Latest / Normally / Normally Podcast: Immigration, Education, and the Fight for Trust

Transcript

Normally Podcast: Immigration, Education, and the Fight for Trust · Normally

0:01
Speaker 1: Hey guys, and welcome to Long on the show with
0:04
Speaker 1: normalist takes for when the news gets weird.
0:06
Speaker 2: I am Mary Catherine Ham and.
0:09
Speaker 3: I am Carol marcoitz him. Mary Catherine, how's it going.
0:12
Speaker 1: It's going okay, although I do think I may be
0:15
Speaker 1: entering my snowbird era because I am old now and
0:19
Speaker 1: I can't get warm.
0:21
Speaker 2: I can't get warm, Carol.
0:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree. Cut my one of my favorite comedians
0:26
Speaker 3: in a Bragazzi. He has a whole thing on how
0:28
Speaker 3: the older you get, the more you're like looking at
0:30
Speaker 3: young people like where are their jackets?
0:34
Speaker 2: True?
0:35
Speaker 1: My children walk around in bare feet, and I'm like,
0:37
Speaker 1: don't do that. It's making me cold because I'm looking
0:39
Speaker 1: at you.
0:40
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly. My toes are cold because of you. So
0:43
Speaker 3: I'm a very big slipper person. It's like big in
0:46
Speaker 3: my you know, Russian cultures. So I don't understand how
0:48
Speaker 3: everybody's not wearing like warm ugs slippers around the house,
0:51
Speaker 3: even in Florida.
0:52
Speaker 2: But I have been so yeah, I'm with you.
0:57
Speaker 3: So interesting weekend. I don't know how the other forty
1:01
Speaker 3: nine states did, but Florida continued to be scandalous with
1:05
Speaker 3: this whole illegal immigration push by our legislature. So over
1:10
Speaker 3: the weekend someone leaked a paid influencer campaign to pay
1:15
Speaker 3: three thousand dollars to push the legislature's bill. That's the
1:19
Speaker 3: bill that Ron DeSantis is opposing. The governor is saying
1:24
Speaker 3: that it's the bill is very weak. I happen to agree.
1:27
Speaker 3: One of the main things that the bill does is
1:30
Speaker 3: move enforcement of illegal immigration outside the Governor's office into
1:34
Speaker 3: the Agricultural Commissioner's office, which of course makes no sense
1:38
Speaker 3: at all. This campaign over the weekend was exposed so
1:43
Speaker 3: fast that the few influencers, like three of them I think,
1:47
Speaker 3: ended up deleting their tweets about it. The campaign had
1:51
Speaker 3: Republican Party of Florida at the top, but the party
1:55
Speaker 3: denies they had anything to do with it. Now, the
1:58
Speaker 3: irony here is that the legislature is filled with these
2:04
Speaker 3: really crazy people who are on x saying that opposition
2:09
Speaker 3: to them is the AstroTurf. Meanwhile, opposition to them all
2:12
Speaker 3: have their names on their tweets and are just saying,
2:15
Speaker 3: you know, we support the governor. We want the governor
2:18
Speaker 3: to have the powers that he is granted by the
2:20
Speaker 3: Florida State Constitution, which is the side notes all this
2:23
Speaker 3: that even if they had a majority to override the
2:27
Speaker 3: governor's veto, it's probably unconstitutional and going straight to the courts.
2:32
Speaker 2: Anyway.
2:34
Speaker 3: My last comment about this is an account that I
2:37
Speaker 3: like on X A lot is called t x SA
2:41
Speaker 3: l THH two zero. I don't know tisal though. Two oh.
2:45
Speaker 3: She's fantastic. She's got a large following. I just can't
2:47
Speaker 3: pronounce her handle. She tweeted g whiz. Who would benefit
2:51
Speaker 3: so much from this bill that they would pay influencers
2:54
Speaker 3: to push it? Don't know who? Could it be? Possibly
2:58
Speaker 3: big agriculture.
2:59
Speaker 1: Maybe this thing has seemed suspicious from the get go.
3:03
Speaker 2: I'm glad you're following it.
3:05
Speaker 1: The idea that they called it the Trump Bill just
3:08
Speaker 1: felt like a little.
3:10
Speaker 2: Try hard for me. That set up some flags.
3:13
Speaker 1: And I think as right leading people, we are on
3:17
Speaker 1: the lookout for terrible legislative ideas coming out of California
3:21
Speaker 1: because those spread east and eventually overtake many parts of.
3:26
Speaker 2: The US, and they don't work well.
3:29
Speaker 1: But there are bad, plenty of bad tactics, even in
3:33
Speaker 1: places legislatures that are run by Republicans and that have
3:37
Speaker 1: competent governors, where bad stuff can come out of state
3:40
Speaker 1: legislators A because people aren't thinking through things very well
3:44
Speaker 1: and B because of these larger influences and people are
3:47
Speaker 1: not paying attention to it.
3:48
Speaker 3: That's absolutely right. So Randy Fine, who is a state
3:52
Speaker 3: legislature legislator here in Florida, he's going to Congress most
3:56
Speaker 3: likely if he wins a special election in April, which
3:59
Speaker 3: he looks like he's going to do. He's been just
4:03
Speaker 3: aggravating and exacerbating this problem because he's erratic and irrational
4:09
Speaker 3: on X and tweeting angry tweets at people. And basically
4:13
Speaker 3: their entire argument is who would listen to the popular
4:16
Speaker 3: governor of Florida when you could listen to legislators, legislators
4:20
Speaker 3: you've never heard of, because look, the governor ran against
4:24
Speaker 3: Donald Trump for president. How could you trust someone who
4:26
Speaker 3: didn't stand with Donald Trump. The irony, of course, is
4:29
Speaker 3: that Randy Fine endorsed Ron DeSantis for president against Donald
4:35
Speaker 3: Trump before switching to Donald Trump. So it's been a
4:38
Speaker 3: real good time down here, a lot of fun. Highly
4:43
Speaker 3: recommend it.
4:44
Speaker 2: I've seen I've seen Randy say it.
4:45
Speaker 1: I'll you know, he's like getting in debate challenges all
4:49
Speaker 1: over the place, so I guess we can look forward
4:52
Speaker 1: to that if he doesn't, if she ends up taking someone.
4:55
Speaker 4: Up on it.
4:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, he's supposed to be on Dana Lash's show
4:57
Speaker 3: today as we're recording this. I don't think it's happened yet.
5:01
Speaker 3: He also thought he was getting an hour on her
5:03
Speaker 3: show because she said we'll have you on in the
5:06
Speaker 3: second hour. He thought he'd have an hour on her
5:09
Speaker 3: radio show to like, you know, tear into the governor
5:12
Speaker 3: and how much he doesn't like him. So that's what
5:14
Speaker 3: we're dealing with down here. You're right, you know, contagious.
5:18
Speaker 3: Bad ideas are very contagious, and I think we caught
5:21
Speaker 3: this from Texas.
5:23
Speaker 2: So.
5:25
Speaker 3: Be careful, be careful out there.
5:27
Speaker 2: States.
5:28
Speaker 3: Yes, it could happen to you. Your bad policies from
5:31
Speaker 3: other red states can come to you the red state
5:33
Speaker 3: you live in, and you could trust the Republicans in
5:36
Speaker 3: your state. I did. I didn't even know this was
5:38
Speaker 3: I had no idea this was a thing that I
5:40
Speaker 3: had to be watching the Republican Party legislators in my state. Crazy.
5:46
Speaker 3: I'm brand new to this.
5:48
Speaker 1: Part of what you're looking for when you elect sensible
5:51
Speaker 1: people and you have a good leader, is that you
5:53
Speaker 1: can sort of relex, actually chill and enjoy your life.
5:58
Speaker 1: But this is a good reminder to stay vigilant because
6:01
Speaker 1: does not always work out like that.
6:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, So what it is is we trust Governor DeSantis
6:06
Speaker 3: and right now nobody else down here. Yeah, we're going
6:10
Speaker 3: to take a short break and come right back with Normally.
6:16
Speaker 1: I live in a place with a very good school district, Carol,
6:21
Speaker 1: very good, best in the nation at times in the
6:24
Speaker 1: past twenty years or so. But that district, along with
6:27
Speaker 1: many others, during COVID, decided to self emolate in just
6:32
Speaker 1: astounding ways, both on social justice and on academics, and
6:37
Speaker 1: just like shutting down. Like I silly me thought in
6:41
Speaker 1: this area of the country, I could look to my
6:44
Speaker 1: schools and be like, well, it's just a good school district,
6:47
Speaker 1: I'll send my kids there. Silly, No, that was not
6:51
Speaker 1: what happened. They shut down for two years during COVID,
6:54
Speaker 1: and we all know what the end of that story was.
6:56
Speaker 1: But the end of that story became a lot clearer
6:58
Speaker 1: this week with the national report card coming out. It's
7:02
Speaker 1: the NAEP, I believe it's the National Association for Educational Progress.
7:08
Speaker 1: Fourth and eighth graders take this big test, and we
7:12
Speaker 1: get the results and they're bad.
7:15
Speaker 2: They're really, really bad, Carol.
7:19
Speaker 1: Some of the scores are the worst in thirty something years.
7:23
Speaker 2: And you know, I'm still mad about it, bro still
7:28
Speaker 2: very very mad.
7:30
Speaker 1: And a lot of these scores show that because they
7:33
Speaker 1: do this every two years, it shows that, you know,
7:35
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two, you could have been like, Okay,
7:37
Speaker 1: we're still working on getting back what we lost during
7:41
Speaker 1: the pandemic and because of pandemic policies and teacher union policies,
7:47
Speaker 1: and now in twenty twenty four, we're not coming back
7:50
Speaker 1: the way we should be. We're not regaining and you
7:53
Speaker 1: can't blame it on just pandemic.
7:56
Speaker 2: At this point, you made a whole and you haven't
8:00
Speaker 2: dug out.
8:00
Speaker 3: Of it exactly. I was going to say that that,
8:03
Speaker 3: you know, while you know some blame for the pandemic
8:07
Speaker 3: policies for sure, and I know that you and I
8:10
Speaker 3: somewhat relish being right that this was going to happen,
8:13
Speaker 3: because obviously.
8:14
Speaker 2: It was going to happen.
8:16
Speaker 3: After a while, you really can't keep blaming the pandemic
8:19
Speaker 3: era policies. There's a piece by Frederick hess he's executive
8:23
Speaker 3: editor of the website education next, and he writes the
8:27
Speaker 3: measure of a school leader gradually became a willingness to
8:30
Speaker 3: parrot the tenets of social justice. Professional developers urged teachers
8:34
Speaker 3: to deconstruct privilege, be on the lookout for microaggressions, and
8:37
Speaker 3: do their best to combat climate change. The grandiose ambitions
8:41
Speaker 3: and amorphous directives came at the extense of more prosaic concerns.
8:45
Speaker 3: After all time devoted to gender unicorns or interrogating privilege,
8:49
Speaker 3: his time not spent on science for math and the
8:52
Speaker 3: associated doctrines undermine academic pursuits. That's you know, we also
8:58
Speaker 3: have been saying that for a long time that every
9:00
Speaker 3: in it you spent on woke nonsense is a minute
9:02
Speaker 3: you're not spending on math.
9:04
Speaker 1: Well, I've never understood the argument that DEI doesn't take
9:09
Speaker 1: from other principal missions of your work, because we all
9:15
Speaker 1: have finite time, right, and public schools in particular are
9:19
Speaker 1: always saying we have too many students and too many
9:21
Speaker 1: needs to meet in too little time, And then they
9:24
Speaker 1: decide the way we're going to deal with that is
9:27
Speaker 1: to add a whole other raft of non academic concerns
9:33
Speaker 1: to our plates, and that seemed like a bad idea.
9:36
Speaker 3: The whole time, right, it's the whole second.
9:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, So it's.
9:40
Speaker 3: Interesting about the fourth grade scores in particular, those kids
9:44
Speaker 3: would have been in kindergarten in twenty twenty. My youngest son,
9:49
Speaker 3: he if we stayed in New York, he would be
9:51
Speaker 3: in fourth grade and taking this test and probably bombing
9:54
Speaker 3: it because I don't think he's at level for fourth grade.
9:57
Speaker 3: He's in third grade in Florida, because it's a different
10:00
Speaker 3: off And look, I you know, I say, I talk
10:05
Speaker 3: about this a lot, but he was the main reason
10:07
Speaker 3: we moved to Florida. I saw that this online nonsense
10:10
Speaker 3: that he was doing was failing. I also, at the
10:13
Speaker 3: time realized that the reading curriculum, which had totally worked
10:17
Speaker 3: for my other two kids but suddenly wasn't working for him.
10:20
Speaker 3: Where they memorized all these words. It turned out he
10:23
Speaker 3: had an amazing memory and could memorize thousands of words
10:26
Speaker 3: and not sound anything out, and he could pretend to
10:29
Speaker 3: read and appear to be reading but not actually be reading.
10:32
Speaker 3: All of that kind of collided to say that this
10:36
Speaker 3: just isn't working for him, and I have to get
10:38
Speaker 3: him out of here. That was our main reason for
10:40
Speaker 3: moment of Florida was our youngest son. Again, these fourth
10:44
Speaker 3: graders were lost school because Randy Weingarten didn't want the
10:50
Speaker 3: teachers to go back into buildings that were safe, and
10:54
Speaker 3: everybody else is going back, and these weak politicians listened
10:59
Speaker 3: to the teacher unions and they kept school closed, and
11:02
Speaker 3: these kids lost a very pivotal time in their lives.
11:05
Speaker 3: It's interesting that I think we'll watch this cohort, this
11:09
Speaker 3: one that just took the fourth grade test. I don't
11:11
Speaker 3: know that they were covered by eighth grade. I don't
11:13
Speaker 3: know that this improves for them. I mean, we've thrown
11:16
Speaker 3: a lot of resources at our son and he's gotten
11:19
Speaker 3: a lot better, but he's just not where his older
11:22
Speaker 3: two siblings were at this point because it hit him
11:24
Speaker 3: at such a time of change for him.
11:27
Speaker 1: Yes, I think putting five and six year olds on
11:30
Speaker 1: Zoom is one of the worst policy decisions ever made.
11:37
Speaker 1: I think that we failed them in very serious ways.
11:42
Speaker 1: Once you've created a whole, it's hard to climb out
11:45
Speaker 1: of it you put I mean, and as we noted,
11:48
Speaker 1: and as this test notes, it was the people who
11:52
Speaker 1: were doing fine, who have basically done fine cohorts that
11:57
Speaker 1: were not doing great and who had or resources and
12:00
Speaker 1: who have less time and money to climb out of
12:02
Speaker 1: the hole, and fewer private tutors during COVID that haven't
12:08
Speaker 1: been able to correct course. And it's going to be
12:12
Speaker 1: really ugly if we don't figure out a way to
12:14
Speaker 1: fix that. There is one bright spot, which is Louisiana,
12:18
Speaker 1: which improves some of its scores and it credits and
12:21
Speaker 1: a couple people I trust too follow curriculum Wars. It
12:25
Speaker 1: credits a back to basics approach on math and phonics.
12:29
Speaker 2: Would you look at that?
12:30
Speaker 3: Can you imagine that working?
12:32
Speaker 1: Yeah? And I think it sounds like you guys in
12:35
Speaker 1: New York got into this trap of this trendy different
12:39
Speaker 1: reading curriculum that can work for some.
12:42
Speaker 2: Kids, but is not scientifically right.
12:44
Speaker 1: It's not scientifically proven to be better than phonics, which
12:49
Speaker 1: ends up being kind of just the building blocks of
12:53
Speaker 1: the whole thing.
12:54
Speaker 2: Right.
12:54
Speaker 3: It's so dumb, and it's so it's terrible because I
12:58
Speaker 3: really didn't pay attention because my older two learn to
13:01
Speaker 3: read kind of early, and I didn't even think about it,
13:03
Speaker 3: and then it was like, wait, why does my kids
13:06
Speaker 3: seem like he's reading but he's actually not reading, And
13:08
Speaker 3: then I looked into it, and you know, New York
13:10
Speaker 3: had been doing it for decades. They actually just reversed
13:14
Speaker 3: themselves on it, realizing how harmful this memorization way of
13:18
Speaker 3: teaching is to kids. And again you have the double thing.
13:22
Speaker 3: So maybe the memorization a way of learning to read
13:25
Speaker 3: wasn't great. Then you had them not learning to read
13:28
Speaker 3: at all because of COVID, and these two things collided
13:31
Speaker 3: to really cause damage to kids. And again, we were
13:35
Speaker 3: able to throw tutors at this. At our son, we
13:37
Speaker 3: were able to move him to Florida. We were able
13:39
Speaker 3: to put him back into another half year of kindergarten
13:42
Speaker 3: when we got here because of his cutoff age. A
13:45
Speaker 3: lot of people couldn't do that.
13:46
Speaker 1: So I would also note that a lot of this data,
13:49
Speaker 1: if you dig deeply, shows counterintuitive things about various states
13:54
Speaker 1: serving students of color and students of low income brackets,
13:59
Speaker 1: where places like Louisiana and Mississippi end up in Texas
14:03
Speaker 1: end up serving black and Hispanic students better than say
14:07
Speaker 1: California or Wisconsin, which really looks like it has some
14:10
Speaker 1: very serious issues there in Wisconsin.
14:13
Speaker 3: So that coming up, Yeah, I don't know, it's a
14:16
Speaker 3: bottom of list for black and Hispanic education in.
14:20
Speaker 1: This So it's going to feel weird for people in
14:22
Speaker 1: education to look to Louisiana.
14:25
Speaker 2: But they need to look to Louisiana.
14:26
Speaker 1: I know there's going to be there's like a stigma attached, Oh,
14:29
Speaker 1: this is the Deep South, why would we follow their lead?
14:32
Speaker 2: But the data shows that that might be a better approach, and.
14:37
Speaker 3: It's not groundbreaking information. If you teach math and reading
14:42
Speaker 3: in a normal way and not focus on other nonsense,
14:46
Speaker 3: you're going to have better results. I can predict this.
14:49
Speaker 3: Any state that follows this model is going to do better.
14:52
Speaker 3: Here's my prediction out there.
14:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, we've predicted other things in the past that since
14:57
Speaker 1: quite obvious and indeed have.
14:59
Speaker 2: Come to fruition. I still am.
15:02
Speaker 1: I still am astounded that the left in this country
15:07
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, shut schools for eighteen months, it'll be fine.
15:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, kids are it will be fine.
15:14
Speaker 1: Randy Winingarden, by the way, of course, doesn't think that
15:18
Speaker 1: these scores have anything to do with that. She and
15:21
Speaker 1: other union leaders are like, you know, there's just there's
15:25
Speaker 1: just a lot of challenges. It couldn't have anything to
15:29
Speaker 1: do with instruction for us or our contracts or our
15:33
Speaker 1: push to keep schools close.
15:34
Speaker 2: It's just like there's probably something wrong with y'all. That's
15:39
Speaker 2: always it. Oh, you know what, we need more money,
15:43
Speaker 2: We need more money.
15:43
Speaker 3: I saw that we need more money, right, And there's
15:45
Speaker 3: these great charts floating around that show, you know, as
15:48
Speaker 3: the money goes up, the learning standard goes down. I
15:52
Speaker 3: don't think that's how it's supposed to work.
15:53
Speaker 1: But you know, I know, really I know, even breaking
15:56
Speaker 1: these out, the data out by private versus charge versus
16:00
Speaker 1: public schools, you find that extremely highly funded per student
16:04
Speaker 1: public schools are failing students.
16:06
Speaker 2: Yep.
16:07
Speaker 1: And I am done with being concerned about where students
16:11
Speaker 1: are served. I want them to be served well, right.
16:14
Speaker 3: I also I wonder about peripheral things like so during
16:18
Speaker 3: the pandemic, you know, I lived in Brooklyn, and all
16:20
Speaker 3: the rich people around me, they didn't just not send
16:24
Speaker 3: their kids to school. They got them either tutor or whatever.
16:27
Speaker 3: But a lot of people pulled their kids to private schools,
16:30
Speaker 3: which were of course, of course those were open because
16:33
Speaker 3: those were safe for marriage safe guys. That was totally okay.
16:37
Speaker 3: But so those people left for private school. A lot
16:40
Speaker 3: of people went to homeschool not. You know, from around
16:42
Speaker 3: the country, homeschool numbers are at an all time why.
16:46
Speaker 3: I wonder if pulling all of these kids with not
16:50
Speaker 3: necessarily means but kids who have involved parents who were
16:54
Speaker 3: going to get them the education regardless of what their
16:57
Speaker 3: local school was saying. I wonder if pulling those kids
17:00
Speaker 3: out of the system has led also to these numbers
17:02
Speaker 3: being up so sharply because you don't have the dedicated
17:06
Speaker 3: kind of families taking these tests anymore.
17:09
Speaker 1: Well, this is the kind of thing that the left
17:11
Speaker 1: would complain about before they decided to close schools for
17:15
Speaker 1: a year and a half day or two years. They
17:17
Speaker 1: would say, like, that kind of drain is detrimental and
17:21
Speaker 1: it is why we are struggling.
17:24
Speaker 2: And I would just say, why did you chase people away?
17:27
Speaker 3: Then?
17:28
Speaker 1: No one did more damage to public schools in my
17:31
Speaker 1: lifetime than the people who argued they should be closed
17:34
Speaker 1: for two years, right, they were in essential. And you
17:38
Speaker 1: and I who aren't necessarily public school shills. I've always
17:40
Speaker 1: been a public I've always been a public school kid,
17:43
Speaker 1: but a school choice person because I believe in that mission.
17:48
Speaker 1: But when the rubber hit the road, you're not serving
17:52
Speaker 1: my kids. And I contend that taking my kid out
17:55
Speaker 1: of school, out of zoom school, when I had no
17:58
Speaker 1: idea how to homeschool and I was just like, I
18:01
Speaker 1: will read books to her, was better than zoom.
18:04
Speaker 2: School, for sure.
18:06
Speaker 3: I think you came up with the term zoom butler
18:08
Speaker 3: or because that's what we were doing. We weren't. There
18:11
Speaker 3: was no education going on.
18:13
Speaker 2: The go get a blue Hulu hoop.
18:15
Speaker 1: They told me, like, what are we doing? I don't understand, right, Yeah,
18:19
Speaker 1: it was a lot.
18:20
Speaker 3: It was a crazy time and a lot of people
18:22
Speaker 3: haven't recovered from it, and it's very very unfortunate. I
18:26
Speaker 3: hope to blame goes exactly where it needs to with
18:29
Speaker 3: this whole thing will be right back on normally.
18:35
Speaker 1: One of the things that came out of the pandemic
18:37
Speaker 1: and out of testing like this is that the Democratic
18:41
Speaker 1: Party lost eight generations long twenty point lead on trust
18:46
Speaker 1: and education, and it turns out that parents care deeply
18:49
Speaker 1: about education. So I think that's that's one of the
18:52
Speaker 1: fronts on which one of many fronts that they're fighting
18:56
Speaker 1: and going to have to learn earn back significant trust
19:00
Speaker 1: to get people to go that direction again. But we've
19:05
Speaker 1: watched a little bit of the DNC meeting where they're
19:08
Speaker 1: picking new leaders.
19:10
Speaker 2: They're trying to grapple with what's ahead of them, and
19:12
Speaker 2: should we.
19:13
Speaker 1: Play just a little bit of a former DNC head now,
19:16
Speaker 1: Jamie Harrison, addressing his group about exactly how to run
19:21
Speaker 1: this meeting.
19:22
Speaker 5: We're finding out ways to expedite this because of our
19:25
Speaker 5: gender balance provisions. On this next ballot, you will be
19:29
Speaker 5: able to vote for two candidates of any gender on
19:32
Speaker 5: the next ballot. Okay, So on this next ballot, you
19:37
Speaker 5: will be able to vote for two candidates of any
19:40
Speaker 5: gender on the next ballot. If two candidates receive I'm
19:49
Speaker 5: going to turn to Helen to clarify this last part.
19:54
Speaker 2: Please, do you.
19:56
Speaker 4: Are in this next ballot where you have two votes,
20:02
Speaker 4: as the chair has said, you may vote for two males,
20:07
Speaker 4: two females, two of any gender. Okay, Nope, you can't
20:11
Speaker 4: do that because we've got to balance. You could vote
20:14
Speaker 4: for one of any gender. Okay, no non binary gender.
20:20
Speaker 2: Excuse me? It is late? Okay, is it is it?
20:24
Speaker 2: A laser? Was there? Herd? I couldn't do it either, girl,
20:28
Speaker 2: I too have.
20:29
Speaker 3: No idea what's going on here?
20:31
Speaker 1: Actually, Stuart Varney asked me on Fox today, Can you
20:34
Speaker 1: explain what's happening there?
20:35
Speaker 2: And I said no, but I know that it looks stupid,
20:37
Speaker 2: and it looks stupid to most normal people.
20:40
Speaker 3: Right, What was going on there? They you could only
20:44
Speaker 3: choose one of each gender, but also some people are
20:47
Speaker 3: not a gender, so you could choose those people too.
20:49
Speaker 3: Is that the general?
20:50
Speaker 1: Well, and I guess they have quotas for who they
20:53
Speaker 1: can elect. And then weirdly, in the end they ended
20:55
Speaker 1: up with a straight white guy chair and a straight
20:58
Speaker 1: white guy DNC vice chairs.
21:00
Speaker 2: So I don't know, the ratio didn't seem to work out.
21:02
Speaker 2: It didn't work out there, but the.
21:04
Speaker 1: Whole meeting was full of land acknowledgments, discussion about race blaming,
21:11
Speaker 1: of the loss of Harris on racism, and misogyny, every
21:17
Speaker 1: buzzword you could imagine.
21:19
Speaker 2: That's not going to get you wins, right.
21:22
Speaker 3: No lessons learned. The fact that they went with David
21:25
Speaker 3: Hog for their vice chair is so insane to me.
21:31
Speaker 3: This is a guy who has no experience in anything.
21:36
Speaker 3: I think the only thing that really he's ever done
21:38
Speaker 3: is start a pillow company to compete with My Pillow,
21:41
Speaker 3: which is a conservative pillow company. And David Hogg's pillow
21:45
Speaker 3: company failed, so this is their guy, and I think
21:49
Speaker 3: that they brought him on because he's going to talk
21:52
Speaker 3: to men and he's going to talk to the youth.
21:54
Speaker 3: But he's like a total weirdo, and I don't understand
21:57
Speaker 3: how they don't see that and think that he's going
21:59
Speaker 3: to be representative of what they need.
22:03
Speaker 1: Well, he seems to think, and his argument is that
22:06
Speaker 1: he will be the pied piper for young people.
22:10
Speaker 2: He is.
22:11
Speaker 1: He at least was correct in pointing out that Democrats
22:13
Speaker 1: had lost significant ground among young voters. He has in
22:17
Speaker 1: the past backed a guy who is and I regret
22:19
Speaker 1: to inform you that both of them are Florida exports
22:22
Speaker 1: Maxwell Frost.
22:24
Speaker 2: His Democrat, Yes, from Florida.
22:26
Speaker 1: That's where this sort of his idea for his pack
22:28
Speaker 1: got hatched, which is called the Leaders We Deserve Pack,
22:31
Speaker 1: which is I tend to think that.
22:35
Speaker 2: It's like that's an insult to us.
22:36
Speaker 1: Anyway, he started this pack and as because he's David Hogg,
22:40
Speaker 1: and this is a problem on both sides. He's an
22:42
Speaker 1: Instagram personality basically not really an operative. He gets tons
22:48
Speaker 1: of press. Jinsaki has him on our show. He gets
22:51
Speaker 1: tons of donations from high profile lefties, a lot of exposure,
22:56
Speaker 1: and then they don't do a ton of work on
22:58
Speaker 1: behalf of candidates. What they do is they funnel off
23:02
Speaker 1: a bunch of money to friends and consultancies.
23:06
Speaker 2: They sort of kind of.
23:07
Speaker 1: Give a little bit to a few candidates, several of
23:10
Speaker 1: which are like, you know, like a transgender Democrat in
23:14
Speaker 1: a primary in Alabama.
23:15
Speaker 2: Who unsurprisingly lost.
23:18
Speaker 1: Guys, I don't think you have your finger on the
23:21
Speaker 1: pulse here, and they largely don't win. But David Hogg
23:26
Speaker 1: remains very famous. And I know you'll be shocked to
23:31
Speaker 1: find out that I went to the press room of
23:34
Speaker 1: Leaders We Deserve Pack's website and wouldn't you know it,
23:37
Speaker 1: it's just a bunch.
23:38
Speaker 2: Of David hog clips.
23:41
Speaker 1: So look, he's a bit of an entity unto himself,
23:45
Speaker 1: and now he's been put in charge of helping Democrats
23:48
Speaker 1: come back.
23:50
Speaker 3: It's just such a bizarre choice. And I think that
23:53
Speaker 3: people aren't being honest with the Democrats anymore. Like I
23:56
Speaker 3: think James Carville was doing a fantastic job telling the
23:59
Speaker 3: truth about what went wrong for a long time, but
24:02
Speaker 3: the most recent stuff was like, you know, they didn't
24:05
Speaker 3: really do anything wrong. They just, you know, they just
24:07
Speaker 3: got to keep doing what they're doing. And I don't know,
24:10
Speaker 3: I I nobody's around to tell them this is all
24:15
Speaker 3: like they sound like five years ago, and these land
24:19
Speaker 3: acknowledgments and these gender you know, trying to fit the
24:24
Speaker 3: number of genders into into how many roles they have
24:27
Speaker 3: and all of this nonsense. Like Trump was elected to
24:31
Speaker 3: move away from that. Democrats should take that opportunity. They
24:34
Speaker 3: don't have to listen to us. Look, we're two conservatives, fine,
24:38
Speaker 3: but we're actually telling them the right thing to do
24:41
Speaker 3: to save themselves. Well here on normal nonsense behind yeah,
24:45
Speaker 3: hero Normally.
24:45
Speaker 1: We pride ourselves on being at least normally adjacent. And
24:49
Speaker 1: I can look at David Hogg and tell you he's
24:51
Speaker 1: not going to reach normal male, young voters. I can
24:55
Speaker 1: just I can tell you that. And there are people
24:58
Speaker 1: in the Democratic Party who will tell you this same, Uh,
25:01
Speaker 1: they are often not listened to. I think there are
25:04
Speaker 1: a couple of guys who do know how to speak
25:06
Speaker 1: to men. I think Fetterman's one of them. Reuben Diego
25:09
Speaker 1: showed promise in his run because he used a bunch
25:12
Speaker 1: of sort of like local mma fights and visited those and.
25:16
Speaker 2: You know, wooed young Hispanic men.
25:18
Speaker 1: There are people who get like what a dude is right,
25:22
Speaker 1: not that that's their only.
25:23
Speaker 2: Problem, but uh, David Hog isn't one of them.
25:27
Speaker 3: No, and so old you know tweets of his surfaced
25:30
Speaker 3: where he said things like I'm never running for office
25:33
Speaker 3: because we don't need another straight white guy. And then
25:36
Speaker 3: he ran for office.
25:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, another straight white guy. So I hope for.
25:42
Speaker 1: Their sake that Ken Martin, who is a Minnesota Democrat,
25:45
Speaker 1: which means, you know, very liberal, but seemingly at least less.
25:50
Speaker 2: Kind of.
25:52
Speaker 1: It's crazy looking for than Hog. Yes, Hog, of course,
25:56
Speaker 1: we should say, rose to prominence as an anti gun,
26:00
Speaker 1: antisecond amendment person after the terrible shooting at Marjorie Stoean
26:04
Speaker 1: Douglas High School in twenty eighteen, and he has been
26:08
Speaker 1: on the rise on that issue and others ever since,
26:11
Speaker 1: except not actually doing things, mostly just.
26:15
Speaker 3: There's no doing right. Yeah, the Democrats have signed up
26:18
Speaker 3: for somebody like this for a little while. Let's see
26:20
Speaker 3: how it goes for them, Mary Catherine.
26:22
Speaker 2: This is the thing.
26:23
Speaker 1: Neither party can totally count on the other party being
26:27
Speaker 1: terrible enough so that they win. I know that both
26:30
Speaker 1: parties want to do that desperately, and they really try.
26:34
Speaker 1: You do have to deliver something other than not Trump,
26:38
Speaker 1: and if they didn't learn that this time around, it's
26:41
Speaker 1: going to be a problem. Yeah.
26:43
Speaker 3: Well, thanks for joining us on Normally. Normally airs Tuesdays
26:46
Speaker 3: and Thursdays, and you can subscribe anywhere you get your podcasts.
26:50
Speaker 3: Get in touch with us at normallythepod at gmail dot com.
26:53
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening, and when things get weird, act normally