Latest / Normal Men / Episode 79 - Rational Exuberance

Transcript

Episode 79 - Rational Exuberance · Normal Men

0:00
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Should we start by acknowledging how right I was about byu? Yeah. You deserve enormous credit
0:05
George: for that. Like, literally called it a week before you. In fairness, you did say Nevada was going to be the problem, not ucf. But
0:12
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: no,
0:14
George: yeah, Utah. Not ucf. But regardless. Well done, sir.
0:18
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: But yeah, regardless, I called it. They were a fraud. They can go have a dirty soda about it.
0:24
George: An LLM level fraud emanating from the state of Utah. Who would have thought?
0:29
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Yeah, I think Texas Tech lost too, right?
0:34
George: Yeah,
0:35
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: they got
0:35
George: their clocks cleaned.
0:36
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Yeah. And Tennessee lost to South Carolina.
0:41
George: Yep. Last second play. Yeah.
0:43
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Yeah. The Fighting Shane Beamers.
0:45
George: Everyone's college football team sucks. Like, literally everybody's college football team sucks. Well,
0:51
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: there are no good teams
0:52
George: this year.
0:53
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Miami beat the shit out of Pittsburgh.
0:56
George: It's pit, man.
0:57
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: I know, but I was kind of expecting them to have a letdown after last week.
1:02
George: Yeah, but it's still pit. I'm sorry, that does not get. Get Miami out of the suck doghouse.
1:08
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Yeah.
1:11
George: Enough
1:12
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: VA Tech beat Clemson.
1:15
George: We. We love to see Dabo Swinney take an L. So,
1:17
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: yes,
1:23
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 much. I'm George in Charlotte.
1:31
Propter: In D.C. i'm Propter Malone
1:33
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: in Outer Florida. I'm Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer. And
1:36
Propter: I'm Ed
1:36
Ed: in Boston.
1:41
George: All right, that's enough college football. We got. We got real competitive sports to talk about today, like polling.
1:48
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Yeah.
1:48
Ed: Just as I find the stopwatch app on my phone to do a bit and then you're finally, thankfully done.
1:56
George: Keep
1:56
Propter: the stopwatch handy though, because we might be doing a speed round on election predictions here.
2:03
George: Yep, we are definitely going to do that. Before we do, I think we should talk a little bit about the polling because my, you know, I. I don't know. There's a bunch of ways to track this and I don't subscribe. Subscribe to the A silver bulletin because I'm not a lunatic. But you know, if you look at 50 plus ones generic ballot, we are at 522 to 43. So 9.2 points the week before the election. Basically. I've seen some polls like from instance, from Texas that look like. And maybe Ohio, a couple others that look like maybe some bigger leads have narrowed a bit, but not nothing too dramatic. Propter, have you seen anything like that?
2:52
Propter: No. I mean, at this point I think people are mostly trying to read tea leaves from early votes and trying to figure out how that's going to map to everything Else we might. We might get a couple more polls trickle in, but most of what is eventually going to be in before election is already out of the field. So I wouldn't expect that we're going to get a whole lot more raw data from here. Pretty much what we've got. Plus whatever moves in between when they were last in the field and Election Day is going to be the shape of things here. And
3:29
George: I will say, just looking at the generic ballot from fifty plus one, Republicans have trailed off. They sort of peaked in July and have trended a bit lower since, not dramatically like a percentage point or so, while Dems have gone from 49 to 52. And if you're closing out a polling cycle with one party literally falling and while the other party rises, that's. That. That's not good news for the falling party.
3:57
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: No, but this is a wild set of Senate elections like you could have if you had a moderate miss either way. Like, that could affect 10 seats on that.
4:10
George: Yeah. And it really depends on the kind of miss you have too, because you're talking some very different electorates. Like Alaska looks nothing like Iowa, which looks nothing like North Carolina, which looks nothing like Ohio, which looks nothing like South Carolina. Like, these are completely different kinds of states. It's worth saying. You know, historically, Senate polling has been pretty good on average, but you always get big misses somewhere. That's how averages work. So at some point there's gonna. In one of these states is going to be way off. Who knows what direction it's going in. But actually a couple of them probably will be. But that in and of itself doesn't tell you that the polling was. Was way off. Because you look at these things across averages and in groups, not one single poll, and point to that and say, well, you know, polling's broken. I actually think the polling's broken. Discourse has gone a step too far, personally.
5:01
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Yeah, I think it. I think it has, too. I think polling is mostly fine. What is. What's the race that y' all think the Dempsey. Y' all think that if we lost one, it's the most likely to lose. Y' all think it's Michigan.
5:16
Propter: It's Maine. It's always been.
5:18
Ed: It's definitely Maine. It's always Maine.
5:20
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: No, no, no, no, no. That's not. We
5:21
George: don't hold Maine, though. Fair
5:22
Ed: enough. Oh, yeah, sorry.
5:24
Propter: County count. County chickens before we hatch on that one, I guess. Yeah, it's probably Michigan. I. I'm not seriously worried about Michigan, but
5:33
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: I'm not seriously worried about it. I am like mildly worried about it. I, I kind of thought AES would be farther ahead than he is,
5:44
Propter: I think. Well, okay, let's, let's pull up the last few polls and, and take a look at what's got people worried here. So we have in the last two weeks we have one poll that is coming from, that is a Republican poll that has Rogers with the lead. Everything else is showing AES with between a short lead and a significant lead. And also this is, this is the main reason why I'm not that worried about it is that the polling has him consistently much further ahead with registered voters than with likely voters. It may be that for whatever reason this is, this is the place that bucks the trend. But what that kind of says to me is that the likely voter screen is over indexing on past voting in this case.
6:41
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Yeah, that's possible.
6:42
Propter: We should probably talk about that more, more regularly because like in the dark. My expectation would be that the more that the more motivated party, which is pretty clearly Dems right now, would do better going from RV to lv.
6:56
George: We can quantify that with the early voting data too, especially for North Carolina. Like if you, if you look at my tracker ncrly P E R K. Yes, it's in the show notes from the last episode. We'll throw it in again today. But you can do all sorts of stuff to look at propensity and like voters who are less likely to vote, I. E. They don't regularly participate in primaries. They don't regularly participate in midterms. They've maybe come out for one presidential in the past two. Like those voters who are registered Democrats or independents who have at some point pulled the Democratic ballot in a primary. So Demi Jason, those voters are like massive, massive turnout search and Republicans are suppressed across the board. So everything we can tell from the early vote data suggests that the low propensity voters who are turning out are Democrats or are Democrat leaning and are bluining things. Like there's just no evidence anywhere that there are lots of low propensity voters coming out for Republicans. And that was the, that was the linchpin of the 2024 electorate for Republicans. Like that was it. Now it's still possible they could show up on election day. That is absolutely possible. I would not hold my breath, but it's possible.
8:09
Propter: I would say that if, if I'm going to play devil's advocate for just a second, there's some reason to think that particularly Southern voters, especially Southern black voters may be exceptionally agitated this year in a way that's throwing off some of the projections from historical expectations. Whether that translates to Michigan and Minnesota, which is the other state that you'd worry about us losing at the Senate that's currently Dem held, is, I think, a little bit of an open question. Michigan's got lots of voters of color. It's not white in the way that some of the Midwestern states are white. If you go to Kansas, you're not going to see a whole lot of effect from VRA backlash. But in Michigan you might expect to, or at least you might be able to put together a case that there are minority voters there who might take it more seriously in the way that it seems pretty clear at this point that black voters in the south are taking it. If that fails to show up for whatever reason, then that's not necessarily great. That said, there are lots of pollsters that are doing this kind of same thing where you've got five point margin swings happening between registered voters and likely voters moving towards Republicans at the state level. And that strikes me as very, very heavily an artifact of how the pollster is slicing their screen. It doesn't necessarily mean they're wrong. It just means that House style rather than necessarily something, something that is substantiated and borne out, that's, that's a prediction rather than, rather than the data. So,
9:57
George: and you know, in defense of pollsters making that kind of qualitative judgment, like you have to do that, otherwise you can't model an electorate. There is no way to know what the electorate's going to look like. So you have to do some kind of guessing and they're doing guessing and I think that's probably going to be the wrong guess. But it's not like, oh, that necessarily makes them, makes them like a bad pollster depending on how they do it. Obviously some combinations of this are just wrong. But like, you know, you can guess wrong at the electorate and get to an incorrect result and ex ante, it can be hard. But, but I will say like any, any poll that comes out that shows like a 50, 50 Harris Trump vote in a swing state as their, as their recalled vote or, you know, has anything close to the 2024 electorate in terms of composition demographically, that is going to be wrong. Like, like, I, I am really confident in saying that is going to be completely wrong. I think there are a lot of reasons to think this, but every election we've had since 2024 has looked wildly different and has delivered wildly different outcomes at the demographic level. The polling data backs that up the early vote data backs that up. Just the raw turnout volume backs it up. And it's not just in the south, it's also in Ohio, it's in Nevada. Like, Democrats are beating down the doors to vote and Republicans aren't. And that doesn't ne mean therefore everybody. Like, when you just update your prior each time with like, a little bit of information from these different sources, each one of which is kind of irrelevant, you get a pretty strong signal, in my opinion. And I just, I just don't see how you have an electorate that looks as red as 2022, let alone as red as 2024.
11:33
Propter: Right? So, like, basically there are two levers you can pull in moving from registered voters to, like, way voters, right? You can look at how people, you can look at whether people have voted in the past and for which elections they voted in the past, and you can ask them questions that are a proxy for how likely are you to vote this year? Sometimes that question is as simple as have you already voted this year? In which case that's about as likely as the vote gets, right? Less whatever adjustment there is for people lying to the pollster, which they do constantly. But those are the two levers. In a cycle like this where you're looking back at multiple periods that include Donald Trump on the ballot, you're looking back at three presidential elections where Donald Trump is on the ballot. So somebody who comes out to vote for Trump but doesn't come out to vote otherwise, depending on how the pollster is slicing their screen, unless they're doing something to look at midterms, they're going to show that person as being a very likely voter for this. On the, on, on that retrospective part of the likely voter screen, even if that person is saying, no, I'm probably not going to vote, they're going to go, well, this person voted in the last three presidential elections. They haven't missed a presidential primary since 2012
12:50
Ed: because they just like, evil.
12:52
Propter: Well, I mean, maybe they just like Donald Trump, right? Like, like, which is a subset of you.
12:56
Ed: Yes. And
12:57
Propter: so, like, like, anecdotally, we think there's a lot of voters like that. We think that there's a significant number of, of loosely attached Republican voters who are Trump voters. We
13:08
George: have quantitative evidence of this, though. Like, like I, again, North Carolina early vote. We have quantitative hard evidence that low propensity Republican voters, these are people who are not voting in primaries who are not voting in maybe sometimes what, in the midterm. But, like, they're, they're not the vote at every time the ballots are open kind of person. These people are not turning out. They are not. And it's true of both unaffiliated that are adjacent to Republicans and actual registered Republicans. And the opposite is true of Dems and unaffiliated adjacent to Dems. Like and that's not talking at all about persuasion. That's just talking about like base activation. Democrats are smashing the doors down the boat and it's not just black folks. So like I, you know there is a mode thing going on here where a lot of Republicans are going to vote on election day that haven't voted early and they're very clearly intending to do that. But also like more than half of Democrats who cast a ballot in a primary have already voted in North Carolina. Like the base activation you need to do and the way and the, and the, and the reaching out to undecided and getting the vote out work you have to do on election day gets so much easier when that's the case. Like Democrats aren't going to have any, any base left to vote by the time early votes done. So like that gives you a lot and, and this is true in a bunch of different races too. So I, I, I don't know. I just, I'm, I'm, I'm really skeptical.
14:36
Propter: Well,
14:36
George: like some of these likely voter screens,
14:38
Propter: you know, since those are the two levers you have to pull for a likely voter screen, right. Did you vote in past and how likely are you to vote this year? The more decoupling there is between those levers, the less accurate you would expect your likely voter screens to be. So if your prior this year is that there are a bunch of people who showed up to pull the lever and passed who are now dispirited Republicans, that's something that could explain some amount of differential there between, between the RV screen and between the LV screen because we're seeing fairly large effects here.
15:11
George: The other thing anecdotally I'm hearing is there are non trivial numbers of Republicans who are not voting at the top of the ticket but will show up for their local county commissioner or whoever. Most of the time these kinds of people are not like, it's just not that many people that are like that. But like in Texas for instance, that's a big deal. Like I, I know there are people out there who are showing up to vote straight party ticket Republican with the exception of somewhere between two and four offices on the ticket, they may not be pulling a lever for Talarico or in a Hosa. But they're definitely not voting for Paxton, that kind of thing. I have heard stories of Republican poll workers in North Carolina who are like, I'm only out here because my buddy's running for county commission. Not poll workers, poll volunteers. You know, like the people outside the, the polling place that hand out the tickets or whatever. I'm not, I'm not here to vote for Whatley. Like, I don't care about that guy, but I'm here to support my buddy in the county commission or whatever it is. That is not a good sign for Republicans if there's any number of people like that.
16:18
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: No, and I'm, I'm sure that's happening in, in Texas, probably happening in places like Ohio because our boy Vivek is such a repulsive little ghoul. Getting back to polls in Michigan for a second, I'm looking at the Marist poll. It looks like Marist. Their likely voter screen is just based on question. They're not. It doesn't look like they're anchoring to 2024 or 2022. Now. They do have El said 5048 with likelys and 5245 with registereds. And I suspect the truth is somewhere in between there. But, God, there's like, no good polling. Like, what the hell is Tyson group?
17:08
George: We've had two Marist polls since mid September and a YouGov poll, and that's kind of it for high quality stuff, which is rough in a state as important as Michigan.
17:19
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Yeah,
17:20
George: that's raw.
17:21
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: I wouldn't put YouGov in the same category as Marist.
17:24
George: Well, whatever. I'm just saying, like, like YouGov aren't like, making stuff up.
17:28
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: No, no, they're not. They're not clowns or something, but they're, you know, they're usually like, roughly in the ballpark. Like, they're pros. They've been doing this for years. But they're, they're not as good as, like, Sienna College or, you know, some of the really big dogs in it. But yeah, it's really. It looks like it's. It's just Marist. Among recent high qualities,
17:56
George: I do think Michigan is the one. I would have Democrats underperform the swing by the most in other than Maine, I think. I think Maine and Michigan are the two where it's going to be tight. Maybe. Maybe Minnesota as well. You know, I, I do think there's some weird stuff going on in the upper Midwest. Not weird enough that we're going to lose any of those Three. And yes, I did just refer to Maine as being the upper Midwest because spiritually can't find a better comp.
18:21
Ed: I got bad news. I would put it more like, all right, fine, I'll give you, I'll give you the Michigan, the Michigan comp. But it doesn't. We have always called it the south of the north for a reason.
18:35
George: I mean it's old, relatively educated and super white. Like that's, that's the Midwest, man.
18:41
Ed: Definitely educated.
18:43
George: Isn't. Isn't Maine's college education kind of comparable to Michigan?
18:48
Ed: I thought it was a lower, but I, I know it's like whatever historically means high school graduation rate has been very good, but college has been kind of
18:55
George: whatever.
18:56
Ed: But I don't know. These days
18:57
George: I. The main voter, I think scans more as a Michigan voter than as a Virginia voter. Let's put it that way.
19:05
Ed: That would be a compliment to Maine. Comparing the, the average voter to, to Virginia.
19:11
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Yeah,
19:13
George: right. And I'm not doing that. I am specifically saying they are more like the average Michigan voter. So yeah, like I'm, I'm not, I'm not being nice to Maine here.
19:20
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: I think they're really more like the average Quebec voter.
19:24
George: Oh God. I saw. And you'll
19:27
Ed: love this. Actually there's not that many of them.
19:30
George: You'll love this. Low tax. We haven't done car talk in a while. I came across a tick tock today of some kebaqua dude who pulled up to like a Mac equipment dealer, I think it was in Texas. He had a kebaqua plate trailer that was rated at £6,000 per axle. And he wanted to load this bobcat, you know like excavator thing onto it and driving on home to Quebec, what do you think he was trying to tow that with? So keep in mind this is 12,000pound load on a 2,2 axle trailer. What do you think he was trying to tow with?
20:05
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: I don't know, like an 80s citron.
20:09
George: Come
20:10
Ed: on Quebec.
20:17
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: I have no idea.
20:19
George: A Tuareg.
20:21
Ed: Wow.
20:24
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: VW Tuareg. Wow.
20:26
George: Volkswagen Tuareg. I got, I got 6,000 pound on each axle. I can drive very safe. I know what I am doing. My truck can handle it. Sir. Did you just call that a truck?
20:40
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: It called
20:40
Ed: a braked towing capacity of £7,700.
20:44
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: He's gonna drive, he's gonna get to like Marshall, Texas and the axle is going to snap and like it's going to overheat because Volkswagens have terrible electrical work and it's going to Be tap around that.
20:58
George: Listen, like, honestly, with. When you're £5,000 over towing capacity, like, the thing I'm worried about is making turns and stopping at lights. Like that's like, forget. Forget hauling on the open road. Like, you got much bigger problems. So anyhow, they ended up having to call a cop. And the cop was like, dude, come on, what are we doing here?
21:20
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Yeah, like, well. And can you not get an excavator like that in Quebec?
21:26
George: Dude, who knows what this guy was doing? I like, who knows?
21:32
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: I mean, just. I assume they have rental cars there. Like go rent an F150 or whatever you need. And
21:39
George: well, that, that, that was part of the joke is the guy's like, the ke's like, I can throw more than one of your F150. And the guys. Sir, we would not let someone drive out of here in an F150 with 12, 000 pounds of trailer behind it. Like, no, like maybe an F350. An F150? Nah, buddy.
22:01
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought an F150 could do
22:05
Ed: like 12, 000 pounds.
22:08
George: I think my truck is rated for 10, 000 and I got a 7, 000 pound curb weight. And I got a lot more braking capacity.
22:16
Ed: That's true. You do have more, but 13, five, apparently, which I don't think I would. I don't think I would do that.
22:23
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Yeah, I would not test that.
22:26
George: Yeah. No.
22:27
Ed: Great. We have discovered the theoretical limits of Ford.
22:31
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: I
22:31
George: put a couple tons in the bed before and that was sketchy enough. Yeah. I do not need to.
22:36
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Yeah, let's go get something with 1 ton axles to move our excavator. I think. I'm gonna need. I'm gonna need like some Dana 80s on that.
22:50
George: He's got the tape measure out and he's showing. He's got 14 inches of clearance when the. When the thing's loaded and the touaregs sitting low in the suspension. I still have 14 inches. No. No way. It's a problem. And it's like my brother in Christ.
23:08
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: I mean, you know, people have. People have towed dumber things than that,
23:14
Ed: and many have died.
23:16
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Yeah,
23:18
George: well, the guy in the video goes, yeah, this is why we have the rules, man. Is people like you. Sir, do you have your class A federal cdl? What? I. I do not need a cdl. Why are you asking me that? All right. Anyhow, back to Maine.
23:41
Propter: I got one more stupid seasonal towing thing, if you don't mind. I don't know if you Guys saw that thing that Don Moynihan was sharing around, but apparently there's a house up in Ann Arbor that every year contracts with a competition pumpkin grower to purchase multiple 2,000 pound pumpkins to put in their front yard as a trick or treating attraction. This is. How
24:04
George: big is a 2,000 pound pumpkin?
24:06
Propter: It's. It's pretty big, man. Like they, I mean, from the picture, it looked like they were probably about neck height on me, you know, like, these are, these are real large. These are like, these are like. Apparently they bring them in on a flatbed, use a forklift to get them into place, and then they have people come carve them with chainsaws. So that's, that's how one handles a 2,000 pound pumpkin.
24:29
George: It's a whole operation.
24:30
Propter: Yeah, I just thought that was cool. So I don't know if there's. I don't know if there's stunt pumping farmers. Hear me? But
24:37
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: the European mind cannot comprehend this.
24:42
George: I like that so much more than the giant skeleton thing where it's like the 15 foot tall Costco skeleton that you store in the attic and wheel out once a year. And it's just like. And of course, everybody that's got those things is putting them out there on September 15th. And it's just like, guys, can we not like.
24:57
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: So, so my neighbor put up. Got one of those giant skeleton things, but put clothes and stuffing in it so it's like a scarecrow and put a pumpkin head on it.
25:07
Propter: Nice.
25:08
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: And the thing is like, the thing's like 8ft tall and
25:11
Ed: work.
25:12
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Yeah. And they put an ax in its hand.
25:15
Propter: Oh,
25:16
George: like a
25:16
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: real. Yeah, okay. Or I think it's a real one. Maybe it's a toy one, I don't know. But so now every time we go to walk the dog, the dog sees this thing in the yard and loses its.
25:35
George: I probably would too. To be fair to the dog.
25:37
Propter: There's. There's somebody a couple blocks from me who has. And, and if you live in D.C. near Georgia Avenue, you've seen, you've seen this house. Who has skeletons up in and around their property. But they keep them up all year and they redress them seasonally. So, you know, these will be, these will be Christmas skeletons in a month. There'll be patriotic skeletons in the summer. It's great.
26:00
Ed: I mean, if you're going to buy one, get your money's worth.
26:03
Propter: Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know,
26:04
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: you don't have to screw around with taking them down and putting them back up.
26:08
Propter: Right. Like let's not, let's not do an 11amonth vacation for the skeletons. Like, I think we can get more work at our skeletons than.
26:14
Ed: I don't even know. I don't even know where I'd put it. I mean, like, what's it going to dep. Displace the wood shop? The 3D printers? Like, I would, I would, I would by necessity have to leave it out year round.
26:27
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Yeah, that's true.
26:30
Ed: Now I want one. My wife.
26:33
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: I've got like 15. I got like 15 in my garage. You can have Ed.
26:39
Ed: I think the carriage fees would be a little expensive.
26:45
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: All right, so we all agree Maine is the Quebec of the United States.
26:50
Propter: Unambiguously
26:52
Ed: only District 2.
26:53
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: I like that they're sending AOC up there. Like, I would not have thought AOC would be a great pitch man in a main.
27:04
George: She. People really like aoc, man. And like, forget for, for bass activation. She just.
27:11
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: People like her. Yeah.
27:12
George: Yeah.
27:13
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: The public overall is kind of a. On her.
27:18
George: Yeah. But it's, it's because people either think she's literally Satan or a really, really nice young Latina who they would love their son to bring home one day. Like it. Come on.
27:30
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Yeah.
27:33
Ed: The thing is that like,
27:34
Propter: are we doing aoc a single again discourse? Is that, is that a thing to work?
27:37
George: I guess we can. No, we're not. Because we got another discourse we got to deal with later. So. But we'll come back to that.
27:43
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Wait, is, is she single again?
27:45
Propter: She is, she's single. I mean, I mean she's not single again. Like, like she's been continuously in a relationship until very recently when apparently she split from her fiance. So
27:53
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: yeah, okay,
27:55
George: there, there is a very funny Marie leconte post from back in the day being like, you know, this guy looks like a bin raccoon, which is a very British insult for a French woman. And she's lived in London her whole adult life, so no, no wonder there. But I, we, we found that so funny that one of my group chats is the Bin Raccoon chat because we all consider ourselves in a similar position.
28:18
Propter: Yeah. You know, I mean, speaking. Speaking on behalf of those who have out kicked our coverage a little bit in the, in the wife department. Like it felt, it felt a little, it felt like people were being a little bit mean to AOC's former fiance who.
28:31
George: Yes
28:32
Propter: it was, was, was, was like he, he was, he was maybe a bracket to over or 2 over market value. Right. Like, like he wasn't totally mismatched, but
28:45
Ed: he was dating a congresswoman.
28:48
Propter: Well,
28:49
George: we're just purely speaking in looks department here. He was not like some sort of hideous looking dude. Much respect to friend of the pod, Marie Laconte, but that he was not hideous looking.
28:59
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: I'm just imagining Marie saying this because, you know, Marie has that, she has that wonderful accent because, like, she's French Moroccan, but she's lived in London her whole adult life. And so these things all kind of meld together. So it's like, oh, it looks like Zippin Raccoon in it.
29:22
George: It's sort of, it's sort of like the accent version and a more refined accent version of what the Steelers did, which some of them showed up in peaky blinders attire to a game in Paris this weekend.
29:33
Propter: I did. I did see that picture. That was weird.
29:35
George: Yeah,
29:36
Propter: yeah. Aaron Rodgers.
29:40
George: Yeah, yeah. They lost, right? The Steelers lost.
29:44
Propter: I'm afraid they did not.
29:46
George: Ah, God. Can't have it all. Oh, well. Okay, let's go on to the next discourse topic, which is of course, Cheesecake Factory. We're going to talk about upscale full service restaurant chains here, gentlemen. And I can tell by the way Lowtax is closing his eyes, shaking his head and maybe praying that this is going to go great.
30:10
Propter: Yeah. So if you're not extremely online, you may be wondering why we would be talking about the Cheesecake Factory. And the answer is that
30:16
Ed: I am extremely online and I am wondering why you were talking about the Cheesecake Factory.
30:20
Unidentified speaker: Here's what I
30:21
George: mean. Enough.
30:22
Propter: President Obama commented in a rally, I think it was a rally in Michigan this week, that the way Trump has decorated the White House looks like Saddam Hussein running a Cheesecake Factory. Which, you know, is, is not unfair. I think that's, I think that's accurate. But there are various people,
30:47
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: which is a mod on my joke, by the way, which is that Trump decorates like a golf monarch with a head injury. And Barack, we know you listen to the show. You need to give me credit. Like, come on now,
31:04
George: there are so many layers to this thing. Right? Like, so we're going to take this from all angles. There is the popular perception among a certain political cultural block in this country of what Cheesecake Factory is that got overreacted to when Obama made that joke. Because I think Obama made that joke in not necessarily as a way to rag on Cheesecake Factory. Like you can make that joke where the Saddam Hussein part is the, the knock and the Cheesecake Factory thing is just like a normal part of everyday life. That's why the joke works. Right. You're you're coupling the mundane with the absurd. And so there's that aspect of it. There's the fascinating business model of the Cheesecake Factory. There is the position it holds in our culture, like, which is unique, mostly driven by portion size and calorie count. It's just it. There's just. So this is such a rich text of a discourse, and I felt we were absolutely obligated to sink our teeth deep, deep into it.
32:09
Ed: Okay,
32:10
Propter: so to be clear, there's been. There's been backlash over the Cheesecake Factory comment because some people who I think are mostly operating in bad faith and mostly on Twitter, think that Obama is denigrating the noble Cheesecake Factory. I also want to point out that the same day the Big Dog President Bill Clinton described Trump's decorating style as catch me if I have this wrong, but as looking like Liberace's bathroom, which is similar vein. And I think. I think gets to, you know, the same. The same place. You know, this is. This is the people's house. And there sure are a lot of gold leaf on things right now. Anyway, sorry, proceed.
32:52
Ed: So I have never been to the Cheesecake Factory, so I'm very curious about, like, let's start with the economics one, because my understanding of the Cheesecake Factory is it is basically Olive Garden's endless breadsticks, but for, like, cake. Like, I heard 1600 calorie cake.
33:12
George: No, that.
33:12
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Imagine if. Imagine if the Olive Garden was designed by Saddam Hussein.
33:17
Ed: No, I've. I have seen pictures. I saw. I saw the one proper posted on Bluesky where it looked like a tongue in teeth.
33:24
Propter: Yeah,
33:24
Ed: I understand that part, but, like, the amount of calories that they serve you seems to be of the kind that it's like we are going to beat you to death with calories before you can cause us damage to our bottom line.
33:37
George: So, okay, let's get a couple things clear on the Cheesecake Factory. The. You need to. You need to unpack, like, what they're doing as a business from their esthetic appeal. Their aesthetic appeal is deeply rooted in 1990s to 2000, like suburban sprawl. That is. That is 100%
34:00
Ed: pink and teal.
34:01
George: Well,
34:02
Ed: I just mean, like, they're doing it, but, like, that's the spiritual vibe.
34:06
George: They are a McMansion of an interior design philosophy.
34:09
Ed: Yes, I get
34:10
George: that. Right.
34:11
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Yes.
34:11
George: Right. But then you get to the menu and, like, the menu is really interesting because the business model of a restaurant is you are going to, as efficiently as possible, squeeze every dollar of margin you can, out of three inputs. I mean, there's more inputs, but it's basically three real estate labor and like the, the actual food that you're preparing. And there are a bunch of different ways to do this. Most fast food restaurants these days are outsourcing as much of the labor as possible to off site preparation. And a lot of full service restaurants are doing the same thing because you can get economies of scale with off site preparation in what amounts to a factory that you can't get in a small kitchen. Cheesecake Factory takes precisely the opposite approach. So your family diner around the corner does way less food prep than Cheesecake Factory does. And by that I mean like taking raw ingredients and turning them into a finished plate. When you go to Cheesecake Factory, basically everything you're eating was a raw ingredient that came in the back door of the restaurant.
35:19
Propter: Except for, ironically, the cheesecakes, which they,
35:22
George: ironically, yes,
35:23
Propter: they have actual cheesecake factories and they ship centrally.
35:26
George: Yes, that is the one exception. But if you're eating like, if you're eating chicken and dumplings or spaghetti bolognese or one of those monster salads they have or whatever, all that stuff that came in the door as unprocessed raw ingredients and comes to your plate of finished meal and that's just like so rare. Like, that's so rare.
35:46
Ed: Is there any intel on how many 50 gallon barrels of butter they use a day for this?
35:53
George: Yeah, so I mean, that's the other thing. You are getting enormous portions. Like, like, I, listen,
35:59
Ed: I know that part.
36:00
George: Yeah, I, I, I can eat a cheesecake entree for me, a Cheesecake Factory entree for me. And we don't go there often. My brother loves the place. Him and his partner love the place and go all the time, so we occasionally go with them. I, I don't understand why they're so infatuated, but we, whatever. An entree at the Cheesecake Factory for me is like an enormous amount of food. And I am 6, 3, 2, 25 and in the process of marathon training, so you can imagine what my appetite looks like. I, it's, it's staggering. And then the cheesecake itself is, as previously noted, like, I think the lightest one you can get is 1200 calories. And it goes up rapidly and persistently from there into the 2000 calorie range. It's unreal how caloric the food is, but like, it's also something that's kind of, how do I put this? Like nostalgic in the sense that like, it's an Actual restaurant that does what restaurants are supposed to do, which is not true of most restaurants these days. So I've kind of got a soft spot for the Cheesecake Factory. Not because the food is really good or the interior design is great. Both. Food's fine, the interior design's terrible. Nutrition best not discussed. But they're doing what a restaurant's supposed to do as an economic unit, and that's fascinating. And they're pretty successful with it. I mean, the stock hasn't exactly lit the world on fire, but they're, they've been a publicly traded restaurant company for a long time now, and that's also pretty rare.
37:27
Ed: Are they a franchise company or are they just a straight up chain?
37:31
George: Yeah,
37:31
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: the, the food is. The food's fine. I, I do not, for the life of me understand why people go nuts over the place. But getting back to the Republicans and their whining, the, they're like, Americans should be insulted by this because the, all the Republicans are going, oh, well, for 99% of people, cheesecake Factory is a fancy night out. And like, no, no, like, like 85% of Americans have much fancier options near them.
38:08
Ed: Yeah, I'm going through, like, the restaurants within walking distance, and I'm like, these are objectively fancier places, and I have seen some real characters infesting some of them.
38:20
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Yeah, yeah, I said on Bluesky. Like, I mean, if you have like a steakhouse in your city, it is. Or in your town, it is almost certainly fancier than the Cheesecake Factory.
38:31
George: No, it is, it is. It is a very middle class place in the sense of, like, it is designed for middle class consumers. And I don't say that as a negative thing. Like, I'm not, I'm not putting down the Cheesecake Factory when I say that. There was a lot of hit dog holler, like, weird. Like, like you don't even know who you're talking about on the Republican side. And the same thing, I think, actually, like, on Bluesky. There were some bad posts about this too, where everyone was like, oh,
38:56
Ed: like
38:57
George: the, the, the microwave noodles that were made in a factory six months ago. It's like, dude, you, you literally, like, that's the opposite of what they're doing over there. Like, y' all don't know what you're talking about either. So, like, I don't know.
39:10
Propter: Two other. Two other notes about Cheesecake Factory from a business perspective. Number one, they're consistently regarded as one of the better places to work across the economy as a whole. Like, like, like in terms of employee satisfaction, they tend to hang around top 50 and frequently top 25 of companies in the United States, which is insane for a restaurant.
39:32
George: Yeah, that's completely nuts. Yeah.
39:34
Propter: And number two, the menu is enormous. Like you would think that for a place that makes everything from scratch, you would pare down the menu and have relatively few options. But no, they've got like a frickin phone book of a menu. Those things might be related. Like if you're, if you're somebody who wants to work in a restaurant kitchen and make lots of different kinds of things from scratch, then maybe this is an attractive place to work.
40:01
George: Yeah, there is.
40:01
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: As restaurants go, as restaurants go, they're great. They actually give the staff the coke and heroin at the beginning of the night.
40:10
George: The thing about becoming a good cook, and I don't mean like a good, like Michelin star chef, I mean like a good cook at home who's able to cook whatever is in your fridge. What you need to do to do that is get reps. You need to just cook a lot. You need to work as a short order cook or spend an entire lifetime cooking for your family. Like, there's a reason I saw another great TikTok today. I'm under the weather, so I spent a lot of time on TikTok today. I saw another great TikTok today of this abuelita in Valencia making a paella. And like this woman has been doing this weekly for her entire adult life. Like no one else is going to be able to come close to that paella because she has put this down to a science. Right. It's just, it's about doing it every time. And if you're in a restaurant where you're doing that much raw ingredient to finish plate on that big of a menu, you are going to touch and do so much different stuff in terms of techni and just getting basic reps and experience. That like a phenomenal place to learn. Like, like the trade of putting a meal on a plate. And like, I know that sounds kind of hyperbolic and like over the top, but it's, it's cool. It's cool to see an institution like that, even if it is an institution that's in the process of, you know, trying to add roughly 50 pounds to the average American waistline.
41:35
Propter: Yeah, this is, this is the Beatles playing German nightclubs. Right. Like this is just go out and do the thing, a lot of the thing, over and over again. And you might want something. I don't know if the Cheesecake Factory has produced any great chefs that way, But I hope someday they do. And I hope they go a different direction with their interior design.
41:54
George: Agreed.
41:55
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: I wish. I wish German. I wish German nightclubs had not let the Beatles play.
41:59
Ed: My entire contribution to this discourse is that I just engaged with a burrito taxi, apparently, because you all made me hungry.
42:08
Propter: I think we should. I think we should talk about more Senate races because. Dude. I mean, dude.
42:12
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: I agree. Do
42:13
Propter: we want to do predictions here, or are we. Are we. At that point,
42:17
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: we can.
42:18
Propter: Okay.
42:19
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: If George's dog has stopped barking.
42:22
Propter: No, the dog. The dog has thoughts. That's fine.
42:25
George: Three dogs and an Amazon delivery. I'm gonna stay on mute again.
42:29
Propter: All right.
42:31
George: Okay. Sure. It's fine. It's fine.
42:34
Propter: Yeah. So. So we've got. We've got a bunch of Senate races that I think could plausibly go either way. And it might be fun to kind of do. Do a whip round of where. Where we think conventional wisdom is and where we think in our heart of hearts, things are going to wind up.
42:50
Ed: So
42:51
Propter: you're
42:51
Ed: going to make me actually look at a poll?
42:53
Propter: I'm going to make you look at some polls.
42:56
George: Sorry. Can I make a suggestion of how we do this? Well, we all put in a guess for the D minus R margin on each of these, and then we add up the total of that and the actual total, and whoever gets closest wins bragging rights.
43:11
Propter: Oh, fair enough. Okay.
43:14
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Okay.
43:16
Ed: That's so much work.
43:18
George: No, it's fine. It's just one spreadsheet. It's not a big deal.
43:20
Ed: It's just one spreadsheet. Says the guy who lives in spreadsheets.
43:23
George: Well, I'll handle the spreadsheet. I mean, come on.
43:27
Ed: Well, that's very noble of you.
43:29
George: All right, where are we starting? The order I've got for this is Propter low tax ed me. And then we can flip the order back and do it in reverse on the next pass.
43:39
Propter: Let me toss out at the. At the top of These, the current 50/1 average for each of the Senate races. So we've got something to anchor from.
43:48
George: Perfect editing. This is gonna be a nightmare.
43:53
Ed: You could also just not let. Let people see how the sausage is made.
43:57
George: No, no, I don't want to give anyone a mannerism.
44:00
Propter: All right, Actually, let's do this alphabetically because that's how. That's how 50 plus one does it.
44:04
George: Okay. Let's have. Let's have Mississippi be the tiebreaker. How about that?
44:08
Propter: Okay, Sounds good.
44:09
George: Because we'll do this the way we'll do this is we'll do it rounded like to the percentage point and so there is a possibility of a tie. So Mississippi will be the tiebreaker if and, and remember we're doing D minus R. So if you're 52, 48, that's plus 4 and that's how we'll just do it.
44:25
Propter: So top of the bracket we've got Alaska where pro Fish pro choice Paltola takes on the Dan's Sullivan that is currently showing as a two point advantage for Peltoa. 49.7 in the polling average versus 47.7. Remember that this is a ranked choice election in Alaska, so that's probably going to screw with this in terms of output. I'll take the first prediction there. I think Peltoa wins it by more than two. I think that, I think that winds up as a four point Beltola win.
45:00
George: Low tax.
45:03
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: I will take a 2.51.49.
45:07
Ed: Yeah, I was going to say plus two. Peltola.
45:10
George: All right, I'm going to buy skew here and say five. All right, where are we at for polling in Florida?
45:17
Propter: In Florida, current average is 49.1 for Ashley Moody versus 43.3 for Nixon. So we're at about minus 6 in the. In. In the polling averages right now. Am I, am I going first again or are we, are we actually going to
45:33
George: sneak in it. It's so it's me. So you said minus six in the polling average. So I will take minus seven.
45:40
Ed: I don't know anything about this. Feel better than that though. Minus five.
45:47
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: I'm gonna go minus eight.
45:49
Propter: I think Nixon. I think Nixon makes it. Makes it close enough. The Moody's sweating. I'm gonna go minus four.
45:57
George: Alrighty. And back to you, Propter for Georgia.
46:00
Propter: Georgia. Good lord. Okay, so the current polling average has Ossoff up by eight. More like eight and a half, I think. I think this is going to be a beating. I am going to take us off by 11.
46:16
George: Wow. Low tax.
46:20
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: I will take Ossoff by 9.
46:25
Ed: Wow. Way to look at my notes. I was gonna say plus nine, but now I feel like I'm copying him. So let's say plus eight. Price is right rules.
46:33
George: I'll take 10. All right. And it's to me in Iowa down by.
46:41
Propter: It's. That's Kansas. Oh, sorry.
46:43
George: It's Kansas. Yep.
46:44
Propter: Yeah. Iowa's Turac and Hinson Turek is currently up by 3/10 of a point in the polling average. We might want to talk about Iowa a minute because that's There have been some recent developments in that race that we should probably address directly, which is that Josh Turek is so far the one candidate of the cycle who I think has come out with a legitimately, no doubt, no shit, anti trans ad that he's put at least some muscle behind from, from the Democratic side. This isn't, this isn't trying to thread a needle on sports. This is him pledging that he would vote against federal support for gender affirming care, full stop. That basically he wants the equivalent of the abortion amendment, but for gender affirming care, which understandably has some people pretty agitated around Bluesky and elsewhere. I kind of think that's a sign that his campaign may be panicking a little bit, which doesn't make me feel great about it. But, you know, the, the polling in Iowa is those numbers, those averages that I just quoted you have that, that's a 46, 46 tie. So that's, that's, you know, 8%, 8% undecided or a third party. It's very much still a live race, but right now, statistical tie, almost a dead heat in the averages. So what do you got, George?
48:23
George: I have Turk winning by less than 1%, so I'm just going to say zero as my guess. I, I do have Turk winning, but it's going to be rounded to zero. So,
48:34
Ed: yeah, I was going to say plus zero too, because, I mean, like, that's a, that's a terrible race.
48:42
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: I'm going to go minus one.
48:45
Ed: Low tax is generally the most pessimistic here.
48:48
Propter: I'm going to be surprised to go to Iowa too. I'm going to go, I'm going to go minus two. I think we don't take Iowa.
48:54
George: All right, Kansas to you, Propter.
48:57
Propter: Kansas. Current point averages have Hamilton up by a little over a point. I think Hamilton's going to win that one by three. So plus three. Dim.
49:12
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: I will take Hamilton by one. So plus one.
49:18
Ed: Yeah, plus two.
49:19
George: All agree with Ed. Plus two. I will say probably the best quality candidate you could ask for in that race. And I, I think it's going to make a difference.
49:29
Propter: She's really
49:30
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: notably not notably not a candidate who throws trans kids under the bus.
49:34
George: That's right. You said he was plus two in the average. Propter
49:39
Propter: Hamilton. No, he's a plus 1.2. Plus one.
49:43
George: Plus one. All right, who we got in main polling?
49:46
Propter: I'll just give you rounded averages going forward. Jackson's up by two in the rounded average in Maine. I, I think I've been wrong. So Many times about Maine.
49:59
George: Well wait, about. Man, you're going last on this one. This one's my turn
50:02
Propter: first. Okay.
50:04
George: Yeah. So I got Jackson by three.
50:06
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Ed.
50:06
Ed: Oh, sorry.
50:07
George: The main number.
50:08
Ed: You can see
50:11
George: Jackson. I
50:13
Ed: think it's going to be way closer than people want it to be because Susan Collins has like weird demon powers. But I do think that. That Jackson is boring enough to actually pull it out.
50:30
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Yeah, this one's annoying. Like it would not shock me if Dems swept all the Senate races that are like they're currently leading a tight end and then lost mates. Yeah.
50:41
Ed: Like they could
50:41
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: lose this
50:42
Ed: by five. Who friggin knows.
50:44
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I'm gonna go with Jackson though. I think we finally pull it off and Jackson wins by about four.
50:53
Ed: Here's a fun one. If Platner was in the race.
50:56
George: Oh no, we're not doing. No, no. Propter.
51:02
Propter: I'm gonna say I'm gonna take Jackson by seven. I think that there's a. I think Maine is hard as to pull. I think people are Collins. I'm gonna take a swing There
51:10
Ed: they are. But they're also insane.
51:13
George: I will say like the, the Collins coming out this week and saying we got rid of tax on seaweed and blueberry or tariffs on seaweed and blueberries. So you're welcome. Was not a good sign for her. So we'll see. Proper back to you feeling Michigan
51:29
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: appealing directly to Ed there even though he doesn't live in the state anymore.
51:34
Ed: She got half
51:35
Propter: right. Michigan is. Is currently plus three for our man AES. I think, I think he wins it by more than that. I think. I think that. I think ultimately this is about a plus five election.
51:47
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Yeah, I, I agree with Propter. I think it's going to be plus six.
51:54
Ed: Plus five sounds about right. Like he's. He is as good a candidate as you can get against that piece of. But like Michigan is also weird.
52:10
George: I think we will have our first senator of Egyptian descent and Abdul Raham El Sayed will win by six. What was the polling average there again, Propter?
52:20
Propter: Three.
52:22
George: Okay. Minnesota. Minnesota.
52:27
Propter: Minnesota. Flanagan's up by four and the polls on Michelle Tafoya. That's you again, right?
52:38
George: Yeah, this is me. Flanagan's gonna win by 12. The polls are wrong. I'm sorry. That's wrong. That's just not right.
52:48
Ed: Really Banking on those. Those sweater wearing. I don't. I don't actually have any stereotypes for Minnesota. Flanagan by four. Yeah, let's say four.
53:05
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: I agree with George that the polls are probably wrong. I don't Think they're that wrong? Because remember, I think Flanagan isn't she Walls's lieutenant governor.
53:13
Propter: She is.
53:15
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: And Walls is not particularly popular there right now. But I think Flanagan outperforms the polls. I'll go with Flanagan by six.
53:25
Propter: Yeah, I think. I think George has this one right. We've had relatively low, low quality Republican pollsters flooding the zone in Minnesota. I'm going to take Flanagan by 10.
53:36
George: All right. Out to the mountains. Montana.
53:38
Propter: Montana. Honestly, we shouldn't even be picking Montana. But currently the polling average is Almay at 42. Seth Bodnar, the independent, but really he's a dem at 30. And Bankhead, who is the evil actual dem at 17. So right now, right now that is R plus 12 in the polling average. And I guess the way we value this one is the margin. Well, are we doing. Are we doing Indy to Indie, Indie to Republican?
54:10
Ed: Yeah, the margin over bodnar.
54:13
George: Yeah, yeah, 100.
54:14
Propter: Okay. So if we think that. If we think that it's. If that's currently showing as a 12, I think it gets closer than that. I don't think Bodnar can do it. Although I would love so much to be wrong on this one. I think it's going to wind up at about R +6.
54:33
Ed: That sounds about right. Oh, sorry.
54:36
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go minus eight.
54:41
Ed: Yeah, I was gonna say minus six. But also Montana has a ranked choice voting referendum on the ballot next time.
54:51
Propter: Nice.
54:53
George: Yeah. Unfortunately, the record is going to get something done here. I think it's going to be worse than y' all do. I think it's going to be a 10 point spread.
55:01
Propter: Could be
55:01
Ed: better than what it is right now, though.
55:03
Propter: Nebraska. Nebraska is a. Nebraska is a dead heat right now. In the polling average, 46.2 to 46.2 between Ricketts and Osborne.
55:15
George: Squeaks cross by one.
55:18
Ed: I'm going to say minus one. I think Republicans win because it's Nebraska.
55:26
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: I'm going to say minus two. Price is Right style.
55:31
Propter: I'll take. I'll take plus two on this one. I like, I like Osborne's ability to close. And I think the Rickets. I think Ricketts is not as good a campaign or not as good a retail campaigner as Osborne is.
55:44
George: New Hampshire, I don't think this is gonna be particularly close, but we should, we should definitely.
55:49
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: No.
55:49
George: Yeah.
55:50
Propter: Yeah. So polling average is D +7 right now. I think I'm going to take that as D +8. It should probably be more than that. But D +8 for me.
56:05
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Yeah, this one is not going to be very competitive. It's probably more competitive than it should be because the Republicans actually had some brains and nominated Sununu. But I'm gonna go Dems by 10.
56:22
Ed: Yeah, I'm gonna say plus 10. Sununu is. Is viscerally stupid. He is. He looks like a thumb. He's the worst piece of. And he doesn't know how to target his ads because the Massachusetts. The good people of Massachusetts have been putting up with his gormless face for the last three months.
56:40
George: The shade's face right now.
56:44
Ed: Plus 10.
56:45
Propter: I really, I really enjoy it. I really enjoy it. When Ed leans in on the New Englander. That's
56:49
Ed: no I. That's
56:50
Propter: fun. For the rest,
56:52
Ed: I had to sit in a car dealership for three hours while they played his commercials on loop.
57:00
George: I think Dems are going to have a harder. I think Dems are going to have a harder time in the Northeast than some of the averages would suggest for national swing. I mean, Sununu is going to lose by a wide margin, but I think less than you might. Than y' all do. I think seven.
57:18
Ed: He's just such an asshole and everyone hates him.
57:21
George: He's going to lose. Don't get me wrong.
57:23
Ed: I hope this means he goes away.
57:25
Propter: Yeah,
57:26
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: I sympathize with the good people of Massachusetts and.
57:31
Propter: All right, North Carolina. Big Roy, what do we got?
57:35
George: Well, give us the polling average first.
57:37
Propter: It's a 11 point, 10.6 point margin right now in the bowling average.
57:44
George: I think Roy wins by 14
57:46
Ed: plus 12. But they somehow elect him. God.
57:54
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Yeah, I think this is. This is gonna be like Span Burger. I'm gonna go Roy by 15.
58:01
Ed: Roy worked for the CIA.
58:03
Propter: I'm just, I'm just going to copy George's homework on this one. Plus 14 for. For copper.
58:07
George: It's a little optimistic on my part. I think 14 gets us into the territory where the NCGA starts to flip. And I think based on the early vote data, I think that's possible. It's going to kind of depend on how good Republican election turnout is, but it's inside the realm of possibility. The one thing I will say is on. On this guess is I have Roy outrunning Ossoff by four points, which feels aggressive, but. But I also think the bottom is falling out and there are just so many low propensity Republicans in North Carolina that aren't going to vote. And so we'll see.
58:41
Propter: Is anybody spending.
58:42
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: That's why I took. That's why I took 15 and I actually think it might be more like 17, but I'll stick with 15 because I do think the bottom is going to fall out,
58:53
George: I will say at the top of the ticket statewide. So, you know, the last two years ago, we had the biggest governor win in about 30 years. Right. So we've seen it. But I don't know. I'm aggressive with the 14, but I like it. To your question, I think you were going to ask Propter re spending Wadley's been cut loose. He's done. And Cooper is still. They, they, I think they canceled some reservations, but they're still spending to some degree. You know, this was a bad place.
59:27
Propter: Is anybody spending Republican money in North Carolina? In North Carolina right now,
59:30
George: in some of the congressional seats, yes, but nowhere else. And keep in mind that their fundraising apparatus has come apart because their biggest fundraiser lost a primary earlier this year. So like, like the North Carolina Republican politics is on the verge of collapse. Like I like it would not surprise me at all for this election to be. We're done. We're Virginia now, but we'll see. Hopefully, inshallah.
59:56
Propter: All right, we got Ohio where the polling average and this point averages is A for Senate and B, a little bit stale. I don't think that the, the Acton motion recently is fully priced into this, but the polling average currently has sherrod Brown by four. Overhasted, caked up husted,
1:00:18
George: new words spoken in the English language.
1:00:22
Propter: I mean, like, you know, we could coin husted as, as large as, you know, that that could just be the word we use for that. Now. I'm going to take Brown by six here. I think that there is significant damage being done to everybody's prospects in Ohio right now.
1:00:39
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: I, I would like to think that. I do think Brown's going to win. I think he's going to win by probably 4. But I don't trust ICE Florida to really cut them all loose.
1:00:57
Ed: The polling average sounds reasonable, but Trump has been weird enough that it's going to knock a point. So. Plus five.
1:01:04
George: Yeah, I agree with Ed. Plus five.
1:01:08
Propter: South Carolina, the point average currently has Darlene Graham Nordone up by only a single point over Andrews.
1:01:19
George: That's Wild Dog.
1:01:20
Propter: Yeah, right. I don't think there's all that much polling going into that point average. But that's what the. But, but that's where the bowling is right now.
1:01:27
George: Let me. Hold on, let me look at some another polling source here.
1:01:34
Ed: I am not seeing a lot of them and they all are suspicious.
1:01:38
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Yeah, I only see three Polls one is called from something called Impact Research, which is a demo affiliated pollster. And then there's Insider Advantage and Trafalgar
1:01:51
Ed: by four.
1:01:53
George: I mean, look, Trafalgar finding Graham up three in mid October is a five alarm fire on its own because like Trafalgar is a bad post polling operation. They're heavily partisan. If, if they're finding three, then like, you know, whatever modeling they're doing, it could be 50, 50, like that, like that's, that's rough. Still just so skeptical. I do not think what looks like really impressive black belt turnout is going to be enough to get it done. I think Graham wins by two.
1:02:30
Ed: I am going to be an optimist here. Not because I want to be, but because I want the points and say plus zero.
1:02:38
Propter: All right,
1:02:40
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: I'm going to go with minus eight.
1:02:47
Propter: All right. This is, this is a differentiator
1:02:49
Ed: here that just your description of South Carolina.
1:02:54
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Yes, first of all, but no. So the thing is, Andrews is getting into like sort of low to mid 20s in these polls and Darlene Graham is getting into sort of mid-20s, maybe high 20s a little bit, but I think pretty much.
1:03:12
George: You mean
1:03:12
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: mid-40s,
1:03:13
George: not mid-20s, right?
1:03:14
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Yeah, I'm sorry, 40s. But I think like pretty much all of that undecided vote is Graham.
1:03:24
George: The thing about South Carolina, and we talked about this around the South Carolina primaries, I think on an episode is that they have had a lot of in migration from other states that is dominated by conservatives and they're experiencing the same thing as the rest of the coastal south where the cities are growing really fast and the rurals are shrinking, but they're being held up in places like Myrtle beach by these like really, really rabid Republicans fleeing the Northeast once they retire. We have the same thing in North Carolina. Obviously that's what's happened to Florida. South Carolina is in between Florida and North Carolina in this respect. And there just isn't enough growth in Greenville, Columbia, Charleston to offset the inflows of retirees. So like I, I am really. I don't know, I. Low tax is probably closer than I am on this. I just. That Trafalgar poll is so crazy to me that I just.
1:04:27
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Yeah. Although I mean, the Trafalgar poll is not all that different on a distribution from the Impact Research poll.
1:04:33
Ed: Yeah.
1:04:35
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: And like, like this has been. We had more polling earlier in the year, I think, and was pretty consistent. And this is like a pretty consistent story in my experience with South Carolina is that, you know, it's it's basically a census most years. But Graham is a really weak candidate. It's a really bad environment for Republicans. So what would Normally be a 15 point race becomes an 8 point race. I think
1:05:07
George: I will say there is a world where black belt turnout is so strong and the Republican base is so unmotivated that Andrews can win like that is possible. It's not that that can't happen. It's just, that's really out the distribution. I just, I don't know.
1:05:23
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Right.
1:05:23
Propter: I think, I think this is, I think this is a candidate story, not a demographic story. And I'm going to pick Andrews by two. So D plus two for that one.
1:05:32
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Wow, that is bold.
1:05:36
George: And then I'll hang
1:05:36
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: out to George's point, to George's point about the influx. Like South Carolina. I agree entirely with George on this and South Carolina. It's just not anchored by, you know, the major metro areas that Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia are.
1:05:51
Propter: You guys, you guys are entirely right on the demographics. But I think that like, okay, Graham Nordone has never run a political campaign before. We have no evidence that she's any good at it. We have some evidence that she's pretty bad at it. Unlike a lot of sort of inherited candidates, she didn't inherit much of a machine because Lindsey Graham was an iconoclast within the party even though he'd been senator for fricking years. So like I'm not sure that she's going to be able to just step in. I think she's shaped like a candidate that underperforms, that people ultimately do not want to pull the lever for that.
1:06:26
Ed: That's.
1:06:27
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Oh, I, I agree. I, I think she does underperform. But underperforming. You got to really, really underperform for Dems to win that race.
1:06:37
Propter: Yeah, all that is true. Okay, Texas,
1:06:40
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: but I respect, I respect Propter like betting the house on this.
1:06:43
Propter: There's some hope. There's some hope happening here. I'm not, I'm not going to lie about that. For Texas, the polls currently have Talarico up by. We round that to four over the odious Ken Paxton. That's, that's my pick first. I'm going to take the over on that one. I think Talarico wins it by five.
1:07:07
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Oh, I, I'll take Talarico by three. I don't trust you that much. Texas.
1:07:17
Ed: Yeah, I'm torn because Ken Paxton is an all timer of a bad candidate. Like this is a guy who is currently being raked over the coals for plea deals for Literal. Let's not get sued. You can Google it as well as anyone. But like, it's Texas, they exist to disappoint me and also to act as an exclusion zone for Austin because those people have ruined the concept of flannel. I am going to say that Talarico wins by one and I don't feel good about it.
1:07:58
George: Talarico by seven.
1:08:00
Ed: Really?
1:08:01
George: Yes.
1:08:03
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Wow.
1:08:03
Ed: I mean, Paxton is a terrible candidate and like, I, I would believe anything from like him, like Paxton somehow winning to plus 12.
1:08:12
George: Talarico is going to win going away. He's going to win because the entire Rio Grande is going to vote against Paxton. He's going to win because the black turnout in Houston and Dallas is going to blow the doors off. And in East Texas as well. He's going to win because a whole bunch of, by Texas standards, moderates who love crumble cookies and Chick Fil A are going to say, absolutely not. We like the nice Christian boy and
1:08:35
Ed: crumble, by the way.
1:08:36
George: Well, I know that I did posts about that. It's
1:08:41
Ed: fine.
1:08:42
George: And I
1:08:43
Ed: didn't read them.
1:08:44
George: I, I think the Texas Republicans have finally overreached and they don't have a message. The only message they have is anti trans stuff. And that doesn't motivate anybody to go vote. It does. It just doesn't. It's just not.
1:08:54
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Nope.
1:08:55
George: A thing. So I think in a Hosa wins by roughly 2 and I think Calorica wins by 7. And I think that the next senator from Texas will probably be a Republican. But in this cycle with this set of fundamentals, Latinos are coming for blood and it's going to be Paxton's and it's going to be Abbotts.
1:09:17
Ed: Would Talarico win if Cornyn was the nominee?
1:09:21
George: Yeah, but by a lot less. I think it'd be like, by like one.
1:09:27
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: I don't think he would.
1:09:29
Propter: It's tough. I mean,
1:09:30
Ed: it sounds like I caused Propter pain.
1:09:32
Propter: Yeah, you did. You did cause Propter pain.
1:09:36
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: If, if Texas doesn't do it this time, we're selling it back to Mexico.
1:09:41
Propter: I think, I think the fundraising picture would look very, in Texas if, if Corin were the nominee. So I'm not, I'm not sure that one can just generalize from where the state of the race is and say, okay, this is, this is X points of Canada difference. All right, so we got our, our bonus pick left, which is Mississippi. There are only, there have only been 4, 4 public polls in Mississippi over this entire cycle. As far as I can tell, they've all been Democratic polls, and the most recent of them was change research, which had Cindy Hyde Smith at 43, Scott Coleman at 40. So that is a Democratic poll that has the Democrat minus three with a lot of wiggle room. What do we think? How does that one end up?
1:10:29
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: I think it's George's pick.
1:10:30
George: Yeah, it is my pick. I think this is our Plus 5,
1:10:42
Ed: Minus seven. I. I have no basis for this other than I have not heard a word about this race. And that probably doesn't sound good.
1:10:54
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Okay, so, George, you said R plus 5, so you're a minus 5.
1:10:57
George: Y. Yeah. So polls minus 3. Obviously it doesn't matter because there haven't been any me minus 5. N minus 7.
1:11:07
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: Oh, I think it's. I think it's minus 6
1:11:15
Propter: plus 0.
1:11:20
George: Jesus.
1:11:20
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: No, you didn't. You don't mean that.
1:11:22
Ed: Look, there's some gamesmanship here. If he's right, he wins big.
1:11:28
Propter: Look, I. I think that. I think that both national parties are spending in Mississippi right now, so there's some money behind the idea that this is a live race. There are some reasons to think that if there is a big differential on turnout, a big racial differential on turnout, then that could be a problem for Cindy Hyde Smith. Cindy Hyde Smith is not a particularly strong candidate. She wasn't a strong candidate in 2020 when she only won by 10 in Mississippi. I don't think she's a strong candidate this year. And also I think that this is maybe the single best place for the thesis that in addition to racial polarization going down among whites, while being extremely high among minorities in the United States, that. That gender polarization and sexism is going to be a problem. This is one of the few races we're running, along with Maine, where the sexism gap could play in our favor. So I think that this is one where we got a shot at it. And like I said, the national committees are spending in this race, so they think this is worth spending millions of dollars on too.
1:12:54
Ed: And if that gave you any hope whatsoever, please direct all of your disappointment to Propter Malone, Bsky Social.
1:13:02
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: That's right.
1:13:03
George: Just for the record,
1:13:04
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: should we.
1:13:04
George: Yeah, just. Just for the record for where we ended up here, Propter has us has Democrats picking up nine Senate seats this cycle. Low tax. You're at six, Eds at five and I'm at seven.
1:13:19
Ed: I did not expect to be that low. But. But like the vibes, the vibes fall where they may.
1:13:25
George: And in terms
1:13:25
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: just for fun, we could do, we could add the three gubernatorials in Ohio, Georgia and Florida.
1:13:33
Ed: As if I know anything about any of those.
1:13:38
George: And then in terms of the total, the way I'm looking at this is some of all the margins that we predicted. And again, leaving Mississippi out, it's gonna be the tiebreaker, although it doesn't technically matter, I guess, if you leave it in or out, mathematically the same. But excluding Mississippi, Propter across those 15 races has plus 66, 65. Excuse me, low tax plus 33, ED plus 37 and me plus 53. So similar. All of us are more optimistic or, sorry, myself and Propter are in aggregate more optimistic than the polling. Low tax and Ed are in aggregate less optimistic than the polling.
1:14:18
Propter: Yeah, that tracks.
1:14:20
George: So that is going to be our show for this week. Thank you for listening in. You will hear this at some point between when we're recording on Sunday, October 25th and election day, which is nine days from today. You won't hear another episode from us until the bloody aftermath of that. I don't know what we're going to do for the Sunday before the elections, but you'll have our predictions at least if you're interested in tracking stuff real time on the night of Votecaster. P E a R K. Yes, I have recreated the New York Times needle for a variety of Senate races that will drive you completely insane, and I'm looking forward to all the hate mail I get for it, so you can check that out. You can also rate and review the show wherever you get your podcasts or whatever it is your platform you're listening to this on. And we hope y' all have a very, very enjoyable election season as well as a happy Halloween with your kiddos or other people's kiddos knocking at your door. Four normal men on the North Shore of Lake Norman in North Carolina. I'm George
1:15:23
Propter: in dc. I'm Propter
1:15:26
Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer: in Outer Florida. I'm Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer
1:15:28
Ed: in thank God I will soon no longer have to think about elections. I'm Ed in Dawson.
1:15:34
George: Stay normal, y'. All. Sam.