4.7 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 10 January 2023
⏱️ 61 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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0:00.0 | Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome back to Conversations. I'm very pleased to be joined again. We had for our first conversation in the spring of 2021, which stands up very well. I might add joined again by James Carvell, my friend. I think we first met when. |
0:29.0 | James was running the Clinton campaign in 92 and crushing us were in the bush for sports White House, but I'm letting those bygones be bygones. You know, three decades later, I can get over that. And James, thanks for thanks for joining me today. |
0:45.0 | Thank you, Bill. Good to be here. |
0:48.0 | And James is really, I think, apart from running campaigns all over the place and is a very shrewd analyst and an honest analyst of American politics. |
0:56.0 | And so I really look forward to finding out for you what the situation is, what the balance of our country is, and then we can talk about each party, what you expect from the Republicans, what you expect and wish for from the Democrats. |
1:07.0 | So, state of play, November election. We're now two months past that. It's January 9th, if you speak, just pass the speaker election. What's the sort of balance of power, the balance of forces in American politics? |
1:18.0 | Well, I mean, the Democrats took control of White House and Senate and appeared in, of course, narrowly lost the House. |
1:29.0 | I think Biden didn't do anything else in his last two years. He would be successful by what he got done in his first year. |
1:38.0 | So, I'm not, I think everybody would free the sigh of relief if we just got through the debt ceiling and closing the government down. |
1:49.0 | And if that happened, I think people would say, okay, I'll take that. |
1:54.0 | I'm not sure what's going to happen that easily, but, you know, it's, it could have, let me put it this way, it could have been a lot worse. |
2:05.0 | And remember, they're getting ready to pick up another seat because that Virginia's, they have a special, the seat's number in Virginia. |
2:11.0 | That's a democratic district. |
2:13.0 | And if George Santos doesn't hold up, the Democrats would probably win that seat, and if they reratted. |
2:21.0 | So, there's some chance that the majority shrinks even more. |
2:26.0 | Right. But in terms of the election, I mean, 2020 and 2022 together, I mean, it feels like we dodged a bullet on the other hand, the country's evenly divided, right? |
2:36.0 | Yeah, I, I call a micro little next, right? |
2:40.0 | And, you know, we won the presidency in 2020, we did not do that well in the house and, you know, in other places. |
2:47.0 | In 2022, you know, who's building one, you know, I'm being honest, yeah, I'm not saying it's him here, but who really won the 2022 election? |
2:57.0 | I said, one, the really stopped off a disaster. |
3:01.0 | Or like the people I'm speaking to right now. |
3:04.0 | Why do I say that? I say that because democratic base turnout was not very good. |
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