Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Full Episode - Voters Don’t Like Democrats… But They Want To Fire The Republicans + How Can Democrats Win In The South?

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Full Episode - Voters Don’t Like Democrats… But They Want To Fire The Republicans + How Can Democrats Win In The South? · The Chuck ToddCast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This episode of the Chuck Todd cast is brought to
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  Speaker 1: you by Chapter. Now, almost everything you hear about Medicare
• 0:06
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• 0:11
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  Speaker 1: I think there's all sorts of space. You see a
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  Speaker 1: lot of people are throwing themselves in this healthcare space.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: What I like about these chapter folks, I've spent time
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: with them. This is a very transparent organization. It is
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  Speaker 1: and less confusing. OK, so look, take the skepticism you
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• 2:06
  Speaker 1: And then call chapter today at 980-734-4200. Hello there and
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: welcome to the Monday episode of the Chuck Todd cast.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: It's our October. We are now in the first full
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: week of October and it is our first real stress
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: test to see. How is the fall campaign going so
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: far for Republicans? How's their financial advantage holding up? Let's
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: just say we've got some results from some key polls
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: that tell us the money bomb may have fizzled out.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: We will get to that quite a bit in this podcast.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: And then I want to talk about a few other
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: things happening in our federal government, including this fight between
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump and Tom Cotton. Because I think it's emblematic
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: of the larger problem Donald Trump has with his own
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: party and his own base and the problem he has
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: of Republicans really not wanting to show up for him anymore.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: And I think the whole daylight savings and the whole
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: dispute over Tom Cotton is a reminder. Donald Trump gets
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: mad when people won't do his bidding. And what he
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: doesn't fully appreciate is a lot of folks thought they
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: elected him to do their bidding. And Tom Cotton, congratulations.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: You now know what it feels like to be a
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: rural farmer. You know what it feels like to be
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: in the ag sector, to see Donald Trump remodeling the
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: American economy, not caring the damage that it does to
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: his voters in Kansas or Iowa and all these places,
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: not caring about the damage the Iran war does to
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: our ag sector, not caring about the damage the tariffs
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: do to small businesses. These are all people that voted
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  Speaker 1: for him. That's the irony to all this. And the
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: anger and doxing of Tom Cotton is just, to me,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: an incredible example of the self-centered nature of Donald Trump's presidency,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: his leadership, and the fact that he just does not
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: care about the future of the Republican Party. And he
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: really doesn't care about his own constituents. Arkansas might be
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: one of the four most Trumpy states in the country.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: Tom Cotton simply wants to represent the best interest of
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: his state. And daylight savings, the entire daylight issue really
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: screws them. And a lot of, there's quite a few
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: places in this country, Donald Trump doesn't care. So it
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: may be a small thing over daylight savings, but it's
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: emblematic of the larger problem that I think is happening here.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: So we're going to get into that. We're going to,
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: like I said, kind of, I've, I've spent the weekend
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: going through all those polls. No, I didn't make it
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: down to Clemson. I wish I had, I had, uh,
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: I had a trip to Kansas city. I was telling
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: you about incredible. If you check out my Instagram, you'll see,
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: I shared a few things that I learned, um, from, uh,
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: the Negro league museum that I just, uh, I can't
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: wait to go back there. There's just more to take in. Um,
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: And I spent way too much money in the museum shop.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: But just just good stuff there. Fascinating time in Kansas City, Kansas.
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  Speaker 1: You know, I wasn't there for long, but you can
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: get a sense. This is that area of of Kansas
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: is is Hamilton country. And you could feel it there.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: The irony is that these are suburban voters. These are
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: purple voters. These are I was, you know, To give
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: you a sense, and it was a fairly, the area
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: I was staying in was fairly wealthy. Apparently, I wasn't
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: very far from where Travis Kelsey and Taylor Swift live.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: So it tells you, I think, the income level of
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  Speaker 1: the area that I was visiting in Kansas City. But
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: let's just say after the visit and then seeing the time,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: seeing a poll that, oh, huh. The experience matches what
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: the data is showing there. But I got back in
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: while I got back technically in time to make it
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: to that Clemson game. I don't know if I was
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  Speaker 1: gonna be able to pull it off. I think I
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: give Miami a B plus on that game. I'll have
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: more to say at the end. There was a, you know,
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: it was methodical. It was a conference road game at
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: night where there was no doubt the other team was
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: fired up to try to prove a point, to try
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: to prove they belong. But I do think the game
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  Speaker 1: really exposed the atrophy of the Clemson football program under
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: Dabo these last five years. Because it reminded me of
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: a Miami-Clemson game from 2017 where Miami thought they were
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: back and Clemson just physically beat us up. And what
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: was interesting is I felt like the roles were reversed
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: where we just beat them up. They weren't physically prepared
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: for that level of football. And there was a time
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  Speaker 1: Clemson set the standard for that level of football, particularly
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: on the defensive line. Dabo's just fallen behind. It's pretty
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: clear he's not built for this era anymore. And the
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: problem with this is just like in politics, you're going
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: to hear me say this phrase, good gets better, bad
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: gets worse. And I think his philosophy is just making
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  Speaker 1: Clemson football worse. I get it. I, you know, people
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: are always resistant to change. People in this media business,
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: much of my conversation in Kansas City was about, do
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: you lament the loss of things in the past or
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: do you move forward and build and try to come
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: up with a solution in the world that you live in,
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: not the world that you wish existed? And as you know,
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: that's what this podcast is all about, right? Politics for
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: the rest of us, and it's reality-based. How do we
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: figure out how to make this work? Not what's the
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: ideal solution that will never actually pass muster. So there
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: you go. I'll even take my college football rants and
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: tie them back into both the problems of this country
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: and how the solutions are actually quite similar. All right,
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  Speaker 1: so let me kick things off here. We're basically a
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  Speaker 1: month out from the midterm elections. And I've told you
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  Speaker 1: before that when it comes to state polling, there are
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  Speaker 1: a handful of pollsters where when they release something, I
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  Speaker 1: stop what I'm doing and I spend a lot of
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: time with the crosstabs and I spend a lot of
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: time in those polls. New York Times-Siena, AARP and its
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: bipartisan polling team and Fox News and its bipartisan polling team.
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  Speaker 1: Those are the three entities regularly doing state polls, high
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  Speaker 1: quality surveys that are worth Your time and worth my time.
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  Speaker 1: Anything else is not worth your time going to the crosstabs.
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  Speaker 1: You know, but those three, I don't just look at
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  Speaker 1: the horse race. I want to get in inside the crosstabs.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: I want to know what's happening by age, by party,
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  Speaker 1: by ideology, what voters are thinking about the economy, what
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: they think about individual races, because I trust these pollsters methodology. OK,
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: I trust. So I will spend time under the hood.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: And look, you're going to see, you see every second
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: of every day, you see now a lot of other
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: polls between, and we're going to see a ton of
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: them between now and election day. And there's some, there
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: are ones that are total garbage and you should throw out.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: Insider Advantage, they were caught doing something wrong about 10
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: years ago. I'm sorry. I don't trust anything out of there.
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  Speaker 1: I think they're herders. They always have a poll that
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: seems to match the average. It's just garbage. I don't
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: buy it. And like I said, there'd been evidence in
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: the past they were manufacturing numbers. Maybe it's a new situation,
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm just saying this to get myself
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: legally off the hook, but I can tell you, I
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: don't trust them. And I don't think you should either. And,
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: you know, panel surveys are panel surveys. I think they're
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: B minus C plus type of, you know, directionally, they
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: can tell you some things, but I wouldn't spend a
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: lot of time on the crosstabs. And I don't want
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: to say they're all bad polls, right? But I know
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: that what I just outlined are very costly. And I
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: can tell you the polls, again, if a poll is
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: cheap to conduct, the results are worth how much you
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: paid for it. And look, it's also why I'm not
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: so enamored with polling averages as some of my friends
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: in this business are. I understand what they're trying to do,
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: smooth out the noise, combine a bunch of data, hopefully
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: get closer to the truth. But Look, anybody that's known
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: me a long time knows I think there's a huge
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: flaw in treating every additional poll as if it's necessarily
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: additional information. Sometimes you're averaging a really good poll with
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: a really mediocre poll. And sometimes you're averaging a really
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: good poll with a really shitty poll. And you're going
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: to make everything taste like shit. And somehow we're supposed
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: to believe that the resulting number is more informative because
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: you increase the sample size. Sorry.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: Look.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: If I've got five really good surveys telling me something,
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  Speaker 1: I'd rather spend my time figuring out what those five
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: surveys are telling me than throw another 15 shitty polls
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: or mediocre polls into a blender and pretend I've created
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: something with greater precision. I think these folks, they make
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: you feel good, but they're misleading you. But hey, you
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: spend your money how you want to spend your money.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: All right, many ran over. I bring all this up
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: because this weekend we got exactly the kind of polling
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: dump that I do like to spend a lot of
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: time with. New York Times and Siena went into Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Ohio,
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: and Texas. We got an AARP poll for Breezeo and Ward,
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: Impact Research, DNR firms. They were in Maine. Remember what
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: I told you two weeks ago? Republicans had finally started
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: their money bomb. They had dropped their financial, they had
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: taken advantage of their financial advantage, right? They had been
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: getting swamped on TV in some of these races, particularly Texas.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: So the cavalry was a rivalry. Republican outside groups finally
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: putting in real money in these contests. And I said,
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: let's watch the first week of October. We should see
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: if these ad campaigns are working, it should see some movement. Well,
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: I thought by then we'd ought to have enough information
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: to see whether all this money could change the trajectory
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: of any of these races. Well, it's first week of
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: October and we have our final verdict. Our first verdict,
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: not the final verdict. Our first verdict. Not well at all.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: In fact, if anything, we're seeing one of those phenomena
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: where you look for as an election gets closer, good
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: is getting better and bad is getting worse. And right
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: now the bad is Donald Trump and the Republican Party.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: It doesn't mean Democrats are gonna win every one of
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: these races. These are polls, they're not results. They're all
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: inside the margin of error, although one is flirting outside
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: the margin of error in the advantage of the Democrats.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: And obviously, turnout's gonna matter. The makeup of the turnout
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: is gonna matter enormously. In fact, I think turnout may
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: be the biggest unanswered question buried in all of these numbers.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: And I know that's an easy thing to lean on.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: It's all about turnout, right? But it's more than that.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: It's a specific turnout of specific age groups. But still,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: look at where we are. These aren't polls of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin,
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: or Arizona. We're not in battleground states, right? We're talking Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Ohio,
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: and Texas. These are all Trump states. all Republican states,
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: all won by Donald Trump. And where there were both
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: a governor's race and a Senate race, we got results
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: from Time Siena, for instance. So let me give you
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: a quick rundown. Alaska, Mary Patello ahead by seven points.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: Times had her hitting 50% in Iowa. Ashley Hinson, the Republican,
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: ahead by insignificant margin here, one point over Josh Sturek, 48, 47.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: Kansas was dead even, Marshall, 45. Adam Hamilton, 45. Ohio,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: Sherrod Brown at 49. John Husted at 46. Tallarico was
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: over 50 in this poll. 51. Paxton's 45. You throw
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: in the governor's races. In Iowa, they had Rob Sand
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: with a double-digit lead, 52-41. Ohio, Amy Acton ahead of Ramaswamy, 49-45.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: And in Texas, Gina Hinojosa ahead of Abbott, 49-46. Kansas
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: was the one exception among those where the Republican, Ty Masterson,
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: was a head of Holsher, Sidney Holsher, 49-44. Kansas, we
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: have literally gone eight years one way, eight years the
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: other way. They're pretty windshield wipery on this, and we're
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: just wrapping up eight years of a Democratic governorship there. Again,
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: let's not turn polling leads into the actual results, but
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: these are not states that Republicans thought were going to be,
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: all were going to be this close and this competitive
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: less than a month before Election Day. And I do
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: think when you take a look at this, Charlie Cook's
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: distinction of instead of calling this the making of a
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: major blue wave, that instead this really is a red
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: undertow election. And it's because when you look inside the numbers,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: you see voters are not embracing the Democrats. Voters are
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: firing Republicans. This is a repudiation of Donald Trump and
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: his leadership and a repudiation of his economic policies, pure
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: and simple, if these polls are end up looking like
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: the election results a month from now. These states are
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: not blue states all of a sudden. The Democratic Party
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: itself isn't very popular in these five states. So you
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: really are seeing an undertow of dissatisfaction beneath years of
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: Republican control in some of these states. Who else are
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: you going to blame? But if you're looking for another
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: tea leaf to read, about how real Kansas is and
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: why Democrats probably have a much better shot at winning
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: that seat than Iowa, in my opinion. Of the five
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: states that the Time-Santa poll surveyed, there is only one
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: where voters think their state itself is headed in the
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: right direction. And it was the only state of the
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: five that had a Democratic governor, Kansas. How about that? Coincidence? Maybe.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: But if you're trying to understand how we got to
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: the point where we're talking about a tied Senate race
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: in Kansas, I'd circle that little data point, right? The
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: fact is state voters are satisfied with their Democratic leadership
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: in the governor's mansion, the general direction of the state,
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: Republican legislature, Democratic governor, unhappy about the national economy. The
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: point is the fact that they have elected Democratic governors
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: and have had Democratic governors, 16 in the last 24 years,
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: makes the idea of voting for a Democrat for the
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: Senate less odd, less, oh my God, we haven't done
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: this in a generation. Anyway, that's an important tea leaf there.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: Now let's get underneath these polls. and understand the source
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: of the dissatisfaction. And guess what? It's pretty obvious. It's
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: the economy, affordability. It's the lived experience in these states
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: of this Trump economy. Trump is underwater on the economy
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: in all five states. His approval on cost of living
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: is below 35% in all five. On gas prices, he's
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: below 28% in all five. On tariffs, he's below 40%
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: in all five states. On the Iran war, he's below 37%
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: in all five states. This looks like a These all
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: look like battleground states, right? These all look like, frankly,
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: lean blue states when you look at it through the
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: prism of Trump's popularity or unpopularity on a slew of
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: significant issues. And in every one of these states, a plurality,
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: so not quite a majority, but a plurality say that
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: Trump's policies have hurt their state more than they've helped
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: their state. This isn't some abstract ideological argument either, right?
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: Your gas bill isn't ideological, neither is your grocery bill, right?
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: None of it is. And one generational number really jumped
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: out at me in these polls. Millennials of all the
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: different age groups, Gen Z, millennials, Gen X, boomers. Millennials
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: are the most dissatisfied with everything. They have the biggest
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: right track, wrong track deficit of any generation in these polls.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: And when you think about it, it makes a ton
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: of sense in the world. They're on the front lines
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: of this more so than any of the other three generations. Yes,
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: Gen Z's looking for work. Millennials are having to survive
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: in this uneven economy, an unfair economy, right? Gen X
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: and boomers, if you have a little bit of retirement
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: savings or you have a lot of better retirement savings,
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: Trump economy's not great, but you've had the funds to
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: withstand it. You've been able to get some of the upside,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: not a lot of it, but you've gotten some of
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: the upside that Trump's been personally benefiting from, right? But
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: the millennials, boy, they are smack in the middle of
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: the most expensive period of their adult life, right? You're
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: trying to buy a house or you just bought one
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: at a lousy interest rate. You're having kids. You're paying
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: for childcare. You're buying groceries for four instead of one.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: You're paying insurance. You're trying to save money. You're thinking about,
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: I know you look at, you don't have any of
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: this accumulated wealth that somebody in their late 50s, 60s,
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: or 70s may have. So when affordability gets worse, This
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: is the generation that's getting squeezed in every direction. So
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: it is not a shock to me that this is
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: the most unhappy age group. This episode of the Chuck
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: Todd cast is brought to you by Kalshi. It's an exchange.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: where you can trade on what you actually think is
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: going to happen. Sports, politics, culture, whatever's on your mind.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: For example, one market, of course, that I'm monitoring very
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: closely is the U.S. Senate and control of the U.S. Senate.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: As recently as September 10th, Republicans were favored to retain
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: control 52%, right, to buy a share of Republicans' retained
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: control is going to cost you 52 cents. It would
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: have only cost you 48 cents to buy essentially a
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: share of the prediction that Democrats would win control. But boy,
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: have things changed in two weeks, right? Democrats are now favored,
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: according to the markets, the market to buy Democratic control
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: is up to 62 cents. The market for Republican control
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: is 38 cents. So it's the Democrats... High watermark so
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: far of the cycle. And so far, the number is
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: growing by the day. And so you know what that means?
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: If you're confident, you think this number is only going
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: to grow, then you better hurry up and get in
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: now if you believe the Democrats are going to do this.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: And if you look at this and go, hey, I
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: think the Republicans are going to retain. And in fact,
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: whether they retain or not, I think we're going to
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: see some polls. There'll be the natural tightening of October.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: I better get in on this, get a piece of
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: this Republican number before it goes back up. And, you know,
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: either way. you can make a couple of bucks. So
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: it's fascinating. And depending on how you view the next
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: three weeks are going to go, not necessarily election day,
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: but the narrative of the next three weeks may impact
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: which side of that equation you want to purchase. So
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: here's what you need to know about CalSheet. You're going
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: up against other traders directly. There's no house setting the odds,
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: just people putting their own opinions and predictions on the line.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: So if you trade $ 25 and you use the code ChuckTodd,
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: They'll throw in another $ 25 instantly. As always, please remember
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: to trade responsibly. Now, Gen Z is a different story.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: And Gen Z presents Democrats with both their biggest opportunity
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: and their biggest problem. Democrats' largest age advantage on the
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: generic Senate ballot in these five states is with Gen Z,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: voters under 30. And guess which generation is least certain
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: it's going to actually vote? Voters under 30. So if
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: you want to see the problem in another high quality poll,
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: you go to the state of Maine. This is the
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: divide here on age is really stark. And that new
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: AARP poll, right, conducted by the firms that are the
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: pollsters for the last two presidents, Trump and Biden. This
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: poll has Troy Jackson at 50, Susan Collins at 47.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: It's basically right inside the poll's margin of error. But
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: forget the top line for a moment. Among voters 50
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: and older, Collins leads 53-44. And among voters under 50,
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: Troy Jackson leads by 25 points. So, and then when
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: you look at motivation to vote, 87% of voters 50
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: plus say they're extremely motivated to vote in Maine. And
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: under 50, it's 73%. But under 35, that number drops
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: below 70%. And that's the basic tension in this election
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: and really the difference between a good night for Democrats
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: and a tsunami and a massive red undertow. The younger
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: this electorate gets, the better these surveys look for Democrats
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: across the board. And the younger this electorate gets, the
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: less certain those voters are to actually show up, right?
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: So that's why all of the effort by Democrats now
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: in this last month is going to have to be
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: about figuring out how to talk to voters under 30
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: and figuring out that they have a voting plan. That
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: is going to be the focus. I think millennials are
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: going to show up, right? You know, I think certainly
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: voters over 50 are showing up. That's the uncertainty. It's
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: going to be Gen Z. That is going to be
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: the difference between, right? If you want to see a
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: blue tsunami, then you need a motive. You need to
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: see college campuses on fire. You need voters under 30
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: showing up everywhere. But right now, it's that uncertainty of
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: their interest in this election that is giving Republicans any
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: potential shot at mitigating what could be a disastrous night
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: for the party. Now, there's another thing in these Times-Santa
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: polls that Democrats ought to pay attention to, because the
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party is not popular in any of these states.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: In fact, when they ask the question about which party
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: do you identify with, this is before pushing people who
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: call themselves independents, which side do you lean? Just straight
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: up party identification. Just 14% of Alaska voters voluntarily would
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: call themselves Democrats. One, four, 14. I didn't say 40, 14.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: It's 27% in Iowa, 26% in Kansas, 30% in Ohio, 30%
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: in Texas. Not in a single state do more voters
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: identify as Democrat more so than either Republican or independent.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: They are second or third in all of these states. Now,
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: here's what's interesting. Across these five states, this is where
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: candidates matter because across these five states, 52% say the
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party is too far to the left. Majority believe
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: the Democratic Party is too liberal. But only 35% say
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: the Democratic Senate candidate in their state is too far
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: to the left or too liberal. Gap's really important here.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: In all of these cases, they're trying to run as
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: candidates that fit their state, right? We've seen it. Adam
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: Hamilton has essentially said he is not there to put
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: Trump on trial. Right. You've seen in the governor's race, Gina,
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: you know, in Texas, use a January 6 rally goer
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: as an endorser to focus on education. And she has
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: said she's not going to relitigate some of the culture
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: wars that have taken place. She's essentially, in other words,
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: not going to be Wendy Davis. And if you know,
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: you know. So it tells you in all five of
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: these states, they're not buying what the Democratic Party is selling.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: But they like this.
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: These.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: Particular candidates, because these candidates are trying not to be
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: cookie cutter national liberal left-wing Democrats, right? It's why, and
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: it's this phenomenon is why Mary Patello can be sitting
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: at 50% in a state where only 14% of the
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: electorate calls itself democratic. And it's why these campaigns don't
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: look like cookie cutter national campaigns, you know? So It's
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: a reminder, if you're going to win in Alaska or
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: Iowa or Kansas or Texas as a Democrat, you have
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: to persuade a whole bunch of people who have absolutely
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: no interest in calling themselves Democrats.
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: And, you know, just to dig into Alaska a little bit.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: So Patello leads Dan Sullivan, the incumbent Republican, 50-43. But
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: if you ask the same electorate in Alaska, which party
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: would you prefer to control the Senate? Republicans lead 49-45. Now,
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: if that means if you're Sullivan, you probably got to
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: make the, hey, Republicans, you know, don't you want a
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: Republican Senate argument? OK, we'll see how well that goes over.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: But there are voters in Alaska essentially saying, I prefer
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: Republican Senate. I'm just not voting for this Republican senator. Boy,
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: talk about real damage Trump has done to the Democrat,
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: to the Republican Party brand, particularly in these states. And
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: it's a reminder that candidate quality matters, character matters. And
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: that brings me to Texas. James Tallarico has a 23-point
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: advantage over Ken Paxton on character. 23 points. That's why
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: he's winning, folks. So what are Republicans doing to try
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: to close that gap? Well, if you watch college football
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: this weekend, you probably saw this ad somewhere. It showed
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: up in the Texas Tech game that I happen to
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: be watching. It showed up in the SMU game, which
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: I always watch in this household. Angela Paxton is appearing
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: in ads, essentially saying, vote for the Republican ticket. She
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: never says her soon to be ex-husband's name, but she says,
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: support the team. Don't let Democrats take control. Now, I
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: get why they're trying to make this argument. I'm guessing
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: this worked in a focus group of perhaps Trump Republican women,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: you know, Republican women who voted Trump in 2024, who
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: don't like Paxton. I'm sure they play this Angela Paxton
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: ad and it said, oh, OK, you know, if I
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: heard her make that case, I'd be more open to
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: voting for the quote unquote Republican ticket.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: And we get it. They're trying to move the decision
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: away from Ken Paxson, the individual who clearly is kind
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: of a. It's just a dirtbag, right, to use the
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: words of Republican Senator Eric Schmidt. And they just want
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: voters thinking about partisan control. But I think it tells
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: you something about the problem Republicans have right now. The
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: argument increasingly isn't here's why this person is going to
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: make your life better. She's not making that argument. It's
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: whatever reservations you have about this person, you can't let
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: the other team win. But they don't really have a
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: reason why. It's just some sort of, you know, I
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: think it's a Rorschach test. They're hoping you're just reminded.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: Remember all the reasons why you've never voted Democratic in
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: a long time or you stopped voting Democratic or you
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: never did.
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: But in an election that appears to be driven by
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: the lived experience of this unfair economy, I'm not sure
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: a tribal argument answers the question voters are actually asking,
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: which is pretty simple. When does my life get easier?
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: I think this is a tone deaf ad campaign. And
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: I mean, look, we already know the Republican Party doesn't
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: care about character, right? I mean, this is the party
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: of bad character, right? I mean, to do all this
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: that they're trying to do for Ken Paxton, On behalf
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: of Donald Trump, two of the lowest character individuals I've
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: ever seen try to succeed in elective office. And it's
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: not like their peers haven't tried to do it right.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: Both men have been impeached. Both men have had members
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: of their own party think they're unfit for office. And
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: yet here we are. And now they're trying to make
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: a national argument. Hey, ignore, you know, we're the party
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: of moral values, but ignore the moral values of the
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: candidates we're asking you to vote for. This is the
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: rot that's taken place inside the Republican Party. And this
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: is why so many true conservatives have left the party.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: Because it's a full on rot. This is indefensible stuff.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: It's just totally indefensible, you know. And you may not
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: like the ideas some on the left, maybe they may
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: concoct once they get power. But I know the conservatives
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: that are disgusted by this Trump era would believe they
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: can win these arguments on the merits with people that
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: have some character, which is why they left their party.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: And then there's Ohio. This one's almost too perfect. Sherrod
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: Brown has an 11-point advantage over John Huston. And this
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: is the one state where data centers is probably the
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: most compelling issue, right? And Brown's winning by 11 points
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: on this issue. Who's going to handle this issue better? Houston,
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: of course, has spent a good portion of this campaign
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: trying to deal with this vulnerability on data centers and
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: electricity prices. But then what does Donald Trump do? He
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: goes to Ohio this weekend to, in theory, help John Houston.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: And what does Donald Trump do? He defends data centers.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: He's been making money on data centers. He's making money
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: on this huge AI expansion. Just remember why Donald Trump
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: is so for this. Some of it's legacy play, but
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: more of it is he's made money. And that's really
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: always just Trump is a simple person to understand. He
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: wants glory and he wants cash. I don't know if
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: it's always in that order or not. But here he
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: is defending data centers and it's his pitch was essentially,
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: there's too much money involved. We need them. Otherwise, they're
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: going to China. Okay. Now, maybe Trump believes that. Whatever.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: But politically, it gets to the question I've been asking
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: myself as I went through all these polls this weekend.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: Is Donald Trump listening to the voters at all? Does
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: he understand why his party is in the position that
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: it's in? Because every time somebody gives him evidence that
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: voters are unhappy, his response seems to explain why the
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: evidence is wrong. The worst instinct. The economy? No, it's
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: doing great. Aren't you paying attention? Haven't you seen how
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: much money Donald Trump's made? The polls? They're fake. It's
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: all fake. The news, data centers, you don't understand how
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: much money there is. The jobs numbers aren't good. And
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: what is Kevin Hassett doing? Kevin Hassett, right, the president's
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: chief economist, you know, God bless him, he goes out
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: after the jobs report comes out on Friday and he
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: goes out on Fox with the typical sort of, literally,
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: he's like Baghdad Bob of economists these days. And he's like, hey,
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: these job numbers aren't good. And Kevin Haas says, well,
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: one reason unemployment ticked up is people see this incredible
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: labor market and they're rushing back into it. No, sure
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: they are, Kevin. That's what they're seeing. Jeez. Gas prices
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: are killing people? No, wait until the Iran deal. The
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: Iran war itself? Trump tells Time it actually could help Republicans.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Sure it will, Donnie. And then there's the line in
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: Texas that I think sums up the whole problem. We're
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: doing great, but I can't get the word out. You know,
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: when Trump tries to play the Dale Carnegie cards, right,
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: the You always have to pretend you're optimistic. Always pretend
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: everything's great. Always the salesman, right? The used condo salesman,
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: which is really what he is at best, right? The
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: bad casino operator. Oh, keep playing. Everything's going to go great.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: Everything's going to work out. And then he thinks, oh,
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: people just don't understand this economy. Oh, they understand. The
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: word's out. They just think this economy sucks and they
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: think your leadership sucks. Now, There is somebody in the
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: White House that seems to realize the country has an
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: affordability problem because they are trying things like, let's send checks.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: Here's 90 bucks to 20 million seniors to help with Medicare.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: It's not a bad idea if you're looking to try
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: to make the group that's most likely to show up
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: are voters over 65. So I guess they're the, at
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: least you're not throwing money away, I guess. But I'm
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: not sure $ 90 is going to make them feel great
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: about this economy since cost of living basically eats that
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: up and then some. But they're trying, right? They've got
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: $ 90 to 20 million seniors, $ 500 for Obamacare rebates for
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: other people, maybe a future dividend for people that live
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: near data centers. And of course, there's that promised $ 5, 000
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: Trump dividend if Republicans keep the House and the Senate.
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, Trump's just trying to throw something, right? Throw
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: spaghetti at the wall here. At some point, the political
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: response to the affordability crisis sounds more like, can we
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: just mail everybody something before election day? If we send
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: everybody a check with my name on it, that seems
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: to be Trump's answer to everything. But there's a deeper problem.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: And it gets back to something I talked about last
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: week on the podcast, what I call the Trump anxiety tax.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: It's the cumulative cost of living in a country where
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: you're never quite sure whether today's rules are going to
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: be tomorrow's rules. Because Trump is always rocking the boat,
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: even when it's smooth. And this weekend, we got perhaps
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: another ridiculous example of Trump's narcissism, daylight saving time. Donald
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: Trump wants permanent daylight saving time. Well, Arkansas Senator, Republican
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: Tom Cotton, does it. And that's the dispute. And Tom
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: Cotton has been the person who has objected to unanimous
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: consent in the Senate to a bill to make daylight
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: saving time permanent that the House has passed. And Tom
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: Cotton's argument is one actually I've made on this podcast
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: a long time ago. We've tried permanent daylight saving time before.
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: People hated the dark winter mornings and parents in Arkansas
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: don't want their kids waiting for school buses in darkness. Now,
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: agree with them or disagree with them, whatever. But it's
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: a completely normal policy disagreement where Tom Cotton is trying
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: to represent the interests of his state. And Donald Trump
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: is trying to just obsess over something he's decided matters.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: But what's Trump's response to Cotton's objection? He publishes, he
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: doxes Tom Cotton, gives everybody Tom Cotton's cell phone number
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: and told the people of Arkansas to call him over
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: Trump's demand for permanent daylight saving time. And look, as
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: I said at the top of this podcast, I think
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: this story is much more revealing than it looks. Trump
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: needs Tom Cotton's voters next month. He needs Republicans in
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: Arkansas to show up. He needs Cotton supporting his agenda.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: And yet the moment Cotton says, Mr. President, I disagree
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: with you on this one because I think it's bad
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: for the people I represent, you know, the people who
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: put him in office. Trump's instinct isn't persuasion. It's punishment.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: And it's like he's punishing all of Arkansas over it.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: That's the anxiety tax. Tariffs on bed in your business,
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: that's the price of my trade policy that I think
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: will work. And it may take 40 years to do it.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: A data center changes your community and puts more pressure
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: on electricity prices. Hey, there's too much money to be
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: made for me and my buddies. So tough shit. The
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: Iran war drives up gasoline prices higher. It'll be worth
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: it when Trump gets the deal he really wants. And
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: if you're a parent in Arkansas who doesn't want your
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: eight-year-old waiting for a school bus in the dark, well,
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: apparently that comes second to whatever the hell the president
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: wants because he wants to get an extra nine holes
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: in the winter. That's a political problem for somebody who
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: isn't actually on the ballot anymore. And that's the thing.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: Democrats don't need every disaffected Trump voter to become a Democrat.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: That's not how midterms work. Some can simply become exhausted
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: Trump voters who say, screw that guy. I'm done helping
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: him because he doesn't help me anymore. They voted for
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: him because they wanted the border fix or lower prices
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: or conservative judges or lower taxes. Or maybe they hated Biden.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: Pick your reason. A vote for Donald Trump wasn't necessarily
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: a signed contract agreeing to every subsequent thing Donald Trump
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: might decide to do. But Trump has always had trouble
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: making that distinction. You're expected to be there for him.
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: He doesn't expect to be there for you. And that's
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: what We're learning about this midterm election. The Cotton episode
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: is a pretty good reminder that when your interests and
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: his collide, you shouldn't necessarily assume he's going to care
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: about what you care about. And when Trump isn't physically
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: on the ballot, that matters because he keeps telling Republican voters,
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: pretend I'm on the ballot. Okay, do that. Will somebody
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: who came out specifically for Trump Pretend Ken Paxton is
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump? Will they pretend John Husted is Donald Trump?
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: By the way, this didn't work in 24. He was
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: actually on the ballot and Democrats swept the battleground Senate
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: races other than Pennsylvania. It didn't work. Hey, this episode
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• 40:55
  Speaker 1: rating was as of August of 2026. There's another question
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: underneath all of this that bothers me even more because
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: elections come and go, presidents come and go. Political parties
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: win and lose, but certain institutions are supposed to survive them,
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: regardless of which party controls the White House. And I'm
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: increasingly concerned about what is happening in three of these
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: institutions that Donald Trump is trying to screw up. The FBI,
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: the Justice Department, and the Pentagon. My friends at The
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: Atlantic published an extraordinary story this weekend about Kash Patel
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: and the FBI. And forget the weird gold-plated jet ski
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: response for a second. It's a colorful anecdote, but it's
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: not the important part of this story, though. It's the hook, right?
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: The important allegation is that enormous FBI resources are being
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: devoted to trying to find evidence for Donald Trump's continued
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: obsession with the 2020 election. The Atlantic interviewed more than
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: 40 current and former administration officials, FBI employees, congressional staffers,
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: and others, and reports that Patel has repeatedly pushed officials
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: to revisit election investigations, including telling people to look again
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: when investigations haven't produced the evidence that the White House
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: is looking for. I mean, I guess we should be
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: happy they're not manufacturing the evidence. The FBI disputes the
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: characterization of its work and says election security is appropriately
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: one of its highest national security priorities. Well, good. I'm
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: glad they say it out loud. But the reporting raises
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: a pretty fundamental question. Is evidence driving an investigation or
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: is a desired conclusion driving the search for evidence? We
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: saw what happens, right, when a U.S. senator steps in
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: his own Schmidt because he's got the confirmation bias virus.
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: And then there's one detail I can't get out of
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: my head. Andrew Bailey, one of the FBI's deputy directors,
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: left this past week. And according to the Atlantic sources,
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: Bailey sometimes raised the most basic objection when questionable actions
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: were discussed. Hey, the law doesn't allow that. Bailey denies
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: that characterization. Okay. But the larger question remains, who is
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: left in the room to tell Kash Patel no? Because
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: apparently Andrew Bailey was. because another Republican operative gave The
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: Atlantic perhaps the most revealing description of Patel's relationship with Trump.
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: Patel is the guy who doesn't say no. And that's
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: exactly what you don't want to hear about an FBI director.
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: The FBI director is supposed to be willing to tell
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: a president no. The attorney general is supposed to be
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: willing to tell a president no. The Justice Department isn't
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: the president's private law firm, even though he put his
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: personal lawyer in charge of And that brings me to Mr.
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: Blanche and the Justice Department. The most disturbing allegation in
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: the Atlantic story may be the line attributed to a
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: DOJ official about the justice manual itself and the rules designed,
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: among other things, to keep law enforcement from manipulating elections.
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: The official says they were effectively told those rules no
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: longer mattered. Now, DOJ emphatically denies that was ever department guidance, okay?
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: I hope that denial is correct. But if agents and
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: prosecutors are seeking legal advice about what they may be
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: asked to do around an election, you know you already
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: have a problem. Now, I think it's too late. I
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: don't think the... I don't think... There is enough actual
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: apparatus and enough logistics movements for the FBI to damage
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: these midterms the way some folks fear that they could.
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: But one can see how the FBI could try to
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: create dummy investigations to create the illusion that there's something wrong.
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: But still, even if nobody ultimately crosses the line, the
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: people inside the Justice Department, the FBI, apparently aren't certain
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: where the line is anymore. Because Todd Blanch and Kash
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: Patel do not give a shit about the rule of law.
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: They only care about their standing with Donald Trump. That's
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: institutional damage all by itself. These agencies only work if
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: people inside them believe that evidence comes first, the law
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: comes second, and the political desires of the president don't
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: get a vote. And they certainly don't work if the
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: assignment is the president believes something happened. Go now, go
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: find the evidence to prove the president right. That's ass backwards, folks.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: And it gets to the thing, the Atlantic story, that
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: is also very troublesome. Nobody is in the room to
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: say no. Nobody. Not who can tell Donald Trump what
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: he wants to hear. There are plenty of those people.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: But the minute somebody tells him no, these people end
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: up quitting. That's what Joe DiGenova did, right? To me,
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: that's why the description of Kash Patel as the guy
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: who never says no is so damning. Isn't it embarrassing?
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: Who wants to be known as a lackey for anybody?
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: I mean, literally, he's just a bootlicker. He's just a
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: Trump bootlicker. History is always going to know. Kash Patel
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: is always going to be known as Trump's bootlicker. How embarrassing.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: Who the hell grew up, wanted to grow up to
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: be that? Have you no shame, Mr. Patel? Are you
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: just glad somebody, he takes you seriously when nobody else
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: thought you were worth a shit to put in charge
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: of anything? Unbelievable. And frankly, the same ought to be
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: true of an attorney general. That ought to be true
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: of a secretary of defense. There are certain jobs in
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: government where part of serving the president is occasionally telling
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: the president something he doesn't want to hear. So we'll
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: end with Pete Hegseth. He gave what he described as
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: a state of the force address this week. It got
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: plenty of attention for all of his typical juvenile. I mean,
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: this dude is arrested development, just like the president, right?
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: No wonder the two get along. He basically didn't socially
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: mature after the age of 13, right? He literally, you know,
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: the whole no fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos,
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: no wimps, no radicals. How about no dummies? Because apparently
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: a dummy is allowed to be in charge of the Pentagon.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: So sophomoric, again, arrested development. So far beneath the culture
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: of the military, let alone beneath the office of a
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: cabinet secretary. But look, that's not the part of the
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: speech that disturbed me the most, believe it or not.
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: What bothered me more was his continued attempt to turn
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: the Pentagon, an institution that has worked very hard, not
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: always successfully, to remain outside partisan politics. And he's trying
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: to turn the military into some ideological project. I'm old
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: enough to remember when the right thought the Democrats were
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: doing ideological projects on social policy in the military. Well,
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: this guy's doing it right now. He announced an office
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: of religious affairs inside the Pentagon. Now, there's nothing inherently
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: wrong with that. Service members have religious liberty rights. They
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: should have access to chaplains. Christians should be able to
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: practice their faith. So should Jews. So should Muslims and atheists.
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: And others shouldn't be pushed into picking a faith. Okay?
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: Everything is protected by the United States Constitution. That's why
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: we call it religious liberty. But listen to how Hankseth
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: talks about his own office and about this new office
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: he created. It will report directly to him. I mean,
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: he's got his own weird sect of Christianity that he follows.
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: And look, I shouldn't have used weird. We're in America,
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: go ahead. But it's not a mainstream version of Christianity
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: that he follows. Now he says, this office is going
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: to have real teeth. He talks about putting on the
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: full armor of God. Oh, no, sir.
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: Oh, no.
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: You don't use language like that in the United States
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: of America. He says, while the military fights physical wars,
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: the real battle is spiritual. Who's spiritual battle? Who's God?
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: We live under the constitution, buddy, nothing else. No other
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: text guides the laws of this country. We don't have
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: a Christian military. We don't have a Jewish military. There's
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: no Islamic military. It's the American military. And the common
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: oath is not religious. There's only one text. It's the constitution.
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: I'm not trying to be anti-religious. The constitution itself makes
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: this clear. But it's precisely what allows somebody of deep
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: faith to serve next to somebody of a completely different
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: faith who serves next to somebody who doesn't believe there
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: is a God. It's the whole American experiment. I guess
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: Pete Hegseth was absent the day they taught the Constitution
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: in school. So when the Secretary of Defense starts describing
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: the mission in the United States military in explicitly spiritual terms,
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: we ought to pay attention and we ought to be
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: a little bit freaked out. That's what theocracies do. That's
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: what dictatorships do. It's not what the American are supposed
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: to do. Hanks said something else in the speech. He
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: claimed that roughly 95% of the force recognizes an almighty God.
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: All right. So even if that is true, so what?
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: First Amendment doesn't become optional at 95%. We don't vote
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: on what rights get protected and what rights don't. Well,
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: sometimes we do, but we codify it in the law.
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: The rights of the 5% aren't subject to a vote
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: though by that 95%. We chose not to live in
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: a country that did that. That's the whole point of
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: the American experiment. So Hegseth and Patel begin to look
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: like part of the same story to me. They both
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: are running institutions whose credibility depends on professional independence And
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: both have spent an enormous amount of energy attacking the
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: very culture of independence inside those institutions. At the FBI,
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: the question raised by the Atlantic's reporting is whether investigators
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: are being pushed to keep looking until they find an
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: answer the president wants. At the Pentagon, Hegseth has spent
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: nearly two years telling us which generals he thinks are ideological,
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: which officers don't belong, and which parts of military culture
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: need to be purged. And now, what sort of religious
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: and cultural values ought to define the force? The man
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: deserves to be impeached. He does not uphold American values
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: at all. Just keep that in mind. This is very un-American.
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: There are things that he brought up in his State
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: of the Force speech that somebody wrote for him, probably
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: Bridge Colby, that actually deserve some attention. The military needs
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: to be more aggressively focused on preparing for autonomous warfare.
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: Drones have transformed the battlefield. This Pentagon is wholly unprepared
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: for modern warfare. And we have pissed away 25 years
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: of Pentagon budgets because of the military industrial complex. No
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: doubt in my mind on that. So there are some
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: things here that do deserve some reform and attention. But
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: it's not the military culture. It's actually the defense contractor culture.
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: So we should prepare for some of that future, though
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure Elon Musk and Newt Gingrich are the
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: best people to put in charge of this. I'm not
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: sure if you're trying to figure out warfare in 2040.
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: Somebody says, hey, has anybody checked with Newt Gingrich to
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: see what he thinks? Anyway, modernizing the military is one thing.
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: Politicizing the military is something else entirely. And that's the
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: common thread here. The FBI, Justice Department, Pentagon, these were
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: not supposed to be the president's institutions. They're not Donald
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: Trump's institutions, but he's trying to do this. And it's
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: damaged them. It's going to damage us for a long time.
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: This is going to take decades to fix. What you
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: can't do is replace institutional trust on an inauguration day, right?
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: You might be able to replace these people, but it's
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: done real damage. You're not going to be able to
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: issue an executive order saying, okay, everybody trust the FBI again,
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: trust DOJ, trust the Pentagon. I wish it worked that way.
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: It doesn't. And once one administration establishes that these institutions
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: are simply another instrument of presidential power, You know what
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: the temptation is going to be for the next administration? Well,
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: they did it. And that's how damage becomes permanent. I
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: hope there is a Congress that has read the Constitution
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: and starts to put checks back into executive authority. I'm
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: a little skeptical because Democratic Congresses haven't done it in
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: the past and Republican Congresses haven't done it in the past.
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure either major party is capable of this.
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: But it brings me back to where we started today.
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: These polls are telling us something. Voters are very unhappy
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: with this economy. They're unhappy with the cost of living.
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: They're unhappy with all of this. They're unhappy with the
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: Iran war. And in these five states that we looked at,
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: one of the five people who voted for Donald Trump
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: in 2024 now disapproves of the job he's doing. One
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: out of five of Trump voters disapprove of the job
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: he's doing. That's how a good Democratic night becomes a
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: massive Democratic night. especially because Trump is not listening to
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: the people. Instead, his response are, well, the polls are wrong.
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: The economy's great. The war is going to be great.
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: Don't worry. Data centers are good for you, no matter
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: how much you don't like them. And if Tom Cotton
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: won't give him what he wants in daylight savings time,
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: we'll give out Tom Cotton's cell phone number so you
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: can harass him. And it's all part of Trump's same instinct.
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: There's always another disruption, a fight, a person who has
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: to bend to him. And it gets back to this
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: Trump anxiety test. You never quite know if the rules
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: today are going to be the rules tomorrow. You never
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: quite know if the policy today is going to be
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: the policy tomorrow. And apparently, you never quite know if
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: being one of Donald Trump's most loyal supporters today means
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: you're going to be targeted by him tomorrow because you
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: disagree with him about daylight saving time. Remember, Tom Cotton's
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: argument is about Arkansas. He says, I represent Arkansas. And
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump says, I don't care. It's a small story
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: in some ways, but to me, it's emblematic about just
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: how out of touch Donald Trump is at this moment.
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: He is in total denial about what's going on and
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: he thinks he can happy talk and use it. And
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: he's really just, if you look at it, it's something I've,
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: the point I've made before is And it happens to
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: many a politician, right? Whatever worked the first time, that's
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: what they always want to try again, no matter how. Remember,
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: he doxed Lindsey Graham, and it made Lindsey Graham bend
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: the knee for the rest of his life. So he thought,
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: I'll dox Tom Cotton. It'll make him bend his knee,
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: and this will all happen, and his own people will
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: turn on him, just the way Lindsey's voters turned on him,
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: and so he capitulated. The problem this time, Trump's voters
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: are disillusioned with Donald Trump right now. They don't have
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: time to be disillusioned about Tom Cotton. And I think
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump's going to learn that lesson on November 3rd.
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: All right, we're going to sneak in a break. When
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: we come back, my conversation with an old friend of mine,
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: Jen Palmieri. She's a longtime Democratic operative. She's got a new,
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: but she's been sort of dabbling in the world of
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: documentaries and things like that. She was a big part
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: of the circus, for those of you that like that
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: show on Showtime. Well, she sort of took the circus
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: mindset to do a mini doc series on the South.
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: And What it really felt like was Jennifer was trying
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: to get the rest of the Democratic Party to stop
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: bitching and complaining about the South's rise in political power
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: and start figuring out how to win down there. And
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: so much of our conversation is about what she's learned
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: while traveling through the South and what Democrats have misunderstood
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: about the South for so many decades. So we'll stick
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: in a break. We'll talk to her when we come back.
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: After that, I got my time machine. We'll do some questions.
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: And I'll tell you why we had such a great
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: weekend of college football. As I was saying to my
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: next guest when we were off camera, there are like
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: five people I actually like that I've met in Washington
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: over the years. And this and she is one of them.
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: It's Jennifer Palmieri. And Jennifer and I go back to
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: the 20th century. I guess it's probably the best way
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: to describe it. And, you know, we don't want to
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: talk about age or anything, but we go back to
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: the 20th century.
• 58:43
  Speaker 4: It's true. Hotline, hotline truck.
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: I'm a, I'm a cub hotline person. You're, you're, you're like,
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: you know, on the middle rungs, right. Of the press
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: world back then at the, at the Clinton white house. Yeah.
• 58:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah.
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 58:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 58:57
  Speaker 4: That's fair to say.
• 58:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 58:58
  Speaker 4: Lower the middle.
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: And Jen is one of these people we grew up,
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: you know, our pre professionally grew up together and, And
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: I think every generation of reporters and sources, you know,
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: every every sort of 10 years, there's versions of this.
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: And I think it's safe to say that Jen and
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: I's experiences overlap in a variety of ways, variety of
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: presidential terms. And a variety of mediums. I mean, she jumped,
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: you jumped into the sort of the documentary new space
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: and this media space before I did. Now I've jumped
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: in with two feet. You've got a terrific new podcast series,
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: documentary series. You know, I don't care what we name
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: these things anymore.
• 59:37
  Speaker 3: I know.
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: Like, you know, the platforms to me are irrelevant. It's
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: wherever you want to find this stuff, you're going to
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: be able to find it. She's executive producer of Long Play.
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: And this really is sort of– well, you tell me.
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: You're reimagining. You're trying to– it is something that, look,
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: a lot of us political handicappers have been saying that essentially–
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: And we've seen this culturally. You know, first, frankly, it
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: happened with college football. It went north to south. High
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: school recruiting went north to south.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: And it's been this slow thing. And now America's presidential
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: elections used to go through the Midwest. And increasingly, they're
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: going to go through the Sun Belt. I mean, and
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: I've made this argument that basically if you look from
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: Arizona to Georgia, You see that the presidency, U.S. Senate control.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: So it's politics, it's culture, it's everything. And here's what
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: this feels like to me. This feels like your way
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: of like, hey, Northeastern liberals, the map has changed. Get
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: to know the South and stop mocking it. Is that fair?
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 4: That is fair. Also, hey, people in L.A.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 4: You know, like that it is, you know, so it's, I.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 3: Have always felt so like at the point, the point
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 3: of the show is to focus on the South. And
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 3: that's why it's called Long Play is because like, first
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: of all, our show, it's a, you know, it's a YouTube,
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 3: it's the audio podcast.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 4: It's also YouTube.
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 3: It's the same production company that did the circus. So
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 3: it's very well, yeah, it's very well done. But we,
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 3: the point is that it's a long play in the
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 3: South in terms of not just like, not just like, oh, Democrats,
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 3: you know, let's have Democrats went in the South, but
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 3: just to get, you know, civic re-engagement because it's been
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 3: such one.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 4: Party rule you know like tennessee for example.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 3: Uh is often at the bottom 50 out of 50
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 3: in terms of voter participation like tennessee it's a major state.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 4: You know nashville's there one of you know one of.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 3: The fastest growing uh cities in the country and there's
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 3: just you know there's a one party rule you know
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 3: and somebody in mississippi alabama you know so it's like
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: And I've always felt because I was.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 4: Born there and I moved around a lot.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 3: And I think this has helped me, bless you Chuck,
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: in politics is that I'm pretty observant because I've had to,
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 3: you know, I always had to, I moved every couple
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 3: of years. So just to figure out how you fit
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 3: in and the South really stuck with me and it
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 3: really bothered me.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 4: You know, I worked for a southern governor who became
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 4: president of the United States.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 3: I think our best, you know, Obama is sort of
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 3: an exception to this. But the best Democratic politicians come
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: from red states, you know, people who are used to
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: having to make an argument.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 4: To the full spectrum of political views.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 3: And that it really bothered me that we just kind
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 3: of wrote off this entire region like it wasn't even there,
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 3: let alone moral arguments of that. It's some of the
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 3: poorest states in the country and it's some of the
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 3: states with the highest black population. But now, you know,
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: it's like now it's just like, hey, if you want
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 3: to survive, if you want to win the presidency, like
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 3: maybe you can win the presidency in 2028 with winning
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 3: one or two states in the South. But going forward
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 3: with the way the population is growing and the census
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: and how Congress and Electoral College is going to work.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 4: You have to win multiple states in the South.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: Look, it is it is tempting to say that to
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: do to play the I told you so game and
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: not to you, but sort of to generally write about this,
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: because frankly, there's there's certainly there's certainly I have felt
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: I don't want to call it a disdain in Democratic
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: circles about the South. And I don't mean all Democratic circles.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, really in the campaign political set
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: and I think part of it is just what I
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: call geographic bias, right? The Acela corridor. I just think
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: that there is just, there is a two-dimensional picture of
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: the South that's painted to a bunch of people that
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: just read the New York Times. And I know I'm
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: being a little broad brush here, but not too much. Because,
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: you know, you see it in just sort of, well,
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: I'll give you an example. And this isn't a Southern
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: state because it drives me crazy. It's technically a border
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: state and it's Kentucky. But I remember, remember during Obamacare,
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: because who doesn't remember if you were in the middle
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: of that PR?
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 4: That's stupid.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: If you once told me you should say, you know,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: you should see the president. He goes, Kentucky?
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 4: Kentucky!
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 5: Kentucky was the best one.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: But I think about that and it was just think
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: about that preconceived notion that was planted in his head.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 4: And I say, how.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: Can Kentucky do so well with a Web site to
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 3: sign up people for health care?
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And it was just like, wow. See, there's a
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: lot of inputs that were going into Obama's brain by
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: other people. Barack Obama.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: Right. That were stereotyping the South that probably arguably delayed
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: a lot of Democratic interest groups, Democratic money. social, cultural
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: engagement in the South.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 4: Do you accept that premise?
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 3: I think that is correct. I, you know, I wasn't,
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 3: I had not been back to, I went back to Mississippi,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 3: sort of going back like in 2017, but I had
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 3: not been to, you know, other than going to New Orleans,
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 3: had not been to Mississippi or Alabama, you know, Florida
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 3: and Georgia, yes, but not the, not like the deep
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 3: South for a long time. And it's easy to think
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 3: that there, that it is, that it's a monolith and
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 3: it's just not at all. You know, there are, There's
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 3: like a, do you know the Bitter Southerner? Are you
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 3: a fan of the Bitter Southerner? Do you know that magazine?
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 4: I think you'll be super into it.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 3: It's a great magazine made by three people from Georgia.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 4: They're out of Athens.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 3: And they were bitter because the South, it sort of
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 3: started as that they were bitter because of the South.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 3: There was a list of like the 50 best cocktail
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 3: bars in America. And there was not one of them
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: in the South listed. This was a while ago.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 4: Because you can't imagine that happening now. But it's 14
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 4: years ago.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 3: And they're also bitter that the South is portrayed as
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 3: entirely conservative, you know, a monolith. And so they made
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 3: this they won the National Magazine Award last year for
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 3: general excellence. I mean, that's like how good they are.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 4: But it.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 3: Was like I started to look at it was like
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 3: it's just like a reminder there are there are different
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 3: there are different viewpoints everywhere and like and and and
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 3: happening in the south and it is you know and
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 3: it feels now like the we did six weeks on
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: the road six southern states Texas Georgia North Carolina South
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 3: Carolina Tennessee and Mississippi and it's like The there's so
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 3: much that's happening on the Republican side, like a power grab.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 4: That's just like happening everywhere.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 3: But it does feel like that era is running out
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 3: of road. And there is I mean, Georgia is an
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 3: interesting thing to talk about. It's its own special case.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 3: Texas is a special case, too. But the other states,
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 3: it feels like. something struggling to be reborn if if
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 3: if there was like it's got to be organic it's
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 3: got to be people from that state not people coming
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 3: into that state but they could use money and resources
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 3: and attention that could really change you know not hard
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 3: to win a senate race in mississippi not a lot
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 3: of money not a lot of voters you know a
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 3: little attention go a long way.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: And i and and here we go again where once
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: again the national party national money national political figures are
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: talking the talk about Mississippi and ain't doing any walking.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: I mean, there is, and it is, I look at
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: this Mississippi race as a, such a missed opportunity. I
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: went off on a rant about this in my Thursday
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: episode last week about how there's what, 25 different people
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: wanting to run for president in 2028, right? And then
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: none of, you know, a good way to stand out
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: Just decide, you know what, I'm going to triple down
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: on one state and I'm going to marshal all of
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: my donor networks, all of my energy into turning Mississippi
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: into a competitive state. I know the National Party has
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: other priorities. I get it. So I'm going to turn
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: my eyes and attention to this. I actually threw this
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: idea at somebody that's running and they pondered it and
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: they said, I get it, you know, but you know,
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: it got in the way of the speaking schedule or
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: the travel schedule.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 4: But I want to go to North Carolina too.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: And I want to go to Georgia too.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 4: And I want to go to Texas too.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 4: I don't want to just double down on Mississippi.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: And yet, you know, if you end up becoming the
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: sugar mommy or daddy to a victory in Mississippi, you've
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: just proven to me, there's three pieces of, the job
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: of being president. One is leader of your party, right?
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: And that is an important one. You know, we forget
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: that part of it, right? One is a communications job.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: Obviously you wanna know you actually have a vision and
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: all these things, but the political leadership part of the
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: party has actually been a huge problem for the Democrats
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: going on a couple of decades now.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 4: Going on a couple of decades? You're putting Obama in that.
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: So look, I. I think the state of the DNC
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: has its roots in what and how the Obama White
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: House marginalized it. I do.
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 3: But what what what president hasn't marginalized the party, the DNC?
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's just I just know Bill Clinton took
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: it over. There's a difference. Bill Clinton used it. Bill Clinton,
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: he accepted it. He embraced it. That's the difference.
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: Obama enjoyed being an outsider.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 3: You're saying like Obama because Obama did organizing for action.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I'm not saying. This is I
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: know we're getting off on a team.
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 4: We're getting off on Obama.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: Was good for Obama, the party of Obama. The question is,
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: are you good for the party of the Democratic Party? Right.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 3: Like, well, I think that it's just like it's like
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 3: I just think I mean, I know enough. I worked
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 3: at the DNC. I know I know enough about how
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 3: it operates. And it's a very weird.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: You were there when it was healthy during the Terry
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: McAuliffe years.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 3: Terry, I recall it was healthy, but it's also it's
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 3: easier to be healthy when you're in opposition.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 4: I'm going to tell that to Ken Martin. Yeah, well,
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 4: it could. It has the potential of being it has
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 4: potential of doing that.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 3: But, you know, really, it is that since they're in
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 3: opposition until until they're until somebody until, you know, you know,
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: a great presidential candidate cures a lot of ills. And
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 3: the DNC is going to reflect whoever they, you know,
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 3: it's going to reflect whoever that person is.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 4: And then when that person is gone.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 3: The DNC is going to have to remake itself because
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 3: it was made in the image.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 4: Of the president.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 3: You know, like, it's just like, that's just how our
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 3: party system is.
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 4: So I don't think, but I do think.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 3: That we just, you know, it was like, we don't
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 3: need to talk to those people because they're not going
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 3: to vote for us and we can win without them.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 3: It's like, that's kind of the attitude that I feel
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 3: is like really corrosive. And, you know, and it's like,
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 3: look at what that has wrought. Look what ignoring the
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 3: South has wrought. Look at everything that comes out of
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 3: the South. The, heartbeat abortion bill right that the the
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 3: the first one came out of the tech the texas
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 3: state legislature with its trifecta.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: Where did dobbs originate.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 3: Where did dobbs originate the state of mississippi where did
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 3: all the gerrymandering originate you know it's like now there's
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 3: like legislation about contraception and being and and surrogate parents
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 3: and all of this and nothing ever stays in the
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 3: south and you know um i talked to this guy
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 3: you would love him jerry his name is jeremy fasson
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 3: he's the caucus chair for the Texas, Tennessee state legislature, Republican,
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 3: from like kind of Gatlinburg area, great guy, like welcomed
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 3: us to his home, introduced us to his family, has
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 3: a mixed race son, that adopted son, is You know,
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 3: he'd go, he'd like, not in a gratuitous way, but
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 3: he wants you to know that, you know, his daughter
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 3: is married to a black man from, I forget what country,
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 3: I think Nigeria, but like very welcoming, you know, clearly
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 3: not racist, right?
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 4: Like goes out of his way, like is leaving.
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 3: Office because he thinks Republicans have gone too far because
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 3: they tried to pass a bill to like the children
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 3: that were undocumented could no longer go to public schools
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 3: in Tennessee. It failed, but he was like, that's when
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 3: I was like, it's too much. I was like, OK,
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 3: Representative Fasson, did you vote to carve up Memphis into
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 3: three districts?
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 4: Well, yeah. Well, why? It's like, well, because of politics.
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 3: And you're like, well, but you just told me that
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 3: you're going to leave politics because your party has become
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 3: too extreme.
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 4: And why are you giving it more power? And he
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 4: was like.
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, and I was like, this is what
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 3: Lamar Alexander warned about. And he was like, well, he
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 3: has a good point. You know, there was just not,
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 3: there's no, there's no pushback at all. There's no, there's
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 3: just no, um, there's no opposition. And it's just like,
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 3: this is when things die. And so like Tennessee is
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 3: doing terrible, uh, and healthcare, and Tennessee is doing terrible
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 3: in its education.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 4: So it's not just.
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 3: About winning, it's about having that region be more vibrant.
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 3: If that region is more vibrant in terms of civic
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 3: engagement and people voting and the schools, improving the way
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 3: Miss out, honestly, the way Mississippi and Alabama have sought
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 3: to improve their schools, like that's going to be good
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 3: for the whole country. And that's going to, and if
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 3: there is a more, you know, 10 North Carolina, just
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 3: one seat away from breaking the super majority, um, and
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 3: the Senate, um, and then, you know, in the house,
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 3: it's one seat away from getting to super majority, but
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 3: it's like, there's a battle right now in these state
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 3: legislatures and the styles that matter so much, um, not
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 3: just to the South, but to like the whole country,
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 3: because that is the test kitchen for all of the,
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 3: all of these conservative, you know, whether from it's like
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 3: socially conservative legislation to power graphs.
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: I'm going to start, I want to, I'm going to
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: tackle this constituency by constituency in the South. And sort
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: of hear about what you learned and what you saw.
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: And I want to start with the black belt and
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: rural blacks. What I what I've what's interesting to me
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: is when you look at North Carolina.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: The one time Democrats carried it in this century was
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: in 08. And what makes 08 unique is not Barack
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: Obama at the top of the ticket that year. What
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: actually made North Carolina unique was it was an important
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: primary in May of that election year. And there was
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: this huge competition between Obama and Clinton and Indiana. Think
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: about that primary date. And it's to me such a
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: reminder of something. So Indiana and North Carolina are going
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: to be. they were perceptionally important, right? It didn't really-
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: They were, yes.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 4: I remember this, yes.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: Right. It didn't really, wasn't really going to change the trajectory,
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: but sort of, if you were going to make the
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: case to the superdelegates, boy, Obama had to split. Like
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: he couldn't afford to get swept there. And that was
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: the concern. And yet he thought, all right, we better
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: put some pressure on her in Indiana. And she wanted
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: to put some pressure on him in North Carolina. The
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: assumption was he was going to win North Carolina, she
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: was going to win Indiana. That ended up that way,
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: but boy, was Indiana super close and it ended up
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: being a bit of a bruise for her. But here's
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: what happened in November. Democrats carried both states.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah, right.
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: And I think I know the answer because there was
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: a necessity for both campaigns to campaign in parts of
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: those two states that they probably never would have in
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: any other year. Yeah. And that translated- to a better performance.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: And I look at that example more than any other
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: as simply if you show up, you do some groundwork,
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: it does pay dividends down the road. And I use
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: the North Carolina thing specifically because there's some majority black
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: rural counties at the border of North and South Carolina
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: that essentially powered Obama's victory in November of that year.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: And he came up short in 12 and it was
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: in those counties and it was a turnout issue.
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: And it and it was because he didn't have to
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: campaign there that often in 2012. And when he did,
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: he did it via Charlotte or, you know, the big way.
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: You see where I'm going.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 4: We had the convention in Charlotte.
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: So I go to and that's why I think about
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: this issue of rural blacks. It is the problem. It's
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: sort of both the answer and the problem in South
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: Carolina and Mississippi, two states that should be more competitive.
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: if you just look at the demographic, but they're not.
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: So what'd you learn?
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 3: So this is, and I talked to, you know, uh,
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 3: when you talk to Roy Coopers, cause I came from
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 3: Georgia and then we went into North Carolina talking to
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 3: Roy Cooper's team, the, you know, just for my people,
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 3: the former governor who's running for Senate there. And they're,
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 3: you know, they're a little, sometimes people in North Carolina
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 3: are a little defensive. Democrats are about how they're not
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 3: Georgia and all the reasons why they're different from Georgia.
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 3: It's like, Well, we're not, we're never, you know, our suburbs,
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 3: the Atlanta suburbs are huge.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 4: There's no Atlanta.
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: There's no Atlanta.
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 3: And when we, and Charlotte and Raleigh aren't that, and
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 3: the suburbs aren't that. And they always go on to
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 3: say that the rural areas in North Carolina have just gotten,
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 3: they have gotten more conservative in the last 20 years
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 3: since basically it's been, basically it's been 20 years since
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 3: Barack Obama was elected. And that, and then I talked
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 3: to some of the state legislators that represent those, the
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 3: kind of county that you're talking about.
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 4: And they said, Our areas have gotten more.
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 3: Conservative, including Black voters, and there's no way to reach them.
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 3: Because they're just, you know, there is like, because they watch,
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 3: if they watch anything, it's been Fox News.
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: Because it shows that it's what's in every local diner, right? Like,
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: that's sort of the crowd noise, whatever, the background noise.
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 3: And it's just, it's just been like a major problem
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 3: in North Carolina, the ability to like break through and
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 3: reach and like, and reach these voters.
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 4: And if you're not, if.
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: You're not campaigning, they're... We should assume this is probably
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: a very similar experience in rural South Carolina too, right?
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right.
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 3: I think even more pronounced in rural South Carolina. It's
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 3: like it has fewer, it has less of the metropolitan
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 3: areas that they do in North Carolina. But what's interesting about.
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 3: What's interesting about North Carolina or about South Carolina is
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 3: how much it's changing.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 4: It's the fastest growing state in the entire country.
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 3: Now, a lot of the people that are moving there
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 3: are older and they can be more, you know, people
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 3: also say well somebody's coming into a state that means
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 3: it's becoming more blues about.
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 4: Not always not always.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: That isn't what's happening in the national suburb and national
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: suburbs that's not.
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 3: What happened in Oxford Mississippi yeah it's like so that's
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 3: not necessarily what's happening in South Carolina but it is
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 3: but people are moving there from out of state and
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 3: I do feel like it makes South Carolina a little
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 3: more of a of a jump ball The thing that
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 3: was interesting about Mississippi, well, first of all, Georgia. What's
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 3: fascinating about Georgia is, this is sort of obvious to say,
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 3: but it's not something I think people think about in
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 3: day-to-day politics. It's just that the decisions that were made
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 3: specifically impact in this politics today. So people like Mayor Hartsfield,
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 3: who was white mayor at the end of Jim Crow,
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 3: beginning of the civil rights era of Atlanta, and decided.
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 4: Atlanta's going to be the city too busy to hate.
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 4: We're too busy.
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 3: And it's like, racism is bad for business and they
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 3: wanted to have there's a lot of this big black
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 3: population they wanted to have a sustainable black middle class
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 3: that was part of the theory as to why art
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 3: still jackson maynard jackson the next mayor first black mayor
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 3: of atlanta is as big as it is to sustain
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 3: a middle class in atlanta and it worked and you
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 3: had the it's you know every civil rights leader you know,
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 3: is either from Atlanta or came through there, but like,
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 3: and not really. And I think Democrats there, you know,
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 3: I think it's why Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff are
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 3: so good is you got to think really deeply about
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 3: who you are, what you're for, and what your argument.
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 4: Is going to be.
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 3: If you're going to convince independents and Republicans in Georgia
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 3: to vote for you. And they like, both of them
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 3: have that civil rights history very much in their present mind,
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 3: you know, John Ossoff talks about how John Lewis, his
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 3: mentor would tell him, remind him the black Jewish alliance
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 3: during the civil rights era and how important that is
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 3: and how symbolic and important it is that there's now
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 3: John Ossoff, you know, a Jewish senator and a black
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 3: senator representing this state. And it's like, and then of
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 3: course you had probably 15 years ago. Now people like
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 3: Stacey Abrams make the move to, to organize Georgia outside
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 3: of the party structure, which is often, you know, either
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 3: you get like a rock star who wants to organize
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 3: a party within like Ben Wickler in Wisconsin, or you
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 3: get somebody who's like, I'm going to do something outside
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 3: of it. And it's like, that is just people deciding
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 3: that they're going to do things differently and it matters.
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 4: That's starting to happen in Mississippi.
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Um, there is, um, the Charles Taylor is the
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 3: head of the NAACP there. Um, he was in data,
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 3: he was in like normal data, you know, analytic politics
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 3: and stuff that you and I don't love as much
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 3: as the, just, you know, um, people who are you
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 3: know uh politicians that are just good at this and
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 3: get it um and he's been making the argument for
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 3: a long time like mississippi is totally winnable and like
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 3: here are the numbers and this is why and it's
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 3: not a pipe dream and if five percent more black
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 3: voters um turn out than normally do in the midterm
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 3: and we get five percent more uh white voters to
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 3: vote democratic you know scott columb becomes the next uh
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 3: democratic senator for the state of mississippi um and you
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 3: know they've done a lot of work there's a group
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 3: called the Mississippi Black Women's Roundtable super cool not quite
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 3: like Stacey Abrams like more they're more like ladder of
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 3: engagement they meet women who need help like child care
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 3: help with their utility bills and they let them know
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 3: hey you have a voice and you should like make
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 3: sure that the state legislature knows about and they collect
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 3: stories to go to state legislature to be like We
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 3: need paid leave.
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 4: We need child care. And they've had success.
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 3: But then they're also getting these women trained to campaign,
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 3: to be candidates themselves like that. And it's like it's interesting.
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 3: Somebody in Mississippi today, I said, who's making a difference?
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 3: And she pointed to this group and she said they're
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 3: challenging the status quo.
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 4: And I took that to mean something more than the Republicans.
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 4: I took that to.
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 3: Mean they're challenging kind of old school, the degree to
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 3: which there is Democratic fixtures in Mississippi. They're like challenging
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 3: that something new coming from it. So like I do
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 3: like I totally believe in like it's a cheap state,
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 3: a little bit of money for Scott Colombe.
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 4: And he's a good candidate, by the way. He's like engaging.
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: Well, he's got a good story. He's a county prosecutor.
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: And it's a good specific story as well with this senator, right?
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: You know, with the whole blue slip business, not to
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: get into arcane Senate business here. But the point is,
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: is that like it was a good recruit. And I
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: just find, you know, I want to tell Democratic leaders like,
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: you know, You just had the gutting of the Voting
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: Rights Act. That should be motivation enough to put Mississippi
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: in the center of your focus, not as a nice
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: to have if we find extra money in the couch cushions.
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 4: And I just, you know, this is like Maine is
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 4: looking not great.
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 3: And this is like what this is what Charles Taylor
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 3: from Mississippi said to me. It's like we're going to
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 3: drop what, like one hundred million dollars to lose a
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 3: Senate race in May.
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: Look at you, you're already, I think, I don't know.
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 2: I think the- I mean, he's like, I'm saying what
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 2: they are saying, right?
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: And he's like- Yeah, it's an interesting, it's an interesting- He's.
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 4: Like, it feels a little racist.
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: Like, why are you- Why not $ 50 million in Maine?
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: Still like, is the 100 million gonna be the difference, right?
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: That's probably the best way. It's like maybe 50 million
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: will still give you the same chances, about a 40
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: to 45% chance of winning. And you know, national environment
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: carries you. But you need more infrastructure. Like a dollar
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: goes much further in Mississippi at the moment than a
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: dollar would in Maine.
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 4: Or Alabama, you know, too. And I talked a lot.
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: I saw Doug Jones a couple of months ago when
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: I was in Alabama. I was interviewing him.
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 3: That's where Hillary Clinton worked for the Children's Defense Fund
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 3: in Alabama.
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's got the it's the world's largest, I think,
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: peanut exposition that you can have there in Alabama.
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: But they will analytic you to death about how winnable
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: their race is. And it does seem as if national
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: donors are like crickets with them.
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I feel what it also I think if that
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 4: was a Senate race, it would be different, too.
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 4: You know, that's like that's that's that is part of it.
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: That's another blind spot for the party sometimes is is
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: sometimes not.
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: Not realizing how important winning a governorship is sometimes more
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: important to a long term party building than a Senate seat.
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's just like, I mean, look at Roy Cooper,
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 3: the exposure of a Democratic. I mean, that guy, that
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 3: guy's literally been in office for 40 years. He's been
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 3: a statewide.
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: I know, which you just wrote that. That's the attack
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: ad on him. He's been in office for 40 years,
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: which is, you know, you're right. Which is why he's
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: going to win. It's why he's going to win. And
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: it's his biggest vulnerability. That's the irony.
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 3: He can't get, because people know who he is.
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 4: So you can't pigeonhole him as a certain kind of
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 4: Democrat because they know who, they know who.
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: You should see that, not to totally go off region here,
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: but I saw the most recent attack ads on Sherrod Brown.
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: They're no longer trying to say he's a liberal. They're
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: trying to say, well, the party is not what he
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: you know, they're sort of acknowledging he's not.
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 4: He's not like them.
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: We know he's not like them, but he'll go along
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: with them. Like that's the hit.
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 4: And you're like, oh, that's that's that's interesting. That's revealing.
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 4: That's revealing.
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: It told me that they know that that. He's been
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: around so long that he has his own identity. And
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: so they couldn't they couldn't fuse a new identity onto him,
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: which was.
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 4: So you either need. So like the right.
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 3: And this is why the state legislators are so important, too,
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 3: because it's like that's like a breeding ground for good politicians.
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 3: But in Mississippi, it is Brandon Presley who came very
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 3: close to winning the Democratic governor. to be elected Democratic
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 3: governor in 2023. And like the amazing thing about that
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 3: was it was a Joe Biden midterm, you know, like,
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 3: and he almost won. So, and there is, and he
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 3: put money back into some mayoral races for the 2025
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 3: race and was able to flip us, you know, and
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 3: it's with the theory that mayors are good.
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 4: Training ground too, right?
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 3: So it's like, so I think it, and it's not,
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 3: you know, it's not that hard to, So I don't
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 3: think people can't parachute in.
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 4: So, and like, and money is not just the answer.
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 3: It's like, you gotta have committed people on the ground
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 3: that want to build something. But I feel like that
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 3: is there in Mississippi and that is there in Alabama.
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 3: Alabama is super interesting because you have Huntsville, which is
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 3: another one of the fastest growing cities in the South.
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 3: It's kind of like a triangle, research triangle situation because
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 3: of NASA there in terms of the people that are
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 3: moving there from out of state.
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: This is like highly educated- It was the last place
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: a white Democrat, I think, represented Alabama. The last time they.
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 4: Had a white Democrat. Who was that?
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 3: Kramer.
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: I think it was Kramer, right?
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 4: Bud Kramer, right? Bud Kramer, I believe, yeah.
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 3: And then Birmingham, which is also sort of booming, too,
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 3: and trying to organize as another Atlanta. So, like, you
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 3: could see. But, like, man, it feels like the Republicans
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 3: are running out of room there. There's just, like, it's just.
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 4: I didn't meet.
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 3: I did not lay eyes. on one interesting new Republican candidate.
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 3: I sat through like a three-hour Republican Senate candidate forum
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 3: in Charleston when the Lindsey Graham seat was.
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 4: And I was like, okay, this is interesting.
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: Sure, let's see what they got, yeah.
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 4: Let's see what they got. And it was like just... Yeah.
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 4: Norman Frye. Right. Norman Frye. Was that he lost?
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: No, Ralph Norman. And the other guy was Russell Frye. Yeah.
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 4: Russell Frye.
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Right.
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 4: Russell Frye was the only one that had a little energy. And,
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 4: you know, he lost.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 3: Uh anyway yeah he was the youngest yeah yeah all
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 3: right so we.
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: Talked we talked about um rural blacks and you talked
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: about that yeah the other arguably fastest growing demographic group
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: in the in the Sun Belt so I'm expanding it
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: a little larger but it's very true in the south
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: is Latinos Right. And it's and it is.
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 4: North Carolina, Texas, Georgia.
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: I believe just about every southern state. It's over 10
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: percent of the population.
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 3: And that is and that does feel, you know, Texas
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 3: is the most obviously like the biggest and the most pronounced.
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 3: And the like Texas feels like. We're like ready to explode.
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 3: Like people are not like turn blue, but just people
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 3: have blue.
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: I keep telling people Texas wants it's going to be purple.
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: And that's the whatever happens. Yeah, this has become purple,
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: which is a big deal. It means which is a
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: huge deal. It will be contested. Period.
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 4: And it is.
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 3: And, you know, we talked to a couple of Hispanic
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 3: men that voted, both voted for Trump that own a
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 3: construction company. And they are both supporting Tallarico and, you know,
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 3: for governor. And, you know, they like thought the border
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 3: is out of control under Biden. They're really worried about that.
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 3: Like that was part of the reason why they voted
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 3: for Trump. Also, the economy is. And it is just
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 3: it's like that is a state where people are are
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 3: feeling real effects in their own lives from like bad
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 3: policies from Abbott with education, which is like insane.
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 4: It's insane.
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 3: It's like there's like four day a week schools and like.
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 3: are going to school four days a week because there's
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 3: not enough money.
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: It's unbelievable what they've done. And I do think Babbitt loses.
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: It's schools is why he loses.
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 4: It is definitely.
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 3: I mean, and I was like, you know, when I
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 3: first got there, people were telling me and I'm like, yeah, yeah, schools.
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 3: People all say education is going to be a big issue.
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 3: And then I met with some of these women and
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 3: they are.
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: This feels Brownback-esque, doesn't it? Like in Kansas, like what happened?
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 3: And also what happened in it's interesting because it's sort
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 3: of a clap back to the Loudoun County CRT moms.
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 3: Because like one thing when I met with these women
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 3: in Texas, one was like a never Trump Republican. The
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 3: other two had been like Republicans. You know, they were
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 3: Christian evangelicals. One of the women said she voted. She
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 3: said during COVID, her son was an infant. And she's like,
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 3: I heard they were teaching CRT. I heard that there
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 3: are boys playing girls sports. There are boys and girls bathroom.
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 3: And then my son got to school and none of
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 3: that is true. She's like, we got to teach all history,
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 3: the good stuff and the bad stuff. Like you need
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 3: to know everything. I am a Christian evangelical. I do
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 3: not want my son taught the Ten Commandments in school.
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 4: That is not why he is here. This other woman
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 4: was like.
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 3: My child was doing dual language and was going to
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 3: graduate fluent in Spanish.
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 4: And now he's not. And these are very conservative. And
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 4: this one woman said, she's like, I feel like I
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 4: was duped.
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 3: Into voting for these MAGA school board people and she's
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 3: like now it's on me to like make sure everybody
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 3: knows and I said okay so you're not going to
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 3: vote for Abbott but you're not going to vote for
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 3: I think oh yes we are we are voting for
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 3: Gina Anahosa and we are voting for James Tallarico we
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 3: gave money to James Tallarico they and they're also and
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 3: I was like what about Jimmy Six Genders and Loti
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 3: right yeah.
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 4: And they're just... The.
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: Culture war stuff doesn't hit very well when your kid.
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 3: The culture war stuff doesn't hit well when your kid
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 3: is going to school four days a week and they
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 3: shut down her son's school. Or your kid's not getting
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 3: the education that you think they need. Or you can't
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 3: run your construction company because people who are United States legally,
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 3: who are citizens, are scared to show up to work
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 3: because they're brown or they have a ladder on their truck.
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 4: So it is... Texas is just.
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 3: And also I think Texans are just kind of different, right?
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 3: It's like, don't lie to me. Do not bullshit me.
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 3: Don't push me around. Like, I am not going to
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 3: be pushed around here. And it's like, and then I
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 3: think Tallarico and Hinojosa are both like, you know, good,
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 3: like they're Texans, you know, Gina, I don't know if
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 3: Gina knows this. Gina comes from like a multi-generational family
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 3: in Texas. Her dad was chair of the Texas Democrats
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 3: for a long time. You know, her sister is a colleague,
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 3: a long time colleague of mine.
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 4: And like, she's a, she's a she's.
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 2: She's like oh she knows that this is a moderate
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 2: state the.
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: Most interesting comment about her campaign i got from a
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: old friend of mine uh down there san antonio sort
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: of democrat you probably know him i'm gonna keep him
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: out keep his name out of it i'm gonna uh
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: And he said this is the first time he's worked
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: really hard to try to get Latino Democrats elected. He
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: said this is the first time where I feel like
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: a Latino candidate for office is being taken seriously by
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: everybody and not just the Latino community.
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: And it's just something has. And he's like, look, I
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: don't know if she wins or not, but. boy, this
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: hasn't felt this way since Ann Richards. And he was
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: a big part of the Ann Richards world.
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's... Dating him a little bit. Yeah, I think
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 4: I know who it is now.
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 3: Right, it's also interesting because like Texas women have a
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 3: history of winning there, you know, Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Ann Richards.
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 3: So, but Hispanic, so, but, you know, but they're culturally conservative.
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 4: You know, the most, like these Hispanic voters, but they are.
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 3: And it's like and I think a lot of them in,
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 3: you know, you saw like in 20 and 24, like
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 3: felt like they did not have a place in the
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 3: Democratic Party. So it's not it's an opportunity. And in
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 3: these races were happening in 26. It feels like Democrats
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 3: are meeting the opportunity. But that's a long term play.
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: Well, and that's it. And look, I think that's a
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: long term question about whether, you know, just like Donald
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: Trump's going to find out, you know, Latino voters were
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: never a part of his coalition. He was renting them.
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: And Democrats are going to be renting them, too. Like,
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: don't pretend that if Latinos come back and vote numbers
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: that look Obama level, that doesn't mean they're permanent members
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: of this coalition. It just means, you know, they didn't
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: they they're uncomfortable with that other one. All right. Let
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: me get to the third big constituency group that. And
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: I and we keep we've actually talked about it quite
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: a bit. And that is believers. Right. The South is
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: more religious. It is the part of the South that
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: I feel like an outsider in. OK, even though I'm
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: you know, I I'm a child of the South. But
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: as I joke, the farther south you drive in Florida,
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: the farther north you go.
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: To visit. You have to drive north to visit the
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: south when you live in Miami.
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: But this is the part that can feel culturally. And
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: I remember, look, I at least was familiar enough. I
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: tell the story quite a bit. My first couple of
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: years at NBC, they wanted to do a poll of
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 1: South Carolina primary voters. And I said, you know what?
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: You can't poll on Wednesday nights. And it's just a
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: bad night to poll in the south. And I'm with national.
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 1: reporters and news executives. And they were like, why is that?
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 4: Is there a football game?
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: Right. They didn't know. I said, well, Wednesday's church night.
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: And they were like, well, what's that? And I said, well,
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: for many small towns, it's just a night to gather. Yeah,
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: it's Bible study. Sometimes it's just a potluck dinner. Sometimes
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: it's just going to hang out, just like you might
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: hang out at your country club, just like you might
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: hang out at your golf club, like at the polo
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: lounge or whatever the hell, right? Like it just happens
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: to be a gathering night on Wednesday night and they're
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: not home. And, you know, back then you needed to
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: make sure people were home when you were polling them. Now,
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: of course. There's all sorts of other methods that we're
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: we're we're experimenting with. And whether there are any of
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: them work anymore, I don't know. But I'm I'm going
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: to guess that religion is still the biggest impediment for
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: the Democrats.
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 4: I think it is.
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 3: I think I mean, I just I think like it
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 3: is it can be a blind. It is not a
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 3: blind spot. And it's something because we had Mitch Landrieu
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 3: with us, you know, who's like a big Catholic as
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 3: part of this.
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: It's okay to hang out in new orleans sometimes the
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: catholics aren't allowed anywhere outside of new orleans though i.
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 3: Mean i had an insane experience as a brownie in
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 3: pascagoula mississippi you know like with like some you know
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 3: we went to church as like part of our brownie
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 3: troop and they were talking about like the sins of
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 3: like that the priest for all alcoholics and the nuns
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 3: for all lesbians.
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 4: I'm like, what's a lesbian? What's happening?
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: I'm just a brownie. I don't know.
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 3: I'm selling cookies. The Gulf Coast actually has a lot
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 3: of Catholics.
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: Drive 30 miles outside the Gulf.
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 4: Coast and tell me how many Catholic churches you find.
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 3: Even Mississippi, the Gulf Coast, Mississippi, that strip, it's where
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 3: fishermen settled.
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: Pensacola too, but the further inland you go, and.
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 3: It is like and it's funny because i would talk
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 3: to because i felt like it was a really important
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 3: thing to address in this series is that is how
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 3: i mean faith family football it is not a college
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 3: game day slogan it is life in the south and
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 3: it is something that.
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 4: I have a lot of, I mean, you know this,
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 4: I'm fascinated by football.
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 3: I also did a documentary about the Buffalo Bills Stadium
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 3: because I'm so fascinated by, yeah, it's about laborers that
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 3: built the Buffalo Bills Stadium.
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 4: On the end nfl network and uh it's.
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 3: Incredible because it's like these are the things that bond people.
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 4: Together and give their life meaning okay you want to.
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 3: Mock that you want to think that doesn't matter you
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 3: want to think that that's not something you need to
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 3: understand and address and when i would talk to um
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 3: democratic politicians in the south about it like ossoff or
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 3: scott clumb or Roy Cooper, some of the, they were
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 3: just kind of like, what do you mean we need
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 3: to talk about that? Like, they're just, they're just it.
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: It's like talking about that there's humidity in the South.
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: What do you mean?
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 4: What are we discussing? They're like, yes, of course I
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 4: talk about my faith. You know, it is, you know,
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 4: it's just like, it's a core part of who I am.
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 3: And it is to not, so I think the most,
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 3: you know, the most successful politicians, that's part of their identity.
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 3: And it is, you know, and I, I think it's,
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 3: you know, this is, these are things that bring like
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 3: a lot of meaning and, uh, and, and, and, and
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 3: to not, and the fact, and there's a lot of
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 3: assumptions made about Democrats that they are not people of faith, um,
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 3: and that, you know, unfairly. So, but then also that
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 3: they don't respect faith and the importance that it plays. Right.
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 4: So that is, um, How does one fix that?
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, if you're not a believer, you know, but
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: we go back and forth. Hillary Clinton is arguably the
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: most religious nominee the Democrats have had in my lifetime.
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: And what I mean by that is everything I understand
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: about her faith, I think she was deeply knowledgeable, deeply committed.
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: You know, more so, you know, more regimented about it
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: than Obama, than Biden's pretty serious about his Catholicism, so
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: I should really.
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Jimmy Carter.
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right. But it was... And yet, that never broke through.
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: Nobody in the South accepted the premise that she was
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: a woman of faith. Why do you think that was?
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 4: I mean, I wrote a couple books about why that was.
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: So.
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 5: So what did you learn? I, cause you have, look,
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 5: what I learned, what I learned from like, she, she would,
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 5: I mean, she would speak very openly about it and
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 5: she would be mocked, but she would speak openly about
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 5: a lot of things and be mocked.
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 3: And I think that was just a lot of like
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 3: the first woman to Hillary Clinton, her whole adult life
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 3: from when she was, an undergraduate at wellesley and she
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 3: was on the cover of life magazine for her commencement
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 3: address right she was always pushing the boundaries of like
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 3: what we thought was acceptable for women in the roles
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 3: that women should be in so she was just always
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 3: someone who was going to um get a lot of
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 3: friction when you know when she said but she would
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 3: speak you know like You know, we're having a tough
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 3: day and she would just be like, today's the day
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 3: the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad.
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 3: And she met it, you know, like she. So and
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 3: it I think that there are, you know, obviously like
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 3: Senator Warnock speaks about his faith a lot.
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 4: Senator Ross speaks about his faith a lot.
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: Kamala Harris did not, by the way.
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 4: And she's also, she's a Californian, but like she doesn't
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 4: work for her husband. Yeah, they don't. Yeah, right.
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 3: It's like if people, I think some Democrats think that
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 3: it makes people, if you're not religious, it makes you uncomfortable.
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 4: But it's just, it has not to become, I think.
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 3: You know the country is hurting it's like people are
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 3: looking for purpose they're looking for community they're looking for
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 3: identity a way to like bond together and the things
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 3: that inspire you know so there needs to be a
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 3: lot of respect for people's faith and how important that
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 3: is I mean it's just in the south it's just
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 3: it's it's it's it is the you know it's the
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 3: first thing out of people's mouths faith family football you
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 3: know it's um family may come first but and then
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 3: you got to You have to find a way to
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 3: connect with that, either because it's something that you respect
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 3: or it's something that you share. But I think if
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 3: people don't understand that this that if you're selling yourself
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 3: as a leader.
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 4: That there's something deeper in you than your political beliefs
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 4: that drive who you are as a person, you are
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 4: not going to win the presidency.
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 3: Like that doesn't mean you have to be religious, but
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 3: it means there's got to be something more there. Like
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 3: people are going to really need that in 28.
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: You have just explained why I've never thought about running
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: for office is because I I value the Constitution more
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: than any religious text. And I know that that's a
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: political thing. that that would actually be a political negative.
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 3: But that drives you, but like, and you believe, but
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 3: you believe in something in your core, you know, you're
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 3: not just trying to accomplish something.
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: True, and I agree that belief, but having deep belief can,
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: whatever it is, I mean, but I could see easily
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: somebody turning, turning what I just said, he's godless.
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: You immediately, and that's one of those, if you're hit
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: with godless, it's tough to unring that bell.
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is.
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 3: And it's just like, it's a huge, you know, it's
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 3: a huge part of, It's a huge part of it.
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 3: Like life is not easy in America today. Life is
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 3: not easy in the South. Like if you're, if you
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 3: live in the South, you're more likely to have, you know,
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 3: to be from an economically distressed region. And I think they,
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 3: you know, so if you're, if you're in that situation,
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 3: you might like pull a little deeper on what's important
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 3: to you and then be skeptical of people who come from,
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 3: who come from more affluent and more affluent situation and
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 3: don't have that belief.
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 4: And like, what do you think of me? And like,
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 4: why should I trust you? You know, it's a big deal.
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: Let me do the annoying sort of standard questions that
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: you might get. But like, what was something that you
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: now understand that you didn't before you began this project?
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 2: Um....
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 3: That well i there's just like things so like the
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 3: things that stand out is like how hard the communication
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 3: problem is like how is that.
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: A local thing is it local news it's.
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 3: Local news it's like local news is missing it's like
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 3: democrats pushing back effectively there's no democrats to push back
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 3: effectively so you're not hearing from them just like the
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 3: the echo chamber and the like the hollowness of like,
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 3: just not hearing from Democrats. Like North Carolina is where
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 3: that really hit home. There's some, there's a total rock star, um,
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 3: in North Carolina, this woman, Sydney Batch. She's the Democratic
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 3: leader in the Senate.
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 4: Um, just like you would love her. Like she swears
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 4: too much.
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 3: She definitely swears too much for North Carolina, but she's,
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 3: you know, she's daughter Chapel Hill. Like she was, you know,
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 3: she's a true North Carolinian. Um, Really savvy, really smart. Like,
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 3: I think they are going to turn the North Carolina
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 3: state legislature around. Like, there are, like, stars there that
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 3: are working hard to do that. But, like, in the
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 3: rural areas, as they say, it's like they're big problems. Like,
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 3: that is a huge problem. I did not believe in
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 3: Tallarico until I went to Texas.
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 4: I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Give me a break.
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 4: You know?
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: I started the late spring, early summer as a skeptic. And,
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: you know, I've done... whether it's traveling to Dallas, now
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: that I have a kid in college there in the state,
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: so I'm in the state more often. Certainly, spending more
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: time in Bush Republican territories, not Trump Republican territories, but
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 1: the old Bush-Cornyn neighborhoods. But when you just look at
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: the data, you realize Texas feels like Florida 2000, right?
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: Texas 2026 feels like Florida 2000. You're like, hey, we've
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 1: all known it's been coming, it's been coming, it's been coming,
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: And you know what you end up forgetting, Jen, about
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: Texas is you should look at the statewide results in
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: 2018 and the full statewide results in 2022. And you
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 1: realize the Democratic floor has slowly been increasing.
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: And the Democratic winning numbers have been going like this.
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: So there was always a point, you know, it's like bankruptcy, right? First,
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: it's slow. Then it's, you know, here we are. It's been,
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: you know, Beto didn't get to 48 by himself. The
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: entire ticket got to 45, right? And that's what you realize.
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden you throw in a
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 1: scandal penalty. that does happen to candidates like Paxton across
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: the board.
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that is a real thing. I was like, that
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 4: is a real thing.
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: It's worth four or five points. I mean, I've put
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 1: a data to it. I can show you examples with
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 1: Herschel Walker to Brian Kemp. I can show you Jay
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: Jones and Abigail Spanberger. I could show you Bob Menendez.
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: It is across the board. There is always a handful
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: of voters that do switch, that penalize that do penalize it.
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: And sometimes it's enough to flip a race. Sometimes you
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: don't notice it like in Virginia, because it was such
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 1: a blowout at the top of the ticket, but that's,
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 1: it didn't mean that there wasn't that four to five
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: point penalty. And then the, as competitive as Texas is
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: four to five point penalties, it's toast.
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 1: You're, you're, you're, you're done.
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 4: You're yeah. Like that.
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 3: Uh, and, and, you know, I had heard that Texan
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 3: Republican Texans might not vote for Paxton. They might just
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 3: stay home or vote for Abbott, not vote for him.
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 4: But then I found people that are like, no, we're voting.
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 4: We're voting for we're voting for Tallarico.
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 3: So it's like it's like it is the like I
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 3: don't want to undersell how big the Democrats like brand
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 3: problem is. You know, the best Taylor Remmitt, who's a
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 3: very good state senator in Fort Worth. He won that.
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 3: He won a race that had been he run a
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 3: Senate seat.
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: Tarrant County is where you really see it there, which
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 1: is Fort Worth. I mean, I just had Abby Winston
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 1: on the show.
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 4: Oh, you know, she told me about it.
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah. She talked about the Fort Worth education problem.
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: And it was more about, frankly, because, you know, I
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 1: don't know enough about Texas because I've never had to
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 1: deal with it as a swing state. And you really
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 1: just wanted to understand. I felt like it was really important,
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 1: you know, whether it's me learning or listeners learning. And
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 1: you do see that this is percolating. But I am.
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 1: Let me ask you this.
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 4: But he like Taylor Redmond is like, I am not
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 4: part of the national party.
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 3: I do not talk to them. And I do not
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 3: talk to the local democratic party. Like that is what
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 3: he says. So that's like, so it's like there, it's like,
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 3: it's kind of a blank. Like if these, the savvy
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 3: Democrats are treating the democratic brand, like it's a blank
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 3: slate and they are going to, and they're going to like,
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 3: you know, they're going to define what it is.
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 1: What I think is interesting with Tallarico is that Tallarico
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 1: is basically a Anything in his past that has popped up,
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: something he has said, he is not, he's like, eh, no,
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 1: I didn't, you know, that's an old thing.
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 4: And like, it's, he's- He's not ignoring them. He's not
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 4: ignoring them.
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 1: And he's accepting the criticism. Yeah, you're right. That went
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 1: too far. A lot of times Democrats are told, no,
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 1: stick to your guns. Don't abandon your principles, right? And
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 1: a lot of communications professionals would say that. Yet I
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 1: feel like Tallarico is strengthening because he's been willing to say, yeah,
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 1: what I– that was– look here, I could tell you
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 1: what I meant, but you know what? I get it. I, I,
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: I didn't use the right words, you know?
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 4: And it's like, I don't think it's like his, his
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 4: experience is instructive. We'll see if he wins.
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 3: I mean, he's obviously doing better than he would, than
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 3: I expected him to do given some of the past statements. Right.
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 4: You know? So it's like, I mean, God is not binary.
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 4: I thought I was like, all right, that's all I
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 4: need to hear.
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: Texas is not doing that. That's just not going to happen.
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 3: I don't know that everyone could explain these things away
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 3: as effective as he can, because there's other ways for
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 3: you to connect to that man's core and understand who
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 3: he really is.
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 3: And his faith is a big, I think, I mean, I,
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 3: you know, it's like, You take bits and pieces from everything, right?
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 3: So it's working for him. He's obviously doing better because
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 3: he's taking these things on. I do think that if
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 3: people are talking about it, you've got to address it.
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 3: You have to give at least your supporters something to understand.
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 1: Let them explain it, right? Give them ammunition.
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 4: Give them ammunition.
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 3: In this day and age in particular, you need to
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 3: do that.
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 4: And it depends on what it... And I just think.
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 3: It depends on what it is, but also I think
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 3: there's something about, you know, like there's someone I talked to,
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 3: they're like, I would not want Ken Paxton as a neighbor.
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 3: I would be very happy to have James Tallarico, like
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 3: growing up, you have my kids growing up next door
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 3: to him. So like, there's something that, you know, they're like, they're, they're,
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 3: they're pulling a lot from that guy's background.
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 1: So how did you not put on 100 pounds traveling
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 1: in the South? Because the food is so gas station.
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 1: My favorite thing that that and this is something I
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 1: learned from a from a Georgian. He said, don't turn
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 1: your nose up at gas station fried chicken. He said
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 1: a lot of times gas station fried chicken is the
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 1: best fried chicken you're going to find in a county.
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 3: The terrible thing in Oxford, you know, Oxford, Mississippi has
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 3: such great restaurants, including the grocery. You know, that's like
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 3: the big thing. And I actually interviewed Wright Thompson there
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 3: and we ate nothing. It was like an abomination on
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 3: top of an abomination. Here's like the biggest, like one
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 3: of the biggest food guys in the South. But there
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 3: is a gas station in Oxford that has incredible fried chicken,
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 3: incredible biscuits, and incredible French fries.
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 4: Which is what I lived on, though, that we were
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 4: in Mississippi. We did do.
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we did do a lot of, a lot of good.
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 3: I mean, it was like, I was desperate for a
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 3: vegetable though. And I'm not like a big vegetable person,
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 3: but at the end you're like.
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 1: You can always find vegetables. It's just going to be
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 1: in a deep fryer, my friend.
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 4: They're just going to be, yeah, stewed with a lot
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 4: of pork. And yeah, yeah. Cheesy grits.
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 3: Come on.
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 4: So good.
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 3: So many good biscuits. Aaron and I had the best.
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 3: This place called the 5 and 10 in Athens, Georgia.
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 4: Oh my God. It's like each jam. Oh my God.
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 4: So good.
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 1: See, now we're leaving everybody. See, what you got to
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 1: do next is sort of your.
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 4: Late summer.
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 1: A foodie's road trip guide to the South.
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 4: A foodie's road trip guide. That's what we'll add on.
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 4: We're going to go back out for October. So we'll
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 4: add that in. Yeah. And bonus content. Because you just
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 4: got to keep making content, Chuck.
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 1: Yes, you do. You churn it out.
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 1: Let's quickly do two minutes on presidential politics as you're
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 1: watching 2028. Who's had a good 2026 in your opinion? Yeah.
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: Oh boy. Oh gosh.
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 4: Um, I have another thing.
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 3: Um, I think John also has had a great 26.
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 1: Um, we should take that.
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 4: I don't know. I don't know. I think we'd, I
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 4: would definitely take it seriously. You have to take him seriously.
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 3: Um, um, I think he's had a good 26, um.
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 4: I don't know who else really.
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think that I'm not convinced about the
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 3: people who are just out campaigning for other people. And like,
• 1:54:12
  Speaker 3: you know, having your own race to run gives you
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 3: an advantage.
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 4: It really does. Because you can talk about.
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 3: Yourself in a way that you're not being like, look
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 3: at me, I'm running for president. And the others are
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 3: just having to talk about other things. It's not a
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 3: great setup.
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess ASAP though, I think if you'd asked
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 1: me who was going to have the benefit the most
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 1: from that aspect of things, We would have probably both
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 1: said Shapiro and Westmore.
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 1: You know, because they actually could be running for reelection
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 1: while they're doing it. Asaf is it's in that sense,
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 1: that's been impressive.
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 4: He makes, he makes a full argument.
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 3: He's got a full, I mean, I don't necessarily know
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 3: that it's the winning argument for 28, but he's got
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 3: a full argument that he makes about corruption. You know,
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 3: his grounds in history, grounds in the history of Georgia,
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 3: you know, how it's holding us back, what he could
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 3: do about it, what it would mean to, you know, it's,
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 3: you know, it's well thought out.
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 1: Hey, very quickly, if just Cooper and Ossoff end up
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 1: winning in 26, but not Tallarico.
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 1: What is that? What, what, what does that mean for
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 1: the party?
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 3: It means you're making progress, but you know, that was
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 3: a tough race. That was always going to be a
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 3: tough race. There was a lot, there's headwinds that he had. Um, and, um,
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 3: you know, I just think that, but it, but it
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 3: like stuff is changing in the South. And it's just like,
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 3: I just feel like it's really important to keep the
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 3: engagement up. Cause it's been, it's just been like, it's
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 3: just been an open field for them.
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 1: So I come from a world where I believe every
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 1: state has a 50% fulcrum. It's your job as a
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 1: political party to figure it out.
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah. All right. So good to see you.
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 1: All right, let's go to the time machine. And today
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 1: I want to start with what I think is one
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 1: of the biggest weaknesses of the modern Supreme Court. We
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 1: have a diversity problem on the court. And I'm talking
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 1: about a different kind of diversity than the one we
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 1: usually talk about. I'm talking about the diversity of experience.
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 1: We have nine justices with extraordinary legal resumes. but not
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 1: one of them has ever held elective office. Not one
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 1: has ever had to ask voters for their support, run
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 1: a campaign, serve in a legislature, or govern a state.
• 1:56:40
  Speaker 1: And I think it's a huge problem. Somehow, in my lifetime,
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 1: both parties have gotten to the point where actually practicing
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 1: democracy has become a liability if you want to sit
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 1: on the Supreme Court or on the federal bench in general.
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 1: If you've run for office, well, you've had to take positions.
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 1: You've cast votes. You've made some compromises. You've probably said
• 1:57:02
  Speaker 1: something at some point that will make a confirmation hearing
• 1:57:04
  Speaker 1: a tad uncomfortable. So instead, we keep looking in the
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 1: same places and producing versions of the same resume regardless
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 1: of ideology. Elite law school, check. Clerkships, check. Executive branch experience, check.
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 1: Federal appellate court, then Supreme Court. And somehow this is
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 1: supposed to make the court less political? Maybe. Makes it
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 1: very ideological, though. But guess what, folks? The Supreme Court
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 1: is political. Of course it is. It's one of the
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 1: three branches of our political system. Politics is not good
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 1: or bad. It's people and how they practice. Do you
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 1: practice bad politics or good politics? But politics itself is
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 1: like a technology. It's neither good or bad. It depends
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 1: on the user of it. A president chooses its members
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 1: when we talk about the Supreme Court. Senators decide whether
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 1: they get there. And then these nine people make decisions
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 1: about what presidents can do and Congress can do and
• 1:58:06
  Speaker 1: what states can do and sometimes what voters themselves are
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 1: allowed to do. You can't take politics out of any
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 1: of that. The question is whether the court exercises that
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 1: power fairly, whether it stays grounded in the Constitution, and
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 1: whether it understands the country, its decisions are governing and impacting,
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 1: and whether it has enough legitimacy that people will accept
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 1: those decisions even when they hate them. But what's funny
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 1: here is there was a time when we actually thought
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 1: having political experience might help somebody be a better member
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 1: of the Supreme Court. Chief justices had been governors and
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 1: senators and members of Congress. One of them had been
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 1: a president in the United States. The last elected politician
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 1: to lead the Supreme Court left more than a half
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 1: a century ago. His name is Earl Warren. And whether
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 1: you admire the Warren Court or despise it, nobody can
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 1: accuse Earl Warren of failing to lead it. So that's
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 1: where we go to this time machine. October 5th, 1953,
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 1: it's the day Earl Warren took the oath to become
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 1: Chief Justice of the United States. And he gets there
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 1: because one of those accidents of history that ends up
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 1: changing the country. Dwight Eisenhower had been president for less
• 1:59:20
  Speaker 1: than eight months when Chief Justice Fred Vinson suddenly died
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 1: of a heart attack at the age of 63. The
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 1: timing's extraordinary because sitting before the Supreme Court at that
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 1: moment is Brown versus Board of Education. The court has
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 1: already heard arguments challenging racial segregation in public schools. The
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 1: justices are divided over what to do, and they've ordered
• 1:59:43
  Speaker 1: the case argued again, and then Vinson dies. Eisenhower needs
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 1: a new chief justice, and he chooses a politician. Earl
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 1: Warren's the governor of California. Now, Warren and Eisenhower have
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 1: some history. Warren had spent 14 years as a district
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 1: attorney in Alameda County, then became California Attorney General, then governor.
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 1: And he was one of the most successful politicians in America.
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 1: He won three terms as governor in 1946 under California's
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 1: rather bizarre cross-filing system. He actually won the Republican, Democratic,
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 1: and Progressive nominations. Thomas Dewey put him on the Republican
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 1: presidential ticket as his running mate in 1948. And in 1952,
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 1: Warren himself was a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination,
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 1: which put him directly in the path of Dwight Eisenhower.
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 1: In fact, there's a whole political story from the 1952
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 1: convention that matters here. Warren controlled California's very large delegation,
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 1: and California became important in Eisenhower's convention fight against Robert
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 1: Taft over disputed delegates and the so-called Fair Play Amendment.
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 1: Warren's delegation helped Eisenhower. And by most accounts, Warren came
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 1: away believing Eisenhower had promised him the first available Supreme
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 1: Court vacancy. Quid pro quo. Initially, the expectation apparently was
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 1: that Warren might become solicitor general and wait for an
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 1: open seat. Well, then Fred Vinson dies. Now the vacancy
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 1: isn't simply an associate justice seat. It's the chief justice.
• 2:01:18
  Speaker 1: Now there was some argument inside Eisenhower's circle about whether
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 1: the promise to Warren really extended that far. Warren thought
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 1: it did. And Warren held Eisenhower to it. Now, there's
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 1: also another character floating around this story. And he'll come
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 1: to matter later. It's Richard Nixon. Warren and Nixon were
• 2:01:38
  Speaker 1: both California Republicans, but they were hardly friends. And this
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 1: won't surprise you. Warren believed Nixon had worked against him
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 1: inside the California delegation in 52. I'm sure Nixon did.
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 1: Remember that because we're going to come back to Nixon.
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 1: On October 5th, Eisenhower gives Warren a recess appointment and
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 1: Warren takes the oath as Chief Justice. And three days later,
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 1: Eisenhower writes in his diary about the kind of people
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 1: he wants on the Supreme Court. He thinks legal ability matters, obviously,
• 2:02:09
  Speaker 1: but Ike also talks about wanting someone with a national
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 1: reputation for integrity and statesmanship. Now, statesmanship, keep that word
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 1: in mind, because Eisenhower was about to get plenty of
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 1: it from Earl Warren. perhaps more than he bargained for.
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 1: The first enormous issue sitting on Warren's desk was Brown.
• 2:02:31
  Speaker 1: So for nearly 60 years, Plessy versus Ferguson and separate
• 2:02:34
  Speaker 1: but equal had provided the constitutional framework for segregation. Thurgood
• 2:02:38
  Speaker 1: Marshall and the NAACP had spent years methodically attacking that
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 1: doctrine through the courts. And by the time Brown arrives
• 2:02:44
  Speaker 1: at the Supreme Court, segregated education is a huge target.
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 1: The court Warren inherits isn't unified. And this is where
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 1: I think Warren's political background mattered here. He doesn't simply
• 2:02:58
  Speaker 1: sit down and figure out whether he has five votes.
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 1: He understands that if the Supreme Court is about to
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 1: tell a large part of the United States that the
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 1: racial structure of its public school system is unconstitutional, five
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 1: to four is going to land very differently than nine
• 2:03:15
  Speaker 1: to zero. So Warren works his colleagues. He talks to
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 1: them individually. He gives them time. He searches for language
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 1: everybody can live with. Stanley Reed of Kentucky is the
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 1: last real holdout. Justice Robert Jackson has suffered a heart
• 2:03:30
  Speaker 1: attack and is in the hospital as the decision approaches.
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 1: Jackson is so determined that the court appear united that
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 1: he leaves the hospital to be there when Brown is announced.
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 1: Warren wants all nine men sitting there and he gets
• 2:03:46
  Speaker 1: all nine votes. On May 17th, 1954, Warren begins reading
• 2:03:48
  Speaker 1: the opinions. And here's a detail that mattered here a lot.
• 2:03:55
  Speaker 1: The word unanimously is never actually in the written opinion
• 2:03:59
  Speaker 1: at that point. Warren adds it when he reads the
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 1: decision from the bench. We conclude unanimously. He wants everybody
• 2:04:09
  Speaker 1: in the courtroom and everybody who is going to hear
• 2:04:11
  Speaker 1: about the decision afterward to know immediately, nine to nothing, unanimously.
• 2:04:18
  Speaker 1: It's a politician's instinct. Warren understands that the constitutional ruling matters,
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 1: but he also understands how the ruling is going to
• 2:04:25
  Speaker 1: be heard. There was going to be a massive resistance
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 1: to Brown no matter what was ruled, but there wasn't
• 2:04:32
  Speaker 1: going to be a dissenting Supreme Court justice whom segregationists
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 1: could point to and say, see, even if the court
• 2:04:40
  Speaker 1: itself thinks this is constitutionally questionable. Five votes could decide Brown.
• 2:04:46
  Speaker 1: Warren understood the value of getting all nine. Now, unanimity
• 2:04:50
  Speaker 1: did come at a cost. The court settled the constitutional
• 2:04:54
  Speaker 1: question in Brown in 1954, but delayed deciding exactly how
• 2:04:58
  Speaker 1: desegregation would be implemented. A year later, in what was
• 2:05:02
  Speaker 1: deemed Brown II, the court ordered desegregation to proceed with
• 2:05:06
  Speaker 1: what became the famous phrase, all deliberate speed. And all
• 2:05:12
  Speaker 1: deliberate speed turned out to contain a lot more deliberate
• 2:05:16
  Speaker 1: than speed. Southern governments use the ambiguity to stall desegregation
• 2:05:22
  Speaker 1: for years. So the Warren instinct for consensus wasn't cost-free,
• 2:05:29
  Speaker 1: but I think that's part of what makes this story
• 2:05:32
  Speaker 1: rather useful than simply heroic. Political leadership always involves trade-offs.
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 1: Warren wanted an institution united behind the constitutional principle. The
• 2:05:42
  Speaker 1: compromise came over implementation. By the way, that always is
• 2:05:47
  Speaker 1: the case. We can agree on a principle. How we
• 2:05:50
  Speaker 1: implement it is always where it gets messy and complicated.
• 2:05:54
  Speaker 1: History is entitled to ask whether that compromise gave segregationist
• 2:05:58
  Speaker 1: too much room to exist and resist. Maybe. So Warren
• 2:06:03
  Speaker 1: isn't infallible, but it is important for our own history
• 2:06:05
  Speaker 1: now that we know this was unanimous. We know that
• 2:06:10
  Speaker 1: Warren had his own failings, though, from his own career.
• 2:06:13
  Speaker 1: He was California Attorney General during World War II. Warren
• 2:06:16
  Speaker 1: strongly supported the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans.
• 2:06:21
  Speaker 1: He said he later deeply regretted it. So electoral experience
• 2:06:24
  Speaker 1: doesn't magically produce wisdom. Earl Warren's proof of that. But
• 2:06:29
  Speaker 1: it does give somebody experience exercising government power over actual people,
• 2:06:34
  Speaker 1: living with the consequences and living in the real world.
• 2:06:39
  Speaker 1: Then there's Eisenhower, because one of the enduring stories about
• 2:06:41
  Speaker 1: Warren is that Ike eventually came to regret appointing him.
• 2:06:45
  Speaker 1: You've probably heard a quote attributed to Eisenhower that appointing
• 2:06:48
  Speaker 1: Warren was, quote, the biggest damn fool mistake he ever made.
• 2:06:52
  Speaker 1: It's a very Ike quote, isn't it? We don't actually
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 1: have reliable evidence that he ever actually said it, for
• 2:06:57
  Speaker 1: what it's worth, but we'll put that aside. We do
• 2:07:00
  Speaker 1: know that Eisenhower became unhappy with the direction of Warren's court.
• 2:07:04
  Speaker 1: And Brown itself had made Ike uncomfortable. Warren later recalled
• 2:07:08
  Speaker 1: a White House dinner before the decision at which Eisenhower
• 2:07:12
  Speaker 1: took him aside and talked about the white Southerners opposing integration.
• 2:07:17
  Speaker 1: According to Warren's own account, Eisenhower told him, these are
• 2:07:21
  Speaker 1: not bad people. All they are concerned about is to
• 2:07:23
  Speaker 1: see their sweet little girls are not required to sit
• 2:07:26
  Speaker 1: in school alongside some big overgrown Negroes. Pretty big stain
• 2:07:34
  Speaker 1: on the Eisenhower legacy, isn't it? Now, that's Warren's recollection,
• 2:07:39
  Speaker 1: written years later, and he and Eisenhower had plenty of
• 2:07:42
  Speaker 1: reasons to view one another differently by then. So it
• 2:07:45
  Speaker 1: should be treated as Warren's account, not a transcript for
• 2:07:48
  Speaker 1: what it's worth. But there's no question Eisenhower worried about
• 2:07:51
  Speaker 1: the reaction in the South and preferred a gradual approach
• 2:07:55
  Speaker 1: to desegregation. At the same time, I don't think it's
• 2:07:58
  Speaker 1: accurate to simply say Eisenhower wanted Plessy preserved. And when
• 2:08:03
  Speaker 1: the constitutional confrontation finally becomes unavoidable at Little Rock Central
• 2:08:08
  Speaker 1: High School in 1957 and Arkansas Governor Orval Fabus defies
• 2:08:14
  Speaker 1: federal authority, Eisenhower sends in the 101st Airborne to enforce desegregation.
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 1: So the interesting question isn't whether Eisenhower accidentally appointed some
• 2:08:24
  Speaker 1: secret liberal. He did not. He appointed a Republican politician
• 2:08:28
  Speaker 1: he knew quite well, one he owed a favor to.
• 2:08:33
  Speaker 1: What Eisenhower discovered was what happens when a politician you
• 2:08:36
  Speaker 1: think you know suddenly no longer has to answer to you,
• 2:08:40
  Speaker 1: to his party or to the donors or to voters.
• 2:08:44
  Speaker 1: Warren had lifetime tenure. Ike said he wanted a statesman. Well,
• 2:08:49
  Speaker 1: he got an independent statesman. And Brown was hardly the
• 2:08:53
  Speaker 1: end of it, right? Over the next 15 years, the
• 2:08:55
  Speaker 1: Warren court reshaped enormous areas of American constitutional law and
• 2:08:59
  Speaker 1: really enhanced our rights. The right to counsel in Gideon,
• 2:09:02
  Speaker 1: one person, one vote in Reynolds, privacy in Griswold, Miranda rights,
• 2:09:06
  Speaker 1: the end of state bans on interracial marriage and loving.
• 2:09:10
  Speaker 1: And Earl Warren became the face of all of it,
• 2:09:12
  Speaker 1: which also made him the face of everything his opponents
• 2:09:14
  Speaker 1: thought was wrong with the Supreme Court. That's when those
• 2:09:18
  Speaker 1: famous billboards started appearing along America's interstate highway system. Impeach
• 2:09:23
  Speaker 1: Earl Warren. The John Birch Society embraced the campaign. Brown
• 2:09:28
  Speaker 1: is part of that anger, but so are school prayer,
• 2:09:30
  Speaker 1: criminal defendant rights, reapportionment, and the broader relief and the
• 2:09:35
  Speaker 1: broader belief that unelected judges are imposing social change in
• 2:09:39
  Speaker 1: our country. And this is where Warren's leadership and his
• 2:09:43
  Speaker 1: concern about the legitimacy of Brown makes a lot more sense,
• 2:09:46
  Speaker 1: doesn't it? He knew backlash would come, and it came.
• 2:09:52
  Speaker 1: The difference between then and now wasn't the existence of
• 2:09:54
  Speaker 1: the political anger or the conspiracy theories. Robert Welch, the
• 2:09:57
  Speaker 1: founder of the John Birch Society, eventually suggested that Eisenhower
• 2:10:00
  Speaker 1: himself was part of the communist conspiracy. The difference, of course,
• 2:10:05
  Speaker 1: back then was how those ideas moved. When we only
• 2:10:07
  Speaker 1: had three television networks that the government decided who could
• 2:10:10
  Speaker 1: get on the air, dominant newspapers, powerful editors acting as
• 2:10:13
  Speaker 1: gatekeepers for the national conversation, even William F. Buckley, And
• 2:10:17
  Speaker 1: other conservative leaders tried to push the Birch Society outside
• 2:10:21
  Speaker 1: the mainstream conservative movement. Now, the Birch Society still organized
• 2:10:25
  Speaker 1: and raised money and influenced Republican politics, but it didn't
• 2:10:28
  Speaker 1: have the algorithm that the far right has today. Those
• 2:10:32
  Speaker 1: impeachable Warren billboards were almost the social media of their time.
• 2:10:36
  Speaker 1: The grievance was there. Now, today's information environment simply gives
• 2:10:40
  Speaker 1: grievance a much faster distribution system. And Warren himself eventually
• 2:10:44
  Speaker 1: makes one last enormously political decision about the court. In
• 2:10:49
  Speaker 1: June of 68, with Richard Nixon running for president and
• 2:10:52
  Speaker 1: Warren still carrying plenty of resentment toward his old California
• 2:10:56
  Speaker 1: political rival, Warren gives Lyndon Johnson his retirement letter. Warren
• 2:11:03
  Speaker 1: wants a Democratic president to choose his successor. So much
• 2:11:08
  Speaker 1: for pretending Supreme Court succession was ever completely removed from politics, right?
• 2:11:13
  Speaker 1: LBJ decides to elevate Associate Justice Abe Fortas to Chief Justice. Well,
• 2:11:18
  Speaker 1: the Senate plays politics right back. Republicans and Southern Democrats
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 1: organize against Fortas. Fortas withdraws. Warren stays on the court.
• 2:11:26
  Speaker 1: Nixon wins the election. And in 1969, Richard Nixon gets
• 2:11:30
  Speaker 1: to replace Earl Warren after all. He chooses Warren Burger. Now,
• 2:11:35
  Speaker 1: that episode matters for another reason. The Fortas fight was
• 2:11:38
  Speaker 1: the first successful filibuster of a Supreme Court nomination. So
• 2:11:42
  Speaker 1: if you're looking for the roots of our modern confirmation wars,
• 2:11:45
  Speaker 1: some people like to say Bork, it might be Abe Fortas.
• 2:11:50
  Speaker 1: But notice what happened. Warren tried to time his retirement politically.
• 2:11:54
  Speaker 1: Johnson tried to install a preferred successor. Senators used their
• 2:11:57
  Speaker 1: power to stop him. An election intervened and Nixon got
• 2:12:00
  Speaker 1: the seat. So my point is, this is not politics
• 2:12:04
  Speaker 1: corrupting some pristine apolitical Supreme Court. That's the political system
• 2:12:09
  Speaker 1: the Constitution created, folks. which is why I think our
• 2:12:12
  Speaker 1: obsession with pretending the court can exist outside of politics
• 2:12:16
  Speaker 1: gets us into huge trouble. Presidents certainly learned from Warren
• 2:12:20
  Speaker 1: that justices can surprise them. Republican presidents accumulated quite a
• 2:12:24
  Speaker 1: list of appointees who eventually disappointed important parts of their
• 2:12:27
  Speaker 1: far-right coalition.
• 2:12:29
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 2:12:29
  Speaker 1: William Brennan, Harry Blackmun, John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor,
• 2:12:33
  Speaker 1: David Souter. And over time, the conservatives Legal movement became
• 2:12:37
  Speaker 1: much more sophisticated about preventing independent conservative thinkers from being appointed.
• 2:12:43
  Speaker 1: So they wanted to find younger nominees who hadn't really
• 2:12:46
  Speaker 1: lived real life, study a paper trail, vet the judicial philosophy,
• 2:12:52
  Speaker 1: put people on appellate courts and watch them basically make
• 2:12:56
  Speaker 1: them audition. And now Democrats are doing versions of the
• 2:12:59
  Speaker 1: same thing. And you understand the instinct. Justices, they're the
• 2:13:04
  Speaker 1: real legacy of presidents. boy, have we over learned this lesson.
• 2:13:08
  Speaker 1: Because one of the things that makes a nominee less
• 2:13:10
  Speaker 1: predictable is actually having participated in our electoral process. Our
• 2:13:14
  Speaker 1: politics are messy. I want somebody with that experience in
• 2:13:17
  Speaker 1: the court. If you've had to cast votes and make compromises, yeah,
• 2:13:23
  Speaker 1: it's a record. And yeah, it's baggage. But it means
• 2:13:27
  Speaker 1: you understand how the American system works. And the American
• 2:13:31
  Speaker 1: political system and the American legal system are very intertwined.
• 2:13:35
  Speaker 1: And we've gradually screened out the kind of experience that
• 2:13:38
  Speaker 1: used to be considered perfectly normal for the Supreme Court.
• 2:13:43
  Speaker 1: Fred Vinson, the Supreme Court justice that Warren replaced, he'd
• 2:13:48
  Speaker 1: repeatedly been elected to Congress. Charles Evan Hughes had been
• 2:13:51
  Speaker 1: governor of New York and a Republican presidential nominee. William
• 2:13:54
  Speaker 1: Howard Taft had been president. Sam and Chase had been
• 2:13:57
  Speaker 1: senator and governor. Then we got Warren Burger, William Rehnquist,
• 2:14:01
  Speaker 1: and John Roberts, three straight chief justices who'd never held
• 2:14:03
  Speaker 1: elective office. Roberts is somewhat politically sophisticated. He spent years
• 2:14:09
  Speaker 1: operating at high levels of Washington before he became a judge.
• 2:14:12
  Speaker 1: And he often demonstrates some political savvy, much more so
• 2:14:18
  Speaker 1: than either Berger or Rehnquist, for sure. But there's a
• 2:14:21
  Speaker 1: difference between understanding how Washington politics works and then understanding
• 2:14:25
  Speaker 1: how the small, the democratic politics of the entire country works.
• 2:14:31
  Speaker 1: Roberts has never asked anybody to vote for him. He's
• 2:14:33
  Speaker 1: never had to build a public constituency or manage a legislature.
• 2:14:37
  Speaker 1: And he's never had to make a decision knowing that
• 2:14:39
  Speaker 1: the people impacted can turn around and fire him in
• 2:14:42
  Speaker 1: the next election. And I think that matters. The modern
• 2:14:47
  Speaker 1: court understands its power. What it sometimes seems to struggle
• 2:14:51
  Speaker 1: with is explaining that power to the country and maintaining
• 2:14:55
  Speaker 1: confidence in that institution while exercising it. To me, that's
• 2:15:00
  Speaker 1: a leadership challenge, not a legal one. Warren spent years
• 2:15:03
  Speaker 1: learning the kind of leadership before he ever actually had
• 2:15:08
  Speaker 1: to put on a robe. And it made him, I think,
• 2:15:11
  Speaker 1: better able to navigate that period. And America's better off
• 2:15:14
  Speaker 1: for it. By the way, here's another little statistic that
• 2:15:18
  Speaker 1: tells you something about just how political Supreme Court succession
• 2:15:22
  Speaker 1: really is. You know, the last Democratic president to successfully
• 2:15:25
  Speaker 1: install a chief justice, Harry Truman. It was Fred Vinson
• 2:15:31
  Speaker 1: in 1946. 80 years ago. And as we just went through,
• 2:15:37
  Speaker 1: the one time since then that a Democratic president had
• 2:15:39
  Speaker 1: a shot at the center seat, it was blocked by
• 2:15:45
  Speaker 1: technically a Democratic Senate, but it was ideologically controlled by
• 2:15:49
  Speaker 1: the right. Every chief justice since Vincent, Warren, Berger, Rehnquist,
• 2:15:53
  Speaker 1: and Roberts has been appointed by a Republican president. Politics
• 2:15:57
  Speaker 1: is And sometimes I think the court gets itself into
• 2:16:00
  Speaker 1: trouble when it tries too hard to disguise political judgments
• 2:16:03
  Speaker 1: as something more clinical. Roe v. Wade is a great example.
• 2:16:07
  Speaker 1: Whatever you think of the underlying constitutional right recognized in Roe,
• 2:16:10
  Speaker 1: the court didn't simply identify a right. It constructed a
• 2:16:13
  Speaker 1: regulatory framework involving trimesters, viability, and different stages at which
• 2:16:17
  Speaker 1: states could regulate. That's an awfully specific structure to derive
• 2:16:21
  Speaker 1: from a constitution that doesn't mention trimesters. The court was
• 2:16:25
  Speaker 1: trying to settle a profound moral and political argument through
• 2:16:27
  Speaker 1: something that almost looked technocratic. It didn't remove the politics,
• 2:16:33
  Speaker 1: and Dobbs hasn't removed it either. So I'm not interested
• 2:16:37
  Speaker 1: in the fantasy of an apolitical Supreme Court. I want
• 2:16:39
  Speaker 1: a court whose decisions are grounded in the Constitution, whose
• 2:16:43
  Speaker 1: process is fair, whose members understand the country those decisions govern,
• 2:16:48
  Speaker 1: and whose leadership understands the legitimacy it has to maintain.
• 2:16:53
  Speaker 1: And that's why I think the absence of electoral experience
• 2:16:55
  Speaker 1: in today's court is a genuine diversity problem. Sandra Day
• 2:17:01
  Speaker 1: O'Connor served in the Arizona legislature and became majority leader.
• 2:17:05
  Speaker 1: She later ran for and won election as a state judge.
• 2:17:09
  Speaker 1: Since O'Connor, we haven't had another justice with comparable experience
• 2:17:13
  Speaker 1: of actually asking voters for their support. Plenty of judges
• 2:17:19
  Speaker 1: have been around electoral politics. Roberts advised the Bush legal
• 2:17:23
  Speaker 1: team back during the 2000 Florida recount, Brett Kavanaugh, so
• 2:17:27
  Speaker 1: did Amy Coney Barrett. So they know something about election fights.
• 2:17:31
  Speaker 1: They just have never run in one. Not one current
• 2:17:34
  Speaker 1: justice has ever had to put his or her name
• 2:17:37
  Speaker 1: on a ballot and ask voters to say yes. Well,
• 2:17:40
  Speaker 1: I haven't checked their student government track records. Maybe if
• 2:17:45
  Speaker 1: you told me that one of them had run for
• 2:17:47
  Speaker 1: student council president, that probably wouldn't be surprising. But I'm
• 2:17:50
  Speaker 1: not saying we should. I also don't want to put
• 2:17:52
  Speaker 1: nine governors on the Supreme Court either. That defeats the
• 2:17:55
  Speaker 1: point of diversity. Nor does electoral experience guarantee wisdom, right?
• 2:18:01
  Speaker 1: Nor warns record as California attorney general and the internment
• 2:18:05
  Speaker 1: of Japanese Americans demonstrates that. But nine people without meaningful
• 2:18:10
  Speaker 1: experience of running for office isn't diversity either. It's professional monoculture.
• 2:18:17
  Speaker 1: And both parties have created it. And it only adds
• 2:18:21
  Speaker 1: to the overtime why there's less legitimacy to the Supreme Court.
• 2:18:30
  Speaker 1: And Earl Warren is an example of what happens when
• 2:18:32
  Speaker 1: you have a pretty sophisticated politician understanding the times that
• 2:18:37
  Speaker 1: we live in. Understanding the difficulty something will be on
• 2:18:41
  Speaker 1: the ground politically and what you have to do to
• 2:18:45
  Speaker 1: make sure a ruling sticks. I do hope, I do
• 2:18:51
  Speaker 1: hope that a future president, we've had a few, think
• 2:18:56
  Speaker 1: about the electoral experience. I do hope we rectify this
• 2:19:03
  Speaker 1: diversity gap in the Supreme Court sooner rather than later.
• 2:19:07
  Speaker 1: There's your time machine. All right, let's do a few
• 2:19:18
  Speaker 1: Ask Chucks. We're going to start with Dalton Provo. BYU country.
• 2:19:24
  Speaker 1: He says, I have to thank you for finally getting
• 2:19:25
  Speaker 1: me into sports, particularly college sports. And now I'm following
• 2:19:28
  Speaker 1: BYU football and basketball right as they're starting to get good.
• 2:19:32
  Speaker 1: Hopefully that ages well. Yeah, BYU survived. But I still
• 2:19:36
  Speaker 1: can't get into baseball. It feels less like a sport
• 2:19:40
  Speaker 1: and more like athletes hanging out for a few hours.
• 2:19:45
  Speaker 1: What am I missing? And can you help me see
• 2:19:47
  Speaker 1: the light? Look, I guess I would say is... Is
• 2:19:54
  Speaker 1: go to a few baseball games and watch it played
• 2:19:59
  Speaker 1: more often. Look, I know it's slow. I get it, right?
• 2:20:03
  Speaker 1: And basketball and football move, right? There feels like there's movement.
• 2:20:07
  Speaker 1: Although you could argue football, right? There's like, what is it?
• 2:20:10
  Speaker 1: There's only 11 actual total minutes of action, right? Compared
• 2:20:14
  Speaker 1: to like two and a half hours of standing around
• 2:20:15
  Speaker 1: or whatever it is. feels that way. It's not quite that,
• 2:20:18
  Speaker 1: but if you really add up actual play time, right,
• 2:20:22
  Speaker 1: when they're actively going, right, the average, I think, play
• 2:20:27
  Speaker 1: is maybe eight seconds, eight to nine seconds total, you know,
• 2:20:31
  Speaker 1: and you figure there's, you know, 80 to 100 plays
• 2:20:34
  Speaker 1: in a game, something like that. Anyway, you know, I
• 2:20:43
  Speaker 1: enjoy it. I think it's the I will say this.
• 2:20:47
  Speaker 1: I think baseball makes for better movies. Baseball makes for
• 2:20:50
  Speaker 1: better drama. There's, there's a, it's both a team sport
• 2:20:55
  Speaker 1: and an individual sport in many ways, right? It's just
• 2:20:59
  Speaker 1: batter versus pitcher, but you can't do it alone if
• 2:21:02
  Speaker 1: you don't have a, so I don't know. That's the
• 2:21:06
  Speaker 1: draw it is for me. I mean, I just like the,
• 2:21:08
  Speaker 1: there's strategy to it. Um, Look, baseball, you can be 5'6,
• 2:21:16
  Speaker 1: like Jose Altuve, and be a Hall of Famer, or
• 2:21:21
  Speaker 1: you can be the size of Aaron Judge at 6'7.
• 2:21:24
  Speaker 1: You can't really say that about football or basketball. So
• 2:21:27
  Speaker 1: I think that's the other appeal to baseball that I
• 2:21:30
  Speaker 1: think is underrated, which is anybody, if you've got really
• 2:21:36
  Speaker 1: good eye-hand coordination, you can play the game, right? Takes that.
• 2:21:43
  Speaker 1: But you can play the game. And there's a science
• 2:21:47
  Speaker 1: to hitting. Yes, you need some strength. But a small
• 2:21:50
  Speaker 1: guy who understands his body's physics can produce power just
• 2:21:57
  Speaker 1: like a big guy can produce power. So I think
• 2:22:00
  Speaker 1: the greatest appeal of baseball is the fact that anybody
• 2:22:04
  Speaker 1: of any size can play. And we've seen it. And
• 2:22:10
  Speaker 1: we see it in today's game. One of my favorite
• 2:22:12
  Speaker 1: baseball cards is this baseball card that Topps put out
• 2:22:17
  Speaker 1: in 2018. And it's a picture of Aaron Judge standing
• 2:22:22
  Speaker 1: on second base and Jose Altuve standing right next to him.
• 2:22:27
  Speaker 1: 6'7 and 5'7. I mean, they're literally a foot difference,
• 2:22:30
  Speaker 1: I think. In fact, Altuve may be smaller than 5'7, right?
• 2:22:34
  Speaker 1: There's a foot of difference. I believe they went one,
• 2:22:37
  Speaker 1: two in the MVP voting that year or the year
• 2:22:39
  Speaker 1: before or the year after, something like that. And of course,
• 2:22:43
  Speaker 1: I think Yankees fans to this day think, well, Tuve
• 2:22:46
  Speaker 1: cheated to get that MVP. But the point is, is
• 2:22:49
  Speaker 1: that that picture itself shows you, you can be any
• 2:22:55
  Speaker 1: size of any, you know, you just need, the one
• 2:23:00
  Speaker 1: thing you really need is incredible eyesight. And outside of that,
• 2:23:05
  Speaker 1: It truly is a game for anybody of any size.
• 2:23:09
  Speaker 1: So how's that for a case? I hope that helped, though.
• 2:23:11
  Speaker 1: And good, tough win down in TCU in the rain.
• 2:23:15
  Speaker 1: You know, you guys are doing it again in BYU football.
• 2:23:18
  Speaker 1: It ain't pretty. It ain't dominant. It's just winning. And
• 2:23:22
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know if I'm betting against
• 2:23:24
  Speaker 1: you guys this year. I'm very curious to see, though,
• 2:23:26
  Speaker 1: how this Notre Dame game goes. Perhaps the biggest game
• 2:23:29
  Speaker 1: of the season, even though It's actually more of a
• 2:23:33
  Speaker 1: must win for Notre Dame than it is for BYU
• 2:23:34
  Speaker 1: because you guys have a path to the playoff where
• 2:23:37
  Speaker 1: that game is meaningless because it's not a conference game.
• 2:23:41
  Speaker 1: But it certainly is a huge game for the perception
• 2:23:43
  Speaker 1: of the Big 12. That's for sure. And I know Provo,
• 2:23:46
  Speaker 1: no easy place to play, to come visit. One of
• 2:23:50
  Speaker 1: my defining memories of the 1990 season was opening, playing
• 2:23:56
  Speaker 1: the opening game in Provo and losing. All right. Douglas,
• 2:24:01
  Speaker 1: PG County, Maryland writes, Hey, I'm listening to your answer
• 2:24:03
  Speaker 1: about any given Sunday being an underrated football movie. And
• 2:24:06
  Speaker 1: I have to admit that movie led to my high
• 2:24:07
  Speaker 1: school gay awakening insert bashful face here. Anyway, I'd love
• 2:24:11
  Speaker 1: to hear your favorite political impressions. One of my favorites
• 2:24:13
  Speaker 1: from nineties SNL was Will Ferrell's attorney general, Janet Reno.
• 2:24:16
  Speaker 1: What political comedic impressions still make your list? Thank you
• 2:24:20
  Speaker 1: very much for all that you do Douglas PG County. So, um,
• 2:24:25
  Speaker 1: Dan Aykroyd's Bob Dole. There's a great, it's a 19,
• 2:24:28
  Speaker 1: the 88, they mocked an 88 presidential debate. And there's, Aykroyd,
• 2:24:36
  Speaker 1: just Bob Dole, he like looks at the guy playing
• 2:24:39
  Speaker 1: Pat Robertson, who I think it was Al Franken who
• 2:24:41
  Speaker 1: would do Pat Robertson. You cure my left arm and
• 2:24:45
  Speaker 1: I'll vote for you or something like that. It was just,
• 2:24:47
  Speaker 1: you know, I'll take a pencil and shove it in
• 2:24:49
  Speaker 1: your eye. So I liked, Aykroyd's Dole was a good one.
• 2:24:52
  Speaker 1: Of course, Dana Carvey. You know, the Dana-Carvey-Bush, and in fact,
• 2:24:57
  Speaker 1: the Dana-Carvey-Brokaw, everybody's Brokaw is not Brokaw. It's not. On
• 2:25:02
  Speaker 1: the NBC Nightly News, we're going to go to Bosnia-Herzegovina.
• 2:25:08
  Speaker 1: None of us are doing Tom. We're all doing Dana-Carvey.
• 2:25:12
  Speaker 1: And by the way, everybody that works at NBC does
• 2:25:15
  Speaker 1: a Brokaw. Some people are better than others. I'm not
• 2:25:17
  Speaker 1: going to judge. My old friend David Gregory has a
• 2:25:21
  Speaker 1: great one. Brian Williams is pretty good. I think mine's okay.
• 2:25:25
  Speaker 1: I think mine's closer, is better. Some of my colleagues
• 2:25:29
  Speaker 1: think they have a good Brokaw impersonation. They don't, but
• 2:25:32
  Speaker 1: that's all right. But none of us are doing Brokaw.
• 2:25:35
  Speaker 1: We're doing Dana Carvey doing Brokaw because he did the famous,
• 2:25:38
  Speaker 1: Gerald Ford was mauled by a bear tonight. One of
• 2:25:42
  Speaker 1: those great SNL skits. You know, there's a lot of
• 2:25:47
  Speaker 1: Will Ferrells. You talk about that one. His W was fun.
• 2:25:52
  Speaker 1: And Bush handled it really well. I mean, I could
• 2:25:57
  Speaker 1: just think, I like ordering chimichangas. I think I keep
• 2:26:01
  Speaker 1: hearing Will Ferrell say chimichangas. That's one that sticks into
• 2:26:06
  Speaker 1: my head. I have to say, how about Kate McKinnon's
• 2:26:13
  Speaker 1: Rudy Giuliani? I think that's a pretty good one. I
• 2:26:17
  Speaker 1: thought those were good. And, you know, I just, I
• 2:26:26
  Speaker 1: miss Phil Hartman. God, do I miss Phil Hartman. His
• 2:26:30
  Speaker 1: Bill Clinton. His, well, he had both, Phil Hartman did
• 2:26:34
  Speaker 1: one and Daryl Hammond. They both were good Clintons and
• 2:26:39
  Speaker 1: they both had unique takes on Clintons. I love Phil Hartman.
• 2:26:42
  Speaker 1: And look, it was not going to sit here and
• 2:26:44
  Speaker 1: say that the Daryl Hammond one wasn't good too, but
• 2:26:47
  Speaker 1: because Daryl Hammond did the, he did the lip biting
• 2:26:50
  Speaker 1: better than Phil Hartman did. But, Um, both were, both
• 2:26:55
  Speaker 1: were good ones. Those Clinton, those Clinton impersonations were really good. Um, yeah,
• 2:27:01
  Speaker 1: I think those were pretty good, but I, um, one
• 2:27:06
  Speaker 1: of my, there's a ton, there's a great Will Ferrell
• 2:27:09
  Speaker 1: where he plays a candidate whose genitals got burned up
• 2:27:11
  Speaker 1: in a fire. And it was his way of saying,
• 2:27:14
  Speaker 1: I can't, it was during the heat of the Monica
• 2:27:15
  Speaker 1: Lewinsky or it was, it was maybe it was maybe
• 2:27:18
  Speaker 1: even after it could have been later than that. It
• 2:27:20
  Speaker 1: could have been in response to the John Edwards scandal.
• 2:27:23
  Speaker 1: where Will Ferrell plays this fictional candidate for Senate. And I,
• 2:27:27
  Speaker 1: you know, I'll never cheat on my wife. My generals
• 2:27:29
  Speaker 1: were burned in a fire or something like that. And
• 2:27:32
  Speaker 1: it just was one of those, the punchline just kept coming.
• 2:27:35
  Speaker 1: And it was like, it didn't make you laugh at first.
• 2:27:37
  Speaker 1: And then like the 17th time, my general, you know,
• 2:27:40
  Speaker 1: sort of, I'm Joe Schmegi and I approve this message
• 2:27:42
  Speaker 1: because my genitals were burned in a fire. Somehow became
• 2:27:48
  Speaker 1: funnier and funnier as the gag went on, which is,
• 2:27:51
  Speaker 1: you know, sometimes the best versions of SNL. So those
• 2:27:55
  Speaker 1: were top of my head with a little bit of
• 2:27:58
  Speaker 1: a quick change there. All right. Don Z, Florida's ninth district,
• 2:28:03
  Speaker 1: chimes in and he writes, hey, love all your work,
• 2:28:05
  Speaker 1: even from the pre-MTP days. As our resident Florida expert,
• 2:28:09
  Speaker 1: what do you make of Carnegie Mellon University's expansion in
• 2:28:12
  Speaker 1: Miami and how could it affect a state higher education
• 2:28:14
  Speaker 1: system that's already seen its share of turmoil? Full disclosure,
• 2:28:17
  Speaker 1: I'm a CMU alum in music, which might surprise you.
• 2:28:20
  Speaker 1: Thanks especially for your election night coverage with Crystal Liz
• 2:28:22
  Speaker 1: and DDHQ. Keep it going. Hey, we have an election
• 2:28:25
  Speaker 1: night extravaganza that we'll be announcing formally pretty soon, but
• 2:28:28
  Speaker 1: we're really excited about it. Opportunities both in person and
• 2:28:32
  Speaker 1: a 12-hour live stream at a minimum. So we are
• 2:28:37
  Speaker 1: looking forward to that again. I don't view it that way.
• 2:28:43
  Speaker 1: The Carnegie Mellon investment down in Miami, Ken Griffin was
• 2:28:46
  Speaker 1: a big part of that. To me, it feels like
• 2:28:49
  Speaker 1: just brands that are expanding. I believe Vanderbilt has, you know,
• 2:28:54
  Speaker 1: They when I'm in the Palm Beach airport, there's a
• 2:28:57
  Speaker 1: Vanderbilt Business School annex down there. But to me, it's
• 2:29:00
  Speaker 1: like the Cleveland Clinic with its Florida outposts.
• 2:29:03
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 2:29:04
  Speaker 1: Cleveland Clinic still headquartered in Ohio, but it has Florida outposts.
• 2:29:08
  Speaker 1: I think Mayo Clinic has some Florida outposts. I have
• 2:29:12
  Speaker 1: I look, I actually think the next 50 years, not to,
• 2:29:15
  Speaker 1: you know, I have a theory, you know, any anybody
• 2:29:18
  Speaker 1: that's worked with me will tell you, oh, Chuck has
• 2:29:20
  Speaker 1: a theory of everything. There's some truthiness to that. It's
• 2:29:23
  Speaker 1: like I can always manufacture a theory about something. But
• 2:29:25
  Speaker 1: I do have a theory about where higher ed is going.
• 2:29:27
  Speaker 1: I think you're going to see some brands. I think
• 2:29:31
  Speaker 1: when you get, I think as universities consolidate and you're
• 2:29:34
  Speaker 1: going to have, right, the reason to acquire a smaller
• 2:29:39
  Speaker 1: university and maybe to put your brand on a, you know,
• 2:29:42
  Speaker 1: to go down is the land that a universe, you know,
• 2:29:45
  Speaker 1: let's say a small college is struggling with because we
• 2:29:50
  Speaker 1: have the demographic cliff. That's a lot of valuable land.
• 2:29:54
  Speaker 1: It may be that the land has to stay for
• 2:29:58
  Speaker 1: educational purposes. So could I picture Stanford deciding to buy
• 2:30:03
  Speaker 1: up small colleges around the country and turn them into
• 2:30:05
  Speaker 1: Stanford outposts? Could I picture Harvard doing this? Could I
• 2:30:09
  Speaker 1: picture the University of Michigan? Could I picture the University
• 2:30:11
  Speaker 1: of Texas? It might be harder for a state school
• 2:30:12
  Speaker 1: to do it, but I could see more private schools
• 2:30:15
  Speaker 1: like Carnegie Mellon thinking about creating annexes in different locations,
• 2:30:19
  Speaker 1: especially now when there's a huge fight, right? There's a
• 2:30:22
  Speaker 1: dwindling number of younger people available for admission. So the
• 2:30:28
  Speaker 1: competition is only gonna increase on this. The branding competition
• 2:30:32
  Speaker 1: is gonna increase on this. And Carnegie Mellon being more
• 2:30:35
  Speaker 1: of an engineering, STEM focused, I think they saw maybe
• 2:30:41
  Speaker 1: a potential opportunity down in Florida. So I suspect you're
• 2:30:46
  Speaker 1: going to see– I assume you'll see some of these
• 2:30:50
  Speaker 1: northern universities, particularly private universities who are having problems attracting
• 2:30:54
  Speaker 1: students to their physical campus go to where people want
• 2:30:58
  Speaker 1: to live. Maybe it's in Florida. Maybe it's in Texas.
• 2:31:02
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's in Arizona. But I suspect this will be
• 2:31:04
  Speaker 1: a growing trend. I don't think it harms the state
• 2:31:08
  Speaker 1: systems per se. But– Maybe I'm being a little naive
• 2:31:15
  Speaker 1: to that. By the way, I just had my friend,
• 2:31:18
  Speaker 1: Paul Glaster, who's the editor of the Washington Monthly. They're
• 2:31:21
  Speaker 1: out with their new college ratings and they do it
• 2:31:23
  Speaker 1: a lot differently than US News. They actually care about
• 2:31:26
  Speaker 1: return on investment. Be on the lookout for that interview.
• 2:31:30
  Speaker 1: It's coming soon. And we talk a little bit about
• 2:31:32
  Speaker 1: the future of universities there. Grisha, let's see here. Jason Allen, Grisha,
• 2:31:39
  Speaker 1: Costa Rica writes, Jason Ayer, originally from Houston, but currently
• 2:31:42
  Speaker 1: living in Costa Rica, is a former professional opera singer
• 2:31:44
  Speaker 1: who worked in the U.S. and Germany, including as an
• 2:31:47
  Speaker 1: apprentice at San Francisco Opera. I wanted to thank you
• 2:31:49
  Speaker 1: for your interview about Marian Anderson and for understanding not
• 2:31:53
  Speaker 1: only how difficult the profession is, but that she didn't
• 2:31:56
  Speaker 1: necessarily want to be a trailblazer. She just wanted to
• 2:31:58
  Speaker 1: do the job, which was hard enough on its own.
• 2:32:02
  Speaker 1: I usually tune in for politics, but hearing you bring
• 2:32:04
  Speaker 1: your own musical background into that conversation finally made me
• 2:32:06
  Speaker 1: write in for the first time. Much appreciated, Jason Ayer.
• 2:32:09
  Speaker 1: I'm really glad to hear that. Look, it's kind of
• 2:32:13
  Speaker 1: my theory of the case of this podcast that ultimately,
• 2:32:15
  Speaker 1: and it's the advice I've gotten from others who've been
• 2:32:17
  Speaker 1: successful in this space, is don't be afraid to share
• 2:32:20
  Speaker 1: your own interests. And in fact, lean into it a
• 2:32:23
  Speaker 1: little bit. If you're not interested and you do a segment,
• 2:32:28
  Speaker 1: it's going to come through. And if you are interested
• 2:32:30
  Speaker 1: and you do a segment, it's going to come through.
• 2:32:33
  Speaker 1: And I know I'm with the majority of people who
• 2:32:35
  Speaker 1: are more interested in learning anything if the person telling
• 2:32:39
  Speaker 1: me about it comes across as interested in said thing.
• 2:32:43
  Speaker 1: So glad you enjoyed it. And when the midterm season
• 2:32:48
  Speaker 1: dies down a little bit post-November, I will widen the
• 2:32:52
  Speaker 1: aperture once again. And who knows, maybe even test out
• 2:32:57
  Speaker 1: my embouchure. All right, last question before I get into
• 2:33:00
  Speaker 1: my college football rants of the weekend. Ah, it's the
• 2:33:04
  Speaker 1: official mayor. Our mayor is here from Harvey Cedars, New Jersey.
• 2:33:08
  Speaker 1: Mayor Imperiali, and he writes, instead of a Democratic congressional
• 2:33:12
  Speaker 1: candidate simply telling voters they're against Trump, the war, or tariffs,
• 2:33:15
  Speaker 1: why not run on something more local and tangible? I
• 2:33:17
  Speaker 1: promise to have the best constituent service of any member
• 2:33:21
  Speaker 1: of Congress. He or she takes Trump's calls. I'll take yours.
• 2:33:25
  Speaker 1: I won my own race on one promise. Call me
• 2:33:28
  Speaker 1: anytime for anything. So could a renewed focus on constituent
• 2:33:31
  Speaker 1: service actually be a persuasive message for congressional candidates? Thanks, John. Well,
• 2:33:36
  Speaker 1: I definitely buy that it really works in mayor's races.
• 2:33:39
  Speaker 1: I remember we had a mayor in DC who did
• 2:33:41
  Speaker 1: that at the time, went door to door, gave everybody's
• 2:33:44
  Speaker 1: cell number, gave everybody's email, uh, and it worked. Now
• 2:33:48
  Speaker 1: he was, he was almost too focused on the personal
• 2:33:50
  Speaker 1: constituent service and he wasn't as good about reigning in
• 2:33:53
  Speaker 1: the council and all of that. Um, but he, but it,
• 2:33:57
  Speaker 1: it really helped them when Adrian Fenty was that mayor, uh,
• 2:34:00
  Speaker 1: on that front. Um, I read recently about John Ossoff's
• 2:34:04
  Speaker 1: random phone calls to constituents in Georgia and how that
• 2:34:07
  Speaker 1: he's very, he just, he's been doing it his whole
• 2:34:10
  Speaker 1: six years and the dividends are starting to pay. I
• 2:34:17
  Speaker 1: think if the way you described it could be very
• 2:34:21
  Speaker 1: helpful politically. You know, hey, here's my number. Just, you know,
• 2:34:26
  Speaker 1: because here's the thing. I think particularly younger voters have
• 2:34:30
  Speaker 1: an expectation of getting access to, you know, the, the
• 2:34:33
  Speaker 1: idea that somebody's inaccessible is not true for voters under 40.
• 2:34:38
  Speaker 1: They expect accessibility. They expect access, right? We live, they
• 2:34:43
  Speaker 1: were raised in a social media climate, which means the
• 2:34:46
  Speaker 1: barriers to entry on everything are lower. So therefore the
• 2:34:49
  Speaker 1: barrier to connection with Congress should be right there. They, they,
• 2:34:54
  Speaker 1: there is an, even though they don't quite say there isn't,
• 2:34:57
  Speaker 1: the older you are, we don't, We somehow accepted the gatekeepers, right?
• 2:35:01
  Speaker 1: We were raised with gatekeepers. So we accept the premise
• 2:35:03
  Speaker 1: of gatekeepers. Younger folks don't. So I think you're onto something.
• 2:35:08
  Speaker 1: I definitely, look, you're not, in some ways with mayors,
• 2:35:13
  Speaker 1: it's part of the job. It should be part of
• 2:35:15
  Speaker 1: the job that you're always available. You're accessible, et cetera.
• 2:35:20
  Speaker 1: You know, I think in some ways, Mamdani, well, I
• 2:35:22
  Speaker 1: don't know if he handed out his cell phone to
• 2:35:23
  Speaker 1: every single person. There's this, frankly, Donald Trump's ability to
• 2:35:28
  Speaker 1: take over the Republican Party in some ways was due
• 2:35:31
  Speaker 1: to the accessibility of Trump himself, at least to donors
• 2:35:34
  Speaker 1: and activists and things like that. He made himself quite accessible,
• 2:35:38
  Speaker 1: more so than most Republican politicians had in the past.
• 2:35:41
  Speaker 1: You can get a cell phone, you can get them.
• 2:35:46
  Speaker 1: It's a reminder, not everything Trump does is something that
• 2:35:48
  Speaker 1: should be ignored. Some of his tactics are Maybe he's
• 2:35:53
  Speaker 1: using the tactics for bad. That doesn't mean they're bad tactics,
• 2:35:56
  Speaker 1: if that makes sense. But this is his instinct. He'll
• 2:36:01
  Speaker 1: cut out a middleman. He'll just come directly to me.
• 2:36:05
  Speaker 1: I think that the politicians with this instinct usually are
• 2:36:08
  Speaker 1: better politicians. And I can't wait to see you run statewide, Mr.
• 2:36:13
  Speaker 4: Mayor.
• 2:36:14
  Speaker 1: And who knows, this may become the the Todd cast
• 2:36:17
  Speaker 1: party before it's all said and done. But I would
• 2:36:21
  Speaker 1: say this on Congress. I think the constituent access, I
• 2:36:25
  Speaker 1: think there'd be, it would be met with skepticism at first.
• 2:36:28
  Speaker 1: That's why this John Ossoff just phone calls where he
• 2:36:31
  Speaker 1: doesn't advertise that he did it. He'd been doing it
• 2:36:34
  Speaker 1: for the last six years. And then suddenly they've done
• 2:36:36
  Speaker 1: it enough where there was, there was some traction. That's
• 2:36:39
  Speaker 1: interesting to me. And I know that if I were
• 2:36:43
  Speaker 1: holding office, I'd, I try to do the same thing.
• 2:36:47
  Speaker 1: That seems to be a better way to try to
• 2:36:49
  Speaker 1: figure out what's really on people's minds. Don't put them
• 2:36:52
  Speaker 1: in a teletown hall where they're in front of all
• 2:36:54
  Speaker 1: their friends and neighbors. Call them up individually where they
• 2:36:56
  Speaker 1: feel like they can talk to you one-on-one. Look, as
• 2:37:01
  Speaker 1: a political reporter, I learned more talking to voters one-on-one,
• 2:37:04
  Speaker 1: even though you can't say it's a statistically sound sample.
• 2:37:09
  Speaker 1: but I understand the nuance better of the support or
• 2:37:13
  Speaker 1: opposition to candidate X or candidate Y. The one-on-one conversations
• 2:37:18
  Speaker 1: work for reporters, one-on-one conversations work for canvassers, and yes,
• 2:37:22
  Speaker 1: one-on-one conversations are usually more helpful to elected officials. All right.
• 2:37:29
  Speaker 1: And now my quick take on college football. So who
• 2:37:35
  Speaker 1: had the best game, right? Each week I want to
• 2:37:38
  Speaker 1: usually go through who had the best win, right? And
• 2:37:42
  Speaker 1: usually that win is a road win as far as
• 2:37:44
  Speaker 1: I'm concerned, right? Beating... Winning on the road in a
• 2:37:48
  Speaker 1: conference is hard. I don't care if, you know, the
• 2:37:51
  Speaker 1: only reason and only SEC obsessors think only the SEC
• 2:37:56
  Speaker 1: is a tough conference. Every conference road game is hard,
• 2:38:00
  Speaker 1: whether you're in the new pack 10, 12, whatever they
• 2:38:02
  Speaker 1: call it, the old big 10, the ACC, the SEC,
• 2:38:06
  Speaker 1: the big 12. Winning on the road is hard in college.
• 2:38:10
  Speaker 1: College crowds are crazy. They're fun and they're everywhere just
• 2:38:14
  Speaker 1: because ESPN only covers one conference and only thinks one
• 2:38:19
  Speaker 1: conference matters. That's why Wake Forest should have been ranked
• 2:38:23
  Speaker 1: two weeks ago and wasn't. Now they'll finally be ranked,
• 2:38:25
  Speaker 1: but they're better. But, you know, they're quickly as good
• 2:38:29
  Speaker 1: as anybody in the middle class of the SEC as well. Again,
• 2:38:34
  Speaker 1: the SEC just has better atmospheres, better stadiums or bigger stadiums.
• 2:38:38
  Speaker 1: So that's sort of, you know, rant number one. I
• 2:38:41
  Speaker 1: think this, you know, I guess people can say, well,
• 2:38:45
  Speaker 1: Missouri deserved to be ranked. Well, until Missouri wins a
• 2:38:46
  Speaker 1: road game, right? I think the inability to win conference
• 2:38:50
  Speaker 1: road games should be held against any team for what
• 2:38:53
  Speaker 1: it's worth, right? We know Penn State, chump change. Now Northwestern,
• 2:38:58
  Speaker 1: let's see what they can do on the road, right?
• 2:39:01
  Speaker 1: They got to go win one on the road. Pitt's win.
• 2:39:04
  Speaker 1: I'm very costly. That was a big deal on the road.
• 2:39:08
  Speaker 1: What a game, man. That Pitt, Virginia Tech game. It
• 2:39:10
  Speaker 1: was just a ton of, you know, you throw in
• 2:39:12
  Speaker 1: the throwing. It was a it was a good night there.
• 2:39:16
  Speaker 1: And you throw in that Northwestern Penn State game was
• 2:39:18
  Speaker 1: a half decent Friday night. But very quickly at Miami's. Look,
• 2:39:22
  Speaker 1: it was a Death Valley at night. We were set
• 2:39:25
  Speaker 1: up for a tough game. I feel like Miami and
• 2:39:28
  Speaker 1: Notre Dame are just stalking each other. We almost had
• 2:39:30
  Speaker 1: the identical game. Both had to go to a state
• 2:39:34
  Speaker 1: with Carolina in it. One was north, one was south.
• 2:39:36
  Speaker 1: Both were on the road. Notre Dame had the easier
• 2:39:40
  Speaker 1: time slot, right? A noon game on the road is
• 2:39:43
  Speaker 1: a little bit easier than a night game on the road.
• 2:39:47
  Speaker 1: But they had the tougher weather. They didn't cover. Miami did.
• 2:39:52
  Speaker 1: Miami beat a team that beat the team that Notre Dame–
• 2:39:56
  Speaker 1: Seem to have trouble getting around, but I'm giving Notre
• 2:40:00
  Speaker 1: Dame credit for that win. It's a good win. Because
• 2:40:03
  Speaker 1: both Belichick and Dabo cared a lot about those respective
• 2:40:07
  Speaker 1: games and had game plans to try to do the
• 2:40:09
  Speaker 1: best that they could. But my big observation, as I
• 2:40:11
  Speaker 1: told you at the top, is Miami did to Clemson
• 2:40:14
  Speaker 1: what Clemson did to Miami a few years ago for me.
• 2:40:16
  Speaker 1: When I thought Miami was on its way back, playing
• 2:40:19
  Speaker 1: Clemson was a reality check. And you realize, boy, we
• 2:40:21
  Speaker 1: have a talent gap. Well, that was very apparent last night.
• 2:40:26
  Speaker 1: There just was a physicality and italic in it, which
• 2:40:28
  Speaker 1: then if you're a Clemson partisan, the question is, what
• 2:40:31
  Speaker 1: do you do? How much time do you give Dabo
• 2:40:35
  Speaker 1: to adapt? Can he adapt to this new system? Not
• 2:40:38
  Speaker 1: everybody can adapt to this new system of media. I
• 2:40:40
  Speaker 1: don't know if I have fully adapted. I'd like to
• 2:40:43
  Speaker 1: think I'm more adaptive than most in this space, but
• 2:40:47
  Speaker 1: I'm doing my best to adapt. Some people have adapted well.
• 2:40:50
  Speaker 1: Mario Cristobal, I think, is adapting. There's no doubt. Kirby
• 2:40:55
  Speaker 1: Smart is adapting. I'm trying to think of coaches that
• 2:40:57
  Speaker 1: were successful on both ends of this new college football experience.
• 2:41:02
  Speaker 1: Dabble hasn't figured it out yet. And the question is,
• 2:41:05
  Speaker 1: how much time if you're Clemson do you give them?
• 2:41:07
  Speaker 1: Or do you make a wholesale change? Because this last night,
• 2:41:12
  Speaker 1: the Saturday night, I gave away, I'm taping here on Sunday.
• 2:41:15
  Speaker 1: The Saturday night, loss for Clemson was four years in
• 2:41:25
  Speaker 1: the making. It was four years of Miami building itself up,
• 2:41:29
  Speaker 1: but four years of Clemson atrophying and not having success.
• 2:41:33
  Speaker 1: Whether it's not doing the portal soon enough, whatever it is,
• 2:41:36
  Speaker 1: the physical talent gap was quite striking. And I just
• 2:41:43
  Speaker 1: have this memory of when Clemson did the reverse to Miami.
• 2:41:46
  Speaker 1: So it was a bit of a I think if
• 2:41:48
  Speaker 1: I'm a Clemson person, that's a huge wake-up call. By
• 2:41:51
  Speaker 1: the way, Ohio State, I think it's an impressive win, right?
• 2:41:54
  Speaker 1: All of the big teams had to play tough games
• 2:41:56
  Speaker 1: on the road. Ohio State had to go to Iowa City,
• 2:41:59
  Speaker 1: never easy. Notre Dame had to go to Chapel Hill
• 2:42:01
  Speaker 1: in a game that Belichick was going to care a
• 2:42:03
  Speaker 1: lot about in bad weather. Miami had to go to
• 2:42:05
  Speaker 1: Death Valley. Alabama had to go to Stark Vegas. The
• 2:42:09
  Speaker 1: question is, did Mississippi State get exposed? Certainly we know
• 2:42:16
  Speaker 1: they don't have much of a defense, but look, the
• 2:42:20
  Speaker 1: big game is next week on Alabama's front, right? It's Georgia, Alabama.
• 2:42:24
  Speaker 1: On one hand, the game is meaningless, right? but essentially
• 2:42:27
  Speaker 1: they're playing for the buy. It's probably one way to
• 2:42:30
  Speaker 1: look at, you know, who will get a buy, who
• 2:42:32
  Speaker 1: will be in the first four and who won't, right?
• 2:42:33
  Speaker 1: Who's going to, who's going to have to host a
• 2:42:35
  Speaker 1: game at home in December and who's going to get
• 2:42:38
  Speaker 1: a buy going right to the bowls. That pretty much
• 2:42:41
  Speaker 1: feels this as for Florida, Missouri, you know, Missouri does this. It,
• 2:42:45
  Speaker 1: this to me is more of a Missouri issue than
• 2:42:47
  Speaker 1: a Florida. Florida has won a game on the road,
• 2:42:48
  Speaker 1: that Auburn victory, but they got rolled. And in some
• 2:42:53
  Speaker 1: ways you kind of expected it, but they, The defense
• 2:42:57
  Speaker 1: is still a question mark, and Florida might not be
• 2:43:00
  Speaker 1: a playoff team because of that. Just like Miami. Miami
• 2:43:04
  Speaker 1: defensively wasn't ready to be a playoff team in the
• 2:43:07
  Speaker 1: Cam Ward year. We were 10-2, but we didn't make it.
• 2:43:11
  Speaker 1: And you know what? We didn't have the defense to succeed.
• 2:43:15
  Speaker 1: I think that's the case with Florida. That's from Missouri.
• 2:43:18
  Speaker 1: Can you win a game on the road in conference games?
• 2:43:21
  Speaker 1: I mean, the Jekyll at Missouri probably is the most
• 2:43:23
  Speaker 1: Jekyll and Hyde team in the SEC. They regularly pull
• 2:43:27
  Speaker 1: these upsets or near upsets off at home and they
• 2:43:30
  Speaker 1: regularly fall flat on their face on the road. Um, so, uh,
• 2:43:36
  Speaker 1: it is, it is, uh, it's, it's something, two most
• 2:43:40
  Speaker 1: entertaining games, Syracuse UConn, Kentucky, South Carolina. Um, I just
• 2:43:46
  Speaker 1: love a good game. Thankfully, I didn't have any money
• 2:43:48
  Speaker 1: on either one of them. Most impressive win might be
• 2:43:51
  Speaker 1: Wake Forest. You know, we know Stanford, you know, was–
• 2:43:55
  Speaker 1: maybe the time zone thing was really that bad. But,
• 2:43:58
  Speaker 1: you know, I think the– I think if I'm Florida
• 2:44:01
  Speaker 1: State and I'm thinking about my next coach, I think
• 2:44:08
  Speaker 1: Dickert over in– uh, is, uh, is, is going to
• 2:44:15
  Speaker 1: be somebody I'd put on that list. By the way,
• 2:44:18
  Speaker 1: speaking of Florida state, I thought the UVA coach might
• 2:44:20
  Speaker 1: be somebody worth it. That guy's terrible clock management. I
• 2:44:24
  Speaker 1: watched it. That's first half clock management was so bad
• 2:44:26
  Speaker 1: to me. He's unhirable, unhirable. If you want to compete
• 2:44:30
  Speaker 1: for national titles, he may be really good at recruiting,
• 2:44:33
  Speaker 1: maybe really good at coaching players. Boy, did he have
• 2:44:36
  Speaker 1: a terrible, I mean, it was, it was pop Warner ask.
• 2:44:39
  Speaker 1: It was such bad decision-making and clock management. Um, I've
• 2:44:47
  Speaker 1: literally eliminated that guy from top-end consideration. To me, it
• 2:44:53
  Speaker 1: was that bad of a performance. But overall, I said
• 2:44:58
  Speaker 1: I wanted Miami to put a pasting on Clemson. I
• 2:45:00
  Speaker 1: think we proved a point. I, you know, the running
• 2:45:04
  Speaker 1: game got, it was exactly, it was a very Mario
• 2:45:07
  Speaker 1: Cristobal game. Running game wasn't that good at the beginning,
• 2:45:10
  Speaker 1: but we wore the other team down. And by the end,
• 2:45:12
  Speaker 1: we were popping five and six yard runs and essentially
• 2:45:16
  Speaker 1: putting the game out of reach. This is probably the
• 2:45:19
  Speaker 1: game that cost Tony the Heisman trophy. He was always
• 2:45:21
  Speaker 1: going to be a longer shot at the Heisman this
• 2:45:23
  Speaker 1: year than he will be. He might be one of
• 2:45:25
  Speaker 1: the front runners next year, but I feel like Jeremiah Smith,
• 2:45:29
  Speaker 1: that this thing is his to lose. And once again,
• 2:45:33
  Speaker 1: when they needed scores, he was there for Ohio State.
• 2:45:39
  Speaker 1: He was the key guy. The good news about Miami's
• 2:45:42
  Speaker 1: offense is that we showed that, go ahead, double up, Tony.
• 2:45:45
  Speaker 1: We've got plenty of other people that can make big plays.
• 2:45:49
  Speaker 1: So that was a game that said to me that
• 2:45:52
  Speaker 1: Miami's every week getting a little bit better. Every week
• 2:45:55
  Speaker 1: is preparing for the grind that is the college football playoff.
• 2:45:58
  Speaker 1: And that's something we all have to keep in mind.
• 2:46:00
  Speaker 1: I am not. I think solid wins are solid wins.
• 2:46:06
  Speaker 1: You only need to blow a team out if you're
• 2:46:09
  Speaker 1: worried you're going to get left out. But if you're winning,
• 2:46:12
  Speaker 1: just keep winning. Because undefeated teams or one-loss teams from
• 2:46:16
  Speaker 1: powerful conferences, they're not getting left out of the playoff.
• 2:46:19
  Speaker 1: And instead, you should be preparing for the playoff. And
• 2:46:22
  Speaker 1: in that sense, how is that? Miami's got a much-needed bye.
• 2:46:26
  Speaker 1: The injuries are piling up. So I am happy about
• 2:46:28
  Speaker 1: the bye week. Then we had Florida State and I
• 2:46:32
  Speaker 1: got to give Mike Norvell credit. That team has not
• 2:46:35
  Speaker 1: quit on him. One iota. That should mean something to
• 2:46:38
  Speaker 1: my friends in the administration at Florida State. All right.
• 2:46:42
  Speaker 1: I'll shut up. I will see you in 24 hours
• 2:46:47
  Speaker 1: for Super Tuesday. And with that, thanks for liking. Thanks
• 2:46:50
  Speaker 1: for subscribing. Please tell a friend or two. We'd love
• 2:46:54
  Speaker 1: to have them as part of the podcast community. See
• 2:46:57
  Speaker 1: you then.