A Nazi on Wall Street Podcast
A Nazi on Wall Street Podcast
Joe Biden, FDR, and the New Deal. Also dogs. With Dr. Allan Lichtman
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What a long, interesting spring it’s been! Elusive Films recorded a 10 episode series and we are excited to start sharing it with you. In the first episode EJ and Jay talk about dogs, Joe Biden, the American Rescue Plan, and the concept of the “first 100 days” of a presidency. We invite Dr. Allan Lichtman to discuss FDR and the New Deal to get an expert perspective. Looking back just a few weeks earlier to when we recorded this, it’s interesting how the public conversation about bipartisanship and passing bills has changed. I predict this conversation is likely to change again this year. Maybe more than once!
To help us better understand the current context and how it relates to the New Deal era, Dr. Lichtman helps us navigate. He is an expert on this period, as well as the conservative movement that resists it. He’s also well known for a system to predict the winners of presidential elections called 13 Keys to the White House. Incidentally, Dr. Lichtman makes an unprompted prediction on our show! You’re going to want to tune in to this one.
I want to see if I can stop this dog from barking. Samuel
Speaker 2[inaudible] come to a Nazi on wall street podcast because every time history repeats, the price goes up.
Speaker 3Okay. I am Dr. Jason. Weichselbaum a historian and filmmaker and expert in American companies doing business with Nazi Germany,
Speaker 4And I'm BJ Russo. I'm just a regular guy who got freaked out by the last administration and is just trying to figure out what the hell is really happening. Jay and I created this podcast in part to help promote his project, a Nazi on wall street, but to also discuss troubling current events and give them historical context, Jay, my friend, how are you doing?
Speaker 3I'm doing, doing okay as okay. Can be the world is a troubling place. And yet the arc of the moral universe hopefully continues to turn towards justice. As most folks know me I'm and I'm noxious optimist probably from studying the Holocaust so much people made it through that and you can make it through anything. But yeah. How you doing?
Speaker 4I love that concept. An optimistic Holocaust historian.
Speaker 3Yeah. Well, it's, you know, it's all perspective, right? I mean, you can look at it as like, oh, you know, people are the worst or you can look at it like people made it and if they could make it, so can you, and that's one
Speaker 4To grow on. I like that. I'm doing okay. I'll be honest with you. I'm a little on the tired side of it burning the candle at both ends a little bit. My both my wife and I have been, but things are going great. I forget you, you have a dog, right?
Speaker 3Yes. Yes. He is more popular than I am on the internet. He is a small terrier spaniel mix name, Henley. It looks like a tiny boxer. He's 28 pounds. He can pull at least three times his weight. He's been cowering. As I've been cleaning for the last six hours. There is spots in the house away from whatever noises I've been making. How old is he? He is six years old. People always ask me, cause he's tiny. It's like, oh, is he going to grow? It's like, um, uh, likely only sideways. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4So I have two small dogs. Finn who is a in beagle mix is my oldest one. And he's about seven years old. He is my moody teenager. I mean, he loves you, but he would rather stay in his room and listen to the Smiths.
Speaker 3But my second
Speaker 4Dog is Marcy, who is a Chihuahua pug. And Marcy is, see how I can say this nicely. She's definitely a special dog. She's kind of what you would get. If you were to take the personality of Bjork and Amelie and squish them into a little nine pound jittery canine,
Speaker 3This is a complicated animal that you're describing. You would
Speaker 4Not that believe this little timid dog who's quirky. She's nine pounds. So she's small, but she is muscular. Like she is beefy. In fact, the groomer called her muscles. Marcy. She is very timid until she interacts with Finn and she bosses Finn around like a ragdoll. So to say that she is unique is to say that Matt gates likes younger women.
Speaker 3Oh no.
Speaker 4I mean, they, they, you broke the mold with his dog. She's a, she's just a funny little thing. She has this nervous tick where she licks all the time as well, but she always wants to be under foot and she wants to be with you all the time. She is the biggest loving dog. She was abandoned when she was a little puppy. So he rescued her and she's always so happy and she's just grateful to be with us. But she is weird. For instance, this past weekend, it started getting pretty warm as the spring season tends to do. And our house tracked in like three or four house flies inside, probably around Friday or something. And Saturday afternoon comes and I still see these flies still buzzing around my living room, but I did my best to ignore them probably because I am just too lazy to do anything about it. I had the afternoon off for once. And so I took advantage of that by chilling on the couch to watch some great British bake-off and don't make fun of me. Great. British bake off is awesome.
Speaker 3Yeah. Oh, are you kidding me? I've watched every episode, man. I get lost in Paul Hollywood's eyes. My new thing is I watch all of the versions of those shows and now I dream of crossovers. So it's like, you know, it's like the forged in fire. People have to go over to the great British bake-off have to go over to blown away, have to make costumes with tan, France. It's just, I want it all. I want all the crossovers that is some intense judging right there. Oh my God. It's so much judging.
Speaker 4What would they make? 10
Speaker 3Friends is like, we need to make a sword of the skin mono this moon, and then a piece of glass to go on the table where they're going to eat dinner with the bake that they've made. And then somebody is like, nailed it.
Speaker 4I I'll be honest. I'm your average, CIS hetero American male. But I would be lying to your face. If I said I had never fantasized about receiving the famous Paul Hollywood handshake. You know what I mean? It's there and beautiful kind of like my dog, Marcy, but regardless there, I was appreciating all things. Culinarian, posh, when who comes flying through the air, like a ninja Ben Johnson, but none other than my little tiny Audrey two two in dog form Marcy in a split second, this pup flies onto the couch volts from the seat makes this Wiki to par core jump off of the back of the seat. And in a mid Immelmann flip in the air successfully down. One of the flies that was buzzing around my head with a mere snap of her jaws landing gracefully on the floor. Next to me, I was so astounded at what I just witnessed. Jay, I apparently had to bring it up in a freaking podcast about Nazis.
Speaker 3It was going to be like, how are we going to work? The new deal into this one? It's like, and Marcy's kill was just like FDRs landslide victory in the 1932 election. It's like you turn on a podcast. Oh, there's just these guys talking about nothing for 20 minutes. Get to the meat, get into the content here.
Speaker 4It's just these guys talking about cakes and dogs. What the deuce man, national
Speaker 3Hug, your pet day recently dating the recording of this podcast. I understand this is going to be a pet theme show and I'm here for it. And
Speaker 4The best part of this entire scene that I'm depicting right now is that after the landing, this dog stared right into my eyes and for a brief second gave me a look like she just dumped on me like Kobe Bryant. She gave this quick little grudge to while she was doing it, she was like, and then proceeded to victoriously lick herself. All I know now, Jay is that I may no longer be the man of the house.
Speaker 3And you know what, it's the future. This is the future liberals want.
Speaker 4Well, speaking of the man of the house, Jay, talk about segues. I wanted to check up on our guy, Joe Biden and see what he has been doing during his proverbial first hundred days in office. As you may recall, Joe Biden began his presidential run on the pretty simple idea that the government and the country for that matter work best. When people from opposing parties unify and work together, he cast himself as the one person qualified enough to regain the passion for her bipartisanship and his inaugural address. Biden stated quote today on this January day, my whole soul is in this, bringing America together. Unity is the path forward. And to quote at the time I remember that some liberals actually, yes, especially on the progressive side of things were openly worried that Biden's determined to pledge towards bipartisanship was merely a remnant of a bygone era and a lost generation that attempts to find Republicans who would support his policies would not only fail, but also lessen the chances of pushing forth progressive priorities at a moment when Democrats happened to control both the house and the Senate and the presidency, when is the next time that that's ever going to happen? A Biden presidency could potentially stall the progress. Liberals have been demanding recently due to Biden's incrementalism as demonstrated by his decades in the Senate in many circles on both sides of the political spectrum. It seemed that Biden was really the worst choice to fix these trying times. Well, if the first 100 days of Biden's administration suggest anything it's that these left-wing fears so far might not really be, you see the first three months or so of Biden's build back better initiative has been defined by a series of executive orders, laws, legislative maneuvers, and policy proposals that suggest the 46th president is willing to go bigger, bolder, and much more liberal than most of us thought he was willing to
Speaker 3Do as a historian. One of the first signals, there were many signals during the campaign, but what is the first signals once he was in office, that things might not be what they seemed or how he was portrayed by both activists on the left and the right was that he replaced Trump's portrait of Andrew Jackson, an apt choice for that president and replaced it with a portrait of president Franklin, Delano Roosevelt. And then also right behind the resolute desk, put a bus of Cesar Chavez, the famous activists of farm workers in California and elsewhere. That signaled to me that despite Biden's many years in the Senate, which is not known for being fast in making any changes, it's known for its the deliberative body and finger quotes. He was trying to match the tone of the moment using
Speaker 4These symbols. So wait, you're saying that you didn't replace Andrew Jackson's picture with shisha.
Speaker 3Yeah. Right? I mean, where do you go from here? If you're a Trumpist Gangas Kahn, Jeffrey Dahmer. I don't know. I mean, you know, you already have like folks like Alex Jones, like literally threatening to eat his neighbors. There's not much ideological space left to go. If you're in that camp right now, it would be lamentable if it wasn't so horrible,
Speaker 4Do an entire episode just on the change in belief of Democrats, instead of being political adversaries, they are now seen by the Republicans as on American enemies and to some circles, baby eating Satan works.
Speaker 3I mean, I had baby for breakfast, so I'm full now. So other white meat, but I had aggressive. This is kind of the culmination of a long arc that goes back several decades between these two kind of competing ideologies as governor, the problem or government can help people. And of course, with some perspective and have a longer view of American history, obviously during the FDR administration, uh, people had a memory of government helping people get out of a very, very severe crime.
Speaker 4And that's been the theory so far behind Biden's complete initiative. And the first couple of months of his presidency, for example, Biden proposed and was able to push through a$1.9 trillion stimulus bill meant to help Americans affected by the global pandemic as well as the tanking economy he did. So with only democratic votes and dismissed Republican attempts to slim down the legislative package, the American rescue plan has been said to be even more specific and ambitious than what FDR did early on. It includes$350 billion in aid for state and local governments,$1,400 in cash payments to most Americans, extension of unemployment insurance, expansion of refundable tax credits for working families and children. I mean, that's a huge one right in itself, and a series of executive orders that reverse much of the damage Trump did on immigration and the environment. And the centerpiece of this entire plan is Biden's promise of 100 million vaccinations in 100 days. And that looks like it's going to succeed earlier than intended. And so if Biden succeeds with all of this, it will be potentially the fastest mobilization in American history.
Speaker 3At the time we are recording this, I think Biden's is gay 79 or 80. Somewhere in that realm. I haven't been counting is a very busy week for me. Anyway, he had announced, I think last week that he was going to double that particular ambitious number up to 200 million shots in his first 100 days. And I think I've been obsessively watching the white house COVID response team, um, press conferences that come out twice a week that are great to watch and watch them on CSPAN. They're not long. They filled me with comfort because you know, he get the progress every day. But anyway, we were already at like above 150 million shots somewhere in that realm as of this week. So it looks like they're going to hit their target, basically doubling, which is crazy. Cause you know, just a few months ago in January, there was a lot of like kind of media skepticism. Uh it's like that's like over promising it's way too much, but it seems like the theme of the Biden ministration has been more and more under promise and over deliver, which is actually really a smart strategy.
Speaker 4That's just one part of what he's been able to do over the last couple of months. He's also unveiled the$2.25 trillion infrastructure plan in late March that he touted as a quote once in a generation investment in America, end quote, as to the unified Republican opposition to the proposal Biden forcefully demonstrated in early April that he was open to compromise, but he was not open to doing nothing. He said, quote, debate as welcome compromise is inevitable changes are certain, but we will not be open to doing nothing. And action is simply not an option and
Speaker 3Quote it's. Unfortunately the news of our government's doings has been overshadowed by other very tragic news with police murdering unarmed black folks, which is extraordinarily awful. Now a cycle we've been in for awhile. What came in under the radar, again, just like you did with the, uh, American rescue plan by an invited Republicans into the white house, the beginning of this week, the same song and dance, the same kind of crew of so-called Republican moderates, really, which there are none because none of them have any interest at all in voting for anything. Have no counterproposals whatsoever have no even ideological position in which to argue other than to be opposed to everything. But you know, Biden's still making a good faith effort. Anyway, his view of, I think slightly different than maybe what we normally understand that as, or what the media perception of that is in late
Speaker 4January, 2021 Biden proposed a sweeping plan aimed at reducing us dependence on fossil fuels and addressing the looming climate crisis. In February, he announced a sweeping immigration bill that includes a pathway to citizenship for people in the country illegally. He also announced several executive orders on gun control very recently to the recording of this episode, including a declaration for much broader measures by Congress. And he said, quote, they can do this. Now they can do it right now. They've offered plenty of thoughts and prayers to members of Congress, but they have passed not a single new federal law to reduce gun violence, enough prayers, time for some action and quote,
Speaker 3We've got one party that's just in complete crisis right now is in some sort of nihilist test spiral. And so like all these really pressing problems, which we just keep repeating horrible mass shootings, the crying need to address racism and policing. Yes, we could do something tomorrow, but the Republicans they're stuck. And to some degree they were shot out into the wilderness in the early thirties to where, you know, they had had their chance for many years, era dominated by Republicans. Well, now there's a crisis and now it's time for some new leadership. So in some ways we're kind of in a similar place.
Speaker 4And I haven't even mentioned Biden's suspending the Keystone XL pipeline nor his decision to rejoin the nuclear deal with Iran or rejoining the world health organization and the Paris climate accord nor has moved to set up a bipartisan commission to study structural changes to the composition of the Supreme court. I mean, this is a year's worth of work in three months.
Speaker 3I know. And literally just today I announced withdrawing troops from Afghanistan by September 11th on that 20th anniversary that in itself, even if none of these other things were going on would be a huge, huge deal. I think his quote was something like obviously troops were there in response to nine 11, but it makes no sense that they're still there 20 years later. What is the mission? So these are big things. Not only are they big things, they're pretty progressive
Speaker 4Things. So I have to ask you, Jay, how did a divorce without institutionalist and self-professed pragmatic dealmaker during his time as Senator and even vice-president turn into a big swing, progressive
Speaker 3There's so much punditry out there and I don't want to reinvent the wheel. I mean, I'm an avid consumer of such things myself and I'm sure there are many other people at, and I hear a lot of answers. I think the good, basic short version of the few good answers I've heard are one Biden is kind of a bellwether of the democratic party. So as the democratic party moves, so does he, another one I've heard also is that yes, he's an institutionalist and everything we've seen, including a literal attack on our Capitol tells me he's now feels responsibility and protecting these institutions, which means much more bold action. Restoring the faith in the American government itself is kind of mission number one. So I can see how Biden is meeting those moments. And then of course, again, you know, going back to meeting the crisis, he's run for president many times and he's been around a long time. And so in some ways he has been training all his life for this moment. This is a culmination for him.
Speaker 4I thought of two answers to this question. The first is the fact that I feel Biden sincerely believes that the combined after effects of the Trump administration and the global pandemic have created an unprecedented moment where the direction of the country has been left wavering. I think this is why he keeps mentioning that he is fighting for the soul of the nation. A lot, the magnitude of these challenges laid before us, whether they be economic, environmental, public health, racial, et cetera, these challenges posed by this moment require a response from government that is both big and bold. And polls actually suggest that many of their ideas actually have support among Republican voters, not Republican politicians, but definitely a good majority of Republican voters are okay with this. It's kind of interesting.
Speaker 3We have some good examples of where we've kind of hit these moments before. I mean, FDR looked back to Lincoln coming in as president in a crisis. And I think smart politicians know that crises present opportunities to make big changes. I mean, that's kind of what paradigm shifts are and we're, we're in one I firmly believe. And so in this swirling chaos, there's all kinds of opportunities to do big, bold things that maybe couldn't be done in areas that are more stable. In some ways there are more calm. Any of the irony is, you know, it's like, okay, let's address climate change. I think 20 years ago that would seem pretty radical, but things have shifted. Another thing good politicians know how to do is to kind of get a sense of where people are at. Yeah. And another
Speaker 4Reason I feel that Biden took this left turn, so to speak, I mean also stem from his eight years behind president Obama. I really believe that I'm really referring to actually the first four years of Obama's presidency, where Barack tried helplessly to find compromise with Republican politicians on pretty much anything. And we all know how well that worked out. And I think that this experience showed Joe Biden that the Republican party he was used to seeing as a willing partner back in the day was no more. And this goes to your point previously made a couple of minutes ago, this Republican party has been replaced by a party built around absolutism and obstruction as the only winning strategy as reclined from the New York times stated quote, the result is that Obama Biden, the key political strategists who advise Biden and almost the entire democratic congressional caucus simply stopped believing Republicans would ever vote for major democratic bills and quote. And I think that is where you're seeing a lot of this they have given up and it's sad. They have given up on the Republican party to have any input in leadership, any responsibility, and now they have taken it upon their shoulders to really try to get us out of this mess. And ultimately this has all pushed Biden to the belief that this moment in time calls for radical and bold change, whether or not Republicans are willing to come along for this ride or not. And this is certainly not the Joe Biden. Most people have known him to be, and it's not the Joe Biden. A lot of Democrats thought they were going to get when they voted for him back in November. But this is the Joe Biden we have well, at least for now. And what I'm curious is how does this compare to what FDR had to go through in his first a hundred days? Because during my research, looking into Biden's comments over the past few months, he has borrowed a lot from the perspective that FDR had when he tried to get us out of the great depression,
Speaker 3There's kind of two pieces to it. It's the way you talk about your policy and then what you're actually doing to implement it. Man, I wish I could remember who quoted it. Somebody wrote either yesterday or the day before it was pine campaigns as prose, but governance as poetry. It was talking about the precise timing of all these policies are rolling out the executive orders first and the rescue plan, the infrastructure plan and so on and so forth going through, um, perhaps action on student loans, closer to the midterms. There's a rhyme and reason to this, but you asked me about reactions to it. So he has a plan, but then it wasn't a slim majority when FDR came and things were a lot less polarized and then they are now eventually as you get further into FDR, his presidency, especially as his second term and later there's a lot more resistance to what he's doing. And oftentimes in his own party, then the ideological lines shift a little bit, you know, the democratic party has had a lot of people from the south or who were as happy about him, pushing government is helping people, which is the point I really wanted to make, was thinking about where we started with that in the thirties and how we got here, especially with the Republican party being so broken. And I think what ended up happening was, again, there are these two ideologies, right? Government can help and government's the problem, but the government is the problem. People were really kind of blindsided during the crisis of FDR. But when you get to the civil rights act and a concerted effort to address the systemic racism in the sixties, that's when the Republicans really get hardcore with the government is a problem ideology because really it's government problem parentheses because it helps nonwhite people and women. Once they go down that road, they're going to get to where they are now. I mean, we know that now with hindsight, but that was the road. They were always traveling on. If government's the problem, eventually government's the enemy. And we have to storm the Capitol to stop them from counting the electoral votes. We have to abandoned governments in the middle of a pandemic because government can't help. If we let government help at all, then we betrayed our own ideology at this point. And now they're kind of way outside the box because there was a fight for a while within the Republican party between kind of wings of the party that were like Rockefeller Republicans are like, you know, we're businessmen. We can do a public private partnerships. And then there were kind of like the wing nuts who eventually went out and, you know, Nixon, unfortunately included and people were even more radical after him. It was like, you know, we're going to do whatever we can to have power. That's when Ailes Roger Stone and all these other folks come out and it's just like, it's all about power. And doesn't matter. Governance is not the priority. You end up in a situation now where these two ideas are. So starkly, separate America is in crisis. Now that in some ways for scale, the crisis in a lot of ways was even worse in 1932. I mean, because there was no FDI. See if there are no kind of structures in place, the economic calamity kind of spiraled out of control. So what FDR had to do right away was take these kinds of unprecedented actions, declare a bank holiday, stop business, everybody take a break, take a pause. We're going to establish some rules. You can't just line up and take all your money out of the bank and let the bank collapse. We're going to figure out how to get relief to people who are literally starving. There are things that they had to do kind of immediately to help people. This is where we get the first 100 days. Now, every time there's this kind of media narrative and a new president comes in, oh, what's he going to do? And his first 100 days, cause really like FDR created a whole new model because he took so many executive actions to kind of reshape American government to confront the crisis. Hoover was just flailing. You needed kind of like not tinkering around the edges, but major structural changes to address the crisis while
Speaker 4Hoover was flailing. That didn't mean that everything that FDR did was this cool and calculated the thing. Yes. A lot of it was, however, his mantra was more that he was a man of action. He had to always be trying something. And his idea was like, look, you know, like we got to try it cause we have to try something. And that's kind of what Biden was alluding to in his inauguration speech where now is the time for us to come together and do these big things. And then just recently talking about the infrastructure plan, admitting that look, I'm willing to talk to people on the opposite side of the aisle about what they would like to do to change this bill. But I am not going to do nothing. We have to try something. I feel like FDR was constantly experimenting on what would work and if it didn't work, he would stop it and he would change it around and then he would go onto something else. It wasn't flailing. He was trying good ideas, but I feel like these are some cues that Biden has adopted in his perspective during this moment,
Speaker 3If we want to draw another parallel between buying an FDR it's, you know what they did before I was governor of New York prior to being a president you're governor of a state where the crash happens, his term starts right before the crash. So he's already kind of dealt with like a mini version of what he's going to have to do nationwide unemployment in New York city was horrible at the same time, you know, Biden was there with Obama in those first few months of, uh, 2009, when the crisis was just spiraling out of control. We passed a big stimulus bill, but ended up, you know, as we know now in hindsight and what Biden has said many times, the response wasn't big enough, you know, that it really kind of stretched out the pain and a slow recovery. Certain sectors never did recover like higher ed. He got to learn that lesson from that vantage point and now has this opportunity to do something different. So, you know, the rescue plan, I think it was like three times the size of the 2009 stimulus plan, much of which in, in oh nine was mostly went straight to banks just to buy up these assets that were causing problems in the market. It wasn't even like checks to people and shots and arms, which is what the American rescue plan was term
Speaker 4Was too big to fail. I went all to the banks and automakers and major corporations and their everyday American really saw none of that. And that's when you started seeing occupy wall street pop-up and on the other side of the tea party, it, I think had a lot to do with how really George W. Bush handled it. He
Speaker 3Created the first stimulus before
Speaker 4He left office. And then when Obama was inaugurated, one of the first things that he did was to essentially rinse and repeat, create another stimulus package for major banks, bank of America, chase a lot of people on all sides of the political spectrum were screaming to just say, Hey, you know, let them go bankrupt. This is not the right direction that we should be going in right now. And a lot of people got upset. It helped create the tea party. I'm sure that Barack Obama being a person of color didn't hurt their numbers. And now that tea party grew into the mega cult and who knows what that's going to transmogrify into in the future. But Biden really had some disagreements over how Obama ran the first four years of his presidency. And I feel like he is trying to learn from those mistakes and assimilate what he saw during the great depression and FDR dealt with things and is trying to sincerely do the right thing.
Speaker 3You know, Biden's a very frustrating villain for the Republicans right now. He is not a black man. This stuff he is doing is popular. The Republicans have been on this trajectory for a long time with policies that are very unpopular. You know, the power of what we call negative partisanship is very strong where it's just like, you know, you vote against your perceived adversary. That's sustained many election cycles, but that game is over time as become broken. And the paradigm is shifting now. And that wasn't, you know, that was never meant to last forever. It may seem like it did, but so, so that, that, you know, Biden has this real opportunity, but FDR in the same way, have that opportunity, Republicans had dominated not just the 1920s, but really the entire period from the civil war onwards with some notable important exceptions. When at the time came for things to really shift both. I didn't have to ER, seem to be well FDR we know, uh, was taking advantage of that to really kind of put these structural changes in that could stabilize the systems and make them better for people genuinely make them better for people. Now that's not to say FDR was perfect far from it. The new deal notably left out women and people of color. And of course, during world war II, we also imprisoned Asian Americans, some really dark parts in American history, but also we can't even imagine what life would be like without social security, without unemployment. These are things that are keeping people from dying on the street. Literally it remains to be seen because even after this podcast is recorded and airs, you know, there's still going to be a lot for Biden to do in his first term. Mine seems to be well aware of this history and the, in this moment, populism is part of the American political culture. It manifests itself on both the left and the right it's this kind of search for an enemy creation and stoking of grievance, you know? And there's always like some cause, but the cause is never the primary thing. The cause is the anger. Uh, one of the things that was most striking to me and some other historians I noticed picked up on it and uh, Biden's inaugural address is that he said the government, isn't some foreign entity in some far away place. It's us. It literally says in our founding documents, we, the people, we are the government, it really strikes at the heart of like this competing ideology that the government is some entity out to get you in that we have to fight it at all costs, collect guns to fight it or whatever, you know, it's like, no, we can make it what we want to provide for the things we need, especially in a crisis. So I was taking notes. I think, you know, this wasn't off the cuff, but I knew what he was saying.
Speaker 4I love every comment I get on the interweb where the response is, oh, well, that's just a result of the deep state. And I'm like deep state. Congratulations, idiot. You discovered bureaucracy. Congratulations.
Speaker 3The deep state is when you go to a city council meeting and listen to listen to folks testify on zoning. You want to get into the deep state. That's where it's at. Good luck to you and cut.
Speaker 4Yeah. You want to be invited to the next deep state meeting, come to a zoning ordinance committee in your local township have fun. You'll get to find out all the deep dark secrets that are controlling your life. Guess what? You can vote on it. I know,
Speaker 3I know. It's, they're going to put in that bike path. There's nothing you can do, but complain a lot and maybe stop it from yeah. Today we have a very special guest, Dr. Alan Lichtman, he known for many things. He's a well known scholar of conservatism. He wrote a book called white Protestant nation. I find highly influential, but even more well known probably for his 13 keys to the white house, which he makes a prediction on who will win the presidency using a mathematical formula, which I find endlessly fascinating. So Dr. Lichtman, thank you so much for being with us today on the Nazi and wall street podcast. Certainly happy to be there. Well, I guess we should start with the first 100 days. That's a term that came out of the new deal. Yes. I've been around a long time. I go all the way
Speaker 1Back to the Eisenhower administration and became a professor at American university way back in 1973, beginning with the Reagan administration, I've been asked for a period of 40 years. Every time a new president is an org aerated. How does his hundred days compare to Franklin Roosevelt's hundred days? And my answer is always a famous Zen quotation. Ask the question. There is no comparison to Franklin Roosevelt's 100 days, Franklin Roosevelt's 100 days where unique will probably never again be replicated, at least in the foreseeable future of the American experience. He faced this unprecedented calamity of the economy in collapse and perhaps society on the verge of unraveling. He had an overwhelmingly supportive democratic Congress who basically would push through anything that FDR wanted. You know, this notion of bipartisanship, it's a nice slogan, but the truth is most of the important things in American history have been done with unified control of a government or in Reagan's case unified ideological control over government. And he got through some 15 major bills depending on how you define it in his first hundred days. And also had quite a number of critical executive orders, executive orders, for example, declaring a bank holiday. So the banks wouldn't have this unsustainable run on their assets.
Speaker 4What was the state of the Senate at the time? Was it similar to the point where we had such a hairline margin of a majority, or was there much more of a democratic presence in the Senate that allowed the Democrats to simply pass everything that FDR could did? They have a Joe mansion? They
Speaker 1Did have some Joe mansions, but here's the deal. They had clearly enough majorities in both houses of Congress to enact whatever they wanted. And actually they extraordinarily, for the first time, since the civil war, the party controlling the white house, FDR made gains in the midterm elections of 1934 running against Herbert Hoover and his disastrous approach to the economy also. And this is critical to understanding what an extraordinary politician FDR was. And sometimes, you know, even someone as humane as FDR has to sacrifice principle for politics, he made a deal with Southern Democrats. They were, you know, a third of the party. They had critical chairmanships because basically if you were a Democrat in the south, you always won in those days. So he made a deal with the Southern Democrats. Basically they would support FDRs new deal and they did overwhelmingly. And in turn, he would not mess around with Jim Crow. The system of discriminatory race relations in the south, FDR never had a civil rights program to deal with, uh, Jim Crow in the south because of this deal that he cut with Southern Democrats, which really wasn't undermined until 1948, when Hubert Humphrey at the democratic convention pushed the Democrats for the first time to adopt a civil rights program, Southern has walked out of the convention and we all know that Strom Thurmond the governor of South Carolina, organized a third party movement. I wanted to
Speaker 3Ask you, I know that our media landscape is going to make comparisons is that's what they do, but are there analogs or comparisons between the verse 100 days of the Biden presidency and FDR?
Speaker 1I think there are, you know, they both faced major crisis FDR face and economic calamity. The worst in the nation's history, talking about businesses, uh, in the red unemployment, well over 20%, not even counting under employment, which was enormous at the time farms being foreclosed, social unrest raging across the land was not just an economic problem. It was a real fear that society would become unraveled. Joe Biden didn't face conundrums of that level, but he still faced severe problems coming in the economy certainly had not recovered from the pandemic hit. The outgoing administration. Credibly had worked hard to develop a vaccine, but entirely botched, otherwise its response to the pandemic and botched the rollout of the vaccine. So Biden had to deal with recovering from the economic downturn of 2020 and dealing with a still raging pandemic. You know, Donald Trump said in one of the presidential debates in October that we're turning the corner on the pandemic. When in fact the pandemic was becoming much worse and claiming many thousands of lives per day and heading towards 400,000 lost lives by the end of his presidency. And we're now well over 550,000 lost lives. So Biden had to deal with the economy. He had to deal with the pandemic. Unlike FDR though, he did not have commanding majorities in both houses of Congress. And back in those days, you didn't have the routine use of the filibuster. So today he needs 60 votes for certain things in the Senate, not just 50, although he brilliantly got around it for a stimulus package with something called reconciliation, I'm not going to get into the arcane features of it, but basically the Nabeel's you to pass things in the Senate with a simple majority when you're dealing with spending and taxes. So there are those parallels, there were other parallels Biden didn't get 15 major bills through, but like FDR, he did get a crucial relief and recovery bill through. And that of course was his$1.9 trillion stimulus package, which he passed without a single Republican vote in either the house and the Senate and in the Senate, he had to have his vice president Kamala Harris break the tie. Also we tend to forget FDR also issued important executive orders. As I mentioned on the banks, on giving up your gold for cash and a whole host of other executives fact, FDR wound up issuing over the course of his presidency over 3,700 executive orders like orders of magnitude more than any modern president. And of course Biden given the, his precarious majorities in both houses of Congress, acted significantly through executive orders fundamentally to overturn the policies in areas like the environment international relations, dealing with COVID and immigration to overturn policies of the Trump administration that also largely had been established through executive order because Trump only had Republican majorities in his first two years. And despite claiming to be the master of the deal failed miserably to make deals in the Congress.
Speaker 4One of the biggest obstacles that Biden has to deal with currently is working within the wake of the big lie that the Trump administration tried to push shortly after the election, where it has now created this atmosphere where a good portion of the electorate does not even believe in the credibility of the election. And that president Joe Biden is not really the president. What I'd like to know is one, is there any historical context where a substantial portion of the electorate did not believe in the credibility of an election? And the second is how does president Biden work in this environment to bring people together as he had declared that he wanted to do during the election, bring this sense of unity. When a good portion of people don't even believe that he's the actual presence. FDR
Speaker 1Did not have the burden of a substantial segment of the American people believing he was not legitimate, only elected. He wanted an overwhelming landslide with something on the order of nearly 60% of the popular vote in the overwhelming majority of the electoral college. So the vote was so sweeping that even the most bitter opponents didn't argue, he wasn't[inaudible] elected, but FDR had to face a barrage of criticism from people who believe that he was an unAmerican president. He faced a lot of criticism from the American, right, who, you know, ironically called him simultaneously a fascist and a communist that, you know, he was bringing into American government, all of these pernicious, awful foreign doctors, the German American book, openly Nazi organization even said he was secretly Jewish. He was really president Rosenfeld. And you know, he was lying to the American people about his heritage. And of course, for a pro Nazi group being a Jewish bent, you are illegitimate. Roosevelt had a wonderful answer to this. He said, uh, you know, I'm not sure what religion, my ancestors followed way back, you know, in earlier times, but I don't really care as long as they were good people. That's all that matters is just a wonderful response. But you know, FDR never brought together all of the American people about a third to 40% of the American people were bitterly and diametrically opposed to the new deal. They believed it was killing capitalism, destroying individual initiative. Regimenting people. They believed that it was bringing in un-American foreign doctrines leaders of evangelical Christianity believe that S FDR was undermining morality because he was offering the government as a solution rather than following personal moral religious teachings as the solution. They believe the problem was bad people, not a bad system. And it could never be remedied by government. You'll never bring all the people together. That's a myth. And you know what, in terms of passing legislation, no one cares how the vote was. How many people remember today that not a single Republican voted for the affordable care act. All people care about is isn't the affordable care act, helping me, my favorite president, or one of them along with FDR, Abraham Lincoln talked about all the criticism. You know, we reviewed Lincoln today. He was reviled by his opponents in his own time. Maybe no president was so reviled because even the north was so bitterly divided. And what he said was I never bothered to answer all of these personal criticisms because the truth is if everything comes out okay, in the end, none of this is going to matter anyway. And if it doesn't come out okay, in the end, it still won't matter. I think Biden should keep that in mind. The
Speaker 3Media discussion of, uh, the need for bipartisanship seems to be a creation of the chattering class itself, but not really something that actually matters in the historical record. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1Right. It's a creation of the chattering class. And, you know, it's kind of a nice do good idea, but for the most part, it hasn't mattered. Sometimes it has the best examples of where it has mattered is the civil rights act of 64 and the voting rights act of 65. And the reason it mattered, uh, kind of out of character in those cases was the Southern Democrats. So you couldn't get democratic unity. And Johnson had to get every Dirksen, the minority leader in the Senate to bring along Republicans, but you know, for the most pod Johnson's great society pass with democratic votes. The new deal passed with democratic votes, Ronald Reagan's, our Reaganomics pass where the Republican votes and some Southern democratic support, the affordable care act didn't have a single Republican behind it. Neither did. Biden's a stimulus package, have a single Republican vote. But you know, if you get your stimulus check or your unemployment compensation, you're not going to care that Republicans didn't vote. I'm going to give this check back because it wasn't bi-partisan
Speaker 3For the general public, they have an understanding that the new deal happened, that there were these major changes. But for scholars, we know that there were really kind of pieces of the new deal. There was like an about first new deal and a second new deal. And of course, I'm also thinking about kind of historical parallels of how things might play out in the Biden prednisone and see. So I was wondering if you could give our listeners the general timeline of how the new deal played out during a FDRs first and second administration,
Speaker 1There are really three pieces to the new deal you pointed out. The first new deal is a hundred days and the early days and months of the Roosevelt administration, when he issued his executive orders to keep the banks from collapsing to inject cash into the economy, he adopted regulation of securities relief to individuals, major programs, to revive the agricultural economy, the agricultural adjustment act to revive the industrial economy, the national recovery act planning in the most depressed area of the country, the Tennessee valley area ensuring bank deposits to try to prevent future runs on the bank. So a lot of this was, you know, response to the emergency. Then we got sometimes called the second new deal after he did so well in the midterm elections of 1934 and the hallmarks of that, or the Wagner act national labor relations act to, uh, shore up collective bargaining and unionization. That's one of the most important pieces of legislation in American history. And it often gets overlooked because prior to FDR unions were almost nothing, 10% of the workforce by the 1950s, it had gone up to a third to a great extent attributable for both the national labor relations act and a new kind of industrial unionism that incorporated all workers, not just skilled workers it's since declined again. But that's another story of the pillars of the second new deal with the works progress to put the unemployed to work. And of course the singular, perhaps most important achievement of the new deal, social security act, which was not just old age pensions, there were three other very important components aid to dependent children that is mothers who did not have a male partner present to help her support the children, unemployment compensation. We forget that's part of social security and a aid to the disabled, very important part of social security. Then we got the second term and the second term started out on a very sour note for FDR. He suffered his first big defeat, and that is his so-called court packing plan. FDI was very worried for good reason that a conservative Supreme court, he hadn't appointed anyone yet would overturn the new deal. They are already overturned the agricultural adjustment act and the national recovery act. And he was afraid they would go after the social security act and the national labor relations act and destroy the new deal. And they had good reason for that. So he proposed this plan to expand the Supreme court for every justice over 70, who didn't retire. Well, it was a disaster. He couldn't even get democratic support, even though he had even bigger democratic majorities after the 1936 election, then he had, after the 1932 election Republicans went down to almost nothing in the house and the Senate. And that started the second term off on a sour note, a difficult note,
Speaker 3People first started talking about expanding the court during a Kavanaugh, and then, uh, Amy Coney Barrett. My favorite story to tell, uh, my friends, uh, who are not historians is the switching time that saved
Speaker 1Nine. Yeah. I was about to get to that justice Roberts swing vote, who switched to not overturn the pillars of the new deal and that really preserved the nine member. And, you know, if there was any historical lesson, FDR was not the first president to go after the court. It's never worked leave the court alone politically. I understand why you might want to expand the court, but that is political dynamite. I'm not saying it's the wrong thing to do. I'm just saying the historical lesson is presidents do not do well when they tilt against the Supreme court. And then of course the major accomplishment of the second term, which same term didn't come close to matching the first term was the fair labor standards act, minimum wage, maximum hours, anti-child labor. And that began to unravel the deal that FDR made with the south because a lot of Southern Democrats hated the fair labor standards act, because guess who wages would be raised? African Americans, you know, would undermine the dual system of wages in the south. And that was kind of the birth of the so-called a conservative coalition that really emerged full blown in the 1940s of Republicans and Southern Democrats. It was that conservative coalition that really stymied Harry Truman's fair deal programs. And that resulted in the first major modification of a new deal program. The Taft Hartley act of 1947, which gutted parts of the national labor relations act and was passed over Harry Truman's veto by this coalition of Southern Democrats and Republicans.
Speaker 4We've seen some Republicans like representative Madison, Cawthorne start touting the American rescue plan after no Republicans voted for it. And so I would like to know if at any point after the first new deal had passed and the benefits started to be seen, were there any Republicans or those people who were vehemently against it at the time, did they start coming around to understand that there were benefits of them, the new
Speaker 1Deal, you know, after FDR one in 19 36, 1 prominent Republican said, you know, you can't beat Santa Claus. Here's the great paradox of American politics. People hate their government and they still do. You know, they still believe in this myth of rugged individualism that we can all make it on our own in this free enterprise open society. And, you know, we don't need big government, but as I mentioned before, nobody, but nobody is willing to give up their benefits from government. And it's not just things like source security, for example, you know, when floods or hurricanes hit, who is it that people turn to? And you know, a lot of this, isn't very conservative areas in the south and the Midwest, who do they turn to for relief to government? So this is the paradox at the core of American politics. People hate their government, but they love what government can do for them. And we're always as, you know, observers. And of course, as politicians trying to deal with the tensions created by that paradox. And that's what you're seeing with these conservatives embracing the benefits of the stimulus package. And eventually not immediately, conservatives came particularly to embrace the benefits of social security. How can you be against helping out old people, you know, who can fend for themselves in the private economy? This is one of the interesting things about the new deal. By the way, you know, the new deal was not a big welfare giveaway. Look at the social security act, its main welfare provision. It was all designed to deal with people who couldn't make it in the private economy. You were too old, you didn't have a job and you were looking for a job and you couldn't find one, you were disabled, you are a woman burden with a lot of kids. So, you know, he, wasn't looking just to give away federal money to those who could fend for themselves. Those who could fend for themselves, they had to work under the WPA works progress administration of federal works program, interesting to Harry Hopkins, a very influential FDR advisor was head of the WPA. And he was criticized by saying, you know, are these projects that these workers are working on really have long-term benefit. And Harry Hopkins would respond. People don't eat in the long term. They need jobs. They need relief right now. You know, we're talking about infrastructure, it's a big topic today. One of the most overlooked aspects of the new deal was this tremendous impact on infrastructure. The public works programs of the new deal were critical for building and repairing American infrastructure, roads, bridges, airports, and guess who benefited most from that? The businessman, the business, people who are constantly attacking and tearing down the new deal, probably no one benefited more from the new deal than American business, even though American business was constantly attacking FDR.
Speaker 3And that's kind of the big question on my mind, we're recording this as we're debating and discussing a new infrastructure plan. What I've been thinking a lot about is the legacy of the new deal and how we look at government now, and also this paradox that you've brought up that is such a core of our politics, that there's this, all this obstruction and all this reaction against these activities that ultimately all Americans have vastly benefited from. So I was wondering you're in the prediction business and I want to push that too much, but like what do you see happening in the next 100 days? The rest of Biden's term, given this legacy of how things have shifted in American's relationship to government and you know what we might see next?
Speaker 1You know, the conventional wisdom, even among a lot of scholars, is that what Republicans stand for is fiscal responsibility and limited government. Well, they only stand for that when they're out of power, once they're in power, they have their own vision of Republican big government. Who's the biggest spender and the biggest government builder in history. George W. Bush, his spending increased more in terms of relation to the GDP in one term, then Democrat bill Clinton had spent in two terms, he built the biggest bureaucracy department of Homeland security. So the argument is never over fiscal responsibility or big government. Your argument is over what you do with government. I mean, Republicans have suddenly discovered, oh my God deficits, of course they were very happy with Trump's tax plan that built a$2 trillion. So it's always, you know what you're doing with government, never its size, its scope, the spending. And so all of this Republican opposition to the Biden plans, it's all political. It's not principled. It's not based on anything other than politics. Remember when Obama came in, uh, Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate leader said it doesn't matter what it is. We're going to oppose anything with Obama's name on it. We seem to see the same thing from Republicans. Now we're going to oppose anything with Biden's name on it, even though after it passes, are you going to say, look what we're doing for you with all of these benefits. So I think in the end we will get some kind of infrastructure plan, but not the full 2 trillion or 3 trillion, whatever the most ambitious plan that Biden is proposing,
Speaker 4What were some that FDR made during either the first a hundred days or in the first term that Biden can learn from so that he can not run into the same obstacles during his first term? I think
Speaker 1FDR, his first term was about as flawless as was possible. You know, he really got through pretty much everything that he wanted. And in a sense, some would say it was successful because he was criticized by both sides of the political spectrum. Of course the Rite aid at him, you know, they called him a fascist, a communist, a dictator. Let's not forget. He had a lot of criticism from the left. Those who didn't think he was doing enough. You know, his most famous critic was Huey long. The king Fisher Senator from Louisiana who wanted to share the wave wealth plan, basically soak the rich and redistribute the wealth that ordinary Americans. And he said, you know, FDR was too conservative. Wasn't doing enough father Kauflin Charles Kauflin the radio priest kind of rush limbo of his time. He had the biggest radio and he was also at that time, a critic from the left saying, we need much more liberal fiscal policies. Francis Townshen proposed much bigger, old age pensions than anything in the social security act. So FDR face criticism, we forget from his left as well as from his right and QE long was planning to run against him in 1936 as an independent and may have made it more difficult for FDR to win. But he was assassinated in 1935. So that did not happen. FDR really did not make his first big political mistake until the very beginning of his second term with this court packing plan. And there were two mistakes or three, one was of course gotta be very careful in going after the court just makes you look bad, makes you look like you're politicizing. The one branch of government. That's not supposed to be political. We know that's not true, but it does make you look bad. Secondly, he didn't get his ducks in line. He didn't even get his democratic party in line behind his court packing plant. And then finally by late in the term, foreign policy really takes over, you know, as we get to the preliminary and then to the outbreak of world war II, FDR had a very, very difficult time getting through his foreign policy priorities. At one point, he made what was called his famous quarantined speech. We talked about quarantining, the dictators, and he didn't get any support. He said, you know, imagine you're leading a band and you turn around and no one's following you. He did not do very well. And maybe no one could have, because we were in isolation, his country at the time in really commanding support for his foreign policies. Eventually he did succeed, but it was very, very difficult.
Speaker 3These are such huge aspects now, structurally in modern us history and led to massive political realignments. And so now I'm wondering if there's going to be a new, massive realignment. We just like we heard about it. Reagan back in the day, we're hearing about Biden Republicans. Now that's a different look back then looking back in the new deal, looking back at 1980, but I'm wondering, you know, because they're these huge crises, huge responses, they tend to have major political realigning effects. So in thinking about legacy, well, I was wondering what your thoughts are on the legacy then and what we might see
Speaker 1Now, you know, FDR, his legacy was impart through his policies. His policies did fundamentally change the relationship between the government and the individual and the government and the economy policies designed to curb the abuses of business to build up unions, to provide relief to individuals, policies like the federal deposit insurance corporation, to make sure we wouldn't have another great depression. And we haven't, and that's a huge legacy, but there are other aspects of FDR his legacy. He was instrumental in fundamentally realigning American politics. Let's not forget since 1920, until FDR Republicans had won every presidential election by landslide margins. America was a Republican dominated country. Only one exception was the solidly democratic south, which grew out of white supremacy and opposition to reconstruction. FDR totally changes that we work for 20 years. You know, Democrats won every presidential election until Eisenhower in 52 and Roosevelt forged this new majority coalition. And it was pretty extraordinary. You know, it had some real contradictory elements, you know, Jews, Catholics, union members African-Americans for the first time and Southern white supremacists was quite amazing, you know, and he was able to hold that together. And to a great extent, it held together until the election of 1980. And then again, the election of 1994 in which really Republicans took over the south. So his achievement was also very much political and finally was under FDR that really, for the first time in our history, we thoroughly abandoned isolationism and became involved strategically, economically, politically in every part of it.
Speaker 3Are we bound to see another realignment perhaps?
Speaker 1Yeah. Yeah. You know, what's interesting about the current political situation that really makes it so different from the new deal period is really economics dominated the new deal period. Yes, there was this element of Christian conservatism that opposed the new deal, but you know, the major Christian conservative organization. And by the way, Christian conservatism did not start with Jerry Falwell and the moral majority and the late 1970s, spiritual mobilization was formed in the middle of the 1930s by pastor James five field with the support of the big conservative donor, J Howard pew of sun oil. One of the most important figures in American conservatism, who's kind of been forgotten in the history books, but spiritual mobilization did not stress the social issues. You know, it wasn't calling particularly for revival of prohibition or, you know, war against mud. It primarily dealt with economic issues. As I said, you know, the idea that government is not the answer and the new deal is regimenting us and killing. So it dealt with economic and governmental issues. So the social issues really were there, but they weren't nearly as prominent in the 1930s as they are today. And really it is the social issues that is sustaining the Republican party without the social issues. I think the Republican party would fall apart, but the Republican party isn't a lot of trouble. A new Gallup poll just came out, showing they're down to 40%. That's why they want to figure out how to govern as a minority. That's why they benefit from the electoral college. Republicans have only won one time. The popular vote from 1992 to 2020, that was 2004, but they twice won the presidency in 2000 and 2016, losing the popular vote and came close in 2020, you know, a few hundred thousand votes in a few key swing states. Trump could have won the presidency while losing the popular vote by 7 million votes. So they're trying to figure out how to govern as a minority. That's why you're seeing all these voters suppression measures. You can't grow more old white guys like me, the base of the Republican party, but you can try to suppress the rising democratic base of young people and minorities. And the big question is can they succeed in governing as a minority? And if they don't succeed. And I think it's really questionable, whether they can. It's an open question. I'm not going to predict the answer, but if they can't, then I do think we're going to see some kind of big realignment.
Speaker 4It's still unknown. Whether Donald Trump will actually run in 20, 24, but one of the keys about that. Okay. So one of the keys to the presidency is whether the challenger is uncharismatic or charismatic or not. And what I would like to know is can the GOP with the direction that it is going, which is absorbing Trumpism, can the GOP survive? This Trumpist March without Trump. If Trump is not a part of the 2024 election,
Speaker 1First part is I don't think Trump's going to run in 2024. And I have a host of reasons for that. It's not that he may not want to run one. The guy is not healthy. You know, he concocts these crazy doctor reports. He's not healthy. He's morbidly obese. He's in his mid seventies. You know, whether he will be healthy enough in four years to run again is a huge question. But leave that aside. He has so many problems that are facing him that I don't think he's going to be able to concentrate on doing what you need to do to run for president. Again, he faces possible criminal indictment in at least three venues in the state of New York, which is looking into his finances and I've looked into his finances as much as one can cause, you know, I wrote the book, the case for impeachment and I firmly believe, you know, he's played and loose with his finances in a criminal way, whether they indicted him or not. I can't answer that. He also faces possible election tampering, indictment in Atlanta and possible indictment for insurrection in DC. And there may be other criminal problems that we just don't know about. He's facing dozens upon dozens of civil cases. He can't just ignore them because he's going to be called upon to give evidence. And one of them by egine cowl, she claims he raped her in the 1990s. And she has DNA evidence kind of like Monica Lewinsky did. And the court probably will subpoena him to provide DNA and that alone, if it turns out the DNA matches and the rape allegations, incredible unlike Hollywood access where you can say it never happened, he's not going to escape that he's got$400 million plus in loans coming due, he's off Twitter, his brand is hurting. His businesses are hurting. So I don't think he's going to be in a position to run in 2024. Can the GOP survive? Trump preserved Trumpism without Trump? Absolutely. We see all these prodo, Trump's emerging, a governor DeSantis and Florida Senator Hawley in Missouri, among Madison Cawthon, the represent among a host of others. And as long as there is this simmering resentment of the other, the social issue as I call it, the Republicans at least have a potential to survive, but only as a minority party, as I see it, that's not a prediction. That's just what I see at this point. I don't have a system for engaging that, you know, in 2014, when the state of Texas was adopting voter suppression measures of all people, Rand, Paul Senator Rand, Paul came to Texas and gave him a lecture. And he said, you know, you're making a mistake. You need to reach out to the minorities. You're not gonna survive by trying to keep them from voting. That might work in the short term. It's not going to work in the longterm. If Biden is healthy enough to run and you know, he's not obese and have big health challenges like Trump, but he's older four years older. So assume for a moment, Biden is healthy enough to run again in 2024, if the Democrats want to win, they should. We nominate Biden because that would give them two keys. The sitting president key and the internal party contest gave Biden's out of the picture. Obviously you lose the sitting president key and you're going to lose the internal party contest. Key. Of course, there are lots of ambitious Democrats and they're just not going to just bow down to Kamala Harris and anoint her as the nominee. Remember it takes six keys to lose. And so forfeiting two keys or conversely securing two keys is huge. So that is your little bonus outlook for 2024.
Speaker 3I love it. I love it. Dr. Liquin. Thank you so much for being part of this discussion. I will continue to think about it as we opine on, uh, on the new deal then, and now I believe a realignment is coming. If the first 100 days of the Biden administration culminates with anything close to what the first 100 days of the FDR administration was like, then the Republicans really are in a situation where they can't beat Santa's rush Limba. Once that responded to that and said, oh, well, we're going to bring our own Santa Claus, but we all know he never did.
Speaker 2Uh, Nazi on wall street is brought to you by elusive films maker of the, uh, Nazi on wall streets, film and television series. It was recorded and edited by EGA Russo. Original music was written and performed by Joseph Mulholland. We can't bring these stories to life on screen without your support. So please consider donating to our crowdfunding campaign@elusive-films.com. That's elusive hyphen films.com for Jason Wexel Baum I'm E J Russo. Thank you. And we will see you next episode.