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All right, listeners. Well, you can weigh in and tell us what you thought about last week. Nate seems to be quite dedicated to the position that nothing happened last week. That's a straw man.
All right, let's dive in. We don't have that much time. We've got to cover five topics. Are we in couples counseling, Galen? Nate, I value your opinion. You are heard. I want you to know that what you say matters even if we disagree and that the disagreement comes from a place of respect and not from a place of distrust. I appreciate it. That's what I need to hear. Okay, now I'm in a better mood.
Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk. A lot happened while I was out last week. This seems to be a trend for some reason. Senators Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer announced that they reached an agreement on a climate tax and health care bill, an outcome that seemed unlikely just weeks prior. Congress passed the CHIPS Act, adding to its now sizable list of successful bipartisan legislation.
Also, a debate broke out over whether the United States is currently in a recession after second quarter annualized GDP numbers showed a 0.9% contraction. That marks two consecutive quarters of contraction, a common definition for recession.
In addition to that, the Washington Post reported for the first time that former President Trump's actions are part of the Department of Justice's January 6th criminal investigation. And former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang joined forces with two centrist groups to relaunch a third party that he started last year, the Forward Party.
Usually we focus on just a couple topics on Mondays, but today we're going to do things a little differently and try to do a roundup of everything that happened last week. Talk about what it all says about our politics and maybe upcoming elections. And here with me to do all of that is Editor-in-Chief Nate Silver. Hello, Nate. Hello, everybody. Also here with us is Sarah Frostenson, Politics Editor. Hello, Sarah. How's it going?
Good. Hey, y'all. We're not going to quite dive into it all today because we have other things to talk about. But I should say that the start of August means that the primary calendar is heating up again. There are elections on Tuesday in Arizona, Missouri, Michigan, Kansas, Washington, and Tennessee. We're going to be live blogging those elections on Tuesday night so you can tune in on the website. And then, of course, check your podcast feeds on Wednesday for a roundup of what happened.
All right, let's get to today's topics. Last Wednesday night, shortly after the Senate passed the Chips and Science Act, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Joe Manchin announced that they had reached a deal on a $700 billion climate tax and health care bill called the Inflation Reduction Act.
The details are still being worked out, but in broad strokes, it would spend $369 billion on energy and climate with the goal of reducing emissions 40% below 2005 levels by 2030. It would reduce the deficit by $300 billion, allow Medicare to negotiate the costs of some prescription drugs,
extend Affordable Care Act subsidies for another three years, and end a corporate tax loophole. All right, so maybe not to be redundant here, since Nate doesn't think anything happened last week, but how significant of a piece of legislation is this in terms of costs and scope? Before we get into, like, the politics of it all.
It's big. Like, you know, this I did really think was big news last week. And yes, the politics of it is that it took Democrats, Republicans, everyone by surprise. But, you know, it's not the initial ballpark figure that Democrats were pushing for way back in 2021. But,
They didn't think anything was on the table. And now they're going to pass something presumably on climate change. There's, you know, I think a number of possible ways that this bill could still tank, which we'll talk about. But in and of itself, it's a big deal. Back in my day, a $700 billion bill was considered a lot of money. Exactly. Exactly. Wait, are you just drunk? Is that what we're dealing with? Not yet. Not yet.
So, you know, give me a little more context. No, it is. I mean, we can have a broader discussion about kind of what the Biden agenda has accomplished. Right. But if you have this plus the covid spending bill, plus the infrastructure bill, plus a few bipartisan things like the guns bill and the chips bill, then it starts to become like a.
fairly weighty agenda for the first two years of a presidency, which is people covering politics. I mean, we're not economists, though I have my degree in economics, right? That's kind of, I think, more of the narrative story, at least. Also interesting kind of what winds up being prioritized in this bill and what doesn't. Interesting in what way?
Efforts to expand the welfare state with new types of tax credits and so forth are not things that survive, right? It's more kind of reinforcing existing programs plus climate spending. You know, it is, I think, interesting at least that if Manchin was one of the veto points that classically West Virginia is a fossil fuel state and the fact that he's actually more on board with the climate provisions and with some of the other stuff is, I think, just
kind of interesting. I'm not sure you would have- Like a child tax credit, do you mean? Yeah. I mean, I think partly it's, you know, my theory is it's partly has to do with like, what have been long-term democratic priorities that have buy-in from interest groups and from centers themselves, right? And climate has kind of been on the radar longer. I thought some of the problem with Build Back Better, by the way, I don't know if we should be using these terms. I mean, it's a disputed fact whether the bill would
increase, decrease, or have no effect on inflation, right? So I always feel a little bit weird about like, you know. That was going to be my second question. Is the Inflation Reduction Act an accurate name? Not clear. Not clear, I guess, is the answer. But I think there is maybe a lesson here that things that are longstanding priorities, right? Healthcare, climate are certainly longstanding priorities of the Democratic Party. A child tax credit felt like it was not something that was discussed that much on the campaign trail in
2020. I thought one problem with Build Back Better is that Biden seemed to invent a whole bunch of social programs that maybe people liked, maybe they didn't, but that they hadn't really spent much time trying to build urgency for. I thought that was kind of a mistake. It was kind of a laundry list. And so this is like a more tidy and efficient bill in some ways.
Yeah, I mean, I would add two things to Nate's point. First being that, right, climate change is something that is hugely important among Democrats. I've been really surprised to the extent to which they rate it as a top issue. You don't see that among independent voters and Republicans.
But for Democrats, it's really important. I also think with this bill versus like the child tax care credit, Manchin could come from a point of leverage and negotiate more with like fossil fuel industries and get the kind of provisions in the bill itself and kind of bring home the bacon to West Virginia. And that was a big way in which this bill changed from the way it was initially written back in 2021.
And just I think there was more room to negotiate if you're someone like Manchin on this. Right. Like part of what he got was an agreement that there would be an expedited approval process for infrastructure that could carry, you know, natural gas pipelines, for example, things like that.
I think is what you're talking about, Sarah, right? Right. And drilling that Biden had said was off the table is very much in this bill. So it's something where it's advancing priorities of the Biden administration, but still very much also accomplishing things that were important to Manchin. We talked a little bit about the intraparty dynamics here. When we look at the broader public, is this a popular set of proposals?
I don't know if there's been enough time to take polls on this new bill. In general, I don't think polling on Build Back Better was terribly useful because people don't know what's in it. Actually, some of the stuff that got axed out, like the child tax credit, was not actually that popular necessarily. Nate, let me read to you what I have from Gallup. And you tell me if you think
We know the issue polling is complicated. And so I'm curious what you think of how Gallup puts this together. They asked a bunch of policy-related questions to climate, and it seemed like they were pretty popular. And this was in March of 2022. Providing tax credits to Americans who install clean energy systems like solar power in their homes. In favor, 89%, oppose 11%. Providing tax incentives to businesses to promote their use of wind, solar, and nuclear power.
In favor, 75%. Opposed, 24%.
setting higher fuel efficiency standards for cars, trucks, and buses. In favor, 71%, opposed, 28%. This goes on down, but, you know, maybe another example of one of the things in this bill, providing tax credits to individuals who purchase electric vehicles, 61% in favor, 38% opposed. It seems like a lot of this is pretty popular, but we can always ask the question, like, is this a good or bad use of polling? No, I think it's probably...
Right. But also people like to spend money when you're not telling them how they're spending it. I think the ways this bill raises money from are probably ways that are not unpopular, at least. You have a corporate minimum tax. You have effect the carry interest loophole. You have greater IRS enforcement, supposedly, which is this big ambiguous thing. If you wind up getting audited as a result, it probably won't be very popular. People don't know that in advance, though. Better watch out, Nate. Yeah.
All that time in Vegas. Let's not joke about that, Galen. No jokes. Hey, IRS commissioners, if you're listening, anyway. If you're listening, don't audit me. Now you're definitely going to get audited, Nate. No, look, I think this bill, okay, first of all, I think
This is not going to be a bill that causes Democrats big popularity problems. That's the conservative way to put it. I also don't think it's going to be like, oh my god, the Inflation Reduction Act passed. Let's go crazy. But I do think it certainly serves to motivate or at least give one less excuse to Democratic voters to
who say, oh, Biden hasn't done anything. It helps Biden with his base. I think helping with the base is less important than helping with swing voters, even in midterm election. Again, I think even without this bill, Biden had a decent set of legislative accomplishments, but this definitely could change the media coverage a little bit. Democrats can say, we've delivered on these priorities. I think it's not the kind of thing that's going to
cause a big backlash, I don't think. Yeah, I mean, I think Nate's right in the sense that this bill is very much designed for Democrats, right? Like it's passing a number one priority for them. I'm a little less sure about the backlash just in the sense Pew had this poll from May and it was asking Americans, you know, do you approve of how the Biden administration is handling climate policies?
And 82 percent of Republicans said no. So, I mean, depending on where the conversation goes on inflation and the economy, I do think there could be an argument that, hey, why are Democrats prioritizing this when real Americans are hurting? I don't but like that backlash probably happens without this bill. So it's probably, you know, right to be a little skeptical of it.
But it is a flex for Democrats and not necessarily for other Americans. And maybe that's not the best politics strategy right now. Don't know. Although, imagine how...
sort of like done a lot in the way of trying to reframe what started as build back better to be something about lowering energy costs, right? He's saying like this is an all of the above approach. It does include provisions to streamline the extraction and use of natural gas, et cetera. In addition to all of the other things it does with renewable energy. Is that the kind of thing that people buy? Like, do people look at Joe Manchin and say, oh, yeah, he seems like a pretty moderate guy and
And this is it seems like he's the one presenting this or proposing this. He said himself, you know, this isn't a Democratic plan. This isn't a Republican plan. This is an American plan. Does that framing change how people view it at all, even though this is ultimately in large part a big Democratic liberal priority, you know, addressing climate change?
I mean, the standard Republican lines will be like, this is a partisan bill, spends more and more money at the time when we have high inflation, we need to reduce the deficit of this bill, since it will do some deficit reduction. I don't think it's a super easy to attack bill apart from the generic bill.
We're spending this money in a time of high inflation, right? Even though it's raising revenue. So I think it's probably designed pretty well to avoid some of those criticisms. I also think it's not one of the top five things that the average voter will be thinking about in November. It's like party people, Democratic Party people are going to be thinking about this. Yes. And it will reduce some of the wagon circling from the left, for example.
Manchin is one of those senators who does better, arguably, with Republicans in his state than Democrats, right? And so I think, though, you know, we already saw this was one from morning consult data that came out last week, that there was a dip in his approval rating from Republicans. I assume that this further kind of tarnishes his image with them. It certainly angered Senate Republicans, right?
I don't think the way he spins it is going to win over anyone other than maybe Democrats who don't like Manchin all that much to begin with.
Why did he? I think this is being presented as, oh, Manchin flipped or he changed his mind or whatever. There's another way you can look at this, which is like it was a fake out when Manchin said, oh, it's off the table. If you've been paying attention to how this has all gone down, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said that Republicans would not support the CHIPS Act if Democrats tried to pursue a go it alone reconciliation bill on these kinds of priorities.
Manchin said, yeah, doesn't seem like we're going to reach an agreement. I'm worried about inflation. They passed the CHIPS Act later in the day. Oh, wait, we have an agreement on Inflation Reduction Act, Build Back Better, whatever. What was all of this? So Manchin has an incentive to make it seem like he's driving a hard bargain. And maybe he also isn't driving a hard bargain, right? But Joe Biden and Democrats are extremely unpopular in his state.
He also doesn't want to be accused of being like a do nothing center, I guess. But like, but like he has all the leverage and he has incentive. Like when some left wing Democrat goes on TV or on Twitter and criticizes Joe Manchin. He's like, yeah, keep saying that. Yeah. That's helping me in West Virginia. Right. That's awesome. And so you can argue that like you kind of like consciously or not play this process out in a way that he doesn't.
Both gets to look like a skeptic and you reduce the scope of this, but also kind of gets to be the hero at the last minute.
Because the whole time, I mean, again, electorally speaking, any votes that Democrats get from West Virginia is a huge bonus. And people on the left have completely naive views, naive is putting it kindly, about what type of leverage the White House had over Manchin. Like, you got to pull an LBJ and tell him who's boss and threaten to withhold X and Y, right? It's like, yeah, but if he cares about reelection-
and the most basic premise of congressional psychology is that for the most part, Sanders mostly care about reelection, put other priorities second, then his incentive to sign on with some big sweeping omnibus bill are worse than more a targeted bill that you can brand maybe half-winkingly as inflation reduction, maybe not, deficit reduction. I think if you're actually looking at what his
His incentives and his leverage are that the outcome we wound up with is fairly rational.
It's rational, but I don't fully get it still in the sense of there wasn't a thought that Manchin was going to be on board with any climate change legislation. I mean, I guess he was able to negotiate the bill, as we were saying earlier, in such a way that it did bring a lot home to West Virginia. He's not running again until 2024. You know, this probably is not going to be a huge topic of debate in 2024.
I'm I still don't fully get it, though. I guess it does put him again in the center of conversation. He was literally on all the talk show talk shows on Sunday talking about it. You don't get it in the sense that like he didn't have to do this. He probably would have been better off electorally if he didn't. Yeah, I think so. I don't think it's maybe it helps with Democrats in West Virginia, but it probably angers. I don't know.
Okay, so we're almost talking about this as a foregone conclusion and as if Manchin is the only sort of stumbling block here. But, of course, Kirsten Sinema, I think, is the other. We don't know whether or not she supports Seville yet. Her team has said she's looking at the text and, you know, will get back to us. Do we ultimately think that this passes? I think she is...
a much less rational actor than Mention. So I have no f*cking idea.
Yeah. She has been curiously silent. Manchin was talking her up on the Sunday talk shows, you know, about like, Oh, cinema smart. She'll be thinking about this, but we haven't heard anything. The other question I have is when we were talking about like, does this actually help reduce inflation? There was of course, like the model from the university of Pennsylvania that found, no, it actually adds and adds to inflation until 2024. Um,
Manchin and Democrats have disputed that because it's an investment in the economy. But I am curious whether the CBO, so the Congressional Budget Office's markup of the bill is going to rattle people like Manchin or Sinema if it has been found to negatively affect inflation in some way. You know, he reportedly did his homework in talking with Larry Summers, who was one of the economists who predicted the inflation situation we'd currently be in.
But it does seem as if this could contribute a little. I mean, you just don't know where some of the media coverage on this is going to go and if that backfires for Democrats. Yeah, I think the Summers argument, too, is that the tax enforcement provisions will bring in more revenue than the sensible price tag shows. That seems like the kind of thing that the CBO would not want to make a lot of guesses about, right? That's very assumption driven.
And so you could have a gap between the CBO score and kind of what an economist who is a little bit less process or rule bound might think about it. Right. We can kind of plug in his own estimates. But yeah.
All right. So I think only time will tell and we'll continue covering the process of the debate over this bill as it happens. But I want to move on to a topic that, Nate, you brought up a little bit at the start, but that this legislation and the CHIPS Act passing sort of puts a focus on.
which is how much legislating Congress is actually doing. And it seems as though it's contrary to popular perception and what one might expect in the summer of an election year.
year. As I mentioned, Congress passed the $280 billion Chips and Science Act, which will subsidize semiconductor manufacturing and spend billions on research and development, the goal being to compete globally in new tech. Two weeks ago, the House passed the Respect for Marriage Act with 47 Republican votes, codifying legal same-sex marriage and
interracial marriage. We'll see what happens in the Senate. This comes after a bipartisan gun safety and mental health law and bipartisan support for aid to Ukraine and amid discussion of a bipartisan Electoral Count Act reform. Last year, of course, Congress passed a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill and more, including a renewal of the Violence Against Women Act and an overhaul of the Postal Service. This is on top of what we just discussed. We'll see whether or not the quote-unquote Inflation Reduction Act passes in
Is this level of legislating, particularly in a bipartisan manner, unique? And I mean unique for our contemporary politics, not unique in the scope of our centuries of politics. I mean, certainly it seems like just if you go by like the amount of money outlaid, it's an awful lot, right? You know, maybe the critique is that
you don't have that much kind of permanent legacy change to the tax code. Although if this Inflation Reduction Act passes, you would have some of that. But it seems to me like a pretty robust agenda given a 50-50 Senate in particular and narrow majorities in the House. I ask that even without this latest salvo, it was already decent. That's not even really the question I want to ask here. Is Biden's legacy sort of a robust one? My question is more like,
Is this level of bipartisanship, bipartisan legislating, unique? And if so, why is it happening now? I actually don't think it's actually all that unique. All right. So David Mayhew, who's a political scientist at Yale, he categorizes these major laws. And he found in the last session, so for 2018 to 2020, 15 major laws passed.
We do not have the data from this term. Maybe it is more than 15. But I think the problem is, as Nate was getting at, a lot of these bipartisan laws don't get a lot of attention. Or if they do, there's still-- it's the conflict that drives the conversation.
And in fact, you know, some research has found that controversial legislation, you know, only one third of it focuses on the actual policy details. The other two thirds of it is on, you know, the fighting between Democrats and Republicans on the bill.
And I think that's something like the infrastructure bill that we were talking about earlier. You know, that was a bipartisan achievement. It was still incredibly acrimonious. And I think that's where a lot of the coverage went. And so a lot of these bipartisan bills just slip under the radar. I think we've had some more high profile ones, arguably, this cycle. But I don't know if the number is all that different from previous sessions. I mean, it does feel like you kind of maybe pulled back from
the brinksmanship of partisanship in kind of the Obama presidency where the debt ceiling was a huge fight routinely, for example. I don't know what would have happened if you'd had 51 Republican senators instead of 50, how many cabinet nominations he would have gotten confirmed. But there clearly are a group of GOP senators that, or let's put it like this, right? Partisanship and ideological polarization are not quite the same thing. Ideological polarization can be growing at the same time that partisanship is
steady to decreasing because politics is complicated and there's a complicated story here. Like the guns bill was interesting.
Oh, yeah. I mean, I think part of that, though, was going back to what Galen was saying earlier with the CHIPS bill, that I think there was kind of this understood agreement between Republicans and Democrats that they weren't going to touch the reconciliation bill, that it was dead. And I think you started to see a shift in some bipartisan movement. I mean, we'll see where the Electoral Count Act goes, but that was something that both Manchin and
Collins co-authored and had been talked about taking up to a vote. But then, you know, following Manchin and Schumer's announcement, Republicans tanked a bill on giving veterans medical support. So it could be that this brief blip of bipartisanship we've seen in the Senate is now over.
Yeah, I was going to ask, is there a pattern in terms of what can get bipartisan support and what can't? Because, you know, there are certain things that seem, oh, this makes sense. Like,
the CHIPS Act truly was, like, bipartisan in the sense that it was the brainchild of both Republicans and Democrats and largely focused on competing with China, which is one of the most broadly popular things you can do when you ask Americans sort of their overall preferences. Both Democrats and Republicans and independents view China as a threat. But, like, guns, that seems counterintuitive to a certain extent. Maybe in the same way that
you know, criminal justice reform seemed pretty counterintuitive under Trump. So are there any patterns just in terms of what Democrats and Republicans are willing to work together on and when? I mean, I think there's two categories, right? One is on issues that aren't particularly polarized, like semiconductor manufacturing. And the second is on issues that are polarized, but where the status quo maybe doesn't reflect
where the center of the electorate is at. So like the guns bill, I mean, gun control advocates would say it does kind of the minimum, or I don't know if it takes for that negative, right? It's not doing things that would have like major, major effects. It's stuff around the margin and all that stuff is kind of fairly popular. And so Republicans may figure that like to say we're able to do a little bit on gun reform kind of puts the issue to bed. And that's an issue that was benefiting Democrats. I think if there is
codification of gay marriage, it would be similar, right? They would be saying, we do not want to be fighting ground on this issue anymore. Yes, it may annoy some people in our base, and there are renewed strains of homophobia, frankly, in the GOP right now, if they ever went away. But we're more damaged by giving Democrats a reason to
turn out, right, and to say we must elect more Democratic senators to protect gay marriage, right, taking an issue off the table could be valuable. I mean, they're not doing this out of like the benevolence of their hearts, right? It's that they think that they minimize electoral damage by giving some, like not that kind of thing, gay marriage and interracial marriage for that matter in this bill would be trivial, but, you know, it's more than crumbs, but like, but you're conceding some ground in the sake of winning the broader war. Yeah.
No, I think that's right. And a lot of times, too, for the more controversial issues like the gun reform legislation that was passed, it follows after a huge outcry. Like, I realize that didn't happen after Sandy Hook, which was another mass shooting in an elementary school. And many were surprised by that and why this shooting in Evalde, you know, moved legislators when that one didn't is hard to know. But I think it's as Nate's getting at. It's just the political calculus looks as if, well, we have to do something on this.
And you notice in the more controversial types of bills, it really is a compromise where Republicans don't fully get what they want and Democrats don't really get what they want. Yeah.
All right. Well, we're going to see where the legislative agenda goes over the next couple of months. There's also going to be a lame duck session, which should be interesting. So we're not done talking about actual legislation, but we are going to move on to more electoral politics type stuff with our first question being whether or not we are in a recession.
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Last week, the Commerce Department released second quarter GDP numbers showing that the American economy contracted by an annualized 0.9%. That is the second quarter of GDP contraction after the economy shrank 1.6% annualized in the first three months of the year. Two,
Two consecutive quarters of contraction is a common definition of a recession, although officially recessions are declared by the National Bureau of Economic Research, which can take months to declare. And by the time that happens, the recession is sometimes already over. Other factors that we generally associate with recessions, like high levels of unemployment or bankruptcies, have not yet taken shape. And more than anything, this has all just sort of sparked a political debate over whether we are actually in a recession.
Nate, do you think that we should call what our, we should define our current economy as in a recession, regardless of whether you think it's important or politically or not? I don't because I believe in the idea that you want to look at a consensus of indicators and not any one indicator. And I think the consensus of indicators, the labor market in particular, don't necessarily point toward below zero growth in the economy.
I would rather that this also not be determined by a committee. I think if you're in the NBER, so before I talked to the IRS, now I'm talking to you on the NBER. If you're on the National, what does NBER stand for? Hold on. National Bureau of Economic Research. If you're on the National Bureau of Economic Research, I think you should set up an objective set of criteria. It can be as simple or as complicated as you want to define a recession and then disband yourself.
I don't like the fact that they're kind of at the margin, even though I trust... Oh, now I'm going to get myself in a lot of trouble. I trust academic economist experts to be nonpartisan more than other groups of experts. This is a whole other conversation, right? But I do think when you have decisions that are politically fraught, expert panels have strengths and weaknesses. But maybe if you look at here are...
the five or six economic indicators that NBER looks at, right? You create an index. I mean, we actually kind of do this for the 538 general election model, presidential election model. We create an economic index. So maybe like when that index is below one standard deviation, it should be a recession or something, right? Nate, you should write a paper. Maybe. No, the other issues. So I guess I actually do have some like kind of expertise in this, right? The other thing about like that
index that we build is that it's based on economic variables that update monthly or more frequently. To me, it's kind of useless. By the way, the fact that a recession has not been declared yet does not mean that we're not in a recession. It may very well be that in three months, six months, a year, the NBER will look back and say, oops, actually, we were in a recession back then after all. So I think it's kind of useless
to not be able to declare in real time based on the information we have available in real time, whether in a recession or not. And then you can go back and revise maybe, right? But like, I think there should be some
robust indicator? Because GDP is A, it's lacking. B, it's quarterly. C, there are all types of adjustments such as inventory that can cause it to deviate from other indicators of economic well-being. I would love to have a contemporary measure of is the economy growing or shrinking? And maybe that measure is shrinking by X amount
over X period of time, there's a big enough gap in output, then we say it's a recession. Okay. So in conclusion, you don't think we're in recession, but you also think the way that we judge it is bad. Sarah, what do you think?
It's interesting, like the monthly indicators, more of a holistic index that all makes sense. I do think it's a little beside the point. Like we're debating the semantics of are we in a recession or not? It's all political in the sense that it allows Biden Democrats to say, no, the economy is strong. Look at the jobs numbers. And then Republicans to say, oh, no, it's spiraling. Things have never been worse. But when you look at how Americans think and feel about the economy, no one's
saying it's good. I mean, one thing we found using data from University of Michigan, and it was consumer sentiment data, is that yes, Democrats are still more confident than Republicans or independents about the economy, but their opinions now are worse than at any point during Trump's presidency. And the significance of that is that consumer sentiment, you know, used to kind of indicate...
You know how people were thinking of the president, but that's become more partisan. But we're seeing with Biden that that relationship maybe is back and that people generally speaking aren't pleased with the direction the economy is headed. And, you know, we were talking about that morning consult poll.
on last week's podcast or the week before about Americans thinking that we were in a recession. It just feels like we debate the semantics of it a lot. The metric is not good and we're not listening enough to people just saying, yeah, things are pretty bad right now.
Right. So to give a little roundup of the data, the morning consult poll that we discussed before any of this GDP data came out show that two thirds of Americans already thought that we were in a recession regardless. Two thirds also disapprove of Biden's handling of the economy. And a third of Americans say inflation is the most urgent issue for the country. That's the highest rated of a whole slew of issues.
So I think, Sarah, you're arguing that definitionally, it doesn't matter whether we're in a recession or not, as far as politics is concerned, because people think the economy is doing poorly. Nate, do you think it matters? You study a lot of different economic indicators and how they shape political views as part of putting the model together. Do you think it matters to voters whether or not we're definitionally in a recession or not? Only in the sense that it affects media coverage of the race, right? Because like being at
minus 0.1% versus plus 0.1% doesn't really change anything. It's a barely noticeable difference, right? There's no kind of magic threshold. So yeah, I think it matters to the extent that the media fights about it. And that's why there's a lot of infighting within the media about it, right? Where everyone kind of pretends that everyone has this solid definition of a recession in mind, where it's kind of one of those new topics that comes up. Unless you were kind of like an economics geek, you may not have had a firm opinion about it.
But no, I mean, look, what's more important from a voter standpoint are visible indicators. Employment's a visible indicator, right? Prices are a visible indicator. Gas prices are. Yeah.
Grass and grocery prices are visible indicators. Markets that they have access to, the stock market, rent and housing markets can be impactful potentially. Do you know which, like, have you sort of ranked from most influential to least influential how different aspects of the economy shape voters' behavior? So it's hard to rank them because they're all highly correlated. And when you have a bunch of measures that are highly correlated, then you need lots and lots of
evidence to tease those out, lots and lots of data points to tease out kind of which are most important. And we don't have that, right? Economic cycles last for years at a time. We don't have that. I think the general view is that the single most important measure might be kind of take-home income. So if your paycheck gets larger or smaller, but take-home income adjusted for prices. So if you are used to being able to buy
X, and now the same paycheck goes less far, you notice that. If you have a bigger paycheck and now you can spend more, then you notice that. Government transfers and payouts, you notice. I think the single best indicator is disposable income, real disposable income per capita. But that's more based on the theory than the evidence. The evidence is murky, which is precisely why you want to look at a bucket of indicators and not just one.
I'm curious though, Nate, I thought, and I could be misremembering that what you've found when you look at presidential versus midterm elections is that the economy generally matters less in a midterm. Does that just have exceptions to it or? I mean, midterms are weird. Midterms are in part just usually a backlash to what happened two years ago. Yeah.
you know, it kind of gets embedded in presidential approval. I mean, I'm some new things that like the effect of the economy on presidential elections is also slightly overstated. Right. I think you have a lot of political scientists who to use a technical term overfit models, which means that you check through hundreds of model specifications. You find one that fits the past data well. And then it doesn't necessarily provide that good a prediction going forward. But, you know, so I think like the economy is, is,
Part of why Biden's approval rating is poor is the economy. Approval ratings do have some effect on midterm elections. I'll put it like this. Do economic indicators add value above and beyond what polls say is the question? The answer to that is, I think they may be at a little bit, but not a ton necessarily. By the way, you should also be forward-looking.
It matters more what voters think about the economy in October and November when they begin casting ballots and what they do right now, right? The fact that the stock market has risen, the stock market is a leading indicator. That would indicate that by the fall, the economy might be better, potentially. There is some notion that like,
Commodity prices like gas will continue to decline. There are more debates over so-called core inflation, which is a more important component going forward. But if energy prices decline, then that would be at least moderately helpful for the economy and for people's take-home income. So yeah. In conclusion, you don't think we're in a recession, but it also maybe doesn't really matter that much outside of media coverage.
There are plenty of reasons that Americans are pessimistic today, but that could change. Is there anything else we should talk about in the economy segment of today's roundup before we move on to talk about third parties? Third parties. All right, we're going to talk about third parties. Last Wednesday, three somewhat centrist political groups announced that they are collaborating behind a new third party called Forward.
And that's an effort that former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang already began pursuing since he announced he was leaving the Democratic Party last fall. Their stated goal in their press release is as follows, quote, forward plans to achieve legal recognition in 15 states by the end of 2022, twice that number in 2023.
and in almost all U.S. states by the end of 2024. They go on to say, three building blocks will unite our broad coalition and serve as the springboard for the leadership and policymaking by forward party leaders. Free people, thriving communities, and a vibrant democracy. So we can get into the specifics of what those planks mean, but third parties have notoriously been unsuccessful in the U.S. Is there any reason to believe that this effort will be any different?
You know, I mean, the biggest reason to think why this time is Americans are just really, really dissatisfied with their two current choices. You've seen an uptick in the number of Americans identifying as independent. They don't really like either party. I think what's challenging from that, though, is there's not some great consensus around what the third party should be. And that seems to be the roadblock for.
for third party bids. But I'm interested. I do think, you know, we are at a time in American history where Republicans have kind of undergone a shift in what it means to be conservative. Those who were not pro-Trump have leeched the party.
but don't necessarily like the Democratic Party. I think some Democrats are still very moderate and don't necessarily enjoy the shift for more left-wing policies being embraced. But yeah, will Yang's group kind of emerge as a third party? I mean, I think there are a lot of good structural reasons, particularly in the primaries, while that's very challenging, but I'm interested. You know, my platform is,
What's your platform? Three Planks, Cure Cancer, Puppy Dogs for Everybody, and Taco Trucks in Every Corner. Those are my platform, and I hope you join my third party. What's it called, Nate? The Backward Party. Backward to a time when there was more puppy dogs and ice cream and tacos. Okay, so now an earnest answer.
Sarah was a little bit skeptical, but it seemed like you were more generous than a lot of the coverage I have seen of this third party effort. Nate, what do you think? And again, here, I'm not asking whether a third party like presidential candidate, like whether an independent can be successful. That's like a different thing that we'll get to. But like an actual third party building infrastructure that competes in a regular way on ballots with the Democratic and Republican Party. I mean, look, the.
The plumbing is part of it, right? The plumbing of having the infrastructure for how would you actually get on the ballot if you did have a viable candidate, right? And so it's kind of like they're solving the plumbing problem, arguably. But I'm not sure that's the most important motivator for a third party. I mean, it's complicated. You know, certainly some of the dismissiveness on like kind of left-leaning Twitter and
toward these groups is A, a dislike of Andrew Yang, B, a concern that this group would draw more from Democrats than Republicans, which might be true. Of course, the history of American third parties is not very successful. The two-party system is robust, in part because you have these two major franchises that buy up every piece of real estate.
they're not very ideologically consistent, right? There are huge amounts of hypocrisy embedded within what both parties are trying to accomplish. And it's because voters don't necessarily care that much about intellectual or ideological consistency, right? It would be an error in some sense to adhere to a party that says, oh, we're strictly speaking like socialists or strictly speaking like libertarians, right? They try to like carve out different policies for different constituencies and they do like a fairly good job of it overall, right?
So, you know, can you carve out space? It's like right in the middle between the two parties. I tend to think that's probably not where the most fruitful territory would be. I mean, I don't know. Do you want to have a discussion about like, about where I would...
What would be successful? Yeah, okay, go for it. Where do you think the most fertile ground is for a successful third party? So... And you should clarify, is it a party proper that has all of the infrastructure of a regular party? Or if someone was running for president and wanted to win and beat the Democrat and the Republican, how they might run? And maybe the answer is the same for both, but it might not be.
So, yeah, we should, you know, having a new party that disrupts the two party system and like is routinely electing senators and governors is much less likely than having like, oh, Mark Cuban or Joe Rogan or The Rock want to run for president. And now they use this party as a platform to do it. Like that is not that's not crazy at all. I mean, you have had like Perot. You have had people like I mean, Trump himself in some ways was not far from being this outside candidate.
celebrity business person disruptor who could very easily, you can imagine, have run as an independent and not as a Republican, right? So running as a one-off for president in 2024 is maybe a different thing. I'm talking about like, if you could like permanently kind of carve out a third party. I mean, I think you'd start out by, I think it would be kind of like
populist and anti-elite and would be pro-democracy reform. It might start out with provisions like term limits. It might start out with provisions like members in Congress should not engage in stock trading, so it criticize Nancy Pelosi and things like that. It might be anti-gerrymandering, it might be pro-voting rights. That would be one set of things
I think it would also be kind of like anti-elite. So it might favor something like a wealth tax. It might be kind of anti-Silicon Valley. It might be somewhat skeptical of the US participation in multinational treaty organizations and so forth, right? It might be a little skeptical of like the scientific community.
If you look at things like the Five Star Movement in Italy, they're Euro skeptic generally. I'm trying to think of what the parallel dimension is in the US and maybe skepticism of the establishment. That's why I mentioned Joe Rogan earlier. He's someone who actually is a little bit hard to map.
onto the traditional two-party spectrum. Somewhere like that, there are probably more people like that than true down-the-middle centrists, and they are less well-represented in the current two-party system.
I mean, are you just saying mostly somebody who is more conservative on social issues and more liberal on economic issues? I think it sounds like you're saying don't touch the social issues. Yeah, I think you avoid the third rail, so to speak, of the social. How do you avoid? Yeah, that's my question. But how do you completely avoid them? Because if you talk to normal Americans, they have perfectly, like the social issues are kind of ironically kind of what I think Americans are.
have more centrist views on and people who are political elites don't, right? Like to most Americans say, yeah, I have abortion without any restrictions in the first three months. And then with various conditions like rape or health of the mother thereafter, right? Like that's actually like a pretty popular viewpoint. You know, gay marriage is, is a consensus viewpoint at this point. Right. Um,
But there might also be issues where- So are you saying, would this third party just support what you're saying are popular consensus views? Like would the third party say, I support whatever the majority of Americans believe on social issues? Are you saying they wouldn't talk about them at all? I mean, it's Sanders 2016. That's what we're kind of talking about here, right? He did shift in the 2020 campaign where it was more about social issues, less about the economy. And this was a Nate story, but I thought it was really interesting. Granted, it was only 10%, but when you look
at the CES data from Harvard, there was 10% of voters who voted for Sanders in the primary who then went on to vote for Trump. So I do think there's something to this pop. It's like populism without the racism. I'm just maybe a little skeptical that works in America. Yeah, I think populism without the racism and without the
socialism, right? So maybe you could have a universal basic income. It's an Andrew Yang thing, right? But maybe you also say we want to reduce regulation on small businesses. So if you want to look at where am I triangulating this from, it's a bunch of places, right? It's a little bit of Sanders 2016,
A little bit of Trump 2016. Yeah. A little bit of like the five-star movement and the Euroskeptic movement in Italy. Le Cinque Stelle. A little bit about... But they haven't been that successful. Of what? The five-star movement like originally sort of took off and was like super popular. And then as soon as it got some power, everyone turned really skeptical of it. So that's one of the few advantages that a third party could have, right? Is that you don't actually have any responsibility for...
for public policy. So on the one hand, you could kind of come out with like a anti-tech elite stance, right? Which might involve more regulation of internet content. On the other hand, you might be very pro-free speech because free speech is popular, I think,
you can just claim it's under attack from both sides. Right. And those things might clash, but if you have no actual power, you don't actually have to implement any policies and resolve that clash. And so in some ways, like that's the, that's a luxury potentially. Wait, so like, but,
But are you envisioning a world where this third party actually gets power? Or are you just saying, like, this would be a fun job for someone who wants to do it, but it's not actually going to win them the White House? I'm trying to say, if you work backward, let's stipulate that despite expectations of political scientists and et cetera, et cetera, in 2028, there is a either –
third-party presidential candidate who has succeeded or a robust even third-party movement, what would that look like? And I'm trying to, like, triangulate, you know, what things... Just super pop, like, try to combine populist impulses on both sides of the aisle. You said 2028, though. Or 2024 for that. Well, because it might take longer, right? Yeah. We're also ignoring here, like,
maybe more fundamental parts of American democracy, which is like, yeah, Ross Perot is an example of a successful third party candidate who won 20% of electoral votes in 1992 and didn't win a single electoral vote as a result. Like, I think you were comparing Trump to a sort of third party candidate before. Part of the reason he was ultimately so successful was because he used one of the two major parties as the vehicle for his movement, even though he obviously campaigned against sort of rhinos and establishment Republicans.
So the idea of a populist independent third party effort succeeding, we've already seen it happen, but most likely it will succeed by using one of the two parties as its vehicle. I'm curious what the argument is for that kind of effort succeeding using the forward party or whatever other third, you know, there are plenty of other third parties out there already, the Green Party, the Working Families Party, the Libertarian Party.
I mean, again, I think some of the low hanging fruit, like corruption in government, right? Neither party really has much interest in reducing corruption in government and reducing the influence of special interests of reforming the campaign finance system, right? Like you used to have Democrats talk about reforming campaign finance. Now that Democrats like raise a lot more money from the campaign finance system, they don't talk about that as much, right? So like talk about the things that truly are uncomfortable for Democrats.
for the two parties, right? Like, I don't know why people aren't talking more about like completely unacceptable for members of Congress to be trading stocks at all, right? Like that's a populist thing that like you could gain a lot of traction on. A little monkey and esoteric, right? Yeah, I'm skeptical. Again, I come back to the same question is like, are you describing like a good job for someone who wants to take it? Or are you describing a world where this party gains real power in Washington? Yeah.
So, I mean, part of Trump's rise in 2016 was he was charismatic. I mean, I think part of the problem with this third party is Andrew Yang's track record's not so good so far. You know, he didn't advance in the 2020 Democratic primary. There was a lot of hype around him running for mayor in New York. That didn't pan out. And now it's like going to start a third party, kind of, you know, the CNN analyst gig, not paying off that much.
With the right candidate and the right kind of FU Democrats, FU Republicans, that could shake up our system. I think our politics are at an all-time low. Like, distrust in institutions is so high right now. But is Yang's party the right vehicle? You know, like, probably not. Yeah. You know, actually, to your point, I saw one of the, like, many takes online around this, you know, third-party bid, the forward party bid.
was saying that it's attempting to be sort of like broadly appealing to moderate voters, but that historically independent style candidates, your Ross Perot style candidate, even maybe the Trump playbook, obviously he's a Republican, but he kind of like took the party hostage in a way, aren't just super like moderate. Don't place themselves between the two parties, maybe as you were arguing, but find an issue that is super popular that they just like
beat to death and they stay on message and they're super, I mean, Ross Perot, it was the deficit, right? He was purchasing 30 minutes of airtime on television to take like an alligator claw and a whiteboard or whatever and explain, talk about the deficit to people and explain why the deficit is the root of everyone's problems and use the deficit to condemn both Republicans and Democrats.
And like, he wasn't just taking the quote unquote moderate view on the deficit. He was taking maybe even an extreme view, but just making it sort of wedging it in such a way that he could use it to condemn both parties. It could be the deficit, right? So look at issues where there is a consensus among technocratic elites and then do the opposite, right? Technocratic elites, right?
I tend to think the deficit-- oh, it's different now in an environment where interest rates are much higher. But clearly, neither party has given much of a about the deficit. And until recently, these technocratic elites don't care about the deficit that much. So therefore, maybe that would be a good issue, potentially. If you're talking about true populism, I don't know. But no, it could be something like that. But I think it's more likely that it's kind of like the force of personality.
I mean, maybe you need like, I don't know. I don't know what work is going on in the background, but you don't want some like, you know, technocratic leader. You need a charismatic leader that probably already has some built-in populist appeal and becomes a kind of unlikely. Wait, can you be a charismatic technocrat? Wasn't that kind of like Obama? So get Obama to run as a, he's not eligible to become president again, though, I don't think. I don't think he ran as a technocrat either. Yeah.
He, like, governed that way, you know? Anyhow. Fair. We have to move on. We have, like, one topic to still get to. How do we want to end this? Are we going to say that this is a good use of a third party or a bad use of a third party? Look, you have a party trying to get on the ballot, and that could be meaningful, but it's, like, the least important step.
Their platform is vague, kind of sucks. Free people, thriving communities, a vibrant democracy. Okay, pick an issue like we were just talking about that's going to really energize people. Get somebody charismatic and then we'll see. All right, let's wrap up by talking about the politics of former President Trump's legal liability.
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Last Tuesday, The Washington Post reported and The New York Times confirmed that the Department of Justice is investigating former President Trump's actions as part of its January 6th criminal investigation. The wording was specific, and this is not the same as having an open investigation into Trump himself, although commentators have debated how important that difference is. The Washington Post reporting reads as follows.
The prosecutors have asked hours of detailed questions about meetings Trump led in December 2020 and January 2021, his pressure campaign on Pence to overturn the election, and what instructions Trump gave his lawyers and advisors about fake electors and sending electors back to the states, the people said. These are anonymous sources that The Washington Post spoke to.
Some of the questions focused directly on the extent of Trump's involvement in the fake elector effort led by his outside lawyers, including John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani, these people said. So this is not the only criminal investigation where Trump may be facing legal liability. There are ongoing investigations in New York and perhaps the most serious other investigation for political purposes. It's the one in Fulton County, Georgia, into Trump's efforts to overturn the election.
None of us are attorneys. We should just say that at the top. But from a historical perspective and a political perspective, how big of a deal is this investigation? And we can look at this through the lens of the 2024 election. Until Merrick Garland says that he is prosecuting
Donald Trump. I think this remains something that isn't a big deal. It's all caught up in hypotheticals. Yes, this is uncommon for a historical president. Trump has been investigated so many different times, though, and the outcome has not panned out in the way that Democrats have hoped. This just doesn't seem to have real teeth yet, but it obviously could, and I shouldn't be dismissive of it, but it just continues to seem...
We haven't seen that Garland is going to say, yes, we're prosecuting Trump. And I think until that happens, I remain a little skeptical of all of this. And I'm not a lawyer. I have watched a lot of episodes of Law and Order, especially Special Victims Unit, which involves me to say, no, I agree with Sarah. I don't. I think this is pretty binary, right? Does Merrick Garland charge Trump, which is the most important event of the entire political cycle at that point? Yeah. Yeah.
And short of that, I'm not sure how much we should incrementally update our priors. Sorry. So you don't have to apologize. I think, see, unlike your comments earlier in the podcast, I think that's a fair judgment here, which is why this is also going last. Because we did, I think, talk about things that matter and things that are important. And hopefully we've convinced you, Nate. Nate, have we convinced you at this point in the podcast that we talked about important things that happened last week?
I love debating the definition of a recession and third parties, right? But again, these are like fun excuses to talk about things. And the thing that was most important last week was the reconciliation bill maybe being somewhat, depending on Kyrsten Sinema, agreed upon.
Okay, fair enough. Let's get back on topic. So the question I have here is you're saying it's binary, either he's prosecuted or it's not. And if he's not prosecuted, this is all just sort of, you know, fun for the press to cover, but not actually something. I say that sarcastically, obviously. When you look at the actual polling, you continue to see a migration of Republican primary voters from Trump to DeSantis.
And I am curious why you think that is. Do you think it's like, because also we had more January 6th hearings while I was away, and also this come out about a potential investigation. Do you think there's a general sense in the water that Trump is facing some liability that is unattractive for the Republican Party, and that that is affecting politics, regardless of whether or not a sort of prosecution ever happens?
I think if you cornered Republican elites and gave them truth serum or I don't know what they drink, Woodford Reserve or something, right? I think they would tell you, and we can discuss how we define elites. I think they would tell you that they think DeSantis is both more likely to be elected and will more reliably implement the things they want because he's more competent and reliable and skilled. And so therefore they have like a,
Pretty strong incentive. I mean, if you look at like Fox News, Trump has kind of somewhat disappeared from Fox News. DeSantis is on there a lot, right? They haven't covered the January 6th hearings, but they're kind of at least dipping their toes in the water of... Well, they have. They have. Okay. I mean, not to the extent that other networks have or other cable news channels have, but yeah. You know, the Wall Street Journal editorial board, places like that are kind of showing their hand a little bit in that they would prefer...
DeSantis to Trump. I mean, the other thing to keep in mind is that in 2016, the story wasn't that these institutions were pro-Trump. They were kind of ambivalent. And they didn't rally behind another candidate, right? There wasn't a lot of love for Jeb Bush. Marco Rubio couldn't kind of close the sale, right? Ted Cruz was roundly disliked in some quarters. And
The fact that there's one alternative to Trump and that people kind of know what happened last time, I think that's probably somewhat bad news for him, combined with the fact that voters like to move on. They're pretty sick and tired of litigating the past. This has a new chapter even to rank and file voters. I mean, again, Trump has this weird thing where on the one hand, he can deny falsely that he lost the election.
He is not president, though, right? So if like, if you got, let's say you're in a crazy conspiracy tinfoil hat land, right? How are you electable? If even if the election was stolen from you, again, in tinfoil hat land, you're still not in the White House. It doesn't necessarily show that you have an effective plan, right? And so I think that could be a problem for him potentially. So what you've just said about Republican elites, quote unquote,
you know, if you give them truth serum. I think what you said initially about, like, Ron DeSantis being an effective leader, I don't even think you'd have to give them truth serum. But, like, does that have anything to do with the January 6th hearings, the Department of Justice January 6th investigation, the Fulton County, Georgia investigation? Like, is all of this true regardless of that? Or are the two things related? I mean, you have a bunch of individual actors who collectively act as a group, right? I think there probably are
Some Republicans who are truly appalled by January 6th, I think not very many, right? I think you have more Republicans who are tired of the Trump show and all that entails, right? Maybe you have somewhere concerned about Trump's tendency to dig in and relitigate personal grievances when you might have a
Biden or Harris or a TBD Democratic nominee in 2024 who has lots of problems on their own right like making an election about Trump is a way for For the Democrat to win even if conditions are not very favorable for the Democratic Party, right? And so so they don't they're not like mutually exclusive answers. I don't think okay Sarah my question to you is you sort of described this as it's not a big deal until it's a big deal which is if a prosecution actually happens to like play dumb
or maybe just to play ignorant to sort of tease out why it matters, like, okay, then what? So, you know, if he's running for president and the Department of Justice is investigating him or prosecuting him, why is this such a big deal? How does that change things? Oh, well, you know, we haven't had someone running for president under investigation from the Department of Justice, right? Like, that would be unprecedented, right?
And it would be highly political. And I think that's part of the reason why someone like Garland hasn't stepped into the fray. I mean, the other thing I think that's interesting about this is when you look at polls of how Americans are reacting to the January 6th hearings, you're not really seeing those top line numbers budge. You know, yes, about 50% say he should be charged for crimes. This was in a recent Marist poll. Um,
And, you know, only 28 percent think he will actually face prosecution. And I think that's in part because we saw in the first impeachment trial that support for impeaching Trump was split. We saw in the second impeachment trial that support for removing him from office was split.
We haven't seen what we saw in the Watergate era, which was that Americans were, you know, kind of split in the beginning. Republicans weren't necessarily calling for Nixon to resign. But then there was a shift and public opinion moved into 60 percent and more. And he ends up resigning from office.
We just, we haven't seen that. You know, there was the turning point on January 6th, but then they went back into the Capitol and, you know, some senators still decided to oppose certification of the results. And I think we just haven't seen Republican legislators turn from Trump. But I think to your point and what you and Nate were talking about, that doesn't mean that he is this, you know, all powerful figure who can't be challenged. And I think we are starting to see cracks in
But it's, you know, it's still his party. And to some extent, if there is a criminal prosecution, particularly if he's running for president, that's a hell of a campaign slogan for him to take on the government. Look, they don't want me to be your president. Does that help Trump? I mean, maybe. Nate? I mean, if he were prosecuted, I guess I think it would help him in the primary. I don't know exactly. Whoa. Yeah.
I don't know. We're talking primary. Yeah. But I'm not sure that like. But not the general, presumably. I don't know. I mean, you know, it's rare I say this. I'm not sure this is the type of question that. There's so much uncertainty that like, I'm not sure that Merrick Garland should be concerned about the electoral knockoff implications of all of this. I mean, yeah, sure. You would hope he wouldn't be.
No, I think the harder question is, and it's been the same issue with the Mueller investigation, with everything with the Ukraine scandal, is can you take
How can you connect Trump directly to what he is accused of doing and in his direct orbit and does what we hear in a political context, which is the January 6th hearing, work in the court of law? And that's just very different and hard. As you said, we're not lawyers, but there's so many complications there that I don't think we fully appreciate and explain some of the hesitancy, I think, to take this up. All right. Any parting thoughts? This is a long podcast, Galen.
This was a long podcast. We're making up for last week. A lot of news I heard. Was this the most important week in the history of the universe? Yes, I think so. Okay.
Catch next week's podcast where we rank in order from first to last the most important weeks in the universe. Big bang. Starting with big bang number one. Last week, number two. Big bang two. All right. Thank you, Nate and Sarah. I appreciate you sticking around for such a long podcast today. Thank you, Galen. Thank you, Galen.
My name is Galen Druk. Tony Chow is not in the virtual control room. He is on parental leave. So congratulations, Tony, on your new little one. Sophia Leibowitz is in the control room. Chadwick Matlin is our editorial director and Emily Vanesky is our intern. You can get in touch by emailing us at podcasts at 538.com. You can also, of course, tweet at us with any questions or comments. If you're a fan of the show, leave us a rating or review in the Apple podcast store or tell someone about us. Thanks for listening and we will see you soon. Bye.
