July 10, 2024 • 46 mins
Nate and Maria really, really, really want Joe Biden to drop out of the race.
Maria gives a psychological consult on the best way to convince Biden to quit. Nate estimates Biden’s chances of defeating Donal Trump if he stays in – and Kamala Harris’s chances of winning the election if she replaces Biden.
Also: An update from the Main Event of the World Series of Poker.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Hi, everyone, welcome back to Risky Business, our podcast about
making better decisions. I'm Maria Kannakova.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
I'm Nate Silver.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
So today we're going.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
To be doing a little bit of a deep dive
into the political situation that is a Joe Biden, and
then we'll be talking about the World Series of Poker.
It is currently the main event, and we are taping
this right before I go play day three. I'm running
on about four hours of sleep, but I'm very excited
to be here Nate, and we're going to get totally
(00:54):
psyched up to play by talking about the amazing decisions
that the United States political machinery is making.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
I got a great night's sleep after having gotten knocked
out of the main event on the last level. There
is more poker later this week, but good luck to you, Maria,
Thanks so much, Nate.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Let's do a quick recap.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
So last time we spoke about the elections, it was
right after the debate, which I think the scientific consensus
was it was a total cluster fuck.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
It's epic shit storm, I think is the.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Okay, actually perfect, I'm sorry, total cluster fuck. That's a
little less than shit storm, right, No, actually.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
I think you're right. It's like a it's a shit
storm inside a black hole, inside a cluster, fuck inside.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Of fucking Okay, that sounds reasonable. So that's where we
were last time. We are recording this on Tuesday morning,
Vegas time. Now it's been a week and a half later, right,
something like that.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Two weeks later.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Yeah, it's been it's been twelve twelve restless nights for
the since the debate for Joe Biden and the Democrats.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Yes, and things have gone up and down. Right in
the immediate aftermath of the debate, it seemed like people
were absolutely horrified. And then Joe Biden is now going
on his I'm not resigning tour.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Look, some comeators. You know. Benji Sarlin's a very bright
reporter for Semaphore and talks about the kind of mutually
assured destruction scenario that Biden is presenting for Democrats right
where he's saying basically, well, I'm going to be the
nominee whether you like it or not, and so anything
you do now will just put me in an even
worse position against Trump. Right, So first of all, let
(02:32):
me stay this is like actually not Biden's only option.
Biden has the right to stand down. The ballots are
not been printed yet. That's all misinformation, right, we haven't
had the convention yet. By the way, it's actually technically
speaking not the Democrats only option. There is a conscious
clause in the convention which says, if you're in you're
(02:53):
good conscious, you think this guy should not be the nominee,
then you are not legally bound to vote for him. Now,
ninety eight ninety nine percent of the delegates where people
selected by Joe Biden. When you vote in the primaries,
you vote both for a candidate and for his or
her Dell gets the convention as chosen by the candidate, right,
So they're loyal to Biden. But there also weren't really
(03:14):
necessarily planned for a scenario like this. There might be regular,
normy Democrats who are kind of local party leaders. If
you look at polling now of Democratic voters, it's actually
pretty close. I think in one poll which was put
up by group it's advocating for this, So take that
with a grain of salt. Right, In one poll, a
majority Democratic voters actually said they prefer to have an
open nomination process to Biden. I mean, I don't know
(03:36):
what kind of cave people are hiding in. But like
the concern about Biden's age and the debate is certainly
not confined to uh, just elites, right, I mean, it's
with registered impuls of voters for a long time, for months,
for years, voters have said, sorry, we tolerated up to
age eighty one, which he is now, right, but another
(04:00):
another six months this plus another four years eighty six,
that's not going to work for us, right.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
And if you talk to like, has that has that
clause ever been used?
Speaker 3 (04:10):
I don't think so. But look, the general no, I
mean I don't. Well, look, I mean it depends because
before nineteen seventy two, roughly then, it was kind of
a smoke filled rooms scenario where parties would have minimal
to no input from voters. The primaries are mostly for show,
and then they get going to the convention, like actually
pick the candidates what the convention was for? You know,
(04:31):
Since then there hasn't been a situation where the superdugets
had to be invoked, although it was close in some years, right,
you know, Hillary versus Obama was fairly close. For example,
there was talk on the Republican side where Trump at
one point had a plurality, but not a majority of delegance.
In twenty sixteen, he wound up though sweeping the last
(04:52):
twenty percent of states to have a clear majority in
the end. But look, I mean, the reason you write
emergency procedures is for emergencies, and Democrats are in kind
of an emergency. I'm not going to be one of
those peoplehos like, oh Trump gets elected, it's going to
be the last election. I think it's probably hyperbolic, right,
but like one of your goals as a party is
(05:12):
to elect winning candidates and win elections, and Joe Biden's
probably not going to beat Donald Trump. And in fact,
even Democrats if you read the reporting, even Democrats who
say we can't switch candidates, if you talk to them privately,
they say, we think Biden's gonna lose. We just don't
think we have a choice, right, we want to save
down ballot racist things like that. It's just not very rational.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
I don't think, no, I mean, and it's a you know,
it's a problem that you get in decision making a
lot when it's a collective action problem and you need
that one person to step up and to say something
and to actually be the person who becomes that voice
that says, Okay, we need to say publicly what everyone
is saying privately. But unless that happens, that galvanizing force
can't gain momentum. And so many times then in these
(05:58):
decision making processes, and by the way, right right now
we're talking about the presidency, which is huge, but this
happens in boardrooms, this happens in corporate decision makings, This
happens everywhere when everyone is thinking something privately but they
can't say it publicly because they're too afraid of the repercussions.
And the calculus just doesn't work out if we put
(06:19):
it in our game theoretical framework. Right, you start looking
at the payoff matrix and you say, okay, what's my
payoff matrix? If I'm the person who speaks out and
then people don't support me and all these things happen,
and then I'm the one who loses. And Biden is
actually playing into that because he's stacking it. He's explicitly saying, Okay,
your payoff matrix looks like shit because you know I'm
(06:41):
going to do this, and you don't want to be
the person who betrayed me, right, you don't want to
be Buddhists in this scenario.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Well, look, I don't think he's going to be president
for much longer. I'm not sure he's going to be
an influential political figure for much longer, or in good
health if he is already for much longer. Right, Look,
I have an article I'm running on I'll finish for
newsletter subscribers after we finished taping this podcast. I think
Biden has a weekend and it's running a pretty bad bluff.
And I think who select to go into politics tend
(07:11):
to be what I would call knits meeting there. We've
used that term before on the show, right, And it's
like a neurotic riskivers person, and elected Democrats are like
neurotic and riskivers and also very people pleasing. You advance
in the party by by building alliances and the different
constituents and commitments you have finding ways to balance those
(07:34):
pleasing donors, which sounds like the worst thing in the
world to me, right, to have like some rubber chicken
dinner where you're pleasing these donors who are rich but
have dumb opinions about politics most of the time.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Let's be honest, Yes, you know that sounds like that chicken,
especially public offer IPO chicken because when you go to
IPO dinners, they always serve this rubber chicken.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
So yes, they have IPO chicken dinners.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
That life sounds like torture to me. You couldn't fucking
pay me enough to be a fucking center or something
like that. However, it selects for people who are not
inclined to rock the boat. But look, there are several
things here. What is that Biden has Clearly the first
move was to get Biden to take a hint gently.
(08:18):
I mean, the first move is you hope that he
kind of is aware of the situation on his own right.
The first move is said, get Biden to take the
hit gently and then maybe not so quite so gently,
where you start to have anonymous leaks and then you
have backbenchers meaning relatively obscure members of Congress kind of saying, hey,
you should think about this. As far as I know,
as far as any reporting has suggested, there has not
(08:39):
been like a posse of senior leaders who has gone
to the White House and said, Joe, we're not fucking around.
You're gonna lose, You're gonna embarrass your party, You're gonna
embarrass your position in history. It's time to stand down.
So far as I know, that hasn't happened. Really, they
have kind of gone halfway up the escalatory spiral, but
(09:00):
they haven't really used their best ammunition yet. Never mind
these nuclear options like the conscious Clause or the twenty
fifth Amendment is an amendment to the US Constitution that
CanCERN if a president is unable to carry out his
duties and the cabinet can say that the vice president
ought to take over. I also think that like they
haven't fully played the Kamala Harris card, and I want
(09:21):
to talk about Harris in kind of the second half
of this segment. But like you know, one of the
ironies is that the Congressional Black Caucus has been what's
helped Biden to save ground, to salvage ground so far right,
I don't think there have been any Congressional Black Caucus
members who have come out yet and said that Biden
(09:42):
should step aside. There have been many who said that
he should not step aside, and so you know that
has been very helpful to him. But if Biden were
to step aside, the most likely replacement would be, you know,
the first woman president or the first woman. I guess,
you know, I know you would take over immediately, But like,
but Kamala Harris, who could become the first woman president
and a black woman and an Asian woman as well,
(10:04):
So it seems like I don't really buy. Look, my
preference is that you'd have some type of voter input,
more open nomination process. But like, it seems like, do
they really prefer Biden to a black vice president who
was at this point in her life much more capable
than he is? Right, eighty one year old Biden's not
more capable than Kamala Harris. I mean, he's not right,
(10:26):
he's not prosecuting the case against Trump. He's not capable
of like being up time when you need a potential crisis.
I mean, you can think Kamala Harris is a mediocre
at best politician, which I do, and she might not
be your cup of tea. But like, but it's just
a bizarre argument that like, you know, so I think
if if they said, Okay, we might not have enough
leverage to have this West Wing Aaron Sorkin fantasy convention,
(10:50):
that Nate Silver might like, right, do you not have
the leverage to say, let's agree that Kamala Harris is
a less bad option, right, she is capable of actually
prosecuting the case against Trump. You're not lying to the
American public about her fitness for office, and you know what,
she'll probably lose, but like, but Biden's probably gonna lose too. Like,
(11:11):
what's the world in which Biden wins that Harris doesn't win.
I mean, it's like the world where Biden win, involved
world where the polling is so far off that we
don't know what I'm gonna begin with, or where like
Trump goes to jail or something, and like, like any
Democrat can win into those conditions, any any halfway competent democrat.
Maybe we're not gonna get more than a halfway competent option.
But like, I mean, look, we're in Nevada, not Nevada, right,
(11:33):
Nevada Nevada's And you see ads in Nevada because it's
a swing state, which New York is not. Saw some
Spanish language ad for example, where they're like, you know,
Joe Biden is very competent, he is a steady hand,
and like he does not have a steady hand. I
mean literally, I'm not sure he has a steady hand. Anymore.
I don't mean to diagnosed semtically, but like, but you
(11:54):
can't project we are the campaign that is just a
steady hand competence, no chaos anymore. Right, that cat is
out of the bag. It's too late for that. You're
selling people on a lie like it just you know,
the honest thing to do is to say, we chose
this woman to be vice president, and she has served
(12:16):
as vice president for three and a half years. Now,
at any moment she could become president. Joe Biden could
have a heart attack, there could be some type of
attack on whenever Joe Biden is located. We elected people
elected Kamala Harris to be vice president and clearly you're
in a situation where she is more fit to be
president than Biden over the next four years. And like,
(12:40):
what's it say about her or what's it say about
like how cynical the decision was, Like maybe you picked
her in June twenty twenty because you're in a period
summer twenty twenty when you're in a period where there's
a lot of this racial reckoning, so called right, but
she is a center from California, She's been in this
attorney right, she is like someone who I think is
(13:01):
generally regarded as being very smart and competent. The problems
were mostly the fact that like that, like politically she
wasn't a very compelling hand ain't unless have some upside potential,
But like, what is it saying that these people don't
trust her in a circumstance where she you know, I
think obviously it seems more fit for the job now,
let alone for four more years.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
So what I but I actually so, I don't think
we're I don't think what we're seeing is as much
what it says about Kamala Harris. I think it's more
what we're saying about delusion and doubling down, and what's
going on psychologically with kind of with the Democratic Party
and with Biden himself. So I think there are a
few different real real fallacies happening here and real real issues.
(13:42):
The first is that Democrats are saying, you know, Biden
is a good man, like we can convince him to
step down by kind of these these subtle hence, these
subtle you know, he'll see the light. What they don't
understand is that when you attack someone's core identity, right
who they are, how they see themselves, what their reason
for being is. That does not work, and what ends
(14:05):
up happening is you double down and you really do
not see kind of the light. And I think that's
that's even worse with Biden right now, because he is
degrading a little bit when it comes to cognitive capacity.
We all know see the world through rose colored glasses,
you know, have this kind of better than average effect
(14:26):
where we think we're you know, better, et cetera, et cetera.
But in the case of someone who is president right,
who has that kind of hubris, who's been reinforced over
and over and over, that's going to be completely doubled.
I've wrote an article a number of years ago from
The New Yorker called I Don't Want to be Right,
and it's basically about how difficult it is to get
people to change their minds when the essence of who
(14:49):
they see themselves as is attacked. And so relying on
Biden and trying to appeal to his good nature to
step aside, that is not going to work. And we
see that actually backfiring right now. We see Biden saying,
you know, I'm not going to step aside. I'm going
to fight, and it's obviously not helped that he has
people around him like Hunter likes Joe Biden who are
(15:12):
telling him, Oh, no, this is great, this is wonderful.
And then the flip side of that is that you
have this party that is a.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Little bit kind of I don't know if diluted.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Is the right term. It's a little strong, but it
might be correct. So I think we've talked on the
pod before, maybe not about how I see the Trump
supporters as basically being cult followers, right, doesn't matter what happens,
They're in this cult. So they're going to rationalize everything away.
No red flags are actually red flags, and instead they're
(15:45):
going to kind of go through this cognitive dissonance reduction
so that they end up saying, no, this is still
the best candidate, this is wonderful, this is great, like
no matter what, we're voting for him. And I actually
see think we're seeing a little bit of that in
the Democratic Party, where it's not a cult, but it's
more like Stockholm syndrome ish where they're also rationalizing away
(16:06):
the red flags. And I think that actually intersects with
what you were talking about with the risk aversion factor,
because they're scared and they're scared of taking this kind
of this gamble. They're scared of doing something unprecedented, and
that is self reinforcing. So you have that, and then
you have the kind of the delusion of no, everything's
going to be okay. This isn't actually a red flag.
He just had a bad day. And the more you rationalize,
(16:29):
the easier it becomes to rationalize, and the more you
actually start believing that this is reality. Because in the
immediate aftermath of the debates, you were like, holy shit,
were fucked right, And then like the next day you're like, oh, well,
maybe it wasn't so bad. And then two days later
you're like, Okay, really it wasn't so bad. You know,
you kind of start rewriting history, you start rewriting the
way that you perceive it, and you end up in
(16:51):
this place where you're pretty divorced from reality. And that
is a really dangerous place to be. And I think
that might be kind of where we are right now.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
So let's say I commission you some I'm Barack Obama,
right and you're my PhD Columbia psychologists, and I say
I need to devise a plan to get Joe fucking
Biden to quit, and I have a week to do
it before we reach the point of no return. I
can use any trick in the book, as long as
(17:40):
it's not illegal, any psychological trick in the book. What
is a plan to make Joe Biden think it's in
his best interest to quit? Or is it not a
matter of or is a matter of playing pure hardball?
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Well?
Speaker 2 (17:53):
I think I think that there can be too approaches
to it. First, I think you do need to be
completely straightforward with him and straightforward with the people around him. Right,
you need to sit Hunter and Jill down as well
and be like, stop fucking around, like this is bad, right,
and get that, get that out of the way. But
then I think you need to be straightforward with him,
and you need to do it in a way that
does not attack who he is, but actually reinforces it
(18:17):
and says, you know, you want to go down in
history as the great president who stopped Donald Trump. The
only way to do that is by stepping aside. These
are all the amazing things that you would be doing.
This does not make you look weak. It's not because
you're old. Of course, we know you're competent. Of course,
we know what you're doing the other people are idiots, though,
(18:38):
and you need to understand political perception. You need to understand,
you know, how people are reacting. They're not rational, but
it doesn't matter because you know that's who we're dealing with.
So you need to be the bigger man and do
the right thing. And you're smart enough to do it.
You're competent enough to do it. You know, you're brilliant,
use your brilliant mind to step aside and do the
(18:59):
strategically correct thing to save the country from the brink
of disaster. So you're doing several things right. You're playing
to his ego. You're not saying he's weak, you're not
saying he's too old, you're not saying you're not attacking
him in ways that make him feel attacked. And instead
you're trying to say, okay, how do you cement your legacy?
And honestly, I might even do something like pull the
(19:20):
RBG card and say, you know, let's let's look at RBG.
You know someone who was this absolutely brilliant mind.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
Charles Carls Dickens film where the Ghost of RBG Comes.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
From, the Ghost of RBG comes. You know, I can
dress up as RBG. You said, pull out all the stops, right,
we can get some CGI special effects and I might
be a little taller than she is, but you know,
we'll figure it out actually work.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Because Biden said, if the God Almighty came down right, Like,
I'm thinking there's like a twenty percent chance, like if
you actually stage that in the clever way, would actually work.
And I'm like, I had some vision and like, you know,
give him some stroom gummies. It's probably it's probably probably illegal.
I didn't mean to suggest that.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Yeah, so we're not going to do anything illegal, but yeah,
I mean you could even pull that RBG card the
ghosts of the ghosts justice has passed and saying, you know,
I bet, like I actually bet that if we if
we got the ghost of RBG on the pod, she'd
regret her decision after she saw what happened. You know,
she was a smart woman. She just let her ego
get in the way. And I think that that's what's
(20:24):
happening here. And you can compare, I mean, if you compare, Biden, like,
I think the key also is to find other good
historical precedents of people who he admires and who he
thinks you know, are strong leaders who did something like this,
who you can be like. You know, you can be
like or you can be like RBG right, like you
can do you can do these things. And it's not
(20:45):
about you the whole thing, right, we always talk about
you look at all these presidential addresses over you know,
hundreds of years, and it's all about it's not about you,
it's about the country. It's about the greater good. And
so to try to kind of get to that and
have him hear it, and the only way he's going
to hear it is if he doesn't feel attacked, and
(21:06):
if he doesn't feel like you're disrespecting him, if he
doesn't feel billittled, if he doesn't feel like you're talking
to him like an old man. Because he does not
see himself that way, I think it's really important to
project to him the way that he sees himself. He
sees himself as still that young, capable senator who can
do anything. In the debate, that became very clear because
(21:27):
when he was asked, you know, what do you say
about the age about the age complaints, he was like, well,
I used to be the youngest, and everyone is complaining
about my age. Well, that doesn't answer the question, but
that actually gives you a really really interesting psychological lens
into what's going on in his head. In his mind,
he's still the youngest, he can still make it work.
He just has off days. He is doing that exact
(21:49):
same rationalization, and I think he truly truly believes it.
I do not think he thinks he's slipping, and he
can rationalize away like one bad day, et cetera, et cetera.
And if he actually has diminished cognitive capacity, then once
again it's going to be much that much more difficult
for him to see reality. So the way the best
(22:10):
con artists operate is to sell people the vision of
the world that they already believe is true. And so
here I'm suggesting we use the persuasion tactics of con
artists to try to gently get persuade Biden to do
what's best and make make him think that it's his
own idea. That's the other thing that they do. Right,
(22:32):
Instead of saying like give me your money, they make
me say, Nate, you know, I think you really want
to give me your money.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
And you're like, hey, you know what, Maria, I.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Really want to give you my money, and so I
think that's what we need to do with Biden, so
that he ends up thinking himself, you know what, maybe
I do want to step down. Maybe this is really
for the best of everything, and maybe this is how
I cement my legacy as the great man that I
know that I am.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
What's challenging is that you have two kind of games
in the sense of things that game theory might apply
to going on at once. On the one hand, you
have this private tactic that you're talking about, right, and
the senators, supposed to the representatives are mostly saying things like, well,
I was troubled the Susan Collins if you're a politics
(23:18):
and I was troubled by what I saw on the debate,
And I've gone back to my constituents to see what
they think. But I wouldn't want to make a decision
on behalf of Joe Biden, the greatest man who ever lived.
It's like that kind of shit, like that.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
You should become a voice actor.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
Okay, thank you, Maria. I think that's kind of maybe
the right play in terms of the psychology of it.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Right.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
However, you also have this thing where all these Democrats
think Joe Biden should quit. And they have a collective
action problem and kind of a preference cascade problem where
people are acting differently than what they really think, you know.
And so what Biden did on Monday is they kind
of rounded up all of the people I think they
could who would go on record for whatever selfish or
(24:02):
unselfish reason or naive or not naive reason, you know,
AOC and all these Democrats kind of when I record
instead of course he has to be our nominee. It's
not actually that many as a share of the caucus,
but like, you know, but they're not worried about the
preference cascade game. They're coming out and saying what they
actually think, or maybe actually they're saying things that they
don't actually believe but like but that they don't bear
(24:22):
as much of a personal cost, or at least they
don't think so, or or the presidents calling in favors
or whatever else. So he made this aggressive move to
like reverse this momentum and staunch the bleeding for how
long I don't know. I mean, the fundamental problem is
that he doesn't have the goods, right, He doesn't have
the goods to run a normal campaign, and his slim chances,
(24:43):
which aren't zero, but slim rests on you know, something
about the information environment that we don't understand, or something
that hasn't happened yet, some other dilemma that makes Trump
even know nothing seems to change Trump's numbers. On principle,
you could imagine. I'm not sure what that way now.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
I can't. I can't imagine anything on principle.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
But I actually thought about one other thing that is
happening right now that we've talked about before in a
past episode that can be a data point for people
to use with Biden and was convincing him that sometimes
these gambles pay off. Macron and France like, holy shit,
you know what happened in the second round of elections
(25:20):
when when people thought the National Front was going to
sweep it and might become, you know, the majority, that
didn't happen, right, that it actually his gamble kind.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Of you know, we were we were a little bit wrong.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
It kind of paid off.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
I mean, we'll see, right, we'll see what happens. But
the country really came together to stop this threat, and
he did something completely unprecedented. You know, we we thought
that it was totally insane, and now we see that.
Oh wow, Like it's not it's not just because the
country actually are in le Pen got like thirty nine
(25:56):
percent of the vote by far the largest.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
Absolutely, absolutely, But however, predicted adults in the room acted
like adults, and they said, what happens. You had very
high turnout in all these constituencies, So like three candidates
qual five for the ballot. You'd often have a right
wing candidate, a centrist and elect wing candidate and the
left in the center agree that in every constituency where
one of us finished their third place, right, if it's first,
(26:21):
two will battle it out, right, but like if one finished.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Yeah, and it worked, actually worked, They did it. They
had the third.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
Bar twenty twenty in an amnic way when Democrats said,
we are in the middle of an impending pandemic and
we don't want to really left wing nomine like Bernie.
And you can say that was the wrong decision or
unfair to Bernie, but they did get Biden elected and
they were able to like close down that primary pretty quickly.
And so like you know, the notion that Biden is
(26:51):
like running some anti elite campaign. First of all, he
calls into like fucking like mourning Joe the like breakfast
cereal of like the most elite political elites in the country,
right to complain about how I mean it's very Trumpian
or Nixonian. It's Trumpian. I mean, it's not like I'm
not playing around with this. I'm being fucking both sides.
(27:11):
I think. I think Joe Biden has acted more and
more like Richard Dixon and Donald Trump in recent days.
But like you know, he was appointed to positions by
decisions made by elites. He finished in eighth place in
the two thousand and eight Democratic primary or something, and
and Barack Obama appointed him as his vice president. Right
in twenty twenty, there was an intervention on his behalf.
(27:32):
I think he might have eventually won maybe anyway, it
was probably pretty close between him and burning other people.
But there was an intervention by all these party elites
to like Maximiz's chances as much as possible. So who
the fuck is he is to think that he didn't
earn this for being like the most impressive order or
in America or the smartest person, right, I mean, if
we're being fucking honest, like of the of the forty
six hownty persons that it's at forty six, I'm losing
(27:53):
my train to that. Yeah. Yes, in terms of what
he's accomplished outside of politics, he's like not in the
upper half of like no.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
But he but if you say this to him, like
in his mind, he will have rewritten history, right, Like
that's the way that self serving bias works, especially when
you're in that position of power and you get that reinforced.
He does not remember that it wasn't him. He does
not remember that he finished aith. I mean, obviously he remembers,
but he has already rationalized a bit away as I
was always the best choice. I was going to win regardless.
(28:22):
But what the Democrats need to remember is they made
it happen. Right, So let's forget Biden. Like he's not
gonna he's gonna say like I made it happen. But
what the party needs to understand is that collective action
is actually possible. And we just saw it in France,
where that coordination worked and the fact that the candidates
worked together, that they put aside their egos, that they
stepped aside, you know, that they did what was right,
(28:44):
and that, as you said, they behaved like adults. Why
can't our country behave like adults. They're behaving like fucking children.
Like it's really like both parties and you, you know
what you said. The reason that I started saying that
some of the things I was saying about connartists and cults,
et cetera, and Trump, I'm now applying to the Democrats,
that is because I kind of agree with you that
(29:05):
Biden is acting in those ways more right now than
he ever has in the past. And of course all
politicians have a little bit of kind of that bent
to them because you have to convince people to do
things all the time. But he now is becoming increasingly
divorced from reality and from what's going on. And as
(29:27):
soon as your decisions become driven by ego as opposed to,
you know, by what you should be doing as a
politician the country, et cetera, et cetera, that's when things
start to go wrong. So I but, as I said,
let's let's call on the Democratic Party to actually remember
who got him there, and that they are capable of
(29:47):
doing big things like this, and that we now we
see evidence that this works, and it's worked in other countries,
and it's worked in our country, and why not try
it again? Because yeah, it might not work, but what
we're doing right now shures hell ain't working.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
Yeah. Look, if he is not able to process this,
then maybe we should to book the twenty fifth Amendment.
I mean it's kind of like, you know, I don't
like the people around Biden. With them, would you play
hardball or is that still about it? Because if for me,
I'd be like, first of all, every fucking piece of
dirt that we have on he was going to come
out unless he quits in a week, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Okay, So the people the people around Biden are different
from Biden. With them, I would play hardball. With Biden,
I wouldn't be you know, I would start off with
the strategy that I already that I already outlined. The
people around Biden, that's totally different. Yeah, with them, you
absolutely play hardball. And this is where you just go
down and dirty and you do what you need to
do to get them to act and to actually light
(30:45):
a fire under their asses so that they do what
needs to be done for the good of the country,
because right now, you know, they've been left alone and
that's not working. Whatever's happening right now is not working.
Speaker 3 (30:55):
I do wonder if you're some senior Biden's staffer. Right,
what if you turn out to be the whistleblower and
you write an not that for the New York Times
and go on all the TV shows, come on this
podcast and say Biden is not fit to be president.
We've been propping it. We put it a much more
diplomatic way. Obviously Biden was a great man, right, but
(31:18):
as as time has evolved, he has had more and
more challenges with day to day tasks. And I cannot
get conscious not convey this to the American people anymore, Right,
And I think he should step aside and let his
extremely talented elected Vice president Kamala Harris be the nominee instead. Right,
First of all, if if your cards play right, you
might look like a genius for doing that. Although there's
(31:39):
one other problem, which is that, like if let's say
Kamala Harris has like a I'm going to give you
if you've listened this far, and I'm gonna give you
some numbers. Right, Let's say she has a thirty five
or forty percent chance to win, and Biden has a
twenty percent chance to win if he if he's forced
to stay in, Right, I think it might.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
Be high, but these numbers, Yeah, I was going to say,
are these numbers based on your model?
Speaker 3 (32:04):
The models is twenty nine percent. But there's one big
problem with that, which is a model assumes that like
Joe Biden is capable of running the type of campaigns,
running the type of campaign that feeds a data in
the model. Right, if you took Joe Biden right now
in a hole and replaced him with an average Democrat
John Kerry, maybe Joe Biden twenty twenty, who was notably
a better performer, right, you know, if you put like
(32:28):
an average Democrat in his shoes, Hubert h Humphrey or something,
then I think twenty nine percent, the most recent reading,
you know, might be reasonable. However, I don't think he's
capable of running a normal campaign at all. He hasn't
been so far. Every media cycle has been distracted, was
going to turn into a distruction about like his age
and performance and things like that. There's another debate coming up,
(32:52):
so like, I think the chances might be if i'm
you know, if i'm kind of I mean, my gut
is the chancellor zero right now. I don't weigh my
gut that heavily. My gut is like, there's just no
fucking way then America is gonna like this guy for
another four years, just fundamentally untenable. And he's already behind.
Now he's fallen further behind. So if I average twenty
nine percent zero, then you get in the fifteen percent
(33:13):
range or whatever. Right, a kind of balancing head and model.
And the reason why in this case I think it's
important not to go up pure model is that there's
not a precedent in circumstance for this, right, there's not
a circumstance where like the canon is so obviously not
ready to run a normal campaign anymore. And I think
also like in a more technical matter, like we still
(33:35):
haven't had that much high quality state polling since a debate,
the model's being a little bit conservativebout it. So I
bet on the model being twenty five percent anyway, that's
where I get to, like fifteen or twenty percent. I
think it's not zero, but like in Harris, I think
might be double that roughly.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
Which is huge, by the way, even if we're below
fifty percent, double Biden is huge.
Speaker 3 (33:58):
A lot of Marie on the turn picked up a
lot of outs or hand looked back exactly. It picked
up like a straight fluster on the turn. Not too
bad badly.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Now we have a combo draw.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
Combo draw, maybe even heading a pair. Maybe we hit
that queen and the combo draw. Maybe that would be good.
You never know.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
Absolutely, yeah, absolutely, and and so so I think that
it seems to me, you know, last time we were
talking about different options, I think that we agree that
Kamala is kind of the best option given given where
we are, just in terms of the fact that you know,
she has all the machinery in place, she has all
(34:34):
of the funds in place. You know, she gets to
use the however many like ninety one million dollars.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
I don't want the machinery the best part of kom
Will you get rid of this fucking incompetent Biden staffers? Right?
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Absolutely, But but she gets to use the money that
has been you that has been raised for the for
the Biden Harris ticket.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
She gets to use kind of she she.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Is already someone who doesn't need to start from not zero,
but from a from a much lower point. And right now,
you know, getting to that double Biden's numbers seems to
be a victory. But I think we should be taking
every edge, right, take every edge you get.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
But let's say that kam Leg gets nominated and the
sixty percent chance roughly that she loses got someone that
plays out in our world. I guess you look bad then, right,
because then you're like, well, you know, Joe, if only
Joe Biden had stayed in I mean, this is but
this is where like this, I think people are not
willing to admit the untenability of the situation that like,
(35:37):
I mean Biden again, the things that would allow him
to win are things that would allow any Democrat.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Anyone win, to win.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
I mean, look and look, I wrote some the New
York Times last week. If you compare Democrats polling and
Senate races to Biden, they are doing better in literally
every single poll, literally every single pole in a say
it's both a swing state. They're tied in one excuse me,
out of like fifty poles. Democrats are actually doing pretty
fucking well down the ballot. It's Biden that's the problem.
(36:07):
The reason that's a problem is because he's eighty eighty
one years old and is in rapid decline. I think, yeah,
that's obvious to anyone with a fucking brain and like
it just you can't sell that much of a shit
sandwich to voters. It's not something you can compartmentalize because
it gets into the very way that he speaks, the
very way that he conducts the business of the White House.
(36:28):
It's not like he you know, it's not like he
screwed some intern and then and you can put that
out of your mind.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
Right. No, this is fundamentally the person making our national
security decisions, right This is the person who is reacting
in times of crisis. This is the person who we
turn to for the major executive decisions that matter. And
you need someone with very clear executive making capacity, which
(36:55):
I think right now he lacks. Now, of course, I'm
I'm just gonna say this goes without saying because a
lot of people are like the what about is and
with well what about Trump? Yeah, of course, like Trump
lacks it too. Trump should step aside, blah blah blah.
That ain't happening, So like let's let's not let's not
worry about that. To the people listening right now and
being like, well, you know, what about No, not what about?
Speaker 1 (37:15):
Like Trump is awful?
Speaker 2 (37:17):
He can't think clearly, He's you know, he's too old,
he has cognitive problems. We don't want him with the
nuclear codes, you know, he but he is not stepping aside.
So so that's just going to I just want to
like get that, get that out of the way.
Speaker 3 (37:30):
Look, if you detect like a little peak in my tone,
in Maria's tone today, I mean there's two things. Like one,
I'm just offended by strategic stupidity and high stake situations right, although,
to be fair, we don't know what individual motives are
and that gets complicated. But also like I feel angry
as a voter that I am not offered an acceptable alternative.
(37:51):
I said last week, I'm not going to vote. I'm
not going to vote for Biden. I'm not in a
swing state. I don't know because.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
I'm in Nevada. Yeah, and he's come.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
But I hope that I don't have to write I
really really hope that I'll be voting for Harris or
for for whoever replaces him. I truly hope that, because
you know, of course I will vote for Biden, but
I do it kind of with a heavy heart because
I don't want Trump to win. So let's just say,
let's just put it out there, there's no way that
Trump is withdrawing from the race. That just ain't happening.
(38:22):
So there's only one party that exists that has the
option of actually giving us a good candidate that we
want to vote for, and that's the Democrats. So please,
Joe Biden, now is the time be a hero withdraw
from the race and do it now.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
Marie, I think I need something relaxing to talk about,
like high stakes pumper tournaments instead, let's do it.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
We are in the middle of the largest main event
in World Series of Poker history night so records were
broken ten one hundred and twelve something like that. People,
an insane number of people are out here in Vegas
going for that ten million dollar first prize.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
So I'm of the roughly, what is it like sixty
five hundred of the ten and twelve that are no
longer in the tournament, you are in the four thousand
or something that are tell me about how it's gone
for you so far?
Speaker 1 (39:36):
So far.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
So we're about to start day three, so this means
that we're not in the money yet, so there's still
quite a ways to go until then. So far, the
tournament has been very up and down for me, but
I have I've not been running well, so Nate, I'm
keeping track of our prop bet and yesterday I actually
lost every single all in except for one tiny one,
(39:59):
so and I would get it and I was an
overwhelming favorite. I got two out of three times. My
table thought this was very, very amusing. But I kept
building back and being able to survive, and honestly, that's
the key. So right now I'm going to have about
fifty big lines heading into day three, which is totally fine, right,
It's solid, it's not huge. I'm not one of the
(40:21):
big stacks, but I'm not one of the micro stacks.
And what's really really important to remember in an event
like this, which lasts over many days, is survival matters.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
Right.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
It's one of these things where even if you don't
have a huge chip stack, as long as you have
some chips and as long as you pick your spots,
then you're in it. And of course this is poker,
so anything can happen.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
You know.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
I did have a couple of moments where I could
have been knocked out, and I took the more conservative
line and it served me well. And so I'm proud
of not of lasting through those but who knows. As
you get shallower, you know, when I have two hundred
big lines, it's much easier to avoid those.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
It's much easier to find the fold.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
When you have fifty and you have you know, said,
when you're in a situation like that, at some point
you can't fold.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
It's a tricky tournament because on the one hand, there
are inclinations to be riskivers yourself. On the other hand,
everyone else thaks the same way, so it can kind
of like can kind of devolve into a game of
Chicken a little bit.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
You know.
Speaker 3 (41:24):
I was never getting very much going as far as
like hitting hands right. So mostly ups and downs involved
different types of bluffs. I tried to run, some successfully,
some not. But you can run pretty big bluffs in
the in the main event. People don't want to lose
all their chips and get and get knocked out. Yeah,
but yeah, I don't have a great narrative. I mean
I was kind of just you know, remaining very patient
(41:45):
because you can just like, oh, I lost like ten
pots in a row, and because you have so many chips,
and like you actually it's not affecting you all that much.
But at some point, kind of late on day two.
If you'd ever played the event, that's when the blinds
start to creep up enough. You know, goes from one
thousand big bline to fifteen hundred and then two thousand
in two levels. Right, that's a doubling in two levels.
(42:06):
And that's where a lot of people like me start
to get knocked out or in a situation where where
there was actually a cost to being patient, right where
it's like, yeah, I just you know, I went I
know if I wanted to technical about the terms, right,
but like I shoved, I went all in with with
the okay hand because I thought I had a lot
of full equity. I've been playing very tight. I thought
I had a good image. But you can have a
(42:28):
good image of the m the theifona has kings, then
it doesn't matterimes you.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
Just run into it.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
You know. Sometimes it's a good spot. You made the
right decision and they just have they just have it,
and those those situations are going to happen, and that
doesn't mean you made the wrong decision.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
You know.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Once again, this is to go back to what we've
talked about a lot, and to tie this a little
bit back to politics. The process is what matters, and
you can't be you know, outcome oriented. If you made
the right decision for the right reasons, even if you
ended up losing, you can't be mad at yourself. So
you know, if you ran the right bluff, went all
(43:03):
in with the right hand, picked the right spot, and
they just happened to have it, so be it. But
at least you know that you did everything possible to
put yourself in the situation to win. And I think
that everyone would do well too to remember that lesson
and to not be.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
Like, but what happens if I lose? I can't.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
You cannot have that sort of risk averse thinking going
in that said, you know, I'm going to you know,
my plan for today is to just play well, try
to pick good spots, and hope for the best, because
you do need to you do need to run well
in these in these tournaments, and patience is important and
not panicking is really really important because a lot of
(43:43):
people when they start, you know, when their chips start
going down, they start making decisions they shouldn't, They start
taking risks they shouldn't to try to build back up,
and that's not a good mindset. So I will try
to be zen going into.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
The day and the main event. I mean benefits for
people who have made like a deep run before. I think,
I mean, you see one thing that was good. I
made this deep run last year, which will not be
repeated now obviously, But like you, you get that monkey
off your back, and I felt loose. In What I
think is I think you'd mostly rather be looser than
(44:16):
tighter when you're playing poker. I don't mean in terms
of like how you construct your ranges, right, that's a
different type of looser tight yep. I mean in terms of, like,
in terms of your vibe and your mood. I I
don't think there's any harm from looking at the main
event as quote just another poker tournament, right, I think
that's more good than harmful. Now that might mean that,
(44:39):
like now, strategically, their differences I don't apply to any
other tournament, right. And there are things like it's more
worth it to get your rest and your fitness and
eat well instead of the cheap burger or whatever right
on the break, right, the expected value difference is higher.
But like you know, people who have success in the
main tend to have repeated success because they've been there before.
And I have anything to prove, and like, I think
(45:00):
that's usually that's usually helpful any tournament where patience is
very rewarded.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
Yep, absolutely so. So you know, here here's hoping that
I will be rewarded today. I will do my best,
but whatever happens, I just hope that I'm happy with
my decisions at the end of the day.
Speaker 3 (45:18):
May you want to wrap it up? I mean I think,
you know, yeah, a lot of politics, a little bit poker,
but trust me, listeners, it'll be the reverse of that
in some episodes in the future.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
That's absolutely right.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
But with that, I am going to go and prepare
to play day three of the main I'm.
Speaker 3 (45:34):
Going to go and enter some other event where I'm sad.
I'm sad, sad with the losers, the loser bracket.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
Good luck, good luck. You are my favorite loser.
Speaker 3 (45:47):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (45:52):
Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kannakova and.
Speaker 3 (45:55):
Me Nate Silver.
Speaker 2 (45:57):
The show is a co production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia.
This episode was produced by Isabelle Carter. Our associate producer
is Gabriel Hunter Chang. Our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
Speaker 3 (46:10):
And if you want to listen to and add free version.
Sign up for Pushkin Plus for six thirty nine a month,
you get access to ad free listening. Thanks for tuning in.
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Hi, everyone, welcome back to Risky Business, our podcast about
making better decisions. I'm Maria Kannakova.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
I'm Nate Silver.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
So today we're going.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
To be doing a little bit of a deep dive
into the political situation that is a Joe Biden, and
then we'll be talking about the World Series of Poker.
It is currently the main event, and we are taping
this right before I go play day three. I'm running
on about four hours of sleep, but I'm very excited
to be here Nate, and we're going to get totally
(00:54):
psyched up to play by talking about the amazing decisions
that the United States political machinery is making.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
I got a great night's sleep after having gotten knocked
out of the main event on the last level. There
is more poker later this week, but good luck to you, Maria,
Thanks so much, Nate.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Let's do a quick recap.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
So last time we spoke about the elections, it was
right after the debate, which I think the scientific consensus
was it was a total cluster fuck.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
It's epic shit storm, I think is the.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Okay, actually perfect, I'm sorry, total cluster fuck. That's a
little less than shit storm, right, No, actually.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
I think you're right. It's like a it's a shit
storm inside a black hole, inside a cluster, fuck inside.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Of fucking Okay, that sounds reasonable. So that's where we
were last time. We are recording this on Tuesday morning,
Vegas time. Now it's been a week and a half later, right,
something like that.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Two weeks later.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Yeah, it's been it's been twelve twelve restless nights for
the since the debate for Joe Biden and the Democrats.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Yes, and things have gone up and down. Right in
the immediate aftermath of the debate, it seemed like people
were absolutely horrified. And then Joe Biden is now going
on his I'm not resigning tour.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Look, some comeators. You know. Benji Sarlin's a very bright
reporter for Semaphore and talks about the kind of mutually
assured destruction scenario that Biden is presenting for Democrats right
where he's saying basically, well, I'm going to be the
nominee whether you like it or not, and so anything
you do now will just put me in an even
worse position against Trump. Right, So first of all, let
(02:32):
me stay this is like actually not Biden's only option.
Biden has the right to stand down. The ballots are
not been printed yet. That's all misinformation, right, we haven't
had the convention yet. By the way, it's actually technically
speaking not the Democrats only option. There is a conscious
clause in the convention which says, if you're in you're
(02:53):
good conscious, you think this guy should not be the nominee,
then you are not legally bound to vote for him. Now,
ninety eight ninety nine percent of the delegates where people
selected by Joe Biden. When you vote in the primaries,
you vote both for a candidate and for his or
her Dell gets the convention as chosen by the candidate, right,
So they're loyal to Biden. But there also weren't really
(03:14):
necessarily planned for a scenario like this. There might be regular,
normy Democrats who are kind of local party leaders. If
you look at polling now of Democratic voters, it's actually
pretty close. I think in one poll which was put
up by group it's advocating for this, So take that
with a grain of salt. Right, In one poll, a
majority Democratic voters actually said they prefer to have an
open nomination process to Biden. I mean, I don't know
(03:36):
what kind of cave people are hiding in. But like
the concern about Biden's age and the debate is certainly
not confined to uh, just elites, right, I mean, it's
with registered impuls of voters for a long time, for months,
for years, voters have said, sorry, we tolerated up to
age eighty one, which he is now, right, but another
(04:00):
another six months this plus another four years eighty six,
that's not going to work for us, right.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
And if you talk to like, has that has that
clause ever been used?
Speaker 3 (04:10):
I don't think so. But look, the general no, I
mean I don't. Well, look, I mean it depends because
before nineteen seventy two, roughly then, it was kind of
a smoke filled rooms scenario where parties would have minimal
to no input from voters. The primaries are mostly for show,
and then they get going to the convention, like actually
pick the candidates what the convention was for? You know,
(04:31):
Since then there hasn't been a situation where the superdugets
had to be invoked, although it was close in some years, right,
you know, Hillary versus Obama was fairly close. For example,
there was talk on the Republican side where Trump at
one point had a plurality, but not a majority of delegance.
In twenty sixteen, he wound up though sweeping the last
(04:52):
twenty percent of states to have a clear majority in
the end. But look, I mean, the reason you write
emergency procedures is for emergencies, and Democrats are in kind
of an emergency. I'm not going to be one of
those peoplehos like, oh Trump gets elected, it's going to
be the last election. I think it's probably hyperbolic, right,
but like one of your goals as a party is
(05:12):
to elect winning candidates and win elections, and Joe Biden's
probably not going to beat Donald Trump. And in fact,
even Democrats if you read the reporting, even Democrats who
say we can't switch candidates, if you talk to them privately,
they say, we think Biden's gonna lose. We just don't
think we have a choice, right, we want to save
down ballot racist things like that. It's just not very rational.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
I don't think, no, I mean, and it's a you know,
it's a problem that you get in decision making a
lot when it's a collective action problem and you need
that one person to step up and to say something
and to actually be the person who becomes that voice
that says, Okay, we need to say publicly what everyone
is saying privately. But unless that happens, that galvanizing force
can't gain momentum. And so many times then in these
(05:58):
decision making processes, and by the way, right right now
we're talking about the presidency, which is huge, but this
happens in boardrooms, this happens in corporate decision makings, This
happens everywhere when everyone is thinking something privately but they
can't say it publicly because they're too afraid of the repercussions.
And the calculus just doesn't work out if we put
(06:19):
it in our game theoretical framework. Right, you start looking
at the payoff matrix and you say, okay, what's my
payoff matrix? If I'm the person who speaks out and
then people don't support me and all these things happen,
and then I'm the one who loses. And Biden is
actually playing into that because he's stacking it. He's explicitly saying, Okay,
your payoff matrix looks like shit because you know I'm
(06:41):
going to do this, and you don't want to be
the person who betrayed me, right, you don't want to
be Buddhists in this scenario.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Well, look, I don't think he's going to be president
for much longer. I'm not sure he's going to be
an influential political figure for much longer, or in good
health if he is already for much longer. Right, Look,
I have an article I'm running on I'll finish for
newsletter subscribers after we finished taping this podcast. I think
Biden has a weekend and it's running a pretty bad bluff.
And I think who select to go into politics tend
(07:11):
to be what I would call knits meeting there. We've
used that term before on the show, right, And it's
like a neurotic riskivers person, and elected Democrats are like
neurotic and riskivers and also very people pleasing. You advance
in the party by by building alliances and the different
constituents and commitments you have finding ways to balance those
(07:34):
pleasing donors, which sounds like the worst thing in the
world to me, right, to have like some rubber chicken
dinner where you're pleasing these donors who are rich but
have dumb opinions about politics most of the time.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Let's be honest, Yes, you know that sounds like that chicken,
especially public offer IPO chicken because when you go to
IPO dinners, they always serve this rubber chicken.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
So yes, they have IPO chicken dinners.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
That life sounds like torture to me. You couldn't fucking
pay me enough to be a fucking center or something
like that. However, it selects for people who are not
inclined to rock the boat. But look, there are several
things here. What is that Biden has Clearly the first
move was to get Biden to take a hint gently.
(08:18):
I mean, the first move is you hope that he
kind of is aware of the situation on his own right.
The first move is said, get Biden to take the
hit gently and then maybe not so quite so gently,
where you start to have anonymous leaks and then you
have backbenchers meaning relatively obscure members of Congress kind of saying, hey,
you should think about this. As far as I know,
as far as any reporting has suggested, there has not
(08:39):
been like a posse of senior leaders who has gone
to the White House and said, Joe, we're not fucking around.
You're gonna lose, You're gonna embarrass your party, You're gonna
embarrass your position in history. It's time to stand down.
So far as I know, that hasn't happened. Really, they
have kind of gone halfway up the escalatory spiral, but
(09:00):
they haven't really used their best ammunition yet. Never mind
these nuclear options like the conscious Clause or the twenty
fifth Amendment is an amendment to the US Constitution that
CanCERN if a president is unable to carry out his
duties and the cabinet can say that the vice president
ought to take over. I also think that like they
haven't fully played the Kamala Harris card, and I want
(09:21):
to talk about Harris in kind of the second half
of this segment. But like you know, one of the
ironies is that the Congressional Black Caucus has been what's
helped Biden to save ground, to salvage ground so far right,
I don't think there have been any Congressional Black Caucus
members who have come out yet and said that Biden
(09:42):
should step aside. There have been many who said that
he should not step aside, and so you know that
has been very helpful to him. But if Biden were
to step aside, the most likely replacement would be, you know,
the first woman president or the first woman. I guess,
you know, I know you would take over immediately, But like,
but Kamala Harris, who could become the first woman president
and a black woman and an Asian woman as well,
(10:04):
So it seems like I don't really buy. Look, my
preference is that you'd have some type of voter input,
more open nomination process. But like, it seems like, do
they really prefer Biden to a black vice president who
was at this point in her life much more capable
than he is? Right, eighty one year old Biden's not
more capable than Kamala Harris. I mean, he's not right,
(10:26):
he's not prosecuting the case against Trump. He's not capable
of like being up time when you need a potential crisis.
I mean, you can think Kamala Harris is a mediocre
at best politician, which I do, and she might not
be your cup of tea. But like, but it's just
a bizarre argument that like, you know, so I think
if if they said, Okay, we might not have enough
leverage to have this West Wing Aaron Sorkin fantasy convention,
(10:50):
that Nate Silver might like, right, do you not have
the leverage to say, let's agree that Kamala Harris is
a less bad option, right, she is capable of actually
prosecuting the case against Trump. You're not lying to the
American public about her fitness for office, and you know what,
she'll probably lose, but like, but Biden's probably gonna lose too. Like,
(11:11):
what's the world in which Biden wins that Harris doesn't win.
I mean, it's like the world where Biden win, involved
world where the polling is so far off that we
don't know what I'm gonna begin with, or where like
Trump goes to jail or something, and like, like any
Democrat can win into those conditions, any any halfway competent democrat.
Maybe we're not gonna get more than a halfway competent option.
But like, I mean, look, we're in Nevada, not Nevada, right,
(11:33):
Nevada Nevada's And you see ads in Nevada because it's
a swing state, which New York is not. Saw some
Spanish language ad for example, where they're like, you know,
Joe Biden is very competent, he is a steady hand,
and like he does not have a steady hand. I
mean literally, I'm not sure he has a steady hand. Anymore.
I don't mean to diagnosed semtically, but like, but you
(11:54):
can't project we are the campaign that is just a
steady hand competence, no chaos anymore. Right, that cat is
out of the bag. It's too late for that. You're
selling people on a lie like it just you know,
the honest thing to do is to say, we chose
this woman to be vice president, and she has served
(12:16):
as vice president for three and a half years. Now,
at any moment she could become president. Joe Biden could
have a heart attack, there could be some type of
attack on whenever Joe Biden is located. We elected people
elected Kamala Harris to be vice president and clearly you're
in a situation where she is more fit to be
president than Biden over the next four years. And like,
(12:40):
what's it say about her or what's it say about
like how cynical the decision was, Like maybe you picked
her in June twenty twenty because you're in a period
summer twenty twenty when you're in a period where there's
a lot of this racial reckoning, so called right, but
she is a center from California, She's been in this
attorney right, she is like someone who I think is
(13:01):
generally regarded as being very smart and competent. The problems
were mostly the fact that like that, like politically she
wasn't a very compelling hand ain't unless have some upside potential,
But like, what is it saying that these people don't
trust her in a circumstance where she you know, I
think obviously it seems more fit for the job now,
let alone for four more years.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
So what I but I actually so, I don't think
we're I don't think what we're seeing is as much
what it says about Kamala Harris. I think it's more
what we're saying about delusion and doubling down, and what's
going on psychologically with kind of with the Democratic Party
and with Biden himself. So I think there are a
few different real real fallacies happening here and real real issues.
(13:42):
The first is that Democrats are saying, you know, Biden
is a good man, like we can convince him to
step down by kind of these these subtle hence, these
subtle you know, he'll see the light. What they don't
understand is that when you attack someone's core identity, right
who they are, how they see themselves, what their reason
for being is. That does not work, and what ends
(14:05):
up happening is you double down and you really do
not see kind of the light. And I think that's
that's even worse with Biden right now, because he is
degrading a little bit when it comes to cognitive capacity.
We all know see the world through rose colored glasses,
you know, have this kind of better than average effect
(14:26):
where we think we're you know, better, et cetera, et cetera.
But in the case of someone who is president right,
who has that kind of hubris, who's been reinforced over
and over and over, that's going to be completely doubled.
I've wrote an article a number of years ago from
The New Yorker called I Don't Want to be Right,
and it's basically about how difficult it is to get
people to change their minds when the essence of who
(14:49):
they see themselves as is attacked. And so relying on
Biden and trying to appeal to his good nature to
step aside, that is not going to work. And we
see that actually backfiring right now. We see Biden saying,
you know, I'm not going to step aside. I'm going
to fight, and it's obviously not helped that he has
people around him like Hunter likes Joe Biden who are
(15:12):
telling him, Oh, no, this is great, this is wonderful.
And then the flip side of that is that you
have this party that is a.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Little bit kind of I don't know if diluted.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Is the right term. It's a little strong, but it
might be correct. So I think we've talked on the
pod before, maybe not about how I see the Trump
supporters as basically being cult followers, right, doesn't matter what happens,
They're in this cult. So they're going to rationalize everything away.
No red flags are actually red flags, and instead they're
(15:45):
going to kind of go through this cognitive dissonance reduction
so that they end up saying, no, this is still
the best candidate, this is wonderful, this is great, like
no matter what, we're voting for him. And I actually
see think we're seeing a little bit of that in
the Democratic Party, where it's not a cult, but it's
more like Stockholm syndrome ish where they're also rationalizing away
(16:06):
the red flags. And I think that actually intersects with
what you were talking about with the risk aversion factor,
because they're scared and they're scared of taking this kind
of this gamble. They're scared of doing something unprecedented, and
that is self reinforcing. So you have that, and then
you have the kind of the delusion of no, everything's
going to be okay. This isn't actually a red flag.
He just had a bad day. And the more you rationalize,
(16:29):
the easier it becomes to rationalize, and the more you
actually start believing that this is reality. Because in the
immediate aftermath of the debates, you were like, holy shit,
were fucked right, And then like the next day you're like, oh, well,
maybe it wasn't so bad. And then two days later
you're like, Okay, really it wasn't so bad. You know,
you kind of start rewriting history, you start rewriting the
way that you perceive it, and you end up in
(16:51):
this place where you're pretty divorced from reality. And that
is a really dangerous place to be. And I think
that might be kind of where we are right now.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
So let's say I commission you some I'm Barack Obama,
right and you're my PhD Columbia psychologists, and I say
I need to devise a plan to get Joe fucking
Biden to quit, and I have a week to do
it before we reach the point of no return. I
can use any trick in the book, as long as
(17:40):
it's not illegal, any psychological trick in the book. What
is a plan to make Joe Biden think it's in
his best interest to quit? Or is it not a
matter of or is a matter of playing pure hardball?
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Well?
Speaker 2 (17:53):
I think I think that there can be too approaches
to it. First, I think you do need to be
completely straightforward with him and straightforward with the people around him. Right,
you need to sit Hunter and Jill down as well
and be like, stop fucking around, like this is bad, right,
and get that, get that out of the way. But
then I think you need to be straightforward with him,
and you need to do it in a way that
does not attack who he is, but actually reinforces it
(18:17):
and says, you know, you want to go down in
history as the great president who stopped Donald Trump. The
only way to do that is by stepping aside. These
are all the amazing things that you would be doing.
This does not make you look weak. It's not because
you're old. Of course, we know you're competent. Of course,
we know what you're doing the other people are idiots, though,
(18:38):
and you need to understand political perception. You need to understand,
you know, how people are reacting. They're not rational, but
it doesn't matter because you know that's who we're dealing with.
So you need to be the bigger man and do
the right thing. And you're smart enough to do it.
You're competent enough to do it. You know, you're brilliant,
use your brilliant mind to step aside and do the
(18:59):
strategically correct thing to save the country from the brink
of disaster. So you're doing several things right. You're playing
to his ego. You're not saying he's weak, you're not
saying he's too old, you're not saying you're not attacking
him in ways that make him feel attacked. And instead
you're trying to say, okay, how do you cement your legacy?
And honestly, I might even do something like pull the
(19:20):
RBG card and say, you know, let's let's look at RBG.
You know someone who was this absolutely brilliant mind.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
Charles Carls Dickens film where the Ghost of RBG Comes.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
From, the Ghost of RBG comes. You know, I can
dress up as RBG. You said, pull out all the stops, right,
we can get some CGI special effects and I might
be a little taller than she is, but you know,
we'll figure it out actually work.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Because Biden said, if the God Almighty came down right, Like,
I'm thinking there's like a twenty percent chance, like if
you actually stage that in the clever way, would actually work.
And I'm like, I had some vision and like, you know,
give him some stroom gummies. It's probably it's probably probably illegal.
I didn't mean to suggest that.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Yeah, so we're not going to do anything illegal, but yeah,
I mean you could even pull that RBG card the
ghosts of the ghosts justice has passed and saying, you know,
I bet, like I actually bet that if we if
we got the ghost of RBG on the pod, she'd
regret her decision after she saw what happened. You know,
she was a smart woman. She just let her ego
get in the way. And I think that that's what's
(20:24):
happening here. And you can compare, I mean, if you compare, Biden, like,
I think the key also is to find other good
historical precedents of people who he admires and who he
thinks you know, are strong leaders who did something like this,
who you can be like. You know, you can be
like or you can be like RBG right, like you
can do you can do these things. And it's not
(20:45):
about you the whole thing, right, we always talk about
you look at all these presidential addresses over you know,
hundreds of years, and it's all about it's not about you,
it's about the country. It's about the greater good. And
so to try to kind of get to that and
have him hear it, and the only way he's going
to hear it is if he doesn't feel attacked, and
(21:06):
if he doesn't feel like you're disrespecting him, if he
doesn't feel billittled, if he doesn't feel like you're talking
to him like an old man. Because he does not
see himself that way, I think it's really important to
project to him the way that he sees himself. He
sees himself as still that young, capable senator who can
do anything. In the debate, that became very clear because
(21:27):
when he was asked, you know, what do you say
about the age about the age complaints, he was like, well,
I used to be the youngest, and everyone is complaining
about my age. Well, that doesn't answer the question, but
that actually gives you a really really interesting psychological lens
into what's going on in his head. In his mind,
he's still the youngest, he can still make it work.
He just has off days. He is doing that exact
(21:49):
same rationalization, and I think he truly truly believes it.
I do not think he thinks he's slipping, and he
can rationalize away like one bad day, et cetera, et cetera.
And if he actually has diminished cognitive capacity, then once
again it's going to be much that much more difficult
for him to see reality. So the way the best
(22:10):
con artists operate is to sell people the vision of
the world that they already believe is true. And so
here I'm suggesting we use the persuasion tactics of con
artists to try to gently get persuade Biden to do
what's best and make make him think that it's his
own idea. That's the other thing that they do. Right,
(22:32):
Instead of saying like give me your money, they make
me say, Nate, you know, I think you really want
to give me your money.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
And you're like, hey, you know what, Maria, I.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Really want to give you my money, and so I
think that's what we need to do with Biden, so
that he ends up thinking himself, you know what, maybe
I do want to step down. Maybe this is really
for the best of everything, and maybe this is how
I cement my legacy as the great man that I
know that I am.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
What's challenging is that you have two kind of games
in the sense of things that game theory might apply
to going on at once. On the one hand, you
have this private tactic that you're talking about, right, and
the senators, supposed to the representatives are mostly saying things like, well,
I was troubled the Susan Collins if you're a politics
(23:18):
and I was troubled by what I saw on the debate,
And I've gone back to my constituents to see what
they think. But I wouldn't want to make a decision
on behalf of Joe Biden, the greatest man who ever lived.
It's like that kind of shit, like that.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
You should become a voice actor.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
Okay, thank you, Maria. I think that's kind of maybe
the right play in terms of the psychology of it.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Right.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
However, you also have this thing where all these Democrats
think Joe Biden should quit. And they have a collective
action problem and kind of a preference cascade problem where
people are acting differently than what they really think, you know.
And so what Biden did on Monday is they kind
of rounded up all of the people I think they
could who would go on record for whatever selfish or
(24:02):
unselfish reason or naive or not naive reason, you know,
AOC and all these Democrats kind of when I record
instead of course he has to be our nominee. It's
not actually that many as a share of the caucus,
but like, you know, but they're not worried about the
preference cascade game. They're coming out and saying what they
actually think, or maybe actually they're saying things that they
don't actually believe but like but that they don't bear
(24:22):
as much of a personal cost, or at least they
don't think so, or or the presidents calling in favors
or whatever else. So he made this aggressive move to
like reverse this momentum and staunch the bleeding for how
long I don't know. I mean, the fundamental problem is
that he doesn't have the goods, right, He doesn't have
the goods to run a normal campaign, and his slim chances,
(24:43):
which aren't zero, but slim rests on you know, something
about the information environment that we don't understand, or something
that hasn't happened yet, some other dilemma that makes Trump
even know nothing seems to change Trump's numbers. On principle,
you could imagine. I'm not sure what that way now.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
I can't. I can't imagine anything on principle.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
But I actually thought about one other thing that is
happening right now that we've talked about before in a
past episode that can be a data point for people
to use with Biden and was convincing him that sometimes
these gambles pay off. Macron and France like, holy shit,
you know what happened in the second round of elections
(25:20):
when when people thought the National Front was going to
sweep it and might become, you know, the majority, that
didn't happen, right, that it actually his gamble kind.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Of you know, we were we were a little bit wrong.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
It kind of paid off.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
I mean, we'll see, right, we'll see what happens. But
the country really came together to stop this threat, and
he did something completely unprecedented. You know, we we thought
that it was totally insane, and now we see that.
Oh wow, Like it's not it's not just because the
country actually are in le Pen got like thirty nine
(25:56):
percent of the vote by far the largest.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
Absolutely, absolutely, But however, predicted adults in the room acted
like adults, and they said, what happens. You had very
high turnout in all these constituencies, So like three candidates
qual five for the ballot. You'd often have a right
wing candidate, a centrist and elect wing candidate and the
left in the center agree that in every constituency where
one of us finished their third place, right, if it's first,
(26:21):
two will battle it out, right, but like if one finished.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Yeah, and it worked, actually worked, They did it. They
had the third.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
Bar twenty twenty in an amnic way when Democrats said,
we are in the middle of an impending pandemic and
we don't want to really left wing nomine like Bernie.
And you can say that was the wrong decision or
unfair to Bernie, but they did get Biden elected and
they were able to like close down that primary pretty quickly.
And so like you know, the notion that Biden is
(26:51):
like running some anti elite campaign. First of all, he
calls into like fucking like mourning Joe the like breakfast
cereal of like the most elite political elites in the country,
right to complain about how I mean it's very Trumpian
or Nixonian. It's Trumpian. I mean, it's not like I'm
not playing around with this. I'm being fucking both sides.
(27:11):
I think. I think Joe Biden has acted more and
more like Richard Dixon and Donald Trump in recent days.
But like you know, he was appointed to positions by
decisions made by elites. He finished in eighth place in
the two thousand and eight Democratic primary or something, and
and Barack Obama appointed him as his vice president. Right
in twenty twenty, there was an intervention on his behalf.
(27:32):
I think he might have eventually won maybe anyway, it
was probably pretty close between him and burning other people.
But there was an intervention by all these party elites
to like Maximiz's chances as much as possible. So who
the fuck is he is to think that he didn't
earn this for being like the most impressive order or
in America or the smartest person, right, I mean, if
we're being fucking honest, like of the of the forty
six hownty persons that it's at forty six, I'm losing
(27:53):
my train to that. Yeah. Yes, in terms of what
he's accomplished outside of politics, he's like not in the
upper half of like no.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
But he but if you say this to him, like
in his mind, he will have rewritten history, right, Like
that's the way that self serving bias works, especially when
you're in that position of power and you get that reinforced.
He does not remember that it wasn't him. He does
not remember that he finished aith. I mean, obviously he remembers,
but he has already rationalized a bit away as I
was always the best choice. I was going to win regardless.
(28:22):
But what the Democrats need to remember is they made
it happen. Right, So let's forget Biden. Like he's not
gonna he's gonna say like I made it happen. But
what the party needs to understand is that collective action
is actually possible. And we just saw it in France,
where that coordination worked and the fact that the candidates
worked together, that they put aside their egos, that they
stepped aside, you know, that they did what was right,
(28:44):
and that, as you said, they behaved like adults. Why
can't our country behave like adults. They're behaving like fucking children.
Like it's really like both parties and you, you know
what you said. The reason that I started saying that
some of the things I was saying about connartists and cults,
et cetera, and Trump, I'm now applying to the Democrats,
that is because I kind of agree with you that
(29:05):
Biden is acting in those ways more right now than
he ever has in the past. And of course all
politicians have a little bit of kind of that bent
to them because you have to convince people to do
things all the time. But he now is becoming increasingly
divorced from reality and from what's going on. And as
(29:27):
soon as your decisions become driven by ego as opposed to,
you know, by what you should be doing as a
politician the country, et cetera, et cetera, that's when things
start to go wrong. So I but, as I said,
let's let's call on the Democratic Party to actually remember
who got him there, and that they are capable of
(29:47):
doing big things like this, and that we now we
see evidence that this works, and it's worked in other countries,
and it's worked in our country, and why not try
it again? Because yeah, it might not work, but what
we're doing right now shures hell ain't working.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
Yeah. Look, if he is not able to process this,
then maybe we should to book the twenty fifth Amendment.
I mean it's kind of like, you know, I don't
like the people around Biden. With them, would you play
hardball or is that still about it? Because if for me,
I'd be like, first of all, every fucking piece of
dirt that we have on he was going to come
out unless he quits in a week, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Okay, So the people the people around Biden are different
from Biden. With them, I would play hardball. With Biden,
I wouldn't be you know, I would start off with
the strategy that I already that I already outlined. The
people around Biden, that's totally different. Yeah, with them, you
absolutely play hardball. And this is where you just go
down and dirty and you do what you need to
do to get them to act and to actually light
(30:45):
a fire under their asses so that they do what
needs to be done for the good of the country,
because right now, you know, they've been left alone and
that's not working. Whatever's happening right now is not working.
Speaker 3 (30:55):
I do wonder if you're some senior Biden's staffer. Right,
what if you turn out to be the whistleblower and
you write an not that for the New York Times
and go on all the TV shows, come on this
podcast and say Biden is not fit to be president.
We've been propping it. We put it a much more
diplomatic way. Obviously Biden was a great man, right, but
(31:18):
as as time has evolved, he has had more and
more challenges with day to day tasks. And I cannot
get conscious not convey this to the American people anymore, Right,
And I think he should step aside and let his
extremely talented elected Vice president Kamala Harris be the nominee instead. Right,
First of all, if if your cards play right, you
might look like a genius for doing that. Although there's
(31:39):
one other problem, which is that, like if let's say
Kamala Harris has like a I'm going to give you
if you've listened this far, and I'm gonna give you
some numbers. Right, Let's say she has a thirty five
or forty percent chance to win, and Biden has a
twenty percent chance to win if he if he's forced
to stay in, Right, I think it might.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
Be high, but these numbers, Yeah, I was going to say,
are these numbers based on your model?
Speaker 3 (32:04):
The models is twenty nine percent. But there's one big
problem with that, which is a model assumes that like
Joe Biden is capable of running the type of campaigns,
running the type of campaign that feeds a data in
the model. Right, if you took Joe Biden right now
in a hole and replaced him with an average Democrat
John Kerry, maybe Joe Biden twenty twenty, who was notably
a better performer, right, you know, if you put like
(32:28):
an average Democrat in his shoes, Hubert h Humphrey or something,
then I think twenty nine percent, the most recent reading,
you know, might be reasonable. However, I don't think he's
capable of running a normal campaign at all. He hasn't
been so far. Every media cycle has been distracted, was
going to turn into a distruction about like his age
and performance and things like that. There's another debate coming up,
(32:52):
so like, I think the chances might be if i'm
you know, if i'm kind of I mean, my gut
is the chancellor zero right now. I don't weigh my
gut that heavily. My gut is like, there's just no
fucking way then America is gonna like this guy for
another four years, just fundamentally untenable. And he's already behind.
Now he's fallen further behind. So if I average twenty
nine percent zero, then you get in the fifteen percent
(33:13):
range or whatever. Right, a kind of balancing head and model.
And the reason why in this case I think it's
important not to go up pure model is that there's
not a precedent in circumstance for this, right, there's not
a circumstance where like the canon is so obviously not
ready to run a normal campaign anymore. And I think
also like in a more technical matter, like we still
(33:35):
haven't had that much high quality state polling since a debate,
the model's being a little bit conservativebout it. So I
bet on the model being twenty five percent anyway, that's
where I get to, like fifteen or twenty percent. I
think it's not zero, but like in Harris, I think
might be double that roughly.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
Which is huge, by the way, even if we're below
fifty percent, double Biden is huge.
Speaker 3 (33:58):
A lot of Marie on the turn picked up a
lot of outs or hand looked back exactly. It picked
up like a straight fluster on the turn. Not too
bad badly.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Now we have a combo draw.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
Combo draw, maybe even heading a pair. Maybe we hit
that queen and the combo draw. Maybe that would be good.
You never know.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
Absolutely, yeah, absolutely, and and so so I think that
it seems to me, you know, last time we were
talking about different options, I think that we agree that
Kamala is kind of the best option given given where
we are, just in terms of the fact that you know,
she has all the machinery in place, she has all
(34:34):
of the funds in place. You know, she gets to
use the however many like ninety one million dollars.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
I don't want the machinery the best part of kom
Will you get rid of this fucking incompetent Biden staffers? Right?
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Absolutely, But but she gets to use the money that
has been you that has been raised for the for
the Biden Harris ticket.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
She gets to use kind of she she.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Is already someone who doesn't need to start from not zero,
but from a from a much lower point. And right now,
you know, getting to that double Biden's numbers seems to
be a victory. But I think we should be taking
every edge, right, take every edge you get.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
But let's say that kam Leg gets nominated and the
sixty percent chance roughly that she loses got someone that
plays out in our world. I guess you look bad then, right,
because then you're like, well, you know, Joe, if only
Joe Biden had stayed in I mean, this is but
this is where like this, I think people are not
willing to admit the untenability of the situation that like,
(35:37):
I mean Biden again, the things that would allow him
to win are things that would allow any Democrat.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Anyone win, to win.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
I mean, look and look, I wrote some the New
York Times last week. If you compare Democrats polling and
Senate races to Biden, they are doing better in literally
every single poll, literally every single pole in a say
it's both a swing state. They're tied in one excuse me,
out of like fifty poles. Democrats are actually doing pretty
fucking well down the ballot. It's Biden that's the problem.
(36:07):
The reason that's a problem is because he's eighty eighty
one years old and is in rapid decline. I think, yeah,
that's obvious to anyone with a fucking brain and like
it just you can't sell that much of a shit
sandwich to voters. It's not something you can compartmentalize because
it gets into the very way that he speaks, the
very way that he conducts the business of the White House.
(36:28):
It's not like he you know, it's not like he
screwed some intern and then and you can put that
out of your mind.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
Right. No, this is fundamentally the person making our national
security decisions, right This is the person who is reacting
in times of crisis. This is the person who we
turn to for the major executive decisions that matter. And
you need someone with very clear executive making capacity, which
(36:55):
I think right now he lacks. Now, of course, I'm
I'm just gonna say this goes without saying because a
lot of people are like the what about is and
with well what about Trump? Yeah, of course, like Trump
lacks it too. Trump should step aside, blah blah blah.
That ain't happening, So like let's let's not let's not
worry about that. To the people listening right now and
being like, well, you know, what about No, not what about?
Speaker 1 (37:15):
Like Trump is awful?
Speaker 2 (37:17):
He can't think clearly, He's you know, he's too old,
he has cognitive problems. We don't want him with the
nuclear codes, you know, he but he is not stepping aside.
So so that's just going to I just want to
like get that, get that out of the way.
Speaker 3 (37:30):
Look, if you detect like a little peak in my tone,
in Maria's tone today, I mean there's two things. Like one,
I'm just offended by strategic stupidity and high stake situations right, although,
to be fair, we don't know what individual motives are
and that gets complicated. But also like I feel angry
as a voter that I am not offered an acceptable alternative.
(37:51):
I said last week, I'm not going to vote. I'm
not going to vote for Biden. I'm not in a
swing state. I don't know because.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
I'm in Nevada. Yeah, and he's come.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
But I hope that I don't have to write I
really really hope that I'll be voting for Harris or
for for whoever replaces him. I truly hope that, because
you know, of course I will vote for Biden, but
I do it kind of with a heavy heart because
I don't want Trump to win. So let's just say,
let's just put it out there, there's no way that
Trump is withdrawing from the race. That just ain't happening.
(38:22):
So there's only one party that exists that has the
option of actually giving us a good candidate that we
want to vote for, and that's the Democrats. So please,
Joe Biden, now is the time be a hero withdraw
from the race and do it now.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
Marie, I think I need something relaxing to talk about,
like high stakes pumper tournaments instead, let's do it.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
We are in the middle of the largest main event
in World Series of Poker history night so records were
broken ten one hundred and twelve something like that. People,
an insane number of people are out here in Vegas
going for that ten million dollar first prize.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
So I'm of the roughly, what is it like sixty
five hundred of the ten and twelve that are no
longer in the tournament, you are in the four thousand
or something that are tell me about how it's gone
for you so far?
Speaker 1 (39:36):
So far.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
So we're about to start day three, so this means
that we're not in the money yet, so there's still
quite a ways to go until then. So far, the
tournament has been very up and down for me, but
I have I've not been running well, so Nate, I'm
keeping track of our prop bet and yesterday I actually
lost every single all in except for one tiny one,
(39:59):
so and I would get it and I was an
overwhelming favorite. I got two out of three times. My
table thought this was very, very amusing. But I kept
building back and being able to survive, and honestly, that's
the key. So right now I'm going to have about
fifty big lines heading into day three, which is totally fine, right,
It's solid, it's not huge. I'm not one of the
(40:21):
big stacks, but I'm not one of the micro stacks.
And what's really really important to remember in an event
like this, which lasts over many days, is survival matters.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
Right.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
It's one of these things where even if you don't
have a huge chip stack, as long as you have
some chips and as long as you pick your spots,
then you're in it. And of course this is poker,
so anything can happen.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
You know.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
I did have a couple of moments where I could
have been knocked out, and I took the more conservative
line and it served me well. And so I'm proud
of not of lasting through those but who knows. As
you get shallower, you know, when I have two hundred
big lines, it's much easier to avoid those.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
It's much easier to find the fold.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
When you have fifty and you have you know, said,
when you're in a situation like that, at some point
you can't fold.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
It's a tricky tournament because on the one hand, there
are inclinations to be riskivers yourself. On the other hand,
everyone else thaks the same way, so it can kind
of like can kind of devolve into a game of
Chicken a little bit.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
You know.
Speaker 3 (41:24):
I was never getting very much going as far as
like hitting hands right. So mostly ups and downs involved
different types of bluffs. I tried to run, some successfully,
some not. But you can run pretty big bluffs in
the in the main event. People don't want to lose
all their chips and get and get knocked out. Yeah,
but yeah, I don't have a great narrative. I mean
I was kind of just you know, remaining very patient
(41:45):
because you can just like, oh, I lost like ten
pots in a row, and because you have so many chips,
and like you actually it's not affecting you all that much.
But at some point, kind of late on day two.
If you'd ever played the event, that's when the blinds
start to creep up enough. You know, goes from one
thousand big bline to fifteen hundred and then two thousand
in two levels. Right, that's a doubling in two levels.
(42:06):
And that's where a lot of people like me start
to get knocked out or in a situation where where
there was actually a cost to being patient, right where
it's like, yeah, I just you know, I went I
know if I wanted to technical about the terms, right,
but like I shoved, I went all in with with
the okay hand because I thought I had a lot
of full equity. I've been playing very tight. I thought
I had a good image. But you can have a
(42:28):
good image of the m the theifona has kings, then
it doesn't matterimes you.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
Just run into it.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
You know. Sometimes it's a good spot. You made the
right decision and they just have they just have it,
and those those situations are going to happen, and that
doesn't mean you made the wrong decision.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
You know.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Once again, this is to go back to what we've
talked about a lot, and to tie this a little
bit back to politics. The process is what matters, and
you can't be you know, outcome oriented. If you made
the right decision for the right reasons, even if you
ended up losing, you can't be mad at yourself. So
you know, if you ran the right bluff, went all
(43:03):
in with the right hand, picked the right spot, and
they just happened to have it, so be it. But
at least you know that you did everything possible to
put yourself in the situation to win. And I think
that everyone would do well too to remember that lesson
and to not be.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
Like, but what happens if I lose? I can't.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
You cannot have that sort of risk averse thinking going
in that said, you know, I'm going to you know,
my plan for today is to just play well, try
to pick good spots, and hope for the best, because
you do need to you do need to run well
in these in these tournaments, and patience is important and
not panicking is really really important because a lot of
(43:43):
people when they start, you know, when their chips start
going down, they start making decisions they shouldn't, They start
taking risks they shouldn't to try to build back up,
and that's not a good mindset. So I will try
to be zen going into.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
The day and the main event. I mean benefits for
people who have made like a deep run before. I think,
I mean, you see one thing that was good. I
made this deep run last year, which will not be
repeated now obviously, But like you, you get that monkey
off your back, and I felt loose. In What I
think is I think you'd mostly rather be looser than
(44:16):
tighter when you're playing poker. I don't mean in terms
of like how you construct your ranges, right, that's a
different type of looser tight yep. I mean in terms of, like,
in terms of your vibe and your mood. I I
don't think there's any harm from looking at the main
event as quote just another poker tournament, right, I think
that's more good than harmful. Now that might mean that,
(44:39):
like now, strategically, their differences I don't apply to any
other tournament, right. And there are things like it's more
worth it to get your rest and your fitness and
eat well instead of the cheap burger or whatever right
on the break, right, the expected value difference is higher.
But like you know, people who have success in the
main tend to have repeated success because they've been there before.
And I have anything to prove, and like, I think
(45:00):
that's usually that's usually helpful any tournament where patience is
very rewarded.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
Yep, absolutely so. So you know, here here's hoping that
I will be rewarded today. I will do my best,
but whatever happens, I just hope that I'm happy with
my decisions at the end of the day.
Speaker 3 (45:18):
May you want to wrap it up? I mean I think,
you know, yeah, a lot of politics, a little bit poker,
but trust me, listeners, it'll be the reverse of that
in some episodes in the future.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
That's absolutely right.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
But with that, I am going to go and prepare
to play day three of the main I'm.
Speaker 3 (45:34):
Going to go and enter some other event where I'm sad.
I'm sad, sad with the losers, the loser bracket.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
Good luck, good luck. You are my favorite loser.
Speaker 3 (45:47):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (45:52):
Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kannakova and.
Speaker 3 (45:55):
Me Nate Silver.
Speaker 2 (45:57):
The show is a co production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia.
This episode was produced by Isabelle Carter. Our associate producer
is Gabriel Hunter Chang. Our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
Speaker 3 (46:10):
And if you want to listen to and add free version.
Sign up for Pushkin Plus for six thirty nine a month,
you get access to ad free listening. Thanks for tuning in.
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