Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Chuck’s Commentary - Why The Sun Belt Could Realign American Politics + Dems Have A Path To The Majority… If They’re Willing To Take It

Transcript

Chuck’s Commentary - Why The Sun Belt Could Realign American Politics + Dems Have A Path To The Majority… If They’re Willing To Take It · The Chuck ToddCast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This episode of the Chuck Todcast is brought to you
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: by Wild Grain. Wild Grain is the first bake from
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: frozen subscription box for sour dough breads, artisonal pastries, and
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: fresh pastas, plus all the items conveniently baked in twenty
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: five minutes or less. Unlike many store brought options, Wild
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Grain uses some simple ingredients you can pronounce and a
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: slow fermentation process that can be a lot easier on
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: your belly, little gut health there right, and richer in
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: nutrients antioxidants. There's also no preservatives and no shortcuts. The
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Wild Grain boxes are fully customizable. In addition to their
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: variety box, they have a gluten free box, a vegan box,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: and a new protein box. I will tell you I
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: have done the gluten free box. I have done it
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: a second time. I have also used the code, the
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: todcast code. If you use the promo code toodcast at checkout,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: you get thirty dollars off. I've already used it as
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: a gift to somebody else who loves this bread. It
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: is hard to find good gluten free bread. It is fantastic.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: They give you step by step instructions.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: I really dig this.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: There is nothing like having an artesion bakery in your freezer.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Right now, Wild Grain is offering my listeners thirty dollars
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: off your first box plus free croissants for life. Come
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: on when you go to wildgrain dot com slash podcast
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: to start your subscription today. That's thirty dollars off your
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: first box and free croissants for life when you visit
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: wildgrain dot com slash podcast, or simply use the promo
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: code podcast at checkout. This is a sponsor I absolutely embrace,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: so use that code. Hello, Aaron, Welcome to the Thursday
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Long Weekend edition of the Chuck Podcast. But I'm gonna
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: begin with a little bit more fallout from the from Texas.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: But I want to look at it from a wider
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: perspective here, and the wider perspective is to fit what's
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: happening in Texas into the Texas Republican Party. It's actually
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: part of a pattern that we've seen in the Sun Belt, right.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: And I look at my formative years learning American politics,
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: digesting American politics, and now consuming American politics and now
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: trying to explain it and explain where we've been and
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: where we're going, and the Sun Belt for a majority
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: of my adulthood, and really most of my lifetime has
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: been in a transition from Team Blue to Team Red.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: Right, you know, the.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Southern states in the early seventies when I was born
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: were all Democratic, but there was always a conservative through
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: line in there. You know, there was sort of populist
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: on economic issues, but culturally a bit more conservative and
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: certainly a bit more hawkish on military issues. So you
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: know it, if you think about today's Republicans as descendants
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: of yesterday's conservative Democrats, that's the through line you would
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: take there. And so for the lion's share of the seventies, eighties, nineties,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: even and really sort of peaking, I think I think
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: we're going to say peaking somewhere around twenty ten.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: Twenty twelve.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: The Sun Belt states have powered this Republican majority. The
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Republican majority in the House went through the Sun Belt
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: whenever they had the majority. The first time they got
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: it ninety four, it went through the South. But each case, right,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: and it's been fairly reflective in its leadership. Right, You've
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: had Southern Speakers of the House, New Gingrich, Mike Johnson,
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: You've had plenty of sort of Southern Leaders of the House,
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: tom Delay Dick Army. It has gone through the South,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: through the Sunbelt over the last ten years, as the
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: Midwest has sort of continues to although we're starting to
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: see population gains for the first time back in Midwestern cities,
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: we've been sort of there's been this sort of consistent
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: come down, right, and this sort of gradual shift of
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: the population from the north.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: To the south.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: And you know, from much of the twentieth century and
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: the first arguably the first say sixteen years of the
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: twenty first century, the path to political power has gone
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: through the Midwest, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Ohio right gone
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: that Essentially they've been the majority makers, majority makers in
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: the Senate, majority makers, and that is now shifted. And
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: now what we've seen, particularly since twenty sixteen, is that
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: the path back, particularly for Democrats, has not been to
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: you know, has been to hold their own in the Midwest.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: But when they have gotten majorities, it's because they have
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: overperformed in the Sunbelt. We've seen it now Georgia and
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Arizona and i have been the big two sort of
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: shifts where they went from red leaning to now very
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: I think deep purple and structurally at the moment feel
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: as if you'd rather be Team Blue than Team Red.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: And I'm going to discuss that in a minute. Right
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: the states to me are would are more comfortably in
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: the center right camp. But because the Republican Party in
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: both of the states have shifted so far to the right,
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: or the perception of them is so far to the right,
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: and they've purged certain people, it is created some opportunities.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: And it's in this sort of rubric that I want
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: to talk about sort of the challenge that both parties
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: have at the moment. And ultimately, you know, signpost here
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: that you know, the future of American politics is going
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: to be decided in the Sunbelt. And what do I
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: define as a sunbelt. Nevada's in you know, to me,
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: Las Vegas qualified, so Nevada, Nevada's in the Sunbelt. It's Nevada,
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: It's Arizona, It's New Mexico is a part of this.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: This is a state that is uh sneakily, sneakily more
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: competitive if when you when you sort of look under
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: the hood a little bit, potentially Texas, certainly, Georgia, North Carolina,
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: and then you have sort of these states that that
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: you know, in the Midwest, it was your Indian and
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: your South Dakota's. In the South, it's your Mississippi's in
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: your South Carolina's.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: There.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: There's something happening there. The question is whether it is
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: going to get turned into.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: Something so.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: But it but it's it's kind of how I want
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: to tackle today's conversation. So we're going to the and
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: I think what we're watching here is a shift. And
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: what we're seen in Texas with the Republican Party in
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: Texas is something that we've already seen take place in Florida,
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: take place in Arizona, because you know where these states
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: collectively reside. You know, would they prefer center right versus
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: center left? If given the choice, would they prefer right?
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: I think it's fair to say Florida, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina,
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: in Arizona, I think instinctively see them would probably plot
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: themselves somewhere just to the right of the center lane
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: in one form or another. Some of it would be
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: for cultural reasons, but almost all of it would be
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: for economic reasons. Right, you know, economic growth development in
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: general has been a net positive for these states. So ultimately,
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: for the large sort of chunk of voters that live
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: between the thirty five yards lines in our on our
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: political spectrum layered onto a football field. I think that's
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: where they would put themselves. But the Trump brand has
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: complicated things, right, The Trump brand doesn't work in Georgia.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: The Trump brand doesn't work in Arizona. We've seen that
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: that's put both parties over their skis, and in both states,
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: whenever a Trump branded Republican has ended up a nominee,
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: it's been a problem. We saw this in North Carolina,
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: Mark Robinson, right, it's been a problem. So the question
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: is did we just see this happen in Texas? Is
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: Ken Paxton the Mark Robinson moments? Here is Ken Paxton,
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: the Kerry Lake moments. Right, is Ken Paxton, the herschel
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: Walker moment. This this feeling that you're like, you know,
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: this is this is going too far? And the other
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: question is do Democrats recognize that this moment is here
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: and do they know how to adjust? But I do
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: think that this is what is right now. The biggest
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: thing that is changing sort of the political landscape in
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: the South is what's happening inside the Republican coalition. And
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: I think you have to understand what it used to be.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: Because what's happening in state after state in the Sunbelt
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: is this The parts of the Republican Party that knew
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: how to manage what were broad coalitions when they first
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: grabbed power in the Sunbelt in the seventies and eighties
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: are slowly being purged, marginalized, and overwhelmed by activist politics.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: Right success has made the Republican Party look inward and
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: go further to the base. Now, the irony is many
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: of the Republican governors and strategists who were actually the
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: most successful politically in these states usually understood that governing restraint.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: They understood restraint. And I say this specific word here
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: because it didn't mean they weren't conservative. It didn't mean
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: and they weren't disruptors. But they knew that there was
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: a hey, no, no, no, no, that's going to go
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: too far and that's going to blow up the coalition.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: And for the most part, these governors were able to
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: keep their activists at bay who came after them. It
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: wasn't through moderation, it was simply through restraint. Brian Kemp
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: has understood this, right, He's sort of he's a conservative.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: No one's mistaken him for a rhino, but he sort
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: of looks at it and says, I may believe this,
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: but not a majority.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: Of my states. I'm not going to go that far.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: Greg Abbott has been interesting to watch because he's not
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: a trumpy, but he doesn't want Trumpers to know that.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: He's not a trumper.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: And he's managed this and I'd say the first couple
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: of terms he's managed it better. In this coalition has
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: been more of a Rick Perry, George W. Bush or
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: a coalition conservative manager. He's been pushed lately right, He's
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: been pushed into more confrontational politics, and he's now been
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: part of his own purging of the party and his
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: own primary. And the question is is he going over
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: his skis? And we're going to find out in November
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: there and then I would argue in Florida first term,
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: DeSantis understood that he had to manage the coalition more
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: like jee Bush rather than doing what he has kind
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: of let the legislature a little bit take over, and
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: then the instincts of the rest of the party has
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: shoved things to the right, more so in second term
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: DeSantis than in first term. And again, but these governors
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: that sort of got restraint. It wasn't that they were moderate.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: These are very conservative people. Their political skill was understanding
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: the coalition maintenance, right, because fast growing Sunbelt states are
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: not ideologically uniform places. They're very complicated, they're messy, they're massive,
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: suburbanizing plate entities. They're economically diverse, and they're culturally transitional, right,
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: because you do have people with different cultural mores that
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: sort of all gravitate towards these warm climates. You've got
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: evangelical conservatives, business republicans, retirees, military families, libertarians, working class
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: of Hispanics, suburban professionals, exurban populists. It's a it is,
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: you know, there's other than sort of keep government in
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: my you know, out of my life a little bit
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: and keep my taxes low. There's not a ton of
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: other consistency. That's a coalition, it's not a movement. And
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: for about fifteen years, right, I'd argue, from say nineteen
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: ninety four to about twenty ten, okay, Republicans were extremely
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: good at holding this coalition together. But what happens is
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: when dominant parties over time continue to win, they start
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: confusing their dominance, particularly their primary dominance, with general election
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: durability and so and the two things are not the
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: same thing. So I think what we're watching now, particularly
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: in the Texas Republican Party, something we saw in the
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: Arizona Republican Party, and it's still happening today. It's coalition
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: intoxic intoxication, right where the activists are sort of drunk
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: on the power. The base begins to believe, we don't
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: need those other voters anymore, why do we need? You know,
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: they sort of forget what it took to get fifty
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: percent plus one to actually get power in the first place.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: And the minute the base of a party thinks it
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: doesn't need these majority making voters, the ones that are
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: more parts of a coalition than they are believers in
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: your movement, that's when parties start drifting and you start
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: to see it state by state. Right, Florida is a
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: good example. At the moment, the Florida Republican Party is
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: basically purged most of its remaining mainstream institutional wing right.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: We saw a big purging of it in twenty eighteen,
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: right when Ron de Santis came out of nowhere just
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: using Trump and essentially retired the Bush wing of the party.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: Adam Putnam being that right. So the Bush wing of
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: the party died in Texas this past Tuesday. The bushwing
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: of the Florida Republican Party died in twenty eighteen with
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: Brond De Santis' dual victory, beating Putnam in the primary
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: and carrying that over and winning there. Now, politically, Florida
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: obviously still leans Republican, but the party has become so
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: dominant internally that it's lost some of the ballast that
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: kept it I think, strategically disciplined, right, Jeb Bush was
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: a conservative, but he under but you know, living frankly,
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: living his early adult years in Miami, he understood, hey,
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: this is a diverse state and you can't push things
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: too far, and that ballast is missing right now. And
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: so when there's no internal opposition in a party, the
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: loudest activists end up getting to set the emotional tone
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: of the party. In Florida, I think is not as
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: far to the right as the Florida Republican Party is behaving.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: Right now.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: We're going to find out whether that matters yet November,
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: but it changes decision making. I think, like I said,
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: Arizona's where we saw this happen first.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: Arizona.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: It's always been the case, right, John McCain's politics were
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: probably the north star generally of where where Arizona is
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: frankly still is. I think Mark Kelly is essentially a
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: McCain Democrat, right, Mark Kelly was a former Republican, but
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: the Arizona Republican Party, you know, and this was it
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: was sort of the first big sun belt state that
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: it went you know, it made very goldwater blush. It
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: went so far to the right at one point, and
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: they're still in this middle of the civil War. We're
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: sitting in the governor's race. Andy Biggs and David Schwikert.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: Sweikert is more of a essentially a Republican that was
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: more familiar, more out of the mold of John McCain
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: or John Kyle versus Andy Biggs, who's more of the
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: Trump wing of the party or in Arizona speak.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: Look, now, maybe not as boisterous and loud and as
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: conspiracy minded as Kerry Lake, but close certainly you know,
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: doesn't want to offend her supporters. And Democrats have benefited
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: from this big league, as certain politicians might say, you know,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: Arizona's got the you know, got a Democratic governor and
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: two Democratic senators. Is the state suddenly liberal or is
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: this the case of In each case, the Republican Party
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: essentially went its primary voters went too far to the
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: right right, and you see this backlash question. Now we
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: can say, do Democrats understand that? That's why they've got
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: the clean state wide sweep and the near sweep of
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: all statewide offices. I think they only lost treasure in
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty two. And that's the point. Arizona became competitive
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: because Republicans began testing how far ideological purification could go
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: in a state that was filled with a ton of
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: suburban independence and transplanted voters from the Midwest right. And
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: now we're seeing Georgia is in the middle of this.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: Brian Kemp's political instincts are actually very different from a
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: lot of the activist energy that dominates parts of the
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: state party. And we're going to see it Mike Collins
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: versus Rick Jackson. You're going to see it with Derek Duhl.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: Excuse me, Mike Collins versus Derek Dooley. You're seeing it
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: with Burt Jones versus Rick Jackson. Right, the pre Trump Party,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: Derek Dooley and Rick Jackson will be the two nominees,
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: and they probably both be slight favorites to win state wide.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: In Trump's purification of politics, neither one of them is
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: going to get out of their runoff, and you're going
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: to have an election denier in Burt Jones. And I
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: would remind you every election denier lost as a major
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: nominee in Georgia in twenty two, and the election deniers
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: lost in Arizona.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: In twenty twenty two, it is.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: It is, you know, the election denier lost in North
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: Carolina for governor. The question is do election deniers get punished?
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: Where to find out? In Texas Florida. And we're gonna,
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: you know, we are, Like I said, I think we
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: already know what happens in Georgia. It's gonna be an
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: interesting test. You a former Atlanta mayor, and just in general,
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: Atlanta mayor's are going to be polarizing to the rest
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: of the state that isn't Atlanta versus potentially a Trump
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: endorsed election denier. But Kemp, you know, didn't govern this
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: way and didn't do his politics this way. He understood
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: how to survive in suburban Atlanta while still keeping the
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: Republican based together coalition maintenance that takes discipline, because once
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: a party becomes entirely performative, once every issue becomes a
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: loyalty test, that's when you start bleeding exactly the voters
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: you need in growing metro areas, which is the sun
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: belt at the moment, right again, from coast to coast,
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: from North Carolina to Arizona. This episode of the check
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: Timecast is brought to you by Fandel and stay tuned.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: The end of the ad, I will have my own
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: set of picks to share. Now you can predict the
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: playoff action all the way to the finals with FanDuel Predicts.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: All you have to do is sign up to get
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: your twenty five dollars bonus. Follow all the playoff dishes, swishes,
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: wishes and misses. Every move is a potential pill out twist.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: Predict the spread, the total points, and even the game
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: winning moments to make the playoffs where one run, one rebound,
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: one shot can change everything. So from the opening tip
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: to the final buzzer, stay locked in with every pass,
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: every play, and every moment that moves us closer to
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: crowning an NBA champion. So sign up now for your
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: twenty five dollars bonus on FanDuel Predicts for me Game six.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to be heavy on the spurs to cover,
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: but I'm going to be light on the heavy on
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: the spurs to cover, I'm and be a little heavier
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: on the under because that's the one I'm the most
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: confident in and with that, let's hope. Hey man, the
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: greatest words and sports are. It's game seven, So I
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: know what I'm rooting for, right. That's why I'm only
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: a little on the spurs here because do I want
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: the outcome too badly? And that's why I think the
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: spurs right. So that's why I'd spend more of my
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: time in the total in this one than on the
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: head to head.
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: Enjoy the game.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: FanDuel Predicts is offered by FanDuel Prediction Markets, LLC. It's
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: a registered Futures Commission Merchant eighteen plus. Bonuses non withdrawable
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: and expires seven days after receipt. Trading derivatives involve significant
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: risks and may not be suitable for all investors. Manage
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: your activity with FanDuel's consumer protection tools. Restrictions apply. See
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: all the terms at FanDuel dot com. Slash, predicts, slash bonus,
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: hyphen offer hyphen terms. In North Carolina, Republicans already found
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: the line where voters said too much. Mark Robinson was
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: that line, and now the state is still competitive, it's
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: still polarized, it's still structurally difficult for Democrats, but the
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: Trump wing doesn't go as well there, and the Democrats
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: found somebody who also understands sort of left wing coalition
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: maintenance and understands that there is not a majority for
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: progressive politics in North Carolina. That at best, you can
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: create a coalition that leans left. But what you see
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: overall is an electorate pushing back against ideological overreach. And
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: we know every state will do this. This happens in
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: blue states when they go to start. I think this
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: is what California is looking for a way to push
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: back on the leftward lurch. They're not ready to go
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: pull Republican, but they're looking for something. It's pretty clear,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: and we'll see if the next governor understands this and
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: knows how to find a heat vowve on that. Now,
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: Texas is the giant, unresolved question hanging over all of this,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: and that's where Paxton comes in. Up until John Cornyn's loss.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: You could argue that Texas Republicans have had enough institutionalists,
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: enough coalition managers like Greg Abbott to prevent a full
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: activist takeover. And yet then you get a guy like
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: Bo French, who's you know, within the Railroad Commission race,
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: who's unabashed in his in his more ideological purification, and
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: wants to get rid of a Republican who he you know,
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: who he says is too cozy with the energy industry,
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: and you start to wonder if are they going are
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: they going to make the same mistakes that Georgia Republicans
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: made in Arizona Republicans made, And is Greg Abbott going
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: to be able to still manage this coalition as well
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: as he has he? You know, like I said, first
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: two terms, Abbot was really good at this. He is
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: you know, he's always looking over his right shoulder more
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: than he's looking over his left shoulder. And the question
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: is is he look over his right shoulder too much?
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: We're going to find out in November. But you can
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: see the pressure building underneath him. And you know, he
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: did his own version of purging of the party with
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: his voucher primary campaigns. But it doesn't matter. The activist
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: wing always wants more right. Both parties find this. They
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: always want more, They want more purity, they want more confrontation,
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: they want more ideological virtue segment and eventually every dominant
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: coalition faces the same question, can it still govern broadly
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: once the activists become convinced compromise itself.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: Is a weakness.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: Now here's where Democrats enter this story, because the irony
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: is I don't think it's that difficult the Democratic parties,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: the electoral math problem is easy to solve. What they
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: have is a psychological problem because the path itself is
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: not complicated. If you're willing to accept what the path is,
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: the opening is sitting right in front of them. Regain
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: enough suburban moderates, hold enough working class minority voters, avoid
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: culturally alienating swing vote, and presents stability against ideological overreach.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: It's not complicated math. And you know what this what
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: this This is the same exact ingredients that Bob Martinez
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: used to become the first Republican governor in a generation
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: of Florida. It's what George W. Bush used to become
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: the first republic a sort of the first two term
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: Republican governor in Texas. Uh. I think ever, when he
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: when he won re election, Uh, it is what Sonny
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: Purdue did when he defeated Roy Barnes in Georgia. They
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: understood it wasn't a movement, it was a coalition with
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: that was powered by a growing movement inside their party.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: And I think that's going to be the challenge for Democrats.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: The hard part they're going to have is convincing parts
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: of the Democratic base to emotionally accept what the coalition
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: requires in order to win. That's the tension. And I've
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: been thinking about this reading some of the debates on
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: the left at the moment. Especially there's this new piece
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: in The Atlantic by Jonathan Chade about the neo Brandician movements,
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: named after a supposed quote that BRANDI said about monopolies.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: I say supposed because mister Chate couldn't find the origin
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: of it. But the argument that concentrated corporate power and
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: economic inequality basically is what has caused all of our ills,
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: our social lills, our cultural ills, and our economic ills,
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: and that dealing with it requires a far more aggressive
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: progressive response. Now Intellectually, a lot of the critiques are persuasive.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: There's clearly monopoly power in tech that we have to
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: be wary of. But electorally, the question has been a
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: lot different because parts of the progressive movement increasingly behave
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: as though they've already won this broader cultural argument. And
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: if you think you've already won the argument intellectually, compromise
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: to build a bigger coalition starts feeling unnecessary, even immoral.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: But the country still behaving are the country still behaves
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: like a coalition country. We are not a movement country,
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: and that's the disconnect. We might become one if you
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: spend decades persuading, but we're not that. Historically, this is
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: where parties often struggle the most. The hardest part in
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: politics usually isn't finding the path to victory. Path to victory,
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: I can find it in almost any state. The path
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: is often very obvious. The hardest part is convincing your
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: own party's most committed supporters to accept what the path
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: actually requires, because every activist movement eventually reaches a point
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: where it says, we don't need those voters anymore. The
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: corporatist Democrats, how often have you been hearing that lately?
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: In some of these debates on the left. Okay, you
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: don't want them in your party. You don't have to
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: have them in your party. If you don't want power,
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: do you want power?
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: Is the focus winning? And that's usually the moment when
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: you start to just when you start to put a
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: a security gate in front of your party where you
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: decide where somebody has to have a secret code in
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: order to get in to be a member, rather than
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: you just opening the doors and being a party that
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: just believes. In addition, that's the moment parties begin losing elections.
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: They should have won.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: Not to be clear, Republicans are creating this opening all
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: by themselves. They are losing republic races that they should
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: have won thanks to Donald Trump's purging right, And the
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: victories in Arizona and Georgia are not because Democrats suddenly
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: became brilliant strategists. It's because there was an obvious path
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: to take that the Republicans allowed an opening, and you
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: had smart candidates who pivoted.
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: Whether you're rough.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: Field Warnock, John assaf Mark, Kelly, Reuben Diego, or you
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: just didn't do you did no harm, like Katie Hopps,
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: the governor of Arizona, now, Republicans of many of these
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: Sun Belt states are drifting into these ideological purification politics.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: The question is whether Democrats are capable of accepting the
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: kind of broad, sometimes uncomfortable coalition politics required to capitalize
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: on the opportunity that is staring them straight in the
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: face Florida, Texas, Georgia. I'd throw Alabama and even Mississippi
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: in there. It's staring them in the face. But the
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: base of the party has to accept that it is
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: not a majority, even inside its own coalition, and that
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: is not what the activist base thinks. Just like and
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: what happens when an activist base thinks that all victories
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: are their victories. Get Ken Paxton as your Republican nominee
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: for Senate, You get Bert Jones as you're likely Republican nominee,
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: an election denier for governors. So this is the this
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: is the warning and opportunity that the Democratic Party has.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: But right now, in some ways it's got the same
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: issues that the Sun Belt Republicans have, where it's loud,
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: activist base is in charge, and it's chipping away at
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: the very coalition that gave the Republicans power the first
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: time they got it. In the Sun Belt in the
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: seventies and eighties and nineties. The opportunity for Democrats is
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: to follow the same path. No, it is not ideologically pure.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: Neither are the Sun Belt states. They're all messy coalition,
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: there is no and in fact, you know they're there.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: And this is I think it's hardest to see in Texas,
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: but none of these Most of these states have fewer
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: and fewer natives in it. It's just, you know, it's
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: just like you know, if if the country is a
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: nation of immigrants, these states are a country of domestic immigrants.
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: They you go through a college football weekend in central
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: Florida or the suburbs of Houston or the suburbs of Dallas,
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: You'll see a lot of big ten flags. You'll see
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: Ohio State and Michigan. These are all people that used
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: to live in the swing states of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania,
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: and Iowa. Uh. And so I think that this is
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: I think this is what's happening on the right, and
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: we're seeing they're all over their skis and and I
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: think we all kind of see where this is headed.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: Unless the Democratic Party gets in its own way, which
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: we know is always quite possible. Ultimately, this is the
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: irony of a modern American politics. Both parties increasingly want
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: movement politics, but the American electorate and increasingly these sunbell
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: electorates reward coalition politics. They're not ideologues, but the two
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: parties are trying to let the ideologues call the shots.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: Whichever party remembers that first that the ideologues are wrong
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: about this will end up with the advantage going into
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty eight. I want to showcase one other thing.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: There's another piece of data out there that actually reinforces
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: this entire conversation about coalition politics, activist pressure, and why
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: both parties are struggling to understand the electorate they're trying
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: to win back. The Washington Post did I love open
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: ended questions and polls. So instead of asking the question
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: of do you approve of Democrats? Do you approve of Republicans?
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: They ask voters an open ended question. Now, I will
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: tell you at the end, there's more questions that I'd
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: like than to ask open ended. But open ended means
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: they let the voters say in their own words why
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: they disapprove. Right, So, what do you actually dislike about
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: each party? The answers are incredibly revealing because they expose
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: something we've been talking about a long time on this podcast.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: The crisis isn't in American politics isn't just ideological polarization.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: It's also coalition exhaustion. Americans increasingly dislike both parties for
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: completely different reasons, but the common thread is that voters
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: think neither party fully understands normal life in America, that
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: they're sort of just out of the mainstream that we live,
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: not the mainstream that the media says its mainstream, just
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: our main our lives, our normal, everyday lives. So the responses,
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: the Democratic responses were fascinating because they split almost perfectly
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: into two competing critiques. One group thinks Democrats are too
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: culturally left, too too focused on Nietzsche issues. Two disconnected
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: from everyday concerns like cost, jobs, immigration, and basic social stability. Now,
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: guess what most of those critics were not members did
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: not call themselves Democrats. They either call themselves independence or Republicans.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: But the other huge group, it featured Democrats themselves who
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: think the party is too weak, to passive, to cautious,
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: to unwilling to fight Trump aggressively enough right and we know, right,
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: this is the essential tension inside the party because those
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: two critiques. It all depends which critique are you hearing
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: Louder right, It's very important to find out where the
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: critiques are coming from. And that's what makes this this
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: research that the Post is doing very valuable and I'd
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: like to see more of it. I'd also like to
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: know what do you like about the Democratic Party? What
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: do you like about the Republican Party? But that my
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: friend Scott Clement, who I think oversaw this project over
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: there at the Post. Hopefully he's a listener and hopefully
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: he'll add this to it. But essentially you see it, right,
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: Independents are looking they'd like to vote for an alternative
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: to Trump, but they want a more moderate Democratic Party
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: to vote for the other. Of course, the base of
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: the Democratic Party sees trump perceived success, although I would
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: argue he's unpopular. I don't know why you think what
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: he's done is successful, but I think the base Democrats
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: say I want that, and he's strong and wrong, let's
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: do it. It got him power. And of course that's
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: exactly the psychological coalition problem I was just talking about
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: in the Sunbelt, right, the path is obvious. The math
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: is easy. The hard part is convincing the most activist
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: members of the Democratic Party to follow the math equation. Emotionally,
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: the party is split between voters who want the escalation
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: and voters who want confrontation. Frankly, that's the country itself, right,
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: and it's not easy to balance because Republicans have their
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: own version of this contradiction. The biggest complaint about Republicans
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: in this poll was Trump or the party's loyalty to Trump.
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: In fact, the Republican criticisms are just as fragmented. The
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: voters think Republican parties are too extreme, too conspiratorial, to performative,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: too angry, and to authoritarian. That's what many independents and
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: Democrats thought of Republicans. But then what did Republicans think
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: of Republicans. Well, that slice of Republican voters think the
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: party isn't loyal enough to Trump, which gets back to
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: this idea of coalition purification. Because once a party becomes
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: centered around loyalty tests, every disagreement starts looking like betrayal.
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: Compromise looks like you're throwing in the towel, and that
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: creates instability inside the coalition.
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: Itself.
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: One of the things I found most interesting about what
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: the post piece surfaced is how many criticisms of both
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: parties weren't ideological at all. Both parties had people who
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: used words like corrupt, wishy, washy, week, out of touch,
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: and self interested. That was used in both sides. So
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: the frustration isn't just about policy, It's about trust, competence, authenticity, strength.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: They're upset about the entire political system. And I think
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: that this is why the next successful sixty percent leader
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: of this country, and what I mean by sixty percent
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: not somebody who's going to win sixty percent, somebody's going
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: to have the approval of sixty percent of their governing ability.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: The next sixty percent president is going to be somebody
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: who understands that we are entering an era where voters
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: care less about ideological purity and more about whether this
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: coalition feels emotionally stable, capable of governing, and responsive to
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: what we believe is the actual mainstream in America. And
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: right now, neither party fully predicts that the party that
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: wins on a given election cycle wins because they're able
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: to show that the other party is even more out
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: of touch than there and that's right now the definition
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: of winning. So because Democrats are still struggling with the
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: perception that they are culture out of sync with parts
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: of the country. Republicans still struggle with the perception that
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: they are governed by grievance, performance politics, and loyalty enforcement.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: And what makes this environment so politically volatile is that
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: there's a huge number of Americans who just feel politically homeless,
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: which I'm assuming is a large chunk of this audience.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: It's not means doesn't mean you're centrist. It just means
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: you want a little bit. It's incrementalism, it's restraint, it's directional,
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: it's not dogmatic. And that's the exhausted majority, exhausted by
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: permanent escalation, exhausted by performative outrage, exhausted by parties that
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: increasingly speak to their activists because frankly, they feel so weak.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: The activists make them feel strong, but that's all they do,
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: and they don't seem to understand how people live everyday life.
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: And that's the biggest opportunity. It's sitting there for somebody
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: to grab. There's this vast unrepresented majority in America that
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: neither that. The only time either party cares about them.
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: Is when the Republicans are running in a very blue
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: state like right now Steve Hilton is trying to speak
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: to those voters, or Democrats running in a very red state,
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: you know, like to Dan Osborne, trying to talk to
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: those voters. That's what I think voters are looking for.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: It's what I to this day believe they thought they
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: were getting in Joe Biden. They wanted to move towards competence, stability,
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: and coalition maintenance. That's what they thought Biden was going
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: to get him. And Biden's sudden governing to the left
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: rather than to the deal he cut with voters is
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: why he.
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: Became so unpopular so fast.
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: Right, how you campaign, if it's different than how you govern,
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: you will get punished faster.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: And that's what happened to him.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: One thing this Washington Post project showed voters are not
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: asking for ideological perfection. They're looking for competence and stability.
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: And look, they may incrementally think the left has more
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: ideas worth experimenting, or the right has more ideas, but
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: even when they make the choice, they don't want a
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: huge leap. They want a baby step. Those that understand
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: and keep power. Those that don't either never get it
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: or lose it. This episode of the Chuck Podcast is
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: brought to you by Soul. So if you love that
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: end of the day unwined, but hate the hangover, Soul's
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: out of Office is for you. These sparkling THCHC drinks
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: and gummies give you the same relaxed social feeling without
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: the alcohol, without the calories, and without the crash. Soul
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: is a wellness brand that believes feeling good should be
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: fun and easy. Soul specializes in delicious hemp derived THCHC
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: and CBD products designed to boost your mood and help
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: you unwind. Their best selling out of Office Gummies were
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: designed to provide a mild, relaxing buzz, boost your mood,
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: and enhance creativity and relaxation. With five different strengths, you
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: can tailor the dose to fit your vibe. So also
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: has a variety of products specifically designed to help you
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: get a better night's rest, including their top selling Sleepy Gummies,
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: a fan favorite for deep, restorous sleep.
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: Look.
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: I have made no secret, I am a believer in
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: this stuff, in cannabis and hemp derived. I do not
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: partake in alcohol. For the most part. I think this
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: stuff is a lot safer than alcohol, a lot less
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: addictive than alcohol. And yes, I have to say I
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: love these drinks. It is the glass of wine and
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: you know, after work, that's what this is. So no
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: hangover and no excess calories like this. I'm a big fan.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: So bring on the good vibes and treat yourself to
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: sold today. Right now, Soul is offering my audience thirty
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: percent off your entire order. Go to getsoul dot com
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: and use the word podcast. That's getsol dot com promo
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: code podcast for thirty percent off.
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: And yes, I too, am.
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: A customer, ask Chuck. All right, we're going to go
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: a little lengthy here on questions I get a little
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: extra time form today. We're start with John and he writes, Hey,
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: I'm a regular listener and really value the podcast.
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: I also appreciate your concern about Democrats sinking to Republican tactics,
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: but history suggests taking the high road hasn't always worked.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: I saw this firsthand as a congressional staffer during the
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: Kingrich era and in two thousand. How how do you
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: think about that trade off? Well, I mean, you know,
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: there's there's always a trade off to a to acquire power.
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: And the question is what are you willing to compromise right?
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: When?
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: What what morals or ethics are you willing to compromise?
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: And which ones aren't you? And you know there's a
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: I remember Carvel and Madeline when they came out with
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: their first book. It was called All's Fair and Love
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: in Politics and Right. The implication is that there's nothing
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: that's unfair, which means anything goes right, and that love
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: and politics are two things that where anything goes and
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: outcome is rewarded more than process. And there's always a
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: line to this. You know, the question is is so
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: let's let's the the The issue that I have expressed
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: the most concerned with is jerrymandering. And the reason I
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: have such a problem with it is because it was
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: the Democrats that wanted to be the party of fairness
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: and giving up. You know, if it's still the right
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: thing to do, why would you give up fighting for?
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: And that's you know to me, that's you know, look,
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: every there has to be a test everywhere. Take crypto right.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: Chuck Schumer presented Senate Democrats with a with a basically
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: a coercive challenge earlier this year when he said, you know,
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: it's going to have to get on board crypto. They're
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: too financially powerful and our path the majority is blocked by.
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: The crypto money.
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: And if you and so you have to decide how
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: important is that issue to you?
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: So, the problem with answering your question is that you
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: know something that I'm very mindful of what I'm I
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: might think something is a principled stand that you will
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: that is unrecoverable if you compromise on it. And you
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: may say it's subjective. You know what, you know, once
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: you get power, you can do good. And the thing
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: is we both could be right, and you just you know.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: I think that's the tough decision in politics is knowing
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: what stance do you believe and take is compromisable in
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: which aren't and ultimately right, That's it's up to every politician.
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: What's a line you won't cross? As voters, I care
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: about that, I want to know you know what line
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: won't you cross? And you know Donald Trump has tested
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: his party in ways that their party never thought they'd
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: be tested on, asking them which lines won't you cross?
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: And you don't know? Sometimes you don't know what line
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: you won't cross until it's presented to you. And so
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: so I understand, you know, there's trade offs. I think
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: ultimately you have to decide, you know, I try to
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: put myself and you putt put this in the other shoes.
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: You know, do you ultimately want to be this party?
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: What is your north star? And if it violates your
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: north star, don't do it.
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: If you think it is.
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: A forgivable sin, then do it, right, I mean, it
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: is successful. You know, politics is not a pure process, right.
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: Politics is something we invented in order to settle disputes
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: without violence. So the whole concept of politics is a
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: compromise of something. So I don't want to be so
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: dogmatic as to suggest you don't ever borrow a tactic
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: in order to win power. But I would just say
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: careful borrowing a tactic that becomes that undermines a core
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: quality or descriptor of what your movement was about. And
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: on gerrymandering, you know, I think I think that is
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: that if it really is the source of a huge
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: part of our ills, and I think we all believe this,
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: then making it worse in order to hope. I mean, look, yes,
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: there are studies that say, you know, sometimes people need
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: to see the extreme version of something to finally understand
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: why they don't want it. Now, maybe you can make
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: that argument to me that the you know, mutual assured
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: destruction on redistricting will eventually make everybody want to go
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: to fair districts. Boy, that feels like worse hopium than
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: the hopeium I'm smoking. That says, wherever you can, you
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: fight for fair districts, because that's the right thing to do.
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: Dean from Long Island from l I and yep, Long Island.
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: He says, Hey, if Democrats take the House and the
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: push Fury district, he may ease, but if Republicans hold control,
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: it could intensify. Actually, I think it's going to intensify
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: in either direction because the margin is I think only
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: I think no matter what, the margin is either going
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: to be too thin for too close for comfort for
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: Democrats or they're going to succeed and overperform and then
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: they're going to under protect those new people. But anyway,
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: beyond that, let me finish your question. Beyond that, the
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: bigger issue is the twenty thirty census and the shifting
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: population trends. How do you see election results shaping gerrymandering
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: and what comes next. Thanks, Look, the big shift has
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: to Actually this is a well timed question, because what
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: the twenty thirty census is going to cement is the
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: shift of political power from the north to the south,
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: the expansion of political power frankly, from the east to
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: the south and west to an extent, it's really sort
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: of the inner West, right, California's kind of is going
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: to lose lose some congressional seats, but you're going to
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: see Utah, I think, in Colorado, Montana sort of the
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: inner West. I guess, if you will, the part of
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: the West that doesn't touch saltwater doing better, and certainly
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: you're going to see that expansion in the south. To me,
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: it should put a priority on where there's more money
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: spent on state legislative races in these population growth states,
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: more money spent on those governors races, more attempts to
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: do fair redistricting where it exists. Right, you have that
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: in Arizona, you have a form of it attempted in Colorado.
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: We'll see what happens in Utah. They have different court cases.
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: And then of course there's Texas and Florida and I
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: think it is. It is that just the if both
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: parties aren't worried about organizing every county, let alone every
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: state in the Sunbelt, they're going to be behind in
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: the fight for power because national political power is going
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: to go through the Sunbelt and the twenty thirty census,
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: it's you know, forget the big Blue wall in the Midwest.
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: It is going to be North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: probably you know, and then every once in a while
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: Florida and Texas may sneak into there, and every once
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: in a while New Mexico and say Mississippi could sneak
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: in there. But I think that's coming. But bottom line,
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: I think that's what you know, there's that more political
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: organizing focus and investment, whether you're on the left or
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: the right, is it's going to be demanded to be
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: there in the South because the South and the Sun
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: Belt in particular is going to be the path to power.
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: Next question comes from Grand Fa, Minnesotan by way of
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: Iowa go Hawks. Well right on. That means he might
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: be of one of those a lot of Vikings fans
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: in Iowa, particularly in the Mason City area. He goes
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: long time listener love the podcast. Do you think presidential
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: approval ratings are overused or too limited, especially in such
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: a polarized environment where they rarely move outside of narrow range.
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: Why isn't political media developed more advanced metrics to better
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: capture performance or public sentiment? Actually, it's sitting there. You're
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: highlighting a void that frankly, I should be filling and
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: more should be filling. We've all figured out there's a
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: four part test on job approval. You should ask, we
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: should not be asking approved, disapprove. It's strongly somewhat on
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: each side. Do you strongly approve, do you strongly disapprove?
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: Do you somewhat approve? Do you somewhat disapprove? It is
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: a different type of voter in each of those four categories.
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: Those move a little bit more. Right, The overall with
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: the shifts between strong and somewhat in either side of
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: the equation are what is the movement? Right, It's the
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: movement underneath the movement. The point is is that the
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: NBC News polls shifted to that or quite a while ago.
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: But in the Trump air in particular, and even a
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: bit in the Obama era, we learned this that having
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: the four part job approval question allows.
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: You to do would give you the quote.
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: Unquote advanced metrics mindset right, and we should it is
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: more the trend line of strong disapprove and strong approve
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: tells you a lot more than the combined numbers do.
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: The combined numbers when you combine to someone in the
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: strong just sort of dilutes it all because a lot
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: of times the somewhat approve is you know, when somebody
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: is growing unpopular, they're somewhat approved is bigger than they're strong,
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: and they're strong disapprove is bigger than they's somewhat. When
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: they become more popular, literally, those things start to reverse.
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: So that's when you're asking for quote unquote advanced metrics.
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: There's still job approval is still the best opening question
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: to do, but if you're not doing a four part ask,
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: then you're not doing it correctly and you won't find
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: what you're looking for, which is some of that movement.
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: So I think what you're asking for is better reporting
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: of job ratings.
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: And guess what I confess.
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: I think we need to lean in more on reporting
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: the four categories rather than reporting the combined two. So
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: I would say this look. As many of you know,
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: I'm not a huge fan of aggregating polling across methodologies.
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: I'm not a huge fan of it. I know, real
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: clear politics at five point thirty eight. I think that
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: they they both know that the somewhats and the strongs
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: give you better internal analysis to focus on. But they
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: do all their charts with the basic approved disapprove. You
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: probably ought to take a look at both the economists
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: you gov poll they split it up and they take
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: a look at the intensity better, and so does Hugh
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: and both of their sites I think do a better
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: job of focusing on essentially the four the four categories,
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: and you see the movement within the four categories more
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: and look strong strong disapprove has been growing, and that
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: that's more of a sign than just seeing the incremental
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: increase in either side. And there's always the overall approval
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: number doesn't change much, but the makeup between strong and
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: somewhat is a little more volatile, and I think it
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: tells you more.
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: And so that.
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: If my friends at the aggregation world are listening, I
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: think enough pollsters are. I've figured out the job approval.
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: You're doing a disservice if you're not asking the four
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: part the four part question. If you're only doing the
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: two part question, aggregate the four parts. If you're going
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: to aggregate guys, I think you'd benefit from it. I
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: know not everybody's aggregating that.
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: Well.
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: Do those that do? Guess what we should push everybody.
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: It's a waste of time to just ask it as a.
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: Two part question. All right. Next question comes from true
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: Bill and he ends it with go lions.
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: All right, He goes, thank you for your thoughtful analysis.
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: Always appreciate your respective. As an eighty one year old
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: Vietnam Vet who grew up believing deeply in this country
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: and its ideals, I've been wondering where those true believers
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: are today, especially after a recent interview with aj Purshuddy.
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: Do you see a path forward for people who still
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: hold on to that belief and for some sense of
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: healing in or politics? You know? I go back to
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: something that is really sort of gnawed at me, and
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: it is this idea and God, I think it was
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: the conversation I had with Lamar Alexander about no Child
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: Left Behind and what the unintended consequence of focusing on
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: testing and how it essentially right everything is an incentive structure, right,
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: and sometimes you have an unintended consequence.
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: And so when you when.
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: You changed funding bonuses to reflect improvements on reading and
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: math test scores, then you had the best teachers being
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: pulled from other subjects focused there the testing was about that,
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: and then you end up de emphasising over time subjects
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: that are not impacted, where your funding's not impacted by
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: whether your students score well or not. And I think,
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: and I'm probably truell, I'm probably pulling exactly at the
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: heartstrings that you want me to pull out here, but
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: I think there's something to it, which is, if we
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: choose to teach civics and say that you need a
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: good civics education before we deem you a high school
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: graduate or a college or somebody who's acceptable for college admission,
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: I think that we'd have a better prepared citizenry for
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: our politics. Not saying it would automatically depolarize us, but
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: early awareness of that our system and that this country
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: is pretty diverse and pretty politically complicated, and understanding how
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: the system works and why it was designed to actually
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: be this filled with all these contradictory checks and balances.
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: Because we didn't really have one ethnicity, We didn't have
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: one ideology that was that we decided to cement. You know,
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: we really did want to want to want to not
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: let let one ideology become the dominant, uh guide here.
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: And so I have I am stuck on this idea
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: that we by choosing to emphasize what we chose to
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: emphasize when it came to deciding what completes and education
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: in the public school system.
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: It didn't include civics or social studies.
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: And I'm glad that I grew up in a house
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: that just you know, thought that was as important as
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: English and math, also thought extracurricular activities, both sports and
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: music in this case, and more musical talent than artistic talent.
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: We're also part right.
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: Of a whole, you know, that the you know, the
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: whole wholeness type of thing. So I'm I'm lucky that
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: I grew up. You know, we didn't have we didn't
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: have a lot, but I certainly had a I certainly
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: my parents were rich in promoting that even if we
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: didn't have material goods. And it is shocking to me
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: how little civics gets taught in all sorts of whether
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: it's private school, public school. I've I've had my kids
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: experienced both, and it's been quite disappointing. And I realized
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: how much I didn't get in school either. I got
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: almost all of it at home, more of it at
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: home than I got at school. When it came to civics,
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: and it came to politics, and it came to to
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: American history. And if you're wondering, where are the true
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: believers we deemphasized, I wonder. You know, love of country
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: is loving all of its contradictions, complications, And you know,
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: I look at our complications. That's what makes me a
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: true believer. I think our systems amazing. I think we
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: put together something. We gave ourselves a toolbox to allow
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: a whole bunch of people who shouldn't agree with each
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: other and anything to find some path. We have a
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: process to find some path to majoritarian rule, not always
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: feeling as majoritarian sometimes. And I think when that gets
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: out of whack, that's when you need to realign as
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: statives and make sure that majoritarianism is still is still
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: the backbone of what we're doing. But we have a
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: pretty good tool toolbox. But I worry that we've spent
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: fewer and fewer generations teaching. You know, It's like, imagine,
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: imagine not teaching. I'm going to say, I'm gonna going
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: to be very sort of I'm gonna sound old school traditionalists, Matt.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: Imagine not teaching your kids the difference between a flathead
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: and a Philip screwdriver. And I say this because you
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: know what, it's one of those things that over time
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: you're glad you know the difference when you grow up
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: and you're on your own and all this stuff right,
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: and some things that you just get taught that you
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: don't realize you're getting taught till you need it. Well,
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: we've stopped even explaining the tools in the American democracy
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: to our kids. We've stopped teaching it. I've been pitching
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: a potential opening class for USC that was asked to
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: design it, to submit a potential introductory course for a
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: Washington program for incoming freshmen, and I said, how about
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: just simply the Constitution? Because the thing that I have
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: noticed is how much that the how much the students
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: don't know as much about the Constitution when they come
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: into college. Now, those that want to learn love it
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: and really dive into it. And get to know it.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: But what if that were a mandatory course for incoming
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: freshmen at a university, particularly in a Washington program. Right now,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: it's set aside for those that already have an interest
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: in politics, But shouldn't everybody learn this anyway? I have
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: a feeling i'm preaching to your to an amen choir
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: to you, true Bill, But I assume being a Lions
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: fan means you always have some optimism somewhere, So God
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: bless you, and I'm all for the lines doing well
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: except when they're playing my packers, all right. Next question
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: comes from Daniel T. Anderson, South Carolina. He goes, with
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: all the controversy about around redistricting, would it makes sense
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: to use a more scientific, data driven method to remove
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: the human element altogether, like drawing districts based on population
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: using geographic coordinates. Could something like that realistically work?
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: You know, it's funny, Daniel.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: I thought that the twenty twenty and I wonder if
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: COVID sort of screwed this up. But I really thought
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: the twenty twenty one reapportionment was going to be the
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: most egalitarian one that we had, because I thought, you know,
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: you and I can make maps now right, we don't
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: need you know, sophisticated technology. You know, all of the
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: data is available to any of us can make maps.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: And I thought we would start to see competing maps.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: And I thought we would start And there's a part
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: of me that wants to see more maps. Show me
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: a map that would be the most republican map, Show
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: me the most democratic maps, show me the most compact maps.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: Show me, you know, I want to see the options,
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: all the options, you know, rather than the option that
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: only fits.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: My politics, right.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: And I think it's all there, And I you know,
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: I was I was hopeful that maybe if and look,
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: my my my friends and partners at DDHQ are building
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: a terrific hub for political intelligence. And I think that
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: by twenty twenty thirty, I have a feeling we're going
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: to my friends over there are going to build something
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: that's going to allow just for this, because I think
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: people need to understand. The more the public understands, how
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: this changes representation, how this changes political power, just based
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: on who draws the maps. And then maybe you just
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: you know, and maybe what we're voting on. I'm with you.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: Let's take you know, let's take the human element out
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: of it completely. But and say, you know, here, show
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: me a map this way, show me map this way,
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: show me map this way. Now you go to the
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: voters and say, would you prefer a map that leaned right?
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: Would you prefer a map that leaned left? Would you
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: prefer a map that was super fair? Like you almost
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: ask for the outcome that you want if you actually
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: can see all the choices. Anyway, I'm being a little
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: a little provocative here purposely because you know, why can't
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: we use a data driven model?
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: Please?
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: There's so many things we need a data that would
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: be better if we just well let the data speak
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: for itself. I do think over time data will win
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: the argument. But it's a subjective persuasion there, you know.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: But I do think people need to understand how you
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: can take the same map and create four or five
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: six different type of outcomes for political power based on
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: you know, what you think the electorate wants. And sometimes
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: I wonder should be you know, what do the voters
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: want in a given state? Do they want hard partisanship
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: or do they want you know, I grew up with
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: a father who lean right, who thought I want to
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: have I want to make sure there is somebody that
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: cares about South Florida in both parties, so that whoever's
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: got power has some say about how that power is
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: enacted for our community. Right, And I think, you know,
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: there's still voters who believe that, right. And I think
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: what's happened is the parties have been hijacked by activists
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: who don't believe the other parties should have a say.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: That. You know.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: It's that politics should be completely zero sum and if
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: you lose, you get no say versus you know, And
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: that's what I think the American public sees sees politics
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: in proportional terms. Yet our system, you know, doesn't really
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: reward proportionality. You know, would we be better off with
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: proportionality politics so that you know, if if a state
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: was twenty five percent you know, conservative and twenty five
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: percent liberal, then their representatives would be far left and
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: far right half of them, and then the other half
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: would be somewhere in the middle.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm just saying that the irony is that
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: we're a country that he sent you actually accepts the
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: outcome to look proportionality, even though maybe we go in
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: there with a zero sum attitude. But I'm not sure
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: about that, And you know, I don't know whether I'm
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: a mainstream voter, and that I kind of think that
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: I want to have a foot and all in both
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: camps because at the end of the day, I don't
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: know who's going to have power, and I want to
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: make sure my community is well represented. I'm still more
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: of that kind of old school sort of American voter,
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: and that felt, you know, but I don't know whether
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: that was the norm or whether I was.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: Raised in a household that was unique, right.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: And I think what we all, what we all don't
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: want to admit, is we think we're we're the mainstream
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: until we meet others and we wonder, wait, are they
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: mainstream or are I mainstream?
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: But you know, you're asking for data driven results. It
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: seems simple we have. It's never been easier to make
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: a map. And I think at a minimum, if we
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: started making more maps so people could see this is
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: a map that would be driven by maximizing Republicans, maximizing democrats,
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: maximizing geography, compactness, maximize you know, you go through the
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: various and you know which one is in the best
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: interest of this state. Just another another potential way to
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: handle this because again, banning gerrymandering is naive because one
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: person's gerrymander is another person's competitive district, and if you
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: want competition, you may have to jerrymander. So it's all
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: about what what is your priority? I personally would I
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: want I want the market to speak, so I would
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: prioritize competitiveness. But you know, take a take a place
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: like Wisconsin. Wisconsin from a statewide level is very evenly divided.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: The problem is most of most of the Democratic voters
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: are in one concentrated part of the state, in the
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: southeast part of the state. So if you just ad
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: geographic it would sort of give an outsized advantage to
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: the Republicans. Right, So like, what is the right way
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: to balance it?
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: Right? Right?
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: And it all depends on your own motivation, right, If
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: you're a partisan, you're trying to put it in a
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: way that maximizes your political leverage. At the end of
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: the day, if you just care about what's in the
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: best interest in Wisconsin, you might say, well, maybe we
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: want competitiveness, maybe we want this, you know, So that's
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: why ultimately I prioritize competitiveness. But if you did that
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: in Wisconsin, you'd have to Gerrymander, You'd have to have
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: districts that were kind of weird in order to make
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: sure you had a balance. And so I think that's
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: the I think that's the trade off. So if you
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: want true blue, you know Milwaukee wants to feel represented, fine,
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: but the more representative feels it may be speaking for
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: less of the state. So just an example, all right,
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: Last question mark from Ann Arbor rights, Hey, I'm curious
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: about a few things you've discussed recently and expanding the House.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: Do you think it's realistically achievable given political incentives and
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: public perception. What are your thoughts on proportional voting as
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: a potential solution to Jerrymander?
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah? I just answered that first part.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: And on a lighter note, how does your current workload
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: compare to your time at meet the presip the good work.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: Mark from Ann Arbor.
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: Well, I just talked a little bit about proportionality, right,
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: I think it goes back to what what do a
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: majority of your voters want?
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: Do they want one party to have a political advantage
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: or do they want the market to decide this?
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: The free market of ideas, the free market of the democracy.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: And you know, like I said, I would prioritize competitiveness
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: because I want you know, I want everybody's I want
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: every I want more voters with skin in the game.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: I don't want fewer voters with skin in a small
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: our game.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: I e.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: Primaries, right, I want more voters involved in the general election,
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: whatever that takes. And frankly, and that's why I'm for
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: all party primaries.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: I think we got to get rid of.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm fine if you want to join a
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: political party, but that shouldn't and you should tell us
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: what your political party is. That's fine too. If you
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: want to sell us, you know, that's fine. But you know,
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: if voters decide they want a competition between two independents,
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: two Democrats, two Republicans, whatever it is, that let's let
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: the voters decide to the final two.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: Final two ought to be.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: So on on expanding the House, I think this is
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: going to get a little bit of legs because of
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: what happened with the Voting Rights Act. I've had a
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: you know, look, I think this is an important answer.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: It's an Act of Congress.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: It isn't.
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: This isn't a heavy lift. You don't need a constitutional amendment.
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: This is just an act of Congress if you're not
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: going to move to proportional representation. Right, if you moved
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: to proportional representation, you probably could keep it locked at
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: four thirty five and you'd have a different way that
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: you would make up the states and make up the
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: delegations if you want. You know, now, the reason I'm
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: for expansion of the House is a I think it's
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: a lot easier to get folks to rally around something
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: that the founders intended, and the founders intended for the
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: House to expand with the population of the country, and
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: we stop we have stopped doing that for literally ninety
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: seven years. That was ninety seven years ago that we
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: capped the House. It's been one hundred and six. You know,
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: it's been over one hundred years since we last expanded
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: the House, and we expanded every single decade before nineteen twenty.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: You know, you would see that various identity groups would
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: have more representation in the House of Representatives, the People's
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: House if we expanded the House. And I think when
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: more groups realize this, you're going to see more calls
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: for this, because I mean, I think it's the relief
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: it's the best relief valve to these gerrymander wars where
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: if we're going to turn state legislative races and the
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: governor's races into zero sum games, which is, if you
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: win fifty one percent of the vote, you're going to
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: get one hundred percent, you're going to get one hundred
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: percent of the rewards on remapping the state. And you know,
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: up states turning left. So we're going to make all
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: the districts left and we're going to you know all
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: of that. You know, first of all it majority parties
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: will keep chasing voters, and then you chase voters that
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: won't be there the next election. Right, Texas Republics are
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: going to find that out the hard way with Latinos
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: in the South. You know, they went chasing them thinking
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: it was going to help them with their remap and
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: it may end up blowing up into a dummy mander.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: So I think the the shift, you know, the lack
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: of representation of African Americans in the South, if these
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: gerrymanders go through these sort of Republican leaning gerrymanders, I
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: think it brings a whole new group of activists in
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: the uncapped the House world and again I think you
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: can find common cause between African American democrats in the
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: South conservatives in the north East, places like Massachusetts and Connecticut.
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: Those are states with thirty five to forty percent of
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: voters that lean right, that have no Republican representation at
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: all in Congress. But if you expanded the House and
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: those states too right, they would there would be more
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: opportunities and more likelihoods that you would have more of
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: your political diversity represented in the House of Representatives.
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 2: And that that was the intent.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: And I think the closer we moved the democracy to
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: the people, the better off we are. And the democracy
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: is further away than it's been. And every every ten
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: years that we choose not to expand the House, this
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: democracy becomes more perverted and less majoritarian.
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 2: And that that's why this is.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: This is the first among perhaps many fixes, but this
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: one has to go through first before you can decide
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: what others that need that are necessary. As for workload,
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: I have more control over my week and month, but
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: I'm probably as busy, if not busier, because I don't
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: know how to say no. I went from sort of
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: six jobs that I you know, I had sort of
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: three or four different jobs. Within a job at NBC,
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: I probably have six or seven different projects, some of
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: which intertwined.
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 2: And some don't.
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: And so I will tell you this, in the last
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: three months, I have felt like I'm always a little
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: bit behind, which is what I would describe ten my
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: nearly ten years and meet the press, which I was
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: always you know, Luckily, you know, I'd catch up every
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: week because she still had to put on a show.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: And whatever I felt behind, my had to turn the
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: page and keep moving. And I've gotten to that point
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: in the last three months, which frankly probably makes me happy.
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: I'm better off being a little bit too busy than
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: if I have a little much, a little too much
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: free time. Speaking of free time, though, it's time to
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: go take some for myself and go work on some
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: of those other projects. So with that, I'll see in
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: seventy two hours. Appreciate the listen, and if you like
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: what you hear, i'd love a five star review and
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: a little like and subscribe. Thanks very much, and we'll
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: see you next time.