No Easy Problems

TOPICS DISCUSSED

  • The DNC Shakes Up the Primary Calendar

  • Emboldened Extremists

  • Railroad Strike Averted

  • Outside of Politics: Holiday Traditions

Correction: At minute 22:00, Beth mentions the attack on the energy substations in Moore County, North Carolina. It is Moore County not Monroe County.

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EPISODE RESOURCES

DEMOCRATS SHAKE UP THE PRIMARY CALENDAR

EMBOLDENED EXTREMISTS

RAILROAD WORKER CONTRACTS

TRANSCRIPT

Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland. 

Beth [00:00:08] And this is Beth Silvers.   

Sarah [00:00:10] Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics.   

Beth [00:00:26] Thank you so much for joining us today. Georgia is having its Senate runoff as this episode comes out. So if you are an eligible voter in Georgia and haven't done it already, please go make your voice heard. We'll be talking about the results of that as soon as we have them. But today, we are going to do sort of an old school, whatever we're thinking about, discussion at the top of the show. We hit on the artist formerly known as Kanye West. We hit on the Democrats decision to change their primary calendar. We talk a little bit about former President Trump and a little bit about this strange attack on infrastructure that has left people without power in North Carolina. Then we are going to turn to a topic that encompasses so many issues we love to discuss here, infrastructure and the economy and the balance of power between employees and employers and the role of government. We're talking, of course, about Congress acting to avert a railroad strike. How is that possible? Why did it happen? What might come next? We're going to dig into all of those questions. And outside of politics, because we go hard in our families at Christmastime, we're going to share some of our favorite holiday traditions.   

Sarah [00:01:30] If you're doing holiday shopping, don't forget to check out our favorite things guide of 2022. Maggie gathered up all the links of our favorite things from throughout the year and put it in one place for you. We've even added a few things over the past few weeks that you all have asked about, so if you checked it out when we first released it, you might want to take another look and see if anything new. It's just the right gift for someone you love or of course for yourself.   

Beth [00:01:49] Next up, we're going to kick it old school and run through a barrage of headlines. Sarah decided she wanted to kick it old school today and just talk about all the things. We're going to start with Democrats proposing a real shake up of the primary calendar. Now, Sarah, I know you are not entirely convinced that this will get through the full DNC out of the Rules Committee, but what has been proposed is beginning in South Carolina and following that quickly with New Hampshire and Nevada on the same day. So it is a very big change from Iowa holding the caucuses and then going to the first in the nation primary in New Hampshire.   

Sarah [00:02:36] Yes. And then they're adding Michigan and Georgia early in the calendar. I read an interview with Representative Debbie Dingell, who's like, we've gotten this close before and we got screwed at the end. So I think there's a lot of Democrats that are, like, let's wait till the full thing gets through before we celebrate. But I know New Hampshire will put up quite a fight because their first in the nation primary is enshrined in state law. But this is a big deal for us. I texted you and said can you believe that we witnessed or most likely witnessed the last first in the nation Iowa caucus, which we attended in 2020?   

Beth [00:03:11] And now I feel a little bit sad about it because it was such an extraordinary thing to be part of. It's like the best field trip I've ever been on in my life. I loved seeing the caucuses. I had so much more respect for them after seeing them in person even though we were there when it did not go well.   

Sarah [00:03:27] It did not go well.   

Beth [00:03:28] But it was a really interesting thing to understand the generational work that underlies hosting something where the entirety of American politics and media descends on your state. And seeing, especially in Des Moines, how every coffee shop is now where MSNBC is recording Morning Joe or where this campaign is meeting its surrogates. And this is where everybody takes off to go knock doors for this campaign. And here is the House that's hosted every Democratic president since Jimmy Carter or whatever. I mean, it's just a really fascinating thing to see. And it feels sad to me for Iowa to lose that, even though I think even people in Iowa while we were there were saying probably this is it. It also feels hard to me in the span of just two years for South Carolina, Nevada, Georgia, Michigan to get prepared for the drastic spotlight that will be on those states if this calendar goes through.   

Sarah [00:04:33] I loved our time in Iowa and also I'm not sad to see this change. The New York Times morning did a really great write up on the history of the Iowa caucus, which really took off with Jimmy Carter's campaign. He basically lived in Iowa. That's how he became a Democratic nominee, basically. But it's like an important reminder. It's not always been like this. And so it cannot always be like this. I hope Iowa celebrates this very important history and this very important role it has played in presidential politics and also acknowledges that things don't always stay the same. As I am constantly saying, there's no status in American politics. And we have experienced some pretty dramatic changes to presidential campaigns, to presidential politics, to these primaries. I mean, everything changed in 2016 when Donald Trump won the Republican primary. And it felt like in 2020 we were still like kind of holding on and pretending that everything hadn't changed. And I thought that was evidenced by the fact that Joe Biden did terrible in Iowa and New Hampshire and then won the South Carolina primary and became the president of the United States. And so I'm here for an acknowledgment that this isn't some event that's set in stone that makes us all feel a certain way. This is how we nominate a president. And as an a Democrat watching the Republican Party sort of being held hostage to these extreme wings, having leadership from the top say, "Okay, that's not what we want. We are saying and articulating over and over again that we want moderates, we want people of color, we want more diverse input in our primary process. So we're going to make these hard changes to make those priorities a reality," is incredibly, incredibly encouraging to me. And so I hope it makes it through to the full DNC.   

Beth [00:06:24] Well, it would be nice for it to shift every cycle because the country should get to know itself better, and a way to get to know the country better would be moving this around so that we see glimpses of what the diners look like in New Mexico as well as in Ohio. And to some extent, the Electoral College is always going to make certain states get more of a spotlight than others. But this is a really fascinating country to live in. And the more we travel it, the more I wish more people could have the experience that we do of really getting to spend some time in communities and get to know them and to see when the process is there. Like when it lands in Iowa and when it lands in New Hampshire, those voters take it extremely seriously. They recognize what happens when they set the tone in these contests. And for more of us to have that experience is a really good thing. Now, I do think it's strange that Joe Biden decided to weigh in on this. I feel like this would have been a good one for him to just sort of float above.   

Sarah [00:07:25] No. I think that the way you get big changes is with big leadership. Leaving this up to sort of a committee is hard because you need somebody to take the heat for some big changes. So I admire the fact that he's, like, I'll take the heat. South Carolina was good to me. Let's do it. Let's do what we say we wanted to do, which is put more emphasis on diverse voices and moderate voices and let's move forward. So I'm here for it. I think it's going to be really great.   

Beth [00:07:52] I'd like that better from him if he were saying at the same time, "And I'm not running again, so the primary process is going to be very important because we need a good process to openly vet a big field of candidates."   

Sarah [00:08:05] Well, I can make the case that he's doing this because he's running again and also because he's not running again. I think you could really see the motivation from either angle. And so I can't really look at this and decide where I think he's leaning because I think it would be a really good change for Vice President Kamala Harris. And I think it would be a really good change for Joe Biden running again. So who knows?   

Beth [00:08:29] Well, we know whatever happens with this calendar, the Democratic primary is going to be extraordinarily different from the Republican primary. And that leads us to a constant tension that we feel here at Pantsuit Politics about how much to discuss former President Donald Trump is now officially a candidate for 2024. He is, in classic form, taking meetings with all kinds of horrible people and saying outlandish things. And it's just a struggle to know whether you treat that like it is small in the hope that it doesn't give him the kind of oxygen that drove him to the Republican nomination in 2016. Or if you say we need to look at this because these things are very big deals, and just because we expect him to do bad things doesn't mean we should ignore their badness and all of the ramifications of him doing bad things.   

Sarah [00:09:29] Yeah, I really struggle with this-- not only with him, but with the people he's surrounding himself. There has been several news cycles. He hosted Kanye West, now known as YÉ, and Nick Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago, then Kanye West  went on Alex Jones' podcast in this truly horrible interview. And withboth of these incidences I have really struggled with what to say and how much to say. Because when these people are espousing anti-Semitism and white supremacy and borderline domestic terrorism, you don't want to give oxygen to them. You don't want to fuel further news cycles. But you also in your silence, you don't want to miss the opportunity to condemn anti-Semitism. We're working on a show for this in the next few weeks, we're going to be talking to Yaya Rosenberg from The Atlantic, who I think does some of the best writing out there on this topic. But it is the further this extreme faction in American politics, led by Donald Trump, just circles the drain. It really is difficult to find analysis that you feel like contributes anything at all?   

Beth [00:10:53] Yeah. My Never Trump kind of feeds that I follow are filled with condemnations of this and condemnations of current Republicans for refusing to condemn it in a full throated way. And I think all that's valuable and correct. I don't have anything to add. This is horrific. It's irresponsible. It will create more violence. It will create a new generation of people who have hateful ideologies as part of their identities. And that is a tragedy. And I don't really know what else to say about it. What I have been thinking about and I do think I have started to build some scaffolding for myself around this sort of cancelation topic with Kanye, I'm realizing that I don't feel the conflict that we've heard from some listeners in denouncing what he's doing right now. Even though I am aware that he is unwell, I don't feel that conflict. I think because I've been able to understand that since I'm not in a relationship with him-- I'm not even a big fan of his. I never have been. I acknowledge that he has created some really significant music and been a very influential artist, but I'm not a fan of his. So I don't even have really a parasocial relationship with him. So I don't have a relationship. So I really can see, even though he is a whole complex person, he is a person. He is an artist and he is a brand. And his focus right now seems to be on himself as a brand and how he has rebranded. He changed his name. He's changed the way he's physically showing up for interviews. Like what he's wearing is a strong statement when he's out in public. And he has created this terrible logo for a presidential run that is overtly anti-Semitic. And I have no qualms about saying, as a brand, this guy is toxic. And I'm so glad Adidas dumped him. I'm so glad CAA dumped him. I think it's very important that we not give any oxygen to this brand. And I think that that has kind of been an aha moment for me because it's the opposite of what often happens when we're talking about cancelation. Like, I will like the artist's work or the brand's work and then find out something terrible about the person. And it's just kind of making me rethink, like, okay, when I don't have a relationship here and I can't influence this person, I can't help them get help, or I can't personally say, "What are you doing? Let's recenter," it is okay for me to sort of separate those things out and figure out what I want to contribute to and what I don't in their work. Does that make sense?   

Sarah [00:13:46] Yes, that completely makes sense. And I think it speaks to sort of the increasingly bizarre behavior. I mean, the way he showed up with this  Alex Jones interview with his face covered is just bizarre. That's the word, right? His behavior is increasingly bizarre. And I think that's where people struggle. I think there's some, like you said, sort of easy conclusions. The Republicans who are not denouncing Donald Trump and his ever increasing extreme language, yes, they are in positions of power. They should be held to account for their silence on this. The people who have propped up Kanye West as his behavior has become increasingly bizarre, which is not a recent phenomenon. That's not a recent phenomenon. This man has been acting out for years. Adidas knew it. The Kardashian family obviously got a front row seat and people continue to profit or prop him up for a multitude of reasons. And those people should be held accountable. To me, as far as Adidas, I'm glad they dumped him. They should have done it sooner. Lots of people should have. And so I think that's hard to sort of detach from, particularly the anti-Semitic part of this entire discussion because that's like its own beast. And I'm like that's why I have so much respect for [Inaudible] Rosenberg's writing and that's what we're going to get into it with him, which is like this is its own self-perpetuating universe of thought and like it's not just about Kanye. And to detach that and sort of take that apart is a really important part of this. But the more bizarre his behavior gets, the harder that is to do because it just becomes linked to him. And I think that's why I struggle to talk about it, because I don't want it to become this all Kanye discussion or all Kanye's mental health discussion or all Trump discussion, because I think it's so important that it needs its own place. And we need to put some some of that intellectual scaffolding around it so that we can see it hopefully way before it gets to the point where Kanye is behaving the way he is and we're all like sort of dumbstruck by this bizarre behavior in which you are praising Hitler. It's very difficult and in some ways not. Like, it's all of that at once.   

Beth [00:16:25] Yeah, it's clearly not okay. And then once you move beyond this is unacceptable and not okay, it's hard to know where to go.  And that's how I feel about this latest round of Trump saying that we should terminate the Constitution because he believes there is some kind of conspiracy at Twitter about the campaign. On the one hand, I know that Trump doesn't respect the Constitution. That has been very obvious to me since the moment he began running for president. On the other hand, it is really significant that he just said it out loud and that he once again has declared to the entire world, the only thing that matters to me is that I get what I want. Nothing else matters, including the foundational structures of American governance. They don't matter. And to have Republicans on the Sunday shows saying, well, it's not a deal, I'll vote for the Republican nominee. We don't want to look backwards. We want to look forward. I get it. I'd rather it not be Trump. But if Trump's the nominee, we know what you're going to do. You're going to get in line again after all this. And that's another reason I don't know if it's even worth talking about because there is clearly no break glass moment. There's never going to be one. Until Republican primary voters shut this down, we are not going to see Republicans in positions of leadership do that.   

Sarah [00:17:49] Well, and look, there is a similarity between Kanye and the entertainment industrial complex. How far did he have to go before we had this break glass moment? Because there's been, again, so many red flags, but there was still money to be made. And, look, I'm not saying that Kanye West has been exploited any more than I'm saying that Donald Trump has been exploited. That's not what's happening here. But there are these similar tracks where people are like, well, there's clicks to be had and eyes will take this in and people will spend money. In this moment in American history and media consumption, where it's just the extremes and the conflict that get you the traffic, that get you the attention. I think you can sort of see the similar pass that these two men have been on. And it's not totally surprising to me that they're ending up at dinner together with Nick Fuentes, who also traffics in that extreme conflict-ridden, angry, victimization narrative that has now also swept up Elon Musk at Twitter, who released the Twitter files that led to Donald Trump spewing all this ridiculousness about terminating the Constitution. It's just like a big chaos tornado and they're all a part of it.   

Beth [00:19:19] Well, and it's even worse than that within the Republican Party, because every time someone like Mitch McConnell says there's no place in this party for a person who is anti-Semitic, a person who is a white supremacist, it's just not true. A lot of the strategy to grow the numbers of the Republican Party and certainly to grow the enthusiasm of the Republican Party has been marketed around that very stuff and saying out loud that you don't like it because you're a good, respectable Republican does not make that not true. And I say this as a person again who desperately wishes there was a good, respectable Republican Party that I could be part of. I think they are right right now about some of the budget negotiations that are going on where Democrats want a lot more social spending. And Republicans are saying we have done an awful lot of social spending this past year and inflation has resulted. And there are still, by the way, big buckets of money out there unspent from past spending bills that we have done to combat COVID. Like that 'pump the brakes let's talk about this' is essential. It's essential to have an opposition party that ask those kinds of questions, even if they don't win. That pushes it a little bit and says we need to have competing philosophies here. I desperately wish we could have that. But it's just not true that Republicans in Washington, D.C., in positions of power have not flirted with and cultivated very reliable support among people who espouse very exclusive ideology. And they are unwilling to say this plainly because they know they need that support. They have danced themselves into a corner with it. Speaking of painting oneself in a bit of a corner, I just wanted to get your perspective, Sarah, on something that really surprised me. We are recording on Monday morning as we are receiving information about someone shooting substation in Monroe [correction: Moore} County, North Carolina, and causing blackouts for so many people. And I heard a national news network this morning saying that the belief is that this was motivated by anger over a drag show. And maybe it was. I have no idea. But I was shocked. At this early stage, when the FBI has come in to investigate with local law enforcement and local law enforcement has said, "We've interviewed some people, but we don't know who did this yet. We don't have the person. We don't know everything," I just thought that is a bold claim and a bell that will be almost impossible to unring if it turns out that that's not what happened here.   

Sarah [00:22:09] Yeah. I think that's what happened. And I said that on the news brief, but I'm not a journalist. I'm just a podcaster who makes a fun morning newsbrief for our premium subscribers. It doesn't seem to be a lesson that we're learning quickly, which is once you put that out into the ether in this time where conflict and narratives take off and feed and breed misinformation that you need to be a little bit more careful. The story is bananas. And I think whoever did this and however many people did this are about to have the full force of FBI at their doors, and are going to regret their choices. But it's scary to me that this possibility of, oh, I can shoot up a substation and this is the havoc I can wreak. But I have to believe now that this has been presented as a possibility, power companies all over the country are going to prepare in probably expensive ways that will be passed down to the right payers.   

Beth [00:23:05] Absolutely. And that probably has needed to happen for a long time. I wish it were not because of domestic terrorists. I wish it were because we understood that we have some vulnerabilities on the international stage that we need to shore up. And I'm sure a lot of that grid work is being contemplated now in connection with the infrastructure bill, and I hope that there's money there to get some of that done.   

Sarah [00:23:29] Yeah, that's true.   

Beth [00:23:31] I'm worried about copycats here, though. I'm worried that once people realize, wow, you can get a lot of attention for this, that we're going to start to see it everywhere. And as the temperatures are getting colder, I don't think we understand that's not just inconvenient, that's dangerous. It's dangerous for our hospitals. I know most have generators, but we're just in a situation where taking out power is a tool of Russians in war. Like that is a very, very, big deal. And it is not something that we should be doing here in our communities. And I don't usually have the, like, let's make an example of someone philosophy, but I think that this does need to have the full power and force of the FBI involved to shut it down immediately. Because if we start to see this all over the country, that is bad news. So as we think about complex problems that require some investments and very competent governance to think about preventing further harm, we are going to take a quick break and then discuss how Congress stepped in to avert a railroad worker strike and what might happen next. Sarah, as I was preparing to talk about this, I was stunned to learn that railroads still carry 43% of all freight transportation in the U.S.. It's just shocking to me. Really important stuff. Coal, which still provides a ton of electricity, chemicals, grains, cars, you name it, probably railroads are shipping it with more frequency than I could have imagined.   

Sarah [00:25:10] Yes. I think the emphasis that all players the president, Congress, the secretary of labor and transportation, the railways themselves, the railway workers put on this entire process speaks to what an incredibly important piece of our infrastructure this is. Did you read that  the water treatment was at risk if there was a strike because they shipped the chlorine that we used to treat our water on rails across the country. I mean, again, the fact that everybody was freaking out about this is all you really need to know as far as the importance of railroads in our national infrastructure.   

Beth [00:25:54] And that integral tie that they have to our national infrastructure is why Congress has the ability to step in and avoid a strike. It's a weird thing that Congress can tell workers you have to accept this deal. But that comes from a 1926 law, the Railway Labor Act, that is designed to facilitate negotiations among railroad workers, their unions and the companies themselves. And it inserts a really meaningful role from a federal agency, from the president and from Congress, to try to allow those negotiations to happen without major disruptions to transportation. And it's been really successful. Over the past 30 years, we've only had two days of service disruptions arising from a bargaining process among unions and railroads.   

Sarah [00:26:44] Well, now I'm going to undo everything I just said, because that was 100 years ago before we had semi-trucks. That's why I'm a little  perplexed by this because, yes, we still ship an enormous amount of very important pieces of our national infrastructure on railway. And also now we have planes and semi-trucks and other ways to get what we need different places. And it seems to me  that labor was never particularly served by the incredibly powerful place that the railroads themselves played in our economy.  American history is rife with exploitation when it comes to not just the building of the railways, but the companies who ran them. And it's still just like a handful of companies. I feel like this is just one more example of what we're running up against in the American economy, which is this gap between the rich and the poor is fueled by a lot of monopolies. Just a lot of places in our economy where there are very, very, few decision makers and those decision makers are very, very, powerful. And it is hard when you read about the particulars of the workers and what they're asking for to not feel hugely sympathetic for them when it comes to this particular negotiation.   

Beth [00:28:15] Yeah. You can understand how even though we have alternative means of transporting goods, railroads, barges, can just handle a different level of volume than a semi or a plane can. And a different kind of material can be transported that way than on a plane or a truck. And you can understand why unions have been important, because the cost to open a railroad business is huge, right? The operating expenses are driven not only by extremely expensive equipment to acquire and maintain, but then also you have fuel costs which are going to vary depending on what's going on in the global economy. And the entire business model is derivative. So how much is being shipped because of how well the economy is doing drives how much money you're making to actually ship the stuff. And so I get the concern about keeping costs aligned to all the risks around the business. At the same time, it seems like the railroads have done much more than conservatively manage their operating costs here and actually kind of gone the direction that a lot of companies have gone. I loved this phrase from industry expert Ric Patterson. He calls it the cult of operating ratio, the idea that the best way to keep your profits high is to raise prices and lower expenses rather than increase the amount of business that you're conducting. That you're always just trying to keep the prices going up and the costs going down instead of changing your volume. The cult of operating ratio. I thought that so beautifully described the way so many businesses are being run right now and why it is such a problem for workers.   

Sarah [00:29:56] Yeah. Think about the spot these workers are in. So you have this really essential part of national infrastructure that Congress can get involved in. You have a few companies that are very, very, powerful who cut labor costs by like 40%, but somehow made record profits. You don't want to be left holding the bag as labor if there's a strike and everything is disrupted. They're in an incredibly difficult position and the way they work shows that. Like, this is just basic quality of life. They work enormous hours with very, very, strict attendance policy. They just want paid sick time. They just want to be able to have this flexibility that we all value enormously right now. I was just reading the other day that the online job post looking from work from home way outpast what's actually offered. This is where we're all going. We want not just good pay, we want a little bit of freedom. We want to be able to act like full and complete human beings outside this work. And there is not a lot of that when you read about the particulars of the men and women working on these railways.   

Beth [00:31:11] We have a listener who is the child of a railroad worker. She's now an adult, but her father worked on the railroad when she was a kid and he's still there. And she very generously shared her experience with us and said, "My father provided really well for our family. And he also missed so many birthdays, so many holidays, so many events. Now, he was written up for taking a day off to meet his first grandchild. When his mother died, he was not given bereavement leave and he was severely reprimanded for taking time off to grieve her death." And she said that the least that railroads can can do when you look at the physical, constant, hard labor that they ask of their employees, is to treat them like people and give them a little bit of room. And it looks like they could hire a few more people, not even get back to full capacity where they were. It looks like they have cut so far that there is room to add to this workforce enough to give people a little bit of space.   

Sarah [00:32:17] And so that particular type of scheduling was really at the center of this conflict. If we all remember back in September, President Biden called this team together and was, like, figure it out. So they struck this deal that mainly included pay increases and really did not get to solutions around this scheduling issue. And so four of the unions, including two very, very big ones, voted down this negotiated deal from September. So that's how we get to the point where President Biden has no good options. I do not believe that President Biden, who has a long history in politics and the most consistent part of that long history in politics is being pro-labor, suddenly sold them out. I think this is a classic example of what we talk about a lot, which is once you're president, the problems that reach your desk are impossible to solve. There is only a solution that makes basically everyone mad. And so that's what he's doing here. But I think that he will not solve this now and move on because it's not really solution. I think that he'll go back and he'll fight for legislation that addresses the scheduling issue. I'd like to see him address this 1920 law that doesn't seem to apply as much as it did 100 years ago. That's what I would do if I was him to really prove like I'm here for labor. I'm not selling you out. But nobody, the president, Congress, the railroads themselves or the workers wanted to be left holding the bag for a strike that would disrupt our nation so dramatically. I did read some workers that were, like, he didn't have to do it this early. Getting down to the wire was our negotiating tactic. But, again, this is an incredibly difficult situation. There is no way anyone, President Biden or anyone else, was going to notch some sort of big win in this situation.   

Beth [00:34:10] Those leverage points have to be kind of creatively managed by both the unions and the railroads, because a quirk, another quirk of this 1920s law is that railroad contracts don't have fixed expiration dates. So a lot of times, if a union has a contract with a company, the pressure to get it renegotiated is built in because the contract will expire. That does not happen with these negotiations over paid sick leave, of all things. Other issues too, but that is the driving force, have been going on for two years. And so this kind of holiday window end of year when it is getting colder, like transporting coal for energy, that kind of stuff is so important, the unions use December 9th as a deadline for strike to create some pressure to get some movement in the negotiations.  And that is what caused the president to say we just cannot have that right now. Let's get Congress to step in and stop it. But it's true, I think, that no one is happy here. We have the unusual situation of both the yeas and nays on this in the House and the Senate being bipartisan. And you had some really bizarre voting configurations, especially in the Senate, where a Bernie Sanders and like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley all voted together saying no to this, wanting to side with labor here.   

Sarah [00:35:36] That's how you know it's a tough nut to crack. I mean, I feel like this is like literally an episode of West Wing. This is just an impossible situation where maybe you get a good monologue walking down the hall and that's about all you can take away from it.   

Beth [00:35:48] Yeah, no one's happy. A lot of people are relieved and there's a lot of work left to do. I like this quote from Senate Commerce Maria Cantwell, she said, "There are two messages here. One, this fight over sick days is not over. And two, we're going to figure out how to fight on another front." And I think that that's good. You keep going, but you shift in a way that won't disrupt the entire economy at a very pivotal point in the calendar year. Well, as we think about where we are in the calendar, Sarah, we're going to talk Outside of Politics today about some of our favorite traditions. I wondered what your favorite childhood tradition is, especially if it's one that you have left behind, like it's when you no longer celebrate as an adult.   

Sarah [00:36:42] My family time was not filled with a lot of traditions, and I think that's why I've crafted so many as an adult. We had traditional family gatherings. My holidays were really driven by the gathering of my mother's extended family, the Skidmore family and the Allen family. So those were the holiday traditions. We go to my great grandmother's, we played Dirty Santa with the big extended family. We go to my grandmother's house. We have lasagna with all my mother's brothers and sisters. So those were the big traditions. But as far as just in my house with my mom and my stepdad, we didn't have a lot of big traditions. And so I have I have leaned all the way in with my kids, and we have very, very, very, many holiday traditions. What about you? Did you have a lot of holiday traditions growing up?   

Beth [00:37:34] My growing up around the holidays is much like the rest of my growing up, like the church was a very central driving force of our social lives. And so what I remember the most as a kid about the run up to Christmas was the Christmas cantata. It was like my broadway moment. I live for the Christmas cantata. We practiced all the time, and I always loved it because even as a kid I usually got to sing with the adult choir, and I thought that was so much fun. I loved the costumes. I remember the music. My parents would always put the cassette tape in the tape deck in our car. So we listened to the cantata music when we were driving anywhere. It was just a beautiful part of my childhood, and I do miss that. I was thinking the other day, when would I make that happen now? If I were to be in a Christmas cantata as an adult, when would I go to practice? How would I even do it? How did those adults do it? But everybody made it a priority and it was so much fun. And I love those memories of going to practice and then going out to eat with my parents friends from church afterward, maybe having like a church basement meal after the big performance. That was a really beloved part of my of my youth.   

Sarah [00:38:47] I asked my kids the other day in the car what's their favorite holiday tradition. Two kids answered that their favorite tradition is when Nicholas and I have been doing since we were dating. We just did it one year and I was, like, let's do it like this every year. We eat a pizza and we watch a Christmas story while we decorate the tree. And that was Felix and Amos's favorite holiday tradition. But one of them is one we haven't done every year, but I guess they love it. So maybe we need to really focus on making sure we do it every year. But sometimes it shifts a little bit depending on my extended family gatherings. But we eat fondue on Christmas Eve after the Christmas pageant at our church. And I love the Christmas pageant in our church on Christmas Eve. I just love all of those sort of liturgical traditions. We also have an advent walk in my community, which I love. One Sunday is Chrismon Sunday, one Sunday is Saint Nicholas Sunday. So I think a lot of our traditions are built out of the liturgical calendar, which I did not grow up with because I grew up Southern Baptist.   

Beth [00:39:42] And we have a beautiful Christmas Eve service at my church. We have a candlelight service, more traditional, and I love it. And then at 4:00, we have a family service that is so much fun. The kids do a nativity, but every kid who comes gets to pick like a little miniature costume so that they can be sheep or wise ones or whatever. And it's just really fun how they try to bring sort of everybody in the building into the story at that 4:00 service. And I'd really love that.   

Sarah [00:40:12] But wider than our community traditions, we have a lot of family traditions, but I don't even know if my kids recognize them. I read my dad's copy of the night before Christmas on Christmas Eve. I don't know if they recognize that as a tradition, even though I do, we wear matching pajamas. I think they would definitely recognize that one. But a lot of them it helps give me structure around the holidays. It's not like I'm really attached to any single one. I just love that this is the time of year where I can put emphasis on our family life and all those decisions are sort of made for me. Like we went back to take Shabbat this weekend for the first time in a long time and I thought this is why I love this, because I'm very intentional about our time together as a family. And I think that's why I love this time of year, it's because those traditions create those triggers right where I'm like, oh, right, this is the top priority as we're spending quality time together and we have all these decisions pre-made as opposed to where we kind of all drift off to our different corners of the house to watch our own screens.   

Beth [00:41:12] I love making cookies with my daughters, and I told Ellen that I had Chad pick up molasses at the grocery store this week and her eyes got really big and she goes, "I don't know what molasses is, but that sounds exciting." And then I said, "We're going to make gingerbread." And she was like, "Yes, I love making gingerbread." Does she like to eat gingerbread? Not really. But we love to decorate the cookies. It's a lot of fun.   

Sarah [00:41:34] Yeah, we have a holiday tradition where my very, very, good friend since childhood, Mr. Dylan, comes over and we make Christmas cookies with him every year. And I love  decorating the cookies. I love making my own Christmas cookies heavy on the almond extract. Again, that's not a thing I do throughout the year, even though I always think like, oh, I want to make ice cream this summer. I want to decorate Easter eggs, but they just don't happen. This time of year and the traditions around it just have their own momentum.   

Beth [00:42:02] Well, we hope that you are finding lots of space for fun in your homes whenever you observe or however you spend your Decembers. Just a reminder that we are going to have our holiday party for premium members on December 15th. If you subscribe through Apple Podcasts subscriptions, please make sure that you've shared your email address with us so that we can get you access. The link is in the show notes. We hope to hear from all of you about all your thoughts on today's conversation. You can send us to Hello@pantsuitpoliticsshow.com. And we'll be back with you on Friday. Until then, have the best week available.   

[00:42:54] Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our managing director.   

Sarah [00:42:59] Maggie Penton is our community engagement manager. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music.   

Beth [00:43:05] Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers.   

[00:43:09] Martha Bronitski. Allie Edwards. Janice Elliott. Sarah Greenup. Julie Haller. Helen Handley. Tiffany Hasler. Emily Holliday. Katie Johnson. Katina Zugenalis Kasling. Barry Kaufman. Molly Kohrs. Katherine Vollmer. Laurie LaDow. Lily McClure. Linda Daniel. Emily Neesley. The Pentons. Tawni Peterson. Tracy Puthof. Sarah Ralph. jeremy Sequoia. Katie Stiggers. Karen True. Onica Ulveling. Nick and Alyssa Valleli. Amy Whited. Emily Helen Olsen. Lee Shea McDonough.   

Beth [00:43:46] Jeff Davis. Melinda Johnston. Michelle Wood. Joshua Allen. Morgan McCue. Nicole Berklas Paula Bremer and Tim Miller.   

Sarah [00:43:57] I'm struggling. Hold on, I'm trying to decide what I want to say. My brain has stopped working. Hold on everybody. It'll come back online in just a minute.   


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