← To The Contrary with Charlie Sykes
To The Contrary with Charlie Sykes
Jonathan Rauch: SCOTUS, the Blue Wave and the Future of Democracy
00:47:19
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- [00:00]
Charlie Sykes
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Charlie Sykes
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Jonathan Rauch
Can I just let it go?
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Charlie Sykes
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Charlie Sykes
I'm Charlie Sykes. Welcome back to to the Contrary podcast, where we have a lot to talk about today. I'm joined by my good friend Jonathan Roush. Thanks for coming back on the podcast.
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Jonathan Rauch
First of all, I am always happy to be with you, Charlie. I enjoy listening to the show and I even enjoy being on the show.
- [02:00]
Charlie Sykes
That's actually even more fun. You know, I thought that today's show was going to be obvious, that we're just going to be talking about the biggest story of the week, which was, of course, the blue wave, the Trump thumping that took place in the election. And we're going to get to that in a moment. But I have to say that there are sometimes there are stories that genuinely do surprise me that are actually important stories as opposed to a trivial story. And so if you'll indulge me for a moment, this is breaking as you and I are sitting down here. The justices heard the challenge, the constitutional challenge to President Trump's tariff regime. And amazingly, and amazingly, at least some of the conservative justices sounded very, very, very skeptical whether or not the president has the imperial power to impose taxes on the American people by whimsical. Kind of amazing. I mean, can I just read you some of the. The quotes here?
- [02:56]
Jonathan Rauch
Yeah, yeah, I think.
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Charlie Sykes
Well, Because I think people are surprised. I mean, you know, he's been. He's been invoking, I mean, just a little bit of background. I mean, you know, he's been invoking this 1977 Emergency Powers act, which, by the way, does not mention tariffs, and it gives the President the power to, you know, take certain actions during emergencies. He has applied it to all of the tariffs, and people are. And lower courts have said, yeah, that's an abuse of the law. The Constitution in Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1, says, Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises. So the headline here on the Early Report from the New York Times is Justices Cast a Skeptical Eye on Trump's Tariffs. The Supreme Court questioning of the use of a 1977 emergency law to impose tariffs on scores of countries raised doubt about the centerpiece of the President's economic agenda. And so that you have a majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said at one point, question the scope of Trump's reciprocal tariffs, which she describes across the board. Is it your contention that every country needed to be tariff because of threats to the defense and the industrial base? She asked. I mean, Spain, France, I mean, I could see with some countries. But explain to me why as many countries needed to be subject to the reciprocal tariff policy. Justice Roberts, Chief Justice Roberts says, wait, that's a congressional power. That's not a presidential power. Neil Gorsuch was asking, well, what do you mean that if Congress grants some power, they can never take it back? There's always a ratchet effect. So what you have is one after another. They're asking fundamental questions. And I guess, I don't know, I'm a little surprised because I just didn't think they would have the intestinal fortitude to go after Trump on a centerpiece, especially because there will be economic consequence. I mean, if they rule that he abused his tariff power, not only do the tariffs in theory go away, but there might be some refunds out there. So I was not expecting this to happen. So, I mean, it's the law, but I've become cynical. What do you think, John?
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Jonathan Rauch
Well, I got to ask you, Charlie, before I tell you what I think, let's. Let's lay a few bets. So today was just the oral argument. They say all kinds of things. What would you guess? You're just guessing, but what would you guess? That they would have the cojones to actually overturn some or all of his tariffs and say you don't have the power to do what you're doing.
- [05:29]
Charlie Sykes
I think there are probably six votes to rule that he does not have the power to do everything that he's done. Now, my guess is it's gonna be one of those split verdicts where they're gonna say, you don't have the power to do this. You have the power to do this. There might be different reasons that they will use. Some of them seem hung up on the major questions doctrine, which they have cited in the past, which is basically the major question doctrine, is that. And they use that to strike down President Biden's forg of student loans, which is that Congress has to explicitly grant you authority to do something. So some may rule against them on that, some may rule against them on congressional, on constitutional grounds. But I don't know. It's very hard to predict how these opinions settle down. But, you know, everybody's takeaway from today's oral argument was that you have six justices who are going, wait, didn't we have a revolution about this? Isn't the Constitution explicit? Shouldn't there be an explicit grant of this power in the law? So I don't know.
- [06:37]
Jonathan Rauch
Well, I'll give you a thermometer reading and tell me if you're in about the same place. But reading these headlines. Just the headlines. So very amateur view, but reading these headlines, I would guess that the odds that they will actually overturn these tariffs. Tell them he can't do do it. Have increased from possibly 30% to as high as 50%. But I'm guessing there's still only a 50% chance that they will decide at the end of the day to confront him on what they should do. Is pretty obvious. He does not have the authority to do what he's doing. The Constitution, as you say, gives the power to, to tax, which includes tariffs, to Congress and only to Congress. He's claiming an emergency where clearly none exists. The fact that Canadians ran an advertisement he does not like does not constitute a national emergency, even if you're on lsd. And even if it did constitute an emergency, the underlying law does not give him the power to raise tariffs. It gives him the power to regulate. So the law is pretty clearly on one side of this. But here's, you know, Charlie, tell me what you think of this. But I always thought there was kind of an elephant in the room, or maybe it's a dark horse in the race. Pick your metaphor. So this court likes presidential power. We know that unitary executive. But John Roberts and some of the others are also sticklers for the idea that, that each of the branches of Congress, of government has a lane, and it should stick to that lane, but it is sovereign within that lane. That wasn't Madison's idea. Madison wanted all the branches to get up on each other's business. He thought that was healthy. But these guys, especially Roberts, if something's Congress's job, then we have to make Congress do it by not letting anyone else do it for them. So on that philosophy, they would be likely to say, look, guys, Congress, you need to stop this. The president can't do it. If you want tariffs, vote for tariffs, period.
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Charlie Sykes
Right.
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Jonathan Rauch
So that might be the way the conservatives go.
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Charlie Sykes
Yeah, I might actually go above the 50%, although I'm also skeptical that they're willing to do something that would be disruptive. I mean, John Roberts, I still go back to his decision on Obamacare where he basically carved out these sort of very Byzantine ways of approving the individual mandate and whatever. She might choke on that.
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Jonathan Rauch
Trump v. US, same thing.
- [09:19]
Charlie Sykes
Oh, my God.
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Jonathan Rauch
Comes up with schemes to avoid having to do things he doesn't want to do.
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Charlie Sykes
The flips along the lines that you're describing. If, in fact they say yes, if they uphold what he's done. It is a vast expansion of presidential power. I mean, it is the imprimatur on. On the Imperial presidency that he can wake up one morning and see a commercial and slap a tariff on Canada, or he can become angry at Brazil for prosecuting their corrupt former president and decide that he's going to retaliate against him. So the legal observers are saying basically, whatever way they go, this is a huge case. I mean, it would be the first time that this court actually, and actually would be the first time that many of these justices have really expressed fundamental skepticism about excessive executive power. But if they were to greenlight eliminates almost every. Every limit on. That's why I think the questions from the conservative justices, I mean, I think it was Neil Gorsuch, and I'm doing this from memory now, was questioning the Solicitor General, who had a very bad day, by the way, very bad day. They were laughing at him at some points, you know, that, well, could Congress basically give a future president, you know, complete power to take any action for, you know, global warming? You know, and, you know, Sauer said something like, well, this administration thinks that's a hoax. And they were all laughing about that. But the, you know, the question is, can Congress just basically override the Constitution and give up all of its powers? Does, you know, Justice Roberts asking him, well, wait, you're. You're justifying this as, you know, emergency, you know, international threat, and yet we're talking about imposing taxes on the American people. They made that explicit. You know, Justice Roberts called tariffs a tax on the American people. So my.
- [11:19]
Jonathan Rauch
Today he said that in the oral argument.
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Charlie Sykes
Yes. My gut sense is with you on this that they are unlikely to do it. On the other hand, the logic of this is so powerful that we do have a Constitution, we do have an Article one, we do have a law that clearly has never been applied in this particular way. So, again, this is one of those moments where we might be surprised.
- [11:45]
Jonathan Rauch
Well, that's right. And unlike some people, I don't view this court's conservatives as just partisan hacks in Trump's pocket. I think they are people with ideologies. Agree with them or disagree. And this is about, as you say, Charlie, as frontal a test.
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Charlie Sykes
Yeah.
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Jonathan Rauch
Of their ideology of defined and enumerated powers as, as you could possibly have. Now, they're, I mean, I could imagine them doing something like hold this decision and issue it at the same time as when they overturn Humphrey's executor, which would give the President vast new powers to fire people running independent regulatory agencies. And so do those both on the same day and say, Look, Mr. President, we got a package for you. You don't like all of it, but you're going to like some of it. So maybe they do it that way and they have another out kind of, which is, I'm not an expert on trade law, far from it, but if the President loses these emergency powers to wake up one morning, declare an emergency and slap tariffs on Canada, there's still other ways for him to do tariffs.
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Jonathan Rauch
There's a Plan B, there's a Plan B, and even a Plan C. You know, it requires a three month or several, you know, a process to do a finding to find a country's in violation of this or that, but he can still do it that way, and that may be something that they look to if they decide to strike down this particular avenue.
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Charlie Sykes
Yeah. Now, the caveat here is that please don't take any of my predictions as being expert because I am not, I am neither a lawyer nor a judge, nor do I play one on podcast. And I remember how many times I confidently went on television and on podcasts like this to predict, well, of course the Supreme Court is not going to grant the President absolute immunity, you know, from criminal prosecution. They, they surely would never do that. So, you know, Neil Katyal, by the way, argued, argued the case in front of the Court. And apparently he was absolutely magnificent. You know, and what he basically said was that the power that, you know, that the President has claimed is an open ended power to junk the tariff laws. One significant question the Justices grappled with is whether Trump's tariffs violate the. And this, I mentioned this before the Court's major questions legal doctrine, which holds that the executive branch must have explicit legal authority from Congress to carry out policies that have major economic or political consequences. And what's interesting about this is the Court's conservative majority has invoked that in the past, as I mentioned, with the Biden administration, not just on student loan forgiveness, but also on the COVID vaccine mandates and on climate change. Chief Justice Roberts expressed skepticism that Trump's use of the emergency law could pass that test. The major questions test, since the President has interpreted the law to provide him virtually unlimited tariff powers, quote, it does seem like that's a major authority. Robert said. So I don't know.
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Jonathan Rauch
We will see if they strike down Biden's student loan forgiveness while allowing Trump's far more ambitious and egregious tariffs to stand. Yes, that will go down in the law books as a switch in time. That saved nine.
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Charlie Sykes
Yep.
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Jonathan Rauch
Now there, there is here the administration has this argument, I don't know if it came up today, but they do claim that tariffs are a foreign policy issue, unlike student loans and these other things. And that in the realm of foreign policy, the President really is sovereign and Congress's and especially the Court's power to review his decisions are greatly curtailed. So that's probably in the mix somewhere.
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Right?
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Charlie Sykes
But that's when Roberts said, well, wait, you're invoking the foreign policy power, but you're talking about attacks on Americans. That's not a foreign policy thing. So we'll see. We can be surprised. Okay, so speaking of big surprises, and I suppose to a certain extent it was not a surprise that the Democrats had a good night. The surprise was the extent of it. They ran the table and not just won all of those races, but the margins. So what struck you from, from those, from those results? What was, what was the mo. What was the most striking result from Tuesday's vote for you?
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Jonathan Rauch
Well, I'll be fired from your podcast because what I have to say about this is the same thing every, everyone has to say. Maybe that just means it's obvious. But the first thing to say is what you just said. I think we all knew the direction because the President's approval numbers are low and because his policies are Unpopular, including even on immigration now. But I thought these races would be closer. I did not see some of the double digit outcomes that we saw. I did not see New Jersey, you know, the Dems basically running away with that race. It looks like this was, this was a set of races in which people who wanted to vote against Trump were much more motivated to come out than people who vote wanted to vote for him. Trump himself said that he again, what is it true social said the reasons this happened or the government shut down and he wasn't on the ballot. And I think that's probably true. But yes, the margin sent a message. This was some angry voters who, who had something to say. A second thing we learned from this is that Trump has way outrun his mandate. He's just gone off in directions that the voters don't support and that's why they sent that message. You know, they, they didn't vote for all the crazy stuff he's doing. They voted for lower prices and a more effective leader than they thought they were getting from Joe Biden. And by the way, we're going to have peace in Ukraine and in the Middle east overnight. Well, he did do the border, so that's under control. But he's running way out in front of or to the side of or, you know, out in some galactic space compared to what the voters wanted. And that's what they're telling him. So the question now is, does he pull back a bit? Does he rethink stuff like the government shutdown? You know, maybe the smart thing to do now is maybe make a little bit of a deal with the Dems on the subsidies under Obamacare and get this, get the shutdown done maybe.
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Charlie Sykes
Yeah, that is a smart play. And I'm guessing that there's a real good chance that he's going to do that because of course the government has to reopen at some point. But I think the problems, as you point out, they run much, much, much deeper. And I think he's got fewer exit ramps. So, for example, I want to get to some of the results in a moment, but one of the things that really struck me was looking at the numbers of how he has absolutely cratered among younger voters. And it's very obvious that one of the major factors, I mean, the economy is a factor, one of the major factor are the, as I think one pundit described it as, the ICE videos, these viral videos of the masked ICE agents, you know, ramming into people's cars, you know, throwing moms to the ground, smashing windows, using Tear gas, shooting pepper balls at priests. And so you're seeing just this massive repulsion. And this is one of those moments you realize. So people actually are watching what we're watching. I mean, I remember saying early on, you know, let's just see what these videos, what the videos accomplish. When people begin to see. It's one thing to say we ought to enforce the immigration laws, we ought to secure the border. Fine. But then you get into the. What does that involve? And these brute squads and the behavior of the ICE squads is out there, and it's on everybody's social media. And, you know, younger voters are seeing this and they're going, wow, this is not what we signed up for at all. And that, to me, seems to have been a theme across the country. So he, he has lost, lost dramatically among younger voters. He's losing among Hispanic voters, which I think is going to have significant impact. But the margins were rather extraordinary. And the more you learn about them, the more extraordinary they are. I mean, in Virginia, the democrats picked up 13 seats in the House of Delegates. 13 seats. So, I mean, it was up ballot and down ballot.
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Jonathan Rauch
Well, as my colleague here at Brookings, I wish I'd thought of this line, but I didn't. Said, one of the things we learned last night is that the Republicans did not buy minority voters. They just rented them.
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Charlie Sykes
Yeah.
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Jonathan Rauch
And those, those voters, those were conditional votes. They wanted to see something done about the cost of living. Trump, of course, is going in the other direction. That's if the laws of political gravity still apply, then. Then the administration has to care about that. But here's a question for you, Charlie. You're.
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You're.
- [20:54]
Jonathan Rauch
That you're the person for this question. You have witnessed how far this administration will go to violate the rule of law and norms of all kinds. They, I think, are paving the way to deploy ICE and National Guard and possibly active duty military around polling places to, quote, unquote, protect them in 2026, an election they care considerably more about. One way that Trump and his MAGA base and followers in Congress could react to these results is a course correction. Let's get closer to where the public wants us to be.
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Charlie Sykes
Right.
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Jonathan Rauch
The other way they could react is to say, let's figure out how to outrun accountability for this. We're going to do it through gerrymandering. We're going to not acknowledge if Democrats win the House or the Senate in the next election. We are doing a dry run rehearsal now for not seating Democrats who win the next election in Congress. We're going to use voter intimidation, we're going to threaten criminal penalties against elected officials. So we're going to try to rig this thing enough so that we skate through the next election, then we have two more years to further consolidate this kind of authoritarian rule so that 2028 isn't free and isn't fair. So that's the other way they can play it, right? Which do you expect?
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Charlie Sykes
Well, I have to say that a few months ago, I would have thought that, okay, everybody needs to calm down about what they're going to do with the election. There's going to be an election. Trump's not going to run for a third term. They're not going to deploy the brute squad at the polling booth. But I'm not gonna use the word that I've been radicalized. I think I've been become more realistic about this, because you can tell this is deep within their id that that is, that it is the latter option that they're more likely to do. And they're already beginning to take steps with these various executive orders. Look, we know who Donald Trump is. We know what he's prepared to do. This is a man we have to constantly remind ourselves, this was the guy that actually fomented an attack on the Capitol presidential election. I mean, he's already done this, and then he pardoned the people who attacked the Capitol and beat the cops. So when we asked, is he capable of doing X, Y or Z, go, wait, who are we talking about here? Because we know what he is capable of doing. How many times has he talked about, you know, how corrupt the elections are, you know, how other elections are rigged, and what is his response going to be? I think that it is overwhelmingly possible, if not probable, that he's gonna do exactly what you just described. Now, the question is, what is the pushback? Does that motivate more resistance? Is there going to be a backlash? You know, one of the big questions I think of Trump 2.0 is, does the bullying work? You know, are. Does the intimidation cause people to capitulate, to surrender in advance? And for the first few months, it felt like they did. Now, I wonder whether or not that's going to be as effective. But, yeah, at this point, I think it would be nai, and it would be a failure of imagination not to consider every single one of those points. Governor Newsom is talking about that, Governor Pritzker is talking about that, and I think that's legitimate, that they're talking about it.
- [24:23]
Jonathan Rauch
Well, I think that's right. If something is reassuring on that front. It's that last night's results may have sent a message to some people in Trumpistan that the public is swinging against them to such a large degree that they probably would not succeed at rigging the 2026 race, putting a thumb on the scales. So maybe better not to try it if it's not going to work. My guess is that the stuff they can do between now and 2026, you know, the gerrymandering and the voter intimidation and whatnot, that might be good for five or 10 House seats. You know, I kind of a random number, but it's starting to look like 2026 might, might be more than enough so the Democrats can outride, outride that. And that might, that might give them second thoughts about even trying. But I don't know, as you say with these people, you've got a guy in the White House who overturned every law, every norm, lied about the election. I don't think there's any real chance that he would say in 2026, we lost, Democrats won.
- [25:37]
Charlie Sykes
Well, I mean, and look, he's sitting in the room with people like, you know, Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon who are telling him to go full Leninist on all of this stuff and, you know, to use all of his power to declare martial law. I mean, these are guys. And so then the question is in that room, who's the grown up saying, Mr. President, we can't do that because the Constitution doesn't allow it. You know, Mike Pence is not in the House anymore. You know, there are no Dick Cheneys and Liz Cheney's around who are going to be giving any advice whatsoever. But to your point, and this is actually, I've started thinking about this, you know, when you start to see this kind of wave coming, it's not going to affect necessarily the Trumpistan people because they are, they're too deeply invested. Right? I mean, there's too many much sunken cause. But I wonder about all of the other institutions of civic life and civil culture out there that have figured out we just need to, you know, bend our knee as deeply as possible to this regime because, you know, it rules by fear and favor. And we have to stand our right side at some point as it begin to dawn on them, you know, they might not be in power forever. And so maybe you ought to rethink what you are willing to surrender, what you're willing to give up, what kind of graft you're willing to engage in, because there will come a time when they will be gone and somebody else will be in power. And you're going to look back on this in a different way. I mean, like think about all of the, all of the corporations and the billionaires and the millionaires who are funding that stupid ballroom. You know, there's just the, you know, in public graft of all of that, or the people who have decided to pay off, you know, Trump and his family members with crypto at some point in the back of their mind going, geez, this works as long as we have the thousand year Reich. But what happens if there's a new sheriff in town? What happens if this is not forever? And so I would hope that some of them would at least start hedging their bets. I might not hope, think that they might, in their own cynical way, begin hedging their bets.
- [27:46]
Jonathan Rauch
Well, there's a lot to say about that. I think the civil society institutions, the law firms, some of the universities, many of the universities and so forth have already figured out that I think so that, that caving does them no good and that standing up is strategically as well as morally a better thing to do. You know, the law firms that caved in have taken a real hit in terms of their own client base and their reputations. Justifiable, justifiably so. Harvard won, you know, a landmark victory in court and so forth. I think our allies overseas have started to figure out, don't kowtow, you know, you do some stuff, you do some negotiations, but the administration's gonna settle for an apparent victory. So they've started to figure out how to game it. So I think society is beginning to adjust in positive ways. The question, again, I think you're the only Republican or former Republican in this program right now is does the Republican Party begin to adjust? Because again, there are two ways they can go. One way is, geez, this guy's unpopular, he's dragging us down, let's move on. Because we know there's a lot of people, I think they include John Thune, for example, who really are not enthusiasts. They're just, they're scared and they're timid. So that's one way they could go. But the other way they could go is the way I think MAGA wants to go, which is they want to have a one party country and they're willing to do what, whatever they can do to get that result. I firmly predict, based on his past behavior on the Republicans, past behavior, that they would not acknowledge a Democratic victory in the 2028 elections. I'm not saying they get away with not acknowledging it, but they will not voluntarily accept defeat and turn over power. So that's the other way they can go double down on the strategy of, of one party rule.
- [29:44]
Charlie Sykes
So I thought I was going to answer this one way, which is that of course they're going to stick with him because I mean, part of the dynamic that people need to understand is I get asked when Republicans realize they might lose the election, will they break with Trump? The answer is no. Because there's a big difference between losing a general election and losing a primary. If you lose a general election, you're still part of the tribe. You lose the primary, you're cast into outer darkness. And, you know, with this, you know, six to seven of us out here. So I, and I'm also not sure that he has the majority in the Senate right now to do some of the things that I think that he would like to do. So, for example, what do you make of the fact that he's demanding that they eliminate the filibuster and the senators, including John Thune, are basically saying, no, we're just not doing it. And this is one of the very, very few times when they ever resisted him. And I don't know whether you watch any of the video of his post election rant to the senators. It sort of looked to me, I mean, he's rambling and he's going on and on about blue slips and you know, maybe I'm just projecting, maybe it's just wishcasting. But some of those senators just like, we're just sick to death of this shit. I mean, they're just sitting there going, what is this? He still needs 51 votes in the Senate to do a lot of the things he's going to do. But I think that there's almost no chance that the Republicans are going to break with him. Is there a point at which they will go, I'm sorry, we're not going to, you know, allow you to steal another election? I don't, I don't, I don't know. You know, part of what's happening now is you are starting to see a little bit, I don't want to say civil war, but you're starting to see some of the cracks in the coalition of, you know, what post Trump MAGA is going to look like, how extreme it's going to be. You know, you see this with what's going on with the Heritage Foundation. I mean, we're in a moment where conservatives are having a serious debate. I can't even believe I'M about to say this like, okay, is being a Holocaust denier and a fan of Adolf Hitler, is that perhaps a bridge too far for us now? I mean, we have moved the overtone window and apparently.
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Jonathan Rauch
How do we feel about that?
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Charlie Sykes
How? Yes. I mean, should we cancel someone for saying that we want to, you know, kill Jews? You know, it's. And the fact that, that the Heritage foundation, which for the Youngs who are listening to us at one time was the intellectual beating heart of the conservative movement, that they can't seem to make up their mind about this, tells me that there are many paths out there. They're all kind of ugly, but we don't know where they're going. But there's clearly a push pull for power and influence. My concern is that you're right about the extremism because you have guys like J.D. vance who have decided that they are not going to be outflanked on the right. So if there's a big debate between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks, and the Bolsheviks say we will never give up power, we will never have elections again, where does J.D. vance come down? You know, there's going to be the hardcore people who will go and bend the knee to the Steve Bannon and say we will take the most extreme possible position, but we don't know at this point how far they're willing to go. But I think the darkest suspicions are all valid.
- [33:04]
Jonathan Rauch
So I liken this to maybe you remember high school physics and those diagrams that illustrate potential energy as a ball bearing at the top of a hill, a sombrero shaped curve, and, and it has high potential energy, but it could go down either side and wind up with radically different outcomes. And that's what we're circling with in this whole conversation. We have these two extremely different paths that the party and thus the country could follow. And right now I think it could go either way. This is a little bit painful to say, but in some ways Trump is a restraining influence on the MAGA movement. He meets with Nick Fuentes, but he's not a real anti Semite. He's not really, doesn't care about post liberalism and you know, he's not really on board with the, the new Apostolic Reformation movement and his, his views on, on, on technology and, and other things. You know, he's not where Peter Thiel and J.D. vance are and all these factions, you know, they think they're using him, these really dark ideologies that have assembled under him. But he's really just about himself right yes. And about having that beautiful ballroom and lots of gold leaf everywhere. So in some ways, these other forces in the party who've assembled there and some really, really noxious, terrible people are included in that have big designs for when he's gone. Does that mean they fight each other and it turns into a bag of, of rats? Or does it mean that they bust apart and something like normalcy emerges from the Republican Party? And again, it's. I, I don't know if it's. Well, yeah, if it's the bad guys win, though, we could see a significant ideological shift to a darker place than they are right now.
- [35:03]
Charlie Sykes
No, you're right. This is an important distinction. And you know, look, Donald Trump is a man without any ideology, without any principles whatsoever. I don't know whether he's personally anti Semitic, but he did open the door to them. I mean, what happened is he blew down all the guardrails, dismissed all the gatekeepers and opened the sluices of pure bigotry. And they're there. Doesn't mean that he necessarily shares those views, but he enabled them. I do think it's ironic that they're having this big debate about should we platform and treat Nick Fuentes, who is a neo Nazi. I'm not even sure about the neo part, that we should, you know, the Nick Fuentes, you know, had a friendly conversation with Tucker Carlson. If Tucker Carlson is going to be canceled for that. What about Donald J. Trump, who actually had him for dinner and said, I really like this guy, he really gets me. But to your point. So he's opened the door to all of these noxious forces who are much more ideological, much more committed to a specific agenda. They are all using him. But what happens when he is removed? You know, do they move in? Does, does JD Vance then, you know, bring this, you know, post liberal ideology into the White House? I don't know that they have the ability to do that, but that's the fight that's forming.
- [36:22]
Jonathan Rauch
And they say they're telling anyone who will listen, you know, the techno monarchists and aristo populists and post liberals and New Apostolic Reformation and Seven Hills Mandate People and all these other things that are circling out there, what they're saying is that they have built a well funded, durable infrastructure and that they fully intend to outlast Trump.
- [36:47]
Charlie Sykes
I think, and they have, and they probably will. On the other hand, I think the vast majority of Americans, when they finally pay attention to these guys, are gonna think, what the hell, what a bunch of freaks. Because most people have not even heard of these ideas. And I'm just not sure that that's going to have the, you know, a populist appeal. So. Okay, I was about to take a digression into, you know, we're talking about.
- [37:14]
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The.
- [37:16]
Charlie Sykes
Sort of, you know, pseudo Catholicism of J.D. vance and people, you know, some of the folks on the right. I need to write more about this new Pope. I mean, have you been following this at all? I mean, Pope Leo has become more and more outspoken about this. And I have to say that maybe this is, again, just wishful thinking. But you think back on the role that Pope John Paul II played in the fall of communism, and this American Pope is becoming more and more forceful. And I think it's going to be a real challenge for the JD Vance's of the world to sort of wrap themselves in the cloak of Catholic tradition when the Pope is basically saying, you're full of shit. And he says it in English, too. Which makes a difference. No.
- [38:02]
Jonathan Rauch
Yeah, I asked. So everything I know about the Catholic Church, or almost everything, is from a wonderful columnist called Father Tom Reese, who's been a church observer for many years. And yeah, you may know him. You should have him on the show. And when I asked, how does the Pope feel about being lectured by J.D. vance?
- [38:24]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, exactly.
- [38:25]
Jonathan Rauch
About the principle of was it subsidiarity or locality? I don't know. It was the thing about who you. Whether you have. Whether you get to love people in your country more than people in other countries. Father Tom, he just started laughing out loud and he just said, I'm sorry, that is, that is so not on with the Pope being told by some politician what Catholic doctrine is. So there's some real game. Yeah, there's some real institutional resistance there at the Vatican. And there's. And there's going to be. But Tom also says, again, this is all borrowed authority. He says there's a real split among the bishops and the cardinals because the younger guys are largely are pretty conservative and veer in that direction. And so there's a generational split between those who want to propagate Pope Francis's legacy and those who actually kind of want to roll it back.
- [39:25]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah. So let's go back to the election just for a moment in the few minutes that we have left. And I almost want to defer this conversation because I think that one of the things that I work on in life, I don't know about you, is I want to celebrate the good things. I don't want to just let them go. I think that we are programmed as human beings to focus on the threats and everything. And then something good happens and we don't actually celebr the wins enough. So I think, you know, take a deep breath. What happened was very, very positive. But now Democrats have to decide what is the lesson they take from this election. What is the model for the future? Who is the future face of the Democratic Party? I have been arguing that. Look, it's right in front of you. It is these two women, these two congresswomen who won these landslide victories in really kind of swingy states. Mikey Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger. There are people like Alyssa Slotkin who win in Michigan. They're people who win in swing district. And yet there's a huge branch of the Pontadocracy and the Democratic Party that really thinks that the future of the party is coming out of New York City is or in Mandami. What do you think?
- [40:44]
Jonathan Rauch
I think you're all wrong. As John McLaughlin used to say, you're all wrong.
- [40:48]
Charlie Sykes
I love that show. I grew up with that show.
- [40:54]
Jonathan Rauch
So I'm a centrist. I'm the sort of person who's been saying for years the Democrats should move to the center not just for political reasons, but because, you know, the, the crazy gender queer stuff and identity politics stuff is crazy. But I'm not afraid of Zora Mandam me. I want to give the guy a shot. And the reason for that is that I think we're facing a different kind of swing electorate than we faced back in the day when swing voters, the ones who are going to decide the presidential race, not the 40 to 45% of both parties who would just vote on party lines. We used to think they were reached by policy. Yeah, you know, taxes up or down, Medicare, Medicaid. And that's still true to some extent. But what a lot of them want to see is three things. Energy, authenticity harnessed in the direction of change. And they're not that ideological. And a big problem the Democrats have had is showing any of those three things. They look like an old tired party of the status quo. So I look at Zoram Andami and think, okay, I don't like the socialist policies. I don't want government run grocery stores. But maybe that's beside the point. Maybe what voters are telling us here is Democrats find more people who can show authenticity, energy and change. This guy's got that. So I think that that Mondami's victory has something potentially very positive to teach Democrats. Not necessarily about their policies, but about the kinds of candidates that they run in terms of specific races below the presidential level. As you know, that's all about matching the candidate to the state or the district, finding the right mix. So it's hard to make a national conclusion about that. But in terms of the presidential election, Democrats can't set a direction until the race begins in 2027. They just can't. Chuck Schumer is not in a position to exert that kind of leadership. So what we're seeing over the next, over the next year or so is digesting yesterday's results, looking at Spamberger, looking at Mamdani and thinking, okay, how do we generate a consensus out of that?
- [43:20]
Charlie Sykes
You know, if they can pull that off, it would be something. But I think that one of the things that is emerging is that the Democrats now have a stronger base than I think perhaps they thought. You know, you start thinking about what the field might look like, the kinds of influencers out there, and it is more impressive than it was perhaps a couple of years ago. I mean, I think there needs to be that turning of the page from the geriatric leadership. The same old, same old. They cannot be the party of the status quo. You're absolutely right. They cannot be the slick same old. And you think about how long the Democrats have been doing, been recycling that they actually thought. I mean, of course, we, you know, this, you know, hindsight is so perfect, but the notion that you could, you know, run with Hillary Clinton back in 2016 and then Joe Biden twice when the country definitely wants something new, my guess is they're going to be sick to death of Trumpism. But they, they don't want some recycled candidate. Right in. In 2028.
- [44:29]
Jonathan Rauch
Well, that's right. And, and I was never in the camp after what was assuredly a route of the Democrats in 2024. Despite that, I was never in a camp that said the Democrats are losing any shot at power, that they're in terrible, terrible shape. That election was mostly a negative verdict on the incumbent presidency. The voters thought that Joe Biden was a failed president, and they correctly perceive that Kamala Harris was his vice president and had been in office for four years. That was a race primarily about incumbency. But the fundamentals of this country are still that it's basically a 5050 country with two very closely matched parties in terms of the size of their coalition. So it was way too early to write the Democrats off at the beginning after the 2024 election, and it is way too early to write them on. So to speak right now.
- [45:35]
Charlie Sykes
Right. Well, and you know, to your quote from your colleague about the, you know, one of the big shocks of 2024 was the erosion of minority voter support. If it does turn out that Republicans were renting them rather than buying them, then there's an indication that things can, you know, that there is a course correction that you can get that back. And by the way, the, you know, it will be interesting to see how this plays out in places like Texas where they're gerrymandering the state in order, you know, to get more, more Republican seats. But I think they've been counting on the fact that, you know, in southern Texas that there are, that the Hispanics are voting more Republican. What if they don't? What if in fact it reverts to a form? Then we could see a massive, we could see a massive miscalculation. You know, it does occur to me, John, there, there are a lot of smart people who don't know as much about politics as they claim to. We are excluded from that. But watch all these, these great minds out there with all of their elaborate plans and maybe they're just getting it wrong.
- [46:38]
Jonathan Rauch
Yeah, they bite themselves in the ass. Yeah, People, people sometimes forget gerrymandering is a two edged sword. And what it's designed to do is win you marginal seats in a close election, but it dilutes your electorate in districts where you think you have enough Republicans or Democrats to carry the day. But in a wave election, a gerrymander can turn a small wave into a big wave because suddenly those seats are all less safe and they can blow over and we don't know what we're looking at next year. But that's something I'd be a bit nervous about if I were to Republic.
- [47:17]
Charlie Sykes
We can get very, very wonky about all this. But actually there was a time when I spent time studying this and one of the weird things that I hear almost no one talk about is the fact that Republicans have liked the idea that the maps create minority districts. They actually have always liked that because what it means is that you concentrate Democrats into one like super district, which means they are not diffused into other districts. You break apart some of those hardcore districts and suddenly districts that are 55, 56% Republican become 51% Republican. So a lot of these people are being way too clever in what they're doing. Okay, so let's not end on a wonky note here. Jonathan Rauch, it is always a pleasure to talk with you, particularly on a day when so much interesting stuff is going on and hopefully we could be surprised by the Supreme Court. Although, you know, I just, I feel like, you know, it is the hope that kills you, right? I mean, it is the.
- [48:17]
Jonathan Rauch
As John McCain used to say, it's always darkest just before it turns totally black.
- [48:23]
Charlie Sykes
And on that note, thank you for joining me. I appreciate it very much.
- [48:27]
Jonathan Rauch
Thank you.
- [48:28]
Charlie Sykes
And thank you all for listening to this episode of to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlay Sykes. We continue to do this and this week was a great reminder. We are not, not the crazy ones. Thanks.
- [48:52]
Jonathan Rauch
Did I talk too much? Can I just let it go?
- [48:58]
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