Bill Scher on Abortion and Polarization
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Welcome to Breaking Battlegrounds with your hosts Sam Stone and Chuck Warren. We have a packed show for you today, so make sure you stay tuned, including for the podcast-only segment. Go on there, download it. Breaking Battlegrounds is available on every podcast format. First on the line today with us, Robert Knight, Senior Fellow for the American Civil Rights Union, a regular columnist for The Washington Times. He's been covering some stuff we want to talk about going on in Texas with Myra Flores.

But also, obviously, we're going to be talking a little bit about the big news of the moment, the Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe versus Wade. Robert, thank you for joining us and welcome to the program. Well, thanks for having me on, Sam and Chuck. So you did a piece fairly recently for The Washington Times on Flores and her win in Texas and what that means for Republicans in November. I thought that was really quite a watershed moment.

What should Republicans be taking away from her victory?

A couple things. First, the Hispanic vote shouldn't be ceded to the Democrats. And for a long time, Republicans haven't made the effort to get into the Hispanic community and the black community, for that matter. But those voters are peeling away and they're veering toward the Republican Party. And this is a great opportunity for them to pick up votes of people who are tired of the insanity that has descended upon us since Joe Biden moved into the White House.

and that was the impetus for my column that uh... this is not just evidence of hispanics moving toward republicans but it's i'd believe it's a precursor to voters in general saying stop the insanity

And you can see the insanity at the gas pump, in supermarket prices, what's going to happen in the fall when these high energy prices hit everything else, including fertilizer for farmers. I mean, we're in the grip of a regime that seems determined to drive us into the dirt.

economically and culturally. I mean, they're pushing the transgender agenda in the military, in the schools. And I think the American people are looking around saying enough is enough. Let's stop the insanity. And Myra Flores' victory in deep south of Texas, 85 percent Hispanic district, really opened some eyes.

Chuck? Robert, so talking about insanity. So today we have the Roe versus Wade ruling. And there is going to be no moderate talk on this. There will be extreme for pro-choice supporters. The world has come to an end. How do you see this playing out, this election cycle and beyond?

well i think the democrats uh... are secretly uh... happy in a way because they're hoping that they can use the abortion issue uh... and and the gun issue for that matter from of this recent other supreme court ruling

to distract people from the economic issues which are carrying them down uh... it's not going to work it is the economy stupid uh... and voters aren't dumb that they don't like getting what what appears to be going to be six dollar a gallon gas before too long uh... that they they know who's responsible job i didn't keep trying to blame that vladimir putin uh... but for the

I think the abortion issue will turn out some of the far-left Democratic faithful, but it won't be enough to stop the Republican wave. As long as we have free and fair elections and the Republicans keep an eye on vote fraud like they did in Virginia last fall and elected Glenn Youngkin and Winston Sears and Jason Myers,

That also sent shockwaves through Democrats, because Winston Sears is a black woman who's very much an outspoken Christian. Jason Myers is a Hispanic and another outspoken Christian. And Glenn Youngkin, the governor, is an outspoken Christian. They've been telling us these people can't get elected, but you know what? They can. Absolutely. Flores, too, right, is very strongly based on Christian values in her campaign.

Oh, she is. She was outspoken about it. I'm a Christian. I'm a mother of four. My husband's a Border Patrol agent. I mean, what are they going to do with people like this? Well, I think arrest us all if they can at this point is what they seem to be trying to do. Yeah, but I am worried about vote fraud. I really am. I don't know if you've seen 2,000 Mules and...

rigged the movie by Citizens United, showing how Zuckerberg pretty much bought the election by spending $400 million to go into takeover election offices. Now, the good news is Republicans are onto it, and they are preparing defenses. They're passing laws saying no private money for government elections, which should have happened years ago because the opportunity for corruption is unbelievable. Yeah.

you know, private money pouring into the place that's supposed to be politically neutral. Uh,

Why they didn't see it before, I don't know. And then the ballot boxes, unmanned ballot boxes all over the place. That was a COVID-19 wrinkle that was never seen before in American history. And it has to go. We have to get rid of those ballot boxes. And they really need to curb early voting. You don't need a month to vote. No. There's no excuse. Even a week is a lot. But a month? Here in Arizona, we have a situation where

You have your primary on August 2nd, and then early ballots go out less than 60 days later. I mean, there's no time between the primary and the general to even get a message out.

Yeah, and the problem is a lot of these people vote early, and then things happen. Suddenly they get an eye-opening view of their candidate, and they wish they hadn't voted for him. Also, it's hard to watch what's happening when the elections are strung out over weeks at a time. You can't have poll watchers doing it. This is why they love mail-in balloting.

because it's the easiest way to commit vote fraud. And that's what happened in 2020. I'm convinced the millions of ballots mailed from uncorrected registration lists resulted in great opportunities for vote fraudsters. Chuck, I know you have a question. Robert, look,

Go ahead, Sam. I was just going to add, we know that they ballot harvested for years and now you have a national database that they can cross reference that's supposed to be used to clean voter rolls. But instead, if you don't clean those voter rolls, actually gives you a direct list of people in that state expecting early where their early ballots going out. And those people aren't there. You know, they've died. They've moved away. No one's expecting that ballot.

Yeah, it's a little like the list of Americans left in Afghanistan that we're asking the Afghans to protect. It's a list for the bad guys to go after them. Well, in this case, you've got a list of everybody, and a lot of these voting rolls have been cleaned up for years, and that's a violation of federal law. The Motor Voter Act that Bill Clinton signed,

compels states to keep clean voter rolls and so does the help america vote act that came a little later so these officials all over the country are in violation if they're not bothering to clean up their voter rolls robert let's go back to roby wade for a minute um yeah the decision today how do you see what does obviously this battle goes to the states now

How do you see Democrats attacking this on a state level and what will Republicans do on a state level if you had a crystal ball today? Well, we can look at what's already occurred in a lot of the conservative states. They've already moved to pass laws restricting abortion or ending it in all due respects, like in the state of Mississippi that brought this case and in the

Deep blue states like New York and New England and California, they're moving quickly to put laws in the books that are really extreme. I mean, New York's law allows abortion right up to the moment of birth, which I consider infanticide. I mean,

You're going to lie baby moments from birth and you kill it. But that's infanticide. You know, they say it's just tissue or something. And this is like the transgender movement. They really are defying science and common sense and not to mention basic morality. Absolutely. Absolutely. No question about it. Robert, as we get it close to the end of the segment here, how do people follow you? How do they keep up with your work?

Well, they could go to my website, which is easy. It's roberthknight.com.

Perfect. Stick an H in there, roberthknight.com. And I also let people email me directly. I'm not shy about it. It's roberthknight4 at gmail.com. The four is the number, not spelled out. roberthknight4 at gmail.com. You'd be surprised how many people contact me after something like this, a podcast or a radio show. And I'm happy to engage with them. Oh, that's fantastic. Thank you for doing that. I know, folks, if you're listening out there...

Get a hold of Robert. He is one of the smarter people in Washington, which at times seems like it may not be saying all that much because there is a lot of insanity coming out of there. You had another column I wanted to hit on real quickly before we wrap up here. This week's woke offering is the Washington Commanders.

Oh, yeah. It's hard to believe, but Jack Del Rio, the defensive coordinator of the commanders, made a statement saying, you know, yeah, they're looking into January 6th, the Capitol riot, but why isn't anybody looking at the 2020 riots with Black Lives Matter and Antifa that tore up literally hundreds of cities, left dozens dead, took...

caused two billion in damage, left something like over a thousand police officers injured. Why isn't anybody talking about that? So they said, oh, he's been insensitive. And he...

You know, he made one mistake. He used the word dust-up. He said, well, compared to those riots, the January 6th Capitol riot was a dust-up. So now, okay, he has to apologize, pay a $100,000 fine. I don't think that's the end of this. I mean, when the left identifies somebody and wants to crucify them, they do it. He's still coaching for the commanders, but...

And I hope he does fine there. But he has been forced to apologize for something that shouldn't have been apologized for. As a Cardinals fan, I hope he only does okay there.

Well, I'm a longtime Redskins fan, so I still have to root for the commanders, even though they're kind of politically correct right now. Well, and this is a bigger thing than just the commanders. We only have about a minute left, but corporations and then the folks that run into these issues, I think if there's one lesson from Dave Chappelle and others, it's don't back up. Don't apologize. Don't give them one inch of ground.

Because once you do, they are dogs on meat. Yeah, they get rabid. They smell blood. It always just gets worse for them. And I would love to tell Republicans in particular, quit giving away any moral ground. You don't have to.

They don't respect you for it, and all it does is embolden them. Whenever bullies see weakness, they just go for more. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Robert Knight, Senior Fellow of the American Civil Rights Union, columnist for The Washington Times. Folks, make sure you follow him. He's doing amazing work. Breaking Battlegrounds coming right back. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your hosts Sam Stone and Chuck Warren.

On the line with us, returning friend of the program, Bill Scheer. Bill is contributing editor to Politico magazine and a contributor to Real Clear Politics. He is always a fantastically insightful, entertaining guest. Bill, thank you again for joining us. We really appreciate having you on today. Always happy to be with you. Well, there's nothing happening in the country today that anyone needs to talk about, right? I mean, we can all just like wrap up this program and go home right now, can't we?

There was a little thing that happened in the Supreme Court today that you might want to get into a little bit, just to give you a little bit of advice from the outside. Oh, are you sure? Because I've just been tuning out all that noise, you know. Yeah. So we have something pretty significant to talk about, something that I think a lot of people kind of predicted with this Supreme Court and a lot of others just didn't think would come to pass, the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Bill, how is that going to play out in the upcoming midterms?

And then longer term, what's going to happen in all these states? I wish I could give you a succinct answer for it, but I do think it's complicated. On one hand, my overarching view is this is still a pro-choice majority country. Every poll shows that. I don't think this is going to be widely embraced by the public at large. And that

puts Republicans in a tricky situation. Almost everything else is going their way for the midterms. I would think if you're a Republican, you kind of want to leave things just being strictly political here. You want to not let anything, any wild cards get in the way of the momentum that you currently have with inflation going the way it is. This gives Democrats an opportunity to talk about something that's not inflation,

where they're in the majority on. And you're not seeing Republicans nominate more moderate mainstream candidates, at least on the Senate level. You're seeing some pretty hard right figures getting nominated so far. So that also gives Democrats an opportunity to say, this person is just too far out of the mainstream.

There's also, I think, risk for Republicans on the state races, governor's races. You know, if you're in Alabama, sure, this is not easy to implement an abortion ban.

We got a lot of purple state Republican governors up for reelection. DeSantis in Florida, even Abbott in Texas. I'm not arguing they're doomed by any stretch. The polls are just pretty much otherwise. But the poll I saw in Texas that came out that had Abbott up over Beto O'Rourke,

had O'Rourke beating Abbott when it came to abortion. Now, abortion was only a top issue for 8% of Texas voters.

But this was before the decision. Again, I'm not overstating the analysis here. I'm not saying this means Abbott's in trouble. That's just one case. But I think you have a number of purple states where abortion doesn't cut the Republicans' way. And we'll see. We'll see if it rises to the level where it overwhelms what had otherwise been the top issues.

On the flip side of all this is Democrats are not quickly coalescing around a singular view on how to handle this because you still have a divide in the Democratic Party over do we abolish the filibuster? Do we pack the Supreme Court?

And those positions are not as readily embraced by the majority of the country. Off the top of my head, I know that John Fetterman in Pennsylvania, who a couple of shows is leading the Republican Dr. Oz, not landslide territory, but with a decent sized cushion. Oz's unfavorables are terrible in Pennsylvania. But Fetterman, I know I said he wants to abolish the filibuster. I'm not sure what he said about packing the court. So forgive me for being ignorant on that.

But he just said on Twitter today he wants to abolish the filibuster to codify Roe. Codifying Roe is popular. Abolishing the filibuster might not be. So if this becomes a point of intra-party dissension, we're not really, our Democrats disagreeing amongst themselves, but some people are actively

criticizing Democratic Party leadership or attacking Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema. How dare these people sully our party with their love of the filibuster if they're getting into that circular firing squad place that dampens their ability to take advantage of any pro-choice momentum? Bill, there's something interesting about this debate as well, because like you said, the country is pro-choice, but it's not what the Democrat House bill was.

clear up to birth. The public's not there, nor are they for eliminate completely all abortions. There really is a lot of nuances to this. So how do you see progressives and Democrats attacking this? Do they just take that hard line, like some on the right will say, get rid of Roe, and they'll just say, no, you have abortion clear up to you're on the table. And we're giving labor. I mean, what do you think they do? Because it's not as well.

we're getting a, as everybody likes to pretend I, you know, we're, we're getting a lot of a breakup in your feed right there, Chuck. Um,

Sorry. OK, go ahead, Sam. I think, Bill, I think you got the gist of the question. Democrats are a little bit out of line with the public on this, too, because they are pushing a really extreme and frankly, pretty awful vision of abortion up to the day of birth. California actually had a bill that would have extended it past the day of birth. Which part of their party comes comes out with the winning legislation that they're going to move forward with?

Well, without accepting the entirety of the premises of your questions and statements, to get to the heart of the matter, yes, it's not as simple as the country is just flatly pro-choice. I'd say they are generally pro-choice, but quite open to restrictions in second and third trimesters. And where the issue gets tricky is,

for both parties, both parties have their weaknesses on the issue. For example, in 2012, when you had some Republicans in state legislatures talking about forced ultrasounds, that put them in a weaker spot. When you had Senate candidates talking about no exceptions for rape, we had two candidates in 2012 lose in Indiana and Missouri, these Republican states, lose because they would not give ground on the rape exception question.

In the 90s, when Democrats were defending late-term abortions, that was harder turf for them. And why it's, you know, the easy attack is you're effectively supporting infanticide. The Democratic response is, no, we're talking about situations where there are medical complications, and this should be a matter between a woman and her doctor. You know, I think it's

but it's a more complicated position. It's been harder for them on the generality of it and not get boxed into dealing with the more tricky examples. So I think at the moment when a conservative Supreme Court shaped by Republicans has abolished Roe, their Democrats are not as susceptible

to fighting on their weakest turf. They can fight on their strongest turf right now, 'cause that's what's front and center. There may come a point down the line where you can make Democrats' life difficult when you talk about the late-term issue, but the late-term issue is not the primary issue at this present time.

Okay, Bill, we're going to bring you back for our next segment here. I want to keep talking about this. But obviously, this is going to be a discussion that carries right through this election and likely into 2024. Folks, Breaking Battlegrounds coming right back with more from Bill Scheer. All right, welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. At the moment, just with your host, Sam Stone, Chuck Warren off the line. It turns out, folks, that the dog ate his headphones.

That's a new one, but we're going to go with it. Now, obviously, we're having a little bit of technical problem. We really appreciate Bill Scheer staying on the line with us here. We have a lot more to talk about, obviously, on what's going on right now and how the overturning of Roe v. Wade is going to play out across the country this year and for the coming couple of years. Bill, again, thank you for joining us. Love having you on. How can folks stay in touch with your work?

Well, mostly running at the Washington Monthly, also every other week at Real Clear Politics, and I'm always active on Twitter at Bill Scher, B-I-L-L-S-C-H-E-R. Fantastic. You know, one of the things I like about Real Clear Politics is I get ticked at it almost exactly 50% of the time, which I think is an indication they're doing the right things. Yeah.

They try. They try to get everything from the left and the right on there so you get your fill no matter where you stand. Well, talking about getting your fill no matter where you stand, I think this issue we've been talking about is going to be all over everyone's TV sets for the next several months across this country as these elections play out.

I mean, here in Arizona, there's actually some confusion in our legislature about whether a total ban that's been on the books, I think, since 1917 or a more recent bill that that drew abortion back to limit it to 15 weeks will be the law of the state.

But Democrats clearly see this as a big area for them to attack in an otherwise very unfavorable electoral environment. You know, and a lot of this, you know, taking your specific example there, perhaps it's going to take some time to sort out.

legally, you know, with some litigation at the state level, what is the actual law that's in effect? And perhaps that delays implementation of the law. You know, what we saw in Texas after they passed effectively a six week abortion ban last year,

was that the number of abortions in the states only went down a slight amount because people were either traveling across state lines or getting abortion pills mailed to them, even though Texas made that illegal shortly thereafter the initial ban. That's a hard thing to enforce.

you weren't seeing, I mean, I'm not saying this makes the, from a pro-choice perspective, I'm not saying it makes the bill okay that you should make it this hard for people to get an abortion. But I think as a matter of politics, if access is not materially affected, it limits the amount of backlash that Democrats can exploit. So it may not have

the immediate political effect that some people might expect. And that might make Republicans say, well, you know what, we got rid of Roe and the waters weren't royal and everyone's going to go about their business. But that doesn't mean that

Things can't come to a head in short order once laws get implemented, get enforced aggressively. If there are people put in jail, if there are people with steep fines, if you do start seeing abortion statistics really plow because you can't cross state lines easily or people being arrested because they are crossing state lines, there's lots of ways this could get

much more felt at the grassroots level. And when that happens again, since the country generally speaking is pro-choice, I think that's where things can get politically dicey for Republicans. Yeah. You know, one of the interesting things is there was some discussion for instance here, and I know in a few other States about, uh, putting this issue on the ballot for this year as a way to separate it from candidates. Um,

I'm not sure that pro-life advocates haven't overplayed their hand in trying to stop those efforts because obviously then the legislature, the governor here would get to decide. You leave it an issue for those races.

As a Republican, in looking at it from a slightly different perspective, would you say, hey, this is something that probably now needs to go to the ballot box for voters to decide on? That maybe even given our divisive politics, the best thing we can all do is take it off the table for the politicians themselves? I mean, I don't have a blanket statement to make about that. I mean, I think...

The notion that you're going to solve the abortion debate so everybody's happy about it and never becomes a point of debate ever again. Like, that's just not realistic.

And I thought one of the weird aspects of the court's thinking was, I mean, you see this in the opinions that they're critical of the subsequent Roe position opinion on Casey. Well, Casey didn't solve the abortion debates that shows it's not really strong precedent. The notion that's how you take it off the table and so you leave it to the people and everyone's going to come to some sort of consensus. That's unrealistic, too. We're going to fight about this continually.

Probably till the end of time. Yeah, I want to talk some more about that when we come back in our next segment. Breaking Battlegrounds coming right back at you.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host Sam Stone, Chuck Warren. I'm

Not able to join us. Some technical difficulties today. He's out of town, but on the line with us, returning guest Bill Shearer. Bill, thank you again for joining us. We always appreciate your insights on the program here. When we went to break, we were talking, obviously, about the overturning of Roe v. Wade. What effect that will have. There was a piece that I thought was very interesting in The Atlantic today talking about how

With the movement we're seeing in the country, with people relocating, there is more and more sorting going on where we're becoming a country of very red states and very blue states. Is this ruling likely to increase that sort of division? And how do we ever get back to being a country if we can't agree on virtually anything anymore?

Well, disagreement is not bad. Democracies have disagreements. That's kind of part of the mix. The question is, can you disagree and still recognize there's commonality that does unite us as a people? And what's sort of frustrating to me is I think there's lots of evidence that

We were finding that commonality in the past year that even despite all the polarization, people came together on infrastructure. They came together on Ukraine. They came together recently on gun safety. So we could be having a narrative about how we are calming down as a nation, depolarizing as a nation, yet things keep coming up that take us in the opposite direction. And

You know, with with with the loss of Roe, when you have rights recognized in some states, not others, that's a very hard place for a country to be at. So I think it's going to be very hard to to sort out. But but we're not cleanly red and blue. As I was saying earlier, there's a lot of purple places in America. There's a lot of purple states in America, including the ones this show airs in.

Yeah. I mean, Arizona is absolutely one of them. So the idea that the red states will do this, the blue states will do this, they will be happy in their separate corners. That's not what's going to happen here. There's going to be some very, very fierce arguing in these purple areas. OK, now getting on to some stuff that I think is a little more fun and certainly a little more lighthearted. Chuck was saying before during one of our breaks, before he had to go there, you've been blogging now for 20 years.

Literally 20 years. There's 20 years in two days to be exact. Wow. So I should probably offer you my condolences, right?

I'm not regretful of my choices, my life choices. Is it getting easier? I had a blog 20 years ago called liberaloasis.com. That's no longer in existence. So technically, I don't blog so much these days. I write for online publications and I'm active on social media. So in that sense, I've been writing about politics online for 20 years. And a lot's happened over that period of time.

How much has the way you interact with people online changed during that time? Well, when I started, I had a blog and didn't even have comments. So my interactions were not in real time. There's some emailing, there are blogger conferences and things like that. Now I'm getting it minute by minute on Twitter. And there's obviously good and bad to that. But yeah,

The fact that we have so much connectivity and interactivity obviously is very, very double-edged. You know, we can get opinions and feedback in real time, but our sense of what the broader public opinion is can be very warped because the voices you get online aren't necessarily reflective of the public at large. Well, I think we saw that a lot recently with the gun control measure that was passed by the Senate, and now we'll go to the House, but...

If you look at, for instance, John Cornyn in Texas, even though there's a huge backlash on Twitter from the conservative right against him, his poll numbers are holding up strong. It looks like, frankly, there's an awful lot of people out there that are entirely comfortable with some sort of compromise on the issue.

Yeah, I don't think, Cornyn didn't seem to break a sweat when he got booed at the Republican convention. He's been around the block long enough to know just because you're a part of the state party doesn't mean you are representative of the state, let alone the state's primary electorate. You have to have enough experience to not be overly swayed by the loudest voice because the loudest voice might not be the determining voice.

How much has online interaction changed politics over those 20 years that you've been doing this? Well, I...

What's been striking to me on the Democratic side is I think the Democratic Party has been very influenced by the Twitter conversation, even though there's lots of evidence that they shouldn't be so much. I mean, you know, Twitter didn't want Joe Biden to be the nominee at all. Progressive Twitter was livid at the even mocking of the notion that it was even possible.

And Biden made a bet that Twitter was not representative, spoke to the public at large and won the primaries going away. And yet,

That didn't change how Democrats operated, at least in 2021. They still were very influenced by the most engaged voices, which were pushing Democrats to go very big and abolish the filibuster and all that kind of stuff. And when they were constrained by Manchin and Sinema, there still is great anger about that. How dare those two people do such a thing?

If Biden, I think, stuck to his bipartisan history, he might have approached his legislative agenda in a different sequence, not go big first and scale back later, but go for 60 first. See if you can find the infrastructure, the gun safety sweet spots early. And then if you hit a wall with that, you're going to get 60 so many times. Then you can say, hey, I tried my best.

Now it's time to do with 50. I think that order of events would have served Democrats a whole lot better than the way things went down, where there was a lot of misaligned expectations ginned up on social media that got dashed and led to a lot of frustration, demoralization. Well, you know, it's interesting because there's a lot of talk among the progressive left here in Arizona about getting rid of Sinema, primarying her, that sort of thing.

I got to tell you, I think they could potentially primary her. They could potentially beat her in a primary. But if they do, it's going to be with a candidate who's almost guaranteed to lose. Whereas if she's your nominee, she's going to win and they're still going to be aligned with her. What, 80, 90, 95 percent of the time? There's not a great track record of the Democratic left.

beating more moderate incumbents in primaries. There are a couple of examples, AOCB Joe Crowley and Kurt Schrader just got beaten in Oregon in a redrawn district. But those are more anomalous. And again, I can't speak to, Yosinima is a bit of her own case because on one hand, she's been very,

provocative towards the left. On the other hand, she's racking up a real record here. She can go in 2024 and say, I...

infrastructure bill is cinnamon portman the gun safety bill uh i brought chris murphy together with mitch mcconnell and john corden and tom tillis you know you need you need me on that wall so she's not you know joe manchin i mean it's west virginia so it's a different deal you know joe manchin's got rep now of blocking things he blocked build back better so he's got more of doing things and i think that's going to hold her in pretty good stead i can't predict she can win the primary but uh i've

I'd rather be her than than Gallego at this point. Yeah, I tend to agree. I mean, I think she is she has done, frankly, and I'll make some people on my side of the aisle mad. But I think she's done an outstanding job representing the state of Arizona as a whole. And I think Joe Biden has tried to do that also. One thing that seems to be popping up and there seems to be some tension coming in is sort of a divide between Biden and his staff.

where some of them are pushing for things that that he doesn't seem terribly comfortable with. And then he says things that they're clearly not terribly comfortable with. Is that I don't think Biden is in one place and his staff is in another. I think that's too simplistic. I think Biden is very internally conflicted. And I think he's been internally conflicted for a long time. He's always had a bipartisan rep.

But he's also often had a partisan streak. You know, conservatives are still mad when Biden said Mitt Romney was going to lock you up in chains. You know, Bill, Joe Biden's still that guy in 2007 when a debate questioner said, are you going to protect my baby, my AR-15? And Joe Biden said, if that's his baby, he needs help. You know, he's always had that fight inside. And here he is first, you know, first month as president. And he's got people around him saying, you can be FDR. You could have it all. And

that side of him, you know, one out. I mean, the bipartisan side is there too.

But there's always, I think, a struggle. You can see in the same appearance, the same speeches, he will say bipartisan things and partisan things in the same breath. So he hasn't found a way to bring it all together. And I think it's not served him well because he's leaned into the partisan side more than he needed to and led to some bad strategic choices in how he deals with his own Congress.

What what is next if you're Biden in the White House? What comes next in the next two, three, four months before this election? Because you may have a very narrow window to get some things done that won't be possible or, you know, may not be possible after November.

Well, there's still a lot of talk that Democrats are going to get that reconciliation bill, reconciliation, the procedure that's filibuster proof, but is limited to budget related matters. You know, Chuck Schumer and Joe Manchin have been in quiet talks for several weeks.

You know, there's a bit of a code of silence there, so we don't know exactly what's happening, but we're getting dribs and drabs. It seems like it's really happening. It's going to be a lot smaller than Build Back Better, but it's going to be something in theory. And if they can say, hey, we changed the tax code to put corporations more on the hook, and that's going to help

with the deficit, which is going to help with inflation. And we're going to lower the cost of prescription drugs too along the way. You know, those are things that are pretty popular. And at least that progress in going to the midterm saying we did things. This wasn't a waste of time. We weren't befell by gridlock. So that's sort of the biggest thing kind of hanging out there. There's also the competitiveness bill, semi-cucked manufacturing that's supposed to help with China. That's close to fruition.

And perhaps electoral count act reform to have his electoral college train wreck that we had almost had in 2020. So there's still a few things out there. And, you know, if inflation can actually come down between now and November, Democrats might not be completely hammered, but, you know,

Everything can go right for Democrats and you can still lose the Congress because the margins are so now and it's a midterm year. You're losing six House seats historically is pretty darn good for a president's party. But in this case, you would still lose the House. So a lot of things have to go right for Democrats to avoid that problem. Well, you know, at some point and I got to I got to say, I would like to see us figure out how to work together again, because there are a lot of things Republicans and Democrats actually do agree on.

but we never seem to focus on those things. And it's too easy to focus on the things that make for good Twitter, you know, good Twitter posts. And I'm guilty of that as much as anybody, but. Well, I think what's wild about this past year is that they have actually done that. There actually has been a fair amount. I mean, there's some issues I've even mentioned here. There seems small bore, but forced labor from, from China, you know, that's been banned. Yeah.

That kind of flew under the national radar. Anti-hate crimes legislation. Yeah. Then you fly under the radars when things get passed. That's how things get done when the noise is pushed away. But when it happens, you don't see the two parties pat each other on the back and celebrate it. It's done kind of quietly. And what you hear is the anger and the vitriol. So that's unfortunate. We don't recognize when it does happen.

That is too bad because, I mean, that, you know, talking about the forced labor and China issue, that should be a concern for every person in the Western world. You know, not only in terms of economics, but just simple humanitarian, you know, humanitarian values. And that that's a significant accomplishment. But you're right. Those things are getting pushed aside by a lot of.

a very aggressive noise. Before we have, we have to go, again, tell people how to follow you. And I want to thank you once again for joining us on the program. On Twitter at Bill Scher, B-I-L-L-S-C-H-E-R, and often writing at the Washington Monthly, RealClearPolitics, and occasionally at Politico.

Fantastic. Bill, thank you so much for joining us once again. We really appreciate having you on. Folks, we're about to wrap up the on-air portion of our program, but be sure to tune in today. We have a fantastic guest who's going to be on the podcast segment of the program, Andrew Mack.

principal of AMG Global Consulting. He is someone who has tremendous experience in food security, a lot of issues that are coming to the front right now. And be sure to tune in for that segment. Breaking Battlegrounds will be back on the air next week.

Welcome back to the Breaking Battlegrounds podcast. I am your host, Sam Stone. Chuck Warren having a few technical difficulties this morning, not able to join us, but I guess I am very excited to talk to Andrew Mack, CEO of Agrimoval. They are doing some amazing work around the world right now that, Andrew, I wanted to talk to you about because tell us a little bit more about Agrimoval, what you're doing, I

I think in this moment in time with everything going on in Ukraine, the increased food insecurity across the globe, the work you're doing is absolutely critical. And I want to really get into that.

Thanks, Sam. Yeah, now, Agrimobile is a tech platform. It's a data platform that helps to connect small farmers with big supply chains around the world. Think about it like, you know, most farmers, there are about a billion and a half small farmers around the world, including in the United States. Most of them have a very, very limited or no digital footprint, so no one can see them. And their invisibility is causing a really big problem for everybody. They can't make enough money to

big supply chains, big buyers, big exporters can't find them. And as a result, you have people locked in a cycle of poverty on the farm side and all kinds of food insecurity on the global side. It's a big issue that's facing the world. And we set out to, we have a US-based technology solution that set out to address it all around the world.

That's fantastic. How did you get into this? Kind of give us a little bit about your background, but how did you get into doing this? Because I think, as someone, I grew up on a farm, on a small farm, and this sounds like heaven for a lot of small farmers to be able to access the broader supply chain. That was always one of our battles, is where to sell your produce. Yeah.

So I'm a Cincinnati boy. So I grew up in the Midwest, but I do not have a farming background. But I spend a lot of time working in different countries around the world. I think I've worked in about 80 different countries. So a former World Bank guy, former banker. I started off my career helping to run a refugee camp on the Zambia-Mozambique border with Doctors Without Borders a long, long time ago.

And this is a problem that you see literally, if you've ever spent any time outside, if you've ever spent any time, certainly in the developing world, but even in rural parts of the United States, you see farmers sitting by the side of the road with big bags of stuff.

They're literally going, the fruits of their labor and the economic future of their families, and it's literally going bad in the hot sun, right? And it's this invisibility, their inability to see who wants their goods, see who wants to transport their goods, to make those connections. That's really at the heart of Agrimobile. We started off, I started off

sitting and talking. I was doing a project for a road safety project with Chevron and the World Bank in Nigeria. And we're sitting by the side of the road talking with a bunch of Nigerian farmers who all have their big bags of stuff and they now have their new cell phones.

And it dawned on me that there must be a way now that we've got a level of connectivity, now that we've got a level of literacy around the world, and now that we're more and more intertwined logistically, there's got to be a way to connect these small farmers with markets, with the possibility of export, with the possibility of processing and creating value add for them and creating value add for these big supply chains.

And we set up to do that. Our goal is to be a very, very straightforward platform. Think about it a little bit like the Google of the ag space. When Google, there's a difference between Google and Yahoo, right? Well, one of the things that Google, I think, did well was they made it very, very simple and very obvious for me as a user what I'm going to do to get on.

right i'm going to go there for search it's going to be super straightforward it's going to be super clean so we sat down with farmers to do a super clean version of an app interface that would allow them to post their goods to raise their hand and say here i am and this is what i'm going to have available and just with those kinds of things and some very basic information about the farmer you can heat map all kinds of things that are very very valuable to

to suppliers who want to purchase from them and manage their risk for governments for uh people who want to push infrastructure and connectivity into into the countryside all those kinds of things are are very valuable and uh we've had a really great experience working with the farmers and working with big supply chains who are trying to reach them how how important is it uh

I mean, well, I know from being on a farm, but timeliness is so important with any kind of food distribution network. Not having to sit there for days and watch your crop go bad on the side of the road. How big a difference can that make for these small farmers, especially in emerging markets, in terms of their ability to sustain, grow, and take care of their family and expand their business and their economy? Yeah.

No, I mean, it's huge. It's huge. And, you know, most people who are looking to buy don't have a sense in the day-to-day of what's going to be available, when it's going to be available, where it's going to be available. And as a result, they're really relying on intermediaries who are the ones who are making most of the money in the agricultural supply chain around the world.

Even large companies, we're working in three countries right now in Colombia, Tanzania and Ghana. I'm actually on my way out to Tanzania and to Kenya in a couple of weeks. And what we've seen, you know, even large supply chains like Guinness we're working with in West Africa, they're working with 30,000 farmers.

And for them to be able to see what's going to be available and when it's going to be available so that they can work with their aggregators to get things picked up at the right time so that they can plan what's going to be happening. That's huge for them. From the farmer's perspective, they want to make sure around the world, about 30% of all the goods, somewhere between 30 and 40% of all the goods that are harvested never make it to anyone. So they accrue to no one's value. There's no, literally no, they get nothing for it. Imagine if it were your work. Wow. If you could just...

This is stuff that just never makes it to market in one way or another, you know, or it gets rejected by an exporter and then never makes it into the domestic market for billions of dollars every year that is lost not just to the small farmers in terms of money that they lose, but also to the world. You think about Ukraine, you think about what's going on with climate change, you think about, you know, some of the some of the some of the big

The pinch points in logistics, all of those things mean that food prices are likely to go up.

What's the first rule of holes? The first rule of holes is if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. And if we've got 30% of the goods that aren't making it to market, boy, that would seem like a great win for the farmer, but also a great win for the supply chain, for people like you and me who want to eat the goods at the end of the road. Yeah, I mean, certainly you're talking- We looked at this, Sam, and- Oh no, go ahead, please. So you had asked earlier about how we-

how we get into this. And we looked at this from the two sides, first from the farmer side, when we're sitting there talking with people from the side of the road, but we also kind of did an exercise with the team around the kind of macro issues. And if you think about it, think about the big issues that are facing the world right now.

food security, climate change, forced migration and employment, small farming is at the center of the biggest issues that are facing all of us right now. They're going to shape the next 50 years of the world. And if we can get this right, we're

We're talking about a group of the 1.5 billion small farmers would be if taken together, they'd be the largest country on earth. Small farming is, people don't realize that the United States, because, you know, two or 3% of all the people in the US are farmers or connected to farming. In the rest of the world, it's, you know, 40, 50, 60, 70, in some countries, 80% of people are small farmers.

If we're going to solve the problems that we face, we need an approach to them that's going to reach a lot of people, that's going to be simple, and that's going to create data that's going to work across countries so we can actually see what's happening and do some big-time planning. I think in the past, we haven't really looked at it as a big macro issue because we've always had enough, and we've always had enough to be able to push out to other parts of the world.

But now with the implications from food shortages and just kind of a whole sense of employment and what are people going to do with their lives, if they're going to be small farmers, we need to make that system work better for them. And you mentioned Guinness, but there are a lot of companies out there that frankly –

I think would have a pretty significant interest just from a social responsibility perspective of engaging and being able to purchase their inputs, the things they need to make their products from these small farmers. How much has that – how big can that market get? Because that seems like it's a pretty big market right now. A lot of companies are willing to maybe spend a little bit more here and there to do this. And it sounds like you've got a way that might not even cost anymore. Yeah.

So our way, the way that we work, we're going to be free to the farmer forever. We want to be as pro farmer as we can possibly be. Okay. We make our money on the back end, helping large supply chains and co-ops and others who need data at scale to get it. Okay. We enter markets working with developers.

with the trusted supply chain actors. So we're not going to come in and try and convince every farmer on earth that they should pull up a smartphone and get our app and all that. Well, we're going to work through the people that they already know. So the co-op movement is very big in the United States. A lot of people, Land O'Lakes, you may not have ever heard of as a co-op, but around the rest of the world, a lot of farmers are in these big co-ops and associations.

A lot of them also, they work through supermarket chains that they sell to, or they work through big suppliers like Guinness. And there are a lot of people that you wouldn't necessarily think of who are also big and getting bigger in this game. For example, a lot of oil companies that need to, you know, they're trying to blend in, uh,

- Ethanol. - Corn and other inputs for ethanol. And things like that, we've been in conversations with Shell in South Africa. We've been in conversations with the Kenya Tea Development Agency in Kenya, which is a big co-op that has like 650,000 members.

There are a lot of really big people out there who need to source and need to manage their risk from a ton of different producers. And you're right, more and more, what we're finding is that shareholders, governments, community groups really care very much about the profile.

of what these people who are you reaching women farmers? Are you reaching younger farmers? Are you reaching farmers from all the different parts of your country? And part of that, in order to understand that you need data and that's the kind of data that we have. It's awesome. Andrew, how many people, because I don't know, and maybe you do offhand, how many people or what percentage of people around the globe are experiencing food insecurity right now or at any given time?

Well, it's certainly different in different places. I don't know the most up-to-date numbers. The things that I've seen have been shocking. I mean, you're talking about many, many millions of people just in the Horn of Africa right now. They're talking about, I'm trying to think, the last...

The last emails that I've been seeing about it were that there are another, what is it? There are another 20 or 30 countries that are in very dire,

risk of famine in not just in Africa, but in parts of Asia. You know that India is having its hottest summer in forever, and it's having a major impact on production. And, you know, I was just listening to a thing on NPR the other day where they were talking about the wheat harvest being off by 30% in Kansas.

Right. So you have super hot conditions in Kansas. You have super hot conditions in India. You have super hot conditions in the southwest. There are, you know, this can put a real significant

significant strain. I know that there are groups like USDA, Feed the Future from USAID and others are tracking this on a day-to-day basis. And there's real concern about famine putting pressure on societies. And it isn't just a question of whether there is

It isn't just a question of whether there's enough food to go around. It's got to get to people. And it puts a tremendous amount of pressure on central governments, governments that are trying to do good things. We worry about forced migration coming up from Central America. As an example, in the United States, it's close to home. A lot of people who are leaving Central America are leaving because their farms are failing.

Because those farms aren't working. They're not providing enough food and enough money for the farmers. And they're, you know, people are doing what people do around the world, which is they, you know, they look for better and more secure situations and they look for ways to earn money for their families.

And that's one of the reasons why we think that this is so timely. I mean, all of the indicators, weather indicators and yield indicators and just the general insecurity around the world, it's going up. And to keep things under control, but also to make, they always talk about never letting a good crisis go to waste. We have a tremendous opportunity, I think, to

We have a tremendous opportunity to look with fresh eyes at what's happening around the world in terms of our agricultural production. It's not just going to be possible for a small number of countries to produce. A lot of people have to improve their game. And we have to modernize the sector. There's no question. You know, 95, 98 percent of all the farmers on Earth are off the data map.

Think about that. Wow. That's crazy, huh? Yeah, that is crazy. And I think food insecurity is one of the things that hasn't been talked about enough in regard to Ukraine and what's going on around the globe with a lot of different things. We're talking a lot about oil because of gas prices in this country. But a much more significant effect long term may be the food instability issues that are created by this. Because when you have food instability in a country, it often leads to a lot of other forms of instability, right? Yeah.

happens in every country, including in developed countries, right? I mean, food insecurity is a major driver of all kinds of social ills wherever you are. And, you know, think about it. If Ukraine accounts for a quarter of the world's wheat, more or less, something like that, 20%, a quarter of the world's wheat, and a lot of that is either bottled up in Ukraine or isn't going to be planted, that's an awful lot of food aid that isn't getting out.

Now, the best case scenario is to make local economies much more productive, right? And I think we have opportunities to do that. The technology to get, you know, there's much more information that's out there on raising yield. There's much more information that's out there on animal husbandry and about how to make, you know, your farming process better. But the

thing that we really haven't cracked the crack the code on is how to improve the marketing how to improve the market linkages so that small farmers can get into the market at scale and nothing can make enough money and to to do the things that you would think that we would want them to do which is to you know expand their production and to hire more people and to produce more you can't get it to market it doesn't matter

Fantastic. And I think we're going to end it there. Andrew Mack, I really want to thank you for coming on the program today. CEO of Agrimovel. It sounds like you guys are doing amazing work. How do people keep up with you and what Agrimovel is doing? We have a website, agrimovel, at www.agromovil.co, because we started off in Colombia. We are on Facebook. We're on LinkedIn a lot.

And, you know, we're expanding around the world. We're just, I'm pleased to say we're hiring people in Ghana and Tanzania, and we've got a great team in Colombia. And we're trying very hard to, you know, to get the investment to bring Agrimobile to the United States.

conditions in the Central Valley and in parts of, you know, Northwest Mississippi are very much like they are in other parts of the world. And we can bring technology to unlock this for farmers everywhere. And that's what we're hoping to do. Yeah, I grew up knowing a lot of the folks who would benefit from something like this right here in this country. And that was frankly in upstate New York.

I mean, it's not that remote where you get into places where there are a lot of small farmers who could really benefit from this technology and what you're doing. Andrew, I want to thank you again for joining us on the program. We really, really appreciate having you. We'd love to have you back sometime. Folks, that's going to do it for today's program. Please be sure to tune in, download, tell your friends about it. Breaking Battlegrounds is growing by leaps and bounds, and we are looking forward to seeing you next week.

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