Dan Pfeiffer

But when you look at the data about what stories are breaking through, this one is not breaking through.

Like someone tweeted the other day, someone reported to me the other day that there was no shutdown story in the Times, Wall Street Journal, or the Post, I think maybe on Monday.

Taylor Swift's album.

Yeah, I mean, we could have this debate again if you'd like.

But there is a fundamental challenge here, right?

Which, like, I told you when we did this that we could probably have a long, hour-long discussion about this, and maybe we would because it feels like, well, this may still be around on our next podcast.

But you raise this point, which is the thing that drives conversation is...

immigration, democracy, crime, issues that go to core of identity, right?

And those are the central conflicts in American politics in the Trump era.

Healthcare is not that and does not drive that conversation.

The Democrats, I will say, I give them credit for, they want to make healthcare a bigger issue.

Healthcare, they have defined the shutdown on healthcare.

This is about healthcare.

A Republican does an interview, they get asked about the Affordable Care Act tax credits, like they've done that.

The political challenge here is that the issues that drive attention online and drive conversation are not the issues of primary concern to the voters who sit in the middle.

And so you have this issue where you can drive a ton of attention, but you're maybe not be persuading the people you need to persuade.

Or you can talk about the issues that matter to the people that matter to the persuadable voters, but they'll never hear about it because they can't drive enough conversation.

And so it's like this paradox that cannot be solved.

And so I don't have the right answer to that.

I don't have a solution to it.