Politix

This week, Matt and Brian take stock of Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Tulsi Gabbard—Trump’s Fanatic Four nominees to head the Departments of Justice, Defense, Health and Human Services, and the national intelligence directorate. They discuss:

* Why Hegseth’s personal mediocrity (C-list Fox News host) and depraved sexual conduct (pretty awful), combined with the complexity of running an organization as vast as DOD, might make him the worst of the four picks.

* But also why they’re all really bad and it’s hard to say who’s the worst!

* How career civil servants should respond (or not) when confronted with corrupt or abusive orders.

Then, behind the paywall, a longer discussion of why Trump has picked scandal-plagued individuals for these roles, and how Democrats in Congress can and should exploit their liabilities. Why are prominent Democrats like Cory Booker, Chris Coons, and Jared Polis setting the tone by kissing up to RFK Jr? Does Hakeem Jeffries really believe that Trump’s potential cabinet officials are distractions, not worth commenting on? Is the best we can “hope” for that these people shamble their way into crises that leave the administration discredited?

All that, plus the full Politix archive are available to paid subscribers—just upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

Further reading:

* Brian responds to Jeffries: Cabinet secretaries are #actually kind of a big deal?

* Matt thinks Trump’s best bet for success is to not elevate fanatics and crooks, and just chill.

* So does Brian, FWIW.

This week, Matt and Brian review the incoming Trump administration as it takes shape, and what if anything Democrats can do, without official power or a real media arm, to limit the damage.

* Who has Trump nominated already, and who is he being gun-shy about, given that some of his loyalists would have a hard time getting confirmed by the incoming Senate?

* Can Democrats quickly shift gears into productive opposition, when so much of their infrastructure is built around intra-left discourse.

* How could Democrats (or how would Brian) go about building and reforming media to reach marginal voters who don’t tune in to mainstream organs or sophisticated political media?

Then, behind the paywall, Matt and Brian discuss the challenges progressive culture might pose to the establishment of a bigger tent, and more robust messaging. Would a new liberal media project tolerate elevating people who aren’t committed movement progressives? How can pro-liberal, pro-Democratic Party ideas better infiltrate non-political spheres of media, from pop culture to fitness to cooking? Given how much liberal funders already spend on “unhelpful” projects, is there any reason not to try?

All that, plus the full Politix archive are available to paid subscribers—just upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

Further reading:

* Brian’s article pleading with Democrats to take their media deficit seriously, and do something about it.

* Matt on how Democrats can broaden their own tent (ideally while their new media works at shrinking the GOP tent).

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This week, Matt and Brian discuss the unexpected final (?) twist of the 2024 campaign: The immense backlash to Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden.

* Why did a bad comedian’s offensive comments about Puerto Rico break through, when he and other speakers made equally racist comments about black people, Jews, Palestinians, and others?

* After a campaign in which Democrats largely downplayed race politics in favor of cross-cutting democracy, abortion, and health care appeals, how did racism become the disqualifying thing that broke through the MAGA din?

* Are Democrats like Pete Buttigieg right that the Madison Square Garden controversy is “bait,” and a distraction from those other issues, when it’s visibly tearing Republicans apart, and they’re desperate to change the subject?

Then, behind the paywall, Matt and Brian take a comprehensive look at the immense, organic backlash to Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post after Bezos scuttled the paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris to preemptively appease Donald Trump. To what extent was this a canary in the coal mine of for the country’s drift into authoritarianism? Is the boycott itself a leading indicator that the anti-Trump resistance is a sleeping giant awakened? Will campaign reporters push back against Bezos-style thinking by closing out the election with the kind of adversarial coverage that Trump deserved all along.

All that, plus the full Politix archive are available to paid subscribers—just upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

Further reading:

* Matt’s 27 takes on the election, one week out.

* Brian on the awakening of America’s pro-democracy majority.

* Kamala Harris, For Men! by Sarah Lazarus.

* Jeff Bezos “explains” himself.

* Michelle Obama’s plea to male voters.

This week, Matt and Brian discuss the merits and drawbacks of field organizing, and why it’s worth knocking on doors or making calls if you care about the outcome of the election. They tackle questions including:

* Can feel your own contribution to turnout, even if canvassing operations are expensive for the campaign? (Spoiler: Yes.)

* Where to volunteer depending on your demographic traits.

* How talking to real, marginal voters who don’t live and breathe politics will humble even the most self-assured ideologue.

Then, behind the paywall, Matt and Brian muse about what they hope and expect to see from the campaigns in the closing days of election. Will Donald Trump fill more news holes with Arnold Palmer’s fleshy hog (to avoid more discourse about January 6 and his dictatorial ambitions)? What can Kamala Harris do to keep national attention where it belongs? How can everyone from lowly issue advocates to retired four-star generals do to make sure the campaign ends on a helpful note?

All that, plus the full Politix archive are available to paid subscribers—just upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

Further reading:

* Brian’s reflections on his first canvassing experience.

* Matt on why Democrats should talk about their good issues.

* A right-leaning think tank concludes Trump’s fiscal agenda will dramatically hasten Social Security insolvency and the severity of the automatic benefit cuts seniors will experience if we reach that point.

This week, Matt and Brian examine the quadrennial liberal October panic, and think through practical ways for Democrats to close strong:

* Is it possible to increase the salience of Democrats’ top issues (abortion, democracy, and health care) when Trump is hoovering up attention to his fascist freakshow?

* Might the fascist freakshow, for perverse reasons, be helping Trump keep the race close?

* To what extent should working the media refs to focus on Trump outrages fit into the plan?

SPOILERS:

Matt answers those questions: Yes, maybe, and very little.

Brian answers them: Maybe, no, quite a bit.

Then, behind the paywall, a granular look at why Democrats shouldn’t fear racial depolarization. Have Democrats (wrongly) convinced themselves that they can’t increase their share of the white vote? Does it matter if homing in on issues like abortion and anti-fascism makes the Democratic coalition a little less rainbow? Are these issues resonant enough to deliver Kamala Harris a victory if Trump and his corrupt allies stage a rat fuck late in October?

All that, plus the full Politix archive are available to paid subscribers—just upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

Further reading:

* The Our Brand Is Crisis documentary.

* Brian on Barack Obama doing asking the Joseph Welch question of our generation.

* Matt on how Harris can, should, and does appeal to Trump-curious male voters.

This week, Matt and Brian take a big-picture view of Republicans for Kamala, including:

* Why the Emerging Democratic Majority thesis of the aughts and early 2010s made people assume that outreach to Republicans would lead to betrayal on policy grounds.

* The academic basis for Harris to view support from influential conservatives as a critical safeguard against Democratic backsliding.

* How a more concerted Trump-accountability effort at the outset of Joe Biden’s presidency might have mooted the whole need for a unified front.

Then, behind the paywall, a more nuts-and-bolts look at how this kind of third-party validation works in practice: Are Harris’s critics really mystified by why Democrats keep citing state-level Republican praise for the Biden administration’s response to Hurricane Helene? Would we be talking about January 6 so much, all of a sudden, were it not for the fact that it drove so many influential Republicans into the anti-Trump camp? If this kind of thing is suspicious, or of dubious value, why is Trump trying so hard to pretend Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, and Elon Musk reflect significant Democratic defections?

All that, plus the full Politix archive are available to paid subscribers—just upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

Further reading:

* How Democracies Die, by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt

* Brian on creeping Democratic fatalism and the role Republicans for Kamala might—might—be playing in it.

* Matt on how Harris can, should, and does appeal to Trump-curious male voters.

JD Vance is the more polished debater. And whether it was because he was jittery or prepped not to take a wrecking ball to anyone except Donald Trump, Tim Walz wasn’t generally able to convey that Vance is much more extreme than he pretended to be on stage Tuesday night.

So how did he win?

In this free post-VP debate episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* Whether Vance’s polish is really more appealing to a general audience than Walz’s plain-spoken delivery.

* Was Vance able to simultaneously rehabilitate his tattered image, focus on attacking Harris instead of Walz, and kiss up to Donald Trump?

* Most importantly, will Walz’s best moment—cornering Vance who was unwilling to admit that Trump lost the 2020 election—be the defining moment of the debate that establishes Walz as the clear winner.

* Also, what about the moderators?

If you’re new to Politix, welcome! We hope you’ll continue to listen, and consider upgrading to a paid subscription.

This week, Matt and Brian take stock of Donald Trump’s late pitch to young male voters, who are significantly more Republican curious than young men were in the Bush and Obama years:

* Are young men really drifting in a more conservative direction? Or are they mostly attracted to Trump’s teflon libertinism?

* Is America swinging back to a pre-Bush norm when partisanship wasn’t so stratified by age?

* Will these voters turn out? Are they even registered?

Then, behind the paywall, Matt and Brian debate the theoretical merits of pandering to young voters with policy appeals. Are Trump’s weird promises around vaping and cryptocurrency really the kind of thing that can mobilize voters without partisan commitments or apolitical young people? Does the fact that he fully reversed himself, in exchange for money, to adopt these new positions undermine the appeal at all? And to what extent is the Harris campaign also microtargeting young voters?

All that, plus the full Politix archive are available to paid subscribers—just upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

Further reading:

* Brian on the deficiencies of Trump’s pandering, young-male voter Hail Mary.

* Matt on whether the influx of women into the workforce (and, in parallel, the Democratic Party) help explain new norms around sensitivity (or young men’s new openness to MAGA).

* Jessica Valenti on how Kamala Harris doesn’t just defend abortion but has started to normalize it.

* The Harvard Institute of Politics fall youth poll.

This week, Matt and Brian take stock of the many ways Republicans have flailed since Donald Trump lost last week’s debate against Kamala Harris:

* If they’re trying to change the topic, or convince people Trump won, why are so many MAGA influencers still trying to “prove” ABC rigged the debate for Harris?

* Is the discourse they’ve provoked by terrorizing Haitians in Springfield, OH, actually better for Trump than some stories about how he lost?

* Where does Trump’s, um, weird relationship with the bigoted conspiracy-theorist Laura Loomer fit into all this?

Then, behind the paywall, Matt and Brian debate the nature of racist political demagoguery when the progenitor is as erratic and undisciplined as Donald Trump. Are Democrats too traumatized by the Trumpian immigration politics to recognize when Trump veers into politically toxic territory? Is it a political emergency when Trump manages to drag discourse back to immigration? Even when he does so by saying outrageous and unpopular things? Should Democrats be more chill, pressing their advantages on whatever issue happens to be in the news—or should they always anxiously try to steer the conversation back to safer terrain?

All that, plus the full Politix archive are available to paid subscribers—just upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

Further reading:

* Matt on Karl Lueger, George Wallace, Donald Trump and the tired dance of the demagogue.

* Brian on how Democrats can compete with this Trumpian incitement machine instead of running a conventional campaign and getting drowned out.

* The James Fallows and Deborah Fallows Our Towns foundation, book, and documentary.

That was way better than the first one! In what may be their only debate Kamala Harris reduced Donald Trump to a smoldering mass of anger, deranged lies, and incoherent rambling. It’s fair to say everyone agrees she won, because pro-Trump influencers are already attacking the moderators.

In this free post-debate episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* How Harris pivoted away from Biden’s failed debate strategy toward one designed successfully to provoke Trump into making big mistakes.

* Why her polls slipped a couple points between the Democratic convention and the debate.

* What a longer run strategy to rebuild and maintain her pre-convention lead might look like.

* Will she get a measurable bump from her debate victory on Tuesday? And, if so, how long will it last?

If you’re new to Politix, welcome! We hope you’ll continue to listen, and consider upgrading to a paid subscription.