David Frum: Pride in the Fight
46:07 Share

So Philadelphia, you ready to do this? Are we ready to vote to win? Oh, it's good to be back in the city of brotherly love where the foundation of our democracy was forged. And here at these famous steps, a tribute to those who start as the underdog and climb to victory.

Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Holy shit, it's November 5th, 2024. It's election day. That was Vice President Kamala Harris at her last rally on the Rocky Steps in Philadelphia, Monday evening. I'm delighted to be here today with favorite of the pod, David Frum. David, how are you feeling this morning? Calm. Calm. What did you make of the Vice President's closing and her campaign this raucous 107 days?

You know, we have lived through a very dramatic decade in American politics, and so much has happened, including an attempted insurrection against the United States government. But I think when we look back on it, maybe nothing happened at all. Maybe the story was 46% of Americans supported Trump when they got the chance in 2016, and 46% supported him when they got a second chance in 2020. He was at 46%, 47% in the approval polls most of his presidency. He's going to get about 47%.

tonight. And maybe that's all that ever was true, that about a little less than half the country supported him, some intensely, some less so, some because they believed in him, some because they hated the libs. But there has not been a single day since he entered national politics when a majority of Americans didn't reject him. The reason I'm calm is I think that will manifest itself again tonight. And the question will be how representative

are the institutions of American elections, how representative is the electoral college, how much can it distort reality? But that's the reality. And we've been pushing and pulling at that giant boulder for almost a decade. I don't think we've moved it very much.

Yeah. The problem is that assessment, and I'll steal from Bill Kristol here, who loves to talk about how history is contingent. I've become very enamored with that framing, that nudging the boulder tonight, one way or the other, may make all the difference. I mean, it was only 40 some odd thousand votes in 2020 that were the difference. And

And, you know, we'll see how things go tonight. We'll get to predictions at the end, but it's possible we're in a, we're in a position where just nudging it a little bit one way or the other could create quite a dramatic difference of outcomes. I don't say that as a recommendation of passivity. What was that old joke from cold war days that, you know, how many reformed central Europeans does it take to change the light bulb? The answer is none because the market will do it. I don't believe that. And I agree with Bill about the contingency of history. I think that's right. It's not set by vast and personal forces and,

But in this case, there's this fraudster who showed up. He had a lot of advantages behind him, including an unrepresentative American political system. But in the end, he was seen through by the majority at the beginning, in the middle, and I trust now at the end.

I want to talk about the kind of implications of that unrepresentative American system and where we might go from here when we come out on the other side tomorrow or later this week or whenever. But before we do that, we got to just do a little bit of politicking as we've come to the last of this campaign. And Donald Trump...

I guess the one thing we have working in our favor is it does not seem to me like Donald Trump has been all that interested in nudging the boulder his direction over the past 10 days and did not learn a lot from his 2016 campaign. And I want to play a couple of clips from his closing rallies and J.D. Vance's closing rallies yesterday. I want to start with Donald Trump talking about Nancy Pelosi at an event. Evil. She's an evil, sick, crazy. Oh, no.

It starts with a B, but I won't say it. I want to say it. Childish, massive, massive gender gap in the campaign. Maybe possibly the key voters here are older Republican women trying to decide what to do. Traditionally Republican voters. And he's out there being like, I don't know. I really want to say the B word. Well, Stuart Stevens has made this point again and again, that this is a campaign run by and for women.

people with serious psychological behavioral problems. You saw the Stephen Chung tweet. You've been a campaign spokesperson. I mean, you know, you sometimes needle your opposite numbers a little bit. I've seen you do that, but usually in a way that is like unintelligible to anybody who's not a fully paid up political professional, they won't know what you're talking about or care. The idea that you would, you know, make a sexually loaded attack on people

In such a way. I mean, for what? Why are you saying this? What end are you serving? I mean, you are in the end. For people who didn't know, Stephen Trump's spokesperson sent a tweet about how the Harris campaign manager, Jen O'Malley Dillon's husband is a cuckold. And it went downhill from there. But that was the gist of it. Yeah. What's that for?

And the answer is like Trump. And so I think there's a part they can't help themselves. Like, how is that any good for Trump? He's so mad. He's raging. And any impulse control he's ever had and he hasn't ever had much, it's gone. And that has large consequences because, you know,

People are rude to the president of the United States or disappoint him or fail him all the time or her now. You don't want him losing his cool because something happened that he didn't like because every quarter of an hour, something will happen that the president doesn't like. I was also reflecting on the Stuart Stevens comment about the kind of mental issues about the people surrounding Trump last week when I went to the Steve Bannon post-jail press conference yesterday.

And the group of people that were there, I mean, I said this on the pod last week, but it felt like you're in a movie and you're in a fake Eastern European country. And like the, you know, the Svengali gets out of prison and it's like you've got the one-eyed man there and a couple of people that have Asperger's syndrome. And like, that was the weirdest conflict. Like Bannon was the most normal person in the room.

And I think that just speaks to what the types of people that have been drawn to the movement, which is alarming given how close they are to power.

Yeah. Well, one of the enduring debates I've had with myself through the Trump years is who's worse, the cynics or the fanatics? Right. Sometimes some people are both, but Bannon is both a cynic and a fanatic, but more cynic than fanatic. If Bannon sees a piano dangling from a thread above his head, Bugs Bunny fashion, and Trump says the piano's not there, Bannon will still step out of the way of the piano. Right.

Whereas I think there are people say, OK, sir, if you say there's no piano overhead dangling by precarious, I'm going to do the Bugs Bunny thing and just defy the piano for you. Yeah, that's about right. So we have in addition to Trump going after Nancy Pelosi last night, these things tied together to me because if we were to believe Trump,

what the math says that, that maybe not the decisive demo, but a key demo in this election is these Nikki Haley voters, not the only key demo, but one, you know, middle to upper income college educated Republicans or former Republican types, uh,

Trump has done everything possible to alienate them. He hasn't called Nikki Haley since June, she said. He's making these sexist remarks, which presumably would turn at least some of them off. And then who is he reaching out to? I want to play a little clip from him talking about his new friend Bobby at a different rally last night. So Bobby's going to pretty much do what he wants. I want him to do something really important for our country, makes people healthier,

We have obesity. We have every problem you can have. And Bobby feels very strongly about it. And he's going to be very much. The only thing I told him, though, Bobby, you got to do one thing. Do whatever you want. You just go ahead. Work on the pesticides. Work on making women's health. He's so into women's health. And, you know, he's really unbelievable. It's such a passion. I mean, there you go.

Right. No, he's right there in the gynecology room every day with his speculum. No, he's really into women's health. Yes. Yeah. So Nikki isn't called, isn't involved. Bobby Kennedy gets to do what he wants. Vaccines, pesticides. Fluoride. Fluoride. Got to make tooth decay great again. Women's health.

I mean, again, there's the side of this where you look at, you're like, these are people that have mental health issues and it's funny almost. There's all, but it also is like, this is, I mean, this is who he's riding with. Like, this is who he's riding with the cracks. I want to say something with the Nikki Hayes, our people basically, right? The people, the bulwark was served. I remember early, early, early in the period, 2017, that there was a joke on the Trump side that never Trump wasn't a political party. It was a dinner party.

Okay. And you may remember that joke too. So it's going to turn out to be quite important. Liz Cheney is the most effective, most visible surrogate for the Kamala Harris campaign. I want to say something about us and because some of the people who listen to this podcast may, you know, may be glad we're there, but aren't us.

The ratio of how committed this group is to politics, how likely to show up, how unwavering it's been, and how little it has asked for in return. Because I don't think any of us think that Harris is going to be anything other than a pretty liberal president. Maybe a little more firm on foreign policy than Biden was. He's pleasantly surprised me on foreign policy, which was the one caveat I would say. Maybe she'll not give the Ukrainians half of what they need, but two-thirds, possibly even three-quarters. That would be good.

But at home, you know, we're expecting, depending on what happens in Congress, but her instinct will always be the full liberal and maybe even more liberal than Biden's own instincts. And we have not asked for, we vote for her in full knowledge that our dearest hope going into this thing is that we'll be able to vote against her in good conscience in 2028.

And the country will change and the party will change. I just want to draw a contrast between the far left of the Democratic coalition, which brings nothing to the party, which says, we're going to wreck your convention. Oh, we can't wreck your convention. Okay, then give us a speaking slot so we can embarrass you at your convention. We ask for everything. We can deliver nothing. And...

I just hope that if this coalition has to last, if the Republicans can nominate J.D. Vance in 2028 and this coalition has to continue, this big, messy coalition that extends from Dick Cheney to Bernie Sanders, that people in the middle of the coalition at the center of gravity will notice who's bringing the most and asking the least and who's bringing the least and asking the most. I agree with every inch of that, except for, I guess, one caveat, which is if I got to wish.

My greatest wish for 2028 would be that Kamala Harris would be a good president and govern from the center, and then I'd be happy to vote for her again. So I guess that would be my greatest wish. But I see the point of what you're saying, that it would be ideal. I mean, it would also be wonderful for Kamala Harris to win such a route tonight and for the Republicans to be shaken in such a way that we wouldn't have to vote for her again. I don't really expect that, but that certainly would be a nice outcome. I'm hoping that the Republicans get the message.

And that somebody like Brian Kemp can run for president in 2028 on a message of money doesn't grow on trees, you know, and stay in school. Don't do drugs. You're not leaving the house dressed like that young man.

David, you're not getting a DeLorean for Christmas, bro. I'm sorry. I know that that sounds nice, but there's not a DeLorean on offer this winter, I don't think. The whole Trump campaign with no taxes on tips, I thought our message was money doesn't grow on trees. Right.

Well, you invoked J.D. I had two other clips from the last night rally we had to get to. Guys, we're all just waiting today. There's only so much analysis you can do. So Dave and I, we're going to do a little bit of reverie and a little bit of imagination about the future. But we also, we should just listen to how these assholes have decided to close their campaign. Here's your old friend, your old associate blogger, J.D. Vance, last night discussing the vice president of the United States.

Two days, we are going to take out the trash in Washington, D.C., and the trash's name is Kamala Harris. God bless you, Georgia. Let's go get it done. That was the closing line. I'd seen that clip happen on Twitter, but I was like, what was the context in which he brought this up? So I went back and rewatched the whole speech on 2XP that can only stomach so much of J.D. And I was like, wait, that was his sendoff. That was J.D. Vance's sendoff to the campaign. The first female vice president is trash.

Like what happened to this, this man? If this election goes the way the polls suggest, uh,

When this is over, the Republican Party will have to do an assessment. And I think they will have some good news. By the way, and this in any other context would be good news for America, which is young Latino men who don't finish college are voting more like everybody else, like other young men of their similar place in society. And that's a good thing that the American melting pot is bubbling away and race and ethnicity continually matter less and less. That would normally be a good thing, even if it means that, you know,

You behave badly in the same way that other people like you. The melting pot is working. So they'll have that, my guess, in their corner. And perhaps, although I'm more skeptical of this, some inroads among similarly situated younger black men. I doubt that, but impossible. But I think they'll see it with the young Latino men. But they will say, my God, we've got this crisis with American women. And I would have thought that Vance, who does play this game, some moves ahead. If Trump loses, he's a candidate in 2028.

And the biggest question about him was going to be, you were our single biggest problem. That joke about Puerto Rico, that was just, you know...

An extra bonus, but the childless cat lady remark, that was the wound from which the coalition never stopped bleeding. So you are going to have to make some amends and make American women regard you less as their enemy than they do now. And to end like that, like he should be thinking today, okay, it's possible we lose. I will be a candidate in 2028. And every donor, everyone's going to ask me, what do we do about the childless cat lady situation? Oh, and now the garbage remark too. Yeah. Yeah.

I guess my question is, I mean, he's demonstrated himself certainly to be very savvy. You know, going from a forum blogger to a vice presidential candidate in 10 years or however many years it was is not nothing. So he's savvy. Yeah. But he's also revealed himself to be pretty angry. Yeah. And mean. Yeah.

And I don't know if you can shed that skin after a loss, right? Like once you've decided to go there, it's hard to come back to offering kind of a sunny vision, a broad, sunny, appealing vision, I think. I think that's true. And that may be the man himself. You know, one of the things that I've been recommending to people is they watch again in full. It's only 60 seconds long. Ronald Reagan's famous closing argument in 1980, are you better off than you were four years ago? So people remember that.

But it's worth washing in full because the other message of that debate, which is only a week before voting day, and Reagan and Carter had been quite close until the end, was the thing Reagan was reassuring people about is, you know, you're obviously done with the incumbent government. There's inflation. There are high interest rates. There's this catastrophe with the Iranian hostage rescue. But you're worried about me. People have told you I'm a lunatic. People have told you I'm a warmonger. People have told you I'm mean. So I'm going to stand here on this stage, and for 90 minutes, I'm going to exude goodwill

graciousness, respectability. And his closing argument, we all remember the plain language of, is it easier for you to go into the stores and buy things? But he also, he began by saying, when you enter the voting booth, it might be well if you would ask yourself, that is he correctly used subjunctive condition. And then, and then he said, and if you answer these questions, yes,

He said, then I think your choice is very obvious. And here he nodded and smiled at Jimmy Carter. If you've liked the last four years, of course you will vote for my distinguished opponent against whom I have not a personal thing to say. That is also how you can end a campaign. It's not just the compare and contrast. It's also the implicit reassurance. I'm a gracious person. I am in command of myself. I've got goodwill to humanity. I can speak English properly.

Hey y'all, because those assholes made us turn our clocks back, you know, it's getting dark earlier and I have to start thinking about my wardrobe. In New Orleans, it stays persistently warm.

well into the fall even into November but you know it's time to start getting a little cozier so start thinking about you know I got to put those terry cloth collared shirts away and come up with something a little more flannel a little more cozy for the coming brief Louisiana winter and so I'm excited to be jumping into a new wardrobe with our friends at Quint's

Quince offers affordable, high-quality essentials for any wardrobe. That includes seasonal must-haves like Mongolian cashmere sweaters from just $60.

Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical, and responsible manufacturing practices, along with premium fabrics and finishes. And they partner with them directly, cutting out the cost of the middleman and passing the savings on to you. That means Quince items are priced 50% to 80% less than similar brands, so you can update your look without breaking the bank.

I've been bringing in some new gear from Quince. I hope you guys have been noticing it on the YouTube stream. I've got some new comfortable shirts. My favorite one is that blue button-up shirt with the white piping. I don't know if you noticed that, but next time you see me in it, you will. It's cozy. It's comfortable. It looks good. It's easy. It's affordable.

I'm all about it. So upgrade your wardrobe with the pieces made to last with Quince. Go to quince.com slash the bulwark for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's q-u-i-n-c-e dot com slash the bulwark to get free shipping and 365 day returns. quince.com slash the bulwark.

There was one final character that they brought in to the campaign last night that chose not to and graciously either did not learn from Reagan despite I think being a Reagan Republican herself at one point. My new friend Megyn Kelly was on stage at the final Donald Trump rally. It's been a strange journey for both her and JD since 2016 and I just want to play one clip of

of Megan, who is the special. If you have to have Megan or Oprah, I guess I'm happy with the fact that Kamala had Oprah, but Trump had Megan and here's what she had to say. He will be a protector of women and it's why I'm voting for him. He will close the border. He will keep the boys out of girls sports and where they don't belong. And you know what else? One more thing. He will look out for our boys too. Our forgotten boys and our forgotten men. Guys like you. Guys like these guys.

who've got the calluses on their hands, who work for a living with the beards and the tats, who maybe have a beer after work and don't want to be judged by people like Oprah and Beyonce, who will never have to face the consequences of her disastrous economic policies.

I feel like I'm in good company this week to have Megan shining her sights on Oprah, Beyonce, and me. For people who don't suffer through X slash Twitter, Megan sent about 17 tweets at me this week. She's very upset about an interview I did a couple weeks ago.

The whole thing is like, why are you so mad? The whole thing is crazy to me, David. It's like Donald Trump cares about the guys with the calluses on their hands. Donald Trump has the softest hands in the world. That Oprah is judging them. Is Oprah judging them? Beyonce is judging them. What do they do? I don't know. Beyonce just did a country record. I don't think that these people are judging these guys. I think this is all just a fabrication. A total hallucination.

So anyway, we were talking about this in the green room. How does she get to this? Well, this is one of the strangest of them all. And we did discuss this just beforehand. So not everyone listening will, there may be people who are 25. And so their political memories don't go back to the faraway days of 2016. We've got a couple. But Donald Trump declared for the presidency in the middle of 2015, in June. By July, he was the frontrunner.

Except for one week in November when he had a bad week. But he was the front runner all the way through. And through 2015, Fox News indulged it and indulged it and indulged it because they thought this guy's great for ratings. It's great TV. It's a lot of fun. And it's only 2015. We'll take him down and replace him with somebody serious because Rupert Murdoch's candidate for 2016 was Chris Christie, then the governor of New Jersey. And then eventually Marco. And then eventually Marco. But the big moment for Fox to pivot...

came at the first or second debate in January of 2016 on the eve of the New Hampshire primary. And Megyn Kelly was sent out by Fox to kill Trump.

And she had a question that was her first question and obviously cleared with everybody in the company. I assume the Murdoch's themselves. And it went through just instance after instance of demeaning, insulting, grotesque, sexualized things that Trump had said to attack women. And Trump batted Kelly off, refused to take part in another tough Hawks debate until Kelly was fired from the network.

and broke the network, brought the network to heel. They did terminate Kelly, who was then the huge star. She was going to be the next Sean Hannity. She had a big show at nine. She was going to get the most coveted piece of real estate of them all. She was the star. And Fox broke her and betrayed her. And then she went public with her grievances, the sexual harassment to which she'd been subjected by Roger Ailes, who had made her pose and prance for him in a humiliating, demeaning way. For that person to get from there to this...

One of the things that endlessly surprises me about these returning Trumpers, these late Trumpers, these anti-anti-Trumpers, is I get the opportunism

I can't get how you have so little self-respect and so little dignity. And even, you know what? Scratch that. Petty vindictiveness. Petty vindictiveness. You know, like if Mitch McConnell had had a couple of ounces more of petty vindictiveness, he goes, I'm getting back at you. I'm going to make a big speech on this impeachment floor about the Constitution of the Republic. But actually, I'm here to get revenge for the things you said about my wife. That, like, where's that? Where is that? Yeah, no. And that's what I asked you. It's like...

And she's mad at the wrong people. I guess it's a psychological thing where in order to survive –

With your career. It's a separate question about why Megyn Kelly cares about her career. She got a multi-million dollar exit package from two networks, I think, and said she could just be living on an island if she wanted. Assuming you just, for whatever personal reasons, ambition, you want to have a career. The person you should be mad at, the person that betrayed Megyn Kelly was Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes and Donald Trump. They were the ones that insulted her. They were the ones that derailed her career. And yet...

Because you can't you're stuck right you're trapped in the situation where to continue the ambitious path You can't be mad at Trump You can't betray him back because he has the power and so instead you lash out at I guess Beyonce and ever Trumpers and I don't know trans kids and the Oprah thing is especially revealing because when Kelly was terminated at Fox she did get another chance to reinvent herself as a kind of Oprah at NBC and

When you're on the camera all the time, the camera has a way of finding you out. So I'm not a big watcher of daytime TV. Really? I would have thought you'd be a Kelly Clarkson show DVR. No? I'm given to understand that the thing that America has figured out about Oprah is that deep down, she's a very giving, kind, generous person.

who's suffered through many of life's upheavals and is a person who, despite her phenomenal wealth and accomplishment, is actually a person like somebody you'd like to live next door to. In fact, the ideal person. America sort of collectively decided that over a long period of time. And when Megyn Kelly tried to reinvent herself as an Oprah-like figure, the camera decided, ooh, she's really a nasty piece of work.

That was not a part that she was asked to play. She was like some great actor reaching deep within to find who, you know, be the shepherd. I always was the shepherd. I always will be a shepherd. I love sheep tending is my life. And she just, she's mean. She's mean all the way down. And so she can't be Oprah because Oprah is nice. As you say, it's a strange thing to say about Oprah that she doesn't respect Oprah.

working people, but it's the working people by their tens of millions. And especially have all said, yeah, we love her. She's us. We feel respected by Oprah. And like not for 30 days, not for 30 months. So why Oprah? Because you tried to be Oprah and you failed and it stings. Yeah. We sit there and we can psychoanalyze and figure it out, but maybe it's just ambition and meanness, right? Maybe if you are a mean person, um,

the appeal of Donald Trump becomes too great to resist. You did a closing article for The Atlantic making the case about this, and there was one insight at the end of it that I'd like you to expand upon, which is that the right vote for Kamala Harris today

is both progressive and conservative, right? And so I want to hear you kind of expand on that kind of closing point before we get to what everybody's waiting for. Obviously, a vote for Kamala Harris is a progressive vote because she's a progressive candidate. And although she's probably not as progressive as she was

into trying to present herself as in 2019, 2020, probably her instincts on all the major issues are to the left of where Bill Clinton's were, to the left of where Hillary Clinton's were, and probably in line with where Obama's were. She will definitely want to expand the universality of healthcare coverage. She will want to have a higher minimum wage. She'll want to have a mental health component and an elder care component within. All those things that have been sort of like

the rock face on which progressive has been working, she's going to want to do all of those things. She may not have the votes in Congress to accomplish them, but that's going to be the direction in which she wants to go at home, question mark over where she wants to go abroad. So in that sense, yes, it's obviously a progressive on policy terms, but it's also a conservative vote because even if you

don't agree with her on all those things, or in an ideal world would agree with her, but think money doesn't grow on trees. How are we going? How are these things to be paid for? You can't just borrow it. You know, if you have all of those older Republican instincts, then what I'd say is what you're doing when you, with her is keeping alive the possibility of future disagreements because

Because here's what continues. Free elections continue. Fair elections continue. Political competition continues. If beaten, she will not only step aside, but make a concession speech and attend her successor's inauguration. She will understand that there are

unwritten rules of constraint. If the opposition party has majorities in Congress, how much information do you share with them in advance of major foreign policy decisions? Do you take them more fully into your confidence or less? Do you talk about people who disagree with you with respect or insult? Those things aren't written down. And as we've learned over the past

interval in American life. They're not enforceable, but they're things we expect and they're things we used to do. Do you operate a business while serving as president? Do you ask visitors to the White House whether they bought goods and services from you before the meeting begins? She's not going to do that. Again, it's not written down that you can't exactly, but she's not going to do those things. So she's keeping alive possibilities. I don't think this is going to be a transformative presidency in the way that Obama's was with the Affordable Care Act and the way that Biden's was with his

major domestic spending initiatives, I don't think she's going to have the votes for it. But it will be a restorative presidency because it's going to put us back to keeping open the possibility of solutions and making it possible for us to do politics like human, like respectful human beings again. What are you worried about?

Right now. Like, what are you worried about, about tonight? I mean, it seems that you said you're calm at the start. You're more confident than I am, I think, about the outcome. But what worries you? Okay. Worry for this election or worry for the next four years? Both. You sit here today, we have this election tonight. You know, there's some anxiety, really. I'm just wondering, what are some of your nagging worries, either about the result or what follows? Okay. So for tonight, I worry that the Electoral College, once again, massively distorts American opinion.

And someday we should have a talk about the Electoral College because it's always been a loaded revolver on the nightstand of American democracy. It's clicked a couple of times, but not in a way that was hard. It very nearly could have happened, for example, in 1960, that Richard Nixon could have won the popular vote and John F. Kennedy won the electoral vote anyway. That could very easily have happened.

But that, you know, Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy were probably on policy terms the two least dissimilar presidents ever. And it very nearly happened the other way with Ford and Carter. And again, you know, if Ford had gotten a second term versus Jimmy Carter, how much would that have changed the direction of American democracy? But now we're having like not near misses, but two points missing.

3 million votes apart in 2016, and the person who got 3 million votes fewer became president. That's not right. And that Trump's plan for 2024 is to lose probably by more than 3 million votes and yet have the Electoral College make it 40,000 votes apart, as you said, about 2020. In 2020, the distance was 7 million votes apart for the nation and those tens of thousands you mentioned in the Electoral College. I really do worry about that. For the next four years, I worry every president gets a big foreign policy test early.

I think with the first woman president, the test is going to be presented even earlier and it's going to be even bigger. And the question is, will she be up to it? And one of the things I would recommend to her if they're asking my advice, which they're not, is that she shouldn't wait for the test. She should

within 90 days of coming into the presidency, decide for herself on a foreign policy test, and then go advance to that test and meet it to answer the questions that are present in the mind of the Putins and the Shis and the Iranians and the North Koreans. So I worry about that. But I'll let you make a prediction, and I'll tell you about the thing that everyone is worried about that I am not. Okay, well, no. I want one more follow-up on the Electoral College before I make my prediction. Because that is, I mean, I think what looms over this tonight. I just wonder what...

If that were to come to pass again, if for the third time this century, the Republican wins, we'll have a minority vote and Donald Trump wins for a second time. How will you process that? Not to be cliche, but like, what does resistance look like in the face of that? So those who defend the Electoral College need to understand that when the founding fathers wrote it, they didn't write it because they thought that

that Midwestern states should be able to outvote more populous states on the coast. They did it because they thought ordinary people shouldn't have a role in the presidency at all. If you want to defend the electoral college, what you should say is, like, we should pick the 3,000 richest and best educated people in the country, along with major leaders of Protestant churches, and bring them into some conclave and let them pick the president. And the rest of you people, you vote for the House of Representatives, but the whole point of the electoral college was not to let the people into the presidency. So if you think the people should vote, and...

There's a political theory class somewhere where you can defend the 3,000 richest and best educated and leading Protestant clergymen picking the president. But what you can't defend is a system of popular voting where popular votes are randomly weighted unequally for crazy reasons having to do with the way that West was carved into states 100 years ago. Yeah, right. That was nobody's plan. That's just how the system that instantly failed. By 1800, the original conception of the electoral college is already defunct.

And then we got these very lopsided populations and we got other demographic tendencies and you get this outcome. It's indefensible. If Trump does become president, losing the popular vote by the 7 million that Biden won it by or thereabouts, he's legally the president. You can't contest the legality of his presidency. But there is a difference between a legal and a legitimate president.

And in the early Trump years after 2016, a lot of people tried to blur those two words. After the Russian interference on his behalf, I would say, look, he's the legal president. He met the legal criteria. He won the election according to the rules. So he's the president.

The president has both power and authority. You know, those famous phone calls of Lyndon Johnson. This is your president speaking. This is the only president you've got. Does he command my, not just my obedience to those laws that he lawfully signs, but does he command my assent? Do I give him the benefit of the doubt? Do I think, well, the president has said this, therefore we, the nation should follow even though... No, no, it's just a...

It's like the same weird thing that has him paying no income tax where the people who serve his meals pay a lot of income taxes. Those are the rules. They're not breaking the rules so far as we know, but those aren't good rules. And those are not rules that command my deference and respect. They command my obedience, but not my deference and respect.

So that will just have a lot to do with how we talk about his presidency, if there is one, how we think about it, how opposition people in Congress, how much deference his nominations to the courts deserve, how much deference his cabinet nominations deserve, whether you should watch him when he goes on TV to speak to the nation. There's a lot of things like that. His non-legitimacy.

But his legality, that'll be a very difficult path to be on. Let's hope we don't do it because it's a bad place to be. Let's hope we don't do it. All right, we'll get to predictions time. Nate Silver ran his model. He ran 80,000 simulations and Kamala Harris won 40,012 of them. So there you go. That's what big data gets you from Nate Silver. My prediction for folks, I hate to do predictions in a lot of ways, but people want to hear them. And I might as well tell you what I'm thinking because I tell people in private.

My view really hasn't changed for two months. I felt that Kamala Harris has a narrow but stable advantage in the blue wall states ever since the debate that she had with Donald Trump. I've felt that Nevada has continued to be, we have to make the sound effect, a bulwark for the Democrats over and over again, despite turnover and despite being close. And I think that she wins all four of those. But I'm not...

I hope I'm wrong. I haven't fully bought the seltzer. There's a hidden vote out there. I think that we're a polarized country. I think that the red parts of this country are going to turn out to vote for Donald Trump, and he's going to get an appalling number of votes, probably more than he got in 2020. But I think that Kamala Harris will win a narrow electoral college victory with 276 electoral votes. So that's what I think is going to happen tonight. How about you?

All right. So the Nate Silver reminds me of a story from the early Reagan days. There was a big debate about what the inflation rate would be in 1982. And this had all kinds of budgetary implications. I won't bore you with it. So the two warring camps finally agree they will be bound by the decision of the chief of the Council of Economic Advisors, an economist named Murray Weidenbaum. They go to Weidenbaum's office and say, Camp X thinks the inflation rate will be thus much. Camp Y thinks the inflation rate will be thus much. What do you think?

And Weinbaum said, let me consult my computer. And he lay back in his big chair, rubbed his stomach a few times and gave an answer.

That's what I think. This is why we bring on from, this is why from gets the election day, a guest slot for the Weidenbaum anecdote. Yeah. What was the answer? So that's what I think Nate Silver is doing with his running the models. He's not running the models. He's rubbing his tummy. Who are we kidding? All right. So I have two predictions. One I am not confident of. And one I am confident of the prediction. I'm not confident of it is about the outcome.

which is, I think there's going to be an unpleasant surprise for blue Americans from Arizona, where I think the immigration issue will override. People will be able to vote against Carrie Lake and for Trump because they don't want to be represented by a fraudster and lunatic, but they're very mad about the border for really sufficient reasons. And my other prediction is,

I think Democrats will be surprised by North Carolina, pleasantly surprised by North Carolina, because I was looking at some data on this the other day. It is just remarkable how fast the number of college educated people in North Carolina has been growing, not just since the year 2000 and not just since the year 2010, but from 2016 to 2020 to now. It's just there are eight points more college educated people in North Carolina than in 2016.

And I think it's a state where there's a very horrible Republican candidate for governor, disgusting even to very conservative people. And I think there's going to be good news for the Democrats from North Carolina. Now, here's the prediction I am more confident of, which is I am really confident there will not be significant violence after this election. That's much predicted and much worried about. But here's why I think that.

The violence in 2021 was not a spontaneous eruption of mass emotion. The violence of 2021 was a conspiracy. It was a conspiracy incited. It was planned. It was designed. It was incited by the president, the person in charge of upholding the laws, the same president who made sure that Congress was undefended. And

Without the complicity of the head of government, all you get are disorganized hooliganism. And a disorganized hooligan may break a window, may hurt somebody. That's terrible. May set a police car on fire. That's reprehensible. You should be punished. But the kind of threat to the authority of the state

the state with a capital S, I don't mean your local state, I mean like the national American state, the ability to overwhelm the power of law enforcement, that only exists when you have the complicity of people inside the government. And that complicity will not be there. The Congress on January 6th, 2020, 25 will have proper protection provided by President Joe Biden and his administration. If they have to send the 82nd airborne, they will, they won't. But if they do have to, they will. They will certainly have National Guard units at the ready. There will be no possibility of disruption. And every

out there will know that. And one more thing I hope those hooligans know is that while the American justice system has found it very difficult to hold Donald Trump to account for what happened on January 6th, it has not found it difficult at all to hold to account the foot soldiers. A thousand people more have been sentenced

to time in prison. Many of them are still there, some for long sentences. Trump, despite Megyn Kelly's assurances to the contrary, does not care about what happens to the people who are fool enough to trust him. He exploits them, he cheats them, and he sends them to prison. And I hope they've learned that lesson and learn not, if Trump is defeated, not to try violence on his behalf because they'll land in jail and he won't help them at all. I love that optimism on that point. I'm inclined to believe you. I'm worried. I'm inclined to believe you unless, with the caveat, we have...

2000 in Pennsylvania where Kamala Harris is Bush and Trump is Gore. That worries me a great deal. Outside of a situation such as that, I'm pretty aligned with you. And I'm aligned with you on North Carolina. We'll see. I didn't predict North Carolina, but if there is a big night for the Democrats, you could see North Carolina and Georgia falling for the reason that you said, and it's just this migration. And it's probably why Florida and Texas aren't going to happen.

Right. There have been a lot of college educated blue members of blue America moving into Atlanta, Raleigh and Charlotte. And there have been a lot of people who are unhappy about covid rules or whatever conservatives moving into Texas and Florida over the past four years. And so that that does explain the change.

And if less educated Latino men are flowing into the Republican Party, then whatever tendency there is in Texas to follow the North Carolina path has been offset by Latino flow into the Republican Party. And same thing in Arizona, where there are a lot of Latinos who say, I don't like trash on my lawn.

Well, that is a view that is loud. All right. I'm going to close by telling everybody what we're going to do tonight, but just really quick. But since I have you, it's election day and I'm feeling feelings. How do you feel about the last nine years? Are you ready for the fight to be over? Are you ready to be rid of him tomorrow? Do you have mixed views? What's happening in your emotions thinking about the last decade? Look, when I think back of the past decade, I think a feeling that I want to voice, it's not my only feeling, but a feeling I want to voice is pride.

I dedicated my last book on Trump to the never Trumpers. And I quoted an old Methodist hymn, when all were false, I found the true. And I just think there have been people who have, you didn't know it would work out for you when you made the big decisions in your life. It did, congratulations, but you didn't know that.

And many people took tremendous risks. Many people paid tremendous prices and they stood up and many voters have done the same. And people showed up in 2018 to vote for the House of Representatives and put the first halter around Trump's neck. So I feel pride that the country has most of the time, in most ways, proven itself equal to the Trump challenge since that terrible glitch in the electoral college in 2016. So I feel pride about that.

For myself, I think this is my last stop on the bus line for personal reasons. As you know, I'm not the person I used to be. And one of the reasons I am devoutly hoping that Kamala Harris wins tonight is I need to step away from a lot of the things that I've been doing. And I need to feel like the country is on a stable enough course that whatever little difference my efforts make, they're no longer needed. And I can then focus on things in my life that I need to focus on.

Well, David Frum, I greatly appreciate you. And don't step too far away from the bulwark. And I'm happy that you were able to grace us with your wisdom today. I've just an undying appreciation for you. So thanks so much to David Frum. Everybody else, I want to give you a quick agenda for what to expect from the bulwark over the next 24 hours. But my thanks to David Frum, and we'll be talking to you soon. Bye-bye.

Gosh, David Fromm, just the best. So grateful to him. All right. Our plans for tonight for the Bulwark and what you guys should watch for at 730. I will be live on YouTube. Come hang out with us. We will be live for as long as makes sense on the Bulwark YouTube. We'll have some special guests.

I will have some friends. We'll be looking at the numbers. We'll be hanging out together. It will probably be too serious for me to be drinking, but many others will be drinking. And I hope you come join us and hang out with us because we've been on this ride together. Whether you're with us or not, what I am looking for tonight is Georgia, which should come in early. Whatever your feelings are about the Georgia electoral reform after the 2020 election, which was premised on a bunch of lies,

Brad Raffensperger and Gabe Sterling are honorable people. They're actually competent bureaucrats. And Georgia has a plan tonight to actually count their ballots in a reasonable time. Georgia closes at 7. I expect that by 9, 10 o'clock, possibly even earlier, we'll have a very good view of what happens in Georgia tonight, which will give us a very good view of what's going to happen in the country. Atlanta and the suburbs of Atlanta are not so different from Philadelphia and its suburbs.

As I just predicted, Kamala Harris can lose Georgia and still win. So it doesn't mean that how goes Georgia goes the nation. But if Kamala Harris is winning in Georgia, we can all start breathing deep. If it's too close to call, I think that's also a good sign. If Trump has a sizable lead, that does not mean that the door is closed, but it'll be interesting to kind of look at

how that is happening. Is it happening, you know, based on lower turnout among in the urban precincts? Is it based on him getting, you know, et cetera. So just kind of looking at those counties, we'll be looking at a couple of key bellwether counties on the live stream tonight that I'd be, I'd be focused on your Atlanta journal constitution website. If you're, if you're looking for an early indicator on what's to happen, everybody, I appreciate you so much. It has been quite the ride. The ride will continue. Hopefully.

The American people step up to the task tonight and we can flush this asshole down the toilet once and for all. We'll see you on the other side. We'll be back tomorrow with another edition of the Borg podcast. Peace.

♪ I see you on the other side ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪ I got the time ♪ ♪

The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brell.