The latest episode of Trial Balloon is live for members.
Is centrism dead? Is “uncommitted” the new Ted Kennedy? Should Sonia Sotomayor retire?
Add the show to your podcast player. You’ll get new episodes automatically each week.
Or listen here:
Or you can now read a transcript of the episode below.
Chris:
Excited or anxious, Taegan?
Taegan:
I am anxious for the baseball season because a key Red Sox pitcher just went down with Tommy John surgery. Yeah. That’s not what topic is. Okay. I am excited because it is the State of the Union address tonight, and I like watching them.
Taegan:
I’ve watched almost everyone since I was a boy. And call me crazy. I’m looking forward to this one again.
Chris:
That was the topic. Okay. So you’re excited. You’re not anxious for it.
Taegan:
If you look at what Joe Biden did last year, he exceeded expectations. He came off extremely well. He really showed his skill as a politician playing with the crowd, with the heckling. It backfired so much, I think, that speaker Mike Johnson has already warned members of the Republican caucus to not heckle him because it didn’t really come off well last year.
Taegan:
And it’ll be interesting to see what happens. I don’t think Mike Johnson has a grip on his entire caucus, so we might have a few heckles here or there, a few shouts, but I think Biden’s pretty good in this setting.
Chris:
What is it about the last month or two that leads you to believe that Mike Johnson might not have a good handle on his caucus?
Taegan:
You feel comfortable saying that? Well, if I were to think about it just about everything, Chris.
Chris:
Just about everything. Okay. And the other thing that we’ve just done is violated every rule of podcasting, which is talked a bit at length about something that will occur between this recording and when this drops. So immediately upon people listening to this, they will know whether you had it right or wrong. And what they can do with that information, like we always offer, is they can send questions to the mailbag.
Chris:
Contact Taegan via Political Wire or email me simply by replying to any day’s newsletter. Now let’s get on with business. And one question raised this week, is centrism dead? Axios wrote, centrist extinction looms as Sinema, Manchin, Romney call it quits. Senator Kyrsten Sinema’s decision not to seek reelection has dealt the latest in a series of crushing blows to senate bipartisanship, hollowing out a centrist core that has suffered under years of intense fine polarization.
Chris:
The departures of Sinema, Joe Manchin, and Mitt Romney, 3 moderates routinely vilified by their own parties, will leave a massive hole for bipartisan deal making. It’s hard to look at today’s political incentives with lawmakers more concerned about their primaries than the general election and conclude that the vacuum will be filled. Tagan, is centrism dead?
Taegan:
Well, it sure seems it sometimes. Right? You know, Kyrsten Sinema, her crime was to kind of work across the aisle. It’s what voters seemingly demand. You know, everyone talks about working across the aisle, trying to find solutions to the nation’s problems.
Taegan:
She did that. Joe Manchin did that. Mitt Romney does it at times. But when it comes to voting, there doesn’t seem to be much appetite for that. And Sinema made this decision because she was probably going to get no more than 10% of the vote if she ran in a three way race, even though she’s the incumbent.
Taegan:
She was way behind Kari Lake and Ruben Gallego in the polling of a three way race, and there was no path for her to win reelection.
Chris:
Why is that? Have you seen polling or analysis on this dichotomy between what voters say they want, meaning people to work together, versus how they actually vote?
Taegan:
I mean, there’s been a lot of polling showing the polarization of the country and how it’s grown over the last 20 or 30 years.
Chris:
But the why on the dichotomy between because I think you’re I believe you’re right, anecdotally, that that is what voters say. They say they you know, why can’t they all get together? We want our country to come together. Why can’t we just get things done? And yet they don’t vote for that result, as you just stated, that kind of cognitive dissonance between stated expected desires versus their actions.
Taegan:
You know, if you look at this increase in polarization over the last 20 or 30 years, for the first half of that, I probably thought that, no, you know, what’s happening here is it’s technology. Technology is allowing us to gerrymander districts so that only the extreme side of the party votes in these primaries. Districts are protected. There are very few swing districts left. You know, the ability to narrow cast your message, you know, the ultimate dog whistle to be able to get your base supporters out in these races.
Taegan:
And all of that is true, and all of that is still true. But at some point, you have to actually blame the voters themselves because the voters are electing, seemingly every time there is someone more moderate on the ballot, the easiest way to beat them is to run to their left or the right. And that is really what Kyrsten Sinema found. I don’t think she was necessarily planning this, but she found herself right in the middle. And that’s probably the worst place to be in American politics, right in the middle.
Chris:
So is gerrymandering not the problem that many people think it is?
Taegan:
Well, I still think it’s a problem because there’s so few competitive districts, and that doesn’t help. But, you know, interestingly, you know, we saw in California, we saw a jungle primary. And the jungle primary was this election innovation that was designed to try to boost more centrist candidates. And what was so fascinating about this is that Adam Schiff, who was the top vote getter, and Steve Garvey, the former Dodgers first baseman, came in 2nd. The only reason Garvey came in second was because Schiff ran ads essentially talking about how conservative he was in urging very conservative Republicans to vote for Steve Garvey so that Adam Schiff didn’t have to face Katie Porter in a general election this fall because it would have been the way that the jungle primary works.
Taegan:
It’s the top two vote getters that go to the general election. And so this system, this jungle primary that was designed to increase centrism, so to speak, and to lessen the power of the extremes. What was so fascinating is that Adam Schiff found a way around it and found a way to get the candidate that he wanted and that he thought he could be and almost certainly will be in November.
Chris:
So is the California vote rigged?
Taegan:
Apparently, Katie Porter says so. Boy, I was just taking a look at all the various tweets about this and she is just facing an onslaught of criticism from Democrats. Any sympathy that they might have had for her seems to have gone away. It’s really pretty brutal. It was a bad word to use because, of course, it evokes images of Donald Trump, and that’s about the last thing a Democrat wants to evoke at this point.
Chris:
If you think the comments on X or Twitter were harsh, you may have already taken a look at some of the comments on Political Wire, which I did about an hour ago on your post on that story, they were no more gentle than what you’re characterizing from Axe. So two shout outs here. 1, Jason G. has emailed us, sent in the mailbag on gerrymandering as a question. Jason, I’m going to look at your question again. I don’t know to what extent we may have just covered it.
Chris:
If we didn’t send a note, we’ll try to tackle it again at another time. And second, Taegan, yes, while you refer to Steve Garvey, ID him as the Dodgers former first baseman, which, of course, he was. He also is better known to many of us from Chicago as the guy who just crushed us in 1984, and it broke our hearts when the Padres beat the Cubs after the Cubs were up to nothing and had never been to a World Series, subsequently lost 3 in a row, and the rest became history until 2016. But that’s enough.
Taegan:
Well, that’s not enough baseball, Chris. You guys had Steve Garvey, Red Sox fans. We had Bucky Dent. You know, we had to deal with Bucky Dent as our torturer.
Chris:
He ain’t running for office, so he’s not relevant on trial balloon.
Taegan:
Can you imagine Senator Bucky Dent? That would be great.
Chris:
Yeah. He wouldn’t get any votes in Massachusetts. We know that. Do you know who’s running second to the Democratic presidential primary?
Taegan:
Well, I know it’s not Dean Phillips, so it must be that line. None of the above or uncommitted.
Chris:
It is uncommitted. There are 1968 delegates needed to win. Biden has 1553 so far, but uncommitted has 20 delegates. So I wanna ask you about this uncommitted vote. NPR wrote earlier this week, 100 of thousands of voters across the country cast their ballots for no candidate in Democratic primaries on Super Tuesday, instead selecting versions of uncommitted as a movement opposing president Biden’s handling of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza grows across the country.
Chris:
However, the Washington Post writes, the uncommitted vote story isn’t exactly what you might think. And they wrote, some voters logged protest votes against President Biden on Super Tuesday, but in many places, proportionally, it was a smaller share than in 2012. There were 5 states that voted on Tuesday that had some form of uncommitted options on their ballots and saw that preference get a chunk of votes in the 2012 Democratic primary. That primary is a useful baseline given the similarities of this election cycle. It’s also useful because it makes clear that any protest centered on the uncommitted vote nationally has been successful only in 2 states.
Chris:
In 4 of the 5 states that voted on Tuesday, preliminary but nearly complete voting results suggest that uncommitted got a lower percentage of the vote than it did 12 years ago. In 2 of the 5 states, uncommitted got fewer votes than the ballot line did in 2012. So the 2 states where the percentage of uncommitted vote has increased, Michigan and Minnesota. As The Washington Post noted on Tuesday night, those are also states with relatively large Arab American communities, places where opposition to Biden’s position on the war in Gaza contributed to the effectiveness of the organizing event. So question number 1, is uncommitted the new Ted Kennedy?
Chris:
Does it risk throwing off Biden in the way that Ted Kennedy might have presaged some challenges for Jimmy Carter in 1980? How important is the uncommitted movement? Is it a movement? Or is what matters is that it’s a movement in 2 important states, Michigan and Minnesota?
Taegan:
Great question. I love the idea of comparing it to Ted Kennedy’s run-in 1980 because there are some similarities there as well. Here’s the thing. This uncommitted vote, particularly in Minnesota and in Michigan, is important because those Midwestern states, potentially other Midwestern states, are swing states. This is the battleground where this presidential race may be won or lost.
Taegan:
And when a state could be won or lost by 10,000, 15,000, 20,000 votes, you really can’t afford to have a large protest against you because that may cost you that amount of votes. At the same time, I wouldn’t really call it a movement as much as it’s a protest, and I don’t really think that the strength behind uncommitted is as strong as the strength behind Ted Kennedy. You have to remember that Jimmy Carter in 1980 was a president truly beleaguered. He was being held hostage while there were hostages in Iran. He seemed as if he was not in control of what’s going on in the country.
Taegan:
You remember as a child, as I do, there were lines to get gas at gas stations. It was really not a good time in the country. That’s not the country that we live in right now, and that’s not what this uncommitted vote is. So I don’t really think it’s a movement, but it is a protest, and it’s an important protest, one that I think the Biden White House needs to get a handle on. And as we record this before the State of the Union address, I do think it’s really interesting to see some of the things that have leaked out from that State of the Union address.
Taegan:
One of the items has been he will order the US military to construct a port in Gaza to aid delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza. And that allows him to keep his pledge that there will not be military soldiers in Gaza Gaza while this war goes on. At the same time, he finds a way to get aid more efficiently to Gazans that has eluded him so far. There has been no good way other than air drops and then the permission of the Egyptians to be able to get humanitarian aid into Gaza. So I think that’s an interesting thing.
Taegan:
I think it shows that the White House is paying attention to what happened in Minnesota this week and what happened to Michigan in the week before. Whether that will work or not, I don’t know because it does have a high risk having US soldiers on the shores of Gaza building this pier. You don’t know which way that’s going to go. That is not a low risk operation, I suspect.
Chris:
No. It’s not a low risk operation. Interesting, certainly to me, that it comes after Bennigants, whose opposition to Netanyahu, but in the coalition effort in Israel after Bennigants met with sounds like, basically, every leading White House official except Joe Biden this week. Interesting that that was the tactic that Biden decided to use. Getting back to the Jimmy Carter, Ted Kennedy uncommitted thing.
Chris:
So interesting to me is you’re talking about Jimmy Carter having been plagued by various elements that were outside of his control gave the sense that he did not have command and, therefore, is being held hostage by hostage takers and by oil profiteers. And at the same time, couldn’t, quote, control his domestic plank, his party, and couldn’t control things domestically either. Maybe the parallel I hear you on Biden doesn’t have the parallel necessarily with various policies, although some may say that in various places from Israel and Gaza to Ukraine and Russia and elsewhere, that the world feels just a little bit unstable. But the part that is unstable regarding Biden that probably is out of his control is Biden himself. The age question.
Chris:
The flubs is the mental acuity. And if the uncommitted vote does increase I understand that it’s being, you know, launched around Gaza and Israel. But if it does grow and become something that’s taken up by more states and for broader reasons, I think that it does run the possibility of just kinda destabilizing and showing that he doesn’t have command over his own party.
Taegan:
Maybe, Chris. Maybe because obviously the primary season isn’t over yet. But for all intents and purposes, it is over. And within the next week or maybe 2 weeks, Biden and perhaps Trump as well will have enough delegates that they need to go to the convention and to win their party’s nominations. And I think what that does is even though there are primaries in these future states, I just think that severely dampens turnout in the states.
Taegan:
And so that by itself, once you know who the nominee is going to be for your party, are you really going to get out on a rainy day or a cold day to go cast your vote in a primary that’s potentially meaningless? Maybe the uncommitted people will if there’s a protest that they’re looking to do, but I just think that the media’s focus is already on to the general election. I think that the general election begins tonight as we speak about the State of the Union, which listeners will know already happened. But I think everyone’s kind of pivoted and moved on. I think the uncommitted vote is a message.
Taegan:
It is a protest message that the White House needs to take very seriously. I think they are taking it seriously. I think they realize they have a problem, but I don’t necessarily think it’s going to morph into a wider movement. And I don’t think we’re gonna see what happened to Jimmy Carter in 1980, that Ted Kennedy just pummeled him on through all the way to the convention. And you recall, he went all the way to the convention and
Chris:
Yes. Yes.
Taegan:
Yes. Continued to pummel Carter. So I just don’t think it’s the same.
Chris:
I agree with that. Maybe 2 of the things potentially to be looking for are 1, yes, if the emotional desire to vote goes down, it may not go down, as you noted, among people motivated for other reasons to vote uncommitted to lodge their protest vote. So the percentage on the uncommitted could go up as the denominator of total votes goes down, possibly. I’m just saying, you know, you a little bit made that point. And secondly, and this may be something for a future conversation, Ted Kennedy took his campaign all the way to the convention.
Chris:
You and I were talking earlier before this conversation, before this podcast. It would not shock either one of us if uncommitted protesters took their actions all the way to the convention floor. And that could be something else again. Nothing like a Democratic convention in Chicago to bring out protesters. In our remaining moments, a quick Supreme Court question.
Taegan:
I don’t know if that can be quick, but let’s do what we can.
Chris:
On Monday of this week, the Supreme Court ruled 9 to 0 that states may not bar former president Trump from running for another term, as you know. So the question from some Democrats has become, should Sonia Sotomayor retire? Earlier this week, you posted on Political Wire, a piece from Josh Barrow, Sonia Sotomayor will turn 70 this June. If she retires this year, Biden will nominate a young and reliably liberal judge to replace her. Republicans do not control the senate floor and cannot force the seat to be held open like they did when Scalia died.
Chris:
Confirmation of the new justice will be a slam dunk, and Liberals will have successfully shored up one of their seats on the court, playing the kind of defense that is smart and prudent when your only hope of controlling the court again relies on both the timing of the deaths or retirements of conservative judges, plus not losing your grip on the 3 seats you already hold. But if Sotomayor does not retire this year, we don’t know when she’ll be able to retire with a likely liberal replacement. It’s possible the Democrats will retain the presidency and the Senate at this year’s elections, in which case the insurance created by Sotomayor retirement won’t have been necessary. But if Democrats lose the presidency or the Senate this fall or both, she’ll need to stay on the court until the party once again controls both. That could be just a few years, or it could be a while.
Chris:
For example, Democrats have previously had to wait 14 years, from 1995 to 2,009, and 12 years from 1981 to 1993. Jonathan Last added, I suspect that one of Mitch McConnell’s legacies is that so long as Republicans control the Senate, they will not confirm any Supreme Court nominees made by a Democratic president. It turned out that even before this piece came out, we had gotten a mailbag from Alex L, who wrote, even if Biden wins reelection, the Senate is likely to flip to the Republicans, and it might not flip back to the Democrats for over a decade. A Republican controlled Senate would be very unlikely to confirm a nominee to the Supreme Court from a Democratic president. Do you think that Justice Sotomayor should retire this year?
Chris:
And if she retires, do you think that would help Biden and down ballot candidates? What do you got, Taegan?
Taegan:
Fantastic question. I do think Sotomayor should retire. I suspect she will retire after the term ends in June. There have been other reports that suggest that that she travels with a medic, that her health is in that precarious a shape, that she needs to travel with a medic. And so if that’s the case, we don’t know a lot about her health.
Taegan:
We don’t know a lot about what’s wrong with her. But the key point in all of this debate was what Jonathan Lass said, is that Mitch McConnell has set a standard for what Republicans will do to confirm Democratic nominees to the Supreme Court. They’re not gonna do it, and they’re gonna find any which way they can. So right now, you’ve got a Democratic president and a Democratic senate, and I think Sotomayor has to step down. I just don’t think that they can take the risk.
Taegan:
Statistically, as Josh Barro pointed out in his piece, it could easily be 12 or 14 years, if not more. She turns 70 this June. She has health problems.
Chris:
What about Alex L’s question? Will that help down ballot Democrats?
Taegan:
Well, I think it could because I think anytime you talk about the court now, this is the type of thing that did not happen before Roe v Wade was overturned. But now anytime you talk about the court, you talk about issues like abortion rights. You talk about issues like in vitro fertilization now. You even talk about birth control. These are issues that are huge issues for Democrats in this election.
Taegan:
And if president Biden were to name a replacement on the Supreme Court who stands firm on those issues, which he almost certainly would, it could highlight the difference between Democrats and Republicans in a very important way. And I haven’t really looked at and familiarized myself again with the makeup of the Senate Judiciary Committee. But the senators on that committee who are up for reelection, if you’re Republicans, you probably don’t want to be talking about the fact that you don’t support abortion rights. I think the issue has really caught fire for Democrats right now. It’s going to be important in this election.
Taegan:
And so, yeah, anytime you have a Supreme Court vacancy, that becomes issue number 1.
Chris:
Enjoy the State of the Union, Taegan.
Taegan:
Thanks, Chris. We will talk later. Oh, and and I will say this. If for some reason I’m completely wrong and it turns out out that it was a terrible State of the Union, I’m not sure listeners will ever hear this episode.
