• With fewer than 50 days until Inauguration Day, President-elect Donald Trump spent the long holiday weekend inviting more people to join his administration. But for Democrats, the conversation is still very much backward looking, as the party litigates why it lost the 2024 election despite delivering on a lot of its promises from four years ago. Matt Yglesias, who writes the Substack newsletter ‘Slow Boring,’ explains why ‘deliverism’ didn’t deliver for Democrats in 2024.
• And in headlines: President Biden pardoned his son Hunter, a new drug to seek authorization to fight the AIDS epidemic, and The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees suspended deliveries into Gaza through a key crossing.

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TRANSCRIPT

Jane Coaston: It’s Monday, December 2nd. I’m Jane Coaston and this is What a Day, the show that is coming back strong from the holiday weekend. And definitely didn’t eat too much stuffing and pie. That definitely didn’t happen. Write that down. [music break] On today’s show, President Biden pardons his son Hunter ahead of sentencing later this month. And good news in the pursuit to end the Aids epidemic. Let’s get into it. It’s December and we’re less than 50 days away from President elect Donald Trump taking office. Over the weekend, Trump forged ahead with more appointment announcements. He nominated Charles Kushner, the father of Trump’s son in law, Jared, to be ambassador to France. Trump pardoned him in 2020, and he named a new head of the FBI, Kash Patel. He worked for Trump on the National Security Council before becoming chief of staff to the acting defense secretary at the end of Trump’s first term. And he is very, very, very, very weird. But among Democrats, the party is still litigating why Vice President Kamala Harris lost the election last month. On Sunday, Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy told Meet the Press he thinks Democrats need to push a more populist message going forward to win back working class voters. 

[clip of Chris Murphy] I think some of the most important things that Joe Biden did were taking on the big corporations, going after their monopoly power, um helping consumers with some of the really egregious fees and gimmicks that those companies use to hurt us. I wish the Biden campaign and the Biden White House and the Harris campaign talked more about what they did to break up corporate power. 

Jane Coaston: What it kind of sounds like Murphy is saying there is that President Joe Biden and Vice President Harris did pursue populist policies. They just didn’t talk about them enough. On MSNBC Saturday, former Ohio Democratic Representative Tim Ryan said something similar. He rattled off a bunch of Biden’s legislative wins. 

[clip of Tim Ryan] Democrats are re industrializing the country like this is the first industrial policy this country has had in 40 or 50 years with the IRA, the batteries, the, you know, all the clean energy stuff, the infrastructure bill. 

[clip of unknown speaker] The chips act, infrastructure. 

[clip of Tim Ryan] And of course, the Chips Act, which is hitting Ohio. We’re going to have a $100 billion investment. 

Jane Coaston: Ryan says Biden delivered a direct win for his state. So why didn’t Ohio vote for Joe Biden? Here’s Ryan again. 

[clip of Tim Ryan] Our brand is toxic in so many places, and it’s like you’re a Democrat? Like, that’s the stuff we get, like in Ohio. 

Jane Coaston: It’s hard to wrap your head around. If the whole idea behind small d Democratic politics is that a person runs for office, promises to do things voters say they want and then actually delivers, then voters should reward them by reelecting them. It’s a concept known as deliverism, the idea that if you deliver for voters, they’ll deliver votes for you. Except it didn’t really seem to work for Democrats in 2024. So to talk through the concept of deliverism a little more, I spoke with Matt Yglesias. He’s a journalist and he writes a substack newsletter, Slow Boring, about a practical approach to politics and policy. Matt Yglesias, welcome to What a Day. 

Matt Yglesias: Hi, Good to be here. 

Jane Coaston: So can you explain the concept of deliverism? What is it and how is it supposed to work? 

Matt Yglesias: Okay. Shortly after the um the transition, after I think Democrats had won the Georgia special elections, I was talking to, you know, somebody in congressional leadership and he told me, you know, what we’re going to do is we’re going to show that we can deliver meaningful change for the American people. That’s going to mean shots in arms, checks in pockets, student loan relief he you know, rattled off a list of sort of policy objectives for Democrats. And he was pitching me on the idea that, like, if we get all this stuff done, people are going to love it. And, you know, the boil of Trumpism will be lanced. Um. I think the actual word deliverism, uh David Dayen uh sort of made up in an American Prospect article, but making a similar point that it’s not it’s not good enough to just sort of espouse popular ideas on the campaign trail. You need to deliver them in office. And if you could tell people like, here’s this long list of amazing things we did for you then, then they’re going to love it. 

Jane Coaston: Well, it seems like Biden and by extension Vice President Harris really banked on this concept because the administration did a lot in four years. There was the Inflation Reduction Act, which was the single largest investment in climate and energy infrastructure like ever. There was the Chips act to boost production of semiconductors, a push for student loan forgiveness, a bipartisan infrastructure deal, the largest one year drop in child poverty. So why didn’t it work? Like if you thought deliverism is we deliver you stuff you say you want, you deliver us votes. Why? What? Where’s the disconnect? What happened? 

Matt Yglesias: I think the biggest tell here is not just they did a lot of stuff, which, you know they did, but that they they leaned into that characterization of themselves as having done a lot. Right. If somebody would say, you know, Joe Biden has the longest record of progressive achievement of any president since Lyndon Johnson. Um. The White House would like mash retweet on that, right? They wouldn’t say like, no, that’s not true. Joe Biden is running an incredibly bipartisan uh, you know, administration. Right. They they wanted an image as having achieved a lot. And they were granted that often in the press. I mean, I think it’s really a kind of fundamental misread of how public opinion works. There’s this old result, Christopher [?] I believe came up with the title um, public opinion as a thermostat. And it’s like when people perceive that a lot of progressive policy change is happening, what happens is they develop more conservative issue preferences. And when, you know, when Trump was in office, you had the opposite. Right. 

Jane Coaston: Right. 

Matt Yglesias: So Trump talked constantly about how terrible immigrants were and all the mean things he was going to do to immigration. And public opinion swung way to the left as a result of that. Then Biden came in and was like, we need to be more welcoming to people seeking asylum. Um. And the result of that is that public opinion swung way to the right. And, you know, I mean, I think that’s just a kind of fundamental truth about American politics. It’s why the president’s party usually does poorly in the midterms. It’s why, you know, we tend to see the parties swinging back and forth across these close elections because people are very upset about the system. Right. And like the establishment. But people are nervous about large scale policy change. 

Jane Coaston: So are we just a nation of malcontents? Because it just sounds like, okay, the president is going to zig and America zags. What do we do with that? 

Matt Yglesias: So I do think this question of sort of anti-establishment sentiment and what it means is really kind of fundamental because people have a very low level of confidence in political elites. And so when they hear a partisan agenda being enacted and it’s controversial, they tend to be suspicious of that. And, you know, I mean, a really infamous thing from 2009 or 2010, right, was that Nancy Pelosi was on the floor of the House and she’s giving a speech and she says we have to pass the bill, the Affordable Care Act, so that people can find out what’s in it. Um. And this was like a huge gaffe at the time, and it only exacerbated people’s concerns about that legislation. Then what happened was, was they passed the bill. Implementation took several years, but by the time Donald Trump was president, it had been implemented. Then when he started saying he wanted to repeal it, people found out what was in the bill. Right? I mean, exactly as the former speaker had said. And they were like, what? You want to take away protections for people with preexisting conditions? You want to let women be discriminated against in insurance premiums? You want to kick millions of people off Medicaid? And they hated that idea. So it is a little bit of like a nation of haters dynamic um. And, you know, I mean, I think that’s just something like you have to learn to live with. 

Jane Coaston: Do you think that this election was a repudiation of the concept of deliverism, or were Biden and Harris just working against big headwinds, fallout from the pandemic, high inflation and a global rejection of incumbents? 

Matt Yglesias: It’s a little bit of both, right? I mean, you know, clearly the thing people wanted delivered was like cheaper grocery prices and they didn’t deliver that. Um. I don’t know how much they could have done that that would have delivered what they wanted. But, you know, you talked about, you know, after the pandemic, incumbents everywhere have been really struggling. The 2020 election happened at an odd time. Right. They were catching some of that pandemic discontent. But it was early enough that it that it came back around and hit them. Right. If the election had been 18 months in the future, Democrats could have just been the ones who rode to the rescue. If it had happened earlier, they might have just gotten wiped out. But it happened at this bend point right where it was it was tempting to see people’s concern about pandemic relief and so on and so forth as like demand for this enormous progressive agenda. But then when the progressive agenda was rolled out, you know, everyone just wanted like chicken to be cheaper, which I sympathize with. I also want chicken to be cheaper. 

Jane Coaston: I think something you made this point that Trump’s lowest period of polling during his presidency wasn’t when he did any of the nonsensical bullshit he did. It’s the closest he came to eliminating the Affordable Care Act. That was when people were like, oh absolutely, we are furious about this. So Trump has promised a lot of things. Trump has been, as I’ve said, kind of the sixth grade presidential candidate president, where he promised everybody everything all the time. Does he have to deliver on those promises and does it matter? Does he have to deliver? Is there deliverism for Trump? 

Matt Yglesias: I mean, I think he doesn’t have to deliver. I mean, I think the more Trump delivers, the worse off he’s going to be, right? Like if he were to actually deliver on this make America healthy again um concept, right? Like–

Jane Coaston: Banning gummy worms. Nope.

Matt Yglesias: I mean. I mean. Right. I mean, if he were to, you know, make people stop eating candy. A lot of candy enjoyers would get mad if he was to get Americans to consume less um soy and corn oil, which is like a big, like right–

Jane Coaston: Yeah. 

Matt Yglesias: –wing talking point. But like Iowa, which used to be a swing state, has become a hard right state. Right. If the government tried to like, ban their major agricultural outputs, people there would be quite upset. Whereas if they can just sort of like post about it, you know, that just like, ah like the libs, they don’t want you to know about manly public health, you know, like let’s pump some iron that’s, you know, kind of like vague position taking works well for them. I think you really see this on like on the immigration issue, right? Where like if you were to actually deport millions and millions of people from the country, um that would cause a lot of problems in people’s daily life, right? Like when your favorite restaurant closes down because the dishwashers all got deported. And then it turns out that like, half those dishwashers had kids in the local school and there’s all these sad stories. It’s like or, you know, groceries again, if they get more expensive because you got rid of all the farm workers, people aren’t going to like that. But people right now say they like the idea of mass deportation. So I think, like to the extent that Trump is all talk, no action, that’s probably good for him. 

Jane Coaston: Matt, as always, thank you so much for joining me. 

Matt Yglesias: Oh. Thank you. 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with Matt Yglesias. He’s a journalist and writes a substack newsletter, Slow Boring. We’ll get to more of the news in a moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe. Leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts. Watch us on YouTube and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break]

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Jane Coaston: And now the news. 

[sung] Headlines. 

[clip of Melissa Murray] I just want to alert you all to some breaking news that we’re getting. NBC News is reporting that President Biden is expected to pardon his son, Hunter Biden. 

Jane Coaston: That was Strict Scrutiny host Melissa Murray on MSNBC, breaking the news that President Biden pardoned his son Hunter on Sunday night. According to White House officials, Biden made the decision over the weekend, and in a statement on Sunday, the president said he did it because his son was, quote, “selectively and unfairly prosecuted.” He wrote, quote, “I believe in the justice system but as I have wrestled with this I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice.” He also took aim at Republicans for targeting Hunter in the media, writing, quote, “In trying to break Hunter. They have tried to break me, and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.” This is a huge reversal for Biden, who has said repeatedly that he would not use his executive power to pardon his son. Here’s White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre responding to a question on the subject during a press briefing earlier this year. 

[clip of unnamed journalist] From a presidential perspective, is there any possibility that the president would end up pardoning his son? 

[clip of Karine Jean-Pierre] No.

[clip of unnamed journalist] Well is there–

[clip of Karine Jean-Pierre] I just said no. I just answered. 

Jane Coaston: Hunter was days away from sentencing for federal gun charges and federal tax evasion. He faced a maximum of 42 years in prison. A new rebel coalition has shocked Syrian officials in the country’s ongoing civil war. The rebel group began its surprise offensive against President Bashar al Assad’s government last week and continued on Sunday. The group seized a large swath of Aleppo, the country’s largest city, on Saturday. A civil war between Assad and rebel forces began in 2011. Assad has held on to Aleppo since 2016 with the help of ally countries like Russia and Iran. Syria’s military has temporarily withdrawn from Aleppo to regroup. Here’s what U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan had to say about the rebel offensive on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. 

[clip of Jake Sullivan] What we would like to see is the full implementation of U.N. Security Council resolutions that could bring a measure of peace and stability to Syria and protection to civilians, including religious minorities. 

Jane Coaston: The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that rebel fighters made more advances on Sunday toward the southern city of Hama. More than 300 people have been killed in the fighting so far. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees in the Near East, or Unwra, has suspended deliveries through Israel’s main route, after officials said on Sunday that it’s become too dangerous on Gaza’s side of the border. Armed gangs looted nearly 100 delivery trucks last month, stealing all the food and supplies inside. Unicef has also called the conditions unacceptable. Israel has blamed Hamas for the lootings, but Unwra has pointed the finger at Israel, accusing its military failing to keep the routes safe. World Central Kitchen, another major aid group working in Gaza, also shut down on Saturday, citing safety concerns. An Israeli airstrike killed three of its workers over the weekend. This is the second time an Israeli airstrike has killed World Central Kitchen volunteers. Israel claimed that one of the people killed in the strike over the weekend had ties to Hamas. WCK says that they have no knowledge of any of their staff being affiliated with the group. The Wall Street Journal reported that Egyptian and Israeli officials are in talks to reopen a border crossing near the southern city of Rafah. If they make a deal, it could reopen before the end of the year. President Joe Biden spoke on the White House South Lawn on Sunday as part of World Aids Day, talking to survivors and their families. 

[clip of President Joe Biden] I hope you can find comfort and remember, one thing is never lost your love for them and their love for you. Jill and I along with countless others, are forever grateful to you for your collective and individual courage. 

Jane Coaston: There are 39 million people living with HIV worldwide. The fight against Aids has come a long way. The disease is no longer the death sentence it used to be. A new drug from pharmaceutical company Gilead has some researchers excited that it could be a possible vaccine. Studies have shown Sunlenca, a twice yearly injection, has been 100% effective in preventing HIV infections in women and almost as effective in men. Gilead is seeking authorization to have the drug used as an HIV preventative with the hope of ending the Aids epidemic. About 630,000 people died of Aids last year, the lowest number since 2004. Experts from the United Nations say we’re at a, quote, “historic crossroads where ending the disease might be possible.” And holy shit, after more than 40 years of death and stigma and loss, what an achievement that would be. And that’s the news. [music break] One more thing. So while we were on Thanksgiving break, Donald Trump was doing what he does best, posting a lot. He loves to Post, always has. He’s just a born poster. Anyway, last Wednesday, Trump posted, quote, “I will be working on a large scale United States advertising campaign explaining how bad fentanyl is for people to use. Millions of lives being so needlessly destroyed. By the time the campaign is over, everyone will know how really bad the horror of this drug is.” Now, if there’s anything I know about hard drugs, it’s that the people who do them, particularly drugs like fentanyl, probably know it’s not good for them. And as a DARE graduate, I’m also aware that let’s do a big ad campaign so that everyone knows drugs are bad has a winning percentage worse than Ohio State’s against Michigan since 2021. That’s oh and four for those who aren’t keeping track. But I actually want to make a larger point, which is that there is a good chance this large scale United States advertising campaign either doesn’t happen at all or becomes something so anodyne that we all kind of just forget about it, because Donald Trump is not just a poster. He’s a liar. And that should be a big factor in how we cover him and how you think about him. I was going to make a big list of Trump’s failed promises from his first term from we’re going to eliminate the U.S. debt in eight years to we’re going to bring back coal, to his 2016 promise to eliminate gun free zones on day one and his plan to enact a five year ban on executive branch employees becoming lobbyists. But if I did that, we’d be here for hours because Donald Trump lies all the time, so much so that his entire political appeal seems to me to rely on him being a liar. Of course, he just won’t do the scariest stuff he repeatedly promises to do because he never does. That’s not to say that his lies don’t matter. He’s going to be the president of the United States again. So how he lies and what he lies about is important. But posts aren’t policies and we can’t treat them like they are. Posts don’t tell you answers to questions like who’s going to pay for this and will this work and wait? Seriously, people know fentanyl is bad for you. You know that, right? So the next time Donald Trump posts something on the Internet, which knowing him will probably be right about now, take a second to remember that we cannot spend the next four years running after every Truth Social pronouncement. Our nervous systems can’t handle that. Or at least mine can’t. So let’s pay attention to what Trump does, who he hires, what bills he signs. Because honestly, we are way too busy for posts. [music break]

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Jane Coaston: That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe. Leave a review. Go on and give your son in law’s father a job and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading and not just about how it’s fun to remember the time Donald Trump said he wouldn’t play golf as president like me. What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston and go blue baby. [music break] What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producer is Raven Yamamoto. Our producer is Michell Eloy. We had production help today from Tyler Hill, Johanna Case, Joseph Dutra, Greg Walters and Julia Claire. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison and our executive producer is Adriene Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka. [music break] 

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