Jamelle Bouie

And so I think, with all respect to Brett, I think his analysis here kind of just misses a couple steps and doesn't take seriously what the voters themselves are saying and signaling in their actions and behavior.

That actually gets to a thought I just had, which is that I think one reason, one reason that people in our business should not be amateur political strategists is that we think in terms of words and messages, but voters think in terms of images.

That's what lands with people.

Images, right?

And so the East Wing is...

You ask a wordsmith, do you think people are going to care about the East Wing thing?

They'll say, I don't know so much.

But people actually do care about it because it's a striking and dramatic image.

And it represents something on a very visceral level about how they feel about what's happening in the world.

In the same way, Epstein is primarily about images, right?

Images of this guy with powerful people, images of this guy.

with teenage girls, right?

These images are quite powerful.

And so I think the task for Democrats politically is to be able to conjure up compelling images, compelling images that tar their opponent in like talking about democracy doesn't do that, but this might.

And then images that demonstrate a commitment to building a better world, right?

For me, dismissing something as vivid as the Epstein scandal as a political tool.

There's a good word for it.

It does feel like malpractice, right?

So I don't find it that shocking because...

This has been, I mean, the groperization of the Republican staffer class, you might say, the young men who are entering in Republican politics, has been like an ongoing thing for a couple years.