Wright Thompson and Jesse Lehrich: Hopium and Hate

Tim Miller (0:12)

Hello, and welcome to The Bulwark Daily, I'm your host, Tim Miller. We have a massive double header for you today in segment two. It's LSU Ole Miss Hate Week, Go Tigers.

And I brought in the best sports writer of my generation, the best cultural commentator on the intersection of sports and politics and history, particularly in the south, it's Wright Thompson, couldn't be more excited to have him back on the show. He is in segment two, he'll be coming at us live from the Delta Lounge. But we're still going to make it sound pretty in your ears. All right. So do stick around for Wright. There's some really touching stuff at the end. But first we got to do politics and news. He was a Democratic strategist, now he's a streamer. He's a spokesperson for Hillary's 2016 campaign. That one didn't go well, as I recall. His show is called Nobody Knows Anything. He writes a newsletter called Nobody's Listening. That's not true. I'm listening. It's Jesse Lehrich. What's up, man?

Jesse Lehrich (1:02)

Thanks so much, Tim. I appreciate your listening. You and my mom.

Tim Miller (1:06)

What is your age? What is your birth year?

Jesse Lehrich (1:09)

I was born in 1989, respect to all.

Tim Miller (1:11)

This counts.

I was trying to go a little younger than that for my young, my series of young politicos, but it counts. Adam Gentleson was last week. I think he's older than me. Basically, we're just trying to get younger than Axelrod and Carvel.

Jesse Lehrich (1:26)

No shame. I can do that. I can do that.

Tim Miller (1:30)

We're grandfathering anybody in that was born after the Gerald Ford presidency.

Jesse Lehrich (1:36)

There we go.

Tim Miller (1:37)

We're going to do midterms, 2028 stuff, and so I just did the biggest picture. Where are you at on the midterm state of play?

Are you bedwetting? Are you Hopium Huffing? Where are you at?

Jesse Lehrich (1:50)

I'm definitely Hopium Huffing. I'm still relatively low on the Democratic Party writ large. I think the long-term prospects could use some work.

Tim Miller (2:00)

You're seeing a 2022 redox for the Democrats do very well, but didn't fix our underlying brand issues.

Jesse Lehrich (2:06)

Exactly. We do the thing where we win a bunch of races, we had no business winning, and then everyone's like, oh, I guess we fixed everything, and then we lose to a fascist, and Bulwark blows up again, everyone wins.

Tim Miller (2:18)

Okay. Well, no, that's not what we want, just to be clear. I would love, I mean, honestly, had Kamala won for one, for example, the only person that would suffer would be you, because I wouldn't have had you on the podcast. We would have just done Wright Thompson, it would have been a boring day, we would have talked only about LSU, Ole Miss, because nothing would be happening, and that would have been great for me, by the way. I would trade that, totally.

Jesse Lehrich (2:38)

It sounds like a much better life. I mean, Wright Thompson's a far more interesting person than I am.

Tim Miller (2:42)

You're doing great.

Jesse Lehrich (2:43)

Thanks.

Tim Miller (2:43)

Okay. I want to go through the races, but first, I think we have a sense for how things are going based on how the vice president framed up his pitch to the electorate yesterday. Let's watch a little bit of that.

SPEAKER_3 (2:57)

There's a lot of good that's been done, but there's a lot of work left to do.

Don't give power to the people who cause the problems that we're fixing. Give us another chance or give us another couple of years to continue to work on the amazing things that we've been doing for the past two years.

Tim Miller (3:12)

Give us another chance.

Give us another swing. How would that, if you were a spokesperson, how would you tell your principle about that?

Jesse Lehrich (3:20)

I mean, it's about as good as you can do when you've overseen the greatest gas price surge, a pointless war. You have negative charisma.

Nobody's happy with any of the things you're doing. Give us another chance. We'll do better. I mean, I've heard worse pitches.

Tim Miller (3:40)

Not that many of them, and I've been on some pretty bad campaigns. But yeah, man, I don't know. When you've got the diesel price up above seven bucks, I was talking to somebody last night. It's kind of transitioned us into the map. I was talking to somebody from Alaska. They're just kind of giving me a briefing on that race because I never did a campaign in Alaska. I don't know what the fuck's going on up there. It's one of the states I've never been to. So I was trying to just make sure I wasn't, because I've been kind of fan girling Mary Peltola's campaign. But sometimes I worry about that. It's like, if you're appealing to me too much, is that like a bad sign for resonating with Alaska voters? So I was asking about this, and it's like, dude, is it the home heating costs up here? Is it the cost for this winter? I was like, it's going to cost 10 grand for me to heat my house this winter with the increased prices.