It’s Mo Time

Don't miss the ending.

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On today’s eclectic episode of The Remnant, Sarah is joined by Mo Elleithee, executive director of the Institute of Politics and Public Service at Georgetown University, to discus elections, tribalism, and Halloween. The two explore the shrinking acceptability of bipartisan friendships, the effects of campaign finance reform on polarization, and the importance of understanding the arguments of the other side. Stick around until the end for a heart-wrenching tale of unrequited avian love and to hear Sarah publicly debut her much anticipated screech owl call.

Show Notes:

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  1. Stuart.Weikel

    The owl call raises so many questions! Dying to see the video that accompanies such convincing audio. How many different owl calls did you perform there? Can we assume it swept the talent show? Whose/what talent came in second? And was it even close?

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  2. Will

    My dad introduced me to Merlin, a bird identification app. It tells me Sarah's bird call is an Eastern Screech Owl, so long as I pretend I'm in Texas. We'll done, Sarah! If there's a bird version of the Turing test, you passed.

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    Ceich62

    I think there were a couple of issues that could have been dug into.

    Mo touched on eliminating primaries but backed away quickly. That mistake tracks to when he said our problems started, but he does not seem to connect them, or maybe thinks it’s quixotic to try going back.

    The other is how the major parties have captured ballot access to preserve their duopoly. Third parties have that much harder time getting traction, which explains the shift to hostile takeovers (Bernie, DJT).

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    Seth B

    I used to love hearing Western screech owls in the redwood forests of Santa Cruz, CA - but mainly their delightful bouncing-ball call, which is what I was expecting to hear from you, Sarah, but this call is more impressive since it's much more difficult for a human to produce. (If you can do the bouncing-ball, though, I hope we'll get to hear it sometime.)

    For what it's worth, I can do a pretty good barred owl call.

    My long-eared owl avatar has yet to migrate here from Substack. I trust he will arrive soon.

    Happy Halloween!

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  5. Aaronhfrank

    Any podcast where Sarah does raptor bird calls should be declared The Flagship Podcast.

    Trump didn't defeat the Republican Party, he defeated a bunch of Republicans who spent more time fighting each than The Donald. If Marco, Ted, Jeb, and Carly had all coalesced around one of those four or even someone else, they might have been able to take Donald down.

    One last thing - everyone always says "there 350,000,000 people" but only a percentage of those can actually vote. If you take out those under 18 and non-citizen residents the number comes down to around 200,000,000. That is still a big number but it is much smaller. And if you look at the number of people who voted it is a much higher percentage of those who are eligible.

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  6. Heroica2

    There is a way to square the circle regarding compromise and fighting for principles. I'm not sure that's what people were thinking based on the wording of the question, but it is possible.

    For example, there are issues where both sides have different reasons for favoring the same policy and everyone could walk away with 75% if the intractable parts are deferred for later. But everyone decides they would rather have the issue than get less than everything. For example, qualified immunity reform.

    I would never swear that's what the people surveyed had in mind, but it does bug me.

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    1. Elwood

      Agree entirely. Real adults interested in governing have plenty of fertile ground for meaningful progress on policy if they were willing to “fight!” (TM) to prioritize the areas where we actually agree.

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    Stephanie

    I was listening to this podcast with great interest when at about the 11-minute mark, Sarah made some remarks about nut-picking, and mentioned as an example she had said something in the comments section of another podcast to a listener who said "the Republican Party is a huge threat to democracy" and that they didn't know anyone who wants the borders wide open.

    I recall in "the Sweep" of 10/25 Comments section, I made that statement about not knowing anyone who was for open borders. I didn't make the other statement. Sarah replied at the time in the Comments that she knew people who were for open borders.

    That Democrats want "open borders" as a matter of policy is such an irritating canard, but I wasn't clear enough that I meant actual policy makers.

    Still, if you read this, Sarah, can you clarify if half of your remark was referencing my comment. I don't think it was "nut-picking" and I don't believe I was incorrect either.

    My feelings are a little hurt! (unless it was somebody else you meant) Nobody wants to be hung out to dry on a podcast.

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      Sarah Isgur vertical-nib Author

      In truth, I don’t actually remember—I answer dozens if not hundreds of emails a week between dispatch, abc, and my students! But I still disagree on the open borders question even if we limit it to politicians. Remember the abolish ICE campaign slogan? That was adopted by 4 presidential candidates. The idea being to stop prosecuting people for illegally crossing the border—I think it’s hard to argue that’s not a form of open borders if there’s no penalty or enforcement mechanism for violating border-related laws.

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        Stephanie

        I could be wrong—I thought “abolish ICE” referred to the way that enforcement branch was operating—mission creep, and scandals like sexual abuse, forced sterilization and other criminal behavior suggesting ICE was seriously in need of restructuring from the top down.

        The idea, as I recall it from Sen. Gillibrand, was to completely reform ICE—replace it with an enforcement unit without the problems.

        Thanks for responding!

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        1. Avatar photocircle-angle-nib
          Sarah Isgur vertical-nib Author

          I do think that’s how Gillibrand later defined it, but the abolish ice movement had been well established by that point and it wasn’t about reform. Here’s AOC year earlier suggesting it was more about getting rid of DHS entirely and ending all border enforcement.

          https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/07/11/politics/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-department-of-homeland-security/index.html

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            Stephanie

            Touché!

            I ignore everything AOC says, but you as part of the media, give her statements more weight than (I assume) the general public
            does because she’s an elected official, just as I suppose we have to/ need to find out what Paul Gosar and MTG think about issues. She’s more than three-quarters of the way around the horseshoe.

            Quoting her might be considered nut picking actually, since she’s a fringe actor—I give Nancy Pelosi some credit for keeping her in her place.

            I’m hoping that all the rhetoric about Democrats wanting “open borders” or the that that is the current state of affairs (looks like the definition varies according to who’s saying it) can be replaced with some actual comprehensive legislative reform.

            I see people like Ted Cruz using the issue as a cudgel, but I don’t recall him saying whether he, as one of the only 100 people (in the Senate) who can actually do anything about it, is actually working on any legislation. Same for any of the other loud voices.

            That could be why some people don’t think Republicans actually care about fixing the issue because if it did get fixed they’d not be able to use it every two years to win elections.

            Obviously there’s a lot more to it than that, though.

            I don’t feel very knowledgeable about the history of immigration law and what the consequences were of changes since the 50’s/60’s so I don’t have an opinion on the subject, actually. I only know how I feel about the rhetoric—frustrated & cynical.

            I don’t know of a reliable source of information on that since everything I read is written by someone with an agenda.

            If YOU have any good source, I’m interested.

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    Cpreilly11

    Great podcast. Its unfortunate that many folks don't really stand for anything other than performative behavior to annoy the opposing team. If they really wanted to be effective, they would consider listening to opposing view points or making convincing arguments their primary goal.

    A coordinated walkout is performative behavior that really accomplishes nothing. You are no more informed or better prepared to understand and defend your beliefs. Defending your beliefs is not about being attacked or attacking someone, its about truly understanding your own position.

    We all need to live in this country, civil discussions like this podcast are encouraging.

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    Tomadonna

    Mo seems like a nice person but he definitely has the standard backhanded comments that dems don’t think the right understands that contributed to the rise of trump.

    In this podcast note the ingrained prejudice for rural Americans. When he refers to rural Americans as rural, while he refuses to urban Americans as ‘urban elite’.

    As long as dems continue to define themselves as ‘elite’ thus making everyone else not ‘elite’ we are not going to get anywhere. This is the issue that confuses the left about Florida and their yacht parades and stuff. The left continues to define the elite in their own bubble as democrats, in urban areas, that have college degrees.

    Jonah has discussed some of this before. There are rural or suburban Americans, equally educated, wealthy, and far more successful than the urban, liberal arts graduate, massive debt, dead end job leftist. But for some reason the left still considers the later the elite and the former not worth talking to.

    The proto example of this is the ‘learn to code’ fiasco. Which I admit Obama never actually said word for word. But there is zero doubt it was implied, the rural areas asked what are we supposed to do when our jobs leave and their only answer was here is some program where you can join the exciting computer science field. But when urbanites worry we give large city unions massive bailouts and ‘forgive’ 10-20k of their debt, and anyone that says ‘learn to code’ or points out it was Obama’s indifference to rural Americans problems that spawned ‘learn to code’ to begin with. Not to mention ‘guns and religion’.

    Seems to be a standard leftist that talks a dang good talk about finding perspective from across the isle while actually using it as a Trojan horse to mean, I’m not going to change, I’m right, you’re wrong. Here’s why you should agree with me.

    There were some great points made in this podcast even with his ivory tower style disdain. The point that legacy admission of institutions that have previously discriminated due to race perpetuates that discrimination if it is a short cut to admissions.

    I thought this was interesting, as a person from a low income background I think this touches on a real undiscussed issue, however I feel that pushing the focus back on race was a mistake when class/caste is much more encompassing.

    Thomas Sowell talks about some of this too. Yes Harvard clearly discriminated in their admissions in the past, but it has more to do with the in group vs the out group. During the period of obvious discrimination The people with more social capital as it relates to Harvard; local, wealthy, connected, have a huge huge advantage over the out group.

    This includes the black populations as they are, during this period, not wealthy, but it also includes the rural whites, or any other out group. I think the desire to push it to some monocausal explanation is a mistake.Show less

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    Ben Connelly

    This was good. Good job as guest host, Sarah.

    I think I’ve figured it out. You’re laying the ground early for Nate’s teenage years. Whenever he thinks he’s too cool for his mom, you’ll remind him that 10,000 strangers know random things about his toddler years. Boy I’m glad my dad didn’t have a podcast in the 1990s.

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      Occam's Razr

      Underrated comment.

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