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A
Three, two, one. Hello and welcome to. I was going to say FiveThirtyEight. It's just. Wow, you're too familiar somewhere deep in
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that, in the recesses of your brain.
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I'm wearing a 538 shirt right now,
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so maybe that might be why.
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A
Okay, all right. Get it together. Hello and welcome. Welcome to the GD Politics podcast. I'm Galen Droock and Nathaniel, managing editor at Vote Beat is here with me, who I did not expect to see quite so soon. We spoke last week about ongoing election law fights regarding the midterms. We talked a little bit about this Calais case that had been heard by the Supreme Court that they were considering whether Louisiana had to redraw itself congressional maps due to a racial gerrymander at the time. Nathana, you suggested maybe this is a. Wait until the end of the term. You know, want to make sure that it doesn't throw a wrench in the cycle while we're in the middle of primaries, while there's the possibility of maybe redrawing maps. Famous last words. The decision came down Wednesday morning. So Nathaniel, you're here with me now to talk about it. Welcome. How are you doing?
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B
Thanks, Galen. I'm good to be back. It's good to see you so many times in a short period of time. We should have major Supreme Court cases more often.
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A
Well, major Supreme Court cases. I also saw you in Washington D.C. this past weekend for I guess another news making event. Nathan, I think we have to stop hanging out. This is like we don't have a good track record.
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B
That is true, yes. You know, for listeners out there, Galen is alluding to the White House Correspondents Dinner, which we did not attend the dinner itself, but we did go to a couple of the.
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A
The ancillary part, you know.
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B
Exactly. It was good to see you.
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A
Just the losers get invited too, you know, not like, not the main event, just hangers on like us.
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B
Yes. But obviously, you know, a scary situation at the actual dinner and you know, obviously we're glad everything's okay. And it, you know, just goes to, you know, we've had many podcasts where we've talked about the horizon and political violence and it's just. It happens too darn often.
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A
Yeah. As you were joining today, I was thinking I have probably talked to you about you specifically about political violence and trend lines in political violence more than anybody else. Maybe we'll get into it a little bit more later. But let's talk about the Supreme Court's decision in Clay. I don't even want to try to match your prowess in terms of explaining what just happened. I'll just ask the, the challenging questions once you explain it, but give us the lowdown on what the opinion was and what it does.
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B
Yeah, so this was the Supreme Court case that was basically challenging the constitutionality of the Voting Rights act, which is the civil rights era law that basically aims to prohibit racial discrimination in voting. And it's especially relevant to us in politics and election world because of its applicability to like congressional districts and in fact districts of all shapes and sizes, legislative districts, city council districts, making sure that those districts are drawn to give kind of a fair shot to minority candidates and to non white groups in particular. So this decision came out on Wednesday morning. It was 6, 3 along partisan slash ideological lines. Judge Samuel Alito, who has long been, obviously is one of the most conservative members on the court, but in particular on this particular issue of the Voting Rights act and kind of racial discrimination, he's one of the most conservative issues. So this was not what liberals wanted to see. That said, the decision was not the kind of doomsday scenario for the Voting Rights Act. Right. There was a lot of speculation that the entire act would be deemed unconstitutional or struck down that there would be a grand pronouncement that race cannot be used in redistricting because that is illegal or unconstitutional racial discrimination.
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A
That doesn't according to the 14th amendment. Essentially the Voting Rights act and the 14th amendment are kind of being pitted against each other here in that self described non African American voters in this case said that based on the 14th Amendment, the way that the district had been drawn to consider race had discriminated against them. So anyway.
- [04:24]
B
Right, exactly. So there was this kind of tension, as you mentioned in the law, that a lot of conservative groups were really eager to resolve, which basically was that the Voting Rights act, as it was kind of previously, you know, before today, as it was understood to exist, said that basically whenever it was possible, you had to draw districts where non white groups or minority groups specifically, were able to elect candidates of their choice, where they were the predominant voting group that were subject to a few kind of specific kind of conditions on that. Like the groups had to be, you know, large and compact enough to constitute a majority of the district. There had to be racially polarized voting, which basically means that, you know, the minority group votes one way and the white voters vote the opposite way to try to kind of squelch that. But that was the general kind of takeaway of the Voting Rights act. But the 14th amendment says you can't discriminate based on race, as you said. And so there was this kind of tension where it was like, oh, well, we're going to try to draw districts that are kind of race aware enough that we're not discriminating against the minority group, but we can't be too blatant about it because then you're discriminating against white voters. So conservatives have been wanting to fill this, this kind of gap for a while. This case, I think, goes a long way to doing that. So basically the upshot of the case is that the Voting Rights act remains on the books, but there is basically a much higher threshold for violations of it. Basically, Alito added, who wrote the opinion, added all of these kind of conditions and criteria to when the Voting Rights act is violated. I think the most important one is basically that before the Alabama map or the Louisiana map, they only had one majority black district when they could have had two. And just the absence of that second district was enough to make it violate the Voting Rights Act. But now, Alito says, and the Supreme Court agrees, that there has to be intentional discrimination for the Voting Rights act to have been violated. And so basically what this means is it significantly raises the bar for proving your point if you are going to challenge a map as being illegal under the Voting Rights Act.
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A
You know, we talk a lot about Section 2 of the Voting Rights act in these conversations, and we're nerdy enough here. I think I might as well just read it to help edify what this whole debate has been. It's not particularly long. There's an A and a B Section A. No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting or standard practice or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any state or political subdivision in a manner which results in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color or in contravention of the guarantees set forth in Section 1B. A violation of subsection A of this section is established if, based on the totality of circumstances, it is shown that the political processes leading to nomination or election in the state or political subdivision are not equally open to participation by members of a class of citizens protected by subsection A of this section in that its members have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice. The extent to which members of a protected class have been elected to office in the state or political subdivision is one circumstance which may be considered, provided that nothing in this section establishes a right to have members of a protected class elected in numbers equal to their proportion in the population. So there's already just a tension within section 2 of the Voting Rights act, which is it's saying that not electing any members of this protected class or their chosen candidate is evidence of violation of Section 2. But Section 2 cannot be used to say that there's a violation just because there's not proportional representation. So how exactly do you go about doing that? This statute, as it was written by Congress.
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B
Yeah.
- [08:28]
A
Has been interpreted, amended, reinterpreted, and they finally got to this place where, honestly, I don't think we could ever really say that there was some sort of settled agreement or state as to how to apply section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. And oftentimes these arguments have been made about race, but they are ultimately probably about partisanship and both parties sort of wanting to use the Voting Rights act to get the maximum number of congressional seats possible. Back when this was first on the books, you know, I did a whole documentary series about this way back in the day at 5:38. And I talked to folks in the civil rights community who said at the very beginning, it was Republican attorneys who were showing up to NAACP conferences saying, hey, you can draw a majority black district here. You should do it. And they were saying that because they wanted to pack Democratic voters into unique districts, making it harder for black voters and say, like moderate white Democrats to come together to elect more Democrats in the South. And so by basically packing black voters together, it helped elect more Republicans around those districts. At one point, it was argued that it had to be a majority of that minority group had to be in the district. But then Democrats said, well, that's taking too many of our voters and putting them into singular districts. We want them to spread out more. So there were civil rights, you know, more liberally Democratically aligned civil rights attorneys who would say, well, if a minority group can join together its votes with other, you know, groups of voters to elect their candidate of choice, that's enough. It doesn't actually have to be a majority. So we're not packing Democratic voters into unique districts. And in fact, if you pack black voters into unique districts, then that could be a violation of the 14th Amendment because you're diluting their power by putting too many black voters in one district. So I think that oftentimes this can feel very like. You're racist. No, you're racist. It has been fully manipulated by both parties over the past three decades, plus for partisan gain. I Just want to say up front, yeah, totally.
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B
And to your point, you know, the. The text of the section doesn't really say a lot. Like, a lot of the. The way that it has been applied to redistricting in particular has been kind of, like, made up as we go along, you know, and that has led us to this incredibly complicated, like, jurisprudence where the Supreme Court keeps trying to nip and tuck at the. At the section. And, you know, it's. It's really interesting, like you said, from a political perspective. But, like, yeah, I mean, it does, I think, ultimately come down to politics, and I think it's going to come down to politics even more now that, you know, Alito has made it, or the Supreme Court in general. The six conservatives on the Supreme Court have made it a lot harder, I think, to a. To get a map struck down by the Supreme Court. But it also just makes it easier. Like, you no longer, if you are a Republican legislature, as long as you claim, hey, we're doing this for partisan reasons or, you know, we're not doing this for. We're not intentionally racially discriminating. You can, you can draw maps that would have violated the old interpretation of the Voting Rights act by, for instance, you know, distributing black voters among various different. Different districts.
- [11:52]
A
I have to say, and I'm not trying to be Pollyanna ish here, I read Alita's opinion, and I couldn't figure out for the life of me what the standard is now, like, in the sense that I read that and I. Because ultimately, he concludes that the reason that we are striking down these maps is because Louisiana didn't have to draw a second VRA district to begin with. And like, he never says just one was enough and one complies with the Voting Rights Act. It's not clear to me that the standard is now there needs to be no voting rights districts whatsoever. There needs to be no black or Hispanic or, in some areas of the country, Asian opportunity districts whatsoever. It's just that in this specific case, in part because there's no argument for proportional representation. And he says the plaintiffs never presented a map that followed all of the rules of Louis, Louisiana's redistricting regulations that had two majority black districts in them, that in this case, you didn't have to draw a second one. But they don't say anything really about where you do need to draw a majority black district or a. I mean, they say, like, if there's intentional discrimination, which, you know, in this day and age, like, people would be pretty crazy to you Know, say one email. Yeah, put in an email or sale
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B
does a really good job of, you know, discriminating against black voters. Right, right, right.
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A
And so to me, I was just like, well, this is going to require a lot more litigation. The liberals on the court were pretty clear and they were saying like, you know, the Alito opinion, while it may seem somewhat bland, is actually ending the Voting Rights Act. So I don't want to pretend that the truth is somewhere in the middle because I don't know that there could be a bunch of litigation that results in actually section two of the Voting Rights act is completely dead. And when they didn't clarify what the standards were totally going forward in this case, what they really meant was there are no standards anymore. And come bring all of your cases. Eventually we'll conclude that there are going to be no more Voting Rights act districts. Like, I couldn't really tell where the line is now. I just thought this was going to result in a bunch more. Everyone's going to now litigate their majority. Minority districts, sure.
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B
Right. I think that it is probably right to say there is no clear standard. Right. I mean, the decision, as I said, didn't go so far as to say that every district that was drawn with race in mind based on the Voting Rights act is illegal. Like, only map that was struck down in this decision was Louisiana's. Right. The other maps just kind of like exist out there in the ether. And people can try to argue that the other maps are Alabama, for instance, that is currently a court has basically said that has to be in Place until 2030. That's a state that, that actually can't do the kind of mid decade redistricting that we have seen in other states. But like, somebody could argue, hey, let's sue over this specific map, because this also similar to Louisiana, was a racial gerrymander because it, it put, you know, race kind of at the top of the pecking order in terms of criteria for redistricting. But at the same time, this decision does prohibit states from drawing, you know, the maps that they have right now other than Louisiana. So I think, yeah, I think you're right that it is going to take more litigation. And you know, it. It does kind of endorse the other notable thing. Right. Is that it endorses this idea of like, partisanship as a redistricting criterion in a way that the previous case on partisan redistricting didn't. The that. So in 2019, the Supreme Court ruled in the case Rucho v. Common Cause that they're Basically, federal judges were taking themselves out of the business of deciding partisan gerrymandering cases. They were just like, this is too thorny for us. Like, you know, it's. It's fine. You know, it's not against federal law
- [15:43]
A
to be moaned it. They said, this is not a good thing, but it's not something we can settle.
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B
Right, exactly. And in that decision, they said, you know, we don't like partisan gerrymandering, but we just. We just can't do anything about it. And like, states, you're welcome to, like, pass laws and like, you know, do kind of your own thing to. To prevent this. But. But this decision actually kind of more actively embraces the idea that partisan gerrymandering is okay. And one of the things that Alito wrote is that basically, if the state has an interest, if the state wants to draw a partisan gerrymander, that is a legitimate interest for the state. And so if you are challenging the map on section 2 of the Voting Rights act grounds, you have to be able to provide a map that doesn't racially discriminate, but still achieves those partisan goals, which in this era of racially polarized voting, especially in the south, which is, I think, going to be ground zero for this, that's just, like, really hard to do. And I think, you know, the cyndical interpretation, you know, of a lot of, you know, certainly the. The liberal justices and, you know, a lot of voting rights advocates is that this does functionally get rid of the Voting Rights act as a tool to. To challenge these maps, even if it is still on the books.
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A
Right. Basically, what Alito says in the opinion is you have to control for partisanship when you're making this kind of analysis in order to draw these maps. And it's like control for partisanship. We're talking about a voting group that is voting for Democrats at 90% plus. So if you control for partisanship, okay, well, then, then. Then maybe if that's the new standard, the Voting Rights Act, Section 2 doesn't really exist anymore. I will be curious what that ends up meaning in practice. I think we've established that more litigation is to come. But if you had to wager a bet, how do you think this changes the congressional maps in the short term and then in the medium to long term? And maybe let's focus on 2026 right now.
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B
So, as we've mentioned before, for 2026, I don't think that this is going to have a major impact, and that's just because we are the Election is upon us. Right. Some states have already held their primaries. Several others, the primaries are coming up is just too late in the game for most states to redraw their maps. Obviously Florida is currently redrawing its map and was doing that before even this Calais decision. Those are the exception rather than the rule. And you know, they would. Yeah, there's just, there's a lot of stuff that states would have to do in order to. It would just be a mess. Some might try it, you know, place. There's obviously been this rash of mid cycle redistricting and, and parties are desperate to gain an advantage. But practically speaking it is very difficult. However, I do think 2028, you know, you would expect to see states like South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, although Georgia might have a Democratic governor after this year. So that is an interesting wrinkle. But like states like that that do have these districts that were basically compelled by the Voting Rights act, but it might where Republicans are at least currently in control of redistricting, they will want to redraw the maps and at least give it a shot to be like, hey, what if we get rid of the black district around Memphis or the black district in the Mississippi river area of Mississippi and just kind of seeing how, whether those pass court muster under this new standard.
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A
But in the short term, I mean, are we expecting at least Louisiana to redraw its map? I mean, what do we think?
- [19:15]
B
I mean, I think yes. So you know, at first blush, right, the decision, the one kind of clear upshot of the decision is Louisiana's congressional map is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. And so it is invalid. The issue is that Louisiana's primary is on May 16th. That is like what, like 18 days away. People are already voting. Like mail ballots have gone out, ballots have been cast theoretically in this election. So they are really in a bind. And you know, the, the court's decision doesn't say anything. It didn't order that the primary be moved. It didn't say, oh this map is illegal, but like you can use it for this election because it's too late. Like Purcell principle, which are all things they could have said, but they didn't. And so Louisiana is, is in a bind. And you know, people, the Louisiana press corps has been asking, you know, the governor, legislators, the state attorney general, basically like what are you guys going to do? And they are like, it's too early to say. And they're probably frankly behind closed doors, they're trying to figure it out themselves. But you know, my guess, I mean the, the Two opt could pass a new map and postpone the primary, which would be a big disruption to voting, but it certainly would serve their partisan aims better. Louisiana, of course, is controlled by Republicans and they probably want to get rid of that black seat. Or they could try to say, hey, we're having an election right now, it's too late. And they could try to get the Supreme Court to agree to basically be like, okay, sure, you can use this map in 2026, even though we've already deemed it illegal. That is something that does have precedent. Sometimes courts will say this map is illegal, but it is too close to the election. So we don't have a choice but to use it in the election that is on hand. So we will see. We're keeping an eye on that for sure. And we'll be keeping an eye on if any other state tries to do the, you know, especially I think states, and obviously any state that's already held its primary or the primary is coming up in May, I think is very unlikely to try to do this. Some of the states that have primaries in August, like, maybe they could try to postpone their like, filing deadlines and primaries in order to try to redraw. But you know, obviously it's also a lot of those states are like blue states or something, or states with independent commissions where, you know, there isn't one party in control of the redistricting process. So I think the, the impact for 2026 will be minimal.
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A
You alluded to Florida redrawing its congressional map, which is in some ways related, in some ways not related. Related in the sense that Republicans in Florida say that this is part of the rationale for redrawing the map, but unrelated in the sense that Florida already had the special session planned before this decision came down. And, and the real beginning of this saga is with mid decade redistricting that began last August. So what does that new Florida map look like? You know, how many seats are Republicans potentially gaining from? They just passed it today.
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B
Yeah. So the new map attempts to add four new seats for Republicans. It basically eliminates the Democratic held district in Tampa. It eliminates one of the two Democratic held districts in the Orlando area and then two of the Democratic districts in South Florida. Yeah, I mean, you know, it is, it's a kind of a nice little mirror image to the Virginia map in the same way that kind of like California was countering the Texas redraw. Florida obviously was aware of the result in Virginia and the proposed map in Virginia, I think when they, when they were Drawing this? Yeah, I think this is the. Apart from, you know, whatever happens in Louisiana and potentially other states, you know, this is kind of the last domino to fall in terms of the mid cycle redistricting, mid decade redistricting, kind of wars that we have seen before. We kind of switch over to the like, Calais phase.
- [22:51]
A
We mentioned that there's some ambiguity here about how the Voting Rights act gets applied to drawing congressional districts using race going forward. I think that what pisses people off a couple things. One, the Voting Rights act, as I mentioned on last week's podcast, worked to elect a historic number of black legislators to Congress and in state legislatures as well. Alito makes this argument, in his opinion, that, well, what's the time horizon here? You know, like society has changed so much. Whatever I read Section 2 of the Voting Rights act, it doesn't say anything about a time horizon. It just talks about protecting minority groups and their voting rights. I think, though, over time, nonetheless, attention has turned to partisan gerrymandering as something of a greater evil. Right. White Democrats today are not nearly as opposed to electing black Democrats as they were in, like the 1950s before the voting Rights act was written up and passed. So I think there's more of a chance than ever for cross racial coalitions to elect Democrats, Republicans, whatever it may be. And as time has progressed, I think people come to see partisan gerrymandering as the greater scourge. I don't want to speak for everyone, but that's my sense. For people who don't like partisan gerrymandering, this has been a rough couple years, but that is probably the most like pursuing an end to partisan gerrymandering would probably be the most, like, efficient way or meaningful way to end, like all of the bullshit, all of the shenanigans, whatever, are there. Do you see in this moment sort of paths forward for people who do want to end partisan gerrymandering?
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B
Yeah, I mean, that's a, that's a great question. And I mean, I, I don't want to minimize the impact of racial gerrymandering either. Right. Obviously there's a long history of that in the country. And, you know, I think right now race and party are very highly correlated. That may not always be the case in the Future. Obviously in 2024, we saw Latino voters, for instance, you know, becoming more of a swing group. You know, the Voting Rights Act, I think was, was largely written with, with black voters in mind, but it applies to any minority group, of course. And it has, I think, similarly helped Latino and even like Asian American groups gain representation in Congress as well. In terms of the partisan gerrymandering, I mean, I think that basically any hope for, you know, there was a lot of progress made for reformers on the state level with new redistricting commissions in places like Michigan. A lot of like state level courts and stuff were like, you know, ruled found that, you know, there were protections against partisan gerrymandering in state constitutions, for instance, like in Pennsylvania. And so, you know, I think it until 2025 it was fairly, you had reason for optimism. If you were one of these people who was, you know, kind of good government, you know, let' partisan gerrymandering person. Then obviously 2025 and 2026 came around. You know, both parties, you know, decided to draw maps for political gain. And you know, Democrats, which had historically been the party that had been in favor of those kind of good governance reforms, decided, you know, to heck with it, we are going to fight fire with hire and not unilaterally disarm. And so we're going to draw our own gerrymanders as well. I think that that means that any kind of prospect for reform has to happen federally at this point. There has to be kind of a holistic solution because red states were never particularly interested in this, in kind of these reforms to have more fair maps and blue states are no longer interested. And you know, I think like in California, for instance, or in Virginia, I'm not sure you're going to get back to those commissions are still technically on the books. But I have a hard time especially if states like, like Tennessee and South Carolina and Mississippi and Georgia get rid of their, you know, few remaining blue seats. I think those states are in California and Virginia are not going to, you know, go back to the fair maps process. Yeah, I mean, I think that the hope is on the federal level the idea of like a national gerrymandering ban or some kind of set of standards. You know, there's also the prospect that the Congress could pass a like more robust version of the Voting Rights act that specifically says it's the effect, it's not the intention that matters. And you know, that might be also I'm sure it would be challenged in court and it might get struck down in court. But you know, that door is open. The Supreme Court did not say that this, you know, like, again, it kind of paying attention to race and redistricting is unconstitutional, full stop. So that is the possibility. I think probably it will require a Democratic trifecta and getting rid of the filibuster to do it. And I'm not sure how realistic that is, but we will see. And then the other option, of course, is a constitutional amendment. And you know, this is the, this is the, the drum I like to bang. I think that constitutional amendments continue to be undervalued as a potential tool for reformers. I think there are a lot of things that there would be, you know, there's a lot of partisanship out there right now and obviously a lot of state led. In order to pass a constitutional amendment, you need the approval not just of Congress, but of state legislatures. But there's a lot of things that, when you can take the current political context and acrimony out of it, which I know is easier said than done, but when you can do that, that a lot of these reform ideas do have bipartisan support. And so, you know, that's, that's another potential option. And obviously that is much stronger than a, a statute that Congress would pass. But, you know, both of these things, I think are long shots and they are years away if we ever get them at all.
- [28:38]
A
Yeah. You and I have talked at various points about perhaps the most powerful political arguments in America today being anti politics arguments. And so in a way, you'd almost need a group of cross partisan, anti partisan independents to be like, here's the things that we're doing. Like we're banning partisan gerrymandering. We're banning stock trading, we're banning, we're making term limits. We're doing all of these things that are kind of a fuck you to the establishment. Right. Like a populist kind of message that cuts across Democratic and Republican talking points, whatever usual partisan lines, and gets to the core of. There's a lot of anger here and people are angry, angry at the people in charge. And so let's, you know, tell the people in charge that we're the ones in charge now. It's not, it's hard for me to imagine, you know, like a group led by Elizabeth Warren doing something like that. You know, it's got like, in a sense, independents have to end up in Congress or something. Or there has to be just like, you know, know Elon Musk, Elon Musk pre. Donald Trump has to decide that this is the thing that he cares. Like, Elon Musk is obviously now branded as Trumpian. But like Elon Musk, pre. Donald Trump, if he's like, this is the most important thing in the world to me, I want to, you know, obviously I don't think he would Be like, I want to get money out of politics. I want to, you know, lessen partisanship. But it would have to be somebody like that to spend a boatload of money who's trusted by both sides. Because, like, yes, the polling is there for, in favor of a lot of these things, but once it gets filtered through, like, the messengers are just terrible at it. And as soon as, like, you start hearing AOC or Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders or Zoramdani talking about these things, you're like, okay, you've lost 50% of the country.
- [30:28]
B
Yeah, for sure. And I think, you know, yeah, I think, I completely agree. I think a much more productive use of a, you know, billionaire who is interested in politics this time is to try to pass a constitutional amendment instead of try to run for president. But, you know, that was.
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A
Especially if you aren't born in America.
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B
Yeah, but no, exactly. And like, obviously it would be very difficult, but I think that there are some things you can do. I think that you can make these, any kinds of these provisions, like set the effective date like 10 years in the future. Right. Like, these things don't take effect until like half of these people who are voting on it would be retired. Right. Like, that is, that's an important thing. Obviously something like term limits. A lot of members of Congress aren't going to vote for that, but maybe they will if they say, okay, starting with the people who get elected after you. Things like that.
- [31:12]
A
Also it changes state level politics. I think that's, that's an underrated thing, which is when, you know, whatever, assuming it gets passed out of Congress when it goes to the states, because it has to be ratified by three quarters of the state legislatures, all of a sudden people running for office in state legislatures have to start answering questions about like, well, do you support all of these different populist election measures? And that changes focus and maybe people decide eventually, you know, sure I do, but I don't know. Try it. American politics has become so boring. Like, I know on one hand it's like never been more crazy, but it's also been, it's never been like, less dynamic.
- [31:57]
B
Right. A lot of it has. We have kind of like distilled down to like the purest essence of like turn of the century politics. Right. And like, it does feel like there is. We've, we've reached the end of the trends that have been happening for, for decades. And does the fever have to break? It doesn't have to, but I don't know. I always make the comparison to like, the previous turn of the century and how, you know, in like the 1890s and stuff like that, America was very polarized and we were not too far away from the Civil War and people hated each other and it wasn't a good situation. But the Progressive Era happened and there were a bunch of that ended up frustrating the political parties that were progressive Democrats, there were progressive Republicans, and there was this wave of good governments that produced like new amendments to the constitution, like the 17th amendment. You know, there are precedents for this. And I think that if the fever does break, these reformers would be smart to be well positioned to take advantage of it.
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A
Is that a good place to leave things?
- [32:59]
B
I think so. We got, we got strangely philosophical.
- [33:02]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. These impacts. It's after hours. It's the After Hours podcast. It's past regular business hours.
- [33:09]
B
That's true. We always record either at like midnight or at like, you know, 10am but we never record right now, which is like 5:30.
- [33:16]
A
For what it's worth, I've already recorded one podcast today. In case I sound particularly loose. It was about prediction marks. We put that on the back burner for a second. We'll pull it out soon enough. Hopefully it'll be an interesting conversation for now. Nathaniel, thank you so much for joining me.
- [33:31]
B
Thanks, Galen.
- [33:32]
A
My name is Galen Droop. Remember to become a subscriber to this podcast@gdpolitics.com and wherever you get your podcast. Paid subscribers get about twice the number of episodes. You can also join in our paid subscriber chat and pass along questions for us to discuss on the show. And you ensure that we can keep making a podcast that prioritizes curiosity, rigor and a sense of humor. Also, be a friend of the POD and go give us a five star rating wherever you listen to podcasts, maybe even tell a friend about us. Thanks for listening and we will see you soon.