Speaker 1: Okay, campers, rise and shine and don't forget your booties
Speaker 1: because it's cool out there today. Yes, I cliched it up.
Speaker 1: I'm starting with a groundhog Day reference. I don't yet
Speaker 1: have the finances to pay for I've got you, babe
Speaker 1: or that, of course, so just have that in the
Speaker 1: back of your head as you hear that. But we
Speaker 1: are on groundhog Day with the shutdown. I certainly have
Speaker 1: other topics I want to get to, but here we
Speaker 1: are with the shutdown, and look, I will fall on
Speaker 1: my nostrodama sword. I really did think we were going
Speaker 1: to be done after a week. I think we should
Speaker 1: be done with this by now. I think the Democrats
Speaker 1: have accomplished what they wanted to accomplish out of it politically.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: They don't have an agreement yet to extend these subsidies
Speaker 1: for the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare, whatever you want
Speaker 1: to refer to it as. But it's pretty clear that
Speaker 1: they've gotten the issue more front and center. They've got
Speaker 1: more Republicans talking about it, They've got the President of
Speaker 1: the United States concerned about it, they got the Vice president.
Speaker 1: It is if they want. As I've said in previous episodes,
Speaker 1: this week. If they want to declare victory, they could
Speaker 1: and say they got what they wanted to get out
Speaker 1: of this. And if the Republicans back off their agreement
Speaker 1: to try to hammer out a deal on Obamacare, well
Speaker 1: this continuing resolution is only for another six weeks, so
Speaker 1: they have another leverage point. And I would say this,
Speaker 1: I mean, look, there's no evidence that this is going
Speaker 1: to end this weekend. I you know, so I was
Speaker 1: wrong about that, but we're we're going to be missing
Speaker 1: a paycheck. The first paycheck missing happens at the beginning
Speaker 1: of next week. We've got already impacts on the traveling
Speaker 1: public right now. You know, I didn't have any problems
Speaker 1: going from lax to Washington Dulles after visiting USC. But
Speaker 1: I promise you, if you're traveling, whether it's Nashville, Indianapolis,
Speaker 1: Des Moines, Albuquerque, any slightly smaller market than some of
Speaker 1: the large ones, you know, it doesn't take too many
Speaker 1: air traffic controllers in that region to suddenly call in
Speaker 1: sick to where you're grounding all flights.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It had a huge impact in Nashville a couple of
Speaker 1: days ago. This is in the LA area. Burbank essentially
Speaker 1: had to go to a ground stop for a few
Speaker 1: hours the other day. So this is only going to grow,
Speaker 1: This is only going to get worse. And this is
Speaker 1: where the more the public is personally impacted by these things,
Speaker 1: the more they're going to be upset at all parties involved,
Speaker 1: and they may no longer be as focused on the
Speaker 1: issue that I do think Democrats have successfully gotten into
Speaker 1: the pushed into the into the zeitgeist here a little bit. Look,
Speaker 1: it's hard for any issue to break through in the
Speaker 1: Trump era for any given period of time, but this
Speaker 1: issue of health care certainly has the attention of the
Speaker 1: Republicans on this. So now it's a game of chicken
Speaker 1: and the longer, frankly, if I look on the Democratic side,
Speaker 1: the longer they hold out what I say yesterday, then
Speaker 1: this really isn't about health care. This is about something else.
Speaker 1: And frankly, it is about something else, right. It is
Speaker 1: about the fact that Donald Trump is not respecting the Constitution,
Speaker 1: he's not respecting the appropriations process, he's not respecting the
Speaker 1: legislative branch. But the Democrats have a problem. They're not
Speaker 1: in charge of the legislative branch right now. It's the
Speaker 1: Republicans who are allowing the executive branch to steamroll them
Speaker 1: because they're the ones in charge, and it's an issue
Speaker 1: that's hard to get the public to rally around. They're
Speaker 1: going to rally around things and impact their lives. Yes,
Speaker 1: what's happening with the misuse of appropriations and the sort
Speaker 1: of the aggressive nature of what O and B has
Speaker 1: tried to do is impactful on people's lives, but it's
Speaker 1: much harder for them to see it. You know, it's
Speaker 1: it's healthcare hits their bottom line. That this is premiums
Speaker 1: doubling that that is, that is the cost to live issue,
Speaker 1: which of course has arguably been what's been hanging over
Speaker 1: our politics since we got out of the COVID shutdown.
Speaker 1: And I think in some ways, the healthcare the rising
Speaker 1: healthcare premiums would only feed into the cost of to
Speaker 1: live issues that the tariffs and some of the other
Speaker 1: policies that President Trump has pursued has done. I mean,
Speaker 1: we are, as I said before, we have this. We
Speaker 1: have this weird economy that will statistically look good for
Speaker 1: those that have money, but it is completely impossible to
Speaker 1: catch up or get ahead, or if you don't already
Speaker 1: have a little bit of savings earning, you know, getting
Speaker 1: taking advantage of the supercharged markets that we have right now,
Speaker 1: fueled by all of this artificial intelligence investment. So we
Speaker 1: are in a situation where either party can end the
Speaker 1: shutdown right now. Democrats could declare victory, provide the eight votes,
Speaker 1: open the government up, and have six weeks to hold
Speaker 1: them accountable again if they don't come to the table.
Speaker 1: And of course Republicans could open the government right now themselves.
Speaker 1: They don't need a single Democratic vote. They'd have to
Speaker 1: get rid of the filibuster, but they could do it
Speaker 1: on a party line vote anytime they wanted to. So
Speaker 1: we are in the This is a choice aspect of
Speaker 1: the shutdown. This is truly a choice. And I just
Speaker 1: would warn Democrats on this one. You've had some success
Speaker 1: here getting this issue more front and center in the
Speaker 1: public's mind, but by the way, your negatives are rising
Speaker 1: as a political party over the polling that matriculated out
Speaker 1: this past week one on two in that risks potentially
Speaker 1: at some point, the more Americans have their lives disrupted,
Speaker 1: the more they're likely to then sour on everybody and
Speaker 1: then whatever slight even issue advantage of just getting the
Speaker 1: healthcare issue into the ether disappears, and then it becomes, well,
Speaker 1: what did you gain for all that adjuta with the shutdown?
Speaker 1: So you know, there's a point of diminishing returns here.
Speaker 1: At what point does Team Blue see that? We shall
Speaker 1: find out. But again, before I get to a few
Speaker 1: other issues I want to get to, Republicans could just
Speaker 1: do it on their own if they chose to. They're
Speaker 1: also apparently don't mind, and that that gets sort of
Speaker 1: what I said yesterday my groundhog Day response here, which
Speaker 1: is I think the base of both parties think they're winning,
Speaker 1: and so when you think you're winning, you don't want
Speaker 1: to stop.
Speaker 2: The problem is is how big?
Speaker 1: You know, first of all, your feedback loop is unfortunately
Speaker 1: very small. You know, where's everybody else? How big is
Speaker 1: the every everybody else pile there? And I think that's, uh,
Speaker 1: that's an open question. But look, the the other issue
Speaker 1: that's sort of front and center for a lot of
Speaker 1: people is what's happening in Chicago. Uh, and this sort
Speaker 1: of showdown between the Trump administration and the governor of
Speaker 1: Illinois and the mayor of Chicago. This is you know
Speaker 1: this it it is a few updates. Obviously you had
Speaker 1: the President escalating his war of words with the mayor
Speaker 1: and the governor, calling on the Democratic leaders to be impeached,
Speaker 1: actually be imprisoned for failing to protect ice officers. Trump
Speaker 1: wrote on his truth social post, Chicago mayor should be
Speaker 1: in jail for failing to protect ice officers. Governor Pritzker also,
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody's saying that they're not protecting ice
Speaker 1: officers here. But of course this is this sort of
Speaker 1: the the the the pretext that it appears the Trump
Speaker 1: administration's trying to create in order to force this situation.
Speaker 1: I have to say, the most bizarre aspect of all
Speaker 1: this is the is what the state of Texas agreed
Speaker 1: to do? You know, It's one thing, Look, the President
Speaker 1: has the authority to federalize the National Guard in Illinois,
Speaker 1: so he did it, but to use Texas troops to
Speaker 1: essentially invade Illinois, right, And I don't you know, I know,
Speaker 1: it can come across that everybody's getting very dramatic here
Speaker 1: about some of these things, but nobody seems to remember
Speaker 1: the golden rule in life or in politics. Right, do
Speaker 1: unto others as you want done unto you.
Speaker 2: And I asked the governor of Texas.
Speaker 1: How would you feel if a Democratic president decided to
Speaker 1: send a governor of Illinois decided to offer up National
Speaker 1: Guard troops to occupy a city in Texas, right without
Speaker 1: the governor's essentially acquiescence. I think I know where Texans
Speaker 1: would stand on this. And that's the point here. Nobody
Speaker 1: seems to be thinking about, Oh is you know what
Speaker 1: happens if the roles are reversed? Right, And this has
Speaker 1: certainly been a virus. It's in our politics these days
Speaker 1: where nobody thinks of the of the reactionary consequence to anything.
Speaker 1: We don't treat people the way we want to be treated.
Speaker 1: In some ways, we're treating people the way we we
Speaker 1: think how poorly we're being treated.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Part of that is internet brain, right. I think there's
Speaker 1: way too many people right now in high level leadership
Speaker 1: positions on the left and the right who are live
Speaker 1: online and don't live in the real world. And so
Speaker 1: I do think this is why there's a disconnect between
Speaker 1: those that are extraordinarily alarmed by what's happening and the
Speaker 1: those that are like, here we go again with things now,
Speaker 1: I would say, you know, the courts are are playing
Speaker 1: a role here and are providing. You know, the Constitution
Speaker 1: hasn't been shredded yet, okay, and I think that should
Speaker 1: be seen as a positive and not something that is
Speaker 1: that is it is me being naive on this front.
Speaker 1: We had a federal judge in Chicago on Wednesday extending
Speaker 1: a nationwide consent decree that requires ice to better document
Speaker 1: and report probable cause for their immigration arrests, and they
Speaker 1: have found this judge found that the agency repeatedly has
Speaker 1: violated the twenty twenty two agreement by making warrantless arrests,
Speaker 1: both before and during what they called Operation Midway Blitz.
Speaker 1: The judge also took particular issue with the practice by
Speaker 1: ice A here, according to the Chicago Tribune, of carrying
Speaker 1: blank warrant forms known as I two hundred's with them
Speaker 1: on missions and essentially filling them out at the scene. Right,
Speaker 1: they cannot prove that where they're going that there was
Speaker 1: a there was a criminal intent by the person that
Speaker 1: they believe is in this country illegally, so they're basically,
Speaker 1: you know, getting there and then coming up filling out
Speaker 1: the form to try to to try to sort of
Speaker 1: come up with a legal pretext after the fact. And
Speaker 1: the judges rightfully, I think, lecture them about this and
Speaker 1: I can't imagine this one that this part of the
Speaker 1: ruling somehow gets over overturned or overruled by.
Speaker 2: A higher court.
Speaker 1: We'll see on that front. But I think more importantly
Speaker 1: it's what is the public see and what are they thinking?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: If you live online, right, if you live only in
Speaker 1: the blue sphere, this is the beginning of the end
Speaker 1: of the republic.
Speaker 2: If you only live in the red.
Speaker 1: Sphere, it's about time that the federal government did something
Speaker 1: that the mayors and the governor refused to do in
Speaker 1: protecting Americans.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: But the question is that we live we you know,
Speaker 1: most of the rest of us live in this gray area.
Speaker 1: And what's interesting about the polling here is that there's
Speaker 1: comfort in the poll numbers for both sides, and there's
Speaker 1: warnings in the poll numbers for both sides. So there's
Speaker 1: a new Reuter's zipso's poll that shows fifty eight percent
Speaker 1: of Americans, including seventy percent of Democrats and fifty percent
Speaker 1: of Republicans, they feel the president should only deploy armed
Speaker 1: troops to face quote external threats. Now, part of that
Speaker 1: may explain why the president Stephen Miller in particular, keep
Speaker 1: using overheated rhetoric to describe what they say ICE agents
Speaker 1: are dealing with and what they say the threat is
Speaker 1: from some of these undocumented immigrants. But it is there's
Speaker 1: clearly a line here where the more militarized this looks,
Speaker 1: the more uncomfortable the public gets, including plenty of Republicans.
Speaker 1: Now that said, and what's interesting here is that there
Speaker 1: is not a majority that believe that the president has
Speaker 1: some sort of huge authority to do this. Thirty seven
Speaker 1: percent agree that the presidents of either party should have
Speaker 1: the power to deploy troops into states even when state
Speaker 1: governors object, but forty eight percent disagree with that, and
Speaker 1: in fact, eighty three percent overall in this poll agreed
Speaker 1: that the military quote should remain politically neutral and not
Speaker 1: take a side in a domestic policy debate. Now, there's
Speaker 1: another poll that was out in the New York Times
Speaker 1: Siena Poll, and it's part of the same poll that
Speaker 1: came out last week that I was telling you about.
Speaker 1: But they released their immigration questions on Wednesday, and essentially
Speaker 1: it's showing you the same thing that I've been telling
Speaker 1: you for a while, which is a majority agree with
Speaker 1: the goal of what Trump is doing, but a majority
Speaker 1: don't like how he's trying to do it. Let me
Speaker 1: put some numbers around that. Fifty four percent of registered
Speaker 1: voters broadly favored deporting immigrants living in the country illegally. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's ninety percent among Republicans, fifty two percent among independents,
Speaker 1: and about twenty percent of Democrats think this. Now, you'll
Speaker 1: see on that issue of mass deportation, Independence much closer
Speaker 1: to Republicans than they are Democrats. Right, it's a majority
Speaker 1: of Independence. That to me a little warning sign there
Speaker 1: for Democrats on their stance on immigration. Now, that said,
Speaker 1: fifty three percent of voters feel the process of deporting
Speaker 1: people has not been fair, and forty four percent said
Speaker 1: it was mostly fair. So that tells you. And fifty
Speaker 1: two percent of those surveyed also disapprove of Trump's handling
Speaker 1: of immigration. The point is this, a majority of people
Speaker 1: in this country do think that too many people were
Speaker 1: let in illegally and many of them should be returned.
Speaker 1: But there is a discomfort in the aggressive tactics that
Speaker 1: are being used, and the more that is front and center,
Speaker 1: the more Americans may sour on the policy.
Speaker 2: Itself.
Speaker 1: But this is to me the warning sign here a
Speaker 1: little bit. What's interesting is fifty one percent said they
Speaker 1: thought the government was deporting mostly people who quote should
Speaker 1: be deported. Forty two percents of the government was deporting
Speaker 1: the wrong people. But there's a narrow majority there. So
Speaker 1: the point is is that Democrats have to find realize
Speaker 1: that a majority in this country want the law followed.
Speaker 1: At the same time, a majority of the country's more
Speaker 1: open to immigration than perhaps the Trump administration is behaving.
Speaker 1: So like everything in our politics, there's more nuanced in
Speaker 1: gray area than the two parties are presenting each other.
Speaker 1: But it is where we are at this moment. I
Speaker 1: do think the Trump White House believes that Pritzker and
Speaker 1: Mayor Johnson are good foils for them politically. I think
Speaker 1: they're personalizing this on purpose, and Pritzker and Johnson are
Speaker 1: playing right into it because I think they think it's
Speaker 1: good politics to get personal right back, It is worth
Speaker 1: noting that Trump put out that truth social statement on
Speaker 1: Wednesday after Pritzker on Tuesday night opened wondered aloud whether
Speaker 1: Trump has dementia. So it is certainly getting personal, and
Speaker 1: in that sense that's also a bit of a you know,
Speaker 1: it goes back to my whole who's going to be
Speaker 1: the adult in the room. And when you start to
Speaker 1: go name calling against Trump, you have to remember the
Speaker 1: rule of the pig, which is careful getting to a
Speaker 1: mud fight with a pig, because you'll both get dirty
Speaker 1: and the pig will enjoy it.
Speaker 2: This is a classic case.
Speaker 1: You want to get into a name calling fight with
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. He's always willing to go lower. He's always
Speaker 1: going to be more outlandish, go to places you'll never
Speaker 1: be comfortable going, and you'll look and then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, you'll look feckless for some reason. So it's
Speaker 1: a warning there, and it's obvious what the political motivation
Speaker 1: is there. Clearly is an attempt by the Trump administration.
Speaker 1: Perhaps this is the Stephen Miller plan to create a confrontation,
Speaker 1: to create a pretext to then do more of this
Speaker 1: and get more aggressive of these tactics. But the political
Speaker 1: warning signed to Miller and the Trump White House is
Speaker 1: the more aggressive they get, the more Americans are going
Speaker 1: to turn on them on this, and even among Republicans,
Speaker 1: so as much as it looks as if they're completely
Speaker 1: ignoring sort of the reality of the situation, and they're
Speaker 1: frankly lying about the threat. The level of threat that
Speaker 1: folks in Chicago are dealing with. There's real political risk
Speaker 1: in how they're handling this, just as much as there's
Speaker 1: real risk for Democrats not looking like they're not in
Speaker 1: favor of the rule of law either. So I wanted
Speaker 1: to deal I will say this, I'm not. The reason
Speaker 1: I'm not my hair's not on fire on this is that.
Speaker 2: I do think.
Speaker 1: The system is working more than it isn't right. The
Speaker 1: courts are having their say. There's a lot of loud
Speaker 1: rhetoric from Stephen Miller, irresponsible rhetoric, but they're abiding by.
Speaker 2: The court rulings.
Speaker 1: So I'm not saying this isn't something we shouldn't be
Speaker 1: concerned about. We should be on high alert about nation,
Speaker 1: but we got to continue to use the system itself
Speaker 1: to enact the guardrail rather than trying to take matters
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Speaker 1: they win. The DNC is starting to circulate its after
Speaker 1: action report on the twenty twenty four election. Politico has
Speaker 1: gotten a few sources to talk about the sword of
Speaker 1: top lines that are being circulated to certain Democratic leaders,
Speaker 1: and here's sort of the early take on this according
Speaker 1: to the political report, DNC officials argued Democrats. This is
Speaker 1: I'm reading directly from the political article. DNC officials argued
Speaker 1: Democrats didn't spend early or consistently enough to engage and
Speaker 1: persuade voters, one of several problems the party face in.
Speaker 2: Twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: According to the committee, swapping Joe Biden with Kamala Harris
Speaker 1: the top of the ticket intensify those systemic long term
Speaker 1: problems for the party, the official said. And this is
Speaker 1: according to two people that were brief by the DNC
Speaker 1: this week and granted anonymity to discuss the comments for
Speaker 1: what it's worth. So far, in these early briefings of
Speaker 1: this after action report, the so called autopsy of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four by the DNC, Biden's age has not come
Speaker 1: up now.
Speaker 2: The DNC officials also.
Speaker 1: Said the party's failure to respond to voters's top issues
Speaker 1: led to losses across once core constituencies, including working class voters.
Speaker 1: That is one of those duh, Right, When you don't
Speaker 1: talk about the issue that's most concerned to the voters,
Speaker 1: you're going to likely be on the losing end.
Speaker 2: Of an election.
Speaker 1: I'm glad it's taken them eight months to write an
Speaker 1: autopsy to come to that conclusion. On that front, Another
Speaker 1: person briefed on the report said that they understood the
Speaker 1: assessment to mean that Democrats quote didn't talk enough about
Speaker 1: bread and butter issues, and instead we talked about social issues,
Speaker 1: social anxieties. Now here's the thing. This idea that the
Speaker 1: Democrats didn't spend early enough actually doesn't fit the facts
Speaker 1: the job. Back when Biden was still actively running for president,
Speaker 1: their campaign actually bought twenty five million dollars worth of
Speaker 1: ads in September of twenty twenty three. It was earlier
Speaker 1: than either Barack Obama or Donald Trump aired ads during
Speaker 1: their first reelections. They also spent another thirty million dollars
Speaker 1: on ads in March of twenty twenty four, and they
Speaker 1: were arguing. Biden's team at the time was arguing, according
Speaker 1: to Political that this early investment for activate key voters.
Speaker 1: So I'm confused here. The DNC is claiming it was
Speaker 1: too late of investments and money in this idea when
Speaker 1: actually Democrats had the advantage early with money. Look, it
Speaker 1: sounds like this autopsy is going to end up if
Speaker 1: this is what it is. If this is what they concluded.
Speaker 1: Then they've it is just a a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: words to not say what the real problem was, which
Speaker 1: is Joe Biden shouldn't have run. Joe Biden didn't have
Speaker 1: the capacity to articulate the message that they needed to do.
Speaker 1: But more importantly, the Biden white House totally disagreed with
Speaker 1: the public on what the top issue was. Remember you
Speaker 1: had the Biden white House putting out surrogates constantly saying,
Speaker 1: the economy is recovering, the economy is great, look at
Speaker 1: all the job creation. And they kept arguing making the
Speaker 1: job creation argument, saying, this economy, you know, pay no
Speaker 1: attention to what the rest of the country essentially we don't,
Speaker 1: you know, pay no attention to what you think the
Speaker 1: problem is with the economy, i e.
Speaker 2: Costs.
Speaker 1: You should listen to us and we'll tell you that
Speaker 1: the economy is okay. I mean, it is so this
Speaker 1: initial if this is really the autopsy, it tells me
Speaker 1: that they're just trying to I don't know, are they
Speaker 1: protecting people's personal feelings or is it just I mean,
Speaker 1: do you need an autopsy to find out you had
Speaker 1: a candidate that wasn't capable of running for president. That
Speaker 1: was the issue. He couldn't sell his agenda, and then
Speaker 1: more importantly, whoever was surrounding him totally misread the did
Speaker 1: have any clue at what the country was upset about,
Speaker 1: which was the cost to live. I don't know what
Speaker 1: more the autopsy should say other than that, and you know,
Speaker 1: other than you know, do they want to try to
Speaker 1: light on fire certain consulting groups or people. Obviously a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of people made a whole bunch of money
Speaker 1: based on bad strategy. Okay, that's a fair point. But
Speaker 1: on the other hand, considering how poorly all of this
Speaker 1: was handled, the fact that they came essentially about one
Speaker 1: hundred thousand voters away from winning the electoral college is
Speaker 1: still pretty remarkable. Again, if Kamala Harris simply flips Michigan, Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: and Pennsylvania, she's at two hundred and seventy electoral votes.
Speaker 1: So they're going to release the whole thing. Apparently they're
Speaker 1: going to release the whole thing after this November's elections,
Speaker 1: but it is if this is what the early word is,
Speaker 1: I don't know if anything's going to be learned from this.
Speaker 2: To me.
Speaker 1: If the autopsy doesn't say Hey, the DNC has done
Speaker 1: a terrible job over the last fifteen years in registering voters.
Speaker 1: Then to me, the entire autopsy is worthless because that
Speaker 1: has sort of been one of the major problems. The
Speaker 1: party has had a complete and utter dismissiveness of the
Speaker 1: fact that they were losing voters, basically leaking voters for
Speaker 1: the last decade. And now, of course you sort of
Speaker 1: see the accumulation of lost party registrations and it is
Speaker 1: it is shocking what the numbers are. It is almost
Speaker 1: a ten to one. Look, Republicans have lost registered voters
Speaker 1: over the last few years, and so of Democrats. Literally
Speaker 1: it's a ten to one ratio. Democrats are losing ten
Speaker 1: voters for every one voter the Republicans are losing. That
Speaker 1: is an unsustainable path on that front. A few updates
Speaker 1: on Virginia. It does appear that everybody is going to
Speaker 1: rally around for now. Rally around on the Democratic side,
Speaker 1: Jay Jones, I want to read you a few statements
Speaker 1: that a few state Democrats are they're rationales for sticking by,
Speaker 1: for sticking by Jones, the Attorney General nominee, who of
Speaker 1: course had those text messages that were sort of fantasizing
Speaker 1: about the death of a former Assembly speaker's kids. Virginia
Speaker 1: State Senator Lamont Bagbee, who chairs the state's Democratic Party,
Speaker 1: asked the following question in an interview and asked whether
Speaker 1: Jones should resign, and his response was Republicans that are
Speaker 1: asking him to resign? Where were they when Trump and
Speaker 1: other Republicans have made their comments? Ah, the old what
Speaker 1: aboutism defense? And another I want to read you one
Speaker 1: more west blamea well connected progressive activist who teaches at
Speaker 1: Virginia State University, said the following. People I'm the feel
Speaker 1: as if they have to be the perfect, highest moral
Speaker 1: individuals in the world. Normal everyday people stay stupid things
Speaker 1: and text messages online all the time. If that is
Speaker 1: the thing that means the Democratic ticket doesn't win the election,
Speaker 1: then they've got bigger issues. Look, I don't think this
Speaker 1: is going to take down the entire Democratic ticket. It
Speaker 1: probably is only going to take down his own candidacy.
Speaker 1: Could make the LG race a lot closer, and maybe
Speaker 1: Spanburger wins by single digits and it costs them some
Speaker 1: opportunities and down the ballot and state legislative races and
Speaker 1: things like that. But this public defense. This is exactly
Speaker 1: what I've been sort of ranting about now for a
Speaker 1: few months, that the rationales that many Republicans would use
Speaker 1: to overlook hateful and violent rhetoric from Donald Trump and
Speaker 1: some of his supporters, and the sort of oh, can't
Speaker 1: you take a joke and nobody it's not that serious
Speaker 1: that the democratic defense of when somebody on their side
Speaker 1: sort of behaves similarly as well, is now going to
Speaker 1: go to the same thing. Is that really the answer?
Speaker 1: I go back to the whole golden rule. Right, you
Speaker 1: do unto others as you want done under you.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And the Texas governor has decided he is going to
Speaker 1: trounce on the Tenth Amendment when it comes to the
Speaker 1: state of Illinois. But he has no apparently he is
Speaker 1: not worried about Texas's rights being trampled upon if the
Speaker 1: roles were reversed. Okay, ditto here, right, you know, if
Speaker 1: we are trying to tone the rhetoric down, then somebody's
Speaker 1: got to take the high ground here. Somebody's got to
Speaker 1: want to have some moral authority here, and these defenses,
Speaker 1: and look, in fairness, not many well known Democrats are
Speaker 1: willing to stick by and make the defense like that.
Speaker 1: But that mindset, and I know it's there in the
Speaker 1: base of the party.
Speaker 2: I get it.
Speaker 1: They look at what the Republic, what Trump and his
Speaker 1: minions get away with and think, jeez it, it doesn't
Speaker 1: hurt them, So why do we care so much about it?
Speaker 2: And I'm like, there's.
Speaker 1: Still a vast chunk in the middle, who do care
Speaker 1: about ethics, who do care a little bit about character,
Speaker 1: who do want somebody to try to pretend to be
Speaker 1: a role model for doing this the right way instead
Speaker 1: of the wrong way.
Speaker 2: So you know, I'm.
Speaker 1: Sort of shaking my head, but I will I would
Speaker 1: be a little leery Democrats of giving up the adult
Speaker 1: in the room voter, who I do believe they've had
Speaker 1: an inside track on essentially during most of the Trump era.
Speaker 1: But if it's a if you can't beat them, join
Speaker 1: a mindset, I don't know what happens. Then you don't
Speaker 1: know where this goes. Does a go third party, does
Speaker 1: it go splintering. There's a lot of ways that this
Speaker 1: could go. A few campaign notes, I think we have
Speaker 1: another Democrat to add to the presidential list. So we
Speaker 1: told you any be been in New Hampshire. He was
Speaker 1: just there this week. I told you there was already
Speaker 1: a pro Palestinian group running an attack ad on Bisher.
Speaker 1: Sort of an early warning shot I think to all
Speaker 1: presidential candidates that there are going to be some activist
Speaker 1: groups that are going to want to make Israel and
Speaker 1: arming Israel e litmus test. Well, we've got additional Democrats
Speaker 1: on the schedule in New Hampshire, Chris Murphy. I think
Speaker 1: many people already knew the Connecticut Democratic senator was sort
Speaker 1: of at least toying with a national campaign in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty eight. He's going to do a town hall in
Speaker 1: New Hampshire November twelve. But Alyssa Slockton, the first term
Speaker 1: senator from Michigan, is going to headline a fundraiser for
Speaker 1: the Manchester Democratic Dinner on October fifteenth. As my friend
Speaker 1: Chris Eliza likes to say, you know, nobody shows up
Speaker 1: to ior in New Hampshire by accident without at least
Speaker 1: you know they're kicking the tires on something. And what's
Speaker 1: interesting about Slockton is this is she's doing this within
Speaker 1: about two weeks of Gretchen Whitmer, the term limited governor
Speaker 1: of Michigan, sort of indicating that she's probably not going
Speaker 1: to run for president in twenty twenty eight, that she's
Speaker 1: let that she hopes to be participating in what's next,
Speaker 1: but that she probably wouldn't be at the top of
Speaker 1: the ticket herself. Is this coincidence? Is this related? Let's
Speaker 1: just say inquiring minds want to know, and a few
Speaker 1: other California notes. I was just out in California. First
Speaker 1: of all, it does look like the redistricting effort it is.
Speaker 1: I think Gavin Newsom is going to win this prop
Speaker 1: It looks like they've successfully turned this into a referendum
Speaker 1: on Trump, which was the way to win this. And
Speaker 1: it also looks like money is drying up on the
Speaker 1: no side of things. Kevin McCarthy, according to punch Bull News,
Speaker 1: who had pledged to raise and spend one hundred million
Speaker 1: dollars to try to defeat the proposition in the November elections,
Speaker 1: has so far only been able to spend seven millions.
Speaker 1: So it does seem as if that it's possible some
Speaker 1: money is drying up. So if you're you're if you're
Speaker 1: keeping track of the redistricting wars, so if California is
Speaker 1: gonna happen and Texas is going to happen. They've canceled
Speaker 1: each other out, so now it becomes this sort of
Speaker 1: night fight one by one. So we're gonna have Missouri,
Speaker 1: you might have Indiana. Then there's the Utah redraw. There
Speaker 1: could be now a Maryland redraw. Does Florida get into
Speaker 1: the game, right, there is another potential seat or two
Speaker 1: they could attempt in Broward County. If you remember my
Speaker 1: interview with Jared Moskowitz, even w Wasserman Schultz's district, they
Speaker 1: think maybe they could they sort of stretch it across
Speaker 1: Alligator ally and essentially try to create districts that would
Speaker 1: have nothing in common. I mean, trust me, growing up
Speaker 1: in South Florida, you know the Fort Myers and and
Speaker 1: Fort Lauderdale have nothing in common that much other than
Speaker 1: one's on water and the others on water. But one's
Speaker 1: on an ocean and one's in a golf right.
Speaker 2: It is, but it is too far away to.
Speaker 1: Call it a community of interest. But that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that isn't how they might attempt to draw the map
Speaker 1: and make a couple of Democrats in the Broward County
Speaker 1: area a little more a little more vulnerable. But if
Speaker 1: we do have sort of this stand off between California
Speaker 1: and Texas. Then it probably means at best Republicans are
Speaker 1: going to net maybe three or four I think max
Speaker 1: out of this redistricting effort now in an extraordinarily close
Speaker 1: midterm election, that could be the difference. And if it
Speaker 1: is that close, and to me, Democrats already have lost,
Speaker 1: right if they can't make this where they're sort of
Speaker 1: winning the national argument, you know, in the generic ballot
Speaker 1: five six, seven points, well then you know we're going
Speaker 1: to be looking at you know, two or three seats
Speaker 1: on either side. And speaking of California, I think what's
Speaker 1: notable if you're listening to this podcast, my guess is
Speaker 1: you've already seen the Katie Porter clip. The former member
Speaker 1: of Congress who lost a Senate campaign against Adam Schiff,
Speaker 1: has been the nominal front runner for governor ever since
Speaker 1: Kulanacas got out of the race and Kamala Harris announced
Speaker 1: she wasn't going to run. So Katie Bore has kind
Speaker 1: of been the front runner. I've never really thought of
Speaker 1: her as the front runner because I think Rick Caruso,
Speaker 1: the guy who lost the mayor's race to Karen vass
Speaker 1: in LA when he jumps in, he was likely going
Speaker 1: to be the new front runner when he gets in.
Speaker 1: My guess is he gets in after the November elections.
Speaker 1: But for now, Porter had been the one. She had
Speaker 1: the most name id from her previous campaign for Senate,
Speaker 1: so she'd been ahead, but she was like in the twenties,
Speaker 1: you know in some of these polls. Well, anyway, that
Speaker 1: the viral interview, I'm not going to sort of just
Speaker 1: describe it in detail because it's been everywhere. I think
Speaker 1: what's notable is how much both Republicans and Democrats piled
Speaker 1: on this. Plenty of us who have covered Katie Porter,
Speaker 1: covered Congress, covered the California delegation have known that she's
Speaker 1: not very popular among Democrats. You know, she may be
Speaker 1: popular among MSNBC viewers and among many progressive activists, but
Speaker 1: among the sort of insider crowd, she wasn't very popular,
Speaker 1: and not because of her stances, but sort of because
Speaker 1: of her attitude and sort of how she went about it.
Speaker 1: You know, she's in some ways what's good outsider politics
Speaker 1: is not always good insider camaraderie. And frankly, if you're
Speaker 1: going to be governor, you gotta work with other people
Speaker 1: I think her inability to handle what wasn't tough questions.
Speaker 1: These weren't hard questions. It makes me wonder has she
Speaker 1: spent too much time in a blue safe space when
Speaker 1: she interacts with maybe blue leaning me that don't challenge her,
Speaker 1: and these were lightly challenging questions. I mean, no, I'm
Speaker 1: not disrespecting the reporter at all. I think the reporter
Speaker 1: it's clear what she was doing. She was doing a
Speaker 1: larger package and talking to all the candidates, you know.
Speaker 1: I think she made that, made that pretty clear. But
Speaker 1: you want to be governor of the world's fifth largest
Speaker 1: economy and you can't handle a tiny bit of a
Speaker 1: tiny bit of a follow up question about Trump voters
Speaker 1: and you sort of lose it really quickly. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna be able to control every setting in politics,
Speaker 1: no matter where you go. So but the most notable
Speaker 1: thing about this is not the incident itself. To me,
Speaker 1: it's how much everybody else piled on.
Speaker 2: She does not.
Speaker 1: Have a reservoir of goodwill inside the Democratic Party, it seems,
Speaker 1: and I think the way she behaved after losing, after
Speaker 1: not making it into the top two with Adam Shift
Speaker 1: in the Senate race, and you know, she just she didn't,
Speaker 1: you know, she was angry that Adam Schiff played to win. Right,
Speaker 1: So Adam Shift spent money promoting Steve Garvey during that
Speaker 1: primary process so that Garvy would be seen as the
Speaker 1: chief Republican opposition to Shift, and so that way the
Speaker 1: top two face off would be Shift versus Garvey. D
Speaker 1: versus are very easy campaign for Shift to win, rather
Speaker 1: than Shift versus Porter, which would have been D versus
Speaker 1: D might have been very awkward and a much closer race,
Speaker 1: much more competitive, and we don't know which way it
Speaker 1: would go. Obviously, Porter was still very bitter about it,
Speaker 1: and sort of the way she went about it, you know,
Speaker 1: it was sort of like sour grapes that Adam Shift
Speaker 1: did something, you know, did a campaign tactic that is
Speaker 1: not new, not that controversial anymore. It's sort of how,
Speaker 1: you you know, he had the resources to do it,
Speaker 1: and because she didn't have the same resources in him,
Speaker 1: she was frustrated that he got to have more impact
Speaker 1: on who he got to run against than she could.
Speaker 1: And so I do think that how she how she
Speaker 1: carried herself in losing that primary didn't exactly win her
Speaker 1: a lot of friends outside of her core base of supporters.
Speaker 1: So this was a red flag and probably probably the
Speaker 1: type of thing that will be hard for her to
Speaker 1: shake off, especially since how easily everybody seemed to pile
Speaker 1: onto her on that fashion Cure. A long time political consultant,
Speaker 1: he ran Bernie Sanders' camp campaign for president in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: He's right now aligned with the video the Progressive Lean
Speaker 1: video Have More Perfect Union.
Speaker 2: They do some really good work.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's sort of advocacy journalism. But what's interesting is
Speaker 1: he was very critical of what he thought Democrats were
Speaker 1: doing when it came to short form video. You know,
Speaker 1: he was saying that that while people like Gavin Newsom
Speaker 1: and you've seen Akim Jeffreys and Chuck Schumer all doing
Speaker 1: more videos themselves trying to talk to voters sort of
Speaker 1: explaining different policies, that he thinks it's not worked, and
Speaker 1: he thinks that if you want more effective viral videos,
Speaker 1: you've got to talk to people who's actually impacted by
Speaker 1: the situation. And he noted the he said, the raw,
Speaker 1: emotionally jarring clips of human suffering in Gaza and the
Speaker 1: outrages videos of ice agents separating families, that those videos
Speaker 1: go more viral than when a politician is telling you
Speaker 1: what they think, and as he said, those clips have
Speaker 1: done more to change public opinion on those issues than
Speaker 1: anything else. His point is, real people are who you
Speaker 1: should be featuring when you're trying to make a point
Speaker 1: on the cost to live, on the impact of healthcare
Speaker 1: subsidies going away, or the impact of no childcare tax credit,
Speaker 1: things like that. And this goes back to some politics never.
Speaker 2: Change, right.
Speaker 1: If you make your campaign about the people you're trying
Speaker 1: to convince to vote for you, they're more likely to listen.
Speaker 1: If you make the campaign essentially about your own ideology
Speaker 1: or your own views and you're trying to persuade others
Speaker 1: to come to your side, you're more likely to be losing.
Speaker 1: And so I just thought that deserved a highlight. I
Speaker 1: caught what he had to say, and I thought it
Speaker 1: was something worth pointing out. Anyway, let's do a few
Speaker 1: Q and as ask Chuck. This one comes from John
Speaker 1: A from New Orleans. Hey, Chuck really loved the cast.
Speaker 1: As Mayor Koch would say, you are a voice of reason.
Speaker 2: I appreciate that.
Speaker 1: Here's an idea that I would like your feedback on.
Speaker 1: We use the tax code to influence behavior all the time, Yes,
Speaker 1: we do. Why not do it to encourage a true
Speaker 1: democratic good? Give people a seventy five dollars tax credit
Speaker 1: every time they vote in a national election. More voters
Speaker 1: would significantly change voting dynamics. It would give third parties
Speaker 1: a real shot in the arm. The effect would be profound,
Speaker 1: and we wouldn't need a constitutional convention to make the change.
Speaker 1: Thoughts interesting, So we're paying people to vote? I guess
Speaker 1: that's you know, it's not like Australia. What is I
Speaker 1: think it's Australia that has sort of mandatory voting.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm I hear what you're saying. There's a part of me.
Speaker 1: There's a lyric from an old Rush song. If you
Speaker 1: choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
Speaker 1: It's their song free will. So are we going to
Speaker 1: financially penalize people who decide they want to sit out
Speaker 1: a national election? You see where I'm going here? So
Speaker 1: I hear where you're going. I you know, we had
Speaker 1: that back and.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to guess what your age is. But
Speaker 1: there was a time where you used to be able
Speaker 1: to check off on your tax returns. You know, yes,
Speaker 1: I want, you know, a dollar, one dollar of my
Speaker 1: tax return to go to the presidential presidential campaign fund.
Speaker 1: This was back when presidential candidates would get matching funds.
Speaker 1: We had a period of time where we were hoping
Speaker 1: to at least partially public fund elections to keep you know,
Speaker 1: to sort of keep the influence of money down. Well, eventually,
Speaker 1: you know, I think George W. Bush was the first
Speaker 1: one to be able to raise enough money not having
Speaker 1: to worry about the federal system. And then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, everybody got out of it, and so it's
Speaker 1: it's sort of lost its relevance. But I do agree
Speaker 1: with you generally that the tax code is a good
Speaker 1: that financial incentives. In some ways, it goes back to
Speaker 1: the incentive issue. Right, if you want if you want
Speaker 1: better outcomes, then create better incentives.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: If you think more people need to participate, then that
Speaker 1: is one idea to to certainly incentivize people to do it.
Speaker 1: I still think that the bigger issue is we need
Speaker 1: equal access to the ballot, and you need equal access
Speaker 1: to vote for everybody, right, And I do think primaries,
Speaker 1: particularly state run, state funded primaries do violate equal protection.
Speaker 1: You know, the fact is, if I'm not a registered
Speaker 1: voter of that party, I can't participate in that taxpayer
Speaker 1: funded election.
Speaker 2: That feels like a penalty.
Speaker 1: And so and I do think that if you're looking
Speaker 1: at one thing, one single thing that we could do
Speaker 1: differently that might actually have massive impact on our politics
Speaker 1: is if we got rid of partisan primaries altogether and
Speaker 1: had essentially everybody, you know, like the mayor's races, all
Speaker 1: party primaries. So I'm with you on using the tax
Speaker 1: code as a way to incentivize better behavior. I struggle
Speaker 1: with the idea of using it as.
Speaker 2: A reward for voting.
Speaker 1: You know, it's sort of there's it that I in
Speaker 1: a weird way that feels, you know, one step away
Speaker 1: from buying a vote, right, So there's a there's I
Speaker 1: just I'll admit I'm slightly uncomfortable with that larger concept,
Speaker 1: but I am quite comfortable with using the tax code
Speaker 1: to incentive I mean, look, home ownership in some ways
Speaker 1: is promoted because of the tech. We promote ownership through
Speaker 1: the tax code with mortgage deduction. So there's always I
Speaker 1: think good ways to use the tax code help to
Speaker 1: help people. If you will, but interesting thought and certainly
Speaker 1: worth chewing on. Thanks for the question, John all right.
Speaker 1: Next question comes from Carry and saying Lewis, Hey, Chuck,
Speaker 1: You've mentioned the logistical challenge of third parties, But with
Speaker 1: Democrats wandering in the wilderness and Republicans without a platform,
Speaker 1: what about an American unity platform that anyone running could
Speaker 1: pledge to support. Focus on making government more responsive to
Speaker 1: the needs of citizens, working to get big money out
Speaker 1: of politics, constitutional convention ending, germ mandering, maybe even required
Speaker 1: civic service for young people. Yes, I'm huge national service person.
Speaker 2: Could that work? What would you include in this platform? Thanks?
Speaker 2: And I love the history highlights. Oh great, best wishes.
Speaker 1: Look, I love this and in many ways what you're
Speaker 1: describing is what my late mentor Doug Bailey, when he
Speaker 1: Unity eight is what he called it back in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight. In the run up to that election,
Speaker 1: he was trying to create a process that could help
Speaker 1: nominate a bipartisan ticket. Well, then the two parties nominated
Speaker 1: the two most bipartisan people that were running. Right, Literally,
Speaker 1: the most popular Democrat among Republicans was Barack Obama and
Speaker 1: the most popular Republican among Democrats was John McCain. They
Speaker 1: both did well among independence and they both won their nomination,
Speaker 1: So it made Unity eight kind of a pointless exercise.
Speaker 1: He was anticipating that it would be Hillary Clinton and
Speaker 1: Rudy Giuliani right, a more polarizing, divisive matchup that would
Speaker 1: then leave room for a more unifying bipartisan ticket. But
Speaker 1: it is, you know, and in fact, what is the
Speaker 1: today's Forward Party has some of the remnants of what
Speaker 1: Doug began. Some of the folks that have been working
Speaker 1: on the Open Primaries movement to try to sort of
Speaker 1: get rid of partisan primaries, the gentleman that's been working
Speaker 1: on trying to get rank choice voting to be considered
Speaker 1: in other states. All of it is derivative of what
Speaker 1: Doug began with.
Speaker 2: Unity O eight.
Speaker 1: And I will tell you this. You are to me
Speaker 1: on the right path of what kind of to me
Speaker 1: that look in an ideal word, would be a four
Speaker 1: party system. I think that's I'm not gonna I'm trying
Speaker 1: to be realistic here. The most the most likely way
Speaker 1: that a third party could have an impact is sort
Speaker 1: of helping to reform the two major parties by sort
Speaker 1: of running a race that did this. And I think
Speaker 1: you don't you want to plan And this gets it
Speaker 1: to a debate that I know some folks that are
Speaker 1: involved with the Forward Party, Andrew Yang, Christie Whitman Party,
Speaker 1: the sort of the third party movement where there's a
Speaker 1: debate are they a movement to try to get the
Speaker 1: two parties to become more rational or do they want
Speaker 1: to be their own standalone party that essentially replaces one
Speaker 1: of the two major parties and why? And if you're
Speaker 1: going to be one thing, then you're going to have
Speaker 1: more issues you might take a stand on. And the
Speaker 1: more issues you take a stand on, the more opportunity
Speaker 1: you have of potentially pushing some people, you know away.
Speaker 1: If you're trying to be this sort of moderate party
Speaker 1: that sort of shoots you know, that sort of shoots
Speaker 1: the gap in between the two parties, then I do
Speaker 1: think you want a platform like the one you describe,
Speaker 1: where hey, look, we need to we need to make
Speaker 1: some massive reforms in how the democracy works. And this
Speaker 1: isn't going to be about whether we should have more
Speaker 1: immigrants or less immigrants. This is about whether we're going
Speaker 1: to have a system that is easily understandable and how
Speaker 1: immigration works. Right, it is almost like a technocratic campaign
Speaker 1: that you would run. Now, the problem with that is,
Speaker 1: I think you need an incredibly charismatic individual to be
Speaker 1: the leader of that movement. Ross Perot had his own charisma,
Speaker 1: Teddy Roosevelt had his own charisma. Shoot, even George Wallace,
Speaker 1: who was arguably had some success at least in shifting
Speaker 1: that election to Nixon in sixty eight, had had enough
Speaker 1: charisma to lead a movement. So there is a you
Speaker 1: can't just do this as a dry technocratic exercise.
Speaker 2: But I do think.
Speaker 1: Going after process and talking about how we need the
Speaker 1: structural reform of the democracy, and I think post Trump
Speaker 1: there'll be an appetite for this. The question is is
Speaker 1: there an appetite for it in twenty eight or do
Speaker 1: we need sort of a couple more years removed from
Speaker 1: Trump before there'll be a full appetite for this. But
Speaker 1: American Unity Platform, I mean, I'm gonna keep saying it
Speaker 1: over and over. So my friends at the Forward Party
Speaker 1: who I know listen to this podcast regularly. It's a
Speaker 1: good idea because, especially if it's about how you centered it,
Speaker 1: how do you make government more responsive?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Things I'd put in there is doubling the size of
Speaker 1: the House. Right, maybe it's a constitutional amendment that says,
Speaker 1: you know, no congressional district can be, you know, bigger
Speaker 1: than point zero zero zero one percent of the population,
Speaker 1: which would give a metric so that way you could
Speaker 1: deal in case our population shrinks overtime rather than expands.
Speaker 1: But that's something I would put in there because I
Speaker 1: think that would be something that would make us more responsive.
Speaker 1: Getting rid of partisan primaries where you're doing things that
Speaker 1: are not about specific issues themselves, because that's where you
Speaker 1: start to third parties can sometimes lose support almost the
Speaker 1: more positions you start taking.
Speaker 2: So it is, it is.
Speaker 1: You certainly have warmed my heart in what you're prescribing.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that I've learned is when
Speaker 1: you have the luxury to worry about this, and you
Speaker 1: don't have a financial crisis in your life or a
Speaker 1: healthcare crisis, you have the luxury to worry about the democracy.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of voters out there who, in theory
Speaker 1: might agree with this platform, but are more worried about
Speaker 1: the near term and are going to be more in
Speaker 1: tune with somebody that's going to throw them a bone immediately, right,
Speaker 1: a benefit bone of some sort immediately, And I think
Speaker 1: that's the only risk in trying to run a very
Speaker 1: sort of let's fix the democracy, because you almost have
Speaker 1: to have a majority agreement that it's broken. And we're
Speaker 1: getting there, right. We have over sixty percent saying we're
Speaker 1: in a political crisis. So it may be that by
Speaker 1: the fall of twenty seven this is a very appealing idea,
Speaker 1: which is but the idea of just putting out a platform,
Speaker 1: almost without a candidate and even without a political party
Speaker 1: is an interesting idea as well. So anyway, you've given
Speaker 1: me a lot to chew on that this is not
Speaker 1: something I want to give up, the American Unity Platform.
Speaker 1: I love how that sounds, all right. Next question comes
Speaker 1: from Heather from Littleton, Colorado.
Speaker 2: Hey, there, I.
Speaker 1: Heard you chat your chat with Chrystaliza and appreciated what
Speaker 1: you said about Trump being the worst role model for
Speaker 1: our children. I have two boys, and my younger son
Speaker 1: was born on election Day twenty sixteen. I remember sitting
Speaker 1: in the hospital, heartbroken that our country had elected a
Speaker 1: man who embodied everything I didn't want them to become.
Speaker 1: As a lifelong conservative and former staffer for Rick and Torum,
Speaker 1: I even voted for Hillary Clinton that year because I
Speaker 1: feared that would happen under his presidency. Sadly, both his
Speaker 1: temperament and character of only worsened. Sense Heather from Littleton, Colorado, Well,
Speaker 1: you know this.
Speaker 2: Goes to the issue of character, and it goes back to.
Speaker 1: For whatever reason, and I think in sixteen, look, I
Speaker 1: think you and I share a similar way that we vote,
Speaker 1: which is, I do character matters a lot, right. I
Speaker 1: think character is destiny. I think high character people are
Speaker 1: going to do the right thing. Low character people are
Speaker 1: more likely to do the wrong thing or more likely
Speaker 1: to be out for themselves. And I certainly believe that. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: a second Trump term has perhaps, Look, we're coarser, we
Speaker 1: just are as a society, and you can't tell me
Speaker 1: it's disconnected from the way Donald Trump has modeled himself
Speaker 1: for the American people.
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 1: You may have heard me say this. I think the
Speaker 1: American bad behavior at Bethpage Black during the Ryder Cup
Speaker 1: is representative of the Trump era. Do I say Trump
Speaker 1: himself go to those people to behave that way. No,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to go that far. But I think
Speaker 1: his behavior gives a permission slip that it's okay to
Speaker 1: sort of be be rude, be dismissed, be dehumanizing. Hey,
Speaker 1: if the president does it, why can't I? And of
Speaker 1: course this gets it to what we're watching how the
Speaker 1: Democrats are dealing with this Virginia issue, where there was
Speaker 1: there was an attempt to hold Republicans accountable when they
Speaker 1: misbehaved like this, and there are a lot of Democrats
Speaker 1: who were lecturing Republicans for not holding their own side accountable.
Speaker 1: And here you have something on the Democratic side and
Speaker 1: they're not immediately taking the moral high ground here on character,
Speaker 1: and it's you know how much of that is? And
Speaker 1: you see that sort of some supporters of Jay Jones
Speaker 1: have essentially said, well, if Trump can do it, why
Speaker 1: can't Why can't we is essentially, you know, if the
Speaker 1: voters are going to forgive him, why wouldn't the voters
Speaker 1: forgive Jay Jones?
Speaker 2: And maybe that is the case.
Speaker 1: Maybe the electorate has given up that politicians can be
Speaker 1: good people. Unfortunately, right now I do think the I
Speaker 1: think good people are afraid to run for office, and
Speaker 1: I think there is a sense that if you're morally
Speaker 1: ambiguous person, but you're looking for legitimacy in society, holding
Speaker 1: office suddenly gives you legitimacy. You know, it brings up
Speaker 1: a quote I've been meaning to share with you guys,
Speaker 1: but I just haven't had the right I just haven't
Speaker 1: had the right moment to bring it up. But I'm
Speaker 1: going to go find the quote for you. So Madison Cawthorne,
Speaker 1: the guy, the kid who was sort of who when
Speaker 1: he came to Congress sort of was just he admitted
Speaker 1: the only staff he wanted to hire work communication staff.
Speaker 1: He didn't really see the job as representing his constituents.
Speaker 1: He saw it as just messaging and trolling. He offended
Speaker 1: so many Republicans that they recruited at candidates to primary
Speaker 1: m get him out of office, and he was a
Speaker 1: one term wonder. Well now he has shown up in
Speaker 1: Florida and he wants to run for the open seat
Speaker 1: that Byron Donalds is vacating to run for governor. Well,
Speaker 1: he's not the only former member of Congress running in
Speaker 1: that district for Byron Donalds. There's another disgraced former member
Speaker 1: of Congress that's also running in that race. It is
Speaker 1: Chris Collins. And if you're wondering who Chris Collins is,
Speaker 1: he was a Republican member of Congress from the from
Speaker 1: western New York, representing the Buffalo area, and he was
Speaker 1: notable at first. I mean, I could tell you how
Speaker 1: he got my radar, and first time I interviewed me,
Speaker 1: he was the only member of Congres. He's the first
Speaker 1: member of the House of Representative, the first House Republican
Speaker 1: to officially endorse Donald Trump, and for the longest time,
Speaker 1: he was the only one that endorsed Donald Trump. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was it was, it was something else, and he
Speaker 1: was the only one, and he was sort of he
Speaker 1: was kind of. I enjoyed interviewing him, and in fact,
Speaker 1: I'm going to try to book him for the podcast
Speaker 1: because this quote really stood out to me, and I
Speaker 1: don't get to it in a minute, but it sort
Speaker 1: of gets it to what I fear elected office has
Speaker 1: become for too many character challenged people, and perhaps describing
Speaker 1: Chris Collins this way.
Speaker 2: Will make him not want to come on.
Speaker 1: But one of the things I found interesting about him
Speaker 1: is that he seemed to be comfortable in his own skin,
Speaker 1: willing to sort of take any question and sometimes say
Speaker 1: things out loud that you're shocked that he would say,
Speaker 1: which brings me to this quote. So he's among again.
Speaker 1: Madison Cawthorne is running in this race. So's Chris Collins, right,
Speaker 1: the former New Yorker you had to resign in twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen after he pled guilty to some insider trading. Collins,
Speaker 1: who's now seventy five, he suggested that he wasn't coming
Speaker 1: out of involuntary retirement purely because of his desire to
Speaker 1: serve his new community in southwest Florida. Here's what he
Speaker 1: said to a podcast in August. He said, quote, if
Speaker 1: I they then retire as a congressman from Florida nineteen
Speaker 1: and Marco Island in Naples, I think I would be
Speaker 1: welcomed then to serve on some of the you know,
Speaker 1: the not for profit boards and hospital boards and being
Speaker 1: invited to the you know, fundraisers and galas and being welcomed.
Speaker 1: He said, that would be a great retirement because right
Speaker 1: now it's kind of lonely. He goes, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: not invited to any of those things because all I
Speaker 1: am is, you know, the former congressman who resigned in disgrace,
Speaker 1: convicted felon This was this is Chris Collins in a nutshell.
Speaker 1: He will he speaks some blunt truths. He's self aware
Speaker 1: and not self aware sort of all at the same time.
Speaker 1: Right says the quiet part out loud that the only
Speaker 1: reason he wants to run if he could just win
Speaker 1: a term. Then suddenly he's invited to all the local
Speaker 1: events and he gets to I guess, sit on the
Speaker 1: dais rather than I'm sure he could be invited to
Speaker 1: these events, but he doesn't want to beg to be there,
Speaker 1: I guess. Anyway, I use this as an example to
Speaker 1: sort of respond to your question on that, because that
Speaker 1: is my concern, is that politics is turned into this
Speaker 1: place where people rehab bad images because we now think
Speaker 1: politicians are kind of you know that we assume a
Speaker 1: politician is slimy. You know, you're guilty of being slimy
Speaker 1: until you prove.
Speaker 2: That you're not.
Speaker 1: And that's sad. Right, I got into this. I went
Speaker 1: to Washington because, man, I looked up to these people.
Speaker 1: And it's true, the more you get to know them,
Speaker 1: the more you realize not all of them are are
Speaker 1: worth looking up to. But there was a time more
Speaker 1: of them were. And it's a bummer. We're not there yet.
Speaker 1: All right, let me do one more question here and.
Speaker 2: I'll do my little college football preview for you. Good evening.
Speaker 1: Loving the Check podcast find myself anxiously awaiting the next
Speaker 1: installment every other morning during the week. I appreciate that
Speaker 1: my question you recently cited congressional carve outs for pay
Speaker 1: during government shutdowns, such as military pay and social security.
Speaker 1: I was listening to someone on Boston Public Radio a
Speaker 1: few days ago, where you are a frequent guest, discussed
Speaker 1: military pay would cease during the shutdown. So I'm confused.
Speaker 1: Thanks for a fantastic source of information critical of both
Speaker 1: sides of the aisle. The pay is guaranteed, that the
Speaker 1: pay can be delayed, but it's guaranteed, and the military
Speaker 1: pay was always guaranteed as a carve out, and then
Speaker 1: they have to a lot of times. Most of the
Speaker 1: times when they've done these shorts shutdowns, they do pass
Speaker 1: a bipartisan bill that says, hey, we're going to go
Speaker 1: ahead and let military pay happen on time. And that
Speaker 1: was frequent when we always had some you know, some
Speaker 1: members of the military in a hot zone or a
Speaker 1: war zone, notably for whatever reason, they didn't you know Democrats.
Speaker 1: In fact, that's one of the ways that Democrats are
Speaker 1: now trying to go to Mike Johnson back to bringing
Speaker 1: the House back this week, is to just simply vote
Speaker 1: on that so that there's no interruption in their pay.
Speaker 1: But the carve out, they're guaranteed their pay and in
Speaker 1: the case of active duty military, you know, they're housing,
Speaker 1: the don't have to worry about that. So that's why
Speaker 1: it's that carve out. If they weren't guaranteed their pay, I.
Speaker 2: Think you'd have a different situation.
Speaker 1: So where I may have confused you was I may
Speaker 1: have indicated that they were they were getting it without
Speaker 1: interruption because they always do, but they hadn't. Actually each
Speaker 1: time they had to individually vote to make sure it
Speaker 1: was done without interruption, and they didn't do that for
Speaker 1: this time, which was unusual. But there is no but
Speaker 1: the law guarantees that back pay. Quote it's what the
Speaker 1: law guarantees the back pay now of all federal workers.
Speaker 1: That was a separate law that was passed in twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen that Donald Trump signed the law and now that
Speaker 1: his current budget director is trying to claim does not abide.
Speaker 1: But anyway, apologies for confusing you on that, but that
Speaker 1: that's where that goes, all right, So with that, I
Speaker 1: am this is my first weekend and four weekends and
Speaker 1: I'm not traveling to see a football game.
Speaker 2: I will be honest, as.
Speaker 1: A middling aged man, I am getting exhausted for mayor travel.
Speaker 1: So maybe I needed a weekend off from traveling to football.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean we don't have a great lineup
Speaker 1: of games this week. Look the most the one I'm
Speaker 1: most curious about, and I think the one that will
Speaker 1: be more determinative to me. You know, there's two big
Speaker 1: ones this week, and they're both in the Big ten. Right,
Speaker 1: you have Indiana at Oregon. Do you fully believe in Indiana?
Speaker 1: And how good is Oregon?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Do we look at the Penn State loss to UCLA
Speaker 1: and start to question whether is was that just Penn
Speaker 1: State flat spot or is Penn State really just not
Speaker 1: that good without Tyler Warren?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: And I think we're starting to come to the conclusion
Speaker 1: that they had a special, special talent in Tyler Warren.
Speaker 2: How good was he? He's so good.
Speaker 1: He's made the Colts a playoff team right all on
Speaker 1: his own. He's made Daniel Jones look like an MVP candidate.
Speaker 1: So shame on all of us for not realizing how
Speaker 1: maybe that dude should have been invited to New York
Speaker 1: at least to be a Heisman finalist on that front.
Speaker 1: And then the other interesting game is Ohio State going
Speaker 1: to Champagne in Illinois.
Speaker 2: Who is Illinois?
Speaker 1: Are they the team that beat USC or the team
Speaker 1: that got their clocks cleaned in Bloomington by Indiana? They're
Speaker 1: tough at home. Ohio State does appear to be getting
Speaker 1: better every week. Justin saying, I'm just saying, right, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to get over that punditry that that ability
Speaker 1: to do so many puns with the quarterback of Ohio State.
Speaker 2: We're all just.
Speaker 1: Saying that, justin saying is getting better every week. I'm not,
Speaker 1: by the way, I'm not somebody who will bet on
Speaker 1: individual players. I accept the premise that I think player
Speaker 1: props are very corruptible when it comes to when it
Speaker 1: comes to gambling, and in fact, in the state of Virginia,
Speaker 1: they don't even allow you to bet on awards. You
Speaker 1: can't bet on the Heisman in Virginia. I have to
Speaker 1: go across the river to DC if I wanted.
Speaker 2: To do that.
Speaker 1: But if I were taking a long shot Heisman pick
Speaker 1: right now, justin saying would be a pretty good bye
Speaker 1: at this point, because you know the way the Heisman
Speaker 1: stuff works, it's all recency bias. And as much as
Speaker 1: I think Reuben Bain and Miami or Carson Beck and
Speaker 1: Miami both deserve consideration, their most high profile games are
Speaker 1: now over and Ohio State has a lot more high
Speaker 1: profile games to come. And of course that you know,
Speaker 1: the whole recency bias, right, He's going to be having
Speaker 1: that Michigan game, you know, not very far from the
Speaker 1: voting itself, perhap. Ohio State Oregon in the in the
Speaker 1: Big Ten Conference final itself is another stage for him. Anyway,
Speaker 1: It's it's interesting how good is he? How good is
Speaker 1: is Illinois. It's slowing this game down in order to
Speaker 1: give themselves a chance. They can't afford to trade scores
Speaker 1: with Ohio State. So I'm intrigued by that game. I
Speaker 1: don't know if I buy into Illinois, And in fact,
Speaker 1: their victory over USC makes me doubt USC more than
Speaker 1: it does make me more confident in Illinois. And then
Speaker 1: there's Indiana in Oregon right the other game, So it
Speaker 1: all depends on how much of a juggernaut you think Illinois.
Speaker 1: I think it's clear Indiana is better this year than
Speaker 1: they were last year. But does that mean they're they're
Speaker 1: they're a contender for the whole thing or not. If
Speaker 1: they can put up a once, you know, even lose
Speaker 1: just by one score in Eugene, I think it's fair
Speaker 1: to say, because that is one tough place to play,
Speaker 1: I think it's fair to say they are contenders. Uh.
Speaker 2: I can't believe.
Speaker 1: I'm not that The first game out of my mouth
Speaker 1: isn't about Texas Oklahoma. Here we have the Red River
Speaker 1: Shootout rivalry, whatever we're supposed to call it. Now, it
Speaker 1: does feel as if this is a This has become
Speaker 1: a very important game for Arch Manning's reputation, fairly or unfairly.
Speaker 1: I do think it's worth reminding people that Arch's grandfather, Archie,
Speaker 1: was the first one to say he's not turning pro
Speaker 1: in twenty six. Perhaps he knew his grandson needed more
Speaker 1: time to sort of in the football factory to get better.
Speaker 1: Look the hype machine. It's not as if the Manning
Speaker 1: family didn't contribute to the hype machine. And you know,
Speaker 1: it is what it is. Sometimes you can't do anything
Speaker 1: about it. You know, if he were Arch Smith, he
Speaker 1: wouldn't be He wouldn't have gotten the same amount of hype,
Speaker 1: nor would he be getting the same amount of criticism.
Speaker 1: But the real question is whether John Matteer, Oklahoma starting quarterback,
Speaker 1: is really going to try to play here in this game.
Speaker 1: Except look, Oklahoma are are they legit contenders for the
Speaker 1: whole thing? They beat Texas without Matier as a relevant force.
Speaker 1: That's a big deal and that shouldn't be ignored. So
Speaker 1: that's probably the third most interesting game for me on
Speaker 1: the docket. Then after that, everything else is only interesting
Speaker 1: depending on how much money you plan on putting down there.
Speaker 1: I mean, Georgia Auburn, I think we thought that.
Speaker 2: Would be a big deal game.
Speaker 1: I assume Georgia wins that with a little bit of
Speaker 1: put it this way, I I will be surprised if
Speaker 1: that's a if that's a close game in the fourth quarter,
Speaker 1: and if it is, then maybe Georgia isn't a top
Speaker 1: ten team this year. And by the way, no shame
Speaker 1: in that. My goodness, look at how many people they've
Speaker 1: sent to the pros. At some point, I'm not saying
Speaker 1: the cupboard is empty, but their depth at some point
Speaker 1: is going to catch up with them, and in this environment,
Speaker 1: you don't get to stockball talent the way you used
Speaker 1: to be able to stockpilot. So that's a little bit
Speaker 1: of a we'll learn a little something there, depending on
Speaker 1: the on the spread of that game and if baseball
Speaker 1: is not doing it for you. That Friday night South
Speaker 1: Florida North Texas game, it's a big deal to South
Speaker 1: Florida if they want to be the group of five
Speaker 1: representative in the playoff. I think it's gonna be a
Speaker 1: great game. They're going on the road. They got to
Speaker 1: win that game. And as a Floridian and as a
Speaker 1: team that that the Hurricanes have defeated, I want to
Speaker 1: see everybody that Miami.
Speaker 2: Beat do well.
Speaker 1: So let's go Bulls. Let's go see if you can
Speaker 1: go to the other big game in North Texas this
Speaker 1: weekend and give them a good preview. Should be an
Speaker 1: entertaining game. If you're just looking for some entertaining football,
Speaker 1: North Texas and South Florida is one that will be
Speaker 1: worthy of your time. All right, with that, I have
Speaker 1: a relaxing weekend as my Hurricanes have another bye. We'll
Speaker 1: get a buy week before Florida State bye. I have
Speaker 1: to tell you The scheduling this year for Miami has
Speaker 1: been fantastic, which means, let's not screw this season up.
Speaker 1: We are not going to have where we get a
Speaker 1: buy before Florida State and then a BUYE to recover
Speaker 1: from Florida State before going into this Friday night game
Speaker 1: that we have coming up next week with the always
Speaker 1: dangerous Louisville Cardinals. So with that, I'll see in about
Speaker 1: ninety six hours. Enjoy what is this is right now,
Speaker 1: we are at peak sports fandom. They're all coming together, NHL,
Speaker 1: NBA regular seasons begin, baseball playoffs, college football, NFL. It
Speaker 1: is a smorgasboard, So enjoy it while it's here. Enjoy
Speaker 1: this October weekend, and with that I'll see in my
Speaker 1: name