Can We Call It Quits?

And: politics vs. football.

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63

Donald Trump has won Iowa and New Hampshire, but is Nikki Haley waiting until Super Tuesday before calling it quits? Sarah, Jonah, John, Steve, and David (Drucker) discuss the Haley campaign’s game plan heading into South Carolina:

The Agenda:
— RNC Moving to Declare Trump Its Presumptive Nominee
— Trump’s veepstakes
— Cui bono? Trump.
— Coalition building and the politics of subtraction
— The loyalty of the Trump base
— Imagining a post-liberal and post-constitutional world
— Voting by gut desires
— Biden losing populist voters
— No Labels, no future?

Show Notes:
— Wednesday’s Morning Dispatch
— Mike and David’s reporting on Haley
— WSJ: From ‘Never Trump’ to ‘Encore’

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Comments (63)
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  1. Avatar photo
    George.Skinner

    I'd like to think it's not completely crazy that Haley doesn't have some deep 3D strategy behind her continuing primary campaign. She may recognize that there's not really any future for her in the Republican Party while Trump continues to be such a dominating influence, and more importantly, believes Trump simply should not be president again. That final point seems to be held by just about anybody who held a senior position in the Trump administration or the Republican leadership over that time, but very few of them have actually been willing to risk anything in support of it. There's essentially Lynn Cheney and possibly Nikki Haley. Mitt Romney and Chris Christie have certainly been vocally against Trump, but were also starting from no-hope positions on the outside of the Trump Republican Party.

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    David Burke

    Jonah! Please on cryin’ a river about Tim Scott and how mean trump was to him.

    Scott has just shown you who he is and always was.

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  3. Jstevenson85

    It’s very clear that the Brisket watches Bluey.

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  4. David_S

    I think Sarah got to this towards the end of her discussion of college football and politics, when it comes to what is broadcast. I feel like if you watch ESPN or the NFL network, you will almost always have a former player/coach with a deep understanding of the game, summarizing what happened, sometimes at the granular level of what your listener emailed, sometimes at a more simplified level. If you flip on Fox News or CNN or MSNBC, you will often have a series of journalists and activists who don't have the same deep understanding, and the descriptions they are offering are not for the purpose of explaining (as it is with football analysis) but instead to entertain or to help drive partisanship for "their side".

    So no, I think the average viewer of football programming knows more about the game than the average consumer of cable news political pundentry, because the football analysts are coming much closer to neutral analysis than anyone on cable news does these days.

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    Patrick

    Pretty funny that the guy with the largest Venn diagram overlap of politics and football, Steve Hayes, was not given a chance to speak on that segment.

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  6. Gass

    I’m not sure if there is a German word for it but the Avett Brothers have a song with these lyrics that I think sum up the football, politics and just about everything else discussion.

    Ain't it like most people? I'm no different
    We love to talk on things we don't know about

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  7. Avatar photo
    Matt Stokes

    On Sarah's friends and acquaintances who were anti-Trump voters but plan to come home in 2024, I wonder how many are driven by professional and policy considerations? I don't mean that in cynical terms, but perhaps they rode out the storm for as long as they could but they've decided four more years of Biden (from a policy standpoint) is worse than whatever Trump might do. But were those actual Biden voters? I'm curious how many people made the psychological leap to voting D but now can't do it.

    Regarding the reader email about defenses, there are in fact a lot of casual fans who do understand those dynamics. ESPN has shows dedicated to this, there are podcasts and talk radio that can get into those nuances, and Twitter and message boards are full of playbook diagnosis for fans to understand what their DC/OC is up to on any given Saturday or Sunday.

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  8. Jose Rodriguez

    Excellent and fun.

    Yes those Are verbs


    Sexy Librarians rule.

    :)

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  9. Just Dean

    There a lot of direct and indirect children and toddler references in this podcast:

    Sarah: Keepy Uppy from Bluey and 'If you give a mouse a cookie'
    Steve: "Biden is an Awful, Very, Very Bad President" = "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day!"

    Let's be clear that the only toddler we're dealing with is Trump! Have you ever seen a Baby Biden balloon? Just saying.

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  10. Avatar photo
    Dave in Houston

    C’mon, Sarah, your date was obviously referring to the Presidents who held office under the Articles of Confederation, although that office wasn’t completely analogous to the executive established by the Constitution.

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