AI transcript
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0:00:36 Will the VP debate move the needle in what’s shaping up to be a neck-and-neck election?
0:00:40 You never know in advance what will be the thing that matters and the thing that doesn’t matter.
0:00:48 But Donald Trump will be almost 80 and J.D. Vance will be one cheeseburger away
0:00:50 from the presidency should they win.
0:00:55 I’m Preet Bharara and this week the Atlantic magazine’s David Frum joins me on my podcast
0:00:59 Stay Tuned with Preet to break down what happened at the debate.
0:01:01 The episode is out now.
0:01:04 Search and follow Stay Tuned with Preet wherever you get your podcasts.
0:01:12 Hi everyone, I’m Brené Brown and I’d love to tell you about a new series that’s launching on
0:01:13 Unlocking Us.
0:01:17 I’m calling it the On My Heart and Mind podcast series.
0:01:20 It’s going to include conversations with some of my favorite writers on topics ranging from
0:01:25 revolutionary love and gun ownership to menopause and finding joy and grief.
0:01:28 The first episode is available now and I can’t wait for you to hear it.
0:01:32 All new episodes will drop on Wednesdays and you can get them as soon as they’re out by
0:01:35 following Unlocking Us on Apple or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
0:01:39 Welcome to Raging Moderates.
0:01:40 I’m Scott Galloway.
0:01:41 And I’m Jessica Tarliff.
0:01:47 Jessica, we’re Raging Moderates with an emphasis on the term “Raging.”
0:01:50 Raging all the time, yes.
0:01:53 I mean, I don’t know if other people will think we’re Raging Moderates,
0:01:55 but we’re here to tell you why we are Raging Moderates.
0:01:58 What does the term “moderate” mean to you?
0:02:02 Moderate just means anything that’s around the center.
0:02:04 That’s what it is around the center of an issue.
0:02:08 A lot of people like to identify themselves as politically moderates.
0:02:11 So that’s kind of like the center left or the center right of each party.
0:02:16 But I think that it really comes down to how you’re feeling about a particular issue
0:02:21 at a particular time and that that’s what it means to be moderate.
0:02:24 Yeah, I like to think it means they’re not part of a cult.
0:02:26 And occasionally we can acknowledge the other side.
0:02:27 That works too, yeah.
0:02:29 And what are your objectives?
0:02:33 If this was a win, if this podcast gets huge traction,
0:02:35 what are you hoping to accomplish here?
0:02:39 I’m hoping to have a lot of really thoughtful conversations
0:02:42 about where society actually is.
0:02:46 And that maybe folks who are running for office or an elected office
0:02:49 will take note of the fact that the biggest voices,
0:02:53 the biggest coalition is actually around the center of these issues.
0:02:56 And that they’ll start acting accordingly and also to draw those lines
0:02:58 between what’s going on in the political sphere
0:03:00 and what’s going on in the real world.
0:03:01 Because it’s all intertwined.
0:03:04 And I mean, that’s really what you do so well.
0:03:07 Let’s talk about what’s happening in the business and in the markets
0:03:10 and how it’s all part of one big conversation.
0:03:12 I like that.
0:03:14 I mostly just want power.
0:03:21 I’m hoping that we aggregate so much influence up and down by that we basically become the ultimate
0:03:25 king and queen makers and that tomorrow belongs to us, Jessica.
0:03:28 Okay, let’s bust right into it.
0:03:30 In today’s episode of Raging Moderates,
0:03:32 we’ll be breaking down the latest polling,
0:03:35 our thoughts on the proposed economic policies,
0:03:39 and what to expect from the 90-minute debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
0:03:43 So with that, Jessica, we’ve officially entered the election season
0:03:45 and a block coming up between now and November 5th.
0:03:48 Can you walk us through how you’re thinking about the latest polling,
0:03:53 which essentially shows Harris and Trump are neck and neck?
0:03:57 Yeah, so there is, I mean, the first component of all of this is that
0:03:59 I’m fundamentally depressed that this is a neck and neck race.
0:04:02 I feel like every time Donald Trump’s on the ballot,
0:04:05 you just think, how is it possible that this could be close?
0:04:09 And yet it is, which is reflective of the general theme of why we’re here
0:04:13 to talk about the moderate middle and where the election is actually going to be won.
0:04:16 But it was a big polling weekend because the New York Times,
0:04:19 Seattle poll came out, everyone always goes bananas over it.
0:04:22 It’s actually, so it’s an A-plus quality poll,
0:04:26 and it’s been the most friendly to Trump consistently.
0:04:29 When we started seeing these results that he was winning,
0:04:33 upper teens of Black support, that he was doing well with Gen Z voters,
0:04:37 that Biden and now Harris were softer with female voters.
0:04:40 That was all coming out of the New York Times, Seattle poll.
0:04:43 So it’s obviously something that makes you sit up and listen.
0:04:44 And this was the same.
0:04:48 It was just like the July poll, similar margins,
0:04:50 same soft spots for Kamala Harris.
0:04:55 And you could see if you went on any social media over the weekend,
0:04:58 you could see all of the Democrats absolutely losing their mind.
0:05:01 The bedwetting has commenced again,
0:05:04 which is the end of Brat summer, I guess,
0:05:06 that we’re all a little less coconut-pilled,
0:05:10 but a little bit more realistic about the challenge in front of us.
0:05:16 Do you think, I’ve heard a lot of fears that polling doesn’t constantly underestimate Trump
0:05:19 because there’s a lot of closeted Trump voters.
0:05:22 Do you think that that still holds or that people are no longer embarrassed
0:05:25 about endorsing Trump and they’re no longer closeted?
0:05:28 I mean, he’s lost a lot of elections,
0:05:30 which I feel like people don’t talk about enough.
0:05:32 Like he won the big one.
0:05:34 He won in 2016.
0:05:39 But since then, he’s been a big drag on down ballot tickets,
0:05:42 obviously on his own ticket, losing in 2020.
0:05:48 And so I’m not willing to say yet that the 3 to 5% of Trump voters that were closeted,
0:05:52 which is what it was in 2016, that it could be that enormous.
0:05:56 I think there still are some what we consider kind of normal people
0:06:00 or people that we run into more who aren’t die-hard Trumpers
0:06:03 that are persuaded by a tax cut, for instance,
0:06:06 or might think he would be better for Israel.
0:06:07 And I want to talk about that.
0:06:10 There was a poll of Jewish voters that I found fascinating.
0:06:15 But in general, I feel like people are pretty much out there at this point.
0:06:23 And this election for Trump, when or lose, is kind of, it should be his last hurrah, right?
0:06:26 He should not be running on the top of the ticket.
0:06:30 If he loses again, he’ll be 82 years old at that point.
0:06:32 Or last thud, right?
0:06:33 Or last thud.
0:06:34 Well, that’s a hope.
0:06:36 I mean, he’ll still try to play kingmaker with other races.
0:06:40 But this is the crescendo moment of the Trump era.
0:06:43 And I think that people are out there for it.
0:06:47 It strikes me as it’s almost sort of comical that we do these national polls,
0:06:48 because quite frankly, they’re meaningless.
0:06:52 It really doesn’t matter what these, I mean, I guess they reflect momentum,
0:06:58 but all we really care about is the choice, the polls in what, five or six states.
0:07:03 And in those states, as far as I can tell, the majority of them, she is up.
0:07:05 And in some, she’s up by two, three points.
0:07:08 I mean, if you look at the national polls, okay, it’s neck and neck.
0:07:11 I wonder how much of this is the media wants to Jones up a closer race and
0:07:14 make it seem more heated and tighter than it is.
0:07:17 And I do think it’s tighter than I would have thought.
0:07:21 But that when you look at the swing states, or when you look at what is actually going to
0:07:24 decide this election, we should not report national polls.
0:07:25 It just doesn’t make any sense.
0:07:28 What does the picture look like across the swing states?
0:07:32 Well, first to the national poll, in defense of national polls.
0:07:36 They’re just a snapshot in time.
0:07:40 And I think that it is important to continually gauge yourself as you’re going along
0:07:42 and to look at those trend lines.
0:07:46 That’s why forecasts are so interesting to see where Biden was,
0:07:49 then what Harris has been able to do, how Trump is moving around.
0:07:51 And he is doing better than a lot of people expected.
0:07:55 And he’s coalescing the base in a way that we hadn’t expected,
0:08:00 necessarily considering the primaries and all of the Nikki Haley support that we were seeing.
0:08:02 So I think it is important and also to draw the contrast.
0:08:04 So we already talked a little bit at the New York Times poll,
0:08:09 but there was an ABC Washington Post poll, which is also an A+ pollster.
0:08:12 And they had Kamala Harris ahead by six with likely voters.
0:08:17 That contrast also important, registered voters versus likely voters.
0:08:21 It’s very different to have an opinion versus I have an opinion
0:08:22 and I’m actually going to go and vote.
0:08:25 But you’re totally right about the battleground states.
0:08:28 It’s all basically within the margin of error.
0:08:32 And something that came out in the last week or two that I think is really fascinating
0:08:36 is basically Trump is zeroing in on one strategy.
0:08:38 If you look at where he’s spending money on advertising,
0:08:40 he’s got one route that he’s heading towards.
0:08:42 And Kamala Harris is still spreading it out.
0:08:45 She needs the blue wall, but she’s interested in the Sun Belt.
0:08:49 They really think North Carolina is in play for them.
0:08:54 So it’s been fun to watch them go in their different directions,
0:08:57 see how they’re trying to achieve a win in those places.
0:09:00 But yeah, razor thin and it could be even thinner than 2020,
0:09:04 which we know took days to properly call.
0:09:08 And then months of litigation, though I won’t call it proper litigation,
0:09:12 whatever Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Alice were doing, certainly wasn’t proper.
0:09:15 But it went on for a long time.
0:09:23 And on the issues, so Harris is pulling much better on issues around bodily autonomy.
0:09:24 That’s not a shock.
0:09:28 54 to 39 on “democracy,” although that’s a loaded term.
0:09:31 It’s 50-45 for Harris.
0:09:35 On the economy, Trump is resoundly beating Harris, 55 to 42.
0:09:40 And on immigration, he’s also resoundingly beating her 53 to 43.
0:09:42 I understand the family planning.
0:09:46 This is more a reflection of how you feel about being pro-choice or pro-life.
0:09:50 The democracy one, it feels like a rabbit hole, we could go down.
0:09:54 Talk about whether or not you think that what do you think is going on?
0:09:58 Why do Americans trust more Trump on the economy and on immigration?
0:10:01 And what do you think both candidates need to do to try and either solidify
0:10:03 or chip away at that lead that Trump has?
0:10:10 Yeah, so it was strange to me to see this result on the economy from the New York Times
0:10:15 because the Fox voter analysis and the Fox poll had him between six and eight points
0:10:18 ahead on the economy, which means that he, Kamala’s basically,
0:10:24 have the lead that he had when he was running against Joe Biden, which is awesome to see.
0:10:28 And one thing that’s showing up in survey after survey is that people,
0:10:32 and this could be a bad thing, they don’t feel that they know Kamala as well.
0:10:34 So there’s a lot more room for her to grow.
0:10:35 Trump is basically at his ceiling.
0:10:39 No one says like, I don’t know where Donald Trump stands on the issues.
0:10:43 Now, they may not really understand that what would happen if we had all of these tariffs
0:10:47 and that it’s attacks on the consumer or however his deportation force is going to work.
0:10:49 But she does have room to grow there.
0:10:54 But I think that people still fundamentally see him as a businessman,
0:10:56 whether he went bankrupt six times or not.
0:11:02 And they remember a time pre-COVID where they felt they had more money in their pocket
0:11:04 and grocery prices were down.
0:11:08 And it’s not sexy to create a bumper sticker that said,
0:11:09 “Best recovery in the G7.”
0:11:16 It still sucks when you go to the store and your items are more expensive.
0:11:19 And she’s been working really hard to address that.
0:11:23 I love that she actually calls out the prices of things in speeches and says,
0:11:26 “I know that your bread is 50% more than it used to be.”
0:11:34 But people are holding onto a bit of nostalgia about the Trump era in that specific way.
0:11:38 We’ll be right back.
0:11:46 Well, the economy was strong during his era.
0:11:51 And the interesting thing, there’s kind of a weird dynamic in the sense that
0:11:56 when the price of diapers goes up, you blame the administration.
0:11:59 When your salary goes up, you credit your own character and grit.
0:12:04 The fact that actually now wages are increasing faster than inflation,
0:12:08 which is a good thing, the administration gets no credit for it.
0:12:09 Because that’s because I’m awesome.
0:12:14 Whereas when gas prices or something else go up, by the way, I think it’s just hilarious
0:12:16 that anyone assumes the president has any control over gas prices.
0:12:21 But anyway, they blame the administration for prices going up.
0:12:25 And again, they don’t, they see their raises well-deserved.
0:12:25 I agree with you.
0:12:28 The thing I would hammer on, and I’m curious to get your thoughts.
0:12:34 I taught economics and I taught graduate micro-macro economics.
0:12:38 And one of the few things that all economists kind of agree on
0:12:41 is that tariffs are basically a tax on the consumer.
0:12:47 And his current line of thinking, and I don’t think the Democrats have done a very good job
0:12:51 of exploiting this, and it’s weird to be lecturing Republicans on this issue,
0:12:55 because they’re usually very much anti-tariff, is narrative is, look,
0:12:57 these people have taken advantage of us.
0:13:02 And to his credit, I do think he accurately highlighted the asymmetry in terms of a trade
0:13:05 relationship between the US and China during his administration.
0:13:08 I think he was right on that, but he’s saying all these firms,
0:13:10 all these countries are taking advantage of us.
0:13:15 We’re going to put in some instances a 100% tariff on their products.
0:13:17 And what will happen according to Donald Trump?
0:13:20 It’ll make our products more competitive.
0:13:22 There’s less competitive because theirs will be more expensive,
0:13:26 meaning more jobs will return to the US because we’ll be more competitive
0:13:30 relative to these foreign imports, which are now much more expensive.
0:13:34 What he leaves out is this key thing that happens every time.
0:13:38 And that is if we slap 100% tariff on Toyotas,
0:13:46 they turn around and go, okay, girlfriend, we’re putting 100% tariff on Escalades and Jeeps,
0:13:53 which makes our products much less appealing to consumers in China and Japan and South Korea,
0:13:57 which reduces demand for them, which reduces employment.
0:14:03 But what happens across all markets is the cost of cars for consumers, skyrockets.
0:14:06 And there are some instances where tariffs work.
0:14:11 If you’re China and you think it’s costing me 200 bucks a ton to produce steel,
0:14:16 I’m going to sell it for 100, put all the domestic suppliers and manufacturers
0:14:18 in the US of steel out of business so I can consolidate the market.
0:14:22 Okay, then you impose a tariff until there’s some sort of symmetry around trade.
0:14:26 I get it. If we’re outsourcing jobs because they have forced labor
0:14:31 and it doesn’t reflect the cost of doing business in the correct way, fine, a tariff.
0:14:36 But these unilateral tariffs and this hallucination that all of a sudden it will
0:14:43 bring jobs back to the US is so wrong and any economist worth their salt would recognize that.
0:14:47 It strikes me that the Democrats haven’t done a very good job so far, and I’m hoping to see that
0:14:53 in the debate, is it that she does a better job of saying tariffs or taxes be clear.
0:14:58 And this is a terrible idea and hugely inflationary. What are your thoughts?
0:15:02 I totally agree. I hope that they’re going to keep hammering.
0:15:06 They have a new line that Donald Trump’s going to cost you $3,900.
0:15:11 So they’ve calculated out the cost of these tariffs on the lives of an average American.
0:15:13 And we were talking about tariffs last week on the five.
0:15:18 And my colleague, Jesse Waters, said to me, “Well, why didn’t Biden and Harris extend
0:15:25 the Trump tariffs on China?” And I actually, I rarely admit that I’m wrong.
0:15:28 Well, Jesse admits that he’s wrong way less than I do.
0:15:32 But I did not think that they had extended them. And then when I went and read about it more,
0:15:36 so there was all of the usual stuff about how tough the tariffs had been,
0:15:42 especially for the US farming community. But there was an argument that was being made,
0:15:48 and it was all over Bloomberg, that it was still more effective to punish China,
0:15:52 even though there was some hurt to the American economy to send a message about it.
0:15:58 And I think that there is an angle at which Kamala could take or Democrats could take more
0:16:04 regularly about this, if Republicans are going to fall in line on the tariff front to say,
0:16:08 “We’re not talking about tariffs. We’re talking about sanctions.
0:16:12 And sanctions are something that you can use really, really effectively.”
0:16:16 Versus just hammering this tariff line, which, frankly, everybody knows is not going to,
0:16:21 as you said, have the outcome that he thinks, and is not a rationale for an entire set of
0:16:25 economic policies. He did a speech at the New York Economic Club last week,
0:16:27 and he’s rambling on about child care.
0:16:33 Look, child care is child care. It’s something, you have to have it. In this country,
0:16:37 you have to have it. But when you talk about those numbers, compared to the kind of numbers
0:16:42 that I’m talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to,
0:16:46 but they’ll get used to it very quickly. And it’s not going to stop them from doing business
0:16:51 with us, but they’ll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country.
0:16:55 Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we’re talking about,
0:16:58 including child care, that it’s going to take care of. We’re going to have —
0:17:03 One of the more incoherent things that I’ve ever heard and everybody else as well,
0:17:05 people are struggling to understand what does this actually mean.
0:17:07 And he just keeps saying, “I’ll pay with tariffs. I’ll pay with tariffs.”
0:17:12 And what I think that he’s doing is he’s just trying to say, “For bad countries,
0:17:18 I’m going to find ways to sanction them in some way.” But he’s using the term “tariff” and said,
0:17:23 it’s kind of like, I don’t know if you’ve been following the Hannibal Lecter thread,
0:17:27 you know how he talks about Hannibal Lecter all the time. And it seems like he doesn’t
0:17:31 understand the difference between political asylum and actually being in a mental asylum.
0:17:39 So I think that these things are actually with Trump always like the most base thing
0:17:43 that they could possibly be. And I hope that she flips the script on it and talks about
0:17:49 how effective they have been in using economic sanctions versus penalizing the American public
0:17:54 with tariffs. So let’s talk a little bit about child care because I’m not sure
0:18:02 people really understand what are the policies on… So basically, Trump is saying,
0:18:07 “I’ll find a way to create additional revenues such that we have better child care because
0:18:11 child care is child care according to Trump.” And he was trying to give the notion that I think
0:18:17 it’s important, I’m in favor of it, and I’m going to raise the money for it we need by taxing these
0:18:22 nations with their asymmetric unfair trade relationship.
0:18:26 What is… Can you outline, because I don’t know the answer, what is sort of Harris’s plan
0:18:33 around child care? Yeah, well, the most important part of it is obviously the paid family leave
0:18:40 as the baseline for everything, bringing back the child tax credit, which cut poverty in America by
0:18:45 50%. It’s just astounding that that happened in a couple of years and something that people
0:18:48 are really hankering to bring. To poverty across children, right?
0:18:55 Yeah, child poverty, yes, no. And then there’s the stuff that comes in with
0:19:02 walls as well with the school lunches. We have universal 3K and pre-K. I’m treating
0:19:06 this as a bigger bubble of just raising children than just the child care front,
0:19:10 but they also want to have universal daycare, which is something that J.D. Vance, of course,
0:19:16 has railed against in some unearthed clip from 2021. It’s kind of amazing that he won his race
0:19:21 for Senate. There have been a lot of people that have been picking on Tim Ryan. Why were
0:19:27 you not going after him with all of these horrendous things that he’d said? Tim Ryan’s
0:19:32 team has defended him and said a lot of these clips are coming from us. We knew about this,
0:19:38 but he seems so utterly repellent. So universal daycare is a big part of it. And what I appreciate
0:19:44 about Democrats and what Kamala’s doing is she’s not afraid to say that we’re going to raise taxes
0:19:50 on some people who can afford to pay more taxes. She’s not looking for tariffs as the solution to
0:19:56 it. She’s like, this is good old fashioned. If you’re a billionaire, if you’re a multimillionaire,
0:19:59 not just like two, three, four, five million, they’re talking about people over 100 million,
0:20:04 200 million, your taxes are going to go up a bit. And I’m curious what you think about the
0:20:11 unrealized gains proposal, because that seems like a very, very bad idea that even Mark Cuban and
0:20:17 Ro Khanna are saying halt the brakes on that one. But it’s obviously part of her plan to pay for
0:20:21 all of this. Yeah, it’s funny. I thought I was going to bring it up because I thought it might be one,
0:20:24 I mean, so far we’re in violent agreement on everything. I thought it might be one place we
0:20:30 disagree. I think it’s essentially whether you agree with it philosophically, it doesn’t matter
0:20:35 because they don’t work. When France instituted its wealth tax, the wealthiest man in the world,
0:20:39 or the wealthiest man in Europe, Bernard Arnaud, what do you know, moves to Belgium.
0:20:43 Really wealthy people are incredibly, among the advantages they register,
0:20:47 one of them is they’re incredibly mobile. And what you have here, just, I don’t know if you’ve
0:20:51 heard about what’s going on in the UK, but they’re basically doing away with this non-dom tax
0:20:58 status, where if you have residency in Hong Kong and you live in Britain, you basically can pay
0:21:03 Hong Kong taxes, which is zero. And now they’re saying, sorry, after, I think after you’re here
0:21:08 of four years, you got to pay UK taxes. I actually think philosophically, that makes sense. If you
0:21:14 send your kids to school here and you enjoy the culture and the roads and the infrastructure and
0:21:20 police and fire of the UK, you should pay taxes. But what’s happened is that it looks like about
0:21:27 10,000 high net worth UK residents are leaving and that the purser or the treasury is actually
0:21:33 going to end up worse off than before the non-dom, because these individuals have so much money and
0:21:39 we’re bringing so much economic growth through the UK that quite frankly, tax advantage that’s
0:21:43 even unfair was probably the best thing to do for the economy. The other thing is, I just,
0:21:51 my mind goes into a tailspin trying to imagine, okay, if you’re going to assess someone’s wealth
0:21:56 over $100 million every year and then tax their unrealized gain, who is in charge of putting
0:22:01 that number on it? You can do it when they’re publicly traded stocks, but how do you assess
0:22:07 the value of real estate, of private partnerships? How do you assess the value of things? Does that
0:22:14 mean certain asset classes which are less easily assessed become more in vogue and people start
0:22:20 selling their stocks and buying real estate or private company assets? Who’s in charge of coming
0:22:25 up with that number? The way I would approach it is an AMT, an alternative minimum tax that says,
0:22:32 okay, if you’re worth $170 million, congratulations, you have an AMT and that is any income you have,
0:22:40 you have to pay a minimum 20% on regardless of the tricks of the trade. The other thing I would
0:22:46 like to see is an intra-country and intra-state agreement where if you’re Jeff Bezos and you’ve
0:22:51 aggregated $120 billion in wealth in Washington and you’ve taken advantage of the school system
0:22:55 there, the University of Washington, the Seattle Tacoma Airport, the culture, and then you piece
0:23:01 out to Florida to quote-unquote spend more time with your dad, that when you realize those gains,
0:23:06 whatever percentage of those gains were accreted in Washington state you have to pay Washington
0:23:11 state taxes on. I think you could do the same thing internationally when people move, but the
0:23:17 idea of taxing unrealized gains, I just think it’s going to create more problems than it solves.
0:23:23 What are your thoughts? Well, they’re not as elaborate as yours, which is good. I
0:23:30 agree with all of that, and it’s been interesting to see people as liberal as Congressman Ro Khanna,
0:23:34 who’s in the Bernie wing of the party, and then someone like a Mark Cuban or someone like you
0:23:41 advocate for basically the same thing. The part that I would add to it that I think really matters
0:23:46 with the kind of economic policies that she’s putting forward to, she basically has a founder
0:23:51 agenda. If you go to her website, we should note to everyone, her policy page is now completely
0:23:56 decked out, and you should go and take a look at it. And what they did that was really smart
0:24:03 is for each section, it then has a Project 2025 tab, so you could see what the Trump agenda would
0:24:10 do in contrast to what Kamala is trying to do. But she really wants to encourage startups and
0:24:15 entrepreneurs, and America has always been the best place to go and start a business,
0:24:21 to bring your innovative idea out there and to make a shit ton of money. And it kind of flies
0:24:26 in contrast to that idea that we want to give you the $50,000 deduction to get your small
0:24:31 business going, which is something economists on the right and the left think is such a good idea,
0:24:36 but oh, if you get to a hundred million, then you’re screwed, that it doesn’t really add up.
0:24:41 And that’s what Ro Khanna was talking about. He gave an interview, and he’s actually a surrogate
0:24:45 for the campaign, and he just said flat out, how are you going to tell people, because you got this
0:24:52 successful, that we’re going to start taxing was 28% of your unrealized gains, which is a massive
0:24:57 number. I feel like if it was like two or 3%, people would be like, okay, it’s kind of like a
0:25:04 normal liberal tax. So I think it’s not great for her startup world.
0:25:13 Yeah, I feel like, and I say this as a small business person, I feel that small businesses are,
0:25:18 they’re like puppies, everybody loves small businesses. It’s hard to, no one ever says
0:25:21 of small businesses are taking advantage of our economy and are treated unfairly.
0:25:27 And we romanticize small business. And as a result, and I benefited hugely from this,
0:25:32 I believe the tax code probably airs on the side of being too favorable towards small business.
0:25:38 One, it is very easy to shove through a crazy amount of expenses through your small business.
0:25:44 And because of an underfunded IRS, you cannot write off your life, but pretty close to it
0:25:48 when you have a small business. The tax advantages are enormous. There’s something called 1202,
0:25:54 which I took advantage of, where if you start a business, and it’s a secor, and you hold on to
0:26:00 the stock in that company for more than five years, if you sell it, the first 10 million
0:26:06 or 10 times your initial investment is tax-free. I didn’t even know that existed, and I’ve used it
0:26:11 twice with companies I’ve sold. To me, that kind of makes no sense. And their viewpoint will be,
0:26:15 will Scott, people like you wouldn’t start businesses unless we had these tax advantages.
0:26:19 I don’t know any entrepreneur that knew their tax status when they started a company. That’s not
0:26:24 why we start companies. In my view, and I hate to say this because I like the idea of more small
0:26:29 businesses, but the reality is there were more small business permits issued last year than I
0:26:35 think ever. And it doesn’t seem to be getting in the way of small businesses. And I feel like it’s
0:26:42 very populist. And I would like someone to get more serious about the deficit. What is this going
0:26:47 to cost us? And I think the best way to help small business would actually be more antitrust. It
0:26:53 breaks up these big monopolies, but I’m not sure. For example, I think the first thing you see,
0:26:57 the first result of this or the second result, more businesses start, $50,000 real money,
0:27:01 let’s start a business. You’re going to see more business failures because quite frankly,
0:27:05 one of the reasons that a business works is you have to talk people into giving you money.
0:27:11 And if all of a sudden anyone who starts a business gets a $50,000 tax credit, I just think
0:27:14 you’re going to have a lot of shitty businesses started. Now is that to say there won’t be winners
0:27:19 there? And I can feel people on the other side of this just right now just saying, “Oh my God,
0:27:24 you don’t like puppies. You don’t like small businesses.” No, I do, but the small business
0:27:29 environment in America is very strong. I don’t like giveaways like this. I think it should be,
0:27:32 I don’t want to say difficult to start a business, but I don’t think it should be,
0:27:38 I don’t think it should be easier. I think there’d be easier ways to get to this. The thing I really
0:27:45 don’t like about Harris’ economic policy is around housing. Whereas if you’re looking to buy
0:27:48 a house and I think if you’re a first-time buyer or whatever, you get $25,000. To me,
0:27:56 that is just massively inflationary. That just means starter homes everywhere go up by $25,000,
0:28:02 if not more, because you can borrow more against that. And I don’t understand how that helps.
0:28:07 I love her ideas around making it easier to issue more housing permits. Probably the reason
0:28:11 housing prices have gone up so much as we took housing permits out of the hands of local officials
0:28:16 and put them into the hands of homeowners who get very concerned with traffic once they have a home.
0:28:24 But I don’t see how giving $25,000 to new homeowners is anything but inflationary and
0:28:29 just going to do exactly the opposite of what they want to do. And that makes housing less
0:28:34 affordable. What are your thoughts? This is a tough one, because I feel like it’s a total
0:28:39 campaign season policy, right? And everyone wants the good feels. And they want to hear
0:28:45 all the right things about home ownership and how important it is to the quality of life
0:28:51 for everyday Americans, right? You have better schools, safer communities, more small businesses,
0:28:55 your favorite. Though, I guess you said there were going to be too many, but you want people that are
0:29:00 investing in their community and small businesses the way that they’re doing that. And so it sounds
0:29:05 really sexy to say, “I’m going to help you do this.” Now, everybody knows that just means the price
0:29:10 of houses are going to go up another $25,000, right? So if you’re buying a $400,000 house,
0:29:17 it’s going to be $425,000. And what will be interesting to see is what the banks are doing
0:29:21 with all of this, if it actually goes through as a policy. And I feel like it might be one that
0:29:29 falls by the wayside if and when she gets elected. But I agree with you on that. I think it’s also
0:29:34 one of them to kind of return to the point of being here in this kind of raging moderate middle
0:29:39 when you see how aggravated people have gotten about student debt relief even, which is something
0:29:44 that I think you can make even a stronger argument for helping people out with, maybe not wiping out
0:29:48 hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt, but certainly for people who’ve had Pell grants,
0:29:56 people who were scammed 100% to get their money back. But folks who went to do something and took
0:30:01 on this big undertaking, maybe they wanted to go be a doctor and they don’t go to one of the medical
0:30:06 schools where Bloomberg is just going to wipe out your debt, that they should get a bit of help there.
0:30:12 I think that resonates better with the American public than getting just $25,000 towards you being
0:30:18 able to buy a house. I would push back a little bit and that is as someone who borrowed money,
0:30:24 as someone who’s deeply involved in education, I’ve just always had trouble with the idea of
0:30:27 two thirds of the Americans that didn’t have the opportunity to go to college bailing out the one
0:30:32 third that did. So let me be clear, I think if you’re going to go be a doctor in a rural community
0:30:35 or a low-income community or you’re going to go into nursing or teaching where you’re having a
0:30:39 tough time attracting people, some sort of federal programs to release student debt,
0:30:44 is important. I would like to see my school NYU and every other school be on the hook for
0:30:49 20%, 30%, 50% of bad debts. We stopped loaning $200,000 to philosophy majors who go on to be
0:30:54 baristas and then can’t pay this debt back. It should be dischargeable and bankruptcy.
0:31:00 But there’s something uncomfortable about, you could argue the third of the American public that
0:31:04 gets to go to college is arguably the most advantaged third. And there’s some really terrible
0:31:08 situations where me and my colleagues prey on people because we want to make more money.
0:31:16 And that needs to stop. But three quarters of a trillion dollar bailout with Biden proposed
0:31:21 of student debt to me. And the worst thing about what I hate about student debt relief
0:31:27 is it shrinks the tumor of student debt, but it doesn’t go after the cancer. And the cancer is
0:31:33 the following. We are just charging too much goddamn money. I think it sucks to be a grown-up,
0:31:37 and I think the people on the hook for student loans should be really angry at their university
0:31:44 and that we need to stop this torrent, this typhoon of cheap credit that keeps driving up
0:31:51 the cost of education. So I really don’t like student loan bailouts. And my sense is they were
0:31:57 found to be illegal. They were. Yeah. Well, there are ways around it. Are there? Yeah. There are,
0:32:01 I mean, there are policies, there are Department of Education policies, which is how the Biden
0:32:08 Harris administration has been able to give back so much that, that allow for it. But yes, I mean,
0:32:16 the Supreme Court gave it a big hell no to just wiping out people’s debts. I think as an extension
0:32:20 of what you were saying, though, you know, school, yes, it’s too expensive. And I have two little
0:32:27 kids with the beginnings of their 529s. And I just can’t really fathom how much money is going to
0:32:31 have to be in those accounts for them to be able to go to the $4 million. A million bucks. At this
0:32:34 point, at this point, you’re looking at a million bucks. That’s even worse than what my financial
0:32:39 advisor said. So. For both of them. Only a half a million each. Unless they come down while you
0:32:42 and then it’s more than that. Well, if the podcast really works out, then everything’s going to be
0:32:50 fine. There we go. You’re set. You’re done. After this one episode. But I feel like it’s time,
0:32:54 especially with if it’s going to be Kamala, the prosecutor, and if she’s going to talk about
0:32:59 things like price gouging, if she’s going to talk about her experience going after the big banks
0:33:05 in California, I wouldn’t mind some sort of policy platform about going after universities.
0:33:10 And especially these ones that are sitting on endowments that are, you know, being propped up
0:33:16 by investing groups, you know, that are doing their two and 20s or whatever it is. And they’re
0:33:20 sitting on billions of dollars and they’re not helping students out, maybe because they know
0:33:24 that the administration might do that in the end, or most likely because they don’t care.
0:33:29 And they’re like, well, you’re going to have a degree that says Harvard or whatever it is,
0:33:34 and now state schools are even, you know, for a regular person, astronomically expensive.
0:33:37 But I would love to see that. And I think that would be popular across the board. You know,
0:33:42 if you’re looking for a policy that everyone can glom onto, if you said, I’m going to go after the
0:33:47 universities that are that are stealing your money and giving you, in some cases, worthless
0:33:52 degrees, you’re going to end up like the barista that you were mentioning. You know, landslide.
0:33:56 Stay with us.
0:34:05 What are some of the other central points of her economic plan? I feel as if she hasn’t done a
0:34:13 great job so far. And it feels like quite frankly, a lot of giveaways. What about on the revenue side?
0:34:18 They’re going to raise taxes. There’s a wealth tax. What else are they planning to do?
0:34:21 Trump has said he’s going to tear off the shit out of everybody. And that’s going to raise a
0:34:25 ton of money. How is she planning to increase revenues other than a wealth tax?
0:34:33 It’s a lot of just investing in the communities and regular, like the corporate rate, I don’t
0:34:38 think we’ll go up further than it is. I think they’re toying with, and I need to get back on
0:34:43 the website, the individual rate for the top, you know, the top top. Now we’re getting into like
0:34:49 the tippy tippy tippy job versus the tippy tippy tippy top. But I think that they are, and this is
0:34:54 where she’s going to rely back on actually the good economic news out of the Biden Harris administration.
0:34:59 You know, she has to toe that line of like, this is what I think was really good that we did. This
0:35:04 is what I think wasn’t so great. And I would have advised differently. And we’ll see how she does that
0:35:09 at the debate. So before we wrap up here, we have to talk about the debate. It’s being held.
0:35:15 We’re, we’re taking on Monday. Give us, I’ll just be curious, just riff on what you think about this
0:35:20 debate, what you’re expecting, what you think each candidate needs to do and any predictions you might
0:35:28 have. So Trump needs to just act like a human. And that’s always been the bar for him. And he’s
0:35:34 failed a majority of the time, which, and I’m looking forward to that, there was the big fight
0:35:39 about whether the mikes would be muted or not. And Kamala’s team obviously wanted them un-muted,
0:35:45 so they could see people really coming after her, especially when you have the gender dynamic and
0:35:49 the size differential. A lot of people have been focusing on that because, you know, she’s quite
0:35:55 short. And he is, well, he was six four before he started shrinking. I’m not quite sure what he is
0:36:01 now, but he’s a big guy. So I think for her, and we touched on this a little bit earlier in the podcast,
0:36:06 a lot of people don’t feel that they know her, especially people who are in the battleground
0:36:13 state. So I think she’s going to do a decent amount of the bio stuff again, but not in like the
0:36:19 mamala way. And this was what my background is. And this is how I brought those skills to the
0:36:23 vice presidency, you know, Senate vice presidency, and now hopefully as presidency, and that I am
0:36:29 ready on day one. And there’s a new ad out focusing on foreign policy, where I actually
0:36:33 thought she was the strongest at the DNC in her speech. I thought it was incredible.
0:36:42 As commander in chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting
0:36:48 force in the world. She’s going to be using the contrast of all these folks that worked
0:36:54 in foreign policy, the generals, et cetera, for Trump, who are now saying, I can’t endorse him.
0:36:59 He’s absolutely out of his mind. We’re going to be less safe. She’s going to lean into what a
0:37:06 better force for good America will be if she is the next president. But I really hope and I don’t
0:37:12 think that we’ve talked about this yet in general, like she’s not playing identity politics at all,
0:37:18 which I think is part of why she’s resonating as well as she has and has gotten this to a neck and
0:37:23 neck race when Biden, you know, was on his way, I think, to a pretty resounding defeat. You know,
0:37:28 she never talks about being a woman. She never talks about being a person of color.
0:37:35 She’s just Kamala Harris. And I think that he, well, he would obviously love to be able to
0:37:40 be as misogynistic and sexist and potentially racist as possible, but watching her kind of
0:37:46 steer clear of those little potholes will be interesting. I hope she can keep that up.
0:37:52 And I hope that the moderators really push him on explaining things. This is probably one of the
0:38:01 biggest uphill battles that I have on the five is, you know, people treat Donald Trump’s presence,
0:38:05 the fact that he’s actually just out there standing in front of a podium or quote unquote
0:38:09 taking questions as the fact that he’s being transparent, but he’s not actually explaining
0:38:14 anything. And now the policy pages are such a wonderful encapsulation of this. So Kamala Harris
0:38:18 has all of our policies with the dropdowns that explain them. And Donald Trump just has a list
0:38:25 of his policies. And some of them are like deport everyone. Well, you know, how are you going to
0:38:31 go around and find 15 million people that you’re going to throw out of the country? So I hope that
0:38:38 he’s really pushed on detail because I think that she’s pretty wonky and will be able to handle that
0:38:44 well. But she just needs to reassure like tens of thousands of people that it’s going to be okay.
0:38:48 And Pennsylvania is really important for this. And it’s a topic for next week because I know you
0:38:53 have a ton to say about it. But I was reading about all of the ads that Trump is running in
0:39:01 Pennsylvania and how they’re directed at young men. She’s doing much worse with men than Biden did
0:39:06 in that New York Times, Sienna poll, especially white working class men. And he’s just hammering
0:39:11 that. And so it’ll be interesting to see if things like that come up as well.
0:39:16 So I believe that we’re a much more Luxus nation and that as individuals are much
0:39:24 more Luxus than we want to admit. And I think Luxus aesthetics, when people saw the Reagan-Carter
0:39:27 debate, when they watched on TV, they thought Reagan won. And when they listened to it, they thought
0:39:35 Carter won. And JFK let them put makeup on them. And anyone who watched it thought Kennedy won.
0:39:39 And anyone who listened to it thought Nixon won. I think Luxus are important. And I think
0:39:44 that plays huge advantage to her. She’s an attractive, non-white, young woman. I didn’t
0:39:47 know she was short. I’ve never met her. She actually, she looks kind of…
0:39:51 Yeah. I assume she’ll be wearing heels. But the fact that she also is wearing converse a lot,
0:39:54 she’s really like, she’s a little pistol. Yeah.
0:39:59 Really? I didn’t know that. I thought she was kind of average height, so to speak.
0:40:07 By the way, he claims he’s 6’3,215. John Elway is 6’3,215. And so John Elway and Donald Trump,
0:40:11 yeah, they’re mirror images of each other. Same diet I’ve heard, the Cheeseburgers diet.
0:40:12 Yeah, physically. Broken ice cream. Yeah.
0:40:23 Physically, yeah. So I think she wins just moment one on that count. I have a thesis here, and I
0:40:28 want you to, I want to get your reaction to it. And that is, and this plays into my bias that
0:40:32 young men are the only special interest group that have been totally ignored recently,
0:40:40 who are really struggling. And I think old men are going Trump, young women are going Harris.
0:40:44 I do think similar to just as the election will be won by a handful of states. I think the overlooked
0:40:51 crowd here that is sort of up for grabs is young men, because there’s a bit of a myth that young men
0:40:55 are all fucked up in the head, and their incels, and they’re angry, and they’re
0:40:59 attracted to the man of fear and Trump. And I think what some of the research shows
0:41:05 is that it’s not that they’re moving towards the Republican Party. Gen Z and millennial men
0:41:11 actually believe just as much in gender equality as their female counterparts.
0:41:15 They’re actually quite progressive around gender equality. I think what’s happening is they’re
0:41:19 not moving towards the Republican Party. I think they’re moving away from the Democratic Party.
0:41:23 And the thing that just blew my mind, Jess, was I went on the dnc.org website,
0:41:30 and it has this section that says who we serve. And it lists 16 demographic groups,
0:41:37 everyone from the disabled, to veterans, to immigrants, to the disabled, to Pacific Islanders,
0:41:44 to blacks, to women, rural Americans, farm, it just, by my calculations, they listed somewhere
0:41:53 between 70 and 80% of America. The only people they didn’t list were men. And when you are in this,
0:41:58 I think the Democratic Party is struggling with the same problem that the DEI apparatus at
0:42:05 universities is struggling with. And that is when you claim to be explicitly advocating and advancing
0:42:11 the interests of 75% of your population, you aren’t advantaging them, you’re discriminating
0:42:17 against the 25%. And I think that’s how a lot of young men feel. They just, quite frankly,
0:42:23 don’t feel seen by the Democratic Party. And I don’t think it would be hard to recapture them.
0:42:28 I think they are very much pro-life. A lot of them have more progressive inclinations,
0:42:32 a lot of them are turned off by Trump. But I think at a minimum, they need to say, all right,
0:42:37 what are you doing to help my community that is killing themselves at four times the rate,
0:42:43 is addicted at three times the rate, is less likely to go to college, is having trouble finding a
0:42:48 mate, because women are dating older, quite frankly, is it okay? I just feel like a little
0:42:55 bit of something, a recognition of the problem, vocational programming, expanded freshman seats,
0:43:01 national service, even taking a victory lap around the Infrastructure Act, which supposedly the 70%
0:43:04 of the jobs are going to be for men without college degrees, but they don’t want to talk
0:43:08 about it because they’re worried it’ll ruffle the feathers of the far left. What do you think
0:43:14 about the idea of young men being the swing voters up for grabs here? I like it. I mean,
0:43:19 it’s a great headline, and it’ll get you a lot of buzz, which we’re always looking for in life.
0:43:25 But I think it’s also, I think it’s true, and I actually think it’s even more
0:43:30 base than what you’re saying. I think that if you said, we don’t think that you’re bad,
0:43:35 that it would be enough. Yeah, we don’t think you’re toxic.
0:43:43 I don’t fundamentally think that you’re broken because you’re a white dude. And it’s been
0:43:52 interesting with my friends, we all have little kids, and a lot of them who had sons were worried
0:44:00 about what culture is going to be like for them. These are going to be kids who have enough who go
0:44:04 to great schools, either a good private school or a great public school that they’re zoned for
0:44:12 or are on their way to college. They’re going to be raised in loving households with dads that
0:44:16 support their moms, all the good things. They’re going to be pro-choice. They’re going to care
0:44:20 about the climate. They’re going to think that there are too many guns on the street and that
0:44:26 school shootings are one of the most important stains on American culture that there is,
0:44:32 but they’re not going to be spoken to as equals. They’re going to have to do double the work,
0:44:40 triple the work to be a “allye” in the right way. And I don’t know if you remember this t-shirt that
0:44:47 was going around that you would see the future as female. And I’ve seen less of it lately, but it
0:44:53 really did see- What about books called The End of Men? Yeah, well, that too, as the corollary
0:44:59 to the t-shirt, like buy my t-shirt and then buy this book. And I do think, I don’t know if you’re
0:45:08 following that horrendous trial in France about the 70-year-old woman whose husband led dozens of
0:45:16 men come and rape his wife, drug her. And I think it’s really interesting in context with the default
0:45:22 position that men are so bad. Obviously, that is the most extreme case in the entire world. But
0:45:27 when you hear about things like that, and you’re not going to hear about a woman that did something
0:45:35 like that, maybe there’s some apparition example of it, but you look at things like that and you see
0:45:39 it just being pumped into the culture that men are the ones that are capable of these kinds
0:45:45 of things, right? Like men are the ones that would be doing the bad things. I think it permeates
0:45:52 further than it should. Yeah, I think it’s a big opportunity. So just as we wrap up here,
0:45:59 who do you think, regarding the debate, who do you think wins and why? What do you think the
0:46:03 narrative will be? Make a prediction. Who wins and why? And then I’ll give you my thoughts.
0:46:09 I think Kamala wins, because I think that she has, since she’s taken over the nomination,
0:46:15 understood the task at hand, which is to message to these raging moderates,
0:46:23 these swing state voters, to make her somebody that is hopeful, joyful, and progressive in the
0:46:30 progress sense of the word, not in the liberal sense of the word, and that she will contextualize
0:46:35 a vision for America that’s more palatable to the widest swath of people. But for Trump supporters,
0:46:41 he will do fine, but she’s the one who has a ceiling that can continue to grow. And we know
0:46:46 that he caps out about where he is right now. I like it. I hope you’re right. My prediction
0:46:52 is that he wins by virtue of the fact that I think expectations have been set so high for her and so
0:46:59 low for him. And also, I think that coronation, not competition, I don’t think she’s battle tested.
0:47:05 I think when you have candidates go through the primary process, they are quick on their feet.
0:47:11 They know how to deflect criticism. They know how to see a weak point and go after it. I don’t
0:47:16 think she’s out of practice. Anyways, we shall see. Well, I hope you’re wrong in the nicest possible
0:47:22 way. I hope I’m wrong as well. I mean, that’s sincerely. Anyways, that’s all for the inaugural
0:47:28 episode of Raging Moderates. We’re raging, Jess. We’re raging. Raging. Our producer. Raging. Our
0:47:33 producer is Caroline Shagren and Drew Burroughs is our technical director. You can find Raging
0:47:39 Moderates on the ProfG pod every Tuesday. Please subscribe. We will see you next week. Thanks,
0:47:46 everybody, for tuning in. Have a great rest of the week, Jess. Thank you, you too.
0:47:56 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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0:00:36 Will the VP debate move the needle in what’s shaping up to be a neck-and-neck election?
0:00:40 You never know in advance what will be the thing that matters and the thing that doesn’t matter.
0:00:48 But Donald Trump will be almost 80 and J.D. Vance will be one cheeseburger away
0:00:50 from the presidency should they win.
0:00:55 I’m Preet Bharara and this week the Atlantic magazine’s David Frum joins me on my podcast
0:00:59 Stay Tuned with Preet to break down what happened at the debate.
0:01:01 The episode is out now.
0:01:04 Search and follow Stay Tuned with Preet wherever you get your podcasts.
0:01:12 Hi everyone, I’m Brené Brown and I’d love to tell you about a new series that’s launching on
0:01:13 Unlocking Us.
0:01:17 I’m calling it the On My Heart and Mind podcast series.
0:01:20 It’s going to include conversations with some of my favorite writers on topics ranging from
0:01:25 revolutionary love and gun ownership to menopause and finding joy and grief.
0:01:28 The first episode is available now and I can’t wait for you to hear it.
0:01:32 All new episodes will drop on Wednesdays and you can get them as soon as they’re out by
0:01:35 following Unlocking Us on Apple or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
0:01:39 Welcome to Raging Moderates.
0:01:40 I’m Scott Galloway.
0:01:41 And I’m Jessica Tarliff.
0:01:47 Jessica, we’re Raging Moderates with an emphasis on the term “Raging.”
0:01:50 Raging all the time, yes.
0:01:53 I mean, I don’t know if other people will think we’re Raging Moderates,
0:01:55 but we’re here to tell you why we are Raging Moderates.
0:01:58 What does the term “moderate” mean to you?
0:02:02 Moderate just means anything that’s around the center.
0:02:04 That’s what it is around the center of an issue.
0:02:08 A lot of people like to identify themselves as politically moderates.
0:02:11 So that’s kind of like the center left or the center right of each party.
0:02:16 But I think that it really comes down to how you’re feeling about a particular issue
0:02:21 at a particular time and that that’s what it means to be moderate.
0:02:24 Yeah, I like to think it means they’re not part of a cult.
0:02:26 And occasionally we can acknowledge the other side.
0:02:27 That works too, yeah.
0:02:29 And what are your objectives?
0:02:33 If this was a win, if this podcast gets huge traction,
0:02:35 what are you hoping to accomplish here?
0:02:39 I’m hoping to have a lot of really thoughtful conversations
0:02:42 about where society actually is.
0:02:46 And that maybe folks who are running for office or an elected office
0:02:49 will take note of the fact that the biggest voices,
0:02:53 the biggest coalition is actually around the center of these issues.
0:02:56 And that they’ll start acting accordingly and also to draw those lines
0:02:58 between what’s going on in the political sphere
0:03:00 and what’s going on in the real world.
0:03:01 Because it’s all intertwined.
0:03:04 And I mean, that’s really what you do so well.
0:03:07 Let’s talk about what’s happening in the business and in the markets
0:03:10 and how it’s all part of one big conversation.
0:03:12 I like that.
0:03:14 I mostly just want power.
0:03:21 I’m hoping that we aggregate so much influence up and down by that we basically become the ultimate
0:03:25 king and queen makers and that tomorrow belongs to us, Jessica.
0:03:28 Okay, let’s bust right into it.
0:03:30 In today’s episode of Raging Moderates,
0:03:32 we’ll be breaking down the latest polling,
0:03:35 our thoughts on the proposed economic policies,
0:03:39 and what to expect from the 90-minute debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
0:03:43 So with that, Jessica, we’ve officially entered the election season
0:03:45 and a block coming up between now and November 5th.
0:03:48 Can you walk us through how you’re thinking about the latest polling,
0:03:53 which essentially shows Harris and Trump are neck and neck?
0:03:57 Yeah, so there is, I mean, the first component of all of this is that
0:03:59 I’m fundamentally depressed that this is a neck and neck race.
0:04:02 I feel like every time Donald Trump’s on the ballot,
0:04:05 you just think, how is it possible that this could be close?
0:04:09 And yet it is, which is reflective of the general theme of why we’re here
0:04:13 to talk about the moderate middle and where the election is actually going to be won.
0:04:16 But it was a big polling weekend because the New York Times,
0:04:19 Seattle poll came out, everyone always goes bananas over it.
0:04:22 It’s actually, so it’s an A-plus quality poll,
0:04:26 and it’s been the most friendly to Trump consistently.
0:04:29 When we started seeing these results that he was winning,
0:04:33 upper teens of Black support, that he was doing well with Gen Z voters,
0:04:37 that Biden and now Harris were softer with female voters.
0:04:40 That was all coming out of the New York Times, Seattle poll.
0:04:43 So it’s obviously something that makes you sit up and listen.
0:04:44 And this was the same.
0:04:48 It was just like the July poll, similar margins,
0:04:50 same soft spots for Kamala Harris.
0:04:55 And you could see if you went on any social media over the weekend,
0:04:58 you could see all of the Democrats absolutely losing their mind.
0:05:01 The bedwetting has commenced again,
0:05:04 which is the end of Brat summer, I guess,
0:05:06 that we’re all a little less coconut-pilled,
0:05:10 but a little bit more realistic about the challenge in front of us.
0:05:16 Do you think, I’ve heard a lot of fears that polling doesn’t constantly underestimate Trump
0:05:19 because there’s a lot of closeted Trump voters.
0:05:22 Do you think that that still holds or that people are no longer embarrassed
0:05:25 about endorsing Trump and they’re no longer closeted?
0:05:28 I mean, he’s lost a lot of elections,
0:05:30 which I feel like people don’t talk about enough.
0:05:32 Like he won the big one.
0:05:34 He won in 2016.
0:05:39 But since then, he’s been a big drag on down ballot tickets,
0:05:42 obviously on his own ticket, losing in 2020.
0:05:48 And so I’m not willing to say yet that the 3 to 5% of Trump voters that were closeted,
0:05:52 which is what it was in 2016, that it could be that enormous.
0:05:56 I think there still are some what we consider kind of normal people
0:06:00 or people that we run into more who aren’t die-hard Trumpers
0:06:03 that are persuaded by a tax cut, for instance,
0:06:06 or might think he would be better for Israel.
0:06:07 And I want to talk about that.
0:06:10 There was a poll of Jewish voters that I found fascinating.
0:06:15 But in general, I feel like people are pretty much out there at this point.
0:06:23 And this election for Trump, when or lose, is kind of, it should be his last hurrah, right?
0:06:26 He should not be running on the top of the ticket.
0:06:30 If he loses again, he’ll be 82 years old at that point.
0:06:32 Or last thud, right?
0:06:33 Or last thud.
0:06:34 Well, that’s a hope.
0:06:36 I mean, he’ll still try to play kingmaker with other races.
0:06:40 But this is the crescendo moment of the Trump era.
0:06:43 And I think that people are out there for it.
0:06:47 It strikes me as it’s almost sort of comical that we do these national polls,
0:06:48 because quite frankly, they’re meaningless.
0:06:52 It really doesn’t matter what these, I mean, I guess they reflect momentum,
0:06:58 but all we really care about is the choice, the polls in what, five or six states.
0:07:03 And in those states, as far as I can tell, the majority of them, she is up.
0:07:05 And in some, she’s up by two, three points.
0:07:08 I mean, if you look at the national polls, okay, it’s neck and neck.
0:07:11 I wonder how much of this is the media wants to Jones up a closer race and
0:07:14 make it seem more heated and tighter than it is.
0:07:17 And I do think it’s tighter than I would have thought.
0:07:21 But that when you look at the swing states, or when you look at what is actually going to
0:07:24 decide this election, we should not report national polls.
0:07:25 It just doesn’t make any sense.
0:07:28 What does the picture look like across the swing states?
0:07:32 Well, first to the national poll, in defense of national polls.
0:07:36 They’re just a snapshot in time.
0:07:40 And I think that it is important to continually gauge yourself as you’re going along
0:07:42 and to look at those trend lines.
0:07:46 That’s why forecasts are so interesting to see where Biden was,
0:07:49 then what Harris has been able to do, how Trump is moving around.
0:07:51 And he is doing better than a lot of people expected.
0:07:55 And he’s coalescing the base in a way that we hadn’t expected,
0:08:00 necessarily considering the primaries and all of the Nikki Haley support that we were seeing.
0:08:02 So I think it is important and also to draw the contrast.
0:08:04 So we already talked a little bit at the New York Times poll,
0:08:09 but there was an ABC Washington Post poll, which is also an A+ pollster.
0:08:12 And they had Kamala Harris ahead by six with likely voters.
0:08:17 That contrast also important, registered voters versus likely voters.
0:08:21 It’s very different to have an opinion versus I have an opinion
0:08:22 and I’m actually going to go and vote.
0:08:25 But you’re totally right about the battleground states.
0:08:28 It’s all basically within the margin of error.
0:08:32 And something that came out in the last week or two that I think is really fascinating
0:08:36 is basically Trump is zeroing in on one strategy.
0:08:38 If you look at where he’s spending money on advertising,
0:08:40 he’s got one route that he’s heading towards.
0:08:42 And Kamala Harris is still spreading it out.
0:08:45 She needs the blue wall, but she’s interested in the Sun Belt.
0:08:49 They really think North Carolina is in play for them.
0:08:54 So it’s been fun to watch them go in their different directions,
0:08:57 see how they’re trying to achieve a win in those places.
0:09:00 But yeah, razor thin and it could be even thinner than 2020,
0:09:04 which we know took days to properly call.
0:09:08 And then months of litigation, though I won’t call it proper litigation,
0:09:12 whatever Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Alice were doing, certainly wasn’t proper.
0:09:15 But it went on for a long time.
0:09:23 And on the issues, so Harris is pulling much better on issues around bodily autonomy.
0:09:24 That’s not a shock.
0:09:28 54 to 39 on “democracy,” although that’s a loaded term.
0:09:31 It’s 50-45 for Harris.
0:09:35 On the economy, Trump is resoundly beating Harris, 55 to 42.
0:09:40 And on immigration, he’s also resoundingly beating her 53 to 43.
0:09:42 I understand the family planning.
0:09:46 This is more a reflection of how you feel about being pro-choice or pro-life.
0:09:50 The democracy one, it feels like a rabbit hole, we could go down.
0:09:54 Talk about whether or not you think that what do you think is going on?
0:09:58 Why do Americans trust more Trump on the economy and on immigration?
0:10:01 And what do you think both candidates need to do to try and either solidify
0:10:03 or chip away at that lead that Trump has?
0:10:10 Yeah, so it was strange to me to see this result on the economy from the New York Times
0:10:15 because the Fox voter analysis and the Fox poll had him between six and eight points
0:10:18 ahead on the economy, which means that he, Kamala’s basically,
0:10:24 have the lead that he had when he was running against Joe Biden, which is awesome to see.
0:10:28 And one thing that’s showing up in survey after survey is that people,
0:10:32 and this could be a bad thing, they don’t feel that they know Kamala as well.
0:10:34 So there’s a lot more room for her to grow.
0:10:35 Trump is basically at his ceiling.
0:10:39 No one says like, I don’t know where Donald Trump stands on the issues.
0:10:43 Now, they may not really understand that what would happen if we had all of these tariffs
0:10:47 and that it’s attacks on the consumer or however his deportation force is going to work.
0:10:49 But she does have room to grow there.
0:10:54 But I think that people still fundamentally see him as a businessman,
0:10:56 whether he went bankrupt six times or not.
0:11:02 And they remember a time pre-COVID where they felt they had more money in their pocket
0:11:04 and grocery prices were down.
0:11:08 And it’s not sexy to create a bumper sticker that said,
0:11:09 “Best recovery in the G7.”
0:11:16 It still sucks when you go to the store and your items are more expensive.
0:11:19 And she’s been working really hard to address that.
0:11:23 I love that she actually calls out the prices of things in speeches and says,
0:11:26 “I know that your bread is 50% more than it used to be.”
0:11:34 But people are holding onto a bit of nostalgia about the Trump era in that specific way.
0:11:38 We’ll be right back.
0:11:46 Well, the economy was strong during his era.
0:11:51 And the interesting thing, there’s kind of a weird dynamic in the sense that
0:11:56 when the price of diapers goes up, you blame the administration.
0:11:59 When your salary goes up, you credit your own character and grit.
0:12:04 The fact that actually now wages are increasing faster than inflation,
0:12:08 which is a good thing, the administration gets no credit for it.
0:12:09 Because that’s because I’m awesome.
0:12:14 Whereas when gas prices or something else go up, by the way, I think it’s just hilarious
0:12:16 that anyone assumes the president has any control over gas prices.
0:12:21 But anyway, they blame the administration for prices going up.
0:12:25 And again, they don’t, they see their raises well-deserved.
0:12:25 I agree with you.
0:12:28 The thing I would hammer on, and I’m curious to get your thoughts.
0:12:34 I taught economics and I taught graduate micro-macro economics.
0:12:38 And one of the few things that all economists kind of agree on
0:12:41 is that tariffs are basically a tax on the consumer.
0:12:47 And his current line of thinking, and I don’t think the Democrats have done a very good job
0:12:51 of exploiting this, and it’s weird to be lecturing Republicans on this issue,
0:12:55 because they’re usually very much anti-tariff, is narrative is, look,
0:12:57 these people have taken advantage of us.
0:13:02 And to his credit, I do think he accurately highlighted the asymmetry in terms of a trade
0:13:05 relationship between the US and China during his administration.
0:13:08 I think he was right on that, but he’s saying all these firms,
0:13:10 all these countries are taking advantage of us.
0:13:15 We’re going to put in some instances a 100% tariff on their products.
0:13:17 And what will happen according to Donald Trump?
0:13:20 It’ll make our products more competitive.
0:13:22 There’s less competitive because theirs will be more expensive,
0:13:26 meaning more jobs will return to the US because we’ll be more competitive
0:13:30 relative to these foreign imports, which are now much more expensive.
0:13:34 What he leaves out is this key thing that happens every time.
0:13:38 And that is if we slap 100% tariff on Toyotas,
0:13:46 they turn around and go, okay, girlfriend, we’re putting 100% tariff on Escalades and Jeeps,
0:13:53 which makes our products much less appealing to consumers in China and Japan and South Korea,
0:13:57 which reduces demand for them, which reduces employment.
0:14:03 But what happens across all markets is the cost of cars for consumers, skyrockets.
0:14:06 And there are some instances where tariffs work.
0:14:11 If you’re China and you think it’s costing me 200 bucks a ton to produce steel,
0:14:16 I’m going to sell it for 100, put all the domestic suppliers and manufacturers
0:14:18 in the US of steel out of business so I can consolidate the market.
0:14:22 Okay, then you impose a tariff until there’s some sort of symmetry around trade.
0:14:26 I get it. If we’re outsourcing jobs because they have forced labor
0:14:31 and it doesn’t reflect the cost of doing business in the correct way, fine, a tariff.
0:14:36 But these unilateral tariffs and this hallucination that all of a sudden it will
0:14:43 bring jobs back to the US is so wrong and any economist worth their salt would recognize that.
0:14:47 It strikes me that the Democrats haven’t done a very good job so far, and I’m hoping to see that
0:14:53 in the debate, is it that she does a better job of saying tariffs or taxes be clear.
0:14:58 And this is a terrible idea and hugely inflationary. What are your thoughts?
0:15:02 I totally agree. I hope that they’re going to keep hammering.
0:15:06 They have a new line that Donald Trump’s going to cost you $3,900.
0:15:11 So they’ve calculated out the cost of these tariffs on the lives of an average American.
0:15:13 And we were talking about tariffs last week on the five.
0:15:18 And my colleague, Jesse Waters, said to me, “Well, why didn’t Biden and Harris extend
0:15:25 the Trump tariffs on China?” And I actually, I rarely admit that I’m wrong.
0:15:28 Well, Jesse admits that he’s wrong way less than I do.
0:15:32 But I did not think that they had extended them. And then when I went and read about it more,
0:15:36 so there was all of the usual stuff about how tough the tariffs had been,
0:15:42 especially for the US farming community. But there was an argument that was being made,
0:15:48 and it was all over Bloomberg, that it was still more effective to punish China,
0:15:52 even though there was some hurt to the American economy to send a message about it.
0:15:58 And I think that there is an angle at which Kamala could take or Democrats could take more
0:16:04 regularly about this, if Republicans are going to fall in line on the tariff front to say,
0:16:08 “We’re not talking about tariffs. We’re talking about sanctions.
0:16:12 And sanctions are something that you can use really, really effectively.”
0:16:16 Versus just hammering this tariff line, which, frankly, everybody knows is not going to,
0:16:21 as you said, have the outcome that he thinks, and is not a rationale for an entire set of
0:16:25 economic policies. He did a speech at the New York Economic Club last week,
0:16:27 and he’s rambling on about child care.
0:16:33 Look, child care is child care. It’s something, you have to have it. In this country,
0:16:37 you have to have it. But when you talk about those numbers, compared to the kind of numbers
0:16:42 that I’m talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to,
0:16:46 but they’ll get used to it very quickly. And it’s not going to stop them from doing business
0:16:51 with us, but they’ll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country.
0:16:55 Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we’re talking about,
0:16:58 including child care, that it’s going to take care of. We’re going to have —
0:17:03 One of the more incoherent things that I’ve ever heard and everybody else as well,
0:17:05 people are struggling to understand what does this actually mean.
0:17:07 And he just keeps saying, “I’ll pay with tariffs. I’ll pay with tariffs.”
0:17:12 And what I think that he’s doing is he’s just trying to say, “For bad countries,
0:17:18 I’m going to find ways to sanction them in some way.” But he’s using the term “tariff” and said,
0:17:23 it’s kind of like, I don’t know if you’ve been following the Hannibal Lecter thread,
0:17:27 you know how he talks about Hannibal Lecter all the time. And it seems like he doesn’t
0:17:31 understand the difference between political asylum and actually being in a mental asylum.
0:17:39 So I think that these things are actually with Trump always like the most base thing
0:17:43 that they could possibly be. And I hope that she flips the script on it and talks about
0:17:49 how effective they have been in using economic sanctions versus penalizing the American public
0:17:54 with tariffs. So let’s talk a little bit about child care because I’m not sure
0:18:02 people really understand what are the policies on… So basically, Trump is saying,
0:18:07 “I’ll find a way to create additional revenues such that we have better child care because
0:18:11 child care is child care according to Trump.” And he was trying to give the notion that I think
0:18:17 it’s important, I’m in favor of it, and I’m going to raise the money for it we need by taxing these
0:18:22 nations with their asymmetric unfair trade relationship.
0:18:26 What is… Can you outline, because I don’t know the answer, what is sort of Harris’s plan
0:18:33 around child care? Yeah, well, the most important part of it is obviously the paid family leave
0:18:40 as the baseline for everything, bringing back the child tax credit, which cut poverty in America by
0:18:45 50%. It’s just astounding that that happened in a couple of years and something that people
0:18:48 are really hankering to bring. To poverty across children, right?
0:18:55 Yeah, child poverty, yes, no. And then there’s the stuff that comes in with
0:19:02 walls as well with the school lunches. We have universal 3K and pre-K. I’m treating
0:19:06 this as a bigger bubble of just raising children than just the child care front,
0:19:10 but they also want to have universal daycare, which is something that J.D. Vance, of course,
0:19:16 has railed against in some unearthed clip from 2021. It’s kind of amazing that he won his race
0:19:21 for Senate. There have been a lot of people that have been picking on Tim Ryan. Why were
0:19:27 you not going after him with all of these horrendous things that he’d said? Tim Ryan’s
0:19:32 team has defended him and said a lot of these clips are coming from us. We knew about this,
0:19:38 but he seems so utterly repellent. So universal daycare is a big part of it. And what I appreciate
0:19:44 about Democrats and what Kamala’s doing is she’s not afraid to say that we’re going to raise taxes
0:19:50 on some people who can afford to pay more taxes. She’s not looking for tariffs as the solution to
0:19:56 it. She’s like, this is good old fashioned. If you’re a billionaire, if you’re a multimillionaire,
0:19:59 not just like two, three, four, five million, they’re talking about people over 100 million,
0:20:04 200 million, your taxes are going to go up a bit. And I’m curious what you think about the
0:20:11 unrealized gains proposal, because that seems like a very, very bad idea that even Mark Cuban and
0:20:17 Ro Khanna are saying halt the brakes on that one. But it’s obviously part of her plan to pay for
0:20:21 all of this. Yeah, it’s funny. I thought I was going to bring it up because I thought it might be one,
0:20:24 I mean, so far we’re in violent agreement on everything. I thought it might be one place we
0:20:30 disagree. I think it’s essentially whether you agree with it philosophically, it doesn’t matter
0:20:35 because they don’t work. When France instituted its wealth tax, the wealthiest man in the world,
0:20:39 or the wealthiest man in Europe, Bernard Arnaud, what do you know, moves to Belgium.
0:20:43 Really wealthy people are incredibly, among the advantages they register,
0:20:47 one of them is they’re incredibly mobile. And what you have here, just, I don’t know if you’ve
0:20:51 heard about what’s going on in the UK, but they’re basically doing away with this non-dom tax
0:20:58 status, where if you have residency in Hong Kong and you live in Britain, you basically can pay
0:21:03 Hong Kong taxes, which is zero. And now they’re saying, sorry, after, I think after you’re here
0:21:08 of four years, you got to pay UK taxes. I actually think philosophically, that makes sense. If you
0:21:14 send your kids to school here and you enjoy the culture and the roads and the infrastructure and
0:21:20 police and fire of the UK, you should pay taxes. But what’s happened is that it looks like about
0:21:27 10,000 high net worth UK residents are leaving and that the purser or the treasury is actually
0:21:33 going to end up worse off than before the non-dom, because these individuals have so much money and
0:21:39 we’re bringing so much economic growth through the UK that quite frankly, tax advantage that’s
0:21:43 even unfair was probably the best thing to do for the economy. The other thing is, I just,
0:21:51 my mind goes into a tailspin trying to imagine, okay, if you’re going to assess someone’s wealth
0:21:56 over $100 million every year and then tax their unrealized gain, who is in charge of putting
0:22:01 that number on it? You can do it when they’re publicly traded stocks, but how do you assess
0:22:07 the value of real estate, of private partnerships? How do you assess the value of things? Does that
0:22:14 mean certain asset classes which are less easily assessed become more in vogue and people start
0:22:20 selling their stocks and buying real estate or private company assets? Who’s in charge of coming
0:22:25 up with that number? The way I would approach it is an AMT, an alternative minimum tax that says,
0:22:32 okay, if you’re worth $170 million, congratulations, you have an AMT and that is any income you have,
0:22:40 you have to pay a minimum 20% on regardless of the tricks of the trade. The other thing I would
0:22:46 like to see is an intra-country and intra-state agreement where if you’re Jeff Bezos and you’ve
0:22:51 aggregated $120 billion in wealth in Washington and you’ve taken advantage of the school system
0:22:55 there, the University of Washington, the Seattle Tacoma Airport, the culture, and then you piece
0:23:01 out to Florida to quote-unquote spend more time with your dad, that when you realize those gains,
0:23:06 whatever percentage of those gains were accreted in Washington state you have to pay Washington
0:23:11 state taxes on. I think you could do the same thing internationally when people move, but the
0:23:17 idea of taxing unrealized gains, I just think it’s going to create more problems than it solves.
0:23:23 What are your thoughts? Well, they’re not as elaborate as yours, which is good. I
0:23:30 agree with all of that, and it’s been interesting to see people as liberal as Congressman Ro Khanna,
0:23:34 who’s in the Bernie wing of the party, and then someone like a Mark Cuban or someone like you
0:23:41 advocate for basically the same thing. The part that I would add to it that I think really matters
0:23:46 with the kind of economic policies that she’s putting forward to, she basically has a founder
0:23:51 agenda. If you go to her website, we should note to everyone, her policy page is now completely
0:23:56 decked out, and you should go and take a look at it. And what they did that was really smart
0:24:03 is for each section, it then has a Project 2025 tab, so you could see what the Trump agenda would
0:24:10 do in contrast to what Kamala is trying to do. But she really wants to encourage startups and
0:24:15 entrepreneurs, and America has always been the best place to go and start a business,
0:24:21 to bring your innovative idea out there and to make a shit ton of money. And it kind of flies
0:24:26 in contrast to that idea that we want to give you the $50,000 deduction to get your small
0:24:31 business going, which is something economists on the right and the left think is such a good idea,
0:24:36 but oh, if you get to a hundred million, then you’re screwed, that it doesn’t really add up.
0:24:41 And that’s what Ro Khanna was talking about. He gave an interview, and he’s actually a surrogate
0:24:45 for the campaign, and he just said flat out, how are you going to tell people, because you got this
0:24:52 successful, that we’re going to start taxing was 28% of your unrealized gains, which is a massive
0:24:57 number. I feel like if it was like two or 3%, people would be like, okay, it’s kind of like a
0:25:04 normal liberal tax. So I think it’s not great for her startup world.
0:25:13 Yeah, I feel like, and I say this as a small business person, I feel that small businesses are,
0:25:18 they’re like puppies, everybody loves small businesses. It’s hard to, no one ever says
0:25:21 of small businesses are taking advantage of our economy and are treated unfairly.
0:25:27 And we romanticize small business. And as a result, and I benefited hugely from this,
0:25:32 I believe the tax code probably airs on the side of being too favorable towards small business.
0:25:38 One, it is very easy to shove through a crazy amount of expenses through your small business.
0:25:44 And because of an underfunded IRS, you cannot write off your life, but pretty close to it
0:25:48 when you have a small business. The tax advantages are enormous. There’s something called 1202,
0:25:54 which I took advantage of, where if you start a business, and it’s a secor, and you hold on to
0:26:00 the stock in that company for more than five years, if you sell it, the first 10 million
0:26:06 or 10 times your initial investment is tax-free. I didn’t even know that existed, and I’ve used it
0:26:11 twice with companies I’ve sold. To me, that kind of makes no sense. And their viewpoint will be,
0:26:15 will Scott, people like you wouldn’t start businesses unless we had these tax advantages.
0:26:19 I don’t know any entrepreneur that knew their tax status when they started a company. That’s not
0:26:24 why we start companies. In my view, and I hate to say this because I like the idea of more small
0:26:29 businesses, but the reality is there were more small business permits issued last year than I
0:26:35 think ever. And it doesn’t seem to be getting in the way of small businesses. And I feel like it’s
0:26:42 very populist. And I would like someone to get more serious about the deficit. What is this going
0:26:47 to cost us? And I think the best way to help small business would actually be more antitrust. It
0:26:53 breaks up these big monopolies, but I’m not sure. For example, I think the first thing you see,
0:26:57 the first result of this or the second result, more businesses start, $50,000 real money,
0:27:01 let’s start a business. You’re going to see more business failures because quite frankly,
0:27:05 one of the reasons that a business works is you have to talk people into giving you money.
0:27:11 And if all of a sudden anyone who starts a business gets a $50,000 tax credit, I just think
0:27:14 you’re going to have a lot of shitty businesses started. Now is that to say there won’t be winners
0:27:19 there? And I can feel people on the other side of this just right now just saying, “Oh my God,
0:27:24 you don’t like puppies. You don’t like small businesses.” No, I do, but the small business
0:27:29 environment in America is very strong. I don’t like giveaways like this. I think it should be,
0:27:32 I don’t want to say difficult to start a business, but I don’t think it should be,
0:27:38 I don’t think it should be easier. I think there’d be easier ways to get to this. The thing I really
0:27:45 don’t like about Harris’ economic policy is around housing. Whereas if you’re looking to buy
0:27:48 a house and I think if you’re a first-time buyer or whatever, you get $25,000. To me,
0:27:56 that is just massively inflationary. That just means starter homes everywhere go up by $25,000,
0:28:02 if not more, because you can borrow more against that. And I don’t understand how that helps.
0:28:07 I love her ideas around making it easier to issue more housing permits. Probably the reason
0:28:11 housing prices have gone up so much as we took housing permits out of the hands of local officials
0:28:16 and put them into the hands of homeowners who get very concerned with traffic once they have a home.
0:28:24 But I don’t see how giving $25,000 to new homeowners is anything but inflationary and
0:28:29 just going to do exactly the opposite of what they want to do. And that makes housing less
0:28:34 affordable. What are your thoughts? This is a tough one, because I feel like it’s a total
0:28:39 campaign season policy, right? And everyone wants the good feels. And they want to hear
0:28:45 all the right things about home ownership and how important it is to the quality of life
0:28:51 for everyday Americans, right? You have better schools, safer communities, more small businesses,
0:28:55 your favorite. Though, I guess you said there were going to be too many, but you want people that are
0:29:00 investing in their community and small businesses the way that they’re doing that. And so it sounds
0:29:05 really sexy to say, “I’m going to help you do this.” Now, everybody knows that just means the price
0:29:10 of houses are going to go up another $25,000, right? So if you’re buying a $400,000 house,
0:29:17 it’s going to be $425,000. And what will be interesting to see is what the banks are doing
0:29:21 with all of this, if it actually goes through as a policy. And I feel like it might be one that
0:29:29 falls by the wayside if and when she gets elected. But I agree with you on that. I think it’s also
0:29:34 one of them to kind of return to the point of being here in this kind of raging moderate middle
0:29:39 when you see how aggravated people have gotten about student debt relief even, which is something
0:29:44 that I think you can make even a stronger argument for helping people out with, maybe not wiping out
0:29:48 hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt, but certainly for people who’ve had Pell grants,
0:29:56 people who were scammed 100% to get their money back. But folks who went to do something and took
0:30:01 on this big undertaking, maybe they wanted to go be a doctor and they don’t go to one of the medical
0:30:06 schools where Bloomberg is just going to wipe out your debt, that they should get a bit of help there.
0:30:12 I think that resonates better with the American public than getting just $25,000 towards you being
0:30:18 able to buy a house. I would push back a little bit and that is as someone who borrowed money,
0:30:24 as someone who’s deeply involved in education, I’ve just always had trouble with the idea of
0:30:27 two thirds of the Americans that didn’t have the opportunity to go to college bailing out the one
0:30:32 third that did. So let me be clear, I think if you’re going to go be a doctor in a rural community
0:30:35 or a low-income community or you’re going to go into nursing or teaching where you’re having a
0:30:39 tough time attracting people, some sort of federal programs to release student debt,
0:30:44 is important. I would like to see my school NYU and every other school be on the hook for
0:30:49 20%, 30%, 50% of bad debts. We stopped loaning $200,000 to philosophy majors who go on to be
0:30:54 baristas and then can’t pay this debt back. It should be dischargeable and bankruptcy.
0:31:00 But there’s something uncomfortable about, you could argue the third of the American public that
0:31:04 gets to go to college is arguably the most advantaged third. And there’s some really terrible
0:31:08 situations where me and my colleagues prey on people because we want to make more money.
0:31:16 And that needs to stop. But three quarters of a trillion dollar bailout with Biden proposed
0:31:21 of student debt to me. And the worst thing about what I hate about student debt relief
0:31:27 is it shrinks the tumor of student debt, but it doesn’t go after the cancer. And the cancer is
0:31:33 the following. We are just charging too much goddamn money. I think it sucks to be a grown-up,
0:31:37 and I think the people on the hook for student loans should be really angry at their university
0:31:44 and that we need to stop this torrent, this typhoon of cheap credit that keeps driving up
0:31:51 the cost of education. So I really don’t like student loan bailouts. And my sense is they were
0:31:57 found to be illegal. They were. Yeah. Well, there are ways around it. Are there? Yeah. There are,
0:32:01 I mean, there are policies, there are Department of Education policies, which is how the Biden
0:32:08 Harris administration has been able to give back so much that, that allow for it. But yes, I mean,
0:32:16 the Supreme Court gave it a big hell no to just wiping out people’s debts. I think as an extension
0:32:20 of what you were saying, though, you know, school, yes, it’s too expensive. And I have two little
0:32:27 kids with the beginnings of their 529s. And I just can’t really fathom how much money is going to
0:32:31 have to be in those accounts for them to be able to go to the $4 million. A million bucks. At this
0:32:34 point, at this point, you’re looking at a million bucks. That’s even worse than what my financial
0:32:39 advisor said. So. For both of them. Only a half a million each. Unless they come down while you
0:32:42 and then it’s more than that. Well, if the podcast really works out, then everything’s going to be
0:32:50 fine. There we go. You’re set. You’re done. After this one episode. But I feel like it’s time,
0:32:54 especially with if it’s going to be Kamala, the prosecutor, and if she’s going to talk about
0:32:59 things like price gouging, if she’s going to talk about her experience going after the big banks
0:33:05 in California, I wouldn’t mind some sort of policy platform about going after universities.
0:33:10 And especially these ones that are sitting on endowments that are, you know, being propped up
0:33:16 by investing groups, you know, that are doing their two and 20s or whatever it is. And they’re
0:33:20 sitting on billions of dollars and they’re not helping students out, maybe because they know
0:33:24 that the administration might do that in the end, or most likely because they don’t care.
0:33:29 And they’re like, well, you’re going to have a degree that says Harvard or whatever it is,
0:33:34 and now state schools are even, you know, for a regular person, astronomically expensive.
0:33:37 But I would love to see that. And I think that would be popular across the board. You know,
0:33:42 if you’re looking for a policy that everyone can glom onto, if you said, I’m going to go after the
0:33:47 universities that are that are stealing your money and giving you, in some cases, worthless
0:33:52 degrees, you’re going to end up like the barista that you were mentioning. You know, landslide.
0:33:56 Stay with us.
0:34:05 What are some of the other central points of her economic plan? I feel as if she hasn’t done a
0:34:13 great job so far. And it feels like quite frankly, a lot of giveaways. What about on the revenue side?
0:34:18 They’re going to raise taxes. There’s a wealth tax. What else are they planning to do?
0:34:21 Trump has said he’s going to tear off the shit out of everybody. And that’s going to raise a
0:34:25 ton of money. How is she planning to increase revenues other than a wealth tax?
0:34:33 It’s a lot of just investing in the communities and regular, like the corporate rate, I don’t
0:34:38 think we’ll go up further than it is. I think they’re toying with, and I need to get back on
0:34:43 the website, the individual rate for the top, you know, the top top. Now we’re getting into like
0:34:49 the tippy tippy tippy job versus the tippy tippy tippy top. But I think that they are, and this is
0:34:54 where she’s going to rely back on actually the good economic news out of the Biden Harris administration.
0:34:59 You know, she has to toe that line of like, this is what I think was really good that we did. This
0:35:04 is what I think wasn’t so great. And I would have advised differently. And we’ll see how she does that
0:35:09 at the debate. So before we wrap up here, we have to talk about the debate. It’s being held.
0:35:15 We’re, we’re taking on Monday. Give us, I’ll just be curious, just riff on what you think about this
0:35:20 debate, what you’re expecting, what you think each candidate needs to do and any predictions you might
0:35:28 have. So Trump needs to just act like a human. And that’s always been the bar for him. And he’s
0:35:34 failed a majority of the time, which, and I’m looking forward to that, there was the big fight
0:35:39 about whether the mikes would be muted or not. And Kamala’s team obviously wanted them un-muted,
0:35:45 so they could see people really coming after her, especially when you have the gender dynamic and
0:35:49 the size differential. A lot of people have been focusing on that because, you know, she’s quite
0:35:55 short. And he is, well, he was six four before he started shrinking. I’m not quite sure what he is
0:36:01 now, but he’s a big guy. So I think for her, and we touched on this a little bit earlier in the podcast,
0:36:06 a lot of people don’t feel that they know her, especially people who are in the battleground
0:36:13 state. So I think she’s going to do a decent amount of the bio stuff again, but not in like the
0:36:19 mamala way. And this was what my background is. And this is how I brought those skills to the
0:36:23 vice presidency, you know, Senate vice presidency, and now hopefully as presidency, and that I am
0:36:29 ready on day one. And there’s a new ad out focusing on foreign policy, where I actually
0:36:33 thought she was the strongest at the DNC in her speech. I thought it was incredible.
0:36:42 As commander in chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting
0:36:48 force in the world. She’s going to be using the contrast of all these folks that worked
0:36:54 in foreign policy, the generals, et cetera, for Trump, who are now saying, I can’t endorse him.
0:36:59 He’s absolutely out of his mind. We’re going to be less safe. She’s going to lean into what a
0:37:06 better force for good America will be if she is the next president. But I really hope and I don’t
0:37:12 think that we’ve talked about this yet in general, like she’s not playing identity politics at all,
0:37:18 which I think is part of why she’s resonating as well as she has and has gotten this to a neck and
0:37:23 neck race when Biden, you know, was on his way, I think, to a pretty resounding defeat. You know,
0:37:28 she never talks about being a woman. She never talks about being a person of color.
0:37:35 She’s just Kamala Harris. And I think that he, well, he would obviously love to be able to
0:37:40 be as misogynistic and sexist and potentially racist as possible, but watching her kind of
0:37:46 steer clear of those little potholes will be interesting. I hope she can keep that up.
0:37:52 And I hope that the moderators really push him on explaining things. This is probably one of the
0:38:01 biggest uphill battles that I have on the five is, you know, people treat Donald Trump’s presence,
0:38:05 the fact that he’s actually just out there standing in front of a podium or quote unquote
0:38:09 taking questions as the fact that he’s being transparent, but he’s not actually explaining
0:38:14 anything. And now the policy pages are such a wonderful encapsulation of this. So Kamala Harris
0:38:18 has all of our policies with the dropdowns that explain them. And Donald Trump just has a list
0:38:25 of his policies. And some of them are like deport everyone. Well, you know, how are you going to
0:38:31 go around and find 15 million people that you’re going to throw out of the country? So I hope that
0:38:38 he’s really pushed on detail because I think that she’s pretty wonky and will be able to handle that
0:38:44 well. But she just needs to reassure like tens of thousands of people that it’s going to be okay.
0:38:48 And Pennsylvania is really important for this. And it’s a topic for next week because I know you
0:38:53 have a ton to say about it. But I was reading about all of the ads that Trump is running in
0:39:01 Pennsylvania and how they’re directed at young men. She’s doing much worse with men than Biden did
0:39:06 in that New York Times, Sienna poll, especially white working class men. And he’s just hammering
0:39:11 that. And so it’ll be interesting to see if things like that come up as well.
0:39:16 So I believe that we’re a much more Luxus nation and that as individuals are much
0:39:24 more Luxus than we want to admit. And I think Luxus aesthetics, when people saw the Reagan-Carter
0:39:27 debate, when they watched on TV, they thought Reagan won. And when they listened to it, they thought
0:39:35 Carter won. And JFK let them put makeup on them. And anyone who watched it thought Kennedy won.
0:39:39 And anyone who listened to it thought Nixon won. I think Luxus are important. And I think
0:39:44 that plays huge advantage to her. She’s an attractive, non-white, young woman. I didn’t
0:39:47 know she was short. I’ve never met her. She actually, she looks kind of…
0:39:51 Yeah. I assume she’ll be wearing heels. But the fact that she also is wearing converse a lot,
0:39:54 she’s really like, she’s a little pistol. Yeah.
0:39:59 Really? I didn’t know that. I thought she was kind of average height, so to speak.
0:40:07 By the way, he claims he’s 6’3,215. John Elway is 6’3,215. And so John Elway and Donald Trump,
0:40:11 yeah, they’re mirror images of each other. Same diet I’ve heard, the Cheeseburgers diet.
0:40:12 Yeah, physically. Broken ice cream. Yeah.
0:40:23 Physically, yeah. So I think she wins just moment one on that count. I have a thesis here, and I
0:40:28 want you to, I want to get your reaction to it. And that is, and this plays into my bias that
0:40:32 young men are the only special interest group that have been totally ignored recently,
0:40:40 who are really struggling. And I think old men are going Trump, young women are going Harris.
0:40:44 I do think similar to just as the election will be won by a handful of states. I think the overlooked
0:40:51 crowd here that is sort of up for grabs is young men, because there’s a bit of a myth that young men
0:40:55 are all fucked up in the head, and their incels, and they’re angry, and they’re
0:40:59 attracted to the man of fear and Trump. And I think what some of the research shows
0:41:05 is that it’s not that they’re moving towards the Republican Party. Gen Z and millennial men
0:41:11 actually believe just as much in gender equality as their female counterparts.
0:41:15 They’re actually quite progressive around gender equality. I think what’s happening is they’re
0:41:19 not moving towards the Republican Party. I think they’re moving away from the Democratic Party.
0:41:23 And the thing that just blew my mind, Jess, was I went on the dnc.org website,
0:41:30 and it has this section that says who we serve. And it lists 16 demographic groups,
0:41:37 everyone from the disabled, to veterans, to immigrants, to the disabled, to Pacific Islanders,
0:41:44 to blacks, to women, rural Americans, farm, it just, by my calculations, they listed somewhere
0:41:53 between 70 and 80% of America. The only people they didn’t list were men. And when you are in this,
0:41:58 I think the Democratic Party is struggling with the same problem that the DEI apparatus at
0:42:05 universities is struggling with. And that is when you claim to be explicitly advocating and advancing
0:42:11 the interests of 75% of your population, you aren’t advantaging them, you’re discriminating
0:42:17 against the 25%. And I think that’s how a lot of young men feel. They just, quite frankly,
0:42:23 don’t feel seen by the Democratic Party. And I don’t think it would be hard to recapture them.
0:42:28 I think they are very much pro-life. A lot of them have more progressive inclinations,
0:42:32 a lot of them are turned off by Trump. But I think at a minimum, they need to say, all right,
0:42:37 what are you doing to help my community that is killing themselves at four times the rate,
0:42:43 is addicted at three times the rate, is less likely to go to college, is having trouble finding a
0:42:48 mate, because women are dating older, quite frankly, is it okay? I just feel like a little
0:42:55 bit of something, a recognition of the problem, vocational programming, expanded freshman seats,
0:43:01 national service, even taking a victory lap around the Infrastructure Act, which supposedly the 70%
0:43:04 of the jobs are going to be for men without college degrees, but they don’t want to talk
0:43:08 about it because they’re worried it’ll ruffle the feathers of the far left. What do you think
0:43:14 about the idea of young men being the swing voters up for grabs here? I like it. I mean,
0:43:19 it’s a great headline, and it’ll get you a lot of buzz, which we’re always looking for in life.
0:43:25 But I think it’s also, I think it’s true, and I actually think it’s even more
0:43:30 base than what you’re saying. I think that if you said, we don’t think that you’re bad,
0:43:35 that it would be enough. Yeah, we don’t think you’re toxic.
0:43:43 I don’t fundamentally think that you’re broken because you’re a white dude. And it’s been
0:43:52 interesting with my friends, we all have little kids, and a lot of them who had sons were worried
0:44:00 about what culture is going to be like for them. These are going to be kids who have enough who go
0:44:04 to great schools, either a good private school or a great public school that they’re zoned for
0:44:12 or are on their way to college. They’re going to be raised in loving households with dads that
0:44:16 support their moms, all the good things. They’re going to be pro-choice. They’re going to care
0:44:20 about the climate. They’re going to think that there are too many guns on the street and that
0:44:26 school shootings are one of the most important stains on American culture that there is,
0:44:32 but they’re not going to be spoken to as equals. They’re going to have to do double the work,
0:44:40 triple the work to be a “allye” in the right way. And I don’t know if you remember this t-shirt that
0:44:47 was going around that you would see the future as female. And I’ve seen less of it lately, but it
0:44:53 really did see- What about books called The End of Men? Yeah, well, that too, as the corollary
0:44:59 to the t-shirt, like buy my t-shirt and then buy this book. And I do think, I don’t know if you’re
0:45:08 following that horrendous trial in France about the 70-year-old woman whose husband led dozens of
0:45:16 men come and rape his wife, drug her. And I think it’s really interesting in context with the default
0:45:22 position that men are so bad. Obviously, that is the most extreme case in the entire world. But
0:45:27 when you hear about things like that, and you’re not going to hear about a woman that did something
0:45:35 like that, maybe there’s some apparition example of it, but you look at things like that and you see
0:45:39 it just being pumped into the culture that men are the ones that are capable of these kinds
0:45:45 of things, right? Like men are the ones that would be doing the bad things. I think it permeates
0:45:52 further than it should. Yeah, I think it’s a big opportunity. So just as we wrap up here,
0:45:59 who do you think, regarding the debate, who do you think wins and why? What do you think the
0:46:03 narrative will be? Make a prediction. Who wins and why? And then I’ll give you my thoughts.
0:46:09 I think Kamala wins, because I think that she has, since she’s taken over the nomination,
0:46:15 understood the task at hand, which is to message to these raging moderates,
0:46:23 these swing state voters, to make her somebody that is hopeful, joyful, and progressive in the
0:46:30 progress sense of the word, not in the liberal sense of the word, and that she will contextualize
0:46:35 a vision for America that’s more palatable to the widest swath of people. But for Trump supporters,
0:46:41 he will do fine, but she’s the one who has a ceiling that can continue to grow. And we know
0:46:46 that he caps out about where he is right now. I like it. I hope you’re right. My prediction
0:46:52 is that he wins by virtue of the fact that I think expectations have been set so high for her and so
0:46:59 low for him. And also, I think that coronation, not competition, I don’t think she’s battle tested.
0:47:05 I think when you have candidates go through the primary process, they are quick on their feet.
0:47:11 They know how to deflect criticism. They know how to see a weak point and go after it. I don’t
0:47:16 think she’s out of practice. Anyways, we shall see. Well, I hope you’re wrong in the nicest possible
0:47:22 way. I hope I’m wrong as well. I mean, that’s sincerely. Anyways, that’s all for the inaugural
0:47:28 episode of Raging Moderates. We’re raging, Jess. We’re raging. Raging. Our producer. Raging. Our
0:47:33 producer is Caroline Shagren and Drew Burroughs is our technical director. You can find Raging
0:47:39 Moderates on the ProfG pod every Tuesday. Please subscribe. We will see you next week. Thanks,
0:47:46 everybody, for tuning in. Have a great rest of the week, Jess. Thank you, you too.
0:47:56 [BLANK_AUDIO]
Get ready for the election with us! Every Tuesday, Scott and The Five co-host Jessica Tarlov break down everything we need to know about the latest politics all through a centrist lens.
Today, Scott and Jessica discuss the latest polling data, their thoughts on both candidates’ economic policies, and their predictions for the presidential debate.
Follow Jessica Tarlov, @JessicaTarlov.
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