 Welcome to the reason roundtable your weekly libertarian podcast from the magazine that is not on your ballot this Tuesday See can't blame us. I am Matt Welch joined by Nick Gillespie making weird guttural noises Peter Superman and Catherine Mangu giggling Ward. How do you do fellow citizens? Howdy? Matt that was the worst intro ever midterm madness Monday Whoo a little alliteration to start out our week Let's get straight to it The fate of democracy is in your hands President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. Said yesterday Warned MSNBC historian Michael Beschloss. What's at stake is whether we will be a democracy in the future whether our children Will be arrested and conceivably killed counters Carl Rowe the Republican strategist formerly known as Bush's brain the geniuses in the West Wing thought they could make the election about Anything they wanted it to be about a midterm election in particular is about what the people want it to be about Deep thoughts from Carl Rowe. So in Republicans reading the election is about crime. It's about inflation. It's about the economy. It's about COVID It's about immigration immigration. Thank you. Jesus Christ. He's interrupting the word on my pay I showed you. I thought this was participatory. No, it's not master. No, okay get to the question Like the electrodes back on the testicles Whatever it is They were never it's they were never close This election control of the United States Senate hangs in the balance There's a pretty normal pendulum swing looking like it's about to happen in the house Remember that on average something like 26 Presidents party loses about 26 seats in the first midterm, but also the chances of a Pre-election polling error is particularly high because the kids don't answer their phones and I can't really blame them Libertarians as usual are outsiders much more so now than ever before and perhaps we can add a useful Outside perspective that the currently hyper panicked Insiders are unable to achieve so Catherine As a non-voting anarchist one-legged robot Can you lead us in a round of? Everyone giving their sense of what is the single biggest important thing from your perspective at stake in this? Election to end all elections. Yeah, I heard this was the most important election of our lifetimes Matt So, okay, so why because they all are every single one is every single one of my lifetime has been the most important election of my lifetime This one, you know, obviously the rhetoric around it is, you know, where democracy is at stake, but it's not clear in that kind of hysteria whether The outcome of the election is determining whether we get to keep having democracy or whether the conduct During, you know election day and vote counting is the thing that we have to keep an eye on probably both I guess everything because everyone's just losing their minds. I have historically been a skeptic of the Often espoused libertarian position that divided government is good government. I think that You know, there maybe I'm an idiot, but I just keep holding out hope that some kind of minimally competent and minimally You know libertarian friendly government would still be better than just a gridlocked Nightmare escape. I am I'm coming over though to the side of team divided government And so I think you know, that's that's what's at stake here if we end up with kind of meaningfully You know a government meaningfully at odds with itself in terms of the partisan balance that we will at the very least not have to see a replay of The of the sort of inter inter democratic nightmare where like Joe Manchin You know ran the country for a year and instead we will see kind of a more classic Tension between the parties resulting in very little getting done At this point. I really can't see anything that anyone in government is proposing to do that. I want to see done And so we might as well just have great Wait, you're not excited about the debt limit showdown over Medicare and social security. That's definitely going to happen Yeah, I think Showdown though, that's like Spider-Man 3 or something. Yeah, somebody play the bonanza theme Peter. What's your Single biggest issue of importance that's at stake in this I think I think this is this election is mostly about inflation Not entirely but mostly in some ways because inflation supersedes and also encapsulates all other issues, right? There's a if you look at the surveys and also just the reports and a data from voters They'll be like, well, you know Democracy abortion sure all that stuff. It's like seems important But what actually matters is when I go to the grocery store things are much more expensive And the partisan polling is I think pretty revealing here Republicans have been worried about inflation for a while They're they're quite worried about it for obvious reasons in part because it hurts their pocketbooks in part because it's like a It's a way of scoring points against Democrats against Joe Biden, right? but Democrats and upper-middle-class voters in recent months have actually grown more Concerned about inflation rather than less and so even Democrats are trending in a direction that is bad for Joe Biden and his party And independent voters who are obviously very important to elections and the outcomes of elections Independent voters are actually more likely than Democrats or Republicans to say inflation is creating serious stress in their lives According to a new Wall Street Journal poll. So that's what people are worried about Then that tells you about what the what this election I think is really going to be about and what's It's amazing to me is the way that Biden and his party have responded by trying to treat this as a Messaging problem, which is in some ways. This is what Democrats and to a lesser extent to or in a different way Maybe Republicans always try to do with problems. They can't really solve but the macro economy does not respond To speeches like you can't really you can't you can't fix it with soaring rhetoric It just doesn't care how many times Joe Biden says come on man or you know insists He is on the it's like the terminator. It's out there, you know, it can't be bargained with it can't be reasoned with It doesn't feel pity or remorse. It will absolutely not stop ever until prices stop rising I think is how that goes. I just think Democrats have not even bothered to reckon with this in a really serious way in part because To do so would be to acknowledge that Joe Biden's big signature policy when he came in to office Was to pass a giant spending bill that even people in his own party said was too big and was likely to trigger runaway inflation Democrats went ahead and did it. They did it on a partisan basis and now we are where we are You know Peter joy read joy and read from MSNBC taught me that no one had used Use the word inflation until Republicans in the scaremongering media started using it So I think you're part of the problem Nick. What is your sense of what is at stake for Nicholas P? I was gonna also add to Peter though that you know the Stacey Abrams at one point tried to wrap abortion into Inflation and it was something like you know because now we can't get abortions inflation is really out of control or something and So, you know you gotta give people think the price of a terminated pregnancy is included in any measure of CPI Now but think of the the spending that you commit to if you let that kid come, you know to turn That's like, you know a couple hundred thousand dollars You are just you're pouring gas on the economy of the future Matt I to pick up on actually what both Catherine and Peter were saying I think the you know It's it's the economy in the broadest terms possible and it's not simply inflation I think it you know, there is a restructuring going on That has been going on for the past 20 years. You've talked about it Recently on this podcast, but you know the labor force participation rate younger people older people like who's in the economy who isn't On you know, and then you see things like inflation and you see things like free trade and supply chain You know problems where most people don't really fully understand why this is how I don't know that anybody really fully understands Why any of this is happening? But there is a growing sense that things are just not Being taken care of or acknowledged or nobody knows what's going on and then you look to the people who head up You know the two big parties and it's Joe Biden on one hand who is a bumbling fool and I was talking with a bunch of Democrat Operatives, you know, I'm not talking about just regular voters or anything and they like they do not have a sense of how badly Joe Biden comes off to everyone in America except that I mean he is Fucking out of it and people everybody knows that and then there's Donald Trump and you know I'm sure we've all had you know either You know people who are trumped hards or friends who are like well He's not so bad and it's like this guy These are these are the two heads of the parties and they're poisonous people that nobody believes nobody trusts And that's really what's at at stake here. It's certainly not democracy and You know for that reason I think we are going to see a swing to the Republicans because they are not the Democrats first and foremost And this election is going to be like most of the elections of the past 20 years now where it's like whoever isn't in power Needs to be taken out of power And then it takes about two years to realize that the people that we just voted in are just as bad They might even be worse because they have been living in basements, you know scraping paint ships off of You know cellar walls and eating those in the two years that they're out of power So my sense of the biggest thing at stake for me for Matt Welch Is that on the ballot in a handful of states? Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada Pennsylvania Wisconsin there are governors and or Secretaries of State so people who are in position to impact the counting of votes who are not just people who have said Hey, you know the 2020 election was rigged and whatnot, but they've been campaigning pretty openly on Doing things to make sure that they don't steal the vote away from Donald Trump next time around when we talk about the institutions of Democracy being under threat It's not very helpful in my point of view to be vague about it But the specific candidates are these people many of them are in a position They have a good puncher's chance of winning and at least one of them Kerry Lake in Arizona was boosted by Democrats Nice job in the primary because they thought that should be easier to beat Those are the races that I will be watching soon. We have talked a little bit about it already, but let's get more into it What is the one? main major party closing argument that you find Most risable bonus points if you get making whoopee in your answer Catherine. Why don't you start? I will not be getting making whoopee in my answer. Just want to clear that up right now You know, it's a great sports team from Macon, Georgia. I Think It's what I alluded to before which is that the closing argument of Democrats seems to be if you let Republicans take Control of one or more houses of Congress democracy as we know or maybe one or more state Legislatures or governors mansions Democracy as we know it will be over and that is not true. That is untrue Bill more says it's true Catherine Bill Maher is wrong in this respect because it's You know, we have a great cover story from a couple of issues ago by Eric Bame Which I recommend to you about how our elections have always been messy and we are in a messier than usual moment Like I don't mean to say everything is completely fine And there really are some battles happening for control of kind of specific semi obscure bureaucratic entities that control how Election outcomes get communicated and tallied that I think are worth paying attention to but broadly speaking our democracy will be fine and Certainly this midterm election is Not is not the lynchpin of history So I guess I'm just back to my very very beginning of my first answer Which is you know, is this the most important election of our lifetimes? No, it's not it's an election It's a regular election and some people are being kind of extra bonus dickish But that is neither here. No, okay, but if you're like 18 months old This is the only election of your lifetime You know, you got me there. That's a that's a fact check on me and I will Boom right like there's at least four reason the staffers with With the office who are 18 months old. Are you saying that was just pandemic really? No, I thought you're gonna say there at least at least four reason staffers for whom this is the first election of Their lifetimes we got some some youths on the staff now Certainly Billy Binion looks like that Peter. What what is the major party closing argument that is sticking in your? Crawl whatever a crowd. It's a synthesis of what you talked about with the Republican Races where there are governors etc. Who are promising to install people or sort of change processes? In order to ensure that Donald Trump wins next time even if he doesn't win I think is kind of the argument there Right, so if he doesn't run maga stop the steel movement I think on the one hand and the flip side of that which is what Catherine is You know mentioned which is the Democratic argument that democracy is in peril And so I think Republicans are in a really disturbing place with when it comes to the machinations of democracy and voting and whether or not Trump actually won in 2020 Trump Trump lost and a lot of Republicans have not accepted that and they need to and they've built a movement around the idea that actually he did and It's just totally out of touch with reality And I think it's really poisonous for our politics at the same time Democrats have responded with this argument that therefore democracy is in peril and What the implication of their argument of the democracy is in peril arguments is that you then have no choice But to vote for Democrats and not just no choice, but to vote for Democrats no choice, but to vote for Democrats and enthusiastically support their entire Stupid policy agenda the one that landed us with in the place we are right now economically the the one that you know but that we have seen for the last two years from Joe Biden a Democratic in the White House and a unified Democratic Party in Congress and Josh Barrow who is you know, not a libertarian not and sort of an interesting center left guy recently wrote a really smart piece in which he Basically argued that if you're telling voters The democracy is in peril to the point where you don't have a choice but to vote for Democrats Then what you're telling them is you've already lost the choice and you've already lost democracy And it's it's just a terrible argument from from like a kind of logical perspective But also from a I think even from a pro-democracy perspective because what it says is is that in fact You don't have a choice You shouldn't have a choice and you've got to support all of our dumb spending stuff if you want to restore democracy You've got to support all of our bad ideas our entire your crappy policy agenda now Republicans are responding with Terrible non-policy ideas. I mean if you look at at the Republican policy agenda to the extent that it exists It is in many ways just it's it's half-assed and barely there And so Republicans are not exactly, you know on the ball about this stuff either, but the way that Democrats have responded to Republican election Nonsense is I think not particularly helpful and it has landed us in a really sort of Unpleasant place going into this midterm election. I Would remind everyone that the same people who were making the Democracy is dying and in broad sunlight argument right now Tended to wildly mischaracterized the Georgia election law changes Not that long ago President Biden called it, you know, not just Jim Crow, but Jim Eagle at some at some point and Doesn't that make it more American Blame onto American Indians No, it gives me the Jim Henson Sam Eagle energy. That's what I think of when I hear that I'm trying to grow my eyebrows out just like that Nick. I know you broadly agree with what Peter and Catherine both just said I would invite you as you expand on that to take into Consideration that you know in 2016 20 or 2015 you we didn't think Donald Trump was gonna win In January early January of 2021 We didn't think that the capital was gonna get ransacked and that 140 Republicans would not vote to certify the election Is it possible that the hysterics? Hysterical though they may be are causing us to underrate the possibilities for chicane re. Yes I think so depending on how you define chicane re there might be more things like the January 6 riots or something But in terms of voting I mean, you know The elections have been really solid over the past, you know, 20 years like there aren't any You know, everybody has gone looking for this and unless you're Dinesh to Suza Whose books keep getting poked by publishers before they can see print, you know Like nobody has found met wide-scale large-scale voter fraud that matters in any given election What we're seeing actually in this to build off of what Catherine and Peter were talking about is like We're not seeing the death of democracy in the 21st century We are seeing the growth of it like, you know the voting eligible population Which is the number of people who are voting age who are actually able to vote in the 21st century has been like higher than it Has been in the previous 50 years in 2018. We had record midterm turnout We're gonna see that again or something like that. This is what democracy looks like and it kind of sucks But it's not going away. I mean like this is this is exactly I can remember writing for reason And one of my first I think it was one of my first editorials as editor-in-chief of the magazine in 2000 People were bitching and minding about the vanishing voter people didn't vote enough people didn't vote enough and like we've had 22 years of people voting in record percentages in every election across the board and it sucks So if you want democracy, this is what it looks like and it's not good to go to your you know Your earlier appointment about like secretaries of states and people like Carrie Lake who is out of touch with reality on many many Core issues including whether or not Donald Trump was elected president in 2020 or not I'm hopeful and this may be it like totally, you know, just because there's nothing else to do but hope for the best But in Boy Scouts, you know, and I was an Eagle Scout. They you know, one of the things that they taught us Yeah, Joe Eagle Jim Eagle Scout That but one of the things that the the leaders of the troop saw this was like when you see a troublemaker Give them some responsibility and it straightens about and how are secretaries of state? Like they have to oversee elections that are going to be closely watched Etc like it's going to be really hard for them to be in charge and throw elections one way or the other Because there's so much scrutiny and also the election results need to be believed in order for them to stand So I'm less worried about this kind of broad-based chicanery Although I do think politicians whether the right wing or left wing and there's some on both parts who are so blatantly out of touch with Basic reality should be called on on that all I feel like I just understood for the first time how Matt Welch became editor-in-chief Yeah, well, you know, I also realized like after the fact I was like, oh, that's why I was made a leader of Yeah, you know, so it's it's just turtle with the wheels here for sure. Oh MG I'm going to take as my entrance something that Suderman alluded to before which is a large Democratic Party closing argument As Joe Biden said about a thousand times in the last five days Republicans have embraced a plan Embrace and plan those are keywords here to sunset Social Security Medicare within five years. They're gonna put it on the chopping block No That's not true It's not true. It's important that that's not true. He's the president. He's saying the thing. It isn't true There isn't a plan There is one stupid Rick Scott bullet-point list from February that includes 18 words In which some of it is that all federal programs should be sunset within five years Doesn't say anything about Social Security Medicare In follow-up questions in March of this year, someone's like, oh, did you mean Social Security Medicare? He's like, nope Nobody I know wants to do that So that's the plan that Republicans have embraced the plan that doesn't exist That is not supported by anything that anyone is campaigning on at all right now It it hides the reality that the Republican Party of 2022 is Basically unrecognizable when it comes to things like entitlement reform than it was in 2010 because Donald Trump Won the argument against Paul Ryan. Where is Paul Ryan right now? He's crying in his money That's where Paul Ryan is right now. He doesn't matter at all Donald Trump does part of the reason why is because Trump said I am going to protect your Social Security Medicare Screw these bean counter Republican Conservatives and now you have the rising class of Republicans who matter are saying stuff that like like masters did about libertarianism that it doesn't work It sucks and then he gets the endorsement from the liver Can I vote for him now that he is explicitly anti-libertarian and I'm a libertarian? I mean, I mean a lot of members the Libertarian Party. It's very attractive to the self-hatred of the Yeah, it's I think you got to go move to Arizona first or Or at least try to can I get a mule some kind of mule that will take my vote there? Like a like an actual mammal or I don't know. I just know there's 2,000 mules and they're running votes all over that there is hey Peter's one other quasi not quite plan that Suggests that Republicans might want to do something to Medicare and Social Security. It is the It is the House Republican Study Committee's 122-page budget which includes lines like adjust the Medicare eligibility age to reflect life Expectancy it's not a plan to sunset Medicare and Social Security in five that sounds like exactly the same thing as Tables that show that if you don't do anything Medicare is one of the big trust funds will not be able to pay all of its bills Like if you if you continue on just not doing anything and then it says well, maybe we should do something right the so what's great about that is that the those proposals are basically with one exception indistinguishable from the proposals that the Bipartisan Simpson bowls the committee came up with in 2010 11 when Barack Obama appointed a Committee to look at long-term and time of reform because we're not gonna kick that down the road on out of my watch We're gonna finally like solve this problem. This was I remember that broadly Understood by people who pretended at least at seriousness about long-term fiscal Whatever's that you had to make at least those small adjustments the other the thing that the Republican Study Committee thing does that is Beyond where they went is that they wanted to give younger workers the option to opt out of the Social Security retirement and invest things on their own Which has been something that Republican or conservative white papers have been advocating For 50 years and it goes precisely nowhere Ever the closest that we came to any of this and Nick might remember this because he has memory cells Is the ownership society? Like flaccid attempt by George W. Bush in his second term that just sort of collapsed on almost on contact It's not I mean it obviously didn't happen, but there I actually think Maybe I was just like a delusional youth at that time But I remember following that conversation and thinking okay, it seems like there is a a Reasonable possibility that we will get nothing like actual privatization and nothing like you know something that solves our budget problems But maybe a little 401k ish account for some people It could it could happen like it was I crazy to think that like the poison plan or whatever was was a Potential reality in that moment. We already have that though. You can you can voluntarily save for Yeah, that's true tax advantage Some of some of the money out of Social Security as it's currently constructed and put into these other accounts now I remember thinking at the time also those accounts will get ransacked when You know the next moment that politicians want them and also they'll be somehow constrained in ways that are damaging and you know ultimately Don't serve Taxpayers, but was I crazy to think that might have happened at that moment? So George W. Bush did in fact sign into law HSA's the health savings accounts, but if I recall correctly that was at least somewhat linked to the Medicare reform and expansion bill that that that also established Medicare Part D So he expanded Medicare. Yes also building HSA's into the system Right, but then there was a social security equivalent of it Yeah, that was after he was reelected and he you know he won big it was the first president since his father to Win with the majority of the popular and date and he said I have a lot of You know capital and I'm gonna play it and he went after immigration and Social Security and within six to eight months both of those Paula, you know, both of those plans were just totally gone Reason had an interesting debate about privatizing Social Security between Tyler Cowan and James Glassman people can look it up It's probably from 2004 2005 I Think subsequent to the Obamacare Kind of arguments. It'll be interesting to see Republicans I don't think can do that if any kind of you know Mandatory any kind of privatization of retirement spending is based on involuntary Contributions or that you have to sign up that won't make sense anymore. All right, we're gonna get we're gonna talk more midterms Later we're now gonna get to our listener email of the week here in a moment But first look, we're all responsible adults here We do what it takes to ensure our families in case of medical emergency But what many of us don't realize is that health insurance won't always cover the full cost of an emergency medical flight even Comprehensive coverage can leave you with high deductibles and co-pays. 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I presume this is Matt cutting in that that's the number that he's attaching to independence by refreshingly stating their actions in office will have little to no effect on Individualized happiness for example Democrats and Republicans have squabbled over tax cuts a somewhat nominal 39.6 percent to 37.37 percent for the top rate while federal spending on every single mandatory discretionary program has remained relatively unscathed yet the tax cuts are held up as an us versus them when discussing policy Will cynicism ever prevail are there any real-life? Bull worth examples now for you 40-somethings on this podcast bull worth was a late 1990s Warren Beatty picture in which a and Holly Barry and yes a sleazebag Democratic politician Organizes his own assassination. I think I was like a senator and then ours goes in a bender Cuz he's unhappy and he smokes a lot pot and gets super drunk and then it shows up in public and starts rapping really badly about the reality of politics and Improbably, I think he might was there a blackface. I'm not sure there's actual black But he did wear a skull skull cap. He improbably starts betting Halle Berry, which is exciting for Warren Beatty And I went for her He was Warren Beatty back then he wasn't the desiccated corpse who misread the winning picture a couple years got I heard betting just on like BETT instead of betting and I was like was there a poker game in which Halle Berry was wagered in this film like I Essentially but anyways, he started rapping the truth about how Democratic politicians are full of crap and in probably started getting super popular And so people thought hey, maybe that's if they would just tell us honestly so Catherine Could the fantasy of having a politician? Suddenly become popular by telling the cynical truth about the limitation of politics and the cynicism of it And then suddenly succeeding could that ever come true? I think that happens regularly I think almost every time that we elect a celebrity To office. That's essentially what's happening including perhaps the election of Donald Trump I think many people who voted for him perceived him to be that guy They perceived him to be someone who was just like, you know what? I am not beholden to the ritual of this thing and I'm just gonna say what I want to say I think the the delusion that at least those of us of a libertarian persuasion have is that that Character is somehow correlated in the end to doing anything even remotely good in Office and I think those things are unrelated and that is what I have taken away at least from not just Donald Trump But actually the kind of populist The reactionary populism that's kind of cropped up around the world in the last four or five years People who seem like they are doing this it seemed like they are being bullwars I guess on this day like Ferris Bueller's political day off is what it sounds like you just described You know those people are subject to all of the same human vices as Regular stuff shirt politicians and perhaps even more Peter This is an open invitation for you to assess your own favorite or at least favorite cinematic presidencies and or to rebut Catherine's assertion that Trump equals bullwars or both equals Trump. So I think the thing that people forget about bullwars is that the most Memorable rep Couplets were actually about hate this already health policy. Yo, no, yo, everybody gonna get sick some day But nobody knows how they gonna pay health care managed care HMOs ain't gonna work No, sir, not those cuz the thing that's the same and every one of these is these mother efforts there the insurance Companies and then two characters named Cheryl and Tanya chant insurance insurance and he says yeah Yeah, you can call it single payer or Canadian way only socialized medicine will ever save the day come on now Let me hear that dirty word Socialism Socialism and honest and what you have to remember is What you have to remember is this movie came out in the late 1990s and that was not a reaction to Republicans trying to privatize whatever that was a reaction to Hillary care and to the mainstream Democratic Party's attempt to reform The health care system. It's also worth pointing out that Warren Beatty, you know cut his political teeth in the 1972 campaign of George McGovern where he helped a war hero lose Virtually every state but I think you can draw a pretty direct line from Bullworth and it's sort of From from that style of politics to Bernie Sanders and to the kind of progressive takeover or at least the rising progressive Movement that we have seen post Obama in the Democratic Party where they're like well If we just say that all these mainstream things, you know that that like we've tried before if we just say that's you know That's bullshit, right if we just call it out then somehow or another Will win and it's it's a little I mean it's related to what I was saying earlier about inflation like there The Democratic Party has decided that you can win all of these things just through a kind of blunt You know sort of we're just gonna say the truth man Messaging that I don't know if it exactly derives from Bullworth. It's not like Bullworth had You know was the first popular incarnation of that idea We've we've seen it for decades at the same time Bullworth was a was popular in certain circles Developed a cult reputation and Bullworth it Bullworth plays at least some small role in putting us in the you know sort of In an America where Bernie Sanders isn't president but play it but it's surprisingly influential within the Democratic Party So Bullworth is Trump although he really isn't I mean, I think this is it's interesting. I Peter I think that's really fascinating read and it's really helpful to remember, you know Bullworth's main thing was about health care in response to Hillary care But ultimately when you look at people like Bernie Sanders or AOC They are not particularly influential and you know one thing that's interesting is when Nancy Pelosi vacates Which is going to be probably sooner rather than later because of that fucked up attack on her husband And when Biden, you know when they stop giving the electric, you know the starter jumps jump starts every morning So it seems as if he's still alive What comes next will be interesting, but people the hardcore socialism progressives in the Democratic Party like AOC and her You know her girl gang like don't have any institutional power or any electoral power. So That's kind of comforting. I was I was going to point people to Matt just in response to the reader's question You know the real-life Example and I think Katherine might have been getting to this was Arnold Schwarzenegger in California when he became governor he was a true outsider who came in very idealistically Matt Welch you and I wrote Positively of the potential for him to be a true change agent and in American politics because he was an old-time I'm socially liberal. I'm fiscally conservative and he was a truth-teller and was it three months six months within His election. He was finished. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it was so bad But then the other guys like somebody like Zelensky, you know in Ukraine got elected and is actually kind of rising to the challenge He's kind of a ball worth type character. Wow, so bull worth equals Trump Well, he plays the he played the piano with his penis in a in a comedy that is true Or he became president that's pretty and it is actually that's better than Warren Beatty rapping Although in some way it may be for anyone who does not understand the sort of popular culture or sort of a Role that Schwarzenegger was cast in when he was governor You should go back and read the Esquire profile of him by Tom Tom Junode from 2009 Arnold Schwarzenegger is president of 12% of us that is just this incredibly sort of Laudatory like Schwarzenegger is gonna come in there and beat up all the bad guys and just do the you know Like be the action hero that California needs in the governor's office piece It's it's kind of a fascinating piece of journalism a great read I think it didn't hold up very well as a as a piece of political prediction But it will give you a sense of how he was seen and how he was portrayed in the press Yeah, it's that of the Terminator we Schwarzenegger got jingle all the way I want to confess having attended the the very brief moment in which Warren Beatty was a Possible presidential candidate in 1999 we have memory hold this but he was given a Eleanor Roosevelt award at the Beverly Hilton In October of 1999 and people like is he gonna run is Bo worth gonna run for president and this place was Phil It was probably the most like glittering Event I've ever gone to all these sort of Hollywood people Stanley shine bomb there the Ancient ACLU benefactor Norman Lear was there a bunch of people Bob Shear Well, and with a really hanging on every word is he gonna run is he gonna run again? He gave a really really boring speech That was kind of like by the numbers Bernie, but without the charisma Men who sort of like he thought he was being ultramatic and not but yeah People were writing a credulous articles in October of 1999 So that shows you how the political Campaign cycle has I was why 2k Matt? We were you know fucking out of our mind out of our minds You know that we were wearing up planes dropping from the sky and bull worth was gonna be president This sounds perfectly reasonable to me You know a great truth-telling movie worth watching which is better than bull worth is 1972 is the candidate with Robert Redford, which is based on the improbable run and victory of John Tunney the son of a heavyweight champion Jean Tunney against George Murphy who had been a Hollywood movie star You know who's friends with Ronald Reagan. It was governor at the time But it's about a young idealistic candidate who runs and wins by telling the truth And then it has a great early 70s ending where the political consultant who has helped massage You know make the message live Etc. You know Robert Redford turns to me. It's like oh we're elected. What do we do and he's like I don't know That's like your job like I'm just here for the messaging and we've had You know a series of people Reagan is the great exception of like a celebrity Who you know first became governor, which is no small thing and governed for two terms You know effectively you could like him or dislike him But he got his stuff done or a lot of stuff done and then the president Virtually never happens. All right, let's go to a lightning round about the midterms everyone around the table gets to tell us Single-race ballot initiative, whatever thing that is happening on Tuesday that you find of particular perhaps idiosyncratic Interest for whatever reason Catherine when he starts. Yeah, I'm keeping an eye on California prop 31 where we're going to You know protect the children from the vaping this is something that reason of course has covered quite a lot and It's a real classic example of Failure to think about trade-offs You know that the numbers are already trending in a more positive direction Even if you are worried about the teens and their vapes that those numbers seem to be going down and of course teens vaping or anyone vaping is still far far better than anyone smoking a cigarette even though cigarettes Are awesome and amazing and they are the best drug and the best drug delivery device ever invented by humanity They kill you they do kill you and so we should be making Alternatives to them widely available even perhaps to the children. I mean vapes for the children is what I'm saying here and That's a sign that your children are not as old as my This is easy for me to say with an 11 year old but the One reason that I've been paying attention to prop 31 is because it is such a classic example of this like misleading Titling and description of ballot initiatives which like California specializes in but all states do this Where even if you are an informed voter Even if you have a highly developed opinion on the policy area when you look at the language of the ballot initiative itself You're like, I don't know what's going on here. I literally don't know which way to vote to get the outcome I want this is I think like an under an under appreciated problem with Taking these questions directly to the people is that the people are voting on some confusing and badly written sentences I think prop 31 will probably pass and that will be a ship Nick. What is something that you're paying attention to? so I'm Following the Georgia Senate race between Herschel Walker who is one of these people who I mean his reality testing I don't think he would be let out of most insane asylums in America And he's against Raphael Warnock who is a terrible Seems to be kind of a terrible human being if you look into his past But is also a terrible politician who's voted for every big government thing that Joe Biden has asked and you know plus some But Chase Oliver the libertarian Candidate in that race is polling between one to five percent probably going to cover the spread between these two knuckleheads and Chase Oliver is a really classic pre-meses caucus LP guy who you know walks the socially liberal Fiscally-conservative line which we can get into philosophical debates about whether that's good or bad But political in retail politics. That's pretty good and Georgia is an interesting state because it's flipping back and forth between people But it's not purple. It really is like there's a lot of red people and a lot of blue people there So I'm curious to see how Oliver does and in particular when you compare him to the Arizona race where You know Blake masters versus Mark Kelly where the libertarian Mark Victor who had been polling as high You know in double digits and some races Caved and said okay You know all libertarians should vote for Blake masters because I talked to him for a while And he claimed to have carried human action around in his backpack when he was in grammar school or something like that So I see the Georgia race not only interesting because of this red blue You know kind of showdown, but also about how is the LP going to go? How is it? How is it going to go going forward because you know, they're under new management Oliver has been critical of the Mises caucus, but it's gonna have one of the very best and most Impactful if we're using that word Outcomes I think in in this election cycle. So I'm very interested in seeing Georgia is fascinating for a lot of reasons Not just because it's the site of the alleged Jim Eagle Election law, but we might see a lot of tickets splitting right Brian Kemp my my win governor over Stacey Abrams Who's a what definitely it's kind of wet? I mean, he's like up almost, you know, double digits by most and yet Warnock might win It's just it's it's it's fascinating and it'll put a lot of narratives to the test and kind of scramble them in ways That if it happens that way would be kind of like a hopeful To me Outcome Peter, what is something you've been looking at in some ways? It's something that I haven't been looking at unfortunately It's another Georgia race. This one is the the Marjorie Taylor Greens district Republican representative she will not be there there will not be a Libertarian on the ballots in that race because the libertarian didn't make the ballot because of Georgia's insane Ballot access rules which were designed initially to keep communists off the ballot, but now have turned into Basically a sort of a way for the two parties to ensure that there is no third-party competition now And there was a there was an interesting potential candidate who tried to get onto the ballot Angela Pence She describes herself Catherine will love this as an anarchist at heart She is someone who thinks that America needs more immigration a smaller governments less control over individual decisions and she says that she was Activated in her sort of political journey because she felt like the Republicans were turning toward authoritarianism But she couldn't bring herself, you know to pick to choose either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton in 2016 Hey, hey, that sounds kind of familiar This seems like somebody who would be a good person to have on the ballot She wasn't gonna win Angela Pence was not gonna beat Marjorie Taylor Green But it would have given people a choice in that district and I think it would have been a better race had she been in it She did however tweet about a week ago that she has been humbled by the number of people messaging to say that They wrote her in for the for Georgia's 14th congressional district So people do still have a little bit of a choice, but it's harder because she's not on the ballot And I think it's a shame Eric Bame covered this for us over the summer If you want to if you want to read about Georgia's Ballot access laws and how that system was developed and how it is being used now His article how Georgia's at Landish ballot access law is protecting Marjorie Taylor Green and the two-party system is at reason.com The speaking of ballot access the one that I'm paying closest attention to probably Election on Tuesday is the New York gubernatorial race, which has only two people on the ballot Unfortunately, New York also has terrible laws governing third parties Libertarian Larry Sharp was unable to get on the ballot. It was challenged the law of underlying law was rough And then his actual signature collection was challenged by Lee Zeldin the Republican running So there's only two people on the ballot and the last like 3648 hours of pre-election coverage has been such an absolute freak out meltdown Mostly by Democrats and left leaners at the possibility that Zeldin might be competitive in this race. You can see Kathy Hockels Closing commercials on television are all about how she's gonna fight crime the hardest So that's a different message than she had a month ago. There's gonna be a lot of national discussion There's people blaming Eric Adams the mayor of New York already because he's leaning into False conservative narratives about rising crime and such like it'll be in it'll be an interesting It'll have more national implications than most and then it's you know, it's my governor So I have personal skin in the game as well. And it's a it's a damn toot and shame that there isn't a Sensible libertarian on that ballot would have been easier and I just want to say that Nick. I know that you wrote in Yeah Candidate there. I believe I wrote in you. I you know if elected I will not serve but if I have to You will be jailed. I'm just preemptively I'm already I'm digging a tunnel to New Jersey In your mind, all right, if you know by like 11 p.m. Tomorrow night, I'll be gone boring machine Hyperloop Is it a slow boring or is it a fast? All right, let's let's get to our end of podcasts what we have been consuming Nick Why don't you lead us off? Okay, so speaking of Marjorie Taylor green who is another person who is delusional? I mean these are you know, there was a famous in the early 70s. There was a famous psychiatric paper on being sane and insane places where a Psychologist had a bunch of grad students go to mental institutions and give vague descriptions of something and then saw how many people were seen as Insane Marjorie Taylor green is insane I think if she was put if a battery of doctors asked her basic questions They would be like this person probably should not be operating heavy machinery or driving a car or wielding You're on the side of the liberal medical establishment I am you know what lock her up lock her along with violent homeless people Yeah, you know, well thankfully I'm not a psychologist so I'm not bound by those rules but and Barry Goldwater in 1964, you know, there were reasons to worry in any case So I'm the reason I'm talking about Marjorie Taylor green is that I'm reading Robert Draper's New book weapons of mass delusion when the Republican Party lost its mind Draper is a really excellent journalist who hails from Texas He wrote flatteringly of Matt and me in the You know what is increasingly looking like the high-water mark Matt of or at least of our term the libertarian moment in 2014 Yeah, I guess it is true that when something appears in the New York Times. It means it's over But Draper had written the cover story about Rand Paul and libertarians called has the libertarian moment finally arrived When we're so waiting on the answer But but we know it didn't arrive at any time since 2014 but this book is a you know from a guy who is sympathetic to kind of mainstream Republican conservatism he opens with a he's a great writer and he opens with a Remembrance of his father who was a conservative Republican in Texas at a time when it was not easy to be a Republican in Texas Just kind of being dismayed as he was dying to see what the Republican Party had become over the past five or six years and it's it's highly worth reading because the Trumpification of the Republican Party has you know destroyed that party in terms of principles Even when you look at people like Rand Paul or Thomas Massey, you know people like Justin Amash, of course have been chased out But they're you know Republicans do not stand for anything remotely libertarian anymore. I think and that is disturbing as hell And they are mostly obsessed with attacking leftism and all kinds of stuff Wherever they see it to the distraction of being in favor of things like immigration free markets free speech You name it. I highly recommend weapons of mass delusion when the Republican Party lost its mind And this is not to say okay this all the trouble in the world is because of Republicans The Democrats have their own problems and they are going to be dealing with that in a big way come You know whenever these election results are certified But the Republican Party because it's going to win big in the midterms is going to go on as if like look at us We're winning we're winning, you know, let's keep doing what we're doing and what they're doing is terrible and often insane Catherine now, what have you been consuming? I have been continuing to work my way through suggestions from podcast listeners in my convalescence But the one I want to recommend is Susanna Clark's novel pure and nazy You might remember her name. She wrote Jonathan strange and mr. Norrell, but this novel is almost entirely unrelated to to that book it's Actually quite hard to describe but it is kind of a Fever dream ish other world in which we meet a character who doesn't seem to Have contact with the world as we know it but Maybe once did it sort of starts out as a like almost umberto echo type allegory story and ends up as a dark academia thriller and I Really enjoyed it. I found it to be like very very absorbing and right after I finished it I watched the Netflix series. I started watching the Netflix series based on Michael Pollan's book how to change your mind Which follows a very similar path? So basically you know Say you had some experiences with psychedelics and you were in academia How did that go for you in the 20th century like that arc very much follows the arc of this book so much So that I almost wonder if she had it in mind as she was writing. So if you are kind of interested in How really really big world-changing ideas have no place in the industry of ideas that is academia? I I would recommend actually both the Netflix series and this book And also if you want to just kind of not be where you are This book is extremely transporting and if you are me with a broken kneecap that was much needed. So Piranesi by Susanna Clark Peter I watched the movie tar The new film by Todd field starring Kate Blanchett as a superstar classical music Conductor the reason angle is that this is about cancel culture or me too and it's been called a kind of Broadside against cancel culture. I think the movie is actually much more complex much more tricky than that and it's really kind of a Rorschach test because Once you if you sort of get away from it for a little while you realize that all the things you sort of think happened That the movie is suggesting that the the classical music conductor here is getting canceled for that you think like Oh, yeah, she probably she probably did that realize it never shows you any of it And so it's an interesting exercise just in kind of non-judgmentalism and the ways that you know That we can perceive things that are happening just because of how we see a character and a person Kate Blanchett is kind of incredible And I think this movie is actually much more about self-creation and self mythology and whether Individual genius exists But importantly for me, it's also about music and the power of the power of beauty and great art and the way that great art just kind of justifies itself and what What it demands from us and what it can get away with My pick I would usually do a caveat throat clear about how the world doesn't need anything new having to do with the Beatles And I realize that's just not true because the the generation of the successor generation to the fab for people like Sean Lennon people like Danny Harrison and Giles Martin the son of George Martin their legendary producer they keep cranking out really interesting new product that Allows one to enjoy a really good band much much more in this particular case ten days ago They released a new stereo mix of revolver their classic 1966 album revolver super deluxe or something like that Let me look at the exact name the revolver special edition But people are calling it super deluxe on the interwebs It the Beatles when they made their and a lot of bands back in the day at the dawn of stereo They would work all on Their mono mixes forever and then the stereo mix would be kind of done at the last minute If those of us who had crappy speakers all their lives You could always tell when you're listening to a Beatles album because one thing was always panned way left And then you wouldn't get the harmony because they're your right speaker was messed up So this thing I listen to and I'm not an audiophile like Suderman is I don't have big speakers don't care about that stuff It is just so different and big and full and you can't really describe why it's not like oh There's an element I never heard before it just the whole thing a great classic album when the Beatles had stopped touring And we're now working as the studio was an instrument Classic tracks like tomorrow never knows Taxman It is it's remarkable like I noticed it in my chest on the first listen and again I'm not the person who who normally reacts that way and then there's a bunch of great You know outtakes and different versions you could see that the Beatles were basically trying to respond to the birds Nick's favorite band And and trying to exceed them at the same time Jangly guitars and harmonies and these kind of things and you could see them work it out in real time But the actual just remix of revolver is so great It's so much better than what was already really really great And it should to put to rest finally for anyone who actually cares about the drums as an instrument Don't don't ever don't ever talks back about Ringo Starr. That's one of the best drumming records. You will ever hear in your life It's fantastic Nick you the drums on tomorrow never knows are Yeah, it's and it's not just it's it's so bizarre and wonderful and perfect. Yeah, and oh and like one of the outtakes That wasn't on the album originally, but they recorded some singles paperback writer and rain, especially rain Has over the years, you know, it's legendary as being a one of the greatest baselines You've ever heard and the drumming is really great too turns out you find out That version that we've been hearing forever is slowed down The version that they recorded with a really complicated fancy crazy baseline and really good drums was about I don't know One-third faster. So go listen to that. It'll blow your freaking mind that the level of musicianship on these guys at that moment in their lives It's fantastic Giles Martin's been working through the catalog kind of backwards from let it be down here using Demixing technology that Peter Jackson is doing so he's sort of like on the cutting edge of what you can do With with stereo remix and stuff and it's just you know every year. It seems like they're producing something last year It was the the incredible documentary this year It's the revolver thing and hats off to to exploiting the asset and yet making it Kind of more interesting for deep fans. It's really great. I can't recommend it Can I also Make a pitch mat speaking of the Beatles or the Beatles second or sec 2.5 generation Sean Ono Lenin's Twitter feed is absolutely one of the best things online right now And I hope he doesn't go to mastodon where we will you know, he'll never be seen again Even as everybody is going there, right? But he's he's a great musician really interesting collaborator all over the place But his kind of musings on politics and culture I wouldn't say they're libertarian per se But they are not traditionally left-wing or conventionally right-wing and he's just great And he's in the bit in the middle of a big Twitter stream fight feud right now So go check out Sean. I don't know what as a big speakers guy I will just second but it sounds fantastic it on big speakers. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, it's right. It's it's bigger It's crunchier right like it sounds it sounds both more modern and more More of itself, right? It's sort of it like like the like you can it's almost when you listen to it on great speakers It sounds like maybe you're not quite in the room with them playing in it but it's like you're in the The the studio looking through the glass listening through the monitors, right? Like it has that sort of directness of sound and the clarity of it in a way that I like Revolver is my favorite Beatles album and I've probably I've probably listened to it half dozen times already Nice, it'll also remind you that the Obviously the Liam and Noel Caligar listen to that album five trillion times like every single Manorism of every single song is contained in Revolver and the Oasis output. All right, Catherine wake up. What? She just broke her other So thanks for listening Tune in next Monday. It's the same bat time for more stuff. I'll be gone and Listen to all our pad cut pad croosts at reason.com slash podcasts Nick. Do you have any speaking easy to talk? Oh, yeah, well, we have a fantastic Podcast coming up on Wednesday with Maj Tourette That is an interview that was conducted by Zach Weismiller And then the reason speak easy for people in New York the next one is December 1st and it features Caitlyn Bailey a sex worker, right? Active activists who runs a group called old pros has a great podcast called old pros And also does a one-woman show called horse. I view so that I go to reason.com Slash events and you can buy tickets for that on Thursday December 1st And if you like what we do, please go to reason.com slash donates in a couple of weeks We'll start previewing our upcoming webathon on soliciting questions not quite yet, but just gonna wet your whistle right there Thanks for listening again and see you