Abolish Bad Tweets

25:53So you'll see more resources had there. Why do you think Roy Cooper, of all the candidates, is this far ahead? A couple of reasons. I interviewed Roy Cooper on this exact podcast a few weeks ago. Roy Cooper is awesome. He is just, you know, like everyone wants, we often do these super exciting, super inspirational candidates who are like crushing TikTok memes or whatever else. And Roy Cooper is just like a great politician. He is incredibly charming. He is smart. He is delivered for the state. He has tried to be bipartisan against one of the most radical Republican legislatures in the country.

26:30He has accomplished things. He won in that state twice with Trump on the ballot in the state of North Carolina. And Michael Watley was a terrible choice for Republicans. He is a former state party chair. He's Trump's handpicked choice. Voters don't know him. There's a whole bunch about Michael Watley. He just was a bad choice. And so you have a very, very good candidate running against a bad Republican. in a state that is, I think it is underperformed for Democrats in the last couple of elections, if you look at it demographically. And so there is real potential here, particularly in a midterm electorate will look better than a presidential electorate there because of the high proportion of college educated voters in the research triangle in the other suburbs of the state.

27:14I also think on the flip side to your earlier point about, you know, Cooper being these polls being around 50 and Whatley being much lower. One reason for that could be that this is a race where everyone knows Roy Cooper. Yeah, exactly. Right. And so if you're undecided, you've probably, there's probably a better chance you've, you've know Roy Cooper and decided you don't want to vote for him, but you don't know who this Michael Whatley character is. And maybe it's a Republican who's going to end up coming home or just not voting. And I guess, you know, you could say some similar, a similar thing about Ossoff in Georgia, right?

27:47Like he's their senator. He's been their senator. Mike Collins is just a congressman in one district. But also two really bad candidates in Mike Collins and Michael Waltley. Mike Collins today was doing a press avail. I think this was today. And he had to end it early because he got a bunch of questions about all of the anti-Semitic, Nazi-esque things that his son-in-law has been posting online. Yeah, really cool. Cool. We've also got some potentially good Senate news in deep red states like Montana, Idaho, and Nebraska, where the new Democratic strategy appears to be don't run a Democrat. You want to explain what's happening in those states?

28:23Sure. So there is an emerging theory that in states like Nebraska and Montana, which Trump won by 20 points, in Idaho, which Trump won by 36 points, the Democratic brand is so toxic that no person, no matter how great a candidate, no matter how well-funded they are, could actually beat a Republican. But an independent would have a much better chance at taking out a Republican in an anti-Republican year like the one we're in. And so in Nebraska, you have Dan Osborne, who's a union organizer who ran in 2024 against Deb Fischer, is running again. He outperformed Kamala Harris by about 14 points. He only lost by six, closer to seven points ago.

29:02So yeah, it was like 6.7 points, Trump won by 20. And then in Idaho, you have Todd Achilles, who is a veteran, a businessman, former state legislator, used to be a Democrat, has left the party becoming independent. He is running against Jim Risch, who is an actual senator. That probably comes to news to people, but he is. And in that race, there is no – in both Idaho and Nebraska, the person who won the Democratic primary dropped out to give the independent candidate their best chance. In Montana, you have Seth Bodnar running. He is a former Green Beret and the longtime president of the University of Montana.

29:39He is running as an independent. And there is also a Democrat in the race who is refusing to drop out. And some polling has shown that Bodnar has a legitimate chance. I think it was down by a point or two to the Republican, whose name I cannot remember. And you remember the context here is, is that basically the Republican dropped out like minutes before the filing deadline. So there's a whole corruption element to this too. So there's a potential shot in this race, but the Democrat does not seem like she is dropping out. Yeah, the Democrat in Idaho dropped out just this last week. And so, you know, I think Todd Achilles, in that state, the polling hasn't showed him as close to Jim Rich, but like he's still, you know, it's better than the Democrat for sure.

30:21And now that the Democrats dropped out, maybe he'll get some more attention. But in Montana, I mean, there's some polling that shows Seth Bodnar over Kurt Almy is their Republican who basically the fix was in and as soon as Steve Daines who was the Republican senator of Montana dropped out he's the one who just filed a couple minutes after that but the Democrat in that race just like refuses to drop out and she has no money, no real campaign and is just being stubborn for no reason and she does have until by the way august 10th so she can drop out by august 10th and then give seth bodnar like a real chance against um the republican and we could you know you could get independence in there now seth bodnar todd achilles uh there's also brian bangs is running in south dakota um um you know they're not like liberal democrats they're not even mainstream democrats i think all of them have some and same thing with dan osborne some of them have some like i would say I would characterize it as more culturally conservative positions on some issues and then little more economically populist positions on other issues.

31:37Not too lefty economic populist, but for a red state, they do. Very focused on sort of anti-corruption, good government. I mean, you would want them in the United States Senate way, way, way over the Republicans in those seats. Yes. I mean, as an example, Dan Osborne in 2024 ran an ad saying he would help Trump build the wall. Right. Right. But he's also like on economic issues, on health care, like minimum wage, union rights. Proact. Yeah. He's a union organizer. He's great on all of that stuff, you know. So that's hopefully that'll work. But yeah, if you're if you're in Montana or you're in Idaho, check out some of these candidates.

32:14And also, if you're in Montana, like try to help make some noise so that the Democrat in that race can finally drop out and do the right thing before August 10th and actually give us a shot there. Because if not, we have no shot. I would say that in Montana, and I've heard from some people in Montana about this, that there is a lot of anger in how this has played out. That, you know, you have a Democratic Party, a fairly vibrant Democratic Party that has, you know, elected John Tester multiple times. There's been Democratic governors of the state in recent years. And to sort of have that whole process pushed aside for someone who they believe to be quite flawed on many issues has led to anger, which is, I think, leading to banquets in the race.

32:53Now, if you take a step back and you say, what is our best chance of beating Kurt Almey and winning a seat, even if it's a long shot, it is clearly Seth Bodnar and it's not a close call. And there is something that connects this with the DNC conversation you guys had on Tuesday with something we're about to talk about here, which is there really is like it's sort of Lord of the Flies in the Democratic Party right now. You know, you would like to think that there's someone in charge, someone with authority who come in and say, look, someone who's trusted, who could say the best thing to defeat Republicans and have Democrats possibly take the Senate and hold it for a while, because we really want to have a governing majority.

33:30We need to go back to a world where we can win Montana and Idaho and Nebraska and places like that, is to give Seth Bodnar a chance here, even if it is a long shot. And no one has that authority. Same thing at the DNC, where no one has the actual authority to go and tell Ken Martin he should go if that's what they think. And so there is just, we're kind of, no one is in charge right now in the party. And that has consequences in these sorts of situations. And you don't, I'm like, you don't want people from Washington coming in and doing everything, but there is, at times you have to make really hard strategic decisions and there's no one trusted to make those decisions.

34:02So you end up with situations like this. Yeah. That's a real problem. But when you, you know, NBC just had a story about this today, just sort of detailing what's going on in the Montana race and saying how, like, even though the party is sort of at war with itself right now, people from all different parts of the party are all for Seth Bodnar getting a chance in this race. Like, they interviewed Faz, Shakir, you know, worked for Bernie Sanders, Nira, Tanden, Cap, like, the left, the center left, everyone's for this. And so it's just a matter of actually these people in these races who are Democrats doing the right things.

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35:51Hymns is not affiliated with or endorsed by Vietras. Hey, Dan Taberski here. I'm a podcast host, a journalist, and now with my newest project, the author of my own manifesto. Well, it's a manifesto about manifestos. My search for inspiration in a world that feels more infuriating, more out of its freaking mind with each passing hour. Manifestos are a call to action, an artful scream. They capture our anger and they try to do something with it. This is my attempt to take the manifesto back from mass shooters and nihilists and return it to its rightful place with the warriors, the visionaries, the regular folks with just the right amount of crazy.

36:30I compare notes with radicals, secessionists, internet trolls out for a laugh, and punk singers screaming their guts out, all trying to turn their anger into the world they want to see. Listen to Manifesto wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge all episodes of Manifesto early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts.

36:56All right. Meanwhile, in the upper Midwest, the Democratic Civil War is raging like the 2016 primary never ended. We are we're in the final stages of the primary campaigns in the Michigan Senate and House races or Election Day is this coming Tuesday and the Wisconsin governor's race, which is a week later in Michigan. The final debate of the Senate primary between Haley Stevens and Abdul El-Sayed was Monday night. Here's a sample of the vibe. When you ask$60 million to come into a race for you and then say that somehow you're electable, I think you don't quite understand what electability means.

37:30If you need a$60 million crutch, you probably can't be elected on your own terms. My opponent is on these big podcasts. You know, he's running a podcast himself. These folks are making fun of the way I sound. But yet I sound like the people who need help, who are talking to me about what they need. A direct attack on podcasters, Dan. What the fuck?

37:59And in one of ours, actually, the podcast she was referring to there, America Dissected, one of a crooked podcast for many years. It hasn't been for a couple of years, but yeah, that was what Abdul hosted right here on our network. A podcast about public health. Yeah, I was going to say that's the, it's not really this big, she was trying to make it out to be this like celebrity podcast. He's not breaking down Real Housewives of Rhode Island. No, it's a pretty staid podcast about public health that's helping inform people about public health. Anyway, it's getting even more heated between surrogates as it often does.

38:33Michigan Congresswoman Hillary Scholten, who is a Haley Stevens supporter, was asked by Semaphore on Wednesday evening whether she'll support Abdul if he wins. And she said, quote, I will not stand beside someone who has allowed distinctly anti-American sentiment to enter our public dialogue. When Abdul came on this podcast, Alex Wagner asked him the same question about Stevens. He said, I will do everything I can to make sure Mike Rogers never sees the inside of the U.S. Senate. Bernie Sanders, the same night that Hillary Shulton gave that interview, was on CNN saying he would support Haley Stevens if she's the winner as well.

39:12And just not getting it from all of the supporters on Haley Stevens' side. But Haley Stevens herself has said. Yes, she has. Yes, she has. I think that's an important point. And if we're being totally fair here, there are people on the other side who feel the same way about Haley Stevens. Here's the thing. If you believe the polls, and we only have a small sample size of polls here, Abdul is the most likely Democratic nominee. Yeah. So Emerson came out. So we've had a lot of kind of either internal polls or polls that are like not high quality or maybe they're just new pollsters. But we had an Emerson poll on Thursday.

39:48Emerson's a high quality poll. And it has Abdul up 15 % over Haley, which does match what some of those other polls that we weren't sure about were saying. And it matches the internal polls that are circulating. Yes. So I think that that probably is an accurate picture where the race stands today, four days before the primary. And a fair amount of people have voted already in the state. But no matter who wins, everyone's going to have to come back together again. And both the winner and the loser are going to have to build a bridge to get the other side together. Right? If Abdul wins, he is going to have to be very magnanimous and very open, and he is going to need the support of all of the establishment that is supporting Haley Stevens in Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, Dana Nessel, Debbie Stabenow, Gary Peters.

40:39and if Haley Stevens were to win, then she is going to need the support of the huge grassroots network that Abdul has created, the UAW, which has supported Abdul. Everyone's going to have to come together here pretty quickly because this is the problem with the late primary is there's not a lot of time to mend fences, build a coalition, and then go win a general election. Here's all I'll say about it. It is one thing to have supporters on both sides who, when the other candidate wins, are going to say that they're going to take their toys and go home. And that's going to happen. But there is a difference if it is people who are just, you know, posting online or, you know, influencers here and there, podcasters, streamers, whoever it may be.

41:27There's a difference between those people and elected officials and leaders in the Democratic Party. And if you're a leader in the Democratic Party, you're an elected official, you set the example for everyone else to follow. And if random person with a couple hundred thousand followers on Twitter is like, no, I'm not voting for Abdul or I'm not voting for Haley Stevens, whatever. There's nothing we can all do about that. You know, we can shame that person, yell at them, try to convince them, do whatever you want. But like, you're going to get that. That's just going to happen in primaries. We don't have to like amplify that a ton because then it'll just cause everything to be worse.

41:59But elected officials like Hillary Scholten should not have said that. like that. And there's not an elected official on Abdul's side who has said something similar. There just hasn't been. And like to Haley Stevens' credit, she hasn't said anything like that. Her other elected officials who are supporting him haven't said that. But like for Hillary Shulton to say that is just unbelievably unhelpful, unproductive. And what you were saying by telling people that is that if Abdul wins the primary, then somehow you'd rather Mike Rogers be the senator, Mike Rogers, who is a Trump supporting, healthcare cutting, like all of the right-wing Trump positions who would vote for a Trump nominee to the Supreme Court, you would rather that person happen to win the race than try hard to go out there and make sure that Abdul wins the Senate race.

42:47And I just think that's ridiculous. Yeah. It is not constructive, is maybe the nicest way to say it. It's not constructive. And again, it's like if you are a leader in the, I mean, we don't tend to endorse in races. We are in this one because we know Abdul and have worked with him. But like I've said from the beginning, Haley Stevens wins. I am all in for Haley Stevens. And like I don't agree with it. That doesn't mean I suddenly change my mind and agree with her position on Israel. I don't. But like she is far and away better than Mike Rogers. And I'd be very comfortable voting for her and supporting her and doing whatever I can to make sure she wins.

43:23you know i would donate i would if she wins the primary on tuesday night i will donate to her before i eat breakfast on wednesday morning for sure and and you look people will forget this but like you and i had this conversation a million times back on the whole platner mills thing we're like janet mills wins this primary we are all for janet mills we'll go up to maine and knock on doors right like we are on the team here did you just get did someone cattle prod you that we hadn't mentioned platner in this podcast like this is going too well we haven't engendered any hatred just yet. Let's, I am, I am trying to, cause I really, I just, I have these, we have this primary here in Wisconsin and Michigan that this is happening for, but like, we're going to look ahead.

44:01This is going to happen in 2028. I am trying to practice what we preach, set an example and hope that everyone else in positions of influence and leadership in this party does the same thing. Because if we turn around and just, you either, you either want to win or you want to fight, right? Or you want, and then you want to be right. So you, so that like after someone loses that you didn't want to win, you can say, Oh, see, I was right all along. Like, is that going to feel more satisfying than having a democratic Senate, democratic house, a democratic president? That's something you have to ask yourself.

44:33For people insulated from the consequences of politics, it probably will. But for the American people, Michigan, people, America, absolutely not. Right. So you can post later that like you were right all along. And again, this goes for, I, we've, we've seen it. We've been doing this for 10 years. We've seen it on both sides. We've seen sore losers on the left and the center left. Anyway, what are your thoughts on the electability arguments from both sides? Because I do think in this race, it has been tricky to figure out to make an electability case, partly because I think there's been such a lack of high-quality polling.

45:04It is. There is one poll from the Michigan Education Association, a business group that circulated last week or earlier this week that showed Haley Stevens doing much better against Mike Rogers, beating Mike Rogers by a fair amount, and Abdul losing to Mike Rogers, if I'm very correctly. I don't know if that poll is correct. The Republicans do believe privately and publicly that Abdul would be easier to beat than Haley Stevens. If you look at the real clear politics average, it has Stevens 0.5 over Rogers and Abdul 0.5 over Rogers. Exactly the same. And then basically the entire electability gap comes from that poll that you just mentioned.

45:45I'm kind of surprised that Emerson didn't poll the general. Yes. Like they just pulled the primary and they didn't give us a fucking general. Come on, guys. And similar thing with the – we'll get to Wisconsin. minute. We've seen similar things with some polls that could do that. I'm surprised. Yeah. I'm surprised they didn't do that. Like hypothetical general election polling is quite flawed. Yeah. But the people whose job it is to win elections on the Republican side believe, and they could be wrong. They absolutely could be wrong. But they do believe. Yeah. They do. And they've spent money to try to do that.

46:16There's so much money being spent on the Haley Stevens side that it hasn't really mattered that much, but they have tried to boost Abdul in this race. And so I can make an electability argument for both of them. I've done it in my newsletter. I think it is theoretical, self-fulfilling bullshit in most cases. The one thing I'd say is for Abdul, he has more statements and more positions in his life that can be demagogued by Republicans than Haley Stevens does. Yes. For sure. Outside of Israel. Well, as you say, the challenge for Haley Stevens is what makes her a moderate in this race is that she is more moderate than Abdul on a whole bunch of issues, Medicare for all, abolish ICE.

47:04But she is, you know, she voted with Joe Biden, I think 100 % of the time. And so she is more moderate than Abdul, but she's not, this is not Joe Manchin or Jared Golden or something like that. What makes her out, the one issue where she is not sort of swimming with the stream in the Democratic Party right now is on Israel. She is one of the more Or you could say the Michigan electorate. And that's what I was going to say, is the thing that gets lost in the conversation about the changing public opinion on Israel is that the biggest shift is not Democrats, it's independents. And we have not seen Michigan-specific polling on that, but I would imagine it's at least comparable to the national polling or more stark than that.

47:47And so that is a challenge. And for Abdul to win, in this Emerson poll, he is losing black voters by 30 points. Now, I'm confident that most of those black voters would prefer Abdul over Mike Rogers, but you have to turn them out. It's not just whether they choose you or not or prefer you. And then for Haley Stevens, it's going to be a very challenging thing to get youth turnout in Michigan, a state with huge colleges in Lansing and Ann Arbor, when you have the position you have on Israel and your campaign has been bankrolled to the tune of like$60 million from APAC. And so these are challenges for both of them.

48:27But neither of them win, to go back to the original point, if we're not completely unified in this race. Because Mike Rogers is a very good opponent. This is a 50-50 state. I think both of them can win, but they both have challenges. Yeah, I agree. So things are no more pleasant in Wisconsin, where Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong seems to have the nomination for governor wrapped up, despite a last-minute attempt by the state's Democratic establishment to stop her. She's crushing in all the polls. Former Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes just dropped out a couple hours before we started recording.

48:58And David Crowley, who quit the race and then re-entered the race the other week with Governor Evers' endorsement is still stuck around 10 to 15 percent in the polls. A lot of Democrats worried about this race with Hong as the nominee based on some pretty far out there old statements, tweets, policy positions. She once called for abolishing the Senate. Then her campaign said she never did, but the tweet does in fact exist. She once called for abolishing prisons and police, though now says those aren't her current positions. She even had a 2020 tweet about abolishing Thanksgiving, calling it, quote, the original super spreader event that killed indigenous folk and women.

49:41Folk there spelled F-O-L-X. Dan, what do you think of Hong's chances? Well, if the polls are correct, she is almost certainly going to be the Democratic nominee. There have been two polls out this week where she is up by more than 20 points and has very high favorability. So it seems like she's going to be the Democratic nominee. This is a very, very hard race. Um, it is, she, as you point out as a democratic socialist, democratic socialists have a minus 21, I think approval rating in Wisconsin, uh, minus 23 % Democrats have a minus 21 % MAGA is a minus 19%. Um, no one's doing great, but so that democratic socialism, she has these positions that can be demagogued.

50:26In addition to Wisconsin, like I just said, was I said, Michigan was a 50-50 state. Wisconsin is the swing state. It has been decided by less than one point in five of the last seven presidential elections. And Hong is running to succeed a two term Democratic governor in a change election. So she can absolutely win. Like this is a, you're a 50-50 state, the political environment based on the polling decision we just had is somewhere between six to 11 points Democratic. So you have some margin for error there, but it's going to take some real work and she's going to have to be very smart and deft.

50:58And everyone I know who knows her, Amanda Littman was talking about her with me. She's a run for something candidate when she was on this podcast a couple weekends ago. That she is incredibly bright. She's obviously ran an incredible primary campaign. She's a very good campaigner. And she's going to have to run essentially a flawless campaign and navigate these issues to the end. But if she does that, she can win. But it's hard. It's obviously hard. It was going to be a hard race matter who the nominee is. And it's probably a little bit harder with her as the nominee. Here's one thing I'd like to see from her and to an extent, Abdul as well, if he ends up being the nominee.

51:29Like, I've said this before that, you know, you have old tweets, you know, woke one was crazy in 2020. People had a lot of crazy tweets. And if you want to disavow them, great. I just think there needs to be a little more, like, so Hong was asked by J-Mart after the debate, whether she's that's jonathan martin from politico sorry jonathan martin yeah i know it's hard for those who haven't had their brains broken about politics for the last yes so many years um whether she still supports the goal the aspirational goal of abolishing prisons and um the answer is got to be just no just no no i don't and it was she didn't say she supports it but it was sort of a long winding answer and about, you know, over incarceration and all these things that are true, right?

52:22Like we over incarcerate people, our prisons, the conditions there are terrible. We put people in jail for nonviolent crimes that they shouldn't be in jail for, right? Like all of that stuff is true. But when someone asks you, do you think that we should defund the police? The answer is no. Do we think, do you think that we should abolish prisons? No. Do should we abolish police departments? No. Should we abolish borders? No. And what about, you said that before. So what was that tweet about? I was wrong. I was wrong. I tweeted something back then. I have thought about it and you know what? It's wrong.

52:56That's it. And like, I don't think Abdul has done that well enough on defund. And I think he can, he needs to fix that if he runs the general. And I think certainly she has a whole bunch for Jessica Hong of positions like that. Because, and look, and the left will say, well, They have very popular positions on healthcare and data centers, stuff like that. Yes, they do. And those positions, they don't have to worry about as much. And they should spend the campaign emphasizing them. But in order for voters to hear your positions on those issues, they need to feel comfortable that on those other issues, on the group of abolished issues that keeps getting a lot of these DSA people in trouble, that you just disavow them and you've changed your mind.

53:37Yeah, that's exactly right. You have to reckon with the reality of the race you're running. If you are running in a district that Kamala Harris won by 50 points in Manhattan or Colorado, that's one world. If you're running statewide in Michigan or Wisconsin, that is a very different world. Then you're going to have to be very clear. And your primary win, if the polls are correct, both of their primary wins are going to be incredibly impressive. But that tells you very little about how you're going to do in the general and the whole set of voters you're now going to have to go persuade. And it's going to require a shift in strategy, a change in – not a change in like what you actually believe are your values, but how you talk.

54:23You have to be – you have to think that now I have to persuade a whole bunch of people who disagree with me on a lot of things to support me. And you can do that by emphasizing the things they do agree with you on, like healthcare being a human right, universal healthcare in whatever form you're choosing to be in, a lot of stuff that – data centers, a lot of stuff statewide for Francesca Hong about education in Wisconsin. Like that can work, but you do, there are some barriers you have to get over and you're going, tens of millions of dollars will be spent throwing your old positions, your old statements, your old tweets in your face on a daily basis.

54:57And you're going to have to do what Kamala Harris was unwilling to do in 2024, which is explicitly go out and say clearly and repeatedly, I would change my mind. Here's why. Yeah, because here's what doesn't work. Just trying to change the issue again because you don't want to talk about health care. No, doesn't work. Doesn't work. People can read. They can see the positions. They will watch the videotape of you saying whatever. They will read the old tweets. And there needs to be video of you out there giving an explanation. and I don't want to hear that the, because we hear this in the, from the Harris campaign, that it didn't test well.

55:35None of the responses tested well. Of course, they're not going to test well. You're responding to something that is unbelievably unpopular. So it's not going to test well. It's just something that you have to say. Abdul got this question on CNN. He refused, he would not say he no longer supported the fund place. He said a bunch of words that I think he thought in his head added up to that, but it was not clear. And basically seemed like he refused to answer whether he still supported it. You know who was very clear about this? Zoran Mamdani when he was running. I was just going to say, like, if you don't want to listen to us because we're a bunch of fucking centrist neoliberal Obama shills, like, go just watch some tape of AOC and Zoran Mamdani, right?

56:11The heroes of the left. Just watch the tape. And you'll see that they – exactly what you just said, that they know exactly how to talk about this stuff. Yeah. He just – they asked, did you still support it? And he said no. And that was New York City, not Michigan. Right. Yeah. It's good. easier for him there than it's going to be in Michigan and Wisconsin, for sure.

56:56and sharp reporting. The show pulls from The Guardian's global newsroom, so you're getting coverage across politics, culture, climate, and more, plus conversations with big thinkers and newsmakers. Join Kai Wright and Carter Sherman three times a week as they try to make sense of all this. New episodes drop every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. You can watch on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

57:19Okay, one last piece of bad news on the midterms before we get to some other bad news. Elon Musk says he's going to spend at least$100 million. Elon's back and he's got$100 million that he's going to spend to help Republican candidates in the fall. So much for starting that third party. How big of a deal do you think this is? I think this is fucking great. Probably because they have such a financial advantage that$100 million is basically like spitting in the ocean at this point. Honestly, that was my first instinct, but I'm glad that you think that too. It's like that all the world's richest man is going to spend$100 million.

57:50Like he could put$5 billion in if he wanted and it would be nothing to him. So let's make Elon Musk the face of a lot of these Republicans. He's incredibly unpopular. It allows you to talk about Doge. It allows you to talk about AI, which we're about to get to. It allows you to talk about big tech. It is like corruption, everything else. Like, well, put him front and center. Yeah. Well, speaking of AI, a couple of these candidates, in particular, Francesca Hong, have made opposition to AI data centers a focal point of their campaigns. And this week, it was really easy to understand why putting limits on the AI industry is so appealing to people.

58:25As some of you may have seen or heard, a new model from OpenAI escaped its so-called sandbox. What's a sandbox? Well, that's basically a lockdown server with no internet where it was undergoing testing and secretly escaped the sandbox, reached the internet, and hacked into a separate AI platform called Hugging Face in order to score better on a cybersecurity evaluation. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said it was, quote, the first security incident that I have felt very viscerally. Good. I'm glad. Can I say one thing about that that is the scariest thing of that? Is the AI model left notes in the server to itself because they thought it would be destroyed after this.

59:11Basically, like, here's how I did it. So future versions of me can do this. And I saw someone say that if this AI agent was a person, they would have been convicted of many, many crimes. I'm sure. Yeah. But not Sam. Sam just felt it very viscerally. He seems to be moving toward favoring some kind of centralized controls on AI development kind of slowly. As do Trump, the founders of Anthropic, and more than a thousand employees of those companies who signed an open letter this week. But not Mark Zuckerberg. But not Mark Zuckerberg. That little fuck who's out there being like, oh, all these guys want centralized control.

59:47And I just want everyone to have their own AI. And I want everyone to be free to have their own private personalized AI because I'm for that freedom. And they're for central control because all the fucking people that Meta has hired on their payroll, Democrats and Republicans, to like run their PR campaign on AI realized that the advantage that they could have is to paint Anthropic and OpenAI and all the rest of them. as this centralized control and that Meta just wants everyone to be free and have their own AI. Well, everyone having their own AI that isn't tested and that can just run and do whatever the fuck it wants isn't freedom.

1:00:22It's fucking anarchy. Not great. That's my Mark Zuckerberg thing. I cannot stand him. But so the statement, I was like all excited that all these employees, including Meta, OpenAI, Anthropics, signed this letter. The statement in the letter is, we request that the US government support an international effort to develop the technical and governance tools needed to deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development. Ooh. It's an impossible thing to do. Like the other people making AI are the Chinese. Trump had a national televised address like three weeks ago to accuse him of interfering in our election.

1:01:03Yeah, whatever happened with that. Altman himself went to Capitol Hill this week to meet and have a fancy dinner with concerned senators who probably had no idea what was going on, which is all well and good, except that what the public keeps hearing from the AI bros is shit like this. What we need to explain to the world. Number one, we are close to creating a genie that can grant any wish. Number two, we are going to make sure that our first wishes broadly benefit humanity. We are now like in the singularity. Like this is the moment. For the last 10 years ago, this was like a kind of far off dream at best um it seemed very improbable and now we're like actually in the moment that we used to like talk about at the lunch table in a very not serious way you think there's still a 10 to 20 chance that killer robots mean the end of humanity that's a high p doom as they say well in the long run we're all dead of course um yeah um in the long run we're all dead of course good point anyone but how about the short run can we not be dead in the short run too i mean that's the point if you're gonna be dead in the long run why are you worrying about the short run you've been thinking about this one for a while.

1:02:23What should Democrats be doing insane about this? Because it seems like no one is running this rodeo here. AI is the technological, economic, cultural, sociological health issue of our time. It threatens to change everything about how we live. And it is something that people have a growing fear and concern about. And it is in an incredibly polarized world, there's a complete jump ball between the parties. The most recent Pew poll asked people in a battery of issues which party they trusted more. 23 % trusted Republicans, 22 % trusted Democrats, and 51 % said neither party. People are crying out for leadership.

1:03:05In our calcified politics, this is a one opportunity to completely reshape how people think about the party. If one party can step up, take a leadership role here, stand up, be strong about the risks here, have an actual vision for how you regulate it, for how you deal with data centers, how you pay for this, how you protect people from the economic and social downsides of this, this is the issue. Democrats have been – there are exceptions, but Democrats have been largely silent or sort of nebulous about our position on it. That's for a couple of reasons. One is we have a lot of old Democrats.

1:03:42Like, I don't know if you saw the interview that Jim Clyburn did with Estad Herndon on his podcast, where he admitted he found out about ChetGPT last week. This is one of the most prominent Democrats in the House. And another reason is a lot of candidates are very worried about the highly funded AI super PACs coming in and dumping a whole bunch of money against them like they did to Alex Boris in the House race primary in New York. And the third reason is on data centers, there are complicated politics for some Democrats because while two-thirds of the public does not want a data center in their community, labor unions, and particularly building trades, very much want to be building data centers.

1:04:18The reason this is a huge opportunity and a necessity for Democrats is, one, it is the issue, and you should be talking about the issue. Two, it is an amazing point of contrast with Trump and the Republicans, because Donald Trump's philosophy is to let the AI bros, as you call them, who have given Trump millions and millions of dollars to him, both politically and personally, do whatever they want. Their philosophy is let AI cook. And he wants to build a data center on every corner. Just a report in the New York Times this week that he wants to give federal land, to use repurpose federal land for the construction of data centers.

1:04:53We could be the smart, authentic, passionate, populist voice here arguing for a sensible solution. And we just, that has not happened. I hope this is a, I hope this is talked about in every 2028 debate. Hope ever this is talked about all the time. This like, this is the thing and that we have an opportunity and an obligation to lead and we have not done it yet. Here's the, the other tricky dynamic that we have watched unfold since the beginning of this debate is when people raise their voices, whether it's the people who run these AI companies themselves or the people who work there or experts or politicians or whoever it may be and say, slow down, be careful, we got to put some guardrails on.

1:05:41The inevitable answer you get from people who want to just keep going as fast as possible is, but China. And we can't lose the AI race because we don't want, if we slow down, China won't slow down and then they'll have all the advanced AI and then we won't have it. And then they will dominate, you know, militarily, economically, et cetera, et cetera. And I think Democrats have to figure out how to grapple with that because I've heard some Democrats who are more favorable towards AI make that argument. some of the more like national security minded, centrist minded Democrats. And I mean, you mentioned the AI packs and all the other things.

1:06:25But I do think there's a genuine belief among some people who are like, you know, have the best motivations that they're just like worried about China, which is and I think that the only way that we're actually going to not kill each other with these things, have the robots kill us all, is for like an international effort here, an international diplomacy, which we're not going to have with this president at all. But I do think like there is no way you're going to be able to transition to this AI era without like real strong diplomacy and some kind of international framework on this. Because otherwise, every time someone tries to stop AI here or slow it down, the industry and other people are just going to say, no, no, you can't do that because China is just going to race ahead.

1:07:09Obviously, AI is happening. It is like the genie that Sam Altman said we can make is out the bottle. But you have to find a way to do it in a way that is safe, where there's actual real thinking about the policy consequences that are other than just the use of AI, the energy costs. How is that being paid for? Because that's the big thing with these data centers is jacking up electricity prices everywhere. What are the environmental consequences of that? And perhaps probably most importantly, or most relevant to a lot of people, what are we doing for the lots of people who could lose their jobs because of this?

1:07:47Could. I mean, we are at a situation now where we saw what happened with globalization and automation. I sound like rock and bum right now, but in the 80s. And what that did to huge parts of the country, to entire classes of people. We see it coming. It's going to be a different class of people this time. and how do we prepare for that? What can we do? And obviously the real sick irony here is you can't teach them to code because AI is taking, we have to teach the people to code to do something else, I guess. But there is like, this is just a, we see it coming and we should be prepared both subtly, but politically, there's just this massive opportunity and obligation for Democrats.

1:08:35And I really hope that there is a 2028 candidate or candidates who take a real leadership role here. I mean, it's already here, the job situation, because even if you're not seeing it in layoffs in a significant way, employment among young people in AI-related industries or industries that AI could affect is already down 14%, 20 % over the last couple of years. And this is like just the beginning. We're just getting going here, and it's going to get so much worse. And I also think that data centers aside, like there's a whole conversation we had about data centers and everything you said, I agree with there.

1:09:13But the safety of these models, like there has to be regulation on, we can't just say like, oh, wow, that one got out of the sandbox and I really felt that one viscerally and next time we're going to fix that. Like, I mean, Ted Lieu has an AI kill switch bill that he introduced that a bunch of people signed on to that would require developers to have a means of shutting down their models. Of course, the industry doesn't support that for some reason. I think, like, Thune and Cruz and Klobuchar and Cantwell are working on a frontier AI bill. But, like, so much of this shit is, like, voluntary regulation and all this kind of stuff.

1:09:48Like, you cannot have these models go out to market that are this powerful if they're not adequately tested that they're safe. I mean, that is, like, that's more important than anything else because that's, like, lights out for everyone. Anyway, is there a hopeful way to end this? Well, John, in the long run, we're all dead. Here's the thing, Dan. We're in the singularity now, the thing that Sam Altman was just talking about at the lunch table. And now we're here, so that's pretty cool. Yeah. We're in the singularity, the Michigan primaries Tuesday and Wisconsin's the next Tuesday. Things are looking up.

1:10:28do you think i think the flaw in sam altman's genie argument is do you think they've accounted for the fact that the only smart thing to do if you get a genie with three wishes is you ask for unlimited wishes with your first wish i've heard someone else actually make that say that about ai that it's the it's unlimited wishes that it's like well it's not because the the fucking tokens are quite expensive so i don't think it's that unlimited yeah it's yeah give me some free Give us some tokens in every pot, Sam. It's like enough water and electricity to power a small town just for being like, hey, chat, what should I do tonight?

1:11:03Hey, chat, why am I feeling sad? That's a whole town right there. That's our show for today. Love it. We'll be back in the feed on Sunday with The Bulwarks, Jonathan V. Last. Have a good weekend, everyone. Bye, everyone. Pods of America is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Farrah Safari with Ree Cherlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Hethcote, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, Kirill Pellaviv, David Tolles, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Single. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.