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Speaker 1: of the Chuck Toodcast. They'd be probably the best way
Speaker 1: to understand the initial reaction by those that are running
Speaker 1: for office, those that are running in Democratic primaries, those
Speaker 1: that want to be leaders within the Democratic Party versus
Speaker 1: and why they have reacted the way they've reacted. Right.
Speaker 1: You use in some ways you are what's your electorate?
Speaker 1: You know, you tell me you're electorate, and no, I'll
Speaker 1: tell you your position on this shutdown. Right, And if
Speaker 1: you're electorate, if it's an electorate where you're more worried
Speaker 1: about the general the swing voter, you were probably on
Speaker 1: the side of figuring out how to do a pause
Speaker 1: in the shutdown. And if you were somebody who's got
Speaker 1: to worry more about a primary voter, then you were
Speaker 1: going to be emphatic against cutting this deal. And I
Speaker 1: think the reaction is a reminder that this was not
Speaker 1: about healthcare right. This was about taking on, finally confronting
Speaker 1: Trump on something right. And the party Democratic Party hadn't
Speaker 1: done any decent confrontation really. A few governors had in
Speaker 1: trying to fight back on national Guard efforts and things
Speaker 1: like that, but there hadn't been a real showdown between
Speaker 1: the party and Trump, and the shutdown provided that. And politically,
Speaker 1: in the last forty days, it energized the base of
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party and they felt good about that energy,
Speaker 1: and it because the elections went well last week, it
Speaker 1: could it seemed to provide the confirmation you know, a
Speaker 1: sort of form of confirmation bias. Hey, this shutdown seems
Speaker 1: to be working. Look at how well our candidates did.
Speaker 1: Why give up this idea now when at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, you know, you know, things can turn
Speaker 1: quickly if you're not careful. And already some pulling is
Speaker 1: surfaced about how as this shutdown was impacting more and
Speaker 1: more Americans, blame was starting to get shared more and
Speaker 1: more between both parties. Yes, Republicans were taking the runt
Speaker 1: of the blame yes, Mike Johnson and Donald Trump were
Speaker 1: actually making it easier for Democrats to politically when the
Speaker 1: shutdown by their own maneuvers and their own decision making there.
Speaker 1: But ultimately, as I've stated in a few other places
Speaker 1: that I've spoken in the last forty eight hours, there
Speaker 1: is a large chunk of voters in the middle who
Speaker 1: don't pay attention to day to day massinations, but that
Speaker 1: will pay attention when the proverbial government toilet is clogged,
Speaker 1: you know, and not being able to travel around Thanksgiving
Speaker 1: at a time when we have almost no choice but
Speaker 1: to use their airplanes in order to get where we
Speaker 1: want to get in a short weekend was a way
Speaker 1: that you were suddenly going to start impacting people that
Speaker 1: don't normally pay attention to the day to day machinations,
Speaker 1: and that actually can become long term more politically damaging
Speaker 1: than anything you think is going for you in the
Speaker 1: short term. So that's my basic way to explain the
Speaker 1: situation we're in. Now. What's funny here is leave it
Speaker 1: to the Democrats that come across. As you know, they're
Speaker 1: essentially divided over tactics. They're not divided over any issue.
Speaker 1: They all believe in this healthcare issue. They all believe
Speaker 1: Trump needs to be confronted. They all believe they've got
Speaker 1: to shift their messaging to cost of living issues. Right,
Speaker 1: So this is a party that is fighting over tactics.
Speaker 1: You know, do they have the right leaders? They probably don't.
Speaker 1: Just changing leaders change the debate on tactics. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it really does, but I will say this,
Speaker 1: once you have lost the trust of the people you're
Speaker 1: trying to lead, you probably ought to leave, right, you know.
Speaker 1: And and the best thing for the party would be
Speaker 1: if Chuck Schumer went out on his own, not forcing
Speaker 1: more groups to come out calling for his resignation and
Speaker 1: all this stuff. But ultimately, I don't know if it changes.
Speaker 1: You know, you're still going to have a leader that's
Speaker 1: got to be thinking about, Hey, there's the base wants
Speaker 1: one thing, but you still got to appeal to swing
Speaker 1: voters if you actually want to win enough seats to
Speaker 1: actually be in charge of governing something. So I think
Speaker 1: that tension would exist whether it was Schumer, whether Brian
Speaker 1: Schatz is there, whether it's Chris Murphy, whether it's Amy Klobashar,
Speaker 1: whether it's Patty Murray. Right, we could come up you know,
Speaker 1: and I think if you know, this is one of
Speaker 1: those moments where if Schumer just decided in the next
Speaker 1: week to sort of, you know what, all right, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not wanted here, I'll take a step back. My
Speaker 1: gut is Patty Murray would replace him because she'd be
Speaker 1: seen as a quote unquote caretaker majority leader. She's at
Speaker 1: this point the senior most member of the Democratic Senate
Speaker 1: and nobody would cross her right and she really has
Speaker 1: the respect of sort of all wings of the party.
Speaker 1: I think she'd be seeing the original mom and tennis shoes,
Speaker 1: you know, as she ran as a sort of a
Speaker 1: populist candidate of her day in nineteen ninety two when
Speaker 1: she first came on the national scene. I think she
Speaker 1: would be seen as somebody that would would be less
Speaker 1: of a public face for the party. And in some
Speaker 1: ways I think many Senators wouldn't mind that and would
Speaker 1: likely embrace that. But let's be realistic. You may not
Speaker 1: see any change in the short term. To me. You know,
Speaker 1: while it's easy to cover this tactical split inside the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party because it's sort of easy to do, it's
Speaker 1: easy to create a cable news segment on it. It's
Speaker 1: easy to find people to criticize, you know, it's sort
Speaker 1: of an easy debate to have. It's not really that
Speaker 1: big of a divide because it's not over some sort
Speaker 1: of fundamental ideology ideological disagreement, you know, where for instance,
Speaker 1: like things with Mom Donnie, those are fundamental ideological disagreements
Speaker 1: about you know, how involved government should be in the economy.
Speaker 1: That's that's a larger divide that I think doesn't really
Speaker 1: get dealt with in the Democratic Party until the presidential
Speaker 1: primaries take shape. But I tell you, even as everybody's
Speaker 1: focused on the dem divide here, don't take your eye
Speaker 1: off the ball of a growing Republican divide. I think
Speaker 1: that is coming. I think that right now, if you're
Speaker 1: a Republican elected official in Congress, you should You're trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what do I do when the leader
Speaker 1: of the party is not accepting reality. And Donald Trump's
Speaker 1: inability to accept the reality that this economy sucks for
Speaker 1: a lot of his supporters is going to cause a
Speaker 1: much bigger problem for the Publican Party than anything the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party is going through at the moment, because ultimately,
Speaker 1: because they're in the minority and because they're in the opposition,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, they're going to have a unity
Speaker 1: of message, They're going to have a unity of focus.
Speaker 1: They may disagree on how to deal with Trump in
Speaker 1: the moment, but they're not going to disagree on how
Speaker 1: to court the voters in twenty twenty six. That's a
Speaker 1: divide that I think that is not the case on
Speaker 1: the Republican side of the aisle. As this economy weakens
Speaker 1: for those without money and essentially with those about real savings.
Speaker 1: And that's what we're seeing here right This is a
Speaker 1: this is the very definition of a trickle down economy
Speaker 1: where Donald Trump is hoping that the bang, the stock
Speaker 1: market success is going to somehow trickle down and help
Speaker 1: everybody else. There's not a lot of evidence that that
Speaker 1: ever works. You can just go back one hundred years
Speaker 1: and see how that worked out. The last time we
Speaker 1: sort of tried to put together an economy where government
Speaker 1: and big business fused itself together like it did in
Speaker 1: the in the early parts of the industrial and the
Speaker 1: industrial age. That didn't end well. We got a great
Speaker 1: depression and then finally government decided, the people decided, hey,
Speaker 1: they wanted government, they wanted more guard rails on big business,
Speaker 1: more guardrails on the economy than what we had at
Speaker 1: the time, and I have a feeling we're going to
Speaker 1: end up in a similar situation where we're going to
Speaker 1: have a downturn caused by what we're seeing, this fusion
Speaker 1: of big tech and government, and that is going to
Speaker 1: awake awoke in a bunch of people who are going
Speaker 1: to want more guardrails put on our economy, necessarily leaving capitalism,
Speaker 1: but something more akin to what the two Roosevelts fought for,
Speaker 1: both Teddy and Franklin in their in their very different ways.
Speaker 1: But I did get a lot of questions on the shutdown,
Speaker 1: so I decided that before we get to the interview
Speaker 1: that I would answer all the shutdown related q and
Speaker 1: as in this part of the podcast, we'll have our
Speaker 1: individual will it then I'll do my top five list
Speaker 1: this week. It's where the top five Senate seats most
Speaker 1: likely to flip. It's let's just say the top five
Speaker 1: has changed. Just like in college football, what the top
Speaker 1: five was at the beginning of October is a lot
Speaker 1: different than what the top five is at the beginning
Speaker 1: of November. So goes my list of top five most
Speaker 1: likely most vulnerable Senate seats in twenty twenty six. But
Speaker 1: before we get to all that, and I'll do some
Speaker 1: q and as on other topics that were not shutdown related.
Speaker 1: So we'll begin with this. This comes from Tim, and
Speaker 1: he asks, I don't understand why the Democrats are being
Speaker 1: blamed for the shutdown. If the Speaker will not convene
Speaker 1: the House, how can the Dems vote against it? Also,
Speaker 1: if the Republicans control the House, why can't they just
Speaker 1: vote to pass it? I think too many times that reporter.
Speaker 1: Too many times reporters assume that people know the cause
Speaker 1: of the most basic facts about an issue, or maybe
Speaker 1: this was reported the beginning of the shutdown, so they
Speaker 1: don't need to read it those facts. I think it
Speaker 1: has helpful to remind people periodically of those basic facts.
Speaker 1: Thanks Tim, Tim, you're absolutely right. This is a pet
Speaker 1: peeve of mine. I talk about this two new journalists
Speaker 1: or those folks in journalism school where I remind people,
Speaker 1: because I learned this from interacting with viewers during my
Speaker 1: time at Meet the Press. Is how often a viewer,
Speaker 1: particularly a first generation American, would come up to me
Speaker 1: and say that they watched Meet the Press to sort
Speaker 1: of understand how the American government works. And every time
Speaker 1: I would get a response like that, it would remind
Speaker 1: me that, hey, we're in the education business first, right,
Speaker 1: that's first and foremost what a journalist is. They're educating
Speaker 1: the public, and we shouldn't forget that. And you know,
Speaker 1: I had a viewer one time, I think it was
Speaker 1: somebody on social media one time respond you know, somebody
Speaker 1: was lamenting the fact that people didn't know that there
Speaker 1: were nine members of the Supreme Court or how all
Speaker 1: that worked. Somebody said, how often do you put it
Speaker 1: in your stories? And I thought, you know, that person's right.
Speaker 1: We sometimes don't reiterate basic facts about government because we
Speaker 1: go through this well, people already know that, or the
Speaker 1: people that are paying attention to this story are already
Speaker 1: going to know those things. And you're like, well, what
Speaker 1: about the Joe demage. You know, there was a great
Speaker 1: saying by Joe Demaggio. He used to say he played
Speaker 1: hard every game because he thought that there might be
Speaker 1: somebody in the stands who was coming to see him
Speaker 1: for the very first time. And guess what, there's somebody
Speaker 1: reading your story. There's somebody listening to my podcast, there's
Speaker 1: somebody you know, reading your commentary for the very first time,
Speaker 1: and if they don't understand it, they're not going to
Speaker 1: read you again, right, or they may not be as
Speaker 1: they may not follow the topic you're trying to get
Speaker 1: them to follow because you didn't help them understand how
Speaker 1: it works. So I look, I believe in this. You know,
Speaker 1: I look at my college football writers. They spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time explaining how the college football playoff works.
Speaker 1: So college football fans all know how the college football
Speaker 1: playoff works. But it's not because they went out to
Speaker 1: look for it. It's because the new stories and the
Speaker 1: news commentators and ESPN in particular constantly wants to remind
Speaker 1: people how it works. Now they have an incentive, they're
Speaker 1: trying to make a bigger deal out of it. Well,
Speaker 1: we ought to take that same premise there. So you're
Speaker 1: asking why did the Democrats get why should the Democrats
Speaker 1: get blaim to their shutdown? Well, it was technically Democrats
Speaker 1: that withheld just enough votes where the continuing Resolution to
Speaker 1: keep the government open couldn't pass the Senate. Now in
Speaker 1: the House, Mike Johnson got a party line vote and
Speaker 1: he passed the continuing Resolution in the House. So what
Speaker 1: they did is he passed that bill and then they
Speaker 1: want to This is a case where the House wanted
Speaker 1: to jam the Senate and they didn't want to. And
Speaker 1: his thesis was, I'm not even going to come. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to convene the House until the Senate deals
Speaker 1: with the bill that we gave them, and we gave
Speaker 1: him a bill to keep the government open. It's up
Speaker 1: to them to get that bill passed. So this is
Speaker 1: the whole the House passed its version. So no, you're right,
Speaker 1: the House didn't didn't convene while the government was shut down.
Speaker 1: But what Johnson's thesis was they didn't need to because
Speaker 1: there was no legislation. Now why else did he keep
Speaker 1: him out, Well because he didn't want his members, you know,
Speaker 1: board showing up on cable TV saying things that would
Speaker 1: cause them political pain, etc. Etc. But it was also
Speaker 1: a tactic, and this is something that happens. You know,
Speaker 1: there's always a joke in Congress that you know that
Speaker 1: the real divide in Congress is not Democrats versus Republicans,
Speaker 1: it's the House versus the Senate. And so you know,
Speaker 1: the House was essentially jamming the Senate and jamming John Thune.
Speaker 1: So it's up to John Thune, who had fifty three
Speaker 1: Republican senators, actually fifty two because Rand Paul indicated he
Speaker 1: was going to vote against this deal, he had to
Speaker 1: go find eight Democrats. So in that sense, this is
Speaker 1: why in theory, because it needed sixty votes when Democrats
Speaker 1: withheld their votes. Unless the Republicans are willing to get
Speaker 1: rid of the filibuster, which was something Donald Trump talked about,
Speaker 1: then the only way the government could get reopened is
Speaker 1: if eight Democrats joined fifty two Republicans to reopen the government.
Speaker 1: So I think what you're right about is every time
Speaker 1: that the story was reported that would not be explained
Speaker 1: at the top, And I think it's a bad habit
Speaker 1: professional journalists, particularly Washington journalists, have come. I always say
Speaker 1: that a lot of times Washington reports for Washington or
Speaker 1: producers produce segments for producers. They don't think about sort
Speaker 1: of are we educating somebody who's tuning in for the
Speaker 1: very first time, And you know, in that sense, I
Speaker 1: think that's something that we all need to do better on.
Speaker 1: In this way, I love the podcast format where I
Speaker 1: can feel like I'm not I don't have some sort
Speaker 1: of time constraint where I have to take a shortcut
Speaker 1: on something because the main thing I need to convey
Speaker 1: needs a certain amount of time to explain, and I
Speaker 1: don't want to take away from that by having to
Speaker 1: explain the basics and yet not explaining the basics all
Speaker 1: the time. Is what makes politics inaccessible to people. And
Speaker 1: I've always said my real goal, and I've had this
Speaker 1: goal ever since I entered journalism is and political journalism is.
Speaker 1: I love politics, and my job is to explain it
Speaker 1: in such a way that it's more accessible to people.
Speaker 1: You know, there was another person who used to go
Speaker 1: out of his way to talk about the Gang of
Speaker 1: five hundred and made politics inaccessible and would claim that
Speaker 1: politics was an exclusive club and only those in the
Speaker 1: know understood it. Yeah, there's people that want politics to
Speaker 1: be that way, so that way they are not subject
Speaker 1: to what the actual democracy wants, small d democracy wants,
Speaker 1: And so in that sense, I may populous when it
Speaker 1: comes to information, and I think we need to make
Speaker 1: politics more accessible, more understandable, so more people understand how
Speaker 1: much it's impacting their lives. I hope that helped you
Speaker 1: as to understand why in this case democrats had skin
Speaker 1: in the game. Here, there's a reason results matter more
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Speaker 1: unless they win all right. Next question comes from Brian
Speaker 1: in New England. Right, So, I can't help but notice
Speaker 1: all of the liberal political commentators seem to think they
Speaker 1: have lost the shutdown fight. Likewise, all of the conservative
Speaker 1: political commentators believe they somehow won the shutdown fight, assuming
Speaker 1: no last minute silliness by Senator Ran Paul. Yet all
Speaker 1: of the more moderate political commentators seemed to paint a
Speaker 1: vastly different picture as to who won and lost, and
Speaker 1: most seem to think Democrats got most out of the shutdown.
Speaker 1: So this brings up a good question, how do you
Speaker 1: win a shutdown fight? How do you know who won
Speaker 1: the shutdown fight? Can you even win a shutdown fight?
Speaker 1: Or is it really just a lose lose lose for
Speaker 1: everyone involved? Or at the end of the day, is
Speaker 1: who won or lost a shutdown? All just vibes and
Speaker 1: fuzzy feelings? Anyway? To me, it kind of feels like
Speaker 1: the old whose line is at any Way? TV? Show?
Speaker 1: Everything is made up and the points don't seem to matter. Well,
Speaker 1: look this is you know, if you really want to
Speaker 1: wind me up, The entire shutdown process is a manufactured
Speaker 1: political circus. The idea that the that the most important
Speaker 1: government on the face of the earth has a has
Speaker 1: a bug in it that allows for parts of the
Speaker 1: government to just simply shut down when there is a
Speaker 1: political dispute over funding levels. Is got to be one
Speaker 1: of the dumber things anybody does. The idea that you know,
Speaker 1: I just think that the legal interpretations and I went
Speaker 1: through this for those of you that wanted to go off,
Speaker 1: you know, I am, but let me just tell you,
Speaker 1: I am furious that there is not a single effing
Speaker 1: member of Congress in the center of the House that
Speaker 1: is rallying around the idea that we need to prevent
Speaker 1: shutdowns from ever happening again. It is absurd that we
Speaker 1: are hiring people to be air traffic controllers and part
Speaker 1: of the process is, hey, you know, every couple of
Speaker 1: years there's going to be a political fight and you're
Speaker 1: not going to get paid for about a month or two.
Speaker 1: Are you okay with that? What kind of circus are
Speaker 1: we running here? I mean, that's just you know, deciding
Speaker 1: to run to intentionally create a shit show government. It's stupid,
Speaker 1: it's unnecessary, and it shouldn't be. It's dumb, it's it's
Speaker 1: and it all the only people that benefit from a
Speaker 1: shutdown are elected officials who are trying to make a
Speaker 1: name for themselves. You ask who wins in a shutdown,
Speaker 1: Individuals win, No party wins. Nobody likes the result of
Speaker 1: the shutdown at the end of the day, everybody collectively
Speaker 1: hates the process of it, right, But the winners are individuals.
Speaker 1: You know, Ted Cruz, you know. So take the twenty
Speaker 1: thirteen shutdown. Republicans quote unquote are seen as having lost
Speaker 1: that shutdown, right because politically they did. If it wasn't
Speaker 1: for the shutdown, Republicans would have won a governor seat
Speaker 1: in Virginia that year, and instead Democrats won the governor seat.
Speaker 1: So you could look at just sort of the tactics
Speaker 1: and say, up, Republicans lost, and Ted Cruise was unpavable.
Speaker 1: Yet Ted Cruz built a political following. Ted Cruz was
Speaker 1: trying to run for president in twenty sixteen and build
Speaker 1: a national following. So it worked for Ted Cruz. And
Speaker 1: that's who these shutdowns are for. They're for partisan actors,
Speaker 1: pure and simple, to try to make a name for themselves.
Speaker 1: That's so the only people that have ever come out
Speaker 1: quote unquote ahead. Right. It becomes about who can raise
Speaker 1: the most money off of the silliness of the shutdown.
Speaker 1: And I'm sorry, I just think the idea that it's
Speaker 1: a practice that is somehow allowed and the only the
Speaker 1: only reason to have it is to figure out a
Speaker 1: way to bring more at time tention to a funding dispute.
Speaker 1: Guess what, perhaps we shouldn't put three hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: million people in the crosshairs of a political disagreement over
Speaker 1: funding levels. That seems like a waste of a superpower's time.
Speaker 1: It actually makes us more vulnerable as a nation on
Speaker 1: national security. It is certainly a huge sign of weakness.
Speaker 1: And again there's you know, so a responsible democracy and
Speaker 1: a responsible government wouldn't put put us in a situation
Speaker 1: where we can just easily have a couple of people
Speaker 1: decide that the government is just going to close its doors.
Speaker 1: And then, of course we've exempted so many aspects of
Speaker 1: the shutdown that if the initial idea of the shutdown
Speaker 1: was to you know, it was going to be so
Speaker 1: painful that everybody wouldn't want it to be be for
Speaker 1: more than a day or two. But when you take
Speaker 1: away you know, when you decide, well, social security isn't
Speaker 1: going to be a part of it, and we'll exempt
Speaker 1: military pay, and we'll exempt this, and we'll exempt that.
Speaker 1: Then it becomes easier to do the political theater. So
Speaker 1: I have to say, I, as a as a voter
Speaker 1: who would like to have less dysfunction in our politics,
Speaker 1: am sorry that there's not a single elected member of Congress,
Speaker 1: Democrat or Republican currently advocating a no shutdowns bill. They've
Speaker 1: existed in the past, where are they now? Where are
Speaker 1: they today? Instead, everybody wants to perform for the frickin'
Speaker 1: basis of each party because of how stupidly we've gerrymandered
Speaker 1: everything and our partisan primaries, all of those things, right,
Speaker 1: we have, all of our incentive structures are for politicians
Speaker 1: to only pay attention to the base. And it's just
Speaker 1: so the people that hate this shutdown stuff the most
Speaker 1: are the ones that aren't partisan activists. And it doesn't
Speaker 1: seem like there's a single person in Congress that represents
Speaker 1: the constituency that just doesn't want the goddamn toilet clogged purposely,
Speaker 1: and instead this is what we have. So I don't
Speaker 1: know if I answer your question right, I don't think
Speaker 1: anybody won the shutdown fight. And if you're wondering to me.
Speaker 1: You know, it is one of those where the only
Speaker 1: time anybody gains from it is if they're trying to
Speaker 1: if it's somebody individually trying to build their own following
Speaker 1: for some sort of national political purpose, you know. And
Speaker 1: the best example of that Ted Cruise twenty thirteen, a
Speaker 1: shutdown that was seen as a loser but actually gave
Speaker 1: Ted Cruz a constituency. All right, next question comes from
Speaker 1: Kenny from Long Islanding Rights. My question for you is
Speaker 1: about the deal that seems to have been struck. It
Speaker 1: seems to me that the Democrats traded their leverage for
Speaker 1: a campaign at the Republicans will not have to take
Speaker 1: the tough vote, but will inevitably vote down the Obamacare subsidies.
Speaker 1: And that's about it. It snap resumes, payments resumed, no one
Speaker 1: gets fired. But all that is the standard course of
Speaker 1: events for the end of a shutdown. The only thing
Speaker 1: Senator Schumer seems to have extracted here is a tough vote.
Speaker 1: Am I reading this correctly? If so so, why on
Speaker 1: earth would he have fought this hard and held out
Speaker 1: this lung, only to give up and walk away with
Speaker 1: nothing to show for it. Lastly, I agree and disagree
Speaker 1: with your assessment about President Trump entering this lame duck era.
Speaker 1: I agree that's the biggest takeaway for the shutdown resolution.
Speaker 1: To me, though, it's not because of the defiance. It's
Speaker 1: because they negotiated a solution without him in the Senate.
Speaker 1: At least the President disengaged and made it easy for
Speaker 1: this to play out, but ultimately Senator thuonstruck the deal.
Speaker 1: I love the new format and I feel as though
Speaker 1: I'm learning so much more about the inside game when
Speaker 1: it comes to politics. Thank you for the scoop, all right, Kenny.
Speaker 1: I appreciate the construction constructive critique there on that front.
Speaker 1: It's interesting. I guess I could word it, you know,
Speaker 1: and again I would word it differently. I don't think
Speaker 1: there's a cave here. I think there is. I think
Speaker 1: Warnock said it. He said, if you're going to say
Speaker 1: that the Democratic Party seems to care about those on
Speaker 1: snap benefits more than the Republican Party cares about then
Speaker 1: I think he said, guilty is charged, right, that that's
Speaker 1: not a And I think if you're you know, again,
Speaker 1: a better leader and a better communicator would not have
Speaker 1: would not have signaled that this is over, would signal that,
Speaker 1: you know what, I think we've We've gotten more people
Speaker 1: aware of this healthcare issue. We're sorry that the President
Speaker 1: wants to irresponsibly punish people that have nothing and weaponize
Speaker 1: the FAA and all of this, and so we're not
Speaker 1: going to let them do that. So we're going to
Speaker 1: take a pause in this over the next two months.
Speaker 1: We're going to make sure people can travel for the holidays.
Speaker 1: And come January, there's another vote to reopen the government
Speaker 1: and there's Obamacare subsidies. Okay, so I don't think they
Speaker 1: gave away any leverage. I think they still have leverage
Speaker 1: in January to essentially shut down government again if they
Speaker 1: want to, if these Obamacare subsidies don't get passed for
Speaker 1: a year. I I think that there's going to be
Speaker 1: a majority of the US House that votes for these
Speaker 1: Obamacare subsidies. Not a majority of Republicans, but a majority
Speaker 1: of the House. I think you will see somewhere between
Speaker 1: thirty and forty Republicans who do this. I think you
Speaker 1: will see ten to fifteen Senate Republicans wanting to be
Speaker 1: for this. So I think it's going to happen. I
Speaker 1: think the results of the I mean, I think the
Speaker 1: biggest impact on the healthcare subsidies was the twenty five
Speaker 1: election results. The fact that it was a romp, the
Speaker 1: fact that cost the living issues and Democrats didn't even
Speaker 1: have the healthcare issue yet and it was working for them.
Speaker 1: We already know how well healthcare works as an opposition
Speaker 1: issue when you're messing with it. We just saw it
Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen that benefited the Democrats and back in
Speaker 1: twenty ten when it benefited the Republicans. Anytime you mess
Speaker 1: with the status quo of healthcare, the party messing with
Speaker 1: the status quo gets punished. And in this case that's
Speaker 1: going to be now Publicans. And so I guess I
Speaker 1: don't accept the premise that they got rid of any
Speaker 1: of their leverage. And I think this is why I
Speaker 1: could argue, this is why Schumer should go, because he's
Speaker 1: a terrible communicator and he couldn't communicate that they won.
Speaker 1: They won if you want him, you know, and he's
Speaker 1: trying now, but he just doesn't have credibility with anybody anymore. Right.
Speaker 1: It's like like I said, I keep comparing Schumer to
Speaker 1: Pete Carroll and Bill Belichick. They used to have credibility
Speaker 1: with the players they coached. Now they don't anymore. That happens.
Speaker 1: It happens in every walk of life. It happens to
Speaker 1: political leaders all the time. There's a moment when they
Speaker 1: have uber leverage over the entire party, and there's moments
Speaker 1: where nobody will listen to them. George W. Bush had
Speaker 1: so much influence over his party for a period of
Speaker 1: time until he had no influence over his party for
Speaker 1: a period of time. Right, it is political capital is elusive.
Speaker 1: When you have it, you better spend it because if
Speaker 1: you try to save it, it'll disappear. So I guess
Speaker 1: I'm not I think they could have communicated this in
Speaker 1: such a way where they could have been seen as
Speaker 1: the adult in the room and not giving up their
Speaker 1: fight on healthcare because technically they've given themselves opportunities before
Speaker 1: the State of the Union in February to make this
Speaker 1: a showdown vote one more time. All right, last question
Speaker 1: comes from David Crowder, and then we'll get to the
Speaker 1: interview with Joe Willett. I like your work in thoughtfulness,
Speaker 1: Thank you saw your podcast is sam First Info in
Speaker 1: j Jones came out in mid October Virginia begins early
Speaker 1: voting mid September. You get my point. Second, the shutdown
Speaker 1: argument pre pandemic. Some twelve millions participated in the bill,
Speaker 1: their subsidies remain with premium increases. It's not a big deal.
Speaker 1: The big deal is the twelve million who enrolled post pandemic,
Speaker 1: who did not qualify financially for pre pandemic for subsidies,
Speaker 1: they lose the subsidies. Is that disconnect worth shutting down
Speaker 1: the government? I don't know. Seems like some form of
Speaker 1: the subsidy could be agreed upon. Finally, the tax breaks
Speaker 1: that were scheduled to expire were extended. The differences the
Speaker 1: subsidies weren't scheduled to expire. It's all crap, David. You've
Speaker 1: summarized the poor legislative process quite well, right. You know
Speaker 1: the fact that we have such a dysfunctional way that
Speaker 1: we make laws now, and we have such distrust of
Speaker 1: the two parties that they there's always a weird poison
Speaker 1: pills in different ways. Right. The subsidies they can't you know,
Speaker 1: did Democrats want those subsidies in perpetuity? They did? Could
Speaker 1: they not get enough votes to get them without putting
Speaker 1: some sort of time stamp on it. They couldn't. Ditto
Speaker 1: with the with the tax cut, right, they couldn't. Trump
Speaker 1: couldn't get it permanent, so instead he had an expiration
Speaker 1: date on it, hoping that the expiration would serve as
Speaker 1: a fear of a tax hike and then that somehow
Speaker 1: would get people to renew them. The Bush tax cuts
Speaker 1: worked this way, right, these ten year increments. We do
Speaker 1: this sort of funny business accounting when it comes to
Speaker 1: the impact on the deficit, with these funny numbers with
Speaker 1: the Congressional Budget Office and these estimates that are all
Speaker 1: that are all just sort of make assumptions that nobody
Speaker 1: can assume when it comes to the actual state of
Speaker 1: the economy. But we make these deficit projections in such
Speaker 1: a way that it encourages these sort of false expiration dates. Right,
Speaker 1: some will have them, some will don't. They're usually time
Speaker 1: to make it politically difficult to somehow not extend the deadline,
Speaker 1: whether it's on a tax rate or whether it's on
Speaker 1: a subsidy or whatever it is. So this goes to
Speaker 1: the this is what you get when you don't have
Speaker 1: a functioning committee process in Congress and not to get
Speaker 1: really dorky here, But essentially when we totally polarized the
Speaker 1: US Houses, which which really began sort of late eighties,
Speaker 1: early nineties, right, and you know, there's those in the
Speaker 1: right blame Jim Right and the Democrats, those in the
Speaker 1: left blame Nut Gingrids and the Republicans. I think I
Speaker 1: think sort of there was. There was certainly power plays
Speaker 1: that Jim Right made that New Gingridge then emulated and
Speaker 1: took to took to an took even further that ultimately
Speaker 1: destroyed the committee process and the destruction of the congressional
Speaker 1: committee process both in the House and the Senate, is
Speaker 1: why we get such poorly written legislation which used so
Speaker 1: I think eloquently pointed out with the way you worded
Speaker 1: your question, the fact that the question was a bit confusing.
Speaker 1: I don't put on you, I put on Congress because
Speaker 1: this is how they legislate now, with these sort of
Speaker 1: weird expiration dates. It's all designed to create sort of
Speaker 1: political poison, almost almost like these these sort of delayed
Speaker 1: bombs that suddenly explode and you have no choice but
Speaker 1: to continue a policy that maybe you were never in
Speaker 1: favor of. You know, Obama didn't want to Obama ran
Speaker 1: on getting rid of the Bush tax cuts. Turns out
Speaker 1: he couldn't get rid of them because of what kind
Speaker 1: of impact it would have had on a number of
Speaker 1: people seeing their tax bills go up, and he didn't
Speaker 1: want to politically put himself in that situation. He had
Speaker 1: made a pledge not to raise taxes on anybody over
Speaker 1: I think it was four hundred thousand dollars. So that's
Speaker 1: the new line that they drew on that. So ultimately,
Speaker 1: you know, someday we're going to have a Speaker of
Speaker 1: the House and a Senate Majority leader that actually wants
Speaker 1: to make the legislative branch greade again. But until that
Speaker 1: time comes, we're going to continue to have this poor,
Speaker 1: horribly dysfunctional legislative process that we've now seen that for
Speaker 1: many of you, feels like the normal way Congress works,
Speaker 1: because trust me, this was not the intent. How Congresses
Speaker 1: worked the last thirty years is not the way that
Speaker 1: Congress was intended to work in the previous two hundred
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Speaker 1: It is that time I said every month I would
Speaker 1: update my top five, top five, top top just a
Speaker 1: reminder in October and the way I do this and
Speaker 1: my ranks have been doing this since I wrote a
Speaker 1: column called on the Trail back during my National Journal
Speaker 1: dot com outline days, which was I like to order.
Speaker 1: These races are most likely to flip parties, so not
Speaker 1: in the toss up lean R lean D category, but
Speaker 1: most likely to flip to least likely to flip. Obviously,
Speaker 1: by keeping it to five, you know all of them
Speaker 1: are going to be somewhat competitive races that crack the
Speaker 1: top five. So to remind you, the last time my
Speaker 1: top five was North Carolina one, Georgia two, Michigan three,
Speaker 1: Main four, New Hampshire five. So the idea was I had.
Speaker 1: The assumption was the open seat in North Carolina with
Speaker 1: a big recruit there. North Carolina, Georgia's the Democratic health
Speaker 1: seat of John Ossoff. Michigan, of course, the open seat
Speaker 1: Gary Peters Democrat is vacating. Maine is Susan Collins, New
Speaker 1: Hampshire is the Gene Shheen seat that she is vacating,
Speaker 1: a Democratic seat there. So look my new top five.
Speaker 1: In some ways, number one hasn't changed. The most likely
Speaker 1: seat to flip is North Carolina. It is an open seat.
Speaker 1: It is the one open seat, you know, one of
Speaker 1: two open seats in the big seven battleground states. Right,
Speaker 1: The big seven battleground states are Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina,
Speaker 1: Nevada in sort of the sun belt, and Wisconsin, Michigan,
Speaker 1: and Pennsylvania. And so when you look at the competitive
Speaker 1: Senate map these days, there's actually, you know, the last
Speaker 1: two cycles, they all seven of those states. I think
Speaker 1: two cycles in a we either had seven for seven
Speaker 1: or six of the seven with Senate seats this time, right,
Speaker 1: we'd have nothing in Arizona, nothing in Nevada. There's one
Speaker 1: seat in Georgia, one seat in North Carolina, nothing in Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: nothing in Wisconsin, and one seat in Michigan. So it
Speaker 1: is the presidential battlegrounds. This happens to be the one
Speaker 1: cycle where we have the fewest amount of Senate seats
Speaker 1: in the presidential battlegrounds. But I think you still have
Speaker 1: to put you know, I think what I learned from
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty five elections, and again history being a guide.
Speaker 1: Every time we've seen a route like this by one party,
Speaker 1: we have seen that continue in the following even numbered year.
Speaker 1: I am looking for the time. I mean, twenty thirteen
Speaker 1: is one of the few exceptions where Democrats did well
Speaker 1: in the off off year, but that did not translate
Speaker 1: to twenty fourteen, which was not a good year for
Speaker 1: Democrats in there. And again, right, there's a reason twenty
Speaker 1: thirteen is the exception to every single one of these
Speaker 1: trend lines we've been talking about with New Jersey and Virginia,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And you know, certain things I think that
Speaker 1: I took away from the off off years. One, Democrats
Speaker 1: are ready to vote, and you know, the sheer, raw
Speaker 1: number of votes that the Democratic candidate got in New
Speaker 1: Jersey versus the Republican candidate continues to blow me away.
Speaker 1: And I think it's the single most important statistic that
Speaker 1: you need to understand coming out of these off off
Speaker 1: year elections. Right, Jack Chitarelli, the Republican nominee for governor,
Speaker 1: actually got one hundred thousand more votes than he received
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one. In twenty twenty one, that vote
Speaker 1: total was good enough to only lose by three percentage points.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty five, where he got more votes, he
Speaker 1: loses by thirteen percentage points. The Democratic candidate Mikey Cheryl
Speaker 1: got four hundred thousand more votes than Phil Murphy got
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one. Okay, that tells you a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of Democrats who didn't bother to show up in
Speaker 1: twenty one decided to show up in twenty five. I
Speaker 1: don't think I had anything to do with Mikey Cheryl
Speaker 1: in jec Cheddarelly, and everything to do with the larger
Speaker 1: national environment. By the way, we got that result on Tuesday.
Speaker 1: If you recall the NBC News poll that came out
Speaker 1: two days earlier that I am a big believer of
Speaker 1: because I trust those two pollsters. They had a generic
Speaker 1: ballot lead for the Democrats of eight points. It was
Speaker 1: the largest lead that Democrats had going back to twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: Twenty eighteen cycle another pretty good cycle for Democrats. So
Speaker 1: I throw all that in there in that my new
Speaker 1: top five list is skewed a bit towards the Democrats.
Speaker 1: So number one hasn't changed. That's North Carolina. It's not
Speaker 1: going to change. But my number two has. I had
Speaker 1: Georgia's the second most vulnerable seat. After seeing what we
Speaker 1: saw with those Public Service Commission races where there was
Speaker 1: no money spent and Democrats just generically won by a lot,
Speaker 1: you've got a growing divisive Republican primary. I highlighted an
Speaker 1: add a couple of podcasts ago where Derek Dooley, the
Speaker 1: son of Vince Dooley, the former football coach of the Bulldogs,
Speaker 1: that the super pack of Brian Kemp, the sitting governor,
Speaker 1: was running an ad that sort of lumped in the
Speaker 1: two Republican congressmen in the primary and asof as all
Speaker 1: responsible for the shutdown. So you now know what kind
Speaker 1: of campaign Dooley is going to run as the outsider
Speaker 1: the anti Washington crowd. I think it's a smart place
Speaker 1: to position himself at this point though, if Dooley is
Speaker 1: the nominee, I think Osof's in bigger trouble. But if
Speaker 1: Dooley is not the nominee, and so far he's still
Speaker 1: the third place candidate, I think Osoff is a bit
Speaker 1: safer than I preps. Look, he's still in the top five,
Speaker 1: but he is not number two most vulnerable. I think
Speaker 1: now you have to put in the second most vulnerable,
Speaker 1: Susan Collins. I do move Susan Collins up into the
Speaker 1: second slot there. I think when you see what the
Speaker 1: Democratic turnouts was in the Northeast in general, you see
Speaker 1: the fact that in some ways the strength of the
Speaker 1: oyster farmer Graham Platner, the fact that his support is
Speaker 1: holding and it's not hurting the Democrats. The fact that
Speaker 1: Jay Jones got through what he got through in Virginia,
Speaker 1: I think is only going to serve to reassure Platner
Speaker 1: on there. The anti Schumer vibe, the anti establishment vibe,
Speaker 1: seems to be much stronger than the anti character vibe
Speaker 1: inside the Democratic Party right now. And you know Collins
Speaker 1: is going to be defending a bunch of status quo stuff.
Speaker 1: It is, you know, do I think if Janet Mills
Speaker 1: is the Democratic nominee. Collins has a better chance of winning,
Speaker 1: I do believe it or not, but I still think
Speaker 1: it's going to be it's going to be a hard
Speaker 1: time being an incumbent Republican running in twenty twenty six
Speaker 1: with this likely economy that we're staring at and the
Speaker 1: way Donald Trump is positioning the party's brand right, And
Speaker 1: while Susan Collins is never going to be mistaken for
Speaker 1: a Trump Republican, she's still going to have to carry
Speaker 1: around some of that baggage, some of that baggage on tariffs,
Speaker 1: some of that baggage on HEALTHCA. I mean, she's probably
Speaker 1: going to be the loan Republican, you know, one of
Speaker 1: now she won't be the loan Republicans. She's going to
Speaker 1: be one of the lead Republicans trying to get these
Speaker 1: Obamacare subsidies extended, because if they do not get extended,
Speaker 1: she's done. She's completely done. Which is why I am
Speaker 1: bullish that you will see a one year extension at
Speaker 1: a minimum of these Obamacare subsidies, because I think there
Speaker 1: is no senator that would be more vulnerable to a
Speaker 1: decision not to do that than Susan Collins. So number
Speaker 1: one is North Carolina. Number two is main Number three,
Speaker 1: I am going to put Georgia. I still think that
Speaker 1: there is certainly, you know, it is it is a
Speaker 1: even state. We've still not seen, you know, a demo
Speaker 1: until the PS elections. We hadn't see a Democrat win
Speaker 1: a down ballot statewide contest in Georgia going back more
Speaker 1: than ten years. But the entire political environment in Georgia,
Speaker 1: I mean, if Georgia is indeed you know, I've been vacillating.
Speaker 1: Was Georgia and anti Trump state or is Georgia simply
Speaker 1: a swing state that demographics have been shifting over time.
Speaker 1: And I think there's now more and more evidence that
Speaker 1: this is a This is a realignment in Georgia. This
Speaker 1: is the growth of the Atlanta suburbs, this is all
Speaker 1: of those things that this is less about. And it
Speaker 1: may be what we're seeing in the Atlanta metro areas
Speaker 1: what we saw in Northern Virginia that went from being
Speaker 1: an important pocket of voters for Virginia Democrats to becoming
Speaker 1: the most dominant feature of the state and of the
Speaker 1: politics of the state. And I think we're starting to
Speaker 1: starting to see more and more of that in Georgia,
Speaker 1: but I'm still going to put it. I'm still going
Speaker 1: to put it right now in the third slot because
Speaker 1: because of the fact that this time Osoff isn't going
Speaker 1: to have be running with Rafael Warnock or a presidential campaign, right,
Speaker 1: he's got to do this entire turnout operation on his
Speaker 1: on his own there, So North Carolina one Main three,
Speaker 1: Georgia Main two, Georgia three, number four on the less,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put Michigan, so it drops down a slot
Speaker 1: because I've jumped started Maine there. And look, I do
Speaker 1: think Mike Rogers is he went down a weird road.
Speaker 1: He decided to claim that somehow the twenty twenty four
Speaker 1: election was rigged, that it or he's implying he's opening
Speaker 1: the door to some conspiracy theories as to why he
Speaker 1: lost in twenty twenty four. Boy, that's a long way
Speaker 1: away from the Mike Rogers I first started covering when
Speaker 1: he was in Congress. It's going to come as a surprise,
Speaker 1: given that he doesn't really have any serious primary opposition.
Speaker 1: The fact that he's going down this sort of Trump
Speaker 1: grievance road on his twenty four election is a bit
Speaker 1: of a head scratcher doesn't seem as if he needs
Speaker 1: to be catering to that primary voter that enthusiastically. So
Speaker 1: perhaps he really believes this, Perhaps he's going down this
Speaker 1: rabbit hole. I don't think that's good politics for him,
Speaker 1: but you know, he's still The reason I still give
Speaker 1: him and why I think Michigan could be very competitive
Speaker 1: is We're going to have a very messy Democratic primary.
Speaker 1: Who knows who gets elected. Is that the super progressive
Speaker 1: that gets elected is that the outsider, and lsied is
Speaker 1: the progressive. McMorrow is the sort of outsider. Stevens is
Speaker 1: the establishment candidate. They've all scrambled to be anti Schumer now,
Speaker 1: even Stevens on that front. So that primary could get messy,
Speaker 1: and it's an August primary, and it means that rogers
Speaker 1: Is should be in a strong position. But I am
Speaker 1: I do think that's a loser to go down the
Speaker 1: conspiracy road in a swing state like Michigan. And then
Speaker 1: I'm putting a new seat at number five. I had
Speaker 1: New Hampshire in the top five before. No longer am
Speaker 1: I putting New Hampshire there because I think the political
Speaker 1: environment indicates that it's more likely another Republican health seat
Speaker 1: is going to fall before a Democratic health seat. And look,
Speaker 1: I think Johnson new is a much stronger candidate that
Speaker 1: Scott Brown potentially in an open seat. But if the
Speaker 1: wind is blowing left, New Hampshire goes with the wind right,
Speaker 1: you know, you can still get elected as a Republican
Speaker 1: in New Hampshire, which it needs to be in a
Speaker 1: either even or good Republican year. I don't know if
Speaker 1: this is a winnable race for any Republican Chris or
Speaker 1: Johnson unhu. If the wind is blowing as strongly for
Speaker 1: the Democrats in twenty six as it was blowing for
Speaker 1: the Democrats in New Jersey and in Virginia in twenty five,
Speaker 1: I can just tell you thatw it the odds are,
Speaker 1: it's going to look more more like a blue state
Speaker 1: in an environment like this than it will a swing state.
Speaker 1: So my new number five is Shared Brown and Ohio.
Speaker 1: John Houston is the appointed elected senator there. He's been
Speaker 1: doing quite well in some of his union endorsements and
Speaker 1: getting a few union endorsements at Shared Brown, and when
Speaker 1: he was an incumbent senator would get. But if you
Speaker 1: just shift, if you believe the electorate in general is
Speaker 1: just going to be five points better across the board
Speaker 1: for Democrats, like it was in Virginia. That basically makes
Speaker 1: Ohio a coin flip. And what we learned about Shared
Speaker 1: Brown in twenty four is he can run three to
Speaker 1: five points ahead of the Democratic of the generic Democratic number.
Speaker 1: He can't run eight or nine points ahead of a
Speaker 1: Democratic presidential candidate. He's running in a midterm year. He
Speaker 1: has had more success running in midterm years and he
Speaker 1: has in presidential years. And he did win once in
Speaker 1: a presidential year in twenty twelve, but he had that
Speaker 1: Obama had a lot of wind at his back, and
Speaker 1: that was quite helpful to him. In twenty eighteen, he
Speaker 1: was able to win in a Trump year thanks to
Speaker 1: a combination of a week Republican opponent, but also just
Speaker 1: again it was a good Democratic year. So at this
Speaker 1: point I put Ohio there. And this means three of
Speaker 1: the five in my five most vulnerable are Republican held seats.
Speaker 1: So if Democrats sweep the five hold for Georgian Michigan
Speaker 1: and flip North Carolina, Maine in New Hampshire, they are
Speaker 1: only one seat away from the majority. That's where this
Speaker 1: top five list sits right now. That's this is why
Speaker 1: if you want to mess around on the political betting markets,
Speaker 1: one of the best early bets to make right now
Speaker 1: because it's a sheriff stock, and then you could sell
Speaker 1: that share before the results actually happen. Because if Democrats
Speaker 1: succeed in good candidate recruits in Alaska, a good candidate
Speaker 1: in Kansas, you may see them get six or seven
Speaker 1: Republican held seats in the competitive category. Will they win
Speaker 1: them all? No, But if they can put Texas, Iowa, Alaska, Kansas, Nebraska,
Speaker 1: they can put three of those five in play. In
Speaker 1: addition to the three that I think they already now
Speaker 1: have a either even or slightly better chance at flipping,
Speaker 1: you suddenly have a path to the Senate majority. There
Speaker 1: you go. The top five list this week North Carolina, Maine, Georgia, Michigan,
Speaker 1: Ohio the five Senate states most likely to flip this month.
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Speaker 1: growing family. All right, let's take a couple more questions
Speaker 1: ask Chuck. None of these will be shut down related.
Speaker 1: This one comes from a third generation Navy vet, John B.
Speaker 1: From Saint Louis, and he writes, Hey, thanks for responding
Speaker 1: to my question about the atomic bowl. All right, so
Speaker 1: it's a not a first time long time, but at
Speaker 1: least a second time long time. I'm a World War
Speaker 1: Two and Cold War history buff, and I think it's
Speaker 1: crucial to keep conversations about those times alive in our
Speaker 1: modern discourse. We live in the shadow of those events.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering how America might have been different during the
Speaker 1: past fifty years if we had not ended the draft
Speaker 1: falling Vietnam. I think we could expand that to include
Speaker 1: national service in general. Thoughts, John, you are scratching an
Speaker 1: itch that I'm constantly dealing with I think, you know,
Speaker 1: I think not having national service. I think national service
Speaker 1: could be a huge advancement of trying to depolarize America, right, geting,
Speaker 1: getting people, getting American citizens to believe that they have
Speaker 1: to that part of your citizenship is to give a
Speaker 1: little bit to this country and service. And it doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be in the military. It can be a
Speaker 1: variety of ways you can you can give. It could
Speaker 1: be working, you know, in home health care for an
Speaker 1: elderly parent without a close knit family. It could be
Speaker 1: cleaning up rivers and streams. It could be teaching in
Speaker 1: underserved communities that need more school teachers. It could simply
Speaker 1: be two to ring, or it could be military service.
Speaker 1: I think anything. It's why I think that in general,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm speaking on Veterans Day here. In general,
Speaker 1: I'm a big advocate of bringing as many veterans as
Speaker 1: you can into the into the workforce, into any sort
Speaker 1: of culture, because most military veterans, the experience of being
Speaker 1: in the military exposed them to people that grew up
Speaker 1: differently than them, people that worshiped different faiths than they did,
Speaker 1: but they all learned how to have a common mission
Speaker 1: and buy in some ways wearing the same uniform. They
Speaker 1: realize when you wear the same uniform, you bleed the
Speaker 1: same red blood. That hey, they're really the differences really
Speaker 1: are all surface. They're not they're not very deep at all.
Speaker 1: So not to sort of try to like, you know,
Speaker 1: but for the good old days kind of mindset. I'm
Speaker 1: a I'm a huge advocate of National service, and I
Speaker 1: think it could be a again, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: whether it's a way to pay for college. There's all
Speaker 1: sorts of ways that you create sort of for every
Speaker 1: year of national you know, maybe everybody has to do one,
Speaker 1: and every extra year you give you get that much
Speaker 1: more off of your tuition. But I think there's a
Speaker 1: lot of ways, you know, or to trade school, whatever
Speaker 1: you wanted to do it. Anything that we could do
Speaker 1: to sort of get Americans from different walks of life
Speaker 1: to have to have to give back for a period
Speaker 1: of time only strengthens the fabric of this country. So
Speaker 1: I'm a huge advocate, all right. Next question comes from
Speaker 1: Chase little rock hocketsas and response to your question about
Speaker 1: staying on the thirteenth floor in game day. If a
Speaker 1: black cat crossed my path while I walked under a ladder,
Speaker 1: on the way out of my thirteenth floor hotel room
Speaker 1: in Fayetteville. I wouldn't have bat it an eye. This
Speaker 1: razorback football season has already used up every ounce of
Speaker 1: luck in the entire state. Bobby Petrino's come back to
Speaker 1: or hit all the wrong notes, and honestly, Fayeville needs
Speaker 1: a total do over, new coach, new schemes. I knew everything.
Speaker 1: So at the college football job market heating up, which
Speaker 1: openings do you think are the most tempting and who's
Speaker 1: got the chops or luck to fill them? Go hogs eventually? Well, look,
Speaker 1: you know, Florida is always the the It's one of
Speaker 1: those that you think it should be a bigger power
Speaker 1: than it is. Irony is that the history of Florida
Speaker 1: football is actually quite mediocre. Right. They've really only had
Speaker 1: two brief periods of success, one with Steve Spurrier, one
Speaker 1: with Urban Meyer and Tim Tebow which really probably have
Speaker 1: to talk more to Tim Tebow than urban Meyer, and
Speaker 1: they've been mediocre report and every other you know, at
Speaker 1: any other period. In theory, it should be a great
Speaker 1: job to have. In theory, it should be a place
Speaker 1: that you could become a powerhouse. It seems to be
Speaker 1: a cesspool of micromanagers. Right. It's kind of like you
Speaker 1: know what Auburn is. It's like, you know, it has
Speaker 1: all the ingredients, but it's impossible to succeed because the
Speaker 1: boosters are always going to get in your way. It
Speaker 1: just trusts me from experienced mind me so on paper,
Speaker 1: it's Florida, but you know, I'm a huge I think
Speaker 1: Arkansas is a hidden I think Faetteville is a is
Speaker 1: a is a hidden gem in the South. I think
Speaker 1: it's one of the it's you know, it's it's going
Speaker 1: to be the next Austin or Nashville. I think it's
Speaker 1: a great place to live. I think that somebody's going
Speaker 1: to crack that code. And when you have Tyson Chicken
Speaker 1: money and Walmart money, the the you know, if the
Speaker 1: if the university athletic program will invest in football, Arkansas
Speaker 1: could be a great job. It is not clear they
Speaker 1: want to invest in football as much as they do
Speaker 1: basketball and baseball. That seems to be the be the
Speaker 1: biggest problem there. I do think the Penn State job
Speaker 1: is actually quite appealing to because there's such a loyal
Speaker 1: fan base. You I actually think even though Franklin you know,
Speaker 1: think about how long he survived without succeeding at the
Speaker 1: tippy tippy top, which means fan base has actually a
Speaker 1: lot more patience than it gets credit for. So that
Speaker 1: would be a good one that I think you could
Speaker 1: see quick success at and sustained success that and be
Speaker 1: in a community that would be pretty comforting. I mean
Speaker 1: you could turn you could definitely turn Happy Valley into
Speaker 1: Tuscaloosa and have a Nick Saban like run there. And
Speaker 1: that's probably the way I look at it. Where could
Speaker 1: you have a Nick Saban like run where you might
Speaker 1: go a decade and just be so dominant. I think
Speaker 1: fills a place to do that. Think I think a
Speaker 1: Happy Valley is a place to do that. I'm less
Speaker 1: convinced you can do that in Gainesville, and I don't
Speaker 1: you know, I think history shows you it's pretty difficult
Speaker 1: to do. And I don't know if Virginia Tech can
Speaker 1: be on that highest level right now. I don't know
Speaker 1: if they have the financial backing to do that on
Speaker 1: that front. All right, I'm gonna take one more question here.
Speaker 1: This comes from john S and Millie Waukee. Of course,
Speaker 1: everything I've learned about socialist mayors came from Wayne's World
Speaker 1: the movie and Alice Cooper. But I digress. Diehard listener here,
Speaker 1: just finish your podcast with rich Tawe. Fascinating. You answered
Speaker 1: my past question about voters in Ozaki and Sheboygan County's
Speaker 1: voting anti woman richest focus group confirmed my hunch some
Speaker 1: voters dislike Trump, but voter form anyway likely because of Harris.
Speaker 1: Have your thoughts on this changed at all, even if
Speaker 1: the polling doesn't pick it up. Look, I think it's
Speaker 1: pretty clear there was a group of voters that, you know,
Speaker 1: that Harris couldn't appeal to. That I guess what you're
Speaker 1: you know the better the question is that Joe Biden
Speaker 1: did appeal to in twenty twenty. Yes, but I also
Speaker 1: think it's pretty clear. You know, I think it's a
Speaker 1: fair question about about whether it is heart. You know,
Speaker 1: I think I think race is less of an issue.
Speaker 1: I think gender was more of an issue. But it's
Speaker 1: hard to disaggregate it because you had a poor economic environment.
Speaker 1: She was defending the history of sitting vice presidents trying
Speaker 1: to succeed unpopular presidents is pretty stark, right. You know,
Speaker 1: Hubert Humphrey couldn't win with LBJ. But he came awfully close,
Speaker 1: and neither could she. So it is I think it's
Speaker 1: hard to find isolate the specific voter itself. You hear
Speaker 1: it in there, but you'd have a better argument if
Speaker 1: she lost with a better economic record. And I think
Speaker 1: that that's, you know, it is. I still think there's
Speaker 1: a little bit of choose your own adventure on this
Speaker 1: that you can. You certainly hear it in there, and
Speaker 1: you certainly hear it in the focus groups, and Rich
Speaker 1: sort of described it. It is a hurdle, but I
Speaker 1: don't think it's a brick wall. And but it becomes
Speaker 1: a brick wall if you know, there's like this massive
Speaker 1: economic downturn, right if if a whole bunch of other
Speaker 1: stuff are going, it's sort of it is a factor,
Speaker 1: not the factor on this front. So I think that that.
Speaker 1: I mean, if we were seeing women struggle to win
Speaker 1: governorships in these swing states, I'd be I would be
Speaker 1: more persuaded. But you know, we look a look at
Speaker 1: the state of Michigan. It's elected, you know, to two
Speaker 1: term women governors in the last twenty years, in Jennifer
Speaker 1: Granholme and Gretchen Wetmer, but they didn't support Kamala Harris
Speaker 1: was that, you know, so I think that that it.
Speaker 1: I think you can't dismiss it as a factor, but
Speaker 1: I will. I am still going to dismiss it as
Speaker 1: the factor, if that's fair, all right. So I'm going
Speaker 1: to leave that there because guess what. I'll be back
Speaker 1: in twenty four hours with another episode of the Check
Speaker 1: podcast until we upload again.