Presidential Debate Preview

David Plotzip
Hello and welcome to this late political Gabfest.

June 20, 2024, the presidential Debate preview edition. I'm David Plotzip, citycast. I'm here not by myself, not in Washington, DC. We're all together sitting literally cheek by jowl with me. Could not be closer because we're sharing a mic.

Is Emily Bazelon. Hello, Emily. Hello. But I don't. We're so close.

We're so close. But you still must miss your crows. Cause the crows, left, right. The crows are gone. Well, also, I mean, I assume the crows are still gone.

I'm in New York. I don't know. And they're sitting across the table. John Dickerson in his own home. Hello, John.

Emily Bazelon
It's very lovely to see you both at the dining room table. This week on the Gabfest, we're going to preview the presidential debate and how it could alter the trajectory. That's a hard word to say. The trajectory of the election or not. Then the surgeon general called for warning labels on social media and the California governor proposed to ban phones in school.

David Plotzip
Is this nanny state alarmism or a wise precaution then? So many american states have effectively become one party states. We'll talk about an interesting Mitch Daniel's op ed deploring one of the most obvious and yet still dismal trends in american politics. Plus, we'll have cocktail chatter. Judy was boring.

Judy
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Judy
Chuchu chumba nseto.com dot no purchase necessary. Voidware prohibited by law. 18 plus terms and conditions apply. See website for details. President Biden and former President Trump debate on CNN next Thursday night.

David Plotzip
We are going to have a post debate episode on Friday in addition to our regular episode next week. But we want to talk about what we're going to be washing for at the debate, which will be moderated by Dana Bash and Jake Tapper. Two great choices and will feature muted mics and no audience. So, John, historically, debates do not affect presidential elections. And this debate is not likely to push this campaign off the tracks.

But what would it take for it to really matter? Yeah. So historically they don't. But there's so many historic anomalies to this debate. You have two the first debate ever between two candidates who run against each other where we know so much about them.

Emily Bazelon
Also, the first debate that takes place in an era of massive mis and disinformation, where people have all kinds of impressions about the two of them that might be misimpressions. So the performative aspect will be in a different context than before. Then again, we also live in a hyper saturated environment in which things we think are going to change things don't, because subsequent events take over the way we think of things. So I think your opening gambit, which is that they don't change, that debates don't change minds, is probably still right, even though it might be for different reasons in this particular debate. It feels so high stakes this time.

John Dickerson
I mean, I know that you're right about that historical lesson, and I just kind of can't believe it's not going to matter, because the actual questions of fitness and physical wellness for both candidates have been so uppermost in at least the media coverage, if not voters minds. Totally. So think about it. In 1984, Reagan comes out. He's been an incumbent for four years.

Emily Bazelon
Everybody's seen Reagan. He was a movie star ish, or he was a movie star. People had seen him. Right. There were still these questions about his age that he may or may not have dispelled.

With that line, I'm not gonna make an issue of my opponent's youth and inexperience. Greatest line ever in a debate. I think it's true. Now, the question is, in that case, whether that actually changed any minds or it put in elite minds the idea, oh, he still got it. And so columnists and people covering the race were like, no, the age thing's been settled.

We don't need to keep coming back to it. That may be effective, this debate as well, which is it just changes the way elites talk about the race, not necessarily voters, and that then down the line might have some kind of impact. On the other hand, let's imagine on the age question, Biden does a cartwheel, comes out, starts breakdancing and moonwalking. Wow. Age thing dispelled.

Then you've got months of these either doctored videos or just out of context videos that will be saturating these voters who aren't paying super a lot of attention. So maybe that undoes whatever happens in the debate. On the other hand, a debate can be a defining moment that is hard to excavate out of the mind once it happens in that venue. And I mean, what about for Trump, it's hard for me to remember this, but in 2020, he was seen as losing the debate against Biden because he was just, like, roaring too much, came across as a bully and seemed kind of rattled. I mean, all of those things could happen again.

John Dickerson
And then obviously, he's been mixing up words and phrases and places and, you know, all of that. Yeah. On the demonstrations of cognitive fumbling, there are more from Trump than Biden. Just like it's just truth. Now, Trump talks a lot more, so there are more opportunities.

Emily Bazelon
But that doesn't matter if the underlying question is, and also the underlying question really is, are these demonstrations of any serious issue? Everybody mixes up words. It's not the words that Trump mixes up that are the issue in his presidency. It's the ones he gets exactly right. And that leads to a larger point, which, of course, is the most important, is because we've seen the records of these two men.

Anybody who would put anything that happens in the debate above the things they've actually demonstrated and shown in office is bonk us. Right. There will be all this presentism of debated analysis that will try to make what happens in the debate stand in for the two candidates and their campaigns. And really, the debates, in a sense, may matter less than any debates ever because we have records of how they've performed under pressure, whether they've shown character, whether they've lived up to their oaths. There are people testifying under oath to the actions they took.

We have better, cleaner information about these two candidates than ever before. So we don't really need a debate in the traditional ways that we need them. Yeah, that's such a good point. I mean, the debate is a performance, and we have all of these past indications of record. I've been working on a couple of pieces for the New York Times that are about projecting into a potential second Trump administration.

John Dickerson
So I've been going back and reading the things that I wrote and that other people wrote in 2016. And it's not that every single thing came to pass. It's that some of it did and some of it was worse and some of it was unanticipated. But it was all in line with what we knew then. And it just made me think that this idea of like, oh, well, he says a lot of things.

He's just spitballing. Don't worry about it. I mean, that's not what happened last time. You're both saying that the debate may not matter a huge amount. John, you're, you're saying because there's everyone's record is there.

David Plotzip
And yet Biden wants to accomplish something. What does he want to accomplish? Besides, is it only to seem physically fit? Is that all that he is trying to accomplish, to seem mentally and physically fit? I think he also wants a moment where he gets the better of Trump in some way that has its own potential to go viral and get played over and over again.

John Dickerson
And that kind of happened the last time. Right? He said, like, can you just shut up at one point? And that did some work for him. Yeah, that was, it turned out to be the desire of many people in the electorate, and that by voting Trump out that they thought would do that.

Emily Bazelon
I think you probably based on Ron Klain, who is running debate prep for Joe Biden, his former chief of staff, who also did debate prep for Obama twice, for Hillary Clinton, he's a bit of an expert at this. And based on what he's done in previous debates, and this is, of course, true, the debates actually end up having their impact in the world, not based on what happens on the stage, but how they carry on and live on afterwards and the press coverage and in the memes that follow. So you want to create these moments. I think the three moments are probably some moment of, of that beats back the age question. Who knows what that is?

Another moment where either he sets up, he gets the better of Trump or baits Trump, and Trump does something that shows in miniature his temperament and all of that. And then I think the third thing is to show what his hardwiring is about, the economy, who he cares about, who Biden is fighting for, and what he cares about. You could imagine him doing that, either when he talks about, like, growing up in Scranton, everybody's heard that before. But that is a way to say, like, this is what animates me. Whatever happens in the presidency, I care about people because I came from those people.

Or you can imagine doing it on Hunter Biden. So you can imagine Trump coming out trying to bait him by talking about Hunter and the president, saying, you know, I know a lot of people who've struggled with addiction. And let me tell you what the most important thing is with somebody who struggles with addiction is unconditional love. And I think you probably have a lot of people in the audience to whom that speaks and says, you know what, I don't know about this guy's policies or whatever, but when unpredictable things happen, that's the kind of person I want to put my issues in the hands of. Do you guys think, I mean, Emily, does Trump have a debate strategy.

David Plotzip
It always feels with Trump that he is just incapable of doing anything other than being who he is in that moment and that he couldn't possibly have a strategy. But is there a useful strategy that he should be pursuing? What is he trying to accomplish? I mean, he should try to get under Biden's skin and produce some kind of fumble, if he can, and also just come across as more reasonable. I mean, which seems like that's not his strategy.

John Dickerson
I know you're already like, what? But, I mean, that would be, the wise thing to do, would be to seem sober and reasonable and thoughtful and considered. Why? Why doesn't he just do that once, John? I know.

David Plotzip
I feel like he would win the election running away at this point if he just didn't seem insane and terrible. There are 100 instances in which it wouldn't take much for him to, because the bar is so low. I mean, you, again, there are people in whose interests it is, many of them in the media, and particularly for the people trying to turn this show into something for everybody to tune into, whose deep interest is evaluating this moment in time as if it is the most important moment in time. So they will forget all of the actions of the presidency, the post presidency, and all of that, and say this was a turning point. You know, the old joke, like, this is the moment he became president.

Emily Bazelon
There are a lot of people invested in that. So to your point, David, if you were Trump, you would come out and be magnanimous. You would be. And even if it's all a show, which, based on our experience with him going back to how many, many, many years, you know, that's not his normal route. Yeah.

I mean, it's clearly the thing he should do. There's like, there is no, it seems to me, more obvious thing than he should come out and be. The question is whether that's even capable. You know, one reason he might do it is it would get him so much more attention at this point. Right.

John Dickerson
The most attention getting thing would be the thing that would be, like, least brash. Do you think there's any chance he's gonna do it? Not really, no. But it is really interesting to think how it would change the narrative, or at least it would tempt people into imagining that the narrative could change. I think that given everything we know, it would be important to resist with evidence.

David Plotzip
I mean, I think probably what would happen is that Biden, Trump is so easily provoked, and Trump, even if he comes out with a strategy to be this way, if I were Biden's debate coach. I'd be like, if Trump comes out this way, you've got to needle him in ways that, you know, are going to provoke him to be awful and overbearing and the bully that he is always in every moment. And I think he couldn't resist. But Biden would have to open doors and Trump would definitely walk through those doors. I mean, we do have this interesting situation where Trump is now a convicted felon.

John Dickerson
Biden could just say that over and over again, I guess. I mean, I don't actually think that's the way to go because I think you have to say why it matters to people. Right. He's corrupt and he has terrible ideas about our economy or something like that. But it is evidence sitting there on the floor.

Obviously, Trump would use it over and over again as a weapon if the positions were reversed. And I think he will bring up Hunter Biden, although it may not play the way he's hoping Trump will bring up. Oh, yeah. You know what's funny is that we're. John, I think had I asked you about a debate 25 years ago, you would be talking about it as like a forum for debating questions of the national interest and what policies we should use to reach strategic goals that the country should pursue and what are the ways in which Americans can come together to do that and not at all well.

Emily Bazelon
I mean, I still believe that's what they should be used for and what they can be used for. And if I were running it, that's what I would try to get at, because I think part of the role of the press and the debate matter, and the rest of it is even if the candidates aren't going to behave themselves, even if the parties aren't going to tee up the important national issues, it's still our job to tee up the important national issues and not just to say, what's your policy on Ukraine? But what are the national interests at stake in Ukraine? What are the national interests if Russia invades Poland to try to get them to talk about what their core hardwired beliefs are? Because this is a way in which I think the debates do matter, even if they don't matter politically, which is you can find a way to get to what their core animating beliefs are.

And those core animating beliefs are what they are going to rely on when circumstances change in the next four years, as they always do. Policies go away very quickly because they meet reality. So what's going to guide them when they meet reality? And then secondly, the ability to give a concentrated answer about what your core values are. However, that's excavated by the question is essentially what you do in leadership, right.

You know this, David. When you run, when you lead teams, you have to, like, make the pitch to get people to take action in the way you want them to take action. That requires a kind of concentrated worldview conveyed to the people who work for you, and that's the debates scene and answers. And debates is not a bad proxy for seeing if they have that skill. One topic that I wanted to hit before we leave, this is the impossible task that Jake Tapper and Dana Bash have because we know that Trump will lie immensely in real time and will say thing after thing.

David Plotzip
That is simply untrue. He may try to blow through time limits and Biden may as well, but they do have this ability to mute. But is there a responsibility for Tapper and Bash to hold Trump to account in the moment in the way you would expect them to if theyre appearing on, you know, a tapper's own tv show? I think there is. The problem is, first of all, you have to do it exactly right.

John Dickerson
I mean, you have people in the back furiously checking things. And I think you need to do it with Trump's own words, if possible, to show that he's contradicted himself or some other source that people who might vote for Trump are going to care about, which is not necessarily the mainstream media. So that's another bar to jump. And then the other thing is Trump is already talking about how he's going to be debating three people kind of presenting Tapper and Bash as if they're also hostile to him. And so if you do it too aggressively, you also play into his hands as the aggrieved victim of the establishment.

Emily Bazelon
And the candidate running on a grievance campaign is always in search of grievances. And so you have two right there. I think that's right. Can totally make the case for not fact checking in real time. And it goes like this, Juan, to your point, Emily, you have to really get it right.

You have to, as a moderator, you have to. Fact checking is quite hard. Everybody thinks of it as this slam dunk moment. You have to unpack for the audience what the lie is. And sometimes the lie ain't that clear.

Then you have to insert the correct information. Sometimes the correct information is nuanced. And you have to do all of that pretty damn quickly without losing the thread of the debate you're having and not getting into a side debate with the candidate about what the nature of verifiable information is right. So there are all kinds of ways you can go off. And in this case, the candidate who's likely to get into that fight with you, he's benefiting every minute he's in that fight with you.

Because of the previous grievance point we made. It also removes something from the voters. It's our job to know and test and figure out whether these guys are lying and to care about that and not expect the moderators to do it. I mean, we all should be, when we watch it, should say, this is a blatant lie, those of us who are covering it. But in the moment, the moderators have other things to do, and so they should say to the public and to the press, you guys take care of that.

We got to focus on this. Wait, are you, John, are you saying that's what you think should happen or you're just making a strawman argument and you don't think that should happen? You do think they should fact check? I actually find that very persuasive. No, I think, I believe that.

I think, I believe what I just. Said, which is rare case, it's different than if they were coming on vaccination. And it's there. It's like a one on one interview, right? Yes, I think that's right.

David Plotzip
In that case, you would fact check. Because with Face the nation, you don't have an army of fact checkers standing at the ready across all of the different news organizations who will evaluate the performance and can put it into context and who have the time to put it into the right kind of context, not just the, oh, my God, he lied. But this is a shading. This is a different kind of lie. But also because in faze Nation, it's an interview and this is a debate.

Emily Bazelon
Yes. And the debate, if someone wants to fact check, if Joe Biden wants to tell the country what he just said is false and here's how it was characterized at the actual time. That's for Joe Biden to do, I. Think, in the moment. I mean, I do think that last point you made, John, I'm not sure what I think about this, but I think it's really important to remember that the debate clip are what matter in the longer term.

John Dickerson
And so it is up to the rest of them, or at least it's both. Easier to imagine the rest of the media because they will have between five minutes and as much time as they want to imagine them doing it. Well. And then also I do think this idea of in the moment, people speak for themselves, like there is something to that. Although I feel nervous about this because it opens the door to all this lying and misinformation, and I do find that incredibly frustrating.

The idea, it feels like Trump getting away with something, presuming it's Trump who's doing the lying. I would add one other tiny thing, which is as a moderator, your job is to moderate, as David said, the event. And that's an event with two people, and it requires you to play a certain kind of role as a kind of person who's moderating the event. And if you get drugged too much into a one on one with one of the candidates, you you're no longer in that role, which changes the shape of the event. And they're so, and Trump won't let it go.

It's not like if you start, then that'll be over and we'll be on to the next episode of the sitcom. It's gonna linger, and he'll, like, draw energy from it and try to draw blood. And there's also a problem of the sheer tonnage of misinformation and lies that he tells. He has reached orbital escape velocity in terms of the sheer number of things he says that are untrue and also the ways in which they're untrue.

Emily Bazelon
You literally couldn't do it. There's too much material. Do you want to hear more from us after this episode? Emily? Yes.

John Dickerson
I can't wait. Her sarcastic tone aside, you are going to hear more from us after this episode if you're a slate plus member, because we do bonus segments on every episode of the Gabfest, which are remembers only. And today we're going to be talking about a documentary that Emily and I both saw this week called Brats, about the brat Pack, which began as a cocktail chatter, and we got so involved in it that we just turned it into a slate plus. But as I said, this segment is only for Slate plus members. So if you are a slate plus member, thank you so much.

David Plotzip
You have kept us going. You've kept Emily Bazelon lavishly in cherries, and we appreciate it. And you get so many good things. You get unlimited reading on the slate, slate bonus segments on the gabfests, bonus episodes of Slate podcasts. So thank you for that.

If you're not a member, though, go to slate.com gabfestplus and become a member today. That's slate.com gabfestplus. It's hard to imagine a world where we leave future generations with fewer rights and freedoms the Supreme Court has stolen the constitutional right to control our bodies. Now politicians in nearly every state have introduced bills that would block people from getting the essential sexual and reproductive care they need, including abortion. Planned Parenthood believes everyone deserves access to care.

Judy
It's a human right. We won't give up and we won't back down. Help ensure the next generation can decide their own futures. Donate to Planned Parenthood. Visit plannedparenthood.org future this episode is brought.

David Plotzip
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So if you're unsatisfied for any reason, they'll refund your money, no questions asked. Remember to head to zbiotux.com Gabfest and use the code Gabfest at checkout for 15% off. Decisions made in Washington affect your portfolio every day. But what policy changes should investors be watching? Listen to Washington Wise, an original podcast for investors from Charles Schwab, to hear the stories making news right now, host Mike Townsend, Charles Schwab's managing director for legislative and regulatory affairs, takes a nonpartisan look at the stories that matter most to investors, including the policy initiatives for retirement, savings, taxes and trade, inflation fears, the Federal Reserve, and how regulatory developments can affect companies, sectors, and even the entire market.

Mike and his guests offer their perspective on how policy changes could affect what you do with your portfolio. Download the latest episode and follow@schwab.com washingtonwise or wherever you listen. Surgeon General Vivek Murti on Monday called for warning labels on social media, arguing in a New York Times op ed that there is enough worrying evidence that social media use is associated with poor mental health and feelings of low self esteem that it should be treated as a significant health risk. Soon after that, Governor Gavin Newsom called on California to bar cell phones in schools that would join Florida and Indiana and other locations, other jurisdictions, and trying to reduce the distractions caused by smartphones in classrooms. The surgeon general Murti cannot impose this warning.

He can't just simply say, I'm going to impose this warning, and there's a warning now on every social media site. It requires some congressional action. And even if the Congress approved it, not even clear that the Supreme Court would allow something like this to go forward. We could also talk about that First Amendment question. But that said, it's a really interesting idea.

We've talked a lot on the gabfest over the last few years about the kind of risks of social media, and this is a new approach and obviously hearkens back to cigarettes, to alcohol in some ways, also to things like seatbelts. So, Emily, is this a good idea? You know, I wonder if the surgeon general had the power to do this on his own, if he would still be proposing it, because it's not so. Look, I am very skeptical of heavy social media use for teenagers. Let me just say, however, the evidence about exactly how it's harming them, who it's harming, you know, obviously, for some kids, there are benefits to going online and finding communities and finding out information.

John Dickerson
All of that is kind of TBD at this point. There's a serious intuition that a lot of people, and I think a lot of parents have about overuse, for sure. And it's not like Murthy doesn't have any evidence. But what exactly this label would say is pretty unclear. And so in that sense, it's different from tobacco, where we had much, much evidence that tobacco causes cancer.

Like, the dots had all been very connected by scientists. And I feel like this time the picture is fuzzier, even though it sort of feels like it should be obvious. This is a scream. This is a, this is a seriously important job or important problem. There are all these figures.

Emily Bazelon
Everything you raised, Emily, is absolutely up for grabs. But let's wrestle with it and figure out what we think about it, because the potential danger, downsides of social media are a big deal. And even if we're totally wrong and social media is not the culprit, something's the culprit. So maybe it's like the fact that a generation of kids grew up in a world where there are massive gun shootings, and every time school shootings, I should say, every time you go to school, that might be the back of your mind. Maybe it's, you know, the death of religion.

I don't know what it is, but there is some reason that kids are bummed out. I mean, and we seem ill equipped to manage it. So let's have a big national conversation, and this is a way to kick that off, right? I mean, always the problem with focusing sort of fastening on one factor when you're not sure is that you're missing the other factors. So I was reading a bunch of essays this Morning by Candice Odgers, who is a psychology professor who studies this, and she's been one of the critics of Jonathan Haidt, whose book about anxiety in kids is a huge bestseller.

John Dickerson
Odgers is saying, look, what we do know is that kids who are vulnerable for all the standard reasons of, like, family dysfunction or poverty, et cetera, are the most vulnerable to social media. It's those underlying factors. And maybe I think she's intimating that we're focusing on this because we're tired of hearing about all those real reasons, and this seems like something else. I think there's another part of this, though, which is that this is pretty universal, right? It hits kids of all classes.

Parents wrestle with it. There's this feeling of incredible frustration and, like, and shame, I think, on the part of families. And it's a collective action problem. You can't really solve it on your own, because if all the other kids have the apps and the phones when they're little or in elementary or middle school, it's very hard to take it away. And so that is like, a really good moment for government to step in.

And I'm going to refuse to use the word nanny state, which always makes government seem bad. The universality is also clearly important and also the suddenness of it. My children, your guys children, are sort of in this cusp generation, where I have one child who's so old that this didn't really affect her, but others who are wildly affected by it. And it's happened, really, in ten years. It's gone from no smartphone use to universal, almost universal and vast and, like, uncontrollable.

David Plotzip
And that speed is terrifying, I think, and is also part of what makes it worthy of a screen. And here's a hot take that I'm going to stumble into and could be wrong in 50 different ways, which is that all of us who wrestle with this in other different ways are so ill equipped with it because we didn't grow up with it. And so we're wrestling with our own attention issues with social media and with just the general pinging of the world that attacks our attention and makes us all think, oh, I don't remember the last time I sat down and read a book for an hour. You both do. But lots of other people complain that the world of attention attacks has shredded people's attention.

Emily Bazelon
And so we're thinking, oh, that's our experience. We don't want our kids to have it. But something I've noticed with both of our kids is that they have both, in different ways, worked on their restraint towards the devices. And they've developed some pretty good practices, and it is very much a part of their behavior. And that, to me, is both good with respect to these devices, but also our brains are wired to flit and attack us and be all over the place.

And so restraint, that's why people meditate and have for generations and millennia that skill. Knowing when to restrain your impulses, is a super great skill, which they may be learning because of these things. And so they may learn to be better restrained, which is more psychologically healthy because they have grown up in this world. I mean, I love that idea. And one of the things I read that really made sense to me was that what you should say to kids is, like, is this making you feel good or bad?

John Dickerson
And if it's making you feel bad, put it away. I have to say, though, I feel like it's pretty idealized to imagine that most kids are going to go towards self restraint because it is addictive. They're up against the best software engineers, product makers in the world. And also this problem of, like, constant comparison on social media, which I think everybody, no matter what your age experience is like, that is a fundamental, tragic dilemma of adolescence and an obsession of adolescence. And, I mean, I don't know.

I think back to my own teenage girl years, and I shudder to think how hard it would have been to have to be constantly judged and judging and comparing. And it's so much about shallow physical markers of who you are as opposed to anything else. And it's inescapable, not just in social media. I mean, the comparison is throughout our culture. And you're exactly right.

Emily Bazelon
Like Zen of one child is fighting against trillions of dollars being spent to do the opposite. I mean, this is where I'm so sympathetic to murti. So sympathetic is that one of the really big problems is that the social media companies who I don't think are really, I'll get to this in a second. I actually don't think they're the locus of real blame, but they're such bad citizens, they're so unwilling to, to do even the mildest things, to restrain engagement. And it's just shocking.

David Plotzip
It's just shocking how, you know, they won't let you study the safety of it. They won't let you, you know, check, watch, look at their data to see how actually kids engage. They won't stop push notifications or autoplay or infinite scroll or any of these things which, you know, would slightly reduce the amount of time or make it harder for kids to engage and all of us to engage as easily as we do. And when you're dealing with such bad citizens who have made such billions of dollars out of it and dress themselves up as we're powerful companies pursuing the national, making America stronger in the world, it's like, fuck you guys, you need to be controlled. You need to be pulled back.

I love it that everyone on all sides feels that the social media companies have been villainous in this way. No. Why don't you think they are really to blame? Well, I actually, I was thinking about this. I've become obsessed.

This is why I'm so uninterested in AI, is that AI, to me is so much about. Is so little about one's experience in the physical world. It's all just like language being spewed out or images being spewed at you. It's not really about how you're sensing things, feeling things on your skin, smelling things. Like, not yet.

Maybe one day we'll get there. And I actually feel that the problem with phones is not what's on them, it's the objects themselves. It's that they. That your physical experience of the phone is the addiction. So what's on it is part of it.

But like, we're is addicted to our phones. All of us are sitting here with our phones, you know, within easy arms reach. I haven't, you know, I've touched mine a bunch of times during this taping. I'm thinking about what's on it. It's a constant.

Like it's an open wound in all of our heads all the time. And it's because of the physical object. It's not because it's what's Facebook. If it weren't Facebook, it would be something else that you're anxious about thinking about, aware of. And so to me, what really needs to be regulated is our connection, our physical connection to the object.

And if you can break that, then the addiction, the other addiction pieces fall into place. I've always been captivated by a figure that I first read from Sherry Turkle from MIT, who has studied those sort of human relationships with machines. Going back to before we had these in our hands. And it was that even a phone on the table steals some share of our attention, just physically, by being there and in our line of sight, even if we never check it, we are mentally checking it. Which goes to your point.

Emily Bazelon
Can I defend AI, though? There were these very cool clouds in the sky. Again, we were interacting with reality. And so I sent the picture to chat DBT and learned that the wisps that I was seeing was actually a certain kind of precipitation, which I had never heard about. And I wish I could look up where it was, what they called it.

But I learned a totally new thing about the clouds in the sky because I had this right there. So it was not, even though I pretty much agree with absolutely everything you say. And my final point would have been. Nicer to have an unmediated experience where you just were like, look at the wonder of the world. And I'm here in the moment enjoying the wonder of the world.

David Plotzip
I didn't learn anything about it totally. I think there are probably 23 hours and 58 minutes in which I do that. Just for this two minutes, I was able to actually engage in the thought that was brought on by sitting around looking at the wonder of the. I can't just sit and look at the wonder of the world and be mute. Well, the part that's about our phones as objects connects to banning them in school.

Emily Bazelon
Yes, excellent segue taking away. And I cannot see a downside to this, I have to say. I have. I try to imagine how to feel sympathy for the people who feel like they have to be in touch with their kids constantly in school, and I cannot summon it. I just feel like we all grew up without being constantly communicated with.

John Dickerson
I know that things have gotten scarier in schools because of shootings and that a real thing, but I also feel like you're allowing all of this interference with kids learning and socializing for that one eventuality, and I just don't think it's worth it at all. The cloud phenomenon is known as Virga. Do you guys know about this? I don't know about Virga. Yeah.

David Plotzip
Virgo is when you see the rain coming out of the cloud, almost like a shadow below the cloud. Can I jump on your point about the billionaires who make all this money off of this? Imagine if they decided to turn their minds and their billions towards contests to encourage any of us, but also teenagers to not engage with technology. Can you imagine the cool minds applied to, like MacArthur genius grants for the person who spends months without engaging with technology or builds a thing that can only be built through time and attention and focus, like they could come up with it and they have the billions to fund it, which is the lack of creativity and lack of imagination that you're talking about, David, that there's, that there's no reciprocal sense of duty for unwinding. We know that time and intention applied to activity is the only way to do deep, meaningful work.

Emily Bazelon
That's been true for all time. So if that truth is still out there and there are people with billions looking to spend money on it, go spend money on that stuff. Helping and incentivizing kids to do that. On both of these issues, on the warnings and on the cell phone bans, but particularly on the cell phone ban in schools, is this at all partisan? Is there any partisan color to banning cell phones in schools?

David Plotzip
The evidence of it being from diverse states suggests that it is without political valence. I'm just wondering, every issue that we deal with in this country somehow gets colored bipartisanship, and this is almost unique so far in that I feel like it's not. Yeah, I mean, we'll see, right? But it does have the congressional legislation that has not passed by any means but is out there, has bipartisan folks behind it. What's the word?

John Dickerson
I'm looking for sponsors. Sponsors from both parties. And I think there is a sense both people on the right and the left have reasons to be really skeptical of this technology. And maybe the kind of universal dread that a lot of parents have saves it from the typical partisan divide. Decisions made in Washington affect your portfolio every day.

David Plotzip
But what policy changes should investors be watching? Listen to Washington Wise, an original podcast for investors from Charles Schwab, to hear the stories making news right now, host Mike Townsend, Charles Schwab's managing director for legislative and regulatory affairs, takes a nonpartisan look at the stories that matter most to investors, including the policy initiatives for retirement savings, taxes and trade, inflation fears, the Federal Reserve, and how regulatory developments can affect companies, sectors, and even the entire market. Mike and his guests offer their perspective on how policy changes could affect what you do with your portfolio. Download the latest episode and follow@schwab.com. washingtonwise or wherever you listen.

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David Plotzip
Mitch Daniels, the former governor of Indiana, the former president of Purdue, the last reasonable man in american public life as far as. Wait, Michael Bloomberg? Mitch Daniels is more reasonable than Michael Bloomberg. I really admire Mitch Daniels. He has an interesting op ed in the Washington Post.

It's called Indiana is revealing the real consequences of one party rule. And he begins with the fact that Indiana just had a republican primary for governor, and 12% of registered voters voted in that primary. The winning candidate got, 5% of registered voters voted for the winning candidate in the republican primary for governor. And winning the republican primary for governor in Indiana means you will be the governor of Indiana at this point. It's an uncontested, effectively an uncontested race because the state is so red.

And he uses that fact to point out that Indiana, like many states, is no longer really politically competitive at the state level, that the primary has become the election in a lot of states. In 40 states containing 83% of the american population, there's a trifecta where the dominant party controls the legislature and both houses the legislature and the governor's office. And that is way up from where it was even 20 years ago. And he basically is saying this has all kinds of baleful effects on. On political life and on political action in states.

I found this a really persuasive, interesting op ed for a bunch of reasons. But, John, let me start with you. Where has this phenomenon come from? Is it gerrymandering? It is not gerrymandering.

Emily Bazelon
So three fifths of the country had a reasonable political balance as recently as 2000, just to put a number behind. And also in 2024, 30 of those states that you mentioned that have the trifecta have basically two to one majorities in at least one house, which means it's not just one party rule, but one party rule where they can do pretty much whatever the hell they want. Where did this come from? So there's so many interesting factors. And the reason I was so captivated by this and shared your interest in it, David, is that it allows us to then touch on all these different areas.

So it's not gerrymandering. Gerrymandering contributes to it, but mostly we sort ourselves and gerrymander ourselves and who we live near. And that that has created the big sort, has created some of this. The nationalization of politics has done this, which has turned a focus on campaigns that were at the local level, which focused on local issues. Now they focus on big cultural, hot button issues.

That's the way you raise money. If I'm a candidate, if I talk about abortion or if I talk about what teachers maybe is talking about in schools, I can raise lots of money. That makes it a national issue, which then allows the race to line up along national lines rather than local lines. That tends to make it sort one party or another. The number of districts that are competitive, this is federal government, not in terms of one party rule, but it's a part of the same phenomenon.

In 1998, there were 164 competitive US House districts, which meant the population was sufficiently sorted that you might be a Democrat or a Republican. There are now only 23 competitive US House districts, from 164 to 23. Shocking. That's shocking. The number of.

And that's from the Cook Political report, which does, you know, does extraordinary work. The number of landslide districts has mushroomed over time, which, again, is another piece of data that supports the idea that basically people are all living of the same kind in specific places. And so I think those are mostly the contributing factors. And the downsides of this, of course, is that you end up electing, and we've talked about this with respect to Supreme Court. This, again, is national level, but with Supreme Court justices, because the Supreme Court became so central to national politics, it became important to have a senator from whichever party was going to vote for the right kind of Supreme Court justice.

So it didn't matter whether they were compromisers, didn't matter whether they understood agriculture, it didn't matter about their local positions, because everything becomes so nationalized. So you end up electing lawmakers who don't have the skills to do the business of lawmaking. So I live in a trifecta state. Connecticut Democrats have control of both houses and the governor's office. And my understanding is that the Democrats in the legislature have chosen to keep the rules that.

John Dickerson
That allow for filibustering enough that the Republicans actually still have some say in legislation that they, at this point, are close to or have had moments where they had large enough supermajorities where they could have overridden those rules pretty easily, and they haven't. And so the Republicans are totally outnumbered, but they're not completely irrelevant. And also the legislature always runs out of time at the end of the session. And so one form of power is what you allow through on a consensus vote without the, without debate and if you can. So that's another way in which the minority party continues to matter because they can always force debate and then that just runs the clock.

So in some ways, this is, I mean, I am totally think everything you're saying makes sense. And one party rule among all the other problems with the extremes, it also leads to corruption. Right. Because you just don't have the same kind of check in that regard as well. And that can be a real problem in cities as well as states.

I will say that in Connecticut, it sometimes feels like it's the fact that the Democrats don't have total control. I mean, they would do this anyway, but it feels like an excuse to be less ambitious sometimes. Right. You just sort of stick with your more middle of the road. I'm not really going to change anything.

And I know voters resist change and there's lots of dramatic change. I would probably worry about, however, in a state that is sort of declining somewhat economically, in which, you know, they're all these towns, there's no effective regional power centers. And so you have three cities, basically, Hartford, New Haven and Bridgeport, that don't have enough support, are bearing, you know, most of the burden of people who have, who are poor in Connecticut. And there's just like never enough resources or power to those urban centers. I worry about the fact that the Democrat, it's just like, so your position.

David Plotzip
Is that trifecta governments should use their power to pass over weaning legislation in their direction and be ambitious in that way rather. So you're not in the Mitch Daniels camp, which is that competition creates a bipartisanship and cooperation and like, just requires people to use politics to get to a solution that's in the middle only for things I want, for the things that you want. But here's what I want. And so maybe this is just not particularly apt to the problem we're discussing. What I want is for the suburbs to cough it up so that if they're not going to bear the share of ever having enough affordable housing, then at least they are paying for the cities where there should be much more housing and economic opportunity and services, and they're not.

John Dickerson
And so maybe that just doesn't align, but it seems to align because the Republicans come from the wealthy suburbs. And so it feels like there's this problem of the urban centers not having enough power. So your position to repeat is that the trifectas are good because you can force the people who are not on your side to do things that they don't want to do. Except that if the people, if the Democrats started doing a lot of wacky things I thought were a bad idea, then I would be opposed to it again. So herein lies the dilemma of politics.

Emily Bazelon
On the questions of incentives. One of the arguments Daniels makes is that competition for voters outside of the extremes, however, you would force that to happen, and we should talk about that creates entrepreneurial ship and creativity and innovation for new ideas because you're always trying to be like, hey, I know you're sick of talking about this and this. I got this idea for this, right? Like, so it's fertilizing. It's not just compromise is good because it helps the most number of people and it's not at the extremes, but it also incentivizes people to be creative in a way that might actually solve some of the problems that are affecting the most number of people.

You would spend your time on the problems that affect the most number of people because you're trying to actually get the most number of votes. What about having parties for state and local elections that are not Republicans and Democrats? Just like severing that because it's not as if there aren't differences, right? I mean, in Connecticut, the working families party has a little bit of power, but not very much. You could imagine like the Green Party or whatever, various variations on the theme that would actually allow for competition.

John Dickerson
And people could see these differences play out and make real choices that aren't all blanket d and r, but they might be more reflective of local and state interests. Right. That would be great. But doesn't that cut against the nationalization trend that John was talking about, which is that everything has gone to doctor. Yeah, I'm trying to cut against it.

I mean, I realize I'm now just talking about something that's not going to happen, but it does seem like the more that the national seems to be taking over, the more incentive there should actually be. If you were designing the system properly. For a difference there, John, I think you were getting at this. But just to clarify, one point that Daniels makes is that having one party states also means that intrinsically your legislatures, legislators are not merely just running on national issues. They're also more extreme because the only people who are voting are people who, or the only people who matter are people who vote in primaries, who are the more partisan and respond to partisanship in the primary.

David Plotzip
And so you end up getting people running in these races who are, they're not only more extreme than the state as a whole, they're even more extreme than their own party because they're winning the primary, where the votes are more extreme than the party votes just so. Exactly right. And there's not the corrective that used to take place, which is you might go hard right or hard left in a primary, but then because you were trying to tack back to the middle and we'd have that big conversation. We don't have the tech back to the middle conversation anymore in a lot of places and sometimes not even in presidential, in presidential campaigns, although along those lines, there was a fascinating piece in the Washington Post this week about the deciders, which said that six in ten of the voters who will decide in the six battleground states are people who are these kind of low information, low propensity voters in the 18 to 25 range, which made it seem like they were a lot more voters up for grabs. They tend to be a little more from the Biden coalition, more voters up for grabs than we might traditionally think.

One question mostly for you, John, but for you, too, Emily. You too. You can be part of this question. It doesn't appear to me that there are any actual solutions for this, that given the system that we have, it seems like we are stuck with this and we are stuck with states becoming more like themselves and more partisan and thus their legislatures being more partisan and their governors being more partisan. And that's just where we're headed, and there's no structural solutions.

John Dickerson
Well, I think you're right. In the long term, you could imagine states really differing from each other in meaningful policy related ways. Right. I mean, we have examples of that, like Medicaid expansion or the right to abortion, et cetera. It could keep going enough that people could start moving because they want or don't want to be in a state that has, you know, this kind of tax policy or this lack of social benefit.

I'm not sure we've really seen that at all. Right now it seems to have more to do with, like, the weather and where it's nice to retire. But I don't know. I mean, you could argue that the, you know, more available housing in states like Arizona and Texas and maybe Florida is encouraging people to go there in a way that actually matters more than these other things that blue states and cities think that they are doing well, maybe they're not doing them so well. Maybe they need to be better models.

David Plotzip
Yeah, I mean, this is the other point I want to make, is that the republican trifecta states, if you look at where people are moving and sort of measures of economic growth, it is not at all clear that being a republican trifecta state just is dooming you. People are moving there, people are getting jobs there, they're buying houses at affordable prices there or more affordable prices. I think Democrats who are like, oh, these republican states are doing such a terrible job should look in the mirror a little bit. Yeah. Nick Kristoff wrote a piece this week about the west.

John Dickerson
It was basically about like, it was scolding California, Oregon and Washington state for their trifecta governments and for policies that, especially with regard to housing and drug treatment, don't seem to be going so well. And I was, as an east coaster kind of feeling all superior because he said like, oh, well, you know, Massachusetts, etcetera, has much better measures on things like the satisfaction of the people who live there and other measures he looked at. It does raise this question, and I do think that housing and transportation is a huge part of it in terms of people's quality of life, and that those problems do not seem to be ones that having a trifecta of democratic control and governance seems to address effectively. Yeah. The usual solution to this, or a solution that's often brought up in this context, is ranked choice voting, where you have a primary system in which the parties don't participate.

Emily Bazelon
You don't have party primaries, you have primaries. And so you might end up having two democrats who get the top two votes and engage in the runoff where you have a Democrat and a Republican. But states have to adopt that. And if you're in a, you know, if you're in a trifecta state and you are the side that's winning, you're not apt to want to have a system that dilutes your power. Let's go to cocktail chatter.

David Plotzip
When you're sitting with the Dickersons having a stiff vesper martini, perhaps, of an evening. I learned what a vesper is last night. John. Did you use chat GPT to figure it out? No, I was having a drink at a bar with my daughter, and the man next to us was having a vesper and told us all about it.

Emily Bazelon
I just have very simple gin and that's it. What is your gin martini today? My gin martini is about, is a recommendation. I usually don't do these, but, I mean, I tried anyway. It's called craps last tape.

It was suggested to me by William Dewey, who sent me an email. So it's Beckett, which means it's great. But also the key thing to do is watch John Hurt, who on YouTube performs it. And it's essentially about this guy who collects, who has these real to real audio tapes of his life. And it's him in this extraordinary setting, which I won't ruin for you, because it's so listening to these and what they do to him.

And it's. Anyway, beautifully done. It's very haunting and disturbing. And John Hurt is really, really good at it. But it's also interesting to me because I learned that this represents a turning point in Beckett's life when he changed the way he wrote, which basically changed to the material and approach that he took then in the rest of his life.

So when you watch craps last tape and see what happens to the character at the center of it, that becomes resonant and powerful when you think about this as being the turning point that launched a successful part of Beckett's career. My chatter is about a panel saw the other night honoring David Carr. It was about the legacy of David Carr, and it was put together at Georgetown University by David Carr's brother. David Carr, of course, is the great media critic at the New York Times. He had been my boss at the Washington City paper.

David Plotzip
And the people on the panel included Jake Tapper and Ta nehisi Coates and Eric Wemple, all of whom also worked with David at the city paper. But it also included personal favorite journalist Amanda Ripley. And Amanda said something which I may have heard her say this on the gabfest, but it just was such a strong reminder. She was talking about how she wishes that all media organizations had correspondents who were responsible for covering humiliation, that humiliation as a beat. And she was pointing out that a lot of what we think of as conflict does not come from material disagreements or from particular issues, as much as it comes from a sense that somebody feels humiliated or some group feels humiliated, and when they feel humiliated, they lash out, and that creates the conflict.

And that the opposite of humiliation is dignity. And that similarly, you can reduce a lot of conflict by honoring the dignity of the person who is opposed to you. And I just think it's such an important critical point that instead of thinking about issues as issues, you think about how are they making people feel? And I think humiliation and dignity are an incredible lens to look at so many things, and Amanda is always super wise about that. My chatter is sad, and I am sorry about that, but Texas is seeking an execution date for a man named Robert Roberson, and this is a case that is so flawed that the police officer and lead detective in the case has been practically begging the courts not to go through with killing Mister Robertson.

John Dickerson
It's a shaken baby case of particular interest to me because I wrote about shaken baby prosecutions and some of the flaws with them years ago. Robertson has been on death row in Texas for more than 20 years. There's new evidence in the case showing that his daughter probably died of natural and accidental causes. And the other terrible thing about this case is that Robertson has been diagnosed with autism. What people, doctors and the cops held against him at the time was his low affect when his daughter died, but that may well have had to do with with his autism and not with anything that points to his guilt.

Anyway, I'm honestly shocked that Texas is trying to take this step and this is a case that is really important to watch. Yes, listeners, thanks for sending chatters to us. You email them to us@gabfestslate.com dot it is a real pleasure of every week to read them, and this week's listener chatter is from Tristan in Long Island City, New York, which is just, just very close to where we are right now. Hi Gabfest. My listener chatter is about a prison in Brazil that has replaced guard dogs with geese.

Tristan Hinderliter
This was described in a great recent article in the Wall Street Journal by Samantha Pearson. According to the prison's director, the installation was previously using Belgian Malinois to patrol the 3000 foot long perimeter, but the dogs napped all the time, ate fancy dog food, and racked up a small fortune in vet bills. The nine pound geese, however, are fiercely territorial and can be surprisingly intimidating, charging at anyone who dares enter their enclosure and unleashing a deafening cacophony of honks and shrieks that serves to alert guards if one of the prison's 1300 inmates tries to escape. They hate everyone, says the prison's director, Marcus Souza. They have zero loyalty, even to the people who feed them every single day.

It was an entertaining reach. Check it out.

David Plotzip
That's our show for today. The gabfest is produced by Shana Roth. Our researcher is Julie Hugin. Our theme music is by they might be giants. Ben Richmond is senior director for podcast ops, and Alicia Montgomery is the vp of audio for Slate.

For Emily Bazelon and John Dickerson and John Dickerson's dining room table, David Plotz thanks for listening. We'll talk to you next week.

Hi. Slate plus. Emily and I just discovered as we were preparing this morning that we have the same chatter. So Emily. No, ladies first.

John Dickerson
Introduce it. Okay, so David and I each separately watched Bratz, which is the new quite bad and through Andrew McCarthy documentary about the brat pack of the 1980s. Of course, we watched this because it is like right in the sweet spot for our age group and white demographic. The whole thing is the whitest thing you can ever imagine. But it's about Emilio Estevez and Judd Nelson and Rob Lowe and Andrew McCarthy.

And what struck me about it, what I wanted to complain about, is that, okay, so there's a New York magazine article in which the reporter is hanging out with these actors while they're at a club and, like, picking up women and being young and hot and having no regard for anyone other than themselves. And the reporter, David Blum names them the Brat pack. Fine. And it sounds like they genuinely were being bratty and entitled and kind of awful. Then these amazing female actors get dragged into this Molly Ringwald, who is like my personal absolute obsession.

I adored her when I was a teenager. Demi Moore, Ali Sheedy, like, they wind up with this kind of derogatory label for no reason except that they're in the movies with the boys. And yeah, they made the breakfast Club and St. Elmo's fire together more or less like different members of that group. And there are a few other movies that get pulled into this.

Of course, the director and producer John Hughes, who is the 16 Candles breakfast Club Ferris Bueller guy, is important to the story. But it just really bugged me that this brat pack label got applied to these women for no reason. They had done nothing bratty. Then, of course, though, the movie is pretty bad because Andrew McCarthy is obsessed with this brat pack label. And who really cares?

David Plotzip
I think I came into the movie, my girlfriend had already watched the first half hour, so I missed that part where they where the women are being dragged in. That was just a snippet from our slate plus conversation. If you want to hear the whole conversation, go to slate.com gabfestplus to become a member today. Hello, it is Ryan. And I was on a flight the other day playing one of my favorite social spin slot games on jumbacasino.com.

Judy
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18 plus it's opinion palooza season here. It's late. I'm Dalia Lithwick, the host of Amicus Slate's podcast about the courts and the law and the Supreme Court. As this Supreme Court term hurtles towards its close, the justices are handing down decisions that will shape our politics and our lives for years and decades to come. My team and I are putting out analysis of the biggest cases just as quickly as we can, bound to our closets and fire up our laptops to speak to you.

From presidential immunity to social media content regulation to domestic abusers gun rights, we will be here unpacking the news for you. Listen to Amicus wherever you get your podcasts.

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