Interview Only w/ Bradley Tusk - Voting On Your Phone Could Be The Future Of Democracy - The Chuck ToddCast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(01:52):
at the center of American politics, business tech uh for
the better part of a couple of decades, and because
there's so much happening in the world of business that
is intersecting with the world of politics, and Washington in
some ways is becoming an epicenter of business in a
derivative way, because it's frankly about a whole bunch of

(02:15):
companies trying to figure out what it takes to keep
Washington out of their business. But that in itself is
a big business. So my guest is Bradley Tusk. He's
a political strategist turned investor. He lives in this world
in between in a political side. He was the campaign
manager for Michael Bloomberg. And when Michael Bloomberg decided he

(02:36):
wanted a third term, which I wonder if in hindsight
he ever. I want to tell anybody who wants a
third term, don't do it. Yeah, third terms never go.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
I'm trying. I was trying to sit here and think
of a good third term.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
There's none, Bradley, there's none. Ask Mario Cuomo whether he
should have run for a third term. Ask Andrew Cuomo
whether he should have been thinking about a third term.
Third term. I Tim Walls is running for a third term.
I want to say, don't do it. There's no good
that comes from it. If you've if you've succeeded enough

(03:09):
that a third term is viable. There's nowhere to go
but down.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
Yeah. I saw a study once it said that after
seven years, no matter who the chief executive is, people
are ready to move on. And that's like every Taco system,
whether it's a dictator or a mayor or a governor
or anything else.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
Right, look at our own history. I mean, I'm a believer.
And this will get to a little bit of our
conversation here a little bit. But you know, I think
any Democrat that is still consumed with Trump is sort
of wasting their time. And I don't mean this. Look Trump,
there's a lot of things he's doing that you that
you may that may impact your life, and you've got
to care about it. I get it, But I don't

(03:47):
think he's you know, we're about to have a debate
about what the post Trump world's going to look like.
And I got to think people need to be focused
on that because he's been in our lives for a decade.
And guess what, nobody ever lasts that long. We're at
the tail end, right, the Reagan Bush eraw basically ended
with the nineteen ninety tax deal.

Speaker 2 (04:06):
Right.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
You know, Eisenhower lasted, you know, you know, his era
was about a decade, Kennedy, Johnson a decade, Nixon even
less than that. I mean, you know, Obama sort of,
you know, but it just we don't we sort of
wear out. And if you look at the modern era
of our presidents going back since World War Two, there's
a reason that sort of a movement sort of petered

(04:28):
out right in that eight to ten year mark in
some form or another, and we're ten years with Trumpere.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
Yeah. Man, I think the question is to me, the
things that he's doing that will go away when he
goes away, and the things that he's done that will last,
of which some might prove to be good, but a
lot of it might prove to be pretty harmful long
term the area. And maybe this is where kind of

(04:56):
my perspective from the business side is a little different
than the typical person in the political world is I
don't like all the rule of law stuff, but I
think that that ends when he ends right. That is
very much a product of him specifically, Whereas some of
the steps he's taking around the economy really do worry

(05:17):
me from a much longer perspective as an investor, because
if I were China and I said I want to
put in the Manchurian candidate, and I want to undermine
the long term strength of the US, our economy, one
of the things you would really go after. So what
are the things to me that make our economy unique.

(05:37):
It's free trade, its intellectual property, it's rule of law,
it's independent markets, independent data. It is getting the very
best people through immigration. So a lot of the fundamental
things that make our economy truly unique, Investing in R
and D, investing in higher ed, all of that are

(05:59):
all things that Trump, for whatever reason, has really tried
to undermine. So I worry more about the impact of
just taking our strengths and undermining all of them than
whateverything he has said today that on truth social that
makes everyone upset. I don't care about that stuff.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
No, I mean, to me, the biggest I've always said
that there's the presidency. Actually there's three different jobs wrapped
up in one. You're being elected to lead your party,
you're being elected to command our armed forces as commander
in chief, and you're being elected to be leader of
the free world. And he has chosen not to be
leader of the free world. And that is something that

(06:40):
the public doesn't realize is a problem until it's gone.
It's a very hard in fact, when you tell people
you want to be leader of the free world, No,
we don't want that. We don't want to be the
beat cop. But as I always say, you know, I
always say when people say I don't want to be
the world's policeman, I'm like, yeah, but somebody's going to be.
Would you rather be us or another country? You may
not want us to be the world's cop, but you're

(07:03):
not gonna like it if China is right.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
Which then how do you explain the other day him
sending allowing the Vida to sell you know, the h
two hundred GPUs to China, right like it? There are
things that I don't get. So for example, he says that,
and look if you were a full free trade you know, absolutist, right.

(07:28):
But then the next day they issue an executive order saying, oh,
States can't regulate AI because it's a national security issue.
It can't be an ob security issue. If you just
took the most valuable thing that your biggest rival would
want and allow the to go to the.

Speaker 1 (07:43):
Well, let's talk about this is actually the heart of
the conversation. I want to have which is, you know,
the business community in general has been frustrated with the
last two Democratic administrations, sure for too much regular, too
much regulation, too much red tape, things like this. And

(08:06):
I get the appeal of, Hey, isn't it great that
you don't have to have an army of lobbyists on
Capitol Hill? You just have to go into the Oval
office write one check or rite you know, or make
one board seat change whatever. You only have to placate
one individual as a hell of a lot easier than
placating you know, thirty members of Congress or ten senators

(08:28):
and all of that stuff. So I understand the efficiency
aspect of this, But are we doomed here because business
such as an easy relationship right now with Trump's version
of the Republican Party, that they're now going to expect
this kind of treatment from all politicians going forward. That
this is something that we can't put back in the bottle.

(08:51):
And I, you know, I'm sorry, I don't trust the
tech industry with AI without guardrails, because I saw what
the tech industry did was social media, which totally destroyed
our information ecosystem. So yeah, but this is the world
you live in, and you're navigating, so you tell me, so, I.

Speaker 2 (09:10):
Would say, for me, the efficiency argument probably doesn't work
because it's it's too risky and too variable. Right, you
were dealing just with winning the favor of one very
mercurial person and who seems to a lot of the
time agree with the last person he spoke to about something,

(09:31):
and so I don't like the notion of basing an
investment strategy or regulatory strategy around that. And to me,
the right analogy is when I have a company that
I'm investing in that has some sort of new disruptive
technology that either we're taking on an entrenched interest and

(09:51):
there's a regulatory fight, or we're cruitting an entirely new
type of industry AI, crypto, flying cars, whatever, and you
need to build a regulatory framework. There's often the question
of do you go federal or do goo state? We
usually choose to go state by state, which is wildly inefficient. Right,
we're talking about fifty different bills or whatever it is

(10:12):
that we rules, whatever it might be that we have
to create or pass. However I can get outcomes. So
in twenty fifteen, the House Energy Subcommittee, on a bipartisan
basis passed unanimously legislation to begin the regulation of autonomous vehicles.
So right now, the US federal government has done nothing

(10:34):
to figure out how to regulator deal with self driving
cars or trucks or anything else. The bill passed the
subcommittee honesty and has never moved since, nor has federal
dot issued any sort of rules whatsoever as to how
this should work.

Speaker 1 (10:52):
This is for presidential administrations.

Speaker 2 (10:54):
Correct, right and at the same time in states that
you can like or not like any individual states rules
around autonomous vehicles, but they have them right, and you
can get to an outcome and even if you don't
get the president you want in one state, you have
fifty bytes at the apple. So oftentimes we're looking at

(11:15):
something and saying, Okay, where do we think is the
right starting point to launch this thing? Based on partly
the economics, so the market you know, and evermarally starts
in California, in New York and Texas, but also from
a political standpoint, where can we win? Because you know,
one of the things that when when I invest in
an early stage tech startup, I genuinely believe that people

(11:38):
are going to really like the product or the service
or otherwise I'm not deploying the capital or making the
investment in the first place, and so like. For example,
the very first tech company I ever did was Uber,
starting in twenty eleven. And my view, which was the
same as Travis's view, was people are really gonna like this,
So we just need to get this thing up and

(12:00):
running wherever we can show people how much better it
is in the taxi system, and then they will fight
for it. And in every market where we prove it,
it gets that much easier in the next market. And
that basically it was a big fight, and it was
city by city in that case, but it turned out
to be right. So I generally think the right strategy

(12:21):
to legalize most technology actually occurs at the unicipal or
state level, and not in Washington.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
It's always been the I mean, look at the recreational
marijuana movement, the medical marijuana movement, same sex marriage. Right,
we've in some ways to create critical mass to convince
Congress that hey, you should get involved in this, you know,
having it emanate. I mean, that's the beauty of federalism, right,
Like that is that is supposed to be the beauty
of the system, which is why I'm glad to see

(12:50):
there's bipartisan concern about a moratorium on state regulations with AI,
and it it is you know that this is I
think this is where if I were, if I were
in this industry, I wouldn't want this. I mean, look
at the public right now. The public approval ratings of

(13:12):
AI are plummeting. Right we are, compared to the rest
of the world, more dystopian about AI than most other
civil societies. I would argue that has a lot to
do with how involved our polarizing president is with the industry.
I actually think if he were less involved, there'd be
fewer doom and gloomers about AI.

Speaker 2 (13:32):
With two caddiats, one is I actually think the political
tsunami and AI hasn't even hate.

Speaker 1 (13:38):
I agree twenty eight is going to be that. I
think it's I think the fear I believe the single
biggest issue in twenty eight, and we'll see it a
little bit in twenty six. He is going to be
fear of AI displacement.

Speaker 2 (13:50):
Well displaced on our jobs, combined with so every data
center requires so much compute and so much energy that
they're expecting it to consumption to double. We're certainly that
doubling supply, which means consumers electric builds are going to skyrocket.
We already saw a little bit of this in Georgia.

Speaker 1 (14:09):
Virginia, I mean Louden County. Man. You know, they were
making all this money lead some land on data centers.
It is now like you know, it's a they've declared
war on data centers.

Speaker 2 (14:21):
I think we're going to see laws passing states this
year that say that localities cannot issue permits and zoning
for data centers without proof that there will not be
a corresponding price increase for consumers and electric bills. And
so you're right, But we had a world where let's
say that unemployment and the job numbers today, I think

(14:42):
further to except that they were valid. Further you know,
support of this thesis that if job displacement keeps going up,
and unemployment keeps rising and rising gets even potentially double digits,
and electric prices keep going up, and because of Tariff's
other consumer prices keep going up, and you know, only
five thirty guys like Sam Altman become trillionaires, but the

(15:03):
rest of the world's you know, that's of the country
city of eighteen percent unemployment. That's the French revolution man,
and I don't think either party necessarily understands that or
sees it coming. I think one, you know, Trump in
his view is like, doesn't matter. The only goal is
to get your hands on as much as you can
before you die. So therefore this at least fits with

(15:23):
his worldview. Democrats, I don't think have any plan at
all from one I can tell.

Speaker 1 (15:30):
No, I don't think they do either, and it strikes
me and I'm curious. Look, I take it you're trying
to help Democrats be more pro business.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
Yes, I mean, in part because that's how.

Speaker 1 (15:43):
You would describe your you know, your sort of your
altruistic goals here.

Speaker 2 (15:47):
Often times, and I think, you know, not counting what
I do out of my foundation, which is totally separate.
But yeah, and I think oftentimes I feel like, and
you might appreciate this more than most people. Both sides
are so dug in that they miss the underlying point. Right.
So you have these Silicon Valley types who are now

(16:08):
very powerful Washington a Mark Injuries or someone like that, right,
and they hate regulation and their Libertarians and that sort
of sounds great in theory, no rules, but in reality
you can't build multi multi billion dollar industries. In the
absence of all structure, you need a certain amount of
rules and regulation. Crypto, right needs a certain amount of

(16:30):
regulation to separate the coin basis of the world the
circles of the world. Companies that I've invested in with
total scams, right, And because there's a lot of fraud
in the crypto world, and there's also a lot of
genuine companies that you can decide whether or not buying
crypto is a good idea. That's up to the individual.
But crypto itself only works because there is some level

(16:51):
of regulation that says this exchange is permissible, this exchange
is not right, so you need that. But then, on
the other hand, democrats, by sort of playing to their
extremes that all capitalism and all wealth is inherently corrupt
and evil in some way totally missed the point because
people need to make a living, and people are aspirational

(17:14):
and want to do well, and so just vilifying everyone
doesn't work either. And the reality is regulation is neither
inherently good nor bad. It's how it's applied. Like, let
me give an example. I was driving once from Santa
Barbara to Alla, and I'm going down the Pacific Coast Highway,
and I'm appreciating how beautiful it is, because you'd have

(17:34):
to be something really wrong with you not to do
that right. And the thing that hit me was, Okay,
what I'm seeing is from my car window the ocean.
The reason why is that they are not gas stations
and you know, Chipolis and whatever else blocking the view
because of regulation. So in that case, I would say,
a good regulation, I didn't get to LA and I

(17:56):
run into all these homeless encampments. Now again, again that's
the product of regulation. Bad regulation in that case, those
are regulations that make constructing affordable housing way too expensive
and difficult, and people don't have anywhere to live as
a result. So basically, zoning regulation on the same street
right resulted in a net positive at one part of

(18:18):
it and negative in the other. And anyone on either
side who just declares unilaterally that something is inherently good
or bad just doesn't understand what they're talking.

Speaker 1 (18:29):
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feels as if the Democrats are looking for the twenty

(20:18):
first century version of Bill Clinton, who who struck this
balance right now. He did it out of necessity. Democrats
had lost three straight presidential elections, all of them were blowouts.
It was sort of you kind of had to have
a Democrat who acknowledged at that point in time. And
I have a friend of mine who we argue, is

(20:38):
the country center right or are the institutions center right right?
The constitution sort of arguably gives the minority a bit.
You know, you could our rules give the current structure
the right side of the spectrum has more advantages. I
could argue fifty years ago that same structure gave sort
of the Democrats a little bit more. But at some

(21:00):
point that is the structure that we live under. But
Bill Clinton sort of you know want, Hey, we should
have a rules based, opportunity focused society, right like you know,
should be fair, equal access and opportunity, and I remember
responsibility and opportunity, right, that balance between the two. I

(21:23):
guess you know. I could say Obama tried to get
that messaging, and he was better about it by twenty eleven,
twenty twelve. Frankly out of necessity, right he was. He
had a tough reelection, and he borrowed more of the
Bill Clinton language or the Teddy Roosevelt language of the
Square Deal things like that. It seems as if we
just haven't found the politician to meet the moment that

(21:45):
we're in. I think we all know them. We want
to be both aspirational but with a I think we
want a stronger safety net, and we haven't figured out
how to. Donald Trump said, hey, I can do both,
but he couldn't. Right, he doesn't really have the He
doesn't really have a political party behind him that actually
wants to do both. And I think there are those

(22:08):
in the Business Committee that don't believe the left wants
to create what you said, a society that allows for wealth,
right right, Yes, they want the strong social safety net.
So with Ultimately, what we really want is strong safety
net and a realistic path.

Speaker 2 (22:25):
And look, it's harder stand the other day, right, So,
capitalism as a system, to me, I think almost just
incontrovertibly is the greatest system ever created because if you
look at the last eighty years since World War Two,
three billion people who were living in extreme poverty now
have clean drinking water and electricity and less infant mortality

(22:45):
and longer life expectancy in higher literacy. You know all
those stats, right, So unquestioningly none of that happens without
globalization and capitalism. Capitalism, when taken into its full logical extreme,
which is kind of what we tend to have here,
often results in a lot of unhappiness and a lot
of people who are frustrated with the system. Because if

(23:07):
the only ultimate goal to be successful and happy is
to accumulate as much status and wealth as possible by definition,
ninety nine percent of people can't be in the one percent,
and those ninety nine percent are upset. So then you
look at it say, okay, well does Finland or someone
have it right, because it's capitalism, but with a much
stronger social safety net, like you said, so, yes, people

(23:31):
there if you look at say the World Happiness Report,
are exponentially happier because both they feel compelled to need
less and they have more on the on the floor.
But when you look at the last thirty years or
so and look at all of the innovation in the
world that has emerged, basically none of it has come
from Europe right other than Spotify, and there's not a

(23:52):
giant tech company that's been invented. So if you were
to say, Okay, the US will be Scandinavia, as the
Left I think would like to see the case, yes,
you will have a higher floor for people, and I
believe in that. But at the same time, there is
something about our system that is incredibly unique and that
encourages the kind of innovation that has lifted the billions

(24:16):
of extremely poor people that in theory the lefts you
care about the most out of poverty.

Speaker 1 (24:22):
Well, I do think I'm one of those who believes
it's because we're a nation and immigrants that we that
if we if we have I think what you're I
think we could we would already be Scandinavia if we
weren't continuing to have fairly open doors, meaning if we
weren't importing more people who want it, who are looking
for the American dream. Like in some ways third and

(24:45):
fourth generation Americans are more satisfied than first and second
generation of Americas.

Speaker 2 (24:50):
So would you say then that, let's say we have
so I would argue, which have exponentially higher legal immigration? Right,
perfect world. You know who was at the quotas the
Bureau of Labor Stistics, because they would say, okay, the
construction industry has this whole.

Speaker 1 (25:07):
Hospitality this by the way, along with the Social Security
Administration where because we need new workers to fund Social Security, correct, right.

Speaker 2 (25:16):
You need tens of millions potentially of people. And that's
not at all exclusive with having strong borders. But the
question is if we said we're going to keep bringing
in the greatest talent from all over the world, and
if we do that, we're always going to have the
kind of innovation we need because those are I'm a
first generation America and I know I was raised in
an immigrant house, so I know exactly what this is.

Speaker 1 (25:35):
You like, right, right, It's always like you were I
mean education. First look, I grew up in Miami, an
immigrant community where it was just you felt it all around.
Everybody in that community even frankly, even the domestic you know,
even those second third generation Americans like myself. You moved
to Miami for opportunity. Nobody was a native of there.

(25:56):
You were there for opportunities. So it had it had
an immigrants mentality, which means it hustlers. Everybody hustle.

Speaker 2 (26:01):
So let's say that we really increase that, which again
does not in any way have to me not having
strong border security. They're not mutual exclusive at all. But
let's say that we said we are going to radically
increase legal immigration so that the people who are the
hustlers are constantly coming in. Right, if you did that,
could you have the kind of social safety net that
Scandinavia has without deterring the innovation that America has because

(26:26):
that combination of the new people constantly coming in takes
care of that problem.

Speaker 1 (26:32):
Well, it depends on when you make them eligible for
the safety net.

Speaker 2 (26:35):
Now, right, Oh, fair point.

Speaker 1 (26:37):
And I think you and I think this is what
I'm what we're talking about here. Some people would say,
as heartless, what do you mean you wouldn't make the
safety net available for the immediate first gen family at
the same You know, I but I think that would
be a debate, and I think that's a fair political
debate to have. Is I don't think when should somebody

(26:58):
be eligible for the social safety net in the United States?
You know, you certainly need to become the citizen, right,
I think that that's a fair that's a fair bar.
You have to do the work to be a citizen.
You have to proact. Now, I'll tell you this. I
remember this great George W. Bush quote when he used
to talk about people coming over there. He goes, anybody
that's going to go over is going to fight the

(27:18):
environmental elements to get across the Rio Grande River. I
want them in America. Yeah, because they're going to be
great workers.

Speaker 2 (27:26):
Yeah, that's totally hart. Well, look, do you remember when
Eric Adams all these migrants showed up in New York
City and Eric Adams made the decision that New York
City would house and feed everyone. Even though I am
wildly promegration and our first generation American, I thought that
was crazy for two reasons. One, so they didn't have

(27:47):
the money to do that. It came to the expense
of sanitation and police and schools and everything else. But two,
my family, your family, you know, millions of families have
come here, and what there are asking for is not
free housing or free food. What they're asking for is
the opportunity to work and to make a living. And

(28:07):
I don't think you needed to provide that because I
think people would have gone to where the jobs were.
Some might be in New York City, a lot might
be at meat packing plants in Iowa or something like that.
That's fine, right, But I don't think you even necessarily
need to at the beginning, because the truth is, most
immigrants just want to work, and the economy has a
lot of holes of jobs that are needed to be

(28:29):
filled that most Americans don't want to do. And so
I think the problem kind of solves itself if you
just let it happen.

Speaker 1 (28:36):
No, I mean, it's by the way, it's been true
if you fought, you know before, if you look at
the immigration patterns at the border pre say twenty fifteen, okay,
and we've had some different surges for different reasons, I
would argue since then, but it usually went if we
had a lot of ope, but if our economy was humming,

(28:57):
there were more people at the border. If our economy
and humming, there were fewer people at the border. I mean,
you know, if you thought you could find work in
the United States, you came. If you didn't think you
could find work, you weren't going to risk your life to.

Speaker 2 (29:09):
Come, right, right, Yeah, I think that that's I think
that that's right, and I think I mean, it seems
like it's a puzzle, right, which is, if you accept
that most people want others to do well right now,
some of us have easier some mentality where literally we
believe that if you win, that means that I lose,

(29:30):
and I think the president has that mentality quite frankly.
But overall, what we're really talking about is enough resources,
enough of a social statety, and enough opportunity and balancing
it so that it's fair so that people aren't starving.
And yet we are still innovating and creating.

Speaker 1 (29:48):
So let me go back to sort of the premise
that I that I really want you to deal with,
which is, is the business community going to see the
Trump way of doing things and not want to risk
of going back And basically, look, you brought up crypto.
Whatever you think of crypto, the industry decided, hey man,

(30:09):
we're tired of waiting to convince the left on this.
We're just going to buy supporters, right. You know, Look,
they're not the first industry to decide to do that,
but it was kind of it's kind of gross just
looking at it from my perspective, You're like, I don't
we're not making We didn't create that. That Genius Act

(30:31):
didn't pass because we thought it was a good idea.
It passed because they bought enough politicians. I could argue, okay,
and we can we can have a we can we can.
You know, I am pro blockchain, less convinced on the
value of of of of the of the coins themselves,

(30:53):
but I accept the pre tokenization I get right like,
I'm I find myself. I'm in I'm in the middle
on this. I worry that the value scam on one hand,
to get rich quick scheme part of it, versus the
blockchain and all of that, which is a different type
of technology. But if I look at if I'm an

(31:15):
upstart industry in any sort, and I look at what
crypto pulled off, why do I want to risk the
other party coming in, who is just at the end
of the day going to be more bureaucratic.

Speaker 2 (31:26):
Yeah, well, but flipping around depends on the industry right.
So if you are the solar and wind energy industry,
you feel exactly the opposite. Right. You felt like under
the Democrats you had the kind of regulatory structure, the
kind of tax credits, the grants, everything else that you
wanted and needed, and Trump came away and came in
and threw the big viewery.

Speaker 1 (31:47):
I hear you. But should any industry be basically at
the whims of which party wins?

Speaker 2 (31:52):
I mean, to a certain extent, that is the point
of democracy, right. I think the bigger question really becomes
who's making the decisions? And to me, the real problem
is a structure one in that if you accept that
in a world of gerrymandering, only the primary matters ninety
plus percent of the time, and Stat's proved that out.

(32:13):
And if you look at primary turnout, which is typically
about ten to fifteen percent, and those voters are typically
the extremes, either the far right or the far left,
or different special interests that can move money and votes,
whether it's fair Shake doing Crypto or the teachers unions
or whoever it might be. And if you accept that
politicians will always do whatever it takes to get re elected,

(32:34):
then by definition they're governing for that ten percent on
each side to the exclusion of everyone else. And I
actually think, you know, if you sat most people down,
you could get eighty percent of people to agree on
a framework to solve almost every single problem we have.
But those people don't vote in primary, so they're disenfranchised.
So one thing that I've been trying to do with

(32:56):
you know, I didn't I can to grow up a
lot of money. We're in government. I didn't make much money.
Then I went into tack and I did pretty well,
and so I've been given it away is to try
to make mobile voting happen, because to me, you're only
going to get primary turnout from ten to say thirty
or forty by meeting the people where they are. Will
people take off from work and line up to vote

(33:18):
for president, yes, But will they do that for city council,
state rep, state Senate. No, they don't. And as a result,
and that, by the way, even congressional primaries have a
ten percent primary, you know, have ten percent turnout rate.
So and yet close to one hundred percent of us
have phones. We live our lives on our phones, our banking,
our healthcare, our love, lives, all this other stuff, and

(33:38):
if we were able to allow people to vote securely
on their phones, we could get turnout from ten to
say thirty, and then all of a sudden, I'm not
sure that any one industry is at much risk of
the whims of a party because it's not being decided
just by the extremes that either hate Crypto or hate
gran energy or whatever it is.

Speaker 1 (33:57):
Well, I just had somebody on as a guest who's
been advocating getting rid of partisan primaries, and I kind
of think that it's pretty clear it is. I put
it this way, I don't see how a taxpayer funded
primary is constitutional. The idea that I think it's actually
a poll tax.

Speaker 2 (34:16):
Right.

Speaker 1 (34:17):
If I tell you the only way you could participate
in this primary is you join a private club and
you could participate in this taxpayer funded election. That's that
seems you know, give where the where are my goddamn
lawyers here?

Speaker 2 (34:30):
Come on, I'm an independent living in New York City
and my vote does not count.

Speaker 1 (34:34):
Well, and that's just that doesn't make It's like, what
are we doing, especially when you look at this youngest
generation and they're registering as independent or no party at
a greater rate than either of the two major parties.
So I do think this might actually fix itself, meaning
a majority of people plurality would prefer a non party

(34:56):
you know, sort of, Hey, I want to I want
to decide, right, we're we're actually all libertarian, you know,
the whole idea of America's libertarian. You know, I would,
I would, I would argue. So I think we're getting there.
But on mobile voting, you know, when you look at
mobile technology through the prism of our banking system, yep,

(35:20):
it's really secure right now. The times that it's not, Like,
there's nothing I hate more than when a credit card
company tells me, hey, you've got to change your number.
We're doing this for your purposes. No, you're not. You're
doing it for your purpose. Like I just hate being
lied to about that. Like it's like no, no, no, no, And
I even tell them, stop reading your script. You're not

(35:41):
doing it for my benefit. You're doing it for your benefit.
But let's you know, let's figure this out. You have
a You're going to have a hard time convincing the
public that because cyber criminal activity exists when it comes
to scamming people out of crypto or scamming people based

(36:01):
on you know, a text message they get and they
click the wrong link, that they're going to have a
hard time believing that the voting is going to be secure.

Speaker 2 (36:13):
Yeah, I mean, I.

Speaker 1 (36:14):
Just think psyched the psyche.

Speaker 2 (36:17):
Yeah, I think that's right. The polling doesn't quite show that.
What's interesting is so before twenty twenty, we polled nationally
and about seventy five percent of Republicans, Democrats, Independence all
said if mobile voting is secure, of course we should
have it. Right after twenty twenty, we pulled again, stayed
in the mid seventies with Independence, and Democrats fell to

(36:39):
the forties with Republicans because of all the doubt cast
on the twenty twenty election. So, to me, the solution
to that, and this is what we're working on right
now by to start running legislation in seven states to
do this is to allow start with local elections and
let cities choose to opt in to offer mobile voting
as one form of voting for council, school board, may

(37:02):
or things like that. So Anchorage is the first city
that's going to do this. They're going to do it
in their April municipal elections and then if we pass
our bills in these different states that would allow cities
to choose to opt in if they want to, to
offer it for local elections only, and then let's see
how it goes. If people use it and it works
and they develop trust, we can move up the ladder

(37:24):
to state and then maybe one day federal. If not,
then then we don't. But I think we have enough.
You can start locally enough to sort of experiment a
little bit.

Speaker 1 (37:34):
What's your So give me some of the tech, the
security things is it?

Speaker 2 (37:38):
Here's how it would work. Location?

Speaker 1 (37:40):
What would it be?

Speaker 2 (37:41):
So you would go on the app store. You live
in Arlington. So let's just say for purposes, you would
download the Arlington Board of Elections app and the first
thing would say, okay to someone named Chuck Todd, really
live in Arlington? Who's registered voter? Last four digits of
your social your address? Okay, now we know that there's
a voter named Chuck Todd in Arlington, but are you
really that person? So first thing is multi factor authentications.

(38:03):
That's like when you figet your password, they send your code,
you put it in the app. Then biometric screening so
they matt scan your face, match it up against your
driver's license or whatever idea you have. Now we know
this is really Chuck Todd. Ballot comes up on your screen.
Ballot is as simple and straightforward as can be. Whenever
you're done and you're ready to submit, three things happen.

(38:24):
Your ballots encrypted, your ballots anonymized, and you get a
tracking code, goes back to the Board of Elections. They
air gap it, which just mean they take it offline
once your ballot is on a flash drive and not
connected to the Internet. Then they decrypt it. A paper
copy of your ballot gets printed out. That gets mixed
in with all the other ballots. You can see where

(38:44):
your ballot stands because the tracking code will show you
it was received, tabulated, printed, and so on. And then
the underlying code itself is open source. So we've spent
the last five years building this thing out of my foundation.
We posted it to GitHub a couple of weeks ago,
so it is now public code. Anybody can use it,
anybody can download it. I don't even known it anymore.

(39:06):
It's just purely in the public domain, and any government
that wants to try to do it now has the
ability to do so. And I've already and I've spent
twenty million dollars my own money so far, you know,
working on all of this, I've already paid for it.
So I feel like, given that we live in a
world where polarization seems to be the contributing factor to

(39:28):
so many of our problems, and polarization is because not
that people are polarized, but because the only the extremes
vote in primaries, and that's where everything is decided. If
you could do something that could make it so much
easier to vote, especially in primaries, and you get do
you remember when Amazon wanted to put their second headquarters
in Queen So part of it went to where you are,

(39:49):
to Arlington, right, and then the other half was supposed
to go to Long Island City, So hundreds of cities
competed for this. New York want a little unexpectedly, everyone's
very excited. The poland shows people are really into it.
Then AOC comes out against it and look for her politics. Fine,
she's anti jobs, business, capitalism, whatever. Fine. So there's a
guy named Mike Gennaris who is a state senator in

(40:11):
Long Island City, Queens. And Mike is just a guy.
He's not good, He's not bad. He's not conservatives at liberal.
He is just a political hack that wants to stay
in office, nothing else, and all things being equal, of course,
it's exciting when your district is picked by Amazon to
be this thing. But now he says to himself, oh shit,
if I support this, I could get a primary from

(40:33):
the left. Turn out I'll be around eight nine percent
based on the data, and the voters in that primary
will be the most left wing voters of my district.
And if AOC supports the opponent, I could lose. And
he had a choice forty thousand, forty thousand new jobs
for New Yorkers that are good jobs with benefits, or
one job his own, and he picked himself, and by

(40:56):
the way, that's what politicians do. But if he did
the same analysis and turn out as primary was gonna
be thirty seven instead of nine, not because he cared
anymore about the voters, the district, the job, whatever, Nothing
only changed, just the math. He would have done the
deal simply because he would have needed to get re elected.
So what if they were not partisan primaries or open primaries,

(41:20):
that would definitely help. But you know, I still think
if you look at places with the open primaries, and
I'm a big supporter of open primaries for local elections.
You still just don't get people going to submit plays.
With mail in voting, it's a little easier, but in
New York where you have to go, people just don't
show up. But you know what, those same people all

(41:40):
have phones, So when they're sitting on the subway or
they're waiting for their coffee or wherever else, if all
they have to do is press a few buttons, then
you can go from nine to thirty seven. I don't
think you can do that when people have to go
show up some money.

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percent off. Let me introduce a counterintuitive point about voting. Yeah,

(43:23):
and I'm not I'm saying this. I'm not saying I
agree with it. So anybody listening that wants to try
to like, you know, aggregate me and sort of say, oh,
there he goes he doesn't want to if you choose not.
You know, it's sort of like I'm not for compulsory
voting like I think you should. I think you should
feel comfortable made. You know. In fact, I think it's

(43:47):
been fascinating that that voter turnout goes down. The more
apathy goes up, the more content and stable our governments are. Right,
apathy goes down a bit more unstable when our leadership
is a little bit more unstable. Maybe that's a good
thing that that people pay more attention, but it is

(44:09):
is more uninformed people voting a good thing.

Speaker 2 (44:14):
You know what, if more uninformed people is more, it's
still a better reflection of the mainstream and therefore democracy
than fewer. And you know, I just when I was
giving a talk on mobilevoting somewhere someone said raise their hands, said, well,
under your as system, we're going to have a TikTok president.
We have a TikTok president, and a New York have

(44:34):
a TikTok mayor mayor.

Speaker 1 (44:35):
Right now, we're already living in the biggest in the
biggest markets. We're already living in that world so we're
we're already there.

Speaker 2 (44:42):
So to me, the thing that I learned I worked
in city government. I worked in you know, I was
in DC, I was sumer's communications director, I was deputy
governor of Illinois. I saw it from really every angle,
And to me, the only thing that you can count
on is that politicians will do whatever it takes to
get re elected. And so even if it's an uninformed

(45:02):
thirty seven percent, a politician trying to sell for an
uninformed thirty seven percent is still going to land much
more in the mainstream than a politician trying to solve
for nine percent.

Speaker 1 (45:13):
Yeah, do you think you're gonna have an easier time
selling more rural states on mobile voting than urban.

Speaker 2 (45:20):
St It's one of the reasons why Alaska's are Alaska
is a perfect Yeah, a perfect example, if not for
twenty twenty. Yes, the challenge I have right now is
that red states don't want to do anything Trump doesn't like,
and he hasn't said anything about mobile voting. But if
you are a paper only in person thing, then clearly

(45:41):
you're not gonna like mobile voting. And so therefore in
blue states, you not only don't have the concern about Trump,
but you actually have the incentive of sticking it to Trump. Right,
So in theory, what you said should have been the
rollout plan, Trump scrambled that. So now the rollout plan
is much more partisan, which I'd say again, I'm not

(46:02):
even an Emerald party anymore, right, So it's not like
I want one party as opposed to another or one
type of state. But I'm going to have mobile voting.
I want ever want to have it. I think realistically,
there's a world that I live in for what I'm
doing through twenty eight, and then there's a new world
that starts in twenty nine.

Speaker 1 (46:19):
That's interesting that you say it that way when you
say there's just a new world, that's you're just are
you sort of plotting and living? I mean I want
more people to be thinking this way, which is, Look,
the Trump era is over. It just hasn't ended yet.

Speaker 2 (46:33):
Yeah, I mean He's gonna go away and norms will
be restored.

Speaker 1 (46:39):
So well, see that's the question. That's what I'm not
I'm now starting to become a skeptical so we never
go backwards, Bradley.

Speaker 2 (46:46):
So I've been asking people who know Dvance specifically this question, right,
because let's say it's any Democrat, we're probably going back
to a more normalized rule of laws system, right. So
now on the Republican side, even someone like Rubio probably
goes back to that. So to me, Vance is the
biggest of the major contenders, the biggest variable. He might

(47:08):
not want to, but remember when Jordan retired and the
NBA kept turning to manufacture these errors to Jordan and
it never worked. Right, you had great basketball players, but
until Lebron naturally came along, you just didn't have it. Right,
Vance and others will try to imitate Trump at every turn,
and it's not gonna work because Trump is an end

(47:30):
of one and for better or worse, he's just unique, right,
and if you try to imitate him, that will probably
look really inauthentic and actually fail. And so Vance would
be my biggest concern about continuation of the current approach
to rule of law. But I kind of think that

(47:51):
people are gonna want change, and I think that he
is gonna refer he has to run on continuity to Trump.

Speaker 1 (47:57):
And look, Vance is discovering this same trap that being
vice president for an unpopular president is like that Kamala
Harris discovered you're never going to be judged on your
own merits, right.

Speaker 2 (48:10):
Right, Well, do you think he learned?

Speaker 1 (48:12):
So?

Speaker 2 (48:12):
Harris clearly regrets not distancing herself from Biden in any way.
Do you think Vance has learned from that? And if so,
when you're the city vice president and a candidate, how
do you distance yourself?

Speaker 1 (48:26):
You can't. I mean the point is just because you
should doesn't mean you can, right, yeah, right, you know, look,
Hubert Humphrey couldn't do it, and he waited too long.
Al Gore to this day did the best version of
it that was possible.

Speaker 2 (48:48):
Right.

Speaker 1 (48:48):
He found he was trying to figure out a way
to show distance on the things that mattered the most,
the concerns that people had, which was the kind of
the personal ickiness of Clinton, right, and Joe Lieberman was
the tonic.

Speaker 2 (49:04):
And so.

Speaker 1 (49:08):
You know what, you know, had Kamala Harris picked Elon
Musks are running made, I don't know. I'm like trying
to think, like who could have been the.

Speaker 2 (49:20):
I'm not sure anything. I don't know if anything.

Speaker 1 (49:22):
Could even al Gore couldn't outrun it. Right, he got closer.
I will always go to my grave believing that race
got competitive because he figured out a way to walk
the line of being, Hey, I'm going to be the
stuff you liked about Clinton, and I'm not going to
allow the stuff you didn't like to happen either, right,

(49:43):
which was but it was hard.

Speaker 2 (49:45):
Yeah, and bother one of the biggest what asks because
if you think about it, let's say Florida. You know,
a few ballots got fully punched through instead of hanging
had tats or whatever. Right, and the outcome is different.
It seems to be there's two very radically differ friend
outcomes that we said of what we had. One is,
let's just see nine to eleven still happens, because it

(50:05):
probably would have.

Speaker 1 (50:06):
Right, I've gone through this. What if I'm curious where
you're going to go. I have an idea where this goes.

Speaker 2 (50:10):
See, you still get Afghanistan. That doesn't change, No.

Speaker 1 (50:13):
But I don't think you realize Rack, it's not just that, Bradley.

Speaker 2 (50:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (50:19):
If at nine to eleven happens under Al Gore, that's
the ninth year of a democratic presidency. So while George W.
Bush was new and could claim the intelligence was new,
then all of a sudden, if Gore's president, then the
whole well, you knew this guy was a problem because

(50:39):
your administration tried to kill him once and missed. You
were on top of bin Ladden, and you still missed this.
I think the politicizing of the intelligence failure under a
democratic administration, which is a continuation of eight years of
a democratic administration, becomes we are far more polarized. The

(51:00):
world we live in today is the world that would
have happened to us September twelfth, ninth, two thousand and one.
Meaning I think we would have gone immediately because it
would have been this was the because he would have
had the same CIA chief probably maybe he had the
same Secretary of State maybe, but you know what I mean.
There would have been more continuation than difference, and it

(51:23):
wouldn't have been a new president. It would have been
right like. So that to me is the is the
dog that didn't mark right, which is well, we were
we could have nine to eleven, could have gotten politicized.
It didn't, right, and it was a unique set of
circumstances for why it didn't.

Speaker 2 (51:38):
But could you have gotten away with the WMD stuff?

Speaker 1 (51:42):
Well, I don't think Iraq ever happens right, right right?
I mean, in that sense it doesn't happen, and we
probably still do Afghanistan. But what I'm saying is I
think we have a far more politicized world because this
wouldn't have been the failure of a new administration. It
would have been the failure of an administration that, in theory,
had been in power for nine years.

Speaker 2 (52:03):
Right, right? I think that's probably right. Can I throw
one crazy idea at you, because.

Speaker 1 (52:08):
Lad, that's what we do here at the Chuck Podcast.

Speaker 2 (52:10):
So, okay, So if you look at sort of modern
political history for the president, let's just say since Reagan,
So there's been seven presidents, including Reagan's nineteen eighty five
of them, I would argue, were rock stars who were
definitely not the most qualified person to win. So Reagan, Clinton,
w to some extent, Obama Trump. The two that were

(52:33):
ultra qualified, Biden and HW both only lasted one term.

Speaker 1 (52:38):
Right, so I call them nineteenth century presidents. They'd have
been better in the non media era, right the at
least for president.

Speaker 2 (52:46):
Americans want rock stars, and my argument is the DNC
or the RNC are the least qualified entities to pick
rock stars. Do you remember that show? I think you
were probably around this age Battle of the network stars.
It's like when I was a kid, right, So, yeah,
what if you did that in say in twenty twenty seven,

(53:08):
where you said, okay, instead of a tug of war
in the mud, go to the waffle house of midnight,
talk to the truckers, talk to the cops, talk to
the college kids, show them all of America and see
who comes and what they talk to you about. Call
inning of a Cardinals game on the radio, whatever it is.
And put candidates in real world situations that are not
totally scripted and not totally packed with party faithful and

(53:32):
just see how they do. Because some will resonate, some
will not. And ultimately you got to pick the candidate
that has that intangible quality. And you're never going to
get that through the debates and the normal primary systems.
You almost need an alternate method.

Speaker 1 (53:50):
Well, you know we have. You know, it's funny, what
if I told you that we had already had that system,
but we didn't like it, and it's called the Iowa CAUCUSUS.
This single grind greatest aspect of the Iowa caucuses is
what you just described, the fact that candidates have to
go into small venues, They have to it's the only

(54:11):
time in the presidential process where you see more personal interactions, right.
And you know, I've always thought that what people don't
understand that actually the two parties that stumbled on a
really smart way to do the presidential primary system. We
start in a super rural state that's very friendly, in
the state of Iowa, and you're being tested, can you

(54:32):
organize ninety nine counties? Like that's essentially what you're being
told to do. You've got to figure out how to organize.
You can't just win DesMoines. You've actually got to show
strength in ninety nine counties. Then with the second test,
we're going to send you to a state that is
cranky independence and in fact they get to decide which

(54:53):
party to vote in and they vacillate Like two thousand
was fantastic. It was really a fight between McCain and
braw to see who could convince more independence to pick
the D ballot or the R ballot. Well, McCain won that,
and therefore Gore won. Had Bradley won the debate with McCain,
Bradley wins the New Hampshire primary, and then the messages said, hey,

(55:14):
this guy is better at winning independence and it's a
test of that. Like I think the parties and we
didn't fully appreciate that the system that we had stumbled
into place you test or actually existed. And what you
have is you had a whole bunch of idiots at
the DNC who said, well, Iowa was too white, and

(55:36):
it is, and they had it, and they applied a
DEI test to the state of Iowa mistakenly realized, not
realizing that by preventing their candidates from learning how to
speak to rural America in a friendly state like Iowa,
that they were going to fail in appealing to rural
America all over the country. So I absolutely agree with

(55:57):
what you're saying. And I'm like, we already had this
system because it tested Barack Obama, it tested Bill Clinton,
and in fact, it was in the small states and
their interactions in the small states that made the country
comfortable with what they what. We weren't sure whether these
were attributes that were going to work or not. So

(56:18):
we had the system, and we're now actually trying to
throw that system away, which I sort of am frustrated them.

Speaker 2 (56:23):
Well because by throwing it, throwing it away and sort
of nationalizing it empowers the people inside the Beltway at
the expense of everyone else. But the problem is those
people like other people who went to Yale and write
in bullet points, and that is not a rock star, right, right,
But let me go back, let me.

Speaker 1 (56:44):
Throw some up at echew, which is which is? And
I've i've I've been working with a company that's basically
popped up, that didn't exist for a while, but now
exists as an entity to help corporations communicate how to
deal with tricky political situations, either with their own employees

(57:06):
or with the outside world. And it's sort of it's
a company now that it's thriving, and there's a lot
of Fortune five hundred companies that want this research, this information, etc.
And what I've come to discover is that basically we're
now looking for the same attributes in our CEOs as
we expect in our presidents as you just defined, right,

(57:28):
which is ultimately we're looking for the best communicator. Right,
we elect the best communicator. We don't elect the best person.
We're electing the best communicator. The companies with good communicators
probably are doing better on Wall Street than the companies
with bad communicators. And I actually think now we're communicating

(57:51):
is so much more important now to success in both
the business world, the political world, the entertainment world, frankly
even the sports world. That it is now a skill
set that is as important as learning how to type.
It is a skill set that it's important as understanding
how to write. In fact, you need to know how

(58:12):
to do that then you do right cursive. Right. I
just think it's a skill set that it's necessary now
and all walks away.

Speaker 2 (58:18):
In my world investing in tech startups, narrative is frequently
more important than economic fundamentals, right, you know, even and
P and L and everything else oftentimes takes a backseat
to who has the narrative, the rhetoric, the sort of
you know, flash that really gets investors excited, and that's

(58:42):
what drives evaluation. Look, think about AI right now. You
take two companies and you call one of them AI
and one of them not you think to be the
same company. The AI one has doubled evaluation immediately, right.
I mean, I would even argue that a lot of
the spending the open aiyes and the Navidias are doing

(59:03):
on data centers and everything else is really short term
narrative and profit seeking disguise as long term plan. So
it looks like you're saying, oh, I'm thinking twenty thirty
years out, and the market loves that and they reward
it with higher share prices or higher valuations if you're
still a private company, and in reality, we have no

(59:26):
idea what we're actually going to need to power AI
in twenty or thirty years, because the answer might be
that we don't need nearly this much compute, right, maybe
the influence model works. I'm at a company that is
literally using rat brain stem cells to try to power compute.
Whether it works, who knows, right, But like, there's lots
of different ways to go about it. And I think

(59:48):
that if your Jensen want you know, you say, if
I announced I'm going to spend a trillion dollars on
data centers, my valuation goes way up immediately, and the truth,
by the time that the bill comes due, I'm probably
long gone. My shares became worth more and more money
in the short term, and even if all that debt

(01:00:09):
goes bad and people's four oh one k's get wiped
out as a result, not really your problem. So yeah, narrative,
you know, for better and for worse, you know, it
has overwhelming influence over everything else.

Speaker 1 (01:00:21):
No, and it's like, it's not just politics, it's it's
it's business. Let me get you out of here on
this is is it better to be a public company
or a private company in twenty twenty five and in
twenty twenty.

Speaker 2 (01:00:34):
Six, that's a great, great question. I believe that tech
startups stay private for too long. And the reason they
stay private oftentimes is it's easier you don't have all
the scrutiny of the market and analysts and investors and
all of that. And b oftentimes they're really overvalued and

(01:00:56):
they're afraid to go to the public markets because they're
going to face a deep cut in the share price.
They might have a good IPO day, but then you
look six months later and it's down seventy percent, and
that's because fundamentally the company was never worth what people
like me said it was in the first place. And
we tell me if this is a little too technical,
but in the venture world, we have gotten into a

(01:01:18):
game where the real way for people to make money
is have more AUM assets under management, because you get
a two percent fee. So if you can have billions
of dollars of AUM it doesn't really matter what your
investment performance is because the management fee is worth tens
of millions of dollars and if you're the you know,
the main GP, you can pocket that. And so as

(01:01:39):
a result, if you are raising much more money than
you need to get that two percent, you have to
deploy it at much higher evaluations to make the math work.
And everyone's in on the joke from sort of the
earliest stage, you know, investor to Fidelity, whoever at the
Series F for g. And then they know that it
all works for as long as are not exposed. And

(01:02:01):
what exposes it is often the public markets. As I
think tech companies stay private for way too long as
a result, and that is really harmful to the employees,
to consumers, to a lot of other people. So I
think that ultimately I would really like to see the
speed to market increase.

Speaker 1 (01:02:21):
How would you incentivize that because right now, I mean,
I'll be honest, is as much as look, I'm an
advocate of the public markets. I think the public markets
are for all the reasons you just said, right, It's
a way to protect employee rights and all those things
you have. You know, it's having another set of eyes
on everything. But I think the incentive is to stay private,

(01:02:45):
and atentive is But if you so, how do you
incentivize the public. How do you incentivize.

Speaker 2 (01:02:49):
Driven by the institutional capital allocators, meaning the giant pension funds,
the sovereign wealth funds, the endowments that give hundreds of
millions of dollars or billions of dollars to a private
equity fund of entra capital fund, whatever it is. Because ultimately,
every year that the company stays private, the RR of

(01:03:11):
the pension fund goes down. Right, So the people who
ultimately control the money are way too lax in the
requirements and pression that they put on the funds that
they invest in.

Speaker 1 (01:03:22):
And so you think that people running the pension funds
could put more pressure in these private companies. And you
want our if they want our crash, you need to
go public.

Speaker 2 (01:03:31):
Yeah, they said to Sequoia, if you don't get your
average company from your investment to an IPO down by
twenty five percent, we're not doing your next fund. At
the next board meeting, the person with Zaquoia on the
board is betting in the table, saying we got to
get to the market faster. So that's where the power
lies in this situation. And I really think that in

(01:03:52):
some ways because the public pension funds especially or look
when I was deputy governor of Illinois, like I saw this.
We would appoint people, but there are pointees right to
the pension funds. They weren't business people and as a result,
they're often poorly run. And you know, they are more
eager to be able to say I'm in sequoia, I'm
in in grease and whatever it is KKR. Then it

(01:04:15):
is demaining that the leaders of those funds be accountable
and provide really good returns. And so you know, that's
where it has to come from.

Speaker 1 (01:04:29):
Anybody, uh, anybody getting grabbing your attention for twenty twenty
eight that you're excited about yet.

Speaker 2 (01:04:34):
Or no, because in part, if you go back to
the conversation we had about twelve minutes ago, I would
say that I don't know who the rock star is yet,
and I know that if I just find the look
you know, like you people come through New York and
they're rising money or whatever in the car.

Speaker 1 (01:04:52):
Yeah, you meet these people, right you kick, they're smart,
anyone's for president smart, they're impressive. Well, they're they're also
super narsiss. I always say this, like you run for president,
You're like, boy, you know you're You're a bit different
than most of us who don't think we should be right,
but you're.

Speaker 2 (01:05:08):
Good at this. And so I don't trust my own
reaction in those meetings. And I've spent a lifetime around
politicians because I understand what they're really good at, and
that's what they're really good at, and so I don't
maybe it's you know, returned to the version of Iowa,
but I would like to see something that shows me
because look, I'm a rich guy in Manhattan, right. I

(01:05:31):
am not an any way indicative of America, right you.
I live in downtown, I went to Ivy League schools.
I'm everything that the that the right hates right many ways,
and I'm not a good barometer for who's gonna win
Iowa or New Hampshire. And so for me, what I'm

(01:05:51):
trying to do is know what I don't know. And
rather than saying, oh, Josh Shapiro is the guy, Yeah
he might. I don't even know Josh Piera, but he
might resonate really well with in a one on one
launch or whatever it is. But so what right, So
I would like to try to figure out a way
that who is the candidate that can do what you

(01:06:12):
talked about, which is they figured out how to navigate
the independence in New Hampshire, they figured out how to
organize ninety nine counties in Iowa, and then through that
you knew this person has the intangible skill.

Speaker 1 (01:06:25):
Well it goes back. You know, it's funny you brought
up the Battle of the Network Stars. By the way,
if you if you ever want to entertain yourself, go
look at go go watch highlight reels of that on YouTube,
because they haven't. Okay, oh my god, it's it's fantastic.
It's unbelievable, right you just see the You're like, how
much cocaine was being done behind the scenes, right, there
is no doubt, Like you wouldn't have it if there

(01:06:48):
was it, like you know, the amount of like crazy
s seventies coke that was taking place. But anyway, that
ought to be actually a pretty good Netflix limited series
like behind the scenes and the battles and would starts.
I'm sure it'd be you know.

Speaker 2 (01:07:03):
Just hilarious investing and we're going to make the show.

Speaker 1 (01:07:06):
Let's make that show. It would be you know, tell
us the real story of Farah Faucet and Lee Majors,
you know, like those those sorts of things. But there
is a series of tests that we want these candidates
to go through. And while I don't think we want
it to look like Survivor or a game show, in

(01:07:26):
some ways I do. I do like that there are
all these weird obstacles in the primary calendar, or that
there used to be, because while it doesn't test you
on whether how you're going to handle Putin, if you
can't handle you know, the person that you got to

(01:07:47):
deal with in Columbia, South Carolina, that that in order
to navigate you know, precinct, why well, then how the
hell do we expect you to be able to handle
a tough moment with Putin? Right?

Speaker 2 (01:07:58):
So, the modern version that actually is the candidates who
are truly adapt to new forms of technology, whether it
was Kennedy and television or Obama and text, or Trump
and Twitter or Mandani in short form video, they do
really well because that becomes the way to do it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:18):
No, it's a you're not wrong, it's like how do
we how do we how do we sort of celebrate
that part of the prime because you know, there's plenty
of people who will criticize our conversation. You're trying to gamify.
It is sort of, it's not gamify. It's simply finding
the person who's got the best attributes to handle how

(01:08:39):
the job is done today.

Speaker 2 (01:08:40):
Plus a binary contest is a game by definition, right,
So like we're already in that construct.

Speaker 1 (01:08:49):
Yeah, well, mobile voting, when will we see the first votes.

Speaker 2 (01:08:54):
April in Anchorage? And then my hope would be a
whole bunch of these in different states.

Speaker 1 (01:09:01):
What does success look like to you? Fifty turnout? Like
huge increases, You're not.

Speaker 2 (01:09:05):
Going to get that in year one. So Estonia is
the one country in the world that has had internet
voting for twenty years. I went over there this summer
to kind of meet with a lot of people and
learn more about it. So in year one it was
one point three percent of voters voted online. Today it's well,
it's a significant majority, right, And they went from having

(01:09:27):
higher national turnout and low local turnout to sort of
normalize get across the board, whereas now even Musp elections
are getting fifty instead of five because people just got
used to it and it just became so easy that
there's no reason not to do it. So that's what
I'm going for.

Speaker 1 (01:09:43):
Hey, in nineteen ninety five, the state of Oregon ran
this interesting experiment for mail in voting. It was the
special election to replace Bob Packway the entire West coast.
Now it majority votes by mail. Yeah right, you know,
and that was just thirty years ago.

Speaker 2 (01:10:00):
So that's that's what I'm hoping to do here.

Speaker 1 (01:10:02):
Yeah, well, I'll be watching rather than this great conversation
and this was.

Speaker 2 (01:10:06):
Super fun and yeah, absolutely loved it to meet and
sort we'll do it again, all right, See, thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:10:14):
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there's a reason Morgan and Morgan is America's largest injury
law firm. For the last thirty five years, they've recovered
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(01:10:58):
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Interview Only w/ Bradley Tusk - Voting On Your Phone Could Be The Future Of Democracy

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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;}Interview Only w/ Bradley Tusk - Voting On Your Phone Could Be The Future Of Democracy