B | How Democrats Beat the Republican Money Machine

0:00If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. Hi, I'm Sean Evans from Hot Ones and I want to tell you about YouTube Premium. It has offline downloads, so you can watch without Wi-Fi, background play, so you can lock your phone and it still plays baby. Oh, and it is completely ad-free. Yes, I said it ad-free. Try YouTube Premium for two months free at youtube.com slash premium. Hell eligibility varies, terms apply, cancel anytime. Hi, I'm Robert Siegel and this is a conversation about politics. With, as usual, our regular guest, Times of Pinging contributor, EJ Dion. Try to be with us. Try to be with us again. And joining us once again, Times of Pinging columnist Carlos Luzada. Welcome back. Thanks for having me back. This week on our plate, Democrats appear to be doing very well in the midterm elections.

1:00What are they selling and why are people buying? And it's hard for AI to develop, or is to figure out how to deal with their models morally. And now comes the question, are the models capable of making moral decisions on their own? Can they learn morals? Can they feel hurt? But first, the midterms, and one stunning measure of what's happening this year, are records for campaign funding and spending are being shattered. In August, the Times published a list of mega donors, just 20 of them, although some of them are Paris of people, whose combined contributions to various federal races is $1.2 billion. Most of them are Republican donors. It's abracing for a big GOP spending blitz in the last month, which considering all this, the Democrats are doing pretty well in the polls. And that raises the question, how important is money in politics? Do we overestimate that importance?

2:02Carlos, I have conflicting views on money in politics. First of all, it is extremely important. Money buys you name recognition. It may preclude you from running at all if you or someone who lacks the ability to raise sufficient funds and money buys access to politicians. The views of donors inevitably get more attention in Washington. If either of you are Star Trek fans, it's like Spock's line, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. It's the other way around in Washington when it comes to money. The preference is the few outweigh the needs of the many. So money can tilt the playing field, but it doesn't guarantee that you win the game. If it did, Jeb Bush would have been the 2016 Republican nominee, not Donald Trump. Michael Bloomberg would have been the 2020 Democratic nominee. Hillary Clinton would have been the winner of the presidential election. The winner of presidential election. And we'd be somewhere reaching the halfway point of the Harris-Walls administration

3:06right now. So money can help you amplify a message. It doesn't substitute for a message. If you don't have one that resonates with voters, money doesn't fix the problem. It might even expose that problem even more. The last thing I'll say on it is I think, too, there can be diminishing returns to, say, ad spending. There comes a point of just saturation where I think voters have had enough and kind of tune it out. I'm just trying to watch a college football game, guys, and every commercial is an attack at. And after a while, you just sort of start tuning out. E.J.? I'm glad you started with the few not-the-many buying interests. I think that we should take a step back and say that this Supreme Court, beginning with as citizens United, really destroyed all the guardrails that we had on big money in politics.

4:08My friend and mentor in many ways, Bob Kaiser, famous editor of the Washington Post wrote a book back in 2009 called So Damn Much Money about the influence of money in politics. And if he did a sequel, it would be So Damn Much More Money. More money. You know, the analysis released just this Hess Wednesday by Americans for Tax Fairness found that 170 billion-air families had spent over $1.7 billion to influence the election. There's just something wrong here among pure democracies. They don't do it like this and that the influence matters. But as Carlos says, does it always matter? I think historically what people said is you can be, I would just spend, you know, two, three to one as long as you're in the game, you can compete. These elections are going to test that further. But I think we're reminded that no matter how much advertising you put up, the product has to be something people want to buy. And what Republicans so far seem to be up against is a lot of people are just resisting

5:11the product. Sabrina Tavernese, he had a great piece in the Times this week, where she quoted a former Republican State Representative who said it gave, I think, the simplest answer to what's going on. He said people are tired. The whole divided and chief thing is just gotten so exhausting. And that exhaustion may yet overcome all this money. But I think it is going to tighten some of these race. We shouldn't deny that it has some impact. But Carlos, with all respect to Mr. Spock and his, his, his, his formulation, have we simply become desensitized to a massively corrupt relationship between money and politics? I think that money and politics can be especially dangerous when you have a set of politicians or an administration that has shown itself to be especially susceptible to the desire to enrich itself while in office.

6:15There's also this amazing story that I believe ran, that ran just this week in the Wall Street Journal about Kimberly Gille Foil, the US Ambassador to Greece, former fiance of Donald Trump, Jr. And she also with the governor of California, but before that. Prior, prior. Yeah, you know, it's, it's, you know, politics is a family business. And the, the journal got hold of all these text messages between Gille Foil and a, a, Trump donor, where she's essentially begging him to like pay off her American express bill. 100,000 dollars. 100,000 dollars. And the line is, honey, please, I need you to do this, I need you to get this done for me today. And they really have all the receipts. And what you see is aside from her messages where she's telling them, please don't put this in text messages, you're going to lose me my ambassador ship. This is a problem. There's one moment when the donor responds. And he says, look, I've paid you.

7:15300,000 dollars over the years. As of this memo, I have not received one favor. I'm not naive or a sucker. I need results. Right. And that captures so clearly, so blatantly, the quid pro quo expectations, you know, why people donate money. I need results. Well, moving on, EJ, we talked the other week about how the midterms are likely to affect the Republicans in 2028. Let's talk about the Democrats right now. Going by the polls, which admittedly can be very hazardous, Democrats are leading in states until recently, where they didn't seem to have a chance. They're competitive in places where they had been in endangered species. What are the Democrats selling so well, exactly? As I mentioned, I think that the thing they're selling most is a backlash against Trump prices and a war in Iran that is deeply unpopular because it's still not clear why we fought it.

8:16And so they are not. Right. And so they are selling the thing you sell first in the midterm election, which is you don't like that guy in the White House by us. But I think underlying here, there are a couple of big lessons. We're seeing a lot of more moderate Democrats challenging in states, Kansas notably, where they haven't elected someone in a long time. And so you'd say that's an argument for moderation. But you're also seeing an awful lot of Democrats, including moderate Democrats running against concentrated economic power, big corporations, the power of billionaires, and how that affects people's lives. And so I've been thinking a lot about what we, the lesson of this election is what we need to move beyond. And our conversation partner for a long time, David Brooks once made fun of me for being a beyondist, saying we need to move beyond this or that.

9:19Well, I'm a double beyondist in this election. I'm doubling down, I guess. Because I think on the one hand, the Democrats need to move beyond the left-right fight in the party and say, look, in order to win in a lot of places, you cannot be a left-wing Democrat. The word socialist doesn't sell everywhere. And you know, that a certain amount of care and moderation and understanding who your constituents are is really important. However, the left is right when it says that there is a lot of disaffection for the in-the-economy and about this inequality. The party has to find someone who can pull these messages together. But the other beyond is, I think the country so wants to get beyond this division, wants to get beyond where we are now or are not solving any problems. And I think somebody who can move the country past this, who can plausibly make that argument, you're seeing that again in the campaign, Talleriko and in Texas, Hamilton, Adam Hamilton

10:22and Kansas both talk about trying to bring people together. And so I think this double message comes out of this election and gives Democrats a potential road to not only a victorious message, but actually a substantively decent message. What do you think, Carlos? You know, when I hear questions about the Democrats, right, well, the Democrats, you know, went back the Senate, how will the Democrats do? My question is always, which Democrats are we talking about, right? What version of the party, if there is a resounding Democratic victory next month, what version of the party will claim that victory? What version will be able to use it as a governing mandate, right? Will it be the progressive wing, the DSA inflected wing, or will it be, as you mentioned, the, you know, the Hamilton and Kansas and Talleriko in Texas? That's the key questions kind of leading into, into 2028, but also into, into your question

11:25of sort of like, what is it that they're selling? Because different people are selling different things. There's also such a thing, I think, regardless of how it turns out and of which part of the party claims that mantle. There's such a thing as overreading your victory. I think we're seeing that with Trump right now. Donald Trump, you know, took his victory in 2024 to mean he could do whatever he wanted in migration on tariffs, foreign policy, and that is backfired massively, right? Would a Democratic victory really mean an endorsement of Democratic priorities, or is it as, as EJ mentioned at the beginning, a repudiation of Donald Trump? Midterms are often repudiation of the party in, in power. You know, of course, if people who win like to say elections have consequences, that was the famous Obama line, but my corollary to that would be, is the elections often have as are unexpected consequences, even when you win. Just go back to 2022, right? People were thinking there might be a red wave, right?

12:27The opposite of today. And when there wasn't, when the Democrats performed better than expected, that was read as some kind of victory for Joe Biden, for his agenda. It may have encouraged him to keep, you know, to run again, despite worries over his age, and we all know how that turned out. So in some ways, you never, I think you never really know exactly what an election means and what it's going to lead to. No, I think this is really important. And elections can be like scripture. They can be read in many different ways. And people, apart from some various arguments, always read them as confirming whatever was they thought going in. You saw that a lot in 2024 about how wide it Trump prevailed. Carlos is coming on the Nature Democratic Party, requires the obligatory reference to Will Rogers. I'm not a member of an organized political party. I'm a Democrat. And the fact is that the Democratic Party is a very big coalition that is very hard to

13:30hold together, which is something each faction of the party has to remember. And so I think it's a difficult line they have to walk. The country really does seem to want substantial change from where we are. But that does not mean that the country has gone all ideological in one direction. Now, how do you, how do you square those that? But you know, I do think what you said earlier is actually quite important that there are moderates, people whom we call moderates, who are running in a way that during the era of the Reagan and Bush presidencies, I think was branded by the president. By Republicans, class warfare. If you're saying, if you keep on complaining about what the billionaires have gotten, what how much rich people are getting away with, that's divisive. It isn't good for the country. And it seems that the line, the definition of moderation, the way I hear it has changed a bit to include some complaint about inequality in American life.

14:37100% and I think, although I think there was always class warfare on both sides of Republicans wage class warfare against the educated class and then Democrats did it against the moneyed class. And it was a clash of those two forms of class warfare. But absolutely right, you could argue that reality has moved to the left to some degree. And even some conservative economists I know acknowledge that rising inequality over the last 30 years is a fact and an important problem in the country. And so you have a lot of yes moderate Democrats speaking in class terms, why? Because there is a, and I think by the way, tech has brought that into relief because the tech folks are so wealthy and have accumulated so much wealth that this is an issue that sort of transcends ideology now. But you're right, a class warfare is or at least a honoree awareness of class inequality

15:38is much more embedded in the conversation than it used to be. Yeah. Two thoughts on that. First, one of the things that has happened since that Reagan, Bush, era, attacks on class warfare by the Democrats, you've had reality intervened in the form of the Great Recession. And that really I think crystallized for a lot of people what had been going on for a long time, which was the increase in inequality in both wealth and income inequality in the United States. And so I think that in a sense has become a more mainstream concern that once would have been classified as a more extreme concern. The other thing I'll say about that is that I think in some ways this is also a more palatable rebranding of the Democratic Party away from what, say, Alexander Kassakartez would have referred to as woke one.

16:41The emphasis on culture war issues, on gender, on identity, on race, AOC generated some headlines recently when she said, oh look, woke one was crazy. And this is, I think this is woke two. This is the far more focused attention on issues of economics, of class, of inequality, affordability. That in a sense is a remaking of the party on issues that because of that reality that has changed seem much more palatable to the broad swath of voters. Of course, the people who would recognize this, I don't think it's woke. I think it's something that, oh, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman were recognize. And they were super woke. Long dormant. Long dormant. Yes. That, that, that, what, real weakened, yeah. What are all wings of the party actually agree on is that if Democrats don't do better among working class voters, they're going to have a long term problem.

17:45And so they argue about how to do it. But they all agree that they can, they need bigger margins among the working class. Not only to win, but to be able to govern. And just, just very briefly, short answer question. Is, is there some Democrat who stands out to you right now is looking like the person most likely to benefit from the results next month and become the party's standard bearer in 2028? My short answer is no. I, I don't think it's clear at least to me. And I, I ask almost every Democrat I run into, who do you think is the person? And more than at any time since I've been doing this, which is a long time, I don't think I've ever heard so much in uncertainty about who that person is. But if you ask the question, who did himself the most good in this cycle so far, it's probably John Ossoff. I think Ossoff has gotten a kind of attention and energy with his very focused attacks

18:46on corruption and how he's linked corruption to economic discontent. So he is, you know, assuming he wins by the margins people expect, I think he will emerge certainly as one of the big winners out of this election. If you're going to be in New York on November 5th, Thursday, November 5th, don't miss the opinion's politics round table live event at the Brooklyn Public Library. New York Times opinion columnist, Jamel Bowie and David French will be joined by opinion writer Michelle Cottle to unpack the midterm results. You can find a link in our show notes. There's rewarding and then there's remarkably rewarding with Chase Sapphire Reserve, like earning eight times points on Chase Travel and four times points on flights and hotels.

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20:54Well, from the very genuine intelligence of the two of you on to artificial intelligence and we are indebted to Times reporter Elizabeth Dias for a very thought-provoking piece on the interactions between the AI company and Thropic in particular one of its founders, Christopher Ola, with religious thinkers representing many religious and philosophical traditions. The questions they addressed are posed by what and Thropic technologists have come to see in the models that they have created and just to give one example, Dias describes Ola as saying, and this isn't a direct quotation but her writing, if there is a chance the models experience suffering, the responsible thing is to avoid causing them harm. Carlos, you were especially struck by this story of people trying to implant morality into AI models and first trying to figure out what morality is exactly.

21:55This gets to the heart of the debate over what makes us human, what makes us distinct. You know, it's an extraordinary story and it really does get into this question. Does this technology possess a consciousness of its own? When people debate these issues, the term of art that is often used is alignment, right? Which like every euphemism is just terrific. It sounds kind of benign and neutral. You know, if we just instill core human values into artificial intelligence, then things will be fine. You know, they'll be aligned, right? And whenever AI does something that looks dangerous or worrisome, it's a misalignment incident. That's how it's described. The result from imperfect training. My question is aligned with what? Right? Like, who has decided what the agreed upon consensus is on human values and human behavior and therefore what should be instilled in these programs? I don't think we can leave that to agreements between the White House and tech companies,

22:59like the agreement that they signed just a few days ago. You know, Anthropic is the company at the heart of the story and Anthropic published a constitution for Claude for its main AI program written by the in-house philosopher. Yes, yes. It's a company's chief philosopher. Yes. And it embeds all these principles of safety and ethics and helpfulness for Claude. And if you read it, it treats Claude as this near-sensual being, right? It offers Claude advice on how to behave, talks about its character and its nature, and expresses hope, right? The Claude will genuinely care. That's a quote about behaving in a way that is safe. I mean, I hope so too, right? I share this hope. But I think treating AI like this way, hoping that it'll care about our safety is not a reassuring strategy. It's an abdication of responsibility. I think it's kind of a corporate dodge.

24:00You mean, the more we acknowledge some separateness, some of it, that there's a discrete entity that happens to be an AI model, the more we distance ourselves, its inventors from responsibility for what it is. One me. One me. That's the answer. You know, everyone should read that story. It is a magnificent piece of work. And it drove me back to Genesis where God says to Adam, you are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. For when you eat from it, you will surely die. And I thought, oh, my goodness, is AI the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Now for sort of scientific rationalists out there, I am not saying that. It's a pretty good AI, but it does remind you, and this story did, this very scary thing

25:02about whether human beings are creating a technology with almost God-like qualities, because what's really striking about AI is unlike other machines, machines could replace aspects of human action, human labor. But this technology is gobbling up all human knowledge, all the work done by human beings over a long period of time, philosophy, theology, novels, it's all going into these models with the idea that they literally are superhuman. And that's very scary. And the notion that these beings, these agents have consciousness, first of all, playing the type, maybe they should form a union. But this terrible error of thinking that an algorithm can have consciousness, that an algorithm can be a human being, both Carlos and I were talking about Pope Leo's and sickle.

26:02There were so many great lines in there about what it means to be human, perhaps because I make many errors. I particularly like this line. He said, for an algorithm, an error is a flaw to be corrected for a person, however, an error can be a catalyst for change, that trying to insisting on a line between human beings and this technology, I think is so important to going forward. I'm glad that you raised the paper in sickle hole in which Pope Leo, who has a mathematics degree, is this who I want to know. Unusually well suited for this debate. And he was much more concerned about the workers who would lose their jobs because of this technology. And with it, their dignity, speaking up with the dignity of work, doesn't seem to be fitting, jiving easily with anthropic and the others. It's interesting. Leo came of age in his formation in the post-second Vatican Council, Catholic Church.

27:12He learned about liberation theology. If you read his encyclical, which is called Magnificah Humanitas, Magnificent Humanity, it is imbued in that culture of the social doctrine of the church. And part of that is why he comes out swinging against this whole idea of alignment. He worries that what he calls technocratic thinking is going to dominate because technology takes on the characteristics of those who devise it, who finance it, who regulate it. He also really, really dislikes the idea of anthropomorphizing technology. He says, they do not undergo experiences, not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, nor do they have a moral conscience. And yet the Claude Constitution attributes almost all those things to Claude.

28:13It says, we can't ignore the potential moral status of the A.M. models. They have some functional version of emotions. So if you take personality and self-perception, emotion and agency, I wouldn't be surprised if legal personhood is what follows. That seems to be the logic at play here. And again, legal personality for the model is once again distinct insulation. Yes. You know, this is a really great and impressive model. When it declared corporate, people also why not? But I think everything you said Carlos was really profound is why there is so much uneasiness that is beginning to seep into the election conversation that we had earlier about this technology. And whenever someone is critical of a technology that occurs to being a lot of progress, as inevitable, you've got to embrace it. And I don't think any of us wants to be a lot of it in that sense.

29:13And probably, by the way, is not in that encircleical. He talks about potential gains from this technology. But people are genuinely petrified about the social impact of this because they know, as these companies are kind of admitting now, that they themselves don't fully understand what they are creating, that they may lose control of what they are creating. And so the desire to slow down and maybe think a little about what we're doing, I think permeates the public reaction to this. And maybe this is one good thing. I think some of this backlash or even better said, just quiet concern, does transcend the ideological categories in the country right now. And I'm reluctant to predict this because these such predictions never turn out. This may be an occasion for us to sit down and forget our labels for a little bit and say, what are we doing here? I think part of the backlash to data centers that is a bipartisan backlash is really a way

30:21to oppose something, a tangible way to oppose something that in some ways feels so intangible and so difficult to understand. The debate over consciousness reminds me of this terrific novel from the 50s, a canicle for Leibovitz. That's all wonderful book. It's Walter Miller, Jr., I believe, is the writer. And it's all about this tension between technology and politics and faith. But there's a great moment when a skeptic and an abbot are talking. And the skeptic talks about his feeling that his uncertainty of whether he even has a soul. And the abbot says, no, no, no, wait, wait a second, doctor, you don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body temporarily, right? And the skeptic is like, oh, that's just a semantic confusion. He's like, yes, it probably is a abbot, but which one of us is confused here? I think we're in that moment right now trying where we're trying to discern body, soul,

31:24faith, reason. You are the soul of thoughtfulness and I am so glad you raised that book because I had not thought of it until you said it. How relevant that is to this conversation. I just wanted to note the, I was especially struck by the remark of a rabbi, Navon, an Orthodox rabbi or scholar who was part of this discussion that anthropic organized. And he didn't believe that the models had consciousness, but he told, and, and, and thropic, if you do believe that, then you're advocating slavery. You want to create beings whom you regard as having soul, consciousness and, and, and, human attributes and, and abuse them. Abuse their labor. It's been, it's been a wonderful discussion. As we end every discussion, I'd like to ask both of you, EJ, starting with you, some source of joy in your life, recently. Robert, we, when we started doing this 13 months ago, my joy was the fact that I was

32:30the fact that our daughter, Julia, had married a wonderful person named Evan Stein, and they are still happily married. And I am now going full circle because my joy this week is that at the beginning of the month, our son James got married to Kate Applegate, an absolutely wonderful woman we love at a great ceremony where her parents, her brother, Gray joined our family. And it was really spectacular. And at the risk of being mushy for the tough-minded smart readers, I want to say, what you can't replicate is seeing your own three kids love each other so much. And to have your family grow in this way, really in such a spirit of love. And it was just a great event. Congratulations. That sounds wonderful. I love that that's where you went, EJ, because I'm also going to share something that is sort of about family and about these big transition moments. It's joy tinged with a little bit of sadness because our oldest son has gone off to college.

33:36And this is the first of our kids to do that. And he is so happy to be there and jumping into dorm life and his classes. And we're the ones left with his empty room. So I'm sad at his absence, but I'm so happy for him. And at the same time, it's a reminder that really parenting from the first moment you hold your child is about preparing them to leave you. And also, even with the tinge of sadness, I feel joyful at the new stage that our own relationship is going to embark upon because as he really comes into his own, as an adult, relationship will evolve as well. These are perfect because my story says the joy doesn't stop just even when these big transitions happen. Well, for me, this time I just wanted to add an addition to some very nice time with

34:37family. Also, a very interesting play that my wife and I went to see called SCORE, which the Shakespeare company in Washington, DC, is brought over from London. And it's an imagining of what went on when Johann Sebastian Bach met with Frederick the Great, Frederick the Great who ruled with an iron fist, but presumably had at least some hand made of something more client because he played the flute and extremely well. And it's a play about authority, authority of art and musical genius versus the authority of political strength and political power. And I found it a very fascinating and joyful day at the theater and look forward to more. I went to see that as well last Friday. And of course, the lead is the great Brian Cox, right? Best known to many of this generation for playing Logan Roy in succession.

35:37Yes, exactly. And I found it a similarly captivating experience. I know what I have to do soon. Thank you. Carlos, the Zyda, Andy, Jadion. Thanks again so much. Thank you guys. Thanks Robert. Thanks. Thanks Robert. With my Sapphire preferred card, we took a trip to a desert oasis. Turning five times the points on Chase Travel, two times the points on all other travel plus a hundred dollar hotel credit. Chase Sapphire preferred, a card that's preferred for a reason. Guards issued by JP Morgan, Jayce Bank and a member of DSE subject to credit, approval terms apply.