Speaker 1: One of the things we've been talking about over the last really couple of years
is the reality of quite strong economic numbers.
Now, we will talk on the bonus show today about the downgrade of American debt.
I don't know that this dramatically changes the overall state of the economy and the labor
force, but we'll discuss that on the bonus show.
But from a political strategy standpoint, one of the really interesting things that's
going on is that because the economy really is pretty solid, Republicans sort of have
no idea what to do now.
One of the things that they're trying to do is just say the economy's bad.
It's not really landing.
There are people, you know, if you go to Trump rallies and you interview people, you'll see
people repeat this line from Trump.
We've got to turn the economy around.
Biodynamics is socialist, it's Marxist, it's anarchist, as some say, but it's not really
landing nationally.
Nationally, the country sort of thinks the economy is okay.
Maybe not as good as the numbers show, but it's not really working.
So now the question becomes, what do Republicans talk about?
What do they do?
There's a really interesting article by Jennifer Rubin, not someone I'm a huge fan of, but
this opinion piece in The Washington Post is quite good.
And it's called Without a Recession to Exploit.
The Republican Party has lost economic coherence.
And in this article summarizing it, we'll link to it.
But summarizing it, Jennifer Rubin says there's really a lack of economic plans and policies
and there's not a recession right now.
Republicans continue to insist, oh, there might be.
We're on the brink of a recession.
We always sort of might be, but it's not clear that we are right now.
And Republicans really aren't offering constructive alternative to the Biden agenda.
They attack the Biden agenda, they attack the Inflation Reduction Act, they attack student
loan forgiveness.
They do all these things, but they don't really propose anything other than this vague and
general.
The Green New Deal is bad.
Remember, the Green New Deal isn't law, although elements of it are arguably part of the Inflation
Reduction Act, which to a partial degree have started to be implemented, That's pretty weak.
If your argument is we will end the Green New Deal, we don't really have it.
They generally and vaguely want to lower taxes, except Biden hasn't actually raised taxes
on the vast majority of Americans.
So that also kind of falls flat.
And this is how we end up with Republicans focusing on obstructionism and focusing on
culture wars.
As we look around and many of us who think logically and sort of try to analyze things
for what they are, we see the obsession with drag shows.
We see the obsession with what they call child genital mutilation, gender affirming care,
how we teach about slavery in schools, woke and Barbie and all these stupid things.
And we wonder, why are they doing this?
These don't really seem to be the big issues for most Americans.
The reason they're doing it is they are completely incoherent on economic issues, and this is
potentially a major problem for Republicans.
Now, there is a contingent, even of people in my audience who see this.
They see the economy is pretty good and Republicans are offering nothing and instead just playing
politics, saying the economy is bad and meanwhile doing culture war stuff, they're going to
get crushed in November of 2024.
They can't possibly do well.
The economy's good.
They're going to get crushed.
I think it is premature.
To assume that Republicans will get crushed in November of 2024 just because the economy
by just about every metric is doing well.
And there's a couple of different reasons for that.
Number one.
It's about the perception of the economy more than it is about the economy.
There was a time 20 years ago where the average voter more accurately assessed the state of
the economy.
If the economy was pretty good, the average voter would realize the economy is pretty
good and then usually they would be likely to vote to continue with more of whatever
is in power.
Whoever is in power on that basis, that they understand the economy is pretty good and
I realize it's pretty good.
That is different right now.
It's different for a number of different reasons.
It's different because of the amount of disinformation and propaganda and fake news that's out there
insisting the economy's bad, even though the economy's not bad.
Number two, the Republican Party has abandoned policy and is focused on insisting the economy
is bad while pointing the eyes of the attention and ears of voters in other directions.
And number three, the election isn't for another.
What is it, 15 months?
The economy may not be as good in 15 months as it is right now.
So I think it would be wrong and extremely short sighted to assume we don't have to worry
about 2024.
The economy's good.
That means Joe Biden and Democrats widely win.
So that's one thing.
Everyone must vote.
We're not going to take our eye off the ball from a more general kind of analysis perspective.
It is interesting that the Republican Party has nothing left but the culture war, and
it is a culture war that on paper they are losing.
When you pull people about wokeness, when you pull people about drag shows, when every
single one of these questions, I know that if you go on Breitbart or if you go on, you
know, Reddit, I'm sorry, Reddit or yes, Twitter, which is now called X, I have to keep track
of what things are called now.
You might get the impression that these issues are just, you know, foremost on everyone's
mind.
But it really is interesting to see that they are obsessed with issues that are not the
most important issues for Americans because they have failed on the economy.
The economy is pretty good and they're offering nothing coherent.
We're going to follow whether the narrative or story changes from Republicans over the
next 15 months or even within the Republican primary.
But for right now, absent a recession, Republicans don't really know what to do about the very
solid, but by no means perfect economy that we have under Joe Biden.