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Transcript

Episode 69 - Take Sennett · Normal Men

• 0:13
  Propter: Hey.
• 0:13
  Lowtax: Hi.
• 0:14
  Ed: Hello. I'm Ed. You may recognize me from Bluesky's Only Podcast, Normal Men. We have an important announcement for you this week. Due to a scheduling conflict, the rest of this episode has no Ed in it. Propter, George and Lowtax apologize for the inconvenience. I do not. I was taking pictures at a lovely botanical garden. I regret nothing. Enjoy the show.
• 0:41
  George: So I am not podcasting a 100% today because it turns out domestic. Well inside North America transcons don't hand out blankets and pillows anymore. This is something. This is something I discovered about 10pm Pacific Time in Vancouver last night. And the trip across the entire continent from northwest to southeast was not as fun as it could have been. So we landed 6:00am Eastern.
• 1:13
  Propter: So you took the Vancouver to Carolina red eye with no blankets, just raw dogged it.
• 1:19
  George: And a three year old. Oh my God, she's the world's greatest traveler in the under four age bracket. I mean she's absolutely incredible. Incredible. We had two 12 hour travel days and red eye situation on this trip and she just crushed it. Just unbelievable. But no matter how good you are in the under force, there are limits. So. And then I got a quick snooze on the couch while she watched some Disney and here we are. Oh yeah. And then I spent the whole day packing the kitchen because we're redoing our kitchen and that starts tomorrow morning.
• 1:55
  Propter: Oh boy.
• 1:55
  George: It'd be nice to take a vacation. That felt like a vacation is what I'll say there.
• 2:00
  Propter: Maybe. Maybe in about 14 years, buddy.
• 2:05
  George: I just think the next time like we just can't go to my hometown because like. Okay, so going from. Going from Charlotte or like the Southeast to it's like Spokane as I mean you, you know, Propter, it spoke hands. Reasonably accessible. You can get direct flights there from Dallas, Chicago, Louisiana, whatever. But to get to any of those hubs, there are seasonal, occasional seasonal directs from Charlotte into Spokane. Or at least they're planning on doing them. I don't know what happened with that. There wasn't one available. So we connected through Chicago. Not the end of the world. But then you got to drive like almost four hours once you're on the ground after transcontinental and two hops. So no, it's a horrible trip just going to Vancouver.
• 2:48
  Lowtax: Seasonal Spokane directs.
• 2:51
  George: Yeah, Summer tourism season.
• 2:53
  Lowtax: Yeah. Okay, so there's like people out there who are going, you know where I want to go. Spokane.
• 3:00
  George: It's less Spokane and more, you know, you're at the doorstep of the Rockies and several other mountain Ranges. There's. There's a lot of stuff north of you that's worth doing. And East U Coeur d' Alene is really cool. There's a bunch of stuff out there, but. And yeah, I mean, if you're. It's not people going direct from Charlotte for the most part, so. But yeah, but Vancouver is awesome. If any listeners have never been to Vancouver and you want to kill a week on the west coast, you should do that because it's great.
• 3:30
  Propter: It's fantastic. Chinatown. Yeah.
• 3:32
  George: I mean, incredible scenery. So much stuff to do. Just really, like, people are nice and polite and the Canadian dollar is stupid cheap right now. It's just ridiculous how cheap everything was for an American.
• 3:46
  Propter: So we should specify that there are two Vancouvers. There is a Vancouver, Washington, and a Vancouver, British Columbia.
• 3:58
  George: Do we really need to specify that?
• 3:59
  Propter: Yeah.
• 4:00
  Lowtax: No one knows about the Washington one. Propter.
• 4:03
  Propter: The Washington one kind of sucks. Don't go there. It's. It's. It's Portland. It's the Washington side of Portland.
• 4:13
  George: This is Normal Men, a podcast from four men who are clinging desperately to normalcy in an era when that's asking a bit too.
• 4:19
  Propter: I'm George In Charlotte, in D.C. i'm
• 4:21
  Lowtax: Propter Malone in Outer Florida. I'm Lowtax Speedrun enjoyer.
• 4:25
  Propter: And I'm Ed in Boston. Okay, so this podcast is. Is never, never investment advice or financial advice, but this week it is especially not investment or financial advice because George is an unreliable narrator on anything quantitative this week on account of fatigue.
• 4:44
  George: Anything, really. I'm glad we didn't record the. The. The pre show because. Oh, boy, I. My. My memory for names was tested in ways it really shouldn't have struggled with, but it. It was. It did. So here we go.
• 4:58
  Propter: Yeah. We are also Down Ed this week, who may or may not join us midway through recording, but is not here as of this moment. So we forge on through the winds of August. We haven't talked politics for a while, so we thought that this week would be a good time to do an electoral whip round to bring everybody up to date on the state of the Senate, which is essentially all set races with the exception of, I think, Florida, which has its primaries irredeemably late.
• 5:31
  Lowtax: I mean, the good thing is those primaries aren't going to matter anyway.
• 5:35
  Propter: So, I mean, well, okay, we'll talk about Florida. When we talk about Florida.
• 5:40
  Lowtax: They're not going to matter. Do not. Do not pump sunshine up people's asses here, Propter.
• 5:45
  George: We're getting ahead of ourselves because we're Doing this alphabetically. So let's leave the Florida chat for third place on the list. I think some of these are going to be really quick. Some of these are not going to be quick and some of them are going to be easy and some of them are going to be a little more interesting. So.
• 6:01
  Propter: Correct. We have made the decision by default to talk through only races we think were interesting. So if there's a race that you think is interesting that we didn't talk about, please let us know about it. Please let us know how stupid we are for not talking about it.
• 6:12
  George: You can, you can DM ed on Bluesky about that.
• 6:14
  Propter: Correct. It is, it is Ed's fault.
• 6:16
  Lowtax: Yes, that is, and that's3d.net and he's, he's verified now.
• 6:23
  Propter: So look for the blue check. That's how you know it's the real
• 6:26
  George: Ed, except no substitutes.
• 6:29
  Propter: All right, so we're doing this in alphabetical order because we couldn't think of a different order to do it in. Which means that we are starting with Alaska. Alaska is Mary Peltola, who has previously won statewide office in Alaska. Is the Democrat facing off against incumbent Dan Sullivan? I think we're going to win this one, but I think it's going to be close or at least I think we're in as good a good a position as we could potentially be. Given the inherent difficulties in polling Alaska. I don't have a lot of confidence that the polls are correct, but the polls are showing a modest but durable Peltola lead and have been for several months now.
• 7:09
  George: Just for reference, we'll occasionally drop in what betting markets are saying. We're not saying that because we think betting markets have any special insight at this point. It's just conventional wisdom and it's a decent proxy for that. So Kalshi right now has Peltola 53-47. Nothing really insightful there. Just slightly better than 50 50, which I think is about consensus.
• 7:31
  Lowtax: Yeah.
• 7:32
  Propter: Now remember that Alaska has still its bizarre primary system, but one thing that that means for purposes of the general election is that this is going to be a heads up contest. You're not going to have the same sort of wasted votes that you would have in a contest where there are third party entrants in the actual final ge.
• 7:55
  Lowtax: Yeah, it's ranked choice, right?
• 7:58
  Propter: Yeah. So they, they cut it to. I want to say that it's, it's the top four vote getters from the open primary that they then rank Choice down to 2 for the runoff. So. But Whereas for many of the other states, and we'll talk about this as we get to them, for many of the other states and this, one of the things I think you're seeing in the polling is that some pollsters are pushing leaners way too soon.
• 8:27
  George: But for Alaska, what does that mean? What does pushing leaners mean?
• 8:32
  Propter: Okay, so if you're a pollster, you're calling people up, you're asking them who they're going to vote for, you're putting together your sample and then you're, you're doing some data wizardry to composite the, decomposite that, that back together to give you a reasonable demographic profile. What pushing leaners means is that if you talk to somebody and they say, I don't know, or if they say that they're not sure who they're going to vote for, but they get past your likely voter screen for whatever you're saying. If you had to vote today, who would you vote for?
• 8:58
  Lowtax: Yeah, you're going Roy in Roy and Deadhorse. So put a gun to your head. Who are you voting for? Peltola or one of the 17 Dan Sullivans in this race.
• 9:08
  Propter: It is the 16th of August as we record this and most of normie America has not fully checked into the Senate races. Even sickos have not fully checked into the Senate races at this point.
• 9:19
  George: Sometimes the sickos over check in and overshoot it and it's all lost. But hopefully we're not doing that here.
• 9:27
  Propter: I was promised one sicko episode.
• 9:30
  George: We are sickos, but sometimes the sickos can get a little bit lost in the sauce and we will endeavor to avoid that outcome because we are of course the normal men.
• 9:37
  Lowtax: So yeah, let's just remember that. And let's just remember that like 80% of people in Michigan are going to think Abdul El-Sayed is the guy from the serial podcast.
• 9:52
  George: So if you push these leaners, the issue is that like these people, it's basically just someone going to reflex or a guess. It's not, it's not an actually informed voter. And that by pushing the leaner you get outcomes that may not actually be durable. When people actually decide, okay, now I really need to pull the lever and this one counts as opposed to answer the phone from a random person. And you're also, as you get closer to an election, your likely voter screens are going to be more realistic than when you're in August. So you're going to have to push fewer people. Basically, like the people you're getting through. Your likely voter screen are then going to be much better informed than a person that's passing the likely voter screen in August or July or whatever. So as you get closer, that's one reason that as you get closer to an election, your polling gets more accurate than you are this far out. Right.
• 10:42
  Propter: And if you're dropping people who are not likely voters at this point, but who will eventually vote, you may be underestimating the background partisan lean of the state. Again, we'll get to that a little bit more in a little bit more detail later. Anyway, so Alaska, we're in with the chance. You know, if anybody were to tell you that they knew 100 what was going to happen in Alaska, they would be wrong. Alaska is really hard to pull, but we are at least in competitive shape there for right now.
• 11:19
  George: High quality candidate on the Democratic side, low quality candidate on the Republican side. Despite being an incumbent, probably about as
• 11:26
  Lowtax: good a candidate for the Dem side as you're going to get in Alaska.
• 11:29
  George: Yep. Yep. An especially good candidate for salmon.
• 11:35
  Lowtax: Yes. Just remember Alaska, all the salmon you can farm or fish, it is all yours. We will tear up those regulations for you.
• 11:44
  Propter: Pro fish, pro choice.
• 11:47
  Lowtax: That's right.
• 11:48
  Propter: In. In a thing that is going to become a little bit of a theme throughout the candidates we talk about today. Peltola has tribal ties and that's important because that's emerging as a really critical voting block for Dems in a lot of places. It doesn't operate the same way for every tribe. It doesn't operate the same way in every place. But I think it is safe to say that the first peoples in Alaska are going to pull the lever blue for the most part. So that's something to look at as we kind of go through these states. Some of these states have significant tribal population, some don't. All right, state number two, Arkansas, which I requested that we talk about.
• 12:29
  George: I never want to talk about Arkansas, Razorback or otherwise. I just. There's nothing good happening in that state as low tax will share vis a vis the football team.
• 12:38
  Lowtax: Yes, I agree.
• 12:40
  Propter: So the reason we're talking about Arkansas, which is an extreme stretch goal for Democrats. If we win Arkansas, we probably have like 56, 57 seats in the Senate. We would win literally every other state we're going to talk about before we, before we win Arkansas. But Howie Schoffner, who is the Democratic challenger, has released an internal poll showing her only down three against Tom Cotton. 46, 43. Do I think this is accurate? Probably not. I think that, you know, this is, this is the kind of poll you put out there and you maybe juice up a little bit to try to get your fundraising going. I don't think they're lying, but I think that they maybe had to take a few polls to get to a poll where they were, where they were only down three. But if you were to see a path to Schoffner winning, it's through over performance in rurals. Schoffner is a farmer. Tom Cotton, despite his name, has not been particularly good for the agricultural community in Arkansas. He has not done a terribly good job of defending what the Arkansas farmers see as their priorities, of making sure they have access to foreign markets, of making sure that to the extent they don't have access to foreign markets, the federal government is giving them gigantic fat checks. And also, you know, Arkansas, insofar as there's population growth happening, it's happening in blue islands in Arkansas that the Little Rock area is growing faster than I thought it was. And also the Bentonville area is blue and it's growing too. So despite all the shit that we give Walmart on a very deserved basis, it is doing its part to bring educated people out to one corner of Arkansas and that may have a demographic effect over time.
• 14:36
  George: Arkansas has a lot more agriculture than you might think. Something like 14, 15% of state gross value added, which think of that as gdp. It's not gdp, but close enough came from agriculture, which is a lot. I mean that's a huge number. They have more than 30,000 farms and roughly 40% of their surface area is farms. They do chicken, soybeans, rice, eggs, corn, some cat, some cattle and then bit of turkeys, cotton, timber, that sort of thing. So, you know, not all of these agricultural markets are in a rough spot right now. Chicken's been a pretty good place to be in the agricultural complex for a long time. Soybe and cattle, not so much. So, you know, kind of interesting there just looking at the sort of stuff they produce.
• 15:34
  Lowtax: Yeah, this isn't going to matter, fellas. He's going to win by 15 points.
• 15:40
  George: The reason I think it's interesting like that Internal, that internal is juiced for sure. If she's within five points of him, that is a nationwide catastrophe for Republicans. Like it, like it doesn't.
• 15:51
  Lowtax: It would be, yes.
• 15:53
  George: So, you know, if she's within 10, it's a really good night for Dems. Full, full stop.
• 16:00
  Lowtax: I'd say if she's within 15, it's probably a really good night for Dems. Yeah, that's like Arkansas is a freak show state full of just rancid voters. Yeah, I hear that. And I think, okay, maybe that poll, the way they're questioning it, is probably holding Tom Cotton down or something. She's probably not going to get much higher than 43. Like 743. I would totally buy.
• 16:25
  Propter: Yeah. Again, if, if we win Arkansas, then everything has gone extremely well for us already. It would take a combination of a whole lot of factors. Arkansas is, Is a pretty red state. Tom Cotton has money, but it's interesting that he's feeling like he has to spend it. Tom Cotton is already up on the air with that, which is not something you would necessarily expect to see at this point. He's. He's trying to define his opponent as a Democrat. He's putting, putting video out there of her saying that she would have. Oh, my God, Voted for Harris.
• 17:02
  Lowtax: Yeah.
• 17:02
  Propter: And he's pretty clearly banking on the partisan wean of his state to carry him through. It's a good bet for him. But there are some things happening here that don't happen in every cycle.
• 17:15
  George: If you have to spend real money in Arkansas, that is a lot of real money. You can't spend somewhere else, even if, you know. And it's all fungible. Like, let's not, let's not get this twisted. It's coming from Tom Cotton himself, not necessarily the pack sphere, but, like, that is still money that he could have ported somewhere else. So. And would have. Yeah.
• 17:34
  Lowtax: Although, for sure. How much, how much is he spending, though?
• 17:37
  Propter: I don't know. He's got 10 million in the bank. I don't know the numbers, but he hasn't, at least publicly, he hasn't dispersed to anybody else yet this year.
• 17:45
  George: Again, it's not the number, just like the vote outcome. It's not the number itself. It's what it means about the other numbers. That's what matters. And if Cotton spending there, that is a really bad sign for Republicans. I mean, it's just. There's no other way to spin it. So. All right, Arkansas check done.
• 18:02
  Propter: Florida.
• 18:04
  Lowtax: No, stop it. It's not going to happen. It's the. I, I would love to see Alex Vindman. I think it's. His name is Alex Vindman. I would love to see it, but it's not going to happen.
• 18:24
  Propter: I think that's probably right. You know, I'm, I'm the designated optimist on this one, but I think that we, we probably are not going to win for it. The polling has not been great. It has been stale. We haven't had a poll of the G In a month. So maybe in a couple of weeks after the primaries, we open up the box and we find something surprising. And that'll be pleasant if it happens. But Ford has been moving the wrong way demographically. Your Latinos don't vote the way Latinos vote in other places.
• 19:00
  Lowtax: Yeah.
• 19:00
  Propter: You know, I'm not optimistic that we're gonna, that we're going to take that. And Moody is reasonably well funded. Both parties are going to spend a ton of money in Florida because they always do.
• 19:14
  George: Gems. Shouldn't. Dem. Shouldn't even contest it.
• 19:16
  Lowtax: No. Shouldn't.
• 19:18
  Propter: We're not going to, we're not going to bring out. I don't think DSCC is going to drop out of state money into Florida, but nobody should.
• 19:25
  George: Like, if you're, if you're donating somewhere. I'm sure there are some House races that are worth it in Florida because they got enough seats that a couple of them competitive, but statewide, it's not worth it. And if going to win there, you're going to win there anyways. And it's going to have nothing to do with the money you spent. So just don't spend money there because it's not going to move the needle. Like the war on A dollar spent in the Senate campaign in Florida is zero. It might be negative. It. In fact, it is negative. What am I talking about? It's definitely negative. Yeah.
• 19:52
  Propter: So if, if you're giving your small dollar contributions to somebody who keeps spam texting, you give it to somebody else. That's. That's not the spot for it.
• 20:00
  Lowtax: Well, the other thing is, I, I think the seat you would. Vindman would only hold the seat for two years. And so really you're just talking about being able to block the GOP from passing things. But if you're in a position where Vindman is winning in Florida, you've already won all the seats you needed to win anyway, so it doesn't matter. And then Vindman's going to get blown out in 2028 anyway.
• 20:23
  George: Well, I mean, it's going to be a long two years, so who knows? But I do think the Doug Jones path is the most likely. The. I will say the Vindman candidacy itself is kind of interesting. Right. I mean, this is not your typical Democratic poster boy candidate. Right. Like commission, infantry officer in the army. He was at the center of minor scandal in 2019 related to Ukraine. Not that he did anything wrong. Quite the opposite. We don't have to go too far down that rabbit hole, but this guy is a national security do what's right kind of Democrat and not my definition of what's right. Recall our discussion of virtue in the episode last week, vis a vis the Odyssey. But you know, if he was to outperform, I think that would be interesting and maybe like a, you know, a signal of where things might be going. But that's academic more than horse race stuff.
• 21:23
  Propter: Yeah. I mean, Vindman's got some, got some wrinkles to him, including a twin brother who is a congressman in Virginia who Bluesky's mad about because he's got bad opinions about trans people. But I think that Vindman performing worse than you would expect is some vindication for the moderates don't do anything school of thought. In terms of candidate selection, he's going to be running as a, as a conservative Democrat in what by PVI should be a, you know, a reddish purple state. Ford is hard for a lot of reasons, but there's just not a lot of hope there for me. And if he runs behind insurgent candidates elsewhere, I think that that's, that's grist for that particular mill if you think that Democrats should, should run fewer conservative candidates.
• 22:20
  George: The other thing you mentioned earlier, Propter, was the Latino thing too. Just for folks that aren't really aware like that the big diasporas in Florida are Cuban and Venezuelan. And while I think they may be disappointed to a degree over how things have gone vis a vis Cuba, specifically that we haven't attempted a second Bay of Pigs, not going to be mad. And the Venezuelans won't for sure, at least not yet. I think there may be a longer term backlash there from those diasporas in the United States, but that's speculative on my part and not based on anything that's happening today. So. Yeah, I just don't, I just don't see how you, how you do it. Unless again, it's an Arkansas, we win Arkansas type night. Florida would be probably the number two long shot on this list behind Arkansas, actually. So. Yeah.
• 23:13
  Lowtax: Yeah, I would say so.
• 23:14
  Propter: To be clear, the reasons why Cubans and Venezuelans might vote redder than other Spanish speaking immigrant groups is that they are mostly fleeing ostensibly leftist dictatorships. So that's the kind of thing that will, will bias your politics for generations.
• 23:34
  Lowtax: Yeah.
• 23:37
  Propter: All right, well, what do we have up next? Georgia.
• 23:40
  George: Georgia. This one's easy. I mean, also, it's going to romp. He's obviously one of our, as a group, inside track candidates for 2028. If Ossoff doesn't clean Collins clock. I think something's going really, really, really wrong for Democrats on election night in, in November. That said, I just. He's going to clean Collins clock.
• 24:08
  Lowtax: Yeah. I mean, I don't think, I don't think that Fox poll that had him up 13 is going to bear out. I think it's probably going to be more like eight or so. The more interesting thing with Ossoff for me is can he pull Keisha Lance Bottoms over the line in the gubernatorial race? Right.
• 24:28
  George: If he's putting up an eight point margin, he can. If he's putting five point margin, I'm not so sure.
• 24:34
  Propter: Yeah, there's, there's going to be a lot of spending in that state. Ossoff is, is a fundraising juggernaut and he's certainly going to have heavy institutional support behind him as well because this is not a place where Dems can afford to lose. And because of the governor's race, there's a lot to win.
• 24:52
  Lowtax: Also could potentially win the House of Delegates or whatever the hell they call it too.
• 24:58
  Propter: Yeah, I mean there's some chance that this is when Georgia in a meaningful way flips blue at the state level and national Dems are absolutely keyed into that. So there's going to be a bunch of money fired down there. You know, if, if he gave me the over under at Ossoff 9, I think I would take the over, but I wouldn't feel great about it. We'll see.
• 25:26
  Lowtax: Anyway, such a nice boy and his wife's a doctor. Oh my God.
• 25:34
  George: Having covered one end of ID5, we'll come back for the other end of it. We're going to move on to Iowa where we have the Democrat Turek versus Republican Hinson.
• 25:45
  Lowtax: I just Dinosaur hunter.
• 25:48
  George: I just want to note that in our show notes I'm not going to say who said this, but in our show notes we have Hinson as the Republican who is replacing the badger looking lady who keeps military brass. So that tells you a lot about the state of the race in Iowa.
• 26:02
  Propter: Joni Ernst. I just remembered her name. That's looking like a surprisingly tight race. If you had told me, if you had told me six months ago that we were going to be in a polling dead heat in Iowa, I would have been pretty excited about that. I think Turek is a good candidate. I think if you were looking as a small dollar donor to put some money somewhere, Iowa is probably a pretty good place to do it. The 50 plus 1 polling composite currently has him down by a single point at 47 46. Iowa is a weird State demographically, because it is. For reasons I've never fully understood, Iowa is like super educated. It's like usually there's some reason you can point to for like why does the state have a bunch of people with, with, with college degrees?
• 26:55
  Lowtax: Propters just like these don't seem like people you should be sending to school. What are we doing here?
• 27:01
  Propter: I mean some of it is just that like they get everybody through high school. They have a really high high school education rate, but also they send a lot of people to college. So despite the fact that they're a white agricultural state, education polarization has been pretty good or could be pretty good for Dems and Iowa. So.
• 27:23
  George: So the subtitle of this podcast is Propter discovers the Big Ten.
• 27:27
  Lowtax: Yes, they need, they need people to go to college so that they can cover the expenses every time Iowa extends Kirk Ferentz.
• 27:37
  George: Or just the expenses for finding for recruiting every single fullback in the. Every single five star fullback in the class to go to Iowa State. Because that's literally all they know how to do is run it right down the middle.
• 27:49
  Lowtax: Which, yeah, but that shouldn't take much money because they're the only team that actually uses a fullback in 2026.
• 27:56
  George: Still five stars. A five star.
• 27:58
  Propter: Do they give five stars to fullbacks? Really?
• 28:00
  George: I don't know. I don't follow recruiting closely enough to actually know that.
• 28:05
  Lowtax: Yes, they, they assign one five star and it is the one player who is actually a fullback in the recruiting
• 28:11
  George: class and they always go to Iowa State.
• 28:15
  Propter: Now, now I'm wondering if this is just kind of like sniping from the tight end position at fullbacks.
• 28:22
  George: Hold on, hold on. When I played tight end and fullback were the same position, you knew the play was the plays where all. There were certain players that were suited more to, for instance, being in an eye formation and, or weak or strong eye or whatever and playing fullback. But we all sat in the same meeting room, buddy.
• 28:40
  Propter: Granted. Okay, so next state on the list. What do we got?
• 28:43
  George: All right, so next up we have Kansas. Hamilton is the Democrat taking on Marshall the incumbent?
• 28:48
  Propter: Did we lose audio? I can't hear you guys.
• 28:50
  George: Okay, what you got? Lotex?
• 28:52
  Propter: Hello?
• 28:53
  George: Anything?
• 28:55
  Propter: Hello?
• 28:57
  George: Yeah, Bueller. Okay, Bueller. Okay, so we're not going to talk about Kansas, I guess Maine. We talked a lot about Maine. I don't think we need to talk about this one that much more.
• 29:08
  Lowtax: Wait, do we really not have anything on Kansas?
• 29:11
  George: Well, you didn't have anything on Kansas. I don't have anything on Kansas. And apparently Propter doesn't know Kansas exists.
• 29:15
  Lowtax: I don't, I don't like. Kansas is a weird state. It's one of those plain states that sometimes votes for Democrats statewide, although not usually the Senate. They do like their Democratic governors.
• 29:27
  George: Yeah. They have an incumbent Democratic governor, right?
• 29:31
  Lowtax: I think so, yeah.
• 29:34
  George: Right now betting markets have it 4 to 1 in favor of the Republicans. So this would be one of the more long shots. It's not Arkansas level. It's. It's not arch Kansas, but it's just Kansas. Yeah, that's my dad joke quota for the day. I won't do that again. I'm very sorry.
• 29:54
  Lowtax: Jail.
• 29:56
  George: Yeah. Okay.
• 29:57
  Lowtax: No trial.
• 29:58
  George: Again, I think Kansas is a long shot, but if we manage to get traction there, that's, that's. Something's going real right where we are going to get traction now that we've replaced the dirtbag candidate with the same guy. But not a dirtbag is Maine. So Troy Jackson taking on Susan Collins. We've talked a fair bit about Maine. Do we need to over the past six months, and I'm just going to say that's it. Any prop. Do you have anything on Maine?
• 30:26
  Propter: Do we have to talk about cousin fucking?
• 30:28
  George: Do we have to talk about cousin?
• 30:31
  Propter: I think we do, yeah. All right, so, so just, just real briefly on that one. A a the polling looks good. We've got Jackson settling into what looks like a narrow lead over Collins. Big, big pulling misses have burned us before in Maine, and I don't think they're off the table here either. But you would certainly rather have Jackson be the candidate than platinor for both electoral reasons as well as all the other reasons. The reason I keep bringing up cousin fucking is because Jackson is in a common law marriage with his second cousin with whom he has two adult children.
• 31:03
  Lowtax: Look, it's not called New England for nothing, Propter.
• 31:07
  Propter: Anyway, just try to think about what the closest cousin you would consider dating is. Just, you know, for your own files.
• 31:15
  George: For the record, second cousins typically share only about 3% of their DNA, so your odds of something bad happening there are pretty low. It's not nothing, but it's. It's down there. Unless you're doing it repeatedly for very long periods of time, generation wise, which, now that I think about it, Maine may have an issue with. So, yeah, okay, I can't believe we said no more Maine and then now we're talking about Maine again. Even if it's a funny thing to talk about. Like, what the hell, man? What is it? What is up with that?
• 31:46
  Propter: Well, I mean, we can Move on to Michigan if you want.
• 31:49
  Lowtax: That's.
• 31:49
  Propter: That's gonna be, that's gonna be the fun.
• 31:52
  George: I'm not any more excited to talk about Michigan, but, like, at least we haven't talked about Michigan ad nauseam for past year for the worst possible reasons imaginable.
• 32:02
  Lowtax: I'm pretty pleased at how everybody is behaving in Michigan post primary.
• 32:06
  George: Honestly, I thought, Haley, Michigan is behaving fine. I'm more worried about the people outside of Michigan that are being real normal about it.
• 32:14
  Lowtax: They're all gonna forget it in a couple weeks anyway.
• 32:17
  George: That's probably true. Shout out to Haley Stevens, though. I mean, really, she got her clock cleaned. And not, not maybe as much as the polling suggested, but she, she lost pretty decisively and she's fallen in line like a good soldier. No. Yeah, she was.
• 32:32
  Propter: She lost by a point.
• 32:35
  George: Closer than I thought, than I recalled it being. Sorry, but she lost either way.
• 32:38
  Propter: She did definitely lose.
• 32:40
  George: Yeah, yeah.
• 32:41
  Propter: And, and, and good on her for, for getting out there. She said. She has said that she's going to campaign for Abdul El-Sayed. Everybody is at least making nice for the cameras, which is kind of a surprise because that was a really nasty primary. I mean, a really, really nasty primary. And very personal at times between. Between the candidates.
• 33:03
  Lowtax: It's like the inverse of Talarico and Crockett where the primary, that primary didn't feel terribly nasty to me, but the post primary has been a complete show.
• 33:15
  Propter: Yeah, I agree with that.
• 33:17
  George: We'll come back to Texas, but in any event, Michigan Dems are in formation, so that's good. Do, do we think the polling miss was not catching Republican crossovers? Is that sort of one of the reasons behind that in Michigan? Specifically? Because I'd seen some pretty compelling vote pattern evidence that there were a material number of Republicans who voted for Stevens in the primary.
• 33:42
  Propter: It's possible. I mean, my guess is that a lot of it is just that there was a shitload of money on the Stevens side and that they translated that to ground game in a way that worked better.
• 33:52
  George: It ended up being, what, 70 million in outside cash? 60 million, something like that.
• 33:56
  Propter: I didn't see the final number. I would believe that it was.
• 33:58
  George: I thought it was north of 50. I know.
• 34:00
  Propter: Yeah.
• 34:00
  Lowtax: I thought it was 60. Of which something like 30 was APAC.
• 34:05
  George: Jesus.
• 34:07
  Propter: You know, the big pulley miss that everybody remembers in Michigan is when Bernie beat Hillary back in 2016 in the Michigan primary. The thing that sometimes gets left out of the narrative there is that Quinton didn't spend Any money. And Bernie spent a bunch of money in Michigan. So maybe this is evidence that at least on the Democratic primary side, it's easier to translate dollars directly into votes in Michigan than it may be elsewhere. That, and, you know, like, there's some structural reasons that might be true. You've got, you've got, you've got a strong union system. You've got walking around money traditions in, in Detroit and elsewhere. It's plausible that, that, you know, having precinct captains with a little jingle in their pocket goes a long way in those primaries. That this is sort of a throwback to a. I'll go with a less civilized age of, of they need, they
• 34:57
  Lowtax: need that walking around money in Detroit because they all drive Fords and Chevys.
• 35:02
  Propter: If you haven't seen Abdul El-Sayed on video, you should take a minute to go check him out at some point. He's, he's a talent. He is charismatic. He's also just like, he's instantly clockable as an extremely American type. You get the sense that he is a good dude, a little bit of a cocky prick. He was a lacrosse captain and he has huge lacrosse captain energy.
• 35:30
  George: Anyone, anyone posting videos of them pressing three wheels on social media is going to be kind of a prick. Like, that's.
• 35:37
  Lowtax: Yeah, yeah, he has, I think he went to Michigan, but he has big ACC energy.
• 35:46
  George: He reminded me a lot. I sat on my flight from Seattle to Vancouver in the middle of the week. That was another saga that I really don't want to get into. But Delta flight from Seattle to Vancouver and the guy I sat next to was a second generation. I think he was from Iran, his family was from Iran and he was going up to do a triathlon in English Bay in Vancouver. And he had the exact same energy, different sports. He played soccer and was now into more like distance fitness stuff, but exact same energy. Just like super, super cocky. Like not, not in a way that was off putting at all. He was quite fun to have a conversation with, but exact same kind of energy where he's like, I'm a big wheel and I know what I'm doing. And you know, like, that is absolutely a type of guy. And it's, it's, it's nice to see those kinds of very, very normal kind of guy with a D beside their name.
• 36:43
  Lowtax: I thought you were going to say after my ACC comment that he reminded you of everybody. You went to school with Duke.
• 36:51
  George: No, there were not very many Democratic socialists.
• 36:54
  Propter: And to be clear, one other thing that you'll take away if you See video of a speaking is that he's ferociously bright. This is clearly a guy who is smart.
• 37:08
  Lowtax: Oh, babby. He seems really smart. We're going to get behind him.
• 37:12
  Propter: So you, you know, that's, that's going to be a contested race. I think that I'm not that worried about it at this point because I think we have a, a good candidate and that the wounds of the primary will heal pretty quickly. There's already some pulling in that direction, but give it another couple weeks and we'll see where things land.
• 37:31
  George: I will say being good on video appears to be an absolutely enormous force multiplier in ways that just nothing else is right now. And I think that's true across a broad range of national candidate. Ossoff and AOC are both really good high profile national candidates. That's an example of Mamdani, of course, is another. You know, so much of what the Trump or Trump operation does is optimized for video as well. And there's a lot more AI involved in that for obvious reasons. But you know, being compelling, staring at the camera or talking in vertical video is a really big deal. And no, that does not mean we are pivoting the podcast to TikTok.
• 38:12
  Propter: All right, we got two bars for Minnesota here, which is, which is our girl Peggy Flanagan against Michelle Tafoya. I'm really excited about flight again.
• 38:23
  Lowtax: I feel like candidates named Flanagan and to foyer going against each other should not be happening in Minnesota. That should absolutely be a northeastern race.
• 38:34
  George: Oh, that Michelle Tafoya seems nice, but she's got a funny name. For the record, she does not seem nice. She seems like an awful person and I hope she loses by a huge number, which she almost certainly will.
• 38:48
  Lowtax: Yeah, she seems like a lunatic.
• 38:49
  Propter: Peggy Flanagan. Peggy, in this case being a nickname for Margaret is Ojibwe. So that's, that's our. That's our. She is in position to be the first enrolled member of a tribe to woman in the Senate because. Well, at least she'll be elected earlier than Peltola because of the way time works. Moving, moving east to west.
• 39:20
  George: Also, Alaska has a lot of absentee ballots. Right. Like they're like the other western states.
• 39:24
  Propter: Yeah, yeah, they count male for a while. Peggy Flanagan's great. She's the lieutenant governor right now. I think. I think she's going to beat to foil like a drum and that this is not actually a very interesting race for, for that reason. But for whatever reason, conservative election Twitter has decided that this is a winnable race for them.
• 39:44
  George: Now that's cope that. I'm sorry, Come on. Like, what are we doing here? It's Minnesota and they like, has conservative election Twitter talked to anyone from Minneapolis over the past year? Like, holy, they're mad. What do we talk?
• 40:00
  Propter: Anyway, Michelle Tafoya was a pretty good sideline reporter once upon a time, and it's sad to see her like this.
• 40:05
  George: Yeah, yeah. I grew up Monday Night Football when I was in my teens and early 20s. She was all over the sideline. Did a great job.
• 40:12
  Lowtax: Shoot. You know,
• 40:15
  George: I don't think she had any acrocissure Shuji moments, which is, is good, of course, because we don't want to sexually harass the sideline reporter. Memorable at least. But other than not having anything quite that memorable, she was great. She did a really good job. And like you said, it, it is sad to see people who, I mean, look, NFL sideline reporter is not some sort of like hallowed profession. Like, it's, you know, you're, you're on the side of the three ring circus in a lot of ways. But like, it's sad to see somebody who's highly visible and competent and, you know, seems like a nice enough person who you see regularly in the media or wherever, performing artist, movie star, whoever, just have the wheels come off and reveal a brain composed almost entirely of oatmeal and rage. And I just, you know, she was
• 41:14
  Propter: somebody who we invited into our living rooms for a long time and it turns out that she was maybe not who we thought she was. So anyway, I think it's a huge mistake for her to, to do this and I think that, you know, this is, I don't know if she's trying to pivot to a, a seat on the conservative grift train or, or what her deal is or if these are deeply held beliefs. But I don't think she's going to be a senator and I think it's a mistake for her to do this. Speaking of mistakes, let's talk about Montana.
• 41:50
  George: Psy.
• 41:51
  Propter: Yeah. Okay, so let me preface this by saying that I love John Tester. I miss him very much in the Senate. And also this, this whole situation is non trivially his fault. So the background here is that certain factions in Montana, John Tester chief chief among them, made what I think is a reasonable point in the vacuum, that it would be much easier to win this race if you were running as an independent rather than as a Democrat. That this is a state that particularly in the Trump era, has had a nasty partisan lean and Democrats have A bad reputation in the state of Montana. So their idea was that they would do the same thing that we've seen Democratic aligned forces do in a couple of other states, which is they're not going to run a Democratic candidate. They're going to run an independent candidate who is going to be understood to caucus with the Democrats, but is going to be an independent and thereby avoid some of that baggage and you know, put this, put this in a position where people can in good conscience who would never vote for a Democrat, pull the lever for the independent instead. It's all well and good, except that what they failed to do was lock down the Democratic nomination. So we have the Republican candidate who was an extremely backrooms, smoky backrooms pick by the Republican Party. The current incumbent announced that he was not running for reelection literally the same day the candidate registration closed. And this guy Almay snuck in there to essentially get the Republican nomination by default so he wouldn't have to go through a primary. He was, he was, he was the only, the only candidate on the, on the R side is going up against Seth Bodnar, who is the president of the University of Montana, I believe. I think, I think he's University of Montana, not Montana State, who was the designated independent for this strategy. And Bankhead, who is the woman who actually won the Democratic primary, who has no money, who has no prospect of getting any money, but who's going to be sitting on the Democratic. I do not have a lot of hope that we are going to be able to win this race because it turns out that even if you spend a lot of money trying to tell everybody who the Senate candidates are, it's important who has the D next to their name. And if there is somebody who has the D next to their name on the ballot, then a sufficient fraction of the electorate will vote for them that you are not going to win. As an independent who needs those Democratic votes.
• 44:26
  George: Same thing that happened with Ross Perot in the early 90s.
• 44:28
  Propter: I'm ticked about this because I think that this was actually theoretically a winnable Senate race with if, if Bodnar had run as an actual Democrat, I think that I don't know that he'd be favored to win, but he'd be in it. But instead we have the situation where unless something extremely unusual happens, we're, we're pretty well drawing dead. And it's now past the deadline for Bankhead to withdraw so that it's heads up race between Badnar and Almay. So this was, this was one that was maybe gettable that I think that we punted because we couldn't get our act together. So if you want a Democrats in disarray story, this is an actual Democrats in disarray story. I think we, I think we failed to, to get our crap together here.
• 45:12
  George: There's probably what, 20% of the electorate where it does not matter who is on the ticket. They're voting Democrat. And there's just no way you can peel off enough Republicans or Republican leaners to vote for an independent to make up for that if you've got a D on the ticket. This just is not, I'm sure hypothetically there's some state of the universe in some states somewhere where that might make sense, but not in Montana, not in 2026. So this, that that race is lost. Do not give money to Montana.
• 45:43
  Propter: All right, Nebraska. Nebraska is a place where the run an independent strategy is also being executed. This is our man again. Yeah, Osborne came close last time. I think he's a good candidate. He's a union man, which he will tell you at length. He's articulate, looks good on video. There hasn't been any polling on this since mid bay, so I have no idea how he's doing. But this is the kind of race where there was some buzz. If you are like me, a coastal Democrat, you should maybe just not check in on this for a couple months and hope to be pleasantly surprised.
• 46:19
  George: Kalshi currently has it at like 70% rickets. So the Republican. So conventional wisdom says that Osborne's not going to pull it off on a good night for Democrats where, you know, he makes all the right moves. I think definitely winnable race. Likely winnable. No, this is a long shot for sure, but it's possible.
• 46:39
  Propter: Yeah, this, this is, this is a place that would not, in my opinion be absolutely crazy to put small dollar donations if you were so inclined. But this is a race that we need to not nationalize. So, you know, give Osborne money if you want, but try not to pay any attention to anything he does or says. Attention from the coasts can pretty much only hurt us here in terms of media attention.
• 47:03
  Lowtax: Yeah. And let him, let him say whatever he's got to say.
• 47:07
  George: The good news is to. The good news is all the Bluesky posters out there mad at something he said, which I'm sure you people are out there. I don't even know what he said. So who know your opinions are not going to nationalize the race because they don't matter. So, you know, keep posting into the void like the rest of us do and we'll have fun with that together.
• 47:25
  Lowtax: If anything, it's probably helpful, you know, be mad at him and then he can say them Bluesky people are mad at me. Paul.
• 47:34
  George: Paul that niche social media site, be mad at me again. Paul.
• 47:39
  Propter: North Carolina George, what you got for us?
• 47:42
  George: Other end i85 as previously mentioned, Roy is going to beat the Mario coins out of Whatley and it's going to be delicious. And I can't wait. North Carolina, for those who didn't follow all the swing maps last time around closely, North Carolina swung to the left of the nation, especially the I85 quarter, like Charlotte and Raleigh, like urban North Carolina swung more to Democrats than just about anywhere else in the nation relative to the national average. So obviously everywhere swung to Republicans. North Carolina swung less towards Republicans and especially in big urban areas than anywhere else. And actually the mountains also swung much less towards Republicans than the nation as a whole. So that i85 corridor from Birmingham to Atlanta, from Atlanta through northern South Carolina, up country South Carolina to Charlotte, Charlotte to Raleigh, Durham, and you could extend it up into the Virginia urban areas too. That is very fertile ground for the whatever Democratic coalition is going to win in 2028. And Ossoff's part of that for sure. Cooper's part of it as well. And the question for North Carolina then is how big are the coattails? The state Supreme Court races are big there. Here I'm back in North Carolina. I was on the west coast all week, but now I'm back in the warm embrace of the humid air of the Charlotte summer. And the question is coattails for Supreme Court candidate pretty much a must win if we want to take the supreme court back in 2028. North Carolina Supreme Court going back to Democrats unlocks a ton. It unlocks federal seats, it unlocks state gerrymandering being struck down. It unlocks all sorts of different state policy stuff. And if North Carolina is going to follow in the footsteps of Virginia and then Georgia, we need Democrats to control the state Supreme Court. So question will be how big are the coattails? And also what happens in the House and Senate? We, I don't think, have a chance of winning the House. I, I mean, it's hypothetically possible, but you know, getting those margins down is very helpful. So yeah, that's the story here.
• 50:04
  Lowtax: Who do we think wins by more, Cooper or Ossoff?
• 50:09
  George: Ossoff. Yeah, Ossoff. Georgia's further ahead in the, in the rural urban transition. And Georgia also doesn't get the same snowbird retirees that offset some of the gains in population and Dem votes in urban areas. But you know that North Carolina is a 50, 50 state. It's just always, it has been for so long. The, in the most recent governor's election, Josh Stein beat minisoldr, the, the Nazi porn addict. And that was the biggest statewide office win in like 30 years. I think 40 years. And he won by like 15 points. So like it's just not, it's not a huge margin in this state ever. If Cooper wins by more than five, that is an incredible night for Democrats in North Carolina and that's a huge problem for the Republican coalition and the electoral college in 2028. But I think that's the best case.
• 51:08
  Propter: Ohio. What do we got?
• 51:10
  George: How many times has a senator lost his seat and then won another Senate seat back in the same state? That can't have happened that many times, right?
• 51:18
  Propter: That's a good question. I don't know the answer to it. I cannot remember it happening within my political lifetime.
• 51:26
  Lowtax: Well, it's going to happen this year.
• 51:27
  Propter: So Brown has money.
• 51:29
  Lowtax: God, God bless the Republicans for nominating sorry ass Vivek for the Governor's race.
• 51:36
  Propter: Yeah. So the polling average right now has Brown up by four or five points. I think that's, I think that's probably legit. You could talk me into this fading down the stretch. Ohio is a state with a Republican partisan lean and that's been growing rather than shrinking in recent years. But you know that this is, this is a down year for enthusiasm for Republicans and an up year for enthusiasm for Democrats. As Lotac said, the governor's race is not, I think going to galvanize a lot of people on the Republican side. Vivek is kind of counting on that state partisan lean to get him across the finish line. I would guess that this is probably one of the places that people like Musk are going to money bomb that's had varying results in past. One advantage that Brown has here, where other senators might not, is that as a former senator he is wired into the dscc. He is a priority for national institutional Dems and my guess is that their spending priorities are going to flow heavily towards Ohio for largely that reason. He's also helped by the fact that several of the other kind of like mid tier expensive states like I don't think Abdul said is going to need a whole lot of up, a whole lot of institutional money in Michigan. I could be wrong. I think, I think he's going to be a. But I think he's going to Be a fundraising juggernaut on his own. He already raised a bunch of money for the primary. It's just he happened to be going up against apac, full burn money dump. So, like, that's, that's the only reason he looks poor is that, you know, he just, he just spent.
• 53:26
  Lowtax: It's also just a bluer state. Right. You know, it's. I mean, with AES there, I think you can make a pretty good argument that the environment itself probably gets AES over the finish line, even if he doesn't, like, run an incredibly good campaign for.
• 53:43
  Propter: Yeah, I mean, if we're looking at a D +8 environment, then you would think that anybody with the DXO name in Michigan is going to win.
• 53:51
  George: So we have two. Since the 1950s, we have two senators that have done the rebound situation and they both have interesting stories attached to them. So Slade Gorton Gorton in Washington lost the 1986 election by two points and then came back two years later in 1988 and beat Mike Lowry by 2.2 points to win the first of two more terms in the Senate. So we haven't seen this type of behavior in 40 years. The other example since the 1950s was in Ohio. Howard Metzenbaum, which is another interesting name in the 1974, was appointed to the Senate in 1974. He then lost the Democratic primary to John Glenn. And for all you NASA heads out there, yes, that John Glenn. So he resigned his seat a few weeks later. Well, a few weeks before the start of the term when Glenn was then elected. And then he came back and ousted Robert Taft Jr. Two years later in 1976.
• 54:55
  Propter: Wow.
• 54:56
  George: Yeah. So this would be a storied, storied thing to do for the first time since the.
• 55:04
  Lowtax: I mean, like, what are you going to do, man? Like, you're up against fucking John Glenn, right?
• 55:09
  George: Yeah, it's. I mean, but notably, he didn't lose a general election there. Right. He lost the primary and then resigned. He would have been reelected as a Democrat in Ohio in 1976, but he, he lost the primary. So the first. There's only been one honest to goodness example of this since the 1950s. There are a bunch of examples from prior to that, but it hasn't happened very frequently. So.
• 55:33
  Propter: Yeah, brief, brief, normal men lore. I was on Slade Gorton's Whitman County Advisory Committee as a, As a teen.
• 55:40
  Lowtax: Yes.
• 55:42
  George: Yes.
• 55:43
  Propter: I was unaware of his, of his, of his past on account of I was eight.
• 55:49
  George: Incredible.
• 55:51
  Propter: Anyway, all right, so Ohio, feeling good about it. Gonna be so much money spent there. It's not where I would put my small dollar donations because I think the institutional money is basically going to crowd you out. This one is probably going to be shaped like this is. This is basically going to. Going to be DSCC money, which is essentially trial, trial lawyer and union money, taking on what will probably be heavily crypto and evil Silicon Valley money.
• 56:22
  George: For what it's worth, Kalshi has this at 5050 right now. So betting markets are more bearish on Brown than the polls or your correspondence here at Normal Men.
• 56:32
  Propter: Yeah, he's. That's another one that's gotten some hype from conservative election Twitter that I'm not sure it deserves. That there's. We'll find out whether or not it's cope. I guess.
• 56:48
  George: I, I would give that one a less copy rating than Minnesota for sure. I mean, you're talking long cut as opposed to snuff, but it's. Yeah, I mean, we'll see. Maybe Wintergreen long cut. Winter green long cut. Not, not, not. Sorry. If you understand anything I just said, you either played college football or college baseball or you're just a complete degenerate. So we can move on.
• 57:13
  Propter: We didn't put South Carolina on the list before the show, but might be worth a mention just because they have what, what looks like it might turn into a really nasty primary runoff on the Republican side. Lindsey Graham's sister, who probably has a first name, but I don't remember it, is looking like she's going to get beat in the runoff by a, I guess, more heterodox Republican. You know, Annie Andrews on the Democratic side I think is a decent candidate for Senate. I wouldn't really expect anything from this, but South Carolina is not quite as Republican as you think it is. And if you believe in the. What is it? I55 corridor.
• 57:57
  George: Is that the 85, I65 corridor? Right.
• 58:01
  Propter: Yeah. Okay. If you believe, if you believe in that corridor, then you know this is, this is, this is the stretch goal. This, this is the next domino to fall.
• 58:10
  Lowtax: I don't think, I don't think Greenville and Spartanburg get to hang out with Atlanta and Charlotte, frankly.
• 58:17
  Propter: Dare to dream, Lowtax. Dare to dream.
• 58:19
  George: They can hang out as long as they deliver the votes. That's, that's the key thing. Okay. I just want to say briefly, I don't think she's a good candidate on the Democratic side. I mean, I like. Look, I think there is a lot to be said for not nationalizing races. There is also a lot to be said for not Gay baiting somebody.
• 58:43
  Propter: Oh, I didn't know that.
• 58:44
  George: Oh, yeah, yeah. She's been fundraising on a full on like before Lindsey Graham died obviously, because he's now off the board. And you know, this is not me saying don't speak ill of the dead. I have no problem with people talking about the fact that Lindsey Graham was a closeted gay man, but using it as a political, like in a negative attack ad. I am not okay with that.
• 59:09
  Lowtax: So, yeah, don't do, don't do homophobia on our side. You're in the wrong party if you want to.
• 59:13
  George: Yeah, there's just, there's just no, there's no reason to do that. I, you know, the people that care about that particular issue are not going to pull the lever for a Democrat. I'm sorry, it's just not, it's just not how it's going to go. So all you're doing is punching queer folks for no reason whatsoever. So, you know, I, Candidates make mistakes, et cetera, et cetera. If she ends up pulling off a miracle and winning, she'll still be a Democrat. But I, I would not describe her as a high quality candidate myself.
• 59:45
  Lowtax: I'm not feeling good about us in South Carolina, just in general, South Carolina politics, especially not after Nancy Mace got her nine tattoos.
• 59:58
  George: South Carolina is very much on the same path as first Virginia, then Georgia, then Texas, then North Carolina or then North Carolina, then Texas, however order you want to put that in. They have the same phenomena where they have a black belt, they have lots of rapidly growing urban centers. Those urban centers, because of educational polarization are swinging and growing rapid, rapidly. In terms of Dem vote share, vote share and vote count, the rural areas are extremely red. The problem is they just don't have as much urban population in and it's, it's, it's growing fast. They also have the problem that North Carolina does where a lot of the in migration is retirees who skew more conservative than Texas or Georgia or Virginia.
• 1:00:45
  Lowtax: The. So the Ohio problem.
• 1:00:49
  George: Well, Ohio, a lot of the conservatives are leaving Ohio. Right. It's Northeast conservatives or upper Midwest conservatives who are moving to the south for the sun and their retirement, which is, you know, fine, whatever it is what it is. But you know, your, your marginal entrant to the state in South Carolina looks a lot more like a Republican voter than the same in Texas, Georgia, Virginia or North Carolina. And North Carolina, again, marginal entrant looks more conservative than Texas, Georgia or Virginia. So yeah, it would, it would, it would absolutely float my boat if we managed to win that Senate seat though. So, you know, I'm not, I'm not rooting against it, that's for sure.
• 1:01:32
  Propter: The final state on our whip round is Texas. We've talked a lot about Texas, we've talked a lot about, about Jimmy Talarico, the odious Ken Paxton. This is going to be an expensive race. Like there have been calls for the national Dems to triage it, which they may have already done in some ways. It's not clear to me that there's a whole lot of national money going towards Talarico. He doesn't need it. Talarico is an absolute fundraising all star. And the thing about these big states is that by virtue of being big, they have a lot of Democrats in them, even if they're red states. You know, this, this is the same reason we're going to blow. All told, probably, probably $150 million on the Florida Senate race, you know, on two party spend, is because there are a lot of people in that state and they care about who wins the Senate seat in that state. Paxton is not a good fundraiser. So I think that Texas is going to be an opportunity where Talarico is able to take the small dollar donations that are mostly coming from in state for him and use that to make national Republicans bleed because they are going to have to spend if they want to compete in Texas. I don't think that there's much question about that, that Paxton is not himself going to get small dollar fundraising going. And also he's managed to piss off several of the big Texas millionaires who traditionally provide the muscle for statewide Republican fundraising in Texas specifically. So it's not clear that, you know, the Texas oil money is there for him either.
• 1:03:23
  George: I think it's worth just, just dwelling on that point for a second and using it as an illustration of how incredibly top and individual driven Republican spending is in general. It's true nationally, but it's also true at the state level. Right, where if you don't get your key ducks in a row, you're in deep, deep trouble just because there aren't that many ducks for Democrats. Like you're talking about a literal army of small dollar donations that you can, you can piss those people off, but it's not like you piss off one guy and you're sunk. One guy literally doesn't matter in Democratic fundraising. You need to do something to piss off hundreds and thousands of people in one state. A bad candidate who doesn't have the right relationships or who can't get the right guys to write the right seven figure checks ends any viability. And that is really true in Texas. There's been some really good reporting on this over the years from Texas media outlets. I think Texas Monthly had a really good piece on this. There's a couple other places that have done good details because some of the networks there, but like you, you really got to have your ducks in a row and man, people hate Ken Paxton. They hate him. And I mean what's not to hate? But you know that that's going to be a real problem for them.
• 1:04:44
  Propter: Yeah, like there, there are a bunch of millionaires in Texas who are reacting to Ken Paxton as if he, as if he tried to their daughter. Which it's plausible that he did.
• 1:04:54
  Lowtax: Yes.
• 1:04:55
  Propter: You know, like he's, he's just, he's just an odious person and he has made a lot of enemies over the course of his long Texas politics career. And because of the way Texas politics has been structured at the state level, a lot of those enemies are on the Republican side that these have tended to be, you know, kind of intramural knife fights within the Republican Party going back a decade plus because Democrats don't have enough votes to do anything at the state level. So anyway, you know, you obviously can't bank on Dems winning Texas, but I think if you had to, if you had to pick them right now Talarico is probably a narrow favorite and we'll sort of see where the polling goes from here. It's a tough state in terms of partisan lean, but not so tough that it can't be won in a, in a good blue year. There is certainly going to be direct voters, voter suppression operating on who knows what axes. But I believe in the people of Texas. So get it done guys.
• 1:06:09
  Lowtax: If they, if they don't vote for Talarico, I will never believe in the people of Texas again.
• 1:06:16
  George: For what it, for what it's worth, Kalshi has it at a 5050 race at this point. That's a huge narrowing. You know, back in, at the start of the year the pricing was 80, 20 against against Talarico. And so he's, it's now a 50 50. And I do think having, having sort of looked at some of the evolution of some of these markets that sometimes betting markets illustrate a bias one way or the other. It's not strictly one sided bias from prediction markets ahead of elections. They tend to skew more conservative than I think the media does for instance or your Bluesky feed probably does. But they're not necessarily wildly off base in that respect. It does look like there's a fair concerted effort from people in these markets to push higher Republican odds than probably is justified by the polling and the fundamentals. Just having looked at how some of these markets have trended as we've been talking here. So you could probably handicap it and say well it's then 55, 45 or something like that, or the market is just correct if you want to be an EMH fundamentalist, which maybe, maybe that's the way to go. Either way, Texas is absolutely winnable. It's absolutely winnable and you have a perfect storm of horrific presidential approvals, a bunch of policies that are specifically designed to piss off Texas, especially Latinos. You have a high quality candidate on the Democratic side, the worst possible candidate on the Republican side, and the reddest state can flip in that kind of scenario. We've seen it happen before. Yeah, like I am old enough to remember who Doug Jones was. So.
• 1:08:02
  Propter: Yeah. So like tariffs are really bad news for Texas. Texas is integrated cross border with Mexico in any number of ways economically. The thing that pushes back against, against that a little bit is that expensive oil is good for Texas there. It's, it's not, it's not a bad thing for them, sort of.
• 1:08:25
  George: Yeah, because like rig counts haven't risen much. Right. Like what Texas wants is a bunch of rigs in the field. The problem is they're out of good acreage. So even if oil prices go up a lot, a lot of those acres have a much higher break even than they would have five years ago. Like five years ago if oil went up above 100 bucks, you know, you'd see red counts double right now. There's just not that much acreage left. Where that kind of quick put, put rigs into the, into the dirt makes a lot of sense. And that is where a lot of the employment effect from higher oil prices is. Obviously there's a huge petrochemical industry in Texas as well, you know, all that stuff. But that kind of vibe is, I mean that that industry is locked in on Republicans already anyway. So if you want to pick up leaners, you want them being dragged out into the Permian and that's not happening this time around. Rig counts have risen a bit over the past six months, but not like by 5%, not by 50%. So I don't know, like if you read the Dallas Fed's manufacturing survey and the comments there, people are pissed off, man. They've been pissed off about tariffs for a while and they're trying to find a way to say, oh, it's the Viziers, you know, but plus again, the Latino stuff like I. Texas has way too many Latinos for that population nationally to swing against you hard and for you to expect to get a good showing. It's just not. It's just not there. And that they're really important to the Republican coalition in Texas. So it's not a done deal by any means, but this is by far the friendliest territory for Dems to fight on in Texas in my lifetime. So.
• 1:10:09
  Lowtax: Yeah, and RFK is trying to get the dog killed at Texas A and M by taking the vaccines away. He's trying to get. He's trying to get the dog killed at Texas A and M by taking all the vaccines away. I just want Aggie to remember that.
• 1:10:25
  George: What about, what about the Bevo. Is. Is he at risk?
• 1:10:28
  Lowtax: Oh, Bevo too.
• 1:10:29
  George: Yeah, yeah, Bevo too. Oh, Bevo also, I was gonna say we're way past two.
• 1:10:34
  Lowtax: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, yeah, we're up to like Bevo 86 or something now.
• 1:10:39
  Propter: Yeah.
• 1:10:42
  George: Who can eat the stakes out of Bevo?
• 1:10:46
  Propter: They gotta offer that, right?
• 1:10:47
  Lowtax: That's probably the football players. Oh yeah, it probably is a booster thing.
• 1:10:54
  George: A bunch of perverts. Texas football boosters. Anyhow. Okay, so I think that rounds us out. Everything else doesn't matter or isn't interesting. Which amounts to the same thing for us information addled news readers. So.
• 1:11:09
  Lowtax: So how do we, how do we think this shakes out? I'll tell y' all how I do standing here.
• 1:11:16
  George: Let's run down in alphabetical order again and we can all say what we think is going to happen and then we'll tote up at the end.
• 1:11:23
  Lowtax: Okay.
• 1:11:24
  George: Okay. So Alaska, I think Peltola wins. Alaska.
• 1:11:27
  Propter: Yeah. Blue 60%.
• 1:11:29
  Lowtax: I, I agree. I think it's. I think it's a little better than 60%, but I agree. I think it's Peltola.
• 1:11:35
  George: Arkansas. Not going to happen.
• 1:11:37
  Lowtax: Nope.
• 1:11:39
  Propter: 20%.
• 1:11:41
  George: Florida. Not going to happen.
• 1:11:43
  Lowtax: Nope.
• 1:11:43
  Propter: Yeah, I kind of agree on that one.
• 1:11:46
  George: Georgia Ossoff wins.
• 1:11:47
  Propter: Yeah. 98%.
• 1:11:51
  George: I will say Iowa, 55% chance. Call it Iowa. Turek wins.
• 1:11:59
  Propter: I think I've got that one as a true 50. 50. But, but I could be talked into better. You know, it's. It's a, it's a weird year to have open seed contests in red states because it means that they're ducking out on anti incumbent backlash at the same time as they're running somebody who has not necessarily run statewide before, which Hinson hasn't. I think Turek's a good candidate. If I had, If I had $20 that I was trying to give a campaign right now, I'd probably give it to Turek.
• 1:12:31
  Lowtax: I think Turek wins.
• 1:12:34
  George: All right. Kansas.
• 1:12:36
  Propter: No, doesn't exist. Yeah.
• 1:12:39
  Lowtax: Fake place.
• 1:12:40
  George: Okay. Right. Maine. Oh, Kansas. I didn't get my Kansas. No, we're not going to win Kansas. Hamilton's gonna listen. Maine. When 70% dim.65, but yeah, I think that's a dim one. Michigan as is going to win it.
• 1:13:01
  Lowtax: I think, I think we hold all the Dem seats.
• 1:13:04
  George: Yeah, I agree.
• 1:13:05
  Propter: 80, 85%. Michigan.
• 1:13:07
  George: Yep. So Minnesota foregone conclusion as well. Montana. For reasons discussed. I think we all agree is not going to happen. Nebraska. I'm gonna say Nebraska. Osborne wins it. I don't, I'm just gonna say that to be contrarian. I think, you know, I think he's, you know, just to be interesting.
• 1:13:24
  Propter: I think, I think we got a puncher's chance there. I, I, I probably have that at, I don't know, 30, 35. But yeah, we're in it. Fingers crossed.
• 1:13:37
  Lowtax: Yeah, I, I think my gut instinct would be something like prop or 30, 30 to 35%. I don't think we're going to win it, but I don't have real strong feelings on it one way or the other.
• 1:13:51
  Propter: These things are going to be autocorrelated, so, like they're all going to move at the same time.
• 1:13:54
  George: Right. Right.
• 1:13:55
  Propter: And if they move big enough, we're in a position where the wave could, could get over that seawall.
• 1:14:01
  Lowtax: Right. That's why, that's why I feel pretty good about Turek. Dinosaur hunter and Jackson and Salmon Lady.
• 1:14:11
  Propter: Yeah.
• 1:14:11
  George: Yep. Yeah. All right, North Carolina.
• 1:14:16
  Propter: Done deal.
• 1:14:17
  Lowtax: Done deal.
• 1:14:18
  George: That's right. Ohio
• 1:14:22
  Propter: 65.
• 1:14:25
  George: Yeah, I'll take, I'll take Brown for sure. I'd rather be Brown than Husted, that's for sure.
• 1:14:29
  Lowtax: I'll, I'd take Brown. I'd probably put it like 75.
• 1:14:34
  Propter: I wish you were 20 years younger.
• 1:14:37
  George: Seriously.
• 1:14:37
  Lowtax: Oh, yeah, definitely.
• 1:14:39
  George: I mean, the same goes for Roy in North Carolina. I'm not excited about the fact he's in his 70s, but he's, he's going to win the seat. Yep. Yeah, we have a bench here. Keep that he's keeping the seat warm for.
• 1:14:50
  Lowtax: So, yeah, I was, I was going to say Roy. You might not mind that Roy is as old as he is. If you think North Carolina continues to trend blue and we get there with it because you're probably going to Want somebody more progressive and not too long.
• 1:15:06
  George: Well, it's less that and more. You know we again, we have some. We have some. We have some shooters coming up in North Carolina. Jeff Jackson is going to win a senate seat at some point. You know, like, like there, there is some talent here and we're organized. So I'm not so worried about Roy serving a single term as long as it's just one term. But he. That hasn't been a campaign issue. But that's just my view anyhow. Texas
• 1:15:34
  Propter: I believe man.
• 1:15:37
  Lowtax: I believe I. I called it last year. I think our little eagle scout beats job of the hut.
• 1:15:43
  George: Yeah.
• 1:15:45
  Lowtax: And so that I think so that's what. How many do we have us winning
• 1:15:50
  George: that has us flipping 1 Alaska 3 defending Georgia flipping Iowa, flipping Maine, holding Michigan, holding Minnesota. Where what were we? Where do we come down in Nebraska, I think.
• 1:16:08
  Propter: I think. No, but in with the chance was so was the opinion of the puck
• 1:16:12
  George: flipping North Carolina, flipping Ohio, flipping Texas. So we net six Cs.
• 1:16:17
  Propter: That'd be a pretty good night in November.
• 1:16:19
  Lowtax: That would be. And that would be more than enough to offset whatever the hell Fetterman does, right?
• 1:16:27
  George: God, he's gonna get his ass primaried so hard.
• 1:16:30
  Propter: Yeah, I don't think he's even gonna run again.
• 1:16:33
  George: Well, that'd make things easy.
• 1:16:35
  Propter: Pull the cinema.
• 1:16:37
  George: All right, gentlemen, I need to go eat some dinner before I put my 3 year old to bed. So we're gonna cap it there. This was fun. It's too bad our resident Maynard didn't log on to tell us more about cousin. That's our show for this week. Thanks for listening. If you get a chance rate review share all that fun stuff in Charlotte. Thankful to be back from a week on the west coast. I'm George in dc.
• 1:17:04
  Lowtax: I'm Propter in outer Florida. I am Lowtax Speedrun enjoyer.
• 1:17:08
  George: Stay normal y'.
• 1:17:09
  Propter: All. Sam.