SIO224: Dem Debate 7 Or Something

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only, this is episode 224, this, the debate, the democratic debate number, something, I don't know, hey, who cares, how's it going, Jamie?, I've had a few glasses of wine, not gonna lie, it's the only way to get through these things, how about you?, not,

0:00:39 Jamie: Seven, it's going, Thomas, how are you?, ah, see, I skipped the line, because it's late here, it's 1115 Eastern Time, and I was worried if I had wine, I might just fall asleep, because, and that was good, because this debate was, like, kind of boring, um,

0:01:04 Thomas: Yeah, I, I was, as you were saying that, I'm not hearing the argument for why you shouldn't be having wine at 11 o'clock, but then, okay, I guess if you're prone to falling asleep, then sure. Uh, otherwise it sounds, sounds great to me. Um, yeah, this, so we watched the debate. This is a live rapid response. This is not going to be edited. So when we mess up and make noise, sorry, we'll try to keep it to a minimum, but, uh, yeah. So, um, I have no thoughts. What do you have?

0:01:35 Jamie: I really did not like Amy Klobuchar in this debate, Um, not that, you know, she was on my list. Um, I really want to know why Steyer only has one tie. Um. I'm really, I'm confused about that. It seems to me he has enough money to buy another tie. And I just made another donation to Bernie Sanders. So those are my initial thoughts. I

0:02:03 Thomas: Yeah, I don't, I have some, some thoughts on the debate, um, you know, I kind of want to, we might as well talk about some stuff before this debate. I think it's probably just as important, um, for one.

0:02:15 Jamie: Have no idea what you're talking about.

0:02:17 Thomas: Yeah, for one, Jamie, I want to know, how are we going to pay for it? How are we going to pay for Just tell me, we, that's, we need to answer that. How are WE going to PAY FOR IT?

0:02:29 Thomas: Now if we want to send, uh, the US military, like, like a couple of soldiers to every household in the Middle East, that's fine. We'll just do that if we have to. But how will we pay for health care?

0:03:12 Jamie: Should be able to figure out how to do what, like, all of the other first world nations are able to do, or we should stop referring to ourselves as the greatest country on earth, because apparently we're just a large collection of morons. Yeah.

0:03:24 Thomas: Yeah, no kidding. I thought, as I would, of course, I thought Warren was great on this issue because she cited the statistic that on average, I think she said U.S. households pay $12,000 a year for insurance, whether it's premiums or it's, you know, it's insurance or it's just paying out out of pocket, I guess that combination is $12,000 a year on average. Oh, sorry. They

0:03:50 Jamie: So I I agree, this is where Warren is always her best. I was shocked, like, actually my draw, my jaw dropped when she said that 36 million people get a prescription from a doctor that they need to get better and then can't afford to fill it and forego the medicine that they needs. And the thing that I was thinking about, I thought she was great when she pointed out that the reason that the plans Mayor Pete or Senator Klobuchar are advocating cost less is because they do less.

0:04:22 Thomas: Don't do anything.

0:04:24 Jamie: Right. And so the thought I had is like, you know, I have to go to the grocery store a lot. I have two young boys, right? And they are not cheap to feed. And the thought that I had is like, you know, like instead of like buying nutritious fruits and vegetables, like it'd be a lot less expensive to just like buy fruit snacks. But it turns out the reason the fruit snacks are less expensive is because they're inadequate as as a form of nutrition. And similarly, yeah, if you do this patchwork quilt of Medicare for all who want it, public option, private predatory insurance nonsense, yes, the money that the United States government's put out is less. But one, it's not less than the total amount of money being spent on healthcare. But most importantly, it doesn't do a good enough job.

0:04:25 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:05:17 Thomas: One thing that, you know, I imagine all the listeners are aware of, but you know at a certain time, this was something I had to learn just because I've been lucky to have pretty good insurance in my life. But you know a lot of it, so talking about Buttigieg's plan. I have a couple of thoughts if you don't mind. First off, well, no, I'll get to that later. Let me go back to where I was. Buttigieg's plan is like, yeah, I don't want anybody to not be insured. And it's like, okay, that sounds cool as a statement without examining it. That sounds great. You're just, it's going to be way cheaper. Just make sure nobody is uninsured. Sounds great. The problem is when you don't attack in some way, you don't try to limit the profiteering of private health insurance, you can have something, a piece of paper that says you're insured, but doesn't do anything for you.

0:06:05 Thomas: That's a god-awful plan that doesn't actually provide you with good coverage, tries to deny you claims, this and that. You know, Obamacare tried to do this. I think it's very, you know, it was very laudable that Obamacare did try to do this. They tried to set standards for what it can even mean to say you're providing health insurance. Like, like you're, you like, it actually set limits on what health insurance companies could say was coverage, which is important because it we're not all unlike what Buttigieg says. And I think you've done a good job, Jamie, of highlighting the how wrong this view is. I don't think people should have to navigate the labyrinthine, you know, health insurance system. I don't actually trust even myself to be able to read all the fine print, let alone someone like me, let along somebody who's working 80 hours a week at a low paying couple jobs, you know, who's trying to make sure they have health coverage for their kids and stuff.

0:07:03 Thomas: Reading through all the find print to know, like, is this in network? Is this out of network? Is this medication going to cost me this? Is this whatever? You know, like, I don't actually think people should have to go through all that and have, have to be able to do battle with the giant companies who have teams of lawyers who craft these policies in ways that are going to screw people over. And that's a big risk. And Obamacare is now gone.

It's virtually extinct because of Republicans. So it's not enough to just say, let's patch something up here or there. You need to make a big structural change, as both Bernie and Elizabeth Warren want to do. And I do want to say this, and I'm curious for your opinion.

Let me me know if I'm wrong on this, Jamie, and this isn't, uh, trust me, believe me, this isn't an attack on Bernie, this is, uh, I'm curious about the different expectations among the candidates, because a huge deal was made about how Warren is going to pay for her plan. She went through, she crunched all the numbers, got together, did all that stuff, provided the answers, and then everybody was like, okay, whatever, who cares. And nope, did anybody ever ask Berny, like, to come up with specific numbers or care that he hasn't? Um, and I, again, I'm not, I don't, I don't care. Like I'm, this isn't a hit, a hit on Bernie. Like, but I have, have we seen, do we see that same level of vitriol against Bernie for not having specific numbers? I'm curious.

0:08:24 Jamie: So I don't think, think so. I think in part because I think the plan, up until recently, when it became apparent that he's doing far better than anyone expected him to, the conventional wisdom was just to ignore him. And I think Warren was attacked because the thinking was, well, Bernie's not serious, he's not going to go anywhere, his support has already reached its ceiling and we don't have to worry. And so I think there was a much more coordinated attack on Warren because they took her candidacy more seriously than they did Sanders. And now, haha, we're 20 days away from Iowa and it looks like he's leading in Iowa. He's statistically tied in New Hampshire and 10 points up in California.

0:08:52 Thomas: Yeah, really?

0:09:14 Thomas: Oh, I hadn't seen that one. Wow. Yeah. That's yeah. That could be it. I mean, I think it was unfortunate that Elizabeth Warren peaked a little too early. I think at, um, might've in the end, it might've been better if she had, uh, like somehow timed it so that she didn't be, I don't know that you can control that, but it's just might be unfortunate, but yeah, it's a little frustrating. Um, but, but yeah, I, um, I the other thing I wanted to talk about was I think we should talk about briefly anyway, the, the little spat that I, I don't, I that anybody knows what's really going on here with this Bernie Warren thing. It's conceivably entirely CNN's creation or not like CNN's doing it seems like maybe it could be something like if I'm

0:09:15 Jamie: Yeah. Yeah. So,

0:10:04 Thomas: Trying to be very objective it could be something that Warren's camp tried to start but but even that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me because it just seemed very ineffective and not even a that big of a deal so what happened was and I definitely Jamie filling in any facts that I might not have or anything but some CNN I think initially broke this story that um some like two or three staffers said that back in 20 I don't know what it was 60 no 2018 I don't some sometimes some years ago Warren and uh Bernie met and Bernie apparently told Warren according to these staffers that he didn't think a woman could could beat Trump or something like that um and uh I this is it's one of the weirdest things because it really doesn't make sense on any level because if this was some like thought-out attack from Warren it's not it doesn't make sense because it's not even a good attack because you know we're all worried about whether a woman can be true like he could just say like okay yeah I'm concerned um but it doesn't mean we shouldn't try uh nevertheless it Bernie has totally denied it uh Elizabeth Warren seems seems to maintain that that's what was said, but it's not as though, I don't know, it doesn't seem like she's really particularly going after him. She just said she disagrees. What do make of all this?

0:11:29 Jamie: Um, I think this is bait. Um, and I think that as an attempt to create a circular firing squad on the left. And I think that's a big part of the reason why Warren's response to it has been to sort of like deescalate it. And, I'm going to be really disappointing pointing and not be the sort of Bernie bro that everybody characterizes Bernie bros as being. But I think Ezra Klein got it right. He had a tweet earlier that I thought really summed it up. And he said that people communicate unclearly sometimes. And it's possible that what Sanders said isn't what Warren heard. And nobody in this disagreement is lying. And I think it's it's very possible that Sanders may have said something along the lines of, I'm worried about the way that Trump will deploy sexism.

0:11:40 Thomas: Yeah.

0:12:26 Jamie: I'm afraid that Trump's sexism might make it harder for a woman candidate to be successful. And Elizabeth Warren interpreted that as him saying that a woman couldn't win the presidency. And there are enough ambiguities in the way that we talk under the best of circumstances that two interpretations are plausible. And I think that's more likely to be the case. Keep in mind, before Sanders ran in 2016, he met with Warren and tried to encourage her to run. And so it just doesn't make any sense that someone who tried to encourage another woman to run for president before getting in the race himself would two years later be of the opinion that a woman just couldn't become president.

0:13:13 Jamie: It just doesn't make sense to me. And I've tried to think about, you know, the extent to which my own biases are influencing me here as like my preferred candidate is Bernie. And I'm sure that that's possible. But then again, if Bernie is known for anything, it's the fact that he's been saying the exact same thing for 50 years. And we've got him on tape from 30 years ago talking about how women should run for office. So it just seems to me not quite right or plausible that he said or meant to say that no, a woman couldn't be president or a woman wouldn't win.

0:13:50 Thomas: But yeah, I agree. At the same time though, it would have been, I was surprised that he didn't do any sort of hedging or clarification of like, oh, I might've been worried, you know, about sexism because it would've been easy to just say, oh perhaps, I don't remember exactly, but perhaps I was worried about the role that sexism plays in our elections. But of course, I, you know, I support women running for president or something like that. It was kind of weird. There was a flat denial. But but at the same time, I guess what the only thing that bothers me about this is, you know, people who are allegedly progressive all of a sudden deciding that, you know, women just make up lies to try to end male presidents careers or something. That doesn't make sense. Like, I agree with you. I think it's likely an interpretation thing. Who knows what it was.

0:14:36 Thomas: Maybe he didn't at all mean it that way. So maybe he doesn't remember it that way because he said something that he didn't, you know, that, that maybe he thought meant something else or something. You know, I think that's probably what it is. And overall the main thing I, I want to say is I totally agree with You that this is a BS thing that, you Know, we shouldn't be letting divide us. I just was curious for your thoughts on it because like, I don't know, I really, really have a hard time believing that Elizabeth Warren made this up out of whole cloth as an attempt to take Bernie out. Like if if Elizabeth Warren was going to try, it was that person who would make something up to take out another candidate. It wouldn't be something like this. That's almost nothing, you know?

0:15:20 Jamie: Right. I agree with that. And I think you're right. I also, I texted a friend actually, that I thought his response to the question was woefully underprepared, that he should have had a more forceful, meaningful meaningful response to this than just saying, I didn't do it. And then pivot to talking about how he supported Hillary Clinton when she ran for in 2016. I was really surprised that he didn't clarify his remarks and say what he remembered having said and say, you know, perhaps Warren misunderstood what I meant. But this is what I actually said. I'm, I was shocked by that. That

0:16:01 Thomas: Yeah, I think I think if you're team Warren or team Bernie, though, I Think we should all agree that just screw this. Let's focus on Biden. Like just screw it. Like, let's let's focus. Let's unite and just not have Biden be the candidate or not have Buttigieg be the candidate, because whatever the case, you know, I don't really think as as much as I am team Warren, I don't think, you know, Bernie got into a meeting and said, listen, woman, you can't run. Like, I don't think that's what happened. Come on. You know, and but I also don't think Elizabeth Warren is a liar. I think, you know, like you said, it's probably an interpretation thing. And I think we should all just let it go. CNN was not wanting to let it go exactly, but yeah, in fairness, it's not like they pushed it super hard in the debate. They definitely asked about it, which, you know, I think you probably have to have one question about it.

0:16:52 Thomas: But I don't know. Overall, though, I thought the moderation was infuriating in this debate. How did you feel about it?

0:17:00 Jamie: I thought they may as well have like a corporation itself sitting asking questions.

0:17:06 Thomas: Well, for me, it is just the timing. Can't we get to where they only only have 2.3 seconds to answer? And then you just, that way, Jamie, you can ask 480 questions in a debate. You just be like, Jamie. What do you think about the Middle East? Okay. Out of time, out of time. Shut up. Outta time. Outa time. Okay. Biden. What are you thinking about them? And like, what, what are you accomplishing? It's like, they didn't realize we're there to listen to the candidates. It's so weird. This is the thing we're watching for. We're watching for them to talk, not for you to interrupt them and move on to another thing before they even and finish their their answer.

0:17:06 Jamie: Yeah, I agree. In other debates, when candidates would go on, you know, the moderators would sort of urge them to stop or keep telling them that they were over their time. But they didn't talk over them to the point where you couldn't actually hear the candidates. And then there was a number of times that they did that. And I was absolutely shocked. I was like, you Know, at the same time that you want us to take seriously, that we're in this unique moment of political crisis, which I happen to believe that we are, You're not even letting us listen to what the people who are going to be in charge of our government and trillion dollar budgets have to say about these issues. So pick a side.

0:17:46 Thomas: No, they just, yeah. Yeah.

0:18:10 Thomas: Yeah.

0:18:21 Thomas: It was like every 25 seconds, whatever their limit was, they're like, uh, release the hounds. Like it wasn't even, it wasn't even like, okay, try to draw too close. Mm-hmm. Yeah, try to. It was just like, we're guillotine. It was, you got a cane or whatever, the giant thing where they just like cane around their neck and they pull them off stage or something. It was bizarre. There's only six of them too. It's one thing when we had, you know, 18 fucking candidates or whatever it was, uh, but like, you know, six candidates, you can afford to let them talk a little bit. Yeah.

0:18:54 Jamie: Yeah, I was I was really surprised by that. And I hope CNN doesn't do that in the future. I don't know who has the next debate, and I imagine it'll be very different. I imagine after New Hampshire and Iowa, they feel to get shaken up a little bit more.

0:19:10 Thomas: Well, because we'll add Bloomberg, right? I don't know if it'll be, I guess, he, what's the story there? I haven't cared enough because I just don't like Bloomberg and Steyer because I don't want people, billionaires, to be able to buy their way in. So I just, my brain just doesn't accept the information. I'm kind of like, whatever, they'll just hopefully go away. But I believe it's that he didn't make the cutoff for a couple of early states, but he's trying to compete in some other states, right? So I guess later on it could be a factor, but I don't

0:19:13 Jamie: Oh God, is that real? So I'm not even sure what's going on there because he's missed the filing deadline in a number of states. And I don't know how you have billions of dollars and are unable to put put together a team that knows the filing deadlines to be on the ballot. Right,

0:20:00 Thomas: Yeah, I don't know. The story is like, oh, he's not happy with how it's going or something. I don't know. It doesn't make any sense. There were so many candidates, especially back when he when we first started hearing these rumblings. It's like, really, none of the 47 candidates we have, you think, are good enough. What? Weird.

0:20:19 Jamie: And it's between him and Steyer with the amount of money that they're spending on just TV commercials. They could make real meaningful change in the lives of actual human beings. And instead, they're blowing it on these self-funded vanity campaigns for president. And with all due respect, nothing proves that we should be taxing billionaires in order to fund things like health care better than the fact that they are just pissing away money on vanity commercials and Super Bowl ads to run for president. They

0:20:53 Thomas: Yeah. So, yeah, a couple of thoughts on that. I, you know, in fairness to these poor billionaires that you're picking on, Jamie, someone has to defend these poor people. People, uh, I will say that I did hear that, uh, you know, that that, um, Bloomberg donated, I want to say, six million dollars to Stacey Abrams' uh drive for voting. Like, he, he is putting money in a lot of good places which I like, but like, that would all be great except for the part where you're running this vanity campaign for president. Like do all the other stuff and not the part where you think you should be in charge of everybody because you have a bunch of money, that part's not cool. And, and, you know, and Sire has done some good stuff with his money, too. And also, I will say that I've heard that Bloomberg does plan to, you know, spend loads of money on just beating Trump, no matter who was the candidate.

0:21:42 Thomas: So, you now, okay, that's great. But still, what's the part where you're running yourself? Like, why are you doing that? Whatever. I guess they can't resist.

0:21:50 Jamie: Just can't resist. They just cannot make it not about them. And I don't mean to say that it's not great that Bloomberg is going to spend $6 billion on Stacey Abrams' run. But that's, I'm not good at math, that's, you know, a tiny fraction of what he's spending on commercials to run for president. And it's even a smaller fraction of his personal net worth, so I don't know if any of the listeners

0:21:51 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Imagine if he just gave a billion dollars to Stacey Abrams' voter initiative. Like, he could just do that. Like, just a billion. Hours. He has like 52 billion dollars or something, doesn't he? 55?

0:22:17 Jamie: Right I mean, he could give 25 billion dollars to something and and still live quite comfortably for like 30 lifetimes

0:22:34 Thomas: Look he's doing better than what Bezos donated to the Australian like fire crisis over there, like, right? I mean, at least he's doing better than that. I'll give him, I'll get him better than Jeff Bezos.

0:22:36 Jamie: Yeah.

0:22:46 Jamie: So I Mean, congratulations on like clearing a higher moral bar than Jeff Bezos, I guess. I don't know if any of our listeners are good at math, but somebody had broken down Jeff Bezo's donation and it worked out to it being the equivalent of someone making $50,000 a year donating 29 cents.

0:22:52 Thomas: Yeah. I know Yeah.

0:23:08 Jamie: And so, yeah.

0:23:09 Thomas: What was it, like three minutes of his time? I think it was or something like that. Oh man, in terms of his uh

0:23:13 Jamie: Yeah. So he, he makes something ridiculous, like $4 million an hour. Yeah, something ridiculous in case you you were worried about the poor state of billionaires and I'm picking on them too much by my desire to eat one of them. He makes something around $4 million an hour. But so if any of our listeners are really good at math, yeah, I'm pretty sure it's slave labor and denying his employees health care.

0:23:15 Thomas: Oh my god well but that's through hard work though, right? Because he works so hard for that hour, right? Yeah he works he works 80 times harder than in an hour. Like, he does 80 times the amount of work in an hour than a person making $50,000 a year works their whole year. He works 80 times harder than that, right? Pretty sure that's...

0:23:59 Thomas: He must do a lot of shoveling and stuff. Like it's hard back-breaking work for that hour.

0:23:57 Jamie: Yeah, I've sure I'm sure that's right. He's like, Yeah. Must be really hard when you've got secretaries and personal chefs and drivers and, you know, housekeepers. It must really be a lot of work. I can't even imagine. I sort of picture him as, like, the pharaoh, you know, like whipping slaves Thomas,

0:24:06 Thomas: Sweating.

0:24:20 Thomas: Yeah. And sort of on the topic of having a bunch of money makes you money. On that topic, you know, I've said this before. But it's worth repeating in the debate between Medicare for all versus Medicare for those who want it, or Medicare for some people that we think should get it, or whatever the hell they're called. You know, I'm more and more anti-private insurance. I'm tired of this, like, oh, no, people are going to miss their private insurance. Just thinking about, like, the business of insurance and, sorry, I think I've said this before, but the whole business model is here, we have a bunch of money. A, that's one component. We have lot of money. And then B, B, we will, so we'll get, we'll charge you for us having money. So it's like, if anything might happen to you, you pay us a bunch of money and we'll charge you for the fact that we have a lot of money that we can kind of cover you if anything catastrophic happens.

0:25:14 Thomas: Now, mind you, the payouts are way less than the pay-in. So like, we're getting way more money from this scheme, from this little pyramid scheme than we're ever paying out. But like, We have a bunch o' money just in case something crazy happens. So that's A. A. And then B is we'll also find all these creative ways to deny your claims and make further money that way. So like we'll keep from paying out the money we ought to pay to to you and to doctors. And that's the business model.

0:25:38 Jamie: Why do you hate people with jobs because

0:25:40 Thomas: And that's the, yeah, exactly. That's the business mode. What I cannot think of, as much as, you know, the government does blow a lot of stuff, you know, it's inefficient, whatever, I'll grant you that. I've worked in government. There's all kinds of inefficiencies, sure. Her. That's one thing. There's nothing better for the government to do than to fill that stupid business model. What do you think, that's like innovative? What do think, is it like, uh, in some capitalistic way, that's innovative to have a company that just has a bunch of money and denies claims. And that's their business model. Is that advancing the country, you know? Like, is that, I don't know why you would value that as a business that needs to exist. That's the perfect thing It's

0:26:19 Jamie: Those are jobs. Thomas, those are good paying jobs.

0:26:22 Thomas: The perfect thing for government to do, the perfect thing for the government to take over. And we should abolish private health insurance on

0:26:31 Jamie: Yeah, so I think that's right. I think whenever I hear Pete Buttigieg talk about Medicare for all who want it, I hear insurance for those with enough disposable income to donate to political campaigns. And it was really offensive to me to see him up on stage talking about the poor people's campaign outside, because he's smart enough to know that if you make health care access tiered the way that he's discussing, poor people will be will still end up with the worst of it, because what will happen is that it will only be poor people, it will only be sick people who are on Medicare to begin with, and it will collapse the system. And he knows that, and it's really grating to me to watch him talk about this as though what he really cares about is mean testing millionaires and billionaires. So dishonest. So,

0:27:21 Thomas: That topic too. This is one place where, for a second, I almost went with Buttigieg on this issue. I was like, you know, yeah, because he starts talking about the difference between providing college for everybody, free college for anybody, versus cutting it off at some, you know, I don't know, some threshold that I'm not sure if they said, but like, from billionaires and millionaires, they can't send their kids to college free.

And, you know, he goes on his pitch and he's about how, you know, every tax dollar matters and I'm not going to, pay your dollars shouldn't go toward sending the billionaires' kids to college. And I was like, you know, yeah, maybe that, screw it, maybe you should just say that. And then Elizabeth Warren comes back and is like, look, my wealth tax is going to charge these millionaires and billionaires billionaires like a minimum of 16 million dollars a year in taxes under my new wealth tax if they want to send their child to a public college, fine, which, when you think about it, is like, what is that, like what are public universities' tuition now?

I mean, it's been a while since I've been in school, but back when I was going to school, I don't know, maybe eight thousand dollars a year, depending, you know, it's it's in the grand scheme of things, like, it's probably not even worth the overhead overhead to do the means testing for the for the billionaires and millionaires who, by the way, don't send their kids to those schools, they send them to this uber private schools that are not going to be a part of this anyway.

So, like, it's one of those issues where for a second I was like, oh, maybe that is a good point. And I'm like, no, it's really not. Like, there's, it's like libraries, it's like every other thing, let's make it great for anybody who wants it, not worry about means testing. But that that was my thought process. What do you think about that?

0:28:56 Jamie: I agree with that. I thought Elizabeth Warren's response to Buttigieg on that was on the money, no pun intended. If someone is forking over 19 million dollars in taxes, I think I'm not going to complain that their kid goes to the state university for free with my kids. All the more power to you.

0:29:02 Thomas: Yeah, big effing deal deal.

0:29:16 Jamie: I think one thing that this tends to overlook though is most people assume that parents are going to help their kids with college. But not all parents do. And some parents are actually not good parents at all. And college is a way to sort of escape toxic environments. And if you tie a child's financial package to their parents' wealth, you end up trapping children in toxic situations longer than they would otherwise have to be. And so I think at this period of time, I'm detangling access to college from parents' financial ability to pay is a good step toward eliminating some of these more nefarious issues that don't often see daylight.

0:29:41 Thomas: Interesting.

0:30:05 Thomas: And I think, you know, it's such a minor thing. And despite Buttigieg saying every tax dollar matters, like honestly, like thousands of dollars on the federal budget are literally rounding it. Like they don't even track that level of money. So not really. But also I think the principle, I think it's kind of worthwhile to have a principle of free higher education and not worry about, like, trying to, you know, collect a few pennies from the one poor kid from a billionaire family whose parents are like, I'm not paying for you to go to a private school. Rather, like in their opinion, the only real school is like Harvard or some crap, you Know, that has bazillions of dollars or cost bazillions. I think I'm OK with that.

0:30:52 Thomas: Like, uh, you know, I'm okay with enshrining the principle that higher education should be a thing that's attainable for everybody and not worrying about spending the effort of means testing and restricting it for anybody. It'd be cool to live in a country where it's just free for everybody. That'd be awesome. It'd be a fun, it'd be like a good, I don't know, it's just a nice thing to have, kind of like, you know, if everybody had healthcare, that'd be cool too. I would like that.

0:31:17 Jamie: Yeah, I would like to live in that kind of society. And you know, I don't know if you know this, but other countries are able to do that for their citizens.

0:31:26 Thomas: No way.

0:31:27 Jamie: Most of them, actually.

0:31:30 Thomas: Crazy. Oh, Let me see, what other thoughts to have? You know, I have to tease Buttigieg. Now, this was just a minor thing. And certainly if we're counting gaffes, obviously Joe Biden takes the cake and it's no contest. And that guy, man, he's had some better debates and some worse debates in terms of whether it looked like he was going to be able to finish, finish. This one was not great for him.

I felt like he was barely getting through it, you know, like he just, sorry, he's just not quite up to it. You know, again, he is just really tenuous. It's really, every time you're just really hoping he's going to stick that landing, or, no, never mind, stick the landing, you're hoping he is not going to fall right on his face, basically. You are just like, is he going to get through this answer? Is he going get to the end of this sentence?

And the answer is most sometime, yeah, I don't know, half the time maybe, um, and and he's so conscious of the timing because he just wants to be saved by the bell every time. You know, he's always like, oh, my time is up, too bad SNL already did all those jokes with, uh, I think that was Bush Senior, wasn't it, where they did those, those, I was a little young, but, but I think I remember uh the Bush Senior jokes being being like, oh, I'm out of time, and then they're like, no, you have like two more minutes.

He's like, no, no I can't possibly, too bad they already did those jokes 30 years ago, because he does that every time. Now, every time Biden's like, well, I'm out of time, well, I can't finish, I'm out of time, and it's just, to me, it's just emblematic of the fact that he just doesn't quite have the stamina and the energy to do this at the at the level that I, you know, I want in a candidate for president, is all, you know, I don't, I don't hate the guy as much as some people on the show do.

0:31:31 Jamie: I know.

0:32:22 Jamie: No, no. No. In

0:33:16 Thomas: But but, but he, he definitely just, I just don't think he has it. Um, yeah.

0:33:22 Jamie: Fairness, I am prepared with a long history of Joe Biden's attacks on Social Security. So that is fair. I am not a Joe Biden fan. But I did. I almost have to give him credit for having the self-awareness to realize that he should not be talking.

0:33:42 Thomas: He's the only one out of all of them who's like praying that his time runs out. Uh, I think it's Klobuchar is the one who just had no, you know, I'll give her credit and I I'm kind of on her side when it comes to this particular thing, which is why are they interrupting people so abruptly when they're like, you know, it'd be one thing if they were filibustering forever, but they weren't really there, there wasn't a whole lot of that because they never had the chance, you know, most of the time they had probably a few more sentences left to say and the moderators were like, no, you will be shot on sight if you continue talking, we're sending out the terminators to, you know, the Robocop or something is going to just take you out.

Uh, and she would just talk right through it, Klobuchar would, and yeah, I kind of respected that, to be honest with you. Um, gosh, what was I gonna, oh, oh, buddha judge yeah, I was gonna say about his his knee-jerk reaction for every issue of course is to say this is very personal to me and, you know, it's again, if this is a politician thing, I don't mean to hammer Buttigieg much more than some other politicians, but, oh, there's a personal issue to me, here's why, that's like the politician playbook, you try to, they have all these, you know, examples and ways that it touches their personal life or somebody, you know, and that's the way they try to humanize for for everybody, I get it, but it was just so funny because he did that knee-jerk response but for climate change it's just like, okay, dude, yeah, climate change is a personal issue, yeah, we all live on earth, like, we're, what do think the rest of us are out on Mars, like, yeah, it's, we're all gonna die, like, we get, it's a personal issues to me, I just thought it was funny.

0:35:17 Thomas: Unlike the rest who are floating in space, buddha judge cares about if the planet burns. Um, yeah.

0:35:18 Jamie: Yes. So I just find him so so intolerably smarmy that everything

0:35:25 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. I kind of do too.

0:35:32 Jamie: He says I'm just kind of left shaking my head like, are you serious? And I don't understand how someone who is my age somehow manages to perfectly embody my, like, 85 year old grandpa, like, talking down to me about how I should really know better to, like, like, do whatever nonsense it is he's talking about. And I'm like, dude, you're not 85, you're 37. And he just, I don't understand how someone my age could be such a boomer.

0:36:10 Thomas: Well, perhaps it's because as was pointed out on the internet today, he looks a lot like the smoking man from the X-Files. So yeah, now it's all making sense. It'll be part of the extended year. I don't know. Uh, sure.

0:36:17 Jamie: I saw that he does. He does. It does. But he's just, I do want to talk about, you know, he mentioned his child care plan. He had said that child care should be no more than 7% of income income and perhaps free for poor working class people. And I was like, well, that seems like reasonable. And I did the math real quick. And the average person is making, let's call it $44,000 a year. So that comes out to $3,000 a year in child care, or $256 a month, which after putting my two kids through Montessori schools is practically free. But then I realized without something like Elizabeth Warren's funding plan for that, you're going to require child care workers to live on starvation wages. And that's not actually going to be a tenable solution without the sort of wealth tax and universalization of the program that Elizabeth Warren is advocating. Right,

0:37:21 Thomas: Yeah, who was it who was talking a lot about how much they make? Uh, I thought it was a man. Was it Warren or was it? But anyway, that's a good point, because, you know, that's a tough job. Gosh, I, so we pay so much for daycare, it's, it's a lot. Uh, we have two kids now, and, uh, obviously it's twice as much as one kid, and I don't know how much the daycare workers are making, but whatever it is, it's probably not enough, you know. Like, that's another component of it's not just enough to be, to, like, provide this, you know, childcare, it also is, provide you, we need to provide good wages, and you as a parent should want whoever's taking care of your child to make a good living.

0:38:07 Thomas: You know, like I, I do not want them to be mad at their job and upset and like not wanting to, and stressed and not wanting to work there is the last thing I want. So yeah, no, that's, there's kind of two sides to that equation in terms of how much it's going to cost.

0:38:23 Jamie: I completely agree. I found out after the fact, but people at the Montessori school where I had sent my children, which was by no means cheap. They only made about $11 or $12 an hour. And I was sort of shocked, wondering like, well, where does all of the money go? And a lot of it is overhead and rent and insurance and liability and things like that.

0:38:36 Thomas: Well, yeah, but then that, that makes me think like if you personally hired someone to work for your, to like look after your kids, would it, could you pay them better than what the school is paying them? It seems weird. Crazy.

0:38:55 Jamie: In many cases, yes. And so this is a conversation that really has two components to it. And it's great to talk about how we should reduce the cost for families, but Buttigieg, unlike Warren, seems to have no conception of the idea that child care requires caregivers for those children and that those are people who need to make enough money to live valuable lives, to keep a roof over their heads, to buy enough food, to turn the heat on, and to actually afford to fill the prescriptions they they get from the doctor when they're sick. So

0:39:32 Thomas: Yeah. Um, so yeah, childcare would be huge. I mean, uh, it is, it is so expensive and, uh it would be super super cool to, uh, you know, not have to pay so much for that. And, and again, coming from a place of immense privilege, it's even pretty crazy for us. So I can only imagine, um, you know, for, for a lot of people who I'm sure have it a lot worse than I do, how tough that is. Um, so, uh you know another thing as we're kind of running out of time here, um, because it's a very late for Jamie and I, again, thanks Jamie for coming on and doing this after right after the debate, it's very late on the East Coast, but we appreciate you. Um, I do want to talk about the fact that Cory Booker has exactly all of Buttigieg's qualifications, plus 100 million more, and has now had to drop, and Buttigieg is still in it. Drives me insane. Um, but that's just me. What's your take?

0:40:32 Jamie: I think there's a couple of things at play. Obviously, racism is part of it. I think there's a lot of other things that are at play, and it's hard because knowing Booker personally, it's sort of hard to separate out the person that I know from the politician on TV, and I just feel like we're in such a fraught time that is wonderful as his message of love and compassion is, that it's not really what people are looking for. You know, you're not going to beat Trump with a Care Bear stare. He, this is going to require to to roll your sleeves up and you're going to have to to fight a little bit. And I, I think Booker's M.O. is sort of at odds with our current political moment, and it's hard to reconcile the disparity between love and compassion, which are wonderful, and Booker really is that genuinely kind and warm in person, with the sort of existential terror we're all living in on a day-to-day basis.

0:41:46 Thomas: Yeah, I know. It's just I think what what's tough and, you know, it's so easy for the rational bros on Twitter to very quickly be like, oh, he doesn't— Cory Booker didn't have any black support. And to try to find a, you know, very quick dismissive way to dismiss that particular component of things. But, you Know, and it's tough because we never know. You know, it's impossible to know for sure why a candidate takes off and why another candidate doesn't. We can guess and sometimes they might be informed guesses, but it's hard to know. But at the same time, there's also a lot of room within a statement like, oh, well, I don't find them inspiring or, oh I found, because I had a lot of people messaging me about Buttigieg early on.

0:42:39 Thomas: Not so much anymore. Now maybe they quit listening to the show, it's possible, or it's possible that once Buttigieg had to pivot to the center, maybe they, some of the supporters didn't like the fact that he had to do that because he started off seeming like more of a progressive candidate and then made a huge pivot because I think that's the only path he saw to victory. But anyway, the point is a lot of people would talk about how inspiring they find Buttigieg. And, and I just think there's, there's a lot of room potentially in something like that for our unconscious biases to play a part. And it's possible to say for sure. I'm not, you know, I'm not, I don't know. I can't say for for sure, if any one supporter has some bias that would prevent them from finding Cory Booker inspiring, but somehow they find Buttigieg inspiring.

0:43:28 Thomas: It's just, it's interesting to me because there's so much overlap in their credentials and yet Cory Booker's vastly more qualified. And, and what an inspiring guy. I mean, like his stories in C it's so cool. Like the documentary they made about him, like he really is amazing. And it just, I can't help, but feel like race is a factor in that. Okay.

0:43:50 Jamie: I think race is definitely a factor in that. I think we would be irredeemably naive to say it doesn't play a part at all. I think one of the problems, though, in a deeply racist country where that's going to be a problem is that we started out with 437 candidates running for president, and it was hard to sort of find a lane and figure out who you were. Like you said, it's really hard to figure out the science of what causes certain politicians, politicians, to inspire voters and connect with voters and turn out volunteers and create a movement. Personally, I can't wrap my head around why people are behind Pete Buttigieg. I just, with all the other candidates in the field, I don't understand why they go there.

0:44:41 Jamie: But I guess if you want a white dude centrist who isn't almost 80 years old, then what you're left with is Pete Buttigieg.

0:44:53 Thomas: Call me crazy, I just now realized that Yang wasn't in this debate. I mean, I did, I, I had thought he was going to be in every debate because I thought he had made enough of a splash. That's weird. How did, wait a minute, how did Tom Steyer qualify for this debate but Yang didn't, man?

0:45:09 Jamie: So Tom Steyer has spent a ton of money on TV ads in the early states, and so he's polled high enough in the earlier states where he's just dropped money from the skies.

0:45:18 Thomas: That is that's crazy though, like, I, I, I understand, but I just would would have thought that, you know, Yang, say what you want about Yang, like at least he earned it, you know? Like he really did earn his following, and he, he worked hard to, to get his message out there. And he went on a lot of podcasts I hate, but whatever, he, you know, he put on the work, put, did the work. And it's, it's, that's crazy to me that Yang would not be on that stage, but a billionaire like Tom Steyer would.

The frustrating thing about Tom Steyer though, though, is that like it's the tie, which I would never notice because I'm terrible about stuff like that. But it's also that like I don't hate what he's saying. I just don't want him to be up there saying, you know, if he was just a guy who was like a governor, you knows, and he's running for president and he had that message, I'd be like, all right, you're fine, whatever. It's cool. But like, come on, we don't we shouldn't be the party of billionaires who buy their way onto the stage. So, you

0:45:50 Jamie: The tie is the tie. Yeah, I agree. I agree, I like what he has to say. I respect that he's using his billions to raise awareness for climate change. I just wish he would do it somewhere other than the presidential contest. I happen to have this crazy opinion that merely having made a lot of money does not qualify you to be president of the United States. Right,

0:46:36 Thomas: Know, I'm trying to think of if I have any more thoughts because we're coming to a close. Let me know your closing thoughts. One more thing early on. I guess I kind of go in reverse order sometimes. But the very first question I think was about impeachment.

And can we just put to rest this idea that because Donald Trump is going to get, you know, a clean bill of health from the Senate, that they're going to say that he didn't do anything wrong, that that somehow means the whole thing was for nothing or we shouldn't have done it. It's so simple, and, and forgive me if I've said this before, but the whole argument is once the Senate doesn't convict him, well, then he's gonna feel like he could do whatever he wants.

And the simple counter argument that I cannot believe that, you know, like we have to say is, what if you never even try? Which, which criminal do you think will be more bold? The criminal who maybe they try to like do a robbery or something and they get caught by the police, the police charge him, he goes through the whole trial, and then the last second the jury is like, well, not enough evidence, so they don't convict? Or somebody who does a robbery and the policeman sees him, is there, and is like, you know, I can't arrest you because if the jury, I just don't trust the jury, so whatever, not gonna arrest you? Which criminal do you think would be more emboldened? Exactly.

0:48:00 Jamie: I completely agree with you. I can't make heads or tails out of this.

0:48:06 Jamie: It's just bonkers to me. Every day there's a new dump of information that comes out that is even more incriminating than the day before. I cannot take seriously how any reasonable person could look at this and come to the conclusion that the president of the United State has not committed crimes. And the idea that we're not going to do anything thing about it because the Republicans are okay with him committing crimes is just sort of disorienting to me. Because if you aren't going to indict a president, or not indict, but if you aren't gonna impeach a president for what's been done so far, what could you ever possibly impeach a president for? Let's say they didn't impeach him.

0:48:51 Jamie: Because the Senate is led by McConnell, who's not going to do anything, and Trump gets out of office, and maybe we get a Democrat in 2020, but then we get an even more nefarious Republican in there in 2024, 2028, seeing that, you know, the Republicans will just close ranks and defend him no matter what they do. What might they do then? I am so ready for some votes to be cast and to winnow this field down by three more. I am, I am ready for the voting. I am ready for Iowa. I am ready to narrow this down and

0:49:16 Thomas: Exactly. All right, well, we are out of time. Any closing thoughts on the debate, Jamie? Yeah.

0:49:29 Thomas: I guess until it's Biden budaj and yeah, in some ways I do like, that's fewer candidates, but then we got rid of like every candidate of color, so then it feels, now I feel icky that it's fewer, can, you know what I mean? It sucks.

0:49:35 Jamie: Yeah It, it does. And I also, I would just like our elections to not be 30 years long. This is ridiculous. So irritated. This is the dumbest of all possible ways to do it. Yeah.

0:49:51 Thomas: Uh, yeah well we're close to finally, our first result actually, this is the, the last debate before results come in for, what is it, so Iowa at least, and I can't remember if there's another one before the next debate, another primary. But I will say this, I don't think Warren is going to win, but just for all of you other Warren stands out there, um, you know, I was listening to the 538 podcast about the Iowa caucus, and it might be a factor that Warren is so many people's second choice, because the stupid caucuses, that I don't think we should have probably, where, uh, you do that weird caucusy thing, and then if a candidate doesn't have the, I think it's the 15% threshold, then their delegates go to the second choice.

And since Warren is so many people's second choice, maybe that, you know, maybe she could pull off an upset there. Uh, and you know she's statistically kind of within a reasonable distance. Um, but, uh. So just for all you other other Warren fans out there. And there's still a tiny hope, but if she doesn't, you know, get a big victory early on, I, I as shitty as it is, I do kind of hope she'll just consolidate the progressive vote and beat Biden with Bernie somehow. Or maybe if he, you want to offer a VP, that would be awesome too. But, uh, either way, I just don't want Biden to win. All

0:50:07 Jamie: Right well as the representative Bernie bro, we would love to have all of the Warren fans come join us with with open arms.

0:51:27 Thomas: Right. Well, I hope that's the case and now we'll see what happens in the, in the first primary. Now that that we finally will have something actually be voted on in some way versus just all these endless debates. All right. Thanks for listening, everybody. Thanks, Jamie, for hanging on in the East coast, super late. Appreciate it. And, uh, we will see you. I don't know whenever next we put out an episode. See you then.

0:51:49 Jamie: Bye, guys.

0:51:58 Clip: Thank you so much for listening to Serious Inquiries Only. If you like the show, the absolute best thing you can do is support us at patreon.com slash SeriousPod. The second best thing you can do is please share it on social media or by word of mouth. Speaking of social media, if you'd like to follow Jamie on Twitter, she's at Euthyphro. And follow me at SeriousPod. If you'd like to be Facebook friends, send me a request at facebook.com slash ThomasPodcast. If you're not up for that level of intimacy, that's fine. Maybe you want to join the discussion at facebook.com/groups/SIO members. Thank you again for listening. We'll see you next time.