Bodega Campaign Tactics

"The way he slurped those onions!"

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As Congress devolves into high school drama, Sarah, Jonah, and Mike discuss the fight over aid to Ukraine and Israel and the resulting threats to oust Speaker Mike Johnson.

The Agenda:
—Internal drama and blocks to getting foreign aid passed
—Polling shows Trump losing his lead in swing states
—Trump’s bodega campaign tactics
—Latinos’ affinity for Trump: real or media illusion?
—The need for messianic figures in politics
—Assessing the Biden administration’s public-facing stance on Israel
—Does spanking children reveal a cultural divide between the elites and working-class people?

Show Notes:
—Mike Johnson’s interview with Jake Tapper
—National polling
—Nick Catoggio’s Boiling Frogs on Mike Johnson
—This week’s Collision
—The Commentary Magazine podcast
—Jonah’s G-File on the messianic temptation
—The Remnant with Eli Lake
—Matthew Yglesias on “the spanking gap”

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Comments (69)
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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    Boy that polling data at the end gave me hope for this country. Yes, I was spanked as a child. By the 90s and 2000s that might have been less common among parents with grad degrees, but I knew a lot of families across the education divide and it still seemed common enough. If you ask me, we should bring back corporal punishment in schools.

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    Duke Powell

    I grew up in an age (and region of the country) where spanking was a time-honored tradition. My German mother was quite enthusiastic about this practice and I was spanked regularly up until the time I was laughing during the procedure.

    When I really screwed up, I was switched. We had a mulberry bush in the front yard which produced the means of punishment for three generations of my family. As an added bonus, my mother would send me to school the next day in short pants so I could display the marks. By no means were my parents alone in this. Corporal punishment was commonplace both at home and in the schools.

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  3. Bobby D

    I agree that Trump is a symptom of a general cultural restlessness that sets in when life has become too easy.

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  4. Sunil_moderate_D

    The Dispatch nails its analysis of Biden’s messaging on the Middle East conflict as usual.

    I mean … check out his totally “Pro Palestinian rhetoric” as Jonah said in Biden’s recent WSJ op-ed. Totally clear that Biden “thinks it’s genocide”. He’s totally not “making the moral case against these people”.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/moment-of-truth-on-ukraine-and-israel-war-ammo-aid-package-iran-russia-7ed30288

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    1. Avatar photo
      Aylene Wright

      Well, to be nitpicky, I doubt Biden *personally* wrote it, but he certainly approved it, and I understand most OP-eds under a politician's byline aren't actually written by them.

      That being said, IMO, calling Biden "pro Palestinian" is about as accurate as, say, calling Mike Johnson "pro Russia". In both cases, the politician arguably could do more to support one side of a conflict. But that's a quite different thing from secretly supporting the other side.

      The Commentary guys (and I include the ex Commentary guy Noah Rothman in this), have been even more ridiculously critical of Biden, even several months ago when he was only giving occasional mild, tentative criticism of Israel. Rothman once stated something like, "Biden might as well have said that while wearing a keffiyeh" or something, and I don't think Jonah or anyone else at TD, has gone that far.

      But this idea that Israel basically deserves totally blind, unquestioning support, is really not at all convincing for me. (Most people complaining about Biden will deny that's what they believe, and claim that they themselves don't agree with everything Israel does, yet never actually state any specific disagreement.)

      I mean, I actually read Israeli media, and it's obvious that not even Israelis themselves are all marching in lockstep behind the current "Unity" administration. There was even a poll showing the majority, as in over 60%, actually blames Netanyahu over Hamas, for the failure of negotiations to free more hostages. Are these Israelis all "pro-Hamas"?

      Jonah has, commendably, argued against the blind support of domestic politicians, pointing out such an approach doesn't even help the politician, to excuse away all their errors. But he seems to not apply the same approach to the international community.

      PS: I should, to be fair, add my usual caution about believing poll results, especially as polls showing high levels of Palestinian support for Hamas, are often used to justify treating all Palestinians as terrorist supporters who therefore deserve death. But my point is that large numbers of Israelis feel comfortable expressing dissent, even if that 60% figure is somehow inaccurate and it's "only" 50%, I think my point still stands.

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      1. Sunil_moderate_D

        Biden is at it yet again. Why does he support these leftist terrorist sympathizers?

        https://www.threads.net/@yasharali/post/C6CV_2hyEhu/?xmt=AQGzjfdXnk01Mxmb39nCWmTWwUjNollK8y2bPe6aXaZYiA

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        1. Avatar photo
          Aylene Wright

          Joking aside, I think this is yet another issue where the extremists tend to dominate the discourse and try to impose a false binary on it.

          At least online, the most popular opinions seem to be,

          Either, #1: "We support Israel totally unconditionally, they're our only democratic ally in the region, and won't dare question what they have to do to survive, even if they nuke Gaza tomorrow. Anyone who would criticize them at all, is obviously an anti-Semitic terrorist supporter of Hamas!"

          Or, #2: "The entire existence of Israel is illegitimate, it's not a real country, just an imperialist racist settler-colonialist apartheid project, so it should be destroyed ASAP and the land given back to the Palestinians, and the Jews should all go back where they came from. Anyone who disagrees, is complicit in genocide, and should be boycotted, or worse!"

          My own opinion is that Israel is NOT an illegitimate state, no more so than the many Arab countries that were mostly created by European powers in the wake of WWII. That they have not only the right, but duty, to defend it's people. But that doesn't mean that these legitimate ends, automatically sanctify every means used to accomplish it. That although Israel shouldn't be judged by unrealistic double standards, neither should all Israelis get a free pass that others don't.

          I get the impression most Americans, including Biden and most Democrats, actually agree with that overall sentiment.

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          1. Sunil_moderate_D

            I agree. The Dispatch team is really smart. But I feel they fall short on this issue and that frustrates me.

            This is a good one by the way.

            https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lost-debate/id1591300785?i=1000653022000

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    Richardwoolery

    With all due respect, Trump did run a traditional campaign in 2016. The last 100 days of the campaign, he visited the battleground states 133 times while Hillary visited only 88.

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  6. Rpeterson

    This is 50% me being a pedant and 50% a substantive point: Jonah often complains it's not compelling to say "the rate of inflation isn't growing as fast as it used to" but every time what he means is "inflation has fallen but people want deflation". And the reason why I'm saying that's not pure pedantry is, I'm not sure anyone actually wants deflation at all, at least not given how you'd go about getting deflation (a really bad economy).

    I totally get the anger at folks who thought inflation wouldn't be bad and so overshot macroeconomically and now effectively say "sorry, you were more right than we admitted but tough, you're stuck with higher prices". And even more so if you're upper middle class and so you took the inflation hit without the larger wage hike lower income folks got. It's still true though.

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  7. Avatar photo
    Brett S

    Great show as always! Always have some new takeaways when I listen.

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  8. Andrew A. Anderson

    Good show all. Here in Spain we love the Dispatch. Keep up the good work and podcasts.

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  9. Avatar photo
    George.Skinner

    The extremes of both parties seem to have rationalized that the reason their views haven’t prevailed previously is because other factions held the key posts and had the power. Once they get those positions, they’re baffled when it doesn’t translate into inexorably getting their way. The Freedom Caucus hardliners on the Rules Committee are a Republican example; Bernie Sanders and his progressive compatriots behaved similarly in stalling for months over “Build Back Better” legislation as they tried to bludgeon opponents into submission.

    What they miss is the key is persuasion and convincing a majority to go along. Their egos don’t seem to have allowed them to perceive that the lack of traction for their approaches has been that they’ve been unpersuasive, so they latch onto the alternative solution.

    This reminds me of the show “Star Trek: Lower Decks” where a dim witted species called Pakleds are led by the people with the biggest helmets. Upon overthrowing the oppressive rule of the Big Helmets, the rebels put on the helmets themselves and immediately assume they’ve now got the power to be in charge. Holding a spot on an important committee doesn’t amount to much over the long haul of it turns out you can’t persuade others to support you. You should have the title because you have the sway, not the other way around.

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    1. Bobby D

      It’s unclear to me what it is that they want. I think they often pick losing issues precisely because the issue is a losing issue. The merits of the issue itself are irrelevant. Consider the issue around Ukraine funding. Because Biden wants it, the far right opposes it. If Biden were against Ukraine funding, they’d probably be pushing for it. It’s just knee-jerk oppositional thinking devoid of any coherent principle.

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  10. Avatar photo
    Aylene Wright

    Re the whole spanking debate; all I will add is that I don't think there's necessarily a binary choice between "beat all children with sticks" (to quote Sarah once quoting some social media site's paraphrase of a legal argument from Justice Thomas), and "beat no children with sticks".

    The idea that all kids have the exact same temperament and can be managed the exact same way, strikes me as quite silly, and I am not even a parent!

    There's also a lot of room to discuss when exactly corporal punishment crosses the line. Some extremists on the issue will say, basically, Never, or at least, that it's solely something for the parent to decide, and none of the gubmint's business, except if the child actually dies or suffers serious injury, and perhaps not even then.

    Supporting beating children half to death on a routine basis, as just something commanded by the Good Lord, is to me quite different than supporting the occasional swat on the butt with a bare hand in exceptional circumstances.

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    1. Cathwestf

      One way to be sure that spanking has gone too far is that it gets to the point that the child hits back — and can prevail. . I know of such cases.

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