There Has to Be a Breaking Point

Ken Paxton Beats John Cornyn by 28 Points

With the Texas Republican Senate primary wrapped up, we have a pretty clear shape of the midterm elections. I’ve been waiting for months to really talk about the midterms (sorry, Michigan! I can’t wait until August to start moving forward). I wanted to stay out of primaries and intra-party disputes as much as possible and try to keep the main thing the main thing. The main thing for me is this: midterm elections give voters a chance to meaningfully say, “we’re not comfortable with this direction; slow down.” And that’s how I feel: I don’t like this direction. I’d like to slow down.

That frame changes my expectations about candidates, and it changes my ask of my fellow voters. I’m not trying to be inspired by candidates. I’m looking for people who will gum up the works because I think the current works aren’t working.

Sarah and I discuss the races and the works that aren’t working today (including the gerrymandering spiral and money in politics and the DOJ). And then we take a big exhale to talk about summer movies. We hope you take that exhale, too.

- Beth

Topics Discussed

• Ken Paxton’s primary win over John Cornyn

• What Paxton’s victory means for the Texas Senate race and Republican Party

• Redistricting updates: South Carolina, Alabama, Florida

• The midterms as a structural check on executive power

• DOJ investigation of E. Jean Carroll

• Summer movie preview: Project Hail Mary, The Mandalorian & Grogu, The Odyssey, Toy Story 5, Supergirl, live-action Moana

• America250 murder mystery: Murder at Mrs. Morris’s Table

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Episode Resources

• The $130 million ad price tag for the Texas Republican primary (Punchbowl News)

• How Paxton entered the race and what Cornyn’s gun vote cost him (Punchbowl News)

• The NRSC statement that named neither Cornyn nor Paxton (NRSC)

• South Carolina Senate blocks Trump-backed map after early voting began (NY Times)

• Alabama three-judge panel rejects discriminatory maps (NY Times)

• Alabama federal panel opinion (CourtListener)

• Florida judge lets DeSantis redistricting map stand (NY Times)

• Mystery super PACs quietly boosting weaker Democratic candidates (Punchbowl News)

• DCCC’s unusual tactic of joint ad buys with preferred candidates (Axios)

• Texas School Police Pepper-Sprayed, Tackled, and Tasered Students (NYT)

Episode Transcript

[00:00:29] Sarah: This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

[00:00:31] Beth: This is Beth Silvers. You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. Today we’re going to discuss the shape of the midterms. The Texas Senate race is settled now. We have our nominees. We’re going to talk about the latest developments in the redistricting race to the bottom. We’re going to talk about some of the stranger dynamics heading into the midterms. And then Outside of Politics, it’s time for summer movies. We’re gearing up for a genre that one of my friends called aggressively fine. And I think that’s a perfect description of a lot of summer movies, but I’m excited to talk about it. And first, we want to make sure you know what we have in store for our America 250 celebrations.

[00:01:06] Sarah: Okay. I just did my first murder mystery party, Beth. And I think what I learned immediately, in particular after talking to you about your deep and wide experience with murder mystery parties, is that the kit itself really matters.

[00:01:22] Beth: It does.

[00:01:23] Sarah: The quality of the clues, the quality of the story, the instructions make a huge difference to the impact of the murder mystery and the fun everybody has. And I say all that because you queen of the high standards have crafted an American 250 murder mystery party for our premium members. Tell the people.

[00:01:59] Beth: I have. So this is a dinner party taking place in 1776, and I tried to bring all the lessons that I’ve learned from using different kits to this to say “Here’s how I would do it.” So in the instructions, I say, “I would text this now.” You know what I mean? To just try to make it really easy for people who’ve not hosted before. And I don’t want to give too much about the plot away, so I’ll just tell you that one of my favorite characters in this is Sarah Franklin Bache, who was Ben Franklin’s daughter. So she was in her early 30s around this time. All of the characters are based on real people, except one. That is the victim in the story. This is not a real murder, but it is a real committee that was meeting, made up of real people, and I added some women in the committee because I just felt like there needed to be women in the story. And there were women in the story in the background, so I tried to bring them to the foreground. So one of those women is Sarah Franklin Bache. She was handling so much of Ben Franklin’s correspondence that she really understood the dynamics of people’s different agendas, and who was, like, more loyalist than other revolutionaries, who really didn’t want to fight, who was really trying to avoid getting to war, and who was, like, all in, but who was maybe all in for their own purposes. So she just had everybody’s number, and I love that for a murder mystery party.

[00:03:27] Sarah: So I have convinced our best friends to do this over July 4th. We’ll be all together, and we have very many teens and young adult children. I can just assign myself this character. I can be in charge and just make myself Sarah Franklin Bache, right? That’s allowed?

[00:03:42] Beth: You can, although the host characters are Robert and Mary White Morris.

[00:03:48] Sarah: We’re doing July 4th at their house. Can’t they be those people?

[00:03:51] Beth: They can be those people then.

[00:03:52] Sarah: Okay.

[00:03:53] Beth: So you can just tell them that you want to be this person. Here’s the key. You really need one person who’s hosting who’s willing to know how everything goes.

[00:04:02] Sarah: Okay.

[00:04:03] Beth: A lot of these kits are written so that the host can play along and doesn’t have to know how everything goes, and I’m here to tell you that makes for a bad party.

[00:04:12] Sarah: Okay.

[00:04:12] Beth: You’ve got to have somebody who’s willing to steer this ship in a direction, and that means that they’ve read everybody’s character cards, they’ve read all of the clues and the reveals, and they’re willing to keep it moving in the right direction. So as long as somebody else will do that for you, this would be a great character for you, I think.

[00:04:28] Sarah: And I’m here to tell you to the value proposition of all this, these kits are expensive. And you’re going to get this kit along with all the other stuff that’s coming with our America 250 celebration, including but not limited to me reporting from 1776 from the News Brief the week before July 4th, for the low price of $15 a month.

[00:04:54] Beth:  That’s right. And the knowledge that you are supporting independent political media trying to do some good in the world.

[00:05:01] Sarah: That’s right. So what a better way to support and celebrate America’s 250 than to support freedom of the press with your dollars, and to get all this fun stuff as a very exciting bonus.

[00:05:14] Beth: You did a good job steering me back on course there, too, because I could talk about this for 100 years.

[00:05:20] Sarah: Or another 250. Maybe we will.

[00:05:22] Beth: There we go.

[00:05:24] Sarah: So go to the show notes to find out how to become a member of our premium community and get your very own copy of A Murder at Mrs. Morris’ Table.

[00:05:35] Beth: Speaking of characters, let’s talk about Ken Paxton and John Cornyn. Cornyn has been a senator for 24 years, and that career has come to an end in his runoff with Ken Paxton.

[00:05:58] Sarah: In the most brutal way imaginable.

[00:06:00] Beth: Absolutely brutal.

[00:06:03] Sarah: Brutal.

[00:06:04] Beth: 64 to 36%. Yikes.

[00:06:07] Sarah: It’s like the widest margin of a defeat for a sitting senator in a long time.

[00:06:13] Beth: Nearly 50 years. Cornyn won three counties. Yikes.

[00:06:19] Sarah: There’s a lot of counties in Texas. Kentucky and Texas have the most counties, just in case y’all needed a little state trivia. So there’s a lot of counties, to only win three of them is pretty rough. And it’s not like this man was out here pulling a Thomas Massie. He didn’t vote for impeachment.

[00:06:39] Beth: He did not.

[00:06:40] Sarah: He’s not out here criticizing Donald Trump. He is a loyal foot soldier, very conservative, not somebody I would ever vote for in my whole entire life, and still not good enough. Can’t really tell why.

[00:06:53] Beth: Also, a massive fundraiser for other Republicans.

[00:06:57] Sarah: Yes.

[00:06:58] Beth: That’s why everybody’s so mad. John Cornyn was a money machine.

[00:07:02] Sarah: I read that he took over the George W. Bush apparatus in Texas. He picked up the organization and foundational work that came from George W. Bush’s presidency and had control of that fundraising apparatus and directed millions and millions of dollars at Republican candidates. And again, wasn’t what anyone would describe as a troublemaker. It’s not like he ran against Donald Trump in the Republican primary. It’s not like he was out there stumping for Ron DeSantis. I don’t even know why he doesn’t like him.

[00:07:33] Beth: He posted a photo of himself reading The Art of the Deal, in fact. He was as obsequious as you could be. His sin in Texas that caused Ken Paxton to run against him was that he worked on bipartisan gun legislation after Uvalde. And that’s where Ken Paxton decided this guy is a RINO, he’s not looking out for Texans’ interests.

[00:07:57] Sarah: That on the heels of this New York Times reporting that all these police officers in Texas post-Uvalde are aggressive and violent towards children, it’s just a lot to take in, Beth. It’s a lot to take in.

[00:08:15] Beth: Yeah, in a dramatically unaccountable system. I’m anxious to see the follow-on reporting. Somebody comes out with a big piece, and then everybody goes at it, too, and I’m interested to see more of that. But if I were a Texan, that would have my attention even more than this primary, honestly. If you’ve got police officers in every single school in your state, and the results are these incidents that aren’t even being reported to a central kind of watchdog authority, that’s worth getting involved in.

[00:08:49] Sarah: I’ve been a little worried about the Texans because they feel real beat down to me. You say “Yay, Ken Paxton is a defeatable candidate,” and they’re like, “He’s won statewide so many times, he’s the worst, but nobody seems to care.” I want to give them a little pep talk, and I want them to remember that nothing is static in American politics, and there is no reality that is unmovable. And James Talarico is not Beto O’Rourke, and, Ken Paxton is not John Cornyn. He’s certainly not Ted Cruz. And I just want them to buck up just a little bit. I just want to buck up just a little bit. And even if James Talarico doesn’t win, there is a real chance that somebody else will because of this race in Texas, which is now going to require millions and millions of dollars that I’m sure many Republicans would have preferred to direct towards Maine or Ohio or Alaska.

[00:09:55] Beth: I definitely understand why Texans feel so down about this. I’ve struggled to come up with a framework for myself. On one hand, I look at Ken Paxton, who is so unapologetic about such a multitude of sins, and I see him as a pure Donald Trump descendant, perfectly in line with the MAGA philosophy. I don’t apologize. I do what I want. At least I’m honest about it. Almost a sense of Pepsi is unacceptable to me in all situations, but I understand that if you like Pepsi and you’re offered a Pepsi and a Diet Pepsi, you’re taking the Pepsi. And I think that’s what happened in this race. Because Cornyn could have run as a Bush Republican. He could have said, “This is the mold I came up in. This is what I believe to be true. This is my vision.” He could have leaned into that. I would love to run an experiment where he does that and see what the results are, if he’s defeated as badly. I think he’s still defeated, but is he defeated as badly? I don’t know. That’s how I feel about Thomas Massey as well. He was standing up to Trump enough to piss Trump off, but not enough to seem materially different than his opponent to a lot of people who are casually paying attention. If you’re just watching the ad mailers, they sound like they stand for the same thing. Trump’s mad at one of them and not the other. One’s been there a long time and not the other. You know what I mean? So there’s this outsider thing and this authenticity thing that Paxton encapsulates. I read a long post this morning on X. I don’t know why I still go on X. I feel like I learn things, and then I also get upset. I read a long post on X from a guy about Talarico and Paxton. And this guy said, “Look, my faith is really important to me, and that’s why I loathe James Talarico in a way that I’ll never loathe Ken Paxton. Because Talarico is false prophet.” He puts on the cloak of this thing, but it’s not the thing that I believe in. And Ken Paxton is a reprehensible dude, but he just is. He doesn’t pretend to not be.” And that logic is exhausting to me, but I also I want to stare at that logic. I want to stare at that place that a lot of people are in, because I hear that from our listeners in Texas too particularly and throughout the Southwest. I hear a lot of people saying, “ This is the worldview of my family members here. This is the worldview of people I know.” So I want to take it seriously. And that’s why I understand the despondence. I hope you’re right that’s limited enough that there’s an opening here.

[00:12:37] Sarah: First of all, there is no logic there. It might be something, but there’s no logic in that to me. If your faith is important to you, you don’t vote for somebody morally reprehensible. So I don’t know how to say that any other way.

[00:12:53] Beth: But do you get what I’m saying? He thinks that Talarico’s version of Christianity is morally reprehensible to a greater degree, because he thinks that Talarico is using something that matters to him and saying things like, “God is non-binary” that we’re going to hear 10 million times between now and November, and that offends him more than Paxton’s corruption in office, infidelity to his wife, on, and on.

[00:13:23] Sarah: I get it. I just don’t think there’s a lot of logic in it. I think the answer is what the answer has been for many years of United States history. And I’m not saying that we’ve always lived it out perfectly, but the standard is the separation of church and state, and we separate people’s understanding of their own religion from their understanding of the state’s role in enforcing that religion. And I think you get really far apart when it comes to Ken Paxton and James Talarico. And then you ask, so do you want someone who’s reprehensible and shows no moral character enforcing a view that the government should play a active and aggressive role in enforcing morality on the populace? Because I feel like we’ve got a conflict there. Whereas, James Talarico, you might not like the way that he speaks or lives out his religion, but his stance on the government’s role in enforcing people’s understanding of morality and ethics is pretty clear. I think that’s where he made his mark as a state legislator, was standing up and saying, “This matters to me, but that doesn’t mean I want it on the walls forced down everyone else’s throat.” And I think that’s a winning message for a lot of people. I just have to believe when it comes to not necessarily our Run of the Reel Texas voters, but the Republican Party generally, Republican Party leadership, and by that I mean elected officials I have to believe that there is a breaking point here somewhere, just based on my fundamental understanding of human psychology and human behavior, that there has to be-- and maybe we’re nowhere close, and maybe I’m being naive and overly optimistic. There has to be a place, a point where people stop swallowing his shit. It has to be. There is. We’ve seen it. We’ve seen it with Marjorie Taylor Greene. We’ve seen it with Thomas Massie. We’ve seen it with Tucker Carlson. I feel, I hear the tea kettle and it’s just the piercing is getting louder and louder. And when you have the leader of your party taking out established, long-term sitting senators with fundraising prowess and saying in the same week, “I don’t care about the midterms.” There’s got to be a breaking point. There has to be a breaking point.

[00:16:01] Beth: Here’s the way that I look at it right now for myself because I look at some of the candidates the Democrats are fielding who I’m not excited about, like a Graham Plattner. I would find it challenging to vote for Graham Plattner at this point the midterms to me represent a moment where you ask, do we want to give the president a smooth runway, or do we want to gum up the works a little bit? Because the truth of this moment is that he is still going to be the president for two more years without a lot of brakes on his power, and especially without a lot of brakes on his power that he respects. So even if Democrats took both chambers of Congress, he still has the veto power. It’s not like they can go in and remake America. They can go in and make things harder for him. They can go in and be a little bit of a brake on what feels to me like a runaway train. And historically, we have liked divided government and have used the midterms that way. The public might not articulate it that way, but that’s what we’ve done, like a little bit of a brake on this. So I could vote for a candidate that I think doesn’t really represent my views, isn’t the kind of person that I would like to see in office if my choices are a smooth runway or a brake here. And I hope that argument in Texas can prevail, where you’re not asking everybody to embrace Talarico’s progressive view of Christianity or embrace Christianity at all, because again, that shouldn’t be what this is about. Diana Butler Bass, who I respect tremendously, posted something about this is going to be a massive trial of Christianity in Texas. Paxton’s version is, does Christianity mean you are pro-life and anti-Democrat and anti-trans, or does Christian mean that you love your neighbor and you care about the poor and the marginalized? That’s what this is. And I thought, “Oh, God, I don’t want that. I don’t want that.” That’s not what a Senate race should be. You talk about an inappropriate container for something, that’s not what a Senate race should be. So I hope there is a way to reframe this thing where it is, do you want any kind of brake on the president’s agenda or not? And if that doesn’t work in Texas, then I hope it can just be about do you want somebody who feels they owe you something or someone who’s just in it for themselves? Because that’s what Ken Paxton’s career has been about. Ken Paxton is in it for Ken Paxton just like Donald Trump is in it for Donald Trump. And so is this about the victor getting all the spoils or electing somebody who does think about other people when he wakes up in the morning? Well, Texas is one race of a handful that are really in dispute. The Cook Political Report still has Texas in the likely Republican column, maybe lean Republican after Paxton won the primary. But there are three toss-up races, Maine, Michigan, and Ohio in the Senate. And then the House, of course, is where we have 18 toss-up races, but still a pretty significant Republican advantage that grew more significant because of the redistricting efforts that have been swirling for the past 10 months or so. And we have some developments in the redistricting swirl.

[00:19:56] Sarah: Yeah, and to the boiling point of it all, South Carolina Senate refusing to approve a Trump-backed voting map, which was going to eliminate the state’s lone majority Black district and James Clyburn, a historically significant member of the House of Representatives. And I think to watch these moments Come in the midst of his stranglehold on the party. He’s taken out John Cornyn. Again, it feels really important to me that you’re still seeing people push even as the threat of any disloyalty grows stronger. He’s already making a list of 2028 people he wants to go after, and one of them is Lauren Boebert.

[00:20:43] Beth: So South Carolina refused to approve a map that it sounds like the White House pretty well created and gave to them. For us. The process offended people, the timing offended people, and just overall, you had a number of Republicans say, “This is bananas.” And you see that dynamic on display in the judiciary with respect to Alabama’s maps. A federal panel of judges said that Alabama’s maps, even under the new Supreme Court standards, were explicitly based on race for the purpose of discrimination. And I was looking at that opinion. It’s 102 pages long. It is a painstakingly written opinion. And over and over it says a judicial version of, “This sucks. This is lose-lose. This is horrible that this close to an election, we are here looking at these maps. And no matter what we do, the result is bad. This is a bad situation.” So my hope is that the boiling point comes, whatever you think about partisan gerrymandering, whoever you think does it worse, whoever you think started it, whether you think that independent commissions are a good idea or an abdication of authority given to state legislatures, like wherever you are on it, I would love for all of us to be able to come together and say, “A few months before the general election, when primary elections are already underway, we don’t want the maps messed with.”

[00:22:19] Sarah: What I keep thinking is at the beginning of this presidential term, this second Trump term- We spent a lot of time on his mumblings about a third term. We spent a lot of time thinking about the stacking of election officials in states across the country, the stacking in state parties of Trump allies, foot soldiers. I spent a lot of time thinking about ICE at the polls and voter disenfranchisement and intimidation, and now I’m like, “this is the way they’re going to cheat. This is the chosen path to cheating and trying to maintain victory in an election that everyone can see they are set up to lose.” I feel like it was like staring us all in the face the whole time, and I think it particularly becomes clear as they do the Trump thing, which is push people past all reason. Push people past all capacity to defend actions, to this quote from the Republican state senator in South Carolina that said, “Neither my conscience nor my common sense will allow me to stop an election that is already underway.” It’s just they cannot because it’s like everything else surrounding him. He will not allow anything but the following of his whim, and if that means you have to follow him right off a cliff, you better take a running start . There’s just no gatekeepers. There’s no respect for the process. There are so few norms left standing, and the unapologetic We’re going to do whatever it takes to maintain our power, and we don’t care who we have to step on and who we have to defeat and what laws we have to break and the ways in which we have to strain the democratic process. We don’t care because this is what he wants, and so everybody better run out and get it for him. The way that Ron DeSantis has run to do his bidding after the way he talked about him and treated him in the primary, it shouldn’t come as a surprise, but wow. Wow. And the Florida maps are the ones, like they got a little bit of a win because DeSantis has taken the Trump approach of stacking the courts with his appointees. But I don’t know what you’ve read, but what I’ve read is like these are too aggressive and they could not turn out the way they expected.

[00:25:03] Beth: I think that’s right, and I really want to park on that point. The brake on this is a resounding message that we don’t like it. The brake on this is people showing up in these midterms and saying, “I’m willing to vote for someone I never would’ve voted for before, and I might not again in two years or in six years. But right now I want to say clearly this is unacceptable to me,” because the gerrymandering has not gotten as bad as it can get. It can get worse. People are already looking at 2028 and talking about non-contiguous districts, grabbing a county here and a county way over here in the state on both sides of the aisle. So again, it’s not that I think Democrats are perfect or have any kind of moral high ground on districting particularly. It is that the White House going to state legislatures and basically bullying them with the threat of primaries and flooding their districts with outside spending to punish people who don’t comply is not okay. And what we have in the midterms is an opportunity to say, “That is not okay with me. I want this to stop.”

[00:26:11] Sarah: To the objective reality of people’s breaking points. I don’t know where that is. I don’t know with regards to our elections, the enormous stress our system has been under for the last 10 years, first with just the narrative, just the unapologetic way that he speaks about our elections as if they’re all rigged. That was the first wall to fall, right? We’re just going to talk about and lie and say that it’s not legitimate. It’s not a legitimate system. Our elections aren’t legitimate. So that was the first incredible stressor on our constitutional democracy. Then you have this political, no-holds-barred approach to gerrymandering. And I do actually believe that Democrats do have some moral high ground because when you look at states that approached-- at least took the first step, even if they undid them-- were at least trying to make some progress towards non-partisan commissions, it was Democratic states. And to me, that does matter, and it does speak to something. So I think it’s the just constant barrage that our elections aren’t fair and the unapologetic lying about election fraud. I think it is the partisan approach and the just-- We don’t need any competitive races. We don’t need that. We don’t need a contest of ideas. We can all just fight it out among the twenty percent of ideologues that exist on each side. And then I think the final sort of stressor that I wonder When and how we’ll get to a place where people will say enough, is the money in politics. The billionaires and the increasing number of billionaires that are just pouring money into elections, influencing elections, these super PACs coming in, trying to influence the other party’s elections, and this stress on the one person, one vote, the Voting Rights Act. Like, all of this is just building and building to I have to believe a breaking point.

[00:28:28] Beth: Because it’s not isolated to elections, that approach that you just described, the sort of chipping away here, undermining there, is happening with respect to all of the foundational pieces of the constitutional order. I’ve been thinking about this so much with the news that the Department of Justice is investigating E. Jean Carroll for perjury. In isolation, it’s one other story in a barrage of stories. In a world with wars and Ebola, it doesn’t rise to the level of hair on fire. If she lied, people shouldn’t lie under oath. You could talk about prioritization and the vindictiveness, but what more is there to say about any of that except that it’s part of a pattern? Because the judicial system’s power as a co-equal branch of government in so many ways rests on the concept of finality, that once a court has made a decision and it has gone through the appropriate appeals process, that decision stands. That’s why it’s such a big deal to overturn precedent because we respect what work has been done before, and we especially respect that work in the context of the same people and players and facts, the same story. So what does it mean for the Department of Justice to investigate a civil plaintiff for perjury on the other side of cases that she won? And those cases were about truth and facts. They were defamation cases. Now, it’s not exactly the same. Legally, I don’t think there are res judicata sort of collateral attack principles that apply here. But it’s another example of the president trying to use the executive branch, the Department of Justice, to build a parallel process to the court system to undermine what the court system stands for. So he’s chipping away at elections, chipping away at Congress for sure, says outright, “I don’t really need Congress for things. I can do it. I can do what I want. I can declare war. I can bulldoze the White House. I can do what I want without Congress.” And then you have this with the judiciary. That contributes to that tea kettle feeling that you’re describing, and it can be really depressing because in a vacuum, there are so few action steps that we can take as citizens. But the midterms are our chance to say, “We don’t like this. We don’t like where all this is going.”

[00:31:01] Sarah: I would add to the pile the fact that he very clearly articulates that he believes he should be able to determine everything, whether it’s morally right to go to war, whatever he wants to do. He says when asked, “Me, I get to decide.” He wants to be king. That’s why I really think they’re going to do another No Kings protest on his birthday, the day of this UFC fight, and it might be the first one I join. Because it has to be swarms of Americans in the street. I don’t think it’s just the midterms. I think there are other ways to join together and say, “We don’t want a king on our 250th anniversary.” It’s just so outrageous, and it’s making everything worse, everything more expensive. The pressure building in people’s everyday lives and the way that this political chaos is trickling out into closed businesses and increased costs and government cuts. It’s just going to continue to build because this is not sustainable. This is not sustainable.

[00:32:08] Beth: It’s I do what I want. I don’t think about the American people’s finances. I don’t think about the families of soldiers. I don’t think about Congress. I don’t think about America’s role on the world stage. I do what I want. I don’t think about anybody else, and I take what I want from all of it. There’s so much taking for the president personally, and I hate coming to the microphone to be like, “Trump is bad.” I hate that. I would much rather be having arguments with you about policy and being able to compliment actions of the administration to say, “Here is a needle in a haystack,” or, “Here’s a silver lining,” or, “Here’s something that they’re doing that I think is interesting and worth talking about.” I don’t have any runway for that right now because what I see is that runaway train. I don’t see any brakes on a very small number of people wielding the levers of government for personal gain in money and power, and I just want something to throw in front of that track to slow it down. All right, we’re going to go in a totally different direction because we need to. That’s exhausting. Let’s talk about summer movies. I want to tell you, Sarah, that I have seen only two movies this year, I think.

[00:33:49] Sarah: I haven’t been to the theater at all. It’s May.

[00:33:52] Beth: Yeah. I think I’ve seen two movies: Project Hail Mary.

[00:33:57] Sarah: I wanted to see it

[00:33:57] Beth: which I loved.

[00:33:58] Sarah: I wanted to see it. Everybody loved it, but it was so long. It’s it was so long, and I just couldn’t make the time.

[00:34:04] Beth: It felt so short. I’m going to be honest with you. It felt very short. I don’t know how. If you had said to me, “Ryan Gosling is going to carry a whole movie on his back for hours and hours in space,” I would’ve been like, “No way.” But it flew by. It was touching. I laughed. I cried. I still think about it. I’d like to see it again. It was great.

[00:34:26] Sarah: Okay. Maybe I’ll go to the drive-in this summer.

[00:34:29] Beth: That’d be a great drive-in movie.

[00:34:31] Sarah: Okay.

[00:34:31] Beth: Fantastic.

[00:34:32] Sarah: Okay

[00:34:32] Beth: Highly recommend that you do that. On the other hand, Chad and I went to see The Mandalorian and Grogu.

[00:34:38] Sarah: I heard it was bad.

[00:34:40] Beth: My popcorn was excellent. That’s really all I can say for it. I liked my popcorn. I liked my date. This thing was wild. Now, I am not a Star Wars lover. I am a Star Wars plus one. I see the things because Chad loves the things. If you take Star Wars, the original trilogy and suck all charm and life out of it, and add copious amounts of CGI. You just say “You know what this thing needs? More monster fighting.” Just monster fighting, every six minutes monster fighting. That is what you have. And a series of decisions that are very confusing to me. For example, Jeremy Allen White is in this movie. You never see him. Why do you hire Jeremy Allen White for something and not put that face on the screen? He’s just a voice actor in it. Why do you hire Pedro Pascal if you’re going to keep him behind a mask the whole time and have him speak in a monotone? He’s not really acting. He’s just like marching along doing a thing. I’m so confused by all of the choices that were made around this movie.

[00:35:50] Sarah: I think that’s a no for me. I don’t like Star Wars in the best circumstances. Gosh, I’m going hot. I’m telling people I don’t like Elvis. I’m telling people I don’t like Star Wars. The Michael Jackson people are coming for me. I’m just feeling...

[00:36:01] Beth: you’re telling people not to choose violence while you are in every conversation.

[00:36:04] Sarah: I’m choosing violence. I just don’t like Star Wars. I don’t even like the original movies. I think the dialogue is so clunky. I understand why they’re important historically, cinematically. But they’re not my jam. They’re just not my jam, so there’s no way I was going to see this.

[00:36:19] Beth: You know what? I bet if you watched this, and then you watched them again, you might think they’re great.

[00:36:24] Sarah: No, but that sounds like a terrible way to spend my time, so no thank you.

[00:36:28] Beth: It was interesting to observe people in the theater who had a very different reaction. I think the people who were there with us enjoyed it. There were women in the theater who reacted to Grogu, like the tiny Yoda-type figure. I’m not willing to call it Baby Yoda because Yoda, that puppet was interesting. That puppet had some soulfulness about it, and a lot of expressiveness. This is like a doll. I don’t get it at all. But there were women in the theater who reacted to this thing as though it were a live in the flesh newborn among us. Just aahs and coos, and like baby talk noises out loud in the theater. When we left Chad was like, “Should we have asked people what else they’re doing on their first day on Earth?” Because this was a wild experience.

[00:37:12] Sarah: We’re not well as a people. We’re not well as a people. I don’t know what else to say.

[00:37:17] Beth: Okay. There are other movies coming that I’m excited about. I’m really looking forward to Disclosure Day.

[00:37:22] Sarah: Yeah. I’m excited for another Spielberg movie. I like the cast. I would like, oh, I don’t know, new intellectual property. Crazy idea.

[00:37:34] Beth: We don’t have a lot of that on deck for you, I’m sorry to say. No. because the other big movies are Super Girl, so part of the franchise, and I do not think it looks good. I like this actress Millie Alcock, but I don’t think this looks good. We have another Spider-Man. No thank you. It’s called Brand New Day. Does that make it feel fresh to you?

[00:37:50] Sarah: No thank you. No. Toy Story 5?

[00:37:54] Beth: Five. They are tacking a tablet and I’m interested

[00:37:56] Sarah: Yeah, I’m into the screens versus toys premise. I think it’s very well timed much like Yesteryear, the trad wife novel, which nobody likes but it doesn’t matter, keeps selling like hotcakes, just because it’s like we want to talk about this, and this gives us a way. Yeah. So I don’t even think it matters if Toy Story 5 is good or not.

[00:38:13] Beth: Yeah. We want to talk about it.

[00:38:15] Sarah: But people are going to be all over it. I don’t want a live action Moana. No, thank you.

[00:38:19] Beth: Moana feels like it was made five minutes ago. This makes me feel really old that they’re doing a live action Moana. I don’t like

[00:38:24] Sarah: I don’t like the live action movies. I just don’t.

[00:38:27] Beth: I don’t either.

[00:38:28] Sarah: They’re not for me. I don’t get it. I don’t want it. Nobody asked for it.

[00:38:32] Beth: I think the problem is that it’s the expressiveness again. The live action animals cannot be what the cartoon animals are in the movies. And so it just feels so flat compared to the original.

[00:38:43] Sarah: Yeah. It’s giving The Polar Express. Everybody’s dead in the eyes because they’re all half CGI. Remember when they made that movie?

[00:38:48] Beth: Yes.

[00:38:49] Sarah: People love that movie too. I don’t know why. Again, I’m getting so many emails. It’s fine. I’m a big girl. I am excited about The Odyssey. Super excited about The Odyssey. Love it even more now that there’s controversy and right-wing angst about the casting. Y’all are so silly. As if all the Greeks and Romans were white. Do you know anything at all about where ancient history took place on the globe? I really struggle. It’s just so stupid. It’s like Jesus being blonde. What are y’all talking about? I don’t get it.

[00:39:26] Beth: I know.

[00:39:26] Sarah: Y’all sound dumb.

[00:39:29] Beth: I’m excited for The Odyssey too. I think Christopher Nolan is always going to do something interesting.

[00:39:33] Sarah: Right.

[00:39:34] Beth: Whether it’s good or bad, it’s going to be interesting. I love Matt Damon.

[00:39:37] Sarah: Who doesn’t?

[00:39:38] Beth: How could you not?

[00:39:39] Sarah: I even watched that dumb cop movie, him and Ben Affleck made. You know what? It was a great evening.

[00:39:45] Beth: I watched that on an airplane. Do not recommend. It’s not good enough to make an airplane ride tolerable, I got to tell you, it was tough.

[00:39:52] Sarah: No, you need a big screen.

[00:39:53] Beth: It was tough. But Matt Damon on the big screen, Tom Holland and Zendaya in the movie together. Charlize Theron. I like a lot of these people. I think it’s going to be interesting.

[00:40:01] Sarah: I’m into it. I’m going to watch it. I’ll be great. It’s probably going to be four hours long, but that’s okay.

[00:40:05] Beth: It will be so long. It is The Odyssey.

[00:40:07] Sarah: Can we just stop with the... Y’all, a movie should be an hour and 20 minutes.

[00:40:12] Beth: I totally agree with that. I want an hour and 40 max.

[00:40:15] Sarah: I don’t understand why the movies are getting longer as our attention spans are getting shorter. Now, I don’t want these micro dramas. I’m not saying I want a 10-second story on a YouTube Shorts, okay? I’m not into that life either. But can we just tighten it up a little bit? Can we tighten it up just a little bit?

[00:40:31] Beth: I think this is entirely related to a conversation that we just had on our Spicy live for Substack yesterday. The ticket price is more expensive, so the movie’s got to be longer. No. Don’t you think that’s what it is?

[00:40:43] Sarah: I need everybody to stop doing that. I need everybody to stop deciding that we need 15 practices to justify the extracurricular studio price, and we need 100 awards to justify the school program, and we need long-ass movies to justify the thing, and we need giant servings to justify the restaurant prices. The perpetual growth is cancer, everybody. Just Be cool. Curate and just tell me you’re charging me for the curation. Damn

[00:41:13] Beth: I would have paid $20 more at Mandalorian and Grogu for 50% fewer monster fights. I would have written a check so fast.

[00:41:20] Sarah: I ‘m not Paying anything ever, much less 50% more for a Star Wars movie. I said what I said.

[00:41:27] Beth: I’m excited to hear what you all think of these movies, especially if you would like to just talk about how good Project Hail Mary is. I am wide open for that discussion. And we hope that you enjoy your weekend, and we hope that your summer is off to a good start.

[00:41:40] Sarah: And to the movies and the summer and the America 250 of it all, one of the other exciting things happening in our America 250 summer is that our beloved listener Norma is going to do a patriotic-themed film club in July. It’s going to be so fun. I can’t wait to see what movies she picks.

[00:41:56] Beth: What you know is that Norma is never going to waste your time.

[00:41:59] Sarah: No.

[00:41:59] Beth: Never, ever is Norma going to waste your time.

[00:42:00] Sarah: She is exacting when it comes to cinema, guys.

[00:42:04] Beth: In all things, norma is not going to waste your time. So you can trust her. Community is built on trust. We would love for you to join us there. You can find all the links to do so in the show notes. We’ll be back here with you next Tuesday. Until then, have the best weekend available to you.

Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our Managing Director and Maggie Penton is our Director of Community Engagement.

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