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Is the “Red Wall” Crumbling? · Political Junkie Podcast

0:00
SPEAKER_02: Harvest is usually the best time of the year.
0:03
SPEAKER_02: It's literally the fruits of your labor.
0:04
SPEAKER_02: This is the time where we as farmers get to celebrate all of our hard work and
0:08
SPEAKER_02: that we get paid for our year's worth of work.
0:11
SPEAKER_02: And unfortunately,
0:12
SPEAKER_02: this one has a real bitter taste to it because the money is being spent right now
0:16
SPEAKER_02: in Argentina and being given to billionaires.
0:19
SPEAKER_02: Farming is hard enough as it is dealing with Mother Nature,
0:23
SPEAKER_02: but this year especially is very challenging because of the tariffs
0:26
SPEAKER_02: that have been put upon us.
0:27
SPEAKER_02: Our cost of production has increased and our markets have dropped dramatically.
0:32
SPEAKER_02: And this is really putting a major strain on all farmers right
0:34
[music]
1:00
SPEAKER_00: this episode with an excerpt from a video where Illinois grain
1:04
SPEAKER_00: and soybean farmer John Bartman and his mother explain the effects
1:08
SPEAKER_00: of Trump's policies on the agricultural sector.
1:12
SPEAKER_00: Here's a hint, nothing good.
1:13
SPEAKER_00: There was also a big article in the Washington Post this morning
1:19
SPEAKER_00: about how Trump is losing ranchers in the Mountain West,
1:23
SPEAKER_00: which is really a big deal because that is just ruby red forever.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: This is the is the red wall crumbling issue of the Political Junkie Substack.
1:33
SPEAKER_00: I'm Claire Potter.
1:34
SPEAKER_01: I'm Neil Young.
1:37
SPEAKER_00: And Neil, happy Halloween.
1:39
SPEAKER_00: Well, I was thinking of going as a lesbian, but I can't quite get the outfit together.
1:45
SPEAKER_01: Do you have a costume for that?
1:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm not sure.
1:48
SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't really like to dress up for Halloween anymore.
1:52
SPEAKER_00: I stopped really liking it in college.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: And I realized that the only reason I liked dressing up for Halloween when I was
1:58
SPEAKER_00: a kid is it was the one time of year when it was completely acceptable and endorsed
2:04
SPEAKER_00: to dress like a boy.
2:05
SPEAKER_01: Hmm.
2:06
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
2:07
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
2:08
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure there are plenty of,
2:09
SPEAKER_00: you know,
2:10
SPEAKER_00: little gay men who feel that way too about being able to be a ballerina or
2:14
SPEAKER_00: a princess once a year.
2:16
SPEAKER_00: Are you dressing up?
2:18
SPEAKER_00: Will you have people come into your house?
2:19
SPEAKER_01: No, I hate Halloween.
2:21
SPEAKER_01: I really, I'm not a costume person.
2:23
SPEAKER_01: I, yeah, sorry to be Bahang Bug, but no.
2:26
SPEAKER_01: And we have no kids that come to our door here in West Hollywood.
2:29
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's not a lot of children in West Hollywood to begin with,
2:32
SPEAKER_01: but we've literally never had one person ring our doorbell.
2:35
SPEAKER_01: So I'll I'll be upstairs watching TV in my bedroom with the door closed just
2:41
SPEAKER_01: in case there is an errant doorbell.
2:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I used to hide, actually.
2:47
SPEAKER_00: When we were living in Middletown,
2:49
SPEAKER_00: Connecticut, that was nice because it was usually my colleague.
2:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
3:17
SPEAKER_00: So I never, I never resolved that.
3:19
SPEAKER_00: And eventually we left New Haven and it was all over.
3:32
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so it's a very, very scary Halloween for Republicans, Neil.
3:38
SPEAKER_00: And it should be a very scary Halloween for Donald Trump because despite the fact
3:43
SPEAKER_00: that his Department of Justice is routinely unsuccessful in its lawsuits,
3:49
SPEAKER_00: it continues to flood the courts with cases intended to harass Democrats
3:54
SPEAKER_00: and wreak revenge on President Donald Trump's enemies.
3:57
SPEAKER_00: What was the big case this week, Neil?
3:59
SPEAKER_01: Well, so this week, prosecutors filed charges against former FBI Director James Comey.
4:05
SPEAKER_01: We don't know what those charges are because it's a sealed indictment.
4:09
SPEAKER_01: But sort of relatedly, I mean,
4:11
SPEAKER_01: to the Comey of it all,
4:13
SPEAKER_01: one day earlier,
4:13
SPEAKER_01: a federal court had ordered that his daughter,
4:17
SPEAKER_01: that she be restored to her post with back pay.
4:20
SPEAKER_01: She was fired, you know, really with no explanation almost a year ago.
4:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and this is the third indictment for James Comey.
4:29
SPEAKER_00: You know what would be really fun is to show up at the White House dressed
4:32
SPEAKER_00: as James Comey and hold out your bucket and,
4:35
SPEAKER_00: like, get a sealed indictment from whoever's at the door.
4:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and, you know, a couple things are notable here.
4:42
SPEAKER_00: One is I saw a picture of Maureen Comey and James Comey together,
4:46
SPEAKER_00: and they look almost exactly alike.
4:48
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is like a family for whom, like, the family business is justice, right?
4:55
SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
5:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it's obvious what all of it was.
5:21
SPEAKER_01: It's about what most of these lawsuits are about.
5:25
SPEAKER_01: Not a credible legal claim, but harassment and punishment for Trump's bruised ego.
5:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
5:35
SPEAKER_00: Well, and in even better news, a grand jury refused to indict Cassidy Hutchinson this week.
5:41
SPEAKER_00: Remind our listeners who Cassidy Hutchinson is.
5:44
SPEAKER_01: Right.
5:44
SPEAKER_01: She was a former Trump aide.
5:46
SPEAKER_01: If I remember correctly, she was the assistant to the chief of staff, Mark Meadows, right?
5:50
SPEAKER_00: Correct.
5:51
SPEAKER_01: And the grand jury refused to indict her for,
5:54
SPEAKER_01: you know, charges that she had lied to Congress in her testimony about January 6th.
6:00
SPEAKER_00: Right.
6:01
SPEAKER_00: And you know,
6:01
SPEAKER_00: what was interesting about Cassidy Hutchinson,
6:03
SPEAKER_00: and I remember watching her testimony,
6:05
SPEAKER_00: is it doesn't seem like she was ever an ideologue to begin with,
6:09
SPEAKER_00: whereas Mark Meadows really was.
6:11
SPEAKER_00: And she sort of described herself watching January 6th play out.
6:18
SPEAKER_00: And Mark Meadows just sort of being lost on his phone, scrolling Twitter and so on.
6:24
SPEAKER_00: And it's an interesting charge because it really speaks to the whole question
6:31
SPEAKER_00: of whatever the Trump administration says is supposed to be true, right?
6:35
SPEAKER_01: Totally.
6:36
SPEAKER_01: And you know,
6:36
SPEAKER_01: it's interesting you say that because in the New York Times article about this,
6:40
SPEAKER_01: they described her as a former Trump loyalist, which,
6:43
SPEAKER_01: you know,
6:44
SPEAKER_01: I don't know,
6:45
SPEAKER_01: maybe that was a true characterization of her at some point in her,
6:49
SPEAKER_01: you know, working for the White House.
6:51
SPEAKER_01: But I think her appearing before Congress and her testimony,
6:54
SPEAKER_01: if she ever had been a loyalist,
6:56
SPEAKER_01: what that testimony proved was more than that,
6:59
SPEAKER_01: that she was a person that had a set of principles.
7:02
SPEAKER_01: And I imagine that her politics were such that she felt aligned with Trump generally
7:08
SPEAKER_01: as a Republican president.
7:10
SPEAKER_01: But if she was a loyalist,
7:12
SPEAKER_01: then again,
7:13
SPEAKER_01: her loyalties were secondary to some sense of principle and And I would say even
7:19
SPEAKER_01: a set of politics that found themselves in contradiction with the sort of things
7:24
SPEAKER_01: that were happening inside that White House.
7:25
SPEAKER_01: So I think so many of us watched that testimony with such respect and awe for
7:31
SPEAKER_01: a very young woman facing incredible pressure to not do that
7:35
SPEAKER_01: and obviously has paid huge prices since then for this.
7:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
7:40
SPEAKER_00: No, I very much admired her too.
7:42
SPEAKER_00: And it's probably worth pointing out that a variety of people fled the
7:48
SPEAKER_00: The Trump administration following January 6th,
7:50
SPEAKER_00: people like Betsy DeVos, people like Bill Barr, right?
7:55
SPEAKER_00: He resigned like right after January 6th.
7:58
SPEAKER_00: So there were people who were actually trying to hold the thing together.
8:03
SPEAKER_00: He ignored all of them and he did what he wanted.
8:06
SPEAKER_00: But the person who actually got up and testified about it was a woman in her mid-20s
8:11
SPEAKER_00: who, as you're pointing out, has probably had her political influence.
8:15
SPEAKER_00: I think it's also worth pointing out that being loyal in
8:20
SPEAKER_00: the Trump administration means you have to do and say everything we tell you to do
8:25
SPEAKER_00: and say,
8:26
SPEAKER_00: which is only worth underlining because the great charge from the right against
8:31
SPEAKER_00: the left is always like you're all ideologues,
8:34
SPEAKER_00: you all believe the same things, you all move in lockstep.
8:38
SPEAKER_00: But that's the demand from the Trump administration and one can be loyal and still
8:43
SPEAKER_00: in fact have principles as you're saying.
8:45
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
8:46
SPEAKER_01: And I think that this is one of the most corrupting elements
8:50
SPEAKER_01: of our moment is how conversations about loyalty to Trump have You know,
8:57
SPEAKER_01: reshaped an entire political party and transformed, you know, American politics.
9:02
SPEAKER_01: But I think back to the point you're making about sort of the charges against Democrats.
9:06
SPEAKER_01: First of all, that's just not true.
9:08
SPEAKER_01: It's not an accurate characterization of an enormous political party that,
9:12
SPEAKER_01: you know,
9:13
SPEAKER_01: contains all sorts of different constituencies and,
9:17
SPEAKER_01: you know, people with very different priorities.
9:19
SPEAKER_01: But even if it were a loyalty to a set of,
9:23
SPEAKER_01: you know,
9:24
SPEAKER_01: Positions is different than a blind loyalty to a person,
9:28
SPEAKER_01: a fallible person who, you know, whoever they are.
9:31
SPEAKER_01: So I think it's not even a,
9:32
SPEAKER_01: it's a sort of apples and orange comparison,
9:34
SPEAKER_01: even if it were accurate, but of course it's not.
9:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
9:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
9:38
SPEAKER_00: And a person we might also add who is showing increasingly terrible judgment.
9:42
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
9:43
SPEAKER_00: Let's go to the second item on our news summary for this week.
9:46
SPEAKER_00: Which also has to do with the Justice Department.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: After the New York Times reported
9:51
SPEAKER_00: that Democrat Mary Peltola's Alaska Senate campaign engaged in ballot stacking,
9:58
SPEAKER_00: the Justice Department has sought a variety of ways of going after the campaign
10:04
SPEAKER_00: and bringing this perfidy to light.
10:06
SPEAKER_00: First of all, Neil, tell us what ballot stacking is and why it is unethical but not illegal.
10:15
SPEAKER_01: Well, in the case of what's happening in Alaska,
10:17
SPEAKER_01: I think the example can help illuminate what it means.
10:20
SPEAKER_01: So the campaign,
10:23
SPEAKER_01: Piltola's campaign,
10:24
SPEAKER_01: recruited a man by the name of Dan J.
10:27
SPEAKER_01: Sullivan to run against the Republican campaign.
10:30
SPEAKER_01: Incumbent Dan S. Sullivan, right?
10:50
SPEAKER_01: I don't think it really has to be spelled out why that's unethical,
10:54
SPEAKER_01: but I think what's really interesting is that it's not illegal,
10:57
SPEAKER_01: which I think if you think about it,
10:59
SPEAKER_01: not necessarily that surprising,
11:01
SPEAKER_01: because how can you prove,
11:02
SPEAKER_01: you know, I mean, like,
11:04
SPEAKER_01: if you go through the right procedures to get your name on the ballot, then,
11:09
SPEAKER_01: and you happen to have the same name as someone else,
11:11
SPEAKER_01: they can't make that illegal, that, like,
11:13
SPEAKER_01: two Claire Potters can't run at any given time, but it's I don't like this at all.
11:20
SPEAKER_01: What I think is really bad about this story in Alaska is
11:23
SPEAKER_01: that her campaign denied any involvement in this,
11:28
SPEAKER_01: and then it came out through this New York Times investigation that,
11:31
SPEAKER_01: in fact, they were behind it.
11:33
SPEAKER_01: So that lying and that dishonesty,
11:37
SPEAKER_01: I think,
11:37
SPEAKER_01: doesn't look good,
11:39
SPEAKER_01: even if a lot of voters say, well, this is just sort of standard politics.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: You know, as they said during water grade, it's not the crime, it's the cover-up.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:49
SPEAKER_00: And the cover-up has been a kind of drip, drip, drip.
11:52
SPEAKER_00: Mary Patola is now saying,
11:54
SPEAKER_00: well, people associated with the campaign did this, but I didn't know about it.
11:59
SPEAKER_00: And honestly, I don't think anybody believes that.
12:02
SPEAKER_01: No.
12:02
SPEAKER_00: I don't believe it.
12:03
SPEAKER_01: Well, the New York Times reported that she wasn't behind.
12:07
SPEAKER_01: She wasn't the one that came up with this idea and she wasn't the one
12:10
SPEAKER_01: that carried it out, but that she was well aware it was happening all along.
12:15
SPEAKER_00: Right.
12:15
SPEAKER_00: Richard Nixon didn't break into the Watergate either.
12:17
SPEAKER_00: And yet there has been one sort of attitude toward this.
12:22
SPEAKER_00: Well, first of all.
12:24
SPEAKER_00: Donald Trump began by saying that the attorney general should file
12:28
SPEAKER_00: a lawsuit delaying certification.
12:30
SPEAKER_00: That ran into a legal stumbling block because
12:33
SPEAKER_00: the Alaska Supreme Court had already been asked whether Dan Jay should be taken off
12:41
SPEAKER_00: the ballot.
12:41
SPEAKER_00: And the Supreme Court said no,
12:43
SPEAKER_00: but the ballot had to distinguish very,
12:45
SPEAKER_00: very clearly that Dan S. was a Republican and that Dan S. was the incumbent.
12:50
SPEAKER_00: So unless you are illiterate,
12:53
SPEAKER_00: It would be hard to not know you were voting for Dan S or Dan J,
13:00
SPEAKER_00: or unless you were moving so fast that you didn't actually read your ballot.
13:03
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't make it right.
13:06
SPEAKER_00: Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy, also Republican, is ordering an investigation.
13:11
SPEAKER_00: And I think one important thing to point out here is this is not a federal issue.
13:18
SPEAKER_00: It's a state issue, correct?
13:20
SPEAKER_00: Right.
13:20
SPEAKER_01: Yes, exactly.
13:21
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, so the governor has, as you said, ordered an investigation.
13:25
SPEAKER_01: But one thing that I saw on Twitter yesterday was that there's going
13:30
SPEAKER_01: to be potentially a new governor.
13:33
SPEAKER_01: And so the governor,
13:34
SPEAKER_01: there's something about like,
13:35
SPEAKER_01: if this gets tied up, it actually won't be resolved by this governor.
13:39
SPEAKER_01: And so that could like, you know, make this even more complicated.
13:44
SPEAKER_01: The bigger point I'll make here is I don't understand the strategies
13:47
SPEAKER_01: that are being chosen,
13:48
SPEAKER_01: whether it's the governor getting involved or Donald Trump trying to get
13:52
SPEAKER_01: the attorney general involved.
13:54
SPEAKER_01: The legal, as we've said, this is not illegal.
13:56
SPEAKER_01: And while it's very unethical, why not Just blanket the airwaves with ads.
14:01
SPEAKER_01: This is a really close
14:14
SPEAKER_01: So I don't understand this.
14:15
SPEAKER_01: Let's go through the courts when we know that this is not illegal to begin with.
14:39
SPEAKER_00: Well, and clearly they've known about this for a while.
14:42
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the New York Times may have discovered it recently,
14:44
SPEAKER_00: but this is what we call an October surprise.
14:47
SPEAKER_00: And much like the sex workers,
14:49
SPEAKER_00: you know,
14:50
SPEAKER_00: going on record to say that Lindsey Graham paid them for evenings of pleasure,
14:57
SPEAKER_00: this is sort of a feeble October surprise.
15:00
SPEAKER_00: I mean, what you expect from an October surprise is like her emails.
15:05
SPEAKER_00: You don't expect something that actually People do all the time.
15:10
SPEAKER_00: And when I say they do it all the time, I'm not saying that it's right.
15:14
SPEAKER_00: But for example,
15:15
SPEAKER_00: you know,
15:15
SPEAKER_00: the Democratic Party and the Republican Party have both pumped money into campaigns
15:21
SPEAKER_00: to try and push a more extreme candidate in the primary for the other party,
15:26
SPEAKER_00: one that will be easier to beat.
15:28
SPEAKER_00: I've also seen a lot of that on social media,
15:30
SPEAKER_00: social media figures pushing people that they think will be easier to beat as
15:35
SPEAKER_00: the right alternative.
15:37
SPEAKER_00: So there's a number of Dirty tricks that live in this kind of gray area.
15:44
SPEAKER_00: I would also wish that Democrats had come out and said,
15:50
SPEAKER_00: you know, yes, this does happen all the time, but it doesn't mean it's right.
15:54
SPEAKER_00: And in the next Congress, we need to look at real election reform.
15:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, that would be a good response to this, I think.
16:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but haven't heard it.
16:04
SPEAKER_00: So anyway.
16:05
SPEAKER_00: All right.
16:05
SPEAKER_00: So let's move on to another campaign, one we've been following for months now, Neil.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: New York Times reporter Lauren McGowey has finally pulled back the curtain
16:16
SPEAKER_00: on what seems to be a complete collapse
16:19
SPEAKER_00: of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's campaign,
16:23
SPEAKER_00: who is now, of course, in a tight Senate race with James Tallarico.
16:26
SPEAKER_00: So What is the new information that has come out via the New York Times?
16:33
SPEAKER_01: Well, he's been in this relationship with a woman named Tracy Duhon.
16:37
SPEAKER_01: Tracy Duhon is a Christian influencer from New Orleans.
16:40
SPEAKER_01: Apparently,
16:41
SPEAKER_01: she's also a registered Democrat in the state of Louisiana,
16:44
SPEAKER_01: which is not all that surprising in Louisiana.
16:48
SPEAKER_01: But back to Duhan and Paxton,
16:51
SPEAKER_01: the Paxton campaign has successfully kept her name out of the news.
16:55
SPEAKER_01: And I think they've had a lot to keep out of the news when it comes to Paxton
16:58
SPEAKER_01: and his canoodlings.
17:00
SPEAKER_01: But there's been lots of video footage that's captured these two traveling
17:07
SPEAKER_01: and clearly being in a relationship.
17:10
SPEAKER_01: The couple appear to be living together.
17:11
SPEAKER_01: They own a home in a North Dallas suburb.
17:15
SPEAKER_01: She has lots of kids with her former husband,
17:18
SPEAKER_01: Troy Duhan, who is this billionaire automotive dealer in Louisiana.
17:23
SPEAKER_01: He's also really involved in Christian moviemaking.
17:26
SPEAKER_01: They run a charitable nonprofit together.
17:28
SPEAKER_01: She's like a speaker, an author, a sort of Christian social media influencer.
17:34
SPEAKER_01: None of this matters, right, Claire?
17:35
SPEAKER_01: No.
17:36
SPEAKER_00: No, no.
17:37
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the only thing I would say,
17:39
SPEAKER_00: and I wonder if this is going to have any effect on Republican voters,
17:43
SPEAKER_00: is this big mystery.
17:44
SPEAKER_00: You know, for months, I have thought that Ken Paxton was seeing multiple women.
17:49
SPEAKER_00: It now turns out that he's just been seeing one.
17:53
SPEAKER_00: And the McGoughy piece has this great moment where he goes to a fundraiser,
17:57
SPEAKER_00: I think in North Carolina or something like that.
17:59
SPEAKER_00: And that's where he meets her.
18:01
SPEAKER_00: And two weeks later,
18:02
SPEAKER_00: He is on a jet plane out of his marriage and totally infatuated with her,
18:08
SPEAKER_00: which for me has the sort of bizarre effect of humanizing him a little bit.
18:15
SPEAKER_00: I don't think we approve of people cheating on their wives,
18:19
SPEAKER_00: particularly when they are Christians who have made a particularly strong vow not
18:25
SPEAKER_00: to do that.
18:26
SPEAKER_00: But it did kind of humanize him a little bit that they do seem to be in love.
18:33
SPEAKER_00: Right?
18:34
SPEAKER_01: Good for them.
18:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I know.
18:36
SPEAKER_00: He's a horrible person.
18:38
SPEAKER_01: He should not be a senator.
18:39
SPEAKER_01: He has lots of corruption charges against him.
18:43
SPEAKER_01: He's running a terrible campaign and has a terrible set of policies.
18:48
SPEAKER_01: Obviously, this is one of the biggest races and it's super tight.
18:52
SPEAKER_01: Tallarico is ahead in the polling.
18:55
SPEAKER_01: I still am not that convinced he's going to pull it off, but we shall see.
19:00
SPEAKER_00: I think it could be one of the races that ends up being litigated.
19:04
SPEAKER_00: I think it's going to be very, very, very tight.
19:07
SPEAKER_00: What we are seeing is in the polling is that two constituencies for very,
19:12
SPEAKER_00: very different reasons are migrating from Trump to the Democratic Party,
19:18
SPEAKER_00: at least in this instance.
19:19
SPEAKER_00: One constituency is Latinos.
19:22
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of evidence in the San Antonio area,
19:25
SPEAKER_00: well beyond San Antonio, which is traditionally Democratic.
19:29
SPEAKER_00: But also,
19:30
SPEAKER_00: as it turns out,
19:31
SPEAKER_00: suburban white women are really,
19:33
SPEAKER_00: really angry about what has happened to their reproductive rights.
19:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
19:48
SPEAKER_01: Well, I think Texas is going to be, I mean, the exit polls are going to be fascinating.
19:53
SPEAKER_01: The whole race is going to be really, really interesting once we have the numbers around it.
19:56
SPEAKER_01: And I think your point about litigation on it is very likely
20:00
SPEAKER_01: because Republicans don't want to lose this state for all
20:02
SPEAKER_01: the symbolic reasons we talked about, I think, last week.
20:05
SPEAKER_01: And I can imagine this would be a place they decide to continue to put money into
20:09
SPEAKER_01: if they think there's some sort of legal case they can pursue.
20:13
SPEAKER_00: Well, and we're going to be talking about the much bigger picture in a minute,
20:15
SPEAKER_00: but I also think we haven't spent that much time on the Gina Hinojoso campaign.
20:21
SPEAKER_00: And I think that is very tied to Tallarico too,
20:23
SPEAKER_00: because she is really crawling up Greg Abbott's back.
20:26
SPEAKER_00: Tallarico seems to be ahead.
20:28
SPEAKER_00: So unless we see a lot of ticket splitting in Texas,
20:32
SPEAKER_00: we could see two very important offices falling to Democrats for the first time
20:38
SPEAKER_00: since the 1990s, which is huge.
20:41
SPEAKER_01: I think voters are going to split their tickets in Texas in a way
20:45
SPEAKER_01: that will probably benefit,
20:47
SPEAKER_01: can benefit Tallarica,
20:49
SPEAKER_01: but I don't think that, you know, so we'll pull it off, but we shall see.
20:53
SPEAKER_00: Now, can I ask you a snarky question about Troy Duhan?
20:57
SPEAKER_00: Did it occur to you,
20:59
SPEAKER_00: and I'm not saying that this is true,
21:01
SPEAKER_00: I'm not making an allegation, but did it occur to you that Troy Duhan might be gay?
21:06
SPEAKER_01: Well, it didn't occur to me.
21:10
SPEAKER_01: But now that you mention it,
21:12
SPEAKER_01: I mean, they do have a lot of kids, although I think many of them were adopted.
21:17
SPEAKER_01: Apparently,
21:18
SPEAKER_01: her charge was that he actually,
21:20
SPEAKER_01: when she divorced him,
21:22
SPEAKER_01: she alleged that it was because he was unfaithful, which he is denied.
21:26
SPEAKER_01: And of course, she was the one that was immediately in another relationship.
21:30
SPEAKER_01: So, but you know what?
21:32
SPEAKER_01: Only the best folks, Claire, only the best folks.
21:35
SPEAKER_00: Only the best.
21:36
SPEAKER_00: You know,
21:36
SPEAKER_00: the reason why I thought he might be is that they continue to work together
21:41
SPEAKER_00: on this big charity.
21:42
SPEAKER_00: And McGauhy,
21:44
SPEAKER_00: the New York Times reporter,
21:45
SPEAKER_00: made a big deal of how friendly they are and how they continue
21:49
SPEAKER_00: to do business together.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: And it just, okay, people can split up and it doesn't have to be bitter.
21:56
SPEAKER_00: But it made me think maybe there was some larger resolution here that was being served.
22:02
SPEAKER_01: All right,
22:02
SPEAKER_01: let's just put a pin in that and,
22:04
SPEAKER_01: you know, keep
22:05
SPEAKER_00: our eye on the National Enquirer and see what we find out.
22:07
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so finally,
22:08
SPEAKER_00: we have a sad note this week,
22:10
SPEAKER_00: which is the death of civil rights organizer Dolores Huerta at 96.
22:16
SPEAKER_00: Neil, we did a portion of an episode earlier this year about Huerta,
22:22
SPEAKER_00: but can you remind our listeners who might not have been with us who she was
22:26
SPEAKER_00: and why she is currently regarded as such a courageous person?
22:30
SPEAKER_01: Well, you know,
22:31
SPEAKER_01: she founded the United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez and,
22:35
SPEAKER_01: you know,
22:36
SPEAKER_01: built this platform that boosted Latino politicians and,
22:40
SPEAKER_01: you know, and voters really mobilizing them into a powerful community.
22:44
SPEAKER_01: A powerful political force across the United States.
22:47
SPEAKER_01: But I think,
22:47
SPEAKER_01: you know,
22:48
SPEAKER_01: as we talked about her more recently,
22:50
SPEAKER_01: because this was what,
22:50
SPEAKER_01: in the last year,
22:51
SPEAKER_01: I would say,
22:52
SPEAKER_01: she exposed what had really been,
22:55
SPEAKER_01: you know,
22:55
SPEAKER_01: a sort of cult-like atmosphere around Chavez and,
22:58
SPEAKER_01: but particularly his penchant for sexual violence and exploitation of which she was
23:04
SPEAKER_01: a victim of and had been victimized really for a really long time.
23:07
SPEAKER_01: And I think that was really a shocking,
23:11
SPEAKER_01: Development, a shocking news item for so many folks who revere Cesar Chavez.
23:17
SPEAKER_01: But I think people really rallied around Huerta and her bravery in exposing this
23:23
SPEAKER_01: and certainly in the ways that,
23:25
SPEAKER_01: you know,
23:25
SPEAKER_01: complicated how folks think about this bigger history of the United Farm Workers
23:29
SPEAKER_01: and Chavez's political legacy.
23:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and you know,
23:34
SPEAKER_00: it also speaks to,
23:35
SPEAKER_00: and it'd be interesting to talk to somebody who does the history of civil rights
23:39
SPEAKER_00: about this,
23:40
SPEAKER_00: what seemed to be the sort of routine silence about the sexuality
23:47
SPEAKER_00: of often very important figures in the movement.
23:50
SPEAKER_00: And I'm thinking of The ways in which we know now
23:53
SPEAKER_00: that Martin Luther King was routinely unfaithful to his wife,
23:58
SPEAKER_00: Coretta Scott King,
23:59
SPEAKER_00: who stood by him until the very,
24:02
SPEAKER_00: very end,
24:03
SPEAKER_00: really refused to allow her own commitment to the Black freedom struggle
24:07
SPEAKER_00: to be diluted by this.
24:10
SPEAKER_00: Nevertheless, you know, I often wondered in King's case, to what extent the kind of
24:19
SPEAKER_00: There's a kind of impunity connected with that male magnetism.
24:24
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
24:24
SPEAKER_00: I don't even know how to talk about it, but this isn't uncommon on the left.
24:29
SPEAKER_00: It's part of what radical feminists who had worked in civil rights movements,
24:35
SPEAKER_00: including the UFW, talked about when they became feminists.
24:38
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
24:38
SPEAKER_00: What are your thoughts, Neil?
24:41
SPEAKER_01: I think the question
24:44
SPEAKER_01: It has to be brought into an assessment of these men and their legacies
24:52
SPEAKER_01: and what it means to advocate for a set of ideals that may not be completely matched
24:58
SPEAKER_01: by the person's own character and their life.
25:01
SPEAKER_01: I also think that beyond these sort of
25:05
SPEAKER_01: These big names, right?
25:07
SPEAKER_01: These sort of great men of these movements to use sort of an old idea of how history works.
25:12
SPEAKER_01: You know,
25:12
SPEAKER_01: there've been historians who have written more broadly about sexual violence
25:16
SPEAKER_01: within political movements,
25:18
SPEAKER_01: whether it's in the Mississippi Summer Freedom Project or other elements of
25:21
SPEAKER_01: the Civil Rights Movement or, you know, other...
25:25
SPEAKER_01: Other movement-based politics where women have been victimized over and over again,
25:30
SPEAKER_01: sexually exploited,
25:31
SPEAKER_01: sexually victimized,
25:33
SPEAKER_01: or in other ways,
25:34
SPEAKER_01: just sort of demeaned and demoted by the patriarchy
25:41
SPEAKER_01: in all its forms.
25:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'd love to see a feminist historian go to work on this.
25:46
SPEAKER_00: I don't care whether it's a man or a woman,
25:48
SPEAKER_00: but somebody whose work is fully informed by feminism to sort of tease apart Yes.
26:15
SPEAKER_00: And of course,
26:16
SPEAKER_00: Rustin was a brilliant organizer,
26:16
SPEAKER_00: organized the whole march on Washington and really got very little credit for it.
26:33
SPEAKER_00: So it's interesting.
26:34
SPEAKER_00: I think the question of sexuality and civil rights is something we have not yet fully plumbed.
26:41
SPEAKER_00: And I would love to see a young, ambitious historian take that on.
26:44
SPEAKER_00: So, Neil,
26:45
SPEAKER_00: let's get to what seems to be a full-on collapse of the Republican Party,
26:53
SPEAKER_00: one can only hope and pray.
26:55
SPEAKER_00: One does not wish to expect things that might not happen.
26:58
SPEAKER_00: One does not wish to find oneself weeping on the street as we were in 2016
27:03
SPEAKER_00: when Hillary Clinton went down.
27:05
SPEAKER_00: Nevertheless, the trend seems to be democratic.
27:09
SPEAKER_00: As of yesterday, the Cook Political Report has shifted.
27:12
SPEAKER_00: Twelve more House races toward the Democrats and is estimating
27:17
SPEAKER_00: that leader Hakeem Jeffries will end the night with a 12 to 25 seat majority.
27:24
SPEAKER_00: But it could be bigger than that.
27:26
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, there are so many races that have been moved from,
27:30
SPEAKER_00: you know, lean R to toss up and so on.
27:35
SPEAKER_00: So, Neil, we're kind of at the end of a 10-year period that begins in 2016.
27:42
SPEAKER_00: And I just want to say it's not like The Wizard of Oz where you get to throw
27:45
SPEAKER_00: a bucket of water on Donald Trump and he just melts.
27:48
SPEAKER_00: But what happened in 2016 as we look back at it?
27:53
SPEAKER_01: Well, a political map that really changed radically, right?
27:56
SPEAKER_01: So notably those traditionally democratic states of the Midwest,
28:01
SPEAKER_01: Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, all turning bright red.
28:04
SPEAKER_01: Also, you know,
28:05
SPEAKER_01: Florida,
28:06
SPEAKER_01: which was a state that, you know, one of only three states to vote for Obama twice.
28:11
SPEAKER_01: And then Pennsylvania also had been blue since like 1992.
28:15
SPEAKER_01: All of these went to the right.
28:18
SPEAKER_01: And in the 10 years since,
28:19
SPEAKER_01: Democrats have been chipping away at Those states,
28:23
SPEAKER_01: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, were critical to Biden winning in 2020.
28:29
SPEAKER_01: Those states also then flipped back to Trump in 2024,
28:33
SPEAKER_01: but they seem to be slipping away from the GOP again,
28:36
SPEAKER_01: especially rural Midwesterners are blaming the president's policies for
28:41
SPEAKER_01: the bad farm economy, I think especially in Michigan.
28:44
SPEAKER_01: Tariffs and this whole baloney of a trade war with Canada is not something
28:50
SPEAKER_01: that Michiganders Yeah.
28:53
SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
28:53
SPEAKER_01: just to tell listeners,
28:54
SPEAKER_01: you might want to go back and click on the link of the man we started with.
28:58
SPEAKER_01: We always start with like a 20 second, 30 second clip from something.
29:20
SPEAKER_00: But the man being interviewed about how
29:23
SPEAKER_00: the Trump administration's policies have affected him,
29:26
SPEAKER_00: part of what's very moving about that,
29:27
SPEAKER_00: and you'll see this when farmers are interviewed,
29:30
SPEAKER_00: are these like big, hefty men who sort of start to cry.
29:36
SPEAKER_00: Because their dream of successful farm ownership is crumbling.
29:42
SPEAKER_00: Now, the dream of farm ownership crumbling is probably a story as old as America itself, right?
29:50
SPEAKER_00: Independent farming has always been kind of fragile,
29:52
SPEAKER_00: but it was put on a more stable basis during the New Deal when the U.S.
29:58
SPEAKER_00: government began to Design programs to support farming on the theory
30:04
SPEAKER_00: that we needed food.
30:06
SPEAKER_00: What are the aspects of the Trump administration that have really dug
30:11
SPEAKER_00: into farmers' pockets, Neal?
30:14
SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, just everything is more expensive.
30:16
SPEAKER_01: I mean, inflation is difficult on everyone's pockets,
30:19
SPEAKER_01: but I think they've cut into farm support bills.
30:24
SPEAKER_01: The tariffs have been incredibly damaging to those who work in this space.
30:32
SPEAKER_01: I mean, also fuel prices.
30:34
SPEAKER_01: None of this is helping any American, again,
30:36
SPEAKER_01: but especially I think that this falls really heavily on those involved
30:40
SPEAKER_01: in large-scale agricultural production.
30:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it absolutely does.
30:46
SPEAKER_00: And I'd also like to say,
30:47
SPEAKER_00: listeners,
30:48
SPEAKER_00: that the Democratic Party does not have a good record of looking for rural votes.
30:54
SPEAKER_00: And this strikes me as a kind of change in strategy
30:58
SPEAKER_00: that they are seeing opportunities in rural America.
31:01
SPEAKER_00: We are running I say we because I'm a Democrat,
31:05
SPEAKER_00: but we are running different kinds of candidates to appeal to rural people,
31:11
SPEAKER_00: loggers, farmers, fishermen, and so on.
31:14
SPEAKER_00: And the other thing is, is you don't exactly have to win all those red counties in Illinois.
31:21
SPEAKER_00: To win a Senate seat, you have to cut back on the number of votes Republicans get.
31:29
SPEAKER_00: So if you can actually depress the Republican vote in many of these places,
31:34
SPEAKER_00: you have a better chance of winning.
31:36
SPEAKER_00: Now, let me also just say, Democrats just haven't had to work that hard, have they?
31:44
SPEAKER_01: No, I mean,
31:44
SPEAKER_01: I think that like in a lot of ways,
31:46
SPEAKER_01: this is an election where you don't have to necessarily have
31:51
SPEAKER_01: the flashiest candidates,
31:53
SPEAKER_01: the clearest political message,
31:55
SPEAKER_01: although I think in a lot of ways on the points that matter, they've been effective.
31:59
SPEAKER_01: But you can sort of sit back and let the Republican collapse do a lot of the work.
32:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
32:04
SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
32:05
SPEAKER_00: part of what I found interesting about that clip we started with is it demonstrates
32:10
SPEAKER_00: that farmers often have
32:14
SPEAKER_00: They're operating at a higher intellectual level than the American president
32:18
SPEAKER_00: because this man completely understands.
32:22
SPEAKER_00: And let me just say, a lot of farmers go to university, right?
32:26
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
32:26
SPEAKER_00: one of the chief functions of land grant universities in the Midwest and the West is
32:32
SPEAKER_00: to educate people.
32:34
SPEAKER_00: Who work in the agricultural industry, the oil industry, and so on and so forth.
32:38
SPEAKER_00: So these are people with good educations, far better, I suspect, than the president's education.
32:42
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, he pins it together very nicely.
32:45
SPEAKER_00: Tariffs, you know, you don't want fuel prices to go up.
32:50
SPEAKER_00: Don't start a feudal war with Iran that you have no idea how to get out of.
32:55
SPEAKER_00: You don't want interest rates to go up?
32:56
SPEAKER_00: Well, then don't drive up the national debt into the multi-trillions higher
33:01
SPEAKER_00: than it ever was before.
33:03
SPEAKER_00: So this man actually understands the economy.
33:05
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't need to have the economy explained to him,
33:08
SPEAKER_00: which I think is just an important thing that we need to file away
33:12
SPEAKER_00: for future elections.
33:15
SPEAKER_00: Speak to rural people,
33:17
SPEAKER_00: to farmers, to fishermen, to loggers, like the intelligent people that they are.
33:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean,
33:23
SPEAKER_01: they're seeing it in real time, too,
33:25
SPEAKER_01: and they feel the impact of it almost immediately in ways that maybe is faster
33:30
SPEAKER_01: than most Americans do.
33:33
SPEAKER_01: So I think they've been such interesting folks to hear from.
33:39
SPEAKER_01: They're a small part of the American electorate,
33:44
SPEAKER_01: but in a lot of places,
33:45
SPEAKER_01: they're a key demographic,
33:46
SPEAKER_01: and it'll be interesting to see How it shapes up in places that,
33:50
SPEAKER_01: like you said, historically have been really, really deep red.
33:54
SPEAKER_01: Even if they stay Republican,
33:56
SPEAKER_01: they're becoming a light red,
33:59
SPEAKER_01: I think should send,
34:01
SPEAKER_01: and the fact that they've made places that should be easy for Republicans to win,
34:06
SPEAKER_01: places that maybe are now looking more like a battleground and where the GOP has
34:10
SPEAKER_01: to spend money,
34:11
SPEAKER_01: all of it is really fumbling a ball that like,
34:15
SPEAKER_01: A Republican president shouldn't have fumbled,
34:18
SPEAKER_01: but he's making terrible policy decisions,
34:21
SPEAKER_01: terrible economic policies particularly,
34:24
SPEAKER_01: and these are the folks that are feeling it, especially.
34:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
34:28
SPEAKER_00: They're feeling it,
34:29
SPEAKER_00: and they're really,
34:30
SPEAKER_00: in the process of speaking out about it,
34:33
SPEAKER_00: are making the argument for good government better than anyone else could,
34:37
SPEAKER_00: better than a politician could, better than a newspaper person could.
34:40
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so PBS's final poll,
34:43
SPEAKER_00: and let me just say, listeners, that there are two things we know about polls.
34:47
SPEAKER_00: One is that the trend line going into the election has a tendency to intensify.
34:54
SPEAKER_00: So that,
34:54
SPEAKER_00: for example,
34:55
SPEAKER_00: in the 2024 election,
34:57
SPEAKER_00: as Kamala Harris's lead was being cut point by point by point going into
35:02
SPEAKER_00: the last two weeks of the campaign, The trend line was moving against her.
35:06
SPEAKER_00: OK, and so that tends to intensify.
35:09
SPEAKER_00: But it's also the case that in the days before the election,
35:12
SPEAKER_00: probably somewhere around 15 to 20 percent of the people who are going
35:16
SPEAKER_00: to vote have already voted.
35:18
SPEAKER_00: Have you voted yet, Neil?
35:19
SPEAKER_01: I have.
35:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, me too.
35:21
SPEAKER_00: OK, so.
35:23
SPEAKER_00: So they've already voted so that that part of the electorate is frozen.
35:26
SPEAKER_00: But pretty much people have made up their minds.
35:29
SPEAKER_00: There are very few people who go into a polling place saying,
35:33
SPEAKER_00: I just don't know what I'm going to do.
35:35
SPEAKER_00: Or if they do say that, you know, they will default to whatever it is that they've done before.
35:40
SPEAKER_00: However,
35:41
SPEAKER_00: PBS's final poll shows Democrats going into Election Day with
35:45
SPEAKER_00: an eight point lead nationally.
35:48
SPEAKER_00: 52% approval from independent voters, which is unthinkable in my view.
35:55
SPEAKER_00: And more GOP crossover voters than Democrats moving in the other direction.
36:01
SPEAKER_00: Also a good sign.
36:02
SPEAKER_00: Now, the Cook Political Report has been giving us some intriguing House numbers.
36:08
SPEAKER_00: What are those numbers that we're looking at?
36:11
SPEAKER_01: I mean, they're really all over the place.
36:13
SPEAKER_01: There's so many examples we could choose.
36:15
SPEAKER_01: You know, there's Nebraska 2, formerly held by Republican Don Bacon.
36:19
SPEAKER_01: That's moved into likely D. And then there's a bunch in the lean Democratic column.
36:25
SPEAKER_01: But of those, only four are Democrats and 12 are Republicans.
36:29
SPEAKER_01: So sort of that imbalanced.
36:31
SPEAKER_01: Of the category in which is being treated as likely Democrat.
36:35
SPEAKER_01: That particular likely Democratic includes two seats in Iowa,
36:39
SPEAKER_01: one in North Carolina, two in Pennsylvania, one in Wisconsin.
36:43
SPEAKER_01: What else?
36:45
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'd like to take us back to Nebraska just for a second,
36:48
SPEAKER_00: because I was reading a piece in the New York Times this morning
36:51
SPEAKER_00: that said basically nobody really believes that Don Bacon is an independent.
36:55
SPEAKER_00: They really think he's a Democrat.
36:57
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not altogether sure that that's true,
37:00
SPEAKER_00: but it does point to the question of what does it actually mean to be an independent
37:05
SPEAKER_00: in this country?
37:06
SPEAKER_00: And what it may mean if you're a voter is that you're interested in politics and But
37:13
SPEAKER_00: that you don't see either political party serving you.
37:16
SPEAKER_00: And so Don Bacon running as an independent,
37:19
SPEAKER_00: and in fact,
37:19
SPEAKER_00: the Democratic Party in Nebraska is supporting Don Bacon,
37:23
SPEAKER_00: thus probably leading in part to the perception that he's really a Democrat,
37:28
SPEAKER_00: does point to something else,
37:30
SPEAKER_00: which is the independents in the Senate are generally Democrats.
37:36
SPEAKER_00: They're not Republicans, right?
37:38
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
37:39
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
37:40
SPEAKER_01: there's a difference between sort of political politicians who are independents
37:43
SPEAKER_01: and voters who are, right?
37:45
SPEAKER_00: Right.
37:46
SPEAKER_01: But I think actually a commonality is that the independent label is really a cover
37:53
SPEAKER_01: for what we know from a ton of political science data is actually...
37:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and so I think that's right.
38:01
SPEAKER_01: I also think
38:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
38:45
SPEAKER_00: We will brush our teeth and go to work on the presidential.
38:48
SPEAKER_00: You know, that is how it will work.
38:50
SPEAKER_00: I think Americans are just exhausted by politics.
38:53
SPEAKER_00: I think they resent it.
38:54
SPEAKER_00: I think they resent the number of toxic flyers and ads that are coming in.
39:00
SPEAKER_00: I mean, people all over are talking about that, including here in Massachusetts.
39:04
SPEAKER_00: We got a card.
39:06
SPEAKER_00: Blasting Maura Healey, who is our governor, who is actually going to win the governor's race.
39:11
SPEAKER_00: But the Republicans are blasting her for refusing to debate a socialist.
39:18
SPEAKER_00: Like they care.
39:20
SPEAKER_00: Right.
39:20
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, so so there's just like all this stuff swirling around.
39:25
SPEAKER_00: But to to point back to our theme today.
39:28
SPEAKER_00: The.
39:31
SPEAKER_00: Toss-up category is so unbalanced in favor of Democrats,
39:35
SPEAKER_00: five Democratic seats to 12 Republican seats.
39:39
SPEAKER_00: And of those 12 Republican seats,
39:42
SPEAKER_00: eight of them are coming out of the red wall states that used to be blue wall states
39:47
SPEAKER_00: and became red wall states.
39:48
SPEAKER_00: So there is this sense that really the GOP can't stop the leaking.
39:56
SPEAKER_00: It's like the Titanic or something.
39:58
SPEAKER_00: These were waterproofed.
40:01
SPEAKER_00: Holds that should have kept everything upright and they're all just ripping open at once.
40:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
40:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
40:09
SPEAKER_00: So we know that the Democrats will win the House.
40:14
SPEAKER_00: We don't know by how much,
40:15
SPEAKER_00: but we will probably find out pretty quickly,
40:19
SPEAKER_00: barring California, Neil, which will take like two weeks to let us know.
40:23
SPEAKER_00: But it will be the race for Senate that really tells the story of Tuesday night and
40:28
SPEAKER_00: which way the wind is blowing for 2028.
40:31
SPEAKER_00: Why?
40:34
SPEAKER_01: Well, you know,
40:35
SPEAKER_01: it's like the question is,
40:36
SPEAKER_01: can Democrats hold the seats they have and can they pick up four more?
40:40
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot that's, I think, not really clear in the Senate races.
40:45
SPEAKER_01: Maybe there it is in the House,
40:47
SPEAKER_01: but there are some places that we sort of know the answer already, right?
40:51
SPEAKER_01: So like North Carolina Democratic Governor Roy Cooper, he seems to have things sewn up there.
40:57
SPEAKER_01: He has a nine-point lead.
40:59
SPEAKER_01: But there's kind of a big toss-up category for the Senate, right?
41:03
SPEAKER_00: Okay, what are some of those seats?
41:06
SPEAKER_01: So there's seven races that are really seen as a toss-up for the Senate,
41:11
SPEAKER_01: only one of which is a seat that Democrats are defending.
41:14
SPEAKER_01: Most of these are in red wall states.
41:16
SPEAKER_01: So Ohio, Texas, Maine, Kansas, Iowa, and Alaska.
41:23
SPEAKER_01: Hmm.
41:23
SPEAKER_01: Cook has moved the Senate race in South Carolina from likely Republican to lean Republican.
41:30
SPEAKER_01: You know, Annie Andrews continues to close in on Darlene Graham.
41:34
SPEAKER_01: The New York Times even listed this race as a toss-up.
41:38
SPEAKER_01: I think South, I mean,
41:39
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what you think about South Carolina,
41:41
SPEAKER_01: Claire, but I don't think it's going to be as close as things are showing now.
41:46
SPEAKER_01: But I think all these other ones are going to be super tight and Democrats could do well.
41:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they could.
41:52
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think Darlene Graham is a truly terrible candidate.
41:57
SPEAKER_01: Completely.
41:58
SPEAKER_01: Totally unqualified to be a senator.
42:00
SPEAKER_00: Totally unqualified.
42:01
SPEAKER_00: And also, she undoubtedly has her good points.
42:05
SPEAKER_00: I mean, she spent her entire career working on behalf of the blind.
42:09
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
42:10
SPEAKER_00: I will...
42:12
SPEAKER_00: She is a good human being.
42:15
SPEAKER_00: But not every good person should be a senator.
42:18
SPEAKER_00: And of course,
42:18
SPEAKER_00: the Republican Party has been selling this for a while that,
42:22
SPEAKER_00: you know, anybody can just step into politics and do a good job.
42:26
SPEAKER_00: Well, they can do the job their party wants them to do by telling them how to vote.
42:30
SPEAKER_00: But she's also not charismatic.
42:34
SPEAKER_00: And I would say everybody doesn't have to be charismatic.
42:38
SPEAKER_00: You know, it doesn't make her a bad person again.
42:41
SPEAKER_00: But I would also say that this race is an interesting template for the failure of what has been.
42:48
SPEAKER_00: I just want to say tranny is a slur.
42:50
SPEAKER_00: Listeners, don't use it.
42:51
SPEAKER_00: I'm only using it because it's accurate in this regard.
42:54
SPEAKER_00: It is also the case that Annie Andrews is not transgender.
42:57
SPEAKER_00: And to the best of my knowledge, she has no connection.
43:16
SPEAKER_00: To transgender people like anywhere, but she is a physician.
43:20
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so,
43:21
SPEAKER_00: but what this has really been calling attention to is the fact that
43:26
SPEAKER_00: the Republicans got nothing.
43:28
SPEAKER_00: They literally have nothing, right?
43:31
SPEAKER_01: Nothing.
43:32
SPEAKER_01: And I think,
43:32
SPEAKER_01: you know,
43:33
SPEAKER_01: this whole dust up over Obama making this You know,
43:38
SPEAKER_01: joke about the White House looking like,
43:40
SPEAKER_01: what was it, Saddam Hussein Cracker Barrel or something, you know?
43:45
SPEAKER_00: Cheesecake Factory.
43:45
SPEAKER_01: Cheesecake Factory, okay.
43:47
SPEAKER_00: Which I'm going to guess neither one of us has ever been to the Cheesecake Factory.
43:51
SPEAKER_01: I've been to the Cheesecake Factory.
43:52
SPEAKER_01: Many, many times.
43:53
SPEAKER_00: Oh, you're from Florida.
43:54
SPEAKER_00: Of course you have.
43:55
SPEAKER_00: And your husband is from Ohio.
43:57
SPEAKER_01: They do a great salad that we get delivered to the house like all the time.
44:01
SPEAKER_01: Really?
44:02
SPEAKER_01: That aside, yes.
44:03
SPEAKER_01: We have to split it because the portion is so insane.
44:06
SPEAKER_01: Like no person could eat it on their own.
44:08
SPEAKER_01: But the fact that this has become the main thing that conservative media is talking
44:14
SPEAKER_01: about, that the president himself can't talk about.
44:16
SPEAKER_01: And Trump,
44:17
SPEAKER_01: or excuse me,
44:17
SPEAKER_01: Obama came out,
44:18
SPEAKER_01: I think it was yesterday and said,
44:21
SPEAKER_01: He didn't have a problem with me comparing him to Saddam Hussein.
44:26
SPEAKER_01: The Republican Party isn't responding to anything else I talked about
44:29
SPEAKER_01: in this speech,
44:30
SPEAKER_01: which is about the war in Iran,
44:32
SPEAKER_01: about the tariffs, about stupid trade wars, about the corruption.
44:36
SPEAKER_01: No, because they can't respond to those things.
44:38
SPEAKER_01: They have nothing to say about that.
44:41
SPEAKER_01: So that's why they have to hang on to this stray joke about the Cheesecake Factory
44:45
SPEAKER_01: and act like this is something...
44:48
SPEAKER_01: That matters to voters.
44:49
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I was also watching this.
44:51
SPEAKER_01: I watched these clips of what's that show on Fox News?
44:54
SPEAKER_01: I think it's called like the five.
44:56
SPEAKER_01: Jessica Tarlov is the one, you know, non Republican, non Trump, you know.
45:03
SPEAKER_01: And she was making all the points about why Republicans are in a bad position.
45:05
SPEAKER_01: It's the corruption, it's the
45:18
SPEAKER_01: It's the war and Iran.
45:19
SPEAKER_01: It's the trade wars.
45:21
SPEAKER_01: It's the tariffs.
45:22
SPEAKER_01: It's the economy.
45:23
SPEAKER_01: And Kellyanne Conway had a literal meltdown.
45:27
SPEAKER_01: And all she could say was that she wanted Americans to know that Trump is
45:31
SPEAKER_01: the hardest working president.
45:34
SPEAKER_01: And that she remembers back in the first administration where one time they held
45:39
SPEAKER_01: a dinner for the media and the media wouldn't,
45:43
SPEAKER_01: you know,
45:44
SPEAKER_01: a fat elite journalist wouldn't eat mashed potatoes because that's how out
45:48
SPEAKER_01: of touch they are with Americans.
45:50
SPEAKER_01: And it's just pathetic.
45:52
SPEAKER_01: It's pathetic.
45:52
SPEAKER_01: Like that's,
45:54
SPEAKER_01: That's the political argument they're taking
45:57
SPEAKER_01: into this election is like grievance politics, culture war stuff.
46:01
SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't work when Americans don't have money in their pockets.
46:05
SPEAKER_00: That's absolutely right.
46:06
SPEAKER_00: And speaking of money in their pockets, I actually looked it up.
46:10
SPEAKER_00: What was the average cost of a dinner for a family of four at the Cheesecake Factory?
46:18
SPEAKER_00: And it's $200 without drinks.
46:21
SPEAKER_01: Insane.
46:22
SPEAKER_00: Like if nobody has a drink, it's $200.
46:25
SPEAKER_00: So I would like to know which working class people are actually going to the Cheesecake Factory.
46:29
SPEAKER_00: You can make a much better argument for Cracker Barrel where you can feed a family
46:33
SPEAKER_00: of four apparently for like $50.
46:35
SPEAKER_00: So anyway,
46:37
SPEAKER_00: can I also just say,
46:38
SPEAKER_00: this is unplanned, but I just finished listening to Jessica Tarlov's new book.
46:43
SPEAKER_00: I disagree,
46:44
SPEAKER_00: which I recommend everyone,
46:47
SPEAKER_00: despite the fact that Jessica Tarlov has one of
46:50
SPEAKER_00: the most grating voices I have ever heard in media.
46:53
SPEAKER_00: And then she actually has the grace to talk about that in her first chapter
46:58
SPEAKER_00: and how she's been to voice coaches.
47:00
SPEAKER_00: And there's nothing she can do about it.
47:02
SPEAKER_00: Jessica Tarlov also,
47:04
SPEAKER_00: in chapter three or four, she went to Bryn Mawr College, which I hadn't known.
47:10
SPEAKER_00: And her...
47:11
SPEAKER_00: History thesis advisor was Sharon Ullman, who I think we both know.
47:15
SPEAKER_00: And Sharon, she sort of says, Sharon Ullman taught me how to think.
47:19
SPEAKER_00: My history professor taught me how to think.
47:21
SPEAKER_00: Amazing.
47:22
SPEAKER_00: I loved her for that.
47:23
SPEAKER_00: I forgot about how annoying her voice was and I loved her.
47:26
SPEAKER_00: I love her for that forever.
47:27
SPEAKER_00: But to come back to this whole business, yes, the Republicans can't talk about the economy.
47:34
SPEAKER_00: They can't talk about foreign policy.
47:36
SPEAKER_00: They can't talk about national defense.
47:38
SPEAKER_00: So all they've got is transgender people.
47:42
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I mean, they're not even talking about abortion.
47:47
SPEAKER_00: They've lost abortion, too, as a topic.
47:49
SPEAKER_00: So, you know,
47:50
SPEAKER_00: there are all of these ads on Instagram that are fake Republican ads
47:55
SPEAKER_00: where someone says,
47:57
SPEAKER_00: I decided to start voting Republican the day I dropped my child off as
48:01
SPEAKER_00: a boy named Bob and picked her up as a girl named Cindy and, you know.
48:07
SPEAKER_00: Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
48:08
SPEAKER_00: I mean, basically sort of rolling every single culture wars theme into one fake ad.
48:14
SPEAKER_00: And I think Americans are smart enough, A, to notice that.
48:18
SPEAKER_00: And B, I think there are a lot of Republicans,
48:21
SPEAKER_00: all signs are showing, who are not going to go vote.
48:27
SPEAKER_00: They're just not inspired in this election.
48:29
SPEAKER_00: And maybe if Trump were on the ballot,
48:31
SPEAKER_00: as he keeps telling people he should be, it would be even worse than it is.
48:35
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
48:36
SPEAKER_01: What do you think, Neil?
48:37
SPEAKER_01: I think that that is very possible,
48:39
SPEAKER_01: which inverts the sort of political wisdom of the last decade,
48:43
SPEAKER_01: that he's been a strength for Republicans when his name is on the ballot.
48:48
SPEAKER_01: But I think Republican depression is a real factor in terms of depressing voter turnout.
48:57
SPEAKER_01: If you're a person who's not all that politically engaged,
49:00
SPEAKER_01: if you're not someone who has high party loyalty or high party identity,
49:04
SPEAKER_01: which is a good constituency of voters in both political parties,
49:09
SPEAKER_01: what would compel you to go out and vote for these guys?
49:14
SPEAKER_01: And I think Republicans have tried to make the race, they're not tying themselves to Trump.
49:20
SPEAKER_01: I mean, they're actively Right.
49:22
SPEAKER_01: Distancing themselves,
49:23
SPEAKER_01: although he's also doing all these rallies,
49:25
SPEAKER_01: so I think it's a little bit complicated,
49:26
SPEAKER_01: but there's this sort of,
49:27
SPEAKER_01: they've been given the message by the party,
49:29
SPEAKER_01: focus on local and state issues,
49:32
SPEAKER_01: but I don't think Republicans have a lot to win on there either,
49:35
SPEAKER_01: and so I think it's It's a recipe for disaster all around from
49:41
SPEAKER_01: a party that's done nothing to improve the lives of Americans.
49:44
SPEAKER_01: And so what is it they're going to run on?
49:46
SPEAKER_01: Obviously, fear-mongering.
49:48
SPEAKER_01: Obviously, it's sort of culture war stuff.
49:49
SPEAKER_01: But again, that just doesn't work when Americans are feeling the pinch.
49:53
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
49:55
SPEAKER_00: So let's stipulate this.
49:56
SPEAKER_00: Republicans are just running terrible campaigns.
49:59
SPEAKER_00: And maybe it's their fault.
50:01
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's not their fault.
50:02
SPEAKER_00: Maybe the unwillingness to separate from Trump at And so on the one hand,
50:08
SPEAKER_00: we have a Republican Party.
50:25
SPEAKER_00: That is being powered by billions of tech dollars,
50:29
SPEAKER_00: banking dollars, you know, all of these special interests.
50:32
SPEAKER_00: On the other hand,
50:33
SPEAKER_00: we had a Democratic Party whose chair was being criticized,
50:38
SPEAKER_00: Ken Martin of Wisconsin, for not raising money.
50:42
SPEAKER_00: But the individual candidates are raising lots of money.
50:46
SPEAKER_00: And there does seem to me to be an opportunity here that the Heroin
50:53
SPEAKER_00: of unlimited financing here has made Republican candidates kind of soft and lazy.
51:01
SPEAKER_00: They don't actually have to get out there and campaign in order to get money.
51:05
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was giving money to people as recently as yesterday and the day before
51:09
SPEAKER_00: because I was seeing ads and thinking, you know what?
51:12
SPEAKER_00: This is the moment when my $25 might get another volunteer on the street to canvas for you.
51:19
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
51:19
SPEAKER_00: What do you think, Neal?
51:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, Elon Musk has put $400 million into this election.
51:27
SPEAKER_01: The world's richest man putting $400 million into this election.
51:31
SPEAKER_01: But I think your point about the sort of ease of that type of money and
51:36
SPEAKER_01: the tech money billionaire that's going to the Republican Party and the way that...
51:39
SPEAKER_01: Then that maybe undermines a sort of grassroots fundraising apparatus and strategy,
51:45
SPEAKER_01: which is not only about raising money,
51:47
SPEAKER_01: it's also about,
51:48
SPEAKER_01: you know,
51:49
SPEAKER_01: voter engagement and,
51:50
SPEAKER_01: you know,
51:51
SPEAKER_01: and building of a movement that, you know, shows up also at the ballot box.
51:56
SPEAKER_01: So, you know,
51:57
SPEAKER_01: money is corrupting of American politics,
52:00
SPEAKER_01: obviously,
52:00
SPEAKER_01: but it also might be corrupting of parties themselves too,
52:04
SPEAKER_01: in terms of like the way it distorts operations and functions.
52:09
SPEAKER_00: Right.
52:09
SPEAKER_00: And of course,
52:10
SPEAKER_00: we've seen in the past that Musk was greatly admired basically by lots
52:15
SPEAKER_00: of young white men who rushed out to vote in ways that Musk encouraged them to vote.
52:20
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't seem to be very attractive to women for reasons I just can't understand.
52:24
SPEAKER_00: But I also realized when I was looking at his ex-feed the other day
52:28
SPEAKER_00: that Musk has confused the Democratic Party with the ANC.
52:34
SPEAKER_00: The African National Congress,
52:36
SPEAKER_00: for those who don't understand the ANC moniker in South Africa,
52:42
SPEAKER_00: which is he keeps posting that if the Democrats win this time,
52:47
SPEAKER_00: then the Republicans will never win again.
52:49
SPEAKER_00: And of course, South Africa has had that experience with the ANC.
52:54
SPEAKER_00: The African National Congress,
52:56
SPEAKER_00: originally a revolutionary movement,
52:58
SPEAKER_00: became a political movement,
53:00
SPEAKER_00: and is now Actually struggling with its own corruption,
53:03
SPEAKER_00: its own ineptitude and so on,
53:05
SPEAKER_00: but keeps a stranglehold on the electorate all the same.
53:10
SPEAKER_00: I don't think Americans are moved by these apocalyptic scenarios anymore.
53:14
SPEAKER_00: Maybe they're just too tired.
53:16
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
53:16
SPEAKER_00: What do you think?
53:20
SPEAKER_01: For whatever side of the aisle you're on in general of this sort
53:24
SPEAKER_01: of doomsday language of this is the last election.
53:28
SPEAKER_01: This is the last time you have the chance to do this.
53:31
SPEAKER_01: I think in general, yes.
53:32
SPEAKER_01: However, the right has over leveraged that rhetoric.
53:37
SPEAKER_03: Mm hmm.
53:38
SPEAKER_01: I would say for 40 years, but that it has been sort of hypercharged in the last decade.
53:43
SPEAKER_01: And it's literally every time I open Twitter,
53:45
SPEAKER_01: there's an Elon Musk tweet at the top saying exactly that.
53:49
SPEAKER_01: And you can't sort of talk about a doomsday apocalyptic scenario.
53:55
SPEAKER_01: And it never happened without you just having sort of a diminishing effect around
53:59
SPEAKER_01: that sort of threat.
54:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, or the threat that we're going to become a communist country.
54:06
SPEAKER_01: Right, yes.
54:07
SPEAKER_00: Which I don't think most people under the age of 40 actually understand what
54:12
SPEAKER_00: a communist country is.
54:14
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they have come to maturity with communism in radical failure all over the world.
54:22
SPEAKER_00: But, you know,
54:22
SPEAKER_00: I also think there was something kind of inoculating about Roe v.
54:27
SPEAKER_00: Wade being overturned for Democrats,
54:30
SPEAKER_00: which was for many years, this was the worst thing.
54:34
SPEAKER_00: This was the thing that was going to happen if.
54:37
SPEAKER_00: And when it finally happened,
54:39
SPEAKER_00: yes, things got a lot worse for maternal health for a lot of women.
54:44
SPEAKER_00: But actually, the right to abortion held in half the states.
54:48
SPEAKER_00: And there is a path to an abortion,
54:51
SPEAKER_00: even though maternal health care in Places like Idaho,
54:55
SPEAKER_00: for example, has just cratered.
54:57
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
54:57
SPEAKER_00: because two-thirds of the OBGYNs have left Idaho because they cannot practice there
55:02
SPEAKER_00: in any ethical way.
55:04
SPEAKER_00: I think the fact that the worst thing happened to certainly white women
55:08
SPEAKER_00: who are Democrats and black women who are Democrats,
55:12
SPEAKER_00: I think it strengthened us on a certain level.
55:15
SPEAKER_00: Is that weird?
55:17
SPEAKER_01: I think there's a lot of reason to think that that's the case.
55:21
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know,
55:22
SPEAKER_01: and To take a sort of historian view of this issue,
55:26
SPEAKER_01: you know,
55:27
SPEAKER_01: for a long time there were folks on the right who said if abortion is overturned at
55:31
SPEAKER_01: the federal level,
55:33
SPEAKER_01: you know,
55:34
SPEAKER_01: these are people who were like hoping that that was the case and were working
55:38
SPEAKER_01: on political strategies for that to happen.
55:42
SPEAKER_01: They were also several,
55:43
SPEAKER_01: many of them predicting that it would shuffle a lot of political affiliations,
55:49
SPEAKER_01: that in a lot of ways it would benefit Democrats because there were enough Americans
55:54
SPEAKER_01: who were single issue voters around this,
55:56
SPEAKER_01: but who didn't really align with the Republican Party on others,
55:59
SPEAKER_01: on all sorts of things, that they would sort of move over.
56:01
SPEAKER_01: But also I think maybe what you're talking about more is like The sort
56:06
SPEAKER_01: of moderate Republicans who are suburban voters who really are upset with this
56:11
SPEAKER_01: and what they're saying and what they're hearing and what they know
56:13
SPEAKER_01: about maternal health in this country.
56:15
SPEAKER_01: And that it's, I think, shuffling people's sort of affiliations as well.
56:20
SPEAKER_01: We'll see.
56:20
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think this is one of those things that hopefully we'll have election data
56:23
SPEAKER_01: about afterwards.
56:25
SPEAKER_00: Well, and I think we're also seeing that all the sort of apocalyptic scenarios,
56:30
SPEAKER_00: many of which were floated by white men after 2024,
56:35
SPEAKER_00: which is not to say that white men are inherently emotional and apocalyptic and so
56:41
SPEAKER_00: on.
56:41
SPEAKER_00: But, you know,
56:42
SPEAKER_00: there are all of these sort of pundits on social media and in the opinion sections
56:47
SPEAKER_00: who are just like the Democrats.
56:49
SPEAKER_00: It's all over, you know, everything has to change, blah, blah, blah.
56:53
SPEAKER_00: And I actually think there was a lot going on that nobody noticed at the level of
56:59
SPEAKER_00: the punditocracy.
57:00
SPEAKER_00: I mean, obviously in Texas,
57:01
SPEAKER_00: as we've talked about,
57:02
SPEAKER_00: this very high focus on corruption in the Senate race and really sort of hammering
57:07
SPEAKER_00: on that, that is a theme that Trump himself created.
57:13
SPEAKER_00: That is a story that Trump told about politics,
57:18
SPEAKER_00: which is politics are corrupt and I'm going to change them.
57:21
SPEAKER_00: As it turns out,
57:22
SPEAKER_00: he and all of his cronies have made everything more corrupt,
57:25
SPEAKER_00: and they can't stop stealing from everyone.
57:28
SPEAKER_00: But the other thing that I'm seeing in Texas,
57:30
SPEAKER_00: I ran across this great story about Bobby Pulido,
57:34
SPEAKER_00: the Democrats' candidate for House in Texas 15,
57:38
SPEAKER_00: and his opponent,
57:39
SPEAKER_00: Monica de la Cruz,
57:41
SPEAKER_00: derided him by saying,
57:43
SPEAKER_00: you know,
57:43
SPEAKER_00: this election isn't about who you want performing at your niece's quinceanera.
57:48
SPEAKER_00: And then individual Texans started reaching out to Polito and saying,
57:53
SPEAKER_00: and he's a singer, you know, would you come and perform at my niece's party?
57:57
SPEAKER_00: And so he's been going around the district playing music
58:01
SPEAKER_00: at this really important family event,
58:03
SPEAKER_00: which is,
58:04
SPEAKER_00: you know, what happens when a girl is 15 and it celebrates her maturity and her, you
58:12
SPEAKER_00: Going to all of these neighborhood parties to play music where he gets to talk
58:16
SPEAKER_00: to people about real things.
58:18
SPEAKER_00: And that apparently is powering his campaign.
58:22
SPEAKER_00: This is a district that the Republicans should win easily.
58:25
SPEAKER_00: They're not going to because of that.
58:27
SPEAKER_00: That's stupidity.
58:28
SPEAKER_00: He's made up an 18-point deficit in that race.
58:32
SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
58:32
SPEAKER_00: similarly,
58:33
SPEAKER_00: in the Ohio Senate race,
58:34
SPEAKER_00: Sherrod Brown,
58:35
SPEAKER_00: who lost his seat in, what, 2024,
58:39
SPEAKER_00: is running again against John Husted,
58:42
SPEAKER_00: who nobody elected because he was appointed to fill J.D.
58:45
SPEAKER_00: Vance's seat.
58:46
SPEAKER_00: And he's really become the face of the party's efforts to win back labor.
58:50
SPEAKER_00: I don't know, Neil.
58:51
SPEAKER_00: I feel like there's all this stuff going on at the grassroots that's been invisible
58:55
SPEAKER_00: to the national media until quite recently.
58:58
SPEAKER_01: There is,
58:58
SPEAKER_01: and I think the corruption is a special issue,
59:01
SPEAKER_01: interesting in Texas as a political issue,
59:03
SPEAKER_01: because I am seeing one clip after another.
59:05
SPEAKER_01: I think the algorithm is just giving this to me now that I've clicked on a couple
59:09
SPEAKER_01: of them,
59:09
SPEAKER_01: but there's a lot of clips where reporters are out interviewing voters about
59:14
SPEAKER_01: the Tallarico Paxton race,
59:16
SPEAKER_01: and there's a lifelong Republican after another saying,
59:21
SPEAKER_01: I voted for the Republican Party my entire life, and I'm not doing that this year.
59:27
SPEAKER_01: And every single time they say why they're doing so, they say corruption.
59:33
SPEAKER_01: And again,
59:34
SPEAKER_01: Paxton is a completely corrupt candidate,
59:39
SPEAKER_01: but I think his corruption is magnified by the Trump effect, right?
59:44
SPEAKER_01: So it's the general context that Trump has provided with his gross abuse.
59:52
SPEAKER_01: And then his very clear corruption that I think then plays out even more.
59:56
SPEAKER_01: It gets magnified in a race like Tallarico Paxton, where vote.
1:00:01
SPEAKER_01: And I mean, he's not a charming candidate to begin with.
1:00:04
SPEAKER_01: He has all these credible corruption charges against him.
1:00:08
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, voters are like, I'm not doing this anymore.
1:00:11
SPEAKER_01: And so I also think, again, the bigger context of this all is the economy.
1:00:17
SPEAKER_01: I think American voters put up with a lot.
1:00:19
SPEAKER_01: They look in the other direction for their guy.
1:00:23
SPEAKER_01: When things are going well for them, and that's understandable, right?
1:00:26
SPEAKER_01: You got money in your pocket,
1:00:28
SPEAKER_01: your kids are safe and fine, things feel generally peaceful on the world stage.
1:00:34
SPEAKER_01: Okay, there's going to be some corruption in Washington.
1:00:37
SPEAKER_01: The second you are feeling the pinch,
1:00:39
SPEAKER_01: you can't pay for gases or grocery,
1:00:41
SPEAKER_01: there's an escalating war in the Middle East,
1:00:44
SPEAKER_01: the looming threat of AI,
1:00:46
SPEAKER_01: which we haven't even mentioned, and you're just like, No, I refuse.
1:00:53
SPEAKER_01: These fat cats in Washington, I'm going to stick it to the man.
1:00:55
SPEAKER_01: And so I think it's not that this corruption is new,
1:00:59
SPEAKER_01: although it is on, I think, a sort of different scale when it comes to Trump.
1:01:03
SPEAKER_01: But I think the voters' tolerance for it is so diminished in a moment in
1:01:07
SPEAKER_01: which they have their own economic insecurity and precarity.
1:01:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, and I learned about something the other day.
1:01:15
SPEAKER_00: This is not in our show notes.
1:01:16
SPEAKER_00: I was listening to my friend Ryan Gurdjieff's podcast.
1:01:19
SPEAKER_00: And Ryan is a MAGA political consultant who I have been tracking in particular in
1:01:26
SPEAKER_00: the last few weeks because...
1:01:28
SPEAKER_00: He's actually very honest about what's going on and he will not lie to his audience
1:01:34
SPEAKER_00: that Republicans are in trouble.
1:01:35
SPEAKER_00: But one of the things he talked about in his last podcast was there is also
1:01:40
SPEAKER_00: an initiative on the Texas ballot in which Greg Abbott, the governor, Right.
1:02:10
SPEAKER_00: And that that and I don't know whether Ryan just like got this from the television
1:02:15
SPEAKER_00: or whether he actually got it from some kind of focus group material,
1:02:19
SPEAKER_00: but that apparently one concern about that in Texas is the elimination
1:02:23
SPEAKER_00: of high school football teams.
1:02:26
SPEAKER_00: And football rivalries that shape entire years.
1:02:31
SPEAKER_00: And football cultures that bring towns together.
1:02:35
SPEAKER_00: And that people are really concerned that if they lose their high schools,
1:02:38
SPEAKER_00: they're going to lose their football teams too.
1:02:39
SPEAKER_00: And that a lot will go with that.
1:02:41
SPEAKER_00: So...
1:02:42
SPEAKER_00: Culture wars is not entirely off the table, or culture is not entirely off the table.
1:02:48
SPEAKER_00: And in many ways, Democrats have used it quite effectively.
1:02:52
SPEAKER_00: In Alaska,
1:02:53
SPEAKER_00: Mary Peltola has been highly focused on the damage that Trumponomics
1:02:57
SPEAKER_00: and environmental deregulation have had on the fishing industry.
1:03:01
SPEAKER_00: And of course, fish are actually crucial to the indigenous communities in Alaska as well.
1:03:07
SPEAKER_00: Where else has culture wars backfired and Democrats have been able to make use of that?
1:03:13
SPEAKER_01: I think you're seeing at Michigan,
1:03:15
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:03:15
SPEAKER_01: both Donald Trump and Mike Rogers,
1:03:18
SPEAKER_01: Islamophobic attacks on Abdul El-Sayed seem to be moving voters away from Rogers.
1:03:23
SPEAKER_01: So there's a poll this week has El-Sayed ahead by seven points.
1:03:28
SPEAKER_01: Apparently also there's 4% of voters there say they're not interested in either candidate.
1:03:32
SPEAKER_01: But I think that It's been interesting
1:03:35
SPEAKER_01: to watch how much this Islamophobia has backfired in Michigan.
1:03:41
SPEAKER_01: And I think motivated a lot of voters who maybe would have had some reservations
1:03:46
SPEAKER_01: about voting for Al-Sayed,
1:03:48
SPEAKER_01: more for his really left-leaning,
1:03:51
SPEAKER_01: for his leftist politics,
1:03:53
SPEAKER_01: but have sort of risen in defense of him and really want to repudiate Mike Rogers.
1:03:58
SPEAKER_01: I think also this is happening in Florida.
1:03:59
SPEAKER_01: So Republican gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds,
1:04:03
SPEAKER_01: he's in a very clear Tight race with, you know, newly Democrat David Jolly.
1:04:09
SPEAKER_01: You know,
1:04:10
SPEAKER_01: there's this recent video of,
1:04:12
SPEAKER_01: and Byron Donalds is trying to do the Trump thing over and over again in this race.
1:04:16
SPEAKER_01: And it's not working in Florida.
1:04:18
SPEAKER_01: And most recently,
1:04:19
SPEAKER_01: there was this,
1:04:19
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:04:20
SPEAKER_01: video that came out of him interacting with a trans woman
1:04:24
SPEAKER_01: and him repeatedly misgendering her.
1:04:27
SPEAKER_01: And You know, that doesn't seem to be working in Florida.
1:04:32
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't seem to be moving the needle for him,
1:04:34
SPEAKER_01: the sort of culture wars, red meat that he's throwing out.
1:04:38
SPEAKER_01: And honestly, that I think his race is only about.
1:04:41
SPEAKER_01: Victory there is going to depend on turnout.
1:04:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
1:04:45
SPEAKER_00: No, I think that's absolutely right.
1:04:47
SPEAKER_00: And it will be interesting in both cases to see how many people stay home.
1:04:50
SPEAKER_00: I have to tell you, I have...
1:04:52
SPEAKER_00: Really gotten to like and admire El Syed.
1:04:56
SPEAKER_00: And I was sort of agnostic on the El Syed thing.
1:04:59
SPEAKER_00: I know a lot of my friends who are liberal Democrats are very persuaded that he's
1:05:04
SPEAKER_00: an anti-Semite.
1:05:05
SPEAKER_00: I don't see a jot of evidence of that.
1:05:08
SPEAKER_00: And, you know.
1:05:10
SPEAKER_00: I don't know about other voters,
1:05:11
SPEAKER_00: but I'm really getting sick of the,
1:05:13
SPEAKER_00: you tweeted this seven years ago,
1:05:16
SPEAKER_00: thus it means you must be X or Y.
1:05:18
SPEAKER_00: I also think the El Syed race is going to be really,
1:05:21
SPEAKER_00: really interesting because what's driving
1:05:24
SPEAKER_00: the anti-Semitism charges is some candidates,
1:05:27
SPEAKER_00: not just Muslim candidates,
1:05:29
SPEAKER_00: coming out against Israel and the level to which
1:05:32
SPEAKER_00: the Trump administration has enabled an extremely violent regional war
1:05:39
SPEAKER_00: that You know, yes, October 7th was terrible.
1:05:43
SPEAKER_00: Yes, it had to be responded to.
1:05:45
SPEAKER_00: It should not have been the opening for a three-year war in the way it has and
1:05:52
SPEAKER_00: the kind of death that has resulted from that.
1:05:54
SPEAKER_00: So I don't feel like I'm making excuses from El-Sayed,
1:05:58
SPEAKER_00: but I go through the things that people are talking about,
1:06:00
SPEAKER_00: and I just don't think the man is an anti-Semite.
1:06:02
SPEAKER_00: I think he's actually a really nice person.
1:06:05
SPEAKER_00: You said same.
1:06:06
SPEAKER_00: What's your take?
1:06:08
SPEAKER_01: Well, I thought you were going to make a different point,
1:06:10
SPEAKER_01: actually,
1:06:11
SPEAKER_01: which was that I think I'm someone who,
1:06:14
SPEAKER_01: I don't live in Michigan,
1:06:16
SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to vote,
1:06:16
SPEAKER_01: but I think that when this race started,
1:06:19
SPEAKER_01: as a moderate Democrat,
1:06:22
SPEAKER_01: El-Sayed is someone that I've,
1:06:25
SPEAKER_01: there was a lot of sort of policy differentials that I would have with him.
1:06:28
SPEAKER_01: Now, it probably wouldn't have mattered at the end of the day,
1:06:30
SPEAKER_01: but what I did really,
1:06:33
SPEAKER_01: what I've resonated with was Is what we were just talking about,
1:06:37
SPEAKER_01: which is a sort of rising to his defense in light of the disgusting attacks on him.
1:06:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:06:45
SPEAKER_01: And I think that that's what we're seeing in polling suggests that there's
1:06:51
SPEAKER_01: a small constituency of voters,
1:06:53
SPEAKER_01: but in a tight race,
1:06:55
SPEAKER_01: every small constituency is important, who may be feeling the same.
1:07:00
SPEAKER_01: That the level of nastiness and just the abject racism and Islamophobia of it all.
1:07:07
SPEAKER_01: Is motivating to come out and actually support someone who also is a really,
1:07:12
SPEAKER_01: really, really good candidate.
1:07:14
SPEAKER_01: Smart, coherent, policy focused.
1:07:17
SPEAKER_01: I mean, he keeps going on Fox News and I don't even know why they're asking him back
1:07:20
SPEAKER_01: because he just destroys them.
1:07:23
SPEAKER_01: Not with,
1:07:23
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:07:24
SPEAKER_01: the nasty comebacks of his own,
1:07:27
SPEAKER_01: but of bringing the conversation back to policies that he believes in
1:07:31
SPEAKER_01: and his articulation for His positions.
1:07:35
SPEAKER_01: And so, you know,
1:07:37
SPEAKER_01: I think he'll be an interesting figure to continue to watch,
1:07:40
SPEAKER_01: but it's interesting how the,
1:07:44
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think Islamophobia is still a, can work well in American politics, right?
1:07:50
SPEAKER_01: But there's something about the Trump version of it that really seems to be backfiring.
1:07:56
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if that's true everywhere, but certainly it seems to be the case in Michigan.
1:08:00
SPEAKER_00: I think that's right.
1:08:01
SPEAKER_00: I think Islamophobia is going to be less and less motivating to voters
1:08:06
SPEAKER_00: the further we get away from 9-11.
1:08:09
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we have young people who are voting now who weren't born on 9-11 and
1:08:14
SPEAKER_00: who do not necessarily associate Islam with I agree with you, Neil.
1:08:38
SPEAKER_00: It seems like there are a few Democrats who have started to crack the code of Fox News.
1:08:44
SPEAKER_00: I think we're going to see more of them on Fox in the next two years.
1:08:48
SPEAKER_00: And I hope we are going to see more Republicans on MSNBC and not just the,
1:08:56
SPEAKER_00: I was a Republican until Trump drove me out of the party Republican,
1:08:59
SPEAKER_00: because they've already got a lot of those people and they are indistinguishable
1:09:02
SPEAKER_00: from the Democrats on the program.
1:09:05
SPEAKER_00: But to really get some kind of hardcore right-wingers on MSNBC, the PBS NewsHour does that.
1:09:13
SPEAKER_00: And it's really educational and it sparks fascinating conversations.
1:09:18
SPEAKER_00: And you also get to see where the silences are.
1:09:21
SPEAKER_00: What is it that these people actually don't know how to talk about?
1:09:25
SPEAKER_00: So one factor here is,
1:09:27
SPEAKER_00: of course,
1:09:27
SPEAKER_00: the disconnect between the story Donald Trump tells about the economy,
1:09:31
SPEAKER_00: which is exactly what Biden and Harris did.
1:09:33
SPEAKER_00: Oh, the economy's fine.
1:09:35
SPEAKER_00: It's great.
1:09:36
SPEAKER_00: And what is happening on the ground?
1:09:37
SPEAKER_00: You talked about this earlier, Neil.
1:09:40
SPEAKER_00: I want to add one extra thing, which is wages are rising.
1:09:44
SPEAKER_00: That is normally the sign of a good economy.
1:09:48
SPEAKER_00: But costs are outpacing wages.
1:09:51
SPEAKER_00: And in all the sectors of the economy that rely on fuel,
1:09:54
SPEAKER_00: imports,
1:09:55
SPEAKER_00: and most importantly,
1:09:56
SPEAKER_00: sustainable borrowing, business owners are increasingly underwater.
1:10:02
SPEAKER_00: People who like barely recovered from the pandemic are now struggling again.
1:10:07
SPEAKER_00: And Trump made this happen.
1:10:10
SPEAKER_00: What are the other factors, Neil?
1:10:12
SPEAKER_01: Well, I think another factor could be that Democrats have an enhanced skill.
1:10:18
SPEAKER_01: Again, and speaking about what we keep sort of returning to,
1:10:21
SPEAKER_01: which is the corruption that's settling on this president.
1:10:26
SPEAKER_01: He twice has promised voters that he was going to Washington to drain the swamp.
1:10:31
SPEAKER_01: And we all know that he was doing the opposite.
1:10:34
SPEAKER_01: But I think all Americans are really aware of The open pattern of self-dealing
1:10:41
SPEAKER_01: that he's doing is just engulfed his cabinet,
1:10:44
SPEAKER_01: his family, numerous members of Congress.
1:10:47
SPEAKER_01: Corruption and just the wash of money in politics is a top issue for voters,
1:10:52
SPEAKER_01: as we've already talked about.
1:10:54
SPEAKER_01: And I think that Trump's drumbeat of accusations
1:10:57
SPEAKER_01: about voter fraud is Also doesn't seem to be working.
1:11:01
SPEAKER_01: I think it's actually backfiring.
1:11:02
SPEAKER_01: It's potentially driving away voters who have sort of a weak sense of civic obligation.
1:11:08
SPEAKER_01: And from voting in the first place,
1:11:09
SPEAKER_01: I think it's also discouraging,
1:11:12
SPEAKER_01: as we were just saying,
1:11:13
SPEAKER_01: those folks who are sort of less strident in their identification as Republicans.
1:11:19
SPEAKER_01: What else do you think is at work here?
1:11:22
SPEAKER_00: Immigration, immigration, immigration.
1:11:26
SPEAKER_00: I don't mean to go all idealistic about Americans,
1:11:30
SPEAKER_00: but actually one of the things that's very,
1:11:32
SPEAKER_00: very central to being American that Trump used to be able to play very skillfully,
1:11:37
SPEAKER_00: Obama certainly played it very skillfully, is a sense of fairness.
1:11:43
SPEAKER_00: You know, all of us know people who have been affected by the mass deportation agenda.
1:11:50
SPEAKER_00: All of us have someone in our life who is either gone or who leaves
1:11:54
SPEAKER_00: the house terrified every day or somebody who actually is an American citizen.
1:11:59
SPEAKER_00: You know, one of my nephews was stopped in Florida.
1:12:04
SPEAKER_00: Can I see your papers?
1:12:05
SPEAKER_00: Can I see your identification?
1:12:06
SPEAKER_00: And so on.
1:12:07
SPEAKER_00: You know, his mother's Puerto Rican.
1:12:12
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they've been American for centuries.
1:12:17
SPEAKER_00: I think this sense of unfairness and what you were saying earlier,
1:12:21
SPEAKER_00: the cruelty,
1:12:22
SPEAKER_00: the meanness,
1:12:23
SPEAKER_00: there was a time in which that cruelty was expressing a certain kind
1:12:28
SPEAKER_00: of populist rage on the right, and they embraced it.
1:12:32
SPEAKER_00: I think now...
1:12:34
SPEAKER_00: They're no longer tolerating it because actually the unfairness of all of it.
1:12:41
SPEAKER_00: Probably a great many more working class white voters who have Latinos
1:12:46
SPEAKER_00: in their families,
1:12:47
SPEAKER_00: who live in communities and work with Latino men and women, blah, blah, blah.
1:12:52
SPEAKER_00: They've seen this firsthand and they've seen their friends cruelly treated,
1:12:57
SPEAKER_00: called criminals when they weren't criminals.
1:12:59
SPEAKER_00: So I think there's that.
1:13:02
SPEAKER_00: I would also just say the stalemate of the Iran war.
1:13:04
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
1:13:06
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the hubris that you could start a war and say, oh,
1:13:09
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to start it and I'm going to end it in a couple of weeks
1:13:11
SPEAKER_00: and everyone's going to love me for it.
1:13:13
SPEAKER_00: No, that really isn't what happened.
1:13:16
SPEAKER_00: So, Neil, what do we want to go viral this week?
1:13:20
SPEAKER_01: All right,
1:13:20
SPEAKER_01: what I want to go viral is a article in the Substack,
1:13:25
SPEAKER_01: Free the Inquiry, which is a publication by Heterodox Academy.
1:13:28
SPEAKER_01: Not something I usually read,
1:13:30
SPEAKER_01: I will say,
1:13:31
SPEAKER_01: but this is a piece actually by our good friend,
1:13:35
SPEAKER_01: fellow historian Natalia Melman-Petruzella,
1:13:37
SPEAKER_01: who's also the person I am currently co-representing.
1:13:41
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
1:13:42
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
1:14:03
SPEAKER_01: Facing this crisis of public trust, right?
1:14:06
SPEAKER_01: Political polarization is a big part of that.
1:14:08
SPEAKER_01: So conservatives long complained about ideological conformity on college campuses.
1:14:15
SPEAKER_01: And a lot on the left have been,
1:14:17
SPEAKER_01: I think, reluctant to acknowledge that that could potentially be a genuine problem.
1:14:22
SPEAKER_01: And especially so in a moment when
1:14:24
SPEAKER_01: the Trump administration is just attacking universities over and over again.
1:14:28
SPEAKER_01: And what I like about this piece is Julia
1:14:32
SPEAKER_01: and Natalia take those concerns really seriously,
1:14:35
SPEAKER_01: and they argue that universities need to be more intellectually open
1:14:39
SPEAKER_01: and self-critical,
1:14:40
SPEAKER_01: but they're not saying that the answer is to simply bring more conservatives
1:14:45
SPEAKER_01: on campus.
1:14:46
SPEAKER_01: What they've done and the piece talks about this is they've founded a Center for
1:14:49
SPEAKER_01: the American Experience at the New School.
1:15:01
SPEAKER_01: And what that center is doing is bringing together history and literature,
1:15:04
SPEAKER_01: art, music design, and other fields to explore the complexity of American life.
1:15:09
SPEAKER_01: And I think one thing that I found really compelling in their argument is
1:15:12
SPEAKER_01: that they make this the case that,
1:15:15
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:15:16
SPEAKER_01: So much of American culture that doesn't fall neatly
1:15:19
SPEAKER_01: into this left-right political binary that we've allowed to sort
1:15:22
SPEAKER_01: of overtake our conception of what everything has to be seen through.
1:15:26
SPEAKER_01: And so think about fashion and popular music and architecture and even so much of
1:15:32
SPEAKER_01: the history of really important and interesting things like the department store.
1:15:37
SPEAKER_01: There are all these subjects that can reveal all sorts of tensions
1:15:40
SPEAKER_01: and contradictions in American society,
1:15:42
SPEAKER_01: but that don't necessarily come with And so I think their way of sort of using
1:15:49
SPEAKER_01: the American experience in a really vastly imagined way to challenge so many of
1:15:56
SPEAKER_01: the binaries that we've seen locked in, I think is...
1:15:59
SPEAKER_01: Is a great project.
1:16:01
SPEAKER_01: And I would also say that the Center for the American Experience is running
1:16:05
SPEAKER_01: so much public programming right now that's free and open to folks.
1:16:10
SPEAKER_01: So if you're in the New York area,
1:16:11
SPEAKER_01: definitely check out their list of like, they have so many things going on there.
1:16:16
SPEAKER_01: And I encourage folks to go check out one of these, one of their events in person.
1:16:21
SPEAKER_01: But we'll link to the article and people should check out the website for the center as well.
1:16:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we will link to both of those things.
1:16:28
SPEAKER_00: Full disclosure, I'm also on the board of the center.
1:16:31
SPEAKER_00: I didn't even know that.
1:16:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I've been in on some really wonderful,
1:16:35
SPEAKER_00: wonderful conversations with other members of the board.
1:16:38
SPEAKER_00: The chair of the board is a guy named Joel Klein,
1:16:41
SPEAKER_00: who used to be the head of public schools in New York City.
1:16:46
SPEAKER_00: Jonathan Zimmerman from the University of Pennsylvania is on the board.
1:16:50
SPEAKER_00: It's a really interesting group of people.
1:16:52
SPEAKER_00: And I think you really nailed it,
1:16:54
SPEAKER_00: Neil, that there are all of these things for us to talk about and connect over.
1:17:00
SPEAKER_00: And just listening to you describe this center,
1:17:03
SPEAKER_00: which is just starting to get up and running,
1:17:06
SPEAKER_00: reminded me of the 1990s when I was at Wesleyan University.
1:17:10
SPEAKER_00: And we had a large history department in which I would now say probably between
1:17:16
SPEAKER_00: a third to a half of the department were sort of old school conservatives.
1:17:23
SPEAKER_00: But I was never really aware of it at the time because what we were talking
1:17:28
SPEAKER_00: about was curriculum or teaching or,
1:17:31
SPEAKER_00: you know, what should the survey look like and so on.
1:17:35
SPEAKER_00: And without the frame of politics,
1:17:38
SPEAKER_00: we could actually talk about substance in so much of a more interesting way.
1:17:43
SPEAKER_00: And it, you know,
1:17:44
SPEAKER_00: reminds me both of the Jessica Tarlov book I was talking about earlier
1:17:48
SPEAKER_00: and Sarah Longwell's book, which I think I talked about last week.
1:17:52
SPEAKER_00: In which both women,
1:17:54
SPEAKER_00: and it's interesting,
1:17:55
SPEAKER_00: all these people are women, say, always begin by connecting over a mutual concern.
1:18:04
SPEAKER_00: You know,
1:18:05
SPEAKER_00: so if you're going to begin a conversation with somebody who voted for Donald Trump
1:18:09
SPEAKER_00: by saying,
1:18:10
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure we can even really speak about this and maybe we should avoid it.
1:18:14
SPEAKER_00: You might want to start by saying,
1:18:16
SPEAKER_00: you know, both of us really care about fairness in the economy.
1:18:22
SPEAKER_00: Or both of us really care about corruption.
1:18:25
SPEAKER_00: And you start with something you care about.
1:18:27
SPEAKER_00: And you're right.
1:18:28
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this project that the center is promoting is about what is America?
1:18:34
SPEAKER_00: You know, we talk about America, but what is it?
1:18:37
SPEAKER_00: So yes, we're going to be linking to those things.
1:18:39
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so Neil,
1:18:41
SPEAKER_00: what I want to go viral this week is,
1:18:44
SPEAKER_00: this week is the 10th anniversary of America's first encounter
1:18:48
SPEAKER_00: with MAGA-inspired violence, the Pizzagate conspiracy.
1:18:52
SPEAKER_00: So 10, yeah,
1:18:54
SPEAKER_00: so 10 years ago today,
1:18:55
SPEAKER_00: and the article that I read,
1:18:57
SPEAKER_00: it's an incredibly moving story by a guy named Charlie Worzel.
1:19:01
SPEAKER_00: The martyr of Pizzagate in the Atlantic last week.
1:19:05
SPEAKER_00: And he talks about shooter Edgar Madison Welsh and his path
1:19:10
SPEAKER_00: through conspiracy theories to disillusionment.
1:19:13
SPEAKER_00: And Welsh,
1:19:15
SPEAKER_00: like many people who end up armed and being someplace with a weapon ready
1:19:21
SPEAKER_00: to shoot it that they never should be,
1:19:23
SPEAKER_00: Welsh was somebody who was very well liked in his community who suffered
1:19:28
SPEAKER_00: a great deal of misfortune.
1:19:30
SPEAKER_00: Ended up going down the rabbit hole to conspiracy theories and ended up in
1:19:36
SPEAKER_00: that weird WikiLeaks world of the Democratic Party emails and the conspiracy
1:19:43
SPEAKER_00: that came out of that,
1:19:44
SPEAKER_00: which was that there was a pizza shop in downtown Washington
1:19:47
SPEAKER_00: that had children imprisoned who were being trafficked for sex by
1:19:52
SPEAKER_00: the Democratic Party.
1:19:53
SPEAKER_00: And Hillary Clinton was doing it and her aides were doing it and so on.
1:19:57
SPEAKER_00: It was totally crazy.
1:20:00
SPEAKER_00: And there were a lot of people who believed it.
1:20:03
SPEAKER_00: And it's almost difficult to look back in that period of conspiracy theories
1:20:08
SPEAKER_00: and believe that we had to take it seriously.
1:20:11
SPEAKER_00: But this guy, Edgar Madison Welsh, had a family that he loved.
1:20:15
SPEAKER_00: He loved his children.
1:20:17
SPEAKER_00: He becomes convinced that there are children being tortured and trafficked in this place.
1:20:23
SPEAKER_00: Throws his gun in the car,
1:20:25
SPEAKER_00: drives to Washington, walks into Cosmic Pizza and And realizes it was all a lie.
1:20:33
SPEAKER_00: Somebody in the meantime has called the police and he walks out with his hands up
1:20:38
SPEAKER_00: and says, I didn't know.
1:20:39
SPEAKER_00: You know, it fooled me.
1:20:42
SPEAKER_00: I'm so sorry.
1:20:43
SPEAKER_00: This sort of moment in which reality strikes him,
1:20:47
SPEAKER_00: he's able to acknowledge the reality,
1:20:50
SPEAKER_00: but the right wing media sphere takes the story and uses it as proof.
1:20:57
SPEAKER_00: That in fact, children are really being trafficked at Cosmic Pizza.
1:21:01
SPEAKER_00: And that this is yet another cover-up on cover-up on cover-up.
1:21:05
SPEAKER_00: It's a really moving story.
1:21:07
SPEAKER_00: And it's a really moving story about how people
1:21:10
SPEAKER_00: who mean well end up doing terrible things when they are lied to.
1:21:15
SPEAKER_00: I can't recommend it more.
1:21:17
SPEAKER_00: As I say,
1:21:18
SPEAKER_00: it feels like both a world that I can't believe we lived in But
1:21:24
SPEAKER_00: the only reason I can't believe it is that this kind of violence is now
1:21:28
SPEAKER_00: so ubiquitous and this kind of conspiracy mongering is actually coming out of
1:21:33
SPEAKER_00: the White House and out of the president's cabinet and has become
1:21:37
SPEAKER_00: a permanent feature for now of our political landscape.
1:21:41
SPEAKER_00: So the martyr of Pizzagate, Charlie Warzel, The Atlantic linking to it in this piece.
1:21:47
SPEAKER_00: So the Neil, I think that's all we've got for now.
1:21:51
SPEAKER_00: If I came to you for a trick or treat, what would you give me?
1:21:56
SPEAKER_01: I would probably, you mean a candy, a piece of candy?
1:21:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
1:22:00
SPEAKER_01: This may be controversial,
1:22:02
SPEAKER_01: but my favorite candy,
1:22:03
SPEAKER_01: and I stand by it, and this is the time of year for it, is candy corn.
1:22:07
SPEAKER_01: I love, love, love candy corn.
1:22:10
SPEAKER_00: Really?
1:22:11
SPEAKER_00: Really?
1:22:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:22:12
SPEAKER_01: And I literally just got a news item that apparently candy corn contains a good portion.
1:22:20
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to lose it now, but, oh, I can't find it now.
1:22:23
SPEAKER_01: It has like a high proportion of like bird droppings in it or something like that,
1:22:29
SPEAKER_01: but I don't care.
1:22:30
SPEAKER_00: I saw that headline and moved on, Neil.
1:22:33
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
1:22:34
SPEAKER_01: I don't care.
1:22:35
SPEAKER_01: Candy corn forever.
1:22:37
SPEAKER_00: And if you don't take it,
1:22:38
SPEAKER_01: more for me.
1:22:39
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
1:22:40
SPEAKER_00: All right.
1:22:40
SPEAKER_00: So if you came to my door dressed as Lindsey Graham.
1:22:44
SPEAKER_01: Bug secretions.
1:22:45
SPEAKER_01: Apparently it's a high percentage of bug secretions.
1:22:50
SPEAKER_01: Just wanted to get this.
1:22:52
SPEAKER_01: That comes to us via The Atlantic.
1:22:55
SPEAKER_00: As I say, I saw the headline.
1:22:57
SPEAKER_00: I just kept moving on to the conspiracy theories.
1:23:00
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:23:00
SPEAKER_00: If you came to my door, you would get a Tootsie Pop.
1:23:06
SPEAKER_01: I love a Tootsie Pop.
1:23:07
SPEAKER_01: Old school, throwback.
1:23:10
SPEAKER_01: Remember those commercials about how many licks?
1:23:12
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's when everything was so much better.
1:23:16
SPEAKER_00: I know.
1:23:17
SPEAKER_00: And there was like no innuendo about all the licks on a Tootsie Pop, right?
1:23:21
SPEAKER_00: But what I remember is that you would get as far down to the core as you could
1:23:27
SPEAKER_00: without breaking the final shell of the lollipop covering.
1:23:31
SPEAKER_00: And then finally, when you broke through, it was just ecstasy.
1:23:36
SPEAKER_01: The best.
1:23:38
SPEAKER_00: The best.
1:23:39
SPEAKER_00: On that note, Neil, happy Halloween.
1:23:41
SPEAKER_00: And we're going to be,
1:23:43
SPEAKER_00: listeners,
1:23:43
SPEAKER_00: we are going to be meeting next Wednesday,
1:23:46
SPEAKER_00: the day after the election,
1:23:48
SPEAKER_00: doing a free-for-all recap of what happened on Tuesday night.
1:23:53
SPEAKER_00: So stick with us next week, Wednesday.
1:23:57
SPEAKER_00: And until then, Neil, happy Halloween.
1:24:00
SPEAKER_01: See you then.
1:24:01
SPEAKER_01: Bye-bye.
1:24:02
[music]
1:24:38
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1:25:07
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1:25:12
SPEAKER_00: Political Junkie is written, recorded, edited, and produced by me, Claire Potter.
1:25:17
SPEAKER_00: Today's theme is Good News, written and performed by Shabuzi and licensed from Lichty.
1:25:23
SPEAKER_00: That's all for now.
1:25:24
SPEAKER_00: See you next week.
1:25:26
SPEAKER_03: Ain't picking no flowers from the seeds that I hung on.
1:25:29
[music]