642: The Impossible Dream
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from WVZ Chicago with this American life. So one of our producers, Zoe Chase, had this whole plan to follow this Senator for a year as he ran for reelection. And it was an interesting story because the Senator is a Republican who does not like the President and he talks about that all the time. And the President seems to despise him. So, you know, would he be able to convince Republicans to vote for him? Republicans still overwhelmingly support the President. So we wanted to see him make the pitch. And then something happened that threw a wrench in her plans, Zoe? - Yeah, he resigned. He stopped running for office. - Yeah, so that kind of put the kibosh on that story. - That wasn't a story anymore. - Yeah, explain who this is. - Jeff Flake, Senator from Arizona, he resigned from the Senate on October 24th. And that day he gave this big resignation speech on the floor of the Senate, kind of slamming the President in this political moment. It got a lot of attention. It is time for our complicity and our accommodation of the unacceptable to end. We must never regard as normal the regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals, the personal attacks, the flagrant disregard for truth and decency. - In this attitude, you might say, is the reason he had to resign. He'd been very outspoken about the President. He wrote a whole book calling the President basically unfit for office and a menace to our democracy. And that's why he couldn't win an election in Arizona. Like there were polls that showed he only had a 22% approval rating among Trump voters in Arizona. So how could he win a Republican primary? So the story is dead. But then in December, something happens that changes everything. - Yeah, this thing happens where a Democrat gets elected to Senate in Alabama, which is weird.
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