Greetings dear listeners! Before we get started, a reminder to head on over to WisdomofCrowds.live and consider becoming a pink subscriber if you're not one yet. You'll get access to, among other things, the full conversation as well as other subscriber-only benefits. And don't forget to give us a like and review on your favorite podcast app with all that out of the way onto the show. Alright, as I said Shadi, I got no notes, I got no thoughts. I feel like what happened
for the first time ever, ever in the history of this podcast. I mean, not known to our dear listeners is that we have gotten more professional in so far as we have weekly meetings now about WisdomofCrowds and what we're up to. We've upped our game a little bit, but we've always resisted planning the podcast episode, but our colleagues forced us into something, but luckily I've forgotten what the hell we planned. So we might as well have
not planned anything. I think we wanted to talk about how we feel, both of us feel I think disaffected from this moment, that we can't quite relate to what we see going on around us, that with Kamala's Good Vibes campaign, all the seeming joy and enthusiasm around her and the convention and seeing people genuinely excited about politics. Like this again is something that can give them meaning and to use the word again, Good Vibes
or Joy. Joy is the one. People are using this word so much now. And I just was home in Pennsylvania with my parents a couple days ago and I hadn't seen my dad since Kamala became the candidate and to hear him talking about Kamala with enthusiasm, I'm like, wait, dad, what is going on here? And he even used the words vibes and joy. I'm like, dad, I've never
heard you use the word vibes. Right. Joy, perhaps. In other context, presumably. So it's just interesting that my dad wouldn't be a strong candidate for this kind of vibe shift. And my dad isn't very online, although maybe he's getting more online because of this election. So when you see it happening around you and it seems like everyone is marching in lock step, everyone seems to be on the team, so to speak. And then you start to feel a little
bit left out. Like why am I not feeling what other people are feeling? Right. Well, I mean, we can start there right in the sense that you've always felt like you like being part of the team. So I don't feel the feeling left out part. This is how I generally feel about politics, you know what I mean? And insofar as I'm more to the right than you or whatever, I don't know. I think I said this before in the podcast. Certainly,
I think said it to you privately. I don't think if I look back to all the potential campaigns I could have voted for when I was old enough, but even playing the game of any president I could what that was, you know, candidate that was available that was running while I was alive. I'm not sure I would have voted for any Republican apart from like George H. W. Bush ultimately. I wouldn't have voted for Reagan. I wouldn't have voted. So, you know, I don't
have never had like warm fuzzy feelings towards Republicans. And, you know, I've liked Bill Clinton as a politician. I liked Barack Obama as a politician. I didn't like the rest of them really. But it so I guess what I'm saying there is like, you know, Bill Clinton and Obama were good at emotional politics, right? But I never felt like I'm missing out of being part of the team. I'll just sort of be like, wow, this is great politics. These
guys are really good. I mean, I think you're right about like what's going on here. The creepiest part is that your dad is saying vibes. And it's a word that I'd love to like see go away because it just means I think I think, you know, sort of positive emotions or just emotions. I guess vibe shift means like any sort of collective emotional shift on anything, right? Yeah. Like perception, I don't know. This maybe makes me sound really
old, but I think that's what vibes means. Do you have a better sense of what it's supposed to mean? Yeah, I think that's right. And I guess it raises the question, is there anything intrinsically wrong about collective positive emotion? So it, I mean, vibes don't really have substance. In part, they're about responding to what's around you because if you see other people feeling the vibes, then the incentive for you to feel the same thing, they're feeling
increases. So there is a kind of mass, mass politics, mass media effect. And maybe that's the creepy part that you're pointing to because it doesn't have, it's not coming from anything real. It's almost produced. There's a kind of manufactured consent. Yeah. When you see, so I guess the way it works is you see elites and writers and commentators and they're talking about vibes. And then that filters to other people in the Democratic Party or
in the Democratic Party universe. And then it just keeps on spreading. Yeah. So I guess, I guess here's my question that I haven't really resolved on this thing, right? Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, I think it was less puzzling because they were just raw political talent. Like you see them perform and you're like, okay, yeah. And I think, no, again, if we're forced to stick to this new, you found vocabulary and say vibes about
it, they were, they were good vibe politicians, right? Which is, but there was substance, but there was also something real behind it. They were raw political talents. No one questioned whether or not Bill Clinton or Barack Obama were like talents of their generation. Yeah. No, no, no one thinks that, well, actually, now they do. Well, but that's it. That's it. Because I mean, I think we can talk about the fact that like there's also very little
policy stuff underneath the Harris campaign so far. And they're studiously avoiding it. I mean, we're recording this, you know, maybe around the time when the CNN first interview with with Kamala Harris and her Veepe candidate is taking place. But, but yeah, like there's not that much substance, but, but we can, again, we can get to that and what the media
is like, you know, helping in a bedding here. But what I'm getting at is that like, you know, getting caught up in Clinton or Obama is because they are raw political talent. What's striking is that Kamala Harris herself isn't that she's not a charismatic speaker or at least we've had no evidence of it yet, you know, but she's not even a raw political talent. Well, she was actually seen as quite the opposite up until I don't know like three
weeks ago or like a month ago. So I think part of what makes both of us uncomfortable is how someone can go from not being seen by almost anyone as a raw political talent. And in the in the span of three weeks, you have a complete narrative shift about who she is. And this new sense where people are comparing her to Barack Obama 2008. Yeah. And you
almost feel like people are playing a trick on you, right? Like they're gaslighting you because there's no way someone can go from one thing to something completely different in a month. Like that's not how this usually works. So in some sense that that narrative has been created and pushed upon us. And now we're all expected to kind of just step in line and be like, Oh, she is such a raw political talent. Right. Whoa. Like she's
the second coming of Barack Obama. Right. And I think for those of us who have a more skeptical approach to politics and a kind of we don't love crowds even though even though we've named our podcast. Yeah. And even though I say that I love democracy, which I do, though, but I'm someone who's very skeptical of when large numbers of people coalesce around something very quickly because that can't be organic. That there's something that makes
that happen. Okay. So, but that's the interesting thing, right? Is is I do want to get back to the policy substance because I think there's there's something to be said about like that and what Trump brought to the table on like freeing politics from any substance. But I I on the question of coalescing quickly, yeah, I think you're right that it's the changing of of people's minds very quickly. That is that is creepy about it. But you know, there's there's the other
thing just to consider. And that's like where is this coming from? And on some level, I feel like one and I find myself doing this maybe because I'm I feel more detached from it. And even though you and I network in the in the big media complex and it's frustrating that you know, the campaign is is not like cooperating really is not like answering questions and all the rest of that. And then the question, you know, as you sort of alluded to is what complicity do we have of sort of also
like pumping this up? I still find myself despite all of that looking at what they're doing and being impressed like they are managing this very well. And you know, on the one hand, you know, Obama comes out of nowhere. And because he's just a raw political talent, all of a sudden he galvanizes people, right? I mean, when was that 2004 Democratic convention? Yeah, I give a speech. People were like, oh, and like you came from nowhere, like, you know, it's just was he a junior senator at
that point already? Yeah. And so that's okay, right? Like that kind of thing, it makes sense. And I guess what's making you and to an extent, me uncomfortable is just like that that there's no substance behind it that's doing it. But nevertheless, wouldn't the credit go to the campaign that they have managed to manage the situation? They have they were, you know, by happenstance, by luck, been handed a very abbreviated schedule. They looked at their candidate. They saw the troubles
she's had in unprompted interviews, speeches, and things like that. And they identified this as a weakness. And so they said, okay, how do we manage that weakness best? How do we then flip the script? And, you know, what they did, I think, from a communication standpoint, is also smart. Is that they saw what wasn't working with Biden, which is, you know, values, democracy versus autocracy, threat, darkness on the other side. You saw it when they latched on to Waltz's weird thing and
started like calling the Republicans weird. But now they've switched from weird and they've just been like, we're the positive message. Those guys are just the negative message. And that's a different way to like think of vibes, right? Is just like they are relentlessly messaging in a different way than the other campaign. And I respected and I actually like that because I was very much a critic of Biden's approach to campaigning, which as you said, was very focused on American
democracy is dying. And if Trump wins, this is the end of the Republic, that I couldn't be more against that kind of rhetoric. I've always found it very to use it to sort of say problematic, which we're not supposed to use anymore. Right. Soon we'll put vibes on that list as well. Exactly. And I even, I wrote a column with a colleague, Aiden Barton. Brilliant. Yeah. Which and he did a lot of data visualization and kind of we ran Kamala's speeches, her
campaign emails. And we tried to try to look at what the trends were numerically. Like what do we actually find when we run the numbers in her campaign messaging? Yeah. And it is really a stark shift from what Biden was doing. We see a real like an almost precipitous drop in mentions of January 6th. She really moved away from that. She brought some of that back in her convention speech. Right. But if you look at the averages, much less of that much less emphasis on democracy
and democracy dying and much more of a focus on the future. Yep. Freedom. Yeah. Abortion rights, even an increase on border and immigration. So it just, if you look at it, I actually, I like that. That is kind of what I would want a democratic candidate to do. So I'm kind of torn in that respect. Because I think she's making good moves. What makes me uncomfortable, though, I think is much more on the manufactured consent piece of it, the sense that commentators can, so you had some people
who were saying, Oh, Biden will never leave. He shouldn't like, and then all of a sudden they're like, Oh, no. Now, Kamala's the best things in sliced bread. You have people who are just like when people shift very quickly, that's what makes me nervous. Because I think there is pressure for people to not mess with the vibe. So what I've been critical of Kamala, which I still continue to be, I get all these, all these responses from people and they're like, Shady,
like basically why aren't you reading the room? Like Shady, Kamala's the candidate. Why are you bringing this stuff up? Yeah. And that's which stuff like Gaza stuff is that where you're most of critical or other. Oh, yeah, on Gaza, but also on I didn't like her speech and the convention. And apparently I'm in like a relatively small minority on that. And then I think I think that I'm living in a parallel world because I see my feed and everyone's like, this is such a great
speech. Right. And I'm like, okay, at best. And for those of you who, very few of you, I presume, who didn't listen to it or read it, we can include a link to the show notes. If you want to refresh your memory, but in no, like there is no way in my perspective that that was a great speech. Sure. So I'm wondering like, are people gaslighting me? Like, I mean, they're not gaslighting you. Do you? I think, I mean, my impression is, and again, you know, a lot of our colleagues are
quite enthusiastic. And again, I mean, I'm not saying on the new side, I mean, our colleagues and on opinions. I think it's genuine. Oh, yeah, it's genuine. But I mean, I take your point. But I guess I don't understand. But I think there's also kind of, I think a lot of us have an incentive to think that Kamala is doing better than she's actually doing. Well, there's that. Yeah. I think all of us want to believe that she's going to be Donald Trump. So I think there's like a
weird dynamic here where I think, and I even long for this to some extent. And this is why I'm susceptible to the vibes because I want this to be real, even if it's not based in substance. And you can create, if you can create a narrative, which then in turn, pushes more people to believe that that narrative is true. And I don't mean to sound or well-earn about it. But like, there's a way of creating your own reality. But that's also what
makes me uncomfortable that you can just fashion. You're creating your own reality. And then that reality in turn is creating new realities. And you end up being in this very weird substance-free universe where nothing is real and everything is created. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, the main question is, is why are you so hung up on real versus not? Like, I mean, I think what's what's manufactured is I would argue this idea that she is like an Obama-like speaker. Like,
she's not. She's a, she's handicapped by that. That's a handicap of hers is being able to, I think, inspire. But, you know what I mean? Like, I was thinking as you were just talking there, what is democracy other than inspiring your side enough by whatever means, you know, necessary to do so to come out and vote for you, right? And I guess, you know, one like cold-blooded way to look at it is that, like, basically all democratic party inclined people were so demoralized
by Biden, even before he shot the bed in front of everyone on national TV, right? And that, the campaign obviously tapped into that sense of relief and ran with it. And I think there's, this is what I was saying, like, you know, I think we should give full credit to the campaign in this. And arguably should give a lot of credit to her for this. It's her campaign. I mean, she's got good advisors, but at the end of the day, Bucks stop somewhere and presumes it's with her. And so
they're running a very like smart campaign and to basically get people excited. Now, I think, you know, what you're getting at about the gaslighting and getting, you know, especially us in the press and commentators where we may end up losing our way. Again, I think like, if a commentator feels inspired by a campaign and wants to express their positivity, that's fine. I think, you know,
grumpier columnists can grump about it. But, you know what I mean? It's, it's, it's, where we go astray is if we end up convincing ourselves and our readers, then as you said, she's doing better than she is. Because that's the thing to take a step back. Like, there's a lot of this excitement. Your dad is talking about vibes and joy. Like David French had a freaking joy column this week as well. I didn't read that. What was what was the vibe of that? I just saw, I saw
joy in the title. I was like, okay, you're totally a cannot. Yeah, I'm not even I cannot. I was just like, I've got better things in my life. That's all. And I just like, you know, enough. I know enough. And so, so what I'm saying is is the problem becomes for like a news organization. If, if, if you take the individuals sort of enthusiasm and then extrapolate from that like different kind of momentum.
And then, then you start gaslighting yourself and then you're doing bad analysis. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And so, so, but, but the reality is is that for all of this joy and everything else, I feel like what she's done is brought back the reality of the campaign, which this is a 50-50 country. That and the Democrats were hobbled by a corpse of a of a of a president, an incumbent. And now we're back to it. We're just back to where you would have had the race if Biden was not
old. Yes. You know, and so, so easy to forget because you see all this coverage and talk and discourse around joy and enthusiasm and the best convention ever and Democrats are united in all of this. And the risk there is that if you start believing that you start to get maybe into something something like 2016 where everyone just assumes that Democrats are going to win because they're so over there like how could he how could come along not win? Right. Everyone we
see around us is joyful and enthusiastic. There's no way Trump could beat that. And there's a risk of just sort of getting overconfident. Yeah. And believing that the country isn't still something that it is, which is as you say, a very polarized, closely divided, relatively calcified, political environment. Right. And I think we have to be very like if people want Kamala to win, I think they have to be self-critical. And I don't see a lot of self-criticism. I see a lot of,
oh, you know what? Don't look too closely at that. The fact that Kamala doesn't like speaking to the press and has waited a very long time to give an interview. And even then she's not giving the interview on her own. Yeah. She has like a sort of like kind of a buddy who can kind of fill in the gaps. And if she struggles a little bit, he can jump in. Like that is not great.
I think it's not great that partisans are playing this game of not that. I mean, it's funny looking at the Washington Post comments for, you know, some of the columns that go up, which you know, you sometimes end up doing even though it's not always healthy. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's interesting the extent to which a lot of the post commenters, at least on more conservative columns, end up attacking the post more broadly. And so why should she talk to the press? The press will just
come up with negative stories and elect Trump, you know? I mean, like the really hardcore partisan supporters of Harris are actively have turned on the press. I guess what's interesting to me is that the reality is that I think the press itself, even though, you know, there's a lot of this emoting and joy, especially in the commentary at right now, I think the press has learned the lesson about
not overestimating things like the 2016 lesson is felt, I think, pretty deeply. And you know, at least in sort of casual conversations, you know, with colleagues and friends, I think everyone's worried for like the next Joe Biden moment, like when is she going to slip and do moralize the side because you think that's something that you I feel it. I feel it. People are just like
they're waiting for they're waiting to either for a slip up. And I'll say more about that because I think this is another smart thing that the campaign is doing by even playing this game like shall we shall we not give interviews. And by signaling that they're worried about it, it sets up an incredibly low bar for you know what I mean? Like I mean, the real shocker about Biden is that he couldn't clear
also a pretty low bar that was set for him. And she's not like, demanded, you know what I mean? Like maybe she has like, infolicities. But I have a feeling that that's also somewhat intentional that they're playing this game because it sets up a bar that's kind of easy for her to clear. But I
think our colleagues in general also do know that it is a pretty tight thing. And I think you'll see in the next like month or two moments of severe panic on the center left as you know, as Pennsylvania like remains, you know, seemingly out of reach for Democrats and all these questions come up about decisions that were made in the context. It's going to be there's going to be all sorts of
of backbiting and sort of second guessing. And then the other thing that I think is a is a weakness that the campaign can't control is all this reports that you know, she's difficult
to work for. So I wonder whether there's going to be falling that falling falling out and and like falling outses, fallings out, fallings out, fallings out, like attorneys general, attorneys general, follow up, people know that you're not supposed to say attorney generals, attorneys general, fun fact for our dear listener, especially for those that are not native speakers
like myself. But look, I think the other, but okay, maybe just to put a finer point on what I think is like bothering me about some of this is the expectation that I as a writer as an analyst should get in line when as we've talked about in previous episode with Freddie DeBoer and also before that, the job of a writer and analyst ideally should be to question those in power
and to be unsparing and to call things out. But I think we, but I think there's a lot of writers though overestimate their own influence and they worry that if they do that, it could actually like tip the election to either side, which is absurd. Like we, it's a nice fantasy that Shaddy's column could actually tip the election. But sometimes when I see people attacking me in the comments, like guys, what you just read is not going to give the election to Trump. Like,
not going to give the election. I think that's totally right. But you know, you do have a lot of power. I mean, you know, at the post, not the post, you know, you personally, but also one at the post, I just like an anecdote is our colleague Catherine Rampell wrote like pretty savage column criticizing the whole, I think it was subsidizing the grocery stuff. I don't think it was the housing stuff. It was the, it's not subsidizing, but the price gouging and you know, all that little
proposal that they floated. And I think they walked it back. And I mean, I don't know if it was just her, but like certainly her column and a bunch of others were just like, this is nonsense. Now again, this is the, but that's changing a policy. Yeah. And that's very, that's great. But like actually, oh, your words, yeah. Like being decisive. I mean, if I had written, if Biden had
stayed in the race, right. And you know, I could imagine like writing something, well, I'd not really imagine I wouldn't have done this, but let's say hypothetically another version of me who's different than me would have like called on Arab and Muslim Americans to stay at home. I was calling, I was calling on you to do that. Yeah, I think you, yeah, you were calling. Again, I just want to be clear to listeners. That was not something that's not what I believed. That's not something I would
have done. Right. But you can imagine if a columnist who's Arab or Muslim American and who has like a prominent person, a major, in a major newspaper, that could actually have legs and give a permission structure to other Arab and Muslim Americans to stay home. Like because a lot of them would have been on the fence. Like what do we do in this situation? Yeah. So I can imagine like very specific scenarios where like with great power comes great responsibility. And you have to think carefully
about that sort of thing. But generally speaking, that's not how totally, you know, so, but then people act is because so much is at stake and the margins are so razor thin that there is this sense of everything is existential. And I'm against this idea, obviously, as listeners will know of seeing elections as existential battles. Because once you start looking at it that way, then you can justify anything in the name of victory. But so couple paradoxes,
right? In what's what's been what's been going on. Even as like this kind of rhetoric starts spilling up about existential stuff and you know, the fear and things like that, I think I texted you the one what's it called. Thing that I saw, I saw Donald Trump was announcing today that under a second Trump administration, IVF treatments we paid for by the government.
Like fascinating. And then but then on the other side, right, is that like Harris is throwing the green you deal in like environmentalism under the under the table saying, you know, we don't need to be limiting fracking and all this other stuff in order to, and these are tweets I haven't like looked into the substance of it and to do all of that. But more broadly, right? I mean Trump
certainly has pivoted very hard on abortion because he sees it's a huge liability. He sees that the pro-life movement has overreached in a big way and it's a political liability for his chances to win. So he's doing everything and his power to to moderate on that. And so it's funny, right? To a certain extent that that that this incredibly polarized and high stakes as you put it campaign, both sides seem to be making like a mad dash for some imagined middle that is like
less like that the on the issues such as they are. And I mean, I admit this is this is not a technocratic a battle of two technocratic visions or anything like that. But at least rhetorically and sort of on the, you know, the very high policy level, there's like some sort of mad dash for a middle compromise. I'm finding that fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. And like, what's that? What is that? Is that like a different outcome of like the vibes campaign that, you know, that that
insofar as policy is back? Like we're fighting for the median voter again, right? Yeah. I don't know what to make of that. That just like struck me like like a couple of minutes before he started recording. I was like, gosh, you know, but in a way like I kind of, I don't want to say, I might have to think about it more, but part of me likes that insofar as like ultimately we want elected officials or those who want to be elected officials to be responsive to public sentiment.
So if you see people making reversals like that, it means they're listening to public sentiment. Isn't that kind of what we want in a democracy? So when people like talk shit about flip-flopping, oh my god, this person flip-flop. Right. Right. Right. Actually, you do want people to flip-flop some of the time because it shows that they are responsive. Right. That they're listening. And I think there's a term for this that I think is often associated with, um, Maclaseus popularism. Right.
This idea that you pursue policies not because they're necessarily like great, but because they're popular. Right. Right. Right. And that's good. So I mean, what you want to say? It's just, it's a weird moment. It's a really weird moment that, that, that, you know, sort of being freed from policy. We end up in this sort of place of actually a kind of weird
pursuit for a squishy middle. But isn't there like a deeper like first principle operating here that the reason we like popularism is because we assume that if a lot of people coalesce around a particular policy preference, then they probably are doing like they're probably maybe they're right. Like if enough people believe in something, then they're probably on to something. Like it's a wisdom of crowds sort of dynamic. You know, we had, it wasn't you as Christina and I talked to you of all of
them. You know, the his book, what the point he makes though is, you know, the, the, the, and it's not his point. I mean, many people have made the point, but the, the wisdom of the founders is not the wisdom of the crowds. It's in fact that the system is set up specifically to create
gridlock to, to, I mean, the way he puts it is to force compromise, right? The fact to create these places where just like things grind to a halt, which then, you know, builds up frustrations and encounters and sort of and that is, you know, his, in his part, it says you create a people out of that because there's no American people in, you know, any sort of like nation states sort of way. And it's always been diverse and crazy, even when it was like, you know, a majority white
Protestant country. It's still just like geographically, you know, different kinds of people. And, you know, that, that's how like consensus is formed is through not action, not through an idea that, that you have your building, you know, like mass support for stuff, but that, and maybe that's what you're seeing here is that, you know, both parties have, at this point, like locked in their true
believers. I would say that's something Harris has done pretty skillfully as well, right? I mean, I mean, I maybe you're, I haven't been following what you're tweeting about Gaza and her now is, it's sort of like the mask has fallen off, but she's pretty good at alleviating your concerns early on. It looked like, you know, by even picking walls, you were like, okay, she didn't pick Shapiro, that's like, like, step in the right direction. And, and yet, you know, like, she's keeping your
options open and like, you're not going to go anywhere now. And similarly, I think for Trump, unlike the pro-life people, they're not going to go anywhere now. So, so now they're, they're, they're fighting for like these sort of compromise positions, I think, they can ignore the base and sort of, you know, pull in the center. And I feel like we haven't seen that in a really long time. I feel like I haven't seen that in a really long time. You know, it was sort of like a,
it's a funny thing that we used to say. It's like every election is like, oh, they're all going to pivot to the center. When did that happen last? Yeah, but you know what, centristine though, I think Trump has always been unique in this regard. Yeah. He's, I mean, I wouldn't want to overstate this. He on, certainly on economics, on economic issues, he's not a traditional libertarian leaning, free market here. Yeah. Republican. So in, in some sense, on like, pretty big economic issues,
he's moved the Republican party to the left. And on social security entitlements, again, he's kind of like the Paul Ryan version of the Republican party, which we barely even remember now, because Trump has completely subsumed that under in his own image. Yeah. But Republicans don't talk about these things anymore. Trump has moderated the Republican party on economics and trade. Yeah. And I think also to cite my place is one more time. Well, moderated on trade though,
it's interesting to say that. So moderate on trade for you is to be more protectionist. That it's, that it's, or he's moved more to the, like he's moved left words. Right. Which means that if you think about rep, like, I'm just, we don't dwell on this, but I thought that was an interesting little thing there because, because again, I mean, I think it's, I would just put it differently. It's just like shifted the orthodoxy fantastically. Yeah. Because, yeah, I mean,
I guess a lot of lefties have said that that completely unfettered trade is radicalism. But like, so many people have also said that Trump has been radical by import. Oh, yeah, that was in terror. So interesting that there's, I think there's two different ways to look at how he approaches economics, depending on what your priors are. Right. Right. Right. But anyway, go on. Sorry. Then what the real is there. Yeah. So on economics, yeah, like he's been, he's been flexible,
you were saying. Like he, and he's got that talent of flexibility as a politician. Yeah. And you Magglettes came up with this phrase, unhinged moderation to describe Trump's Republican party. Right. That they still seem crazy on cultural issues and like fighting the wokes and the kind of existential tenor of culture war and that sort of thing. But when you actually look at policy proposals in a more technocratic sense, the Republican party has changed and become more,
quote unquote, moderate. Right. But it's really hard to see it as moderation because of all the craziness that is very much tied to the person of Donald Trump. Right. But all of this, I think speaks to like fascinating dynamics in our politics. And also, I think what's really interesting about Trump is sometimes he seems like he will say anything in order to win. Other times, it seems like he doesn't actually want to win or he doesn't care enough about winning to actually do the work.
So to speak, right, which is a really interesting paradox. Like Trump could like he should really, like in some ways, you would think he would have this in the bag and he would like he should have been in a much stronger position now. And he seemed like obviously after an assassination attempt and all of that. But he just has squandered goodwill. And he, yeah, he hasn't been able, like he's just rattled. And he's like sometimes he's saying really crazy things. But other times he'll, he
seems like as with the IVF treatments, he's willing to say like whatever people want to hear. And he kind of like vacillates, you know, I agree with that, right? I mean, I just pushed back on the idea that like how much he squandered. I mean, I think he was bizarrely taken back by the possibility that Biden would step down. I think he spent like a week and a half sort of denial about that and like trying out different things on it. But again, I, I, I, I'm stuck sticking to my guns here
that it's not that this is not a incredibly successful Harris campaign. I think she's just brought it back to where it would have been with like a normal democratic candidate, right? Yeah. And so that means that Trump was riding high, not because of goodwill from his assassination attempt and from his supposed, you know, soft side that he tried to drone on about from like two hours at the RNC. But he also just to add on the soft side because we were texting about this.
Like people, people should really listen to Trump's interview with Theo Vaughan, the comedian. Yeah, that's good. That's really good. I mean, there's, there's like a whole section where Trump and Theo Vaughan like really kind of open up in an almost touching way about substance abuse and alcohol addiction and hearing Trump talk about his late brother, who was never really able to get past that and ultimately. And that's why Trump's a tea totler because because of his
brother. Yeah. Yeah. And I also find it like so yeah, humanizing right? Yeah. Like he seems to be like he seems to have really been affected by what happened to his brother. Yeah. And then he was able to like ask like ask questions and engage with Theo Vaughan like seem seeming like genuinely curious about Theo Vaughan's own struggles with substance abuse and you're like, what is going on
here? I mean, yeah. Right. It just like is we're so primed to think about Trump as one and one thing only this immovable bad evil person who but like like any human being he contains multitudes. There is a complexity to him. I mean, it doesn't it doesn't I think invalidate the the thing that things that we think about him though at the same time, right? In the sense that that he he's a very successful demagogue and he knows how to pull the levers and I think you know
oftentimes we look at these things, you know, like what is he doing? He's gone crazy. You know, it's it's it's also quite likely that he feels that he needs to placate some part of his of his coalition by just like doing that. He's like very instinctive on that sort of stuff. I mean, I'm trying to remember whether I heard this as sort of hearsay scuttle but
or was actually reported somewhere. I think it was just hearsay scuttle but and I don't remember who the person was and even then because I think it's hearsay I wouldn't reveal it but someone met with Trump and he seemed to indicate at some point that he knew that the January 6th stuff was just like chum really and like now again, I don't know, I don't know and like I said I I'm not even sure I remember who this was and whether I read it or it was told to me but I just think,
you know, that's interesting in the sense that that he's conscious. He's like a he's conscious provocateur, you know what I mean? He's just really good at that and it's not that every move he makes
is perfectly mathematically calibrated. It's instinctive and he knows how to play the game but I think it's fair to say that he knows he's playing a game or at least it's a I think it's a a plausible hypothesis that he knows he's playing a game and he's trying to pull the levers in the kind of way that he thinks a good win and you get that a little bit from again snippets from the campaign that he's telling his advisors be like don't question me on some of this stuff. But then
again, he's not actually running a good campaign. Like so like I was back to my point that he really wanted to win. He wouldn't do the things that he's doing to kind of like always get back to like these dumb nicknames for Kamala and talking about her racial identity. Things that are not winners with anyone like no one wants to hear Trump doing like a long riff on whether she's Indian or Black or made up. Yeah, I mean that shows like a real lack of discipline on his part. If he wants to win
really, he wouldn't be doing that. Also, if he really wanted to win, well, I mean part of the problem is that he picked a VP who is not ideal for his chances of winning. Yeah. And then that was a mistake. I think that's a mistake. Yeah. I would say the race baiting stuff. I you know, like yeah, it cost him some like faith in the in the middle. But again, I think he did it on purpose. He didn't stumble into that. That wasn't like an eruption of deeply felt racism that he had to
get off his chest. I think it was strategic racism. And I think he probably thought he knew what he was doing. Maybe miscalculated, but I don't think it was it was undisciplined. Do you know what I mean? Like I would say if you like got him in a candid moment, he'd probably say something on lines. Well, like I, you know, I needed to do that. And it shows that she's a phony. Like, yeah, he can just it. Yeah. Like he and that's what I'm saying. So it's not it's it's not I think
most of his like craziness is premeditated. That's all I'm saying. Like with bad judgment, I don't think he's undisciplined as you say. That would be my that's my theory of Trump. You know what I mean? Yeah. And I think that's giving him the due. And that doesn't, you know, you can one can look at the Theo von Sey and be like, oh, there's a real human being behind that. But like who gives a shit? Like he's he's he's he's doing like almost everything on purpose. You know what
I mean? In a way, like everyone is a real human being in the end. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure Hitler did great podcasts with fucking like some German Theo von German Theo von Wow. Yeah. Huh. Well, it does raise a question about like what is the nature of belief? Because like pretty much what we're talking about here is it's unclear whether anyone in this campaign universe really believes in anything all that strongly. There is a kind of fluidity
to how and this is what happens when you have substance free politics. And Trump was really the one who like mastered the art of substance free politics. He gave it to us. He invented it. Yeah. But that used to to us. But then it raises this question of like what does it mean to believe in something and what is a belief? And like even what you just said about January 6th and that Trump may not even really believe it and is doing a kind of performance. What like I do really wonder
sometimes what Trump really feels in his unguarded moments when he's alone. And maybe even thinking about his maker as he did briefly after the assassination attempt. Like I and maybe this is Niavite on my part that I believe that at the end of the day most people have to contend with their own mortality and even really bad people. Like there's got to be those moments where they're like okay, I'm going to die. Yeah. And at some point like and if you believe that God exists and if
you believe that you're going to die. Like maybe there's moments of vulnerability where you're like like what are like am I comfortable with how I am? Well, are we talking about I think what you're talking about. I think maybe this is what we've been talking about this whole episode is is this what you're saying that you know what Trump introduced to us is like a substance free
politics and like in a way of values free politics. And it's like or you know the politics of vibes ultimately is what we're talking about just like Trump introduced it through dark vibes and now like we're seeing the the the other side of it. And I counterintuitive because we also see this moment as the moment where American politics is so foundational that they're right exactly that these are not actually superficial divides that what divides us as a country are really foundational
questions around values and conviction. So we have these like two parallel discourses and we've talked like so in some ways I can interpret the last eight years of American politics as existential politics because we disagree fundamentally on the biggest questions of who we are and what we believe and what it means to be American and the meaning of the nation the role of religion and
public all these big things that I think have come to the fore and divided us. But on the other hand you can interpret it as I think there's also two levels like you can look at it the politicians and then you look at the people who are trying to give meaning and intellectual scaffolding to the politics because you have the kind of post liberal Trump supporters who do see this as an
existential battle over values. But let me push you a little bit on the value stuff and not for the philosophers and the you know the people who are arguing in the finer points of liberalism and post liberalism and the rest of it. But like what do you think the actual fundamental divide on values you're saying religion yeah sort of I think that's right but I think like where it really comes down to the thing that Trump threw the gauntlet down on and made explicit in ways other
politicians didn't was immigration and and and that is like a divide who are we are we are we are we open to outside the Americans to become Americans or are we not like America is what is that's that's not substance free that's very much but I would just say like I would just throw it out
to you that maybe that's it that's it for part one dear listeners there's a lot more where that came from if you're not yet a paying subscriber please head on over to wisdomofcrowds.live and become one to help support our work hope to see you in the bonus