Defining Infrastructure

If it’s a day that ends in “Y” in Washington, it’s probably a day during ...

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If it’s a day that ends in “Y” in Washington, it’s probably a day during “infrastructure week.” The gang talks about President Biden’s infrastructure bill and debates whether or not it’s fair to call it an “infrastructure” bill. Plus, what should the U.S. do about the continued aggression coming from China and Russia, and the differences in voting laws in Georgia and Colorado. Finally, the controversy surrounding a 60 Minutes piece on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and whether or not “media bias” is the worst it’s ever been.

Show Notes:

–POLITICO’s Playbook on infrastructure 

–What is Starlink?

–TMD on Russian aggression in Ukraine

–Danielle Pletka’s latest for The Dispatch on Chinese aggression towards Australia 

–Oriana Skylar Mastro on The Remnant

–The Washington Post Editorial on boycotting the Olympics 

–Atlanta Journal-Constitution Georgia/Colorado voting laws comparison 

–60 Minutes and Gov. Ron DeSantis – Poynter

–Trump donors – The New York Times

–“Why Being ‘Anti-Media’ Is Now Part Of The GOP Identity” – FiveThirtyEight

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Comments (77)
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  1. Jason Y

    There are a lot of comparisons between Trump/WinRed and Biden/ActBlue laid out in the NYTimes piece. You guys usually do a great job at keeping yourselves to the facts, but I don't see how you make your way to the end of this story and say they don't cover what ActBlue was doing in contrast:

    "Over all, the Trump operation refunded 10.7 percent of the money it raised on WinRed in 2020; the Biden operation’s refund rate on ActBlue, the parallel Democratic online donation-processing platform, was 2.2 percent, federal records show."

    "All campaigns make refunds for various reasons, including to people who give more than the legal limit. But the sum the Trump operation refunded dwarfed that of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s campaign and his equivalent Democratic committees, which made 37,000 online refunds totaling $5.6 million in that time."

    "Even that was more aggressive than what the Biden campaign would do in 2020. Biden officials said they rarely used prechecked boxes to automatically have donations recur monthly or weekly; the exception was on landing pages where advertisements and emails had explicitly asked supporters to become repeat donors."

    "The use of prechecked boxes is not unprecedented in politics, and WinRed said it was simply adopting tactics that ActBlue put in place years ago. ActBlue said in a statement that it had begun to phase out prechecked recurring boxes “unless groups were explicitly asking for recurring contributions.” Some prominent Democratic groups, including both congressional campaign committees, continue to precheck recurring boxes regardless of that guidance. Still, Democratic refund rates were only a small fraction of the Trump campaign’s last year."

    etc etc...

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/03/us/politics/trump-donations.html

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    Jerrymasters7vwp

    Bravo about elevating the existential nature of the CCP's threat.

    I hope to see more on the threat and less of what Mr. Hayes calls "the smallness of politically arguing" that US journalists (including The Dispatch) have been monitoring for the last few years.

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    BrandonAlleman

    Jonah's argument: if you anthropomorphize something, you are are a hypocrite if you latercomplain when it gets constitutional rights. Weird.

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  4. Token Liberal

    Wow! You think the media was unfair to Trump? The same media that spent the entire 2016 election cycle giving his lies a giant megaphone? The same Trump who attempted to overthrow our democracy? All because of some Dan Rather story from 2004 about Bush? That Rather got fired for? Get real!

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    Jeff Baum

    Look, love you guys, but if you think some tv show 18 months before the MIDTERMS is going to be the dominant force in propelling a candidate to a nomination, you need to take a couple days away from The Discourse.

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    LindaL

    My edition of the Times article about check the box donations did mention that the Democratic online donation website used check the box technology although to a much lesser extent. It also mentioned the amount of money refunded by the Democratic site, which was a fraction of the refunds made by the Republicans. I think your outrage was a bit overstated.

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  7. Karin

    Disappointing episode, as I’m usually a big fan. But I don’t come to the Dispatch Podcast for outrage and whataboutism. And the media navel-gazing is very tedious. More policy discussions, please! Best part of the show was Sarah’s précis of the 1936 Olympics.

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    Sad Trombone

    The word in the dictionary that describes the 60 Minutes edit is "dowdification."
    If this episode makes DeSantis the Republican nominee I'll pluck my eyes out in disgust. This man beat one of the finest public servants of his generation - Adam Putnam - in the Gubernatorial primary by running those asinine pro-Trump ads of him brainwashing his toddlers about the very stable genius.

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  9. Marsha Crowley

    Just two points on the Georgia Voting Law : 1. Another difference between Colorado and Georgia that wasn’t mentioned in the comparison is that Colorado has one ballot box per 15,000 people where Georgia ballot boxes are one per 100,000 people. And as you mentioned Colorado ballot boxes are outside, available 24 hours a day and Georgia ballot boxes are placed inside and are available only during the hours the polling places are open. This is a huge disparity and I believe worth mentioning.
    2. Concerning the hyperbolic reaction of the left on the Jim Crow issue. Aren’t we talking about voting here? I don’t believe anyone is referring to the lynching and brutality of that era. The comparison was of the Georgia voting law to the difficulty that African Americans had when trying to vote in that time. I agree with the journalist for the New York Times that you quoted recently when she wrote basically that it wasn’t illegal for blacks to vote in Jim Crow, but that, for them, it was made so difficult as to be almost impossible. Isn’t this really what the Georgia law is attempting to do?

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      Pstahley

      If the georgia law is an attempt at making things as difficult as Jim Crow era, they did a really bad job, and instead settled at "somewhere in the middle of the pack for the US for ballot access".

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      1. Marsha Crowley

        My point, which could have been stated more clearly I’ll admit, was that the law has changes in it that make it more difficult for most marginalized people to cast their ballot. I don’t know the voting laws of all the states in the US. But any state that has voting laws which are unfair to a segment of the population , I believe is not truly democratic.

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    2. Karin

      Not to mention that there was no commentary on the intent of the new law(s) - the GOP have been quite open about their need to suppress democratic voters.

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  10. Jason Runyan

    60 Minutes has now turned into the Nobel Prize. Once prestigious and something important, then they gave it to Al Gore and Barack Obama, FOR NO REASON, aside from making a point that the prize means nothing and is just another tool used for leftwing politics. Now 60 Minutes is political hackery and is not a legit news source. It is nothing, like the Nobel Prize.

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