Mike Stops by House of Strauss and The Dispatch

Summary

Summary of "The Gist" Episode: "Mike Stops by House of Strauss and The Dispatch"

Podcast Information:

• Title: The Gist
• Host/Author: Peach Fish Productions
• Episode: Mike Stops by House of Strauss and The Dispatch
• Release Date: May 3, 2025
• Description: For thirty minutes each day, Mike Pesca challenges himself and his audience in a responsibly provocative style, navigating beyond rigidity and dogma. "The Gist" is surprising, reasonable, and willing to critique the left, the right, either party, or any idea.

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Introduction

In this episode of The Gist, host Mike Pesca presents two in-depth interviews. The first features Ethan Strauss from the House of Strauss substack, focusing on the NBA playoffs and Giannis Antetokounmpo's recent elimination. The second segment involves a Dispatch roundtable discussion on the Democratic Party's internal strategies and challenges, particularly highlighting the dynamics between David Hogg and James Carville.

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Section 1: Interview with Ethan Strauss – House of Strauss and NBA Playoffs

Giannis Antetokounmpo's Latest Playoff Run

Ethan Strauss initiates the conversation by discussing Giannis Antetokounmpo's recent elimination from the NBA playoffs. The focus centers on Giannis' post-elimination press conference, his public statements, and the ensuing reactions from both fans and critics.

Ethan Strauss [05:29]: "Giannis was giving a speech about why there's no such thing as failure."

Mike Pesca and Strauss analyze Giannis' remarks, highlighting the inspirational tone and how it resonated with a broader audience beyond hardcore basketball fans.

Mike Pesca [06:53]: "The collective words of Giannis Antetokounmpo upon being eliminated, this will be like the Chairman Mao's red book."

They delve into the public's varied responses, noting that Giannis' message garnered widespread support, including from those who might not typically follow basketball closely.

The NBA Playoff System and Play-In Tournament

The discussion transitions to the NBA's playoff structure, particularly the introduction of the play-in tournament orchestrated by Commissioner Adam Silver. Pesca and Strauss critique the effectiveness and necessity of this system.

Mike Pesca [15:22]: "This is not an innovation that helps anyone."

Strauss elaborates on how the play-in tournament was intended to boost viewership and maintain competitive tension but may instead dilute the quality and significance of the playoff races.

Reliability of TV Ratings in the Streaming Era

A significant portion of the conversation addresses the challenges in accurately measuring TV ratings amidst the rise of streaming platforms and varied viewing methods.

Ethan Strauss [17:10]: "Technology improves everything theoretically, but now the different options for watching TV have actually made it really hard to know how popular anything is."

Pesca provides insights into the evolving metrics used by networks, such as NBC's method of counting streaming viewers as multiple individuals, creating discrepancies in reported numbers.

Mike Pesca [17:10]: "All ratings are real but also fake. That's the correct interpretation."

They discuss the implications of these rating adjustments on the perceived success of sports broadcasts and the overall integrity of viewership data.

Leadership Dynamics Among NBA Superstars

The conversation shifts to the role of superstars like Giannis Antetokounmpo, Steph Curry, LeBron James, and Jimmy Butler in shaping team dynamics and performance. Pesca and Strauss examine how these individuals influence both their teams' success and the broader NBA landscape.

Ethan Strauss [30:50]: "It's really hard to do it. I don't know who else is. It was Chris Paul good at that."

Pesca emphasizes the delicate balance superstars must maintain between personal leadership and fostering team cohesion, noting the varying levels of involvement different players have in team management.

Mike Pesca [31:52]: "The best intervention is so often non-intervention."

Impact of Public Personas on Team Performance

Furthering the discussion, they explore how the public personas and off-court actions of superstars affect team morale and public perception. The example of Giannis' interaction with Tyrese Halliburton's father is used to illustrate potential distractions and conflicts within the team environment.

Mike Pesca [29:08]: "Even if John Halliburton is at fault, the whole thing was unseemly to me, with the main question being, is Yanis gonna leave your organization?"

Strauss and Pesca debate whether such incidents indicate deeper issues within team management or are isolated events that do not significantly impact overall team performance.

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Section 2: Dispatch Roundtable – Democratic Party Politics

David Hogg vs. James Carville: Party Strategy Clash

Transitioning to the Dispatch roundtable, Mike Pesca, Ethan Strauss, Sarah Isger, Jonah Goldberg, and Jesse Singel discuss the Democratic Party's internal strategies, focusing on the tension between activist figures like David Hogg and seasoned strategists like James Carville.

Mike Pesca [45:02]: "James Carville really does have political sense."

Pesca criticizes Hogg's approach to challenging Democratic incumbents, suggesting that his strategies lack political nuance and effectiveness compared to Carville's experience-based tactics.

Addressing Key Policy Issues: Immigration and Transgender Youth Care

The discussion moves to critical policy areas where the Democratic Party faces challenges in aligning with the majority's preferences. Immigration reform and transgender youth healthcare emerge as contentious topics where the party's stance may be misaligned with broader voter sentiment.

Jesse Singel [55:35]: "Immigration and transgender care for minors are two of the areas in which the Democratic Party is just on the wrong side of the polling."

Participants analyze how the party's positions on these issues might alienate moderate voters and undermine electoral prospects. They explore the tension between mobilizing a passionate base and appealing to the average voter.

The Decline of Party Cohesion and Narrative

Sarah Isger and other panelists examine the deteriorating narrative coherence within the Democratic Party, arguing that the rise of identity politics and fragmented messaging has weakened the party's ability to connect with the median voter.

Sarah Isger [52:27]: "What is the story the Democrats tell about themselves that wins over the median voter?"

They contend that without a unified and compelling narrative, the party struggles to present itself as a viable alternative to Republicans, thereby impacting voter turnout and enthusiasm.

Lessons from Republican Strategies

Drawing parallels with Republican tactics, Pesca suggests that Democrats could learn from how Republicans manage base enthusiasm versus broader voter appeal. The conversation includes reflections on Donald Trump's moderation of certain stances to neutralize divisive issues.

Mike Pesca [68:20]: "Project 25 disagrees with him on abortion. He'll give him a whole bunch of other stuff that they want."

This segment underscores the importance of strategic moderation and controlled messaging to maintain party unity and electoral competitiveness.

The Role of Leadership in Electoral Success

The panelists emphasize the critical role of leadership in guiding the party's direction, managing internal conflicts, and formulating strategies that resonate with both the base and uninvolved voters.

Mike Pesca [64:19]: "..., it undermines enthusiasm. I don’t know how excited a young activist is to get out there in the streets because of many of the issues that we just said."

They discuss the necessity for Democratic leadership to balance progressive values with pragmatic policies that appeal to a wider electorate, ensuring sustained electoral success.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Ethan Strauss [05:29]: "Giannis was giving a speech about why there's no such thing as failure."
• Mike Pesca [15:22]: "This is not an innovation that helps anyone."
• Ethan Strauss [17:10]: "Technology improves everything theoretically, but now the different options for watching TV have actually made it really hard to know how popular anything is."
• Mike Pesca [31:52]: "The best intervention is so often non-intervention."
• Mike Pesca [45:02]: "James Carville really does have political sense."
• Jesse Singel [55:35]: "Immigration and transgender care for minors are two of the areas in which the Democratic Party is just on the wrong side of the polling."
• Sarah Isger [52:27]: "What is the story the Democrats tell about themselves that wins over the median voter?"
• Mike Pesca [64:19]: "Parties or no, to be on the wrong side of 80/20 issues... It undermines enthusiasm."

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Conclusion

This episode of The Gist offers a comprehensive analysis of both the NBA playoff landscape and the internal strategic challenges facing the Democratic Party. Through engaging dialogue and incisive commentary, Mike Pesca and his guests provide listeners with a nuanced understanding of how leadership, public perception, and strategic alignment influence success in both sports and politics.

The episode underscores the importance of adaptable strategies in evolving environments, whether on the basketball court or the political arena. By dissecting the interplay between individual influence and collective goals, The Gist delivers a thought-provoking narrative that encourages listeners to critically evaluate the mechanisms driving success in diverse fields.

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Note: All timestamps correspond to the provided transcript and may not reflect actual podcast playback.

Transcript

[Mike Pesca]

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[Ethan Strauss]

And in the blue corner, the challenger.

[Mike Pesca]

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[Ethan Strauss]

And the winner by knockout is Patty Hataday.

[Mike Pesca]

Bring it on. It's Saturday. It's the Saturday show, and today I'm going to give you two interviews that I did, not as the host, but as a guest or panelist. Did I blow your mind? One was with my friend Ethan Strauss who runs the House of Strauss substack. Yes, it is my favorite sports substack, but it is so much more than sports Ethan had me on. We'll play a generous portion of that and if you wish to find out more, go to House of Strauss on Yield substack machine. And then in a non substacial interview, I was a panelist on the dispatch roundup show. The roundtable that they have. It was me, new dispatch hire, Jesse single and dispatch stalwarts and all stars Jonah Goldberg and Sarah Isger. I'll give you a keeping helping of that, too. And the full show is also available in all the dispatch feeds that you may favor. Dispatch, Strauss, Pesca. Up next. If Ed is getting you down, don't blame Ed. That guy's not special. Lots of guys have it. You need to get up, get up with hims, boost your confidence, boost other things. Hims helps you last longer. Be more confident. You're feeling stalled in the bedroom. Got to get some gas back in the tank. I'm not going to speak elliptically, but I'm not going to speak specifically about what himss does or what Ed is. We all know it can be uncomfortable. Or I've heard that it can be uncomfortable. Himss is changing men's health care by providing affordable sexual health treatment treatments from the comfort of your couch. They have doctor trusted ED treatments like Viagra and Cialis they have generics and you can save 95 on them. Fill out an intake form with a medical provider will determine the right treatment option. If prescribed, your medication ships directly to you for free. You don't need insurance. One low price covers everything and they have hundreds of thousands of trusted subscribers. Start your free online Visit [e-mail] the gist that's hims.com thegist for your personalized ED treatment options. Hisss.com thegist the featured products include compounded products which are not approved nor verified for safety, effectiveness or quality by the fda. Prescription requires. See website for details, restrictions and important safety information. Price varies based on product and subscription plan I want to talk about financial literacy. Do you have it? How did you get it? For me my dad would listen to a lot of those AM radio shows where they talked about finances. I think they were very respectable. They weren't ripoffs and we got smart. We definitely didn't get rich. But you know April is Financial Literacy Month. That's right. They made a whole month reminding you to finally take control of your money. The good news is you don't need 30 days. And that's really good news because there are 30 days left in April. Acorns makes it easy to start saving and investing for your future in just five minutes. You don't need to be an expert. Acorns will recommend a diversified portfolio that matches you and your money goals. You don't need to be rich. Acorns lets you get started with the spare money you've got right now, even if all you've got is spare change. And the great thing is they just help you take that spare change that you didn't even think about and they put it into a proper investment vehicle for you. It's really very clever one time setup and they're automatically for you. A nickel two dimes. I'm not going to give all the iteration of change, but they'll put it in a retirement account. They'll put it in an investment vehicle. It's so clever. It's so passive. It is a way to invest. Sign up now and join the over 14 million all time customers who have already saved and invested over $25 billion with Acorns. Head to acorns.com the gist or download the Acorns app to to get started. Paid non client endorsement compensation provides incentive to positively promote Acorns tier one compensation provided investing involves risk. Acorns Advisors LLC and SEC registered investment advisor view important [e-mail] the gist.

[Ethan Strauss]

Welcome to the House of Strauss.

[Sarah Isger]

Yeah, go for it.

[Ethan Strauss]

Stars hang with stars. Winners hang with winners. It's House of Strauss. We've got friend of pod, Mike Pesca of the Gist. And I thought of you because every now and again when sports happenings are going on, I think I would like some old school Pesca NPR contributions on what is going on in the sporting world. And you reached out to me, coincidentally, as this whole Giannis explosion into post game controversy. Ted A tet with Tyrese Halliburton's father, John Halliburton, who is taunting Giannis on the court. And once again, Mike, we did an entire segment on your show when Giannis was eliminated from the playoffs where he was giving a speech about why there's no such thing as failure. And now there's another post elimination Giannis press conference with massive favorability ratings. And here we are again. This is our first topic, plus whatever else we want to discuss.

[Mike Pesca]

The collective words of Giannis Antikin Pupo upon being eliminated, this will be like the Chairman Mao's red book. This is where all the great insight comes out. Once he is eliminated, he can tell us what is good about humanity. But in this case, I think we mostly agree that in the first case there was, you know, some nice vibes around him saying essentially winning is not the only thing, but you're really making an excuse for yourself this time. There was a very understandable reaction of a guy is just gutted and he's got some waving a towel with what turns out to be his son's face in the face of Giannis and who can't relate to that? Why is this guy in front of me taunting me at this point? How did security allow this? And then you layer into the fact that if Giannis was a different individual, John Halliburton might be decapitated at this point.

[Ethan Strauss]

But. But he's not. Yeah.

[Mike Pesca]

And then he went forth on the postgame press conference to talk about family, you, humility, his father, the plight of being an immigrant who could be deported. It was, you know, is. It was better than anything I saw in that series.

[Ethan Strauss]

Yeah, yeah, that series is the. I mean, this is a different topic, but the NBA playoffs, these playoffs, I think have been great, but the playoffs are so strange because you're offered these options of this is going to be an incredible, almost like a TV show. It's going to unfold over not just days, but maybe even weeks, Just this opera of a drama and you're just going to live inside this series. And they're going to be twists and turns. You're going to love it. And then some of these options you're just never going to let enter your brain and never really want to think about and never really want to interface with. And maybe if you're a basketball podcaster, you want people to think that you're into it, but you're. You're not. You really don't care about Celtics magic. Even if I heard on good authority the magic acquitted themselves impressively against the expectations. That's just. I don't. I don't really need to consume that. And once you saw the Pacers buck series was turning, once you knew, for me, it's this. It's this. If I think that you can impact the path to a title, I'm kind of interested. If not, I'm out. The Bucks clearly could not win a championship. Pacers might be spicy and upset a team that can. I basically just watched the aftermath of that and nothing else. And the Bucks are a depressing situation. They're a depressing situation. And this whole thing was about the most interesting thing to come out of it. Everything else just makes me sad.

[Mike Pesca]

The idea of magic acquitting themselves. Well, I guess through three quarters of the game, I was watching the Knicks game and kept seeing the score in the corner and it was tied going into the fourth. And then there's something like 30 to four run. So I'm thinking if you go to a magic show and see three quarters of a magic trick, you don't know if the woman actually gets saw in half. You see her locked in the box on the saw. So I don't know if that's very good.

[Ethan Strauss]

Let's look at the expectations. If you thought the saw was dull or Mel it couldn't even get that part of the job done, then you might be impressed. But they were able to pull off that of it, even if they weren't able to survive.

[Mike Pesca]

I wanted. What's the name Tis the German center. I wanted him on the Celtics again because they have so many Germans on the magic. I just wanted a Germanic Tet. Yes, it's good. Too many. Too many tattoos. I will also say this is why these. Sometimes you have mega teams and fantastic teams like the Celtics and the Cavaliers and they're not going to lose. But what it really does. And so you can't resent the fact that the Eastern Conference fields to teams who can't possibly beat them. What you do resent is this extra play in folderal, which is just a waste of time. And if we're promised an opera unfolding, why have a prequel to the worst opening acts of the opera at all? And I remember when the couple weeks ago it was supposedly a high stakes game, Hawks versus Heat. And I think it came down to the last minutes. I can't even remember. Thank God. This is like after a woman gives pregnancy and she has the endorphins that go in her brain and she can't really remember the pain of it all.

[Ethan Strauss]

That's what watching the Miami Heat is like. Like. Yes. Yeah.

[Mike Pesca]

That's what the Heat against the Hawks were. And I guess that was an okay series or there were a couple of there. You know, what happened was, was a couple of interesting plays happened in that game. But at the end the Hawks were looking very despondent. And I was saying to myself, why? There are three possibilities. One, they genuinely wanted to win and then get slaughtered in the next round like the Heat would. Two, their competitors and just losing a game hurts. Or three, they were essentially performing despondency because they know that is their place. But seriously, I don't even mean this cynically as a human being. How could the Hawks not have been happier than the Heat in that moment? The Heat doesn't get paid extra money to play these extra games. Sure. They make more money for their owners. Right? I'm right about that. There's no first round playoff.

[Ethan Strauss]

I don't. You get a. You get a playoff share if you make the playoffs. I don't believe you get one if you make the play in. But I. I'd have to fact check that. I haven't really thought about that.

[Mike Pesca]

Why would the team that doesn't have to get slaughtered by a superior squad, why wouldn't they be happy to start their vacation and they did what they could do and they met expectations and they played hard.

[Ethan Strauss]

Playoff share. You don't get a playoff share. That may be one of their accountants.

[Mike Pesca]

Probably keep it anyway as a percentage of their overall strategies like salaries. What's Trey Young's playoff share? No, I genuinely believe this. Maybe it's just the competitiveness coming in and they'd never admit it. But don't you think Hawks should have been happier than the Heat in that moment of losing?

[Ethan Strauss]

I wish somebody could have asked them that. Just why aren't you happy? This was all futile. Yeah, the sphere getting thrown through a ring. What's even the point? And you get to do less of it. That much you still get paid. I mean, what is life? I. That that was something for me that was a little bit. I wouldn't say it scandalized me, but it was something that surprised me. I espn. I started doing this freelance stuff for them. A big little promotion that they gave me was covering the loser of games between the warriors and the Nuggets. And it was expected that the Nuggets would actually win that series. They were favored. This is the first big warriors of that run series win. And I think they wanted me to do it because the thought process was I was probably going to go into the warriors locker room. But it didn't go that way. Instead, the Nuggets were upset and eliminated in Oakland at Oracle. And so I went in there and it was shocking to me because this was a humiliation for the Nuggets and they were so blase about the whole thing. They really did not seem to care at all. They were laughing and I just didn't know that they took it like that. It's not always like that. By the way. Obviously when the warriors lost to the Cavs in 2016, there were tears in the locker room. It was a lot different. But in some of these instances, the players might not care as much as the fans do, not about the overall outcome. There are players who are motivated by money and women. There are players who are primarily motivated just by how did I look in that game? And they might not actually care. And I think at that point a lot of them didn't like George Carl. I watched Andre Miller, who had been empowered by George Carl, throw Carl under the bus. They were very casual. It was a light hearted, fun place to be, actually. Mike. The losing Nuggets locker room in the 2013 playoffs. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed being there. It was good vibes.

[Mike Pesca]

I just pulled up the results of the Cleveland Heat series and I knew by the way, Cleveland Heat, great TV show or movie. They lost The. The Heat got swept and lost by a cumulative. Doing the math here, I think it's 124 points. It's a four game series. This is horrible.

[Jonah Goldberg]

This.

[Mike Pesca]

And it's stretched out, you know, from the 20th to the 28th. So it takes more than a week of their life to have one game within single digits. And that was nine, the highest of the single digits. I don't know. I can't help but blame Adam Silver. This is. This is not. I don't hate that. I don't hate innovation. But this is not an innovation that helps anyone.

[Ethan Strauss]

I hate the play in. Other smart people disagree. But here's the thing. Adam Silver's riding high right now. We can't tell that man anything. The play in happened. It's like an extra playoff game for the ratings and whatnot. And based on what people are saying, and I haven't dug in, the viewership has been very strong in the first round. So while it is intuitive to think that the play in does whatever the opposite of wets our appetite would be before the playoffs. Yeah, it appears that these playoffs have some juice and people are into it. I mean, all ratings are fake. Now, that's a separate conversation. Ever since they added out of home and the streaming and everybody's setting records and telling you that a boring super bowl is the most watched super bowl ever. And it's clearly not true. But if the numbers look good on paper and the play in does not seem to have undermined our interest in Timberwolves, Lakers, then they added something. They fracked the pie. As I say, they fracked it successfully. They got away with it. And they've even distracted us from the whole Giannis elimination that we were going to talk about. And Yanis being a beloved character in defeat. Okay, I just want to touch on that. We can. Yeah, we can bounce to wherever.

[Sarah Isger]

Okay.

[Mike Pesca]

You said. You said Adam Silver. I want to get to that. You said all ratings are fake, which remind me of Matt Levine from bloomb. Everything is securities fraud. I love that. I want to talk about when ratings are real but are also fake, as with the women's ncaa. These are all things on my schedule.

[Ethan Strauss]

To be clear, all ratings are real but also fake. That's the correct interpretation because you can't fake it too much. You can't. It's like being in the mob and skimming from the casino. You can't. You can't skim too much, but you can skim a bit. And everybody's now allowed to skim a bit. Everybody's allowed to say, my favorite was in the aftermath of a recent super bowl from two or three years ago, I came over as NBC. Their streaming ratings doubled the network from the year before. And I was looking into it and I was asking, well, how. How the hell did this happen? And then I finally got the answer back, and it was that, well, NBC. And to be clear, because I don't want to be sued, I'm. It could have been one of the other networks, I don't remember, but let's just say it was NBC. NBC decided in their numbers that they report that when a streaming viewer is watching, it could be two people. Sure, it could be. It could. And cbs, like idiots, was going one Streaming view equals one viewer. NBC went, well, we kind of think it's two. It could be too. We don't know now, do we? Can't prove it.

[Mike Pesca]

Most viewers have two eyes. They could, they could have multiple personalities. Is a lot of.

[Ethan Strauss]

Yeah, we, we, yeah, we have no idea. So they push out that number to Variety or whatever other trades magazine, and only a nerd like me is really going to look into it. And so it's. What's happened is that the Nielsen system has collapsed, effectively or not collapsed, but been confounded. We used to just get a number from Nielsen and that was the number. That was the number. Now we have a situation where they've added out of home viewership to give everybody a boost and they've got streaming viewership. And now we have the networks running to the trade publications to announce their ratings. Some of the ratings are plausible, some of them. You'll get a headline. It'll be the finale of euphoria on HBO. Got 20 million people and you're just going, there's no, there's no goddamn way. That's just basically, here's what's interesting about it to me, Mike. What's interesting to me about it is this. It's that technology improves everything theoretically, but now the different options for watching TV have actually made it really hard to know how popular anything is. So we've gone from a world of absolutely knowing how popular everything on TV is to. Well, there are various streaming platforms. Netflix won't even tell you. You have to just take their word for it.

[Mike Pesca]

Well, they have a good ranking. They rank every show that they put out on a document.

[Ethan Strauss]

Yeah, yeah, the Euphoria said if they say Euphoria instead of Euphoria, Is that what I did?

[Mike Pesca]

I heard it as Euphoria. This is India doing drug show.

[Ethan Strauss]

Yeah, Euphoria, the show.

[Mike Pesca]

The show where the fans were upset with the director for being the director and a 40 something year old man.

[Ethan Strauss]

Yeah, Millennial.

[Mike Pesca]

You wrote those scenes with the young girl. It's like.

[Ethan Strauss]

Yes.

[Mike Pesca]

But you watch the show because you like those scenes.

[Ethan Strauss]

Well, yeah, that had the thing where the Millennial director had the zoomer characters very much immersed in Millennial pop and rap music from what I read. I don't know, I didn't watch it. I don't know. I just didn't believe the rating is all I'm saying. But here's what I'm saying about everything's real and everything's fake. I think that when the big number is big, then that's generally Good. And we don't know if there's a 10% of extra special sauce added onto it. And so we have a general idea of how popular these sports things are. That's what I would say.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah. And I guess the one number that we get is when they, you know, do the re up for the rights. It's a big number. And I suppose that's. That has to be reported because a lot of these companies are publicly traded. I don't know, some media, you have the doll dollar down to the penny, the box office, the tyranny of the opening weekend of Hollywood box office. Everyone knows that. And then on substack, you could leave your numbers on or off. And I've found that more people are choosing to leave them off, but I, I leave mine on. They're not that impressive. Yours are. God bless you. I find that when I read someone, I'm like, oh, this is stupid. I go to the numbers and if it's a low number for followers, I'm like, that don't have to pay attention. And if it's high, I'm like, I get, I get a little upset. Which is kind of crazy. Podcasting has no real numbers. There are services that try to estimate them. I know from the podcast I have visibility into, they're pretty bad. And some services wildly diverge from others. So is it better to have the actual numbers or not? I kind of, you know, as media people or as journalists, we probably default to. More information is always better. But there is, I use the word tyranny and a little bit of a curse to it too.

[Ethan Strauss]

I want the information. I love knowing how popular things are. I think it's a good marker of what's happening in the culture. And I, in a way, I agree with refinement culture and optimization culture. Knowing everything can be a problem in many instances, but in this instance, I think that it would largely be good. I think that the vagueness of it all isn't so great in the industry. I knew that argument was being made, though, during the writers strike where there was this argument that the writers actually didn't want these streaming companies to know how popular things actually were, because it would then be this giant wake up call that everybody is failing and nobody should get paid for much of anything. I saw that argument advanced. But I still think that knowledge would be good. That if that was the case and that's what you needed to know, that's what you needed to know. That's what I told myself when I launched my sub sack. There's this fear that you're going to suffer not only a financial death, but an ego death. You're going to throw yourself a party and nobody is going to show up to the party. And you're going to have to know that, and you're going to have to face that. And when I launched it, there was that fear behind it, and I worried about it. And then I told myself, maybe that's just the lesson that you need to know. You need to just know that you don't have an audience that nobody likes you. Maybe that's just what you need to know about yourself. You need to figure that out, that you can only function as a member of a team. And apparently maybe not even much of a. An essential member or a value add. But that's how you.

[Mike Pesca]

Scary member of a team.

[Ethan Strauss]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mike Pesca]

Barely is having a value add.

[Ethan Strauss]

Yeah.

[Mike Pesca]

Maybe he's a good guy at the office Christmas parties. By the way, do you say ego death because you watch that Aaron Rodgers documentary where he does silence baths?

[Ethan Strauss]

No, but I said that seven times in that documentary. He loves killing his ego. What an. What an ironic.

[Mike Pesca]

Well, he knows enough, right? It's like one of those things is on top of his mind because he understands that it's always at play with Aaron Rodgers.

[Ethan Strauss]

Aaron Rodgers is the most insufferable person who I don't find insufferable in any particular moment. Whenever he's talking, I actually enjoy him and I go, oh, this is a smart, reasonable guy. But the totality of him and his decisions are just completely insufferable. And, oh, God, such a good insight.

[Mike Pesca]

In fact, like the memes around Rogers. Right? He's not memebly insufferable. Maybe he's not like a Katy Perry. He's the opposite of Katy Perry, where I think she's probably a good person who gives up to all these very embarrassing memes. My favorite thing Aaron Rodgers ever did was when he hosted Jeopardy. I was convinced he was a good guy. He might be a good guy, but he is that word that you come back to insufferable. You want to talk about. You want to talk Giannis? Because I have.

[Ethan Strauss]

We don't have to. If the conversation. You got to read the conversation. You can't force the play. If, you know, if we keep getting away from Giannis, then maybe there's a reason for it. Maybe there's a reason that we don't stick on that topic. I mean, and it's just going to go into my own insecurity. I didn't like how your audience members really were angry at me for my cynicism and dismissiveness of his whole failure as a ladder speech a couple years ago or whatever that was. And I just needed to work that out for everybody.

[Mike Pesca]

I felt like I was disappointed in my, or I disagreed with my audience members too. They're, they're of a certain sort, a non sports type. And I think, like playing, playing a Aaron Rodgers moment, just in the context of no context, those seem like very plausible points.

[Ethan Strauss]

That's what I rationalized. And that was the thing that was interesting to me is that they loved what he said and what he said carries some truth. A few years ago, this idea that, look, you're going to fail in sports. And it is all part of this process and it's a thing where, as you were saying, we kind of want them to feel bad. But the people who are commenting and were mad at me, who are just, you know, how dare they. But they didn't have the context of what a colossal disaster this was. And, you know, it's not, not to bring it into politics, but would they be feeling good if there are tariff shocks to the economy and the economy melts down and Trump is saying, you know, there's no failure, there's no process. It's like, do you buy that, a meltdown of epic proportions for that franchise that they have not recovered from?

[Mike Pesca]

I'll give you, I'll give you a spot on political analogy. So most of my listeners, probably, you know, old Obama fans, liberals, when Kamala Harris lost the election, would they want a press conference or an interview where she made tons of reasonable excuses for herself? Right. Look, we got in late and a lot of people just like Trump, what are you going to do? And as much as the old media is on our side, he understands the new media and that's not fair. And, you know, I tried my best. People would hate that, of course.

[Ethan Strauss]

Well, and they, and they're coming to it cold. They're going, this guy lost the basketball game, right? It's like, nbd, he lost the basketball game. We don't want. You shouldn't be shamed, you shouldn't be crying. They don't have all that context of how many people are involved and invested in this thing working. And this is, all this is just collapsing. And I think there isn't conversation to be had about whether he shares any blame and what's gone on with the bucks. I think he's viewed a little bit right now like a tragic figure where it's not his fault. I kind of wonder if some of it is his fault. They've made some sketchy moves, probably to placate him, but that's. That's a whole other conversation. And so it was just interesting to me to see the reaction and fallout from all of that, from somebody who doesn't have an NBA context versus somebody who does, where it was so much more popular with people who weren't big NBA fans. And that went viral. And that's apparently what Giannis does every few years, is he goes viral after a loss. I don't know if there's. I didn't like that. The team tweeted it out. I didn't like that for the last one, the recent one with the John Halliburton blow up. Even if John Halliburton is at fault, even the things Gianna said were all great. It was just. The whole thing was unseemly to me, with the main question being, is Yanis gonna leave your organization? Why are you tweeting out this whole ugly episode with Tyrese Halliburton's dad? I mean, that's a whole other thing where these guys are boy kings. As Woz has said, the reason John Halliburton's on the floor is because Tyrese Halliburton is now the boy king of Indiana. So your family gets to just traipse around the court yelling at people. That's just how it works in the NBA.

[Mike Pesca]

So what is the case for Giannis being to blame for the failures to put together the right team around him? Because I just am not as in depth on this. Does he have a reputation as the guy calling the shots there? The de facto GM? I didn't think so. The LeBron James type. I also thought that getting in Dame was the kind of thing that everyone in his position would cheer. And then you rely on the professionals in the front office to fill around your gaps, which are. You have no wing defenders or really any defenders or a third best player who's better than Bobby Portis. But are some of those things on Giannis?

[Ethan Strauss]

Yeah, it's his fault that Middleton got injured. That's number one. I think the coaching moves, the sketchy coaching moves probably are downstream of his wants, but it might just be an instance where it's bad luck and poor roster management and even a great coach couldn't see them through to the other side. And now they're in this unfortunate circumstance where before the small market Bucks fans could be justified and just loathing. How much of the ESPN conversation Over the years was, oh, who can trade for Giannis? Oh, where can Giannis flee to? And now all of a sudden, it all screeches to a halt and it's, no, this is real. Lillard is just. Maybe his career's over. Who knows? And it would appear that you've got to have serious conversations about dealing a top three player and figuring out those fits. And those conversations are happening. Those are percolating around the NBA right now. I'm seeing lists of teams. People tell me things now, Mike, way more than in the past, because they don't do anything with them, which is a funny thing.

[Mike Pesca]

So, yeah. So you're on their signal. Group chats, yes. Crafting the zeitgeist. So who is the player in the NBA? Steph comes to mind. But I'm going to asterisk this. Who is kind of perfect in being the superstar, who could be a coach killer and could be the de facto gm, but I won't say just totally isn't, but plays the role correctly. LeBron is way too involved. Let's say Jimmy Butler. There's a guy who's a huge headache and has never been a. Seeming a seamless member of a team, but he gets in this great situation. And the asterisk with Steph is maybe it's easy to defer to Steve Kerr once Steve Kerr tells you everything he could do. So does anyone really play that role correctly? Look at what Kawhi did with Pop, who should be unassailable. So I don't know who's better, so much better than Giannis in this. In this factor of being a superstar.

[Ethan Strauss]

It's only Steph, and it's only Steph. And it's easier when you figure out or reach the conclusion that your coach is competent, because if you don't trust them, it's a. That's a different thing altogether. And I think Steph's got this really smart insight that delegation is liberation. I don't know why I'm rhyming up here. Like, I've been listening to a lot.

[Mike Pesca]

Of Gavin Newsom podcasts. He does that, too.

[Ethan Strauss]

Delegation is liberation, folks. It's the English Premier League.

[Mike Pesca]

It will lead to relegation.

[Ethan Strauss]

Oh, no, not relegation, but it's true. Because these players, they're competitive. They want power. Power is a marker of how much they've achieved, and sometimes power can help them. GM LeBron has, I think, changed his own situation for the better, probably at a few different turns. But there's a cost to it all. There's a cost to taking on jobs that maybe are going to absorb bandwidth. And also you're probably not going to be as good at it as somebody whose only job is that thing. And with Steph, I think there's just been throughout his career this sense of I'm going to focus on what I focus on. I'm going to get as great at it as I can get and I'm going to leave the other stuff to Bob Myers now Dunleavy and Steve and Steve's going to handle the coaching and I'm not going to get involved in this whole we need to be doing things differently. The way I want to do it, the way all these other guys do it is more pick and roll, give me the ball. More pick and roll, top of the key. And I think that helps you, that helps you have sustainability and be able to completely do everything that you need to do within your own responsibility. I understand why other guys in that position do it differently. There's got to temptation to try to change things in your favor if you've got the power to change things in your favor. As a parent I understand that it's hard sometimes to just not spend way too much money or just do too much for your kids because if you could do something for your kids, how could you not do something for your kids? But yeah, I think just the ability to say that's enough and this is what I'm doing is something that's benefited him and I understand why. If there aren't many guys who do that when they've got that power, the.

[Mike Pesca]

Best intervention is so often non intervention. We found this that needed, needed a knockdown drag out statistical revolution. Mocking Joe Morgan every day to convince major major league managers not to sacrifice and not to hit behind the runner. That's one example. But another one is I interviewed these two Princeton professors, Macedo and Lee and they wrote a book called In Covid's Wake. And the statistic is non pharmaceutical interventions. Everything about masking everything about hand washing everything that was not the vaccine did nothing. If you look at the states that did it a lot and you look at the states that lock down a little, no death rate difference other than, you know, normed for everything other than other than the vaccine. And it is because if you are a leader, what is leadership? Leadership can't be not saying and doing right. Leadership is always the impetus to do and that's so often the wrong thing. And it's great. And it's only because Steph is comfortable in this. That's for a Lot of reasons, but it's because he has been shown. You have to have proved to you over and over. And that's why the example of Kawhi, who I have enormous respect for, but if Kawhi can blow up pop, then anyone could blow up anyone. And if Jimmy Butler can force trades out of the Heat, which I think of as among the most functional franchises in sports, you know, it's very hard to think that, well, he's a special personality trait. He has special personality Butler. But yeah, it's really hard to do it. I don't know who else is. It was Chris Paul good at that is. Who are some. Some of these reasonable respected superstars?

[Ethan Strauss]

I think it's hard for them too, because insecurity just leads to instability. As I'm going through my various. Insecurity leads to instability. And these guys, I think have more reason to be insecure or more information coming back to them. I even wrote a book about how the social media era had made NBA superstars crazy that they. You get all this just feedback that makes them insecure. And I'm part of it. I have to say, my guilty pleasure, ladies and gentlemen. I don't feel proud of it when an NBA player in the playoffs fails miserably. I do like to search his name on Twitter X and just see all the funny memes. I do enjoy that. I might have been doing that recently after game five for James Harden because people will be ruthless and they will be funny when they Photoshop or maybe not even Photoshop. I think James Corden actually wore a Laker jersey and after a bad Luca performance and they'll get really funny with it. They like to do the whole face swap stuff and make Luca look like D'Angelo Russell. They'll do whatever and it'll be very funny. And people like to do that for the players that you know aren't their favorite players and avoid it when there is their favorite players. But these guys get all of that and I think it hits them more. Even if the criticism was more biting in the newspapers and on TV from Peter Vessi back in the day, there's just more of it. And then they feel like they got to do something. And that's why all these people who are TV hosts are crazy. Mike. All these people, you've got that famous Bill O'Reilly do it live clip. But the people. I only got one little taste of it once. One taste of it. I was doing a hit for SportsCenter and I was at the Target Center. I think it was the 2016 warriors run. And it was noisy and I was on the floor in pre game and I'm just talking and I'm looking at that abyss of the camera and I just feel my earpiece sliding slowly out of my ear. And then I feel it fall. And I look into that abyss and I realize that I'm on live television and I cannot hear anything that's being said to me in the head. And I, I don't know where the clip is and I don't know how it went. I had to fake my way through it because I could. I, I. There was this little other part of the camera where I could see when the guy. Right. Yeah. Because you. Nobody's actually listening. That's the beautiful part about that. Nobody actually cares what's said in any of those instances. You can say, so you can do the thing of. Yeah. And you know, the thing about what Steve wants to do with the team, I gotta mention, is it doesn't have to necessarily connect. Maybe what we're doing right now is figuring out why I got fired from espn. And I had no idea. But that terror, there's that terror, that feeling of, I'm up here, I'm being judged. This is a whole operation. But I take the fall. And it makes these people on television into monsters and divas. It makes them crazy. And I think that's who these NBA players deal with and they're superstars. Is, look, I'm going to get crushed. It's my name on the marquee. It's my legacy at stake. And I can't sit still with it. I can't just accept whatever the situation is. I'm just roiled by this sort of pulsating insecurity and fear. And that's why I've got to shake things up.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah. And football players have helmets and baseball players playing a sport that only baseball fans like. When was the last time someone got on Spencer Strider for doing something wrong? You know what I'm bad at? Maybe or two is meal planning. In fact, I'm so bad at meal planning, I didn't even realize there was this category of activity called meal planning. It would just come time to have a meal or to cook for my family. And I would say, oh, what am I going to have? And try to figure it out. Didn't really make sense to me that you could go back and plan the meal beforehand, but you can. And just about the best way to do this that I've come across is Marley Spoon. I'm excited that they're sponsoring this episode because with the code, the gist, you can get up to 26 free meals from this excellent service. Marley Spoon. They have over 100 recipes to choose from. Comfort food like Big Batch Beef Stroganoff a salmon and Creamy Mustard Dill Sauce Bake, which is a lighter option, something for every mood. I will tell you about a meal or two. The mini chicken, meatballs and escarole, or as my people call them, skarol. And this meal was money. If you understand the Sopranos or Italian, you'll know that Scuttle is slaying for money. But it's in this brodo broth, which I'm going to get to in a second, and it's with garlic crostini. I could never have made it on my own, but with Marley Spoon, I am planning a meal and wowing my loved ones with the quality of the meal and the great thing. One of the great things about Marley Spoon is sometimes you want to make a meal that has a certain ingredient but you know. Or you probably fool yourself and say, sure, I'll use that ingredient over and over again. But it sits in the back of the fridge and you don't. With Marley Spoon. If, for instance, with their Martha Stewart's best One Pot Paprika lamb stew, you need a little bit of broth, you need a couple of packets of beef broth concentrate. So if you opened it in real life, I would never use it again. But with Marley Spoon, it's the exact right portions. This spring, fast track your way to eating well with Marley Spoon. Head to Marley spoon.com offer/the gist and use the code the gist for up to 26 free meals. That's right. Up to 26 free meals with Marley Spoon. One last time. That's Marley spoon.com backslash offer backslash the gist for up to 26 free meals. And make sure to use my promo code. Oh, you know it. The Gist. So they know I sent you.

[Jesse Singel]

Your snacking routine can get a little dull. Time for an Oikos remix or Light and fit remix. Like a crunchy storm of sea salt, praline pretzels, dark chocolate and butter toffee, showering down into a smooth, creamy yogurt.

[Mike Pesca]

Enjoy.

[Jesse Singel]

Six Remix varieties, three EPIC Complete Protein Oos Remix options or three Craveable Light and Fit Remix options. See remixyogurt.com welcome to the Dispatch Podcast. I'm Sarah Isger, we've got Jonah Goldberg and y'all. This is gonna be a fun podcast. We've got Mike Pesca, host of the Gist and author of the Gist List, and Jesse Singel, New Dispatch contributor, host of Locked In, Reported, and writer of Single Minded. And he tells me, y'all, he won a Little league trophy in 1995. I mean, what's not to love about Jesse? Single. I want to start where we left off from last week. We went through sort of what does MAGA stand for? What are the MAGA policies? What's going on with Trump, foreign policy, things of this nature. I want to move over to the Democrats now and focus or maybe use as a jumping off point or a metaphor, the conversation going on between David Hogg, who is the vice chair of the Democratic National Committee now, and James Carville, you know, famous, longtime Democratic operative dude. So basically, David Hogg has taken the quite controversial position that he's going to raise money as the vice chair of the DNC to run primaries against Democratic incumbents. And as Hogg and Carville did this interview together, you know, Hogg basically says, well, what do you want to do, James? What do you want to do to fix the abysmal approval rating of the Democratic Party? And James Carville screams, win elections. Since then, James Carville tweeted, just called David Hogg. He reminded me of the story of after the Battle of Shiloh, Henry Halleck urged President Lincoln to fire Ulysses Grant. Lincoln said, I can't fire him. This man fights. David Hogg fights. The DNC needs him. There's so much about that that I find perhaps not credulous, but, Mike, I want to start with you. Where, where are you on this? David Hogg, James Carville, you know, continuum of how you're supposed to run a political party? How do you bring a political party back from what some say is the brink of death? Is, is that even an accurate description of where the Democratic Party is, or is that where all political parties are after they lose a presidential election? And is there such a thing as the Democratic Party anymore? By which I mean, like, are political parties a thing?

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, there's a thing called the Democratic Party. It lives within all of our hearts or 27% of our approval. I There is no overlap between where James Carville is and me. If it's a continuum, I just resent the fact that Hogg represents one end of the continuum. What is the proof that this guy has been right about anything in his life? He was in a school that was shot up, and it was pretty good on TV because it was in the debate club. And so he kept being I'll give him the maximum benefit of the doubt. And maybe in the seven or so years since then he learned some political skills, but he has no political sense. And James Carville really does have political sense. I don't exactly know what Republicans think of James Carville. I know Democrats sometimes resent him, but they resent him in the way of an old Methuselah like figure who almost always gets it right and he's willing to tell them things they don't like. Like in the beginning of the campaign or in the beginning of Trump's term, he said what the Democrats have to do is just evince competence and essentially do nothing because Trump will self destruct. And you could never tell political actors or really any actors to do nothing. But it's always the best advice. Inaction is in fact a bold form of action. And Carville wasn't saying don't actually make speeches or do programs, just don't commit self goals. So Hogg has a terrible, terrible theory of the case. And I also find that most of the people who are advancing the Hog arguments are people like me who can't believe how stupid he is or Republicans because it's great for Republicans. It's a great distraction from what Trump is doing. And, and it might not be fun to say, but Again, Carville is 105% right on this one and more than 100% right because he goes up to the line of saying, David Hog, you don't know what you're talking about and I think you might be a stupid person. He doesn't say that. That's the extra 5% more right than right. Yes, he says it. Also, let's remember Hog's whole theory of the cases. Let's get old people out of there. And then he's on this tour with Carville, a bonafide old person and who tears him limb from limb every media appearance.

[Jesse Singel]

Jesse, what about the argument, the, you know, the, the Lincoln quote? I can't fire him. He fights. I mean, David Hogg, like AOC maybe, arguably the theory would go, is great for the Democratic Party because at least he's making the Democratic base feel like Democrats hear the problem, are trying to fix the problem. At least he's doing something that like, like sit back and think of England version perhaps that James Carville is trying for isn't going to energize much.

[Jonah Goldberg]

Yeah, I mean, I guess it's just is the question that we need like a more energized base of the sorts of people who could Influence like a primary challenge. I guess I'm also confused about the theory of the case here. Cause it seems like. And again, I think Mike Pesca, I hate to be on the same team as Pesca because he's just such a difficult fellow. But like, I think we probably both.

[Mike Pesca]

And also in Little League, you are very, very self.

[Jonah Goldberg]

I'm guessing Mike would agree that a lot of the Democrats recent successes, to the extent they've had any, have been sort of like moderate purplish candidates. And we remember after Trump was elected the first time, that first midterm, it was like, you know, mobs in suburban Virginia who used to work for the CIA, folks like that. And Hogg seems to really want to use this opportunity to take the party in a different direction. And I don't know, it sort of gets into this whole like, like celebrity thing that makes me uncomfortable where you see people talk about how AOC and Bernie Sanders have attracted huge crowds to these events and okay, you know, but they both have political talent. Does that really mean anything? They're, they're fighting, they can fill these small arenas. But I'm just not sure any of this translates to winning this next midterm or the next presidential election. I just, I don't, I don't understand what his theory is of how this will help the Democratic Party or even if that's his primary concern.

[Jesse Singel]

Shona stick up for poor David Hogg.

[Sarah Isger]

I recently wrote about David Hogg and I had to confess in dispatch fashion to my readers that I am irrationally biased against David Hogg in like a.

[Jesse Singel]

Pajama boy way is how I read it though.

[Sarah Isger]

Yeah, pajama boy, kind of like borderline. I want to smash his guitar against the Delta house wall kind of thing. I'm not just. I cannot stand the guitar. I've known kids like that my entire life. And whenever I visit colleges, and I was just at college, the David Hoggs seek me out to prove how wrong I am and talk to me as if, like, I need their advice. I just. Everything about him exudes some sort of anti pheromone that makes me irrational. So I don't like the guy.

[Jonah Goldberg]

Oh, sorry. Can I just raise one possibility? I'm a social science guy. Political scientists should measure how much the average voter wants to bully a given figure, like with specific scenarios, like stuffing them in a locker, smashing their guitar, Delta, whatever. And then see how they do over the next 20 years in politics. Because, like, I don't think Bernie Sanders is bullyable. So anyway, I just want to Break in with that impression.

[Sarah Isger]

But you raise a good point. Okay, so one of the reasons why I'm so skeptical of this, we need a new, younger red brigade to seize power. You know who just filed for the paperwork to run in 2030? Bernie Sanders. And no one's saying, oh, it's time for fresh blood. You know about Sanders. Look, I got my start in Washington working for a guy named Ben Wattenberg who was obsessed about saving the Democratic party in the 1970s and the 1980s. And so I have a very soft spot in my heart for the Carvillian Roy Teixeira sort of stuff, in part because I've actually come to the conclusion that unless the Democratic Party gets sane and starts running as a party that wants to be a majority party, the Republican Party will never get sane. You really, you can't just have one healthy party. You need two healthy parties for positive competition kind of thing. So I, I agree with you guys. And I've written a couple times that Carville has the best short term strategy for the Democrats right now, where I think there's a problem for Democrats. And look, I'd say Hogg is right. The party's too old. Our politicians are too old as a class. But I just don't think that like, like youthful vigor, absent something else is the only answer. You actually need better ideas and better arguments and that kind of thing. And I think one of the reasons why Carville's position is the right one is one that a lot of Democrats don't want to concede, is I think they've lost the plot. What is the story the Democrats tell about themselves that wins over the median voter? The descent into identity politics and the wokeism, whatever we want to call it of the last decade leaves them in a place where I don't think the elites in the party have a good grasp about how to talk to the normie voter the way they once did, the way Bill Clinton could in his sleep. I mean, I love this Tim Waltz clip from me speaking at Sarah's old stomping ground, the Harvard Institute of Politics. And, and he's explaining how he could code talk to white football watching guys and give them permission structure to vote for Democrats.

[Mike Pesca]

I knew I was on the ticket, I would argue, because we did a lot of amazing progressive things in Minnesota that improved people's lives. But I also was on the ticket, quite honestly, you know, because I, I could code talk to white guys watching football, fixing their truck, doing that, that I could put them at ease. I was the permission structure to Say, look, you can do this and vote for this.

[Sarah Isger]

And I put it to you that maybe dudes who talk like that aren't what the Democratic Party needs. They need football watching guys to code talk to people who use football.

[Jonah Goldberg]

You can't imagine a football watcher be like, bro, are you giving me a permission structure? That's awesome. I'm gonna vote down. Come on, it makes perfect sense.

[Sarah Isger]

Let's do some provision structure for some wings, man.

[Jonah Goldberg]

Yo, cool code switch. Cool code switch, bro. Go, Pat.

[Mike Pesca]

Jonah, when Peyton Manning goes to the line and says, ice cream dice 26 4, that is code talk, isn't it?

[Sarah Isger]

Of a kind, yes. Of a kind. Sure.

[Jesse Singel]

Okay, I'm going to John McLaughlin. All of you wrong. Mike Pesca answered for a special canned banana. Mike Peska answered this question incorrectly from the beginning. And then all of you got the answer wrong, which is, we killed off political parties in 2002 with campaign finance reform. There is no such thing as the Democratic Party anymore or the Republican Party. There is only the last guy to win the presidency. That's what a political party is now in the United States. They have no ability to pick their standard bearers. They have no ability to have narratives of their own outside of that person. And so when you have Joe Biden as that person for the Democratic Party party, you are screwed until you get someone else who wins the presidency. Um, now it will help to have someone who is nominated for the presidency, but that's not quite the same thing if they can't win, as we just saw with Harris. Um, so the Republican Party looks strong because it has someone who just won the presidency. The Democratic Party looks weak because their guy who had won the presidency then lost the presidency and cannot do public events. So that's the answer to the question.

[Jonah Goldberg]

Now, you just did that intelligence meme where, like, the midwit people are like, david Hogg is bad for the party, and the too smart person is like, what is a political party even?

[Jesse Singel]

It's not my fault. You'll suck. So Jonah, though, did raise an interesting point all the same, which is, what does the Democratic Party do here? Jesse, you have some reporting that I want us to talk about. Because at the end of the day, I think two of the biggest cultural problems where the Democratic Party is on the wrong side of what we call 8020 issues. And I don't necessarily mean that these are 8020 issues, literally, or that when you break them apart, every single piece of them are 8020 issues. But immigration and transgender care for minors are two of the areas in which the Democratic Party is just on the wrong side of the polling. And, Jesse, you have some reporting on what the Trump administration is about to roll out. Will you give us a preview?

[Jonah Goldberg]

Yeah. So this morning, the Department of Health and Human Services. I almost said humor services. That seems like a Mike Peska joke. Not a funny subject. So they released this huge report, more than 400 pages, called treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria. Review of Evidence and Best Practices. I actually don't. Maybe it's a different conversation. I don't think, like, Democrats lost because of this issue, but I do think this is an issue where the role of the groups, as some of us call them, really came into play. So there's been this long running debate over youth gender medicine, over puberty blockers, over hormones, surgery. Less frequently. This is for kids who have gender dysphoria. These treatments supposedly alleviate it. And the Democratic Party basically rolled over to a group of activists and medical providers and decided not to look carefully into the subject. Countries like Finland, Sweden, and the UK did look carefully into it. They all rolled back access to these treatments as a result. So when the Trump administration announced via a characteristically inflammatory executive order about chemical mutilation and so forth, that they were going to be looking into this issue, I was really skeptical that we would get a good report as a result. I thought it would be politicized. 90 days, which is what they gave them, is not enough time to do something like this usually. But when I found out who actually was behind this report, these are the folks HHS commissioned. They're smart people. They're smart skeptics of youth gender medicine. So you have this weird situation where the Trump administration, which I would not associate with good science in general or with the scientific method in general, has produced a credible document raising doubts about these treatments in a way the Biden administration absolutely could have chosen to at any point point, except they basically decided to cheerlead these treatments. And I think this just makes this issue even more politicized, even more contentious. And I'm frustrated with the way the Democrats handled this. I think they are part of the reason we're now in this situation where we have to trust the Trump administration's approach, which I don't think is a good general thing to do.

[Jesse Singel]

Jonah, I singled out immigration and transgender care for minors. Is there anything else on this 80, 20 side I'm missing before we dive into it?

[Sarah Isger]

First of all, I just want to make one quick point about the transgender thing. I feel you. I've Been calling it the Greenland effect for a while. I've been pro annexing Greenland forever. But doing it the wrong way discredits the idea and the position. And it's sort of the same thing. This is one of the problems with polarized politics is that even when you do the right thing the right way, because of the general valence of Europe, your other stuff, and it's sort of like this rest of the judge in Minnesota, because of Trump's other stuff with other judges, no one can see it for the fact pattern of that case alone. Anyway, I would say look again, it's the distinction between the ideological position and the way they're carrying it out. I think a lot of the stuff that the Trump administration is doing on the DEI stuff, or antisemitism stuff, if people don't look at the details, I think it's probably not 80, 20, but maybe 60, 40Americans who are like, yeah, that stuff went too far. I like that they're doing something about it. And then the problem is the means of what they're doing create blowback. Right. So, like, I'm for doing all sorts of things to fix Harvard. I'm not sure cutting Harvard's research into pediatric cancer is the way to fix their English departments. But, but that, that sort of split is. I think they're on the right. They're happy to have those arguments. Maybe that's the way to think about it. What are the. What are the. What are the Trump things? What are the things that Trump is doing where he's really happy to be talking about it versus unhappy to talk about it? Di. Immigration, Transgender. Happy to talk about it. Stock market, not so much.

[Jesse Singel]

Yeah. So, Mike, I know it's really easy for us to sit here and say that the Democratic Party should tell their base to go F themselves and get on the right side of these issues. But that's not really a politically viable solution if you want to, to quote James Kerrville, win effing election. Right. The base does a lot of things for you. They're your volunteers, they're your small dollar donors, and they're, you know, many of your voters as well, if not a majority of them. So what are you supposed to do when your base is going off one direction and the American majority is heading in the other direction? And I will use as an example of this or like a reverse example of this on the Republican side, right. The Republican base was really teed up on illegal immigration while it looked like the rest of the country wanted moderation on immigration. You have the 2012 Republican autopsy report that says the Republican Party needs to back comprehensive immigration reform basically needs to get off this issue and tell its base to jump off a cliff. And Donald Trump proved that in fact it was the majority that was a soft majority or not even ever a majority, and that the base was the winning coalition to win an election there. So why shouldn't the Democratic base say the same thing?

[Mike Pesca]

Well, Sarah, I feel you've set a trap for me. You just said that it's easy for us to tell the Democratic Party what to do. But in the previous segment you said there is no Democratic Party.

[Jesse Singel]

You're learning.

[Jonah Goldberg]

Mike just ended this podcast permanently.

[Sarah Isger]

He just Kobayashi Marud the dispatch.

[Jonah Goldberg]

I hate that. I get that. I hate that. I get that. Get that.

[Mike Pesca]

I will end of war games. The only, the only solution is not to play. It is whatever. It's. It is true that the base has their passion. It's also true that consistently bad form of political advice comes from people who are on the more radical side of each party advising the party to be more radical. So for years on msnbc, the advice was, we need someone who gets out the base and excites people. Sure. Who doesn't need that? And that means. And then they would inject some Bernie Sachs style Stan Bernie Sanders style socialism. I think it's just bad politics, parties or no, to be on the wrong side of 80, 20 issues. But I also think that the salience of those issues changes. So they don't. They do ask how much do you care? And people, though they do have, have thoughts on the wisdom of youth, gender, medicine or especially kids in sports. I don't think they're voting on it per se. But what happens and this, this is what every good political political adviser should tell people who want to win. What happens is there is an accrual of issues that if you are on the wrong side of people who do vote for you or who could vote for you, it undermines enthusiasm. And especially with Democrats. My analysis is if they are the truth people once they were on the wrong side of things by asserting untruths. The youth gender medicine was replete with all these lies about. Jesse's reported on this about things like suicide rate and desistance and just lies that smack of lack of common sense. And then when it comes out that the experts and remember Democrats are the appeal to experts people, the experts actually disagree with what the activists were saying, it really undercuts your credibility. The same as Covid, right? I think Covid and the lockdowns that extended, you know, schools weren't back open in LA until April of 22. Covid really undercut their position as the expert people. You add it all up and not only does it hurt your credibility and the ability to win elections, it takes specifically people who would normally be in your coalition, in your base and turns them against you. So there are so many maha moms is another example of that. I don't know the Democrats did anything wrong but the reason why it's a potent issue is those are exactly the kind of people who should vote for Democrats. So if you show yourself to have wrong stances on all these issues that you could call common sense or you could say you're just lying, it is going to hurt you. And I don't know how excited a young activist is to get out there in the streets because of many of the issues that we just said. I think that a lot of them kind of if gender identity isn't their thing, they swallow and go along. If immigration is their thing, they maybe wonder why are we taking these ridiculous stances on gender identity. So I think in general parties are no party dumb to have dumb stances that off voters.

[Jesse Singel]

Jesse, will you social science us here for a second? Tell us, tell us what's going on within a the minds and hearts of Democratic voters or potential Democratic voters. I think the maha mom thing is a great example because almost by definition to be a maha mom and this is a make America healthy again mom, I ran into a mom at the playground the other day who literally had the hat. By definition you basically have to have been a two time Obama voter voter to be a real maha mom. It's like in the definition more or less. So how did that happen?

[Jonah Goldberg]

I think like the average voter is subjected to these weird cross cutting pressures that are hard. Like okay, we're all, we are all partisans to a certain extent. We have a, you know, set of ideologies. I'm not saying this happens often but in my reporting on youth gender stuff like there are there are parents who really get radicalized because of the perception that the Democrats are wrong on this one issue and they really, some of them end up voting for Trump. I find that sort of hard to countenance because it's just you have to mortgage so many of your other ideological values to do that. And I think all of this comes back to the fact that there's only a small sliver of genuinely undecided voters in every election and they are very different from folks like us. And it is Hard to model their minds. I will also. One other thing I wanted to say is that I think there's a real asymmetry here in terms of the radical wing of both parties. So. So border policy under Joe Biden was very bad for a while. Very bad. It was not because Joe Biden is like an open borders freak. It was because of incompetence and Covid related stuff and the lack of immigration agreement in the past, blah, blah, blah. The result though was Democratic mayors going to the New York Times and like launching a war against the administration. There was real infighting there. There was not infighting like during the, during the Republican campaign. No one who wanted to stay within the Republican mainstream could say, oh, Cat. No one who wanted to to. No one who wanted to stay within the Republican mainstream could say, oh, Trump is going a little too harshly on immigrants. Like one for one form of radicalism, the really harsh on immigration thing is more popular than open border stuff. Similarly with the youth gender stuff, let's just ban it all is more popular than let's let all kids do whatever they want, which was an argument that appeared on the front page of New York magazine. Literally give any kid who wants any medical treatment can get it. So I think that asymmetry and the fact that maybe the Republican Party is a slightly smaller tent, although getting bigger and a bit more ideological, these are all also worth taking into account.

[Jesse Singel]

But Jesse, I want to follow up with you on that with abortion. So the abortion is exactly the reverse for the Republicans as, as immigration and the transgender issue have been for Democrats. Meaning it is slightly more popular to say we're going to allow some amount of abortion than to say ban all abortions. And yet Democrats tried to run on that and it didn't seem to do a lot. And Republicans have been able to like memory hole the whole thing. Like we haven't talked about abortion in at least 100 days.

[Jonah Goldberg]

This is a weird example, right? Because my sense is in the immediate elections, like special elections and stuff after Dobbs, the issue did seem to have salience. And there were a couple state level referenda, like in Kansas, I believe, where the quote unquote pro choice side did better.

[Jesse Singel]

And Kentucky, by the way.

[Jonah Goldberg]

And Kentucky. Yes, yes, yes. I think it just turned out to not be as salient an issue. But I grant that that's a counterexample where like these quote unquote more radical side seems to be able to get away with it.

[Mike Pesca]

I have the answer to that. The answer is because Donald Trump, spokesman for the Republicans moderated his stance in the same way, or at least verbally moderated his stance in the same way that Democrats need to moderate their stance on trans girls in sports. You need to not be radical, not outwardly radical. And Trump did it and it neutralized an issue. And that's what Democrats, that's what smart Democrats and James Carville are saying his people should do on transgender medicine.

[Jesse Singel]

That's a good point. Donald Trump basically sister soldiered the pro life movement, except far worse. I mean, he told them they were irrelevant.

[Jonah Goldberg]

Yeah. And he's throwing the groups under the bus for political gain, which the Democrats could learn from maybe.

[Mike Pesca]

Well, Project 25 disagrees with him on abortion. He'll give him a whole bunch of other stuff that they want. And then the fact that you're, let's call it a cult or that there's a clear leader actually helps in the messaging. So. Right. So if the person who's saying, yeah, it's really weird and I don't want my daughter run over by a boy in sports, if that person is the clear leader and is not going to take all the incoming that individual representatives took for saying a sensible stance like that, perhaps influence explicitly phrased, it's easier.

[Sarah Isger]

For that party on this point about the Maha moms becoming that dynamic. Right. That's shockingly common in all sorts of ways. So I remember all these liberal types who became right wingers in effect because of 9, 11, and in very short order, it turns out it's very difficult for people to handle the cognitive dissonance of being on a side switching sides for a single issue. So over time, they just start to absorb the other side's other issues as well, for the sake of that sort of popular front mindset. It happened with the neocons who came into the Republican party in the 1970s because of foreign policy. Charles Krauthammer became, with very few exceptions, a full spectrum conservative. Same thing with Bill Bennett, who had been a Democrat. Gene Kirkpatrick, you can go down a long list and one could argue just going by his Twitter feed, I don't want to start too much of a tong war here, but you could argue that there's a similar pattern going on with people like Bill Kristol, who seems to be just taking Democratic positions full sweep, at least according to his Twitter handle. And I think there's something about human nature that says if I'm going to join another team, I got to wear their uniform.

[Jonah Goldberg]

David Horowitz just died yesterday. He was another new left guy, right who went hard, for sure.

[Sarah Isger]

He was a super new left guy.

[Mike Pesca]

He just wanted to be radical on one side or another. That's the important.

[Sarah Isger]

That's true. He didn't actually change his tactics. He just changed his uniform.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah.

[Jesse Singel]

By the way. So I just. Personal victory lap. On May 4, 2022, I published a piece called Abortion Might Not Be the Wedge Issue It Used to Be and was just pilloried as the dumbest political operative in America for thinking Democrats were not going to win every election forever on the abortion issue. And I would just like to remind everyone here in 2025 that I wrote that and that nobody cared at the time and nobody listened to me.

[Sarah Isger]

And for the rest of your Life, May the fourth will be with you.

[Jesse Singel]

That's right.

[Mike Pesca]

May the fourth is your Jedi mind. Trick them on May 4th. Correct.

[Jesse Singel]

May the fourth.

[Jonah Goldberg]

No, I'm not.

[Jesse Singel]

May 4th is the day that Carly Fiorina announced her candidacy for the Republican nomination as well. So May the Fourth. Fourth is a great day for me because we announced on ABC's Good Morning America with stormtroopers in the background. And I thought, I'm an idiot. I did this. All right. Jesse Singel, thank you so much for joining us. I know you have to go. You're in another continent and country and time zone. So thank you for being here. We'll catch you on the flip side.

[Mike Pesca]

And that's it for today's show. The Gist is produced by Corey Wara, CBSO of Peach Fish Productions. Michelle Pesca. The doyen of the Gist list is Kathleen Sykes. And Leo Baum has been hitting the archives hard and helping us out. So thank you to our intern, Leo Baum, Astrid Greens, our social media director, Improve. And thanks for listening. The Gist is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations.