From the Halls of Caracas to the Shores of Tripoli

Facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence. The law will not bend to the uncertain wishes, imaginations, and wanton tempers of men. The law no passion can disturb. Welcome to the Stubborn Things Podcast, a podcast about American politics where we chase the facts wherever they lead. I'm your host, Sean Trendy. And I'm Jay Kost. And today we'll be talking about... Venezuela. Oh, yeah. And the Don Rowe Doctrine, whatever that is. so so you know i i it's hard for me to even get started on this without laughing just because the whole thing seems so absurd um on the one hand it's kind of like usa usa for like pulling that off without losing a single soldier but it's impressive but you know this is against the background i i will say his background you know i have i have libertarian sympathies so i'm a entanglements to begin with but you know on the one hand you have this apparently successful operation on the other hand like it's not clear exactly where we go from here and it's not clear the administration knows where it goes from here but i think what we want to talk about a little bit more gets to some of the objections to this that that and every time i read this i just kind of have to laugh a little bit that this is somehow completely outside that that that donald trump has once again shredded norms and gone outside the bounds of what we allow by not asking for permission from Congress or the UN or destroying another country's sovereignty. And if you have even a passing acquaintance with U.S. involvement in the Western Hemisphere, it's just wrong. It really is. I mean, it's wrong in, there's like two directions of wrongness that seemingly point in opposite directions, but they both say the same thing. On the one hand, as you said, Sean, there is this idea that Trump has fundamentally violated some sacred principle, which he hasn't. But on the other hand, the notion that Trump has developed here some kind of new doctrine is also really questionable. In both cases, they are making Trump out to be some sort of unique character that is entirely predicated or premised upon historical ignorance. Like you don't know the facts of American history in the Western Hemisphere. And I think to your point about libertarianism, and we could get into this, there is a tension here, a philosophical tension, an important, meaningful tension, which is that the United States is a country that sees itself as a republic and tries to behave as a republic behaves, but at the same time acts as a regional and, in this case, hemispheric hegemon. And these two ideas have our intention, I think. But the important thing to bear in mind is that they have been in tension for almost 200 years, since the United States had enough ability to project its power onto its neighbors. And this debate about are we a republic, are we an empire is a recurring one. It's been ongoing since the 19th century, and it's going to continue going probably as long as this tension exists. So get into this. I mean, I'm not sure where we should start on this. I mean, I think the place to start on this when we're thinking about Americans painting outside the lines of international law or whatever you want to call it, or maybe better put, demonstrating that international law is, you know, what James Madison would call parchment barriers. I think you've got to go back to good old, old hickory in 18, what was it, like 1817, 1818, where the Spanish are gone out of Florida because the United States doesn't control Florida. Spanish are gone because they're putting down the – they're trying unsuccessfully to put down the revolutions in Central and South America. under the pretense of native rebellions, Jackson, without any authorization from the president, marches an army into Florida and just occupies it. Yeah, as one does. As one does, as Andrew Jackson does. And, you know, there was debate within the cabinet about what to do about this. Everybody in the cabinet said, we have to denounce it, pull Jackson back. It was John Quincy Adams, who was Secretary of State, said, let's just hang on a minute here, guys, because, you know, it's Florida and we wanted Florida for a while. So why don't we just occupy Florida and cut a deal with the Spanish? And that's exactly what we did. And that begins this sort of long history of the United States dealing aggressively with other nations and sovereignties in the Western Hemisphere when its own interests are entangled. I mean, you could probably even go back further and look at the approach that the Americans had towards the native tribes, certainly before FDR's, you know, was the Indian New Deal or whatever he called it. I mean, this is just the first example. There's more. I mean, there's the it's called the Monroe Doctrine, for goodness sake. Right. Right. This this is this is James Monroe, not like someone from the 20th century. But, you know, what what strikes me is that, you know, the Marine Corps anthem from the from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli. Right. Like the first one is is a war. We can debate whether it was really a war of aggression. but I think it was a war of aggression by the United States into Mexico. The second one is a just kind of like Thomas Jefferson becomes president and decides that he's about had it with these Barbary pirates on the coast of Libya and Tunisia. And we go over there. We don't have a declaration of war. We just go over there. I think Jefferson called it like a war that was defensive in nature, so he didn't go to Congress. Right. Right. So this idea. Yeah, and I take the kind of libertarian Thomas Massey, Justin Amash idea that, look, the Constitution says you have to declare war. Like, you have to go to Congress for this. I take that. But the idea that there's something unusual about doing this after presidents have been doing it for 2225 years, like, now you're going to all of a sudden put on the brakes and say, you know, basta, enough? No, that's not how it works. But, you know, specific to our hemisphere, I mean, you can just track that forward. You know, a lot of people don't know this, but we just – Woodrow Wilson just flatly invaded Mexico. That's right. You know, now he had, I think, a reasonably good reason for doing so. Pancho Villa had – was a Mexican bandit who had crossed over and massacred some people in the United States. Um, and, but, but put together an army of about 10,000 people actually ended up being crucial, um, because that's where general Pershing, uh, Pershing got his training, um, that he used for world war one. But they led this expedition, they called it an expedition, AKA invasion into Mexico. We were in there for a year. The Mexican government originally said, okay, go get them. but after a while was like, okay, guys, you've been here long enough. We actually had outright engagements with Mexican troops while we were there. We were there over a year. Does Wilson ever go to Congress? No. No, he does not. So, again, this is much more aggressive, I think, than what we see in Venezuela where we kind of paratrooped in to extract someone who had an indictment in the United States. you know and maybe the line has to be drawn short where both are bad but again to suggest that this is somehow unprecedented brented unprecedented norm breaking is just ignorance of what the norms have been yeah i think that's right and i think that it's important to bear in mind as well when we're thinking about this tension right because sean you pointed out right there's this separation of powers question about to what extent is the president under the constitution, you know, having his office as commander chief, his authority to engage in military action without the approval of Congress, long been contested. The other tension that I was sort of getting at is this idea of, you know, is a republic supposed to meddle in the affairs of its neighbors? And, And, you know, the Wilson example is a good illustration of the sort of almost kind of magnetic pull that the United States has felt into the affairs of its neighbors, even when it doesn't want to. So, like, when we think about Wilson and the background of Wilson, right, Wilson comes in as president in 1913. This is after a solid – at least a decade of very aggressive Republican as in GOP-sponsored TRs, carry a big stick type of aggressive nationalism. And that manifests itself in a number of ways. You have like the Roosevelt corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. Roosevelt as president, Teddy Roosevelt as president says, you know, Venezuela is in debt to foreign countries, European countries. And part of the Monroe Doctrine is we don't let European countries bring military force to bear in the Western Hemisphere. So if Latin American countries in severe debt, we're going to go in and we're going to basically put them into our receivership so the Europeans don't come in. Very aggressive. Roosevelt was also very aggressive in his acquisition of the land to build the Panama Canal. There had been negotiations with Colombia because Colombia controlled the Isthmus of Panama. Colombia balked at the treaty, so Roosevelt sponsored a coup. And as soon as the coup went off, the United States recognized the new Panamanian government and immediately settled on a plan to build the canal. You know, and that, by the way, too, is after like this is also right shortly after the United States annexed Hawaii, very controversial annexation. And all of this sort of aggressive nationalism had built up a an instinctive kind of like, no, we're a republic. We should be doing this. Some of this was situated in the Republican Party, but it was really situated in the Democratic Party. And it was the Democratic Party of William Jennings Bryan and Woodrow Wilson. And that was the wave, the intellectual wave on which Wilson was riding in terms of foreign affairs. And yet, and yet he still feels compelled to invade Mexico. And there is this sort of tension that even well-intentioned great powers feel towards their weaker neighbors is that insofar as their interests can be advanced, or insofar as their interests are threatened, you have to be really principled to turn a blind eye to that. And I think that's what's going on here. And I think, you know, there are two things. Like, it's not just Mexico, right? Like, people don't realize this, but the U.S. occupied Haiti for like 20 years, basically put the country into receivership, again, starting with Wilson. Nicaragua, we were there for 20 years. This, you know, you can blame William Howard Taft for. But we were there for 20 years. FDR, you know, ends this partly because we're in the Depression and we're getting ready to go bankrupt. Right. But you know he has his good neighbor policy like okay we not going to quite do this anymore But but I mean again these are these are full on occupations of countries without congressional intervention or consent where we just there like running the show We we did it not not, you know, obviously we have the 80s, some of the interventions there with with spread of communism. This was to protect banks. One of the problems that I think progressives have is that for them it's always like 1913 and there's always a trust to be busted and the U.S. is always in the pocket of the bankers. But it really was in the pocket of the bankers in the early 20th century. We deposed governments to protect U.S. banks and their interest in bond in these countries. But I think one other broader point, and this gets to your like, is this really what a republic is supposed to be? Because, you know, at the founding, the sense was, you know, big republics are kind of novel. Like, if you get too big for your bridges, bad things happen. That was a key argument of the anti-federalists. Exactly, exactly. and but but part of it too is that this in the international law context like this is just this is what powers do right yeah like there was an outright genocide in Rwanda and no one did anything we kind of like looked at our pocket watches and like oh that's that's really bad we think it should stop but no one did anything and the reason was it's not in anyone's backyard Right. Or it doesn't entangle any sort of like important economic interest. Exactly. And this is this is not a moralistic statement. This is this is like how the world is, not necessarily how it should be. OK, why do we depose Muammar Gaddafi in Libya? Because that's in Europe's backyard. Right. They look across the Mediterranean and they're like, OK, there's bad stuff going on here. Why did everyone why do people get involved in the Balkans? So this was actually a live question in the late 90s, which is why are you doing this in the Balkans where you have genocide from Serbs to Bosnians, but you're turning a blind eye to what's going on in Rwanda? And I think the, again, how the world is, not how it should be answered to that, was always this is Europe's doorstep. And France and Germany and England pay extra attention to Europe's doorstep. That's right. It's the same thing for the United States and Venezuela. We are much more interested in what's going on. Now, because the United Nations is the center of power is largely in Europe, in the EU, you could get some type of international approval for Sarajevo and for Libya. Western Hemisphere, it's like the United States. It's just us. Yeah. So for the rest of the world, that's kind of like Rwanda. Yeah. OK, what are you guys so so worried about here? But this this idea that like a great power pay, which at least for the next maybe year or two, we still are paying attention to something going on on its doorstep is just there's nothing weird about it. No, there really isn't. And it it I mean, you you really have to have drunk to the dregs of the anti Trump Kool-Aid to not see Maduro's Venezuela as being a huge strategic threat to the United States core interests. I mean, you know, the drugs, the gang members, it's, you know, just basically shipping oil off to pretty much anybody who hates the United States has a friend in Venezuela. And that's just a problem. I think the Sean, what do we think about the it's just a the inevitable clash between Article one and Article two powers here. And, you know, I've been writing for over a year for a series called how Congress lost. And, you know, the basic idea of it is that Congress is just a fraction holds just a fraction of the power that it possesses. And so much of that power has migrated to the presidency, sweeping powers to do all sorts of things that I think properly belong in Article I, Section 8. But, you know, the thing is, is that this isn't really one of those. I mean, certainly, certainly this is a very aggressive use of executive power on the foreign front. front. But the Constitution really has the scales tipped pretty aggressively towards the president when it comes to the management of foreign affairs. You know, there's a reason for that. And one of the reasons is, is that foreign affairs was really a dumpster fire during the Confederation period. Under the Articles of Confederation, you had this sort of weird polarity where you would have ministers go off or negotiate with foreign countries, and they would be given these broad portfolios to negotiate, and then they'd come back, and then Congress would either approve or disapprove of whatever they did. And oftentimes, in some cases, like there was a treaty with the Spanish in 1786 that Congress was like, sorry, John Jay, we don't like this treaty, we're turning it down. And other times, you'd have guys like Benjamin Franklin over there, And all they would do is get nitpicked by members of Congress while they're over there trying to conduct foreign affairs. And you could see at the Constitutional Convention, there was a very clear like we need to rationalize the foreign policymaking institutions. And really, in a lot of respects, they borrowed it from the British system where foreign policy was historically the complete domain of the crown. And what they did was they kept that, and you could see that by making him commander-in-chief and making him the nation's top diplomat. And then they just sort of checked it by requiring senatorial approval for treaties, congressional authorization for war, and congressional control over the purse. But outside of those handful of checks and balances, this is an area where the president is a very, very powerful player. Well, there's one other check, and I think it's one we need to definitely delve into here, which they borrowed, again, from England, which is that if the king wanted to pay for his wars, he needed to call parliament. Right. Right. I mean, as a matter of fact, I've been doing it's interesting. You read about the the English Revolution in the 1600s, French Revolution in the late 1700s. Both of those are precipitated because the king needs money and he needs to call Parliament, the estate general to raise the money. And he calls them and then they won't go away. Right. And that's how you get. That's how you get. He tries to make them go away. They won't go away. That's how you get both those revolutions. And so the idea in the United States is if you want to pay for your war, you're going to have to call Congress. Congress is going to be in session. That's mandatory. Again, learning from the English experience of Charles I not calling Parliament for some extensive period of time. But you're going to have to go to Congress and ask for money. And this is one place where I really, if we're talking about the world now as it should be and not as it is, Congress has really gotten cold feet about exercising that power. And on the one hand, I understand what the ads are going to look like. Like you sent our troops overseas and then wouldn't pay for bullets and body armor. on the other hand I mean I think back to the one time in my lifetime where I would be certain Congress would exercise that power would be the Iraq war right in 2006 it is not an exaggeration to say that's why Democrats won the Congress right I mean George W. Bush had a good economy he had been a successful wartime president and then things go south in Iraq and the Democrats just savage him over it in the elections. And yet, and yet, and remember they had the timetable for withdrawal, like we need to be out of there in 90 days. The election comes and goes, and George W. Bush's response is, I took a thumping. I'm like, okay. And now we're going to send a bunch more troops to Iraq. As a matter of fact, we're going to surge. And I think that decision is consequential in a number of ways. I think it sets the tone for presidents to ignore midterm election results. But the other thing is that the Democrats caved, right? They blinked. The Democrats said, okay, and it caused a little bit of a rift, but not as much as you would think. They decide we're not going to stand in the way of funding. And the reason is they want to win the presidency, right? They want the trifecta in 2008. They don't want the headlines of we denied the troops, you know, body armor and bullets. But, man, like public opinion was on their side to cut the legs out from Bush's intervention. And they blinked. Now, at least there you had an AUMF, so Congress had greenlit. So you can say like they had a responsibility to fund it. But not really. Like they have the sole power to authorize spending and they just don't they don't use it anymore. Yeah, let me just sort of finish off this segment here. I just I have to say I agree. I think in the case of Venezuela, I think a lot of the a lot of the complaints from the the more democratic socialist members of the Democratic caucus, I actually think they are upset. But I think a lot of the more moderate members and the more pragmatic members are probably just putting out like partisan slop because they have to. Like it's just the demands of this age where the donor base has to be satisfied first and foremost. But I think a lot of them are like, whoa, good for them. Like get rid of him and like it can't be any worse than Maduro. But I do think that as a broader institutional phenomenon, Sean, Congress doesn't use the power of the purse in a meaningful way anymore. Like they just don't do that. You know, you saw the same thing like, for instance, there's all sorts of ways that this could happen. You know, the Biden administration allowing the border to just open and congressional Republicans control the House. They could have, you know, they could, they had the power of the purse. You know, they don't use it anyway. And I so one of my sort of like I'm an old school conservative in the sense that like I actually want a balanced budget. I mean, can you imagine now? It's like so quaint. I guess that's what had like I came of age in the 1990s where people were like, no, we have we like we need to reduce the deficit because it crowds out private investment. And I was like, I still believe that. Right. And so, like, I think one of the consequences of Congress just agreeing to forever deficits is the power of the purse just doesn't mean anything anymore. They've just insofar as Congress no longer makes tough decisions about levels of spending and taxation, which they just don't do. They're just like more more spending, fewer taxes. They're just nullifying their own power. So on that, let's put a pin in that cover. So I'm guessing we're going to talk about that again. But one of the things we wanted to talk about, you know, Sean has had, I don't know if those of you listening in podcast land are aware of this. Sean is a senior elections analyst for RealClearPolitics. And obviously he's a fellow at AEI. But he also has built up a really interesting and fascinating career in the redistricting space over the last decade, I would guess, right? So, Sean, what have you been up to? And how did you – like, just tell me about this. Like, take it in whatever direction you want to go. But how did you get into this? What are you doing? Like, what's it like? Tell our listeners about this. I could tell you, but I'd have to kill you. Oh, okay. Well, don't do that. No, it was just kind of one of those interesting, weird life term, life changes. A guy in North Carolina had a case, and he needed someone to rate the competitiveness of districts That it And so he went to his one of his friends was like hey, I'm looking for someone who can do this. And the guy was like, well, there's this guy on Twitter I know, Sean Trendy. And he gave him my name and got a call. And it's like any other job or career. Like you get an opportunity, maybe you take it, maybe you don't. took it um and then you do a good job or maybe you don't um and if you do a good job you get a call back it's like hey i got this other thing going on like it's the same thing with like any writing articles right like someone calls you from a journal you know and they're like hey you know we'll pay you like five thousand dollars to write an article about this um and you think to yourself, I am so busy right now, I can't do it. You say no, and you don't get the call again. Or you say, okay, I have a lot going on. I'm going to miss a couple nights sleep, but I'll go ahead and do this. If you do a good job, you'll get a call back later in the year, like, hey, we got space in this. How about this? It seems like you'd be a good fit for this. So much of life is just like that. And so that is honestly, it was people liked some, A person liked some of my Twitter posts and recommended me as someone who could rate the competitiveness of districts, and it grew from there. So I remember, I mean, at this point, it's like 20 years ago when you and I first started talking. And, you know, we got – we, you know, developed a close friendship, and you would send me maps of congressional districts from, like, the 1880s. And I'm like, where did you get this? And you were like, I drew them. Like, you know, like on Twitter nowadays, people are like, you know, there's all sorts of apps to draw districts. Ladies and gentlemen, you got to understand, Sean was drawing maps by hand just for fun. And now, Sean, one of the things that you've done, I mean, you've moved from consulting work, like with your North Carolina gig, into actually drawing districts, like legislative districts, haven't you? Yeah, it's one of the weirder turns from life. Yeah, I like to say I was election Twitter before election Twitter, before Twitter was a thing, much less election Twitter. But yeah, I wanted to learn, I had this weird thing, like I wanted to know, I heard somewhere that the longest, held Republican congressional district was actually the second district in Tennessee that around Knoxville. And it turns out that, yeah, this goes back to the Civil War. And I got this book of election results from a guy named Michael Dubin, who's actually a high school teacher in Arizona. Yeah, Michael Dubin. He has these just crazy books where he's gone back and gotten county level returns for gubernatorial races in the 1700s. But I got a couple of those. And then a guy named Ken Martis did a book. He's an actual Ph.D. at West Virginia. The Atlas of Congressional Districts. I may have learned about that from you. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. Still, that book, that Atlas of Congressional Districts, well, it's not really on my shelf because it's too big, but it is still my most prized book. Oh, it's an amazing book. It's a treasure. so then I was like okay like how can I get this all to work together that's where I got the idea to to use Adobe Illustrator I would bring up an image of the state and I was in the counties and then I would just kind of trace where I thought the lines were and then fill them in by color and that that actually was was again one of those things that like I just kind of did it because I was interested in it and it actually was a profound education um in how maps had been drawn You learn all kinds of things like that the black belt was incredibly competitive, which it makes sense now. But like you learn how competitive it was in the congressional elections up until the 1890s when Jim Crow really comes into effect, which then like when you learn about the populace, it's one thing to hear about fusionism in the South. It's another thing to hear about fusionism in the South and understand the coalition that helped give rise to it. Right. But yeah, I hand drew every congressional district, I think, going back to the founding on the computer. I think I'd managed to fill them all in going back to the 1960s before I had a kid and no longer had time. That was it, yeah. But I had the outlines for everything, and I had grandiose plans. And so this culminates – well, I don't know if it culminates because it's continuing to culminate, right? This was just this thing that you did because you hated being a lawyer. But like you were one of the special masters of the to to draw the congressional districts in Virginia. And I remember when you told me about that, I I thought that was just the coolest thing ever. And I mean, I kind of have to say, you know, obviously, the Virginia Democrats are probably going to they're certainly going to try to kill your map and they're probably going to succeed. So RIP to your to your map. But can you tell me a little bit about what that was like? So like you were a special master and there were two of you. And so exactly how how does one get chosen to do that? And like what's that process like to to design maps? Yeah. So the Virginia Constitution provides for a commission. It's it's one of those like lawmakers commissions where it's it's technically commissioned, but it's not independent. the lawmakers draw the map and they have certain boundaries if it deadlocks though it goes to the supreme court of virginia to draw the map well it deadlocked um and it was interesting because you had a gop gerrymander that went bad it was a dummy mander by the end of the it started out as a gop gerrymander by the end of the cycle it heavily favored democrats because all the suburbs flipped that's like eric canter's district ultimately yields abigail spanberger right exactly right exactly and so the democrats were like oh we kind of like this map that you all drew and republicans are like i think we need to like upset the apple cart a little bit and so nothing happened so it goes to the supreme court of virginia supreme court of virginia brilliant judges it's i do think it's one of the best courts in the united states because it's Although it has Republicans and Democrats, it's surprisingly non-ideological. But they don't want to draw a map. And so they go to the parties and say, each of you list three people, and we'll pick someone from the list. And so the Republican Party, Democrats list theirs, and they pick Bernie Grofman. The Republicans list theirs, and the Supreme Court of Virginia looks at this and says, these are Republican hacks. It was like all RNC members. And part of it is that like if you're looking at academia for people who will even talk to Republicans, you're not you're just not going to find a list. It's a thin list. And then you have it really have the specialized knowledge. Right. I mean, it's certainly by the element, just as a quick digression, you know, I mean, the legal community within that within academia has found alternative pathways around this. Right. So you have like the Federalist Society is one. And also, you know, like as Harvard and Yale no longer have space for conservative lawyers and legal thinkers, you're seeing like places like George Mason. Right. And then another thing, another thing that's developing in a lot of like Republican trifecta states is you get these schools like I think it's the Hamilton School in Florida now. But it's based on the model from Arizona State called SCETL, which is the school for, I don't know, civic and educational leadership or something like that. But, you know, that it takes a while to for those places. They're still in the process of building out like a sort of a center right basis of expertise. And so if you're going into most political science departments, you're not going to find the people who combine the specialized knowledge necessary for this, as well as any sympathy for Republicans or even really sympathy for neutrality, to be honest. I mean, it's the space in Americanist political science is very left wing, even when it's like even not like the not we're not even talking about like postmodern or like cultural Marxism, like identity politics stuff. I'm just like your standard issue. You know, Americanist who does quantitative work on Congress is going to be a Democrat. Like that's just it. Yeah, OSU actually has a surprisingly heterodox political science department. Like, you know, we've got people like Vlad Kogan who are writing articles for City Journal against school closures. But at the end of the day, everyone voted. Like, there's one person who worked for the Bush campaign. Like, at the end of the day, everyone, no one votes for Trump. There's one guy in the entire department who is famously pro-Trump, infamously pro-Trump. Who is it? Can I ask? Randy Schweller, who does IR. He's a strong, strong realist theorist. But I don't think there's anyone else in the department who votes for Trump. And so even though there's, like I said, heterodox thinkers. So anyway, the second round they come back and I'm on the list and the Supreme Court says, I don't know what their thinking was, I think probably because I lived in Richmond for a while and worked for Hunt and Williams, that's on my resume, I get selected. And so the first thing they say to us, and I do have a gag order, so I have to be careful about what I say, but we also produced a memo, two memos actually, detailing our process. And this is in the memo. First thing they say to us is, okay, you are no longer the nominees of the Republican and Democratic Party. You are special masters of the Supreme Court of Virginia, and you are judicial officers, and you serve Virginia, not the parties. And I think, I mean, credit where it's due. Like, I think we both did that pretty well. It was a good map. It was a damn good map. I'll say it was a damn good map. Yeah. I mean, it did what I think a good map should do. It kept, you know, they were reasonable districts, right? You look at, there's a couple things where, like, geography just demanded weirdness. And, like, literally demanded it. Yeah, I mean, it's Virginia. I mean, the mountains, for instance, and the tidewater. It's a geographically diverse state. Yeah. I have to be careful about that because people get stupid about that. And they're like, well, if geography demands it, you can do anything. It's like, oh, no. Like, there's this famous valley in the west called the Shenandoah. and as it turns out like the way it gets divided was historically the key to both republican and democratic gerrymanders uh so we said we're just going to keep the shenandoah together and it makes a long kind of stretched out district um but it's a district that makes sense and i think all our districts at the end of the day make sense um and i think the other thing that ended up and this just kind of happened naturally we got lucky but we we ended up with a map where you know virginia is a state that is blue at this stage but it's bluish purple right yeah perfect storm it'll elect a republican governor yeah like young like young can yeah and and it was a perfect storm and he won by two points and that's about you know we're no longer like a perfect storm in 2009 where mcdonald wins by 20 by 20 um and so that's what the map does really is if you're in a perfect storm, Republicans can win control. But otherwise, it's going to be a map that favors Democrats, both the state legislative and congressional level. And that's kind of what we've ended up with. Now, if the Democrats do succeed in overturning the map, I'm actually not going to shed that big a tear because I think it is it's the only map in the South that wasn't challenged for either being a political gerrymander being a racial gerrymander or violating the Voting Rights Act this cycle hey that's a feather in your cap it is I really think it is but the way that Democrats can repeal this map is they have to hold a referendum just like in California. Now, I'm not as sure. I think they probably get it done I think so But we should remind ourselves that Virginia isn California Nope And Virginia is in D back door So it's going to be contested in a way that California wasn't. Yeah, I think the Republicans made a calculation in California that even if they pushed all in, they were not going to win. So they didn't try. And so as a result, it was a blowout for Newsom. They're going to try in Virginia. They're going to try in Virginia. And like I said, this is not a 60-40 state, right? This is a 55-45 state. Again, I'm not saying it won't happen. But the other thing is that if the voters of Virginia decide that they would prefer a Democratic gerrymander to this map, like I think genuinely that at the end of the day, you know, power derives from the consent of the governed. and if you go to the people of Virginia and say, hey, here's this 10-1 Democratic map, and they say, great, let's pass it. I'm not going to be like, but I drew such a good map. I did. And I say I, Bernie and I. Because Bernie isn't on Twitter because he's smart, a lot of people call it my map, and it really isn't. It was a true joint effort, and we worked together really well. Bernie is just a lovely person. can't say enough good about him he's on my Christmas list so yeah well I have one more question for you on this but before I ask you I want to offer an exhortation or encouragement to our listeners especially younger people who are interested in politics and like trying to figure out like alright what do I do I think I'm curious to see if you agree with me But I really think that if you want to understand American politics, you have to read history on your own. And you have to look beyond, like, whatever your coursework was, whatever your professional development goals are, all of that sort of, like, lattery stuff that this younger generation is particularly obsessed with. It's a very status-obsessed generation. Maybe Gen X was just not particularly status-obsessed. I don't know. But if you want to understand how politics works, you have to read history. And the reason I'm keying off that, Sean, was because you had mentioned like you were just like like drawing maps from the 1870s in Alabama and 1870s, 80s, 90s in Alabama. and like you just notice like huh it's weird the republicans are winning here that's not the story i thought and then you start reading and you start doing a little more digging and you learn oh this is actually really interesting phenomenon that happened in the south and like when you start and the more you do that the more you start pulling out these weird anecdotes the more you begin to develop a kind of, like almost a kind of mental map of how American politics functions in practice, you can begin to see things that people who are loudmouths on Twitter are not going to notice. You're going to start noticing like how things actually work. But if you're just like sticking to your professional development and your assigned coursework, you're not going to get there you know it's interesting because you know i have my phd now uh which is kind of like you know my seat at the table card because it's hard to get hard to get phds to talk to you and take you seriously if you don't have unless you're better for worse yeah um but the older the younger phds i find are hit and miss with me because i think this generation is so much more um ideological but the older PhDs either from experience or just temperament even the progressive ones tend to like me when I go to do expert work the older ones are the ones who will sit around and joke around with me and talk about family and what not but one of the things that everyone complains about the older guys is that we spend so much time and I think I like Nate Silver a lot and I think he's made a real contribution. I probably owe my job to him in some ways or my career. But I think the lesson a lot of people took from him is like, you just need to know how to do a regression analysis. And a lot of the younger PhDs, you know, methods has gotten so much more complicated. I got my master's degree in 2001 and the choice for us at the Duke department like a real department was okay do you want stata or you want microsoft excel right right because you could do everything you needed to do with microsoft excel and the data analysis if you could do linear regression like you could write a paper that would get published in um you know jop journal of politics that's just not the world anymore so people get all teched up and they get all into the techniques but like actually knowing stuff is kind of falling behind the wayside it really has you know you go back and you read vo key or schotschneider and i mean there's not a regression analysis to be found and some of their conclusions are weak because of it i don't want to completely disparage um statistics but they knew so much they did like they were practically historians in their own right um and that is something that i think politics in the analysis politics has lost is that long and you can see it in the commentary to bring it full circle the commentary on venezuela i guarantee most of these people don't don't even know that we invaded mexico couldn't tell you what the roosevelt corollary is maybe you've heard of it couldn't tell you about i mean i think it's it's it's a good it's good life advice for anybody who is not just sort of like looking to get into politics to study it but just like if you want to get go into Washington, D.C. and you want to like practice politics, you should read political biographies, like get a good biography of Franklin Roosevelt and read it. Read like maybe not Robert Caro's like 70 billion volume biography of LBJ, but read something about LBJ because the guy knew how politics actually functioned. Like and I like to think of it this way, like if you if you don't read history, your knowledge base begins at the point at which you started paying attention. And it only is going to include the material that you actually noticed. But if you read history, then your base of knowledge dramatically expands. And the ability to capture and notice things that you otherwise would notice also dramatically expands. And it's such an important... And the thing i think maybe part of it and i you know like with respect to silver i mean because silver offers a lot i think it's more his imitators than silver himself but i do think that that one of the one of the problems with this sort of like twitter modern world and the substack world and all of this stuff is that there is immediate payoff for being splashy and there's not as much payoff for for really spending like a lot of time reading and thinking through things like that's an investment that only pays off later but before we go i gotta ask you this so so you were a special master in virginia you've you've you've you've consulted in the construction of maps but you've also been an expert witness in the defense of maps because you know all of these cases listeners you know we talked a couple of weeks ago about the voting rights act right um you know, these cases, they all, they start at the district level, they percolate up, and they all require like expert witnesses, both sides bring in expert witnesses. Sean has been an expert witness in many, many cases. So I got to ask you, what is the craziest thing that you can talk about? The craziest thing that's happened with you in court or in the process of dealing with a court for being an expert witness? You know, I've given a lot of thought to it, and it's hard because so much of it is kind of insidery. Like, there was this one case where we did simulations, and I didn't turn over the simulations. I turned over my code, which is typically how you do it. and the other lawyer just like went to the mattresses and was like you've destroyed evidence um i was like what no you run the code and it recreates the sims he's like well but it's not the actual ones you did so i was like okay i'll run the code again create the sims and send them to you he's like no because that's not what you did for your actual report and like there was actually like an evidentiary hearing on this where this lawyer was just like trying to get me in jail for destroying evidence. You know, there's other things, though. Like, the lawyers vary widely in talent. And I will just say to the listeners who are going into law school, you'll hear this rule that you never ask a question you don't know the answer to on cross-examination. And it is a good rule. I remember when I was practicing, like the head of the litigation department went and did this arbitration in England I was involved with. He and I didn't really get along. And he asked on cross-examination this question. Well, like, so for example, in England's constitution where it's written down that you must do X, Y, and Z. And the guy was like, England somewhat famously doesn't have a written constitution. And the lawyer's just like, I guess that's why I always tell people not to. And I was just sitting and like reading this transcript going, uh-huh, uh-huh. But if you have a good smart witness or even a mediocrity like myself on the other side, and you ask a question that you haven't nailed down their answer to, I will just say you have to be careful. I've had lawyers screaming at me. and um if you have a none of that works because if you have an experienced witness uh who knows his stuff uh or her stuff and knows that they can stand their ground it doesn't end well for you oh that's awesome well thanks for that sean i i that was that was great i love that i think it's such a cool like i i kind of like if i had a time machine one of the things i mean it'd be a long list of things I do but like if I had a time machine I go back in time to like 2006 and like call you up and be like dude guess what you're going to be doing in 20 years you wouldn't believe it like I can't like ladies and gentlemen I mean like he was such a nerd about old congressional maps back in the day and now like like he would sit in his office at lunch when he was a lawyer and he would like draw maps. And now like he's like actually drawing maps that are actual like real maps. It's extraordinary. So good for you, Sean. Congratulations. And again, RIP to the probably the terminally ill Virginia map. But I'm sure you'll get another crack at some point because, you know. All right. Well, that's going to do it for this episode. Thanks everybody to listening. Just want to remind you, Stubborn Things is a podcast of the American Enterprise Institute. we'd like to thank AEI for its support of our podcast and also like to give a special shout out to our producer Michael Schwartz who has been just doing a great job helping us get this off the ground brainstorming ideas with us feedback everything thank you Michael yeah and if you did enjoy this episode please take the time just takes a second to give us a good rating review and follow stubborn things on your preferred podcast platform that helps spread the word and ensures that Jay and I can keep chasing the facts and gabbering on in your ears. And we'll be back to jibber and jabber and go on and on about 1870s populism in about two weeks. But if you have any comments or questions, in the meantime, you can always reach us by emailing us at stubbornthingsataei.org. That's stubbornthingsataei.org. Until then, we'll see you next time. Thank you.