Full Episode - Ken Paxton’s Victory Gives Dems An Opportunity In Texas - Tackling Trump’s Rampant Corruption & Pay To Play Politics - The Chuck ToddCast

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podcast at checkout. This is a sponsor I absolutely embrace,
so use that code. Hello there, Happy Wednesday, and welcome
to the midweek edition of the Chuck Podcast. It is

(01:45):
day after a big primary night. Those of you that
watched in the live stream last night, thank you for that.
You will note would did not have a big late
night because it was not let's just say, the outcome
not only was not surprising, but it was a blowout.
I'm going to get to that in a few minutes.
But i also going to spend a few minutes focused

(02:09):
on what the Pope said about AI, because, oh my goodness,
this was a lot more about AI. There's about seventeen
other headlines in his proclamation about power. It really was
about power and the concentration of power, and in many
ways was a broadside. You might argue an ideological broadside

(02:33):
against the United States of America. But I think it's
important to go through because I think Pope, you know,
I've talked about, you know, sort of the sort of
we have. We have a bit of a moral decay, right,
particularly in our politics. Right, there's very little morality in
our politics, very little ethics in our politics. And I

(02:55):
do think a lot of people are seeking moral guidance.
And while and I've often lamented about where we headed
morally and ethically, as we become individually more secular, right
we are more people identify with no religious affiliation than
ever before, and it seems to be a growing cohort.

(03:17):
And I think the question is, you know, if we're
not going to get moral and ethical teachings from religious
school that many people did for generations, where are we
going to get it? And I do think the Pope
has not just influence with Catholics, but I think there's
a certain a certain sort of Trump resist set of

(03:39):
Trump resistors, if you will, that I do think the
Pope speaks to as well. And I don't mean that
the Pope is seen as an anti Trump force. But
I think the moral I think the Pope has moral
authority with a group of people that are with with
some parts of this country who are not a religious
group of people. But I think look, I think see

(04:03):
the Pope of sort of sharing their more sharing a
similar morality and an ethical code. So I think this
is going to have a lot more influence than people realize,
and I think it's important to go through it with
a little more detail than we saw today. And my
interview is about where are we going speaking of ethics
and morality, what kind of changes are we going to

(04:25):
see to the infrastructure of American politics. People don't like
this system, you know, in particular campaign finance reform. We
seem to have a huge money issue and the money
in politics issues becoming more a bigger concern among a
growing set of folks left and right in this country.
So I have the head of Common Cause, Virginia case
Solomon on common Cause for me is a group I've

(04:47):
always associated with this issue of trying to of trying
to bring more transparency and ethics to the financing of campaigns,
more attention and perhaps more guardrails, an organization that that basically,
you know throughout you know, slightly predates Watergate, but it
basically grew out of uh grew out of Watergate, and

(05:09):
so I thought it would be a good place to
check in. There, got my top five list and some
questions for you. So there's your rundown. So let's get started,
of course with the big news, and that is the
Texas Tornado, that is Ken Paxton. Not surprising that Ken
Paxton won, I'll be honest with you, I am shocked
that he won by twenty five points. I certainly, you know,

(05:32):
when you look at all of the dynamics. John Cornyn
was out spending Ken Paxton, he seemed to have the
better organization, He out pulled him in the first round
of the primary. So you know, while I think ideology
ideologically and of course with the last minute Trump endorsement,
Paxton had more advantages twenty five points. So I think

(05:59):
it's a fair question to ask of what are we
missing here? What am I I'm looking at it? I
want to know what am I missing? What am I
not seeing? We had a couple of interesting guests on
the live stream, and I really highly encourage you to
check out our primary night live streams every Tuesday night, myself, Chris, Eliza,
Jeffrey s Kelley. You know, were essentially the official live
stream of Decision s HQ, which is the most most

(06:20):
reliable and fastest way to get election results anywhere in
the United States these days. And one of our guests
from Split Ticket are Thomas noted, he said, look, he goes,
you know, I really and he was. It was a
bit of a it was a I think a fair critique.
He said, I think a lot of the national observers

(06:42):
don't fully understand how the Texas Republican Party is wired.
That this is a you know that they were insurgents,
this is sort of this is this is Trump's base.
But in some ways they're more Maga than MAGA. They're
more insurgent than than the Trump insurgency that in any
ways they were, They're the roots of what grew into

(07:03):
Trump and MAGA nationally. And you know, the fact is
he's right, and we I think have I think part
of it is Texas hasn't been a competitive state. And
when it's not a competitive state, I know, I don't
spend as much time studying the different different intricacies of it.
The way I do say the dynamics of Florida or
Ohio or Iowa, places that have been swinging states on

(07:25):
and off for the last thirty years. And I think
we didn't underfully understand the dynamics of the Texas Republican Party.
And I think it is you know, one thing that
happened at nine pm Eastern time, which is when we
call the race officially, is the Bush wing of the
Republican Party is now officially dead in Texas. It was

(07:45):
on its last legs. It was on a respirator, it
was in hospice care, if you will, whatever horrible metaphor
you want to try to use there that I just butchered.
But with Cornin's defeat, that's it. I mean, even then
the Railroad Commission race right and incumbent was ousted for
essentially being you know, too close to foreigners who may

(08:07):
want to buy Texas oil. If you haven't seen both
French ads for Railroad Commission, do yourself a favor and
see it. This is this he is speaking. He believed
he was speaking to a majority of Texas Republicans, and
since he's ended up on the winning side, I think
he was right. And it tells you and I think
where that the Texas Republicans put it this way, the

(08:29):
Texas Republican primary electorate, and who Senate Republicans think they
are couldn't be too. It's it's is. The difference is
as stark as the difference between red and blue nationally.
And so I say this because I think, you know
it's important for you don't know what you don't know,

(08:53):
and I think we all need to. I certainly think
nationally I needed a better understanding of this dynamic in Texas.
And you know it is win in doubt. Incumbents have
been in trouble in Texas when there's been a matchup
of the establishment versus the insurgent wing. The insurgent wing

(09:15):
is one each time Ken Paxton defeated a Bush. The
last time he got dragged into a runoff and for
attorney General and lost to George P. Bush, Jeb Bush's
oldest son. And now he beat the establishment again, a
man who had raised, by his own estimates, nearly half
a billion dollars for Senate Republicans over the years, and

(09:36):
that wasn't enough. Now. So I say all this in
that I think the Trump endorsement was meaningless, right, we're
telling you how important it is, and I've been telling you,
and it certainly matters. You know, if you don't have it,
you're in trouble. But in this case, I don't know

(09:57):
if the Trump endorsement is the difference. I talked to
one very wired Paxton inn sultant who said to me
that before the day before Trump and Doors, they had
a pull that came back that showed him up seventeen points.
But they thought that was a little bit of an outlier,
but they had that's where they had the race before

(10:17):
Trump and Doors. So it sort of reinforces this narrative
that you know, the Texas Republican Party, where the where
the party is most animated, is further to the right
than even where the National Republican Party is, And it's
certainly further to the right than where John Cornyn and
the Senate Republicans I think are on the national spectrum

(10:42):
of things. So what does that mean for November. Here's
what we do now. Paxton is the least electable person
they could have nominated, but that doesn't mean he's not electable.
This is a case where I think the prediction markets
cal in this instance gives packs it about a fifty

(11:03):
four percent chance tall Rico's the market is trading at
about a forty six percent chance. I think that's fair.
I think that's about right. One thing to keep in
mind on tall Rico's numbers. And John cuvillian made this
note on our live stream on Tuesday night when he said,

(11:25):
you know, and I said, we've seen this a lot
where you'll see a party's nominee overperform early in polls,
you know, And he used the Tim Ryan jd Vance example.
Tim Ryan's sitting at forty five in April. Tim Ryan
still sitting in but he leads by seven over jd Vance.
And he's sitting at forty five in August, but he

(11:47):
now leads by two. He's at forty five in October
and he now trails by two, right, meaning that the
out party, the minority party, is so excited they know
who their candidate is and they already know how they're
going to vote. The remaining undecided are people that lean
in one direction and it's not the direction of the
of the party out of power, right, And so that's

(12:09):
a question. I have a taller Rico. He's been polling
at forty five the whole time. Can he start to
pull at do you start to see him polling forty seven,
forty eight, forty nine, or is he sort of stuck
at forty five? Do you start to see that as
more of a ceiling rather than a sort of durable floor.
And I think that's the unknown here, which brings me
to where I think this race is going to be.

(12:32):
There's no doubt there is a drift of Texas towards
away from where it has been. Right, it has been
very slowly. This is not this is not happening with speed, right,
Colorado and Virginia when they move, they move fast. Georgia
moves slowly until it moved quickly. Texas arguably is where

(12:55):
Georgia was in two thousand and eight, twenty twelve. Squint,
You're like, you know those races are they're not blowouts,
but you know, is there a ceiling on the Democratic number?
And then suddenly there wasn't a ceiling? Now it took
what took Republicans in fighting in Georgia. It took a
bad set of candidates and a bad set of circumstances.
But then they did it again in twenty two, and

(13:16):
then you're going to say, well, but did they have
the bad nominees. Well it's happening again, and you know,
well they might have bad nominees. Well okay, but at
some point, you know thing, you know, the ground has shifted.
And I think it's clear something has shifted in Georgia.
And you know, Georgia is a different state today than
it was when Barack Obama did surprisingly well but still

(13:37):
lost the state in two thousand and eight. Is that
where we are in Texas and we're just waiting for
the breakthrough moment? And this is what look what breakthrough
moments look like. When a party that hasn't won in
a state and a long time finally wins, it always
comes with a flawed nominee. Right, Sam brown Back in Kansas, right,

(14:00):
or excuse me before after him, it was actually the
anti immigrant Attorney General Chris Kobak. Right, That was a
that was a helpful boogeyman. But the two of them
were helpful boogeyman on that front. You need when when
something when something you haven't seen in a long time
finally happens. You need a convergence of forces. You need

(14:23):
your own overperforming candidate who has an ability to appeal
in independence that previous nominees have said party have not, and
a very weak general election candidate from the party in
power that looks like a more of a caricature of
what people don't like the most about the party in power.
So in that sense, it fits all the ingredients. So

(14:45):
what's this race going to be like between Paxton and
tall Rico. It's not going to be about Ken Paxton
and it's going to be about James Talerico. Now the
question is is that good or bad for him? You
know the old politics pre Trump said if if it's
a referendum, if you're the referendum, you're going to lose. Well,
Trump's been the referendum essentially in every election we've had,

(15:06):
and about half of them go Trump's way and half
of them don't. So you know, I don't want to
sit here and say now, I think if there is
a pattern with Trump, he's better. He's better running against
incumbents than he is defending incumbency. Right. In eighteen he
was defending incumbency, and in some ways in twenty and
he was terrible at it. Twenty four and in sixteen

(15:28):
he was running against incumbency, right, and he was more
comfortable at it, and in twenty two he was sort
of a It was a mixed mess, right, He was
kind of the nominee in exile, but not quite accepted
by everybody in the party at that point in time.
If you recall, there were still more people hoping in
the party that Ron DeSantis would be the standard bearer
rather than Trump. That didn't shift, if you recalled, until

(15:49):
after the twenty twenty two midterms. During twenty twenty two,
there was a real tension there. So and if anything,
connection to Trump was probably more of a net negative
in November of twenty two. It wasn't wasn't as much
of a negative as I think Democrats hoped it would be,
but it was certainly enough of a net negative to
cost them, cost Republicans in places like Arizona and in Pennsylvania,

(16:12):
which were two big places. So I do think this
is gonna be about Tallerico, and it's going to be
about you know, because look the National Republicans, the numbers
it's like having It's like what they did for jd Vance.
Remember Jade Vance when he wins the primary in twenty

(16:32):
two with the last minute Trump endorsement after you know,
Peter Tele, the you know, the famous Silicon Valley investor,
is a huge helper of Jade Vance, and he was
really pushing this and they drag him across the finish line.
And for the longest time, Senate Republicans are like, screw it,
Peter tele you know, you fund the race. You know

(16:54):
we're going to fund other priorities. And there's a bit
of a staring contest. Eventually, the Senate Republicans pooned up
because it's a winnable race. As much as they were
angry about the way the Vance thing went down, they
were upset at each other and all this stuff, the
numbers were the numbers, and it was a winnable race.
And as much as that John Thune doesn't want to

(17:15):
serve with Ken Paxton. Tim Scott probably doesn't think much
of kN Paxton. It's never going to get better. Tim
Cruz probably is not looking forward to having to serve
with kN Paxton. The fact of the matter is, if
they want to keep their Centerate Republican majority, it's a
more winnable race than say, North Carolina. If you're the Republicans,
it's a more winnable race perhaps than Georgia it's a

(17:38):
more winnable race than Michigan. It's more winnable race maybe
even than OHIOA and Ohio. So you're going to throw
money at it. The national Democrats don't have to throw
money at it. Taller Rico is his own fundraising machine.
So this is where strategically, Democrats don't have to win

(17:59):
the Texas Center seat for it to have a huge
impact on the Senate landscape. And that's what makes you know,
Paxton's candidacy here such a liability for the party. It's
not that he can't win the Senate race. He can
win the Senate race. It's that he's not a good
fundraiser and they're going to have to spend a gazillion
dollars and have to drop the anvil on Tollerco and

(18:22):
turn him and essentially try to make this race a
referendum in tall Rico. And I don't know whether there's
anything more that can be said about Paxton that will work, right.
We went through this with Trump, and that's the one
question mark I have. Is there already? You know? Can
you say anything new about Paxton that will grab voters attention?

(18:46):
Versus there's still a lot of things people are learning
about tall Rico. Some of you may say, what is
wrong with our politics? And I would say, have you
been watching this is I'm not telling you this is
the way it should work. I'm just telling you how
it's work and how it's likely to work. So you're
going to have this huge amount of money, and it's
going to be We're going to find out how talented

(19:08):
of a political athlete is James hallercom right. So far
in Maine, Graham Platinird's had an anvil dropped on his head,
and he's shown himself to be quite nimble. He's you know,
I described him on the livestream as sort of it's
like he's got those Wonder Woman bracelets and he can
just bullets just you know, whatever gets fired at him,

(19:29):
whether it's Janet Mills, whether it's seems to bounce off
at him. For now, now he's been able. Main's a
small state. He's been able to already crisscross the state
a few times. It's a lot harder to get to
know everybody in a state the size of Texas. You
can get it can be hard to shake a caricature.

(19:49):
It could take a while to shake a caricature. So
it's not going to be easy, but we're going to
find out. It's going to be a real test of
just how talented of a messenger, of a political athlete
as tall Rico, because it is it is. It is
going to be a nasty race. Is this is? And

(20:10):
maybe he plays the you know, this is literally zags
while everybody zigs with the negatives, and maybe that helps him.
But I could see that working in a small state.
It's much like I said, it's much harder in a
state that where you have to get to know people
via via mass media. It is hard to go county

(20:32):
to county. One question that was raised by John Pouvillian,
he goes, I wonder what is what is a shtick's
going to be right? And what he meant by it.
Beto tried to visit every county and that clearly was
a smart strategy. He overperformed in a lot of places
that Democrats don't normally overperform in. You know, does he

(20:54):
do the work days, does he do what does he do?
He needs to do something right? That is that it
gets him around the state, that makes him you know,
that makes it look like con Paxton is hiding right,
that sort of thing. What will he do? How will
he do it? You know it will be the this
will be the magnet Senate race that national reporters spend

(21:15):
more time covering, even if it's they're literally six more
races that might matter more at the end of the
day than this one. But again, I go back to
what we saw in Georgia. If the Democrats get a breakthrough,
and that's what they haven't had, they haven't won a
statewide office in Texas since nineteen ninety four. They now

(21:38):
have a very radical candidate that they can run against
on the right for railroad commissioner. They've got it. You know,
They've got perhaps a governor who's not been this week
since Rick Perry two thousand and six. He was, that
was a multi candidate race. He was held under forty
five if you know that, right, and a week Senate nominee.

(22:04):
So if Democrats can't break through in this environment with
an unpopular Republican president, this is one of those. If
they can't break through somewhere statewide in this environment, under
these circumstances in Texas, then after this cycle, it would
be fair to ask is it worth it? Right? You know,
what's it going to take that They got a lot
much further to go. But the environment's never been better

(22:33):
for Democrats to have a chance to come back, really,
not since so two when they had their so called
dream ticket of Tony Sanchez, Ron Kirk, and John Sharp
running for the top three state wide offices that year
Lieutenant governor, US Senate, and governor. It failed spectacularly on

(22:57):
that one. This is this is a different environment. This
is a now, you know, two thousand and two was
a pretty good national environment for a Republican and a
Republican president. Twenty twenty six isn't going to be that.
So what's this all going to look like? Here's what
we do now? This is ken Paxton has cost the

(23:18):
National Republican Party probably a half a billion dollars. That's
got to come from somewhere. Does that mean less support
in Georgia, less support North Carolina, less support in New Hampshire,
less important Michigan? Right? It could, It could. It could
be a lot of campaigns. But if you're you know,
we know what they're going to prioritize. I got to
prioritize holding their seats. But if North Carolina looks unwinnable

(23:41):
in October, they can pull the plug there and throw
the resources straight into Texas. That's the only race in
an expensive place that I would suspect could be a
wide enough margin where the party might pull I can
you know, on their worst day, Ohio is still going
to a two point race, So you wouldn't leave there.

(24:02):
You certainly new Hampshire's probably one that that they may
end up fading away from because that's one where they
need a little national wind at their back and they're
not going to have that this year.

Speaker 2 (24:14):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (24:16):
And then let's I think Michigan is very primary dependent
who's the Democratic nominee will determine how seriously Republicans take Michigan.
But the point is, if Cornant had been the nominee,
they'd had a luxury to play in all those races.
Without Cornan as the nominee. With Paxton now as a nominee,
this is a much more expensive problem that they have

(24:37):
on their hands, and that will have trickle down effect.
You know, should should help Democrats in some house races
down the ballot, should help them break through somewhere in
the state, But the bigger impact is what it has
on the national landscape and it it, you know, I
think I think one thing is clear, Ken Paxton as

(24:58):
the nominee. This morning, Democrats woke up with a better
chance at getting the Senate on Wednesday morning than they
had when they didn't know Ken Paxton was the Republican
nominee for Senate, and that in itself is an important development.
All right now, I want to move to what got

(25:20):
overshadowed in my world because I was focused on the
Texas runoff, and I don't want to presume some of
you did not pay attention to this, but I wanted
to spend a little extra time on this because I
do think this pope speaks to more than just Catholics
in this country. I think there is a secular left

(25:43):
in particular that is longing for some morals and ethics,
but maybe doesn't have a lot of faith and organized
religion that does that does like what they've seen so
far far from this Pope. I could just tell you
the bubble I live in, and I mix with a

(26:06):
lot of folks from multiple religions. I mean, the pope
is is somebody that's being taken seriously by a wide
variety of people in my life, and I will tell you,
even the most sort of Trump leaning folks in my
life all sort of are pro Pope, right, And I

(26:26):
think it has to do with that. Hey, it's an
American that's there. So there's a little bit of almost
like a patriotic rallying around the So my point is
is that I think the Pope has I think this Pope,
in particular, the first American Pope, is a more formidable
influencer in this country. I guess that's the word we

(26:48):
all are going to use these days, influencer. I think
he's a big influencer. Sorry, Joe Ropen, but I think
the Pope slightly bigger. Well, this episode of the Chuck
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Quints dot com slash chuck use that code. And I
want to go through with what we learned. And I'm
not going to pretend I am a Catholic scholar. I
am not. My obsession with the Catholic Church is I.

(28:56):
You know, I long to observe one election. I know
I will never be able to observe. I want to
see a conclave. I think it's the most interesting form
of politics that I've yet to observe. I assume it
probably works very similarly to various elections I've observed over
the years, whether for party chair, house leadership, or a

(29:18):
Iowa caucus or two. So I preface that in my
Latin pronunciations may stink magnifica humanity, humanitis. I hope I
said it correctly, because that's the essentially the name of
this of this document. But here's I think an important

(29:41):
place to start. The Pope just declared because this thing
was more than just about AI. He also tackled just
war theory. And if you recall JD. Vance and the
Pope got into a debate about just war theory. Well,
this Pope has changed the conversation on the just war.
This pope just declared that the theory of just war

(30:03):
is obsolete. He compared autonomous weapons to slavery, and he
did it in a document that was ostensibly about artificial intelligence.
Most people missed it. That's why I'm obsessed over this. Now, Poplio,

(30:23):
as you know as American born, this is the second
year of his pontificate, and this document he's writing on
the one hundred and thirty fifth anniversary of the document
that launched Catholic social teaching. So this isn't just a
religious story. This is a power story. So let me
try to explain what magnifica humanitis actually is. This is

(30:49):
not some niche theological text. The closest secular analog is
the equivalent of saying ahead of a political party or
a head of state issuing a comprehensive policy framework. Except
this one has a billion person audience in the Catholic Church,

(31:10):
and there's no electoral constraint. There's no political constraints. Now.
Realm Novarium, issued in eighteen ninety one by another Popolio,
by the way, was the church's response at the time
to the Industrial Revolution. Right, what was happening at the time,

(31:34):
this perception that the concentration of power and capitalism in
the hands of a few. This document in eighteen ninety
one was lamenting child labor unsafe conditions, noting the lack
of worker protections. The Church said at the time that
this is a moral emergency, not just an economic one. Well,

(31:54):
in some ways magnifica humanitius humanitius, I am just butchering
this right. You didn't come here for my Latin is
the same argument one hundred and thirty five years later,
and it's aimed at a different concentration of power. The
fact is every era produces a new technology that concentrates
power every era. The Church eventually responds, the question is,

(32:22):
as always, how fast do we make these changes? How
fast does this concentration of power happen now? The document
makes an interesting, very difficult claim. It says AI is
never morally neutral. Every design choice embeds a vision of humanity.

(32:42):
I think the Pope's right here. When an algorithm decides
who gets credit, who gets hired, who gets flagged by
law enforcement, that's a moral act. This document argues, the
person who built it is morally responsible. The institution that deployed,
it is morally responsible. The machine decided in quotes here

(33:05):
is not an acceptable answer. So this is where this
document is focused. Right, A handful of companies now control
the data, the infrastructure, and the computing power that increasingly
governs daily life. The document explicitly says this surpasses the
power of most governments, and unlike governments, these entities have

(33:29):
no small d democratic accountability. And Pope Leo's framing that
the same principle that said the industrial capital had to
be regulated in eighteen ninety one now requires that technological
capital be regulated in twenty twenty six. All of this

(33:49):
is important with what he's saying, And I'm guessing many
of the things he's saying, whether you're Catholic or not,
you're like, yeah, we got to be worried about these things.
Then the document goes somewhere most people didn't expect it
to go. It goes to war. So the Church has
maintained just war theory for roughly sixteen hundred years, traceable

(34:14):
to Augusty formalized by Aquinas. The framework is that war
could be morally permissible under strict conditions, legitimate authority, just cause,
last resort proportionality, protection of civilians. Right, all of those
things have to be factored in. And if you're factoring
all that in, then the church will say, Okay, that's

(34:36):
a just war. Not this Pope. Pope Leo says that
the framework is now outdated, not weakened, not in need
of revision, just simply outdated. Why, well, this is where
AI comes into play. The document argues that just war

(34:57):
theory assumed three things that autonomous webs and systems systematically destroy.
Just war theory assumed human deliberation. I ees an actual
human being has to make the call, proportionality assessment. That
means some human being has to weigh civilian cost, identifiable accountability,

(35:18):
someone has to answer for the outcome. This document argues
that autonomous weapons dissolve all three, that the decision cycle
compresses below human reaction time, the enemy becomes a targeting profile,
and when something goes wrong, the accountability diffuses into the system.

(35:44):
And of course, then the document argues, no algorithm can
make war morally acceptable. Look, I know, I've been trying
to come up with a better way to explain what
should be A bit should scare us that defense that

(36:08):
decisions to kill a target are going to be made
by an algorithm, by essentially not a human decider, but
essentially a calculation. And you're going to take the human
response time out of the system, which maybe can be
too slow, right, but by taking the human out of it,

(36:34):
who is upholding a moral code? Now? Quietly the document
also calls into question of nuclear deterrence, calls it an
erroneous belief. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons,
which has been signed by seventy plus countries, is called
an important step, but it's largely symbolic because the major

(36:56):
nuclear powers have never signed that document. The implication the
moral consensus exists, the political will does not. And then
there was a pretty provocative historical argument kind of buried
in the document. The Pope does something unusual for a
papal document. He apologizes formally explicitly on behalf of the

(37:20):
church for its complicity and slavery, not as an aside,
but as a structural argument about AI. The Church had
the theological resources to condemn slavery from nearly the beginning
of its existence. Created in the image of God, infinite dignity,

(37:41):
no person to be treated as property. The logic was
always there, and yet it took eighteen centuries to formally
act on it. Papal bulls in the fourteen hundreds actually
legitimized certain forms of enslavement. The formal condemnation did not
come until Lee of the Thirteenth in eighteen eighty eight.

(38:03):
But this is the parallel that Pope Leo draws here.
Autonomous weapons systems reduce human beings to targeting data. They
diffuse accountability so completely that no one answers for the outcome.
They make violence faster, cheaper, and more impersonal. That he argues,

(38:24):
is the same to humanizing logic as slavery, different technology, say.
Moral structure is essentially what he's arguing, and the warning
embedded in the apology is pretty pointed. We don't get
to claim we didn't know. The Church's defense on slavery

(38:45):
was partly that moral awareness developed over time. That defense
is not available in twenty twenty six. The analysis exists.
The warnings are being issued in real time. The question
is whether institutions will act before the atrocities by autonomous
weapons systems get normalized. He's essentially asking, are we building

(39:10):
the moral framework now or are we going to be
apologizing for it in a century. Now. The most important
thing that the document never says, Leo the fourteenth never
names the United States in the document. Now he doesn't
have to if you walk through the indictment without the name.

(39:36):
The world's largest arms exporter, the United States, home of
the dominant AI companies, the United States primary developer of
autonomous weapons systems. The United States has not signed the
Nuclear Weapons Prohibition Treaty. The United States the military industrial complex,
described as a quote defining feature of the current political landscape.

(39:59):
Every structual critique in this document, particularly in the war chapter,
lands on American policy and American corporations. Written by a
pope who was born in Chicago. This is why I
think it's so important for us to spend time on this.
I would not have spent as much time at this

(40:19):
with Pope Francis. But he doesn't just speak English, he
speaks American. And this is going to have a bigger
impact than just on the Catholic Church. This is a
document that constitutes a sustained moral indictment of American military dominance,

(40:45):
framed in the language of Catholic social teaching, addressed to
a billion people. And so far this has been essentially
covered as a tech ethics story about the Pope and Ai.
It's so much more than the Pope and Ai. You know,

(41:06):
It's interesting. During the Reagan years, the Catholic bishops issued
a pastoral letter in nineteen eighty three called the Challenge
of Peace, and at the time it created a bunch
of friction because it was questioning the idea of nuclear deterrence.
That that was a you know, that was that was
tiptoeing to where Pope Leo ended up going, and that

(41:28):
letter nearly tore apart the American Catholic Church really can
divided the United States. This document goes further. So I'm
curious to see how is this going to be received now.
Pope Francis and Pope Leo have changed the makeup of
the American cardinals and what was once more of a
conservative bulrick inside the Catholic Church might be less so

(41:52):
to this day. But again, I am not going to
pretend to be an expert on the politics of the
Catholic Church. Now there's a bunch of stuff he doesn't
have answers for in this text. For instance, while the
document rejects autonomous weapons, it also repeatedly carves out the

(42:16):
right to self defense in the strictest sense. Now, what
does that mean when your adversary is using autonomous systems? Right?
Ukraine doesn't get the luxury of philosophical coherence. Neither does Taiwan.
The document doesn't address this. Right. It may say it's
morally repugnant to use autonomous weapons systems. What are you

(42:38):
supposed to do if they're being used against you? What
is just in self defense? And while calling nuclear deterrence
an erroneous belief is theologically nice, the counter argument is
pretty serious. No great power war since nineteen forty five,

(43:01):
it's not nothing. We don't know for sure that its
conclusion about this is correct, since again, we've had no
great power war since we've gone to this mutually assured
destruction model. Now, the obviously the biggest issue here is this.

(43:27):
You know, there's a call for regulation, and you know
that means political will and all of those things. Every
single solution that's proposed in here, international frameworks, multilateral governance,
diplomatic norms runs into a bunch of institutions that the
document itself acknowledgers are failing, namely the United Nations. Right,

(43:49):
major powers don't even accept the idea of international law.
So the prescription and the diagnosis are completely intentioned. Here.
We know who the audience was for this. It was
the It was American politicians, because ultimately AI, if the
United States doesn't regulate AI, no one else is going
to have the power and authority to do it. Europe

(44:11):
may try, but they're not going to have the same
effectiveness as the United States. So this was this was
more about trying to stiffen the backbone of politicians who
have said we need you know, the government needs better

(44:34):
regulation here of this industry to actually do it. And
in some ways he's trying to provide an environment where
there is a where a call for a moral code

(44:55):
and AI is something that can maybe be above the
political fray, but at the same time can engage a
larger audience in the need to do this. Bottom line
is the document's biggest argument isn't just about AI or weapons.
It's about a moral lag, right, the gap between when
a civilization acquires a capability and when it develops the

(45:18):
ethical framework to govern it. Industrial capitalism, the moral lag
was roughly fifty to seventy five years before we got
effective labor law. You know, we got rid of child labor,
got rid of horrible working conditions. Nuclear weapons is still
not resolved. We're eighty years since they started spreading and
we don't really we haven't really dealt with it, morally

(45:45):
autonomous weapons and AI while the clock has started, right,
are we going to? Are we going to provide some
moral framework and some guardrails before the worst happens? This
pope is essentially arguing that the church failed the slavery
test by being too slow. It cannot afford to fail

(46:07):
this one by being too slow. Again, That's how he
worked the slavery apology into this document. So, whether you're
a Catholic or not, whether you find the theological framework
compelling or not, it's still a serious historical document, a
serious argument from a serious institution that deserves a hearing.

(46:34):
And again, you know, it's not necessarily the place many
people look to that aren't Catholic. But I think this
is a unique pope at a unique moment in time,
and I think he has an audience in this country
that is larger than just the Catholic population. So I
think it's worth taking note. Because this wasn't a religious

(46:56):
this wasn't this wasn't a religious edict of any kind.
This was something that I think a lot of people believe,
and not all of them are Catholic. All right? With that,
we'll sneak in a break and when you come back,
can we get any morality around campaign finance reform? This

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(48:48):
code podcast for thirty percent off. And yes, I too,
am a customer well as many of you know, trying
to figure out how to reforming govern ments, bringing some
transparency and focus into maybe codifying norms and dealing with

(49:08):
the ethical breakdowns that I feel like politics has been
teeming with lately. I wanted to dive into some of
the advocacy groups that are out there that have been
doing this for a while and trying to figure out,
you know, why does it seem to be harder to
get elected officials focused on government reform. So joining me

(49:31):
now is the tenth president of Common Cause. It's Virginia Solomon, Virginia.
It's nice to meet you.

Speaker 2 (49:38):
It's nice to meet you tochtic, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (49:41):
So I will confess when I think of common Cause,
I think of Watergate. And I know that common Cause
technically started before Watergate, but in many ways Fred Wertheimer
sort of the legendary figure at common Cause, not the founder,
but certainly put his stamp on it. And then some
over the years in the post Watergate era, common Cause

(50:04):
sort of was the was the engine of producing you know,
what can we do to make government more transparent, more,
you know, a little less captured by special interests. And
you know, like any organization, it's had to evolve over
the years, and I know that you guys are evolving.
And so let me just start before we dive into

(50:25):
sort of today. How would you describe common Cause to
somebody who's perhaps listening to my podcast twenty six, twenty
seven years old, and maybe doesn't you know Watergate is
as relevant to them as teapot Dome is to me.

Speaker 2 (50:38):
Yeah, So we like to describe ourselves as the ones
who hold power accountable. We call ourselves the People's Lobby
because we recognize that special interests, big corporations, everybody has
their interests being represented in Washington except for everyday people
who are impacted by a lot of the decisions that
are made. And so we're an army of over a

(51:00):
million members throughout the country. We're in every congressional district,
and these are everyday folks who are joining with us
to address issues both locally and in their states as
well as federally, and so being able to address corruption
because corruption doesn't happen in Washington, that's a misnomer. We
see this all over the country. We see it happening

(51:22):
in states. In every state house, there are lobbyists. There
are people who have undue influence in ways that is
so disproportionate to the everyday voter that we feel like
this is our mission, this is our purpose to make
sure that government is doing what it's doing should be doing,
and that we're holding power accountable.

Speaker 1 (51:42):
I will just say my bias when I think about
Common Cause has always been on the issue of campaign
finance reform? Yeah, is that is that as much of
a focus today as you would argue it was maybe
in the early part of the late twentieth and early
twenty first century.

Speaker 2 (51:59):
I think yes. No. I think what we've seen though,
is that post Citizens United, there were a lot of
people who just kind of threw their hands up and said, well,
we can't really do anything about it now.

Speaker 1 (52:13):
So let's see if we I don't want to put
my hands up, but yeah, what do you do? What
do you do? I mean, you know, I have certainly
stopped believing that there is that limits on campaign finance
reform work.

Speaker 2 (52:30):
Yeah, I mean, and so we have to look at
it through I think a twenty first century lens, right,
And I think what's happening right now is horrible as
it is when we see the amount of corporate influence
that's happening, particularly with this administration in Washington. But it's
not limited to that, right, Like, let's be very real.
Corporations have had influence for a very long time. It's

(52:52):
just gotten worse since Citizens United, and so thinking about
kind of new and innovative ways to change that. So,
for example, the CAP the Center for American Progress they
have had this theory for some time. That actually just
passed in Hawaii, one of our states that we're working with,
where secretaries of state actually get to dictate the rules

(53:17):
of corporations who are registered in that state, so being able.
So they just little known thing people don't even know.
It's actually in the House in Montana right now.

Speaker 1 (53:30):
Attention in Montana.

Speaker 2 (53:31):
Yeah, yeah, changing the rules as to whether or not
they can make those political contributions. So when you see
things like that, this is an innovative solution, not something
anybody had thought about, but yet here we are in
Hawaii the first one to try it out. Montana will
be number two to figure out how do we change

(53:51):
the rules.

Speaker 1 (53:52):
Particulate what the rule is because I think I understand it,
which means you have to be incorporated in the state
if you want to be able to contribute. Is that
what it is?

Speaker 2 (54:00):
Well, no, no, this actually turns it all upside down.
So let's take a state like Delaware. I'll give it
because it's not happening in Delaware yet.

Speaker 1 (54:08):
Well, they've only got more companies registered there than any other,
So that's an interesting case to pick, So let's pick it.

Speaker 2 (54:13):
Yeah, it's like Delaware has more corporate entities than probably
any other state in the country. In order to be
incorporated in the state, you go through either the Secretary
of State or whatever their process is for becoming an
entity in that state. That is where you incorporate. That's
where you get all of your irs designation, that is

(54:34):
where you get your licenses to operate in that state.
But you have to be incorporated in a state within
the United States of America. That is where your company exists,
and so they can be in all these other places.
You'll do your designations to be able to operate in
other states, but your home state is where your company,

(54:54):
your company is created instead of just going through and
thinking about I'm trying to think of the best way
to describe this. So you're registering in this state, that
they determine all the rules for how you get to
operate in that state. Okay, so that's all the rules.
Now what they can do is change those rules to say,

(55:17):
in order to be incorporated in our state, you can
do all these things, but you can't give political donations,
or you can't contribute to political campaigns over a certain
amount of money, or whatever those rules are that they
want to determine. In the case of Hawaii, they said,
you're not going to be able to make political donations
in order. It's a risk for the state in some
ways because there is a fear for some that companies

(55:40):
will then go to another state, right, they'll just move.
But at the end of the day, the state is
actually the one who determines how you get to operate
as a corporation in the state that you are registered in.
By taking their ability to do that, they can no
longer be registered in your state if they're going to
be making these contributions.

Speaker 1 (56:00):
So I get it, I think, but let me be
captain skeptic here, and it's it goes to I've always
described this about sort of my sort of evolution on
this over watching attempts to you know, just McCain find
gold is such a great example of how this happened.
There's this line in the movie Jurassic Park, and it's

(56:22):
the Jeff Goldblum character, and the old man is bragging
about how we've made it. These dinosaurs can't mate, don't know,
they're all the same gender, there's no way they're going
to procreate, And Jeff Goblum says, life finds a way.
And the story of campaign money in my lifetime, going
back to every rough form that we came up with,

(56:47):
money has found a way, right, like you stop it
in one place, somebody come find something in the tax
code and we go to a you know, first it
was five twenty seven's because that was the number in
the tax code that they used. Became five oho ones,
then five oh three's and five oh four's. Right, it's
all these little entities in the tax code that people

(57:10):
have now overinterpreted of what you can do with money
like that, and you don't have to report it right
away and all of this stuff. Yeah, and my fear
of the system you've just designed. So company X is fine,
I'm not going to incorporate there. I'm going to incorporate
somebody else. I'm going to write this check to some
entity called Americans for America and Americans for America. The

(57:31):
super pac isn't going to report that donation, and they're
going to go right back and be able to spend
that money in Hawaii. Why am I tell me why
I'm being too cynical.

Speaker 2 (57:40):
If you think you're not being too cynical, I mean,
the reality is I think that we have to experiment
with as many ways or opportunities to figure out how
do we plug some of the holes in the dike,
you know, and how? But it does feel at times
like we're playing whack a mole.

Speaker 1 (58:00):
Right, I mean you come up with I mean, look,
there is now growing consensus among sort of whatever you
want to call people like me. I call myself a
political anthropologist these days, but sort of people that are
sort of watched this stuff for a living and reported
on it that McCain fine Goel had more negative unintended

(58:22):
consequences than positive. Right, taking money out of the two
parties turned out to hide that big money. Right, There
was a time where we knew who was writing the checks.
Then when we told the two major parties they couldn't
do this, it moved elsewhere. And then it did something
else that we weren't fully appreciative of till so we
say about the last ten years, which is when parties

(58:45):
no longer became the epicenter of money. They also lost
the ability to vet candidates and decide who would make
a good standing Republican or Democrat and wouldn't right it
sort of it took and now some might say, well,
that's good. The party shouldn't have that control. And yet
there's been arguments that we've had some bad actors end
up get elected because political parties had no ability to

(59:09):
sort of say, hey, this person's not good for the country.

Speaker 2 (59:13):
Well, yes, and I mean, I think one of the
things that we have to really think about in this
moment is that we have to seek solutions and we
don't always know what the unintended consequences of those solutions
will be. But at the end of the day, in
a democracy, if we're saying that we want to be

(59:34):
able to have a healthy, thriving democracy, we know that
it can't be up to the person who has the
most money to determine what the democracy looks like. And
so at times I feel like we're trying different solutions.
They might not all work, but it's just like ranked

(59:55):
choice voting, for example. There are people who say ranked
choice voting is like the end all be all. I'm
not one of those people. I think rank choice voting
is great in certain places, but is it a one
size fits all. And so I do think that the
more creative that we can be around thinking about or
stop to stop thinking about silver bullet solutions to everything.

(01:00:16):
You know, I think that's part of the challenge that
we have in this country is that we're always looking
for a silver bullet, and the reality is it's a
whole bunch of different things that we need to do.

Speaker 1 (01:00:24):
Well, here's the good news on this issue. And this
is another reason why I want to do on is
that I can't believe how many bipartisan calls I'm hearing
now to do something about money and politics, and it's
sort of refreshing, right, I'm you know, take my friend
the former governor of Ohio, John Kaiseik, who fifteen years
ago would have never talked about campaign finance reform. Pat McCrory,

(01:00:47):
the former governor of North Carolina, who fifteen years ago
admits would never have thought about campaign finance reform, right,
sort of stuck to the talking point of Republicans of
that era. No, that isn't necessary in all this stuff,
And now they both it takes becoming a victim of dark,
big money for people to see the light sometimes. And
I say this, you know, look to me, life is

(01:01:08):
about experiences, and if we're if as long as you
learn from your experiences, then you're living a good life. Right.
So I do think there's there's a large agreement now,
whether it's elected officials or just rank and file on
both sides of the aisle, who have identified that money's
got too much power right now in politics. So that's

(01:01:31):
step one, right, you can if you've got consensus that
you have to do something, then you're there. Has you
have you been able to translate this yet? I mean,
have you notice this yourself that suddenly hate there are
more people from the right side of the aisle suddenly
kind of interested in some campaign solutions on this campaign
finance front.

Speaker 2 (01:01:50):
Yes, at the state level. And I will say I'm trying.
I always try to figure out because I don't like
to paint a mon lift of any group. I think
it's the Republicans who were kind of in the desert,
wandering the desert right now looking for their party.

Speaker 1 (01:02:09):
It's a little bit of that. And I certainly described
two people that probably would not have gotten endorsements or
actually did not get endorsements from dear leader.

Speaker 2 (01:02:17):
So yes, So I think that yes, there are people
who I think are people who are of good intent,
who have different political beliefs than myself, for example, but
who also believe in the promise of this country and
realize that we're on this runaway train and we have
to figure out a way to stop it or at

(01:02:39):
least pull the brakes. And so yes, I have seen that,
particularly at the state level. I think the ones that
we're not seeing are quite frankly, the people who were
standing on the diet is behind President Trump when he was,
you know, on election.

Speaker 1 (01:02:54):
I mean, you know, I laugh about this. I've noticed
people say, oh, big tech is now Republican. I said,
big tech is never Democrat or Republican. Big tech was
just going to give money whoever was in power. And
it was the mistake the left made about their relationship
with big tech at the time. And I think they've
learned a hard lesson. But I would tell my friends
on the right, guess what, the minute you're not in power,

(01:03:15):
they're not gonna be that interested in you either. No.

Speaker 2 (01:03:18):
I mean, it's it's there's a politics of convenience. Whatever
is going to help you and your business, especially when
that is what we lived to a great phrase.

Speaker 1 (01:03:28):
By the way, politics of convenience.

Speaker 2 (01:03:30):
Yeah, I mean it really.

Speaker 1 (01:03:31):
Is a terrific phrase.

Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
And so it's what is convenient for me, What is
going to be the lowest threshold for me right now.
I mean, if you give a few million dollars to
help build a ballroom, which may or may not be
happening because now the taxpayers may be paying for that,
But depending on what you're able to do. It's just
this constant quid pro quo because we're running the country

(01:03:53):
as if it's a corporation in this moment. And they're
not stupid people. The people who run these companies, they
know exactly what they're doing, and it is politics of convenience.
It is convenient for me to be able to get
what to give a little bit of money away to
get what I need. They're not stupid. But the problem,
I think is that when those corporate interests and those

(01:04:14):
people who are you know, when capitalism has more of
a voice in this country than the people who are
impacted every day individuals who live here. There's a real
problem there. And I think going back to what the
solutions are, I mean, if we ever get a Congress
again who is actually serious about reform, I think there

(01:04:38):
are some great things that could be done. But in
the meantime, we're going to have you know, Jamie Raskin
just started this anti corruption task force and they're looking
at what, you know, corruption that's happening both within the
administration and even on Capitol Hill. With the stock trading,
for example, there's been this We've been on a hope

(01:05:01):
and a prayer of getting a stock trading ban for
really long time now it still has not happened.

Speaker 1 (01:05:08):
You know, it's one of those depressing moments because you know,
this is an issue, that's what seventy thirty eighty twenty
with the public right, it's not even there is no
This is one of those where I think eighty percent
of republic as eighty percent of Democrats are like, yeah, yeah,
members of congresshouldn't be able to trade stocks like this.
That makes sense to me. It's amazing and why getting

(01:05:29):
the details on paper has been so difficult.

Speaker 2 (01:05:31):
And I think part of it is not that there
is a lack of will or interest. It is that
there is a leadership issue. You know, we're non part
is an organization, but I like to say we don't
endorse or support candidates or parties, but we're like the
umpire we called balls and strikes, And the reality is

(01:05:51):
that for us, as we see it. This is the
most corrupt administration, but it is also an administration that
has such strong a thought oritarian tendencies that there is
a huge fear among people that if you go against
this president and his wishes, what will you will? You
will lose your job. And so there's also a lack

(01:06:12):
of moral courage I think that we're seeing come out
of here, or maybe it's just ego for some who think, well,
if I'm not here to do this, then somebody else
won't do a good job, like, you know, as good
a job as me. But the reality is that people
are fearful to even put certain pieces of legislation forward
because it will upset the president and that that's a
scary place to be.

Speaker 1 (01:06:42):
So let's start with one that I'm an advocate of
what I call the NASCAR approach, instant disclosure forced. You know,
when I've been thinking about different ideas for to sort
of limit money without a constitutional amendment, there are some
things that I think are are not easy, right. I mean,
we have the judicial We may not like how the

(01:07:05):
judiciary branch is interpreting the First Amendment when it comes
to money, and that's a twenty five year it's going
to take years in order to get that sort of change.
So in the meantime, you either fight for a constitutional
amendment or there might be a way to do things.
And so one thought I've always had is if you

(01:07:28):
allowed for unlimited donations, but once you give a certain
amount of money, once you take a certain amount of
money from somebody, you have to print their name, say
their name every time you communicate to the public. You know,
instead of the stand by your at it's you know,
I'm Chuck Todd, and I approve this message which was

(01:07:50):
paid for by Jeff Bezos, Mark and Dreesen and Mark Zuckerberg,
and that it a minute them. Let's say I made
the threshold ninety nine thousand dollars nine hundred and ninety nine, right,
anything one hundred thousand or more, you'd have to say
the name. I promise you Mark Zuckerberg would only hand
out checks of ninety nine hundred and ninety nine dollars, right.

(01:08:15):
What do you think of ideas like that? I'm sort
of being a little exaggeration where you open the door
its instant disclosure or an unlimited But if you want
to take unlimited you've got to basically talk about your
donor the every time you communicate in your campaign.

Speaker 2 (01:08:33):
You know, it's funny because clob Senator Cloba Sharer has
something called the Disclosed Act that she's put forward pretty
much every Congress. Yeah, and I actually testified on this
a couple of years ago in the committee, and the
opposition they're basic pushback on this was well, what didn't

(01:08:53):
the commercials have to be really long then if we
because they would have to name all of the people.
And I was thinking to myself, if you're worried about
how long a commercial or an ad is going to be,
like your priorities are completely messed up. But I think
this is the kind of thing when I was saying,
you know too earlier about having innovative solutions, we might
not be able to get everything that we want. We

(01:09:17):
know DC is slow, we know reform is slow. We
also know that constitutional amendments, I mean, how it took
seventy two years for women to have the right to
vote for the.

Speaker 1 (01:09:26):
Last meaningful amendment we added was lowering the voting age,
and that was you know, before I was born, that was.

Speaker 2 (01:09:33):
In the seventies, and that was actually common Cause who
spearheaded that. So I'm just going to plug that from
it in addition to sunshine laws. But I will say
that it's these kinds of solutions that you're talking about
that it's a level of we have to be more
innovative here because while we're trying to move the big pieces,

(01:09:55):
we have to think about even in a small way,
just like that kind of the disclosure. It gives more
information to the people. And at the end of the day,
transparency is a big part of this. If people don't
know where it's coming from. And we're not always on
the same page as our friends. Look, Anthony Romero from
ACLU is a good friend of mine and a mentor

(01:10:16):
somebody I adore. ACLU is not on the same page
as we are around disclosure.

Speaker 1 (01:10:20):
Yeah, I've noticed that there's this argument, like the counter
on disclosure I always hear is, well, you know, some
people don't want to advertise their politics. Yeah, I'm like, okay,
then don't give money. But I mean, I don't like
I don't like that. Doesn't you know if you don't
want to advertise your politics, and why are you giving money?

(01:10:40):
You clearly you're you're you're deciding, you know, so you
want to anonymously. You know, look, you get to vote
just like everybody else, but you want an unfair advantage
to finance a campaign. But that's one of the arguments
I hear.

Speaker 2 (01:10:53):
Yeah, and that's one of I think. But that's the
bigger issue here. And so I think what we've seen,
I'm kind of grateful. And this might sound strange when
it comes to this administration, because what we've seen is
so egregious, right, what we've seen.

Speaker 1 (01:11:13):
Oh, it's an MRI. I'm so glad you said it
that way. I believe this. I think fifty years from now,
we'll look back and thank and basically say, well, Donald
Trump showed us where we had our vulnerabilities. He was
an MRI for our vulnerabilities.

Speaker 2 (01:11:28):
Maybe even a cat scan. I mean, like literally we
can see inside the intestines. But it's wild, right, And
so we sit here every day, and I mean, just
like yesterday with the one point and I have to
say one point seven seven six billion, Yeah, the symbolism.

Speaker 1 (01:11:45):
Before I refuse to do it, it's one point eight.
I'm rounding. I'm not giving in that.

Speaker 2 (01:11:49):
It's seventeen seventy six. The symbolism behind it, which is great.
You know, just wild. But you know what we've seen.
I think it makes Watergate look quaint.

Speaker 1 (01:12:00):
It was as I wrote I wrote on my substack earlier,
and this is going to air next week, so I'll say,
you know, late late last week, Nixon had enough shame
to hide this stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:12:11):
No, no, but Donald Trump isn't ashamed. This is exactly
who he said he was.

Speaker 1 (01:12:17):
Going to normalize. He's normalizing it. And my great fear
is that he's going to make people think well because
Trump basically says this, Yeah, all politics is corrupt. I'm
just honest about my corruption. Yeah, basically saying it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:30):
Think about It's really interesting because my staff we have
about one hundred and fifty staff members, and many of
our staff are younger gen z or you know, young millennials,
and you know they're coming in. And it was wild
for me when we were asking folks in a recent

(01:12:51):
staff meeting, you know, what is your first memory of politics?
And none of them remember Barack Obama being president or
George Bush being president. So many of them, you know,
some one of the young folks, they were in elementary
school when Donald Trump, or maybe middle school, in high
school when Donald Trump became president. So their orientation and

(01:13:14):
their political awakening that was happening. This is this is
all they've seen. And for many who came before that
were like, there was actually a world before this where
the biggest concern that Republicans had was or the biggest
job they could could make towards Obama was wearing a

(01:13:36):
tan suit. I mean, there's a level of corruption here
that I don't think any of us have ever seen
in our lifetimes, and so I think there is going
to be a backlash at some point.

Speaker 1 (01:13:48):
People we all agree with that, right, we just don't
know when did we hit the you know, I'm a
I'm Churchillian in this respect because Churchill once said the
Americans always eventually get it right after they've exhausted every
other path, and so we'll figure it out.

Speaker 2 (01:14:02):
We'll figure it out. But the question is how much
damage is going to be done as a result. And
I think one of the things that is both concerning,
you know, just for us here as the American people,
but it's what our standing is in the world globally
and what this means for us because we see some

(01:14:24):
of the people that we have aligned ourselves with, or
the countries that we have aligned ourselves with are also
not necessarily folks who have the best interest of the
United States at the end. And so you know this
there we are at this crossroads right now where not
only is it a moral decision that we need to
make for our country and whose interests are represented, but

(01:14:47):
I think there's also something to be said about our
long term global standing, which has been severely damaged.

Speaker 1 (01:14:53):
So look, there's a lot that Common Cause could focus
on when it came to priorities. And you've talked about
some of these things, but you know, this is one
of those like how do you eat an elephant? And
it is you know, the cliche is one by at
a time, but this is this this corruption issue, this
this sort of cat scan or MRI that that the
president has sort of handed us and we see, oh
my god, we've got to update this and this, and

(01:15:15):
you know, it's like find it's like getting your house
inspected and finding out, my god, there are termites everywhere.
Do I just bulldoze the place or where do I
start the repair? So walk me through what is your
priority this calendar year, this election season, and then what's
your priority for the next two years? And then what
are some issues that you'd love to tackle, but you know,

(01:15:36):
you got to do one, two, and three first and
then we'll let other groups focus on four and five.

Speaker 2 (01:15:41):
Yeah, So on the corruption piece. In the immediate we
have been trying to stop the bleeding, so to speak,
and so we've been heavily engaged in litigation. I mean,
we are filing lawsuits left and right. We just had
litigation that we filed against Trump and the I R
S last week. We are we have been in this
kind of I refer to it as a rapid response

(01:16:03):
phase because what we're seeing is coming so fast, and
then working at local level reforms. I think one of
the things that a lot of people forget is that
when you're able to work at the state level, you're
building momentum for the federal government. You're building momentum towards
large scale reform. We're working also with people like Senator

(01:16:24):
Warren's office. We're working, you know, both with members of
the House and the Senate to look at where we
can again put our fingers in the dike stop some
of the purge. Are there some immediate things? How are
we bringing light We're doing a lot of research, a
lot of investigative research. We work with partners, and so
we have great groups like Campaign, Legal Center and Demos

(01:16:48):
and there are all these great groups who are doing
the work, and then also groups like Protect Democracy, Ian
Bassing who you know. We just have this amazing group
of partners who we have created kind of a coalition
of both thinkers and doers, the thinkers and the practitioners.
So as we think about what reform looks like, we're
also putting plans in place to be able to figure

(01:17:12):
out how do we test some of these reforms at
the state level. So that's kind of the immediate The
other thing is, though, the organizing piece of this, and
I think community organizing and anti corruption is not something
that naturally comes to people's minds. But I will tell
you we have something called our Million Conversations campaign, and

(01:17:35):
we have a goal to have a million conversations with
everyday people before the twenty eight election. And we're talking
to folks all throughout the country, whether you are a
farmer and rural in the breast.

Speaker 1 (01:17:47):
What are these canvassers? What's the idea?

Speaker 2 (01:17:50):
These are organizers and these are members of our organization
or I told you we have a million members already.

Speaker 1 (01:17:56):
When people go door knocking from Common Cause or going
to neighborhoods. What's the we're.

Speaker 2 (01:18:00):
Having town halls, We're having what we call kitchen table conversations.
We're asking our members to each have these conversations at
least twenty five individuals. Forty thousand of our members have
signed up to have twenty five conversations, to talk and
to record what are the things that are most pressing,
what are the solutions that they see that are most necessary.

(01:18:23):
What do they want from their elected leaders? And we're
asking them to talk to other people, and we're getting
this information back, and we're hearing because pulling, you know,
is as good as the sample that you have, and
you're asking these quick questions.

Speaker 1 (01:18:38):
Pulling is good for what, it's not good for whys exactly?

Speaker 2 (01:18:41):
And when we're hearing from and I like that actually,
and what we're hearing from folks is that there is
a fatigue that people are feeling, not only because they're
seeing the amount of information, but people are struggling just
on an everyday basis. That affordability piece ties to the
anti corrupt work in a way that I didn't even imagine,

(01:19:03):
Because people are saying, I can't afford to pay my bills.
We don't have enough money for groceries. Farmers are saying,
we can't buy the fertilizer. But yet, you know, and
what's going to happen. We're going to have to charge
more for food later on down the line because it's
going to cost us more to yield these crops. And
they're saying, but I see all of this happening, and

(01:19:26):
I'm saying, the rich keep getting richer. You know, we
talk about it as a case shaped economy, but the
reality is that the people are on the downside of
that k they are feeling it much differently than the
people who are on the upsite, and they're angry. And
so this all does also come back to voting and
voting ties in because people need to not only be angry,

(01:19:46):
but when we bring the conversation to everyday people, and
I'm talking about people from all walks of life, black, brown,
Native American communities, rural farmers, people who live in the
inner city, suburban moms, they're all saying the same thing.
And people are looking for a sense of agency, a
sense of something to belong to that isn't one of

(01:20:07):
the political parties and by creating a home for them,
it gives people the opportunity to act. So organizing for
us is not just about putting policy being you know
this Washington group who is putting forward ideas to give
to politicians. No, we're saying to everyday folks, how can
you be part of the solution. Because John Gardner, our founder,

(01:20:29):
that is exactly where he started. We're bringing it back
to the basics until there's a real movement of everyday
folks who are demanding this. And I'm not talking about
marches and rallies. I'm talking about people who are going
to show up to their town halls, people who are
going to push their local legislators. That's where I think
real hardcore organizing comes in, getting people to stand up

(01:20:49):
and do something.

Speaker 1 (01:20:51):
You know, it's interesting as you were talking about that,
I was thinking about the election in Hungary because I
feel like and I want to learn more. I want
to keep learning more about about his victory. But it
appears to me what you know, Look, there was political
opposition to Orbon before they pointed out the corruption, before
it was widely known how corrupt things were. What the

(01:21:14):
moment the reason the opposition when this time is it
seemed to connect with people's lives, right, they were able
to see that what you just described, I'm having trouble.
And wait a minute. Government's not only not paying attention,
they're actually transacting over here. And you know, while they're
making money off of stock trades, I'm paying more for chicken,

(01:21:39):
I'm paying more for gas and this. And you know,
I've always said, and it's I'm My greatest fear is
if we don't view this corruption as alarming and instead
it's just seen as just as just the way business
is done. Because look, I'm watching this Jerry meandering business

(01:22:01):
and when you start to one side says we're going
to do it, and the other side says, well, we
think it's a bad idea, but now we have no
choice to do it. Good people will do bad things
if they think the incentives are aligned the wrong way.
And I worry that if this corruption essentially gets normified,
it's sort of where the voters are essentially accept it,

(01:22:22):
right because they don't punish it, that you'll see all
parties start to do this.

Speaker 2 (01:22:29):
But I think we've already gotten to that point, right.
I think it's just a different approach to it. So
when when President Trump reached out to Governor Abbott and said,
you know, we want you to redistrict the state mid
cycle redistricting, you know, redistricting in the middle is usually
only done because there's some core order, because a map

(01:22:51):
wasn't done like correctly, and the Voting Rights Act was
the main protection that we had. It's usually because because
you know, in our Rucial v. Common Cause case that
was decided by the Supreme Court a few years ago,
they basically gave a green light on political gerrymandering. Excuse me,
it was the protections of the Voting Rights Act that

(01:23:14):
really prevented it from being completely out of control. And
we know, particularly in the South, Black people in the
South are the ones who are going to be most
harmed by these political gerrymanders. But in California, when Gavin
Newsom said, hey, you know we're going to do this here,
we're going to fight back. One of the things that

(01:23:34):
we did was we put forth something called fairness Criteria.
We knew that we weren't going to be able to
stop this, but at least we were trying to say
you're not going to crack and pack districts to do
harm to people of color, specifically black people Native Americans.
With the recent Calais decision, all bets are off. Basically

(01:23:55):
it was the death of the Voting Rights Act in
many ways, and so this is happening. It's going to happen.

Speaker 1 (01:24:12):
And that's my point is that like and there are
people who may have good intentions who are going to
pursue essentially what are undemocratic ideas. And that's my concern
of this sort of there the whole fight fire with
fire approach, you know where. Look, if you believe what
Texas is doing is disenfranchising voters, the answer isn't to
disenfranchised voters in your state, right And I understand that's

(01:24:34):
what you said you were trying to do in California,
and I get it. But to me, this is my
concern about this corruption that we see pay to play,
pay to play becomes an accepted practice. Trust me, it
isn't going to stay in one party.

Speaker 2 (01:24:46):
But the difference was with California and for Virginia recently,
which also is not happening now, is that there was
a vote that was brought to the people.

Speaker 1 (01:24:58):
Well, so they did at least go to the I
will I yes, it's better than not going to the voters.

Speaker 2 (01:25:04):
It's better than not good to the people. But it's
all race to the bottom, right, and I think.

Speaker 1 (01:25:08):
And there's nobody's going to win that race. There's no winner.

Speaker 2 (01:25:10):
Supreme Court has not helped either in the sense that
they have not given any solutions. So first, you're not
going to determine how much political jerry mandering is too
much jerry mandering. And then you're basically saying that we're
living in a post racial society where we don't need
this protections anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:25:26):
I mean, it's it's kind of well, the problem with jerrymandering,
and this is where you know, so I'm I'm I'm
one of these weird dorks that believes that they answered
all this is actually expanding the house. I think if
you if we if we right size the house, founders
intent right, they thought the house should grow with the people,

(01:25:46):
and we haven't let the house grown over one hundred
basically one hundred years. It makes jerry mandering more effective. Sadly,
where if you had more members of Congress, I'm not
saying you're not gonna have jerry mandering. And by the way,
we all now self sorted, so you could if if
your goal is to create competitive districts, you might have
to jerrymander in order to create a competitive district these days.

(01:26:07):
So there's all sorts of I think challenges. Is it
better to pursue the to zag here instead of fighting
over how we should determine maps? Is it possible that
we just don't have a big enough Congress to properly
represent this three democracy that's three hundred and fifty million people. Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:26:28):
Absolutely, I mean you have four hundred and thirty five
members of the House and you have one hundred people
in the Senate. I mean, the Senate is a bigger
issue for me in a lot of ways becausely malapportioned.

Speaker 1 (01:26:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:26:39):
Yeah, it's the apportionment issue, and it is a bigger
issue in the sense that it's you have two senators
in California and you have two senators from Delaware, for example. Well,
that's like completely different populations. How is that a fair
representation of the people?

Speaker 1 (01:26:58):
So, I think, and more important, you've also you know,
the reason that compromise happened was that the House was
supposed to at least be right sized on your population.
So California is not only underrepresented in the Senate. California
is also underrepresented in the House, I promise you Virginia
and Massachusetts, which were the two states that everybody else

(01:27:20):
was worried was going to have too much power at
the founding. You know, they had right sized power in
the House based on their population. So California is hurt
twice here, not just once.

Speaker 2 (01:27:33):
Oh yeah, And so you know that is another thing
I need. I mean, at the end of the day,
you asked me something earlier about what the solutions are,
and me saying, you know, I'm kind of thankful in
a way that some of this stuff is happening because
I think it's going to force us into or hope

(01:27:55):
it forces us to think about what this country and
what democracy should should look like, you know. And what
I mean by that is we haven't changed that much
over time. You still have, you know, basically the same rules,
the same people, and the way that they were operating

(01:28:16):
one hundred and fifty years ago. You know, two hundred
years ago, we're coming up on the what is it,
the semi quincentennial.

Speaker 1 (01:28:23):
I had to learn how to how to say I
don't know what right two hundred why can't we just
say two fifty. It's sort of like, you know, there's
certain things we come up with these nobody says these words,
except for when we're trying to come up with a
word for two fifty.

Speaker 2 (01:28:33):
But that's okay, right, But at the end of the day,
you know, we are not the same country we were
when we were founded, and the way that our system
of government was applied then is no longer working for us.
And so my.

Speaker 1 (01:28:52):
Fear go to their credit, they gave us tools to
update it. It's actually, you know, every historian I've talked to,
I said, how what would founders think if they came
back today? They like, they wouldn't believe there's only twenty
seven amendments. They would they just assumed we would be
an active democracy.

Speaker 2 (01:29:07):
The tools, but not necessarily the will.

Speaker 1 (01:29:09):
Well, that's true.

Speaker 2 (01:29:11):
And and so you can have all the tools. You know,
you can lead a horse to water, but you can't
make it drink. Wasn't that the old saying? But a
lot of this does go back to the money and
the corruption, and the self serving and the self dealing.
And I think that there is also a lack of
a sense of community that has that exists now in Washington.

(01:29:33):
I mean, I came to d C twenty five years ago,
and I'll never forget I was a young woman, you
know where in Connecticut, Connecticut heart for Connecticut, and so,
you know, I came and Barbara Kennelly was my representative
when I when I you know, back in the olden
days and so but when I first came, I'll never forget.

(01:29:56):
I went to my first House Judiciary Committee meeting and
John Conyers and Henry Hyde were there and they were
going at it, and I was just, you know, clutching
my pearls, like, oh, my gosh, they're going out in
this committee. And then afterwards they said, Okay, come on,
you're ready to go get a drink. And I'm sitting
there and I'm thinking to myself, Oh, these guys are

(01:30:18):
actually friends. They're able to have compromise behind closed doors.
And this also happened back in the early twenty tens
when we were going through when we almost got immigration reform,
and Eric Canter was up next to be Speaker of
the House. This is when he got primary down.

Speaker 1 (01:30:35):
I lost and they all got spooked.

Speaker 2 (01:30:37):
And immigration reform did not happen. We came very close,
but there were relationships. You know, Gutierres and Eric Canter
were able to have conversations or were able to get
to something different behind closed doors, and right now they

(01:30:58):
don't even speak to each other.

Speaker 1 (01:31:01):
I mean, you know, the word bipartisan is a bad
word to regular voters to these days. In fact, I've
been working with some groups that are trying really hard
to figure out to create new incentive structures for people
to break from their party, but not leave their party. Right,
There's plenty of people who would like to had to
have their own opinions. They want to stay a Democrat
or stay a Republican, but they don't agree with where

(01:31:23):
leadership is going on a specific issue. They'd like to
cross the aisle and work there. But if they do it,
particularly on one side of the aisle these days, they
could lose everything, right, rather than just sort of going, oh, yeah,
so and so it's seventy percent with us, but yeah,
thirty percent of the time they're over here. But you
know what, seventy percent is better than nothing, right, So

(01:31:44):
that's why they're a member of our caucus. Right, Whether
you know, I could be referring to Joe Mansion or
Lisa Murkowski, right, that's not you know, that's that's sort
of a real It is really hard. I want to
I don't want to violate confidence. But there was a
there was an individual member of Congress who broke from
their party and they explained what happened when they did it.

(01:32:06):
They got all these text messages from people that they
knew very well, or going what are you doing? Why
are you giving aid and comfort and all this stuff.
And it was like the person said, they had no
problem on the issue, moving, you know, going in a
different direction. But the peer pressure was rough. Yeah, and
it was, and it made it gave me an empathy

(01:32:27):
for some of these elected officials that maybe I was lacking.
That there are and you just brought it up. There
are individual members who know we've got it, this isn't working,
but the incentive structure makes it that speaking out You
mentioned it earlier, right, that they're afraid, and that's that's
something that I don't know how you reform an incentive structure.

Speaker 2 (01:32:50):
Well, you know, it's interesting we all remember this, right
like if you know, you know the thumbs down moment
from John Mcking there there aren't we've lost statesmen through
this process, you know, John McCain was a statesman. He

(01:33:12):
cared I think deeply about the country. I didn't agree
with a lot of his policies. There were policies that
I did agree with, but he stood behind his values
and what he thought was right. He voted his conscience.
And there are very few people left in Congress who
have the ability to vote their conscience, who have the

(01:33:34):
ability to show up in a way. Because of the
way that the system has changed, it's in all or nothing.
This is a zero sum game. It's you know, we
describe people as good versus evil when we talk about
our country, and so I think, again, going back to
what needs to change, it's more than legislative policy. There

(01:33:57):
is in some way many of many people have become
morally bankrupt in order to financially benefit and or because
they their goal is to be a politician. Their entire lives.
Being a politician and an elected leader used to be

(01:34:19):
about service. I don't know that it's about service anymore.
So I think there's a bigger examination that we have
to have for ourselves as a country when we think
about what the expectations of our leaders are, where we
are creating job descriptions for them, That's why when I
was talking about these million conversations. We're tired of having
leaders put forward a platform and we have no input

(01:34:43):
into what that should be. We want to be able
to have the American people actually have a say and
where they want this country to go. And I think,
you know, politics are always a dirty business, but at
this point, it's like we're basement level.

Speaker 1 (01:35:00):
You know, one of the issues, and I know you
wanted to talk about this, so I want to sort
of lead you to it a little bit, which has
to do with what's happening and how you campaign in America. Right,
it's not just money. But we've now got AI. We
certainly there are we don't have rules yet for how
AI should be used, which means we are going to

(01:35:20):
see and we're already seeing it, right, like the AI
slop with some campaigns that we're already seeing in certain places.
And I don't want to single out campaigns right now
because then you get down a rabbit hole about a
specific campaign. But there's some AI slop out there, and
it's and one side is doing more slop at the
moment than the other. But I know it's just a
matter of everybody. Nobody wants to ever have a disadvantage, right,

(01:35:42):
so we know it's coming, yet we have no rules
around this. And I you know, I'm now in my
mid fifties and I'll admit, like I'll see stuff and
someone will say, well, that's obvious AI, and I'm like,
it is, you know, and I'm like, I think my
eyes are a little bit older now. I'm worried, Like
my kids figure it out. But some of this stuff,
and it's like, I don't know what are the you know,

(01:36:05):
what what is it? Is there current laws in the
books that you think could govern against the use of aislot, No, this.

Speaker 2 (01:36:14):
Is the wild West, and that's what makes it so scary.
You know, there are some social media platforms, for example,
that self regulate content. So, for example, on TikTok, they
do require you to say this is an AI generated content,
and they do a pretty good job of you know,
whatever issues people might have with TikTok, they're actually probably

(01:36:36):
better than most. Meta does not provide those same requirements,
and so we see an X. I mean, x's forget
about it.

Speaker 1 (01:36:45):
The amount of area really is the wild West? Now?
It is XES?

Speaker 2 (01:36:49):
I mean, I don't even know what to say. About that,
but the amount of AI generated content, and like you said,
it's so good. It's not like even you know, three
years ago, where somebody would put a picture and there
might be like a sixth finger or something on somebody's hand. No,
it is so very lifelike and realistic. And the part
of the challenge I think is that Congress is always

(01:37:10):
behind the eight ball when it comes to knowing how
to I mean, look, we have an age issue in
Congress as well that ties to this because we have
people a lot of you know, we have a lot of.

Speaker 1 (01:37:25):
Other But in fairness, even if we had a younger Congress.
Government does not move fast, no, in general, but the
understanding of it and technology is moving so fast. I
don't know what the right way to regulate AI because
the minute you figure it out, it changes on you.

Speaker 2 (01:37:41):
And that is that in itself lies the issue. But
again going back to we might not be able to
regulate everything in this moment, But going back to that
idea around transparency and disclosure and being required especially with
political content, that you should there should be something in
place that requires political content to be labeled as AI

(01:38:05):
if it's AI.

Speaker 1 (01:38:06):
And like out loud, like it can't be you know
how you'll see some prescription drug ads and it will
if you if you read care for they'll say this
the portrayals are actors or they're paid actors or paid endorsers.
They don't say it. It is written that if you
squint right, or you have a big enough screen TV,
you might notice it. Like it. The disclosure's got to

(01:38:29):
be this is AI material, like I want it to
be like louder than the actual commercial itself.

Speaker 2 (01:38:35):
You know, and and and AI isn't completely harmful. Look,
we use it every day in our lives. You just
have to do a simple search, and there's AI assist.

Speaker 1 (01:38:44):
That can't avoid it. I know these people. I never
use AI. Really, you're not on the you're not on
the internet like trust me, you're using if you're doing search,
you're using AI whether you want to or not.

Speaker 2 (01:38:55):
But the political content, the deep fake videos which are
really canning and last election was one of the times
where I think we saw some of this in twenty
twenty I mean twenty twenty four in a real way,
but it was I think the first time where I realized,
oh this is actually we had to litigate in twenty

(01:39:17):
twenty four over some of the deep deep fake content
because it was so disparaging to people.

Speaker 1 (01:39:23):
And so is that problem. I mean, it's funny you
bring up litigation. Sometimes civil litigation is the only way
we create some of these guardrails, you know, basically, I
guess you make a bunch of AI defamation suits.

Speaker 2 (01:39:37):
Yeah, And that's part of the challenge though, is that again,
going back to this idea of creativity, we're facing things
nobody has ever faced before. This is stuff that we
nobody knows what to do with it, and there is
the will. Like in Europe, there's a lot of regulation
that happens around AI content, and I think they're probably
doing better. At least folks in the U European Union

(01:40:01):
are doing a better job.

Speaker 1 (01:40:02):
If you care about privacy help the EU passes something.

Speaker 2 (01:40:06):
Yeah, But but here we're not even like there is
even no real attempt at this point, and so civil
litigation really is the only way to go to bring
these things in the forefront and then figuring out where
we can draw legislative solutions or propose legislative solutions. But
the complexity, I mean, it's like, you know, asking big

(01:40:28):
tech to regulate themselves, is I mean, it's not going
to happen, and so what do we And again there's
there there was a lot of ethical There was a
much more of an ethical approach to AI, I think
just a few years ago and the way that people
spoke about it. And now it's just a race or
a competition to see if we can beat China and that.

(01:40:49):
And that's really scary because when it's looked at as
a competition to see who can go further and faster,
as opposed to what is the impact of the people
who will be on the recipients of this technology, we've
found ourselves in a really dire place.

Speaker 1 (01:41:07):
Before I let you go, you brought up something. You know,
one of the founding successes for Common Cause was the
fight for sunshine laws. And I grew up in Florida
and we've had sunshine laws, and you know, it's one
of these It's ironic to me, the party that now
is trying to kill it was the party that actually
was the one who championed it because they used to

(01:41:29):
be in the minority and now they're in the majority.
And that happens quite a bit with political parties. You know,
they they're pro something until they get power, and they're like, oh,
I don't know if I want that anymore. But these
sunshine laws have stock and they certainly serve as a
pretty good check on what is I think kind of
a weak legislature in Florida. Ditto in Texas. Right, if

(01:41:51):
we didn't have the sunshine laws in Texas, there'd be
a lot more things we didn't know. What's the status
of sunshine laws around the country. Who are some of
the better states and where are you worried that there's
going to be some rollbacks?

Speaker 2 (01:42:04):
You know, I think, by and large, well Florida. Actually
it has been a stop gap in Florida, which is
really interesting, and in states around the country. I think,
you know, that's a hard question for me to answer
because I think in the states that have them, and
which is pretty much every state in the country have

(01:42:26):
them to.

Speaker 1 (01:42:26):
Very form of them.

Speaker 2 (01:42:27):
Yeah, yeah, it's a varying degrees.

Speaker 1 (01:42:30):
But Florida, you go to Florida, like any individual, any citizen, like,
it's a little more some states are we're more responsive
to their sunshine laws is probably a better way to
put it.

Speaker 2 (01:42:38):
Yeah, I mean I think there are states like Rhode Island,
who's doing a great job, and they continue to expand
sunshine laws. I think that some of the states where
I am more concerned are states like North Carolina. For example.
North Carolina is an interesting state.

Speaker 1 (01:42:58):
Superpower legislative and super weak executive branch exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:43:02):
And so where you see that there is not parody
between the or the balance of power doesn't exist, there
becomes an opportunity. So when you see one of the states,
North Carolina is also a state that has an elected
Supreme Court these this is a partisan court. And so
when you see jerrymandering combined with partisan elected Supreme Court officers,

(01:43:28):
and then you see a government that is very much
jerrymandered or the state is very much cheerymandered, and then
you see just how the balance of power is off.
Those are the states where I see the biggest opportunity
to roll back sunshine laws. And so again, this is
just really about having a government that is for and

(01:43:51):
by the people, and that means having some norms and
set having balance in place. And when that balance gets off,
you're a you're in a world of try.

Speaker 1 (01:44:01):
Is there can we have a movement to get rid
of elected judges? You know, Alexander Hamilton in Federalist seventy
eight when he was making his case for judiciary, was
making the case you know, he doesn't. He makes the
case against the election of Supreme Court judges and saying
electing judges is you know, you got to have He's
basically making the case for umpires and is least part

(01:44:22):
at least factional. I think he calls it factions. Back
then we didn't have parties yet that they're not going
to favor one faction or the other. Or you try
to find as neutral of an arbiter as you can find.
So the reason I always like to ground this argument
in the Federalist papers is because anybody wants to play
originalism with me or any of that stuff, it's like
this was founder's intent. Yeah, And ultimately, you know, and

(01:44:47):
I do not understand these states that elect Supreme Court justices.
And it's just I don't, you know, it's it's really
seems so corruptible. You know, I'm not saying everything like
that Supreme Court justice is corrupt, but it's a corrupt.
It's a more corruptible process than doing it through appointments now,
because some would argue, well, you know, an executive is

(01:45:09):
biased and this is you know, you can still have
these things. It's like, yeah, but the judge to actually
take the money themselves right to know that they need donors.
You know, that's going to show up in their courtroom.
You know. It just it's it's inevitable.

Speaker 2 (01:45:23):
It is inevitable. And I think you're absolutely right. I mean,
and look at the most recent Supreme Court case in
North Carolina with Alison Riggs. I mean, it was millions
and millions and millions of dollars the most expensive court
race because it wasn't just about the race itself, which
she won, it's that it was contested and so there

(01:45:44):
were just a ridiculous amount of money for it to
take months and months and months to say, oh, actually
she she did win. And so what happens is when
you have Supreme Court justices who have to spend more
of their time, a big large chunk of their time
fundraising prior to an election, the business of the people

(01:46:05):
is not happening. But again it comes into this, there's this.

Speaker 1 (01:46:09):
Somebody you take a donation, you've potentially compromised yourself well.

Speaker 2 (01:46:12):
Exactly, and then you have to step back and say, well,
I mean, and this is if people.

Speaker 1 (01:46:18):
Step back in you right, and that everybody does it right?

Speaker 2 (01:46:21):
Not everybody is going to do that, and so it
is Look, I would love to leave with some hope
and what I.

Speaker 1 (01:46:27):
Was going to get. Don't worry, I was actually going
to do that give And so you're right, I'm look
because you know, it's like a you know, I joke.
I got a lot of you know, every day is
festivus on the Check podcast with our politics right now,
I got a lot of problems with you people. But look,
what if you don't have optimism, you're not going to
get out of bed, right, So what what what gives

(01:46:48):
you hope? I mean, I like to call myself short
term pessimistic, but long term optimistic. So tell me why
you're optimistic.

Speaker 2 (01:46:55):
I'm optimistic because the people in this country aren't stupid.
For as much much as we see people trying, even
the people who are pushing back against what we see
right now, they are as much of a patriot as
the person who stands outside every day waving a flag.
People love this country, and people want to be able
to live in a country that loves them back. And

(01:47:18):
I think sometimes that means standing up and pushing back
and we've been in this place before. We went through
McCarthyism in the nineteen fifties, during the same time where
Jim Crow was happening, during the same time in the
nineteen sixties where we saw the women's rights movement happening.
So many things that happened, and on the edge of that,
after that that when that next chapter was written, it

(01:47:42):
was always so much better, whether it was the Great
Depression and then seeing the big New Deal that came
out of it, the great New Deal that came afterwards
after the World War Two, and we saw, you know,
a very prosperous nation. This is a dark time for
our country, but we will get through it, and we
will be able to be better as a result. And

(01:48:02):
it's going to be the American people everyday, folks who
aren't connected to the wealthy and the powerful, standing up
and taking back their country and using their vote and
their voice. Who we're going to do it.

Speaker 1 (01:48:15):
Well, Look, a group like Common Cause has to have
some idealism in it, or we're not going to get
compromise solutions. Center effective is what I always say. You
sort of have to aim for the aim for the
perfect in order to get people to sit down and
make things a little bit better.

Speaker 2 (01:48:29):
I couldn't have been doing this work for the past
thirty years if I, you know, wasn't hopefully optimistic all
the time. And the reality is that we're it's rough
right now, but we're going to be okay. But everybody
has to do their part. Being a citizen in this
country means you have to It's more than just go
into the ballot box. It's actually showing up at the
local level and then doing everything you can to help

(01:48:52):
your fellow neighbor while we're fighting this fight.

Speaker 1 (01:48:55):
It's well said, Look, we all need to realize that
citizenship is active, right absolutely, like what you see. Get
up off your took us anyway, Virginia, this was a pleasure.

Speaker 2 (01:49:07):
Thank you so much, Chuck, really appreciate you having.

Speaker 1 (01:49:10):
Great to know what's going on there at Common Cause. Well,
i'd love to hear your reaction to my conversation with
the head of Common Cause there, Virginia K. Solomon, and
what you'd like to see them pursue. What reforms seem

(01:49:34):
you know, it's funny with reforms. There are reforms that
are good for the democracy. Does it matter left or right?
There are reforms that are good for the Republican Party
but less so for the Democrats and vice versa. Ultimately,
the north star should be what's good for the small
D democracy, what gives more voice? You know, I try

(01:49:56):
to weigh down on the side of more democracy, not less.
If you're t to limit democracy in some way, yeah,
I think you're on the wrong side of this. So
I'd love to hear thoughts from you on sort of
reforms that really do would increase democracy and try to
take try to take your own partisan hat off, because

(01:50:19):
I think a lot of reforms are done through the
prism of what would make it better for my quote
unquote side versus the north star being what makes for
better small D democracy. And with that, let's move to
my top five list, Top top five top So look,

(01:50:43):
it's a little twenty twenty six and a little twenty
twenty eight. And here's the theme this week. And I've
been playing with these themes, but this is the one
this week. These are the top five candidates potential candidates
for president who's twenty twenty six performance is necessary to
make them viable in twenty twenty eight, meaning, you know,

(01:51:07):
obviously a loss or falling on their face or eking
out an ugly win, you know. And this isn't just
people who are on the ballot in twenty twenty six.
Is there's four or five candidates that are going to
be on the ballot in twenty twenty six who are
already know are more focused on running for president perhaps
in twenty twenty eight. Alexandrio Cosio Cortez certainly seems more
focused on twenty eight than her reelection in twenty six.

(01:51:29):
I think she feels comfortable in her reelection. She's got
to run for center, She's gon to run for president.
Wes Moore, JB. Pritzker, Jos Shapiro are all on the
ballot in twenty twenty six, but none of them face
a very difficult reelection challenge, and so they're all in
some ways, you know, want to flex their muscles in

(01:51:51):
twenty twenty six in order to maybe make a case
to donors. But the list that I'm trying to create
here is a distinction. It's people who if they if
they win. Not all of these candidates may win in
twenty twenty six. But the theory, and this goes to
my substack this week, which you'll also be able to
read on news fair, which is, you know, the Democrats
have a tendency of always looking for new and fresh. Right, Kennedy, Carter, Clinton,

(01:52:15):
and Obama all had one thing in common. The first
time they ever ran for president was the was when
they won. Right. Joe Biden is the loan exception in
the modern era, if you will, of a Democratic, successful
Democrat getting elected president having already run multiple times for
the presidency. So the Democrats have always tended to look

(01:52:37):
for the new, the fresh. And that's before we had
a media ecosystem that even biased towards the new and
the fresh, and the viral even more so. So, it's
the likelihood that we are going to see somebody whose
name is not on most polling lists at the moment
as a viable, at least co front runner for a

(01:52:59):
while enormous. I mean, look just even years when when
the Democrats went conventional and went with a with a
legacy resume, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Walter Mondale, there there
were insurgents that sort of came out of nowhere to
become legitimate frontrunners. Howard Dean Paul's songis Pete Bootage to

(01:53:24):
name a few, Gary Hart, to name a few who
were all sort of one percenters when they first started
running and then captured lightning in a bottle seemingly out
of nowhere, And so to me that's something Look and
even look six twenty eighteen created Beto O'Rourke. Without his
close loss, he doesn't be treated as a viable presidential candidate.

(01:53:48):
So with that said, here are my five UH and
I'm going to go from five to one where performance
UH this year could catapult them into becoming serious candidates
for twenty twenty eight. Number five on my list is

(01:54:10):
Amy Acton. She is the Democratic nominee for governor in Ohio.
She is incredibly competitive with Republican Vivik Ramaswami. I think
he is uniquely weak in this campaign. It is a
tough year in general to defend Trump policies. He's even
though running in a state race, having to defend more

(01:54:31):
Trump policies. He's running less as the heir to Mike
the Wine and more as sort of the first governor
from the Trump wing of the Republican Party. So I
think that both is helpful in theory to Ramaswami to
be a change candidate. But on the other hand, it
means he has to carry some of the national baggage.

(01:54:52):
His fingerprints on Doze is not necessarily a net positive.
His fingerprints on cutting the size of government, and he's
put some unium things about cutting state funding and consolidating
state universities which are very parochial in every and did
not go over well with voters across the board. So,

(01:55:14):
you know, Amy Acton, who was essentially became prominent during
COVID due to Mike the Wine, had an unusual trajectory
to becoming suddenly the potentially the leading Democrat in the
state of Ohio, because if she wins, or you're the governor,
you're the leader, you run the party, you're in charge,

(01:55:36):
and Ohio pulls this off, and Acting pulls this off.
Trust me, she's on the and she's coming in every
short list. But it probably will also change how changed
the comfort level, right, because you see national Democrats are
still afraid of talking about science and defending some of
the some of the things off of COVID. A successful

(01:55:59):
Acting came I think would certainly I think change change
that perception a little bit. And again this is one
of those a victory suddenly resets the board, right, you know,
she pulls off a win in Ohio. That's not any

(01:56:20):
It's not in any ordinary state, right. That's why number
four on my list after Acting is Rob sand of Iowa.
I think I told you earlier about and I've had
him in a previous list of sort of candidates that
I think are flying under the radar that could end
up being viable twenty twenty eight candidates. Now, I think
he is going to quickly shut this down, and my

(01:56:43):
guess is Acted would too. But knowing I know Sand
a little bit, I know him both a little bit,
but I think he is he would shut that down
pretty quick. He's pretty young, and I think he thinks
he would have plenty of time if that ambition even
enters his mind, and I don't know for sure that
it is. I think one of the mistakes many people
make is presuming just because someone runs for governor means
they want to run for president. Not everybody wants to

(01:57:04):
do that, So I would imagine he shuts it down
pretty quick. But the way he's running his race is
one that many Democrats would like to see replicated. He
is really trying to run a very patriotic race. He
opens his rallies with America the beautiful. It's a fascinating again.
You think, oh, roll your eyes, it's corny, blah blah blah.

(01:57:25):
It works. It works. Now. Maybe it's a place, you know,
something that's going to work better in the Midwest that
it's going to work on the coasts. Maybe it doesn't
work in Hollywood donor rooms, but who knows, maybe this
stuff would actually start working in Hollywood donor rooms because
they want to feel a little more patriotic themselves. So
he is number four on my list. Number three on

(01:57:45):
the list is Grand Platner. Look, I am simultaneously both
a skeptic of Platner's candidacy in twenty twenty six and
somebody who understands why he has traction and why there
are so many rallying around him at the same time.
You know, I superficially, I do think the main race

(01:58:06):
looks an awful lot like twenty sixteen for president, with
Susan Collins and Hillary Clinton in one corner and Graham
Plattner and Donald Trump and another, and watching based Democratic
voters do rhetorical gymnastics to rationalize supporting Platner despite some
of some of the tattoos and the rants on Reddit
and things like that, very similar to what we saw

(01:58:27):
with Republicans and particularly evangelicals doing rhetorical gymnastics to try
to rationalize supporting Donald Trump once he became the nominee.
So there are no doubt I've enjoyed some of some
of that, some of those similarities there to to sort of,
and it's a reminder that both parties will mirror each
other when push comes to shove. But Plattner has been

(01:58:51):
a has been an impressive candidate. He's been hard to
I mean, they've the kitchen sink's been thrown, it's been
hard to rattle the guy. He seems almost above the
fray and how he goes about it. He's got this
ad hitting the Boston Red Sox about sat on private
equity and private equity is destroying everything. I oh, by

(01:59:12):
the way, it's even killing the Boston Red Sox. Now,
if you really wanted to get nitpicky with him on that,
it'd be like, well, private equity was good for the
Red Sox until it wasn't right, But because the same
owners did did get a bunch of world series for
them this century. So it's been a but once they've
I think what you learn about private equity, and the

(01:59:33):
better head is once they've gotten what they've wanted out
of their investment, they don't care anymore and they walk away.
And that's I think a lot of Red Sox fans
feel that way about John Henry and the money people
behind the Red Sox these days. But that's the thing, right,
it was a smart little hit, It went viral, it
went the right way. The Red Sox overreacted pulled his ad,

(01:59:53):
which only gave it more traction because Red Sox fans
are really pissed right now at the ownership, so it
only gave even more attention. But the point is is that, look,
this guy seems to get the modern media ecosystem in
a way that that many don't, and that could give
him a leg up. And and I you know, if
he if he has a big win over Collins, and

(02:00:16):
no outcome would shocked me in May. If he won
by double digits, it wouldn't shock me. And if he
lost by three points, it wouldn't shock me. I'd be
shocked if he lost by a lot. That that's the
one shocking result I'd have out there. But a big win,
and I think I mean, look, Fetterman for president became
a thing until it didn't, right until he sided with
the Republicans one two, one too many times. But go

(02:00:41):
look at at his before he sort of started citing,
you know, before the essentially before October seventh, when Israel
wasn't front and center in the conversation and wasn't front
and center in Fetterman's In sort of the list of
issues that Fetterman breaks with his party on, there were
a lot of people talking about, Hey, the Democrats ought

(02:01:02):
to be thinking differently, and maybe John Fetterman is that guy. Help.
He was my first guest on this podcast, and I
was openly wondering, are you running for something in twenty
eight and then, like I said, everything seemed to change
a little bit on that one issue. But so Platner
at number three, number two, Number two on this list

(02:01:27):
is James Tallerico, and I've floated him before. Tell Rico
feels like Pete Boodagic right, feels like Paul Songis, feels
like Howard Dean, somebody that came out and seemingly came
out of nowhere gaining some traction, sort of saying what
other candidates wouldn't say. Obviously, a big win in Texas

(02:01:49):
gives him some cachet. He's already running on national issues,
it's a little bit easier to immediately. I think the
hard thing for an act than or a sand is
it's tough to quickly move from winning a first term
as governor and trying to run a national campaign Senate.
It's all the same thing. So in that sense, it

(02:02:11):
wouldn't be a huge a huge difference or distinction. And
you know, we already saw a failed Democratic Senate candidate
from Texas parlay a close result into a viable presidential
campaign for a period of time. Why not tall Rico?
And he certainly has people around him that certainly would
like to see some national ambitions. I'm also drinking a

(02:02:36):
little bit of the skeptical kool aid on taller Rico.
You know, I think Paxton is just beatable by pretty
much any mainstream Democrat. My only concern on taller Rico
is I don't know how well the religious stuff plays.
I don't know, if you know, I think he is
what a religious person is that the left may envision

(02:02:59):
who's not very who might be a pretty secular person.
So that's why I'm not is convinced he plays as
well in religious communities as some secular people think he might.
And I think that is still that is something. Let's
see what he looks like after, because the one thing
we do know is in order to hold the Senen, See,

(02:03:22):
you're not going to see a lot of money spent
on Paxton, You're going to see money spent against taller Rico.
So what does tall Rico's image look like at the
end of this campaign? He holds up, well, that could
be interesting. But number one on my list is somebody
who I think is the most likely of my list
here five to run and most likely to I think

(02:03:46):
potentially be in a top tier candidate. And I think
that winning re election automatically puts them in the list.
And I think assuming another person from Georgia decides not
to run, Raphael or not, that suddenly John Ossoff becomes
a real player, because you know, here's a guy who

(02:04:07):
is a swing you know, getting reelected and is the
swinging as to swing states. Without he doesn't come across
as a guy who tries to apologize for being a
Democrat representing a swing state. You know, sometimes and it's
not just you get it on the Republican side of
the outsoud. Sometimes when you when you're a you represent

(02:04:30):
a swing state, that kind of politician will will come
across as almost they're apologizing for their base. They're apologizing
for the stereotype that the party is. You know, I'm
not one of those type of Republicans or I'm not
one of those type of Democrats. Will be a constant
refrain you'd hear from a from a politician like that,
and Osoff has a way, so he doesn't. Here's a

(02:04:52):
guy who is got friendly relations with business and friendly
relations with progressives. I think he leans slightly more to
the left then maybe you'd think was necessary to hold
a Senate seat in Georgia. But he's he works hard,
he communicates well, He you know, is clear. When he

(02:05:18):
thinks he may have disagree with this state on an issue,
he's pretty clear about it. So I think he's got
you know, if the biggest knock on him is he
says he looked, you know, does he look too young
to run for president? I don't think youth's going to
be a negative in twenty twenty eight, considering how the

(02:05:41):
Olds have done running this country or the last couple
of cycles. So you know, that would have been something
that maybe in the in the pre Trump era, I
would have said more seasoning, does he look too young,
does he look like he's ready, et cetera, et cetera.
I don't think any of that days, and I really do.

(02:06:02):
And Asov's the guy who came up with Epstein class,
I think Epstein class is the most brilliant phrase to
use in this campaign season because you don't have to
explain it. People here hear it immediately right now. They
may have their own definition. Some may emphasize more about elites.
Some in their head may say, oh, rich, people want

(02:06:23):
their own set of rules. Some may be directly about
the sex trafficking. But either way, you get the words
class in there in Epstein, and it's so much is
said with so few words. And I'm not saying he
invented it, but he has popularized it better than most

(02:06:45):
of all. So he's to me number one and one,
it's time to start putting him on the lists. Everybody
else here is a bit more speculative in my book,
not also, I think I think this is this is
you know, he's looked, he's got isn't going to be

(02:07:06):
easy but if he does win, I think it's more
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(02:08:10):
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(02:08:54):
slash bonus, ipen offer iphen terms. Ask Chuck, All right,
let's sneak in a little ass, Chuck. I think we're
going to try to do We'll see. We'll try to

(02:09:15):
do five questions today. Max W from Alexandria notes, Hey,
you've refer to the proposed weaponization funds one point eight billion,
though the actual figure is one point seven to seven
six billion, seemingly a nod to the nation's founding. Is
there a reason for rounding it up? Is it to
avoid reinforcing that symbolism or simply not worth highlighting? As
you say, as you used to say, what say you,

(02:09:35):
I'll hang up and listen. Lets you say, yeah, I'm
not you know, I think it's as ridiculous symbolism and
I'm not interested in reinforcing it. It's, i mean, about
as dumb as it comes. And it's really vile that
this is this January sixth what fund to help the

(02:10:01):
January sixth rioterers to somehow equate them with the revolutionaries
of seventeen seventy six. I guess it tells you something
about him, so you know, a reference is necessary, but
I'm not reinforcing it. I think it's you know, it's
one of those issues you don't have to repeat the

(02:10:24):
propaganda if you think the propaganda is utter bullshit, right,
So it is what it is. It's a slush fund.
It's I'm pretty sure it's unconstitutional. I see how they're
trying to make it legal, but yeah, that's exactly it.
I am not interested in spending any time explaining it.

(02:10:50):
It's obvious they're trying to create propaganda, and I can
cover the story without repeating the revolutionary propag Ken Writ's
longtime listener and fantasy has I actually met you in
New Hampshire during the twenty sixteen primaries while covering the
race for a radio show in Maine. Here here, there's
nothing like covering a campaign in New Hampshire. There's a

(02:11:14):
nice central location Manchester. That boy, what is it now?
It's been a ramata, it's been a ratison, it's been
a holiday inn, it's been all sorts of things. But
it's right there at the center of town. Radio Row
has been there. I feel like I know that hotel
about as well as any hotel in the country. Right anyway,

(02:11:35):
I've spent decades around politics and now hosts a podcast
of my own. Here here. My question, I a Greek
character should matter most, but I also view elections through
the lens of judicial impact. How do you reconcile not
wanting to vote for a candidate you'd find and qualified
while also opposing the alternative because of how they vote
on judicial confirmations. Appreciate your insight. Well, Ken, Look, I
think this this is how we ended up with Donald

(02:11:56):
Trump as president. I will believe. I believe that of
all the butterfly effects that impacted twenty sixteen, I think
the most important one was Scalia's death. And without Scalia's death,
I think there are some Republicans that more Republicans stay home,
and I think a handful of Republicans just chose not

(02:12:17):
to stay at home over the Supreme Court and voted
for somebody. So the fact is, I'm not going to
say whether somebody should or shouldn't do it right. Everybody's
vote is theirs. The question is do people vote this way?
And the answer is yes, they do. I think Donald
Trump won his first term because of Scalia's death. You know,
I wish I had you know it is you know,

(02:12:41):
it's hard. It's hard to measure because it's hard to
get people. You know. One of the I've had, I
remember Peter Hart, who was one of our founders, one
of the founders of the NBC Wall Street Ternal pull
back in the day, used to say, don't be careful
asking questions that ask respondents to be fortune colors. And

(02:13:02):
so it's hard to get people to say, hey, pretend
this didn't happen, would you still be voting this way? Right?
It is, It's just an impossibility. But I absolutely believe
twenty sixteen was that that was an important counterfactual, absolutely gigantic.
I think there were some character first voters who held

(02:13:25):
their nose on Trump over the Supreme Court. And that's
Scalia's scene because that was it wasn't just any seat
right that was going to that was going to change
in the makeup of the court in a way, right,
just like Amy Conebert was a change in the makeup
of the court because she replaced it with Bader Ginsburg, Gorsa,
Truscalia and theory wasn't a change in the makeup of

(02:13:46):
the court, so it would have been. So you know,
you're asking, I, here's there's a candidate running. My wife
and I've had this discussion. There's a candidate running who

(02:14:07):
we think is a questionable character, and I think it's
you know, I my politics. I'll vote for the other candidate,
or I'll vote for a third party candidate or an
independent if I think they're the other person's unqualified too.

(02:14:28):
My wife would skip the race if she didn't politically
agree with the candidate who had a higher character. She
said that her indicator her she would she would skip
versus not actually casting the vote. I'm more likely to
cast the opposing vote on something like that. But that

(02:14:50):
might be the difference in our politics. You know, mine
is not. I'm not as attached. And I say that
just because I've not I've never been a member of
a party and she has. So I get it. I
get it. But you know, so I understand the different
distinctions there. And there's there's there's choosing to vote, they're

(02:15:11):
choosing not to vote. There's skipping races, there's you know,
there's all sorts of ways to to protest somebody's character
if you're not comfortable voting for. And the question is
what does it take? You know? Right, there was a
great and this wasn't over the judiciary. This wasn't over judges,

(02:15:33):
but the infamous Edwin Edwards versus David Duke race for
governor in nineteen ninety one in Louisiana, where the bumpser
sticker said vote for the crook. It's important right. Edwards
had served time Duke was who he was, and you know,
I vote for David Duke would have created economic boycotts
of the state of Louisiana, would have crushed New Orleans,

(02:15:55):
would have been just an economic disaster, let alone a
moral failure for the state as well. But vote for
the crook it was important, right. That was one where
you felt like, boy, you got to hold your nose
on character on that front. So look, it's a I
think it's the fact is I understand. I Am not

(02:16:17):
going to sit here and tell somebody how they view
the importance of their vote is wrong. I think that's
the beauty of this country, right, is that we all
have things. But if you have a core issue that
you think the courts have more impact on than anything else,
I understand the decision. And it's a different type of decision. So,

(02:16:39):
you know, I remember my father's death. Bet He died
about two weeks after the eighty eight election, and I
helped them vote absentee. He couldn't he was on a respirator,
but he was well aware. We were using a dry
erase board, one of the old This is eighty eight,
so there wasn't a lot of They didn't sell these

(02:17:00):
many boards at the ink wipe being that wasn't a
big thing. We literally used the old toy, the sketch
where you wrote on the thing and you peeled it up.
Forget what they called that thing, but that whole. As
a kid, it was great. You know. My father couldn't speak,
but he could write and so and I remember going
over his ballot with him, and he he was like I.

(02:17:24):
He didn't like the can He liked one candidate for
Senate better than the other, but it was of the
wrong party. And he says, I'm not going to die
with that party, you know, if my party isn't in
charge of the Senate. So we voted party, not person.

(02:17:45):
Now they were both decent character people in that race.
But you know, the point being is, I think there
are all sorts of rationales voters use, and to me,
there's no law that says which rationale should matter the most, right,
there's nothing in that order. And there's certainly enough impact

(02:18:07):
on judicial nominations that this is as good of a
reasoning as any as there is. And like I said,
I think we've already had a president elected almost solely
on this issue. Next question comes from Eric from Denver,
boy Man, this is another one that ends with la

(02:18:28):
cheeser ree the cornhyser. The littles are coming out in
full force this week, he says, not sure if you
follow Ben Thompson at Strategy, but he recently interviewed the
CEO of Parallel AI about a new tool that scores
content based on its value to AI agents, not readers,
prioritizes originality and scarcity over traffic, which could have real

(02:18:48):
implications for independent local journalism. The idea is that as
AI driven research grows, unique reporting, especially local, could become
more valuable and better compensated. Turely but felt directly relevant
to conversations you had having let's she's a Reeric from Denver,
boy I did not know about this. I've heard about
Parallel AI and it does make a lot of sense

(02:19:08):
to me, And I think, you know, this is where
I am increasingly less concerned that we're going to have
like one AI, you know, lead us down some doomed results,
you know, like the movie War Games, and that you know,
AI is going to develop the same way everything else

(02:19:30):
is developed. There's going to be certain AIS that are
more pornographics, certain AIS that are going to be better
at certain things, certain AI long language models that we
better at other things. You'll have ones that specialize in
hard to find research, you know, you'll have ones that
specialize and data and ones that specialize, and frankly, that's

(02:19:52):
the better use, you know, instant we you know, as
long as we're making concentrated AIS, I think it keeps
us away from having this uber you know, I think
too many people think of AI as some like uber
intelligent source that's going to determine how everything works. And
maybe that is the fantasy of Elon Musk as a kid,

(02:20:15):
or of Altman and Dario and all the names that
we're all starting to get to know in the AI space.
But that isn't going to be the reality. And so
I am increasingly of the belief that you know, we're
it isn't going to be one AI. It's going to

(02:20:36):
be like eight. You know, We're all going to have
different models that we are accustomed to because of the
jobs that we have or the interests that we have,
and writers are going to tend to, you know, look
for places that have more arcane research and maybe specialize
in independentness. And I think that that's an asset. And
I think you will see large language models, you know,

(02:20:57):
compete for traffic based on the feature the things that
they believe their large language model is more of an
expert at. And so this could be the market behaving
the way a market is supposed to behave. But I'm
increasingly believing that ais that are sort of siloed, if

(02:21:20):
you will, within certain issue areas, certain specifics, are going
to be the ones that are more relied upon and
the most viable. And there'll be the ones that are
that are easy adopted with ease because it will feel
more like a tool rather than a replacement. Maybe I'm

(02:21:42):
pollyannishing my way out of this, but I'm sort of
leaning in that area. But I definitely want to learn
more about this, but I tend to believe this is
where this is all heading. Greg from Puery, Illinois writes,
how's the plant in Pueria? Gregg, that's what we all
want to know? He goes, welcome to summer here once again.

(02:22:02):
My walking podcast. Right on, I had a question about
campaign financing. How do candidates and parties balance spending between
primaries and general elections and when do those funds start
to run thin? Also Construnger civics education have helped prevent
some of the issues we're seeing today. Well, I will
tell you this, and this is based on a question
we got earlier this week. But the best question I've
got is this idea that no child left behind prioritize

(02:22:26):
the wrong things. And we've never made civics a priority
for graduating high school getting into college. If we want
to improve civics, we know how to do it. We
have to make it as important as English and math,
and we've chosen not to do that. We've chosen english
and math to be more important. Right, how do we
know this? Just look at it, the SAT and the acat.
If we want civics to matter more than we would

(02:22:48):
make it a bigger part of graduating high school and
a bigger part of getting into college. Anyway, I think
that's just it was such an it was such a
tremendous observation by this by this reader, by this listener,
that I want to repeat it loud and proud. As

(02:23:11):
for your specific questions about primaries in general, so for
federal elections, obviously the rules are all the same. And
you know you can raise so you can raise money
for a primary election, and money for a general election,
you cannot if you are in a primary. The money
you've raised specifically for your general election cannot be used
in a primary. But once your primary has passed, if

(02:23:34):
you have leftover primary money, your primary money then can
be used in a general election. Now, if you raise
general election money and you lose your primary, you're supposed
to return it. Now, some campaigns ask their donors, give
them an option, would you like your money back or
we're going to go you know, alternatively, if you don't,

(02:23:56):
this is what we plan to do with the money.
Some of them want to start their own you know,
maybe they want to run for office again. You know,
campaigns don't like to give money back. They don't like
to return money. But in theory, you're supposed to keep
it separate so that you know, it's almost like an
s growth. You raise general election money and you'll see
that sometimes you'll be like, oh, you've raised a ton

(02:24:17):
of money, but a bunch of it you can't touch
until after your primary, and so that can happen. So
that's a that's something that you have to and you can't.
There's no you know, you can't borrow against general election money.
I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but you're not supposed
to and if you get caught that could be real problems.

(02:24:39):
But you know, the FEC is as feckless as they
come of independent agencies. It's basically these days designed not
to work. But in theory it's against the law to
do that, and you could get you know, the charges
can be brought up against you. It could cost you
a lot of money. And sort of think of it

(02:24:59):
as it's an can do an IRS audit. You know
you may and you know, if it's really bad, you
could go to jail. So that's the uh. But there
is so a lot of times campaigns will have plenty
of money in a general, but they're running short of
their primary money and maybe it gets expensive, like I imagine,

(02:25:19):
you know Paxton in Corn. I mean, my guess is
Paxton was running low on cash. Now you can if
you have a runoff, you can usually then get a
third bite at the apple. If you've got a maxed
out donor in the primary and they maxed out in
the general, but you can't touch that money you have
an extra election like a runoff, usually there's you can

(02:25:40):
you can hit them up a third time and get
you know, there's some maxed out donors, you can get
them to max out one more time on what it is,
but that's generally, uh, you know, they're basically they're not
allowed to mix general at all with primary, and you're
only allowed to mix your primary money with the general

(02:26:01):
after you've won your primary, which frankly feels pretty logical
on that front. And that's, like I said, I'm just
describing Senate and House elections. The governor's elections are all
governed by state laws, and they're literally fifty different sets
of loss when it comes to gubernatorial spending. All right,

(02:26:24):
Philly Mike writes, this might veer a little into tinfoil
hat territory, but I'd love your take. I don't mind
a little tinfoil in my hats. There's a pattern some
people point to where Democrats do the hard work of
fixing the economy, Republicans inherit and take credit, and then
things cycle again. Do you think there's any long term
strategy behind the GP is handling Trump's second term or
is that reading too much into it? My totally off

(02:26:45):
base here. Well, there's been a pattern right in the
twenty first century. Bill Clinton handed George W. Bush healing economy.
He had a recession pretty quickly. Now there were some
signs of a slowdown in late two thousand. That was

(02:27:06):
happening at the end of Clinton's watch. Clinton inherited a
healing economy from a Republican president in George H. W. Bush,
and Bill Clinton wouldn't have had near the success in
his term economically if George Bush hadn't worked with the
Democrats to raise taxes in the nineteen ninety budget deal.

(02:27:28):
And certainly Carter handed a crappy economy to Reagan, and
it took a while for Reagan to get a good economy.
But in the twenty first century, right Bush, it was
an economy in tatters once Obama got it. Obama hens
Donald Trump literally a healed economy. And it is whoever
was the next president was going to get a booming economy,

(02:27:50):
and he got a booming economy. Then COVID happened, right,
So damage happens mostly not him. You know, he probably
didn't help things. The economy starts to heal, and just
as it's healing, Biden Trump takes over and then so

(02:28:12):
you know, it's we've we've seen this pattern certainly play
out a couple of times this century, but it's not
new and we've seen the pattern go and reverse in
the in the late twentieth century where healing economy, you know,
on one end ends up helping the person and the
other party. And that's the irony. Right, Presidents get credit

(02:28:35):
for economies created by their predecessor, get credit or blame
for economies that many times have the fingerprints of their
predecessor on. So you know, that's why you hear that cliche.
You know, president's probably get too much blame and too
much credit, too much credit and good economies, too much

(02:28:57):
blame and bad economies. Trump, though, and what he created,
He took a good healing economy and he made it worse.
Trump is the I mean, this is he made decisions
that all you know, left and right said we're probably
going to hurt the economy, and well they certainly did.
So we've not had this in a long time where intent,

(02:29:18):
you know, basically going against the grain. After all the
advice said, this is bad for the economy, don't do it,
whether it's tariffs, whether it's the war with Iran, and
he did it anyway. So this is why this one
could damage the Republican brand of the economy for some time. Right,
this is a distinct brand of Trump economics that's probably

(02:29:42):
going to linger as a negative like Democrats will start
to use, well, you don't want to go back. I
mean the way Republicans used fear of the Carter economy
and Carter weakness against Democrats for a good decade. I
think that the Trump economy is going to be such
a bad be seen as almost like a four letter word,

(02:30:03):
that they're going to be there. It's going to take
a good decade or so for them to get out
from under this this second of you know where where
folks are not going to believe Republicans having answers on
the economy because of what Trump's done on this one.
All right, that wasn't too tinfoily, Mike. You know, you
know somebody that calls themselves Philly Mike, I expect that

(02:30:24):
even more tinfoil. So come on, do better next time.
Let's go down some real rabbit holes in the next time. Anyway,
Great questions is always appreciate it, Thanks for listening, Thanks
for tuning in to the live stream last night. Texas
told you it's a big one. Uh, and we've been
enjoying these live streams. As always, I appreciate you liking
and subscribing. Thanks for your support. I'll see you twenty

(02:30:46):
four hours

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Full Episode - Ken Paxton’s Victory Gives Dems An Opportunity In Texas - Tackling Trump’s Rampant Corruption & Pay To Play Politics