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- [00:00]
Chris Williamson
Hello friends. Welcome back to the show. My guest today is Crystal Ball. She's a co host of Breaking Points, a political commentator, and a podcaster. Politics has changed a lot over the last four years, and even more compared to a decade ago. And yet everything feels unreal. Kind of a bit like a pantomime. So why do we keep going? Do elections even matter anymore? Expect to learn if breaking stories have any real impact. Whether Elon Musk is even influential this election cycle, if Kamala Harris is a change candidate or has incumbent legitimacy the role of podcasts in deciding the future of America if the polls are underestimating Trump, how the left has a complicated relationship with God and much more I've been loving my cold plunge and sauna from the team over at Plunge. I literally use them every single week because the benefits of hot and cold contrast therapy make me feel fantastic. I have more energy during the day, sleep better at night and recover faster after hard workouts. Plunge's Evolve collection includes four brand new offerings made to fit your lifestyle, space and goals. The new Plunge Pure Pro Chiller uses state of the art technology to filter water and chill it at the same time. The all new Plunge air is amazing. If you're looking for a lightweight, space efficient option, you can connect it to the Plunge Pop up for maximum portability and affordability or go with the XL Plunge Pro for their signature style. They are quick to set up and always ready to go. It only takes three minutes to feel amazing. That's how long I spend in it and they offer a 30 day return policies. Head to plunge.commodernwisdom and use the code MW150 for $150 off any purchase. That's plunge.commodernwisdom and MW150 at checkout. This episode is brought to you by Element. Stop having coffee first thing in the morning. Your adenosine system that caffeine acts on isn't even active for the first 90 minutes of the day, but your adrenal system is and salt acts on your adrenal system. Element contains a science backed electrolyte ratio of sodium, potassium and and magnesium with no junk, no sugar, no coloring, artificial ingredients, gluten fillers or any other bs. It plays a critical role in reducing muscle cramps and fatigue whilst optimizing brain health, regulating appetite and curbing cravings. It's how I've started my morning every single day for over three years now and I absolutely love it. That orange flavor in a cold glass of water first thing in the morning is Fantastic. It is the best way to start the day. Also, they have a no BS no questions ask refund policy. So if you do not like it for any reason they will give you your money back and you don't even need to return return the box. That's how confident they are that you love it. Head to drinklmnt.com modernwisdom to get a free sample pack of all eight flavors with your first box. That's drinklmnt.com Modern Wisdom if you've got an idea for a business, you probably want to get into the business of selling, not the business of building and designing a website and understanding how to manage inventory. That is where Shopify comes in. Shopify is the platform that's quietly powering 10% of all E commerce in the United States. That includes gymshark, Allbirds, and my little creation Nutonic. You handle the creativity and they handle the grunt work and trust me, they don't care about whatever you're selling. You could be selling left handed spoons for all they care and they would still help you crush it. They've got the best converting checkout 36% better on average compared with other leading e commerce platforms. That helps you turn browsers into buyers. It's like having a business partner who is always available and unbelievably reliable. Plus they've got award winning support that's always ready to help every step of the way. Right now you can sign up for a $1 per month trial period at the link in the description below or by heading to shopify.commodern wisdom or lowercase that's shopify.commodernwisdom now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Crystal Ball. Do you think that stories have any real impact on voter opinion anymore or are we just memeing our way through a pantomime campaign now?
- [04:27]
Crystal Ball
I mean, of course, of course they do. But I think we have a sort of meta story that has set in where the central divide in politics in this meta story is how you feel about the person of Donald Trump. It's part of what I think is one of the worst things about the Trump era, frankly, is that all of the, you know, interesting policy and important policy discussion sort of gets subsumed into how do you feel about this one individual? And if you don't like him, which I don't like him, then you end up on the side of like Liz Cheney, who I find basically abhorrent in all ways in terms of her political views. And if you do like him, then, you know, you end up on the other side of that equation. And that has made it so that it's very difficult to do anything but discuss this person. And every campaign is run on, you know, what he's gonna do and who he is and how you feel about him. And I think it's been very difficult for any other story outside of that to break through. And certainly we've seen. I mean, Jesus, how much has happened in just a short period of time where you have Biden drop out of the race. Now, that did move the needle, right? The polls for Kamala are certainly significantly better than they were for Joe Biden. The fact that he was, like, manifestly declining before our eyes, and there was no way this man was going to be able to survive four more years, that did have an impact. But after that, you know, we've had a debate. We've had multiple assassination attempts on Trump. We had a vice presidential debate. We've had all kinds of wide, wild comments out on the campaign trail. And basically, the polls don't really move. They may inch in one direction or the other direction by one point. That's still within the margin of error of these polls anyway. So you don't even really know if that's actual movement. And I think until we break out of this sort of meta story that we're all recycling over and over again, then, yeah, I think these other stories are going to be less impactful.
- [06:22]
Chris Williamson
That was the point that I was getting at. This, like, structurally, swapping out Joe Biden for Kamala Harris was something. Something actually happened. I'm aware that something actually happened when you get shot in the ear as well, but it doesn't. Nothing happened with regards to politics. It's just more stories, and that's why it just increasingly feels like a pantomime. I was thinking about this the other day. You may actually even know these numbers. But if you think about around about 50% of Americans are registered to vote, I think. Is that right? Or around about 50% do vote. Ish.
- [06:51]
Crystal Ball
Yeah.
- [06:52]
Chris Williamson
And then, okay, so chop it in half. And then from that, 150. How many of those are actually going to go and vote? From whatever's left, how many of those are undecided? And from those. How many of those live in the counties in the states that actually matter? To do this, when you break it down, I need Nate Silver to do this for me. When you do that, there is. It would surprise me if that number is bigger than 5 million. Like that would be like a massive amount of people when you think it's only maybe three or four states or whatever that really matter. And then within that, there's the counties and all the rest of it. So you're talking about this entire thing, all of this dominating the news, all of the podcast, this conversation we're having right now being maybe, maybe on the low end, it could be for like one and a half million people or maybe less. Maybe it could be hundreds of thousands of people. Less than a million people.
- [07:41]
Crystal Ball
Yeah, I think it is less than a million people.
- [07:43]
Chris Williamson
Because if you think about it looking insane.
- [07:46]
Crystal Ball
Well, and that is the idiocy of the American political system, because why should it be that a voter in Bucks County, Pennsylvania matters more than a voter in New York City? Right. That's stupid. That is nonsensical. And yet it's just what we're, you know, it's what we're used to with the Electoral College system. But that's effectively what we, what we're looking at. You're looking at a few hundred thousand maybe voters in a couple key states who are largely not particularly politically tuned in and what their whims are going to be over the next couple of weeks. And we're talking about billions of dollars being spent on this.
- [08:24]
Chris Williamson
I would love to know someone, there's someone really smart and good at stats that's listening what that breaks down to from a campaign expenditure perspective from both parties. Both parties are trying to get them right. So you need to look at what they're both spending. And yeah, it's like you could probably retire every voter, plus their entire family, plus the next three generations of them at like an upper class level wage or whatever for this amount of money.
- [08:51]
Crystal Ball
Yeah, no, that's exactly right. And I also just think that there's something, you know, rotten at the core of a democracy where voters in one state matter and voters in another don't. And, you know, for the past several cycles, Republicans haven't have had an edge in the Electoral College, meaning that Democrats have to win the popular vote by a few points in order to also win the Electoral College vote. Hillary Clinton famously wins the popular vote, loses Electoral College, does not become President of the United States. Well, there's a lot of evidence that suggests that Trump is making up a lot of ground in a state like Florida that at this point is no longer a swing state. So, you know, those voters that are added to his column don't really matter. He's also closing the gap with Democrats in the state of New York, again, those voters don't really matter. And so that popular vote, Electoral College vote differential between Democrats and Republicans may actually be closing. But it just seems crazy to me when you think about, like, well, why doesn't it matter that a Florida voter is switching who they're going to vote for? Why is this not consequential in terms of our overall politics? And, you know, overwhelmingly Americans feel the same way. They're like, this Electoral College thing is really stupid. Why don't we just do the popular vote? Because then you would have to actually appeal to voters across the entire country. But, you know, it also points to something else, Chris, which is that I have a lot more, I think, humility this year coming into whatever the hell is going to happen on Election Day. Because first of all, I've been burned several times at this point by thinking that the polls understate this candidate or overstate this candidate or Everybody says in 2022, it's going to be a red wave and the polls show and people hate the economy, and then, like, that doesn't materialize. Of course, Trump wildly underestimated in 2020, 2016. I know I am not reflective of that voter that isn't that politically engaged who was going to decide the election in basically two weeks time. Like, I know that. And so I just have to be comfortable with the fact that I really have no idea what's going to happen. I can look at these polls. They tell me it's really close. That's the best data that I have. And other than that, I'm going to just tell you what I think about the issues, and that's that. Because anyone who's out there saying, like, oh, I'm certain Kamala is going to win, I'm certain Trump's going to win, whatever. No, you're not. There's no way you can know that because the polls have been off in all kinds of directions. It would only take a tiny miss in either direction for it to be a landslide for Kamala or a landslide for Trump. That's where we are.
- [11:18]
Chris Williamson
Yeah. Not only have the polls been off, but this time almost all of them are saying that it's 50 50. Nate was on the show, too. I'm aware everything moves and blah, blah. Nate was on the show, like two, two and a half weeks ago. He's like, it's an actual coin toss. Which he said for him is the most acceptable outcome going into it, because it means that he's got equal chances. He's like, it was 50, 50. I said it was 50 50. Right.
- [11:40]
Crystal Ball
So whoever wins, no one can be like you told us.
- [11:43]
Chris Williamson
Exactly. All of the pollsters have got to get out of jail free Card. I was thinking about this earlier on. How different do you think the political landscape would be if Roe vs. Wade hadn't been repealed?
- [11:53]
Crystal Ball
You know, I have to say that, yeah, I'm personally pro choice. It's an important issue for me, I think, you know, for me and many other millions of Americans, women especially, but men too. I think they were pretty stunned by the idea that this. Right. That they and their moms and grandmas had taken for granted had been rolled back. But I really under underestimated how much it would matter in the American political context. And we have my entire life as a country been split 50, 50 on the question of abortion, like almost exactly. And whichever party at that time feels like they're taking the more extreme position, they were the ones that would, you know, be on the losing side of the abortion issue. It's not a 50, 50 issue anymore. There's a very clear pro choice majority in the country. You can tell Republicans very wary of this. You know, Donald Trump changing his position and just making a mess of what his stance is on the issue. And I certainly think it was determinative in 2022 in terms of there not being that red wave election. You know, Democrats win the Senate, they come very close actually to winning the House. And it remains to be seen whether it still has that level of force in 2024. But I also think it wasn't just abortion alone. It was also tied in with this sense from voters that, like, this party's got some pretty wild ideas, like a lot of the candidates that were nominated by the Republican Party last time around and this time around, by the way, you know, they denied the last election results. Of course, Donald Trump and J.D. vance continue to deny the last election results. And there was just this sense between that and the fringe views on abortion that this is a party that they're a little bit wild, they're a little bit out there. And I think that was a big part of it too. Of course, this time around you see like the Mark Robinson, you know, situation down in North Carolina. I don't have you followed that at all. No.
- [13:51]
Chris Williamson
What's up?
- [13:52]
Crystal Ball
Okay, so only in America. So this is the lieutenant governor in North Carolina. He's running now to be the governor of North Carolina. He's the Republican nominee. When he was nominated already, there were a lot of really, we'll say, controversial statements of his on the record, including things that I think can accurately be characterized as Holocaust denial, et cetera. Well, now it's come out that in a porn chat room that he was a regular visitor of, he described himself as a black Nazi, said that he would actually like to own slaves himself if it was possible, and said, you know, use, like, absolute slurs against Martin Luther King Jr. And so that's an extreme example, but that is the type of character who, you know, when it starts to take hold, that that's like the image of the party, that's a big problem for them. And abortion, like I said, ties into that sort of, like, sense of extremism that I think is a problem for Republicans, especially, especially down ballot. Trump can get away with things that I think other Republicans can't. And that's part of why, you know, he's outperforming every single other Republican Senate candidate in the country, save for Larry Hogan, who's running in. In the state of Maryland. He can get away with a lot of things that others can't. But I think maybe even Trump, if he out and out came, you know, if he came out and actually said, I'm a Nazi, that might be a little bit of a political problem for him, too.
- [15:19]
Chris Williamson
Well, look, you don't know. You don't know who the other respondents in a porn chat room are that might be right on the right in the middle of the zeitgeist of whatever they're talking about. Yeah, there's definitely. Well, I mean, this was what we saw when the hot Swap summer happened was everything was vibes. We don't really care about your sort of political proposals. We don't need to see a budget. It's just, you know, brat summer and everyone's cool and it's chill and look at the merch.
- [15:42]
Crystal Ball
Isn't it great?
- [15:42]
Chris Williamson
Yeah, exactly. And I think definitely the Republicans at the moment are the less fun party. And, like, they just don't seem to be as. They're not as vibey. And if you do get pulled up on vibes like that, which is a. It's a sentiment, it's a sense, it's kind of a tone and a tenor of what most people are saying that isn't to do with the hard issues. It's just. It's just the way that they present themselves. And if you've got, like, Marjorie Taylor Greene on one side and you've got this guy in a porn chat room talking about this other stuff, like, it's just a sense. It's a sense of how Things are. And rather than it people being able to point to any one particular thing that occurred, it gives them this. It's what brand is. Right? It's all of the intangibles about how do you think about this party at large? Like what's the blood that runs through its veins as opposed to the sort of skeletal structure that, that suspends it.
- [16:33]
Crystal Ball
So I think I would have agreed with your assessment that the Democrats were feeling more like the fun party. Certainly, you know, early after Kamala gets in and there's all this enthusiast, you know, Democrats were like on a death march to November or when it was Joe Biden, because they weren't stupid. They were looking like, oh, this is going to be bad. And it was going to be bad. If that man even made it to election day. I mean, he. Anyway, we'll just, we'll just put that to the side. But, you know, there's all this enthusiasm. They're excited, they're out on the trail. Like, they're, you know, making jokes about J.D. vance on a couch and like memeing on Tick tock and all this stuff. And coupling with that. She put out some really substantive policy proposals that are extremely popular. You know, taking steps, especially with regard to prices, which Americans say, understandably so is their, their number one issue. Like, we can't afford groceries, we can't afford housing, we can't afford all kinds of things. And she came up with a very concrete plan on housing that was solid. On price gouging, that was solid. And you know what? I was like, okay, this is good, because you need to show people that you're not just not Joe Biden, but you, you know, you have a plan, you got a vision for the country and you're going to enact it, et cetera. And you add that on top of the, like, good vibes. And that can really be something post DNC in particular. And in the past couple of weeks, they've just really leaned into this. Like, actually we're, you know, we aren't going to really talk about policy. We're just going to talk about how Liz Cheney endorsed us and Dick Cheney endorsed us, and we're going to have bipartisan commissions. And at the same time, you've got the Trump campaign. Trump is going on all kinds of, you know, podcasts. Like, I wouldn't be surprised if he offered himself up to, you know, your podcast viewership and kind of hanging out and vibing with a bunch of podcast bros. And I'm not sure that they've been able to hold on to that sense that they're the ones with, like, the vibe and the momentum and the quote, unquote fun.
- [18:36]
Chris Williamson
What was your post mortem on? Call Her Daddy?
- [18:41]
Crystal Ball
I mean, okay, so I want to be fair. I don't know, Alex. I've never watched the show. Okay? I want to be fair to her. I want to be fair to Andrew Schultz. I want to be fair to all the podcasters who are saying yes to these interviews, because on the one hand, you're not a journalist. Right. You're not a scholar on the Middle east, you're not a. Whatever. Right. However, I do think that given the fact that these candidates are increasingly turning to podcasters to get their message out, I think if you're going to accept that interview, you are accepting a level of responsibility to be more than an infomercial. And, you know, whether it's the Nelk boys or Andrew Schultz or call her Alex Cooper or whoever, mostly what I've seen is just, like, propaganda infomercials. And, you know, maybe it's not fair to those podcasters that that onus has been put on them, but because you have candidates who no longer feel like they have to submit themselves to adversarial interviews from journalists, you know, that does kind of put the onus on you that, like, okay, well, this is all we're going to get from these candidates. They're not doing another debate. You know, they're not sitting for that many traditional media interviews. And by the way, you know, yeah, you're a comedian. Yeah. You're a cultural figure. Yeah, you're whoever. It's not that hard to come up with a few tough questions or a few important questions that, you know, reflect things that are on regular people's minds. In fact, if you're someone with, you know, with that, the talent to build that large audience, you likely have your finger on more of the pulse than some of the mainstream.
- [20:17]
Chris Williamson
There's a very particular. There's a very particular skill set for grabbing and holding a politician's feet to the fire. Even if you come in with the best of intentions and all of the prep in the world, you know, you're looking at one of the two most powerful people in the world in a month's time and going, no, no, no, no. But, Madam President, what do you really mean when you talk about price gouging? Don't you know that there's been an awful lot of criticism for how this is going to raise real blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? And you're like, if we're laying that at the feet of Alex Cooper. So I, it's tough. I'm fascinated. I'm fascinated by this. You know, Douglas Murray had that famous double debate last year about mainstream media versus independent media and is one thing better than the other? And it was him versus Malcolm Gladwell and a couple of other people, I think. And yeah, when I think about that, there is, this is the podcast election. You know, it's so much has been laid at the feet but and this is the kind of relates back to what I was talking about earlier on. I really don't know how much Theo Vaughn is changing the minds of the registered, undecided Pennsylvania electorate. Do you know what I mean? Like when you break it down through all of those different bits and pieces.
- [21:21]
Crystal Ball
No, that's fair. And I think that's a very fair rebuttal to saying like they have this responsibility is basically like these people are spending a billion dollars on advertising. And you really think like the podcast of appearance with the Vaughn is going to be the game changer. So I guess the, the sort of like, you know, the rebuttal and the somewhat nihilistic and probably pretty accurate view is like, well, none of this really matters anyway. So, you know, that's what we need, nihilism.
- [21:46]
Chris Williamson
That's what we, that's what we're here for.
- [21:48]
Crystal Ball
I have to be honest with you, Chris. I'm curious your, your thoughts on this because I, I don't know what your thoughts are on this, but I'm someone who like, this is my space, independent media, you know, what soccer and I do, also my show with my husband Kyle. And you know, we've been very careful about how we cultivate our business model, especially because we are analysts and journalists and you know, we, we want people not just to not have a conflict of interest, but we want people to understand and perceive that there is no conflict of interest there. So we've been very careful about the decisions we've made with regard to our business. We don't take any, we don't talk to any advertisers whatsoever. You know, we don't read any ads, all that stuff. But I have to tell you, I'm pretty black pilled on a lot of independent media. And you know, I, I think I've been the first to call out many failings of the mainstream press where they've gotten things wrong, et cetera, et cetera. But you know, it just feels like there's, there's no check on independent media whatsoever. And the thing that clicks the Most is the most like outrageous or conspiratorial. And that can lead you, that creates a very ugly set of incentives for a lot of creators.
- [22:57]
Chris Williamson
What's, what's some of the scenarios or situations that you've encountered that have black pilled you the most? Again, this will be a cumulative thing over time. It's just this sort of milieu that you're swimming in. But are there any things that come to mind where you go perverse incentive really?
- [23:10]
Crystal Ball
Well, I'll tell you one thing specifically is I was a critic of the liberal derangement around Russiagate, right. The stated like the pee tape and whatever that was alleged to be coming on every any moment about Donald Trump. Like that was not true. Right. So I was a critic of that. However, the DOJ did just indict this, you know, a couple or a Russian person who worked for RT who was actively paying these conservative influencers.
- [23:41]
Chris Williamson
Oh, this is the tenant tenant media thing.
- [23:44]
Crystal Ball
Yes. And, and not only that, and I'm not saying that the, these influencers should be, you know, prosecuted or whatever, but they were taking a lot of like an outrageous amount of money per video from someone that they just thought was like a shady businessman. I believe them that they didn't know it was like a Russian plan or whatever. And it was documented they were taking, according to the government allegedly that they were taking direction on what videos to push and what angles to talk about and like, oh, put up, let's talk about that Tucker Carlson Russian supermarket video as one example. And you know, that just shows you that in corporate media there's all these incentives with regard to where the money comes from and where the ratings come from and catering to power and all of that. I don't see this really any different in independent media. There's a different set perhaps of people that you're catering towards. Audience capture is more of an issue because you have more of a direct connect. You know, a lot of times there's less of a wall between you and any sponsors or advertisers because you may be talking to them directly, you're reading their ads directly. And apparently some people at least are willing to just take a bunch of money from random shady businessmen that they've never heard of before to make the content that they want them to make and not disclose it.
- [25:00]
Chris Williamson
So you know, I brought up a story that happened earlier this year. It was a good while earlier this year we got an email from some random contact form on the website saying we want to propose a guest to come on the show. It's a six figure sum in order to bring them on. And the topics that we want to talk about are below. And it was all oil prices in the Middle east, energy. I'm like this is so fucking deep state. Yes. So yeah, I got lots of thoughts on this that at no point this is, you know, public service announcement. There has been no period during the six and a half years, 800 and whatever episodes that I've done this show where someone has stepped in and given me media training on how to deal with pressure, with criticism, with incentives, with all of the rest of this stuff. So something tells me that most other people haven't either. Whether it's fucking Kyle Kalinske or Tim Pool or whoever. Like people, haven't they? I don't think they've been given that necessarily. I do kind of get the sense that if you're watching Shapiro's show or your guys show, maybe not actually your guys show, yours be one of the very few that this isn't the case. If your balls deep in political content, how undecided are you? Do you know what I mean? Like you're giving it.
- [26:17]
Crystal Ball
Yeah, that's true.
- [26:18]
Chris Williamson
Yeah sure. You're giving the money to the people that talk about politics because they're the ones who it seems on brand for and they're the ones that potentially you can influence to talk about different things. But really what you want to do is give it to like I don't know, the Travis Kelsey podcast, like the one that, where you've got an even split of people either way or when you can access people who are under genuinely undecided. But the people who are undecided probably aren't spending all of their time listening to political shows. Because the reason that you do I think is probably to get your views and opinions and perspective confirmed by somebody that you like and they feel comfortable and you know what they're going to talk about and it's an update or whatever. I would say, I would say that your guys show is one of the few that sits outside of that. But yeah, I, I know exactly what you mean. It's the incentives are incentivizing for me. Mercifully I kind of come from this I guess like bro culture background which means that you know, unless you've got a problem with fitness trackers and whatever, there's limited perverse incentives. No one's coming, no one's coming in to try and give me like big.
- [27:17]
Crystal Ball
Have you ever had a product or company come to you and say like oh we want to advertise, and you'd be like, I don't know.
- [27:23]
Chris Williamson
All the time. Yeah, all the time. And this is one of the.
- [27:26]
Crystal Ball
See, that's the other thing that's difficult is like, let's say that I did go down the path of, oh, you know, this. This pro. And again, I'm not holding the standard out for you. I'm just talking about for us because of our particular space in the media. But, you know, I don't want to be on the hook for, like, vouching for. Somebody came to us with, like, an air filtration system. It's like, oh, this is innocuous. But then it's like, okay, but is it really? Because if you're making claims about it's going to improve your asthma or whatever, I don't want to be on the hook or responsible for some claim that's being made on the show that we're ourselves vouching for. So I think that. I think it's difficult. I think it's a difficult space.
- [28:03]
Chris Williamson
One of the things that you never really get credit for are the decisions that you didn't take.
- [28:08]
Crystal Ball
Yeah.
- [28:09]
Chris Williamson
And in some ways, rightly so, because people don't know what you were offered. They only know what you chose to do. And. But there is a sense on the Internet of a lot of criticism around the acts of commission that people make, but not the virtues of omission that they didn't make. So I often think about that where I'm like, fuck. Like, for instance, it was six, nine months ago when we got that email about the oil baron, whatever the fuck it was that we needed to speak to. And I didn't bother to bring it up because it felt like this weird sort of humble brag of being like, look at what I'm like, my virtue and all of that stuff. But it just makes me feel icky. And at least for me, the show that I'm trying to create is something that's a body of work that I feel proud of. Like, the most important thing is, is it interesting? Do I have fun and am I proud of it Once I was. Once I was done with it? Like, at no point in that is revenue like a big consideration that would. I'd be lying if I said that I don't want the show to continue growing so they can do cool, bigger things and have a nice quality of life and all that sort of stuff. But it doesn't factor in the first, like, five reasons that I did the show ever before. So, anyway, yeah, it's A. It's a bit of a mixed bag on that. I had you mentioned J.D. vance earlier on. One of the things that I kind of slipped under the radar at least a little bit on Twitter, as far as I could see, was, was it the New York Times lady that he did the interview with recently?
- [29:25]
Crystal Ball
Yes.
- [29:26]
Chris Williamson
Yeah. And she, like, something held his feet to the fire and didn't. So that's an example of what you were talking about earlier on, of a woman who is prepared to sit for three minutes in, just wallowing in discomfort as she says, senator Vance, I have asked you, give me a yes or no answer. She's basically saying, would you have certified the 2020 election? And she just, she doesn't move.
- [29:46]
Crystal Ball
She's just like, yes, and five times.
- [29:48]
Chris Williamson
Yeah. And there's. It's the really great answers from him, like, sort of obfuscatory and evasive and all of this, like, all of the tricks, and she's just like, nope, nope, nope, like the most mean, sullen mother ever. But even that, like the Vance saying that he wouldn't have certified the election in 2020, do you think that has made any impact? Does anyone even really care about that anymore?
- [30:12]
Crystal Ball
So there's. There's two levels. Okay, so does it matter that we have that piece of information about him? And frankly, I think that's the single most important piece of information as to why Donald Trump put J.D. vance on the ticket. Because he wants to make sure that if it comes down to not that scenario, maybe, exactly, but something similarly, you know, frank, outrageous and unconstitutional, will this guy be loyal up to. Even to that point where Mike Pence said, that's it, I'm out. Right. And Mike Pence now, you know, the right all hates him. This was the most loyal soldier for Donald Trump right up until that moment. So I think it's important to have that on the record and for people to understand where J.D. vance stands on that issue. Do I think it's electorally consequential? Probably not. Maybe a little on the margins. Because, again, look, I want to be humble about my own predictions, because I was wrong in 2022. I thought red wave. I thought Democrats are just running on, like, democracy and people want to know about their pocketbooks and whatever. They're not offering any kind of an economic program. But, hey, it worked for him. It was enough. And it's very possible it's enough. Again, I do know people hate that Donald Trump won't admit he lost. They hate that he lies about the election. They hate the, you know, the candidates who were election deniers in 2022 performed extremely poorly, and they will perform poorly again. I mean, Carrie Lake is running for Senate in Arizona. She is a foremost election denier there, and her polling is abysmal. She's trailing Trump dramatically. She's almost certainly going to lose what should be a very winnable Senate race for her. So, you know, people do really hate this stuff. So maybe marginally to the extent that it reminds them of an aspect of the, the Trump era and the, you know, Trump himself that they really find distasteful than that, maybe on the margins. But, you know, on the other hand, it's like, well, who doesn't know at this point what happened on January 6th and how they feel about it? So that's where I feel like it's probably unlikely to be electorally consequential, even as I think having the historic record to be able to look back on and increased understanding is important.
- [32:23]
Chris Williamson
One of my friends tweeted earlier on, the ease with which dramatic behavior gets attention online has convinced many political activists that a better world doesn't require years of patient work, only a sufficient quantity of drama. It just feels like that's what sort of Twitter feels like to me at the moment. How, speaking of that, how influential do you think Elon Musk is? Very actual swaying of votes, changing the, the opinions.
- [32:50]
Crystal Ball
Here's the thing. How much do I think Twitter matters? I don't know. You know, you could actually, and my, my colleague Ryan Grimm makes the case. And I think it's, it's compelling, although hard to say that Elon Musk Twitter is actually in some ways bad for Republicans because it's created this just like right wing echo chamber where they think all of their worst opinions are super popular and creates a bit of a disconnected bubble where, for example, you can think it's a smart idea to lie about Haitian immigrants eating pets and think that this is going to sell nationwide. And it doesn't. So, you know, there's, there's a debate about whether Twitter, his stewardship of Twitter is effective for Republicans and for Trump specifically. But Elon Musk, according to Trump, is putting half a billion dollars into the Trump campaign.
- [33:37]
Chris Williamson
Could that not be hyperbole from Trump to just make it sound very possible?
- [33:40]
Crystal Ball
And that's the other thing about the American election system.
- [33:43]
Chris Williamson
Lies all the time. Except for this thing, which is like, I don't want to believe, but we.
- [33:47]
Crystal Ball
We know it's tens of millions. We know it's an incredibly substantial sum. And we know that he's effectively moved to Pennsylvania and is running key parts of the Trump campaign. So again, I'll separate, you know, electorally. Will it make a difference? Hard to say. Certainly having that money helps Trump more than not having that money in. Trump's little cash dropped this election cycle. What matters more to me about Elon's influence is he's already been promised a plum government position with wide ranging authorities, as best we can tell. And Elon Musk, however you feel about him, this is not a disinterested actor. Last year alone, just Tesla and SpaceX receive $15 billion in federal government contracts, US taxpayer dollars to the tune of $15 billion in a single year. He is one of the largest contractors to the Pentagon.
- [34:43]
Chris Williamson
Is that because he creates the best technology? That's the most advanced we've got Boeing stranding, making.
- [34:50]
Crystal Ball
I'm not saying, I'm not saying that he shouldn't be, but I am saying that if you are, that you should not be in charge of a large swath of the government because you have a massive conflict of interest. I don't care.
- [35:01]
Chris Williamson
He does a lot of those. As you go up with people that have been in big Pharma and then they end up working for the fda, you've got this. Leads are replete with these kinds of issues.
- [35:11]
Crystal Ball
Absolutely. And you see it to make the parallel on the Democratic side because this is not meant to be a partisan point, it's meant to be a principled point about the corrupting influence of money in politics and the rising influence specifically of billionaires in politics. I do think Elon is a uniquely extreme example pushing the boundaries of this in a way that there is no comparable other example. And I can, I can make that case in a moment. But you know, to give you an example, on Democratic side, Reid Hoffman leaked in billionaire Mark Cuban, who. We all know who Mark Cuban is. They both are big Kamala donors. They haven't given as much to her anywhere close as far as we know. Again, campaign finance being opaque. Anywhere close to as much. But you know, they're going out there and clearly trying to shape what she does next time around. They don't like the SEC enforcement on crypto in particular. So Mark Cuban has said, hey, I want to be SEC chair, and there's been pressure around that. And then in addition, Lina Khan, who's been the head of the ftc, the Federal Trade Commission and been very aggressive in terms of antitrust enforcement, which I think is incredibly important for competition. Wall street absolutely hates her because she's, you Know, putting sort of icing a lot of mergers and acquisitions that are how a lot of Wall Streeters make, you know, fat bonuses and make a lot of money. And so both Reid Hoffman and Mark Cuban and a few other billionaires on the Kamal Harris side have really been trying to use their influence and power to shape what that regime will look like next time around as well. So I'm not saying that there's like, you know, one party that is immune to this and the other is not, but because of the size of the dollar figures that we can tell and the level of involvement and the large government contracts, the fact that he does run a social media giant, in addition, you know, I think it's, I think everybody should be deeply troubled by the idea of this one individual. Regardless of how you feel about him or who he is or how brilliant you think he is or whatever, any one individual who is not being voted for having that kind of control in the federal government.
- [37:16]
Chris Williamson
What do you think is the downstream implication of having more siloed off social media platforms? You know, I would say that Twitter, up until Elon took it over, did seem to have not quite a mainstream media, but a bit of a left leaning, sort of partisan, sensorial attitude. But now I don't know how it works. You may know the ecosystem, everyone on the left for whom Elon and Trump are too toxic have fucked off to threads. And then there's truth Social, which is like Twitter's Twitter and then there's Twitter, which kind of does feel a little bit right of center now, but maybe that's just, you know, like putting your hand in cold water after it's been in hot water. And it's because of, comparatively to how it was before, like, what do you make of the increasing siloing, a compartmentalization of groups to a platform which only really reinforces what they believe.
- [38:10]
Crystal Ball
Yeah, I mean, I think it just makes everyone increasingly deranged. You know, if you're just like circle jerking all day on your own little siloed platform and not to like, you know, this is, this is very self serving. But I'll give, I'll give you an example. In, you know, my own professional life, I work with Sagar, we co host the show and you know, sometimes he'll bring stories to the table and I'm like, you know, did you see that there's a thing like that's not really what. And, and I will also, because of the ecosystem I live in, bring some of the tables. Like, you know, did you see on the Other hand, there's this point. And so, you know, as best we can, we kind of have to check each other. Right. And so if you just have people feeding one another what they want to hear. Yeah. I think it ends up increasingly deranged. And I think we've. I think we've seen that. You know, I mentioned the Haitian pets thing. That is a very prominent example. There's all kinds of stuff going on with, like, you know, people floating. That Hurricane Helene was generated by Democrats specifically to target Republican areas. Like, that's insane. That is insane.
- [39:19]
Chris Williamson
What are some of the ones going in the opposite direction that you found?
- [39:25]
Crystal Ball
I mean, listen, if you go back to Russiagate, there was a lot of derangement there. You know, there is very prominent liberal conspiracies right now about Donald Trump shitting his pants in public.
- [39:38]
Chris Williamson
I thought that was a Biden thing. Was that not a Biden thing? Oh, this is.
- [39:41]
Crystal Ball
This is like, no one cares about Biden anymore. He's old news.
- [39:44]
Chris Williamson
Right. I need to. We need to talk. We need to talk about that. Like, the guy that's running the country at the moment was. I think he was at the beach when the hurricane was happening recently. Is he just, like, nobody's paying real attention to him. And I think that this fits into a broader. A broader question that I've got about whether Kamala is a change candidate or whether she has incumbent legitimacy, because it seems like the Democrats are trying to bifurcate off where they want her to have this degree of legitimacy, but also that we have got problems. And I know, and I'm going to fix it. And, you know, the best point, the only really good point that Trump made in their debate was the very final one, which was, you've had three years to do this, and what. What have you been doing all of this time? You can't talk about the problems that you're encountering whilst not pointing the finger at yourself. So how. How do you think that sort of circle is getting squared? And what's this sort of modern role of Joe Biden for the rest of this?
- [40:44]
Crystal Ball
I want to. Let me come back to that because there's. There's one other point that I want to make, substantive point on the conspiracy question, which is that I. I think genuinely the conspiracy issue is worse on the right right now. And the reason is because the right is more estranged from establishment institutions. And if you look at the. The polling of trust in the media, trust in government, trust in, you know, the FBI, like every mainstream institution you can imagine, imagine Republicans don't trust them. And so it opens up a lot of opportunity for people to come in and say, well, they're not telling you this, but this is the truth. This is the real story of what's really going on. And so, you know, this is not about like Republicans being stupid or whatever, but because there is this deep mistrust, I think it's opened up more of a space for increasingly wild conspiracies like Democrats are controlling the weather. And then, you know, I think Twitter under Elon has helped to fuel that ecosystem. And the siloing you're talking about, I think that helps to fuel that ecosystem as well. And so that's why I think genuinely there's right now there's some story going around that was like just completely invented by this guy that previously fabricated other stories and got caught about Tim Walls that a lot of people are taking very seriously. So I do think right now it's more of an issue on the right. But to go back to your question.
- [42:12]
Chris Williamson
About now, I've got. No, I've got stuff on that one. Sorry, go ahead. What on your inspiratorial point? Well, just that I was fascinated by this as well, that we're talking about the election coming down to a nail biter. But pretty much anybody. I mean, you can even look at the campaign donations from big media organization employees. They skew massively left to the point where there's like, it's very, very sort of biased in one direction. How different do you think the outcome of the election would be if you had more equal representation in legacy media, mainstream media, from a talking standpoint? I mean, we've seen Scientific American come out in support of Kamala Harris. We saw. Who was it that came out the other week? Washington Post or. Who is that?
- [43:02]
Crystal Ball
I'm not sure. I mean, I'm sure they will if they haven't yet.
- [43:04]
Chris Williamson
But yeah, everybody has come out to endorse. No, it wasn't. It was not the Spectator. What's the equivalent of the Spectator, but on the other side, the Atlantic. The Atlantic came out in support of Kamala Harris, having only three weeks ago published an article titled Scientific American didn't need to endorse anybody. So like this, I don't know, somebody applied the right amount of pressure to the right place. My point being big left leaning influence when it comes to legacy media, mainstream media, how big of a difference would that make if it were on a nail biter, if the scales had been evened a little bit in that regard? Do you think that that could change the outcome.
- [43:42]
Crystal Ball
Potentially. But I think that ignores that, you know, there is a large establishment at this point, conservative media ecosystem as well. I mean, Fox News continues to be the largest cable news outlet. Daily Wire is massive and very influential. There's, you know, in independent media, it's dominated by right leaning podcasts and influencers, et cetera.
- [44:08]
Chris Williamson
I wonder whether someone would say, look at that. You've had to, you've had to kind of create your own ecosystem in order to be able to make this happen. When we talk about the more established, more mainstream, which presumably have a degree of legitimacy, maybe they reach more people. Maybe they reach people that you can't get through independent media that do they.
- [44:22]
Crystal Ball
Have a degree more legitimacy.
- [44:24]
Chris Williamson
Unfortunately not anymore. Yeah, you're probably right.
- [44:26]
Crystal Ball
Yeah, I mean my. So I think it's absolutely fair to say that the legacy outlets certainly have a like liberal, pro Democratic party bias. You know, I'm not a liberal, I'm a leftist and I see, I actually feel like my perspective doesn't really exist in any of these places. And at least CNN will bring on like a perfunctory, you know, Scott Jennings or Hawai ever to rep. The Republican point of view. It is very rare that people with my political views are represented there at all. So I feel very erased in the entirety of the media ecosystem. But to be honest with you, the, the bias that concerns me more in all of these spaces, whether they're sort of elite conservative media or elite liberal legacy media, is more of a class and regional bias because you have a lot of people who, you know, all went to elite oftentimes Ivy League institutions who grew up with very similar backgrounds, many of them from either New York, Boston or California. And nothing wrong with having that background, but it does mean that you're getting a very particular view of the world. And I think that probably has been more of an issue for them than anything in terms of getting some just key fundamental things wrong about their understanding of the country and about the way they frame coverage, the stories they choose to cover and all of those things. To me that's a bigger issue. And unfortunately, especially as regional papers disappear and there's more and more media consolidation into. It's like it's just the New York Times and it's just the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal and you know, these cable news outlets. And that's kind of it. The more you have that con, that consolidation and that nationalization of the media environment, the more of that narrow, biased, like, you know, one sort of class identity view that you're going to get of the world.
- [46:35]
Chris Williamson
Well, being British, you know, we're obsessed with class. Even when we think that we're not obsessed with class, we still are. And coming over here, it's really interesting to see people. Nobody ever uses the word posh in the us in the uk, everybody gets, you know, it comes from a quite a posh family. You know, they tend to go on holiday to like Santorini in the summer, whatever. Right. So, yeah, as a very scum of the earth, working class person from the north of England, maybe that's something, maybe that's a degree of hope for independent media that it is able to cut through class divides because you don't have the same kinds of gatekeepers in that sort of a way. I don't know what like Shapiro or Tim Pool or like fucking David Pakman's upbringing was, but you do have the opportunity in a relatively egalitarian market to have anybody rise to the top. It's based on, pretty much exclusively based on talent. It's essentially costless to start and until it becomes very costly to run. So anyway, Kamala Harris, change candidate or incumbent Legitimacy, what is she and how do you square that circle?
- [47:43]
Crystal Ball
Well, I, I think that she should position herself as the change candidate, but I think she's utterly failed to do that. And I mean, one of her biggest mistakes on the campaign trail is going on the View and they ask her this incredibly softball, honestly, a question that's an opportunity for her to say, you know, I'm not exactly like Joe Biden, who was unpopular, as we know. And she says, I can't think of a thing that I do differently than him. And so I think it's difficult. You know her, obviously she looks different, her identity is different, her age is very different. That's important. That does matter. And I think people were really open. In fact, I think their default assumption was that she'd be a little bit different from Joe Biden. But she's been so terrified of the campaign, has been so cautious and she's been so terrified of this idea that people are going to perceive her as too liberal that she's been afraid to articulate any specific differences really on anything. And, you know, I, I think that has led her to, you know, a very tenuous position in the polls now because people want to change candidate, they aren't satisfied with the direction the country's headed in. And you need to be able to lay on a few specific things where you're going to push things forward in a way. That Joe Biden didn't. You know, I mean, one to me, because this is important to me and a lot of other people besides, very obvious example, is, you know, you have a vast majority of the country that wants to see a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, that wants us to withhold weapons from going to, you know, Israel to commit more atrocities. And even there, there's zero willingness. You know, the politics of it pretty clear at this point for her on that side, zero willingness to create any separation there whatsoever. It's a political failure. But more importantly to me, it's a moral failure.
- [49:34]
Chris Williamson
It is kind of funny to think about the opportunities that politicians have to say stuff out front, and then everybody talks about it as if it was a rational decision. The reason that, for instance, Kamala decided to say or not say a thing on the View. What I'm mostly fascinated by, which we're never going to find out, is what is the interpersonal political dynamics inside of the party? Like, why did Joe Biden drop out? Like, what was that conversation? What was the final thing that pushed him over the line to do that? What was it, dirt? Is it some house of cards bullshit? Like, you know, is that what went on? Or is it just that you can convince somebody through, like, normal motivations, this is going to be better for your legacy and we'll give you a cushy position in the blah, blah, and whatever it is, but the same thing goes for every single conversation. Why JD Vance was picked, why you don't go for, why you don't go for Josh Shapiro, et cetera, et cetera. Like, all of that to me is just so fascinating. I want to know what's going. I want to know. That's why I'm so keen to bring Bernie Sanders on as basically the person who tried to flip the table over as much as you could on the left over the last few years, to be like, you're competing, then you're out of the tent, then you kind of half back in the tent. But also there's this sort of lingering that guy isn't on our side type thing. The skepticism, I just want. Because to me, that seems that's the most interesting thing. And it's a bit of politics that we never, ever get to see, which is the interpersonal dynamics going on behind the scenes. And the same thing goes for the current Harris campaign. Like, are you really able to throw your boss, like, the guy that's kind of still like the actual President of the United States, under the bus while he's still in power? Like, can you do that? Well, I mean you can, but like what the, what the, what are the fallout and what are you trying to mediate from what's happening internally and externally? So yeah, fascinating stuff that we never get to see.
- [51:22]
Crystal Ball
Yeah, I mean as best I can tell from the, with the Biden dropout pressure, it really just got to be where, you know, Obama was against him, Schumer was against him, Pelosi was against him. And the money, that was another key part. The money dried up and you know, yeah, he's, he's old and he's senile, but he's also got some muscle memory in terms of being in politics for what, about 40 friggin 50 years. And so he knows the money dries up, that's kind of game over. So I think once he realized that they're not going to just forget it and fall back in line, you know, they're going to continue to pressure, continue to put the screws to me until I'm out. I think that's when he finally, you know, very reluctantly decided to hang it up. As best, best I can tell, talking.
- [52:11]
Chris Williamson
About the opportunity or the difficulty that some of the candidates have had with being frank when it comes to stating their positions, it does feel a lot to me like there is nothing that you can do to further your cause. You can just mess up sufficiently badly that the other side uses it in a campaign promo. Like, you know, the Trump Schultz interview within, I think it was 18 or 19 hours from publishing the Harris campaign had used.
- [52:43]
Crystal Ball
Yeah, they cut an ad.
- [52:43]
Chris Williamson
Yeah, cut an ad from it. I'm like, so what you're doing is it literally is a game of playing defense which again causes each candidate to withdraw more. Not necessarily from appearances or whatever, but they're more cagey with the things that they say. They use more obfuscatory language, they're caveating, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, that again, just that incentive. So funny. So different.
- [53:06]
Crystal Ball
Yeah, it's, it's very troubling. There's a lot of fucked up incentives in politics because for example, like Project 2025, you know, this big conservative blueprint that's put together that Trump's very anxious to run away from at this point and fair enough, his campaign didn't put it together. On the other hand, no, this is the sort of thing that conservative things Hanks put together all the time and some of that will be implemented because it's the blueprint that's laying around. But he recognized immediately that actually having Specific policy proposals out there. It's not a good thing because then people can dig in and they can criticize and they can pull out things that they don't like. You know, for example, in that project 2025, they're like, we're gonna ban porn. And I don't think that's probably all that popular. So putting specific things down gives people an opportunity to attack those specific things. Doing interviews that even a relatively friendly setting still opens up a possibility that you're going to screw up in some critical way that your opponent can clip into an ad and, you know, use to their benefit. And that's why Kamala Harris, for a long time was deciding, like, I'm just not really going to do interviews because I don't have to. The media is not pressuring me to. The public isn't actually really pressuring me to. And I know that I'm the type of person who might like, well, screw this up in a way that's kind of bad. And you know what, to be honest with you, she was kind of right.
- [54:28]
Chris Williamson
It's bad for democracy, but impressively unimpressive on a long form interview.
- [54:33]
Crystal Ball
You know, she, in that view interview, again, friendly space gave them so much ammunition. You talk about, you know, the Harris campaign clipping an ad of Trump with Andrew Schultz. They clipped an ad of Kamala saying, I'm just like Joe Biden and are reportedly putting money behind it, playing at their rallies, et cetera. So, you know, I mean, you can't blame them for doing that. Like, they're trying to win a campaign. But especially this is the downside of, like, the norms being broken. I'm not a big, like, lover, defender of the norms as a leftist, as someone who, you know, is sort of adversarial to both of these parties. But there are certain things that were better. So for one, one example, we had this norm of a certain number of debates that wasn't a legal requirement, but you just expected both candidates, they're going to subject themselves to three debates, so we at least have that much time to evaluate what their answers are and compare them, et cetera, et cetera. That norm is now gone. You know, we used to have a norm that was like, you would sit for the 60 Minutes interview and the Time interview and the New York Times editorial board, and you would subject yourself to this sort of like, rigorous adversarial press process. And that's no longer the case. Now it's like, you know, I can go hang out with Alex Cooper on Call Her Daddy. I can go hang out with the Nelk boys and, you know, do that thing. And, hey, that's a lot easier. It's a lot lower stakes. I'm reaching a large audience. I'm reaching demographic groups that are important to me. So why would I. So, I mean, that's. That's the downside of the, like, disruption of these quote, unquote norms. I personally. I don't know if this is a radical view or not, but I personally think that candidates for office should be required to debate a certain number of times. I do think it should be a legal requirement because it's the very least that voters deserve in terms of making some sort of a decision. And in fact, going back to the point about Joe Biden, you know, Joe Biden did have primary opponents. They were completely iced out from the media. One of them, Dean Phillips, who I disagree with on a lot of things.
- [56:35]
Chris Williamson
He'S been on the show.
- [56:36]
Crystal Ball
Oh, has he? That's. I'm sure that was a great conversation. He's a. He's a nice guy. You know, he was sounding the alarm. He's like, this guy is too old. Like, we're gonna lose. This guy's too old. And by and large, he was iced down from the media. The Democrats said, we're not having primaries in some states. They literally just canceled the primary, did not have any debates. And think about, not only was that a detriment to the American people and the Democratic Party because they didn't have an opportunity to have a process by which they might vet a candidate and choose who they want to succeed Joe Biden, but it ultimately really hurt, you know, Democratic Party elites who want to presumably win this election, because if he had had to be subjected to a debate in a primary process, we would have seen much earlier, like, oh, holy shit, there is no way this is going to work out. And then you've got time to not just go with, ah, who. Who can we grab and, like, throw into this place. There's actually time to go through a process to generate excitement to see which candidate is going to perform the best. And I firmly believe that they would be in a much, much better position to win if they had gone through that price process and had an actual Democratic process to choose Joe Biden's successor.
- [57:45]
Chris Williamson
Do you think there would be a different successor?
- [57:49]
Crystal Ball
50. 50. Yeah. I think Kamala came in with a lot of advantages just because of her position. She also has a lot of advantages in terms of, like, her fundraising base. You know, she has. From being AG of California, she's got a lot of, like Silicon Valley and Hollywood connections and money matters in American politics. A lot of people who also are excited about the idea of, you know, first black woman president. I understand that. I'm not denigrating that whatsoever. But there's also a reason why she didn't succeed last time around. Right. There's a reason why after voters saw her on the debate stage, saw her in interviews, were like, maybe we'll go in a different direction. So I sort of think it's 50, 50 whether you would have ended up with Kamala or someone else. But even if it was Kamala, she would have then had to go through that trial by fire. She would have. It's just like anything else you put in your reps, you get better at it. She would be a more effective and better politician if she had had to go through that adversarial primary process. So I firmly believe they'd be in a much better place.
- [58:54]
Chris Williamson
Obama was unhappy with black brothers for not sufficiently supporting Kamala.
- [59:01]
Crystal Ball
Yeah, how about that? There's a lot to say about that. So there's a good bit of polling at this point that indicates there has been some shifts among all men, actually, but specifically among working class black and Latino men, some shift away from Democrats towards Republicans. And you know, to shout out one of those mainstream outlets, New York Times did a deep dive into both the polling and also what's going on here. Right. And none, none of the answers they came up with were Democratic politicians aren't lecturing them enough and scolding them enough about how they're failing. That was not one of the answers that they came up with. But there was a piece. There were, there were a number of potential rationales. One of them, though, I thought was really significant, really important, which is that, you know, when people voted for hope and change with Obama, and especially when black Americans felt like, okay, having a black man in the White House means that my interests are going to be represented in a way that they never have been. And then they're. I'm not going to say nothing good. You know, Obamacare improved things marginally, et cetera, et cetera, but nothing really fundamentally changed. And so there's a large percentage of black men and Latino men who say that they don't believe that Democrats keep their promises. And I think that's an important part of the story of how the Democrats have started to see erosion in some of these key groups where, you know, Democrats are still overwhelmingly going to win black voters, including black male voters. It's Still a question mark whether some of these polling trends really manifest on election day, et cetera, et cetera. But I do think that the failure to, you know, really offer and fight for a concrete economic agenda that again goes to those class interests over the racial identity interests has been a major failure of the Democratic Party and has opened up space for, you know, another message from the Republican Party, one that I wildly disagree with. Right. I do think that Trump in particular just loves to demonize immigrants and blame immigrants for every problem. But that's going to be a lot more compelling if you're not offering an answer on the other side.
- [61:22]
Chris Williamson
So I think, is it the groups that we serve on the Harris Waltz campaign funding website? And it's a list of every group in the world except for men. And then there's another one, which is a bunch of proposals and there's different examples, and it's like a black woman in a hard hat on a construction site, and it's a blah. And that group, not even black men. There's just no men, no men at all on that. So it really does feel like I've had a number of conversations. Richard Reeves, if you know who that.
- [61:54]
Crystal Ball
Is, from the American Institute, we interviewed him as well. Yeah, he's very insightful.
- [61:57]
Chris Williamson
Phenomenal guy. But this election very much seems to have, at least on left of the aisle, forgotten men.
- [62:05]
Crystal Ball
Well, there was the white dudes for Harris organizing call. I don't know if you were on that.
- [62:11]
Chris Williamson
I wasn't on. I had a few friends that were on.
- [62:13]
Crystal Ball
But I am actually curious for your view here. You have, you know, you're more of the expert in the bro sphere of correct.
- [62:20]
Chris Williamson
If there's any expertise I've got is.
- [62:22]
Crystal Ball
That of, of what's going on? Because there's, you know, obviously there's a large gender gap. I think that the gender divide in this election may be the most profound one over, you know, perhaps any other identifying characteristic. I think part of that certainly is abortion being such a central message. But you also see the way that the Trump campaign is really playing into that, both with their media parents choices, also with just the vibe at the RNC I have, and Hulk Hogan up there, Dana White and whatever, like playing into almost like a camp version of masculinity. But, you know, I wonder what you make of what's going on there under the, under the surface.
- [62:57]
Chris Williamson
I think it's going to be very difficult to get men to feel supportive or welcoming when so much of, so much of their sex is sort of demonized in one way or another. And even if you can't point your finger to the precise Harris ad campaign that happened, there does seem to be a lot of sort of men bashing that happens on the left, whatever that mean. Like however you want to define it. There often seems to be a sense of male privilege and sort of the diminishment of the issues that men have. Like, I haven't heard anybody, not one, and this is both left and right, talk about male suicide. And Richard was telling me about the most recent set of stats that they've got out of the Institute for Boys and Men, which was if men had taken their own lives at the same rate as women from 1999 until today, there would be half a million more men here.
- [63:49]
Crystal Ball
Jesus.
- [63:50]
Chris Williamson
Which is more people, more men than died in World War II. So it's like, it's just such an obscene number of people. And I don't know, there just seems to be. You don't feel particularly welcome by the left. At best you feel like not demonized and then sometimes sort of outright do. Especially if you're sort of a white guy at the top of the, the privilege hierarchy. But then again, what were we talking about before that? Nobody's, nobody's discussing class. It feels strange to me that, you know, whatever Appalachian or Cumbrian or sort of north east of the UK in person, some guy is like, yeah, yeah, please tell me again about my like white male privilege that I've got. It just seems this, the purity spiral doesn't seem to be particularly useful anymore. And I think that people are kind of, they've got fatigue around that kind of puritanical approach to victimhood hierarchies.
- [64:44]
Crystal Ball
I think there's something to that. I will say I think that Kamala has done better than Hillary in not obsessing over, you know, like Elizabeth Warren famously had a plan for like rural black disadvantaged farmers and you know, really slicing into these very specific, like racial or other identifying characteristics group. Now, she did just put out a plan that I find.
- [65:12]
Chris Williamson
Did you see the crypto?
- [65:13]
Crystal Ball
The black man? Yes, we can talk about that.
- [65:15]
Chris Williamson
Yes, we get to talk about the crypto one.
- [65:17]
Crystal Ball
I will say that, you know, when she's got been asked, for example, about her own trailblazing status, she's very quickly pivoted to, this isn't about me, this is about you.
- [65:30]
Chris Williamson
She's diminished. Diminished being black and diminished being a woman.
- [65:33]
Crystal Ball
Hillary really leaned into. Like, this is about me. This is about my ambitions, like, won't be. It'd be cool if a Woman, namely me.
- [65:42]
Chris Williamson
Well, what was that? I'm living in the United States, I'm with her was the tagline.
- [65:45]
Crystal Ball
Exactly. Yeah. And so I do think Kamala has done a lot better job in terms of that dimension. But that doesn't mean that there's not still, you know, quite a lot of overhang. And, and this sense that, you know, issues that may be specific to men are not the focus of the Democratic Party or there's just like not a sense of this is a place for us. If I put on, you know, if I take. Take a step back from these two particular candidates, parties, whatever, I. And I'll run this by you and you can tell me what you think. Like, I think part of what is happening in society right now is in American society and Western society in general is people are much more precarious, right? It's very difficult to secure those sort of basic trappings of like, middle class stability, the house, the education, the family, like those things. Even before the latest inflationary spiral, we're getting wildly more expensive over decades. I mean, housing is the main example, but college education, the price tag on that is insane. Healthcare, the price tag on that is insane. Childcare, the price tag on that is insane. And so culturally, like the classic view of the man is like the provider, right? The person who's going to be able to secure that lifestyle for themselves and their family. And so if over decades, both parties effectively collude to make that next to impossible, you're going to have a lot of people who are unhappy and who are, are searching and who are manifesting, you know, the, the higher suicide rates and all of those things that are very real. And so I think that if you just completely, you know, invisibilize that or, you know, just dismiss any man who explains that, you know, he's got his. Has something that he's unhappy about or he's struggling with or whatever, then yeah, of course they're. They're gonna, they're not gonna come your way. They're gonna search in a different direction. And you've had, I think this is maybe more of a symptom than a cause, but Hasan Piker talks about this. Basically all of the sort of male like hobby spaces have become more and more right way. So like, if you're a gamer, right, there's a like very like right wing gamer pipeline there. If you work out and you're like a gym buff guy, like that space is increasingly like right leaning as well. All as I mentioned before, you know, most of the Major podcasts, bro. Podcasts tend to be more right lean. I suspect your audience is probably more right leaning as well. And so whether that's symptom or cause, I don't know. But that's the other thing is that's like. That's just kind of like the natural progression and pipeline for young men in particular online pursuing whatever their hobbies and interests happen to be.
- [68:42]
Chris Williamson
Yeah, it's an interesting question. I've thought about it a lot. The I'm sure you saw that famous Colin Wright image where he stayed in the same place and the left moved further left. And then the last like two and a half years has just been different. Polling and analyst companies trying to work out whether we have moved more left or we have moved more right or whatever it might be. There would be. I don't know where the data has come to settle on that. I don't even know if this is directionally correct, but I could see a world in which that was what men were all along. And the political landscape has moved. So it's not that the target has moved, it's that the site that you're using, to cite it with, has changed. So that could be one potential reason for it. Another could be that, I don't know, I just. I was largely apolitical until like seven or eight years ago. I just had my head firmly inside of my own ass and was running a business and just doing stuff and then with no real sort of predisposition, just came out and was like, okay, who speaks to me? And I do. I just largely don't feel spoken to ever by the left. Like, if it's the white guys for Harris thing, which, like, in many ways sounds like a struggle session. Like, it felt like a fucking public, A public humiliation ritual. In lots of regards where you're talking about how we need to do this. It's never positive, it's never forward thinking, it's never inspirational or aspirational. And I understand that the right can play into that in ways that are like a bit cringe sometimes. But the most recent campaign ad that got cut for Kamala, where it was like a black farmer in a hat going like, I'm man enough to vote for a woman and I'm man enough to know when I can change a carburetor and I'm man enough to do the rest of the thing, it's like, that was so disjointed from pretty much everything left of center that I'd seen from a messaging perspective, that it just looked like what it was, which was kind of like shameless, hopeful pandering to an audience that you think doesn't really care about you in the hopes that they're not going to remember that you've never spoken to them before.
- [70:39]
Crystal Ball
So, yeah, I think contempt is a very, like, people feel that. Right. Contempt is very powerful. And I think the Democratic Party, not just with regard to men, but with regard to any number of voting groups in the country, there has been an attitude like from Democratic elites, a sense of contempt. And you know, my, my own view is that there are specific examples where it makes sense to have, you know, a policy that's targeted at a particular identity group or another. But we know if we go back and look at history, at the policies that have made the biggest difference, for example, for black Americans, they've been universal policies. They've been actually increasing the minimum wage was one of the most successful policies.
- [71:32]
Chris Williamson
Class based, not race based.
- [71:34]
Crystal Ball
That's right. And like I said, universal. Right. So, you know, you mentioned the like, blackmail policy from Gamala. One of the things was like more health care for testicular cancer or something like that. That's great. Right? I certainly support people being able to get treatment for whatever kind of cancer they have, but we really gotta like slice and dice the body parts to be able to get universal like way, let's just have universal health care and then whatever kind of cancer you have or other illness you could get treated and whatever group it is, you know, especially when you have groups that are particularly marginalized in society which, you know, certainly, you know, black men in particular, still historic amounts of wealth inequality and these sorts of things, those are the groups that benefit the most from universal pol policies like universal healthcare, lifting the minimum wage, increasing unitization through things like the pro act, which just, you know, increases the level of democracy and power in the workplace. Something that I think is really, really important I focus a lot on. So if you pair those universal policies and perhaps some specific ones that make sense for different demographic groups, but with, you know, an attitude of acceptance and understanding and, you know, trying to meet people where they are, I think you're going to have a lot more success. And you know, I, like I said, I do think Democrats will kind of recognize this, Obama's scolding notwithstanding. You see, they're really trying to, you know, to send them out and, and talk in some of these male spaces. Both Kamala and Tim Walls, you know, I, I think they know that there's an issue there. And like I said before, I think Kamala's really toned down a lot of the like super identity focused, like slicing and dicing type of policies. But you know, these aren't, these aren't things that get resolved overnight. It takes time to rebuild that trust with the community. That feels like, ah, you just, you know, you're not really for me.
- [73:34]
Chris Williamson
Do you think that the left's got a complicated relationship with God now?
- [73:39]
Crystal Ball
Complicated? Like what do you mean that by.
- [73:44]
Chris Williamson
By talking about it you kind of play into what now has become a cliche sort of republican God country type position? I don't, I just haven't heard. In the UK for instance, we don't have a religious right. There's no religious right in Britain. That is a huge fuck off voting bloc, simply doesn't exist in the uk. So me coming over here and seeing an increasingly secular world across everywhere, but I haven't seen anything really to do with religion except maybe we're accepting of people of all faiths. And from a multicultural perspective, I haven't, I haven't seen. And I imagine that because of the meme that is becoming increasingly prevalent of kind of the Bible bashing, right wing, you know, alligator, swamp gun tote in person, that if you try and lean into the God shaped hole in your campaign messaging, maybe it seems in some ways exclusionary to the group of people that you're trying to cultivate. And that's what I meant by complicated, that it must be. I haven't seen much of it and I have to assume that that's because it's difficult to thread the needle of talking to people on the left about God without seeming like you're making some sort of value judgment that's going to get you in trouble.
- [75:03]
Crystal Ball
I think you have to be, it has to be authentic and if it's not, then stay away. Right. And you know, there more liberals identify certainly as like non religious than conservatives. That means very likely you're going to have fewer genuinely religious Democratic elected politicians. And so, you know, it's funny, my husband Kyle and I were talking about this just the other day. Bernie Sanders, who is Jewish, but not, he will say himself not like not particularly religious. He was asked about that back maybe 2016 and he was very upfront about like, listen, I'm not that religious a person, but here to me is what religion means. It's these like sort of core values of, you know, acceptance and kindness, whatever he said, you know. And so I think if you're not coming, I don't think everyone can pull that off. Like I think you have to be coming at it from a genuine place of like, this is my faith and this is important and this is how it informs me. And there just probably are fewer messengers on the democratic side who can pull that off. I'll tell you one person who does speak with that kind of religious moral authority is Dr. Cornel West. You know, that is very clearly authentic to him, to his tradition, to his ideology. But that strain, I. I think it's fair to say that strain of leftism is somewhat less common than perhaps it. It once was, which, you know, is a reflection of. Of a shifting society. I'm not myself religious, so if I tried to talk about it, like, people would be like, what are you talking about? This is ridiculous. Like, you don't care about this stuff.
- [76:38]
Chris Williamson
You know, Speaking of a shifting society, did you see Anna Kasparian substack post?
- [76:43]
Crystal Ball
I did.
- [76:44]
Chris Williamson
What do you make of. What do you make of that?
- [76:47]
Crystal Ball
I like Anna, you know, and I have always had, like, a friendly relationship with her. You know, I guess I need to know more. I don't think that there's a lot of accusations being thrown. Oh, she's a grifter and she's doing the same thing that like, you know, Dave Rubin did the same grift, Jimmy Door, David, whatever. Pick whoever you want. Or, you know, to go back to the religious point, like Russell Brand getting accused very credibly of rape and then doing this very demonstrative Christianity, conversion is like, okay, but I guess I'm a little bit confused about what, where exactly she is. And it seems to me that as she's self described her political evolution, which, you know, it's fine for people to evolve their views, et cetera, it actually has put her more in line in some ways with sort of like the core Democratic Party. So I, if I had to characterize Anna's views based on, you know, what she said publicly and what was in the substack post, et cetera, it seems like she still has some like, leftish views on social safety net stuff, which, you know, you're definitely more likely to get on a Democratic party than the Republican Party. And then she's moved right, or is more vocally right on things like crime in the border and the Democratic Party. I mean, Kamala Harris has been running this very aggressive, like, border hawk campaign and tried to pass this very aggressive border hawk bill as well. So it, from what I can tell, it just makes her more actually in line with where the Democratic Party is. So I don't know. That's. I Don't. I don't impute any, like, negative motivations. I think it's fine for her to shift. I'm just like a little bit. Still trying to figure out where she is. Exactly.
- [78:32]
Chris Williamson
I think people have got concerns around Kamala and the border because again, like, you've been in power for so long and it does seem like, I mean.
- [78:42]
Crystal Ball
The vice president can't really do anything. Let's, let's be real. Like they don't have any real power.
- [78:46]
Chris Williamson
But was she not the border.
- [78:48]
Crystal Ball
What does that mean? What authority does that actually confir?
- [78:52]
Chris Williamson
I'm pretty sure it was retconned out of a New York Times post or something like that. In retrospect.
- [78:57]
Crystal Ball
Yeah. I mean, listen, the thing is, I don't agree, agree with the way the Democrats have positioned themselves. Personally, I'm in favor of a controlled border and a lot more legal immigration, but like a lot more legal immigration. So I think that the Democratic messaging, which has just basically embraced the Republican frame of like, immigrants are bad, period, end of story. I think that that's been a political and a moral failure. But, you know, they genuinely did try to pass this bill that was very hawkish and abandoned. All of the previous, previous Democratic commitment had been we'll do the tight security, but we also want a path to citizenship. It scuttled all of that, added a bunch of new border agents, et cetera, et cetera. So they really did try to pass that and Donald Trump really did try to stop it. So, you know, if that's your, if that's your thing, if you're looking for the Democrats to move right on the border, like, congratulations, they already have.
- [79:55]
Chris Williamson
Crystal ball, ladies and gentlemen. Crystal, I appreciate you. It's fun to get to hear a different perspective and I love your guys show. I think it's.
- [80:02]
Crystal Ball
Oh, thank you.
- [80:03]
Chris Williamson
What you do is really, really impressive. Where should people go? Don't want to keep up to date with the stuff that you've got going on?
- [80:07]
Crystal Ball
That's a good question. Just go to breakingpoints.com YouTube channel, whatever. If you want to get angry at me, you can look at my Twitter feed. But I want to thank you for inviting me on and the back and forth. I really enjoyed it. I hope your audience doesn't hate me too much, but I've had fun here.
- [80:23]
Chris Williamson
They won't. I appreciate.