Around the World and Down the Ballot

TOPICS DISCUSSED

UN Summit
Down-ballot Races and Scandals
Outside of Politics: School Pictures and Fundraisers

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TRANSCRIPT

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

Beth [00:00:09] This is Beth Silvers.

Sarah [00:00:10] You're listening to Pantsuit Politics.

Beth [00:00:12] Where we take a different approach to the news.

[00:00:14] Music Interlude.

[00:00:29] We're so glad that you're here. We have been, with the rest of the world, very focused on the presidential election for months now. And we will stay focused on it. We do want to take a step back today and look at the state of the world in general, which is quite tumultuous. And take a look at some very competitive races that will appear up and down your ballot, including governor’s races, which leads us to a weekend of political scandals. There's lots to discuss about Mark Robinson, etc., which we will do today. And then Outside of Politics, we are deep in school pictures and fundraisers seasons. We're just going to take a second, pour one out for everybody caught in the middle of this very demanding time.

Sarah [00:01:09] We know that contentious elections and world crises bring up a lot of questions and concerns and intense feelings inside organizations, and we really love helping with that. We love helping schools and universities. We like helping corporations and small businesses. We love working with nonprofits and churches. We love working with you all as the world puts pressure on the relationships inside your organizations and institutions. We know quite a few groups are reading our first book I Think You're Wrong, (But I'm Listening) in advance of the election. And if you'd like information on the book or if you'd like us to come speak to your group about finding strength and disagreement and communicating well during this season, please reach out to Alise, our managing director. We spoke to a church in New York City this weekend over Zoom. They are reading our book and it was so lovely to hear how those conflicts are playing out in their relationships and how we can be of help. So Alise's contact information is in the show notes. Please reach out.

Beth [00:02:12] Next up, we're going to talk about the state of the world.

[00:02:15] Music Interlude.

[00:02:23] This Tuesday, the United Nations is meeting. And it's a good time for the United Nations to get together. It's a very packed agenda for them.

Sarah [00:02:31] I was really struck by Secretary General Guterres saying, “International challenges are moving faster than our ability to solve them.”

UN Secretary General António Guterres [00:02:40] But I have one overriding message today. An appeal to member states for the spirit of compromise. Show the world what we can do when we work together. And why is this so critical? The summit of the future was born out of cold, hard facts. International challenges are moving faster than our ability to solve them. We see out-of-control geopolitical decisions and runaway conflicts-- not least in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan and beyond. Runaway climate change, runaway inequalities and theft, runaway development of new technologies like artificial intelligence without guidance or guardrails, and our institutions simply can't keep up.

Sarah [00:03:34] I thought, well, that just about sums it up. I spent a lot of time this weekend catching up on old New York Times and The Economist issues that had been stacking up in my home. And it was really overwhelming to read about China's aggression in the South Pacific, to read about Sudan. Both The New York Times magazine and The Economist had big, big pieces on Sudan as a forgotten conflict. This place where massive famine is imminent and the world is not focused on it. And that does not include any thing I read about Ukraine or Israel and their conflict with Hezbollah, which dramatically escalated over the weekend. So I do not envy the leaders at the United Nations or all the world leaders coming together this week and looking at this array of crisis in front of us as world citizens.

Beth [00:04:33] And it really impacts our election in November because as David Leonhardt highlighted in his morning newsletter on Monday, we in the United States are unprepared to deal with this threat environment. Commission on the National Defense Strategy report says that the United States is facing the most serious and most challenging threats we've encountered since 1945, including the potential for near-term major war. And we are unprepared for a near-term major war at this point in our history. Our military recruiting is down. The defense industrial base is not keeping up with the needs just in terms of what we're sharing with Ukraine. And we have gotten kind of complacent as we think about military spending in the country. It is now lagging far behind the spending that we do on health care and on providing a social safety net. And maybe that's appropriate. But what it has meant is that China and other countries are vastly outspending us. And if we get into another war of the type that we did in World War Two, we will face equals for the first time in our country's history unless we make a really significant change very quickly. And you can't make a lot of these changes very quickly. Building up a military is decades in the process.

Sarah [00:05:55] Yeah. It's so hard to look around the world and see both conflicts that are unique and complex and seemingly intractable. Over the weekend with Israel, watching the Israeli Defense Force try to decouple Hezbollah from the conflict in Gaza, try to take the West Bank, push Hezbollah back and say you're not Hamas, knowing that both are supported by Iran. Reading all that I can about Sudan, understanding that this civil war where there is not an easy villain and an easy hero is also being supported by world powers, including the United Arab Emirates, including China and Russia, which are using all these conflicts as like chessboard pieces because they want more power in their regions. Period. And seeing the patterns but knowing that each piece is so diplomatically complex, that the threat and the risk and the suffering is also unique and complex and heartbreaking, but also united in the way that all human suffering is united and that it breaks our heart and that the people that are innocent with the least power are often the most effective. It is just so difficult.

[00:07:35] And especially in the in the context of our election, I just keep thinking about how often we've said Kamala is the strongest on foreign policy. So it's like I'm trying to take this in the complexity, be in that spot in the world, think about it through that spot in the world. I mean, Haiti is going to come up a lot at the UN. And what are we talking about over and over again? And it seems like in the least serious way possible in our election in Springfield, Ohio, in the way these people are being defamed, the way that J.D. Vance and Donald Trump just consistently lie about them. It's not like they're exhibiting any leadership and talking about, well, this is what's going on in Haiti. They're just lying about the Haitians who tried to come here. It's maddening. It's maddening and it's scary, honestly.

Beth [00:08:26] And it's all connected to the other things people do want to talk about like grocery prices. Grocery prices are a reflection of global stability in so many ways. Why do we care about this? Well, because our supply chain is interconnected, because parts of the world can produce foods that we can't grow here are can produce them in larger quantities because natural resources that are inputs to all kinds of things that we rely on are coming from places around the world. So if you don't care about the suffering side or the leadership in the world side, maybe you care about the wallet piece, but it does all relate. And the other thing that I just think about when we talk about global leadership and stability and Putin and Xi Jinping and China, is that throughout history, you don't see a lot of people who want to increase their influence and reach a point of contentment with that.

[00:09:17] And I think that especially when Putin is so direct about wishing to restore Russia's status in the world as of the Cold War era, well, that was an expansionist time, right? They want new empires. And so, yes, we have to be prepared to take both a defensive and an offensive posture in that environment. And it does mean, I think, that we're going to have to put more money into our military. Bigger than that, though, is that the citizenry is going to have to get serious and tell our elected leaders that conversations about people eating pets in Springfield does not get it done. That's unacceptable. That doesn't rise to the level of seriousness and gravity that our elections deserve.

Sarah [00:10:01] I mean, I was really struck by this sentence in the report from the Commission on the National Defense Strategy. And if you're like, "You just said a lot of words, what does that mean?" It is a panel of eight experts named by senior Republicans and Democrats on the House and Senate Armed Services Committee. These are serious people with serious experience. They consult widely across the government, and they get both public and classified information to issue a unanimous report. So these are serious people with access to serious information. And what they send to us is something they unanimously agreed on. And this is the sentence that struck me. "Fights over the debt ceiling, government funding, spending caps and hot button social issues weaken our ability to manage strategic competition with our peer adversaries. We would be far stronger if we returned to the maxim that politics ends at the water's edge." I don't see that. I don't see any serious reflection of the risk that we are facing as a nation, that the risk presented by China and Russia, particularly when former President Donald Trump speaks of both of these public adversaries with such naked admiration. Where is the seriousness? He just talks about how everything here is falling apart and doesn't speak at all about how important it is that we use the strengths we have and build on them. It's just "I alone can fix it. Everything here is trash. And we really probably should learn more from these strongmen and act like they act." And it's mind blowing.

Beth [00:11:46] Well, and I think Trump supporters would say and find it mind blowing that we're having this conversation, the world was calmer when Trump was in office. And so how do you explain that Kamala Harris is the stronger candidate on foreign policy when this is happening on her watch? And I think that as mind bending as it is to me that that is the perspective out there, they see it in turn. Where we're all certain that our candidate is the person who can deal with all of this.

Sarah [00:12:19] Well, I would say to those people that foreign policy and its impact is not instantaneous. And that much like the economy, you look to the previous administrations because while change is fast, the impact of policy is slow. And so when you look at the Donald Trump presidency, what you're looking at is the impact of much of the Obama policy. And what you're looking at with Joe Biden is much of the impact of Trump policy. The idea that you just step into the White House and just by your mere presence everything calms down, is an approach and a vision of the world that lacks some real critical analysis. Things don't happen overnight. They build slowly. When we're talking about China and Russia getting Iran over the finish line with a nuclear weapon, we are talking about the impact of Donald Trump pulling us out of the Iran nuclear deal. It's so frustrating. I understand the vibes election, but you don't do vibes. You have to have some critical analysis. Listen, I know we're talking about serious things here, but that's my frustration.

[00:13:31] I got into a conversation about Chappell Rowen and how she was like, "Well, the government has lots of problems and maybe just vote in local elections." And I find that infuriating. I find it infuriating. Like a protest vote? Even something as serious as the uncommitted movement, which I believe to be serious and found it in real connection and heartbreak to what's going on in Gaza. But to say Donald Trump will make it worse, don't vote third party, but we don't endorse Kamala Harris; what exactly is that? To me, it's a further manifestation of what this report is naming. The Wall Street Journal editorial was World War three approaches and America shrugs. I just think there's a real lack of clear headedness about the risk and how we lead through that risk to further safety and security.

Beth [00:14:27] I think you're right that we're looking at combinations right now. When the United Nations says the threats are outpacing our ability to meet them, that is not just about who the American president is or was. The world is different. The world is different post-pandemic. It's different because of technology. It is different because Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping and others like them have played a very, very long game and continue to play a very long game. There is a sense of patriotism that motivates that kind of strong man behavior that we are lacking in the United States. And I don't want us to be back in sort of the post 9/11 fervor of patriotism that led us to mistaken attempts to do nation building throughout the world. That led us to kind of performative patriotism in a way that was really unhealthy here at home. I do want us to care about our country and the opportunities that our country has and the responsibilities that our country has as a participant on the world stage. And I want us to stop sitting around moaning and groaning about things, about problems that would be luxury problems for the vast majority of the world when there are threats at this level of seriousness.

Sarah [00:15:53] I think just because we're so deep, almost through Democracy in America, I quibble with patriotism. I don't think patriotism is what is going on in Russia and China. I think it's nationalism and it's nationalism at the end of a gun. It's support us, be on board with us, that's your only option. And that is, friendly reminder, despite the growing strength of China, despite the massive outlays of time and resources and influence that China and Russia continue to use. Despite all that, I do want to say it's a fragile power. That type of authoritarianism is brittle. When it is nationalism at the end of a gun, it is inherently weak at its foundation. I think there is a place here in America because we can't have leaders like Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin who can dominate for decades with that sort of long game and think, God, I don't want that. I, for one, enjoy living in a democracy. But I think De Tocqueville gets at some of that. There's an ever shifting balance of power in democracy because the leaders aren't the foundation.

[00:17:13] The fragility in China and Russia is because it's all Putin and it's all Xi Jinping. The foundation here is us. It's us. True patriotism, true belief in something bigger than yourself, that the voters are the foundation of power. And that is, I believe, a fundamentally more stable and, I don't know, life-giving (to use sort of a woo woo word) form of government in power. And I just wish we could see that again. I think we are so mad at each other and so-- like you said-- mad about problems that other parts of the world wish were at the top of their lists. That we have lost the capacity to see. And I really want these threat assessments, these reports, these global conflicts to just sort of like wake us up. Remember, there are stakes here. There are real stakes here in our lives and in this election. I don't want a patriotic fervor, but I want a patriotic perspective. When you walk into the ballot box to remember like this is not a privilege other people get, and there are stakes here and we matter to each other and on the world stage. And how are we going to do that when we talking about [inaudible].

Beth [00:18:34] Democracy is only more stable if we want it to be. It's hard to make the argument right now that we are more stable when, once again, it's September and Congress has not passed the bills needed to fund the government. And so, once again, we are looking at a stopgap measure that will bring us to this crisis in December, right before the holidays. I'm glad that people seem on a bipartisan basis to be willing to vote for something right now. But this is no way to run a railroad. We have just way too many people who are allergic to compromise. And so the down ballot races really, really matter.

Sarah [00:19:09] Not for nothing, this report says that over and over and over again this is Congress's job. This is Congress's job to fund the military to pay attention to these threat assessments. So who we elect to Congress really matters.

[00:19:25] Music Interlude.

Beth [00:19:33] Let's take a second to talk about the House and the Senate. There are 34 Senate seats on the ballot this November, and it is a very tough environment for Democrats, mainly because when Joe Manchin retired in West Virginia that seat lost real hope of being held by a Democrat, at least in the short term. I don't want to write West Virginia off in the long term. There's some very interesting progressive things happening in West Virginia. But in the short term, Jim Justice, the governor of West Virginia, is almost certain to win that seat. So that means that Democrats need to really run the table to hold on to the seats, the 23 seats of theirs that are on the ballot right now, and probably make some progress in some Republican areas, too.

Sarah [00:20:16] Now, all is not lost because we do have some competitive seats where the Democratic incumbents are running pretty strong. I'm not particularly worried about Bob Casey in Pennsylvania. I'm not worried about Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin. I'm not even really worried about Jacky Rosen in Nevada. But yes, because of the West Virginia, it's tougher. So shall we go through some of the more competitive either open seat because we have a couple open ones, and even ones where the incumbents are in very competitive races.

Beth [00:20:51] So in Michigan, we have an open seat. Representative Mike Rogers and Representative Elissa Slotkin are running for that seat. Slotkin is currently up about five points in the Quinnipiac poll. Well, that is encouraging. I think so, too. A lot of money going into this race. And I wanted to share this relatively new 30 second abortion ad that's being played there in Michigan, because I think it tells you what the strategy looks like here.

WinSenate Ad [00:21:16] We were so thrilled we were pregnant with our second child, but my uterus ruptured. I was losing so much blood and I needed an abortion to save my life. Mike Rogers said he supports all restrictions on abortion and he backed four bills to ban abortion with no exceptions, even to save a woman's life. My husband would have been a widower and my son would have been motherless. And that should not be up to Mike Rogers. WinSenate is responsible for the content of this ad.

Sarah [00:21:46] I needed an abortion to save my life. We are going through a dramatic and accelerated shift in language on the use of that word, and I am here for it.

Beth [00:21:54] I think that reframing is needed so that we're having an argument about the same things. I think we've had a couple of decades, maybe 50 years of not arguing about the same things. And starting with the Harris campaign and reverberating around the United States, I think candidates are doing a better job saying we need to talk about what the law looks like in this area and the consequences of law. And I think this ad is a really effective way to do that. We have another open race in Arizona where Kyrsten Sinema has chosen not to run again.

Sarah [00:22:29] Stepping away, not running again. Super interesting.

Beth [00:22:31] So her seat is being sought by Representative Ruben Gallego. And Kari Lake is back again. Kari Lake who just doesn't go away, she just keeps coming around. Right now Gallego is up six points, according to FiveThirtyEight. Trump is looking pretty solid in Arizona, so Kari Lake is dramatically underperforming Trump in Arizona.

Sarah [00:22:54] Kari Lake, I need you to take Sinema's lead and go find something else to do with your life. But I want to talk about this over the course of this down-ballot conversation and absolutely over the course of the conversation about North Carolina as we get closer to that and these other down-ballot races. I mean, it's just so easy to take them one for one and say like, wow, Kari Lake, quite a candidate. Or wow, Robinson, quite a candidate. But at what point are we going to say, well, it seems like we have a pattern of behavior inside particularly the MAGA Republican side of the party picking real stinkers for the primary and then the voters solidifying those choices.

Beth [00:23:44] David French had a great piece about this over the weekend and he wrote, "In nine years, countless Republican primary voters have moved from voting for Trump in spite of his transgressions to rejecting anyone who doesn't transgress." If you're not transgressive, you're suspicious. Decency is countercultural in the Republican Party. It's seen as a rebuke of Trump.

Sarah [00:24:06] That's really good. Okay, so what do we do about that? Because I am not a Republican, but I don't think this particular doubling down on transgressiveness is good for anyone. Certainly not a winning strategy. Let's put it that way.

Beth [00:24:24] I don't know what we'll do about it. I don't know how we got here necessarily. Even as I can trace it, as David French does this piece, you can trace it. You get it. I read and I nod along and I think, okay, I see that. I don't know what the goal is anymore because consistently trump-like candidates have lost. They performed poorly in competitive races. Now, maybe part of what's going on here is the recognition that we have more races that are not competitive than are. That's true in local races. It's true in House races. The House of Representatives, 435 seats, 67 competitive races. And so what feels like a message that is sinking in to those of us who love politics and obsess about those competitive races every cycle, is not really a broader message to the MAGA base.

Sarah [00:25:24] And it's not all the way across the board because the two super close races in Ohio with Sherrod Brown defending his incumbency and in Montana with Jon Tester defending his incumbency, those aren't super MAGA candidates. They seem to have gotten it together and picked more reasonable candidates there, don't you think?

Beth [00:25:42] I don't know that I would say that about Bernie Moreno in Ohio. But I do think Tim Sheehy was a very strategic choice in kind of an older school mode. Former Navy Seal, very good looking guy. An executive of a business. Lots of the things that you would traditionally see in a Senate candidate. And the Republican Party wanted that over Matt Rosendale, who sits in Congress for Montana now, but is known to be kind of unpredictable, more in the Marjorie Taylor Greene mold.

Sarah [00:26:16] And that race is close. I'm terrified for Jon Tester.

Beth [00:26:19] I am worried that Jon Tester could lose.

Sarah [00:26:22] But I still don't think even if Jon Tester loses, they're going to be like, okay, we're going to go back to this way.

Beth [00:26:26] And I can't decide what matters. Do we think there will be a material difference in a Senator Sheehy versus a Senator Rosendale? I'm not sure that there will be. I just don't know.

Sarah [00:26:38] Yeah, it's hard to look at these races. It's hard to look at Maryland. I mean, Larry Hogan is putting in a fight. I still don't think he will win, but it's just so inconsistent. And I think that speaks to what we've said over and over again. Which is we talk about the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, but the inconsistency of these candidates probably speaks to the fact that that's really not true. There isn't some one big smoke-filled room, (the infamous smoke-filled room) making these calls. Even in Mar a Lago, there's not even a room at Mar a Lago where we're making these calls.

Beth [00:27:19] Yeah, it's not true on either side of the aisle. There is a world of difference between someone who has been out and involved in campus protests and a candidate like Alyssa Slotkin. There is a real difference between a Larry Hogan candidate and a Bernie Moreno. So Larry Hogan is the former governor of Maryland, known as a fairly moderate Republican, has been critical of Trump, has been a very popular governor in a typically blue state. And Bernie Marino is endorsed by Donald Trump, really embraces the MAGA identity, talks about immigrants with a lot of fear. So from a personality standpoint, you have very different people. My question is, how differently would they behave as U.S. senators in terms of votes? Fifteen percent of Harris voters in Maryland are planning to split their ticket and vote for Larry Hogan. And I understand that. So it's tough.

[00:28:11] But then again, I think, if I'm tempted to split my ticket and vote for somebody like Larry Hogan, what material difference do I think that will make in today's climate where people vote in such blocs? You really always come back to Murkowski and Collins and sometimes Mitt Romney, who are willing to vote across the aisle. Occasionally, you get a Josh Hawley, Elizabeth Warren team up on some kind of niche issue. Those things are important. But overall, when we're talking about leadership on the world stage in response to the threat environment we just discussed, when we're talking about funding the government, when we're talking about confirming federal judges who will have lifetime appointments and who we trust to exercise the responsibilities of those offices with the seriousness required, I don't know how to think about this anymore. I don't know how to think about split ticket voting anymore.

Sarah [00:29:03] Yeah, because I don't know when we're looking at a House and a Senate under any rubric that's going to be very close. I mean, look, I hope there's a blue wave, obviously, and I can squint my eyes and create a scenario where that happens. But these are just going to be very close. And so then I think, do we need to have a conversation about the filibuster? If we're ever going to find a path to action that speaks to the threat that we just talked about in the first bloc, looking at these races, looking at how few of them are competitive and looking about the trajectory of the Republican Party right now, I don't know. I think that's why some of these governor's races are interesting, because then it's a different calculus. It's not a congressional calculus, but it still matters. It still matters a great deal, particularly when you're talking about reproductive rights. So I don't know. I feel like the headline of this episode is it's a mess.

Beth [00:30:02] Well, the big mess is North Carolina, which we have alluded to a couple of times. I think it's worth spending a minute with the fact that before last Thursday, we knew that Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson had-- I'm just going to describe them as non-mainstream views and extremely derogatory comments on the record over and over about Jewish people, about Muslim people, about women, about transgender people, about gay and lesbian people. We have known who he is. And then on Thursday, CNN told us in excruciating detail who he has been on the Internet. And that detail, I guess, has been one too many for people who worked on his campaign. I read this morning he lost all but three members of his campaign staff and is having to replace them quickly. And Republicans seem to be trying to just read the room about what's going to happen here. Did you see J.D. Vance this weekend saying, well, I don't not believe Mark Robinson. I don't believe him. I don't not believe him. This is a quote, "I just think you have to let these things sometimes play out in the court of public opinion."

Sarah [00:31:21] I'm just going to say something. What's the difference between we're not going to-- that that sort of very weird, confusing language and how many far left groups are saying we're not going to endorse Kamala Harris, but don't vote for Trump and don't vote for a third party. I mean, I see a through line there.

Beth [00:31:41] Though the through line is not leadership. That's for sure.

Sarah [00:31:45] You know what it is, it's not acknowledging that there are hard choices to make. When it's a mess, we have to make hard choices. That's what I'm missing from a lot of the political discussion. And that's what David French is trying to get at with these primary voters. Sometimes you just have to make a hard choice when things are a mess. Everybody, circle up. Sometimes you don't just get to pick the transgressive guy because he makes you feel good. Sometimes you have to make a hard choice about how you think can actually win and lead. Because this is politics. There are stakes. We need people who can actually win and lead. And it feels like a little bit everyone's lost sight of that.

Beth [00:32:25] And lead is the important piece of that to me. I don't know why you want to be the vice president of the United States if you think you just have to let things play out in the court of public opinion. Well, you can do that from home and have a job that's a lot less stressful and that carries much less weight and responsibility if you just want to let things play out, if you're just going to see how people feel at the end of the day, why do you want to run for office? This is the mystery to me about the way that Republicans in Congress have behaved for years now. And I'm not going to both sides this because I have watched Democrats step up and say no to their base over and over again. In this election Kamala Harris is practically running as a McCain Republican in so many respects. And that takes leadership, that takes standing up and saying to people, I hear you and I care about you. But I know what this moment needs and I will do what this moment requires of me. When you can't even say, wow, I hope Mark Robinson is a changed man, but if these facts are substantiated and they appear to be, this is really unacceptable. Why can't you just say that?

Sarah [00:33:35] Because they don't want to lead. I think you're exactly right. I don't know if this is our media environment. I don't know if it's social media and the intensity of the short form video. I'm really coming around to my 15 year old who says short form video is the devil. It just erodes our brains and messes with our opinions. The big narrative right now is it messes with your dopamine receptors. But it just feels very much like we're stuck in a in a warped universe created by short form video. Like everything exists in 30 second clips. Well, you can't lead through the complexity of the challenges in front of us as both a world and a nation in 30 second clips. It's like the cable news. I don't like cable news, but it is a little bit more than the talking point, right? You have to continue to have even a two to three minute, five minute conversation with the anchor, which is why he keeps getting caught in these terrible exchanges with like Kaitlan Collins, where she says, "So if somebody breaks in, they should go to jail? Okay. Well, somebody broke in the capital and you're saying they shouldn't go to jail."

[00:34:47] So that's what it feels like, because that's the justification I hear from the far left, the sense of like, well, these images from Gaza are coming across our screen and we can't justify that. You don't have to justify it. You have to acknowledge that this is the hard choice in front of you. But moments like what's happening in Gaza and Sudan, moments like what's happening with climate change, both in our country and around the world, require acknowledging that even in the face of a hard and disappointing choice, you still got to make one. That's what leadership is. And leadership is making a choice to vote, to. That's leadership as well. Back to what we were talking about with the citizenship and the patriotism and understanding that there are stakes here and we are fighting for something together is important. And it just feels missing. It feels really like it's missing.

Beth [00:35:42] And also understand that the leaders themselves are disappointed in the choices. No one is more heartbroken. And I truly believe this. And I believe this going all the way back to George W Bush. The people who have the most information and who feel the weight of these choices, however they come out, whether you agree or disagree with what they did and whether history proves them right or wrong, I believe that that toll is real for the vast majority of people who occupy these offices. And that's why I look at the information that comes out about Donald Trump, about Mark Robinson, about J.D. Vance, and think you are not the kind of person that I want to hold this office. I want you to be happy, well, safe, live your best life, but don't take on a leadership position when it seems to me that your whole career is built on figuring out what you can sell to people moment by moment and who you can throw under the bus in service of making that sale to the people that you want with you.

[00:36:49] I want people who are heartbroken by the choices in front of them, who can look at these situations where there is not a good answer. There's not. If you think there's a good answer about Gaza, congratulations on knowing everything. Because most of the people who have spent their lives devoted to this region will tell you that we are many, many years from any kind of peace and reconciliation there. Many, many years. And that getting there is going to be excruciatingly difficult. So congratulations if you know everything and you think it's simple. But that's not the kind of person I want in this office. I don't want a Donald Trump who says, "I don't have to have an articulated understanding of this region or a plan for it. I can just tell you that Putin wouldn't have done it if I were in office." That's not good enough.

Sarah [00:37:39] Yeah. If you think that it's excruciating to have this information pour across your phone in short form video, imagine what it's like to be Antony Blinken to be there, see it, get details that never cross your phone, and then be responsible for making decisions to try to end it. I cannot fathom what that must be like. And I'm just really struggling because we are at a very difficult place. I think about the George W Bush presidency. I think about how I personally struggled with our role and just wanting us to get out of there. And now we are out of there, and the suffering and the complexity is still ever present in both Afghanistan and Iraq. And just because they're not on that list that we talked about with the United Nations, still doesn't mean that isn't true. Because I think we have to acknowledge that we have stepped back. We saw that our presence and our leadership around the world was not getting the results that we wanted. And we have stepped back and that's not getting the results we want either.

[00:38:56] And so we are at an inflection point. And when we're at an inflection point with climate change, with world conflict, with our own economy, that we would even consider someone who has no plan, who exhibits no leadership, who can't even answer a question about daycare and how he's going to drop the cost of daycare, and even have serious manner while we're talking about a party that nominate someone like Mark Robinson to be the governor of the great state of North Carolina, a state that I care for deeply, it's really frustrating. And so that's why I am being particularly hard on my side. I don't want to hear it. I really don't. It's so infuriating to talk about protest votes or your frustration with the Biden administration. Are we living in the same reality? Sometimes it feels like we're not. And that's not anybody's fault. I get that that is a product of lots and lots of changes that are accelerating as well. But it is maddening. It is truly maddening.

Beth [00:40:23] At the same time, hundreds of Republicans who have had the responsibility, who did sit in the chair, who got the intelligence briefings, who made the hard calls, have said, "I am going to vote for Kamala Harris, and I encourage other people to do that, too." I really do think the Dick Cheney endorsement is extremely significant.

Sarah [00:40:42] Yeah, it was like 700 security officials or something this weekend. It was a huge number.

Beth [00:40:46] So many people who really know the stakes and who have taken the job seriously and who you might think handled the jobs poorly, but who I do think have their hearts broken by the decisions in front of them and did their best and cared about the country and probably have a string of regrets as well as a string of things that they would say, no, I made the right decision and the wrong decisions have been made since then, and that's why we're here. We can all argue about that because none of this gets fixed. I am not going to vote for Kamala Harris because I think she is going to fix the world. I don't think in four years the decks will be cleared and all these things will be neatly resolved and there will be nothing new. That's not life. I just want to vote for people who are grounded and healthy enough in who they are to devote, yes, their entire being to these jobs for the terms that they're in office, who will put in the work to learn everything that they can and have every decision be as informed as possible and to reckon with how impossibly hard every decision they make will have to be.

[00:42:01] I struggle with how much we need to know about each other for these offices. I struggled over the weekend with the reporting about RFK Jr and [inaudible] Nazi. I struggle with every story about RFK. I just think how much more do we need to see here? I struggled when we were talking about Fanny Willis and Nathan Wade. All of these sorts of personal scandals, I have a moment when I think, is this my business? I don't know that it is. I don't know that running for office or being a reporter or in any way touching politics makes everything about your life everybody's business. I really don't. And the older I get, the more I feel that way. It is the volume and the tenor around Mark Robinson and around Donald Trump that make me convinced that we know enough. We have enough information to understand how these folks will approach these jobs. And that approach and that personal groundedness and that ability to devote your whole self to it is not present there.

Sarah [00:43:00] When he did the Truth Social post all caps paragraph long, women are worse off, women are suffering. Like screaming through this post at a time when Israel is escalating, when the United Nations is coming together to really discuss important things like adding more members to the Security Council. And he's screaming at women about how stupid they are for even considering voting for Kamala Harris because they were better off under him? I told my dad who is a MAGA Republican, I said, "If you texted this to me in the middle of a political conversation, I would come check on you." This is not serious. And we live in serious times. And so often you'll hear, well, I don't like the way he talks. Or I wish he'd stop doing that. But that's his job. Part of the job as president is to influence people through your words. And you want him to stop talking and tweeting? I don't get it. I'm confused by your approach to him.

[00:44:02] You don't get to compartmentalize people. You get the whole of who they are. And I don't think we need to know everything about each other, but we need to know something. I was engaged in short form video; let me just confess up front. So watching these two young people, a young white man who was arguing for Harris and a young woman of color who was arguing for Trump. And the young man said, "Well, character is most important to me," and he sort of outlaid that trump led an insurrection on the Capitol. He is a convicted felon. He is thrice divorced. He admits to cheating on his wives. All these things. And then we can get the policy. And then she said, "Well, I'm concerned with Kamala Harris because she slept her way to the top and we all know it." And I thought, what is happening?

[00:44:51] She brought up Willie Brown and something about she knew she was using a test that was false positive, that was sending people to jail. And I was like, holy crap. What is going on? We have lost the plot. We have lost the plot. First of all, I really wanted to pull this very beautiful young woman aside and say, take a beat and think about what it means for you to accuse another attractive woman of sleeping her way to the top. Just take one second, one millisecond and think about what that means. It was just so disorienting. That's the word. That's the word; it's just disorienting. To see the stakes, to understand who he is and how he acts and to keep getting this is a deadlocked race. It's like being in the upside down.

Beth [00:45:43] Well, it is a deadlocked race and control of the house is deadlocked. No one can predict right now who is going to control the house. It is a 50-50 knife's edge proposition. And control of the House is about funding the government. It is about what legislation will be brought to the floor at all-- not just what will pass, but will get a chance to pass. Control of the Senate is going to be very tough for Democrats to maintain. Very, very close races there. So please just go vote for the whole ballot. Please don't leave any races blank. Please don't sit it out. Please don't waste your opportunity to be a leader, to be one voice in the country, expressing your vision for where you'd like us to go. Even if the options, as they always will be, are imperfect. Even if you look at it and think, I wish I had a different choice here, these are the choices and these are the stakes. And so as early voting starts in many states across the country right now, we just really want you to invest your time in these down ballot races as well as the presidential.

[00:46:54] Music Interlude.

[00:46:54] Sarah, we always end our shows talking about something Outside of Politics. And because we both have school aged children; we are in the swirl of school pictures and school fundraisers. And I have spent an obscene amount of money supporting these activities over the past couple of days. And I just wanted to spend a second and say, I'm not complaining about our schools. They're great. Love them. I appreciate the teachers, the administrators, the parents, everybody who puts these programs together. I understand that our schools are not well funded for the needs that they are being asked to meet. I'm happy to contribute. I don't know who all this is for. I don't know who the contest are for and the merch for what you win and the $29.99 digital download of the pictures. I just don't know who any of it's for.

Sarah [00:47:40] I want to say upfront that I know this is Outside Politics, but we have talked as a team and I would like to do a big show at Pantsuit Politics about over consumption. I find, back to the short form video critique I had earlier in the show, that this is like the beating heart of the issue. That parents are both a captive audience and a vulnerable audience because the stakes are high and you feel like you want to get additional control. And capitalism tells us that that is the path. And so there's just this level of consumption, the level of spending around sports, around fundraisers, around homecoming and extracurricular activities, around school pictures. One of our friends sent us a mood board from a preschool about the theme of the pictures, understanding, I guess you're going to go out and purchase all new clothes for your preschooler’s school picture. We cannot buy our way to happiness. I don't know if we need to say that more often, but you cannot actually buy your way to happiness and control. Just one more time. You cannot buy your way to happiness and control.

Beth [00:49:09] I want to hover on the preschool mood board for a second because this mood board was comprised of clothing that those kids were not going to be able to wear all day at school. It was not just like a color or a theme. It was like layers of tulle skirts and little bow ties. Clothes that kids can't play in. And so that brings me again to like, who's this for? And I understand that we're all looking for ways to make life fun and enjoyable and special. I've been struggling with this overconsumption idea as I think about my murder mystery party coming up, which I'm very excited about. I'm so excited to play with friends. I think it's going to be great. But then I think about how much should I spend on decorations? How much stuff should I buy for one party? Holiday decor that is produced in a totally irresponsible way, that I'm probably going to end up disposing of very quickly. That doesn't seem right to me. And so I'm kind of trying to balance, like, how do I do this thing that's special and fun and the kind of thing that you look forward to and that connects you with other people and makes life enjoyable and then balance it against a lot of our really off the rails expectations about what's required for something to be special. That was a long way of saying, I get that somebody thought this will be so special to have these preschool pictures done this way, but at what cost? At what cost in terms of dollars and energy and all kinds of things are we doing all of this?

Sarah [00:50:44] Well, look, I don't think it's unrelated to the conversation we had about the stakes in the world and the stakes in our country that we are taking control esthetically because so much of this is about esthetics.

Beth [00:51:01] It is.

Sarah [00:51:01] Straight up. The esthetics of the party, the esthetic of the photos, the esthetics of our home, the esthetics of our wardrobe, the esthetics of our Stanley Cups. There's a lot of esthetics on all this. And I love esthetic. I'm a very esthetic person,. But a long time ago I stopped reading beauty magazines because I realized I left every magazine with an intense sense of lack and scarcity. That I was failing in the trends I was hitting and the essentials I had purchased and the makeup trends, hair trends, everything. I was just not hitting the mark. And that is the sense I get when I go to Instagram now as well. But don't worry, Amazon is there to send me something quickly that will fix that problem. I've got an Amazon dupe for the fashion trend. I've got an Amazon organizational solution.

[00:51:56] I've got an Amazon trick to make this moment in my child's schedule easier and more fun. And it's everywhere. It's in the fundraisers. It's in the teacher presence. It's in the school pictures. It's in the afterschool moments. It's in the morning routines. It's everywhere. And used to especially even just like a school picture day outfit or a first day of school outfit or a homecoming dress outfit, you were limited to by what you could go physically purchase. Well, that's no longer true. And weirdly, now the fact that we have the Internet as an option to solve these problems means that all our solutions look the same. The hair is the same. The dress is the same. The fundraisers are the same. The school picture mood boards are the same. Like, what are we doing? What are we doing?

Beth [00:52:46] And please hear me. I don't engage in this conversation from a place of judgment. I'm in it. I'm struggling through all of this alongside everybody else. I feel these pressures. I succumb to them often. Sometimes I don't even recognize it until after the fact. This is a present struggle for me, not a place where I'm looking down on anybody else's choices. Because I don't know. I really do believe in creating special moments. I love parties. I love events. I love esthetics too. I love travel. There are all these places where you're like, man, this is also fun. I do want to do it. I want to be part of it. And I don't want to infuse an outsized sense of heaviness around every choice because of the environmental impact or because of the fiscal impact or whatever it is.

[00:53:39] So I just am really wrestling with some place of balance. I try to achieve it with the school fundraisers by saying, you know what, I'm just going to just donate an amount and bounce or I'm going to donate my time here or whatever. I want to contribute. And this is what's really tricky to me about the school pictures and the fundraisers. They are an invitation to contribute, but they are wrapped in all of this entertainment and taking too, so that it's not a pure contribution. It's sell this many items so that you can win this prize. And I appreciate the people who are trying to make it fun and exciting. And I get those instincts. And then I also I'm sitting here wrestling with them, too.

Sarah [00:54:27] Yeah. I'm in it, too. I'm really convicted about particularly the short form video in my closet. I have more clothes than I can wear. I have clothes I love and I don't ever get to them before the season's over because I have too many damn clothes. And [inaudible] I don't get dressed up that often. And so I'm really trying to think about that. What am I doing? Why am I purchasing so quickly? I really, really, really want to detach myself from fast fashion. Now, I wore an Amazon dupe on Saturday night. Got lots of compliments on it. So let me just confess that straight up front, but I really am trying to stop. I just want to stop. I don't want to buy anything else from Target or Walmart or Amazon or Old Navy. I want to stop. I really do. But it's like there's so many of these things. And I have stopped largely with the fundraisers. My kids know. I'm not doing it. I'm not going to do it. And you know what? My life is better. And so I am trying to really find ways to just get off that wheel. But it's not an individual choice.

[00:55:33] The reason there's no judgment is because this isn't about us as individuals. This is a societal situation. I think so often about another thing we wanted to talk about on the show. Parents are under pressure. Parents are struggling. And so much of this it's like we need a parent president. We need leadership. We need people to say we're not going to do this anymore. I think you've seen a lot of this around phones in school. I think you're seeing a lot of leadership around this issue where principals and teachers are saying enough is enough. And I don't know where we find that space, where we find that voice in parenting for people to say, enough with the sports leagues. They're making our families miserable and they're excluding people at the bottom of the economic scale.

[00:56:30] I really don't know where we get that. Who can step forward and disrupt this multimillion dollar industry, because that's what it is, that has a stranglehold on all of us. Because it's too hard to ask individual families to say, well, my kid loves baseball, but we're not going to do it. I don't know where we find that leadership space. I mean, not for nothing, in a paradoxical situation, I do think short form video could be it. I think you get enough viral parenting influencers that decide what I want to use this for is to disrupt these pressures on parents instead of using it as an affiliate bonanza. Maybe, but I don't see those people yet.

Beth [00:57:15] Well, the incentives are all messed up for that. There are no incentives for that. I have to check myself. Instagram lately has been showing me a whole lot of short form videos. And I'm saying Instagram is showing me- I'm looking. I'm opening the app and scrolling. It's on me too, but it's a dance. So the algorithm is now showing me because I watch them a lot of videos from women who have very, very large families and how they are feeding these very large families and how they get organized for these very large families. And it's almost like the abundance orientation of a charcuterie board blown up. I love the think pieces about the rise in popularity of charcuterie boards and how we just like to see a whole bunch of stuff on a plate even if only a third of it is going to be eaten. We just like to put out a whole bunch of stuff. And I feel like these large family posts are, for me, that same vibe. I have to stop and remember; I don't have nine people living here. I'm not feeding nine people for dinner. So that's cool what she does and I admire her, but it's not relevant to me. I don't need to click the affiliate link because I don't have to feed nine people tonight. But it's just hard to remember when you're sort of in the scroll that our lives are different and so they call for different resources.

Sarah [00:58:40] Well, and you don't need a beautiful under the sink cupboard. Human history went on without beautiful esthetic under the sink cupboards are beautiful esthetic laundry rooms. That was not a thing. We made it up. And I'm a person who likes a clean, organized house. I am. But you just get in these places where you see enough of it. There's a fashion influencer I really love. I really like her. I love her style. And she will do pieces where she'll walk down a stair and she'll use one piece of clothing and she'll keep one piece of clothing the same and she'll switch out the outfits around this clothing. So she'll walk down the stairs and she'll do nine outfits. Where am I going to wear nine outfits? You know what I mean? In the course of a fall where the weather is about right, am I going to wear the same skirt with nine different things to church or to dinner with my family? Again, where am I going to wear all this?

[00:59:49] Even if you worked in an office and you had to get dressed up every day, you're going to wear this skirt once a week, nine times and play around with it? Maybe. Maybe you are. I don't know. It really is hard, I think, because we don't want to think about how would this work in our real life because we're there, because we don't want to think about our real life. We want to think our real life, but better. We want to think about our real life with less financial stress, with less stress around our kids, with less pain in our bodies and less aging parents. That's the beauty of a short form video. They don't give you time to think about the complexity of your real life. You can just focus on the cleanness and the beauty of an under the sink cupboard that looks like no one lives there. I think that's the intoxication at play.

Beth [01:00:45] Yeah. And again, I don't think it's an all or nothing proposition. If you love having a beautiful under the sink cabinet, I don't have any judgment of that. What I'm struggling with is finding the places where I say no, or less, or I don't need that. I'm struggling. When I get the school pictures and I think I could take a better photo on my iPhone for free instead of paying $29.99 for the digital download, I still do it. Because I think, well, probably the school gets the money from this and I do want to have the collection of all the school pictures. For what? I don't know. Do I care about the collection of my school photos? No, I do not. But I don't have any breaks on myself right now. And I see in the big picture that struggle with where are the breaks on this? Where do we say, yes, enjoy your life. Do the things that you love. Have the moment. Have the charcuterie board. Sure. And then what's the hedging force with all of this? And I just don't know.

Sarah [01:01:51] Well, and politically, I struggle because I hear people complaining about Biden nomics and I see a massive amount of abundance coming over my social media feed. Abundance in food and charcuterie boards and parties and Stanley Cups and pets and their lifestyle and just everything. It's just everything is a lot, all the places. And so I kind of feel like the economy and the cost is someone else's fault, but all I do and see is a lot of consumption flowing across everyone's lives. And so it's just this really weird paradox that feels like a major source of tension inside our lives and our choices and our political conversations.

Beth [01:02:46] I'm sure we'll keep talking about all of this and we'd love to hear your thoughts. We're so glad that you joined us today. Thank you for sharing your scarce time with us. We know that time is the one thing that you cannot go buy more of, and that you spend some of it with us means a lot to us. We'll be back with you on Friday. We're going to talk about some ballot referendums across states, including a big one here in our home state of Kentucky. Until then, have the best week available to you.

[01:03:07] 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. Emily Helen Olson. Barry Kaufman. Katherine Vollmer. Laurie LaDow. Lily McClure. Linda Daniel. The Pentons. Tracey Puthoff. Sarah Ralph. Jeremy Sequoia. Katie Stigers. Karin True. Onica Ulveling. Nick and Alysa Villeli. Amy Whited. Lee Chaix McDonough. Morgan McHugh. Jen Ross. Sabrina Drago. Becca Dorval. Christina Quartararo. Shannon Frawley. Jessica Whitehead. Samantha Chalmers. Crystal Kemp. Megan Hart. The Lebo Family. The Adair Family. Genny Francis. Leighanna Pillgram-Larsen. The Munene Family. Ashley Rene. Michelle Palacios.

Sarah: Jeff Davis. Melinda Johnston. Michelle Wood. Nichole Berklas. Paula Bremer and Tim Miller.

Maggie PentonSeptember 24, 20242 Comments