The Realignment: Supercast Teaser | Realignment Discussion & Ask Me Anything: Saagar and Marshall on Wisconsin & Chicago's Elections, Trump's Court Hearing, Demographic and Geographic Change, and More...
The Realignment 4/7/23 - Episode Page - 14m - PDF Transcript
Marshall and Sagar here.
Welcome to the exclusive realignment supercast feed
where we do a bit of discussion, answer Q&A
from folks who subscribe to the supercast
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So a couple of things I just wanna start off with
to open into for everyone.
So number one, we're probably gonna keep doing this
more and more, a soccer temperature check
on the 2024 Republican primary
after yesterday's Trump indictment hearing.
Yeah, primary, I'm choosing my words carefully.
Trump is stronger than ever.
I have never, I just think,
I said this on the show yesterday,
I tweeted something about this,
but I was watching the news
and participating in the news during the Trump arrest.
And I was like, this man is the only man
that matters in America.
Like it's the Trump era.
It started the day, came down the escalator,
it'll end the day that he dies.
How are you supposed to run against that?
He's not even political, he's like,
medical cultural at this point.
Biden is the president
and he's the most irrelevant man in America
on the day that Trump gets arrested.
He literally was an afterthought
during his own tenure in office.
By the way, that's not even necessarily a dig.
That's like, you're probably good for him
because the more that he's a contrast with Trump,
the better off he is.
But again,
there's actually an article about this,
how someone was basically saying
the Biden team probably wants that to be the reality.
They're clear of the cases,
the more he's the story, the better for us.
They're right, I think they're right.
So I'm not saying,
it's one of those everybody wins things.
So I don't know how he could possibly-
Everyone wins except for Ron DeSantis.
That's what you're really saying.
So I mean, look, I've been skeptical of the meatball case
from the very beginning.
I've said that very publicly.
A lot of the DeSantis stands have gotten very mad
over the last several months,
but I feel very vindicated in a lot of my political analysis
around why I didn't think he ever had a shot
in the first place.
Yeah, I said this to a group chat we're in,
but because you and I on 15 different levels
aren't looking to get political jobs in DC in 2025,
we were in a DeSantis administration obviously,
we were just able to look at the DeSantis situation
with clear eyes.
The trend that I've just noticed
is that a lot of the folks who are most invested
in the idea of Ron DeSantis as someone who won this primary
are really people who I think want jobs.
I think they're people who see themselves
as very explicitly tied to the fate of the Republican party.
Because once again, if I were a Republican party operative,
I would look at 2024 and see Trump on the horizon
and just be utterly terrified.
I would say to myself like, man,
look at these midterm results,
we'll talk about the Wisconsin Supreme Court race
a little later.
I would look at all those factors and just say like,
man, like Ron DeSantis and everything that's happening
in Florida, if there's a future for the Republican party,
it's gonna come via DeSantis and not Trump.
But you and I are not Republican party professionals
or do we want jobs in 2025?
So if you're just able to look at it
separate from wanting anything,
you're just like, oh yeah, like this guy can't beat Trump
in a presidential contest.
This is a guy, and we'll also talk about Florida
in terms of migration.
This is a guy who is governor of a successful state
who has faced a incredibly,
actually mediocre would be generous,
has faced a bottom tier Democratic party
for the past several years.
When you remove him from that highly favorable environment
and place him against Trump,
there should be no expectation that those skill sets
should translate to a dominance in the primary.
And that's why his poll numbers are going down.
Yeah, absolutely right.
And I mean, look, I'm not denigrating the man.
I think he's pro, I think by and large,
like he seems to be pretty successful in Florida,
but the age of that type of person
being able to explode on the national scene,
it just doesn't exist right now
for the Republican primary base.
They don't care about electability.
They don't care about dynamism.
They just care about Trump.
And as long as they just care about Trump,
then Trump is the only guy that matters.
And the only reason, the only way that he could possibly win
is if he was anointed by Trump, but he's not.
So I just don't see it.
I've never seen it from day one.
I've always said, if Trump is not,
if Trump is running, then he will be the nominee.
And this is the key thing I really wanna emphasize
for people to your point about Republican voters
not caring about electability.
If the Republican party were the Democratic party,
in terms of the assumptions and driving forces,
Ron DeSantis would be the nominee.
Let's say if, but the better example
of like the domineering personality.
So Barack Obama is just like the Uber talented politician
of his political generation.
But imagine a world where Barack Obama in 2016
was in the Trump role.
So he wins the presidency,
but he doesn't actually win the popular vote.
He has a bad midterms of 2018.
He loses in 2020.
And then he also has a bad 2022 midterms
which are tied to him very directly.
He would just not be the nominee.
It would be very straightforward
for basically every other Democrat to come out and say,
like, what guys, the only reason
why we are a coherent political party
is because we are a coalition of various groups
who want political power.
We are less invested in the individual personality
if that personality cannot translate the win.
At a deeper level, the Republican party is just different.
The Republican party is the embodiment
of the conservative movement,
which in many ways isn't just a political movement,
but it's a sociocultural movement.
Trump is the leader of that movement, win or lose.
And in fact, there are quite a few number of people
who would even say to me, like Marshall,
he didn't actually even lose in the first place.
So that's just a key difference here.
And there just has to be a level of talent
that would be able to subsume above that
and dissent as to this boy doesn't have that.
Here's the other interesting thing.
Obama, if he was running today,
he would not be the Democratic nominee
after the way that they've changed the primary schedule.
So the fact that South Carolina is likely to be
the first in the nation at a primary level
and that Super Tuesday was elevated over New Hampshire
and Iowa, I don't think people remember.
Obama was not leading in the state of South Carolina
until he won Iowa.
Obama was only able to win Iowa
because he spent two years and tens of millions of dollars
along with a lot of white progressive volunteers
canvassing the entire state.
It was only after Obama won Iowa
that he surged over Hillary and was able to surpass
the Clinton love of the South Carolina primary base,
even though Hillary did win in New Hampshire.
So the fact that we've put South Carolina
as first in the nation now,
or very likely to be first in the nation now
and have removed the primacy of New Hampshire and of Iowa,
I just think that it changes the entire game.
The way in which smaller candidates were able to,
I mean, even Bill Clinton, for example,
Bill Clinton would not be president
under the current schedule.
I don't know if a lot of people know this,
but Clinton got beaten in Iowa dramatically.
He went all in in New Hampshire and he got third,
which is funny because we don't even really think
of third as good.
But he gave a famous speech.
Comeback kid.
Yeah, he was a comeback kid.
Paul, what was that guys?
It's Songus.
Paul Sarkis.
These people are irrelevant today, but anyway.
So it was like Paul Songus,
I think is the one who beat him,
but he gave this famous speech where not only was he
the comeback kid by the media,
but he said, I'll be with you till the last dog dies.
And everyone was like, oh, that's an interesting guy.
And it was a different media environment, of course.
And he ends up getting the nomination
in the New York primary months later.
It was actually still a pretty long battle.
The point that I'm making is that the calendar
does matter here as well.
So anyway, everything is just different today.
And with the Republicans, you know, Iowa,
I've seen some head-to-head polls where
DeSantis is having a showing, but those are fake.
There's no head-to-head with Nikki Haley in the race with,
I mean, for example, okay,
Ted Cruz would have beat Trump head-to-head in Iowa in 2016,
but he wasn't head-to-head with Trump.
So like, why are we even talking about that?
It actually doesn't matter.
What matters is the primary system that we have
and it's not going to change.
And in that system, I think Trump is invincible.
Yeah, that's just the key thing.
I'm gonna do a post about this later,
but I just think the way we're gonna take a step back
and write this political era is we're just gonna say,
hey, EOD, we had a lost generation
where there were just these three big people,
Obama, Biden, Trump,
who just brought it out of the competition.
So during the Obama presidency,
you had a just generation of democratic politicians,
either like not rise or get knocked out
in those bad midterms of 2010 and 2014.
Under Trump, obviously you saw two,
and I think we're just gonna save it.
We're gonna see this.
We're gonna see two primaries in a row
where the new generation, quote unquote,
just isn't up to the task of beating him.
And then if Joe Biden, you had him obviously beat
a very, very deep democratic field in 2020.
It's just about these three individuals.
And at the end of the day,
we're not gonna move on past this moment
until to your point, people start dying
or just leave the political system.
One quick question I'll ask for you real quick.
I did an episode with Henry Olson
that should be coming out either.
I'm sort of deciding which episode I'm gonna post first,
but it may have come out this week
or it's coming out next week.
Henry said that if Trump loses in the 2020,
in 2024, he will be done.
Obviously, he won't be able to run for president again,
which is true, which he won't run for president again,
but-
Well, to find done.
And that's, I'd love for you to define done
because that's actually helpful
because the actual take is even if he loses,
I still think in low turnout primaries,
he's gonna be angry, he's gonna drop endorsements.
So define done from a Trump perspective.
Yeah, I don't think you can define done.
You know, I was thinking about this.
You know, Trump is the most popular figure
amongst Republicans since Reagan.
And I don't, I think we were actually robbed
of an alternate history because Reagan, frankly,
got Alzheimer's and got too old to insert himself
in the political process.
We literally retired from politics.
I was gonna say.
And actually he was more of a dignified individual.
So he was one of those people who was like,
look, George H.J.
He never particularly liked George H.W. Bush,
but he was like, whatever, I'll let the guy be president.
I'll keep a mouth shut.
I'm gonna go hang out in California.
Basically he lost his mind and, you know, retired,
sailed off into the sunset.
But what if he hadn't?
You know, that's one of those where
we have no idea what that would look like.
Here's the truth.
If Reagan had come out and be like,
I don't like George H.W. Bush,
George H.W. Bush would have lost the
to 1988 presidential primary, hands down, no questions asked.
And if he had inserted himself in,
he never liked Dan Quayle either.
If he'd inserted himself in 92 and he said, look,
he's like, we're done with George.
We're going with another, everything would have changed.
And so it's basically like if Reagan was, you know,
if you take Reagan's popularity
and take away the actions that he ultimately,
now look, I actually think Reagan did the right thing
from a politician's perspective,
but Trump doesn't care about the right thing.
He's just gonna do whatever he does.
There is no done.
I mean, look, I guess really what you should pray for
is that Trump goes the Reagan way and like gets dementia.
Like that's all you really would want.
Or, I mean, honestly, or he just dies.
Like that's the only time that it ends.
I think as long as he's mentally with it, quote unquote,
then you're stuck with him no matter what.
And there's a world where we're pushing this into the 2030s.
So good luck if you are a Republican politician
trying to navigate this,
because it just seems like this is actually the,
and in Star Trek, they have this thing called
the Kobamashi Maru, which is this like no-win scenario,
where it's basically just,
it's in Starfleet Academy and the idea is you just can't win
and how do you basically navigate a situation
where you can't win?
James T. Kirk beats it through cheating.
In this case, there is no cheating.
Like this just seems to actually be a no-win scenario,
no matter how talented you are,
no matter how many levels of 5D, 10G chess you play,
Trump is just so much above you
on 15 different levels that you kind of have
to move on from that.
So, okay, so now we are going to get into
the subscriber only section.
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Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.
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In today's bonus episode for Supercast subscribers, Saagar and Marshall discuss the election results from Wisconsin and Chicago, Trump's court appearance, their guest spots on Flagrant & Krystal Kyle and Friends, their upcoming summer plans, and America's shifting demographics and geography.