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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Mike Warren. On today's roundtable, I'm joined by Dispatch Senior Editor John McCormick to discuss the recent and upcoming Democratic primary contests and the ongoing battle between moderates in the party and far left economic populists. Then we talk about the abuse allegations against Republican Congressman Max Miller. And finally, not worth your time, the appropriate caus. Cost of a burrito. Let's dive in. All right, John, let's get right into it here. So we had the Michigan Senate primary last week on the Democratic side, Abdul Al said beating narrowly, I would say more narrow than folks thought going into the election. Congresswoman Haley Stevens in that Senate primary in Michigan, Abdul El said, is going to face off against Republican Mike Rogers in the general election. And then we've got two primaries on Tuesday in the kind of the same region and involving some of the same dynamics that we saw in the Michigan Senate race. Sort of left Democratic socialist or socialist leaning AES, as he's called, is not, I think officially a member of dsa, but sort of left leaning, more progressive, more socialist friendly Democrats facing off against more establishment, center left, moderate tinged Democratic candidates in some primaries. You've got on Tuesday in your home state, John of Wisconsin in the governor's primary there. Francesca Hong is running in the gubernatorial primary. She was facing Mandela Barnes, who dropped out of the race recently. And she's got this, I guess is the sort of more establishment favored Crowley facing off against her in that gubernatorial primary in an open governor seat in Wisconsin. And then next door in Minnesota, a Senate primary there as well. You've got Angie Craig, who is a congresswoman, kind of center left in that primary. She is facing off against the sitting lieutenant governor, whose name is Peggy Flanagan. Peggy Flanagan, definitely representing the far left, far progressive wing of the Democratic Party there in Minnesota. And they are running for Amy Klobuchar's Senate seat. She Amy Klobuchar is running for governor and is likely to win that race. So okay, so that's the those are the kind of stakes those both of those primaries in Wisconsin and Minnesota are tomorrow. It's not quite clear in Minnesota who is going to win. Some polls say Flanagan is ahead. Some polls say Craig is ahead. It's a little more clear maybe in Wisconsin that the far left Francesca Hong candidate is the favored at this point, it seems like so we'll talk about that in a second. But Jon, just last week's primary result in Michigan, a lot of money being spent in that race, a lot of polling. It showed it closer than it was, as I said. But Abdul El said, coming out with that victory, what do we make of this? Is this the sort of the far left of the Democratic Party asserting itself once again in and taking control of this party? Was this. Haley Stevens was not the ideal candidate the center left would put up against a charismatic Abdul El said, and so she fell short and maybe a more charismatic candidate would have won and we wouldn't be talking about this. How do you, how should we interpret what those results mean for the Democratic Party not just in Michigan, but nationally? What do you think?
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B
Yeah, I mean, the result ended up being less than 1 percentage point. I mean, this is one of the biggest polling errors in modern for sure. I actually noted on Twitter the week before that, hey, just pointing out, you know, that the biggest polling error in history was in the 2016 Michigan Democratic primary. It actually underestimated Bernie Sanders by 22 points or something here. Haley Stevens, the establishment favorite, was underestimated by double digits. Not quite that big.
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A
Can I stop you there real quick, John, just to give listeners an idea? So I'm looking at the last several polls of that race. El said up 13. Al said up 16. El said up 4. 15. Al said up 14. The real clear Politics average of the polls going into election day was el said up 10.2. And as you said, it was so much narrower than that. So continue.
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B
Yeah, I mean, so in a primary, right, I think voters, the fact that came down to less than 1 percentage point, any number of things can matter. The personalities, you know, I mean, honestly, the polling era itself could have demoralized, you know, 1% of Michigan Democratic potential voters to go out and cast a ballot for Haley Stevens. But they thought she was going to lose. So I wouldn't read too much into it. Obviously, now that it's happened, it matters. I mean, he is the poster boy, the progressive left. You've seen so much enthusiasm from online. I've seen this. This one narrative about Syed Al Said is that he is the new Obama or the next Obama. I saw a viral tweet about that, you know, noting some of his speeches. I don't think rhetorically his delivery is close to Obama's stylistic delivery. And furthermore, that doesn't actually capture what made Obama's rhetorical strength wasn't just style. It was the fact that he always positioned himself as the reasonable one between two unreasonable alternatives, maybe two extremes. This was something very annoying to conservatives. We would have said that these two extremes were often straw men, but Obama was very smart, you know, and he didn't say he was going to run on Medicare for all like said is. He said he was going to protect people with pre existing conditions and he opposed a government takeover of healthcare. You know, he ran away from Jeremiah Wright, his radical pastor who was famous for giving a speech when she said not God bless America, but God America.
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A
Right.
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B
Abdul Al Said is campaigning with Hasan Piker, the guy who says that America deserved 9 11, who is functionally pro Hamas, pro Russia.
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A
By the way, Hasan Piker is this streamer. I think we've talked about him some point on this podcast, the streamer. He's a wealthy kid, basically wealthy young man who streams about video games and very progressive politics and has said all kinds of, as you said, kind of outlandish and outrageous things and is now apparently the hottest surrogate for these kind of far left candidates and these Democratic primaries.
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B
Yeah, so I mean, so people who are trying to make this Obama comparison, I just don't see it. I mean Obama, he ran in a blue state in the Midwest and he got to hang his hat on the fact that he opposed the Iraq war at a time when super majorities of Congress and the country opposed it. And then everybody flipped on that. So he ran away from his left wing position on guns, even on gay rights. He opposed gay marriage officially in his campaigns until 2012. So Obama was much more strategic, much more of a politician. This is really a question of whether full throated, full progressivism can succeed in a swing state. And given the state of the country, Donald Trump's unpopularity, very well, he could win. But a narrow Syed Al Said win wouldn't necessarily tell you this is going to be very successful in 2028. Honestly, I think that there's a decent case to be made that if people like Al Said wins in Michigan, especially if Francesca Hong wins in Wisconsin, Democrats are going to be way worse off in these two key swing states in 2028. I mean there's just thermostatic public opinion. People swing back and forth. And if Wisconsin's being governed by a woman who is talking about canceling Thanksgiving and abolishing the police and.
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A
Hold on, John, we'll get to that. I think that all of that kind of deserves some conversation and thinking about the implications of this. But let's stick to Michigan and particularly this claim that is Elsa, because he is charismatic and articulates well his positions in ways that maybe recall Barack Obama. I agree with you. I don't quite understand the comparison. But somebody might say, well look, in 2007, 2008 when Barack Obama was running for president and even before then, when he was running For Senate in 2004, it was a different country back then. And these days, and I would say this is the argument you hear from the folks on the left, on the DSA left about the energy and enthusiasm for politicians like Abdul Al Seed in the Democratic primaries is that this is where the people are right, that the people have moved left, at least in the Democratic Party, have moved left. I find that not necessarily entirely convincing. And I think that Haley Stevens is, you know, narrow loss in Michigan suggests that there is a, okay, not a silent majority, but maybe a silent plurality within the Democratic Party that is not necessarily on board with all this. But I will say this, that Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, the congresswoman from New York, she is a member of her local DSA chapter, Democratic Socialists of America in New York. She was on ABC News this past weekend talking with Jonathan Karl. And I'll just really quickly quote what she said when she was asked about Abdullah said victory in Michigan. She said, I think that we are in a time of renewal for the Democratic Party and it's tremendously exciting for all of us for the big tent of the Democratic Party. We have really an ascendance of a young, inspiring, exciting electorate, energizing wave of candidates that I think really inject a new energy to the Democratic Party. Lots of right energy, excitement. Like this is where the enthusiasm for the Democratic Party, which has been missing these Democrats and socialists within the Democratic Party argue we are bringing it. I mean, is that necessarily true or is it just that they're the loudest voices and you know, as you suggest, you know, the kind of declaration of victory beforehand, you know, those 16 point victories in those polls before election day in Michigan, maybe there was just, there's just that enthusiasm gap and it doesn't necessarily reflect a reality of where the Democratic Party is, I confess, not kind of knowing what to believe about where the average Democratic Party voter is on these questions of socialism or center left progressivism. What do you think?
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B
Yeah, I mean, I think that the primaries in Wisconsin and Minnesota will add key data points. But I do think that generally, I mean, yeah, when Mamdani won in New York, I think a lot of people just wrote that off as like, oh, it's New York. You know, of course New York could have a socialist in Cuomo, such a compromise, terrible candidate. But I mean, the fact that, you know, Alci had won Michigan, I think that it does make the 2010 Tea Party comparison apt that you know, that was where the energy was in the Republican Party back then. The harder left, younger, younger voters are the ones who are fueling the Democratic Party right now. And will they have similar flameouts to Republicans in 2010? You know, back when they had, you know, they blew multiple winnable races by nominating two controversial figures in the Republican Party and a few Senate races back in 2010. So that's really what people are going to be watching for, to see if, you know, they blow a governor's race in Wisconsin and a Senate race in Michigan. And will they learn anything from that? I don't know. So I think that's, I think that's where things stand right now. I do think that the energy is with the left and I just don't know whether. And it might be the, again, the environment might be so toxic for Republicans that El said can pull it off, maybe he'll win by two or three points. But I don't know if that's necessarily points to Democratic socialists having an advantage in 2028 or that the country's ready for that. I mean, just think back to the 2020 election when Joe Biden was the only candidate who ran basically opposed to Medicare for all. And he won, he won the primary. I mean, Kamala Harris basically collapsed in on herself trying to explain the issues. How are you going to pay for it? And so I just, I think these basic mathematical questions are going to dog them in a general election if they want to run on Medicare for all in 2028.
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A
Yeah, I think my conflict internally about how to think about this is because I do see those comparisons with the Tea Party movement and the kind of, the Tea Party movement which kind of morphed a bit or took on or maybe reflected more than we realized at the time. Definitely just a more populist attitude within the Republican electorate that I think the end of that or, you know, the end of kind of where that movement went was 2016, Donald Trump and that populist anger at, you know, the bums, particularly within their own party. And I can see that in the Democratic Party, not just Democratic socialists, people who are card carrying members of this organization, which is a national group, but also has these local chapters. But even just sort of your run of the mill voters, most of them on the young, younger side, who are telling people in focus groups and that sort of thing, that, you know, the Democratic Party, the establishment, whatever that is, whether that's Chuck Schumer in the Senate or various other leaders, they're not fighting Trump enough, you know, Those sorts of things. We need Democrats who are going to fight and we're going to fight for these issues. And so that seems to be mirrored by what happened when we saw in the 2010s going up to 2016. On the other hand, the point you just made about Joe Biden. Yeah. I mean, we can look to see other center left Democratic candidates who are doing well. I mean, the first one I always mention, I probably mentioned on this podcast a few times is Roy Cooper in North Carolina, who is the former two term governor of North Carolina. By the way, it's spelled like Cooper, but he claims it's pronounced like Cupper. And so I don't really know.
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B
I was going to ask if you had to spend too much, if you just picked up little draw after your vacation down south, but
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A
after my trip to North Carolina, I don't know. No, but that's how he says it.
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B
I don't know.
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A
I mean, look, if this is the weirdest thing about this guy, like he is going to win hands down in that Senate race in North Carolina. But Roy Cooper is ahead of the Republican candidate, Michael Whiteley. Roy Cooper is a standard liberal, you know, Governor, but not in any way somebody you would describe as hyper progressive, certainly not socialist. And he's going to win a Senate seat for Democrats in North Carolina. You know, of all places, it's a close state, but it's a close state that kind of always goes red in national elections in the last several cycles. So there is a sort of a counter example there. And you point out Joe Biden, who wins the nomination by winning South Carolina in 2020 and who is the base of the Democratic Party in South Carolina? It's black voters and particularly black women voters. I mean, there have been a lot of studies about this that black women voters and black voters in general are consistent and regular Democratic primary voters, particularly at the national level. And they as a group tend to be more moderate, less radical or extreme in the policies that they support. And so it's a battle. And you could see that in Michigan and that Haley Stevens, the more moderate candidate, got a lot of votes from Wayne county, which is where Detroit is, which is where the largest percentage of black voters in Michigan reside. I don't know. So it leads me down these questions of what's really happening, who's fighting for control of the Democratic Party and who's winning. So which leads me, of course, to Wisconsin and Minnesota, which we should talk about in a little more depth. So Francesca Hong has kind of come out of nowhere in A lot of ways to be this leading candidate in the primary, in the Democratic primary for governor of Wisconsin. And like, there's a lot of weird things that she has said and she continues to say. The biggest one that you mentioned is that she seems to hate every single holiday. She's sort of had these conversations and podcast appearances in the past where she says she hates Thanksgiving, she hates Fourth of July, like all of these different holidays. And it's kind of bizarre that she's running for statewide office in Wisconsin and has said all these sort of things. And yet it's also sort of reflective of the closed off nature of a lot of these DSA types. They're hyper online, you know, where these kinds of things in their communities and their little bubbles, you know, maybe they get lots of snaps after saying something like that, but doesn't seem like it's a real general election winner. I don't know. What should we make of Francesca Hong? What's her constituency in your home state of Wisconsin? Help me make sense of this. Is this she just a Madison liberal?
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B
Well, there's a cliche in Wisconsin politics that Madison, Wisconsin is 100 square miles surrounded by reality. Any Republican politician worth his salt has recited that and guess that it'd become a cliche. And then here we have this cliche come to life. Francesca Hong has totally validated that like old shopworn phrase is now, you know, she's a real living, breathing cliche. You mentioned her hatred of holidays. One of my favorite controversial posts is she says that she was at a Culver's in Black River Falls, Wisconsin. This is a little town of a few thousand people about an hour and a half east of where I grew up. And she said that she took a couple bites of her kid's cheeseburger and then left because there were too many old white people there, you know, who assumed she didn't speak English. I don't think this is true at all. I think this is a made up story.
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A
Hold on though, John. I guarantee you in a small Wisconsin town there were a lot of white people, right? I mean, I think we can.
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B
It is full of white people. Yes, it is full of white people.
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A
I think we can believe that part's true.
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B
And I will also acknowledge in the course of 18 years of growing up in rural Wisconsin, I can remember a time or two where I heard some racist comments even directed towards. There's a, you know, a Hmong community which is fairly populous in northwestern Wisconsin and Minnesota. But the idea that a single elderly white person would walk up to Francesca Hong and ask her if she spoke English is very dubious. The idea there were multiple old white people walking up to Francesca Hong saying things that intimated that they didn't think she spoke English. It just doesn't pass the smell test. This is just, it seems totally made up to me. And you're going to have that tweet sent out and popularized. Francesca Hong thinks you're racist. Francesca Hong hates you. She talking about old white people like this. That's why you even saw Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez decline to endorse her before this primary. And given the huge polling error in Michigan, I think that there's still some chance that, you know, the polls are just wildly off in Wisconsin as well. I haven't seen any recent ones. You know, things happened in flux last week. But as you mentioned, Democratic two term governor Tony Evers has been throwing his support behind Crowley Milwaukee County Executive. Hong has been up by, you know, I forget exactly where the polls are most recently, but by much bigger margin than side was up in Michigan.
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A
Just to give us a poll to work off of. I'm not going to trust ppp, which is a Democratic polling firm that is just not reliable in my estimation. But Marquette has done a poll back in sort of late. They were in the field in late July and they found Hong has 38% support. Barnes who I mentioned, who has dropped out of the race at 16% support. And Crowley, the Milwaukee county executive was 7%. I mean that. Who knows? As you said, like it's been, everything's been thrown up in the air with Barnes leaving and Hong getting all of this attention now. So the truth is we just don't know. But there's no, I mean there's no sort of, it's not like in the south, right, where there are, where you have to give 50%. If, if Hong just stays there at 38%, she could win this primary. Right?
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B
Yeah. I mean, and here's where I say, yeah, I'm looking at the same polls that you're seeing right now. I could imagine that. Yeah, the fact that you've got this media saturation coverage vot voters decide very quickly. I mean the hard thing in primaries is that voters now they basically the first question they ask themselves these days in a general election is are you Republican or a Democrat? You know, but in a primary, obviously you don't have that marker. So you've got to make up your mind in other ways. I can totally imagine that the undecided vote totally breaks in favor of Hong's opponent, Crowley, that all of a sudden you end up with like Hong at 45 and Crowley ends up with like 46 or 47 and just shocks everyone. It's entirely possible. But I don't. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, so she's up big in the polls, but given the big miss in Michigan, is that Michigan specific or does it suggest that there is a sampling bias that you've got? Enthusiastic progressives are more willing to answer phone calls, you know, throughout the various demographics. When pollsters are weighting different demographic groups, they're accounting for things, but they can't really. There's this like hidden enthusiasm that is messing with the polls. That's totally possible. So, yeah, I'll be. My mind is totally open as to whether or not she's actually going to win tomorrow or today. Sorry.
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A
Yeah, exactly. Well, okay. On Tuesday, you know the. If you're listening to this on Tuesday, if you're listening to this after Tuesday, it's already happened and we know who won. All right. But next door in Minnesota, we talked a lot and there has been a lot of coverage of what happened in Michigan. But arguably the Senate primary in Minnesota, where Amy Klobuchar is leaving her seat, has been even more kind of bitter and angry. Very unusual for a state known for being Minnesota nice. But these two candidates, these two dfl, this is the Democratic Farmer Labor Party, which is what the Democratic Party organizes itself as in Minnesota. These two DFL candidates, Angie Craig, who is a congresswoman, relatively moderate but still pretty liberal, facing off against Peggy Flanagan. I mean, they have been. And look, Minnesota has been in the news for the past year and a half with what was going on just earlier this year with ICE and CBP being involved in enforcing the president's immigration policies. They're getting very violent to citizens in Minnesota dying. So there's a lot of sort of, again, to use that word, energy in Minnesota Democratic circles. They're angry. And you've had this fight between these two. It seems like it could really go either way. What is your read on this race? As I look at it, Angie Craig seems like she can win this seat in the general election pretty easily. Seems like a no brainer if you're a Democratic Party voter. Right. To vote with somebody who's sort of broadly popular. But a lot of Democratic primary voters want Peggy Flanagan, who was sort of promoting a much more radical, certainly much more progressive slate of proposals and an agenda. What's your read on what's going on in that state next door to your home state in Minnesota.
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B
Yeah, I mean, the Democratic primary seems like a toss up and whoever wins is going to almost certainly win the general election. I mean, I mean, Donald Trump's approval rating is dipping into the 30s. Anytime you see that, you expect a blue wave. And this is a blue state. So, you know, that's the question. I don't think it's a question in Minnesota. I think the question is, you know, how big will the blue wave be? Does that take in people like Al Sayed? Does that take out, you know, Republicans in deep red states? And I think the big reason I think this blue wave is going to be bigger than the 2018 blue wave is just that the voters views of the economy is much, much more sour now than it was in Trump's first term during his first midterms. You know, back then, Trump was polling at low 40s or something as approval rating, but close to a majority in some polls. In Gallup polling, he was polling at like 50% on approval of the economy. And voters just simply aren't happy. They aren't happy with the, you know, the massive round of inflation that we experienced under Biden. People are still angry about that. They're not comparing inflation prices to a year ago. They're thinking about what things cost four years ago or five years ago. People aren't happy with gas prices. People are unhappy with, you know, rising interest rates, the cost of living. So I think that's the big reason to think that this blue wave is going to sweep. Been a lot of people, as you mentioned, you know, moderate, more mainstream Democrats like Copper or Cooper in North Carolina and possibly people like Syed and whoever wins the Minnesota primary. So I think that that's the context of all this, right? It's not just a referendum on the Democrats and progressivism or moderate moderation. Just how big will the blue wave be?
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A
And it does seem to me that that makes the argument which you have been hearing from Angie Craig's kind of supporters, the electability argument, it makes that a much less potent argument. Right? If Democrats are going to win in these states, in these, and certainly in Minnesota, I think it's the Republicans. I think Michelle Tafoya is the leading Republican candidate. Nobody thinks that she, in this environment, which you just laid out, really has much of a chance in a state like Minnesota, which is close but generally leans Democratic in every national election, why not go with Peggy Flanagan? If you're a Democratic primary voter, why not go with the one who maybe speaks more to your frustrations? With not, you know, the establishment in Washington. But I mean, there are things she is essentially supportive of. Medicare for all, wants to cut military aid to Israel. I mean, this is, these are the positions of where the energy of the Democratic Party is. If it's kind of, if you're playing with table stakes here and you're just thinking, well, we're going to win the seat we ought to have, somebody who really represents our values fully, does not have to worry about winning over, you know, disaffected Republicans or kind of winning in a general election. Just go with the most progressive. And it seems to be a potential problem for the moderates in states like that. I don't know. I mean, it's, it does. You just raised this interesting point. If it is a wave, and it seems like it could be waves end up bringing in everybody in the winning side. Right. And that creates this bigger tent that AOC was talking about on, on abc. There's a lot of acronyms here on the show. AES, abc, aoc, dsa. But AOC was talk talking about on ABC how this is all reflective of a big tent for the Democratic Party. And if all of these, you know, various Democrats are swept in by that wave, it could just be a really interesting Democratic conference or I guess caucus in the Senate. Everybody from a Peggy Flanagan, say, and a Roy Cooper in North Carolina. It's, it's kind of interesting to see, to think about what those leadership elections look like and all that. Of course, I think we're getting ahead of ourselves. Any other thoughts on like, what else this might mean in terms of the energy on the Democratic side? What does it tell us about this? Because you mentioned this, actually you started talking about this, Jon, about could this be sort of a Pyrrhic victory for Democrats if they do elect these, you know, get these sort of far left folks in office, if, say Francesca Hong wins the nomination and wins the governor's race in the general election, maybe that's not so good for Democrats. Looking to 20, 28, what are your thoughts?
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B
Yeah, I mean, I think if you're pure, if you're a Democrat, purely concerned, or at least you care about the results of the presidential race in two years a hundred times more than you care about the results of the governor's race in Wisconsin. I think you're far better off with a Tom Tiffany victory than a Francesca Hong victory.
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A
And like Tom Tiffany's the Republican congressman who's going to be the nominee he
- [26:36]
B
supported trying to overturn the election in 2020. The odds that he is governor and the Republican loses and he tries to pull some stop the steal thing and it's successful. I just think that is, you know, very small chances of it. Actually, I think he might try something. Could it actually succeed? No. Whereas you're virtually certain to have a Francesca Hahn governor ship really turn Wisconsin voters against the far left, against Democrats. So I do think that people are gotta be worried about that, you know, in terms of what lessons people can learn. I mean, so I keep going back to 2010, you know, know, thinking about the wave then, you know, Republicans, they won a special election in Massachusetts, deep blue Massachusetts, they won a special, they won a Senate race in Illinois, deep blue Illinois. And their fringy or extreme candidates managed to blow races in places like Nevada with Sharon Angle. They blew a race in Colorado. And you know, people will say, well, obviously Republicans didn't learn any lessons from that. They ended up nominating Donald Trump. Well, that was 2016. In 2012, actually they did go at the establishment. I think that there was some sort of lesson learned a little bit in the Republican electorate that they weren't going to go with Herman Cain or some unproven Tea Party candidate at the presidential level. And then maybe they learned the wrong lesson from Mitt Romney's loss in 2012 and went the other direction with Donald Trump the next time around. So, yeah, I do think that there's basically an ebb and flow and a yin and yang of the way people vote in primaries and in general elections.
- [27:57]
A
Yeah. All right, we're going to take a quick break, but we'll be back soon with more from the Dispatch podcast. We're back. You're listening to the Dispatch podcast. Let's jump in. Let's move on from the Democrats to talk a little bit about the Republicans and particularly one Republican that you have written about. Max Miller is a congressman from Ohio who has been in a lot of trouble over the last week or plus basically over. I think it was initially information that came out during a custody battle with his ex wife revealing some pretty brutal and terrible allegations of abuse and violence on Max Miller's part against his wife and now ex wife and even some allegations made against him that he could have possibly even hurt their daughter. This all kind of blew up in even more so into the public discussion about Max Miller and whether or not he should run for reelection and all these things because his ex father in law happens to be one of the US Senators from the state of Ohio, Bernie Moreno. And he is basically came out last week and said I don't think Max Miller should be in Congress. He had this whole list of things he said about what terrible character Max Miller has. You wrote about this kind of a provocative headline. Republicans have themselves to blame for the Max Miller scandal. And that in a lot of ways we already knew Max Miller was a bad guy when he was first elected back in, what, 2022. That was after the 2021 impeachment vote in which Anthony Gonzalez, who preceded Max Miller in this seat outside of Cleveland, had voted to impeach Donald Trump. He was sort of basically run out of the election for reasons that we now understand to be related to. He was concerned about the safety of his family and Max Miller stepped in. Walk us through your piece that we posted last week. We'll put it in the show. Notes about what Republicans should have known about this mess. And what does this mess mean for Republicans in Ohio in the general election?
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B
I mean, so the, the story is really burst onto the public scene this summer because there are statements that Emily Moreno, the ex wife of Max Miller, made to police have become public. And she accused him of throwing hot water on him back when they were married. She accused him of shoving her up against a wall recently. And he denies all the allegations. Of course, this all came to light when Emily Moreno discovered a large bruise on her daughter's neck. And they went to the doctor's office. She got an X ray. Turns out her collarbone was broken. You know that this triggered an automatic investigation. Neither of them said they knew how it happened. The investigation into as to whether Max Miller could have done this was, quote, unsubstantiated by Child Protective Services. That meant there was no evidence for it. But a child protection specialist did say that what made this unusual, that the bruise was in the shape of a handprint. And so that's why there was this question. Again, unsubstantiated investigation, didn't reveal anything. No one has been. Prosecutors declined to charge anyone. A child coordinator between Emily Moreno and Max Miller speculated, hey, maybe this just could have happened if the child had climbed out of her crib and fallen. But again, there's this question of the bruising shape of the handprint. So very troubling stuff. But this is what, when she spoke to police, then she brought up all these other things. Miller, of course, says that she's just doing this to, to be vindictive, to hurt his political career. He delivered this 20 minute livestream on X and released all these documents that he had filed in court against her. I went through some of those I thought the Miller has really done a non persuasive job, you know, thinking he's going to win over the court of public opinion by going public with all this stuff. I went through some of the documents. For example, he went on cnn, talked to Jake Tapper and said that he had audio of his daughter saying things like, I don't want to go to mommy's, I don't feel safe at Mommy's. A few minutes later, Tapper asks Max Miller, well, what about your ex wife's claim that your daughter said, quote, daddy kill you and other things that were like daddy's house is scary? And Miller's response is, Jake, my girl, she's two and a half. She can't string together sentences like that. Notice basic logic. He's arguing on one hand he has this audio, which apparently he does, and then he's saying she can't string together equally complex sentences. He's just not very bright. He's gotten to where he is because he comes from a very wealthy family and he is sucked up to Donald Trump. Trump. He worked for Donald Trump in the White House. And Trump endorsed him less than two months after January 6 to go after a pro impeachment Republican congressman. And the reason I put this in the headline, obviously, okay, full stop. Max Miller, if he did what he's accused of, again, which he denies, he himself is solely responsible for any alleged abuse. But the Republican Party more broadly bears response because they knew of alleged abuse back before Trump even endorsed him. Stephanie Grisham, the former Trump White House press secretary and communications director, she held both those jobs at different times for First Lady Melania and for President Trump during the first term. She went to both of them in 2020 and said that her relationship of 18 months with Max Miller, then a White House aide, ended when it became abusive. Now, Miller sued Grisham for defamation after she published her book in a Washington Post op ed in October 2021. That defamation lawsuit was withdrawn and, and there ended up being a settlement between Miller and Grisham which there was a non disparagement agreement in there reportedly. So again, this is all the context here, but, but still the fact that this allegation didn't just come out from Grisham herself with no backup. She had told multiple people about it, according to Politico. Politico published a story by Michael Cruz about Max Miller in July of 2021 documenting that Max Miller had allegedly slapped Stephanie Grisham in the face at the end of an argument where she had accused him of cheating on her. And, you know, this was one on one, but she had told other people about it at the time. And the Michael Cruise article was real, very well detailed. And it goes back through Miller's entire life where it documents the fact that, you know, he had run ins with the police when he was in high school and college. He had, according to one report that had been later sealed, you know, he had allegedly punched a male in the back of the head and ran from police. That was when he, before he graduated from high school, he had also, a few years later, when he's an adult, had punched his fist through glass in a door after an argument in a hookah bar. And then the political report also included three people, including eyewitnesses, who said that in high school, Max Miller had shoved a female classmate at his house. There was a gathering of eight to 10 people at his house. He shoved her out the door. She fell down at some of the stairs. And eyewitnesses had things like, he just snapped. I know what I saw. Again, Max Miller denies all of this, that he'd ever push someone in high school. But you add all that together, I mean, I think that you can question whether you'd go back to someone's high school record, but when it's part of this longer, lifelong problem with anger management. There were many other people on the record, too, who knew him when he was younger about having anger problems, even just, you know, teammates on the baseball team who said he had anger problems. And so there's this whole record behind him that Republicans, that Trump, Stephanie Grisham directly told Trump about this before he nominated, before he endorses him. Politico publishes in 2021 before the Republican primary is even held. So, I mean, Donald Trump could have picked any other Republican to go after Anthony Gonzalez. Republicans could have taken this information into consideration when they nominated him. And they knew about that in a way. There's a parallel here with Graham Platner, the Democratic Senate candidate, who, you know, Democrats knew about the allegation that he had been physically abusive to an ex girlfriend. Lindsay Fifield went public in a New York Times article saying that Platner had done things like he yanked her out of a taxic really hard. He grabbed her shoulder so hard that he left bruises and that he had, you know, forced her, grabbed her arm and forced her into a room, locked the door and held it shut and kept her there for hours. You know, people like Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, they just brush it off. Seems like a lot of nothing to me. They knew all about this, and so did the Democratic primary voters who voted for Graham Platner when they still could have chosen Janet Mills. So that's the point I was trying to make. Not to say the know abusers, alleged abusers, are fully responsible for their alleged abuse, but when people know about it, I mean, how many times does it take to take this into consideration? So that is my point. Now you've got also the two most powerful Republicans in the party. Well, just really the most powerful Republican, Trump is the one who matters. Sitting on his hands, calling up Miller, saying, hey, it's gonna be tough for you to win, but not calling on him to leave. I mean, that's the one thing that could have actually forced him out of this race was if Trump had said get up. But Trump, obviously, he has abuse allegations in his own passed. And Max Miller pointed that out in his phone call saying, hey, Mr. President, you know, you had multiple abuse allegations and you still won in 2016. So I don't mean, I mean there have been abusers in both parties. Bill Clinton allegedly forcibly raped Juanita Broderick. He broke Kathleen Willie, allegedly. I'm really not making this as a one party's evil and one party's good on this question. I really do believe both sides have a lot to answer for. And not every allegation is credible. Joe Biden's accuser, Tara Reid, was not credible. You know, allegations that Brett Kavanaugh was part of a gang rape group were just laughable on their face. And there was very thin evidence against Kavanaugh in there. So every allegation should be viewed on the merits. But I think that if you look at these Lindsey Fifield allegations, the Stephanie Grisham allegations, they were very serious, despite whatever people on both sides wanted to say. And voters should have could have taken them into account. Leaders could have taken them into account. They didn't. And that is the point that I was trying to make in saying that Republicans have themselves to blame.
- [37:44]
A
Well, let's look at the question of how people are responding. So to take your Graham Platner example, for example, leave aside your Sheldon White Houses, who is likes to talk is one of the more talkative members of the Democratic Congressional Caucus, but is not necessarily in any real position of leadership. The leadership basically pushed Platner to get out of that race before the deadline hits passed after the last round. Look, I'm not trying to make the Democrats out to be heroic here by any stretch of the magic of the imagination. It took basically a enough public pressure and enough allegations to force Democrats to force Graham Platner's hand and push him out. It seemed last week like that might be happening with Max Miller. On the Republican side, you had Bernie Moreno, who I would say, understandably, I think he got some criticism for how long he was quiet. But let's keep in mind this Bernie Moreno, the senator, this is his daughter and granddaughter who are involved in this legal dispute with the ex husband with Max Miller. I believe him when he says it's really was not something he wanted to weigh in publicly on in any kind of way that would affect the politics, because this is and remains alive and fraught and scary issue for him and their family. But he did come out eventually, and he's been joined by several other Republican senators, some of whom are thought to be potentially future leaders of the Republican conference in the Senate. You have Katie Britt and Tim Sheehy among them, who were saying essentially that Max Miller needs to drop out and get, as you were pointing out here, Donald Trump, the President of the United States, and Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, the leader of Republicans in the House of Representatives, where Miller is declining to get involved at all, and essentially saying, Mike Johnson, let's start with Mike Johnson there. He says, well, you know, I let the Ethics, the House Ethics Committee, you know, determine what to think about Max Miller and all this stuff, which is a pretty weaselly answer, particularly when you realize that the House Ethics Committee is investigating Max Miller because Max Miller himself instigated an investigation into himself, in his words, to clear his own name. But Mike Johnson is sort of waiting around for a House Ethics Committee investigation in order to make a determination about whether Max Miller ought to remain in the House of Representatives. And then, as you say, Trump has essentially said, it's a very sad thing. I know Max. He's a good person. I mean, I always thought he was a very good person. And I'm going to let the families figure that out. Leadership is just the leadership that matters here. And really, at the end of the day, it's just Donald Trump, as you point out, just sitting on their hands. And, and that, that, to me is more indicative of the problem that you were writing about in this piece, which is these are deliberate decisions to look away from allegedly bad behavior and a bad image for the party. And it seems like it's going to hurt Republicans in Ohio. Right. You've got a governor's race there that's competitive. You've got a Senate race there now that's competitive. John Husted the other senator from Ohio. And a tough fight with former Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown. You've got Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee for governor, facing off against Amy Acton, the Democrat. And the polling there is not bad for Democrats there. Ohio is thought to be Republican stronghold now in the era of Trump. Now all these Republicans in Ohio are going to have to be answering questions about, do you agree with that Max Miller should be in Congress. It just seems like a real own goal from a purely, like, gross political calculation on the part of these Republican leaders. No.
- [41:27]
B
Yeah, I mean, John Hugh said, I think he is. That could be the biggest impact. You know, Republicans might not only lose this House seat in Ohio, that's a safe, you know, Trump +10 seat, something like that.
- [41:36]
A
Max Miller seat, you mean?
- [41:37]
B
Yeah, Max Miller's seat. And then John Hughes of the Ohio senator who replaced J.D. vance, running for a full term for the first time, up against former Senator Sherrod Brown. I think that, yeah, I mean, he originally tried, you know, I said he took a deer in the headlights position. He's kind of just ignored questions from reporters. You know, he tried to get to where Trump was saying, oh, it's just a sad thing and I hope the families figure it out. And then he finally settled on, yes, Max Miller should drop out. I know both of these families. It's very sad, but it's in the best interest of his young daughter for him not to be dealing with this in public. Probably, you know, I guess the smartest eventual position that he took to get out there politically eventually. But I think, yeah, this is going to hurt Republicans, you know, and I mean, I earlier brought up all the both sides issues and you just, you never know. Why does one allegation prove fatal and not to another? Why did Bill Clinton and Donald Trump skate and Graham Platner have to resign and other people, lower level? I don't know. I can't exactly explain why voters are the way they are. Again, they're making a choice between two competing sides, but I think it will hurt. And it could definitely take out not just the Max Miller seat, it could take out the Ohio Republican Senate seat.
- [42:42]
A
Before we take an ad break, consider becoming a member of the Dispatch. You'll unlock access to bonus podcast episodes and all of our exclusive newsletters and articles. You can sign up@thedispatch.com join and if you use the promo code Roundtable, you'll get one month free. And speaking of ads, if they aren't your thing, you can upgrade to a premium Membership, no ads, early access to all episodes, two free gift memberships to give away, exclusive town halls and more. Okay. We'll be right back. Welcome back. Let's return to our discussion. Well, the economy and the outlook on the economy from voters seems to be a big problem for Republicans going into this midterm election. And just the cost of things, I think, brings us to not worth your time. Because there was a big discussion over the last week, mostly online, but it did sort of bleed off into the real world a bit about the cost of a burrito. It essentially boils down to a student who was quoted on a Turning Point USA Twitter account. I think, quote, A burrito shouldn't cost $20. This is referring to, I suppose, a place like Chipotle or wherever where, where you have seen prices on their food rise. But it created this whole kind of of mini debate within kind of Republican and conservative circles that kind of shook out into a generational debate. You had, I would essentially say, elder millennials like you and I, John, and older conservatives and Republicans sort of saying, well, actually, a burrito doesn't cost $20 if you don't doordash that burrito to your house. Yes, prices have gone up and that's a serious problem. But really the cost is not so high. But that younger people, people are using these delivery services and other things instead of cooking at home, it like sort of devolved into, should you order out or should you cook at home kind of debate. And then you saw pushback from a lot of the sort of younger voices within the populist conservative movement. He said, no, no, it really does matter. It shouldn't cost $20. And the fact that people are waving this away and saying, oh, you just need to go cook at home instead, they are sort of whistling past the graveyard of popular resentment about cost of things. All of this is sort of happening outside of the question of, well, who is president right now, whose policies are being implemented that are maybe continuing the inflationary trends that we've seen over the past five years or so. I don't know. Job, what do you make of this debate over the cost of burrito? And what should we be mad about or should we be mad about anything? Make sense of this for me.
- [45:34]
B
Oh, yeah, it's such a rich topic. I mean, you know, everybody is right. Everybody's wrong. Maybe more everybody's right.
- [45:40]
A
Ooh, okay, you gotta go.
- [45:42]
B
You've gotta go double stake and guac at Chipotle to get up to $20. So that's kind of ridiculous.
- [45:47]
A
That's what I thought.
- [45:48]
B
You know, food prices have gone up. What I mean, people are upset about the overall inflation rate from five years ago. It doesn't matter that it's gone. And it has ticked up a little bit with again, rising fuel costs lately. So, yeah, people are upset with that. The basic goods, you know, young people who are, it's not just the cost of food, but they're looking at trying to buy a house in the next five to 10 years. And with prices staying high and inflation and interest rates where they are, it seems really far out of reach. You know, people like you or me had bought or refinanced when prices weren't so bad, and interest rates, you know, you could refinance in a two point something or maybe 3%. People looking at a six and a half, 7% mortgage again without prices coming down. That's. It puts things out of reach. So I do think there's an objective reality to how much more difficult things have gotten for people economically. And people are, you know, why did Republicans win in 2024? Why did it not matter that Donald Trump had tried to overturn the previous election, incited a ride at the Capitol? Because ultimately voters were more angry about things like massive inflation. They were angry about immigration, maybe, you know, the debacle in Afghanistan, things like that. And people are still angry about inflation. So, you know, Trump campaigned on lower prices, he didn't campaign on a slower rate of inflation. And so people are upset with that. So I don't know where everybody's right, everybody's wrong, yes. But young people should be, you know, more frugal. And I happily lived on, felt like a king when I graduated from peanut butter to turkey sandwiches at home and was gobsmacked when I saw young colleagues at Le Standard. No offense, I don't want to reveal any names, but I saw a couple fellow young colleagues going out to like, you know, the local saddle places every day. And they're like, same age as me.
- [47:21]
A
Not me, though. You're not talking about me, though.
- [47:23]
B
No, no, no, no, no.
- [47:25]
A
I was a turkey sandwich guy for a lot of those first years, I
- [47:28]
B
think it should be noted. So there's this interesting back and forth, right? So it's Matt Walsh starts it out and then this pro Trump commentator, provocateur. And then Mark Thiessen, Washington Post conservative columnist, hawkish guy, says something about how he lived on ramen in college and burritos don't cost that much. Grow up. I forget the exact quote. And then Vice President J.D. vance from trolling on Twitter says something like, you know, this is surprising because, you know, if you ever met Mark, you'd never guess that he missed a burrito, which is just sort of like so petty and so classless. I mean, of J.D. vance, who is.
- [48:06]
A
And we are surprised by that. Why that's. That's just sounds like JD Vance on Twitter on a day that ends in y. But go ahead.
- [48:13]
B
It was just surprising to see that he had broken his, you know, Twitter trolling fast to call somebody else fat, especially as somebody used to be. Be a bit pudgy like me as well. You know, I don't know when you exactly get the. You lose 20 pounds and like, how many years you gotta wait to start making fun of people for being fat? I don't know. But apparently the vice President thinks that he is. He is.
- [48:32]
A
Okay, but this debate that was going on, I mean, there was some kind of underlying substance to the debate. And what I mean is there does seem to be a. Certainly a generational and ideological divide on the question of what a burrito costs. And I mean, maybe I'm reading too much into it, but what I see are the sort of older. The ones that the sort of JD Vance acolytes think of as like the dinosaur zombie Reagan's. Whatever side of the conservative movement and the Republican Party that their reaction to complaints about a burrito costing $20 is out of step with kind of modern times. Right. That what they say is, well, then you need to find ways to save money and not buy a burrito out for lunch every single day or even at all. And that they seem to be saying, maybe I'm giving them too much credit here. They seem to be saying that is not a sufficient answer anymore for a conservative, for a Republican, that we have to be more attuned to essentially the same kind of things that populist Democrats are talking about, which is affordability. And there's a. Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but there is a sort of a sense that a more populist kind of substance underneath all of this, which I don't quite know what they're saying because what, like government or politicians in the Republican Party need to be more aggressive about finding ways to stop what Chipotle from gouging its customers like. I mean, the coherence breaks down pretty quickly. Right? I mean, you could argue that. That tariffs and tighter immigration is exactly what causes this kind of inflation, which is the sort of policies that the JD Vance wing is supporting. But I don't Know, I mean, there does seem to be something going on here that's more than just about fat jokes about Mark Thiessen, but instead is, you know, people are trying to gain power here within the conservative movement and using this issue to say the old timers are out of step and out of touch with how modern and young conservatives are thinking and talking about these kinds of issues. Am I wrong?
- [50:48]
B
Well, I mean, the economy affordability is objectively a political problem for Republicans. I mean, just again, go back to look at the polling on Trump. The economy is polling on the economy is good in 2019. It's bad. Now, you can argue to what extent does that comport with reality or just perception. But, you know, you pointed to tariffs. I mean, it's weird that the, again, the JD Vance, the Matt Walshers who are the pro mass deportation, pro tariff sides, like, what is exactly their policy to get there? I mean, just saying you want prices lower isn't a policy. Well, how are we going to get there? And I think that, I mean, just it was political malpractice for Trump to implement tariffs. I mean, I forget exactly how many hundreds of billions of dollars he took in before the Supreme Court decision reversed, you know, how many. Most of his tariffs were unconstitutional and illegal. And then there's a question of immigration. I mean, I actually can recall, you know, back in probably 2013, our dear former colleague Chris Caldwell, who was more of a, you know, I guess anti interventionist, more of a paleo con, whatever we want to call now part of the new right. We keep changing the words, but I love Chris. I mean, I literally remember him talking about a Chipotle burrito, saying, you know, a Chipotle burrito, this shouldn't cost $8, it should cost 15 or 20. If you had, you know, people who were fully, who are all legally employed, who weren't relying on illegal immigration, I mean, people who are supportive of mass deportation, they talk about, you know, the rich guy getting his landscaping done or the couple with the nanny getting paid on the table. I'm generally a pro enforcement, immigration enforcement law kind of guy. Not sort of what we've seen under Trump. But in general, I think the law should be enforced in a sensible way. But there's definitely, you know, higher costs associating if people are getting paid a higher wage. You know, you would say, you know, I think Jonah pointed this out over the weekend that, you know, J.D. vance at one point said, you know, it's not worth a million cheap toasters from China if we're, you know, lowering the wages of American employees. Well, Chipotle now starts, what, $15, $20 an hour, something like that. So it's not just the food costs, labor costs, biggest part of that. So anyway, there's lots to chew on on this topic.
- [52:44]
A
Yeah, no, I just think there's something else interesting going on here, almost psychologically. And then we will declare that maybe this was worth our time where the kind of knee jerk has a negative connotation, but the kind of instinctual reaction to this sort of question, a burrito costing too much money from kind of what you would consider the old wing or the Reaganite wing or whatever, the original conservative of the Republican Party, is a message about personal responsibility. Well, maybe you have to make better decisions. I mean, in a way, it's almost a Dave Ramsey kind of approach to this kind of public policy question of costs and say, well, you've got to find ways to live your life cheaper. And I think it's interesting that the new right, for however we're going to call it, sort of attacks that position, maybe for cynical reasons, just to sort of draw more distinction between them and the old right, who are sort of all taking this position online. But I think it's an interesting instinct and it bodes for maybe some significant changes in the next couple of decades about what that default Republican or conservative position is on a whole host of things. But we will leave it there. I love, I know this is very basic, but I love a chicken burrito from Chipotle. The steak is, is. Look, this is my personal decision. Steak is just a little too rich for my blood. I'll take the chicken. It's fine. But yeah, I'll splurge on guac every once in a while. It is an extra $2, as we all know. All right, well, that is all the time we're going to give to this episode. John, thanks for joining me. If you want to support what we're doing here, you can rate, review and subscribe to the show on your podcast player of choice to help new listeners find us. And and speaking of support, here's a shout out to a few folks who recently joined as founding Lifetime members. Nate Campbell, David Bauer and John Playforth. We're glad to have you aboard. One quick note, we are ending our founding lifetime membership offer at the end of August. If you're interested in supporting the Dispatch and enjoying a lifetime of Dispatch editorial goodness, please join us as a Dispatch founding lifetime member member today. As always, if you've got questions, comments, concerns or corrections, you can email us@roundtabledispatch.com we read everything, even the ones from people who doordash a side of guac. That's gonna do it for today's show. Thanks so much for tuning in and thank you to the folks behind the scenes who made this episode possible. Thank you so much to Noah Hickey and Peter Bonaventure Adventure. Thanks again for listening. Please join us next time.