Fast Politics with Molly Jong-FastSlate’s Dahlia Lithwick examines the Supreme Court’s hearing on what care pregnant patients can be provided in emergency rooms in states with draconian anti-abortion laws. Think Like an Economist’s Justin Wolfers explains how inflation in insurance markets is affecting the economy. Semafor’s Dave Weigel details the weird Electoral College move Republicans are trying in Nebraska.
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds, and Justice Clarence Thomas has chosen not to recuse himself from another January sixth case. We have the experts here, We have like people who really know what the folks they're talking about. Slate Dahlia Lithwick gives us the really the four to one one on Mtala, the Supreme Court's hearing on what happens to pregnant women in emergency, And let me just tell you this Supreme Court, you can't even believe how much they suck except the Liberals anyway. Then we have Semaphore's Dave Weigel about the weird stuff that Republicans are trying to pull in the state of Nebraska. But first we have the host of the Think Like an Economists podcast, University of Michigan, Professor Justin Wolfers. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Justin Wolfers.
Fast Politics and Fast Economics. Molly.
Full disclosure, you are not in the United States right now.
Full disclosure. The American election campaign is so much more enjoyable from Australia.
Full disclosure. That is very annoying to me. You need to have skin in the games. You're coming back souit right.
Yeah. Also, I'll tell you I'm up early at six am to talk to your listeners. So that's my Schemeia, Molly, So.
Let's talk about the American economy. Is it too good? And how is that bad for Joe Biden?
Did I wake up at a parallel universe of like the universe Bucks News? I love it?
Is it too good? How is that bad for Joe Biden?
Good? There's two things in the world, Molly. There's economic statistics, which I think correspond to reality, and there's the vibe and how people talk.
Oh, the vibes. Let's talk vibes.
Okay. The story of twenty twenty three. The most talked about economic story in twenty twenty three was why is the US economy about to fall into a recession? And I did one hundred thousand interviews on that, and I said, no, it's not. People said, why would you say otherwise? And I said, because the economic statistics keep telling me the economy is growing faster than it normally does, and unemployments near a fifty year low, and inequality is falling and wages are rising faster than prices, and people still looked at me baffled, and they said, but it feels so bad. There was a moment, though, I'm going to date it for you December twenty twenty three, maybe December twenty eight, get really precise, or I heard a crack, and that crack was public opinions starting to turn around, and a few people started to look out the window and notice that they were better off than they were four years ago. They started to respond to surveys that way, and that led journalists to stop talking down the economy quite so much and so look to vibeate perfect There is still a lot of resentment about inflation. There are a lot of issues I think being stoked by partisans, but I get a sense that public opinion is starting to catch up to economic reality.
Which is pretty fucking core.
All Right, Did the Inflation Reduction Act reduce inflation? Oh?
What a topsy to the upside down world we live in. The Inflation Reduction Act should have been called something like Infrastructure and Green Transition Act, right, I.
Mean, they just made shit up. But I respect the hell out of it because it's like very kind of Republican just to make it whatever you think it should be called.
It really is a symbol of our times. The problem that they faced was that Joe Manchin doesn't like all the things that mainstream Democrats like, and Joe Manchin hates inflation. They couldn't get any of this past without Joe Manchin. In fact, they thought they'd get none of it passed. And then Mansin essentially said, shave a few things off the edges, you get rid of the things that I hate, and form me into thinking it's about reducing inflation, and I'll sign on. So there might be an official White House answer that pretends that the Inflation Reduction Act reduced inflation, but at the very least in the short run, it didn't. There is actually a deeper debate. So the Inflation Reduction Act put a lot more spending into the economy. Typically, more spending leads to more demand, which leads to higher prices and more inflation. There's a different perspective, which is over the medium run, what matters is our capacity to produce. If you boost supply, then we can make more stuff without bottlenecks arising. And so you can think about the infrastructure spending in particular as being about boosting the economy productive capacity, which will allow this boom to continue a lot longer. So the inflation reduction. I probably did nothing to reduce inflation in the year which was past, but maybe part of our longer term growth strategy that allows this little engine that could to keep on chugging up the hill and keep growing.
That's an interesting answer.
So explain to me how the American economy is better than all the other economies.
Look, there's lots of ways in which it's worse. We don't have much of a social safety net.
Oh oh yes, No, it's a terrible place to live and we're all going to die.
But I mean, our economy is better than other people.
Well, Mollie, could I just take a sidebar?
Yes, yes, yes, I.
Believe firmly as an economist we should never talk about the economy without understanding that it's what we're talking about is people's lives. We can't say our lives suck, that our economy is good. If our lives suck, our economy sucks. Okay, Having said that, I think the question you meant to ask is how is our econom me outperforming the others? Right now? Yes, our economy bounced back from COVID further and faster and more dynamically than other industrialized nations. While we have inflation, and Republicans would have you believe it's Joe Biden's inflation. Inflation is lower and has fallen faster than in other industrialized countries. So somehow Joe Biden caused worse inflation in other countries. If that Republican point were true, the US is at or near a fifty year low in unemployment, whereas some other European countries in particular are slowing down. Now, I don't want to put too much blame there. They've also had to deal with Putin and the war in Ukraine to a much greater extent than we have. But if you looked at International League tables and you said which economy has done best since twenty twenty one, has improved the most, you would say the United States. Now that's a really hard political point for the president to People are kind of angry, less angry, I think, but somewhat angry. And you could say, well, you think you're pissed. How do you think the Germans or the Brits feel right now or the Canadians. It's less bad here than elsewhere. It's a hard story to tell, But why is that. Look, there's a really big difference in this economy between what people say and what they do. So, yes, you can turn on Fox News and hear about all the terrible stories of people's lives. Or you could look at public opinion polls which suggest they're not really convinced that Biden is a better steward for the economy. Or you could look at polls that suggest that they're somewhat unhappy about the state of the economy. Or you could look at what they do. If people were worried about the future, they wouldn't be spending money. They'd be saving for a rainy day. They're doing the opposite. If people were worried about the economy, they wouldn't be switching jobs. But they're switching jobs as if they believe that now is a great time to go out and find opportunity. And here's the thing I love, and it's the story we haven't heard enough about, which is, if people were worried about the economy, they wouldn't be starting new businesses because they think that most businesses fail. But in fact, we're in the midst of the greatest boom in new business formation I've ever seen in the United States. People are starting businesses at absolute record rates. In twenty twenty one, we thought, well, maybe this is just a post pandemic boom, And in twenty twenty two we told the same story, and in twenty twenty three we started to believe this might be real, and by twenty twenty four it seems like it's absolutely an essential part of the story, which is we're in an absolute boom of new businesses starting new businesses, forming entrepreneurship, that people are optimistic about the future and building their own new economy. So people smell opportunity out there.
That's interesting and why why is.
A really hard question. If I knew the way, I'd be one of those entrepreneurs out there starting a business boom. But I think what it tells us is that people feel this is a good environment for doing business. And that's a really important point because you think about the traditional Republican heartland. It's the folks who believe in small business, who want people to be able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and so on. They've never done it at greater rates than they're doing it right now. You can't complain about the state of the economy on the one hand and then start a new business the next day on the other. It's a tremendous act of optimism and faith.
It's a really good point and also so interesting.
Let's just talk for a second about kind of what indicators are coming up now and where we are with the United States economy.
Yeah, so the biggest recent news has been that inflation has fallen dramatically from nine percent down to three percent, and it got us all very excited that it would just continue to magically drop, which has been a beautiful thing to watch without needing a recession for that to occur. And we got a little over our skis on that, I'm afraid. And so we've had three readings in a row which are consistent with inflation having fallen to what i'd call nearly normal rates, the high twos or low threes, so the sort of rates that you wouldn't really spend too much time worrying about. But it hasn't kept falling at the to all the way down to normal, which is what we've been hoping for. That in turn has led the Fed, which had previously promised or not promised, indicated that it was on a path to cut interest rates at least three times this year. They've sort of said, whoa nellie, inflation's not falling fast enough. We're going to keep interest rates a little higher for a little longer. And that in turn has been the latest bout of pessimism. Maybe interest rates are going to stay high. And this is where you were right, Molly, to say that what's happening there is the economy in some level is a little too hot, at least for the Fed's comfort. That we are getting so many people into job that it's worried that may cause bottlenecks. So part of this is saying that the actual stuff we do, that side of things is getting better, perhaps so much better, so much faster, that they're a little more worried about inflation. To your listeners who are worried about all of this, I feel your pain, but I just want to counsel patients. What the Fed is saying is not that interest rates aren't coming down, but they aren't coming down for a few more months. So this is a relief delayed rather than relief denied. The only person who this might really hurt is Joe Biden, who was hoping to be able to tell that story before the election.
Do you think that the rates are going to cop before the election now?
Like in a September A.
There had been a lot of hope we'd be looking at our first rate cut at the next FED meeting. That now seems to be off the table, and so that would move from three rate cuts to two this year. And really, people are people know, people are going about their lives, markets are on edge. If the inflation reading starts to turn out a little better, it might turn out we get that at least one rate cup before the election. But if not, then the Fed faces this very awkward dance, which is, yes, it'll want to cut interest rates by late twenty twenty four, I think probably no matter what. But will it want to sneak that in before the election or after the election. It wants to pretend that it's unaware of when election day is, but it also wants to look like it's independent of the White House, and often that means not doing anything during an election campaign. And so I'm awfully glad I'm not running the FED. In the weeks leading up to the election.
Yeah, I bet so.
Then let's talk though about some of the sort of economic news that's happened with the Biden administration. That has been good news about environmental spending and you know that kind of grows like Chips, the manufacturing stuff.
I mean that has helped the American economy.
Right, Chips is two things. It's a short investment, which is, we're going to give a bunch of money to try and be a leader in certain new tech industries. And when that money goes out the door, you've literally got to build the factories. And so what's happening right now is we're literally building the factories, and so construction, for instance, in certain types of construction actually moving pretty strongly right now. But that's not what the Chips actor is about. It's really about you make a long term investment because you want to be a leader, not for affecting the state of the economy in mid twenty twenty four, but because you want a layer foundation for growth over the ensuing decade. And so it's something of an experiment. Can we boost the industries we think of the industries of the future, and will we succeed at being leaders as a result of this big government investment. And that's a conversation I'm delighted to have with you, Moali, But we're going to have to have that one in twenty thirty four rather than twenty twenty.
Four, right too soon to know how that works out.
I want to address a talking point. I bet a lot of listeners hearing, and I just want to give them the facts so that they can be the one most informed ones around the water cool Two criticisms that I hear most about the state of the economy. The first is inflation is killing it. Well, inflation is back down to nearly normal levels. And then people say, well, priss are still high at the grocery store, and they absolutely are. Although grocery store prices haven't been rising over the past in the year, they'll say, yes, but the price is still high. And that's when I remind you that what matters is where wages are compared to prices. Right, if wages go up ten percent and prices go up ten percent, everyone comes out of even. In fact, over the four years at last, the four years since the pre pandemic, I think that's the best starting point. Prices have gone up twenty percent. The pain is real, but average wages have gone up twenty two percent, so wages are actually pulled their head of prices, people's material standard of living, what they can buy with their pay packet. There's actually risen. Now you might say, oh, only two percent, that's not much. Rising by two two percent over four years is rising half a percent per year, which also sounds like not much. But that's actually dramatically faster than the average over the preceding four or five decades. So yes, prices are rising, but wages are keeping up. Then let me address the really untold story, which is lots of people fear that all those gains are going to the rich. And they've got every reason to fear that, because that's been the story of the American economy every decade since the nineteen seventies onward. The pie gets bigger, but the slice of the rich gets bigger, so my slice ain't getting bigger. The last four years or the last three years has been the first time in my lifetime as an economist in which that's turned around. This is the first time for most of your listeners in their lifetimes that wages at the bottom end, wages for working in middle class Americans are rising faster than they are for the rich, and so everything I just told you about wages moving ahead of prices is doubly true for the folks who need it. So this is and I can't pinpoint why, but this is for the first time in most of our lifetimes, the first time that wage gains are going to those who need the most. That's a really exciting story, but it's one I just haven't heard enough.
Of, and it is this idea that the middle class is growing.
The middle class is growing because working class folks who are earning enough money to join the middle class. Part of this is the Great Resort after COVID that a lot of people change jobs, and they moved out of dead end jobs. They looked for opportunities and they found them. And so a lot of the job growth has been in higher quality, higher paying jobs. People aren't just getting higher pay, they're also getting better conditions. I think a lot of it remains to be seen. Economists are going to spend decades figuring out the why. But you're right to say we have the most pro labor president in memory. But it's an economy where the wages of folks who write newspaper headlines. Folks like me who were pine about the economy, and folks like you who talk at Molly, I assume that you're talking cocktail parties for a living? Is that right?
Yes? Pretty much.
The economy for those folks hasn't delivered for the chattering classes, right. You and I, I'm sure, are in the top quarter of the income distribution. But for everyone else, it's growing and really delivering at a much much faster rate. And that may be part of why the chattering coming out of the chattering classes isn't as optimistic as the reality that people are seeing in their lives.
So interesting. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Justin Wolfers can't wait for you to be back stateside with us.
Always a joy, Molly.
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To grab some, head to fastpolitics dot com. Dahlia Leswick is a senior editor at Slate and the author of Lady Justice, Women, The Law and the Battle to Save America. Welcome Back, too fast politics. My I want to say, you might.
I don't know. You're everything to me, Dahlia.
And you are everything to me, but you make.
Me understand stuff, whereas I feel like I make things more complicated. Let's do two minutes on the rage we feel about m Dala, can we sure?
I mean, it was yesterday's rage, Mollie, and I've sort of like it's integrated. It's like in every blood vessel there's like m Tala rage. But we can do a little quickie. I think the one thing I would say about M Tala for folks who have not been really.
Clocking it, which a lot of people haven't, I think.
It's the most important case that nobody knows about. I think that, you know, we expended so much energy on that MiFi pristone case, and I know you and I talked about it, and I think in a lot of ways, a m Tala is a bigger deal abortion case. And b I think everybody kind of missed it. Like I don't know why it was a sleeper.
Case because they just put it in that they just slip it by. You know, it's like EPA versus West Virginia. This Supreme Court has done such a multitude of crazy things.
But what I think is interesting.
About that case, besides the fact that the three liberal justices all were so angry, you could.
Hear it in their voices.
I mean, I listened to these arguments as much as possible. I was surprised, like I could hear their voices shaking at different times.
Let's do one quick minute on what the case is. EMTALA stands for the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, and it is a nineteen eighty six statute that was passed because people were dumping patients. Emergency rooms would get patients in America, only in America, particularly women of color, particularly poor women of color, often who were having pregnancy related crises, and the ers were like nah and sending them somewhere else, right. So m TALA essentially says that any hospital that receives Medicare funds, and that means virtually every hospital has to provide what's called stabilizing care to a patient if their life or their health is at risk, and if they can't do that, they have to provide safe transport to a different hospital that can't. Am TALA was essentially the way of saying, do not take people who are dying in your er and say you can't treat them.
Right, so leaving people to die is a no go if you're a doctor, correct, which.
By the way, let's be super clear, Molly, doctors are trained to do this. They are actually trained to not let people die. And am TALA was a way of saying we're going to make sure that you don't let people die.
In itself, completely insane that it had to be said.
But yes, yes, it's in conflict with a bunch of laws, in this case, an Idaho law that essentially says, no, you don't have to provide stabilizing care if there's an abortion involved, then there are often often abortions involved.
Right.
People come with topic pregnancies, they come with rupturing organs or membranes, they come you know, they're hemorrhaging, their septic, they're bleeding out. So we don't have to wait till the person is going to die, except Idaho has a new abortion trigger law that says, yes, no abortions unless that patient is imminently going to die in front of you. And so there's a huge gap between the Idaho law and MTALA. And there's a little thing called preemption doctrine that says that if there's a federal law and of state law and they are in conflict, the federal law wins because otherwise right every state is doing its own thing. This should have been an easy case, but as you said, it was not an easy case because we heard just a festival, a circus, a cornucopia of insanity from male justices who are like chin stroking and being like, well, I don't know about this. This seems to violate the spending clause, this seems to violate their state's rights. And the thing that you're saying, and this is really important, is like women are dying, like they are dying. There have been cases around the country. Idaho itself has had two helicopter not one, not two, but six women to other hospitals since this law went into effect, and the female justices are pissed.
I've heard that number that six women were ha to be helicoptered out of state. But it's important to realize, like every minute they are in agonizing pain, closer to death, they have to be helicopter right because their health.
Is so fragile.
They could just have the procedure in the hospital, except this crazy law means they have to be helicoptered out of state.
One other point, which is this crazy Idaho law says that a physician who performs an abortion unless it is quote necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman faces two to five years in jail and loss of her licensure. So this is no joke. This is these doctors who, as I said, these er doctors. And we had an amazing Derek Cass on my show last week just explaining like, this is what we are trained to do, this is what stabilizing care looks like. And to have to stand back because a bunch of hospital lawyers are going to come after your license and put you in jail because you said, you know what, I actually think organ damage, like the permanent loss of your fritility is enough for me to intervene, and the Idaho law says no. And so I just think the zeitgeist that you and I were feeling is not just like Katanji Brown Jackson, who never lets herself get mad, just almost vibrating the Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogger, who never gets rattled. Every single one of these women, including Amy Cony Barrett in this case, who was just utterly horrified at the inhumanity that she was hearing from her colleagues. Every single one of them was just like, women are dying. This is what it looks like. There is an objective standard of care. Please don't gaslight us and tell us that there's no daylight between the Idaho law and the federal law. Because six women were helicoptered out of Idaho, and so it was just a horrifying, horrifying performance. And this is the last thing I guess I would just say. Throughout the argument, which went on for almost two hours, every doctor was referenced as heat and the nurses were referenced as she and as my friend Caroline sent in a text today, do these male justices believe that all dogs are boys and all cats are girls?
Probably yes is the answer, but yes. What I thought was amazing we heard was that we heard the three liberal justices who were all women, and then immediately Alito was in there right like.
The first, you know, just right in there.
So that primed us that Idaho versus United States, I feel like, really primed us for today because we all knew having heard yesterday that Alito and Thomas were going to give their guy a pass no matter what because they watch enough Fox News, so their brains and again we don't know if they watch Fox News, but whatever has made their brains like this can only be Fox News.
So let's talk about the immunity case today.
Right, I mean, this is probably the single most important case, I mean certainly of the term possibly of our lifetimes. And this is essentially the case that was you know, Jack Smith's absolutely lean and winnable case that was being brought in Judge Chuckkin Tanya Chuckkin's court in Washington, d C. About Trump's efforts to set aside the twenty twenty election and all the things he did, right, fake slates of electors calling state legislators, lying to the head of the RNC and saying like, oh, you know, we've got ample fraud, so make sure you line up these fake electors. You know, going to fire people at the Justice Department because they weren't with him on this plan. All this stuff, open and shutcase, very clean, and Trump comes to the court with this claim of quote absolute immunity, just complete blanket immunity from criminal prosecution. Ironically, the claim is unless you impeached me, which you may recallturing the impeachment.
It was like, oh, seemed to remember you do.
This in the criminal process, not through impeachment. But here we are, and so this should have been an easy case. The DC Circuit Court handed down an incredibly tight across ideological lines, like absolutely no to blanket immunity. Famously, everyone remembers. One of the judges at that appeal said, are you saying the President could like call on Seal Team six to assassinate arrival And the answer was like, well, kind of depends on the circumstances. The court was horrified, all three judges again all women. If you're just gonna make the point about women, all three women saying like, this is an absurd claim of absolute blanket immunity. Absolutely not. The Supreme Court could have just given a summary affirments when that came down in February, the case would have gone to trial last month, but no, the Supreme Court agreed to hear it and then docketed it for today, which is the very very last oral argument of the terms. So they slow walked it and still had the case been decided quickly, even in the next couple of weeks, we might have still had that case in Judge Chutkins Court. But as you say, Mollie, today was just another festival of chin stroking questions about you know, rogue prosecutors going after poor confused presidents who made a mistake.
I want to talk about justice. So, tomay Er, is it plausible that it's within his presidential right to create a fraudulent state of electors?
The lawyers are sure.
Yeah, No, he was pretty clear. This was John Sower, who was Trump's attorney at the Appeals court as well, who said the scale team sixth thing. And yes, when Sodomiora asked this morning, could Trump order someone to assassinate arrival, yes, could he you know, order a coup? Yes? Depends on the circumstances, but yes, if you really want, I mean, just depends on these circumstances. And again that kind of sneaky. You know, he could be impeached for it and removed. And you know, this brought about the whole weight. But what if he's not president anymore? Like, what if this happens as it did in you know, the last weeks of his presidency? And I guess I don't want to put too fine a point on this, but we got so bogged down in again Justices Gorsi, Justice Kavanaugh, Justice Alito, just Chin stroking questions about you know deep state, you know, bad actors in the Justice Department prosecuting with you know, over zealous Sage statutes. And it literally turned into this kind of crazy referendum of what would be worse for America to have a president who was like a little bit afraid because over zealous prosecutors would come after him and there's a thousand layers of protection to make sure that doesn't happen, or as just as Jackson said, you know, basically operating a criminal enterprise the Oval.
Office with impunity.
And I think we had at least four, maybe five votes for the proposition that would be much worse for poor old presidents to face mean prosecutors. So I think at minimum I counted five, I think votes to kick this back, to send it back to the district court for more findings.
And which is a win for Trump.
Right, because if what we care about is the shot clock, right, if we care about is getting this thing done before the election, if this under any set of questions, whether it's what is an official act or what does the president's mental state have to be or any of the arkhana that came up today. But any of that going back to the district court means this thing doesn't get started until after the election. In other words, it's pointless. And that was a win for Trump exactly.
And I feel like you and I who listened to them, oh oka is the day before, thought these guys are going to just do the most partisan thing they can possibly do, because we had heard them for four hours the day before just basically say that women should die in order to protect their idea of.
Fetal rights I mean an embryonic personhood.
I mean, it just was in my mind the idea that they would do anything that wasn't just absolutely the most partisan hackey thing.
I would have been shocked.
So here, I think, my friend is where you and I slightly differ because I think I drank enough Scotis kool aid. Right, this is my job. I've been like right feeding at the trough of Scotis kool aid for like almost twenty five years. And I made the error, and I'd made it a year ago. I said, look, there's two real Muga justices, and it's Thomas and Alito, and we know how Thomas feels his wife was involved in this thing and he should have recused. But I just really can convinced myself that Justice Kavanaugh, Justice Barrett certainly the chief Justice. I didn't know what to do with Justice Gorsich, but I thought they would be like sort of uninterested in the proposition of November being the last free and fair elections we ever have.
Like I convinced myself.
I really thought they'd be like listen, I'm for crazy, I'm for Fedzock, I'm for fetal personhood, like I'm for dismantling the entire administrative state and putting guns in the hands of all of those embryonic babies. Like I really thought they're there. But are they there for like a crazy lunatic making up fake election results and lying about it and getting states on board and calling Georgia and saying, I just need you to find me this many votes. No, I thought that that was not true, and after today, it certainly feels to me. And to be clear, I don't think there are five votes for the batshit blanket immunity claims.
But the that.
Shit blanket immunity claim was to get here like they did this because they knew that they could get to a place where they got some immunity. They knew they weren't going to be able to get badget The thing I'm struck by when you talk about this is how much the people I know who believe in the court. I mean, because I think about George Conway, my friend who may or may not be involved with having put a lot of those people in the court. You know, he was like, no, they won't do this, this is too crazy or even justice letic. These people are like no, because they believe in the sanctity of the court.
But the problem is it's just a partisan institution.
Now I think it's partisan, and I think those of us who were saying post dubs, oh okay, this is just like a maga court, Like this is just you know, the most wellly conservative court probably in American history, but certainly since before the New Deal. I think that we thought it was partisan and yet would put democracy itself first. And now I think this is like not even about partisanship, Molly, this is about convincing themselves. And we had an argument last week that was about you know, one of the criminal charges that a whole bunch of the January sixth insurrectionists have been charged under And you would have thought, listening to that argument that the bulk of the justices were fully on board with the like these were just like hapless tourists who happened to, like, you know, pick up a stake and a gun on their way into the Capitol and they had no idea what they're doing. So I think they have moved from kind of being conservative, like you say, Fedsock, George Conway. Conservatives. That's fine, That's what I thought this was. I think they genuinely do not think that Donald Trump was a threat to democracy on January sixth, twenty twenty one, and clearly the bulk of them do not think that he will be a threat to democracy in November of twenty twenty before. And I don't know what they're reading.
Yeah, this was so helpful and important.
I hope you'll come back always. Dave Wigall is a reporter at Semaphore. Welcome back, Too Fast Politics.
Dave, it's good to be back. Thank you, so excited to have you.
And there's just a lot of really interesting stuff that one of the things you do is you like crisscross the country and write about a lot of really interesting stuff. So Dave talk to us about what's happening in Nebraska and this electoral college drama.
Yeah, so right now, Nebraska and may and both give two electoral votes whoever wins the state one electoral vote each for the winner of the congressional districts. And in twenty sixteen and twenty Donald Trump won the more conservative district in Maine, the mo rural district, the one does not on Portland. In twenty twenty and two thousand and eight, Democrats carried the second district of Nebraska, which has always been centered Nomaha. Republicans have redrawn it a couple times to make it more conservative at bringing in other parts of the state, splitting it up a little bit, but it's still just without getting into the entire modern history of the Republican Party, it's full of the kind of voters who would vote Repblican ten years ago but not now.
Country club Republicans.
Yeah, and there's an effort under way by the state Republican party, the governor a large number of senators. In Nebraska is a single unicameral state legislature. When it's the senator to change this and say, okay, we're going to go like the other forty eight states and just assign the electors based on whoever wins Nebraska, which would mean effectively, since Nebraska's not gone democratic and generations, that it just gives five electoral votes to Republicans. They're pretty explicit about that, and it was Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA, Turning Point of Action.
They got this idea from Charlie Kirk.
Yeah, I've been describing it backwards because where we are now is that Governor Jim Pillin needs to call a special session to do this. He said he will call a special session to deal with some other tax issues. And this cause began right before the end of the term, the legislative term. Charlie Kirk and his producers realized this was possible, you could get Republicans to change this law in time for the election, and they just they built very quickly and they have a big, good organizing capacity. They built a operation to call the legislators, called the state senators, tell them to do this, Call the state party chair who was on board. They had a rally before the end of the session and for probably too boring for podcast reasons.
That will get all of the funey was bad.
They couldn't get it done right before the end of the session. But the government can call this anytime he wants. And the question is how much would he want to call a session in Lincoln a lot of potential protesters nearby to change the change their electoral system to help Donald drop.
That's what that's what he would do.
Right, And do you think he's going to do it?
They're holding some of their cards closer now. He has repeatedly said he wants to until they run out of time, and running down of time would be ended the summer a little bit earlier. Bro, they have to do this by July until the deadline runs out.
I'm not rolling it out.
I think they were surprised by how quickly Democrats countermobilized, and they were surprised by the Republican reaction. Some Republicans, not many, but enough to block it said they didn't like the way this process is being handled. So what they need to do is work on this. Republican centers he didn't want to cram this at the end of session, say well, you want to cram this in the other session, but you should be on board with doing a special session to get this done.
They need it.
Just there are independently minded Republican state centers who say, this seems a little much. Maybe we can do it for a mixed cycle. And so I'd be very surprised, given this momentum if Nebraska in twenty twenty eight does the electoral college split, given that that that area keeps treading democratic for now, probably not, but I'm not rolling it out. The organizers of this like that a lot of the media has already said this isn't happening, we move on to another.
Story, right, because they feel like to sort of if the attention goes away, maybe they could do it quietly.
But if it's going to be I mean, that's something I'm struck by.
I'm wondering if you could talk about this a second, because one of the things we've seen again and again is like there's been a sort of like pundit pooh poohing of special elections.
Well, it's a special election, it's low turnout.
But one of the things I'm struck by is that these elections people are actually paying attention.
Right, So the problem for the.
Republicans in Nebraska was that people were paying attention, and part of the problem for Democrats in twenty sixteen was that people just assumed Hillary would win and so they weren't paying attention. Do you think this theory sort of holds water, that Democrats have a certain level of attention and anxiety that were not. I mean, the Republicans are trying to gin it up on that side, but I'm not seeing it the same way.
Yeah, and it's about how their coalition has changed. This is conventional wisdom, but I agree with it that since twenty really fourteen, but Trump sped this up, more college educated professionals who used to vote Republican vote Democratic, and those voters always were the most likely to vote in elections. This has been a problem for well, lots of people, but for the left for a very long time. So much left wing organizing for generations has been about getting the working class black voter, working class wive voter to say, no, elections really matter and you should turn out. And that is not a problem that people have two very well off college professors or bankers or whatever who live in Winnetka or Fairfax who are doing fine and voted Republican for fiscal reasons. A lot of them have moved away from the party, and those voters, yes, they do turn out. This has been a problem for Republicans since Trump got in office. It was not that surprising that they did so well in special elections with Trumps president. It's been more surprising to people that Joe Biden's president disapproval rating can be in the gutter and Democrats do great. This is the last version this I covered was on Long Island. God, I almost did the thing that you can't do.
Can they get very bad? They do not take that lightlight.
Going on Long Island. Tom Swazi won this special election, reclaimed the seat that George Stantos want and if you look at the vote patterns there, that's a fairly affluent district. They had good Democratic turnout in the Queen's section, but they had great Democratic turnout in the Nassau County section. And that is some of those people used to be Republicans and now that they used to vote every election, they still vote in every election. That's what's happened to Democrats. So this is why this is kind of a fight between Democrats. Simon Rosenberg is a sort of Democratic optimists on this who says the media is not paying enough attention now while we do in special elections. A lot of other people disagree and say, we're aware of this. It is not bad for Democrats that they turn out for special elections.
We just don't know if it trans lands.
Yeah, And it even happened again this week in Pennsylvania that there was a special election the same day as the primary. Republicans won it, but their margin was about nine points smaller than it was in twenty twenty under Trump. I didn't see many Democrats saying this means that Pennsylvania is a lot for us now. It just means that more Democrats in northeat Pennsylvania just vote in every election now, right.
I think some of this is in a you can gauge enthusiasm, right.
Yeah, you can. And that's one thing this has done is quieted some of the idea that I was referring to earlier that when Donald Trump left office, the resistance would die off. And I've seen a couple of stories over the years on this theme. Usually whatever happened to the Women's March, which which is a reportable fact, just that the group itself kind of shrugged because of things of the news, because of anti Semitism allegations. But whatever happened to these hacks, whatever happened to these rallies, YadA YadA, people will ask that, and that public facing part just became less important for let's call them resistance resistance voters, they just kept voting. You did not see a fall off in donations or in voting patterns by that kind of activated by Trump voter. You did see less protesting. I'm not trying to be a little let anything go any other right now, but for those voters less to protest, there was a different Trump outrage for them every day, and there's not a different Biden outreach every day. So they're not out in the streets. They're just showing up at the schoolhouse or the church wherever the bowling place is all the time, right.
I mean, Trump small dollar numbers have gone down about I mean, the thing I read in the ft was they were down about two hundred thousand from twenty fifteen or twenty sixteen. But if you were to do the math onlike the number of people have died of COVID, you know we've lost a million people maybe more on COVID, so you could see, like I mean, I have a theory that there are ripples from like you know, if somebody died of COVID because they didn't get vaxed. I mean, you could see them having slightly negative feelings about the people who have told them not to get vaccinated. Who knows, maybe they like him even more. But I saw reporting that Biden's small dollar donation numbers have done really well.
Now, yeah, people got activated. We all covered this. If we were out in the trail, we would meet Democratic voters who wish there was some alternative to Biden that was running and not him. But once that stopped being the case, they came back to buy he didn't need that much money to win the primary. Democratic small dollar fundraising in general has been up. This is of a piece what I was just saying that this didn't really change after Trump left office. What happened in the past. If you look at fundraising numbers for Democrats in twenty fourteen when they lost the Senate, not putrid, but not good. They just they were incumbent setters who struggled to raise money, and they just have been in money ever since. They minted money in races they couldn't win, and companies serve yet set of Democrats. They're breaking records every quarter for how much has been raised in the state's history. And Jackie Rosen did this in Nevada. The sherif run does up, so they're still giving to everything and they're still pretty efficient in donating. Republicans not entirely so. Both parties have big dotors five o'h one C three, secretcyt et cetera. But Republicans have been relying a bit more. You've seen that this a few times a cycle. Where a Democrat raises a ton of money, they make a ton of ad AD reservations. One of Mitch McConnell's packs or the House GOP pack will burst in with money from larger donors and make their own reservations. But they're having to tap larger donors to compete with the Democratic support.
But Trump still a lot of it.
Whose reporting this was might have might have been Teddy Sleeper Puck. The Trump trial has been good for him raising money. If you are on the Trump or Republican text list, which I am kind of by accident, but it's a good reporting habit to be on it, you get texts all the time, a learning of things Trump is doing around the trial, and people have been giving money because they're angry, but that juice is not as reliable as was when he was indicted the first time. They were hoping Republicans that every time he was in the news for this, you get the kind of fundraising burst he got when he's indicted in April twenty twenty three, and the returns had diminished a little bit. Whereas a Democrat, they don't need a news hook in particular, they just keep giving the candidates.
I want you to talk about that.
A little more because I find myself often on television panels where I am the person saying, you, guys, I don't think being a criminal defendant is helping him. And there was so much like voodoo economics in the primary, where people are like in the primary, he won because he was indicted, and I was like, no, he won because nobody, because there were fifteen other people running against him, and they were all running as like baby mimiographs of the og Like I never understood the whole idea that somehow being indicted helped him. Maybe it helped him with the base, but I'm not even convinced. I mean, it was more like DeSantis flamed out.
Yeah, and that's their consensus. Everybody worked on these campaigns. When they talk about it, just say there was no way truly to compete with Trump getting indicted because our base was furious about this. Very profiled, psychoanalyzed base at this point of Republicans who believe that Trump is a uniquely powerful, iconoclastic leader and that when he is in trouble it's because his enemies want to stop him. None of them could cut through that message. But that the Republican voter makes up about thirty five percent of the electorate, and outside outside that base, I actould say there are independents who always a Reublican who grew with that. Most people don't, and that's what happened. It could be very tough in the heat of a primary to transition to how the general electorate might think. I would say that Democratic primary voters are pretty good about that. This was a major factor in twenty twenty just Democrats were both promising progressive policies but also getting questions constantly in Iowa, New Hampshire about how do you appeal to people who in the Midwest and win the general election, and that wasn't really a question for Republicans. I don't want to just spin off all the reasons, but what I said, Plus, Democrats really think when they lose elections, they lose elections. They really thought they lost in twenty sixteen. They thought they were screwed by things like the email being hacked constantly, but they really thought they lost. They need to fix things. And Repulican voters think they didn't lose. And there's no good reason to deny Donald Trump this nomination. So if he's in trouble, they have to stay by him, because I mean, I could quote, you can quote an any number of Republicans. This is just turn on Fox or Newsmax for an hour you'll hear this point date about honderd times.
It is so amazing to me that that is like the fundamental problem with trump Ism is that the man was like, no, we won, so voters are like, we won, so we don't have to change, And like that inability or belief that you don't need to change is ultimately what could undermine the whole situation.
Yes, and there wasn't that much of an attitude to change. I felt there a campaign that Mike Pence was the only candidate trying to introduce new ideas into the race, specific policies, litmus tests, just the things that normally work in a primary, and he was the guy who proved that didn't matter for them. For Democrats, I think a lot of it did matter, But the electability question is what has driven a lot of Democratic primaries recently, and it just did. It doesn't for Republicans. So I don't want to get too far from the point of what's happening with him in the court. But yeah, he's with a general electorate that never liked this stuff, that never agreed that he was only in trouble for these date Greece. This is an electorate that in many cases has been aware of Donald Trump for a long time. And if you were aware of Donald Trump in a nineteen ninety seven and someone told you this guy sometimes takes things too far and gets in trouble with the law, everyone would agree with you. The idea that Donald Trump himself would not be under any legal scrutiny would not be in a courtroom if it wasn't for this. This is a guy who's settled all the time, risky deals and uses of the abuse of the legal system. So for the average voter, the idea that he's only in trouble because he's so powerful and threatening to the left, it's a little complicated, caid and convoluted might just make more sense that he's Donald Trump and he does this kind of thing.
How do Republicans that you meet on the trail seam?
I talked to House members all the time too, and I do find the same dynamic that every reporter will tell you about that there are a lot of members who will say one thing privately about how frustrating they find this, and that never say it public like that's true. I've encountered that with Republican voters. This has really not changed since November twenty twenty, when I was in Georgia and asking Republican voters showing up for Trump or Cente Ralph events. I wasn't just asking if they thought the election was pair. I was asking do you think Trump will still be scorn in as president January? And I remember beforting back to my desk and saying, I can't started to do Republican voters who sincerely think that Donald Trump lost the election and will not be president again. That's never changed, and polling has shown this. It's just been frozen. One thing you'll see from the Steve Bannags of the world is they'll point to this polling and will claim that it's rising. It isn't when most independence in every Democrat doesn't think this way. But among Republican voters that that's been the case was that the election was stolen. The American people had never stopped wanting Trump back, and they have some ballast for this now in polling that chose voters miss many things about the state of the world when Trump was president and they won him back. That has kind of been retconned into well, you see, Americans felt this way the whole time. There's no way that Joe Biden could have won the elect That's the universal SENTI almost universal. I mean I've only heard diversions from that. When Nikki Haley was running and Republican voters voted for Haley said no Trump lust, we really would somebody else being to nominate.
So insane, insane, insane, insane. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Oh.
Yes, thanks for having me.
No moment. Jesse Cannon by junk Fast, You'll be shocked to hear there's interesting developments in the Trump trial.
One of the developments in the Trump trial is that David Pecker, who is testifying right during the Thursday trial, is talking about why he decided not to cut the check for Stormy Daniels. And it had been conventional wisdom that Pecker didn't pay off Stormy Daniels. This is from Lisa Rubin at MSMB, because he was angry that Trump never reimbursed him. Packer testifies that it's actually not true. Pecker backed out of negotiating the licensing agreement and repayment scheme once she talked to the company's general counsel and realized that it could be problematic legally, which is basically the entire theory of this case if you think about it right, because this is campaign donations, illegal campaign donations. And the implication here is that Packer pumped the brakes because he knew that this was not okay. And there we go, ladies and gentlemen, and there we are. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, Please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. And again thanks for listening.
