Mark Blyth, political economist at Brown's Watson Institute, and political scientist Carrie Nordlund share their take on the news.

On this episode: rising Covid cases in the US and Europe; the state of the presidential race amidst America's twisted electoral system; Trump's value and liability to the Republican Party; the US government is kind of, sort of, reigning in big tech (but not really); what would happen if the Catholic Church hired McKinsey; how China's economic dominance spells bad news for the Uyghurs' plight; Trump's dance moves.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

[MUSIC PLAYING] CARRIE NORDLUND: Welcome to Mark and Carrie. We're back. And, Mark, new background for you. Is that a green screen, or are those real guitars?

MARK BLYTH: Those are really guitars, but also, you have to hold on a second, because my dog has just decided to start head butting the door.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Oh, I see. OK.

MARK BLYTH: So I'm gonna have to let the dog out, so give me a second. Just in case you're not getting this on YouTube, there is now a two-year-old golden retriever going mental in the room.

CARRIE NORDLUND: But he or she looks so friendly and nice, so we can't hold it against her.

MARK BLYTH: We're going to give her an associate producer credit.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Oh, yeah. For sure, yeah. She just increased our listeners by at least 10%.

[LAUGHTER]

MARK BLYTH: So where are you? First of all, where are you?

CARRIE NORDLUND: Well, I'm in Montana. And--

MARK BLYTH: As one does.

CARRIE NORDLUND: It's 26 degrees-- yeah, it's 26 degrees and snowing. So it feels like winter. And Montana is one of the states driving the increased case load in the US. Because it's cold, and everyone's indoors eating and having a beer.

MARK BLYTH: You are now one of the main voters there.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah.

MARK BLYTH: Simply by showing up, right?

CARRIE NORDLUND: Oh, no. Completely, completely.

MARK BLYTH: Excellent.

CARRIE NORDLUND: But it has been interesting to see the headlines in the newspaper change as the increases has gone up. And of course, here, Montana, the Dakotas, Wisconsin still a big hot spot in the US as well. But I notice that the US isn't the only one, that there's big space across Europe as well.

MARK BLYTH: Oh, yeah, absolutely. And it's interesting, Trump gets so much of the blame for this, for the mishandling of the pandemic, et cetera, et cetera. All of which, I think, is completely justified. But all those other countries that we thought were doing really well and learned by it, so for example, Italy took the brunt of it, Spain took the brunt of it, this enabled even the Germans to learn from it, et cetera.

Nope, it's going up everywhere. And it seems that no one really has a good management strategy unless you happen to live on an Island and your name is New Zealand.

CARRIE NORDLUND: So I actually did this panel on the US election for some Europeans earlier in the week, which was funny because the US-- do we have panels about European elections? I just thought it was so interesting that they were--

MARK BLYTH: No, absolutely not.

CARRIE NORDLUND: --as interested in the US. But also lots of talk-- it was a London-based group-- lots of talk about regional versus national shutdowns, and what Johnson was going to do, and what the fallout was, and there seemed to be a lot of thinking that he didn't want to take the political blowback on a national lockdown. So he'd leave it to regional lockdowns, and then leave it to whoever was making that decision to suffer the political consequences of that.

MARK BLYTH: Who does that remind you of?

CARRIE NORDLUND: I don't know. It's like so--

MARK BLYTH: That's what's Trump did with the governors, right? It's exactly the same thing. So if I put it on the states, and the states handle it well, then it shows I'm obviously doing the right thing. And if it screws up, then it's on them.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah.

MARK BLYTH: And much of the politics of the past 10 months has been essentially trying to get the blame to either stick to Trump, or Trump to take the blame and stick it somewhere else, rather than anyone actually doing anything positive towards a resolution.

CARRIE NORDLUND: I mean, it seems like-- well, OK. Yeah, so it seems like the scenarios haven't panned out, so I don't know why I imagine that that's actually going to happen. But of course, this is really-- we're two weeks out from the US election, and while COVID is a huge element of that, just the state of the race-- I checked the numbers 10 minutes ago. 46 and a half votes have been cast, the majority of those vote by mail absentee ballots. This is a little higher than twice the number of Twenty-Sixteen. So huge numbers of early voters. And this favors Democrats as well.

So one wonders, though, if we're going to see a depression of Democratic voters on election day and a higher number for Republicans. It's not clear how that will bear itself out.

MARK BLYTH: But beyond that, how is it going?

CARRIE NORDLUND: Well, it depends on what side of the aisle you're on, right? So I mean, something that we talked about last time, it's such an interesting contrast, is that Trump started October with $63 million. The Trump campaign. This is not the RNC and the Senate campaign, et cetera. But this is compared to $177 million for Biden. So just in terms of their ability to spend is huge for Biden, especially in those six to eight battleground states, and then expanding the map to Texas and Georgia, if that's real or not, or if they're just doing it to antagonize the Trump campaign.

And then Trump shutting down some of his ads in Michigan, and in Ohio, and Wisconsin. So whether or not this has an effect on turnout and all of this, this is, I think, a question. But at least in terms of psychological, this is a big boost for the Biden campaign.

And big news, Mark. There is a third debate tonight.

MARK BLYTH: Oh, is there? Is it on tonight?

CARRIE NORDLUND: Again, as of whatever time we're recording, the president says he's doing it. When the other person is not supposed to be speaking, that person's mic is muted to decrease interruptions. So we'll see how that actually turns out. Will this have any effect? No.

MARK BLYTH: Yeah, I mean, it's the old sort of, are you really an undecided voter at this point? So I just had an interesting conversation with Major Garrett from CBS, because I was on his podcast. And we were talking about this in a slightly different way.

So let's think about this. You said there were 46 million ballots cast so far, right? Here's a question for you. How many white working class people are there in the United States?

CARRIE NORDLUND: 30% of the population?

MARK BLYTH: Yeah, well, as a percentage. Yeah, It's not bad as a percentage. It's 87 million.

CARRIE NORDLUND: OK.

MARK BLYTH: Right? Now, let's just take guys. Let's just say that's just for 40 million and keep it simple, right? Interesting thing about that demographic is that despite the fact that its share of the population has been going down for 20 years, since Twenty-Twelve, its propensity to vote has been going up.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Mm-hmm.

MARK BLYTH: And where do you find these people as a majority? In those Midwestern battleground states, not anywhere else. Now, what the Democratic campaign essentially has done is, it has a jobs plan. It has certain things that speak to that community, but by and large, that community is what was once referred to as the deplorables.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Mm-hmm.

MARK BLYTH: They are the ones that are Trump suspect. They are the ones that are not on board with the politics of the Democrats, in terms of immigration, in terms of racial integration, et cetera, or at least are presumed to be. So turnout amongst that group was going to be absolutely crucial in setting this out. Because it's really still about five states and ultimately turnout there.

And what we were talking about is how the Democrats have essentially said, they don't actually have to embrace that population. But if it all comes down to just a handful of states and comparative mobilization of different demographics in those states, it becomes a very different story from looking at the aggregate numbers and looking at how far Biden is ahead, how much money they'll have. That's an entirely different story.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Well, and I think it gets so one of the points that we were talking about before, which is, why do we trust polls in Twenty-Twenty versus in Twenty-Sixteen. And are the models better? Have they accounted for exactly what you just said, that an undercount on non-college-educated men and women, which was not accounted for in Twenty-Sixteen. And I mean, supposedly of course, the polls are all saying-- defensive-- and saying that they are, they weighted their numbers, that the race has been really consistent and stable. So it's just there's less of those shocks that we had in Twenty-Sixteen.

But I mean, I think your point about that the Democrats are not wrapping their arms around this particular group of voters, and they're just trying to put together this coalition that hopefully, cross our fingers and toes, turns out from the Democrats perspective, I mean, it's just a Band-Aid on a much larger issue. But I don't know Democrats really want to tackle that.

MARK BLYTH: But it's kind of ironic, because I mean, in some sense the Democrats are supposed to be the party of the American working class.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Right.

MARK BLYTH: But the American working class has become odious to large parts of the Democratic elite.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Well, that's exactly right.

MARK BLYTH: So there's no longer an actual fit. And what's happened with Republicans, traditionally the party of elites and business, is that they have become, at least vocally, at least in terms of identity politics, the party of the white working class. So there's been this incredible switcheroo that we're really not getting our heads around. We're trying to treat this as politics as normal, and I just don't think it is.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Well, and I think that's such a good point, because if you think about-- people are talking post-Trump, what does Trumpism look like? And there are these young senators, young Republican senators, like Ted Cruz's, Josh Holly, that are really likely to carry on the banner of Trump. And yet they represent the most elite of the elite. I mean, Ted Cruz, there's not really anyone more elite, and yet to wear exactly the MAGA and represent the MAGA side of the party I think is-- I'm curious to see how that mismatch actually bears itself out.

So I'm taking a deep breath here, because there's the third debate going on, which will unlikely change anything, but the stuff where things might change is at the House and the Senate. They're still predicting four seats pickup for the Democrats. That would flip the Senate to favor the Democrats. Lurking out there is the Senate Judiciary Committee just approved or just voted for Amy Coney Barrett to move forward to a full vote next week.

The House looks like that they're going to pick up maybe-- the House Democrats will maybe pick up 17 seats. So again, where we actually land may be slightly different, but I've seen some really optimistic numbers that said that Democrats could pick up 10 seats in the Senate. I think that's wildly optimistic, but in places like Kansas that Democrats haven't won since Nineteen-Thirty-Two, they might be able to pick up a win there.

So of course, lots of things still up in the air, but there's always the possibility that it's a total catastrophe, and everything I just said becomes null and void.

[CHUCKLING]

So we'll just wait. We'll just wait for that.

MARK BLYTH: No, but let's go away from the catastrophe narrative, and let's assume for once that your optimistic narrative is actually going to be played out. This raises an interesting question for me about the utility of Donald Trump to the GOP. Because at the end of the day, he has delivered, and delivered big time. He has given them a huge tax cut, which is what they always care about, that went straight to the top. He then stacks the Supreme Court 6-3. He gives them an unbelievable win there. And he's done, I believe, the figure of something like 30% of all judicial appointments.

So essentially, he has delivered. There's nothing more for him to give them, right? What exactly can he do in a second term? Destroy more environmental regulations? Maybe, but that's a marginal gain. In a sense, even if they lose control just now, they have cemented so much, particularly on the judicial side. I wonder if there aren't secret conversations going on about, if we lose Trump, it's not really a big deal if we lose the presidential, because we've gained so much in this one term.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah, that's right on. I mean, especially the Supreme Court. I mean, in their wildest dreams, they hoped for-- they got three. I mean, that's huge. And the lower courts as well? I mean, I think that's why-- and this is at a new thought-- that you see some Republicans starting to distance themselves from Trump. I mean, distance meaning actually have a little bit a critique of the president, but just because exactly of that. "We've gotten what we wanted, and now we can maybe start to distance ourselves from you."

And then there's no COVID relief bill, either. I mean, Mitch McConnell has really shown his true colors on that. I mean, it's embarrassing that they can get through the Supreme Court but not the COVID bill, but I guess this shows the priorities that they have.

One of the interesting things that I saw this week was around the Department of Justice and their antitrust on Google. And then-- did you pay attention to the Hunter Biden? Or were you on Twitter when the Hunter Biden emails came through, I think, over the weekend, on The New York Post?

MARK BLYTH: No, you're going to have to explain this to me, because I just refused to deal with trivia mud-chucking. I just never pay attention to this, unless I basically am told by three major independent news sources the next morning that this is actually significant.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah.

MARK BLYTH: So what's the story? Enlighten me.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yes, well, it goes to a more interesting place. So we don't know, but Giuliani, Rudy Giuliani says that there's-- you're gonna love this-- a broken down computer found in Delaware that supposedly holds Hunter Biden's emails and photos, that has all sorts of connections to him and Burisma, and Ukraine. So that stage is then set. Nobody, to your point, no independent journalist, no journalist can confirm that these are actually Hunter Biden's emails and personal photos, but Giuliani starts to feed it to The New York Post.

Now, the part where it gets interesting is that Twitter and Facebook, because there's been no verification on it, Facebook slows it down, and Twitter blocks it. And so the only way you can get to it through Twitter is by going to The New York Post, and then again Facebook throttles their algorithm, so it slows it down.

You can imagine the GOP are like freedom of the press, this is censoring, et cetera, et cetera. So I thought that was just an interesting contrast to then the DOJ's antitrust stuff, and where are we going with the big media companies?

MARK BLYTH: So in terms of the antitrust stuff, which I did follow a little bit, I mean, this is obviously a rare area of bipartisan cooperation. But for very different reasons. So the Democrats basically don't like big tech, even though they're funded by big tech. So you gotta question how much of their attack on this is sincere.

People like Elizabeth Warren, certainly. People who care about concentration in the American economy, its effects on productivity, all that stuff is real. But at the same time, when you go to the Center for American Progress and the main conference room is the Eric Schmidt conference room, you gotta wonder about how deep this relationship goes.

On the other hand, with the GOP, this is clearly partisan politics. You're not putting enough conservative propaganda out there, so we're going to basically use this as an excuse to take away your protections and make you liable, and therefore we're gonna hurt you.

The thing is, these are incredibly powerful organizations with the best legal teams in the world. This is not gonna go anywhere fast, unless you get a Biden presidency that makes antitrust front and center something that they're gonna do. You're basically gonna do Robert Jackson in Nineteen-Thirty-Five. Unless you're willing to put that much effort into it and that much prosecutorial power into it, they will block, they will delay. This is basically a sideshow, which is primarily why I'm not paying that much attention to it.

As for Hunter Biden, I just feel sorry for this guy. Every family has a loser, right? And I believe that he's been traumatized for years because of this car crash he was involved in. And he comes from this very successful family that is nonetheless a tragedy. His older brother dies of brain cancer, et cetera, et cetera.

And he's just been kicked around. He's probably got a few things in the closet. He's probably hung out with some people he shouldn't have done. But show me an elite family in the United States that hasn't.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah, yeah.

MARK BLYTH: Right? I mean, I'm sure that basically there's plenty of stuff there that you could dig up on the associates and family of the current president. So it just feels very unseemly that what they're basically trying to do is emotionally push Biden's buttons by going through his son, because nothing else works. It's just kind of pathetic and ugly at the end of the day.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah, and it also, I think, to go back to one of our starting points, it shows how the overall presidential race has become really predictable and kind of irrelevant. People are already voting. The president, specifically, acts in really predictable ways. We know he's going to bring up the Hunter Biden emails in the debate tonight. We could probably actually act out the debate right now. And it's just--

MARK BLYTH: Yeah, actually we could probably just do it. Exactly. I will interrupt you to say "what about those emails, what about those emails?"

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah, yeah. But we could do it much more efficiently, too, right? Do it in three minutes. But in that way, I mean, so yes-- I mean, I love to talk with the nuance and everything, but it's also-- there just isn't really anything new to report, because it has been so consistent. And of course, there's the dramatic sort of stuff, but the race is not changing.

I mean, if Biden falls over, I still don't think the race would change tonight. Or if Trump tripped on-- I just don't think that either of those two things, unless--

MARK BLYTH: Yeah, It's not as if-- here's what's not gonna happen. Nobody is gonna go, "I've really changed on Donald. That was a master class of a performance. He sounded like Julius Caesar in front of the Senate," right? That's not gonna happen.

Maybe Caesar's the inappropriate metaphor there, but you get what I mean, right? Look what happened to him. And similarly, if Biden does the thing I always think that he's gonna do, which is, he stops and goes, "are we in France?" halfway through the debate.

Anything short of that is not gonna have an impact. It's not as if people are like, "Well, I was gonna Democrat, but I'm just really worried about this." So yeah, you're right.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah.

MARK BLYTH: Anyway, let's stop talking about this bloody election. What else is going on?

CARRIE NORDLUND: Oh, gosh.

MARK BLYTH: Anything apart from the election.

CARRIE NORDLUND: There's nothing else going on. Actually, I just wanted to ask about-- we were talking about the media giants. I think you're right that it brings Republicans and Democrats together, though. I mean, Democrats, although I think they're probably in the squishy middle, wanna do some regulatory stuff. And Republicans now, they're drunk on-- Republicans are saying that Twitter and Facebook are drunk on power.

So I do wonder, in my Pollyanna rose-colored glasses, whether there is something that they do. But I mean, whether it actually happens, if it happens in the next 100 years, probably not.

MARK BLYTH: Sorry, can I just summarize that as, have you been drinking again?

CARRIE NORDLUND: I know. But I want to hope, because there's so few issues that you see Republicans and Democrats actually might agree on, that I want to have that optimism.

MARK BLYTH: So a conversation I've been having with a couple of people, somewhat related to this, is about the Fed. Why is the Fed so important? Why is the Fed doing everything that it does? And the answer is because the, if you will, the parliamentary system, the Congress, which is meant to have some form of agreement on what to do, think, for example, further stimulus, CARES 2, et cetera. There's no such thing as policy. There's only weaponry.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah.

MARK BLYTH: And every policy is a weapon to hurt the opposition. And that's what this has become. It has become completely dysfunctional. And this is incredibly dangerous for democracy, because what you end up doing is convincing people that it's all just a scam, and it's all just politics, right? Because to a large extent, it is. That what matters is money talks, and democracy walks, if you want to put it that way. And we rely more and more on technocrats to actually get things done. This is not a recipe for democratic longevity. This is very fragilizing and very dangerous.

CARRIE NORDLUND: That's such a happy note to put a cap on our politics talk.

MARK BLYTH: But let's stop talking about the election. Apparently, the pope is now in favor of same-sex marriages. I think his tenure as the pope is obviously coming to an abrupt halt after saying that one. Because you've got to think of this as a marketing problem, right? Or at least a business expansion problem. Let's put on a Mackenzie hat for a minute.

So Mackenzie goes to the Catholic Church. "So what's the problem?" "Well, we're losing members." "Who are you losing them to?" "We're losing them to evangelicals." "Why?" "Well, the evangelicals, I mean, they've got these really strict beliefs about hierarchy, and order, and a woman's role, and abortion, stuff like that." "Don't you guys have that?" "Yeah, but we find it turns a lot of people off, so we kind of soft pedal that now. We're even bringing gays into the church."

"OK, that's great. How many gays do you think you can bring into the church?" "Oh, a couple of million." "And how many hardcore Catholics are you gonna lose because of that?" "Probably more than a couple of million." "Right, so your problem is attrition, and your solution is to do something that, while normatively good, is going to lead to greater attrition."

The pope might think this is a good idea. The people who run the business in the Vatican? Mm-mm. That's not happening. I think not one goes. Either that idea goes or the pope goes in the next 12 months. Watch this space.

CARRIE NORDLUND: But wait. I mean, let's just play on age and thinking about the different populations. But couldn't the young, the youth, the young gays displace the older Catholics that are maybe dying of COVID? Or no? There's no replacement?

MARK BLYTH: I would guess that the attrition rate definitely is going to be not in favor of restocking with gay Catholics.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah. But I like the Mackenzie hat on that. On a more serious topic, I read the article in The Atlantic about Uighurs, and I know that the world's focused, because the US is such a hot mess right now. The US is totally internally focused, but there has been such little global US-led total condemnation on the part of the Uighurs.

I mean, I do believe this, and I've been thinking, wanting to bring this up for a while with you, thinking that this will be one of those historical moments where no one did anything and everyone-- whether we just shrug our shoulders and continue on, or if there is ever any sort of mobilized outcry against the Chinese government or we're so afraid of China, it just is hard to understand why there hasn't been any broad-based condemnation of it. I mean, it's really awful. And I mean, that's all superficial stuff. I just think it's hard to know what to say.

MARK BLYTH: Well, it's not superficial. It's extremely important. But the answer is actually defectively simple. Volkswagen has, I think, 19 factories or 31 car factories in China. So if the EU wants to write a report criticizing China on the Uighur issue, you can be sure that the Chinese foreign ministry phones up the German foreign minister and says, I would not recommend doing this. And then they phone up Brussels and say, I think that language should be removed. And that's exactly what happened about two months ago.

So if you basically want to have market access to China, then you have to go with what China does, rather than saying no. And interestingly, however-- I saw an interesting one today. Somebody who is proving tougher, despite their size, is Sweden. And Sweden has said, we're not doing Huawei kit. We're not doing ZTE kit. We're going to do our own 5G out the way.

And the Chinese ambassador phoned them up, and said this is an error, and you should rethink it, in that wonderful sort of language that only communist apparatchiks actually use. "It is a historical error." Right? That sort of stuff.

And the Swedes basically said no. Because at the end of the day, you guys own Volvo. It's not as if Volvo is a foreign company coming to China. You own Volvo. So good luck with that, right? And we've got loads of stuff that you actually want.

So this whole thing goes two ways. It's not just one way. So there's a certain amount of structural dependence here that silences them, but there's also an amount of timidity. I mean, if a country like Sweden, of like 12 million people, can tell them to get lost and point out the error of their ways, then maybe there's more that could be done.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah, I like that point about timidity, that countries can stand up to China. I mean, it would be my hope that the US would. I don't know that we can. I mean, just on your structural point. But at least on a humanitarian front, in the UN, the US is saying something. With any foreign allies that we have left we're saying something.

But it just seems like we're so internally focused, and there's a lot going ON but this is just one of those moments that you just think why is the world just standing by? But maybe we model our behavior after Sweden. Go Sweden.

MARK BLYTH: Go Sweden! Well, there's the episode title decided. "Go Sweden." There you go. Never thought I'd say that.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Well, as we wrap things up, I don't know if you saw this, so I'll try to lighten things just a little bit. So the president was at a big rally, and he was dancing. And I'm just confused by this, just as a human in the world of why old men try to show off their dance moves. And of course he was mocked on all of the social platforms, but I just want to say, to anybody of any political party, just don't dance. Just don't. Just stand there and wave. Just don't dance. That's my sage advice.

MARK BLYTH: I think what was even better about it was, I love the fact that you're talking about here, old white men shouldn't dance, and you're looking at me and saying that. And you're probably correct. I shouldn't dance, either. But the one thing that I have trained myself to do, however, which Trump didn't receive training in, is not to do the white man's overbite while you're doing the soft-shoe shuffle.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yes.

MARK BLYTH: So he actually did have the white guy overbite going on at the same time, and that's what makes it especially offensive.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah.

MARK BLYTH: I would say.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Why would do you have to bite your lap? Yeah, how does that add to your dance moves? Well, we are going to be back. We've already booked it for two weeks, as a post-election. We'll see where we are at. Hopefully there's some results for us to talk about, and maybe even find a few other things outside of the American election. And I just cross my fingers that maybe we can actually move on.

MARK BLYTH: Yes. But here's the problem with that. Do you honestly think this is going to be over by November 4th?

CARRIE NORDLUND: I mean, if it's a landslide, yes.

MARK BLYTH: OK. So let's go back to the realm of possibility as opposed to wish fulfillment, right? If there's no landslide, then do you think Trump's going to leave, given the fact that if he does, he becomes a private citizen who owes some people of unspecified origin $400 million? So this is gonna end up in the courts, and it's gonna go all the way to the Supreme Court. We're gonna be talking about this till December 31st.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Of Twenty-Twenty or Twenty-Twenty-One?

MARK BLYTH: Well, that's a good question. I'm hoping for just one year.

CARRIE NORDLUND: That's supposed to be a joke.

MARK BLYTH: I know, but you never know. You never know.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Well, you know Florida, Mark. For me, Florida is-- and we always talk about Florida. I mean, right now Biden is up slightly more than the pollsters had Hillary up, and of course she lost Florida. But I think because Florida does count their early votes early, we will know Florida actually on election night. I mean, that, for me, is the big signal. Because first of all, it's going to a razor thin margin for whoever wins, and that's going to be a good night for Biden or it's going to be until December that we know.

So Florida, for me, is the one that I'm really watching.

MARK BLYTH: So let's say that Florida comes in and it's marginally for Trump, and Trump declares victory. What happens then?

CARRIE NORDLUND: Well, it's extended and we go on for-- I think Trump is going to declare victory no matter what. Because he just doesn't have it in him to concede. And then we're just on our authoritarian--

MARK BLYTH: So in other words, we will not move on past talking about this.

CARRIE NORDLUND: No, that's probably the bottom line, yeah.

MARK BLYTH: Exactly. You know, even my dog who's in the room with me is so fed up talking about this, she's now whining to be let out. So I'm gonna get up and let the dog out of the room.

CARRIE NORDLUND: She's like, "no more election talk!"

MARK BLYTH: All right, we'll let this one go as an American-biased episode.

[MUSIC PLAYING]