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Speaker 1: They're happy Wednesday and welcome to another episode of the
Speaker 1: Chuck Podcast. Let me give you a quick little rundown
Speaker 1: of what to expect in today's full episode. I will
Speaker 1: have an answer to the question that I get more
Speaker 1: often than any other will the mid terms happen? But
Speaker 1: I want to explain it in such a way that
Speaker 1: kind of builds off of what we talked about on Monday.
Speaker 1: I will get to that in a minute. So going
Speaker 1: to have my top five list, and this one has
Speaker 1: to do with thought. I'm calling Project twenty thirty two
Speaker 1: for the Democratic Party. I'll just leave that little tease
Speaker 1: at that, and you'll get an idea of where I'm
Speaker 1: going to go with my top five list on that,
Speaker 1: and of course we'll take some questions and go from there.
Speaker 1: All right, So let's go back to the to this exercise.
Speaker 1: I want to do it, and it wants to I
Speaker 1: want to build on the story we talked about on Monday,
Speaker 1: but try to explain why why it's disappearing, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to lament why it's disappearing because I don't think
Speaker 1: it should be disappearing, and try to sort of help
Speaker 1: you discern, you know, which one of these alarming stories.
Speaker 1: How much worry about Trump's alarming rhetoric versus his alarming deeds.
Speaker 1: So look, if you listen to Money's episode, you know
Speaker 1: I spent a good chunk of time slowing things down,
Speaker 1: walking through a story that I think is easy to
Speaker 1: miss in this current information ecosystem. I knew that this
Speaker 1: didn't have easy visuals to show bells and whistles, But
Speaker 1: what I really believe is that this is the worst
Speaker 1: sort of this is the worst corruption scandal we've ever
Speaker 1: had involving an American president. It's bigger than teapot doma
Speaker 1: bigger than Watergate. And I know, because we're so numb
Speaker 1: to Trump's transactionalism, we just don't see it, right. But
Speaker 1: that's why I wanted to walk through the details very deliberately,
Speaker 1: because it's incredibly important.
Speaker 2: And it was.
Speaker 1: Of course, I'm referring to the Wall Street Journal story,
Speaker 1: the report about how Sovereign Wealth Fund of UAE investments
Speaker 1: into a crypto company that really wasn't going anywhere for
Speaker 1: Trump that suddenly became relevant. It led to a change
Speaker 1: in America in the States of America's policy on AI
Speaker 1: and chips, and of course led to a pardon of
Speaker 1: a very controversial figure in the crypto world. And all
Speaker 1: of it happening while Trump was receiving hundreds of millions
Speaker 1: of dollars in cash Trump.
Speaker 2: And his family.
Speaker 1: Now, the story didn't have dramatic visuals, and it wasn't
Speaker 1: easy to villainize somebody in a moment. It was a
Speaker 1: dense it was. It's a story that requires some patience.
Speaker 2: In some ways.
Speaker 1: As I said, right, you need a you need to
Speaker 1: either the Whiteboard on a Beautiful Mind or clar Danes
Speaker 1: and Homeland to sort of see how everything is connected.
Speaker 1: And I really believe that it was the most important
Speaker 1: story of the weekend and really something that that should
Speaker 1: be seen. You know that every congressional reporter should be
Speaker 1: asking every member of Congress about it, right, that type
Speaker 1: of story to sort of get Congress off its ass
Speaker 1: and start worrying about whether presidents are following the Constitution.
Speaker 1: But then the rest of the Then the rest of
Speaker 1: Monday happened.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: You had the Dan Bongino podcast that the President did
Speaker 1: where he mused about federalizing elections, which, of course that
Speaker 1: quick comment coupled with the video footage of the bizarre
Speaker 1: Telsea Gabbard leven FBI rate of Fulton County in Atlanta
Speaker 1: with the twenty twenty ballots, and boom, right, you instantly
Speaker 1: had a bit viral of a feeding frenzy on a
Speaker 1: specific story.
Speaker 2: You know, by.
Speaker 1: Tuesday morning, you wake up and it's Kennedy Senator has
Speaker 1: been Kennedy Center. He's just canceled it, shutting it down
Speaker 1: for two years. Again, a shiny metal object story became
Speaker 1: the lead of the day, and oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: the government was shut down, so we had to reopen
Speaker 1: that and all of it, shoving what is the perhaps
Speaker 1: the biggest scandal in American history further and further and
Speaker 1: further down the information ecosystem ladder. And of course, the
Speaker 1: sudden burst of rhetorical crazy from Trump involving the midterms
Speaker 1: led to a whole bunch of questions that I regularly
Speaker 1: get from both listeners, viewers, and friends and family starting
Speaker 1: to panic, you know, is is he going to cancel
Speaker 1: the midterms? And it always leads to this, because how
Speaker 1: anxious should we all be right now? And you know
Speaker 1: you can and I get it right? Are things collapsing?
Speaker 1: Is this different? Is Trump actually serious this time? What
Speaker 1: guardrails are left that could stop him on this? So
Speaker 1: here's what I want to do. I don't want to
Speaker 1: hype your anxiety, and I don't want to dismiss it either.
Speaker 1: What I want to try to do is organize it,
Speaker 1: because one of the biggest mistakes we make in moments
Speaker 1: like this is confusing volume with importance and mistaking what
Speaker 1: feels scariest for what's actually doing the most damage. It
Speaker 1: goes to the original trope with Trump, you know, right,
Speaker 1: you know, which is you know, do you take them
Speaker 1: literally or seriously or both?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: And in this case, what I would say is should
Speaker 1: you worry about what he's saying or should you worry about.
Speaker 2: What he's doing?
Speaker 1: Now, of course I would argue the answer is yes
Speaker 1: to everything. And that's what we're going to get to.
Speaker 1: So let's start with the story that everyone understands. Immediately,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump goes on a podcast muses again about federalizing elections,
Speaker 1: which of course you know, reminds people of him musing
Speaker 1: about just I wish I could cancel the midterms, and
Speaker 1: almost simultaneously, right when you play that, you have your
Speaker 1: file footage, right, so if you see this on video,
Speaker 1: you could just show the weird Tulsa Gabert thing and
Speaker 1: the striking images out of Georgia of federal agents executing
Speaker 1: a raid connected to election materials from twenty twenty. You know,
Speaker 1: we're at nearly six years later. We've had multiple elections
Speaker 1: in Fulton County ever since. I mean, I sort of
Speaker 1: look at what he's doing is laughable. I think it's silly,
Speaker 1: but it's also very serious. Right, we know he's desperate
Speaker 1: to continue to sell this lie that he somehow was
Speaker 1: illegitimately thrown out of office in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: So Trump talks.
Speaker 1: About overwriting elections, and then all of a sudden, you
Speaker 1: see federal agents seizing ballots. Right, the great fear that
Speaker 1: so many people have. So you don't need a constitutional
Speaker 1: law degree to fill your stomach drop. That is scary.
Speaker 1: Rhetoric plus visuals, threat plus spectacle. It's an easy story
Speaker 1: to tell. It fits in a tweet, it fits in
Speaker 1: a cairn, and it fits in your nervous system, and
Speaker 1: it rides the algorithm. Now, let me be very clear.
Speaker 1: The rhetoric is not harmless. This isn't normal, and it
Speaker 1: shouldn't be normalized. Election interference talk is as damaging as
Speaker 1: election interference itself, and using federal power to intimidate state
Speaker 1: workers matters a great deal.
Speaker 2: So I don't want to I'm.
Speaker 1: Not trying to minimize what he has said or what
Speaker 1: he has done. But here's what I want. I want
Speaker 1: you to understand, and I want to make this clear
Speaker 1: because it's essential. What feels existential is not always what's
Speaker 1: most consequential. So these two events, the rhetoric and the raid,
Speaker 1: landed together. They functioned together. They were consumed as one
Speaker 1: narrative event. It almost doesn't matter which technically came first, right,
Speaker 1: the raid itself or his rhetoric to Bongino, the meaning
Speaker 1: formed through proximity and imaging. Right, that's how political narratives
Speaker 1: work now, thanks to these algorithms, thanks to these big
Speaker 1: tech companies that control the flow of information that you
Speaker 1: and I get to see. It isn't done through chronology
Speaker 1: or nuanced but through what shows up next on your screen.
Speaker 1: And that's why this story dominates. It feels like democracy
Speaker 1: itself is on the line, and it animates a lot
Speaker 1: of people. But feeling existential isn't the same thing as
Speaker 1: actually being the thing that does the most lasting damage. Now,
Speaker 1: let me talk about the Kennedy Center here. First glance,
Speaker 1: Trump's moved to effectively just shut down the Kennedy Center
Speaker 1: unilaterally under the guise of renovations. I see why some
Speaker 1: see it as cultural authoritarianism, and symbolically, sure, it's pretty ugly,
Speaker 1: and if it's a broader pattern of treating institutions as
Speaker 1: enemies and loyalty tests. But then the context of all
Speaker 1: this matters, right, and I think it tells us something
Speaker 1: pretty important about how Trump actually operates. So why did
Speaker 1: he shut this down? This wasn't a first strike, This
Speaker 1: was a reaction. He was being humiliated right. Artists were
Speaker 1: pulling out, performers were canceling, events were unraveling quietly but visibly.
Speaker 1: The reputational damage was happening big time for Trump. Right
Speaker 1: the minute Trump touched the Kennedy Center got involved. Everybody
Speaker 1: wanted out. The opera wanted out. People, every classical, anybody
Speaker 1: with any level of integrity wanted in. The art community
Speaker 1: wanted out. And it was humiliating the Kennedy Center. It
Speaker 1: was humiliating Trump. Right. So Trump wasn't dominating the story.
Speaker 1: He was losing control of it. So what does he do?
Speaker 1: This is a classic Trump He flips the script. Instead
Speaker 1: of having to deal with they're rejecting me, which is
Speaker 1: what they are doing, it becomes I shut it down,
Speaker 1: and instead of absorbing a thousand small acts of descent,
Speaker 1: he creates one big spectacle. Instead of reputational damage accumulating quietly,
Speaker 1: he centralizes the conflict and reframes it as Trump versus
Speaker 1: the culture. Right, it's just simple spin, right, And notice
Speaker 1: what happens when he does that, right, The story becomes
Speaker 1: about Trump's power, Trump's move Trump's dominance.
Speaker 2: Can he do it? Is it legal?
Speaker 1: The stories of the cancelations fade, the accountability dissipates, and
Speaker 1: the noise replaces the consequence. This matters because it's the
Speaker 1: same dynamic we're seeing everywhere else, which brings me back
Speaker 1: to Monday.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: While George and the Kennedy Center sucked all the oxygen
Speaker 1: out of the room early part of this week, the
Speaker 1: story I walked through earlier in the week is already fading.
Speaker 1: And that should worry us more because that story, the
Speaker 1: fact that Donald Trump has turned America into a kleptocracy
Speaker 1: for his personal enrichment, that's the story that ought to
Speaker 1: be alarming everybody because he's already doing it, and he's
Speaker 1: already done it. He has taken these payments, he has
Speaker 1: enriched himself. This isn't he might he's thinking about. He's doing.
Speaker 1: This is stuff he's done.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Foreign sovereign wealth flowing into Trump linked enterprises, policy decisions,
Speaker 1: especially around AI chips and crypto, suddenly aligning with the
Speaker 1: private financial financial upside, pardons, permission, an access, all moving
Speaker 1: in parallel, And as I said, the journal never says
Speaker 1: it was a quid pro quo. But all you have
Speaker 1: to do is look right. The modern corruption doesn't look
Speaker 1: like a brown paper bag anymore. It looks like timing,
Speaker 1: proximity and mutual benefit. Each step defensible on its own
Speaker 1: and technically legal in some sort of byzantine way of
Speaker 1: looking at it, but it is damning when taken together,
Speaker 1: and it is illegal when you realize it's being done
Speaker 1: by the president of the United States, and violation of
Speaker 1: the Constitution. And here's the moment that really sort of
Speaker 1: crystallized all this for me. So on Tuesday morning, I
Speaker 1: was scanning my usual mountain of newsletters right bias. You know,
Speaker 1: lots of good ones out there, lots of mediocre ones,
Speaker 1: but I read a lot of them good faith actors,
Speaker 1: smart people, outlets that are deeply focused on democratic norms.
Speaker 1: And the foreign policy story was gone from a couple
Speaker 1: of them that I was shocked to see it gone
Speaker 1: on from. But the election rhetoric that was everywhere, the
Speaker 1: midterm anxiety that was dominant. I mean, my friend Bill Crystal,
Speaker 1: who does the Morning Shots newsletter for the Bullwork on Tuesday,
Speaker 1: not a single mention of this Wall Street Journal story anymore. Look,
Speaker 1: they did a lot on Monday, but they were obsessed
Speaker 1: with the midterm issue. Ditto with playbook had nothing on
Speaker 1: that had a slew on the midterm issue. We all
Speaker 1: know how this stuff, right. Some stuff travels more, some
Speaker 1: stuff rides the algorithm right, and the way the independent
Speaker 1: media landscape works, a lot of editorial folks examine what's
Speaker 1: getting attention what isn't, and they may lean more heavily
Speaker 1: on the stories that are getting more traction, even if
Speaker 1: there are other stories that are arguably more important. And
Speaker 1: I'm not calling it. I don't think that's bad faith.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's corruption. But it is sort of
Speaker 1: how our information ecosystem is kind of doing exactly what
Speaker 1: it's designed to do. It rewards stories that are visually
Speaker 1: immediate and emotionally legible and quietly pushes aside stories that
Speaker 1: are technical, slow and complicated it and might not be
Speaker 1: as gripping to as large enough of an audience. And
Speaker 1: that's exactly why the story of the creation of the
Speaker 1: American kleptocracy is much more dangerous. So it brings me
Speaker 1: back to the anxiety question and something I want to
Speaker 1: be very clear about. As alarmed as we all are
Speaker 1: by some of Trump's rhetoric and by the sense that
Speaker 1: there are no guardrails left. The truth is a bit
Speaker 1: more complicated, because what's interesting is every time we lament
Speaker 1: this idea that there are no guardrails, you start to
Speaker 1: see that some of them do work, not all of them,
Speaker 1: not consistently, but some of them some of the time.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting for us to realize when they do
Speaker 1: work and when they don't work, and understanding which ones
Speaker 1: work and why is the difference, I think, between whether
Speaker 1: you should panic and whether you should view it as
Speaker 1: some sort of strategy. So let me give you two examples. First,
Speaker 1: there's Minneapolis after the killing of two Americans, and let's
Speaker 1: just say it took two American deaths for Trump to
Speaker 1: do this. Trump did something almost never does rhetorically.
Speaker 2: He back down.
Speaker 1: He sat down with Senate Democrats, he negotiated, He accepted
Speaker 1: the premise that they were going to shut down the
Speaker 1: government if he didn't negotiate constraints on ice.
Speaker 2: And he said, okay, right.
Speaker 1: Here's a guy that his critics consistently say, you know,
Speaker 1: doesn't listen to anything. There's no and he did on
Speaker 1: this one. So why was it because of norms? No,
Speaker 1: we know he doesn't care about norms. Was it because
Speaker 1: someone made a better constitutional argument to him, sorry? Or
Speaker 1: was it because the political costs suddenly became undeniable even
Speaker 1: for Trump? Right, public opinion has shifted dramatically on this issue.
Speaker 1: Republicans got nervous. The backlash wasn't abstract anymore, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't just coming from Democrats that owned the Libs. It
Speaker 1: was measurable, and Trump does respond to measurable pain, at
Speaker 1: least political pain in poling.
Speaker 2: Look at the FED.
Speaker 1: We heard all the noise, the threats, the posturing, and
Speaker 1: then the choice came down to it. He picked Kevin Walsh, conventional,
Speaker 1: even market reassuring pick. He didn't pick a sickophan, a
Speaker 1: guy like Kevin Hassett, who might have been somebody who
Speaker 1: would have just yes, you know, been a yes man
Speaker 1: for whatever Trump wanted on interest rates. So why did
Speaker 1: he do that? Well, one guardrail. He does seem to
Speaker 1: care about our markets, right, and he cares about what
Speaker 1: some donors think, his donors, and he certainly cares about
Speaker 1: what the elites that he interacts with think. So the
Speaker 1: guardrail wasn't the idea of FED independence. It was the
Speaker 1: risk of immediate, tangible financial consequences for him and his friends.
Speaker 1: So it's an interesting pattern that you've watched over. It's like,
Speaker 1: every once in a while he responds to a guardrail,
Speaker 1: but it's never that for the reason you want him
Speaker 1: to respond to a guardrail. It's for usually some sort
Speaker 1: of personal cost and personal nervousness. So it does seem
Speaker 1: as if Trump accepts pushback when when three conditions are met. First,
Speaker 1: the cost is immediate, it's not theoretical, it's not long term,
Speaker 1: it's immediate. Second, the backlash is something he sees poll numbers,
Speaker 1: market drops, donor anger, maybe even a ratings issue. Right,
Speaker 1: it's not an editorial, it's not a whole bunch of statements, right.
Speaker 1: And if the pressure is across the board, right, lots
Speaker 1: of people and lots of different parts of his life going, hey,
Speaker 1: are you sure about this?
Speaker 2: Are you sure about this? Are you sure about this? Right?
Speaker 1: It's why he seemed to back down a bit on Minneapolis.
Speaker 1: And I know some of you're going to say he
Speaker 1: hasn't back down that much, But for Trump, he's back down.
Speaker 2: Right. What happened?
Speaker 1: You had Republicans saying, oh, whoall this went too far.
Speaker 2: The same with the FED.
Speaker 1: But all those reasons are also explained why it's so
Speaker 1: hard for the formn policy monetization story to get legs.
Speaker 1: Because it fails those three tests, the costs are delayed.
Speaker 1: We won't see the impact of selling out American form policy,
Speaker 1: creating loopholes for China to catch up. We won't know
Speaker 1: this until after it's too late. The consequences are on
Speaker 1: a spreadsheet, and none of us like to read spreadsheets.
Speaker 1: And of course the backlash is a bit fragmented. There's
Speaker 1: no market crash, there's no single dramatic moment, there's no
Speaker 1: image on cable news. Just a slow monetization of power,
Speaker 1: and we see it. We see it almost every week
Speaker 1: when he signs, when he releases the list of people
Speaker 1: he's and you start to go through it and you
Speaker 1: realize most of them were represented by friends of Trump,
Speaker 1: and he just was monetizing, helping them win fees from
Speaker 1: these rich crooks. And it also explains why I'm less
Speaker 1: worried about Trump's election rhetoric than i am about what
Speaker 1: he's doing in form policing. Elections in the United States
Speaker 1: are decentralized by design, States run them counties, administer. The
Speaker 1: diffusion isn't a weakness, it's actually a firewall.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Trump doesn't control it. Republicans quietly know he can't override
Speaker 1: it without detonating their own power. They can't do it.
Speaker 1: They'd have to pass Acts of Congress. There's so many
Speaker 1: different ways in order to make this happen. It's for
Speaker 1: it to happen, the Republican Republic would essentially have to collapse.
Speaker 1: We'd have to suspend the Constitution, and we're not and
Speaker 1: he doesn't have that kind of power. Ironically, I think politically,
Speaker 1: every time Trump muses about interfering with elections, he doesn't
Speaker 1: suppress turnout, which I know is a fear some people have.
Speaker 2: He fuels it.
Speaker 1: He energizes opposition voters, he repels swing voters who just
Speaker 1: want to get rid of the chaos, and he deepened
Speaker 1: cynicism among his own base. So if you were trying
Speaker 1: to design the dumbest possible strategy heading into the midterm election,
Speaker 1: you'd be hard pressed to beat the one Trump is
Speaker 1: doing right now. Talk about if you're on the Democratic
Speaker 1: side of the aisle, you should want him talking about this.
Speaker 1: All it does is make it saved you money on
Speaker 1: get out the vote. Donald Trump is going to get
Speaker 1: your base out to vote. And then he's sending a
Speaker 1: message that he thinks the whole thing is rigged anyway,
Speaker 1: and he's sending a message to his own base that,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe he's sort of winking and nodding, don't worry,
Speaker 1: I'll rig it. So it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2: They're not going to show up.
Speaker 1: So, yes, the rhetoric's extraordinarily dangerous and I don't want
Speaker 1: to miss it, but it is institutionally constrained and politically
Speaker 1: incredibly self defeating. That's not the case with this foreign
Speaker 1: policy story. Congress is supposed to be the check here.
Speaker 1: The voters are never going to be the check.
Speaker 2: On this story.
Speaker 1: It's going to take them a while to get it.
Speaker 1: This Congress has shown no interest in investigating the leader of
Speaker 1: their own party, so that story is just going to
Speaker 1: keep going. He's going to keep selling foreign policy decisions
Speaker 1: to the highest bidder. Sometimes he'll do it right out
Speaker 1: in the open. Sometimes they'll do it quietly. I mean
Speaker 1: times it feels like Venezuela, and the oil is he's
Speaker 1: just doing it right out in the open. Most of
Speaker 1: this he'll do out of view. So The point is this, No,
Speaker 1: I don't think the country's collapsing tomorrow, and no, I
Speaker 1: don't think elections are going to get canceled twenty six,
Speaker 1: But I do think we're watching something more subtle and
Speaker 1: more corrosive. Democracies don't usually fall from who's they actually erode.
Speaker 1: They look more like what happened, what's happening in Turkey,
Speaker 1: what's happening in Hungary. They erode when corruption becomes complicated, normalized,
Speaker 1: and easier to ignore than the latest outrage, cultural outrage.
Speaker 2: You know, bad bunny.
Speaker 1: You know, pay attention to bad Bunny, but don't pay
Speaker 1: attention to the selling out of American foreign policy. So
Speaker 1: what Trump does say threatens democracy symbolically, but what Trump
Speaker 1: does corrodes it materially. And our information ecosystem, whether it
Speaker 1: intends to or not, keep steering us towards the loudest,
Speaker 1: scariest stories while the most consequential ones fade in the background.
Speaker 1: That's the real danger. It's not the panic, it's not
Speaker 1: the calm. It's miss placed attention and mist placed concern.
Speaker 1: There used to be a publication out there that once
Speaker 1: reminded us democracy dies in darkness, But sometimes that darkness
Speaker 1: is also noisy, and the democracy can die in a
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Speaker 1: to the Census and a little bit of a riff
Speaker 1: as there's some new Sensus updates went around in there
Speaker 1: a new round of panic among Democrats and liberals about
Speaker 1: how the electoral college map in twenty thirty two after
Speaker 1: the twenty thirty census is going to become a disaster
Speaker 1: for the Democrats because the power shift essentially, you know,
Speaker 1: the Democrats. You know, had Kamala Harris simply carried Pennsylvania, Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: and Michigan in addition all the other states she carried,
Speaker 1: she'd have been right at two hundred and seventy by
Speaker 1: twenty thirty two. The same configuration of states would have
Speaker 1: only gotten her to two hundred and fifty nine electoral votes.
Speaker 1: So basically, Democrats in the next census are going to
Speaker 1: lose a dozen base electoral votes, which means the Republican
Speaker 1: floor is going to go up about a dozen votes.
Speaker 1: Just to give you some technical numbers, Essentially, you've got
Speaker 1: Republican states Florida, Texas, Idaho, Utah that collectively are going
Speaker 1: to net anywhere from say ten to twelve congressional districts,
Speaker 1: which means electoral votes. And then you will have a
Speaker 1: bunch of losses in the blue based states. Right, California
Speaker 1: in New York collectively are going to lose eight to nine.
Speaker 1: Throw in Illinois's going to lose another two, and then
Speaker 1: you're going to lose one each from Oregon and Minnesota.
Speaker 1: Never mind some of the swing states that you're gonna
Speaker 1: see somerom shifts in. Right, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin each
Speaker 1: lose one, but North Carolina, Arizona, and Georgia will each
Speaker 1: gain one. So in that sense, the swing states the
Speaker 1: numbers are going to be the same, but it is
Speaker 1: going to mean that the Blue wall is not going
Speaker 1: to be the important thing. It's the Sunbelt purple wall
Speaker 1: that's going to matter. More of Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona
Speaker 1: are going to be at least as important, if not
Speaker 1: more important, than the trio of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, in Michigan.
Speaker 1: But that's just if you're sitting there, assuming the map
Speaker 1: is what it is. Political parties are supposed to be
Speaker 1: dynamic organizations, and they, based on investments, can can try
Speaker 1: to take a base state from the other party and
Speaker 1: turn it into a swing state. Take a swing state
Speaker 1: and try to turn it into a base state.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Virginia and Colorado Democrats successfully took what were swing states
Speaker 1: and turn them into base states. Arguably, Republicans Florida and
Speaker 1: Ohio took what was swing states and turned them into
Speaker 1: base states.
Speaker 2: Right, So.
Speaker 1: Political parties, right, you've got right Now, Republicans would love
Speaker 1: to take a swing state like Minnesota and see or
Speaker 1: a lean blue state like Minnesota and see if they
Speaker 1: can turn it into a swing state. Democrats have been
Speaker 1: amusing about the idea of taking Texas and making it
Speaker 1: a swing state, but now the project is more acute
Speaker 1: than ever for the Democrats. Now, look, I'm going to
Speaker 1: make one tangent real quick because those of you that
Speaker 1: read me closely and listen to me closely. Know, I'm
Speaker 1: obsessed that the easiest way to fix this electoral You
Speaker 1: know that one of the ways we need to fix
Speaker 1: the electoral college unfairness is to not have a constitutional
Speaker 1: amendment but simply expand the House to the size that
Speaker 1: the founders intended it to be. Right, it is no
Speaker 1: longer a representative democracy we have now. We now have
Speaker 1: every congressional districts the size of a major city, with
Speaker 1: about eight hundred thousand. They're too big, They don't they
Speaker 1: are not representative of communities of interest anymore. They're simply
Speaker 1: dominated by the most powerful faction within each of these
Speaker 1: congressional districts, and so they're not doing what the founders intended.
Speaker 1: The House of Representatives was supposed to expand with the
Speaker 1: population of the country, and they did this every decade
Speaker 1: until nineteen twenty when there was a dispute between the
Speaker 1: two parties and then they locked it in at four
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty five. That is now why you feel
Speaker 1: like you live in a congressional district, likely where you
Speaker 1: feel like your member of Congress doesn't really represent the
Speaker 1: day strict. They either represent to liberal part of the
Speaker 1: of the district over they sort of overrepresent the liberal
Speaker 1: part or overrepresent the conservative part. But there's but it
Speaker 1: doesn't feel like anybody represents right the district as a whole.
Speaker 1: So I want to set that tangent aside. So if
Speaker 1: you're the DNC and you're and you have leadership that
Speaker 1: is thinking beyond tomorrow, and I don't know if that's
Speaker 1: the case, I say it. I'm not trying to be snarky,
Speaker 1: but you know, leaders of political parties are like general
Speaker 1: managers for sports teams. The fan base expects immediate results.
Speaker 1: They are not interested in you building a foundation that
Speaker 1: pays dividends in eight years, because that general manager won't
Speaker 1: even be there in eight years, just like that political
Speaker 1: party leader won't be there in eight years. So it
Speaker 1: is the incentive structures are messed up. But that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean there aren't other outside entities that should be thinking
Speaker 1: about the following, which is, if the Democrats are suddenly
Speaker 1: have an electoral college majority problem, then they need to
Speaker 1: design what I call a project twenty to thirty two
Speaker 1: and decide they've got to put eight to ten They've
Speaker 1: got to invest in eight to ten states, and about
Speaker 1: half of them are swing states that they've got to
Speaker 1: attempt to make more reliably blue and or red states
Speaker 1: that they can put into the competitive category. They have
Speaker 1: got to expand the map, even though it doesn't look
Speaker 1: obvious that they can expand the map, so that long
Speaker 1: wind up is designed. So if project with twenty thirty
Speaker 1: two's presidential election in mind, with the new map that
Speaker 1: we'll have, then I give you the top five list
Speaker 1: of states that the Democrats should be targeting now in
Speaker 1: an effort to keep them competitive on in the electoral
Speaker 1: college going forward. Top top because the political power that
Speaker 1: California and New York, that sort of floor of support
Speaker 1: that at times made it seem like the electoral college,
Speaker 1: and this is something that always is cyclical. At times
Speaker 1: it looks like there's an advantage to the Democrats, at
Speaker 1: times looks like there's advantage to Republicans. Really it usually
Speaker 1: is who's winning the middle more often, right is, and
Speaker 1: who's got the larger base, And right now Republicans have
Speaker 1: a slightly larger base than the Democrats. So with that
Speaker 1: in mind, I'm going to give you my top five
Speaker 1: lists of states that the Democrats have to invest in
Speaker 1: either because they need to try to make that state
Speaker 1: more reliably competitive, or they need to try to take
Speaker 1: a state and make it competitive.
Speaker 2: In the first place.
Speaker 1: So number one on the list is North Carolina. North
Speaker 1: Carolina by twenty thirty two is likely to be up
Speaker 1: to seventeen electoral votes. It's arguably should you know, it
Speaker 1: is trending the way we've seen with Georgia trending. It
Speaker 1: is younger, it's a bit more diverse, but it hadn't
Speaker 1: quite tipped yet, right, But it is one of the
Speaker 1: highest education to growth ratios in the state. Right, it's
Speaker 1: seven percent higher education than some of its neighbors. So
Speaker 1: you know, here they've they've got Virginia as a light
Speaker 1: blue state. Georgia is a model here. But North Carolina
Speaker 1: they have multiple markets. Charlotte, Raleigh, Ashville can serve as
Speaker 1: anchors there. But the bottom line is they've they've acted
Speaker 1: while they are while they're competitive in North Carolina, they
Speaker 1: usually come up short. Right, It's sort of what Minnesota
Speaker 1: has been to the Republicans. And yes, Barack Obama carried
Speaker 1: North Carolina once and in that one year they won
Speaker 1: a Senate seat. And occasionally they win Senate seats just
Speaker 1: like Republicans occasionally win statewide. In Minnesota, there seems to
Speaker 1: be a hard cap of about forty eight percent in
Speaker 1: most federal elections. Dido in Minnesota for the Republicans. Ditto
Speaker 1: for that in North Carolina. They've got to change that.
Speaker 1: And North Carolina has been a state that they you know,
Speaker 1: it's always like, was on the periphery of targeting in
Speaker 1: the swing state. Yeah, we're going to target North Carolina
Speaker 1: the same way they would say, yeah, we might target
Speaker 1: Florida back in twenty twelve and twenty sixteen, and sometimes
Speaker 1: they didn't.
Speaker 2: Sometimes they didn't.
Speaker 1: Now they've got to treat North Carolina the same way
Speaker 1: they treat Wisconsin and Michigan. It's got to be that
Speaker 1: that sort of you know, it's got to be treated
Speaker 1: on another level. So that's number one North Carolina. In
Speaker 1: some ways, I don't know if a Democrat's going to
Speaker 1: get elected president without carrying North Carolina and Georgia. At
Speaker 1: the end of the day, you know, when you start
Speaker 1: to look at this in the way trend's going in
Speaker 1: the demographic makeup of the Democratic Party versus what we're
Speaker 1: seeing in the Republican Party aging in smaller populations, I
Speaker 1: suspect over time Pennsylvania, Wisconsin's going to start drifting right,
Speaker 1: which means Democrats have to figure out how to turn Georgia, Arizona,
Speaker 1: and North Carolina collectively into the new trio into their
Speaker 1: You know, that's going to be the new wall, right.
Speaker 1: It's either a red wall for the Republicans that Democrats
Speaker 1: can't penetrate, or it becomes the building blocks of a
Speaker 1: Sunbelt blue wall. But either way, the anchor of it
Speaker 1: is likely North Carolina number two on that list. I
Speaker 1: think of targeting is a bit of a reach state,
Speaker 1: but it's Texas Texas more than Florida right now. It's
Speaker 1: I think the trend lines in Florida for some demographic
Speaker 1: reasons with the Latino population. In some ways, I think
Speaker 1: Hispanics are more gettable for Democrats in Texas than Hispanics
Speaker 1: are in Florida. They're more swing voter, swingy swing votery
Speaker 1: in Texas than they are in South Florida. So I
Speaker 1: think that when you start to just look at the numbers,
Speaker 1: they're there. Texas is just getting a lot of new
Speaker 1: residents and any just like how Florida transitioned in the
Speaker 1: nineties from being a fairly reliable Republican state to becoming
Speaker 1: a swing state. First Clinton carried it in ninety six,
Speaker 1: and then of course it became the single most important
Speaker 1: state in two thousand, in two thousand and four. That's
Speaker 1: the sort of reasoning in rationale why Texas has to
Speaker 1: be a focal point. And the fact is, rhetorically the
Speaker 1: Democrats have talked about Texas for a long time. They've
Speaker 1: never actually put their money where their mouth is. Maybe
Speaker 1: this year's Senate race, if it's indeed competitive, if Ken
Speaker 1: Paxton is the Republican nominee, that jump starts interest in it.
Speaker 1: But I would argue regardless, they have to treat Texas
Speaker 1: like a swing state even when it's not, in order
Speaker 1: to get that state comfortable supporting a Democrat by twenty
Speaker 1: thirty two. It's not going to happen overnight. And that's
Speaker 1: why it's sort of like again, I go back, I have.
Speaker 1: You know, it is hard to get political parties to
Speaker 1: think more than a luncheon cycle ahead. That's not how
Speaker 1: the incentives work. But when thinking this far in advance,
Speaker 1: that's why Texas arguably is number two. Because it's going
Speaker 1: to be very expensive, and it's going to be and
Speaker 1: you just got.
Speaker 2: To plot along.
Speaker 1: Number three on my list is the state that I
Speaker 1: talk about all the time that it's a head scratcher
Speaker 1: to me that Democrats really don't focus on it, and
Speaker 1: it's Kansas.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 1: We've seen this now two different Democrat, two term Democratic
Speaker 1: governors over the last you know, sixteen of the last
Speaker 1: twenty four years have had Democratic governors, and they've won
Speaker 1: due to Republican overreach, but they've also won because you've
Speaker 1: seen you know, you have a growing you know, look,
Speaker 1: the biggest sort of deno way to find out if
Speaker 1: a state leans will inherently lean red or blue is
Speaker 1: you know, the number of college grads. Well, Kansas is
Speaker 1: one that in Kansas and Missouri are kind of going
Speaker 1: in the opposite directions. You've got the growing suburbs of
Speaker 1: Kansas City in Kansas that have taken have basically taken
Speaker 1: what used to be a lean red district and turned
Speaker 1: it into a lean blue district. Both what Chaton Topeka
Speaker 1: are growing. You've got two big state schools in Lawrence
Speaker 1: and in Manhattan, Kansas and Kansas State. And so when
Speaker 1: you look at the sort of formula that Democrats have
Speaker 1: used to succeed in places like Wisconsin or Michigan, or
Speaker 1: let's see, smaller states are like Nevada.
Speaker 2: I could I could argue that Kansas looks more like that.
Speaker 1: Look there, I get the sort of the historical trends
Speaker 1: of Kansas, but Kansas is not as you know, Yes,
Speaker 1: there's MAGA in Kansas, but there's sort of this Kansas
Speaker 1: Republican that is different than the MAGA makeup as well.
Speaker 1: Where Missouri, you know, it's funny, Missouri feels more like
Speaker 1: a southern state and Kansas feels more like a Midwestern state.
Speaker 1: And Democrats, I think right now have a better shot,
Speaker 1: particularly among white voters in the Kansas winning those folks
Speaker 1: over than they do winning the white voters of Missouri
Speaker 1: number four on the list. Very similar argument to North Carolina.
Speaker 2: It's Georgia.
Speaker 1: Georgia is a state that you know, we're going to
Speaker 1: find out in twenty twenty six just how strong the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party is.
Speaker 2: Is this a state that just.
Speaker 1: Is competitive only when they have Rafael Warnock on the ballot,
Speaker 1: or is this a state that is going to be
Speaker 1: competitive now no matter what. And asof winning reelection would
Speaker 1: send one signal Democrats winning the governor's mansion would send
Speaker 1: another signal. So I think we're going to learn a
Speaker 1: lot about just sort of the health of the Democratic brand.
Speaker 1: How much is the marginal success Democrats have had in
Speaker 1: Georgia been just because of backlash to Trump or is
Speaker 1: there is this starting to become durable. I think we're
Speaker 1: going to learn. But no matter what, again, because the
Speaker 1: math issue, right Georgia. When you think about how much
Speaker 1: money and resources over the decades have gone into Michigan, Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: and Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina and number five on my list, Arizona.
Speaker 2: Three of those.
Speaker 1: Fights, they have to become just core states. Arguably now
Speaker 1: they're as important, if not more important, than the blue
Speaker 1: Wall of the Midwest. This is going to be a
Speaker 1: red wall, a purple wall, or a blue sunbolt wall
Speaker 1: either way.
Speaker 2: So there's that.
Speaker 1: So three states that didn't make my list that I
Speaker 1: think deserve some investment in when you're looking at Project
Speaker 1: thirty two, Iowa, Indiana, in Florida, I think all of them.
Speaker 1: It's one of those where you want to get into
Speaker 1: a position where you're competitive in those states where you
Speaker 1: have enough because you need some buffers. You can't always
Speaker 1: have to draw this, you know, the perfect inside straight.
Speaker 1: And you know, if you want to expand the map
Speaker 1: for Senate seats, and you want to expand the map
Speaker 1: for more governor's mansions, you've got to give yourself buffers.
Speaker 1: And Indiana, Iowa, and Florida, in theory, all have enough
Speaker 1: combinations of metro areas and suburban populations and some allergies
Speaker 1: to MAGA policies that collectively, in theory, should give the
Speaker 1: Democrats opportunity. Now, you know, it's interesting the Democrats in
Speaker 1: this in what should be a focal point here Project
Speaker 1: twenty thirty two. And I'm at some point waiting for
Speaker 1: there to be an organization that's spun off just called
Speaker 1: this right, you know that some big donor decides to
Speaker 1: fund and just focused on voter registration programs things like
Speaker 1: that is when the Democrats decide what their early calendar
Speaker 1: looks like. And they just over the last week greenlit
Speaker 1: twelve states that plan to petition to be in the
Speaker 1: early primary window for president antil politics. If if the
Speaker 1: Democrats are thinking long term, they should be thinking about
Speaker 1: these four states as this decision as an opportunity to
Speaker 1: invest in Project twenty thirty two for them, how to
Speaker 1: strengthen their ability to get more a few more states
Speaker 1: in play expand the map, right, So I wanted to
Speaker 1: look at their twelve states and see where they overlapped
Speaker 1: with states that perhaps they need to strengthen in in
Speaker 1: order to give keep themselves competitive in a presidential by
Speaker 1: twenty thirty two. So the twelve states they put in
Speaker 1: out of the east, it was Delaware, New Hampshire, Out
Speaker 1: of the midwest, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan. Out of the south, Georgia,
Speaker 1: North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and out of the
Speaker 1: west Nevada, and New Mexico. So North Caro and the
Speaker 1: top five lists Georgia and North Carolina overlaps. You know,
Speaker 1: I think on the you know, I've said this before
Speaker 1: in the early state stuff, the bigger this day, the
Speaker 1: more ineffective that state can be at being sort of
Speaker 1: a fair fairness because with the bigger states then rewards
Speaker 1: those with big money. And both Georgia and North Carolina
Speaker 1: are expensive states. So while I think you could argue
Speaker 1: this would this in theory, having them as early states,
Speaker 1: having more Democrats campaign in them all the time could
Speaker 1: serve to overtime invest them. I don't know if they're
Speaker 1: the best states to create a level playing field for
Speaker 1: those candidates with big money and those candidates that don't
Speaker 1: have big money at the beginning. That would be the
Speaker 1: two negatives, right, just very expensive states to advertise in,
Speaker 1: but having them as early states where Democrats are just
Speaker 1: always traveling to those to what Georgia or North Carolina. Certainly,
Speaker 1: I think that is why Iowa state in the battle round,
Speaker 1: even though demographically Iowa looks like a state that should
Speaker 1: be darker red than it is.
Speaker 2: Iowa.
Speaker 1: Obviously, I think this is a way on the smaller
Speaker 1: state scale. I was disappointed to see that either ca
Speaker 1: anas didn't apply or there was no interest. I saw
Speaker 1: that Nebraska didn't do this either. So when you look
Speaker 1: at it, the only viable small states that applied for
Speaker 1: the early state window for the Democratic presidential primaries, with
Speaker 1: Iowa right. The other two in the midwester or Illinois
Speaker 1: Michigan again too big, too expensive, will only be there
Speaker 1: to help the big name candidates. It doesn't really doesn't
Speaker 1: really work as a good early test where Iowa you
Speaker 1: have to campaign in rural parts of the state in
Speaker 1: order to win, versus Ellinois, Michigan you don't have to
Speaker 1: campaign in the rural parts of the state in order
Speaker 1: to win. The most interesting state that's on there that's
Speaker 1: got advanced for consideration to be in the early state
Speaker 1: window is Tennessee.
Speaker 2: And I want to.
Speaker 1: Close with Tennessee because Tennessee is a state that has
Speaker 1: been a head scratcher to me. Twenty years ago. I
Speaker 1: thought Tennessee was going to go, was going to be
Speaker 1: a part of Georgia North Carolina. Right, you always said
Speaker 1: Florida was the first state in the sun Belt that
Speaker 1: became competitive, and then the question was, Okay, which ones
Speaker 1: are going to go next? And if you went by
Speaker 1: sort of socioeconomics, where we were seeing more people moving
Speaker 1: to right, Georgia North Carolina on the list, but so
Speaker 1: is Tennessee. And Tennessee is actually moved become more Republican,
Speaker 1: not less Republican over the last twenty years. Is that
Speaker 1: going to continue? Does the growth of Nashville does that
Speaker 1: sort of the bigger it grows, the more it becomes
Speaker 1: sort of Austin meets Las Vegas, which then creates your
Speaker 1: sort of suburban and you just get more non sort
Speaker 1: of cultural Southerners in your electorate. It's certainly something that
Speaker 1: I think a lot of US election observers have been
Speaker 1: waiting to see, and there's been very little evidence of it.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, if this were happening Tennessee special
Speaker 1: in December, would have would have seen a flip, while
Speaker 1: we didn't see a flip. Right, it was a little
Speaker 1: bit more competitive, but it wasn't necessarily a flip. So
Speaker 1: you know, part of it is, you could say the
Speaker 1: election lines. I do think Democrats have a Memphis problem
Speaker 1: in the state. Meaning Memphis is just it's just it's
Speaker 1: a city that is not as it's not what it
Speaker 1: was thirty years ago. It feels as if and there's
Speaker 1: this whether it's fair or not, this perception while it's
Speaker 1: a Democrat run city and it's poorly run and et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And Republicans have weaponized sort of Memphis a
Speaker 1: long time to win elections. It's been sort of something
Speaker 1: they've done, been sort of a you know, Memphis has
Speaker 1: been used as sort of a code word for race.
Speaker 1: But when you look at the elector in Tennessee, you know,
Speaker 1: I know that if I if I were a strategist
Speaker 1: over at the DNC, I'd be thinking you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: Tennessee is a reached state. But here's a state that
Speaker 1: is that's got something in common with Virginia, something in
Speaker 1: common with North Carolina. You know, maybe more resources into
Speaker 1: the state opened some doors here. I found, of all
Speaker 1: the of all the states that made it through in
Speaker 1: the top twelve, the one that you know, which one
Speaker 1: of these is not like the other, It was Tennessee.
Speaker 1: But I'll tell you if you if you went back
Speaker 1: thirty years, a lot of US election forecasters would have
Speaker 1: said Tennessee was one of the states that we expected
Speaker 1: to start to sort of I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people saw the South sort of splitting into sort of
Speaker 1: you know, the South more Cosmopolitans south of quote New
Speaker 1: South right, and the sort of old South, deep South,
Speaker 1: however you want to describe it. And there was a
Speaker 1: you know, you had sort of your your Tennessee, your
Speaker 1: North Carolina, your Georgia. You're Virginia in one area, Florida
Speaker 1: in one area, and then you're Alabama, your Mississippi, You're Louisiana,
Speaker 1: South Carolina in another area. So it is mostly broken
Speaker 1: along those lines, but not totally. In Tennessee has been interesting.
Speaker 1: I know, my friend Brad Todd has a lot of
Speaker 1: theories there. He thinks that Tennessee Republicans have benefited from
Speaker 1: a lot of Midwestern refugees, if you will, sort of
Speaker 1: Midwestern conservatives who have left the higher tax states of Ohio, Illinois,
Speaker 1: Michigan and have not moved all the way south, but
Speaker 1: moved to Tennessee, a low income tax state. So he says,
Speaker 1: one of the ways you notice it is if you
Speaker 1: go in the suburbs, some of these suburban communities in
Speaker 1: Nashville on a fall Saturday, you don't see Tennessee flex.
Speaker 1: He goes, you see a lot of Ohio, State, Michigan, Purdue,
Speaker 1: Indiana flex. So that's been It's an interesting anecdote. I
Speaker 1: think it's one worth processing. But the reality is this
Speaker 1: Democrats have a major problem on their hands come twenty
Speaker 1: thirty two, and if they start worrying about it in
Speaker 1: twenty thirty one, it's going to be too late. So
Speaker 1: if they're going to launch Project twenty thirty two, now,
Speaker 1: let me go through it again. The five states they
Speaker 1: should be focusing on North Carolina basically the sun Belt,
Speaker 1: Purple Wall of North Carolina, Arizona, and Georgia, and then
Speaker 1: I'd throw in Texas and Kansas. They've got to expand
Speaker 1: their map, and then maybe you dabble in Indiana, Iowa,
Speaker 1: and Florida, and then of course we'll see what they
Speaker 1: do about Tennessee. But if the party doesn't start thinking
Speaker 1: that way, they could get locked out of the presidency
Speaker 1: for a generation. That's how dire this population shift is
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Speaker 1: let's do a little last chuck before we get out
Speaker 1: of here. I think I'm going to try to do
Speaker 1: six of them today, so let's keep me honest. Number
Speaker 1: one came from Brian from New England. He says, Hey,
Speaker 1: it's been about a year since you announced your departure
Speaker 1: from NBC. Yes, it is feels feels like it feels
Speaker 1: like a decade. But anyway, I imagine you're happy with
Speaker 1: the move. Was there a moment that made you realize
Speaker 1: going independent was the right call? Or had you just
Speaker 1: done everything you set up to? Two in a broadcast,
Speaker 1: it's the roles you wish you tried, like foreign correspondent
Speaker 1: or local politics and any future plans you can tease
Speaker 1: maybe a check sports cast. Thanks Brian from New England. Well,
Speaker 1: there's a fun little sports project I'm working on. I'll
Speaker 1: have more details soon ish, partnering with somebody that is
Speaker 1: probably very familiar to many of you in the sports space.
Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to it. But it sort of combines
Speaker 1: my love for sports in history. So I will throw
Speaker 1: that out there and leave that out there as a
Speaker 1: tease for you. But it's something that should be come
Speaker 1: into fruition in the next four to six weeks on
Speaker 1: that front. Look, I have I I have no regrets.
Speaker 1: I miss I miss the collaboration, I miss some of
Speaker 1: my friends in colleagues. I ache currently for my longtime
Speaker 1: friend Savannah got three, who's going through just the worst,
Speaker 1: the worst experience imaginable.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: You know, something happens to your parents, your kids, and
Speaker 1: they're just there's there's no there's no consoling that, and
Speaker 1: it's just heartbreaking. I know Savannah's mother a little bit.
Speaker 1: I love Nancy. She's just terrific. I hope by the
Speaker 1: time you hear this, she's home safe. So moments like this,
Speaker 1: you know, I miss, I miss just miss being able
Speaker 1: to be a be a friend on that.
Speaker 2: But I can always be a friend. I don't have
Speaker 2: to be an NBC to do that.
Speaker 1: But I'm just in pain for that, you know I
Speaker 1: have When you go on the regret front, you know
Speaker 1: some of my regrets, I I it's not really regrets.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like.
Speaker 2: I, uh, I leaned in.
Speaker 1: I should have jumped into certain to certain things, right.
Speaker 1: But I honestly, I'm pretty proud out of my work.
Speaker 1: I think it's aging. I think it's aging very well so.
Speaker 2: In that sense.
Speaker 1: And frankly, I feel like I got out at the
Speaker 1: time just before everybody else was being shoved out because
Speaker 1: of what's happening with corporate ownership of media. So in
Speaker 1: some ways I feel lucky to be in the independent
Speaker 1: space before it was cool. I feel lucky to get
Speaker 1: this opportunity to help really talented friends and former colleagues
Speaker 1: jump into these waters. As I say, it's a big
Speaker 1: cliff dive, but I promise you there's water there.
Speaker 2: And you know, I.
Speaker 1: You know, when you look back and realize this moment
Speaker 1: that we're in with corporate owned media, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think I was able to maximize everything that was
Speaker 1: possible under that situation. And you know that was as
Speaker 1: I was talking with an old friend yesterday, actually we
Speaker 1: were doing a little catching up and reminiscing and lamenting
Speaker 1: about what's happening to our friend's mom. And you know,
Speaker 1: he put it as like, you know, it's so different
Speaker 1: now that it's it's not even the same thing I worked.
Speaker 1: I don't recognize this network.
Speaker 2: I say, it is, no.
Speaker 1: This not me dissing them, it's just totally different, right,
Speaker 1: the separation from that, there's no cable channel anymore. They basically,
Speaker 1: you know, just reimagined, right, there's a real shrinkage of
Speaker 1: what NBC News is. And you know, I don't I
Speaker 1: know this. I wouldn't be happy under this circumstance, but
Speaker 1: you know, I wore the jersey, so I still root
Speaker 1: for him. I root for the individuals there because there's
Speaker 1: some good people still there doing some good reporting. I
Speaker 1: just hope they're given the opportunity to do it all. Right,
Speaker 1: next one, let's see, he says, Hey, I rarely miss
Speaker 1: an episode and really appreciate how you approach issues with
Speaker 1: balance and thoughtfulness. You give me hope multiple times a week.
Speaker 1: My wife tells me this all the time. You have
Speaker 1: to get people hope, don't depress them too much. So
Speaker 1: I appreciate you saying that I sensed a bit of
Speaker 1: fatigue in your one twenty six episode, which is understandable
Speaker 1: given the repetitive nature of our political chaos. Just wanted
Speaker 1: to say your perspective is helping thousands of us see
Speaker 1: the bigger picture and hold on to hope.
Speaker 2: Keep it up.
Speaker 1: Well, can I confess your You know I worried that
Speaker 1: I let.
Speaker 2: My fatigue show that night. I just was tired.
Speaker 1: I'd been traveling and doing all this, so I you know,
Speaker 1: my goal is to never let you see me tired.
Speaker 2: Trust me.
Speaker 1: I always have a cup of coffee going because I
Speaker 1: don't you know, I appreciate the sentiment, but you shouldn't
Speaker 1: catch that which you were correct, You caught me a
Speaker 1: little tired. Next question comes from Eric R. North Oaks,
Speaker 1: Minnesota with parentheses. Want to be Canadian Chuck?
Speaker 2: First time? Long time?
Speaker 1: Why isn't there more discussion about the contrast between Trump
Speaker 1: wanting to send you AUS troops into Iran to protect
Speaker 1: protesters while labying protesters in Minneapolis as domestic terrorists. Imagine
Speaker 1: if Canada crossed our border to defend US protesters, how
Speaker 1: would MAGA respond? The inconsistency is baffling, Eric, That's a
Speaker 1: terrific observation. I you know, I want to sit here
Speaker 1: and say, oh, well, you know this is apples and pairs,
Speaker 1: and you know, no, it's a terrific observation. I think
Speaker 1: the second part, what if Canada sent in troops to
Speaker 1: protect protesters? It's you know, if you recall Tim Wallas
Speaker 1: was asked about bringing in the National Guard, and he
Speaker 1: seemed to think he was concerned that, you know that
Speaker 1: maybe the military confrontation.
Speaker 2: Is is is.
Speaker 1: The pretext that that Trump might be looking for and
Speaker 1: all that. So it's I, you know, I don't have.
Speaker 1: I don't have a lot to add to your comparison.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 1: Now, can I just say something on Iran? Donald Trump
Speaker 1: is playing with America's credibility again, these Iranian protesters. It's
Speaker 1: just like he is messing with these Venezuelan. Venezuelan dissidents.
Speaker 1: You know what, the Venezuelan dissidents want, the democracy. You
Speaker 1: know what Donald Trump is not delivering a democracy. He
Speaker 1: is keeping right Maduro's number two in power because she
Speaker 1: is simply trying to buy time and is playing the
Speaker 1: transactional game. And Trump, as long as he gets what
Speaker 1: he wants in regards to control and oil, he doesn't
Speaker 1: care about democracy. So I do think Donald Trump is
Speaker 1: telling us something about what he thinks of democracy by
Speaker 1: what he's not doing in Venezuela. The fact that this
Speaker 1: is not a priority. Well, if democracy is not a
Speaker 1: priority when you have an opportunity to make it a
Speaker 1: priority in another country, it's clearly not a priority for
Speaker 1: him here. So that's the unfortunate takeaway. Now speaking of
Speaker 1: American credibility with the Iranian hostage of the Iranian protesters,
Speaker 1: you know, every time we make a promise and don't
Speaker 1: follow through, overseas a potential terrorist, future terrorist attacking the
Speaker 1: United States or a US entity only increases. Right, somebody
Speaker 1: who's fifteen protesting in Iran will see their parent killed
Speaker 1: and wondering how come the Americans didn't come. They said
Speaker 1: they would come, but they didn't follow through. Their word
Speaker 1: means nothing. The impression that leads each time, right is
Speaker 1: it is to make a promise and then abandon is
Speaker 1: in some ways worse than not doing anything. But at
Speaker 1: least he didn't promise that you would. So look, it's
Speaker 1: a fair picture you're painting about, you know, the sort
Speaker 1: of protesters. But I think if we're really trying to understand,
Speaker 1: does he care about democracy or I think the actions
Speaker 1: in Venezuela say it all. And the lack of prioritization
Speaker 1: of making this a democracy. There is a democratic elected
Speaker 1: government already ready to go, and the inability to acknowledge
Speaker 1: that is because for whatever reason, they haven't financially paid
Speaker 1: whatever price. I guess it needs to be paid to
Speaker 1: become to get this, to get the support of the
Speaker 1: United States for what the will of the people wanted.
Speaker 1: But I also worry about you know, he's used a
Speaker 1: lot of hot rhetoric with these Iranian protesters, and we
Speaker 1: can debate whether American firepower should be used to protect
Speaker 1: these protesters or not. You know why in Iran but
Speaker 1: not in me and mar right why? You know, picking
Speaker 1: and choosing when we step in is always comes with
Speaker 1: that comes with a lot of problems long term. But
Speaker 1: making a promise not keeping it is in some ways
Speaker 1: the worst possible outcome. Next question comes from Darryl. He says,
Speaker 1: longtime listener and fellow alum of Miami Killian and the
Speaker 1: University of Miami class in ninety seven. Hey, what you
Speaker 1: take on the current state of nil in college football
Speaker 1: and specifically Yum's approach to bringing established quarterbacks rather than
Speaker 1: developing talent from within. I worry this could push promising
Speaker 1: recruits like Darien Coleman to transfer and thrive elsewhere.
Speaker 2: Thanks and keep up the great podcasting. Darryl.
Speaker 1: You're not the only person worried about this. And I
Speaker 1: saw that the Hurricane.
Speaker 2: You know, I'd say, the.
Speaker 1: Hurricane fanatics like yourself and myself were pretty divided, right
Speaker 1: Like I was, I was weirdly not confident that we'd
Speaker 1: be okay if we didn't get a.
Speaker 2: Top notch portal quarterback.
Speaker 1: But that I'm like, all right, you know, we'll find
Speaker 1: a Ken Dorsey, We'll find a Steve Walsh. And what
Speaker 1: do I mean by that? Both Steve Walsh and Ken
Speaker 1: Dorsey did get a couple of cups of coffee in
Speaker 1: the NFL, and Dorsey became a coach, really and he's
Speaker 1: a really good coach. Steve Walsh, I think does some
Speaker 1: coaching in Minnesota, but neither one. We're sort of highly
Speaker 1: touted NFL quarterbacks. But they had great offensive lines, they
Speaker 1: had great running backs and receivers, and they were I
Speaker 1: don't want to call them game managers, sounds like a negative.
Speaker 2: They were better than that.
Speaker 1: They were cerebral, they understood the offense and all that.
Speaker 1: So I certainly think that the way Miami has built
Speaker 1: this brother the way Mario wants to build, which is, you.
Speaker 2: Get as deep of.
Speaker 1: An offensive line and defensive line as you can, you
Speaker 1: get as many playmakers as you can, and then you
Speaker 1: know on receivers, and then you make it where it
Speaker 1: is hard for an average to above average to a
Speaker 1: great quarterback to fail no matter what level they're in.
Speaker 1: And so as long as we're building these powerful offensive lines,
Speaker 1: I'm not concerned about this, and I think that this quarterback.
Speaker 1: I mean, here's the thing. I mean, look at the top,
Speaker 1: look at all of the top top ten. Let's just
Speaker 1: go through the top ten programs real quick. Ohio State
Speaker 1: last year won a national title with a portal quarterback.
Speaker 1: In the end of this year went to a national
Speaker 1: lad with a portal quarterback. Notre Dame was in the finals,
Speaker 1: lost the finals with a portal quarterback. Miami lost the
Speaker 1: finals with a portal quarterback.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 1: Not you can do both. One could argue Georgia hasn't
Speaker 1: won a title because they stuck with Gunner Stockton when
Speaker 1: maybe they should have shopped for a portal quarterback. Is
Speaker 1: that what happened to Alabama?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Is you see LSU has had some success with portal quarterbacks.
Speaker 1: Texas has arch Manning. I don't even think that counts
Speaker 1: right on that front. But I think that, you know,
Speaker 1: you're assuming this is in Miami's control. I think until
Speaker 1: we get some sort of parameters around transfers and how
Speaker 1: this all works, the quarterbacks themselves are going to keep
Speaker 1: shopping because the paydays are there. Because you know, there's
Speaker 1: always one program that thinks they're a quarterback away from
Speaker 1: relevancy if some form or another and will overpay. So
Speaker 1: you're going to get more of these quarterbacks to get
Speaker 1: out of the portal and go in. And so do
Speaker 1: I do? I, you know, think, Well, my guess is
Speaker 1: sixty percent of Miami starting quarterback until the system is
Speaker 1: sort of changed. If this is the system, that a
Speaker 1: majority of our starters will be quort of quarterbacks. But
Speaker 1: if there's you know, we'll find out, you know, what
Speaker 1: happens to how we recruit if we get a major injury, right,
Speaker 1: you know, there's also unforeseen issues that could pop up.
Speaker 2: That could end up.
Speaker 1: Forcing our hand, and we'll find out just how good
Speaker 1: our high school recruiting has been and our quarterback development
Speaker 1: has been. But I think as long as we're building
Speaker 1: an offensive line and whether it's making sure we have
Speaker 1: the best freshman and the best portal right like that is,
Speaker 1: then I do think you can plug and play quarterback.
Speaker 1: It's probably the only position I'm comfortable plugging in playing
Speaker 1: like that, But I think you can. Next question comes
Speaker 1: from Heather from Decatur, longtime listener. I'm curious Illinois or Alabama. Heather,
Speaker 1: long time listener, appreciate the clear, nonpartisan analysis that helps
Speaker 1: me stay grounded in two days political climate.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you for saying that, Heather as.
Speaker 1: A Georgia native. I'm curious about your recent confidence in
Speaker 1: John Ossoff holding the Senate seat beyond the two flipped
Speaker 1: PSC races. Do you have other insights? I wear those
Speaker 1: results might be skewed since many Republican areas had fewer
Speaker 1: races on the like compared to Democratic strongholds. Thanks and
Speaker 1: war Eagle. Obviously it's decater Alabama. What you take on
Speaker 1: Auburn's new head coach. I love Auburn's new head coach,
Speaker 1: Alex GROLs. I think he's got a great story. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you know it. I think he was
Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken. He was born in Moscow in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four. Parents brought him over to the United
Speaker 1: States at the age of seven, became a football crazed,
Speaker 1: got into it, all that stuff, and he's bringing over
Speaker 1: a great quarterback and Byron Brown. So I you know, look,
Speaker 1: I've got Auburn fans of my and my family and
Speaker 1: two our closest friends and some of my closest relatives.
Speaker 1: Big Auburn fans. So I'm a I'm an Auburn apologist
Speaker 1: in general. I've become I'm learning to become one. They
Speaker 1: still didn't deserve a shot at the national title over
Speaker 1: Miami in nineteen eighty three, Stephen, And I'll just leave
Speaker 1: it at that. But I'm bullish on him. I you know,
Speaker 1: I just hope the Auburn powers that we have patience, right,
Speaker 1: They're so inpatience nobody ever seems to get a chance
Speaker 1: to build a program. But I think I like that
Speaker 1: they they're trying this, you know, instead of like trying
Speaker 1: the searching for Bobby, you know, in the obsessions with
Speaker 1: Bobby Petrino, or throwing cash at Lane Kiffin or doing
Speaker 1: something like that, right, seeing if they can get a
Speaker 1: guy from the level below, find their own Urban Meyer, right,
Speaker 1: who came at the time from the mid majors and
Speaker 1: then turned, you know, came in and helped make Florida power.
Speaker 2: So I would.
Speaker 1: I'm I am more bullish on him, and I'd like
Speaker 1: I'd like to see the South Florida guy do good
Speaker 1: on that front. Now, as for the other part of
Speaker 1: your question, John, assof what gives me this confidence, it's
Speaker 1: the weak Republican primary field as well. Right, so you
Speaker 1: throw a bunch of things. Number One, you know, Asofsun
Speaker 1: Andcoman has an enormous financial advantage. Number Two, the only
Speaker 1: can the I would argue, there were two candidates he
Speaker 1: had to fear, Brian Camp and Brad Rathensberger.
Speaker 2: Neither one of them are running.
Speaker 1: Three, you have the national climate and Georgia, clearly being
Speaker 1: a swing state, now seems to move in that direction.
Speaker 1: I agree with you, I I. It is not the margins.
Speaker 1: It is the result of the PSC races. Not necessarily
Speaker 1: even the margins that impressed me, because you're right, you
Speaker 1: know you had you had to turn out differential that
Speaker 1: was huge. But the fact that you still got those
Speaker 1: huge margins says something. But it mostly goes this is
Speaker 1: a weak field. I think the strongest candidate will be
Speaker 1: Derek Dooley, but it looks like the likely opponent's going
Speaker 1: to be somebody with the first name of Congressman, which
Speaker 1: I think is an absolute gift because his biggest impetive,
Speaker 1: you know, in theory, being a part of the Washington
Speaker 1: Swamp is not good. But if you're a House Republican
Speaker 1: people people don't like Congress. I think they hate the
Speaker 1: House more than the Senate, just generically, right. So I
Speaker 1: just think you throw all that together open governor's seat.
Speaker 1: No Brian Kemp leading the ticket either, right, his political
Speaker 1: machine just yes, it's helping Derek Dooley in that Senate primary.
Speaker 1: But I think when you throw all that together, and
Speaker 1: I was, you know, look, I thought as Off was
Speaker 1: the accidental senator when you know, sort of writing the
Speaker 1: coattails of Raphael Warnock back and during those runoffs. You know,
Speaker 1: he's got a formidable He's always been formidable on raising money,
Speaker 1: and he works his you know what off, he works
Speaker 1: his us off off. I guess it's a to to
Speaker 1: try to create a Dad humor pun there. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's I think this is I'm I'm inclined to right now.
Speaker 1: It's in lean dee to me until you show me
Speaker 1: proof that one of these Republicans can get the fifty
Speaker 1: percent plus one right now, I don't see it all right.
Speaker 1: Final question of the day comes from Colonel Stephen Mitchell,
Speaker 1: the United States Air Force retired, and he writes says,
Speaker 1: good day, Check. I really enjoyed your January twenty ninth podcast,
Speaker 1: especially in the segment on Trump's poll numbers, it seems
Speaker 1: he's losing support from voters who backed him for economic reasons.
Speaker 1: But I'm unsure if the same is true for those
Speaker 1: focused on the border. Given your polling expertise, what you
Speaker 1: take and aside from the economy, what do you think
Speaker 1: will be the top issue on voter's minds?
Speaker 2: Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Look, I think obviously you're gonna have economy one. I
Speaker 1: think there's the question I have is is there a
Speaker 1: do we create a bucket called sort of chaos or
Speaker 1: tumult right? Because ultimately, I think the reason why Trump
Speaker 1: won in twenty twenty four is because the perceived chaos
Speaker 1: Biden created at the border, in addition to sourness about
Speaker 1: the economy, like you needed sort of both things. I
Speaker 1: think sourness in the economy plus you know, is he
Speaker 1: intentionally dividing the country with ice?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: It's not that the it's not that what he did
Speaker 1: on the borders unpopular. In fact, that's an important distinction.
Speaker 2: Which I which you're I think indicating that you understand
Speaker 2: about how you know.
Speaker 1: The danger for Republicans now is that the voters are
Speaker 1: pretty sophisticated in how they are processing the immigration issue.
Speaker 1: When you ask them about border security, they're impressed with
Speaker 1: the Trump administration. They're mostly approving. When you ask them
Speaker 1: about immigration, they see that through the prism of ice,
Speaker 1: not security anymore, and they don't like what they're seeing.
Speaker 1: So I think the fact that that's been split right
Speaker 1: where it's an opening if a nimble Democrat knows how
Speaker 1: to take it, which is, Look, Biden was terrible on
Speaker 1: border security. I'm not going to let that happen again.
Speaker 1: And I'm glad to see what the Trump administration has
Speaker 1: done at the border, but what they're doing in our
Speaker 1: communities across the country is outrageous, et cetera, et cetera. Right,
Speaker 1: So the point is that I think what it does
Speaker 1: provide is the Democrats an opening to look like, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm no Biden on the border, but I'm no Trump
Speaker 1: in harassing Americans either. Right, It's a way to differentiate
Speaker 1: yourself from the Democratic brand on a negative aspect of
Speaker 1: the border and at the same time being able to
Speaker 1: differentiate yourself and show empathy and compassionate about what's happening
Speaker 1: in places like Minneapolis. So that's where I think that
Speaker 1: there's a real problem now for Republicans on this issue,
Speaker 1: and why so many of them are starting to whisper
Speaker 1: loudly that Stephen Miller's a problem, that he is creating
Speaker 1: a narrative, creating a perception about Republicans. It's going to
Speaker 1: be hard to overcome in many of these places. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe the base is happy, but that is it on
Speaker 1: this stuff. But when you're asking about other issues, look,
Speaker 1: I think obviously economy anything that's you know, so do
Speaker 1: you consider healthcare and economy issue? I kind of do, right,
Speaker 1: So I think that's there. If Democrats let me do this,
Speaker 1: let me flip the question here. If Democrats have a
Speaker 1: huge night, it isn't going to be because they only
Speaker 1: won on the economy. If Democrats have a huge night,
Speaker 1: it means they got the corruption issue into the mind
Speaker 1: of the swing voter, that they found a way into it.
Speaker 1: Maybe they did it via exhaustion, you know, the Trump
Speaker 1: chaos idea. Look what he does at the White House,
Speaker 1: Kennedy centers selling foreign policy like lumping it all in together.
Speaker 1: But you know, I think the difference between Democrats having
Speaker 1: a good night in November and having an incredible night
Speaker 1: in November is their ability to take these various gross, corruptive,
Speaker 1: uncomfortable stories and figuring out how to package it as
Speaker 1: one right. COVID helped paint a picture of you know,
Speaker 1: all the Trump chaos and it led to this right,
Speaker 1: And so that's why that messaging was was pretty easy
Speaker 1: to get him out of there.
Speaker 2: If you know it.
Speaker 1: It's sort of I'll be curious to see how they
Speaker 1: do it and if they can do it. But my
Speaker 1: point is is that it's one of those if I'm
Speaker 1: in a coma, If I go in to coma to
Speaker 1: my and I don't wake up till day after election
Speaker 1: and you tell me they won six Senate seats and
Speaker 1: thirty House seats, I'm like, oh wow, the corruption issue
Speaker 1: must have played. That would be my initial instinct. So
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's going to play, but I
Speaker 1: think this is one of those for them to go
Speaker 1: from good to great, they need to figure out how
Speaker 1: to get the corruption issue to be easy to digest
Speaker 1: and something the quote check on Trump rite the check
Speaker 1: on his power, you know it is. It is the
Speaker 1: path for them to get to that messaging. But you
Speaker 1: need to make the case that he's corrupt and that
Speaker 1: this corruption is happening in order to do it, and
Speaker 1: we'll see if they're able to pull that off.
Speaker 2: All Right, there you go.
Speaker 1: That does it for me on a Wednesday, Man, I
Speaker 1: got to this is a political junkies, junkies episode trying
Speaker 1: to explain this is like the old hotline for me.
Speaker 1: Little media narrative explanation, a little historical comparison with Teddy Roosevelt,
Speaker 1: a little electoral scoreboard in college strategizing for twenty thirty two,
Speaker 1: plus this, and somebody's asking me whether you know what
Speaker 1: do I miss about NBC at this point?
Speaker 2: Nothing?
Speaker 1: This, This is this is the broadcast, the type of
Speaker 1: broadcast I've always wanted to do. So I appreciate you listening,
Speaker 1: appreciate your support. I can subscribe, don't forget to use
Speaker 1: all the codes from our advertisers, and with that, I'll
Speaker 1: see you in twenty four hours