Episode 899: The Great Burrito Debate

Thank you Welcome to the editors. I am Charles C.W. Cook filling in for Rich Larry on this Tuesday, August 11th, and I'm joined by Luther Ray Abel, by Jim Garrity, and by Dan Foster. Welcome, gentlemen. So our first topic today will be wokeness. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is a representative from New York, but seems to want to be more than that. Perhaps a senator from New York. Perhaps the president of the United States has dismissed the woke moment as being, quote, crazy. She said she has a... friend who refers to it as a crazy time. And then she went on to say that we should look at what candidates are saying now rather than what they said at that time, which I think is a little bit convenient, and also makes it sound as if this was something that happened to her rather than something... in which she was involved, but perhaps it will work. Perhaps people just want somebody to refute it and then move on. Jim, is this good enough? Is this going to work? Or are we within our rights to say, no, no, no, no, no, no. We need a little more than an oops. Well, Charlie, she referred to it as woke one. My favorite joke that I've seen on X the last couple of days was that hearing her refer to it as woke one is like hearing a German refer to World War I in the mid-1920s. A suggestion that there is a sequel coming. And as we all know, sequels are always worse than the original. My early editor's pick, Charlie, is your piece, on just tearing her apart on this. So yes, it is absolutely absurd. for her to act like, ah, this mass hysteria that just happened, came out of nowhere. Boy, that was really crazy, huh? No, like, from where I sit, that is not sufficient. And that if a, you know, person who was an advocate for a philosophy, for a set of policies, for the full-throated cancel culture, my sneaking suspicion is that, like, you walk us through. how that happened. Walk us through why you were so mistaken. Walk us through what you're going to do differently. I'm thinking about Kamala Harris in 2024, who kept saying that these positions she had taken in her presidential campaign of 2019. And yes, I say 2019, not 2020, because her campaign never made it to the calendar year 2020. She kept saying, oh, that's not my position anymore. She actually had a written statement through a spokesman.

that the things she has said on camera in 2019 were not her position anymore. There was never any elaboration of why her thinking had changed and how she saw things differently. She certainly wasn't doing sit-down interviews over this sort of thing. And so there's this similar effort to Emily Letella this, never mind, to just kind of wipe it away, shake the edge of sketch, pretend it never happened. Now, look, if you're old enough, you remember the Obama mania of 2007-2008. It woke 1.0, or whatever they want to call it, of the 2019, 2020 into the Biden years. Like, that was all pretty darn bad. Maybe not the worst hysteria we've seen in American politics. Maybe you can put the days of rage of the 1970s and stuff like that. But it was pretty darn bad. People were getting canceled for positions, losing their jobs, having their lives ruined for utterly mainstream positions. And now, of course, if you say, hey, you know, Hasan Piker should not have said that America deserved 9-11, well, now it's the right who allegedly is doing cancel culture. No one's saying, you know, Hasan Piker should be fired. At least I just think people shouldn't listen to him. But that's where we are. It's attempted jujitsu of, you know, the idea that, oh, the right wants to cancel people for saying controversial things now, as if your statement that men are men and women are women is comparable to saying America deserve 9-11 and that al-Qaeda has legitimate points. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a radical. Now, whether this will hurt her in a Democratic primary, I don't think at all. I think, you know, we're seeing. The DSA enthusiasm that we're seeing right now is kind of comparable to woke 0.1. In fact, you best start believing in woke 2.0 because you're living in it, to quote Pirates of the Caribbean. Dan, I have two views on this simultaneously, and I think they can't be reconciled. At least they can't both come to fruition. One is that although as a general matter, I think that mercy, forgiveness, understanding. are all important. I don't think that in order to be a merciful or forgiving person, you are obliged to trust somebody with higher office if they've shown that they fall. easily for moral panics. So on the one hand, my view of those who were the architects and advocates of work one, as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calls it, is that they simply should not hold office again and that there's no reason for us to involve them in our politics. I also think that Americans move on politically extremely quickly. There were only six years between Watergate and Reagan winning more than 40 states. There were only two years between Obama's landslide victory in 2008 and a massive pushback in the midterms of 2010. So the notion that American voters hold grudges forever, or really for more than a couple of years, seems fanciful to me. Which of these two presumptions do you think is likely to prevail?

Oh, I think it'll be back. I mean, and I think, I think you're right. Americans do have a short memory for lots of things. And, you know, the fundamentals and electoral cycles are so important and so overriding that it's the norm when, you know, results. you know, break in line with the fundamentals. You know, where, where's, where's the economy? What are the growth figures? Are people out of work? Um, there's really only a few, a few things that dominate that. So I agree. Those big structural forces are unfortunately, or fortunately, maybe in some cases, just much more powerful, um, than a lot of the stuff that we, people like us pay attention to. I mean, I do think that there's, you know, a flip side. I agree with you about, you know, the, Forgive, but don't forget, right? I mean, just as a general life matter and in politics maybe where some graces do. But I do think as a compliment to that, you know, that we should just at least express some gratitude that that Cortez is embarrassed by that position, right? That is a good thing. We should be grateful that we live in a moment where Cortez is embarrassed by defund the police because a lot of us, maybe I was. paranoid or or you know anxiety riddled during the early pandemic But a lot of us remember those days and thought, well, are we living through the dissolution of the American Republic or what's the deal here? You know, there was so much insanity and it spread so quickly and with so little resistance in all of these institutions that had so much to lose from giving into this insanity, from the academy to, you know, the corporate world to K-12 education. arts and all these that had had public health let's not even you know we maybe get into that later but like all these institutions that had spent years or decades or longer you know um building up whatever credibility or authority or expertise in their and their relevant domain just set it all on fire in the space of months in a couple of years And to a lot of us, it really felt like, well, this is an absolute mess, you know, psychosis. And, you know, it's going to get out of hand. It did get out of hand. But, you know, there was a sort of, you know, a backlash, but also a sort of more than just a backlash because that implies a sort of reactive thing. There has been to an extent in the last few years. real movement, you know, in some of these institutions back in the direction of sanity. So I think we should just start by being grateful for that. But the other thing that this, that what Cortez said made me think of is the philosopher Richard Rorty, who is a pragmatist died up some years ago, a decade ago or so. He's kind of one of the godfathers of all of this relativistic.

nonsense that infects so many of our highbrow and middlebrow institutions today. And he has this line where he said, the truth is what your colleagues will let you get away with saying. And that's a very relativistic and, you know, philosophical pragmatism oriented slogan. And what he misses is I think what Cortez captures in her mea culpa or convenient reimagining of her own views and the views of her colleagues is that the danger with having an epistemology or use whatever, you know. nickel or dollar word you like there, the danger of having a relativistic worldview that depends on the consensus of your peers and not objective standards that are true regardless of whether everybody believes and agrees with them or nobody does, is that they're incredibly susceptible to moral panics and to moments of psychosis and to moments of mob mentality. and high stress situations. You want a reality and a view of the world and a set of principles that are rooted in immutable, permanent things that are true even when they're inconvenient for you. Because when you have something like that, it can help you navigate, you know, through moments of crisis. And possibility, in the negative sense of possibility, where things can really get out of hand. The last thing I'll say is the degenerate Twitter, a non-Twitter account Jarvis that some of our listeners will be familiar with actually has a bit of earnest political social analysis on this that I think is really useful. He calls it Overton window poisoning. And his diagnosis is... that, you know, the progressives for decades now have operated on the model of moving the Overton window, the window of what's possible politically and safe and reputable, reputable to talk about in American politics. And he says, you know, look, the progressives have always done this sort of leverage move where the sort of tug-a-war move, where they... They try and drag the Overton window by taking extreme positions, forcing the opposition to negotiate, and settling for a more relatively moderate position as a victory, you know, and the position that they always wanted kind of thing. Whether that's true of their actual psychology, I think that's definitely true in terms of as political tactic as an organizing and discursive tactic on the left. But the problem is, You know, as he points out that if you repeat these arguments enough, you start to believe them. And it's no longer a bank shot to get, you know, police reform, quote unquote. You know, these people actually believed in abolition when they were uttering it. And I think that's the, you know, the note I would end on is that, you know, the shocking thing about woke 1.0. And to this day, I mean, there's lots of things, you know, there was that David Remnick interview that maybe some of our listeners.

saw with one of the top officials at the Democratic Socialists. It was real embarrassment for her. And what it revealed, just like what abolished the police revealed, is that these people felt very comfortable saying these things because all of the institutions that might check them, the donor class and the corporate class that funds their useless little nonprofits and their political projects, and also the... you know, academic authorities, political and elected authorities, and the media class above all, just let them get away with it. There were zero follow-up questions, nothing uncomfortable. You say, let's abolish the police and get rid of all the prisons, and nobody thinks there's anything interesting to ask is the next question. You know, what's going to happen? How are you going to deal with, you know, with this or that? It never occurred to them to follow up. And that just made it very comfortable for people to continue, you know, aping these ridiculous positions to the point where they actually started to believe their own BS. Luther, let me ask you as somebody who is in the arena, as it were. The Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez interview was in part about Francesca Hong. She's running in Wisconsin. We've talked about her before. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez declined to endorse her but said that she should be taken at face value. That is to say, what she says she believes now. should be interrogated rather than what she said a few years ago. Francesca Hong herself has tried to distance herself from some of her previous statements by saying that she was younger then and she was operating in a different context. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez herself echoed that with her defund the police position. Do you think that that will work? In other words, if the average person in Wisconsin who is looking at this race is evaluating Francesca Hong, if she's the nominee, do you think they're going to be more interested in what she says now, or do you think wokeness and past statements are still an anchor around the neck? Yeah, she's trying to walk away from these things that she said while she was an elected official. And I think that's what will stick. There are a great many people, Graham Platner, for example, who go and say stupid things online, but then unlike Graham Platner, have the sense to never run for public office. I mean, that's bad enough. But for an elected official... to go and say these things, and then to turn around a year or two later, when it's to her advantage to separate herself from them, it's unacceptable. I'll keep this brief. This whole episode is like Max Robespierre saying, wow, Revolution One was crazy, huh? Well, there's an aristocrat's head rolling in the background.

Marxists, they go to ground and sprint. They don't respect the voters enough to be on the level and simply say, we will always believe these things, it's who we are. And looking again at France and Burke, he has this line, all persons possessing any portion of power ought to be strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that they act in trust and that they are to account for their contact in that trust. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Hong, the DSA have failed that test. All right, double-barreled exit question. I'll start with you, Jim. First off, if the explosion of wokeness from six years ago was woke one, which woke are we now living in, if at all? And will future wokes be worse than that or better? For simplicity's sake, I will say this is Woke 2.0. I'll define the first Woke pretty broadly, coming in as a backlash to Trump. It's Trump's first term and extending well into Biden's second term. Trump's second victory in 2024 did shake Democrats. You have the Seth Moulton's of the world saying, huh, you know, maybe we don't want. grown men on the same field as women athletes or my daughters and stuff. And of course, Seth Moulton has now since, you know, run away from that position. I think, you know, Woke 2.0 is going to come as the 2028 presidential election cycle accelerates. It'll be worse because I think the conclusion that a significant portion of the left, and really I think a decent number of... rank and file Democratic grassroots will be that if our current system of government under the Constitution allowed Donald Trump to be elected twice. then that can't stand, that it has to be torn down. It isn't a good system if Trump can win elections. Ergo, they will be looking at massive, you know, like so it'll be all the familiar stuff. We're going to, you know, expand the Supreme Court. We're going to make additional states. We're going to, you know, get rid of the electoral college. We're going to, you know, abolish ICE, abolish the police, blah, blah, blah. It'll be worse, but it'll also be more punitive because the perceptually the American people need to be punished. for their wrong choices at the ballot box. Dan, which woke, if any, are we living in at the moment? And will future works be better or worse than the original? I think we're still in the counter-reformation here a little bit. We might be heading back in the direction of sort of woke expansionism and the waxing of woke. And that will come. I think it's easy, even for conservatives who are supposed to be, you know, long duray, history-minded people, I think it's easy to fall into.

thinking, not necessarily wigishness or even wigishness in reverse, but just thinking that the epoch that you're in is the one that's going to persist. And it's worth remembering that, that, you know, that it isn't just a one-way ratchet and that American political history, social history doesn't just move in one direction. So I think they'll continue to be ebb and flows. But the thing of it is that... The left has only really been stopped by their own ridiculous overreach. I mean, Americans are, honestly, I think Americans are pretty. progressive socially. I really do think that. I mean, I think there's all sorts of facts about the American psyche that are conservative, but I think that progressives, if they settle into a kind of gradualist, almost fabulous mentality, you know, mentality can get a lot done that we conservatives don't necessarily like all of or a lot of. When they get in trouble is when they Start messing with your kids, right? That's a big one that we learned in lots of ways. When they ask you to affirmatively participate in language games and the denial of sort of plain reality. in favor of magical thinking and, you know, perversion of words and concepts that you know, and most people know to be false. And, you know, blood and fire on the streets. Those are the things that get them in trouble. If they could settle in and be patient and go for a slow burn on some of the stuff, they would have tremendous success. Ben, you know, Ben don't break is the rule for, for, you know, ambitious, progressive. So I think it'll be back. I think we'll move in that direction again. And whether it's, you know, quote unquote better or quote unquote worse will really depend on, you know, how good the people on the left in charge are at delayed gratification. Luther? I think we're in a period of woke consolidation, horseshoe woke. We're post-liberals and Marxists, the populists among us, are sort of woking arm and arm when it comes to Israel, American intervention, and moral codes. They did gain ground, and they're holding it. They had to cede some, but, you know, they have more of... Crimea than they had before or the Dunbass and they're just waiting for the next opportunity. And will that be worse or better than the first one? Oh, it'll be worse because it's more entrenched on the right than it was before or there were clear lines before. I think it's going to be a far more confusing time than the first round.

All right. Well, I think that we're still in the aftermath of work one as well. But I think that the next one will be attenuated. That isn't to say that I won't hate it or that it won't be destructive. But I think that without COVID as a backdrop and acknowledging much of what Dan said, which is that they're going to have to be tactically smarter, it will be less. up front. I want to tell you about Vair, our first sponsor today. We've spent a lot of this year talking about tariffs, whether it's still actually possible to make things in America. Well, our first sponsor today, Vair, is putting that question to the test. Vair was founded in Los Angeles back in 2016 with a simple but very ambitious mission to revive the American watch industry. Cut to today, and Vair is proud to be the largest independent watch assembly in the United States, building watches in California, Arizona, Rhode Island and Alabama, as well as manufacturing straps in Illinois and Florida. And all of us here at the editors have been wearing our VAR watches for a while now, and I can tell you firsthand. They are truly amazing. Vair makes some of the most durable, well-built watches on the market. They use top-grade luxury materials. They all come with a waterproof warranty, which means you can safely swim or dive with your watch on, and they've earned over 10,000-5-star reviews. What's more, Vair's classic analog approach to timekeeping is not only sophisticated and refined. It's a welcome departure for people who are tired of getting pinged on their smart watch all day. So if you want to support American craftsmanship and own a watch that's both rugged and refined, check out Vair. You can find them at Vairwatches.com. That's V-A-E-R-Watches.com. All right, online. A fight broke out last week about burritos, of all things, namely the question of whether burritos are affordable. This debate centered around the claim that burritos now cost $20, and that $20 is too much, and a sign of the affordability crisis. And, of course, this spread into lots of subclaims. that the boomers had it fine because when they were kids, burritos were just 75 cents, now at $20. Nobody can afford them. And the fighting boomers said, no, no, no, that's just because you're door-dashing burritos with your Starbucks coffee and your bottled water. You need to knuckle down and save and economize like we did. And this, of course, is a proxy for all manner of fights within our politics. I must confess to have been irritated by almost everyone involved. I think most people involved had something useful to say, but also a lot that wasn't. And at root, I'm a little bit nervous that the solutions that were offered up to the supposed burrito affordability crisis would, in fact, end up.

making burritos more expensive, not less. That said, clearly this did not spring ex-nigh-Hello. It comes from a general sense that life in America at present is unaffordable. It comes after a period of inflation. It comes out of... irritation and anger at the cost of housing and more. So, Jim, what did you make of what I must term, burrito gate? Um... I, too, found it deeply frustrating because it's not a single, uh, single easy explanation for it. Um, yes, of course, the biggest and most significant factor is that we had huge runaway inflation overall in the, uh, Biden years after the pandemic. But it's worth noting it really hasn't. gotten anywhere near, it hasn't gotten close enough to the 2% annual rate that we'd like to see that the Fed sets as its goal. And, you know, the other thing which is worth noting is that food has generally outpaced the overall inflation rate. 2023, food at home prices increased 5%. Food away from home prices increased 7.1%. Food prices rose by 2.3% in 2024, 2.9% in 2025, 2026 are projected to increase 3.1% and the same figure for 2027. So, like, if you're a politician, you should not be saying, oh, this is just whining about DoorDash. You young people just need to stop ordering your avocado. No, no, groceries, eating out, all of these things are indeed more expensive than they used to be. And, you know, there's a wide variety of reasons for this. People probably remember having really high egg prices when Trump took office. That was mostly because of an outbreak of bird flu. But, you know, when fuel prices go up, that makes transporting food, everything you buy is got to get to the grocery store or to the restaurant. So that's a factor. Drought, higher costs of feed and fertilizer that'll drive up beef prices. You put back the tariffs that's going to make coffee, fish, beer, wine, liquor, all that kind of stuff more expensive. Oh, by the way, a whole bunch of states are enacting minimum wage increases. So, you know, who do you think is, you know, everybody working behind the counter at your fast food place? Labor just got more expensive. When labor gets more expensive, you end up with higher prices. Like this is, you know, this is kind of basic economic, you know, supply and demand and costs here. Now, having said that, you know, just because it's not merely the cost of DoorDash,

DoorDash is expensive. And Mark Thesson, who is allegedly morbidly obese, according to our vice president. But Mark Thesson does not. He looks fine to me. There was a post that said, look at this. My burrito costs 2336. Well, then, you know, Thesson looks through the receipt. There's a 149 delivery fee, a 373 service fee, $2.99 express fee, $4 tip, and 91 cents in taxes. DoorDash can offer you service fees, delivery fees, long distance fees, regulatory response fees, small order fees, weather impact fees, and an optional express delivery free that's separate from taxes, separate from tips, and any other bag, bottle, or mandatory government-enquosed fees. So if you're trying to save money, don't order from DoorDash. Don't order delivery. This delivery charge is pretty darn significant. In some cases, it could double the cost of your order of your burrito. Go to the store, make your own burritos, or go to the restaurant and avoid the delivery charges. So, like, those are real factors. It's a frustrating one. I also think there's been this, like, there was a time not that long ago when the likes of JD Vance were saying it's worth it to pay more higher wages to American workers rather than have cheap, you know, cheap imported goods. Well, you know, coffee and fish get imported a lot. And, you know, now we're living with the consequences of that. You want higher wages. you're going to end up paying higher prices, which a lot of people would say is counterproductive. So this is, you know, another expression of populism. This is another expression of some of its generational whining. But no, like overall, life is more expensive than it used to be. And I have not the least bit surprised that that is the issue that is front and first and foremost in most people's minds as we headed to the midterms. All right, Luther. So you are slightly different than the three of us in three ways. One, you're 10 years younger than the youngest of us. Two, you are a famous frugal midwesterner. And three, you went out, having seen the burrito discourse, to buy a burrito and get it up to $20 in cost yourself. So what is your take on this as a burrito-owning frugal Midwestern 30-something? There were actual... gasps at what my $20 burrito ended up looking like. There needed to be extra tinfoil broken out to wrap this thing up. So I went in, I got the steak burrito for $11.80. I got extra steak for another $6, Caso Blanco for $170, and guacamole for $2.95. So the guac put it over to $22.45. So let's knock off the guac. That's still, I did the numbers here. Something like, give me a moment, please. Yes, 1,500 calories, 66 grams of fat, 75 grams of protein, 132 grams of carbs, 3,130 milligrams of sodium. It was an abomination. There's no way someone is eating that in one sitting. So essentially what I had was the filling of two burritos in the Bill Cassidy or the tortilla of one. I reject this idea that burritos are $20. However, it's...

This debate was never about the burrito, which is a hilarious sentence to have to utter. It was really about many of the populists on the right wanting to alter the Trump administration's policy concerning Iran. They just want to give it up. And they think that maybe it'll bring costs down. They don't really care about that. They don't want to be interventionists. And so the Iran war is their target of choice. And burritos happen to be, you know, as you were saying, Charlie, the proxy for that effort. And it was ludicrous and funny. And my burrito was delicious. And I had it over two and a half meals. So, Dan, do you agree with that? Because I have seen some people, including our own Dan McLaughlin, say that this debate is a proxy. At least it is being fought by people who either wish to condemn or defend the Trump administration. This is an argument between people who are angry about the Iran war, raising costs and the price of gas. It's an argument between people who are angry about the tariffs. It's an argument between people who are angry about immigration and think that that's caused. the prices to go up and then maybe you even have some monetarists as well who would say, no, no, this is all about the money supply. So is this an inter-Nissan or intramural fight and burritos are the proxy, as Luther suggests? Or is there a general sentiment among younger people, especially that they're getting screwed and burritos are just the way of expressing that? I think the answer is obviously both. I think the sentiment among young people is real, and in various ways it is justified. I mean, the picture about the prospects for young people in America, their quality of life, their purchasing power, their long-term prospects, their ability to own property, their ability to start a family with one, not two incomes. the long-term prospects for job growth in light of technological changes and structural changes, the declining value of a college education, you know, the corruption of the academy, you know, the sense that American life isn't full of endless promise as it once was. All of those are justified in various ways and they can coexist with broad measures of purchasing power, quality of life. material, you know, well-being. They can coexist with measures that are, you know, pointing up into the right. So I think that's real. I think the extent to which it's an internecine fight is also very real. And one of the funny things, you know, the left does this in its own way. There's always a kind of symmetry to American politics. But one of the funny things about the MAGA populist Nat Pop right. is that they've adopted this tactic of acting like they're not in charge. And so we see this really funny thing up to it, including the vice president and the president when his attention span warrants it, suggesting, you know, that the capital T, they are, you know, somehow, you know, keeping Americans down when they've got unified control of government. And as, you know, Jim Abley summarized.

Their policies are directly and unarguably contributing to some of these price increases. Yes, there was a period of very willful inflation. I mean, the sort of definition of inflation is too much money chasing too few goods. During the pandemic, we gave people a bunch of money and then locked them in their houses. That was always going to produce a huge wave of inflation. There are all kinds of tariff effects on the price of inputs that go into the burrito and all kinds of other goods from... You know, agricultural tariffs to, you know, fuel and transportation costs, all of what, you know, all that stuff, Jim Rehears, to, you know, and to an extent, yes, the Iran war is leading to higher energy prices, and that's going to have some effect. The Ukraine war is leading long term to higher fertilizer prices. People don't talk about that as much because it's not as near at hand as gasoline is to the average American. That's absolutely contributing to higher prices. There's all kinds of stuff going on that, you know, if you throw a burrito, you're going to hit somebody who's to blame. for the high price of burritos. You know, the interventionist bit of it, the, you know, the monetary supply bit of it, all the tariff bit of it, all that stuff, yes, it's going to be a proxy, a convenient proxy for the, you know, the civil war between MAGA and what I'll call legacy. I won't call them establishment conservatives because they're not the establishment anymore, but legacy conservatives. You know, it's all a useful proxy, but the funny thing again to me is that the likes of JD Vance can pretend that his guys are not in the driver's seat of the party and the government that is overseeing these prices and this palpable feeling among Americans that... that, you know, they can't get ahead. I mean, there's, and there's a million other things, too. You want to look at housing? Look at the softwood, you know, Google softwood lumber dispute with Canada, right? There's lots of stuff that Trump is in the driver seat on and JD Vance is in the driver's seat on that are directly contributing to the things that they're complaining about that the present generation feels. I mean, when things were looking rosier for the Trump administration, you know, early in their second term. There were a lot, including in National Review, there were a lot of defenders of tariff policy, not as economic policy, but as sort of national greatness and national security and, you know, sort of self-reliance policy. But it was never clear to me, and a lot of us, you know, made this argument at the time. Where there might be a case for like, you know, microprocessors, you know, being, you know, subject to industrial policy or protectionism for legitimate national security reasons, it was never clear to me that like, you know, cheap.

tailored suits or toasters or washing machines or aluminum, you know, I mean, aluminum, at least you can say has, you know, strategic applications. But a lot of these are just, you know, consumer goods. And there was never a case that, you know, making them more expensive for average Americans was going to somehow, you know, make America great again. And I think the bill's coming due. Semi-Secretta exit question. There was a navigator Paul. I wrote about it on the corner. It was conducted in 67 swing districts in the House of Representatives. And it found a bunch of results that I find bizarre. On the one hand, it found that within the 67 swing districts, 63% of Americans said that their financial situation was either good or excellent and that it was better. than it was two months ago. On the other hand, it found that only 34% of Americans thought the economy was good or excellent. Now, I have been of the view, and I have argued this for years, that you simply cannot tell people that their finances, that their situation is good when they think it's not. And this was a big problem for Joe Biden, who would say, the economy is good, and people would say, no, but my personal finances aren't. And it's a problem for Donald Trump, who keeps saying there's a golden age and people don't think it is. What I find baffling, though, about these results is that people, nearly a supermajority of people, are saying that their personal finances are good. They're good or excellent. And yet they are saying that the economy, in the abstract at least, is bad. My question is this, is this, I'll start with you, Dan. Is this some sort of revealed preference where people actually, you know, don't think that their finances are good? Or have we reached the point at which people just think that the economy, the state of things, politics, America in general? is bad because that's what they hear all the time, but that their own lives are fine. Because if it is, I feel as if we're going to become ungovernable. So semi-secretta exit question, is that answer, in your view, the product of reality? Or is it people projecting what they think is happening to other people and then concluding everything's going badly? I do think there's a kind of crisis for public opinion measurement or polling or whatever you want to think of it. And with potential consequences for governability, as you say, to a overriding pessimism that is seeming to infect Americans. I think there's a lot of different reasons for it. I mean, part of it I think is. the way that partisan politics works now with negative polarization and all the other familiar dynamics, it incentivizes catastrophism about both the status quo and the future. And I think that's the real thing that's happening here, is that how is the economy, as opposed to your personal finances, how is it doing, becomes a proxy for are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future? And the over...

The overriding problem in American politics is the return of a kind of malaise era pessimism. You know, people who saw Trump as the second coming of Reagan morning in America and who, you know, who'd like to use, you know, phrases like blackpilling, thought that this was going to be a period of American optimism. And there are certain quarters. of the political, of the polity that do think that way. But it's not the overarching sentiment for different reasons on left and right. And so there is this general pessimism that people are using the economy question as a proxy for. And the other thing, too, is to an extent, You know, the, you know, material conditions are important. I just, I just, I just, I just comment that, you know, that the, the, the far left gets in trouble when they decouple, you know, magical language from the reality it's supposed to represent. So material conditions are important, but there is an extent to which the. the feelings of hope and optimism about the future do influence a large extent to which they influence decision-making in the present and therefore change those material conditions. And whether those beliefs are strictly speaking rational in some sort of objective sense, you know, of homo-economicus is a separate question. The reality is just like... you know, panics create recessions, the reality is that that feeling is going to lead to decision making that could, you know, have material negative effects on the future. So it's a tough problem for governability. It's also just a tough problem for fixing things. Jim, do you think that this is a real sentiment about the economy or are people fine with their finances but just convinced that things are bad in general? Charlie, I think the range of the gap that you described is strange. I don't think the phenomenon itself of feeling like you're doing okay, but feeling bad about the economy as a whole. I don't think that by itself is that strange. I do kind of, I mean, you know, I've gone back and forth on this. I do kind of wonder, it'd be nice if the pollster could kind of tease out more when you are assessing the national economy. What comes to mind? I suspect. Gas prices are a very big reason for that because they always have big signs by the side of the road. You drive by them all the time so you feel like you can tell whether gas prices are going up or going down. You fill up your tank once a week or so. Most people, you buy groceries once a week. Those are like, you know, regular every seven days or so assessments of how the economy is doing in a way that, say, checking your 401k may or may not be. Some people check very frequently. Some people check very infrequently.

So I think when people feel like, you know, what's your assessment of the economy? And then you think, how are you doing? Well, they might be thinking about how's their bank account doing or how's their retirement savings doing or are they able to pay for their kids to go to college or stuff like that. The other thing is I just want to, you know, back what Dan is saying, I don't know if that poll broke down by partisan affiliation. But my sneaking suspicion is that almost zero Democrats would say. Yeah, I'm doing great. And I would say the economy is doing great. And I suspect that enormous number of Republicans are much more likely to say, yeah, I think the economy's doing. So unfortunately, how do you think the economy is doing has turned into a proxy question of how do you think the president's doing? And people have seen this, like the moment Obama became. President, Democrats assess that things were going better in Iraq, like instantaneously, one month later, right? Assessments of the economy, usually within a week or two, change dramatically when administrations change. Now, you could argue, but people shouldn't answer the question this way, but they do, and I think that's a considerable aspect of what you're seeing here. Luther? I think it's a confusing time. For those of us who have a memory back to 2008, 2009, the last time we saw these sorts of gas prices were in that period. And it was bad. There are a lot of people out of work. And so that 15-year-old memory, I think, applies in the situation. Well, at the same time, employment rate's pretty good. Likewise, We're still able to do most of what we want to be doing. Tastes have become more expensive over time, and I think people are realizing that, I don't know if you look at the average Costco cart, but, you know, people are not buying the same groceries that I remember people buying 15 years ago. There's a lot more specialty foods. There are a lot more... I guess, yuppie sort of purchases that aren't necessary, but we became accustomed to purchasing them. And it was no big deal. And so there is a pinch there. And more and more people are reckoning with being employed, but not experiencing a raise or cost of living adjustment for several years now. And so on one hand, you're saying I have a roof over my head. I'm able to feed my family. However, we're not doing it as easily before. And I don't feel I'm compensated in the same way I was five years ago. So I think there can be a level of personal frustration with that while still acknowledging that things aren't. terrible. But how that shows in polling, I think it's really difficult to suss out. So I agree with a lot of what has been said, and I certainly wouldn't be dismissive of those who are complaining about the economy in general. But I also do think that, and this applies to presidencies of both parties, Congresses of both parties.

I do think that we have become accustomed as a country toward pessimism, and I think that we have got into a habit of assuming that things are bad for other people, because we're constantly told that they are, and that this is a bit of a problem. And if you look at it, logically, it is, of course, true. that you could have a country in which 65% of people thought that their finances were good or excellent, but also worry very much about the other 35%. It doesn't, of course, follow that just because a majority or a super majority are doing well that everyone is, and it doesn't follow that if someone is doing well, they don't have to care about those who aren't. But after a certain point, if that is... all people think about. And the statistics here seem to be similar when it comes to, is your life going well? I wrote about this in the magazine. There's this Gallup poll from last year where I think it was about 80% of Americans said that personally their actual life, the one they were living, was going well in America. And then about 18% of them said that life in America was going well. When you get that bigger gap. it presents a bit of a problem for the feedback mechanism within democracy. So yes, I think there are issues, and I do understand that there's a difference between the two questions, but I'm a little bit worried increasingly that we're going to see this. as a trend that makes it not impossible to govern, but that makes it quite difficult for administrations to work out what it is that people want. And as regular editors, listeners will know, I think that's been the biggest problem in the last 20 years in Britain, my country of birth, where we have had seven prime ministers in 10 years because the public is... incoherent anyhow our second sponsor this week is the Institute for Governance and Civics at florida state university what if a college degree could prepare you to defend liberty and take on the public policy challenges that will shape our future At Florida State University, the Institute for Governance and Civics offers an undergraduate degree unlike anything in the country. It's called Civics and Liberty Studies. Our students study America's founding principles and constitutional government and learn how to use data to improve public policy. They don't just learn about liberty, they put it into practice. Students conduct original research in the Liberty Lab, helped defend free speech and religious liberty through the First Amendment Clinic and learn from nationally recognized scholars. Join a community committed to free inquiry, the rule of law, and civic leadership. The civics and liberty studies degree at Florida State University. Liberty's next generation starts here at IGC.fSU.

all right our final topic this week is the midterms i want to start with Max Miller who is a candidate for congress in the seventh district in ohio and is involved in a pretty ugly public spat with Senator Bernie Moreno, who is a senator in Ohio. Max Miller is married to Senator Marino's daughter, and there have been pretty credible and detailed allegations of domestic abuse, but Miller has refused. to drop out. I think I'm right in saying that the deadline for his doing so has now passed. And there was a report in Politico that the Trump administration had urged Republicans in Ohio not to put public pressure on Miller to drop out. So, leaving aside, that the allegations are terrible, and if true, that he should not be in Congress, that is more bad news for Republicans. Jim, I've seen some people suggest that Republicans are in a position in 2026 that is similar to the one... They faced in 2006. You have a second term Republican president. He's term limited out. He's unpopular. He got involved in a war in the Middle East that people don't like. People are worried about prices. And you now have scandals attaching themselves. to various Republican candidates. 2006 was not a good year for the GOP. Do you think that's an exaggeration to draw that comparison? At this point, not at all. And one of the things I've been thinking about is that 2022 was less good for Republicans than they would hope and for outside of Ron DeSantis. 2018, yeah, Democrats won the House, but Republicans actually picked up two seats in the Senate. So it's been a while since Republican, before that was the Obama presidency where Republicans gained in both of those midterm cycles. So it's been a while since there's been a really brutal midterm cycle for Republicans. And I felt the top of my head, I think Democrats picked up 31 House seats. The reason I remember that is that... You know, looking at the polling numbers, I was saying that there was a, you know, the Republican base, which had been deeply dissatisfied with George W. Bush did come home to Republicans. And, you know, people like, ah, you know, how could, you know, if they lost 31 seats, yeah, but 19 seats were 5% or less. So conceivably, like a week or two earlier, a 50 seat swing was not out of the question.

And I think it right now, look, it is mid-August. There's still some road to run ahead of time. We're going to have debates. We're going to have, you know, still got some key primaries, although they're kind of wrapping up here. But all in all, the cake is baking. And people's perceptions of the president are not likely to change very dramatically between now and election day. Oh, by the way, remember early voting starts in September in my home state in Virginia and Minnesota and South Dakota. So like the perceptions of the economy are not likely to change dramatically between now and November. So the mood of the country is what we're stuck with. And the country is not happy with Trump. They're not happy with the economy. They're not happy with incumbents. They're P-Oed. We talked about affordability in the last segment. Right now, it could go very badly for Republicans. Now, my back of the envelope math said that redistricting is probably going to give Republicans an advantage. In about eight seats nationwide, you know, California switched five, Texas switched five. By the way, that eight-seat number assumes that Latinos who voted for Trump in 2024 will keep voting for Republicans, particularly in those districts along the southern border. I don't think that's a safe bet. I think it's entirely – the Latinos are as frustrated with the state of the economy and frustrated with Trump as anybody. So it's possible redistricting in Texas does not turn out to be this great bonanza for Republicans there. You look at everything else. It's not quite a wash. It's a slight Republican advantage. But in the end, you can only draw the line so much. If people are frustrated with the status quo – They're going to take it out on the incumbents. And there are more incumbent Republicans than there are incumbent Democrats. A whole lot of retirements this cycle. And open seats are usually harder to defend than an incumbent is. And then you've got entirely self-inflicted problems like the one with Max Miller. There have been three polls out. All of them have them behind. I don't imagine he becomes more. I don't imagine that district's going to have a big, you know, oh, withholding your bunny from your daughter in a custody fight demographic out there. You know, they're, you know, we got a, they have an empty seat for Edwards out in the, in North Carolina. These are both fairly Republican districts. I feel okay about holding onto the Republican one, except the nominee's got to basically start from scratch with about two months to go. But Baxter-Muller's district, by the way, is Republicans by five. So, like, if you had a different Republican candidate, that probably would be one last seat you'd have to worry about, although I should point out, like, Statewide polling for Republicans in Ohio, not looking great. State polling for Republicans in Ohio, in Iowa, not looking great. James Talarico has led the last three statewide polls up against Ken Paxton, the human slug. Like, there's going, like, I'm not saying, oh, James Talarico is definitely going to win, but I will point out, bitter O'Rourke, with more money than God and, you know, every national correspondent going down there and gushing about him, never led Ted Cruz back in 2018. So this could be, you know, right now it's looking bad. It could be a bloodbath for Republicans. They could also turn things around. There's still time, but I think the mood of the country and the way this president focuses on ballrooms and reflecting pools and new fancy Air Force wands, none of that is helping Republicans. And it just feels like it's a classic anti-incumbent. We're frustrated with things year. Will socialist Democrats hurt them? Sure.

But boy, I don't, you know, I'm not sure that any of these. Like, I would not be saying, oh, don't worry, we've got, you know, there's no way Hong gets elected governor or there's no way Abdul Al-Sia doesn't get elected senator. I think, you know, if the country's in an angry mood against Republicans, you'll see them losing all over the place. Luther, are you expecting doom? I know you don't think Francesca Hong is going to win. I expect doom until proven otherwise. I think Republicans. either in Wisconsin or elsewhere, assume too much, and that they should be... What do you mean by that? Assume too much? They assume, and I'm thinking of Texas and in some ways Michigan here, that they are owed victory and they run... men and women who shouldn't be on the ballot. I mean, Max Miller, quite the example. And I want to compare Max Miller to Mandela Barnes in Wisconsin. So, first of all, I prefer these sorts of things settled in court. Same for accusations against a common man, athlete, celebrities. I just hate making election season, an ad hoc court because it's vicious, ugly, and usually completely devoid of good information. But if the charges leveled against a man are sufficiently distracting for his party and his person, it seems wise that he move on and free up space. And Mandel Barnes here in Wisconsin was accused of... just being overfriendly with female supporters, and he withdrew from the race. And he was considered a frontrunner not so long ago. And for his party's sake, he packed it up and may have given Democrats enough of an edge to box out Francesca Hong this evening. We'll see. I don't think Crowley will succeed, but... There's a greater chance of winning because a Democratic frontrunner said, you know what? I'm hurting my party rather than helping. I'm going to step aside. And so as we saw with Democrats doing the same to Bernie in 2020, their party seems capable. of doing what Republicans cannot, and what is it about Republicans that they can't put their pride aside enough to do what's right for the party? Dan, let me ask you this. In 2006, Republicans had a bad midterm election. And then in 2008, Republicans had a truly terrible presidential election, and it was the combination of those two things. that led to the early Obama successes and the passage of Obamacare. Once Obama is subject to the 2010 midterms, he's boxed out and his presidency is in many ways over. Now, everyone is assuming that this midterm will be bad for Republicans. If it is, can they recover? Can they prevent this cascading into...

a similar catastrophe in 2028. Perhaps the economy picks up, perhaps the Democrats get a bit of infighting. What's the scenario in which Republicans have a bad midterm here, but then do okay two years later? Is that possible in our politics anymore? I think on the particular question, of whether they can get slammed in 2026 and recover in 2028. The answer is yes, they can. The scenario in which it happens is the Democrats run a psychopath, who's more of a psychopath. than whoever the Republicans run. And that's, you know, for a decade, American politics has been a stopable force versus a movable object. And, you know, as we've all been saying for a long time, it's really, it's, the lane is wide open for either American party to, you know, simply be normal and dominate. I mean, that's, that's the remarkable thing about the present era, right? Abe Lincoln wins a tightly contested election in 1860 in the Republican Party, which was less than a decade old at the time, dominates national politics for 50 years following it. Woodrow Wilson wins in 1912, and the Democratic Party dominates national politics for, depending on how you measure it, 60 years or 80 years until, you know, kind of the Gingrich Revolution. And yet for the last 10, 20 years, neither party seems interested in forging a 60% coalition or a permanent governing majority. There's lots of reasons for that. And you could argue about the extent to which each of them played a role. I think McCain-Feingold and Citizens United and the whole revolution in how elections are funded. And by whom played a large role for sure. I think social media played a large role for sure. But we're in this weird thermostatic, as it's called, era of American politics where parties overreach, they go for 50.1% majorities rather than 60% majorities or even pluralities. They go for kind of 45% pluralities. And nobody seems interested in governing for longer or with more seats. you know, the incentives are instead to get as close to your craziest primary voters as possible and then, you know, do as much damage through executive order as you can before you get tossed out on your ear. So I don't know what's, I don't know what's going to break that. But in the immediate term, there are lots of reasons why things could swing very quickly. For instance, the, the gerrymanders, as kind of Jim alluded to, They help Republicans in the very near term, but they're so finely sliced that they're very brittle. Those gerrymanders can't sustain large shifts in public sentiment. And as a matter of fact, they turn from good to disastrous for Republicans if there are fairly modest shifts in permanent partisan affiliation. So.

Things can just be very chaotic because the system at various levels are very brittle, is very brittle. All right. Well, I am of the view that the 20... 26 midterms are going to be a disaster, and probably 2028 as well, although I do think that the economy is going to play a big role. And if, and I have no indication to suggest this will be the case, but if in 2027, early 2028, you did get a roaring economy, I suspect that the fortunes of the Republican Party would turn around a little. All we have left to do then is our light items and our editors picks, light items first. Luther, you've been playing with a fire pit. Yeah, so my family's in steel business and we cut out on a laser, this death star looking... Fire pet. And so just about every evening, I'm out there enjoying the day, the sunset, and there's something special about a fire on a long summer night. And it tends to attract others to it. And so before you know it, there are several people in chairs around. I went and bought a cube of hams. Just to be the garage beer. I don't know if this is true in other places. In Wisconsin, there's a garage fridge with your beers to be shared with the general public. And then there's your indoor fridge, which has the family's beverages. And so it's a wonderful feeling to say, hey, come on over and just go grab yourself something. And then, you know. jawed up for a while and as it gets darker people tend to go on their way it's very american very relaxing and i recommend it if you haven't got yourself a bonfire well you know i have a fire pit and we installed it in march and it was 500 pounds and i had to find ingenious ways of putting it through the house to get it to where I wanted it. And then, of course, about a week after we installed it, the weather got far too hot to light fire. So I'm still waiting to use it, which I imagine will be about November. This has whetted my appetite, Luther. Jim, you went to the O Museum. Yes, Charlie. This is a museum up by DuPont Circle in Washington, D.C. It is like five. townhouses that are interconnected. They have a whole bunch of secret doors, and they have just, it's huge, 60 rooms, 32 concealed passages, and almost every room has a theme to it. And I suspect Charlie, next time you're in DC, you'd love it. They have a Beatles room, Star Wars room, Chris, every theme you could possibly imagine.

Everything's stacked, and there's just stuff everywhere. Picture your old aunt, and never giving anything away, and it's just everywhere. Found a whole bunch of William F. Buckley books on the bookshelves. Almost everything in the museum is for sale, other than a couple of, all kinds of souvenir and signed guitars of everything. I think my favorite part was not just the Elvis Room, but the Elvis Bathroom, which I thought was an appropriate setting, considering the unfortunate demise of the King. And Dan, you took your kid to the Museum of Women's History. I did. We were in, as I mentioned, last time I was on the cast, we were in the Finger Lakes for a vacation in the little town of Seneca Falls has a lot of women's movement suffragette, feminist, first-way feminist-themed attractions. It was the place where the Seneca Falls Conference happened in 1848, really the first American. conference of women's rights advocates. And I wanted my daughter, my three-year-old daughter to see that stuff. She's a little too young to appreciate it fully, but I wanted her to see that stuff. It's a national park. I was going to say, you know, I remember looking at some of the signage, though, in the museum and thinking if Trump ever finds out that this is a national park, some of these signs, some of these captions. And some of the signage is going to come down. Because what the museum is a reminder of is something we've been talking about a lot on this episode is that the hardest thing to do in American politics is nowhere to stop because so much of the signage at this museum. So much of the stuff you learn at the museum is you're like, wow, that's amazing. What courage, you know, pioneering, the organization of the conference, the social and political and economic strictures that had to be overcome for these women to organize in this way. Really remarkable, truly great American story. And then, of course, it's all just dressed up with. the wokeest nonsense you could possibly imagine about how, you know, for instance, American middle class society was orders of magnitude more oppressive to women than any other civilization extant on the planet that you could possibly imagine from Native American to, you know, Chinese to whatever. So I would highly recommend people visit it because they do a really nice job in the town. But just keep a little bit of perspective on some of the fringier stuff. All right. Well, I saw the movie The Guns of Navarone as part of my endless attempt to catch up with classic movies that everyone other than me has seen. Highly recommend. It's quite long, but that doesn't bother me at all. Great performances from David Niven and Gregory Peck and others. And my kids who watched it too were particularly fascinated by the fact that it has an interval. It's still on the DVD. It just stops and they have this big panel that says interval, which plays music for five minutes. I had to explain that movies used to have that to them. All right, editors picks. Jim, what you got? So I'm a little bit late getting to our distinguished colleagues, Andrew Stutterford's, reporting from Ukraine in the magazine. Ukraine shows its resilience. I had known Andrew was going over there.

We talked a bit before his trip. I had not realized that he was there in Kiev when the monastery, the Pacharisk Lavra, I pronounce it very badly, but you get the idea. Large, golden domed, one of the holiest sites in East and Orthodox was hit by Russian... drones and attacks. He's got some remarkable photographs there. I'm proud of my trips to Ukraine. I'm also very proud that National Review, at least as at least three in Andrew, Mark Wright, and myself. And Gregory Slayton, he practically lives there. So we're doing an exceptional job of covering this and just, you know, great writing by Andrew. He is one of the masters of sentences I wish I had written. Luther? Yes, sir. So Gary Winslet has a piece for us today, and it's about the fall of Burlington, Vermont, as a pleasant place to live. And having driven through Burlington last fall, it was dark, so I didn't get to see all the needles and other evidence of sort of decay that he describes here. And it's enormously frustrating. that time and again we have left-wing governments who take stewardship of a beautiful bit of the American countryside of American life and allow it to fall into disrepair extremely quickly. And they praise one another for doing so. And so on our most recent Whizbang Road trip, you and I, Charlie, saw parts of Nashville. that were like this. Memphis has long been this way when I was out covering the riots in Portland. There were so many places that made that city one of the best to visit. I've been a few places in my life, but Portland is especially beautiful. But because of this left-wing governance and its permission structure for the activists that support them, It is unlivable for the average family. And it's an embarrassment for the country, for the states. And I think this may be one of the best distillations of just how quickly it can go badly and how hideous it is. Dan? I'm going to do an omnibus shout out to Camden Mulder, the latest in a long line of Distinguished William F. Buckley Jr. fellows on political journalism at NR. The Buckley fellows tend to be very impressive, and she's also a Hillsdale college graduate, those. folks tend to be very impressive too. I'll just say she's done one of the fun things about the Buckley fellows is they develop sort of almost accidental beats because they're kind of cub reporters who get assignments and then they get well sourced in those areas and they end up doing a lot of good work on it and Mulder has has followed suit in that model. She's done a lot of great stuff on.

on the Michigan primary on El Sayette up there. She's done a lot of good just stuff on social issues. And then one piece from about a week ago that is on a, you know, might sound like a dry subject, but I just think is super important. And I've thought so for a long time. And she's got this piece called Who's Writing the Curriculum Climate. Who's writing the curriculum? Climate activists are using to influence judges. It's on this long simmering story about how left-wing judges are being indoctrinated by climate activists through this network of nonprofits and legal legal institutes and activist groups. And, you know, it sounds like sort of dry bureaucratic, the groups process stuff. But the left is getting really good at climate lawfare and energy lawfare. And they've unleashed all these suits across the country to sue energy companies that I think are potentially disastrous enough that they're like a national security threat to U.S. energy security. I think it's a huge. story that doesn't get covered and she does a really nice piece on it last week with some good original reporting. All right, well, my choice is by Joseph Epstein. It's in the latest issue of the magazine. It's called the lofty, lonely life of W.H. Orden. I don't know why I was particularly interested in this other than that in my parents' house, just outside Cambridge in England, for some reason, above the chair in the corner, in the little sitting room, is a portrait of W.H. Orden that I think my dad found somewhere. collecting dust and just liked. And I grew up looking at this picture. I've never read much Orden. I'm not even sure I would like much Orden, but this mini biography of him that is tied to a review of a new book by Peter Ackroyd took my interest nevertheless. And that is all. We have time for this week. So thank you to Dan Foster. Thank you to Jim Gerrity. And thank you to Luther Ray Abel. Thank you to all of you for listening. We are the editors and we will see you on Friday.