Bill Kristol: You Can't Hide Your Lyin' Eyes, JD

Tim Miller (0:12)

Hello, and welcome to The Bulwark Daily. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Monday, October 19th. And so we're here with editor-in-chief, Bill Kristol, a couple of weeks out for the midterms. How are you doing, Bill?

Bill Kristol (0:22)

I'm fine, Tim. How are you?

Tim Miller (0:24)

I'm doing well. I'm coming at you live from Charlotte. We've had a nice weekend on our Southern tour. We were in Columbia Friday, Charlotte last night with Pete, did No Kings Saturday, went to the Rock Hill No Kings in South Carolina, which was fun.

What about you?

Bill Kristol (0:40)

I went to the No Kings here in McLean, Virginia, which was fun. All the ex Reagan and Bush administration people, all the McCain operatives there rallying in McLean for No Kings, but it was nice. It was a nice spirit and a good crowd and a good natured.

Tim Miller (0:54)

I also met with Anderson Clayton, who's the North Carolina Democratic Party Chair. She's 28 years old. She's awesome. Our interview is going to be up on YouTube here this week, so keep an eye out for that. But we were joking because Virginia edged out North Carolina for being one of the early first five or six states in the 2028 presidential nominating process. I was like, you should have run a heavier oppo campaign on the McLean Democrats. We cannot let the political class choose our nominee.

We should be disenfranchising McLean in the presidential primary process.

Bill Kristol (1:28)

It's even worse, right? Because Virginia has an open primary, which I assume South Carolina doesn't. So people, all the ex-Republicans can now vote in the Democratic primary. So it would have been an interesting oppo campaign. Keep those bulwark people out of the Democratic primary, out of the early primaries in 2028 And I'll join you guys in Atlanta tomorrow. So we're going through the winning states of the South, right? South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia. Did Annie Andrews come to the events Friday night?

Tim Miller (1:52)

Yeah, Annie Andrews was there on Friday. Her and Sarah started off the show. She's spunky. It's hard to know who Sarah had a bigger crush on, actually, Annie Andrews or Pete. But she was smitten with the tour altogether. I like Annie Andrews. I mean, we were talking backstage and their internals are margin of error. Like, it's possible. I think that it's obviously a long shot compared to some of this other stuff, but it's much closer than certainly we would have thought a year ago. And I think that she's running a really smart campaign and was high energy, and that was good. And then we went down to Rock Hill for the No Kings. And I met a fellow named Jim, who's a bull worker, he's a lifelong Rock Hill resident, history teacher or something. He said, voted for every Republican from 1964 to 2020 until the insurrection.

So some misses in there. But he was out there at the No Kings, and he is fired up to vote for Annie Andrews. I mean, he had about as choice words as you can have as a genteel southerner for Lindsey and Darlene Graham.

And so I don't know. I mean, like, I do think that there's something to that. And I think that I like being in redder parts of the country because sometimes when you go to places where it feels politically helpless, you know, that you haven't wanted in a while, there's just, it's dead, right? And in this moment, it definitely feels like, you know, in South Carolina and then, I mean, Charlotte's a metropolis, but still North Carolina, so it's 10 to 4 in the House Congressional District Watch, which we'll talk about in a minute. But there is a lot of, I think, excitement and energy. And I think the people that are, you know, can kind of smell a rebuke to Trump are excited to get out. And, you know, I was asking a lot of them, and I think a lot of their neighbors who are Trumpers are, you know, taking down their signs and a little less excited. And do those people actually turn out to vote or not? You know, it becomes, I think, an important question.

Bill Kristol (3:48)

I was giving a talk in New York Thursday night, and there was someone there. I should disguise this a little bit. He's actually an actual kind of prominent Republican in South Carolina, who was publicly supporting Darlene Graham. But he said he thought Annie Andrews could well win. But even better, a little better than 50-50. He thought, he said, all of his friends who are not actually in elective office have to support the ticket. We're basically planning to vote for Annie Andrews for whatever that's worth. He said, I don't know the state well enough to recognize the county he's from, but he said it's a conservative part of the state.