrong people have too much influence because of the way our constitution's structuralway or institution. Therefore we need to change that so the right people will have more influence.
So this is I mean, this is basically insane, I think.
I mean, the very fact that Democrats progressives would toy with this stuff, it's just an indication they're you know, they're they're running out of room, they're running out of they're desperate, they're flailing, right. I mean, this is what you do, and you can't think of anything else to say, Let's just change the prigand rules. See, I know the guy who wrote that op ed you you were mentioning earlier.
You used to write for the New Republic, the first one you mentioned, he's look, I mean, he's this is a kind of wild you know, progressivism, unhinged type stuff that plays very well in significant sectors of the party, and it's playing better now as the trumpetmen stration goes on, because you know, people are in full resistance mode. How
could this terrible thing have happened? I mean, there was like a window of maybe two months where Democrats seemed a little chase in well, maybe maybe we did screw it all up, Maybe we really do need to change a lot, And they say, nah, we don't need to do that. We need to change the constitution. We need more people like Zora and Ondani. You know that'll totally solve the problem. So I just think that all the indicators are now flashing red, as it were, on their
ability to reinvent the party. So I don't expect anything to happen anytime soon. And you know, we may have to go through another presidential cycle where they do even worse.
I can easily see that happen.
That was the story arc of the eighties into the nineties, right as you've finally lost enough elections by a lot that a talented person like Clinton came on. By the way, I just have to say, and then I'll shut up. I like the way you framed the beginning of your answer about you know, the right people the wrong people reminds me of that great Yes Minister scene where Sir Humphrey Applebee says to Bernard says, you know what happened when the right people don't get power the wrong people get it.
Such a great show.
Yeah, I am interested in patriotism.
My question, that's my question. Now good, we're all dying to ask this, right because the term liberal patriot warms my heart. When I was a liberal in college in the eighties, Democrats new republic style democrat, I suppose we're all patriotic. We loved America. It was, you know, the phrase that Rush Limbaugh would later use, the greatest country on God's green Earth. We would nod along too, because we understood a little bit of history and a little
bit of American exceptionalism. Could see exactly why this was a great endeavor. What people get, I think nowadays, not from the you know, from the Democrats who may work you know, in their city, you know, in various civic roles, but from the intellectual heavyweight to the party is sixteen nineteen is the original sins of this country that make it uniquely bad, and that to be a patriot is to align yourself with an enterprise that has caused all
manner of horrors on humanity. Because the isms of the colonialism, the Sexismombia, all of this stuff. This is a bad place. You can be patriotic about an ideal to which we might ascribe should it happen. But the idea of accepting this flawed structure, this crooked timber, is something great and being proud of seems to be lost in the party.
And when they try it, it's not authentic because how much of the ideological energy comes from colleges and comes from the people who have their degrees and the books and all that stuff, which there's a little use and seems to ignore history. Liberal patriot how many of you are there?
Well, I would not say we're a majority at this point and left of center circles, but you know, we're growing slowly, I think, I hope, But I do think you're right that the whole issue of patriotism and its identification and lact thereof with the left has become like a mega problem, and it wasn't really so long ago. I mean, Obama is really pretty different than the way the center gravity of the Democrats, certainly Clinton. You know, there's nothing wrong with America that can't be fixed by
what's right with America. That stuff is like borderline, you know, problematic, racist and all that kind of stuff. So it's funny you bring this up, though, because I just put out a big report with Rick Callenberg at AI called Bobby Kennedy Liberal Patriot, where we basically make a big deal in this in this report, and there should be an article about this coming out in the Free Press. That you know, Kennedy is just so different from the way
Democrats comport themselves these tastes. He was unabashedly patriotic, you know, pro family, pro working class work over welfare, against.
Crime, law and order.
You know, I mean, he was just a different cat than we have nowadays running around in the Democratic Party, and he was unapologetic about it. He was trying in a sense to rescue the party from its evolving trend away from a lot of these values and bring black and white working class voters back together and the party. Tragically, of course that was cut short, and who knew who
we would have worked. But I think he's an interesting model, and you know, he suffused a lot of what he did on his various policy positions with the fundamental idea of patriots. Even the way he treated poverty was patriotic. Like in a great country like this, you know, the United States of America, we should be able to have a decent standard of living for everybody, and people should pay their fair share because it's patriotic. He always that was kind of his touchstone, and I.
Think that's totally lacking now.
I mean, you brought up the sixteen nineteen project, because to me, that was a bit that really was a bit of a cut point to me when it came out. I mean, I know a lot of people went gaga over in liberal circles. So my first reaction is, are you kidding me?
This is terrible and you can't believe you're doing this is gonna alienate us from normy voters and it's not even true. I mean, this is a terrible way that this is a terrible way to conduct yourself. But it was the New York Times, the official.
Arbiter of you know, civilized discourse, that was like foisting this on the American public, at least the American educated public.
And I was I was appalled.
I could not believe it, and I said, oh man, we're in for it now. This is this is I mean, things that have already been going south on a lot of this stuff. But I just thought, not only the peace, but who promulgated it, and the rapture with which it was greeted in most educated left leaning liberal circles.
It's just just amazing. I was like, Oh, well, I guess we're not in Kansas anymore. Wow.
Those of us in the right take a look at things like the sixteen to nine project, take a look at the way that the culture has shifted in the overclass and what their ideas are, and we see, to use all the cliches, the results of the long march to the institutions where now you have colleges, museums and the rest of them are ascribed to a particular sad
of ideological precepts. And now when we try to push back on that, such Trump is trying to do with the Smithsonian, that's regarded as trying to change an objective reality to fit the criteria of dear Leader. When a lot of us are looking at this and saying, no, it's rewriting the plaque under the picture of Valley Forge so that it doesn't say that the result of the victory was the expansion of the country and the exclusion of the Indian I mean, investing absolutely everything less narrative.
I mean, do you guys see it that way? I mean, you're rational, sensible man. Do you sometimes see these things and say, why must this suffuse absolutely everything? And it's not wrong to get back to a more positive sort of accounting of these things without having to rub people noses in the filth of American history every second. Of course, I'm not making a question, I'm just ranting.
Right, No, I mean I agree with that. I mean I think it's become a huge problem. I mean, we're just talking about the sixteen nineteen project with the exemplar of this, and it gets back to Charles's point about the sort of autoimmune disorder or something.
I mean, you.
Cannot in Democratic party or liberal circles admit that there might be something to what Trump is doing, you know, to the universities, to an institutional like the Smithsonian, because by definition, what he's doing is nothing but a drive for white supremacy and authoritarianism. I mean, there's no gray areas, right, I mean, it can't be like he's overreaching.
In some ways.
This happened, you know, he went too far, but you know there was a lot of stuff that needed to be corrected.
I mean a lot of this stuff is crazy.
How they're rubbing people's noses and you know, they want you to think about the terrible stuff before you can think about the good stuff, and in the process, people's sense of you know, a country that is worth identifying with gets lost. And I think you know, Robert Bella, I think once talked a long time ago about the civil religion that's America, right, that's important to unifying our country, and it's you know, attached to various symbols, to various holidays, to various stories and myths.
I mean, that's a good thing. That's a good thing. That civil religion needs to be revived.
And one thing that's peculiar about the Democratic Party today is there adamantly one hundred and fifty percent opposed to anything like that. They do not want people to feel good about their country. They do not want people to buy into, you know, a glorious vision of their country, because that's what MAGA does.
Man, that's right wing. You know, so many things are right coded.
Now that again, if you are a Democrat and you raise some of these issues, say, well, clearly a lot of this was bullshit. Basically that the left was doing what people in the universities did or was it. I mean, your persona on grata immediately, you are just you know, you're just basically shilling for Trump, you're Trump enabling.
So who in elected office is getting this right? You said, even Andy Bisheer, Is anyone getting this right? In the Democratic Party? Do you see any Clintonian figure on the horizon who can pull the party back?
I'd say no at this point. I think they'll have to emerge.
I think there are people out there clearly who probably have a view that is fairly might be fairly close to reality of what's going on, but they're afraid to say it. I mean, you think preference falsification is off a problem for people in bureaucracies or corporations or whatever. I mean, upon politicians, it's huge. They hide a lot of what they think frequently, and you know, because they
think it's in politic to say it. So there probably are people out there Ruben Diego, for all, I know, there might be others who are like, realize, you know, we're lost. We really have to be out front about that we stand for something different. There were different kind of Democrats, but they're afraid to go through the Sister Soldier moments that I outlined in my piece that might actually underscore that. You know, the person who comes closer to it, oddly enough, is Betterman.
I mean, Betterman has been well, this is crazy. You know, we can't before this. You're nuts, you know.
But he's he's a you know, realistically, he's a marginal figure in the Democratic Party universe, even though I get a kick out of him. But you know, Jos Shapiro is the other guy from Pennsylvania, right, And Jos Shapiro is a perfect example of someone who probably has reasonably sensible instincts and a lot of stuff, but is way too measured, way too cautious to really get get out there and do it at least I think needs to be done to get out of the ideological prison they're in now.
I think he.
Will cautiously try to feel his way to the nomination, and I think in the process, he liked the rest of them, will be hurted toward toward Nusimism. Right, Gaba, Newcism has really opposed to Trump. I'm opposed to Trump, you know, so I think realistically that's where we are. I mean, it pains me to say it, but that's how it looks to me.
Folks. You can find more of this often at the Liberal Patriot, the Substack newsletter that Roy is one of the co founder and the politics editor of, and you should and you should subscribe because you will find interesting ideas counter to your own and sometimes intersecting with. And it's important to understand the smart liberal patriots on the other side of the political aisle so that we can figure out what we can do down the road together.
And of course, you know, in slight conflict over some of the things, work will never because you guys are just wrong.
That's for another podcast.
That's another podcast, and that would be fun. But I've enjoyed I've enjoyed this very much listening to what you have to say. And it's been great to talk to you, Roy, And good luck with a Substack and we hope to have you next time you come up with a book.
Absolutely happy to do it. Thanks all right, bye bye, right, okay bye.
And that was indeed a pleasure. But here's the thing, folks, we got to figure out is that there's conflict and then there's football conflict. And we have football conflict to tell you about. Charles, tell them.
It's of the virtual variety. Don't worry.
You don't have to be drafted into the NFL, sign up for a college team, and to the transfer portal or any of that. But if you are a Ricochet member and then you can take part in this year's fantasy football extravaganza. And if you do is, if not the best part, at least a good part. You might even win some money. You might win fifty bucks if you win the league. If you go to Ricochet right now, you'll see on the right hand side of the site there is a link. It looks like a football, so
it's fantasy football on it. You can't really miss it, and that will explain everything. The draft is going to be not tomorrow but the Saturday after that. The time is on there, so are all the rest of the details. There is an address that you can email expressing your interest, so go do it. You have eight days to.
Sign up and take pop grand.
Well do that. And while you're at Ricochet there by the way, if you haven't been there before signing up just to scrape some cash out of us, it's fine, you might take a look at some of the other things that we have. It's great when a piece from the member feed, which is for paying members only, and by paying members. I mean, it's not going to break the bank, don't worry, and you get more than you get a lot when the member feed, stuff goes to the main feed, just to show you what ricochet is
all about. Yes, there's politics, there's podcasts on intellectual property, there are pieces about motherhood. There's a post about a guy who's accusing his power company of maybe stealing his juice.
There's my diner, there's of course, and then there was a post that I absolutely loved by Gary McVay, one of our one of our great writers on the site, who's talking about the rarity of television moving to film and spends a lot of time talking about Jack Web, and one hundred comments later, we're all talking about the sprockets and the frame rates of kinescopes and thirty five and sea. It's nerdy, it's wonderfully pop culture in a
way that you haven't seen before. And it's just it's so ricochet to me to see something like that where you can talk about what happened yesterday, and also the fact that Jack Web was not a stupid man. He hired Julian London. So go to ricochet dot com and you will find everything there, in addition to meetups, of course,
because that's the great thing. If you are a human being not a bot, you can put out a little call and Ricochet members will come to you, and you can sit around and drink and have hamburgers and enjoy yourselves. And if my memory serves, probably talk about everything except politics. When we get together, we talk about all the other wonderful things in lives. Well, what is left to go? Let's see Trump's going to go. He's going to put an end to mail in ballots, which I think is
a good idea. I don't like them. I think they lead to harvesting. I think this trend where we just have all kinds of loosey goosey stuff for Oh, voting is going to be over seven days. Oh it's going to be ranked voting. Oh you can mail it in. No, you go to a place, you show them your ID, you sign a piece of paper, you go into a little hacked off porta potty, and you make your marks in the oval, like the Iowa Basics test. That's how you vote. Now, maybe that makes me a boomer I am,
but I think that I think Drum's right here. No mail in voting. You're here.
One little trivia point that I always like to bring up is, I don't know. It's twenty five or maybe even thirty years ago now that Jimmy Carter and I think James Baker got together. It did some kind of commission on voting, and one of their findings was, we shouldn't have mail in voting. It's just too prone to fraud and manipulation all things you just said. And that was the Saint of Jimmy Carter putting his name to
that report. That always gets forgotten in these debates about it, that even the Saint Jimmy Carter of Plains, Georgia was skeptical of mail in voting. One reason for that, by the way, is that he nearly lost his first rate race with the state Senate, I think in nineteen sixty two or sixty because of some fraudulent votes in this district, and he had to go to court to get them invalidated, and so he won by fifty votes or something. So he has a long memory of what voting fraud can do.
Can we must?
I think we split up the beginning of Trump's tweets in the middle. The beginning is correct, I also disliked mail in voting, although I will note that it works fairly well in Florida. I dislike all voting that is an election day voting in person, and would apply exemptions only for military overseas. So on the merits of it, I basically agree with you James, and you Steve and
Donald Trump. But the mechanism Trump suggested for implementing this was a'tistrophically unconstitutional, and he did use the phrase the states have to obey the federal government as represented by the president.
Now, hang on a minute.
So I am a conservative, and one of the things that I like about the federal government is that it is a charter of enumerated powers, and the states retain pretty much all control over everything that the federal government has not been given. Another thing I like about the federal government, as contrived by James Madison at al. Is that decisions about what the federal government is allowed to do are made by Congress, not by the President in
most cases. So in one fell suoite there, having gone from a very sensible position, which is mail and voting as bad, Donald Trump has articulated a view of power that would have made Woodrow Wilson Blush, and I don't want that power to be in the hands of anyone. I don't want it to be in the hands of Donald Trump, and I don't think anyone who likes Donald Trump wants it to be in the hands of the
next Democratic president. We saw what even Congress tried to do last time around under Biden, which was abmolished the Philip Buster to take over the entire electoral system to permanently advantage Democrats. And it is just worth pointing out that, yes, he's right on the merits, but if he were to try to do that, it would be and should be
struck down by the Supreme Court. Clarence Thomas presumably would write a coruscating opinion of the sort that he has written before when this was presented to him.
So yeah, correct idea. When he says he will lead a movement, that's how he starts.
I'm with him.
I hope Trump does a leader movement against it. I hope he persuades the country to change how it votes. He can't do on his own.
Problem is problem is is that you're absolutely right, but with almost everything it seems to me that Trump is doing. I mean, we could be again the show by saying this is a this is a wise This is a good thing to be done. It should have been done a long time ago. The fundamentals are sound, but I don't like he was how he's going about it. Most people don't care because nothing was done and now something's being done, and that's the norm erosion that I worry about.
But on the other hand, I mean, you go back and forth on this and say, well, let me sort of how bad of an apologist for a post constitutional United States it might be coming here because I say that I'm glad it's being done. I grapple with these things. But a lot of people will grapple because they're happy to see ICE doing what they should have been doing all of these years before, which is enforcing the border and getting criminals out of the country, et cetera.
Well, there's nothing wrong with that, of course, that's reasonable. I would just say that one of the things that has slightly disappointed me over this one, right, is that if the Joe Biden had said on Twitter or elsewhere, the states have to do what the federal government says, through me, the representative of the federal government, your president.
I mean we'd have gone and flicked the safety off rifles.
Like, come on, Stephen, last question before we go here. Have you ever been to a cracker barrel? You know, I don't think I ever have. They don't They don't have very many of them out here in California. I'm not sure I've ever seen one out here. I know I've seen them elsewhere. But you know, I'm worried now about the slippery slope.
We've lost Aunt Jemima, We've lost the you know, the the Indian lady on Land of Lakes. Butter, I'm worried about Crackerjack.
That could be next.
Well, as he's a tired and sort of early twentieth century naval uniform. So there's a militarism there extend. You know that that was the time when the Great White Fleet, oh my gosh, the White Fleet was, you know, it was doing bad things in the Philippines. So yeah, I think get rid of him and just keep hugged the dug whatever the dog was named.
I do know how cracker Barrel can turn it around. This is obligatory. Well, they need to obviously start an ad campaign with Sidney Sweeney because you know, just because the crack.
Of barrels, yes, jams, yes.
Now I want to know you think of crackerball because you are the great collector of Americana, so you must have a take on this.
No.
Well, I mean I have no cracker barrel stuff. As I said before, I've never been into one, never had a particular desire to do one. I find suicidal brand changes to be fascinating because they took rid of the guy in the rocking chair. He has a name, he's part of their whole corporate mythology. They got rid of him in favor of a bland logo with the words
cracker barrel are too small, driving me nuts. But what they're doing there is they're sort of getting away from basically, you know, explicit chatty iconography from the eighties and the nineties and the rest of it would have worked, but it's dated. To them. Everything is dated, everything's brown. They don't like the clientele because they're old, and so they
want to bring new people in. But the people that will be brought in by a brightened up place are not the people are going to go to cracker Barrel in the first place. I mean, they're in a difficult position. They have to satiate the desires of the old clientele at the same time bring in some new people to look around and say, I feel somewhat hip. Now this is a modified look at what my grandma's kitchen used to.
You know, I'm just fascinated how chains die. Chili is having a moment at present because they've just done very well with their ads. They've come up with some price points that hit the right spot, and all of a sudden, Chili's is just big and it's booming. And then you look back and you say, what was across the street from Chili's, Well, TGIF with that explosion of an antique store in the wall motif that they had, and TGIF now expires and dies. What happened to Roy Rogers? What
happened to Shonyes? What happened to Big Boy? What happened to driving out on an American street? And there's a fighting chance you would see a fiberglass statue of a boy in a red and white checked overalls holding aloft her. Why did these things die? Why did they change? And it's it's an almost spiritual question when it comes to commercial America. So I think that cracker Barrel is in a hard position. I understand what they did what they did.
I find it interesting, however, that this fed instantaneously into the whole woke, go broke thing because Cracker Barrel at one point post twenty twenty, when companies were obliged to have a position on the major issues of the day.
If you remember back in the eighties, Charles Stephen, do you remember what the slogan was from the AIDS activists silence equals death right, ah right, And that was a way of politicizing every corner of America, demanding that if you don't say anything about a particular issue, then we are going to assume you're on the wrong side of it. And Cracker Barrel, which is supposed to be rural and Middle America and all the rest of it, put out rainbow rockers on the porches of their place to show
that everyone was welcome. Well, so that sort of inclusion, if you want to call it, that sends a message to people who previously had never won in a million years, wondered what the position of Cracker Barrel was on gay rights. And now they're looking at they're looking at a rocking chair or as they walk in to have their hotcakes and thinking, well, does that mean that Cracker Barrel is in favor of puberty blockers for minors? Because if they are, I've got a problem with that. And so when they
did that, that was part of the first problem. And then the stripping down on the modernization and getting rid of the old guy and the rest of it. Just sorry, my mic field down, they got a problem. That's only going to say nothing, just repeating myself at this point.
So would either of you like to repeat yourself or would you like to call it a day and let people get on with their lives or whatever they're doing right now, vacuuming gardenings, just sitting under the porch watching the world go by.
I have a one minute take if I can delay people watching the world go by.
Take it's my take. I don't think it's woke. I think it's crap.
And I think that it's crap because we have systematically removed creative people from corporations and replace them with those who know how to play the game, who don't actually have any talent. And this is true in the movie industry, and it's true in the restaurant industry. That woman is probably not some hyper progressive lunatic who is trying to destroy a crack a Bower because she thinks anything associated with the South, a rural America or America's past needs
to be obviated. She's probably just incompetent and bland. And she looked at those designs and says, yes, I love that, because everything in her life looks like that. And people who aren't like that, which is most people who can't play the corporate game that she has played, are looking at this and saying that's crap. And now this stock price is going to go down even further than it has over the last five years, and she's going to
get fired. And instead of replacing her with somebody who's actually talented, they were replaced her with the next person in line, who has said all the right things for the last twenty three years and has no personality.
Very good. I agree with you completely. My daughter's inn advertising, though, and so I'm here to tell you there is hope. There is hope for imagination and true creativity in the rest of it. On the other end, mentioned movies in
television all being crapped more or less. I was paging through the pain the other day and then the pain and the streaming channel, and then the other streaming channel, desperately trying to find something to watch that didn't seem formulaic or had stunt casting or a historical casting, and the rest of it. And I decided that I would give another chance to this highly tottered, highly weighted, highly
apparently desirable idea Aliens Earth. I don't know if you've heard about this, right, Finally they do in a television series what they should have been in the third movie, which is to take the xenomorphs and put them on Earth. But let me tell you something, Guys, stop me if you've ever heard of this idea. It's actually turning into a philosophical disquisition on the differences between humans and synthetic people. I mean, what does it mean to be human? What
does it mean to be mechanical? I'm stunned that this is the only the forty seventh iteration that I've seen of this in the last ten years or something like that. I want to take Westworld scripts, roll them up like in the first movie, and jam them down the throat. Whoever wrote this thing, I'm just not there, all right, that's enough. I'm ranting too much coffee, too much fun. I love talking to you guys, and it's been great to do so today. This has been the Ricochet Podcast.
You can join us, of course, at ricochet dot com, where also you'll find links to bank on yourself, support them, support yourself. Great idea and if you could leave a five Yeah, I was gonna say it wasn't I was gonna say you could leave a five star review. I don't know why I bother, but I gotta tell you it's in the contract. If you could be a five star review for us on an Apple podcast, we would
be very very happy about that. There, I've fulfilled my contractual obligation and I now commend you all to the rest of your day and we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet. Four point what Charles, because man, have you been tweaking?
Oh?
I think it's full point twelve point seven right now.
Wow, that's spoken like a man who knows his business. It's been great guys. Bye bye,