Trump on the Ballot, Conflict Abroad, and the Need for Congressional Leadership
TOPICS DISCUSSED
Upcoming Presidential Election: Should Trump Be Disqualified from the Ballot?
Wars in Ukraine and Gaza
The Need for Congressional Leadership
Outside of Politics: Intentions for the New Year
Thank you for being a part of our community! We couldn't do it without you. To support the show, please subscribe to our Premium content on our Patreon page or Apple Podcasts Subscriptions, or share the word about our work in your circles. Sign up for our newsletter or follow us on Instagram to keep up with everything happening in the Pantsuit Politics world. You can find information and links for all our sponsors on our website.
This podcast and every episode of it are wholly owned by Pantsuit Politics LLC, and are protected by US and international copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws. We hope you'll listen to it, love it, and share it with other people, but not with large language models or machines and not for commercial purposes. Thanks for keeping it nuanced with us.
TRANSCRIPT
Sarah [00:00:09] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.
Beth [00:00:10] And this is Beth Silvers. Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics.
[00:00:14] Music Interlude
[00:00:34] Hello. We're so glad to be back for new episodes following our annual winter break, and there's plenty for us to catch up on. Today, we're going to focus on three categories of stories that we think will continue to be major focus areas for 2024. The upcoming presidential election. The wars in Ukraine and Israel. And how the United States Congress is functioning in light of these events. Before we get started, we do want to share and ask as we go into this year and an offer. If resetting your relationship with the news and finding a healthy balance as we go into the heat of a presidential election season is one of your goals for 2024, we would love to help with that. On our premium channel, we produce two shows to help you stay informed and process the news in a healthier way. And we wanted to spend just a second telling you about those shows and about membership in our premium channel and how it makes our work here possible.
Sarah [00:01:28] Yes. So every morning, Monday through Thursday, I do a news brief. Now we call it a News Brief because I am mostly summarizing the top headlines of the day. But I like to think I bring a little bit extra. I'm not just reading you bullet points and telling you what happened. I try to think about it like you're sitting down for coffee with your best and funniest friend (I don't mind saying that) who's just giving you a rundown in a way that's going to be light and easy to take in and not produce a lot of anxiety. I want to give you information, but I don't want you to be bogged down as you go into your day with what's happening around the world. I often include funny stories. I often include lighter stories. And more importantly, on Thursday, I do a Good News Brief where I really collect over the course of the previous days stories that jump out at me as like, we are making progress on this. This is moving in a positive direction. So when I say good news, I don't mean like this town paid for this child's medical treatments. That's beautiful and I'm glad people do that, but I mean good news as in positive trends and progress towards problems that we're trying to solve as Americans or as a global citizenry. So that's what I do on Thursday. Monday through Wednesday is just me tackling what's going on around the world. We have a lot of fun in the comment sections. I learn a lot from everyone who watches and follows along with the News Brief, and I hope I bring a lot of value as you're just trying to figure out what's going on in the world.
Beth [00:03:02] Now, I always feel like the heavy to the News Brief because Sarah comes in all light and breezy and having lots of fun. And then I usually come in kind of serious except for some fun episodes that I do, where I imagine karaoke parties among political leaders. Sometimes I write children's stories about truly absurd news stories. But most of the time I take one story on More to Say Tuesday through Friday, and I ask what actually is happening here past the headline and why does it matter? And what do we know about it and what do we not know about it? And how can I help you feel less anxious because you feel more informed. And I love that many of our long time more to say listeners say that it's like going to law school for non-lawyers. I love hearing from people that they feel like I make these stories even about things like foreign policy really accessible, but I'm not condescending. That's important to me. I try to define terms and ask new questions. We often talk about geography, like, where is this place that we're discussing and what should we know about it? And I think that people find it really refreshing to just do some homework on the things that are most important, because the more that we know about them, the less we stay in that reactive, angry, sort of algorithmically provoked place.
[00:04:20] So if you would like to join us. Memberships start at $5 a month. And all of the work that we just described to you is available at $15 a month. That $15 a month level is the level that really helps sustain what we do here. It helps us pay the people who work with us. It helps us pay for all of our equipment. Some of the travel that we need to do to do these shows well is covered by that level. And these are prices (the $5 and $15) that we have not raised since we started our premium shows, which means that we really rely on long term and new subscribers because like every good business in the world, our costs go up every year. As you think about how to best take in the news, we hope we can be part of that for you through Apple Podcasts subscriptions or Patreon. And if you choose Patreon, there is an annual membership option where you just pay for the entire year upfront. It's such a win-win because it gives us as a business a sense of financial stability and it gives you a discount. So all the details about this are in the shownotes. Please know that we do work very hard to honor your support and we hope to make that $5 and $15 a month feel like a real bargain to you.
Sarah [00:05:26] And please also know that over the course of 2024, there will be events in person that are open only to certain levels of our premium support and events that are open to everybody that our premium members get first access to. So during the Paducah weekend, our premium members got first access and sold out. Our lunch with Sarah Bradley, our Paducah chef of Top Chef fame. So there are lots of perks beyond just the content you get as well.
Beth [00:05:52] Up next, we are going to get into the efforts to prevent former President Donald Trump from being on the ballot.
Sarah [00:05:59] And Outside Politics, we're not going to talk about resolutions for the year. We're going to talk about intentions for the year, specifically around our social media use.
[00:06:08] Music Interlude
Beth [00:06:28] Sarah, it felt to me like the exact second that our winter break began, we got the news that the Colorado Supreme Court had told Colorado Secretary of State Jenna Griswold that she was not allowed to list Donald Trump as a candidate in the Republican primary.
Sarah [00:06:46] I do feel like Jack Smith should have come to us instead of the Supreme Court and said like, could you take a break? Maybe somewhere around early December, mid-February, whatever his drop dead date on I need a decision so I can move forward with this. You should come to us first. And we could have made it happen because when we take off, things happen.
Beth [00:07:05] And I wanted to check in to just get a sense of what was going on. So I pulled up the opinion and I saw that there were over 200 pages of opinions. And I took a breath and I said, "This will be here when you get back, Beth." And it was it was here when we got back. So that's what we want to talk about. After Colorado, we heard from Maine, Michigan and California have both rejected attempts to prevent former President Trump from appearing on the ballot. All of this relates to Section three of the 14th Amendment, which says that if you have been an officer of the United States or of a state and you've taken an oath to the Constitution and then you engage in insurrection, you are ineligible to serve again, you are disqualified. Except that, Congress, by a supermajority vote, can remove that disqualification. And unfortunately, that's like all they gave us. They didn't include a glossary to say, "Here's what engaging in insurrection means." They didn't tell us who's supposed to do the disqualifying. Who decides if you've engaged in insurrection. And so these are really tough legal issues that states are unsurprisingly reaching different conclusions about.
Sarah [00:08:15] Because Donald Trump is a very bombastic, extreme personality; I think that we have all taken a posture that anything involving Donald Trump has an extreme and easy answer in either direction. I have done that. And I was spending a lot of time as we come into 2024 thinking about what both I as a citizen, Sarah as a podcast host, and we as a podcast, we as the media, we as the American people did right and wrong in 2016 because we're going to be here again in 2024. Our third presidential election with Donald Trump on the ballot. Most likely it's looking that way, right? And I think what I want to do differently this time is not take that posture, not act like the answer is easy because he's involved. And I think these court cases are excellent practice for that posture, because it is hard. It is just hard. Are we talking about the rule of law? Are we talking about the power of the people at the ballot box to decide? These are not easy questions. And I think the fact that states are reaching different conclusions is the perfect illustration of that.
Beth [00:09:40] I think that's right. And I think the time timeline is also important. I was saying to you before we started recording that I cannot make myself care about Jeffrey Epstein. The truer thing that I will say about that is I know eventually someone is going to write, as definitive account as they can, of what happened around Jeffrey Epstein's life and death. And I will read that because I do think there's something important here. I'm not trying to be dismissive of that story. It seems so clear to me that we cannot have that level of authority or certainty in talking about it today. And that's how I feel about this disqualification issue. I think about the decision to pardon former President Nixon and how I think at the time I probably would have been a person who said that's exactly the right thing to do. And with the benefit of a relatively short period of time, I have a lot of questions about whether that was the right thing to do. So my initial reaction to efforts to disqualify Trump from appearing on the ballot was that's the wrong thing to do. We shouldn't. Even if it is legally correct, it is politically detrimental to the nation, to our trust in each other as voters, to our trust in the judicial system. The cost of that is too high. But as I read these cases and I study this issue and spend time with it, I realize 30, 40 years from now, 100 years from now, what we make in this moment of what Section three of the 14th Amendment means will still matter and will look very different than we can see right now. So I'm really just trying to pull back from any emotion around this and make myself a student of the unfolding history that we're part of.
Sarah [00:11:33] It's so hard when he's involved. It's just so hard when he's involved. Because, listen, I'm in the gut triad of the Enneagram. I love my gut instincts. I love to lean into it. But it's almost like his emotionality, his posturing, it just fires up our emotion and also creates like some sort of smokescreen of emotion so that we can't actually see what's happening. He's like a smoke bomb anywhere he goes, right? He just obscures, obscures, obscures. And I appreciate the careful legal work that the system is doing to try to clear the smoke and see what's actually happening. And I think the answer that nobody wants to hear in America is that there isn't an answer, that there isn't a fix, that there isn't a right thing to do here. That even-- oh, and this is so painful to say, even after November of this year, whatever the results are, the work will continue. Because there is no stasis. There just isn't. And I think some of the damage he's done will be generational work to mend. I think the problems he's exposed will be generational work to address. And I'm just having to settle into that. I don't like it. The only good thing I did on 2016, though, the day he was sworn, is tell myself I will never get the justice I want from Donald Trump because it's not available. I want him to see and feel the pain and damage he's done, and that's not available. That was my most Zen moment where I was like, "Let it go. Do not let him eat you up because what you want to happen to him spiritually, psychically, is not available to you, to him, to anyone else." And so I'm just having to remind myself of that because I don't want him to smokescreen opportunities for us to really learn something, to really see. I think with the Electoral College Act, we did that. We saw like, okay, wait, there's weaknesses here. That was valuable. Painful, incredibly painful, but valuable. And I think we did the right thing. We saw the weaknesses. We showed them up. That's all we can do. That's all we can do.
Beth [00:14:02] Well, I'm less oriented to justice than you are. And so I don't really have a long term punitive desire for former President Trump. I have the strong unmet desire of my heart that I feel so silly even saying out loud. But this is the thing I'm wrestling with, is I just want basically everybody to say, well, January six was the worst and we can't have that happen again. That's not available. That's not going to happen. The AP morning newsletter this week highlighted a quote from a Republican strategist named Alice Stewart, and she said something like, look, most Republican voters would say January six, not great, but it also doesn't affect my bottom line. They can hold two thoughts in their head at the same time: not great, and it doesn't affect my bottom line. And when I read that, it both kind of felt like a gut punch because my heart so strongly desires everyone to say that was awful and the worst and can't happen again. But at the same time, I thought, you know what? I get that. People have different priorities and that's fair. And people have different priorities for a million different reasons. And because of a million different life experiences, there are as many reasons for stacking your priorities as you do as there are eligible voters in this country. And so that kind of helped me pull back from that unmet need that I've been feeling.
[00:15:34] And I agree, I think watching this go through the court system, knowing that the court system is already in such a precarious place because of the overturning of Roe versus Wade and all of the reporting that continues to come out about how that happened. I just see so much stress in the system that I'm trying to think, well, where can I at least not add to the stress in the system and where can I pull back in my own stress and say, I'm just going to be with this right now because it's always been so. I read that New York Times reporting about the Dobbs decision, how it came down that opened with Justice Gorsuch replying to the long draft opinion in like 10 minutes. And at first I was just so hot. And by the end of the piece, I thought, Beth, do you think that if you sat on the Supreme Court you would not be a person? You would not be a person who sometimes bends to pressure from outside groups? You would not be a person who sometimes lets a long held belief of your own influence your legal work? Do you think that you could handle this better than these nine humans? That is a lie. And that is hubris of the worst sort. And so that's what I want to cultivate, that second reaction in myself, this year. How can I just recognize these are all just people and this is a hard time for everyone, it's always been so it will always be so. We are able to get through it if we want to. And I do want to.
Sarah [00:17:00] I think the other mistake I made in 2016 is deciding that I could live beside those who I vehemently disagree with. That I could find a tolerant piece. That I could live beside and not among, in a way that I think was a lie. I told myself, and I think I'm really informed right now by the conflict in Gaza and this sense that we can buy peace. That's a lie. That we can say we will find a way for us to go forward without addressing the problems amongst us, without addressing the conflict at the core. And that just leads to violence. And I think seeing this bubbling up of swatting members of Congress and bomb threats at the state capitol is just reminding me, like, we cannot just live beside. We must live among. I knew in 2016 I wanted to stay the United States of America. And I thought, well, you'll just be over there and I'll be over here and that'll be good enough. And I just don't think it is. And I'm really trying to push myself in places that I thought there were easy answers. Because if I want to live as the United States of America, if I believe that this experiment in democracy is worthwhile, then I have to take seriously the things my fellow Americans are telling me through the power of the ballot box. I have to, even when I find them abhorrent. And I'm just trying to figure out what that looks like. It's so complicated when sometimes they're telling me things through systems that are oppressive, systems that are unfair, systems like the Electoral College which I even hesitate to call a system, because the system implies some sort of base rationality. I don't want to walk through three elections with Donald Trump but not learn anything about myself, my country, or my fellow Americans. I don't want that. And there is no learning without discomfort. There is no learning without humility. There is no learning without accepting responsibility for the things you misunderstood or purposely ignored. And that's what I'm trying to look at.
Beth [00:19:25] Well, you mentioned what you're learning from Gaza. While we were on winter break, of course, we had wars continue both with Ukraine and between Israel and Hamas. We saw potentially escalatory events in both conflicts that Ukraine and Russia engaged in some of the most deadly bombing that they have done in several months now. That there is escalation in the Middle East generally. We have just learned as we're sitting down to record, that the Islamic State has taken responsibility for the bombing in Iran that killed a number of civilians on the anniversary of the death of Qasem Soleimani, who was killed by the United States several years ago. We also have escalatory activity from the Houthis on land and on sea, and as Israel has started to target some Houthi sites. The Islamic State situation seems to me to be another one of those pieces that makes you step back and have some humility. My initial reaction to the bombing in Iran was what does this mean between Israel and Hamas? And that has turned out to be the wrong question. The Islamic State does not seem to have any kind of objective in framing Israel here or otherwise escalating that conflict. They're just taking advantage of an opportunity. It's a chaotic moment. And this group that was severely damaged by the international community has been trying to regroup, probably trying to recruit people, and they see an opening and they're walking through it. And so that to me is a good reminder. I don't have to and can't and shouldn't be in a constant posture of who's right and who's wrong. This is another place to be a student of this unfolding history.
Sarah [00:21:26] Yeah, and I just have such a hunger for the leadership. You talked about on More to Say today that Chris Christie has done this ad where it's like, I made a mistake. I was wrong. I should never have supported Donald Trump. I really am feeling the pope right now with his energy of like, I'm the pope. You're done. You're not the pope. I'm the pope. I think post-pandemic-- not that there wasn't excellent leadership during the pandemic. Of course, there was. But I feel this energy now where there are a lot of places where leaders are finding their footing and they're getting more comfortable exhibiting leadership, saying we're going to have to make a decision and this is going to be it. And I think the places where people are not ready for that-- now, we talked about the university presidents-- it's so evident. The places where the stakes are much higher than Harvard, like Israel, with Netanyahu, who is not a leader and who does not belong in that position. And where you can't find a path forward, you can't find peace because you have no real leadership available in the PLO that America or Qatar, anybody can look to. Qatar, I think the leadership they've exhibited is evident. When someone steps forward and says, okay, this is a path forward and I'm going to take steps along and I'm not looking for authoritarianism, I'm not looking for populism that says strength is the only thing that matters because strength and leadership are different. Leadership has to come from strength, but it feels different. You know it when you see it. And I'm just so hungry for people to say this is hard, there will be discomfort. Not everyone is going to agree with this decision, but we have to make one. We have to make a decision. It's time.
Beth [00:23:09] You saw that from the Supreme Court in Israel which during the break overturned Netanyahu's plan to scale back the scope of judicial review available. And I think it would have been very easy for that court to say, you know what, it's too tender of a time for us to make a decision on this or to have the tenderness of the time affect that decision. It's a hard thing to be at war, to have your citizens still be held hostage, to have babies still being held hostage. And as a court to come out with such a stern rebuke of the top political forces in your nation. But that is leadership sometimes. And then to have it fall on an eight-seven vote, that is so hard to release. But I applaud the people who said this issue must be decided and waiting doesn't help and it's never going to go perfectly and it's always going to be hard but we have to do it and we're doing it.
[00:24:09] Music Interlude.
[00:24:27] That focus on leadership takes us to the United States Congress, which is a place where a number of difficult decisions need to be made, even as the members of the House of Representatives face re-election this year and control of the Senate will also be decided, and a presidential election is ongoing. There are very personal stakes for every member of that body. There are these two wars involving allies of the United States and international commitments of the United States, not to mention a host of other conflicts throughout the globe that we need to be attentive to and that we certainly have some stake in. In the short term, Congress has critical funding deadlines coming up. Now, you might remember to avoid a government shutdown in November, Congress decided to negotiate what Speaker of the House called a laddered approach, which means that some deadlines are coming due in January and others will come due in February. But in the next eight weeks, a total of 12 funding bills need to pass, or an omnibus bill, which all Republicans say they hate, needs to pass to fund the government. The speaker has said he is opposed to further stopgap measures. They want to get this done in a full and final way. And if those bills are not passed by those deadlines or some stopgap measure put in place or some omnibus passed, then we will see either a partial or a full government shutdown.
Sarah [00:25:55] Now, much of the negotiation around these funding for military aid to Ukraine and Israel has gotten wrapped up with immigration. And to me, that mirrors sort of what you were saying about the Supreme Court in Israel. Is this the best time? Is it too tender of a time? Is there too much at stake? And my instinct is the opposite. No, take your moment. Take your moment when the stakes are high to say, well, let's do this now. I'm so tired of them punting on immigration reform. And I have almost no stakes in the fight. But just as an American, I'm so tired of us pretending that we don't have work to do on this. Not fighting, not arguing, not debating, just work. Just put pencil to paper and reform the system. And the stakes are high enough on every side because we have a flood of people coming over the border. And this will, for the most part, I think, stay the same. There's a really interesting article in The Economist that's like, don't make too many assumptions even about climate change, even about the migration of humans that will be made by climate change. It was a really interesting sort of, let's think about this and upend this in different ways. But all that being said, just do something. It's time. And maybe because you have a tight deadline and high stakes and everybody willing to come to the table will get something done. I sure hope so.
Beth [00:27:23] I don't know the correct prioritization of issues for this Congress. I really don't. Those 12 funding bills are pretty routine. The funding for Ukraine and Israel is supplemental to those bills, but it all feels like one morass, even though the work that needs to be done is quite different. I don't know the prioritization between immigration funding and Ukraine and Israel funding. I believe the causes of the people in Ukraine fighting against Putin's Russian aggression is just. I believe Israel trying to get its hostages back and secure its country, I believe that's a just cause. Now, that doesn't mean that I sign on to all of the ways in which those wars are being conducted. But I think those are just causes, and I think the United States has an interest in aiding those just causes. How I prioritize that versus 300,000 people trying to come into the United States at the southern border in December, I don't know. I am pro-immigration. I believe immigration is essential to our nation. I believe it makes us strong. I am not so naive, though, to believe that what is happening at our border upholds anyone's dignity, including the people trying to come here. Probably most especially the people trying to come here. The disorder in this situation right now is so extreme that it absolutely needs to be addressed. And, again, because we are a big country with lots of different ideas coming to the table and people elected who view the situation differently than I do, I believe we need to invest a lot of energy in figuring out how to solve this. And that will mean some methods that I disagree with. There is no way immigration reform gets done without some things that I think are wrong or unacceptable or ineffective or wasteful or whatever.
[00:29:20] There are going to be some problems with whatever comes of that, but I can't disagree with the prioritization of that issue right now by Republicans. I think they are right. Now, that's different than actually wanting to resolve the issue. And I don't know that the people hardest line about this issue actually want it resolved. I think if people wanted it resolved, it probably would have been before now. But I think that what Congress has to do is really hard. And like you said, we need some pope energy with this Congress. Going back to the efforts to disqualify Trump from the ballot, it's so tares me up to see people writing about how undemocratic that is when we had a well established, clear cut way to disqualify Trump from the ballot and we didn't have any leadership around that from Republicans. Some of the same people who are writing articles now about how this is the wrong way to do it also argued against the right way to do it when Senate Republicans could have convicted him for the events of January 6th and said you may not run again. What a different world we would be living in now if Mitch McConnell had said, "I don't care if you don't like it. This is what needs to be done." And we got to have some of that today in Congress as well. And it is hard to imagine that in an election year we're going to find more of it than we have in years that didn't have a presidential election happening. But we can hope.
Sarah [00:30:58] I think what I'm leaning into is trying to intellectualize my way through some of this instead of feeling, which is the opposite instinct I've had for so much of this journey, like feel what the right thing is to do. Intellectualize your way to justifying it. There's just so many times even with Israel and Gaza, I think you see this sense of I felt like this was the right thing to do even within Israel. And then you have Israelis saying, I don't want this, I just want my family member home. Or you have Israeli hostages shot and killed by the IDF. What's the take away from that? What's the take away from that before you get to the 14,000 dead. Women and children primarily. And this sense that we are blinded to any reasonable analysis. Any attempt at analysis is met with this fury. This wall of righteousness. And I think you see that in so many places and violent conflicts around the world all the way down to like fights on social media. Just this sense of like there is no role for cool headed analysis here. The stakes are too high. And I can't do that again. I cannot ride that roller coaster again with Donald Trump on the ballot. I don't have it in me. I don't think it got us anywhere. It's not that I don't think it produced anything positive. I do think it did in certain areas of American life. But I always think we can do better. I think we can strive for a place to say, okay, what result do we want and how do we get more of it? And I think with this Congress in particular who passed 27 laws, 435 members and 27 laws-- really?
Beth [00:33:11] One tracked to be the least productive Congress in history.
Sarah [00:33:15] Yes. And so let's just run some numbers. If we can agree on policy, if we certainly can't agree on ethics or prioritization, can we just run some numbers and have a conversation? Can we dial this back to something, a basis of something that we agree upon? And I know that is very difficult at this moment in American life, and it's going to get only more difficult with this upcoming presidential election. But I hope that the negotiations surrounding immigration, where we're running numbers and we're running time people spend in the system and we're running how long it takes people to get through the system, how to get into the system, maybe we can get somewhere with that.
Beth [00:33:58] I'm telling myself a lot of what you've said. That I am trying to learn from the past, take a real accounting of how I have approached these issues and how that has served me. Try to learn from the big picture, too. There is another piece of me, though, that is trying to be even softer than that. So you say a lot when you're talking about your conversations with your son. Well, this is developmentally appropriate for the stage of life that he's in. And I'm trying to think about what is developmentally appropriate for the stage of life that I'm in. It's not like I'm done, right? It's not like we don't observe certain shifts in people as they age. And I'm not finished aging. I have a lot of runway in front of me, I hope. And I think that it makes sense at the age that we are-- and we are both 42 and we'll turn 43 in 2024. At this stage, it makes sense that we have a greater tolerance for things that are not perfect, but move the ball a little bit. That we have less energy to be totally wrapped up in the emotions of politics because we've got kids on one side of us and parents and other relatives on the other side of us who need care. That we are watching people who we've loved start to pass away with greater frequency. That we are recognizing in ourselves new gray hairs and wrinkles. We're going to see life differently than we did during the last presidential election because we are four years older and what's developmentally appropriate for us is different. And so I'm trying to give myself that grace too. Where am I actually learning and maybe acquiring some wisdom, or at least not repeating the same mistakes? And where am I just exhibiting tendencies that are connected to both my personality and my time of life? And if I can do that for me, then I think I can do a better job of that for everyone else and have a little bit more patience during this year of decision making.
Sarah [00:36:12] Well, and I try to think, where are we developmentally as a country? And that's a tougher one. Are we teenagers? Are we 20 year olds? Are we coming to the end like so many people think? We're all so obsessed with empires. My friends and I were talking about the book, The Wager, which is about this shipwreck. And we're talking about like how Spain was such a behemoth. It was everything. It was everywhere. So hard to think about Spain like that now or Britain that was this colonial power everywhere. And now not. So where am I placing ourselves in this timeline? I think that's a really tough one as I think through another presidential election where we are deciding what do we want America to be? Where do we want America to go? And I don't know, because I can't decide by myself. Because I have to listen to not only history, but my fellow Americans and prognosticators and futurists and think, what does this mean? That's a big thing. This exercise we go through every four years where we say, where have we been? Where do we want to go? Can we agree on that? It's a lot. Grace is definitely the word for that exercise.
Beth [00:37:37] I think that question of where are we developmentally as a country connects so well to the litigation. We have this provision of our Constitution and we don't know how it works or what it means. That we have the 14th Amendment written during Reconstruction and we don't know exactly how Section three of it works. We have that about the Constitutional Convention idea. The Constitution has told us it can be amended and here's the path. We have no idea how that path would work. None. We have no guidance on that. Is that like discovering that you have a thumb that you've never used before? You know what I mean? At what stage of life do you look at something that's been part of you for a long, long time and go, oh gosh, I've never used this muscle. I wonder how this happens, you know? It really does help put it in context for me.
Sarah [00:38:25] Well, and I would just if I had the email addresses of the Supreme Court who inevitably will have to grapple with this question, can you just not blow smoke? Can you own that? Instead of saying it's clear from the history, that this is the answer and we're just showing you that it's clear. Just own it and say it's not clear, but we're the ones who have to decide and this is what we've decided. I wish they'd do that. I don't think they will. I don't have a lot of hope. I'm trying to give grace to say like, can you just own that this is impossible and this is the call you've made probably based on some of your own politics and prejudices. Maybe that's just the pep talk I need to give myself about them.
Beth [00:39:05] Even their decision to own it, though, has long lasting ramifications, right? Because if they told us this is not something that has a correct answer and we just have to decide, then we would be asking about separation of powers and whether they are the people to decide. That would move us into, I think, asking whether this is a non justiciable political question. That if we can't discover the meaning of something that's obviously there, then does that mean that the Congress has to decide something that it hasn't decided yet and so we can't do anything? And that's a big hairy question, too. So as much as I desire that kind of transparency from the court as well, I recognize it's really not as simple as that, because in a system with three branches that are constantly in this delicate dance with one another, we don't want the courts to just be a place where you go, "Well, somebody's got to make a call. So this is what we think." Even though they are always doing that. The aspiration that they aren't is important. In conclusion, 2024 will have very few conclusions and a lot to learn. And I hope that us personally trying to take the temperature down and learn it will be of value to all of you listening. And we really welcome your thoughts as we all keep learning together.
[00:40:37] Music Interlude
[00:40:49] Sarah, it's resolution time and consistent with our discussion about development. I'm not really into resolutions this year. It's more like continued evolution. Like, how can I take things that I've been working on and continue to work on them? And one of the common themes that you and I are both continuing to work on is our relationship to social media. So tell me about how you're thinking, just maybe in the month of January about your relationship with social media.
Sarah [00:41:13] Yeah, I used to write a long list of resolutions as an Enneagram one and that probably surprises no one. I haven't done that in several years. I do a word of the year. I definitely do daily practices that I want to work on, something that I want to do every day. Now, I hold it pretty lightly. If I break the streak, I try to just pick it back up again and figure out why I broke the streak. But I do some of those, but I still don't even write them down. I definitely just do intentions, something I want to work on, but I don't call it a resolution. I'm not necessarily opposed to them, but just for my personality, I had to hold some of that a little less tight. And with social media, I think over the years I've tried so many things because I thought, I'm going to fix it. I'm going to like find the app or the thing or the practice, or I'll just break up with it all together or whatever and that'll do it. And I've decided to analogize it to the phrase, which probably is bad, it probably isn't even true. But when we were pregnant, what you heard all the time is it takes nine months to gain the weight, nine months to lose the weight. I think it had a positive purpose behind it because it was like, don't think you're going to bounce right back like the ladies in the magazines. But either way...
Beth [00:42:24] They could have said nine years and that would have been more helpful.
Sarah [00:42:26] Fair.
Beth [00:42:26] Nine months to nine years to reclaim some relationship with your body that feels more sustainable.
Sarah [00:42:33] Well, the truth is they should say you're never going to get back to the same body. Your body's different because you create a human inside of it and then push it out or as the case may be. Again, this is still an apt metaphor for social media because we're not going to go back to before.
Beth [00:42:47] Yeah.
Sarah [00:42:48] We're not going to go back to before it existed. That's not available to us. But I do think the metaphor of like we got here slowly, we're going to get out of here slowly is something I'm recognizing and realizing. And I think I have found something that is moving me in that direction that I'm still focused on. So I'm still using the one second app that creates a speed bump. I cannot open social media on my phone without having to take a deep breath. Or my favorite one is they make you, like physically rotate your phone. You have to like turn it upside down and backwards to get it to open. And it's just a pain. And so over time, I just opened it less. It's just not worth it. What I get out of Instagram or Facebook is over time not becoming worth the effort to open it. It didn't happen instantly, but over time I think it slow me down. It's reducing my usage. And so that's just building on itself and it feels fine. It's not like a revelation, but it feels like I'm moving in the right direction, that I need to post less. That voice that's creating posts in my head is getting quieter. The voice that wants me to check things is getting quieter because I think I'm just sort of slowly starving it of input and oxygen. And I like that. I like the direction I'm going in and I want to keep going in that direction. So I've loved One Second. Even over the break I turned my alarm that turns my phone to grayscale at 3:00 off a lot of days. I was like, no, I don't need the grayscale today, but I didn't turn the alarm off. The alarm is still on at 3:00. My phone still goes to grayscale, which is enormously helpful. It's just not fun to be on your phone in grayscale at the end of the day. You have to use it just as a tool if that's the only worthwhile use when it's in grayscale. I kind of just see it working slowly and so I'm going to keep working it.
Beth [00:44:44] Well, the most dramatic step that I have taken recently was that I just woke up one morning over the break and thought, I'm going to archive all my Instagram posts. And so I did. It's not hard.
Sarah [00:44:56] I didn't even know you could do this.
Beth [00:44:58] Takes a minute, but it's not hard. And that means that I can still see everything I've posted and no one else can. So if you go to my pages, there's no post yet, and I can't even fully tell you why I did that. But my body was like, "This is the day that we are going to make a change here and this is the change we're going to make today." And I have just followed that instinct. I thought, this feels right to me. I have continued to post on Instagram the way that I did before we had a podcast. And I have done that because I have a tiny following compared to most people who work in a space like this. And so I thought it's just not that big of a deal. But we'll post a picture of my kids, for example, with the intention of it being for my Aunt Liz. You know who I love and who loves my children and wishes that she could be at whatever performance they're doing and can't. And so here it is, Aunt Liz. And that is just not the reality. Aunt Liz does like my post, which is great. But that's not the reality of who that's really going to. And I'm just trying to be more honest with myself about the fact that I don't want to be a social media influencer, have no desire whatsoever. I don't want to sell anything on social media. My wise friend Anna says that being on social media as someone who has a business and a public life feels like being part of a multilevel marketing scheme that you didn't agree to. And I think she's 100% right about that, and I don't want to do that. I also, though, don't want to be dishonest about what's happening, that when I post a picture of my kids, the vast majority of people who interact with that post are people who've never met me or my family.
[00:46:49] And I trust our audience, so I don't have a whole lot of like safety concerns. But I do think about the fact that there might just be a day, maybe just one of them, a fleeting feeling in my 13 or eight year old that they don't want complete strangers to go back and see baby pictures of them. They just might not. And I think that it's important for me to leave all of those options up to them to the best I can. Now that what's done is done, I get that what I've put out there is out there, but I can make it a little bit harder and I can step back and say, I'm going to create a new pattern for myself. I don't even know what that is. And I don't want to spend a bunch of time thinking about it because there is no value for me in that and no value for anyone in that. Listeners of this show who follow me on Instagram are better served by me spending that time on our work versus like scrolling my feed. I enjoy direct messages. I enjoy Instagram stories. I'll continue to have some participation there. I'm not trying to like do some dramatic peace out, but I just want to say like, okay, I'm turning a page on this. I'm going to have a different relationship. And I don't know exactly what it will be yet, but it's going to be different.
Sarah [00:48:03] Yeah, and I feel that way about archiving my life generally, which I've been very dedicated to for most of my children's childhood. My last, my baby, my Felix gave up the ghost on Santa this year, which was intense and kind of sad, but also deeply freeing that I am free from the tyranny of Santa and the elf. And so I'm thinking like, what does it mean? Am I my keeping everything and am I taking a picture of everything? To what end? What am I going to do with all of this? Truly, what am I going to do with all of these photo books and all of these boxes of memorabilia? I mean, I don't think I might have like a presidential library to archive them. So what am I doing? I don't want to do nothing. When I read a history book like The Wager, and we're depending on people doing what I'm doing to understand what it was like. I think there's a deep value in it. I think it's how I make sense of the world. It's how I sort of cement some of those memories. But I can feel my posture towards it shifting. And I use social media so much as like an archive. And so as that shifts my thinking about social media shifts, and I use social media for other things, for distraction. This is going to be controversial. It's not really social media, but I think I'm going to stop doing all the New York Times games. Why do I have to do those every day? My word for the year is cherish. I shifted it. But let me just be real with you; less is still a part of that. And so I'm like, don't I do this every day? What do I get out of this? Is it bringing me so much joy and happiness? Maybe it's something about crossing over into the second half of life where you got more or at least an even number of tomorrows than you do have yesterday's. And I'm just thinking, what do I want to do? What do I want to do? Because I think I figured out some of the bigger questions around my marriage and my kids and our work. And so I'm just trying to finesse it. And in particular, my approach to my whole life, which is just to maximize. Just to do it, to over perform, to over archive, to over post, to overshare to over everything. I'm just like, okay, well, what if I didn't? Like, what if I didn't do that? What would happen?
Beth [00:50:36] A little mental shift that I'm trying along the same lines, because I will often think, I want to do this thing, but I don't have time. And so I've been working on telling myself I don't have time not to. I don't have time not to exercise. I don't have time not to moisturize at this point in my life. I don't have time not to go on the date with my husband or invite the friends over or stop everything I'm doing and listen to my kids tell me about the dream they had last night. Because the moments are shifting for me and in terms of what they represent. So I don't have time not to do the things that I really want to do. Now, those things do include The New York Times Games, I'm going to be honest with you. Mostly because Chad and I do some of them together.
Sarah [00:51:20] They just keep adding to them. That's what's pushing me this. They just keep adding to them, guys.
Beth [00:51:25] They do. But Chad and I really enjoy this together. And it's a moment when we're playing games-- I think this is why I love playing cards so much. I'm playing cards and so I am not tempted. I felt this way about having a murder mystery party for Christmas with my neighbors. In that environment when we're playing a game or we're playing a role or whatever, we're playing. We're not talking about work. We're not talking about our kids. We're not doing the who's busiest and most important and most stressed Olympics. We're just being and all of that being adds to my day and adds to my experience. It doesn't feel like the kind of deficit that I sometimes feel when I'm on social media where I'm like, wow, I wasted this. Now, sometimes there are some funny things out there or insightful things or inspiring things, so I'm not trying to throw the whole thing away. It's just like, how do I most engage with those life giving parts of it and strike the bargain I want with it instead of the one that makes me feel like an employee of a company that I didn't agree to work for. We are so interested in your January intentions, especially if you have relationship to social media intentions. We're so interested in all your thoughts on what we talked about today. We read every message that comes to the show. Hello@pantsuitpoliticsshow.com. Thank you for being here. Thank you for sharing your time with us. We hope that you'll continue to do that throughout the year. We hope you'll consider a premium membership this year. Spend even more time with us, get to know us even better. Let us get to know you better. Details on how to do that will be in our show notes. We'll be back with you again next week and we look forward to hearing from you. In the meantime, everybody, have the best weekend available to you.
[00:53:03] Music Interlude
Sarah: Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production.
Beth: Alise Napp is our managing director. Maggie Penton is our director of Community Engagement.
Sarah: Xander Singh is the composer of our theme music with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima.
Beth: Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers.
Executive Producers: Martha Bronitsky. Ali Edwards. Janice Elliott. Sarah Greenup. Julie Haller. Tiffany Hasler. Emily Holladay. Katie Johnson. Katina Zuganelis Kasling. Barry Kaufman. Molly Kohrs. Katherine Vollmer. Laurie LaDow. Lily McClure. Linda Daniel. Emily Neesley. The Pentons. Tracey Puthoff. Sarah Ralph. Jeremy Sequoia. Katie Stigers. Karin True. Onica Ulveling. Nick and Alysa Villeli. Amy Whited. Emily Helen Olson. Lee Chaix McDonough. Morgan McHugh. Jen Ross. Sabrina Drago. Becca Dorval. Christina Quartararo. Shannon Frawley. The Lebo Family. The Adair Family.
Sarah: Jeff Davis. Melinda Johnston. Michelle Wood. Nichole Berklas. Paula Bremer and Tim Miller.