Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics. Well,
Speaker 1: we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's
Speaker 1: best minds.
Speaker 2: We're on vacation, but that doesn't mean we don't have
Speaker 2: a great show for you Today. Bolts Magazines Daniel Nacatia
Speaker 2: details how states are going to affect policy in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five. But first we'll talk to mother Jones Eda
Speaker 2: Merlin about how rfk's conspiracy minded world is making new
Speaker 2: conspiracy theories about a pandemic.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to past polity, Axanna, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: What's happening right now is so completely insane, So I
Speaker 1: want you to first talk to us about this paranoia
Speaker 1: about a post inauguration plandemic.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So, essentially what happened with this is that a scientist
Speaker 4: and vaccine expert named doctor Peter Hotez went on MSNBC
Speaker 4: and said that there are these kind of obvious disease
Speaker 4: outbreak threats the next Trump administration is going to.
Speaker 5: Have to deal with.
Speaker 4: Right specifically, he said, we have some big picture stuff
Speaker 4: coming down the pipe, meaning you know, ab and flu news,
Speaker 4: streams of COVID, other potential outbreaks and sort of conspiracy
Speaker 4: theorists mostly on the rate took that to me and
Speaker 4: that he was threatening to unleash disease outbreaks during the
Speaker 4: next Trump administration, because he also said all that stuff
Speaker 4: is going to come crashing down on January twenty first
Speaker 4: on the Trump administration. We need a really good team
Speaker 4: to be able to handle this. So that was taken
Speaker 4: as not just he's warning about disease outbreaks. That was
Speaker 4: taken as he says they're going to He's going to
Speaker 4: cause them, which is ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Right, It is so completely beyond crazy this idea. So
Speaker 1: what is the thinking here and who are the people
Speaker 1: who are narrating this?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 4: So, I think the first important thing to kind of
Speaker 4: know here is that doctor Hotez is a really frequent
Speaker 4: sort of target of the anti vaccine movement and the
Speaker 4: right and the far right, you know, just to kind
Speaker 4: of set the scene, he's, like I believe he's he
Speaker 4: wears a bow tie. He's a recognized vaccine expert and
Speaker 4: has been for years and was a real proponent during
Speaker 4: COVID four people to get vaccinated. And then all of
Speaker 4: that has put him on the radar of people like
Speaker 4: Steve Bannon and Carlson and Joe Rogan and Aaron Rodgers,
Speaker 4: all of them have denounced him in pretty like personal
Speaker 4: terms over the years. So almost anytime he says anything,
Speaker 4: he faces some degree of sort of outrage, harassment, pushback,
Speaker 4: what have you. But talking specifically about these new threats
Speaker 4: that the next Trump administration is going to face also
Speaker 4: ran into this other thing, which is that the broader
Speaker 4: kind of conspiracy community has been warning that, you know,
Speaker 4: the deep spit, deep state or other dark forces are
Speaker 4: going to try to interfere with Trump's presidency, you know,
Speaker 4: and somehow set him up for failure, which it's worth
Speaker 4: noting they also said this last time before he took office,
Speaker 4: Like Alex Jones said before Trump took office the first time,
Speaker 4: you know, they're not going to let him take office,
Speaker 4: And so there's a lot of that now. This just
Speaker 4: sort of created a kind of perfect storm situation where
Speaker 4: the folks are trying to tell their audiences that Trump
Speaker 4: is already under threat, right and running up against something
Speaker 4: that is real and true, which is there are probably
Speaker 4: going to be some pretty serious disease outbreaks in the
Speaker 4: next couple of years. In California, today declared a state
Speaker 4: of emergency over the Avian flu outbreak, we're seeing new
Speaker 4: cases in human beings, which is pretty scary.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 4: We've seen a couple of disease outbreaks in Africa, specifically
Speaker 4: in Congo. There's a really devastating measles outbreak and also
Speaker 4: an outbreak of novel disease that they're not sure what
Speaker 4: it is yet, right, and then COVID is always a threat.
Speaker 4: We're seeing COVID cases starting to tick back up. So
Speaker 4: by warning that there's going to be a quote unquote plandemic,
Speaker 4: like by implying that doctor Hotez or some other people
Speaker 4: are going to cause the next pandemic, it acknowledges that
Speaker 4: it's going to happen, and then it's real. But it
Speaker 4: puts the blame onto a more politically useful group of actors.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's much better if they can get mad
Speaker 1: at the left than the right, is what you're saying.
Speaker 4: Well, and if it's a conspiracy, right, if it's not
Speaker 4: just like the outbreak of infectious disease has been happening
Speaker 4: for years, it's better if it has a person behind
Speaker 4: it to blame, preferably somebody who can be depicted as
Speaker 4: sort of like an opponent of Donald Trump. So you know,
Speaker 4: I'm seeing like Mickey willis sharing these ideas. Who's the
Speaker 4: filmmaker who produced pandemic right of course, you know, which
Speaker 4: implied that COVID nineteen was sort of deliberately created and
Speaker 4: unleashed several pretty well known kind of anti vac seating
Speaker 4: figures conspiratorial news sites like info wars and natural News.
Speaker 4: So this one got a pretty wide amount of pickup
Speaker 4: because it was useful for so many different people.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I would love you to talk about it.
Speaker 1: How a lot of these conspiracies are actually used by
Speaker 1: people on the right to push a narrative.
Speaker 5: Can you talk a little more about them.
Speaker 4: The common thread with a lot of these is that
Speaker 4: they create someone to blame, right, They create a sense
Speaker 4: of a group of evil doers, like working in secret
Speaker 4: against the common good, you know, kind of classic conspiracy stuff.
Speaker 4: And so folding in new disease outbreaks into that is useful,
Speaker 4: It's helpful. It creates a common energy, someone to blame,
Speaker 4: someone to get mad at. And as we saw with
Speaker 4: for instance, QAnon, you know, the basis of the qnon
Speaker 4: conspiracy theory was that Donald Trump was doing a really
Speaker 4: good job, but that a group of evil doers were
Speaker 4: working against him and we're undermining him. So this idea
Speaker 4: of a deep state or a sinister group of scientists
Speaker 4: or some other kind of group of villains thwarting what
Speaker 4: Donald Trump is trying to do is a useful idea if,
Speaker 4: for instance, Donald Trump is having trouble getting things done.
Speaker 1: So it's sort of way to give him an out
Speaker 1: if he can't do some of the things he might
Speaker 1: want to do.
Speaker 4: Yeah, just sort of like preemptively create a set of
Speaker 4: let's say too, yeah, a set of villains, a set
Speaker 4: of factors that could be used to create an out
Speaker 4: or you know, an alternate explanation for anything that does
Speaker 4: not happen during the next Rump administration. Because he's making
Speaker 4: really big promises, and so are people who are going
Speaker 4: to be in administration.
Speaker 1: Broad expensive, hard to maneuver promises totally.
Speaker 4: You know, I mean, when you say that you're going
Speaker 4: to solve all of these issues on day one, whether
Speaker 4: it is the war in Ukraine, the war in Gaza.
Speaker 4: You know, if you're Robert F. Kennedy Junior and you're
Speaker 4: claiming that you're going to end ill.
Speaker 5: Health, whatever that means, it's pretty vague.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but yeah, I mean, these are incredibly broad claims,
Speaker 4: and if you can't get them done, then it would
Speaker 4: be great to be able to blame someone in advance.
Speaker 1: So let's just for another minute talk about why I'm
Speaker 1: wondering if you could explain to us sort of one
Speaker 1: of the things that I've.
Speaker 5: Been destruck by when we talk about our Cage Junior.
Speaker 1: Part of K Junior actually brought a group into MAGA world.
Speaker 5: They are really the other side of the horseshoe in
Speaker 5: a lot of ways. I'm hoping you could talk.
Speaker 1: About sort of who RFK Junior's people are and why
Speaker 1: they exist.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: First of all, I should plug Conspiratuality, the podcasts that
Speaker 4: talks about the kind of incursion of right and far
Speaker 4: right beliefs into the New Age health and wellness world
Speaker 4: if you're curious about this, because they've done really great
Speaker 4: work over the years talking about the ways that these
Speaker 4: different characters kind of appear and join forces. But you know,
Speaker 4: the first thing that Kennedy was in his adult life
Speaker 4: was an environmental lawyer, and the second thing was an
Speaker 4: anti vaccine activist. He's claimed that he got involved in
Speaker 4: the vaccine issue in like two thousand and five because
Speaker 4: you know, concerned mother came to him. But he has
Speaker 4: created a really outsized public image in the anti vaccine
Speaker 4: world as a crusader for their health right and has
Speaker 4: like a real intense fandom in the anti vaccine world,
Speaker 4: especially among mothers who believe that their children were harmed
Speaker 4: by vaccines. And because he's built this incredibly like adoring
Speaker 4: fan base, a lot of them were just automatically like
Speaker 4: willing to follow him when he began this kind of
Speaker 4: presidential run in this political career, willing to advocate for
Speaker 4: his campaign. And then when his campaign started to founder
Speaker 4: and he decided to suspend it and endorse Donald Trump,
Speaker 4: he made what was a pretty canny sort of marketing
Speaker 4: decision and started promoting this idea of the make America
Speaker 4: Healthy Again movement in Maha, and Maha was meant to
Speaker 4: be a way to kind of unite the concerns of
Speaker 4: Trump voters and sort of Kennedy fans under one umbrella.
Speaker 4: And it's not always like the most comfortable relationship, you know,
Speaker 4: Like Kennedy is obviously a pretty big proponent of what
Speaker 4: he considers to be healthy foods. There was that viral
Speaker 4: image of him sitting uncomfortably at a table with Donald
Speaker 4: Trump and some other people, you know, with McDonald's in
Speaker 4: front of him, looking uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: It.
Speaker 4: You know, it's not always like the most natural kind
Speaker 4: of marriage between these two sides, but they do share
Speaker 4: some things in common, chiefly the sense that the government
Speaker 4: regulates too much, especially around food safety.
Speaker 1: Right, which is ironic because part of the problem here
Speaker 1: when you think about like microplastics, the kind of thing
Speaker 1: wouldn't that be a lack of government regulation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, so this is interesting because both the
Speaker 4: Maha people and the more died in the wole Trump
Speaker 4: people do share this sense of government overreach and this
Speaker 4: idea that, yeah, that the government is doing too much
Speaker 4: and regulates too much around food and around medication. But yeah,
Speaker 4: when we talk about a lot of the goals that
Speaker 4: Kennedy wants to achieve, they are more about better and
Speaker 4: further regulation of food safety. I mean, he also sort
Speaker 4: of falsely claims that vaccines are unsafe, that they are
Speaker 4: not tested, that they are not regulated in a way
Speaker 4: that other drugs are, none of which is true. But again,
Speaker 4: like to me, that sounds like he's making an argument
Speaker 4: for more government oversight, not less right, but you know,
Speaker 4: as the nominee for the head of AHHS, you know,
Speaker 4: it seems like a lot of what he's talking about
Speaker 4: is cutting funding and regulation and sort of like taking
Speaker 4: away funding, especially from agencies that he considers to be corrupt,
Speaker 4: like the NIH and the CDC.
Speaker 5: So that's where raw milk comes into it. Can you
Speaker 5: talk about raw milk?
Speaker 4: Yeah, specifically raw milk. Where it relates to Kennedy is
Speaker 4: he did this kind of viral tweet a while ago
Speaker 4: where he was talking about all of the things that
Speaker 4: he wants to reduce oversight of or you know, enforcement
Speaker 4: actions against when he's the head of the AHHS. In October,
Speaker 4: he had this kind of viral tweet where he said,
Speaker 4: you know, the Fday's war on public health is about
Speaker 4: to end. This includes its aggressive suppression of psychedelics, peptides,
Speaker 4: stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, kulating compound, impromectin, hydroxy clark,
Speaker 4: when vitamins, clean food, sunshine, exercise, nutriceuticals, and anything else
Speaker 4: that advances human health and can't be patented by pharma. Right,
Speaker 4: and he's been super critical.
Speaker 5: Of the war on sunshine.
Speaker 4: Yeah, of course, right, But yeah, he's been super critical
Speaker 4: of the FDA, and the USDA is sort of enforcement
Speaker 4: actions against raw milk distributors when they are either taking
Speaker 4: stuff across state lines or when you know, testing reveals
Speaker 4: the presence of a flu, as it has recently. So yeah,
Speaker 4: he's made it pretty clear that he considers raw milk
Speaker 4: to be a health food that is inappropriately suppressed by
Speaker 4: the federal government.
Speaker 1: So interesting. Yeah, the war on sunlight is a real one.
Speaker 1: So it's funny because this is so stupid. But then
Speaker 1: also there's a certain like can you make the raw
Speaker 1: milk and the ball of Arena farm stuff makes sense
Speaker 1: for us. I think you have to explain Ballerina Farm
Speaker 1: for the few, the few lucky people who don't know what.
Speaker 4: This is, right, So, Vallerina Farm is a woman in
Speaker 4: whose real name is Hannah Neilman. Basically, she's a social
Speaker 4: media influencer. She's often referred to as a tradwife, though
Speaker 4: I think she denies that, like she doesn't identify with
Speaker 4: that designation. She is a woman who with her husband,
Speaker 4: owns a farm in Utah and sells meat and sells
Speaker 4: sourdos starter and kind of cultivates a what to me
Speaker 4: seems like a tradwive aesthetic on social media, where she
Speaker 4: has like a million, Oh, I'm sorry, she has ten
Speaker 4: million Instagram followers and nine million on TikTok.
Speaker 5: I actually don't know what.
Speaker 4: Her stance is specifically on raw Milk, but I would
Speaker 4: say that the tradwives, like some of the Raw Milk influencers,
Speaker 4: sort of present themselves as advocating for an older, healthier,
Speaker 4: more sort of a nostalgic view of health and wellness
Speaker 4: that harkens back to an earlier and better and more
Speaker 4: innocent time basically.
Speaker 5: For the modern life.
Speaker 1: I mean, the idea is that somehow modernity has ruined
Speaker 1: American life.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and we see that right in all kinds of
Speaker 4: different areas, whether it is masculinity influencers talking about feminism
Speaker 4: as the corrosive force, whether it's tribal wives also talking
Speaker 4: about feminism as a corrosive force, whether it is mister
Speaker 4: Kennedy saying that, you know, US health and safety agencies
Speaker 4: are sort of inappropriately regulating things that we're seen as
Speaker 4: healthy in previous eras, though of course that's not true
Speaker 4: for things like hyperberic occiden chambers or chelating compounds. We've
Speaker 4: been pasteurizing milk for a really long time because we
Speaker 4: learned that it makes it much more difficult to get
Speaker 4: things like tuberculosis listeriosis.
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, yes, we have really ended up through the
Speaker 1: rabbit hole here.
Speaker 5: I'd love you to talk just for two seconds about
Speaker 5: the polio vaccine.
Speaker 4: So basically, there's a story in The New York Times
Speaker 4: this week about how an attorney named Arion Siri, who's
Speaker 4: a big player in the anti vaccine movement and who's
Speaker 4: kind of linked to mister Kennedy and some other big
Speaker 4: anti vaccine players like Dell big Tree, he filed a
Speaker 4: petition for the government to revoke its approval of one
Speaker 4: of the polio vaccines that is currently used in the
Speaker 4: United States. He's also filed petitions seeking to pause the
Speaker 4: distribution of other vaccines, including COVID vaccines. So this is
Speaker 4: the long shot. Currently, this is not something that the
Speaker 4: federal government would do, especially not for the specific polio
Speaker 4: vaccine that was used in the United States. So it
Speaker 4: is just widely considered to be extremely safe, very effective.
Speaker 4: It is incredibly rare for children or adults in the
Speaker 4: US to get polio anymore, which it didn't used to be. Basically,
Speaker 4: Aaron Siri represents a group called I CAN, which is
Speaker 4: owned by Dell Big Trees and anti vaccine Actiputs who
Speaker 4: worked for Robert F. Kennedy Junior's campaign, and these petitions
Speaker 4: to revoke authorization of these certain vaccines are being put
Speaker 4: out by I CAN. So basically, right now, the idea
Speaker 4: that the FDA would read petitions and be like, yeah,
Speaker 4: we should do that is incredibly far fetched. With Robert F.
Speaker 4: Kennedy Junior over AHHS, which is over the FDA, maybe
Speaker 4: that would change. So it's more kind of about at
Speaker 4: this point signaling what the priorities are for allies of
Speaker 4: mister Kennedy if he is confirmed and sworn in as
Speaker 4: head of AHHS.
Speaker 1: This is such completely insane I should laugh. I laugh
Speaker 1: to keep from crying. Thank you, thank you, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you for coming on.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: Daniel Lakatian is the editor of Bolt's bagazine.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Fast Politics, Daniel, talk us through state legislatures,
Speaker 1: what's going on?
Speaker 5: Talk us through elections? You're my election guy, among others.
Speaker 6: Well, thanks for having me again.
Speaker 3: It's yeah, a lot has changed since since I last
Speaker 3: talked to you.
Speaker 6: Quich probably was before the election.
Speaker 3: We had bolts where I work reading low closely at
Speaker 3: the state level, at the county level, which you know,
Speaker 3: it doesn't get as much attention as obviously the federal elections.
Speaker 3: Very understandable reasons, but when it comes to you know,
Speaker 3: when it comes to a lot of things that people
Speaker 3: really care about, including emotion rights, including civil rights, really
Speaker 3: thinks that are going to be at the center of
Speaker 3: the next two to four years. States are everything, especially
Speaker 3: if you're a progressive, trying to find places where there
Speaker 3: could be pushback, you know, cases where whether legal or political,
Speaker 3: that's really word to look. And so a lot of
Speaker 3: what we've done is look at state houses, state senates
Speaker 3: and also state Supreme Court. So to just start with
Speaker 3: state senates and state houses. You know what I did
Speaker 3: in the in the past few weeks is quite is
Speaker 3: just go state by state. Look in every state, how
Speaker 3: did the composition of state chambers change, And that's really
Speaker 3: going to determine what yours have opened and closed in
Speaker 3: the next year.
Speaker 1: I want to pause for a minute and just for
Speaker 1: our listeners explain. You know, we're all feeling pretty moralized
Speaker 1: and these state legislatures are a way to take power back.
Speaker 1: They're not expensive. They are happening, you know, on off cycles.
Speaker 1: So and these off yr elections are ones where low
Speaker 1: turnout rules and a little money can make a big difference.
Speaker 1: So anyways, start talking to me about these state legislators.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 3: So the first sort of big number that I thought
Speaker 3: was interesting is I quite literally look at the swing
Speaker 3: of state seats if you take into account all the
Speaker 3: races across the country, which obviously is a bit of
Speaker 3: a silly exercise because there isn't ever an institution where
Speaker 3: every state lawmaker from Alaska to Florida gets in the room, right,
Speaker 3: But there were rough six thousand elections happening for state
Speaker 3: lawmaker around the country, and out of this six thousand,
Speaker 3: the GOP gained fifty seven seats. That's a small number,
Speaker 3: I mean, obviously, you know, it suggests that the UOPE
Speaker 3: had the better nights, and if you look at the detail,
Speaker 3: which we could do in a second, they had some
Speaker 3: big wins, but if you look at the overall composition,
Speaker 3: it was quite small given the extent of the shift.
Speaker 3: Obviously in the presidential election. So this is another instance
Speaker 3: like in the US House, where the coattails of Trump
Speaker 3: were were much smaller than one might expect, and Democrats
Speaker 3: clearly got a lot of bright spots as well. Republicans
Speaker 3: gained seats in twenty states and Democrats gained seats in
Speaker 3: eleven states. Again, the GOP had the better night, but
Speaker 3: we do see in a bunch of states where Democrats
Speaker 3: are the ones who gained seats and are in a
Speaker 3: better spot going into twenty twenty five.
Speaker 5: So let's talk about those states.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, So let's talk of the two most interesting
Speaker 3: spots because in Wisconsin and Montana. Wisconsin and Montana had
Speaker 3: new maps this year for the first time, and they
Speaker 3: were more equitable maps than the ones that they were
Speaker 3: using in twenty twenty twenty. In Wisconsin is probably the
Speaker 3: one that a lot of people who are who might
Speaker 3: listen to this have heard about, because there was a
Speaker 3: huge court fight in Wisconsin around the gerrymanders that Republican
Speaker 3: tasked in the early twenty tens and early twenty twenties
Speaker 3: to re locked in their majorities in the state House
Speaker 3: and the state Senate. And it took I mean, it
Speaker 3: was a very expensive election for the state Supreme Court
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty three got a lot of attention in
Speaker 3: April twenty three, which is just a year and a
Speaker 3: half to go, and the candidates supported by Democrats there
Speaker 3: won and flipped the Court to the left for the
Speaker 3: first time in a long time. And then the Court
Speaker 3: shruck down the GOP gerrymanders that was a year ago,
Speaker 3: and the new map was created and lo and behold
Speaker 3: that that the map created a lot of change, as
Speaker 3: you would expect, because we went from a very aggressive
Speaker 3: up jeromander to a fair map. And over in the state,
Speaker 3: Democrats gained fourteen seats in Wisconsin, so that's the biggest
Speaker 3: gain they made anywhere in the country. Republicans kept their
Speaker 3: majority in both chambers, but they're small majorities compared to
Speaker 3: the quasi supermajorities they had, and it sets Democrats up
Speaker 3: very well for twenty twenty six for trying to flip
Speaker 3: control of Wisconsin for the first time in a long time.
Speaker 3: And there's a somewhat similar story in Montana, which is
Speaker 3: quite interesting because the defeat of John Tester in the
Speaker 3: race for the US Senate was a huge story. Obviously,
Speaker 3: on election night at the state level, Democrats gained twelve
Speaker 3: seats across both chambers and up's supermajorities, which is actually
Speaker 3: quite important because the GOP was hoping to use its
Speaker 3: supermajorities to put constitutional amendments on the ballots on party
Speaker 3: line votes.
Speaker 1: Basically, they somehow flipped the Senate seed but lost the
Speaker 1: majority in the House.
Speaker 6: No, they did not lose the majority. Germany ten seats
Speaker 6: in the state House, and that seems like a lot
Speaker 6: that it's a big change.
Speaker 3: Again, it's it has to do with the districting fighter
Speaker 3: that was describing earlier, but the one that didn't come randomly.
Speaker 3: There was a whole fight and another point of contact Smalledgy.
Speaker 3: To just show you the depth of how everything is related.
Speaker 3: There were elections for the state court in the state
Speaker 3: of Montana, and Montana might be a very unusual state
Speaker 3: in for a red state, in that it has a
Speaker 3: state court, the state High Court the Supreme Court that
Speaker 3: leans to the left and has repeatedly struck down GOP
Speaker 3: bills in the last few years, including a restriction on abortion,
Speaker 3: including restrictions on voting access, and conservatives were hoping to
Speaker 3: really change that left lean of the.
Speaker 6: Court and that didn't succeed.
Speaker 3: Actually, there was a key race there that the Democratic
Speaker 3: affiliated candidate won, So there is still going to be
Speaker 3: this bucket of resistance in the state government, which is
Speaker 3: going to be the state Court, and therefore that's why
Speaker 3: the GOPS lost to the super majority there is important
Speaker 3: because they're not going to be able to go around
Speaker 3: the court and just put stuff on the ballot at well.
Speaker 3: So that's going to be very interesting situation in coming years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is very interesting, all right, So talk to
Speaker 1: me about other state launche stuff. So the bright spots
Speaker 1: Montana and what else.
Speaker 3: Wisconsin one of the two biggest ones. So there are
Speaker 3: others where Democrats gained seats, but the GOP also had
Speaker 3: just to be clear of very bright spots. The two
Speaker 3: main stories to just highlight are that the GOP erased
Speaker 3: the majorities that Democrats had for the past couple of
Speaker 3: years in the House in Michigan and the Minnesota House.
Speaker 3: And in both cases, Democrats had just won control the
Speaker 3: full government in twenty twenty two, which you might remember
Speaker 3: as a huge story because no one expected Democrats to
Speaker 3: to gain power during the mid term, and the GOP
Speaker 3: gained just enough seats in both states to erase Democratic
Speaker 3: majorities in the House. That doesn't mean that the Republicans
Speaker 3: have control the state government because Democrats have in both
Speaker 3: states the governorship and the state Senate. But it does stop, obviously,
Speaker 3: the ability of Democrats to pass laws at will with
Speaker 3: their own votes. In Michigan and Minnesota, those are states
Speaker 3: that they used to do. They did a lot of
Speaker 3: stuff in the last couple of years, a lot of
Speaker 3: which made headlines. Just as an example, you know the
Speaker 3: free lunches and schools that Governor Waltz signed. Governor Walts
Speaker 3: also signed a voting rights Act at the state level.
Speaker 3: So all of those sort of policies were done because
Speaker 3: of the trafficta Democrats had. So those are the main
Speaker 3: spot and then the other one I will name is
Speaker 3: that in New England Republicans did. They gained in three states,
Speaker 3: especially the state of Vermont, the state of Vermont, where
Speaker 3: Republicans gained twenty five seats in the state House and
Speaker 3: state Senate in Vermont and broke the supermajorities Democrats had.
Speaker 3: The governor there is a Republican so that's going to
Speaker 3: really tie the hands of Democrats to be able to
Speaker 3: override the veto's.
Speaker 6: The republican governor there.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about what the calendar looks like, now, what's
Speaker 1: coming up?
Speaker 6: First?
Speaker 1: I have this theory that I want you to either
Speaker 1: tell me is wrong or right.
Speaker 5: Okay, So I have this theory that the way.
Speaker 1: This election went wasn't actually Republican Democrat brand, that it
Speaker 1: was Trump then Democrats than Republicans. And so one of
Speaker 1: the phenomenons I saw when I looked at some of
Speaker 1: these numbers from swing states was that you had states
Speaker 1: where Trump got over fifty percent of the vote, then
Speaker 1: they must have left the ticket blank. And I'm wondering
Speaker 1: if you can talk about that phenomenon as it like,
Speaker 1: did you see when you look through the data, did
Speaker 1: you see voters who were just Trump and no one
Speaker 1: else voters?
Speaker 3: That's a great question. I don't have numbers to share
Speaker 3: on the undervote that you're asking about, but I think
Speaker 3: there's evidence to suggest so, I mean, I think your
Speaker 3: question gets to the very first thing I said, right,
Speaker 3: which is that here I was just talking about Michigan
Speaker 3: and Wisconsin, the states that saw a big swing one
Speaker 3: way or the other, but in most of the country.
Speaker 3: It's what the most startling thing as I literally went
Speaker 3: state by state and not just state by state by
Speaker 3: chamber by chamber. The most startling thing to me, that
Speaker 3: the clear story that jumped out is that in so
Speaker 3: many chambers the status quo was almost entirely intact, that
Speaker 3: there was either no change at all or the most
Speaker 3: minimal change. And I mean, I think the most striking
Speaker 3: example is Pennsylvania, which maybe gets to what you're saying.
Speaker 3: So let's just recap what happened in Pennsylvania. Obviously, Trump
Speaker 3: won the state, flipping it on the presidential level. It
Speaker 3: also flipped at the congressional level because Republicans ousted the
Speaker 3: Democratic senator there, and they also gained seats in the
Speaker 3: US House. Now let's go down one level, and this
Speaker 3: is honestly one of the most I don't have a
Speaker 3: particularly great explanation, but it's so startling. Not a single
Speaker 3: seat changed hands in the state House. Out of two
Speaker 3: hundred and three seats. Pennsylvania Democrats had a majority harder
Speaker 3: than two to one hundred and one going into the election,
Speaker 3: and they're going to have a majority harder than two
Speaker 3: ton and one exiting the election. That is quite striking
Speaker 3: given the given the shifts at the federal level that
Speaker 3: did not translate when people were voting, and for their
Speaker 3: state House, and we see this over and over again.
Speaker 3: The number I came up with was that the twenty
Speaker 3: eight chambers saw zero change after holding elections this year,
Speaker 3: and a lot of others only saw a single seat shift.
Speaker 3: That is a lot of stability underlying what you know.
Speaker 3: Has often been covered as like a great night for
Speaker 3: the GOP, a landslide for Trump, but etcetera, which the
Speaker 3: numbers don't really support. Obviously the GOP had the better night,
Speaker 3: there's no question. What I will say is Republicans have
Speaker 3: a lot of reasons to be happy right out of
Speaker 3: November fifth. So they're not going to ask each other
Speaker 3: a lot of questions, which is understandable because.
Speaker 6: They overall won.
Speaker 3: But if you look at what they should ask themselves
Speaker 3: how they weren't able to flip the state House in
Speaker 3: Pennsylvania despite the state shifting to Trump. They should ask themselves,
Speaker 3: right how Perry Lake lost by so much worse than
Speaker 3: Trump in there on a Senate race. For a third
Speaker 3: consecutive cycles, the GOP lost the Senate seat in Arizona,
Speaker 3: and this time was an open race, with Trump winning
Speaker 3: the state by six points, and yet they lost the
Speaker 3: Senate race. There's a lot of questions for the GOP
Speaker 3: to ask itself, and it's not going to ask itself
Speaker 3: that because.
Speaker 6: Take one the big one.
Speaker 3: But there's a lot of different storylines if you dig right.
Speaker 5: Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: And it is striking to me with Pennsylvania because you
Speaker 1: must have had some people vote for Trump and then
Speaker 1: Democrats on the bottom of the ticket.
Speaker 3: Right, well, yes, no, of course, the question of whether
Speaker 3: it was people splitting tickets or under voting is not
Speaker 3: something I can speak to. But there definitely was ticket
Speaker 3: splitting there, and there was a lot of obviously ticket
Speaker 3: splitting in other states. I mean, just to name one
Speaker 3: other state not overwhelm listeners, but North Carolina is a
Speaker 3: great example where Democrats won the governor's race in the
Speaker 3: midst of a giant scandal that engulfed the Republican But
Speaker 3: they also want other state races. They won the AG
Speaker 3: race by a surprising margin. They want other state level races.
Speaker 3: They won by a very small margin a race for
Speaker 3: the state Court, and they broke the GOP super majority
Speaker 3: in the state House, which is going to prevent the
Speaker 3: Republicans in twenty twenty five of overriding the vetos of
Speaker 3: the incoming governor, and as you may have seen, the
Speaker 3: Republican is not taking that very well. They're quite there
Speaker 3: this week trying to ram through a bill that would
Speaker 3: effectively gut some of the essential roles of the current
Speaker 3: governor and transferred to Republican authority because they only have
Speaker 3: a few weeks left of being able to use their
Speaker 3: supermajorities and they're trying to make the most of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, very strange and interesting. So tell us where
Speaker 1: we should keep our eyes peeled now, talk to us
Speaker 1: about the future.
Speaker 6: Yeah, there's always a lot. It's a lot happening.
Speaker 3: The very first thing to know, if people want to
Speaker 3: know about sort of elections going forward, is that they're
Speaker 3: a special elections happening in January and early twenty twenty
Speaker 3: five in Michigan and Virginia for important seats in the state.
Speaker 5: And the governorship.
Speaker 3: Governorship is going to be in in November, but there
Speaker 3: are races in January, like literally around the corner that
Speaker 3: will decide whether Democrats keep control of the state tenets
Speaker 3: in Virginia and Michigan, and those those are very important.
Speaker 3: And then yes, obviously the big one in twenty twenty
Speaker 3: five is the governor's race in the state of Virginia.
Speaker 3: That is going to be an open race because the
Speaker 3: governor is not allowed to run for reelection. Democrats will
Speaker 3: want to take that governorship back, which would give potentially
Speaker 3: give them control they state government there that they lost
Speaker 3: a few years ago. That's really a big one to
Speaker 3: watch in Virginia. And the other the second big sort
Speaker 3: of state wide race in twenty twenty five is the
Speaker 3: Supreme Court race in Wisconsin. So that's actually happening in April,
Speaker 3: and I already talked a bunch about why that court
Speaker 3: has been so important in the past. A liberal justice
Speaker 3: is not running for reelection in April, and conservutives have
Speaker 3: a shot at flipping the court back to the right
Speaker 3: in Wisconsin. Expect that to be extremely expensive race. It's
Speaker 3: sort of going to be on its own on the calendar.
Speaker 3: There's nothing around it happening. The stakes are very high
Speaker 3: on abortion rights in Wisconsin, on redistricting in Wisconsin. That's
Speaker 3: really where the next big campaign is likely to be.
Speaker 3: And also, you know, at this point, the US House
Speaker 3: is so tight, we're all that any special election, any retirement,
Speaker 3: any vacancy would just be a huge deal, right because
Speaker 3: if what once it flips, that actually has huge consequences.
Speaker 1: What it has right now, it's good or at least
Speaker 1: it's going to be two seventeen to two fifteen. Right.
Speaker 3: So the results of November fifth were two twenty two,
Speaker 3: two fifteen, and Trump named three people from the Republican
Speaker 3: caucus and then Gates was one of them, and then
Speaker 3: he resigned.
Speaker 6: But is not going to be in the House. It's
Speaker 6: not going to be aged anyway.
Speaker 3: Yes, So that gets us as two seventeen to fifty
Speaker 3: for now until the special elections.
Speaker 1: Just as a reminder to listeners, you can't tie in
Speaker 1: the House of Representatives.
Speaker 5: You tie, you lose.
Speaker 1: So it means that effectively Mike Johnson has a one
Speaker 1: seat majority.
Speaker 3: And at that point it's not just who has won
Speaker 3: or who is in Congress, it's who is sick that
Speaker 3: they who has a wedding to attend in Michigan, who
Speaker 3: has you know, we we already saw that in the
Speaker 3: last few years, where an absence could have huge consequences
Speaker 3: in what's happening. And that's going to be a lot
Speaker 3: more intense in coming months.
Speaker 1: And actually, if you want to get furious, I was
Speaker 1: talking to a member who was saying to me, you know,
Speaker 1: Democrats have a couple of people who haven't been to
Speaker 1: Congress in a while, of coorse, who are actually like
Speaker 1: legitimately sick and who can't get there.
Speaker 5: But who probably should not be in office anymore.
Speaker 1: Now that said, Republicans also have that, But that is
Speaker 1: quite infuriating.
Speaker 3: Yes, I wish I had pulled the median age of
Speaker 3: people in Congress.
Speaker 6: By what you're saying doesn't surprise me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, look there's a Nancy Pelosi eighty tray
Speaker 1: and then there's you know, some of those people are
Speaker 1: not so old, but they are sick and they need
Speaker 1: to leave if they're if they're too sick to get
Speaker 1: to work, you know.
Speaker 3: To also maybe to give a parallel point as to
Speaker 3: how tight the margin is, because we were taught talking
Speaker 3: earlier about re district thing, right, and we redistricting in
Speaker 3: the state of Wisconsin in particular. So let's just talk
Speaker 3: about redistricting in North Carolina for a moment, because the
Speaker 3: exact inverse of what happened in Wisconsin happened in North
Speaker 3: Carolina in twenty twenty two. Republicans flipped that state Supreme
Speaker 3: Court and they struck down a prior ruling that had
Speaker 3: stopped the GOP from passing their own maps. And so
Speaker 3: what happened is that the GOP in North Carolina passed
Speaker 3: new maps for twenty twenty four and that flipped three seats,
Speaker 3: three seats and the margin in the House out of
Speaker 3: the number fifth. If three seats hadn't flipped, the Democrats
Speaker 3: would have been the majority party. So it's just so
Speaker 3: interesting to trace back the current Republican majority not just
Speaker 3: to the new map in North Carolina, but also as
Speaker 3: a result to the state court elections that happen in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty two.
Speaker 6: Now, we don't think.
Speaker 3: About the state court races as that relevant maybe to
Speaker 3: federal politics or to the national politics, but here's a
Speaker 3: case where literally the state level races for this for
Speaker 3: state judges are directly responsible for a new map that
Speaker 3: is directly responsible for who has the majority right now
Speaker 3: in US House. So you know, that really explains maybe
Speaker 3: to people why the coming election in Wisconsin is going
Speaker 3: to be so expensive and why in twenty twenty six,
Speaker 3: you know, you should repay attention to what's happening.
Speaker 6: At the state level in these elections.
Speaker 1: So interesting.
Speaker 5: Thank you for coming on Daniel, I hope.
Speaker 6: You'll come back, of course, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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Speaker 5: Thanks for listening.