Jamelle Bouie

I think it's very troubling.

Right.

And when you have like two thirds of American voters consistently saying in surveys that this is something that troubles me, I want to know more about it.

It seems to me to be political malpractice to sort of like leave it alone.

The other thing related to that is the way modern American scandals work, in fact, is it's not one big thing.

revelation that hurts the most, it's small revelations over time that hurt the most.

And so just thinking politically, being amateur political strategists, which I think we should strongly encourage people in our business from doing that, but if we're going to do it, being an amateur political strategist here, the best thing to do is just to keep it going.

Like have it be a thing that he's asked about constantly.

That's the smart play.

But the other thing is I think Brett's analysis misses the symbolic aspect of this stuff.

The broad public – and we see this with all these sorts of political insurgencies happening in both parties – are extremely distrustful of the establishment, right?

And here we have in the Epstein scandal kind of this example of corruption amongst the highest reaches of the American political and cultural and economic establishment.

Major figures palling around with this guy, politicians palling around with this guy.

And so if voters are telling you in their actions that what they want is corruption,

some kind of visible representation of you breaking with the way things are normally done, then here is this scandal which gives you an opportunity to performatively break with the things that are normally done.

And it's breaking with how things are normally done that is gonna open the pathway, I think, for voters listening to you on your other ideas.

You show that you're not just another politician, and then they listen to what you have to say.

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.