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Full Episode - Republicans In Triage Mode As The Map Gets Worse + Ranking Colleges By ROI Rather Than Prestige · The Chuck ToddCast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This episode of the Chuck Todd cast is brought to
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: you by Chapter. Now, almost everything you hear about Medicare
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: is somebody quietly trying to steer you somewhere. And you're
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: skeptical of that, as you should be. I get it.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's a federal lawsuit going on right now
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: over exactly this. Companies that branded themselves as unbiased while
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: allegedly pointing people toward whatever would pay them the most
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: as some sort of broker. So if your default is
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: to distrust everyone in this space, honestly, I get it.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: I'm a bit distrustful these days myself. That's the whole
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: reason I want to tell you about Chapter. They're independent
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Medicare advisors whose entire model is that their advisors are
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: not paid to push any one plan. They're just trying
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  Speaker 1: to help. Yes, there's compensation that goes with it. but
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: it's across the board is what they're trying to do.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: At the end of the day, they're advocating for you.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: They're not the insurance companies themselves. They're an actual person
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: who actually goes through your doctors, your prescriptions, your needs,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: and then compares them to every single plan available to
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  Speaker 1: find the best one that will work for you and
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: hopefully save you a couple dollars too. And here's the
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  Speaker 1: part that sets chapter apart. They don't disappear once you've
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  Speaker 1: been in They will keep advocating for you. They're kind
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: of like almost like a concierge service. You're just there.
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  Speaker 1: I need help. You're like customer service. You know, the plan,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: you know, help me navigate this again. So you ever
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: get hit with a wrongful medical bill, they'll help you
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: fight it. They want to stay an advocate for you
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: even after you've done this. So look, I get it.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: I think there's all sorts of space. You see a
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: lot of people are throwing themselves in this healthcare space.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: What I like about these chapter folks, I've spent time
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: with them. This is a very transparent organization. It is
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Medicare and all of its affiliated stuff can be very confusing.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: The whole point of this is to make this easier
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: and less confusing. OK, so look, take the skepticism you
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: already have in all of this, point it at your
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: own plan for 20 minutes. It's free. There's no pressure.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: And then call chapter today at 980-734-4200. 3-9-8-5 Hello there.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: I'm Chuck Todd. Welcome to another episode of the Chuck
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: Todd cast. It is in. We are in nitty gritty
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: time inside of three weeks until Election Day. Less than
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: 20 days at this point in the campaign. I know
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: what I'm doing. I'm spending a lot less time listening
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: to what the campaigns are saying publicly. And I'm spending
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: a lot more time watching what they're doing privately and
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: watching really what the parties are doing with their money.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: That's the information that matters at this point. If you
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: haven't figured out your messaging yet, if you think you've
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: got a great piece of oppo research and you haven't
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: used it, you're probably too late, right? You are not
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: introducing new messaging now. At this point, it is all
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: about reinforcing whatever it is that has been working for
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: you or what's not working for you. And so this
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: is why we're inside this period of time where the
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: news that matters is going to be these little insider
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: tidbits that I'm going to be sharing with you throughout
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: this podcast, right? Where are the committees still spending money?
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: Where are they pulling their money? Which candidates want presidential visits?
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Which ones would probably prefer if Mr. Trump would stay
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: as far away as possible? I know one of the
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: things I've learned covering campaigns for the last 30 plus
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: years is that the last three weeks are when the
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: political professionals that are running the show start telling you
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: what they really think, even if they don't actually say
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: a thing. Right. Usually the most revealing thing they can
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: do is suddenly stop writing checks, stop spending money somewhere.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: I've spent a lot of the last few episodes talking
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: about the possibility that we are underestimating this either red
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: undertow or blue wave, whichever framing you prefer. We have
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: an expanding Senate map and I have more news today
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: to deliver to you to showing the map is that
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: even the Republicans are are playing an expanded defense on
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: this map. There is an asymmetry to what the two
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: parties are up to right now. Democratic candidates are working
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: hard to try to separate themselves from their national brand.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: And you've got a bunch of Republican candidates who some
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: of whom know they need to separate themselves from Donald Trump,
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: but they haven't figured out how to do it very well.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: I will say this Tuesday morning brought another example, but
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: it came from somebody I kind of expected it to,
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: John Sununu in a debate in New Hampshire. But I
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: do want to get a little bit more in the
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: weeds in this episode. I'm going to look at the
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: Republican retreat in some key House races. You know, to
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: do it this early out means, you know, the triage
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: is beginning. the incredible expensive effort that Republicans have now
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: to try to save their Senate majority, and how they've
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: declared Ohio is the last stand. Texas may be the
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: most expensive state to defend, but Ohio's getting the most money.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: We've got some new economic data that only reinforces why
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: people like myself and others believe this may be bigger
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: than just a traditional political wave, that something bigger may
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: be happening here. Got a few items from what I
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: would call my Washington notebook, sort of what's happening, you know,
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: including the extraordinary situation with Kimberly Guilfoyle, you know, and
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: sort of what the rules are in the world of Trump.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: You know, what is legal and what is illegal, not
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: in real life, but just in the world of Trump.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: I got a little something about the search of Ilhan
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: Omar's home and how close to an election this was done.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: And that was an interrogation. clearly an intentional decision, but
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: one that probably sets them back legally. We got troubling
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: developments in the war in Iran and Elon Musk's decision
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: to be now the biggest target in American politics. I
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: think he's going to regret what he's doing. And then
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: later in this podcast, my interview is With my old friend,
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: Paul Glastris, the editor at large of the Washington Monthly.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: I have him on again because he was such a
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: popular guest a year ago. Washington Monthly puts out their
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: own ratings on colleges. on the top colleges, and it's
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: bang for your buck, return on investment. And they look
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: at colleges just a lot differently than our friends at
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: US News do. It's not to say there aren't some prestige,
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: you know, the perceived prestigious universities don't make the Washington
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: Monthly List. They do, but they're not number one or
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  Speaker 1: number two. And you'll see they factor in, you know,
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: does your education at school X provide a better education
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: opportunity up the economic ladder, right? So it's measured in
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: all sorts of ways. And I got a lot of
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  Speaker 1: feedback from the last time I had Paul on from
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  Speaker 1: many of you who said, you know, I just started
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: this search with my kid and I was glad to
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: know that there were schools I hadn't heard of that
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  Speaker 1: have some incredible programs and are incredibly affordable. Yes, right?
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  Speaker 1: That's when I know I'm onto something here with what
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: we're doing. And guess what? Every year, a new group,
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: of parents is suddenly interested in figuring out how to
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: navigate this world of colleges. So, you know, Paul may
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: not know this yet, but I'll see you same time
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: next year, brother, when we do this again. And he
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: had a couple of other unique slices to his list
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: this year that's different, including the best rural colleges in
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  Speaker 1: America to go to. And we spend a lot of
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: time on the importance of this. I think our lack
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: of investment in rural America, frankly, both parties, In different
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  Speaker 1: ways is is a shame if it if it undermines
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  Speaker 1: what has been a pillar of many a rural economy.
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  Speaker 1: And that is these small universities, these small colleges that
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  Speaker 1: have provided real opportunity for people to stay close to home.
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  Speaker 1: and improve their ability to get a bigger paycheck with
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  Speaker 1: a college education. So I look forward to that. After that,
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  Speaker 1: I'll have my most recent top 10 list of governor's
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  Speaker 1: races that are going to flip. And yes, I expanded
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  Speaker 1: it to 10. And the news I'm going to be
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: making is there are going to be two states that
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: most people would have put on their list that I
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  Speaker 1: will not be including because of the direction of what
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: is this blue wave. And I've got a pretty... significant
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: take on why the governor's races will tell us the
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  Speaker 1: level of repudiation more than what happens in the House
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: and the Senate. And I'll have more on that after
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: the interview with Paul. But first, let's talk about what
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: the Republican Party is increasingly having to deal with. And
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: that is some difficult choices. Because here's the question I
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: think will define the last three weeks of this election.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: How many Republicans can survive an anti-Trump election by convincing
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: voters They're not really Trump Republicans. And the answer to
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: that question could very much determine control of the U.S. Senate.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting to me. Think about the Republicans
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: who still have a plausible path to victory in some
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: increasingly difficult Senate races. Susan Collins in Maine. I'm going
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: to include Mike Rounds in South Dakota, who's just recently
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: scrubbed his website of Trump. He's facing not a Democrat,
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: but an independent. The Democrats did not have no nominee
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  Speaker 1: on the ballot. So this is One of those R
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  Speaker 1: versus I situations, a la Nebraska. Dan Sullivan in Alaska
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  Speaker 1: and John Husted in Ohio. But I want to single
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  Speaker 1: out those four. Collins, Rounds, Sullivan, and Husted.
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  Speaker 2: Right?
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  Speaker 1: And then I want you to compare them to Paxton, Whatley, Collins.
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  Speaker 1: Whatley is North Carolina. Collins is Georgia. The other, you know,
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  Speaker 1: the the the other, you know, and the Democrat, the
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  Speaker 1: Republican congressman, not Susan. And and then Ken Paxton.
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  Speaker 3: Right.
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  Speaker 1: Because the four Republican senators that to me still have
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: a plausible path to surviving.
• 10:14
  Speaker 4: Right.
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  Speaker 1: They're not identical politicians, but they all have very different
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: relationship with Trump, both the individual and Trumpism. Because what
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: interests me about all four of them is that none
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  Speaker 1: of them is especially identified with the MAGA wing of
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  Speaker 1: the party. They've all in their own ways expressed some
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: discomfort with the MAGA wing. You know, look, I'm not
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: suggesting any of them is somehow a profile in courage
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: when it comes to standing up to this president. That's
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: not my point. But my point is on voter perception
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: in their own states. So, for instance, if Colin survives Maine.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: The explanation isn't going to be that voters suddenly embraced
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump and Trumpism, that they suddenly in Maine think
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: the economy is good. It's going to be that enough
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: voters who dislike Trump decided, you know what, Susan Collins
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: isn't part of the problem. They're going to determine that she's,
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: you know, that's, you know, Troy Jackson, if he wins,
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: it's because he's convinced enough people that no, even Susan
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: Collins is part of the problem. But she's no Trumpy.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: And if she wins, it's not a notch in favor
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: of Trump in Maine. It is despite Trump. And I
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: think that's important. Dan Sullivan in Alaska rounds in South Dakota.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: You know, we'll be having similar conversations about personal brands
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: and their own connections to voters and the fact that
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: they got elected before Trump showed up. And so you
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: would argue that they may have the best shot at
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: surviving after Trump starts to leave the stage. But we're
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: going to find out, have they preserved enough perceived independence
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: from Trump? You know, do they have a reservoir of
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: memory with their own voters that it's enough to keep
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: them from being a vehicle for voters to say, you
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: know what, I'm out. I'm out of the Trump movement
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: and I'm firing you for being too much of an enabler, right?
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: Ohio is an interesting test. Like, you know, John Husted,
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: who clearly the president, was smitten with the other day
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: of his physical attributes. Look, I know the internet is
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: on fire about Donald Trump. And all I'll say is this,
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: the older you get, the less the filter stays there.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: And your id comes out. And we've said this about
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: Trump for the last few years, right? Trump's barely had
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: a filter as it is. As he's gotten older, you're
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: getting the real, you're getting You really are getting thought
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: bubbles as they pop into his head. It has been
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: interesting to watch him this year. His admiration for the
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: male physique is something that I don't think a lot
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: of people knew he had a fascination with until he
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: has used his rallies. And it just seems to come
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: up a lot, right? You've heard Tom Tillis kind of
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: imply that the reason hagseth seems to get away with
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: half the stuff he gets away with is that trump's
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: got a man crush on him in some form is
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: it however you want to describe the crush but that
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: that hagseth is just you know he's got the look
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: he's got the square jaw and trump is just enamored
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: with him and the way he was with houston it's
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: just it's interesting and for those of us that have
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: been uh trumpologists for a decade or so now let's
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: just say that that there are nonversations about what this
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: really is about trump that um That are flourishing in
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: many a group chat. But I digress. Let's go back
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: to John Houston. Donald Trump's personal affection for him aside,
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: he's in a tough spot, right? He was not elected
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: to that Senate seat. He was the lieutenant governor. He
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: was appointed to replace J.D. Vance when he got elevated.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: And he's trying to win a full term, not a
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: full term even. This is just to finish the Vance
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: term for two years. Remember, the winner of this John Huston,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: Sherrod Brown race, you know what you get? You get
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: to run again in two years, which is why I
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: was always a little bit skeptical that Brown was going
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: to sign up for this because he just ran in
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: 24 and lost. Now he's running again. If he wins,
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: he's got to run again in 28. Man, he's in
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: his early to mid 70s. That's a lot.
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: But, you know, Sherrod Brown, he rolls up his sleeves
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: and he's always ready to go. So he's going to
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: keep running. I have no doubt in my mind there.
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: But I think it's it ain't a lot of fun
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: that you got to do this again.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: But let's be realistic. Republicans have been worried about Houston
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: for months. The Senate Republican super PAC poured yet has
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: already apparently poured 100 million into the race. And it
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: doesn't include all the other outside Republican spending coming more
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: from Elon Musk or from fair shake the crypto people. Ohio, right,
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: really is, it's funny, as defensive as many Republicans are
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: getting about Texas, I think the operative wing of the
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: Republican Party, particularly the Trump world, does see Ohio truly
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: as the firewall. But they've got to forget Iowa, right?
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: If they can, you know, if they can hold the
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: line in Ohio, they're going to hold the line in Iowa.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: And they've determined that Ohio, they've And look, it's over
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: the last couple of cycles, you know, Biden became the
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: first Democratic president since John F. Kennedy to win the
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: White House without Ohio. So they're spending presidential like money
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: this cycle to protect the Senate seat there. And Trump's
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: going to go back to Ohio. Now, look, this is
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: where Houston's just in such a jam.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: He's not a MAGA Republican, but he's not he doesn't
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: have his own individual brand. That would give him some
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: distance from Trump. And then you throw in the fact
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: that Ramaswamy is his ticket mate, who's the Republican nominee. And,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: you know, Vivek's not going to try to separate himself
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: from Trump. He's he was part of the Doge movement.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: He is. We wouldn't have Ramaswamy without Trump.
• 16:11
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: Ramaswamy would, you know, without Trump getting elected in 16,
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: Ramaswamy would just be working in Silicon Valley and we
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: may or may not know who he is. And so
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: it's hard for Houston to separate himself. And he does
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: need Trump's voters to show up. That's been the key
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: to Republican success in Ohio the last few cycles. But
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: does a Trump rally really help him? I mean, you know,
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: the last rally only seemed to concentrate people on John
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: Houston's physique through the eyes of Donald Trump. Right. And
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: I don't know if the reminder helps, but I understand
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: why he's sort of in this dilemma. And I think
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: that this is this is this is the problem Republicans
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: have all over in the fact that this is turning
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: into a red undertow election. It's like on one hand,
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: they need the Trump voter to show up. On the
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: other hand, the Trump voters really pissed off right now.
• 17:05
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: So I get that Republicans want to treat Ohio as
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: sort of the last stand in the Senate in the
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: sense that it's one of the places they have to
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: demonstrate that they can survive there. in an environment that's
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: moving against them, right? And look, if they can stop
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: the Democrats in Ohio, they probably prevent a Democratic Senate majority.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: They might even prevent a majority of governors going to
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: the Democrats. So I see why they view Ohio as
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: sort of the super firewall there. And it would certainly
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: complicate Democrats' path to the Senate, but I don't see
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: any evidence that this is working yet in Ohio. And
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: Ohio's very, very price sensitive at the moment. It is
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: worth noting, Democrats are now, they're all in on Ohio.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: They've poured another $ 7 million in. They poured another $ 2. 5
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: million in Iowa, and they're making a $ 5 million investment
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: in Kansas. Meanwhile, Senate Republican groups are spending, have added
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: money to Nebraska. Pete Ricketts, who's facing not a Democrat,
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: but an independent named Dan Osborne. So you've got national
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: party money moving into Nebraska. You've got– obviously, they're worried
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: about Alaska. They're pouring more money into Texas. But the
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: fact that they feel like they've got to– they're spending
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: money in Kansas. They were hoping to avoid that. So
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: they basically pulled money. The Republicans have pulled money out
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: of Georgia and North Carolina, poured it into Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Ohio.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: It hasn't gotten– and they've put some money into South Carolina. Yeah.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: We've yet to see them move it into South Dakota
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: and Mississippi. But those are the last two on my
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: competitive list that I'm waiting to see what happens. Meanwhile,
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: Democrats have finally decided they now can pull their money
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: out of North Carolina and Georgia. They were waiting a
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: little bit longer than the Republicans. Understandable. You can't take
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: anything for granted. But look, you see where this is going.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: The pattern's hard to miss. Democrats are moving resources into
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: states that six months ago they never thought would be competitive.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: Republicans are moving resources into states six months ago that
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: they never thought they would have to defend. That's the
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: story of this election at the moment. Democrats are in
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: expand the map mode. Republicans are in retreat mode and
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: triage mode. Pure and simple. It's happening on all levels.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: It's happening in the Senate. It's happening in governor's races.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: And it's in particular happening a lot in House races.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: And one thing to watch for over the next 20
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: days is whether the Republican candidates who survived I think,
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: are the ones who have managed to preserve the political
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: identity that they had pre-Donald Trump. And the irony may
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: be that being an establishment Republican that has distance from
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: Trump might actually be a better identifier to have with
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: voters than to be considered part of the Trump establishment.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: It's possible that being anti-Trump is now anti-establishment, even if
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: your name is Susan Collins or Mike Rounds. Not guaranteeing
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: that's what it's there, but it's not lost on me
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: that the places where Republicans think they can survive are
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: the places where they have the least Trumping on it. Hey,
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  Speaker 1: rating was as of August of 2026. Now let's look
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: at the house. Just how big? could this get for Democrats?
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: There's some limitations here, right? But there's another set of
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: numbers out there that I think tells us quite a
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: bit about where things are headed. Republican outside groups are
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: now making some difficult decisions. And we saw earlier this
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: week news on the Republican side that they've pulled support,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: both in a, one was a target race in Michigan's eighth,
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: two were defenses, New Jersey seven, which is Tom Kane,
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: Iowa one, Marianne Miller Meeks, When you pull funding from
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: a sitting incumbent, you know, that that tells you how
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: serious they are. And it tells you that they're that
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: even the even the Republicans, House Republicans are a bit resource.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: They're in a bit of a resource crunch. They can't afford. Look,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: Tom Kane's seat in New Jersey is very expensive. He
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: had the weird he disappeared for a while. Democrats have
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: a very good nominee in that race. It was already swingy.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: You know, it's just a the. It's just very expensive.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: Iowa has become expensive simply because of how busy the
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: airwaves are. And there are two other races that they'd
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: like to try to save there, the statewide race of
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: the Senate, Iowa 3, which is Zach Nunn's, the Des
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: Moines area district, and then the open seat that they're
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: trying to. So there are other reasons to prioritize what
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: you can do in there. But you're seeing... you know,
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: pulling money from an incumbent and Marianne Miller Meeks has been,
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: you know, she won one race a couple of cycles
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: ago by six votes. Um, but the fact that they're
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: starting to pull that tells you something. Meanwhile, the D
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: triple C is an expansion mode. Um, they've, they've added
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: one of the seats that were part of the dummy Mander, right?
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: Florida's 22nd district. They're now spending more money in Florida, nine,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: the Darren Soto district. Um, It's, again, just like with
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: the Senate. One party is expanding the map. The other
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: party is trying to shrink it. It's a pretty good indication.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: We know which direction the political wind is blowing. We
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: just don't know how strong the wind is going to be.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: But there's one other way to look at this. There's
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: a great chart that I've been using comparing the 2024
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: presidential vote in a series of Republican-held or Republican-leaning House
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: districts with the current 2026 forecast from our friends at DDHQ.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: And what the chart gives me is a way to
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: measure how large the potential Democratic wave could get. So
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: I just mentioned the Darren Soto District, Florida 9. Trump
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: carried it by 18 points in 2024. Does that mean
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: it was really a D plus 18 seat or did
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: Latino voters over index for Trump in one election and
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: it sort of. it made people perceive that that district
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: was more Trumpy or more Republican than it is. Well,
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: the beauty of this forecast is it kind of is
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: ironing out that surge of Latino vote. And this is
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: the big shift that has really hurt Republicans, particularly in
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: some of these, you know, in Texas Senate, but really
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: in a lot of these Southern and Sunbelt battlegrounds, is
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: that the Latino vote is not They voted for Trump
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: in 24, but that didn't mean they became– they rented Trump.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: They didn't buy, right? And they're ready to flip back
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: pretty easily. So, yes, you can sit here and say
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: a Florida 9 is going to– now it's projected to
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: be an R plus 2 district, which means that's a
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: winnable scenario for Darren Soto. This is part of the
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: redistricting competition in Florida. Now– Is the environment shifting 16 points?
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: I don't think it's shifting 16 points. I think the
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: environment is shifting 10 to 12. But I think in
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: certain parts of the electorate, Trump over-indexed with certain voting groups,
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: younger voters and Latino voters. They have flipped back in
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: a hard way the other way. I think that's why
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: you see what appears to be dramatic movements or perceived
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: movements of where this electorate is going. I think it
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: was never a D plus 18 seat in 2024. just
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: like Kansas wasn't really D plus 16, you know, but
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: it's just that he sort of over-indexed in the moment.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: The district, you know, I want to watch election night.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: I always, you know, are looking for early tea leaves.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: And this list has two districts on it that for
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: me are the early tea leaves to determine how big will,
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: could this get for Democrats? One is Kentucky's 6th District.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: This is the Lexington seat, the University of Kentucky seat.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: It used to be very swingy when one of the
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: late Happy Chandler's grandkids was the member of Congress there.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: Andy Barr used to lose when he was running to
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: represent that part of Kentucky in Congress. When he won,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: it was sort of a whole shift of the state
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: went to the right. And now you're seeing this district
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: get very competitive. This is one of those, if Democrats
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: are winning Kentucky 6, or if Democrats, and it's an
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: early poll closing, so we're going to know Kentucky 6 by, say,
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: 7.30 or 8 p.m. Eastern time on election night, then
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: you know this thing's going to get big. South Carolina won.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: That's the Nancy Mace district. This has been redistricted to
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: be more Republican than the last time it went Democratic
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: back in the last decade. It was R plus 13,
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: if you believe the presidential numbers in South Carolina won.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: Right now, DDHQ projects it as R plus five. Well,
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: if Darlene Graham is as weak as we think at
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: the top of the ticket and that race is too
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: close to call it poll close, and that's an early
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: poll closing state, 730, I believe, is what South Carolina is. Well,
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: that also in South Carolina won, right? Democrats picked that
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: one up. Then we're looking at the 35 to 40
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: seat race. scenario and maybe bigger. But those are two
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: early ones. There are two more in Virginia, 7 p.m.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: poll closing time that I'm obsessed with. The first district,
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: Rob Whitman's district, and the fifth district, which still has
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: Charlottesville in it, but it's pretty Republican. Tom Perriello once
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: represented a portion of it. Both of those are districts... Look,
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: Whitman was trending towards the Democrats, the first district. It
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: sort of got a little bit of the Richmond suburbs,
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: and it's what's been happening in the northern neck and
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: things like that, if you know your Virginia geography. The
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: fifth is a Republican district that can underperform in a
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: bad year. And so the fifth would be one of
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: those that I suspect if Democrats won it, it would
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: probably be one that would flip right back in a
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: presidential year. Still- Considering that in Virginia, they tried to
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: get rid of, you know, they could end up with
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: a 9-2 map without having to jerry-rig everything. Just keep
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: that in mind when you start to see about those things.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: So that's sort of another way of understanding this election
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: cycle and why early on, right? If Democrats are winning
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: districts that Trump carried in the five to eight point range, Well,
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: that's a 2006 like wave. Um, if they're winning districts,
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: Trump carried from the 10 to 15 point range, that's
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: something considerably bigger. That's something that means we're looking at a,
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: a democratic version of the 1994 Republican wave, right? That
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: was a monstrous wave. That was a category five type
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: of wave. 2006, it flipped both the House and the Senate,
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: but it's more like a category two, category three type
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: of wave. And that's the difference. D plus five to
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: eight versus, you know, a Trump plus five to eight
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: election where they're winning those, Democrats winning those seats versus
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: the double digit seats. And if some of these Trump
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: plus 15 districts start falling, You know, then it's we
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: can't we won't even say this is a extreme routine
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: midterm correction. We might be talking about a full on
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: repudiation and that this is a reset, if you will.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: I don't think we're there yet. I think some of
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: these Republican candidates that we're talking about are the favorites.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: I think South Carolina one still probably stays Republican. I
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: think Virginia five probably stays Republican. But the fact that
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: they're on the board realistically on the board. That's the
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: debate we're having, right? Which is, is this going to
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: go from conventional repudiation to something bigger? Because I'll tell
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: you what we don't see any signs of, of the mirage. I'm,
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: you know, famous last words and I can eat them.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: But the idea that this turns into a blue mirage,
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: my friend Patrick Ruffini is constantly wondering if there's a
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: lot of too much, the folks on the left are
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: smoking too much opium. I hear you. But The political
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: polls match the consumer confidence, right? And the fact that,
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: you know, sometimes you look at something and like, well, huh,
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: polls show it's stronger, but boy, the atmosphere feels different, right?
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: Everything feels like it's aligning in this one. And that
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: brings me to the latest consumer sentiment numbers out of
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: the University of Michigan. We got those over the weekend.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: These numbers... This is why I'm pretty confident we're not overestimating.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: If anything, we could be underestimating. The October preliminary index
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: of consumer sentiment is at a very paltry 46.3 on
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: their scale. What does that mean? Well, it was 48.1
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: in September. But more importantly, 46.3 is lower than any
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: consumer confidence number that was produced during the Biden presidency.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: And remember how much political damage inflation and the lack
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: of confidence, consumer confidence, did to the Biden presidency and
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: Biden's politics and Kamala Harris. Well, consumer sentiment right now
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: is worse in October 2026 than it was at any
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: point in time during any part of the Biden presidency.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: And there's one more part of this University of Michigan report.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: that was released last week that I don't want you
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: to miss. Researchers also asked consumers how they expected to
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: respond over the next year to products that have experienced
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: especially large price increases, right? Thanks to energy spikes or tariffs. Well,
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: only 31% said they expected to keep spending as usual, right?
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: Only one in three voters, right? Well, here's your K-shaped economy, okay? 54%
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: majority of people said they're already planning to cut back. 16%
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: said they'd be stopped. It wouldn't even be buying those
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: overly inflated prices. Wouldn't be buying those items at all. Okay.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: So seven in 10 Americans expect to change their purchasing
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: behavior simply because of higher prices.
• 33:12
  Speaker 4: 70%.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: That's a lot of Republicans, Democrats, and independents when you're
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: at 70%. Right. And here's where you can see the
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: K-shaped part of this economy in this report. Among Americans
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: in the bottom third of income earners, only 20% expect
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: to continue spending as usual. So basically 80% of the
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: paycheck to paycheck crowd feels like they have to cut back.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: Among Americans who do not own stocks, just 18% think
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: they don't have to cut back. And guess what? Among
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: the wealthiest who do own stocks, 50% expect to spend
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: as usual. Well, who do you think Donald Trump is surrounded?
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: I think about this. I looked at this survey and
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: I thought, who's Donald Trump interacting with? Right. If half
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: the people with the biggest stock portfolios think they'll be
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: able to keep spending normally. Well, that's who Donald Trump
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: lives with. That's who he interacts with. That's who he
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: sees at these rallies. That's who I think he doesn't
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: have a clue at what his economic decisions have done
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: to the average American. And I think the average American
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: has decided, the guy who used to hear us and
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: who used to say the things, he seems to say
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: what I'm thinking. That ain't this Donald Trump anymore. So
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: I definitely think that the lived experience on the president's
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: economic policy decisions is what's dooming Trump. And that's why
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: no amount of messaging, no amount of rallying, no amount
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: of owning the libs, BS, sue the networks, this or that.
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: This is the lived experience is trumping all of that.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: And this is why, in some ways, this looks even
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: more precarious for Republicans in red states than it does
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: even in the blue states. You can talk all you
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: want about economic growth, right? You can point to the
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: stock market. But again, what about people without stock, right?
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: It is voters are making decisions based on what's actually
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: happening to them. And this ain't going well for Trump.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: Gas prices, just to give you, right, gas prices were
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: under $ 3 a gallon before the war began in February
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: of this calendar year. We were just starting the primary
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: process to decide who our nominees were, and gas was
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: under $ 3. It got to $ 4. 50 in May, and we're
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: back to around $ 4. 50 right now. That's not good. Consumer
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: concerns and tariffs are what dominated 2025. Now you add
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: in the gas prices and the tariffs haven't gone away.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: And what's interesting here is how Republicans in this survey, right,
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: they rhetorically are backing up. They're more optimistic about the
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: state of the economy. But then when you ask them
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: what they're doing, they behave like people who don't think
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: this is a good economy. So we know that people
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: politically answer is the economy in good or bad, you know,
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: that they answer with their jersey. But when you start
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: to ask them about what they're doing with spending, that's
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: a different story. They're not answering as partisans. They're just
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: answering as their lived experience. And that's where you see
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: the disconnect because you see people who are voicing optimism,
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: but at the same time saying, telling us that they're
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: cutting back. That's the lived experience. That's why Donald Trump
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: has a problem. convincing people, just give it more time,
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: just give it more time. He's been, you know, he's
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: been doing this now for six months with this Iran war,
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: promising that somehow it's around the corner, costs are going
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: to come down. You'll never believe. And, and here we are.
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: All people have is the experience they're living with in
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: the moment. And it is not a good experience. All right,
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: let me unload a quick little few things on the, on,
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: on sort of the Washington front. Um, I'm going to
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: start with Kimberly Guilfoyle. You know, it's funny how the
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: rules in Trump world work, right? She's no longer the
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: ambassador to Greece. She was forced to resign because she did,
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: you know, she used her access to get, you know,
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: some outsider to try to shake down for money, for access,
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: et cetera, right? The Wall Street Journal reported that the allegations,
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: you know, that Guilfoyle sought to have a political donor
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: pay off her Amex bill in exchange for getting access
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: to influential figures in the Trump administration. This is not
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: about whether this is legal or not.
• 37:50
  Speaker 4: It's icky.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: It's certainly unethical, right? We can have an legal argument
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: about whether it's technically illegal or not, but it's icky.
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: It looks gross. It's so gross that even Trump and
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: Marco Rubio think it's a bad public look, right? But
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, as I said before, I find the outrage
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: by Trump world comical, right? Look, the allegations are serious
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: and she should, you know, any person doing this should
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: be punished. But if they're, but this administration, this is
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: the administration that they're going to suddenly draw a line,
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: a bright ethical line around monetizing access to Donald Trump.
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: Is it because we're three weeks before an election and
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: that's why you care about this? Did she make the
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: mistake of having this story come out in an even-numbered year?
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: If it happened in an odd-numbered year, everybody would have said,
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: move along now, nothing to see here. Because suddenly Donald
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: Trump is outraged by what she did. But this is
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: the same Donald Trump whose political operation hosted a private
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: dinner for major holders of the president's own cryptocurrency. I'd
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: say that was about 100 times worse than anything Kimberly
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: Guilfoyle tried to do. The same extended family that has
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: benefited from enormous overseas investments, including Jared Kushner's investment firm
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: receiving billions from Saudi Arabia's sovereign rail fund? The same
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: political universe in which proximity to the president has become
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: such a valuable asset that they sell access to truth
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: social Trump posts early to investors? And Kimberly Guilfoyle is
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: the one that has to go?
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: What are the rules?
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: You can't monetize access to Trump if you haven't actually
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: married Donald Trump Jr. Engagement wasn't, it was, you know,
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: you don't get to do this just as a fiance
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: or an ex-fiance. Or maybe you need to do it
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: on a much larger scale. $ 100, 000 is chump change, too
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: small time. Don't get caught being a petty, you know,
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: being a petty grifter. Go big or go home. But
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: this is a truism throughout the Trump era. People around
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: Trump frequently end up paying a price for conduct that
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: does not produce the same consequences for Trump and his family.
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: Michael Cohen went to prison in connection with Donald Trump's
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: hush money scheme. Donald Trump was convicted in a New
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: York courtroom and received an unconditional discharge. Rudy Giuliani lost
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: his law license. ridiculous allegations that Donald Trump asked him
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: to do. John Eastman was disbarred doing the dirty work
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: of Donald Trump. Other Trump allies have faced criminal convictions
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: or guilty pleas. Meanwhile, Trump returned to the White House.
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: The people who get close to Trump sometimes discover that
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: the rules apply to them in ways they don't seem
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: to apply to him.
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: And Ms.
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: Guilfoyle may have just discovered that there's a particularly important
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: distinction between being part of the Trump family and having
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: once been engaged to somebody in the Trump family. Which
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: brings me to another interesting aspect of this story. The
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: person announcing Guilfoyle's departure was Katie Zachariah. And she's the
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: new White House press secretary. She made her debut in
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: the briefing room on Tuesday. Look, I knew nothing of
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: this person. I'd never heard of her. I don't know
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: if this means I'm not well-informed. I think I have
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: a pretty good feed on the right to monitor what's
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: going on. I do sort of, you know, I pay
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: attention to what Laura Loomer's up to and I pay
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: attention to what these folks are up to. I'd never
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: heard of this woman. You know, I've probably dismissed her
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: as just like another sort of, you know, that's just
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: been grifting off of the Trump movement to build a
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: social media following. But it's pretty clear how she got
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: the job, right? Sycophantry is how you get this job. Now,
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: her debut, I think you find out what happens. Donald
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: Trump has ruined this position, right? There was a time
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: the position was designed to actually take you know, be
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: a conduit to the public and the press about what's
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: the president up to? What's he doing? Why is he
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: doing this? Let me find out. And, you know, whether
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: it was Ari Fleischer with Bush or Mike McCurry with
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: Clinton or Robert Gibbs with Obama, you know, you felt
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: like Jen Psaki with Biden. You felt like, you know, yes,
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: they were going to perform every once in a while
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: for the cameras because the cameras were on. But, None
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: of them ever wanted to be seen as a liar.
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: And it would bother them if they lost their credibility.
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: Ari Fleischer, anytime he's been accused of misleading people, gets
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: defensive about it because he doesn't want to be seen
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: as that. That would bother him. It bothers Mike McCurry.
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: It bothers Robert Gibbs. That's not how Donald Trump believes
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: this job. Sure, lie. I mean, this is who he is.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: He's P.T.
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: Barnum.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: So I, you know, I have no I my my
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: expectations for her in this job are super low.
• 43:20
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: It's if Donald Trump is happy. Great. I guess the
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: word Scaramucci is trending with Zacharia, which isn't a good
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: sign because he lasted 11 days. And the question is,
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: was he so bad at this?
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: She only took a handful of questions and most of
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: them were just to the with with the friendly outlets,
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: which I guess, you know, it's sort of like spring training.
• 43:39
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: Don't take don't don't take a high hard one yet.
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: You know, you don't want to face Jacob Mizorowski again.
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: You want to face a bullpen catcher trying to pretend
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: they're a pitcher, right? So, you know, who knows if
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: she ever gets effective at this at all. I've read
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: where she's a big conspiracy theorist. I don't know why
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: you would want a conspiracy theorist in this job when,
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: you know, and apparently even Susie Wiles was blindsided by
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: this decision. But she fits the pattern of what Trump
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: wants out of a spokesperson. He wants a spokesperson, frankly,
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: to be seen more than they're heard. And that appears
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: to be the situation here. But it's another reminder how
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: much the institution of the White House press briefing and
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: the White House press secretary has been damaged and has deteriorated.
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: It's on the long to do list of what's it
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: going to take to restore democracy. You know, it's the
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: subject of my column today that you can find on
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: Substack or Newsphere. Now, a story that I think is
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: considerably more serious before we get to my interview with
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: Paul Glastris. Federal agents searched the Washington home of Democratic
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: Congresswoman Ilhan Omar on Monday as part of a criminal investigation. Now,
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: the Justice Department says agents executed a judicially authorized warrant. Now,
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: Omar has denied wrongdoing and says she's being politically targeted.
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: Before we go any further, I want to make something clear.
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: I don't know what the evidence the government has. And
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: neither do most people offering instant judgments about this case.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: I am surprised that the Justice Department got a judge
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: to sign off on this search less than 30 days
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: before an election. So, but, you know, maybe... Maybe they
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: have some facts that can obviously they have some facts
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: that convinced a judge a search warrant at this time
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: was necessary. But I can tell you. This better be
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: good because the Justice Department has sort of put their
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: own credibility on the line here.
• 45:54
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: There had been longstanding policy, and I know Todd Blanch
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: changes longstanding policy at the Justice Department at the drop
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: of a hat now. He is not interested in the
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: rule of law. He is interested in just being the
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: president's lawyer. I can recite how he screwed this up,
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: but if you're listening to me now, you heard it
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: on the last episode. But usually the Justice Department wants
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: its cases taken seriously. And if you're going to do
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: something this close to an election, you better have the goods.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: Because it was 22 days before Election Day when this
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: search occurred. The Justice Department for years had operated under
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: policies and traditions designed to prevent federal law enforcement from
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: appearing to manipulate elections. And doing this this close to
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: an election is just that. You've put your thumb on
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: the scale to voters. Now, none of these were absolute
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: prohibitions on investigations. And obviously, there are circumstances where a
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: prosecutor thinks they have to act. But a normal Justice
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: Department who wants credibility with the public, who wants their
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: prosecutions taken seriously by judges, usually dot every I and
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: cross every T. Are you convinced that Todd Blanche's Justice
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: Department is dotting every I and crossing every T when
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: they're targeting a member of Congress less than less than
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: a month before Election Day? And it's somebody who's regularly
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: targeted by the sitting president of the United States all
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: the time. So to say this smells is an understatement.
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: It smells. She may very well have some messed up
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: immigration papers. Maybe it was her. Maybe it was her family.
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: But you better have it. And you better know that
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: she did something criminal here. Because this looks like political targeting.
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: This looks like abuse of the Justice Department. And here's
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: the thing. If they had no track record of abusing
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: their power like this, they'd get a little bit more
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: benefit of the doubt. But have they earned the benefit
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: of the doubt? Who made this decision? Who signed off
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: on it? And we're not seeing anything. The only thing
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: the Justice Department is trying to do is sue the
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: news media these days, right? Now the Justice Department decided
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: to open an antitrust investigation, conveniently, less than a month
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: before Election Day. involving the television networks over the fact
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: that the White House, that the TV networks decided to
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: suspend pool coverage because Donald Trump banned members of the pool,
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: individual members of the pool from covering the president. I
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: was a part of that pool. It's contractual obligation, number one.
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: But number two, if you choose not to cover something,
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: that's part of your First Amendment right too. He has
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: no right to coverage, just like he claims we have
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: no right to be physically in his presence to cover him.
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: So it is not a serious investigation. It is simply
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: the Justice Department being weaponized to create the illusion that
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: somehow Donald Trump... is a target by the media's coming
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: to get him. Right? Oh, the media's coming to get him.
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: I will just say, I don't know what I would
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: take seriously out of this Justice Department, but anything that
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: targets somebody who's regularly a punching bag for Donald Trump,
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: you have to be skeptical about whether they even have
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: the goods. And the fact that they violated a norm
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: inside of 30 days of an election like this, and
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: yet they don't really, they don't, if they had it,
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: I think they would tell us, you know, this is
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: one of those things, they're not, they're not saying if
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: they had the goods on her, we'd all have the information.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: They'd be screaming it from the rooftops because why would
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: you sit on it? If you have something, you wouldn't
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: sit on it. So they're just trying to create the...
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: I don't think they care whether they actually have a case.
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: I think it's pretty clear that just having the search
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: of Ilhan Omar as a headline three weeks before the
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: election is the feature, not the bug. They don't care
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: if they have a prosecutable case. I think if they
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: had a prosecutable case.
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: We'd already know. And they don't have a prosecutable case.
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: All right, one more thing before I go. I want
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: to shift gears for a moment because there's another story
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: that I think could have consequences well beyond this election.
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: So Elon Musk has now decided to spend another $ 276
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: million supporting Republican groups in his own super PAC. And
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: that's just since July, okay? $ 276 million just in the
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: last 90 days. He sent $ 158 million alone to the
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: Senate Leadership Fund, which is the Senate Republican Super PAC.
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: In fact, that single contribution was larger than the amount
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: the Democratic Super PAC raised from all of its donors
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: during the quarter. Now, look, we've had extraordinarily wealthy political
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: donors before. George Soros is a big one for the Democrats.
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: We've had billionaires who've spent enormous sums trying to influence elections.
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: But what's striking to me about Musk is how deliberate
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: and public he's being about his involvement. He's not simply
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: writing checks to candidates he likes. He's becoming one of
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: the most identifiable financial backers of the Republican Party and
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: specifically of the effort to preserve Republican control of Congress.
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: I think it's a giant mistake. If you're a shareholder
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: in any of Elon Musk's business, his decision to be
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: a partisan like this is not in the best interest
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: of these companies. He is not abiding by the fiduciary responsibility.
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: He is hurting the bottom line of these companies. I'm
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: not saying the money's not going to have impact. It could.
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: That's a lot of ads that $ 276 million can buy.
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: But Musk is making himself personally responsible, at least in
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: the public's mind, for the political project he's financing. And
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: that means he's going to be a target. And I
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: think he's going to regret being a target. He already
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: bought Twitter simply to do that. So he wants to
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: control the information ecosystem. He wants to financially be the
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: single most important backer of one political party. This is
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: a concentration of power that no party and no individual
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: American should be comfortable with. But more importantly, if you're
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: a shareholder in his publicly traded company, and if you're
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: a business leader and you're somebody who wants to work
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: with Tesla or SpaceX or XAI, if you're a local
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: government considering a project involving one of Musk's companies, you
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: now have to think about the political implications of that relationship.
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: He is making decisions. And I guess you could say, well,
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: you know, he's not hiding who he is. Okay, maybe.
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: But I don't think Musk fully appreciates this. And it's
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: the way he goes about it, right? You know, there's
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: plenty of donors that pick a side and stick to
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: that side. But are you doing it with malevolence or benevolence?
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: And he's clearly doing it with malevolence. And it only
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: increases interest in finding ways to prove he's doing something wrong,
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: doing something illegal, doing something over the top. But if anything,
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: he's got just way– and remember, he himself may have
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: been personally responsible for sort of helping to try to
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: mainstream this crazy rumor about Tallarico that when he was
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: sick with the flu that he was somehow in some
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: unnamed mental facility. And this is what makes him so dangerous, right?
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: And we've just seen this over and over again. So
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: I just think Musk has made a huge mistake and
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: made his companies more vulnerable to scrutiny, made his companies
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: more vulnerable to businesses not wanting to partner with him, right?
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: The more partisan and polarizing you are, the more uncomfortable
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: people are going to be to hang out, especially when
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: the winds shift. And the winds have shifted quite a bit.
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: I understand Musk looking at the situation and going, boy,
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: Everybody hates tech except Donald Trump, so I guess I
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: will support him. That's the way you become a supervillain.
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: It's not the way you figure out how to work
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: in tandem with government. And, you know, the guy wants
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: to get up in space. Democrats are going to have
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: a lot to say about the funding of those programs
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: as well. So it just feels like both a strategic
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: mistake by him. I think it's a the fact that
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: he already has an outsized influence on our media ecosystem
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: with what he does with X, and he does this,
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: this is, you know, he's accumulated, it's pretty clear, he's
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: accumulated way too much power. The question is, how do
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: you check it in a way that's small d democratic
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: and still protects his rights as well? And I think
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: that that's a little bit of a challenge, but there
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: are ownership rules. You know, he's, you know, if you're
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: going to be a donor of that size, if you're
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: going to be a government contractor, He's basically looking for government.
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: He's a massive government contractor when it comes to a
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: space program. So I don't see how his money is
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: anything other than a bribe, a direct bribe like this.
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: So whether it's government contractors being barred from giving money,
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of things that need to be done.
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: But this is one of those where I know I'm
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: going to sound to some like Bernie Sanders here, right?
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: The oligarchy. But I'm a Teddy Roosevelt guy. And it's
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: about concentrations of wealth and power. And capitalism doesn't work
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: with concentrations of wealth. And democracy doesn't work with concentration
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: of power. And Elon Musk is essentially anti-capitalist. He's anti-free market.
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: And it turns out he's anti-small d democratic. And it's troubling.
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: And there's no easy solution to this. He's like a
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: rogue actor. He's like a He's like one of these
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: AI agents that's escaped and you don't quite know what
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: to do because there's a lot of people afraid of
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: figuring out how to rein him in. But I think
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: this is a– I can tell you this. I don't
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: think voters are going to take kindly to the billionaires
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: trying to prop up political parties. And I do think
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: careful of the company you keep on this if you're
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: somebody running for office. All right. I'm going to sneak
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: in a break. And when we come back, my conversation
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: about return on investment when it comes to paying for college.
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: What are the best schools when you look at it
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: that way? Climbing up the economic ladder, the socioeconomic ladder.
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: What are the best schools? What are the best schools
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: in rural America? Well, my friend Paul Glastris has the answers.
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: That's next. Thank you. Well, joining me now, for some
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: of you, if you've got a college junior or, excuse me,
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: a high school junior or senior, you may be in
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: the middle of the anxiety, especially if you have a
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: high school senior. I am past this anxiety moment as
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: a parent, but some of you may still be in
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: it and trying to figure out how to navigate, you know,
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: what are the right schools and, you know, what are
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: good safety schools or what should be on the list and,
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: Why do none of these lists focus on cost? Well,
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: one of the better college ranking systems that are out
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: there that I think are more user-friendly comes from a
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: publication that I think is one of my favorites in Washington.
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: It may have Washington in the title, but the Washington
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: Monthly does a terrific job of trying to not get
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: caught in Washington, not get caught in Beltway drivel or
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: elite drivel. And the beauty of it and the college
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: rankings that they do, I think is actually a great
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: example of this. People might try to paint this periodical
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: or this publication, this journal in an ideology. What I
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: think the Washington Monthly is skeptical of elites. wherever the
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: elite or elitism exists. When it comes to colleges, we
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: know that US News Ranking seems to favor the elites
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: and favor Seems to let money do the talking. The
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: beauty of what the Washington Monthly does is it actually
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: looks at results. It looks at outcomes. It looks at
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: what did the student actually get. And I'm doing this again.
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: And my friend, the longtime editor of the Washington Monthly,
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: Paul Glastris, is here. Because we did this a year ago,
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: and we got a lot of feedback. I got just
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: simple thank yous. Like, I didn't know these ratings existed.
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: I'm so glad it expanded my kids' search for schools.
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: I now feel– Paul, it reminded me that you can't
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: ever stop marketing your work. Sometimes you guys have been
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: doing this a long time, and yet we got to
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: get more people aware that it belongs in this ecosystem. Well, thanks, Chuck.
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: It's been 21 years doing this particular ranking and the
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: methodology has changed a bit, but.
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: Only because we get new data.
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: And it is a kind of revelation to people because
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: they're so used to going to the U.S. news rankings
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: or the Wall Street Journal rankings or the Money Magazine
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: or whatever. And they look at the top 20, 30
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: schools and it's, oh, It's Harvard.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: It's Yale. It's Penn. It's Stanford.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: You know, throw in a University of Michigan or University
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: of Virginia, you know, kind of elite flagship state schools.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: The public IDs, as they like to call themselves, right?
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And that becomes everybody's idea of what a great
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: college is. And not that those schools aren't great in
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: their own way. But look, if I told you if
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: you told me I want to go to out to
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: a dinner in my, you know, good dinner in my
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: town and you looked at the local media and the
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: top 30 restaurants were all located in member only country clubs,
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: you'd say, oh, yeah. Well, I guess it's possible that
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: the food there is superior. But what good is that
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: to me? I can't get into those places. That's US News.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: That's the Wall Street Journal. 90%, 95% of people cannot.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: Get in to these colleges. And so.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: More than 70% of people go to college within 50
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: miles of where they grew up. that's college, right? And
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: our rankings are for the 90% of people who aren't
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: from wealthy backgrounds, because that's frankly who winds up disproportionately
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: getting into elite schools. But from people of median income
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: and below, that's kind of who we focus on.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: Well, you added a new set of rankings this year
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: for rural universities, which I want to get into. But
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: But let's start with the basics here and start with
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: the criteria before we get into the schools. Sure, sure.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: So to oversimplify, U.S.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: News and the other rankings basically reward schools for being
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: wealthy prestigious and exclusive, wealthy and they spend a lot
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: of money on their students, prestigious in that they do
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: a survey and whatever other college presidents say is elite
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: is elite, sort of like, you know, electing the prom queen, right?
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: And then exclusive, how many, literally, how many students don't
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: they let in?
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: Rejection rate. Like it is stunning that that is such
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: an important metric. Yeah.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: So we don't think that's a good measure of the
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: value of higher education to people who are paying tuition
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: dollars and also to the rest of us who might
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: not have kids in college, but are paying tax dollars.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: You know, the average person spends the government spends about
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: seventeen hundred dollars of your money. Average person. on higher education.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: So we have a stake in this thing. And so
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: we asked ourselves, what do students and taxpayers want from
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: their dollars? And we said, all right, they basically want
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: a college to be a place where somebody of modest
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: means can get a degree that doesn't cost too much,
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: doesn't load them down with too much debt, delivers a
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: degree that brings in a middle-class income or better. And
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: that also encourages students to be active, good citizens. Open
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: the founding document of just about any college in America,
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: and you're gonna find words to the effect of, the
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: purpose of this university is to prepare our young people
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: to enter their democracy and take their place and participate.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: So we actually measure that stuff. We measure whether a
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: college has, you know, how many people, how many of
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: the students are on ROTC serving their country?
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: How many are the Peace Corps?
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: Whether the students are encouraged to vote, whether the university
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: trained students for socially beneficial, but somewhat underpaid professions like
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: social work. And when you do that, you just get
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: a very different top 30.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: So as I said, U.S.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: News, the top 20 or 30, they're all these elite schools.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 2: About a little less than half on the Washington Monthly
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: Best Colleges for Your Tuition and Tax Dollar Ranking are
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: those elite schools. But most of them are schools that
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: I'm sure your audience has mostly never heard of.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: The, you know, University of California State Fullerton, right?
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm a college baseball nut, and they used to
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: be a big power in college baseball. So I knew
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: Cal State Fullerton. But that whole system, yeah, yeah.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, and it's like Fresno State, right? Good football team,
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: but other, you know, unless you follow football.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: What do you know?
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: But these are colleges that may not be nationally known,
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: but they're revered in their localities and regions and states
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: because they serve the local population.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: They tend to be not very selective, right?
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: If you have a high school degree and a decent
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: transcript and okay scores or no scores at all, you
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: can probably get in. And the best of them deliver
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: excellent returns on their investment. And so, you know, the
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: number one college, I think we talked about this last year.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: It's the same this year. Berea College in Berea, Kentucky,
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: a small, academically rigorous liberal arts college started by abolitionists
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: in the 1850s. First college south of the Mason-Dixon line
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: to educate both blacks and whites and one of the
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 2: first to educate women. And students there pay virtually no tuition.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: They work all four years and they go on to
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: fabulous careers. And almost all of them are students of
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: modest means recruited from Appalachia. Again, most people never heard
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: of it. It's number one on our rankings.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: Now, let's go back to them a little bit because
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: I remember it from last year. And how is it that,
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: I mean, how do they fund their university? How do
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: they fund the college?
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: So it's super interesting story. Part of it is, a
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: big part of it is for a hundred years, they
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: have been raising money from everywhere they can, but also
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: from their alumni, usually in small increments for an endowment
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: that is now worth, I think it's a billion dollars.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: Wow, they have a billion dollar endowment. That's a pretty
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: impressive for a small university. That's a lot of money.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: Secondly, they have this work model And there's actually a
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: federal program, a federal designation of a work school. There's
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: about a dozen or two around the country. And it's
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: like work study, but on steroids. All the students get
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: work study money. And freshman year, they're mopping floors. By
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: senior year, they're like helping in the data department. And
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: they're doing more sophisticated stuff. And a big chunk of
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 2: that goes to pay their tuition. And this is just,
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 2: it's a commitment they've made for decades and decades to
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: try to have close to zero tuition, certainly for their
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: poorest students.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: And they make it work.
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: Look, the elite schools.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: Do the same.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: If you're a Harvard or a Yale, and you're sitting.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 4: On a $ 50 billion or $ 150 billion endowment, and this
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 4: is something they've been doing more in recent years because
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 4: of pressure from.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: Folks like us. Yes, from a lot of people. Right, exactly.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: I think so.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: They cover the tuition and, in many cases, room and
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: board for students from middle class and poor families. And
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: they define middle class these days by 200,000 a year.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 2: So if you can get in, it's a great deal.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: It's just that.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: Almost nobody gets in and they educate a tiny, tiny
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: number of students.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, it's interesting not to, you know, one
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: of the ways that the, you know, it's funny that
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: some of the upper middle class privates are struggling to
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: A little bit because of restrictions on foreign students. Yeah,
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: because that what this was how they were able to
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: give scholarship money to to. working class background, kids from
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: a working class background. Essentially, you get your full payers
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: from overseas and you're able to then essentially use that to...
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: And when you can't bring the full payers over from overseas,
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: the Trump administration put a... It is... It's been a really–
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: it's been kind of cutthroat between these upper middle class–
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: I'm quite familiar with them. I've got a kid at–
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: my daughter went to the University of Miami. I went
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: to GW. I know these institutions well and they're all
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: like competing for the same students and same money and
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: it's a real– I mean, this is a way where
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: the federal government has kind of had an impact on
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: which universities, on all sorts of student recruiting. Oh, yeah.
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: And in fact, a lot of the middle tier state schools, too,
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 2: the Portland states and the University of Missouri, and they
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 2: are able to subsidize the education of, you know, in-state
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: students with low tuition by charging full fare for foreign students.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: And that can go too far, right? If it crowds
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: out opportunities for American students. But we're hitting what they
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: call a demographic cliff. There are fewer and fewer 18-year-olds
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: being minted from our high schools because of demography.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: And now you have Trump.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 2: Administration squeezing the visas so that the students can't get here.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: And it's a double whammy. You know, if you think
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: about those foreign students, that's Trump talks about he wants
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: balances of payment. That's a balance of payment issue. That's
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: foreign money being invested in the United States, spent in
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 2: the United States.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: That's a good thing.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: And many of those students stick around and start companies
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: that employ the rest of us and pay taxes. So
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 2: it is really shooting yourself in the foot.
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: No, it really is. So what kind of impact has
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: that had on some of the schools in your list
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: this year? Is this made them more popular as we've
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: seen this squeeze? Or what's been happening with the demographic clip?
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: And are some of these schools going to get squeezed
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: out financially completely because they don't have enough students?
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 2: Unquestionably, unquestionably. The schools that are really hurting are private, small, private, nonprofit, non-elite,
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 2: non-selective schools in out-of-the-way places in small towns in New
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: England and the Midwest, and some.
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: Of the.
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 2: Regional public universities in places that are less, you know,
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: more sparsely populated and are losing, you know, Emporia University
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 2: in Kansas, fantastic school, but, you know, the They're not
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: getting help from the state like they used to. They've
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 2: had to cut classes.
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: They've had to cut faculty.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: They do a fabulous job, but they're being squeezed. And
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 2: these are universities that are providing upward mobility to people
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: who most desperately want and need it and don't have
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 2: any other source of it. Because if you're living in
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 2: a rural area, it's not like, oh, the college closed.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: I'll just go to the college next door. The next
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: college is 200 miles away. That's it for you. You're
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 2: done with higher education for your life. And that town
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: has suddenly lost, if you lose a college, a load-bearing
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 2: pillar of its economy and civic life.
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: You've been around.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: You've seen these small colleges or regional colleges. You're describing
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 2: the voucher fight in Texas at the moment where rural,
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 2: very conservative rural voters are angry at the Republican governor.
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 2: because what school choice exists in some.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: Of, you know, you just described it on a rural
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: university front, but this is, you know, this is true. You, okay,
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: you've given me a voucher for school choice and now
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: you're cutting my funding. So basically the choice is homeschool.
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: Is that what you're telling me I have to do? Yeah, no.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: And so this year for the first time, We rolled
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: out a new ranking. It's called Best Colleges for Rural America.
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: And I'm so glad you did this because maybe this
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: will put a neon sign to certain politicians who claim
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: rural America is being overlooked. And yet they yank all
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: this funding that benefits rural America. Absolutely.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. What we did is we looked at, you know,
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 2: there is no other ranking of rural America, colleges from
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 2: rural America.
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: Go to U.S. News, you won't find it.
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 2: If you go online and you type best rural colleges,
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 2: you'll get a list of 20 colleges from some skeevy website,
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 2: and it's Dartmouth.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: Dartmouth is in a, I guess they're rural.
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: They're in a.
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: Bucolic small town, but they don't, you know, serve rural people.
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 2: They serve upper middle-class students from metro areas around the world.
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: Like my buddy, Jake Tapper. There you go. Mr. Philadelphia, Mr.
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 2: Dartmouth.
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: That's all right. Exactly.
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 2: And so, and so we've got a, I think a
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 2: very good database on where colleges are located and And
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: we match that with a database with our own rankings
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 2: criteria and another database that shows where students wind up
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 2: after they graduate. Because what rural communities need and want
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: is for their young people. And by the way, adults
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 2: need increasingly need to go back to college. They want
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 2: a college that is nearby where they can get the
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 2: training they need to earn a middle class or better
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 2: income without having to go 500 miles away and pay
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 2: for room and board and be away from their family
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: and friends. And so that if they don't want to
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 2: move away, if they want to stay and build their
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 2: lives near their families and friends, they can do it.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: That is- What America did more so and earlier than
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 2: Europe is disperse institutions of higher education geographically such that
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 2: not everyone, but almost everyone in the country is a
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: short drive away from a college.
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I believe it's the Ohio governor, is it Jim
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: Rhodes who said, or sort of the governor who's sort
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: of green-lit, Because Ohio's got a lot of these small universities.
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: There's actually a big debate, right? The Republican nominee, Ramaswamy,
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: is frankly, among the issues he's dealing with, is he
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: just said, oh, we should consolidate these things. And it
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: was just antithetical to the history in Ohio. And I
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: believe he said he didn't want anybody to have to
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: drive more than 30 miles to get to a college.
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: I think that was Rhodes. If I have it wrong,
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: I'll be corrected.
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: I know that. In many parts of the country, that's
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 2: the case. That is how we built our greatness. We
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 2: provided colleges that are geographically near where people live and
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: that average people can afford to go.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: Now, we're turning our backs on that.
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 2: We've let the cost of college double. people can't afford
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 2: it or they think they can't afford it. And now
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 2: we're under-investing in the colleges in the areas where the
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 2: people need it the most. So that's what our rankings show.
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 2: And we have the number, let me tell you about
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: the number one school in our best colleges for rural America.
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: I'll bet you've never heard of it. I certainly had
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 2: until it popped up on the top. University of West Alabama.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: No, and I knew South Alabama. I got a nephew
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: that went there. I knew actually North Alabama because I
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: think Florida State had to play them in football. I mean,
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: I didn't know there was a West Alabama. There's a
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: West Alabama.
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 2: It's in a small town. It's in the Black Belt.
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 2: And the average income of a graduate of University of
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: West Alabama four years after they graduate is $ 26, 000 more
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 2: than they would have gotten had they gone to a
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 2: typical college given their demographics. That's return on investment. That's
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 2: upward mobility. And how do they do it? They are
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 2: a first-rate teaching college. And we think of rural America,
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 2: rightly so, as having lost jobs and hospitals and businesses
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 2: and population. All that's true, generally, not all places. But
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 2: there are still a lot of jobs that aren't being
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 2: filled in rural America. They struggle to get teachers, doctors, engineers,
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 2: people with national resource backgrounds, agriculture. So our ranking literally
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 2: measures that. They give colleges extra points for for that.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 2: A job as a teacher in a growing, wealthy metro
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 2: area isn't considered a high-paying job. In a small town,
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 2: it's a pretty good job. And they partner with the
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 2: local school districts to put the students in the school
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 2: so they get the training. And different of the colleges
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 2: that do well in our rankings do that. And so
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 2: they're very good about knowing what their regions need economically.
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: And is that is, you know, it's interesting. I'm looking
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: at your top 20 skews South Southern. Certainly skews Sunbelt
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: if you throw in your Oklahoma and Texas. Is that
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: because the New England rural or the Mid-Atlantic rural is
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: less existent or, frankly, too costly? Good question.
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 2: There's a little bit of a trick that we couldn't
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 2: quite figure out a way around.
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 4: Hmm.
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 2: We measure whether students stay in state. But if you're
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 2: in a small state like Rhode Island, your chances of
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 2: leaving the state are greater.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: Sure. So they kind of get- You could take a
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: left turn and you leave the state, right? Instead of
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: a right turn.
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 2: But let me give you another example.
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: I guess you could probably do 100 mile radius. Did
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: you guys think, I mean, what were the different, you know,
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: rather than doing state lines? The best we could do
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: is in state or out of state. And we got
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: our numbers from a great group called the- Well, I
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: forget what they're from. Michigan State Organization. Oh, it's my
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: I bet you it's with the American communities. I wonder
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: if it's the.
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 2: It's going to come to me. But the best we
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 2: could do is in state or out of state. But
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 2: I'll give you another example of one of these schools
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 2: in my home state of Missouri. What used to be
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 2: called the University of Missouri Rolla, our engineering school. It's
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 2: now Missouri University of Science and Technology. It's in the
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 2: town of Rolla between St. Louis and Springfield on.
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: My cousin's wife grew up in Rolla. I know a
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: little bit about Rolla. Rolla, yeah.
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 2: And it's not a place that a lot of us
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 2: wanted to go spend our four years. It's really quite-
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 2: not a lot going on there, but it is the
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 2: kind of engineering school. It's probably 50, 60% engineers, but
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 2: mostly STEM oriented where you don't need to be a
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 2: math prodigy to get in. You need good, good math scores,
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 2: but you don't need Carnegie Mellon math scores. And yet
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 2: when you four years out of college, University of Missouri
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 2: science and tech students make more than Carnegie students. And
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 2: a lot of them are living in Missouri and they're
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 2: living in small towns because you know, small towns and
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 2: small cities, they need civil engineers. They need chemical engineers.
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 2: And so, you know, I had a very good friend
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 2: growing up who was smart enough, but not a very
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 2: good student, not focused. He'd like to go fishing and,
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 2: you know, run around, chase the girls. But he got
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 2: into what we called Rolla back then, now Missouri, and
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 2: he still lives there with his family, loves it, and
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 2: go fishing. canoe on the beautiful rivers down there and
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 2: have a great life. So these are these jewels of
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 2: universities that people don't know about. And let me tell you, Chuck,
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 2: we have in this country, as you know, a lot
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 2: of politics around higher ed. It really is the thing,
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 2: if you think about it, that is almost at the
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 2: center of political division in this country.
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: And it didn't used to be that way.
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 2: 10, 15 years ago, nobody really talked about higher education
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 2: as a wedge issue.
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: No, it was just, it was an aspiration.
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 2: An aspiration in both sides. The average person didn't know
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 2: what a Republican view of higher ed was or a
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 2: Democratic view. And that's changed for reasons, you know, you
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 2: and your audience probably know, right? The Republicans now disproportionately
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 2: represent the non-college educated and vice versa with the But
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 2: this best ranking for the best colleges for rural America
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 2: has really hit a positive nerve with conservatives. I was
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 2: on Steve Bannon's competing podcast.
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: The other day. I love it. So he highlighted that. Well, look,
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: you know, Bannon puts his money where his mouth is
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: on this anti-elitism stuff. He really does.
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: He does. But the Daily Caller wrote a wonderful story
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: about it. I think when you put this lens on
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 2: higher education and you're talking about schools that serve red America,
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 2: you suddenly bring both sides together.
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: Well, Paul, this is the, you know, it's always said,
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: it's like, look, you know, when I want to say
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: to my liberal friends sometimes on this, you know, when
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: the right's upset about bias, right? It's this bias that
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: they're actually talking about, which is it's the bias of not–
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: it's the bias of almost ignoring a part of the culture, right?
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: You're not thinking about how rural Americans live or you're
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: not thinking of– I always say there's sort of an
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: anti-religious bias sometimes in the Acela corridor. Not that it's
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: people are– it's more of Out of sight, out of mind,
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: don't care, don't know. Exactly. And, you know, I remember
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: running into this sort of culture clash where if you're
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: not familiar with how people live their lives in the
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: rural South, then you don't know that Wednesday's church night. Yeah.
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: But if you live in New York City, you're like,
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: what the hell is that? Why do they go to
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: church all the time? Well, Maybe the church is also
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: the community center. Maybe that's the potluck dinner night. Maybe that's,
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: you know, it's, it's, and it's just sort of, right.
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: And this is one of those for a lot of
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: people when they, when they talk about bias, they simply
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: want to be heard and seen.
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: And this is what this to me, you're just simply saying,
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: these universities exist here too, you know, and they're pretty good.
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 2: Yes, and they're providing value to their students, to their communities,
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 2: and to the taxpayers. You know, we did 15 minutes
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 2: worth of reporting at the Washington Monthly a while ago.
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: We asked Google, how many stories in the New York,
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 2: non-sports related stories in the New York Times were there
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 2: about Harvard in a 12 month period? And compare that
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 2: to non-sports related stories over a 12-month period in the
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 2: New York Times about the 10 largest universities in the country.
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 2: There were more stories about Harvard than the 10 largest
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 2: universities combined. That's how off-kilter the national media is. You
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 2: can't sell a story to the New York Times about
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 2: the University of West Alabama, but you can write about
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 2: Harvard all day long, positive or negative. Look, Harvard deserves
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 2: a lot of attention. It is a very important institution.
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 2: Hats off to it. A hundred ways, I think Harvard's terrific,
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 2: but it doesn't deserve more focus than the entire other
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 2: part of the university system that is where 90% of
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 2: us get our educations.
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: So you've been doing this a while now and you've
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: been trying to make it outcome focused, right? I feel
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: like it's sort of like, are you getting what you
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: asked for there? So now you're stepping back. Give some
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: advice for our policy makers about, okay, you know, I...
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: You know, one of the things that frustrates me is
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: our public education system. We no longer want to fix it.
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: We just continue to want to gut it in different ways.
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: Even as we claim we're trying, you know, yes, I
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: think we're trying to empower parents and in theory I'm
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: for that, but we're doing it at the expense of everybody. Absolutely.
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: And I don't know how much, you know, is there
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: an argument to be made if we had a more,
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: if we knew we had a more reliable higher education system, system.
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: Would that settle down these arguments more? I don't know.
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: But it is, give some advice at how you would
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: sort of, what should the states roll? When I say
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: the state, could be the feds, could be the states.
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: When it comes to higher ed, that makes a lot
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: of sense here. And what have you learned over these
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: last 20 years?
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 2: I am so glad you asked. Because in this issue
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 2: of the Washington Monthly, our September, October college issues, We
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 2: have an essay by my friend, Kevin Carey at New America.
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 2: It's called a radically simple plan to fix higher education.
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: And I mean, simple, it's simple.
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 2: And I think it addresses precisely what you asked. The
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 2: basic plan would have the federal government go to colleges
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 2: on a voluntary basis. No college would be forced to
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 2: take this deal.
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: And here's the deal.
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 2: We're gonna provide a subsidy of let's say $ 10, 000, which
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 2: is about the average cost of educating the average student
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 2: at the average university in America today. And so we're
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 2: going to give you $ 10, 000 for every student you enroll.
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 2: In return, you're going to not charge that student any
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 2: tuition if they are below the median income and modestly
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 2: higher tuition, but up to a cap if they're more affluent,
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 2: number one. Number two, you're going to accept credits That
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 2: student can bring credits from any other college in the system,
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 2: and you're going to accept them. You're not going to
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 2: give them a hard time because students lose a lot
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 2: of money and time because the credits.
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: It doesn't quite match. Our math department doesn't like their
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: math department.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's one of the great scams in higher ed.
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 2: And number three, you're going to be part of a
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 2: nationwide research effort to improve teaching at the college level.
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 2: If you did those things, and that's it. You can
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 2: stay owned by the state, owned by a private entity.
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 2: It could be not for for-profits, but any other kind
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 2: of college, big, small. What you would have at the
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 2: end of that is, if enough colleges signed on to
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 2: the deal, a network of basically low-priced to free colleges
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 2: all over the country that are of higher quality. And
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 2: who's going to take that deal? It's not going to
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 2: be Harvard. It's not going to be Michigan, right? They
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 2: can get $ 50, 000, $ 60, 000, $ 70, 000 a year from their wealthy students,
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 2: families and foreign students. And they don't need the money.
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 2: So the elite schools just won't be part of this.
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 2: But for a lot of these students, these universities and
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 2: colleges that, as we talked about, they're on the margins, right?
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 2: Their business models are being undermined. They're providing fantastic educations
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 2: or trying to, but their business models. This is a business,
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 2: this is a way to keep the doors open, provide
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 2: for their communities, provide for the students and have higher
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 2: quality outcome. I think it's a win-win-win and I don't
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 2: see why both parties wouldn't support it.
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: Well, and you could see because of the geographic benefits, frankly.
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 2: Right, as you pointed out, a lot of these colleges
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 2: are in the South. A lot of these colleges are
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 2: in the West. Yeah.
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: What would you anticipate as the impediment to that?
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 2: I can't think of a reasonably good reason. I can
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 2: think of all kinds of arguments people would throw up.
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 2: to block it, but I think cost would be an argument.
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 2: This is going to cost hundreds of billions of dollars.
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 2: I don't think it will, and let me tell you why.
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 2: Right now, we've got, what, about a trillion dollars in
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 2: student debt that.
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: The government backs.
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 2: And a whole lot of that we're going to eat
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 2: because students are going to colleges, borrowing too much, not graduating,
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 2: not able to service their loans.
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: So this is shifting that cost then. Yeah, that cost.
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: We might be saying this is not new money. It's
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: just radically changing the financial aid relationship between the federal government.
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: So would you get rid of Pell Grants? No, you've
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: got to keep Pell Grants. And here's why.
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 2: Pell Grants used to cover 80% of your student costs.
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 2: Now it's like 20% or 30%. And most students who
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 2: are from modest backgrounds, it's not just the tuition that's
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 2: killing them.
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: It's the books. It's the room and board.
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 2: So you keep the Pell Grants, but that provides for
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 2: the room and board, and for the books, and for
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 2: the transportation.
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: Gotcha. You know, this....
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 2: It is hard to get an education. Four years of
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 2: school is hard work. You're breaking rocks. The, the thing
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 2: we should be trying to do is not make it harder.
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 2: Students have to work hard to get their grades to graduate.
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 2: Not everybody can do it, but we can make it easier. We,
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 2: you know, the students who drop out, they tend to
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 2: be students. They've got kids at home. They've got jobs.
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 2: They've got parents are taken care of and they, they,
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 2: It takes them too many years and things go wrong
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 2: and they just can't make it. So we can get more.
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: As I always say, life happens. That's usually what happens
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: is that life happens and colleges usually haven't been able
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: to adapt to that very well.
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 2: And if you get a BA degree in this country,
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 2: on average, you're earning 75% more than somebody with a
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 2: high school degree. And that number has been very stable
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 2: for a lot of years and maybe going up a
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 2: little bit. So when you hear, oh, we need fewer
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 2: people going to college, people who say that want their
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 2: kids to get a BA. So even with AI, we
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 2: now have a couple of years of experience with it.
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's very hard to know what AI is
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: going to do.
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 2: But so far, I'm not seeing the evidence that people
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 2: with BAs are going to be wiped out by AI.
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting. The president at SMU, my son
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: goes to SMU right now. He's a sophomore. Hartzell's his name.
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: He was at UT Austin. And look, I'm not going
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: to speak for him, but I think it was the
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: politics of being the president of the highest profile public
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: institution in the very hot potato politics of Texas, right?
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: That he wanted to go to a go to a
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: private university, right? Especially when you're in the state's capital,
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: those politicians can come to your office and you had
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: to do it. His theory of how AI, what he's
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: betting on, and I'm curious if you saw any of this,
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: if you've seen any of this in any of your
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: other research, is that he's trying to beef up classical
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: education departments. His theory of the case is, okay, if
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: all of our technical you know, the tech that the, frankly,
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: the STEM degrees might not be as valuable as the
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: classical education degree, humanities degrees. Is that, are you seeing
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: any trend like that beyond what I just spoke to
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: you about?
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 2: Again, I'm going to be very humble here and say
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 2: none of us really know. This is new territory. But
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 2: I don't know if you know the fellow Paul LeBlanc.
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 2: Paul was the president of Southern New Hampshire University He
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 2: took a sleepy regional public university and turned it into
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 2: the biggest college in America.
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: Online powerhouse.
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 2: So he's a technologically adept, innovative college president who left
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 2: and spent the last two, three years thinking about and
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 2: researching how– AI will affect jobs and universities. He's got
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 2: a book that just came out and an essay in
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 2: this issue of the Washington Monthly called How to Pick
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 2: a College in the Age of AI.
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 1: Interesting.
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 2: And Paul says exactly what you say. Among the many
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 2: good pieces of advice he offers students is that, and universities.
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: Is.
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 2: Asking the most bold, and profound questions and being able
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 2: to be fluid in a variety of disciplines from literature,
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 2: to math, to science, to social science, to history, to geography,
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 2: that capacity to move through disciplines and pull information and
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 2: communicate and think through not just problems, but matters of
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 2: ethics and values and philosophy, that those are the people
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 2: who will be the masters of AI and not mastered
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 2: by AI.
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's really trying to help people. You don't
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: want AI to teach you. You want to use AI
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: as a tool. And you have to learn the larger
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: instruction manual to the human species, frankly, and how we
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: interact and how we colonize and how we settle disputes
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: and how we settled disputes 10,000 years ago, how we
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: settle disputes now. You have to understand that. And then-
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: AI only enhances your ability to find better examples, make
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: better arguments, all of those things. Correct.
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 2: And it is a bit of a misunderstanding that humanities degrees,
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 2: arts and sciences degrees, pay poorly.
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: We just spent a generation convincing those that wanted to
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: go to higher education, don't do that.
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And it's just not true. Humanities majors start out
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 2: at pretty low levels. 20 years in, they're earning pretty
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 2: decent wages and their wages keep going up. Whereas, you know,
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 2: STEM degrees, they start high and then they kind of
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 2: flatten out.
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: So over a lifetime, you make more money. You become
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: technologically obsolete. Exactly. Exactly.
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 2: So yeah, humanities majors, arts and sciences majors have an
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 2: ability to learn, to adapt, to communicate, to think creatively that,
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 2: you know, according to Paul Lewis, and many, many others,
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 2: is the path forward. And universities are going to, your
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 2: son's college president is right to say, bring back classical learning,
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 2: bring back, you know, study the Greeks and Romans, because
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 2: through that, you see it, you see all of life.
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: So let's go to the main rankings that you do,
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: because it's always fun that you have Yale at number 20, right?
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: And you have UT Rio Grande Valley number four. How
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: does that happen? Explain why in your rankings, UT Rio
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: Grande Valley. And in some ways, I think we've been
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: talking about these nice regional and rural universities. Why that?
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: What do they do?
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 2: So UT Rio Grande Valley. is a relatively new university.
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 2: The state pulled together three different colleges in the Rio
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 2: Grande Valley. These statistics are not exactly right, but I
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 2: think something like 90% of the students are Hispanic.
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: Two thirds of.
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 2: Them are the first in their families to attend college.
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 2: The tuition is not expensive. It's under $ 6, 000 a year.
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 2: The students earn annual incomes of $ 54, 000 a year, which
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 2: is $ 1, 300 more than they would have earned considering their
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 2: backgrounds had they gone to a typical other college. That
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 2: is real value. Now, you go to Yale, you graduate Yale,
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 2: you're going to earn a lot more. But Yale... educates
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 2: a tiny fraction of what UT Rio Grande Valley does.
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 2: And maybe 10% of its students are the first to
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 2: go to college and from lower middle-class backgrounds. So Yale
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 2: does wealth, does a great job for the students it
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 2: lets in who are of modest means. It just doesn't
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 2: let many of them in.
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: What is the highest ranked elite university? Is it Brown
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: or what did you have as the highest ranked of
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: the so-called elites that people would accept as elites?
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 2: Well, I think MIT is at number five.
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: No, Duke. Duke is number two. Duke does well.
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 2: But look, the difference between number five and number two
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 2: is pretty marginal. But give these colleges, these elite colleges,
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 2: Harvard's number six, Princeton's number seven, University of Chicago's number eight,
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 2: but number three is California State University, Northridge, right? And nine, 10,
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 2: and 11 are California state schools, right? And Western governors.
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: You ever heard of Western governors? So I have, but
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: I have always thought it's an online only university. Is
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: it not?
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 2: It is mostly only online. They do have brick and
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 2: mortar facilities, but it is a university.
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: Where is it located?
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 2: Well, I think their headquarters are in Utah. They were
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 2: started about 30, 40 years ago by a group, a
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 2: bipartisan group of governors, hence governors in the name. And
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 2: the idea was to provide a college for adults don't
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 2: have a lot of time, don't have a lot of money,
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 2: are stuck in their jobs, need an education to move forward,
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 2: and we're going to give them college credit for things
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 2: they already know. If you've been doing the books at
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 2: a grocery store for 10 years, but you don't have
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 2: an accounting degree, they're going to test your bookkeeping capacity.
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 2: And hey, it turns out you're a third of the
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 2: way to an accounting degree. Boom, you've just cut one
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 2: third of the cost of your education out, right? And oh,
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 2: it's going to be mostly online, but with tutors always available,
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 2: live tutors. So you can study, you put your kids
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 2: to bed at nine, and then between nine and 11,
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 2: you can do your work.
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: And by doing that, I think they have over 100,000
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: students a year.
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: It's just insane. And what's been their return on investment?
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 1: So their graduates are, I take it, that must have
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: scored pretty well.
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 2: You know, I don't have the figures in front of me,
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 2: but like I said, they're 13th of 1,400 colleges, right,
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 2: in our rankings. So we did the first profile of
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 2: them 15 years ago. I'm a big fan because it
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 2: was structured for the student's the average student, right. It
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 2: was not structured for the kid, you know, from a
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 2: upper middle-class family in, in Montclair, New Jersey, you know, who,
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 2: who got SAT prep and mom and dad, you know,
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 2: put them into the best high schools and all that.
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: Those kids are going to do fine.
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 2: It's, it's for the, it's for the rest of the country.
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: Um, quite a bit in our conversation, we have, you've
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: referenced a Cal state, um, something in the Cal State system.
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: We've spent some time in the UT system. On your list,
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: you have the city university system and the state university
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: system in New York. We've talked about Ohio, which has
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: in many ways built its own impressive system. Are those
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 1: the states that stand out here that have like really–
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: or what's– Am I making too much of an assumption
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: on that? I mean, that Cal State system seems to be,
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 1: I mean, some of these are just incredibly well-run state-funded systems.
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 2: You are 100% right. And this is something that struck
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 2: us years ago, that the same colleges in the same
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 2: states kept doing well. And in a way, we're not
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 2: measuring individual colleges. We are measuring states.
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: Right. You're measuring sort of which state government's are invested
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: in having good higher education that's affordable.
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 2: You know, your home state of Florida does quite well.
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: Florida International University. By the way, FIU brags about their
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 1: ranking on your list. They put that in there.
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 2: I've seen their posters in the airport.
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: Yes, they're very excited about it, yeah.
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 2: And as well they should. Florida has a century-long history
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 2: of governing their university systems very, very shrewdly. I'll give
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 2: you an example. Remember we talked a little while ago
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 2: about how students lose a lot of credit when they
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 2: move back. My son's going through this now. In 1967,
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 2: the Florida Board of Regents, the governing body of Florida said,
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 2: every school, every course has to have a number and
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 2: those numbers have to be, have a curriculum behind them
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 2: and every English 101 course at every public university in
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 2: Florida has to transfer to every other university.
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: Because they do that, Floridians, young.
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 2: Floridians can go to a community college, they can go
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 2: to Miami Dade or whatever, spend two years studying and
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 2: getting college credit at a very low cost, maybe will
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 2: live at home, and then move to Florida International University
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 2: or University of Florida and finish out their last two years,
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 2: and all of that credit transfers.
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 1: You can't do that. You're describing the path to college
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: for half of my friends that I grew up with,
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: which is either if they didn't get into where they wanted,
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: you had Santa Fe Community College near Gainesville. Tallahassee Community
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: College near Florida State, Miami-Dade near both University of Miami,
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 1: Florida International, FAU, all that. And that's how they handled this,
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 1: the community college system. Now, those are colleges now. We
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: don't call them– they don't call them community colleges anymore.
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 1: They've given them its Miami-Dade College. I want to say
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 1: it's Tallahassee State now. I think that's what they refer
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: to it.
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 2: You know, they're doing these things. Because they're increasingly getting
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 2: into the BA space. But we measure them as the
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 2: federal government does, and it's percentage of two-year versus four-year degrees.
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: So to me, they're still community colleges. You still call
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: them a community college.
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 2: But again, that's an example of Florida- And they keep
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 2: a lid on costs. And their focus has been quality,
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 2: low-cost college for in-state students. California is the same way.
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 2: Texas has a pretty good, very good system.
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 1: They have a couple of them, right? They have both
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 1: the A & M system. Exactly. Exactly.
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 2: What Florida does is it wraps it all into one.
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 2: California has different systems, but again, they put money into
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 2: the system and they manage it in a way that
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 2: maximizes student success. The CUNY system in New York is
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 2: another one. Pennsylvania kind of a terrible system. They've always underinvested. The-
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 2: Pay attention, Josh Shapiro.
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 1: We're watching, buddy. Come on, man. He's doing what he can.
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 2: And he's had a smart guy in there trying to
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 2: work it. But these are- I wouldn't say my home
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 2: state of Missouri has a particularly good system.
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: Maryland- What's the hallmark- the hallmark of it? I mean,
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: is there a pattern here? I mean, look, is there
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: just or was it just timing or they just had
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 1: the right governor at the right time? I mean, what's
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 1: your explanation? Is there a good explanation?
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 2: I think each evolved a little differently. And I'm not
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 2: a full expert in the history of the evolution of
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 2: all these systems. But a lot of it goes back many,
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 2: many decades. A lot of it goes back to when
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 2: in the 50s and early 60s, every state was building
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 2: out its system of higher education.
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 1: They were You know, this is post-World War II with
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: the GI Bill, right? I mean, that was the incentive, right? Hey,
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 1: we're going to have all these people ready to go
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 1: to college. We need to build colleges for them to
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 1: go to. Yes.
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 2: And they expanded that under Eisenhower with training for STEM students.
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 2: And then in 1965, they had the Higher Education Act.
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 2: And so states built out community college systems. They built
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 2: out branches of the university flagships. And some of them
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 2: had them managed centrally and well. Some of them had
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 2: them where each university was its own fiefdom and the
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 2: state coordinated, but had no teeth. So they're all competing,
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 2: and each has a law school, each has a med school,
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 2: each has a.
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 1: Football team.
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 2: And pretty soon, the costs are up, and you can't
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 2: transfer credit. And the governor throws his hands up, and
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 2: the legislature says, we're not going to fund you because
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 2: you're throwing money away. And you get a kind of
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 2: toxic system. New Jersey is that way a little bit, honestly.
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 2: ED HARRISON But in California, they revere their system and
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 2: they've kept their eye on the ball. Quality education for
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 2: average people, for low income families at a price they
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 2: can afford. And that is what Kevin Carey in the
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 2: Washington Monthly in his story is basically saying the federal
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 2: government should help do. Not as a mandate, but as
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 2: on a voluntary basis.
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 1: Well, and again, you want to inject some investment in
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: rural America? We just came up with it. There you go. Paul,
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: like I said, first of all, your passion comes through.
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: But this is– it is– in some ways to me,
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 1: you've depolarized. But what you do is you're depolarizing this debate.
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: This is not a debate about weather. It's a debate
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 1: about how we do this. We should want all of
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 1: our citizens to have an opportunity to be better educated. 100%. 100%.
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 2: And I appreciate you having me on. I appreciate you
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 2: seeing that what we do with higher education is a
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 2: very good sample of how we can apply what's gone
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 2: wrong with the country generally and why I think there's
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 2: an opportunity to fix a lot of it.
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 1: Well, look, the world still wants to get educated here.
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: So let's... I hope that's still the case, to be honest.
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 1: I sort of that was a badge of honor. I
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 1: took that as a badge of honor. If everybody wants
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 1: to get our education, then I think we're winning. At
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 1: least that's what I used to think. But anyway, I
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 1: think we will. Good to see you, brother. Thank you, sir.
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 1: Top five.
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 3: Top five.
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 1: Top five. All right, it's time for my top five list.
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 1: And like I did last week, since we're getting so
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: close to election day, the map's gotten bigger. And if
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 1: I'm going to do the top five governor's races most
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 1: likely to flip, I'm better off doing the top 10
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: because frankly, you know, the competitive nature of governor's races
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 1: is through the roof right now. I'd say, right, there's
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: 36 that are up. I'd say we're right at about
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: half of them. are going to be decided, perhaps decided
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 1: by five points or less, which shows you what kind
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 1: of competitive environment it is. But it brings me to
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: the central question I was asking at the opening of
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: this podcast in my opening monologue on the Wednesday portion
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: of the podcast, which is just how large is this
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 1: wave going to be if it's, well, blue wave or
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 1: red undertow, however you want to do it. If this
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 1: is a fairly conventional midterm in which the president's party
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 1: loses ground, Or are we watching something bigger and more consequential?
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 1: And I've come to the conclusion that the answer is
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 1: not just from the House and the Senate, but it
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 1: comes from governor's races. Because there are several states where
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 1: Democrats are competing for governorships in places that voted decisively
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 1: for Donald Trump two years ago, right? And there are
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 1: other states where Republicans are trying to take advantage of
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 1: local circumstances that may have very little to do with
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 1: the national environment. So it's an intriguing list I have here.
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 1: I have a few Democratic-held seats that are in my
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 1: top 10 of flips. But there's some really red states
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 1: that have made the top 10 as well. So I'm
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 1: ranking the 10 governorships that I think is in order
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 1: of most likely to flip, the least likely to flip.
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: They're all, if you've made this top 10, you're in play,
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 1: pure and simple. Now there's two states not on my list,
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: Arizona and Michigan. It's not that they're, these are swing states,
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 1: but the battleground states are You know, and these are
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: two-week Republican nominees. Republicans have already pulled their money from
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 1: Michigan on the governor's race. And while Turning Point is
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 1: throwing a bunch of money into Andy Biggs in Arizona,
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 1: you know, the word is out that he's a MAGA guy.
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 1: And MAGA people don't win statewide in Arizona these days.
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 1: It's just been a, you know, I know Katie Hobbs
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 1: says she needs more money. And the DGA is probably,
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 1: you know, they can't afford to lose it. So they're,
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 1: you know, but the amount of money they're spending there
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 1: probably is more than necessary. But I do think if
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 1: this is an election about Donald Trump, the Democrats flip
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 1: the House and the Senate. If this is an election
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 1: about Republican governance and Donald Trump, well, they flip the
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: House and the Senate, and there's Democratic governors in Texas, Ohio,
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 1: and Iowa. And in fact, I look at those three
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 1: in particular. I look at those three in particular because
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 1: Republican governance is what's on the ballot, particularly in Texas.
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 1: And I've said, I think if Texas goes Democratic in
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 1: the governor's race, this is a repudiation of Republican governors,
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 1: and it's certainly a repudiation of the voucher movement. And
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: funding of public education and the funding of public health
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 1: are sort of two of the issues that are bothering
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 1: voters the most of their governors today. And you could
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 1: see Democrats potentially being able to take advantage, take advantage
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 1: of that. All right. So without further ado, let me
• 1:55:33
  Speaker 1: do my top 10 list. So number one, most likely
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 1: to flip Iowa. In fact, for me, it's a new
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 1: number one. I've had Kansas won for the longest time.
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 1: I have Iowa in the one spot. You know, Rob
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 1: saying his lead seems to be durable. It's I don't
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 1: remember the last poll I've seen of Rob saying leading
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 1: by less than five points. The curiosity to me is,
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 1: does he have a ceiling? What's the ceiling? Is it 52, 53?
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 1: Or can he get it closer to 55? If he
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 1: can get it closer to 55, that might be enough
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 1: to pull Turek over the finish line. But I do
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 1: think Turek in the Senate race really needs Rob Sandu
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 1: to get close to the all-time record for Democratic performance
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 1: in an Iowa governor's race, which goes back to the
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 1: 60s when they had a candidate hit 55%. No Democrat
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 1: in the modern since then. who's won a governor's race
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 1: in Iowa, has ever gotten that much of the vote.
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 1: That possibility is somewhat distinct there. And if he gets
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 1: to 55, he probably can sweep, might be able to
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 1: sweep the statewide offices. AG, Treasury, Secretary of State, you know,
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 1: or other statewide races in Iowa. So we should, so
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 1: Iowa's one. Number two, Kansas, as you know, They have
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 1: literally been on a pendulum every eight years. They switch parties.
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 1: We've had eight years of a Democratic governor. She's term limited.
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 1: Her chosen successor lost the primary. So look, it's a
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 1: close race. I think the Republican candidate is probably slightly
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 1: to the right of where the state is. Democratic candidate
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 1: is probably slightly left to where the state is. I
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 1: think you have to assume at this case that– especially if– I,
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm bullish on Kansas Senate because I'm bearish
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 1: on Kansas Gov for Democrats and I'm bullish on Iowa
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 1: Gov for Democrats because I'm bearish for Iowa Senate. I
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 1: think you're going to have some voters that are like, look,
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 1: I'm not voting for two Democrats. I'm only voting for one.
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 1: And I think Hamilton is, you know, I think Marshall's
• 1:57:41
  Speaker 1: unlikable enough and Hamilton's likable enough to be the comfortable
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 1: lone Democrat. And then there's that voter that might pull
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 1: our level. On the gubernatorial side, too. That's my sense. But,
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 1: you know, I do think Kansas is going to be
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 1: quite close, but I think advantage are. Then the rest
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 1: of these races are all very, very close. I think
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 1: both Iowa and Kansas, you would say, distinctly leans to
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 1: the party. to flip. Leaning Democratic on the Iowa side,
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 1: leaning Republican on the Kansas side. Number three on my
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 1: list is Ohio. Amy Acton has probably been ahead in
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 1: more polls than Ramaswamy has. I certainly think there's a
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 1: high floor for Republicans in Ohio. So this is if
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 1: she wins, it's going to be really, really close. This
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 1: isn't going to be you know, I think she's got
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 1: a ceiling of 51 or 52 period. But I do think,
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 1: you know, it's possible third party candidates like she could
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 1: end up winning by four or five because there's a
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 1: third party vote that goes down there. And for the
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 1: next episode, I'm going to dig into the third party votes,
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 1: by the way. I think I promised that last one
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 1: that's coming for my Thursday podcast. just the states where
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 1: I think that the third party could be significant on
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 1: either side. We've seen where Republicans are spending some money
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 1: on a minor party candidate in the Senate race, hoping
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 1: to dilute votes for Sherrod Brown. Number four on the
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 1: list is Alaska, the right choice voting. It does appear
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 1: that the Democrats have the upper hand here. Man, it
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 1: has been a wild and wacky race for governor. I'm
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 1: not going to pretend that I know the intricate details
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 1: of this wackiness, but it does feel as if the
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 1: Democratic candidate has the upper hand here. And, you know,
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 1: it's been been a good 20 years since Democrats have
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 1: held that governor's mansion. Tony Knowles, I believe, was the
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 1: last Democratic governor of the state of Alaska. They tried
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 1: to get him to translate that to the Senate. It
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 1: didn't happen. But that's Alaska looking fairly, fairly optimistic there.
• 1:59:43
  Speaker 1: And number five on my list is Texas. I've spent
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 1: a lot of time on Gina Enos's campaign It does
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 1: feel as if that, you know, Abbott's financial advantage has
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 1: stopped the bleeding. We've seen some, you know, there's been
• 1:59:54
  Speaker 1: slight improvement for Abbott in the most recent Santa poll,
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 1: New York Times Santa poll. But it's neck and neck.
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 1: And he's running for a fourth term. I find it
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 1: hard to believe that much of the undecided vote is
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 1: going to go to the incumbent. I know it's Texas.
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 1: But I think if you're not with him now, I
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 1: don't know what more is going to convince you to
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 1: do it. I really don't. But we'll see. It could
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 1: be just a numbers game there, right? There's just not
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 1: enough Democrats yet, not enough independents yet to cross the aisle.
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 1: But I have Texas five. Six, I have Georgia. Some
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 1: might argue that Georgia should go ahead here. The reason
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 1: I have a slightly more optimism about Hinojosa winning than
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 1: I do Keisha Lance Bottoms is she's up against– I
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 1: think the Republican nominee, Rick Jackson, has got enough distance
• 2:00:42
  Speaker 1: from Trump and an enormous amount of money himself that has–
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 1: that has made him a better bet, right? Than, than Abbott.
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 1: Abbott's having to defend, right? Where Jackson's an outsider. So
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 1: I think this is, you know, I think in a,
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 1: had literally Republicans ended up with any other nominee than him,
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 1: I think Keisha Lance Bottoms would be the favorite. Uh,
• 2:01:07
  Speaker 1: she still could end up winning. And I think if Ossoff,
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 1: you know, if Ossoff does have the Oval Office in his,
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 1: in his sights for 28, um, He should be pulling
• 2:01:18
  Speaker 1: out all the stops to do whatever it takes to
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 1: help Keisha Lance Bottoms. Because getting a governorship in a
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 1: presidential battleground seat is a BFD. And that's a pretty
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 1: good shit. And he would get a lot of credit
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 1: for this. Number seven on my list is Nevada. Lombardo
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 1: fits my description of who are the Republicans that are
• 2:01:37
  Speaker 1: more likely to survive in an environment like this. People
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 1: who are not considered very Trumpy. Joe Lombardo is not
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 1: considered very Trumpy. But he's a Republican. in a swing state,
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 1: in a bad year to be a Republican. If he loses,
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 1: it's simply that. I don't think he's committed a fireable offense,
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 1: but the Democrats have a reasonable nominee in the sitting
• 2:01:55
  Speaker 1: AG in Aaron Ford. They're spending an enormous amount of money.
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 1: Outside groups are in. This feels like if this is
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 1: a generic party vote, Lombardo might lose. If Lombardo can
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 1: make this a choice and he can show a little bit,
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 1: remind people that he's a little bit different from Trump,
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 1: and he's been trying. He's got Democrats on air, endorsement
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 1: ads and stuff like that. But I put him on
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 1: this list because I think the environment's just deteriorated around him,
• 2:02:26
  Speaker 1: and he just may not be able to survive the environment. Oregon. Boy,
• 2:02:31
  Speaker 1: Republicans have been on the verge of winning the Oregon
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 1: governor's mansion, it seems like, this entire century. Democrats have
• 2:02:38
  Speaker 1: keep electing unpopular governors. And the unpopular governors have somehow
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 1: gotten reelected a couple of times simply because there was
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 1: a divide. Like last cycle, there was an independent, and
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 1: there was a divide, and that's how Tina Kotek was
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 1: able to win the first time. There isn't a third-party
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 1: candidate this time. The question is whether the R, is
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 1: it a scarlet R for Christine Drazen, or can she
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 1: prove that she's an independent governor, even if she's on
• 2:03:11
  Speaker 1: the Republican ballot line. I can tell you this, if
• 2:03:13
  Speaker 1: she were running as an I, I think she'd be
• 2:03:16
  Speaker 1: the favorite in this race. The only thing that keeps
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 1: Kotech in the governor's mansion is this national political environment.
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 1: Number nine on my list is Wisconsin. I think that
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 1: David Crawley has stabilized this race. Democrats are pouring enough
• 2:03:30
  Speaker 1: money in it. I think if a battleground state in
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 1: this environment, advantage Democrats. whether it's Michigan governor, whether it's
• 2:03:39
  Speaker 1: Wisconsin governor, and you just have to have an unusual
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 1: Republican on the other side to prevent that. That's what
• 2:03:44
  Speaker 1: we see in Nevada. That's what we see in Georgia.
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 1: It's not what I see in Wisconsin. I don't think
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 1: Tom Tiffany is unique enough to carve out his own
• 2:03:52
  Speaker 1: identity to overcome what I think is just an environment
• 2:03:55
  Speaker 1: that is not overcomable for Republicans right now in the Midwest.
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 1: We'll see. We've underestimated Wisconsin Republicans before, but is Tom
• 2:04:04
  Speaker 1: Tiffany Ron Johnson? I'm not so sure. And then coming
• 2:04:07
  Speaker 1: in at 10 is Florida. As you know, I'm skeptical.
• 2:04:12
  Speaker 1: I think that it's interesting. My man, Uncle Luke, Luther Campbell,
• 2:04:17
  Speaker 1: former lead of Two Live Crew, sort of a rap
• 2:04:21
  Speaker 1: group of my era, of my youth, if you will,
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 1: huge Hurricane supporter. He ran for Congress himself. He's got
• 2:04:27
  Speaker 1: a pretty significant following down in South Florida. He had
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 1: Byron Donalds on his Twitter podcast, and he's going to
• 2:04:33
  Speaker 1: have David Jolly next week. This battle for the black
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 1: vote in Florida is real. Donald's is engaging in it. Look,
• 2:04:40
  Speaker 1: it's possible Donald's is going to underperform in the northern
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 1: part of the state. But if he can counter that
• 2:04:46
  Speaker 1: by overperforming in African-American communities, it might be the difference
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 1: between him winning and losing. The thing Jolly has going
• 2:04:54
  Speaker 1: for him is the surprise victory by Angie Nixon in
• 2:04:57
  Speaker 1: the Senate race. And she has been kind of pushing back.
• 2:05:01
  Speaker 1: She is campaigning heavily in African-American communities. And she's been
• 2:05:04
  Speaker 1: trying to push back on those that are sort of
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 1: Donald's curious in there. But can I just say one
• 2:05:10
  Speaker 1: thing about Florida governor? By the way, is that no
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 1: matter what happens, I think we're going to, no matter
• 2:05:16
  Speaker 1: who wins, Jolly or Donald's, that we're going to have a,
• 2:05:21
  Speaker 1: we're not going to have an awkward, the last 16
• 2:05:26
  Speaker 1: years of governors, and even you throw in Charlie Chris 20,
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 1: it's like, can I just have a normie behaving individual,
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 1: like that sort of lives a normal life, that isn't
• 2:05:40
  Speaker 1: like an introvert or a little bit awkward with people, right?
• 2:05:45
  Speaker 1: Like neither Rick Scott or DeSantis has ever seemed like
• 2:05:47
  Speaker 1: a conventional politician. And maybe that was a strength for
• 2:05:50
  Speaker 1: them at times, but they're kind of, you know, they
• 2:05:54
  Speaker 1: don't look comfortable when surrounded by people. Both Jolly and
• 2:05:58
  Speaker 1: Donald's are a bit more what I would call conventional politicians,
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 1: and I say that not as an attack, I just
• 2:06:05
  Speaker 1: think that you're just gonna have some normal human behavior
• 2:06:10
  Speaker 1: that is not unpredictable in the governor's mansion, regardless of
• 2:06:14
  Speaker 1: who wins this governor's race. And considering, like I said,
• 2:06:18
  Speaker 1: I know Governor DeSantis a little, I know Governor Scott better,
• 2:06:23
  Speaker 1: and Senator Scott, they're not natural politicians. David Jolly and
• 2:06:28
  Speaker 1: Byron Donalds are more natural politicians. So maybe that's the
• 2:06:31
  Speaker 1: most generous way I can describe that. All right, it's
• 2:06:41
  Speaker 1: question time. Let me start with Chris. Say Chuck, love
• 2:06:44
  Speaker 1: the pod. M-I-Z. Are you doing it for Milwaukee or
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 1: are you doing it for Mizzou? You're doing it for Mizzou.
• 2:06:51
  Speaker 1: That's all right. Kalshi still has Ann Wagner at 75
• 2:06:54
  Speaker 1: percent of Missouri, too. even though polling under the old
• 2:06:57
  Speaker 1: map looks pretty even. So I threw a little cash
• 2:06:59
  Speaker 1: on Fred Wellman for the potential payout if Wellman pulls
• 2:07:02
  Speaker 1: off the upset, but Missouri Republicans challenged the results under
• 2:07:05
  Speaker 1: the old map. What happens to my trade, Chris? That's
• 2:07:09
  Speaker 1: a great question. I got to think that these are
• 2:07:15
  Speaker 1: the rules and regulations I need to get more familiar with.
• 2:07:18
  Speaker 1: I'm going to do a little research on this. I
• 2:07:20
  Speaker 1: think it's an important question that I need to be
• 2:07:23
  Speaker 1: able to answer cleaner, and I will confess that I
• 2:07:27
  Speaker 1: don't know the full answer. Because I've wondered this myself,
• 2:07:29
  Speaker 1: do you wait till the elections are certified? Especially if
• 2:07:33
  Speaker 1: you're doing some, I think there's some trades you can
• 2:07:38
  Speaker 1: make that have to do with margin of victory or
• 2:07:41
  Speaker 1: number of Senate seats. Well, okay, what if there's a
• 2:07:44
  Speaker 1: party switch? How does that get factored in? When is
• 2:07:46
  Speaker 1: the cutoff date, right? I think this has always to
• 2:07:50
  Speaker 1: me been the challenge of including election results in markets
• 2:07:55
  Speaker 1: like this because arguably they're not certified. until the state
• 2:08:01
  Speaker 1: certifies them. Hard stop, right? Well, that can sometimes take
• 2:08:04
  Speaker 1: three weeks. I have a feeling that that's not how
• 2:08:07
  Speaker 1: long they plan to keep your money. So look, it's
• 2:08:16
  Speaker 1: a great question. The I only would– I could tell
• 2:08:21
  Speaker 1: you what happens when sporting events get postponed or moved
• 2:08:27
  Speaker 1: because of weather or postponed or canceled if we've had
• 2:08:30
  Speaker 1: like a health issue like during COVID is usually there's
• 2:08:34
  Speaker 1: automatic refund. Everybody just gets their money back. And there's no–
• 2:08:38
  Speaker 1: it's as if it didn't happen. That's the– that's how
• 2:08:43
  Speaker 1: I would be doing business. So I say it out loud.
• 2:08:46
  Speaker 1: My friends at CalShield probably hear me on this. I– That's–
• 2:08:50
  Speaker 1: I got to think that that's– if there is a–
• 2:08:54
  Speaker 1: if somehow the election gets thrown out, which I think
• 2:08:57
  Speaker 1: is very possible because of this weird situation we're in
• 2:09:00
  Speaker 1: in Missouri, I think the most likely thing they would
• 2:09:04
  Speaker 1: do is just return everybody's money. Just make everybody whole.
• 2:09:07
  Speaker 1: Nobody wins. Nobody loses. Everybody just gets– it's as if
• 2:09:12
  Speaker 1: it's just a full-on reset, which to me is the
• 2:09:15
  Speaker 1: right thing to do. Henry in New Orleans comes in.
• 2:09:19
  Speaker 1: He goes, hey, Chuck, after listening to the podcast discussion
• 2:09:21
  Speaker 1: on Pete Hegseth this morning, I have one question. If
• 2:09:23
  Speaker 1: Trump doesn't fire Hegseth after the election and Thomas Massey
• 2:09:26
  Speaker 1: succeeds in getting the House to impeach him, what incentive
• 2:09:29
  Speaker 1: or obligation would the Senate have to convict him and
• 2:09:32
  Speaker 1: potentially bar him from holding public office again? And if
• 2:09:35
  Speaker 1: Hegseth resigns before a Senate trial, could the Senate still
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 1: proceed or would resignation effectively allow him to avoid that consequence? Thanks.
• 2:09:42
  Speaker 1: In regards, Henry in New Orleans. Well, no. I mean,
• 2:09:47
  Speaker 1: if the House successfully impeaches, the Senate has to have
• 2:09:49
  Speaker 1: a trial and it doesn't matter whether they choose to
• 2:09:53
  Speaker 1: stay in office or not. Now, maybe they just decide
• 2:09:57
  Speaker 1: not to– but it's up to the– the Senate can
• 2:10:01
  Speaker 1: work its will and it makes its decision.
• 2:10:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:10:09
  Speaker 1: The magic number is 67. Do you have 67 votes
• 2:10:12
  Speaker 1: to bar Pete Hegseth from ever holding any federal office again?
• 2:10:17
  Speaker 1: I don't know. If it's 54 seats that Democrats win,
• 2:10:26
  Speaker 1: it's still 47. By the way, when would the Senate
• 2:10:29
  Speaker 1: trial be held? Is it held before January 3rd with
• 2:10:31
  Speaker 1: the old Senate or the new Senate? I don't think
• 2:10:34
  Speaker 1: the first order of business for the new Senate, do
• 2:10:36
  Speaker 1: they want to make a Senate trial of Hegseth? And yet, Um,
• 2:10:41
  Speaker 1: so it's, here's the thing. I'm convinced that if it,
• 2:10:47
  Speaker 1: if the election goes bad enough for Republicans, that egg
• 2:10:51
  Speaker 1: Seth could, you might have plenty of house Republicans that
• 2:10:54
  Speaker 1: decide that's it. I'm out. Maybe they read the tea leaves,
• 2:10:58
  Speaker 1: although this administration rarely reads tea leaves and egg Seth resigns.
• 2:11:02
  Speaker 1: And maybe, maybe it's over the decision to try to
• 2:11:05
  Speaker 1: live stream the execution, which clearly Trump has suddenly gotten
• 2:11:08
  Speaker 1: cold feet about. Um, But no, in theory, if you've
• 2:11:14
  Speaker 1: been impeached, resignation isn't supposed to– doesn't necessarily– they can
• 2:11:19
  Speaker 1: choose to keep going with the trial. But one would
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 1: argue what's– unless you really want to bar him from that.
• 2:11:26
  Speaker 1: But you better have the 67 votes. And I don't–
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 1: it's hard to imagine if the 67 votes. But I
• 2:11:33
  Speaker 1: think impeachment itself is the indictment. And if he's indicted,
• 2:11:39
  Speaker 1: if you're Trump, I think you push him out immediately.
• 2:11:43
  Speaker 1: and get the old Senate to confirm a new defense secretary.
• 2:11:46
  Speaker 1: Don't test getting a defense secretary out of a Democratic-controlled Senate.
• 2:11:55
  Speaker 1: Brian from Virginia's 10th District. It's loud and counting these days.
• 2:12:00
  Speaker 1: You often talk about how four or five political parties
• 2:12:02
  Speaker 1: are essentially squeezed into our two major parties, creating tension
• 2:12:06
  Speaker 1: between their competing coalitions. Yet the UK and Canada also
• 2:12:09
  Speaker 1: used first-past-the-post elections and still managed to elect multiple parties
• 2:12:12
  Speaker 1: to parliament, while even independents rarely win seats in the U.S. House.
• 2:12:18
  Speaker 1: Why is the U.S. such an outlier when it comes
• 2:12:20
  Speaker 1: to third-party representation? Is it our presidential system or is
• 2:12:24
  Speaker 1: it something else at play? It's ballot access, right? It's
• 2:12:30
  Speaker 1: ballot access. If every party had equal access to the ballots, equal–
• 2:12:35
  Speaker 1: and independence at equal access across the board, you'd have
• 2:12:39
  Speaker 1: a different story. But it's– that's where– and that's hard–
• 2:12:44
  Speaker 1: voters haven't been given the choice of how they would
• 2:12:48
  Speaker 1: handle multiple parties in a lot of states. But that's
• 2:12:51
  Speaker 1: the biggest impediment to this is the duopoly in a
• 2:12:56
  Speaker 1: lot of states makes– creates major party and minor party
• 2:13:00
  Speaker 1: status and minor party needs more petition signatures than major party.
• 2:13:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, it is literally rigged so that the major
• 2:13:09
  Speaker 1: parties don't have to do as much small-D democracy to
• 2:13:12
  Speaker 1: get on the ballot as minor parties or independent candidates do.
• 2:13:16
  Speaker 1: And I think, frankly, all of that's unconstitutional. It's not
• 2:13:20
  Speaker 1: equal access to the ballot. It's not equal treatment on this. And,
• 2:13:26
  Speaker 1: you know, equal protection seems like it should be a
• 2:13:29
  Speaker 1: pretty good argument on this one. But I think that's
• 2:13:33
  Speaker 1: the biggest issue is simply access to the ballot. If
• 2:13:36
  Speaker 1: access were easier, I do think you'd get more diversity
• 2:13:40
  Speaker 1: in itself. But look, I think our congressional districts are
• 2:13:42
  Speaker 1: too big. If you had smaller congressional districts, you'd likely
• 2:13:45
  Speaker 1: have this. There's a number of ways we could do this.
• 2:13:47
  Speaker 1: But as much as I want to see a multi-party system,
• 2:13:52
  Speaker 1: and I think more factions, I'm with James Madison on
• 2:13:55
  Speaker 1: this one, more factions are better than fewer factions. We
• 2:13:59
  Speaker 1: have to change the rules of of getting on the
• 2:14:02
  Speaker 1: ballot before this can work. You can't just suddenly snap
• 2:14:07
  Speaker 1: your fingers and hope new parties show up. You actually
• 2:14:09
  Speaker 1: have to, there's a whole bunch of laws in a
• 2:14:11
  Speaker 1: lot of states that have to change in order to
• 2:14:13
  Speaker 1: get equal access to the ballot. But these are where
• 2:14:16
  Speaker 1: these small groups are making lawsuits and all this stuff.
• 2:14:18
  Speaker 1: I mean, just, it is absurd what independent candidates and
• 2:14:22
  Speaker 1: minor parties have to do in some states to get
• 2:14:26
  Speaker 1: on the ballot. And all of it seems to me
• 2:14:28
  Speaker 1: should be unconstitutional. All right, Kevin from Tennessee's 6th Congressional District,
• 2:14:33
  Speaker 1: previously the 5th and the 7th. Yeah, they do have
• 2:14:35
  Speaker 1: a new map. While I'm not overly optimistic, I've been
• 2:14:38
  Speaker 1: thinking about how Congress could return to regular order if
• 2:14:41
  Speaker 1: this election serves as a wake-up call for Republicans. Could
• 2:14:44
  Speaker 1: presidential emergency powers be reformed so that rather than remaining
• 2:14:48
  Speaker 1: in effect unless Congress overrides them, they automatically expire after
• 2:14:51
  Speaker 1: a short period, say 15 days, unless Congress explicitly proves that, Kevin,
• 2:14:58
  Speaker 1: they have this power right now. They could decide they've
• 2:15:03
  Speaker 1: they've gone out of their way to to not force
• 2:15:07
  Speaker 1: to not do more votes on this stuff. They they
• 2:15:10
  Speaker 1: don't want the responsibility. Right. This has been leadership decisions,
• 2:15:14
  Speaker 1: whether the leadership, you know, whatever the president's party is
• 2:15:18
  Speaker 1: who's run the House has not wanted to have the
• 2:15:21
  Speaker 1: responsibility of dealing with these things. And, you know, we
• 2:15:25
  Speaker 1: haven't had enough. You know, I do think you'll see
• 2:15:27
  Speaker 1: Democrats pound their chest now when there's a Republican in
• 2:15:30
  Speaker 1: the White House. The question is, are they going to
• 2:15:33
  Speaker 1: be this willing to revoke emergency power when somebody of
• 2:15:36
  Speaker 1: their own party is in the White House? All of
• 2:15:40
  Speaker 1: this would be better That are done in a bipartisan
• 2:15:43
  Speaker 1: basis and all of this. Absolutely. Right. It shouldn't even
• 2:15:46
  Speaker 1: be 90 days. It should be 15 days, should be
• 2:15:48
  Speaker 1: 30 days. All of our emergency powers should be real
• 2:15:51
  Speaker 1: emergencies and emergencies are measured in weeks, not months or years.
• 2:15:55
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:15:56
  Speaker 1: I don't think there should be any emergency from 1978
• 2:15:59
  Speaker 1: that should be legally that you're legally able to use.
• 2:16:04
  Speaker 1: It just shouldn't be. It should expire at least by
• 2:16:08
  Speaker 1: the end of that Congress so that a new Congress
• 2:16:11
  Speaker 1: actually has to proactively pass a new emergency power in
• 2:16:15
  Speaker 1: order to let an executive, the executive branch have some authority,
• 2:16:22
  Speaker 1: whether it's trade authority or whatever. But this is what's
• 2:16:25
  Speaker 1: so frustrating is that Congress has this power right now, Kevin.
• 2:16:29
  Speaker 1: It's a choice. And it has been, you know, the partisan,
• 2:16:35
  Speaker 1: the decision- by Newt Gingrich and then Nancy Pelosi to
• 2:16:39
  Speaker 1: not change the way, to basically to not let the House,
• 2:16:44
  Speaker 1: you know, to sort of narrow the leadership of the
• 2:16:49
  Speaker 1: House to the leaders themselves, to pull back power from
• 2:16:52
  Speaker 1: committee chairs, pull back power from individual members. That was
• 2:16:56
  Speaker 1: what Newt Gingrich decided to have in order to have
• 2:16:58
  Speaker 1: party discipline, in order to partisanize things. Nancy Pelosi went
• 2:17:01
  Speaker 1: right along with it when she took over Congress in 2007.
• 2:17:06
  Speaker 1: She could have gone back to the older way of
• 2:17:09
  Speaker 1: doing things, how Tip O'Neill and Tom Foley did things.
• 2:17:12
  Speaker 1: It's a choice. And Hakeem Jeffries is going to have
• 2:17:14
  Speaker 1: a choice if he has a chance to do this.
• 2:17:17
  Speaker 1: And I'll be curious to see what choice he makes.
• 2:17:20
  Speaker 1: Last question for this episode. Josh in Anderson, South Carolina.
• 2:17:25
  Speaker 1: South Carolina's third district, where Clemson fans are still smarting
• 2:17:28
  Speaker 1: from that loss to my beloved Miami Hurricanes. I appreciate
• 2:17:31
  Speaker 1: you say they're smarting. Hey, man, we just did for
• 2:17:34
  Speaker 1: you What you guys successfully did for Miami, you show
• 2:17:40
  Speaker 1: us how far you have to go. And, you know,
• 2:17:44
  Speaker 1: the pounding Clemson gave Miami in a ACC title game
• 2:17:47
  Speaker 1: a few years back at the Hard Rocks. a few
• 2:17:50
  Speaker 1: years back, sobered up Miami fans and realizing we weren't
• 2:17:54
  Speaker 1: doing enough. We didn't have enough. We're just trying. We
• 2:17:58
  Speaker 1: were just here to help. Just, just, just know the blowout.
• 2:18:00
  Speaker 1: We were here to help. Thursday's podcast. You mentioned Annie
• 2:18:04
  Speaker 1: Andrews fundraising as a hurdle to defeating darling Graham. Well,
• 2:18:08
  Speaker 1: what about straight ticket voting? How do you, pollsters account
• 2:18:11
  Speaker 1: for it? And how can a challenge overcome that disadvantage
• 2:18:13
  Speaker 1: in a state like South Carolina? I'd also love to
• 2:18:16
  Speaker 1: hear your thoughts on how other states have managed to
• 2:18:18
  Speaker 1: repeal straight ticket voting. Keep up the great work. Your
• 2:18:20
  Speaker 1: podcast is appointment listening to me. Well, I appreciate you
• 2:18:23
  Speaker 1: saying that. You know, what's funny about straight ticket voting
• 2:18:26
  Speaker 1: is it used to be a phenomenon of democratic machines
• 2:18:30
  Speaker 1: of the Northeast and in some cities in the Midwest.
• 2:18:33
  Speaker 1: And then you had a lot of Republican efforts in
• 2:18:36
  Speaker 1: the 80s and 90s to get rid of straight ticket
• 2:18:38
  Speaker 1: voting up and down because They thought it was preventing them.
• 2:18:41
  Speaker 1: And then, of course, they get majorities and they get
• 2:18:43
  Speaker 1: control and they decide they want straight ticket voting. You know.
• 2:18:49
  Speaker 1: Straight ticket voting is not popular. Voters do voters may
• 2:18:53
  Speaker 1: behave as partisans, but they don't like to be treated
• 2:18:56
  Speaker 1: as partisans. And there's a and there's a distinction. So
• 2:19:00
  Speaker 1: the case against straight ticket voting is easy to make
• 2:19:03
  Speaker 1: and nobody wants to cast a ballot for it. And,
• 2:19:06
  Speaker 1: you know, if it comes up, let's institute straight ticket voting.
• 2:19:11
  Speaker 1: voters want to believe they have a choice. Now, do
• 2:19:12
  Speaker 1: voters end up mostly straight ticket voting? Yeah. I think
• 2:19:17
  Speaker 1: about 80% of voters do that. But the voter wants
• 2:19:23
  Speaker 1: to decide to do that. So yeah, I think straight
• 2:19:25
  Speaker 1: ticket voting is a tool of authoritarianism to be straightforward
• 2:19:31
  Speaker 1: about it. I think it's a horrendous idea. And it
• 2:19:35
  Speaker 1: is always suggested by Entities in power who are afraid
• 2:19:41
  Speaker 1: of losing power. And we don't live in a parliamentary system.
• 2:19:49
  Speaker 1: Maybe if we did, you could make a better case
• 2:19:52
  Speaker 1: for it. But to me, there is not a case
• 2:19:55
  Speaker 1: anybody can make to me that this is a small
• 2:19:58
  Speaker 1: d democratic idea. Straight ticket voting. Voter could do what
• 2:20:05
  Speaker 1: they want, but to have a place where literally You
• 2:20:07
  Speaker 1: bubble once and the whole thing goes or you pull down.
• 2:20:11
  Speaker 1: And I'm surprised there are any places left that allow it.
• 2:20:19
  Speaker 1: Because again, no voter, no matter how partisan they are,
• 2:20:24
  Speaker 1: wants to admit that they would prefer straight ticket voting.
• 2:20:28
  Speaker 1: Because we're all independent thinkers. And we'll always tell you
• 2:20:32
  Speaker 1: we're independent thinkers. All right, with that, as always, I
• 2:20:36
  Speaker 1: appreciate uh, all of the emails. We'd love more of them.
• 2:20:41
  Speaker 1: Keep them coming. I do my best to get through
• 2:20:42
  Speaker 1: more of them, but that's why I do five or
• 2:20:44
  Speaker 1: six with every episode. I don't want to just do,
• 2:20:48
  Speaker 1: do the mailbag episode for you.
• 2:20:50
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:20:50
  Speaker 1: I know those are always fun, but I, I, uh,
• 2:20:54
  Speaker 1: I think spacing it out so that we're always in
• 2:20:57
  Speaker 1: a constant conversation. And I, I, what I love about
• 2:20:59
  Speaker 1: the questions, you allow me to touch some races that
• 2:21:01
  Speaker 1: sometimes I wish, um, I wish I'd touched it sooner,
• 2:21:06
  Speaker 1: but you guys are smart enough to bring it up
• 2:21:09
  Speaker 1: in questions. And so that I appreciate. So with that,
• 2:21:13
  Speaker 1: I'll see you in 24 hours. Thanks for listening until
• 2:21:15
  Speaker 1: we upload again.