Latest / Normal Men / Episode 75 - Hectoring Achilles

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Episode 75 - Hectoring Achilles · Normal Men

• 0:00
  Lowtax: Got to hear from. From Propter and his hopeless buddy up there in Idaho.
• 0:08
  Propter: Are we, are we jumping right into the Todd Achilles chat?
• 0:10
  Ed: Apparently we.
• 0:11
  Propter: Is that what we're leading with?
• 0:12
  Lowtax: Yes. What is, what is Todd Achilles
• 0:16
  Propter: and
• 0:17
  Ed: is like every other case of this, he just going to blow it up.
• 0:20
  Propter: So I went to a Todd Achilles fundraiser here in D.C. on Friday.
• 0:26
  Ed: And did you meet the fabled centrists?
• 0:30
  Propter: I did meet the fabled centrist. It was, it was kind of a weird scene. Like there's this kind of. I don't remember what they called it. Like this, like this independent party caucus going on in D.C. this weekend that has a speaker roster that is about one third people who I think are involved in the non profit space who are interesting and admirable and the other 2/3 of the speaker roster is the most insane people that you've ever heard of. Like, we've got like, like James o', Keefe, Dennis Kucinich, we got Zen, Honeycutt. Like, like it's, it's, it's not even clear there's a theme here. It's, it's, it's just like these are crazy people from all walks of life.
• 1:11
  George: Please tell me Andrew Yang was there.
• 1:14
  Propter: I do not think Andrew Yang was there. I did not go to the convention. Convention.
• 1:18
  George: This feels like an event completely set up for specifically Andrew Yang. Like I. It is mind blowing. He wasn't on the roster.
• 1:26
  Lowtax: No, this feels like an event in which Andrew Yang thinks it's set up for people like Andrew Yang and stumbles into it.
• 1:35
  Propter: The speakers were again, not exclusively, but predominantly crazy people. Like, like they had Joe Manchin do the video keynote. Who does a Joe Manchin video keynote in the year of our war, 2026?
• 1:46
  Ed: People who can't get Joe Manchin to show up.
• 1:48
  George: Well, it takes a while for him to get his houseboat from West Virginia to D.C. so, you know.
• 1:55
  Lowtax: No, he doesn't live in West Virginia anymore. Come on.
• 1:58
  Propter: The candidates who were at this thing are pretty good. Like, like it's, it's essentially the slate of Dems who are running as independents. So my inference is that is that that event is whatever else it is an opportunity to get some of these guys in a room with some of the centrist donor establishment to try to rub some money off on them or otherwise get, get some back channel Democratic dollars into these guys. The event that I went to was not again directly part of this. It was at the national like truckers lobby thing anyway, just south of Bullfeathers. If you know where that is. They had a decent spread. It was fine. And that was just for Todd Achilles and Brian Banks, who I also thought was an interesting guy. I'll talk.
• 2:44
  George: Hold on, hold on, hold on. What did they serve? I gotta know. What did the National Truckers lobby building serve?
• 2:51
  Propter: We had like some hummus and some baba ganoush. Some pretty good, like bread and crackers. They had sandwiches. I didn't have a sandwich. There was beer. Didn't have a beer either. You know, like it's, it's, it's the kind of thing that if you were a low paid politico hanging out in D.C. and you got invited to this because of your job function, you could, you could survive off this stuff.
• 3:17
  George: Oh, okay. So sorry, continue.
• 3:18
  Propter: Okay. It was in the same building as, as Americans for Prosperity, if memory serves. So if that sets a tone. But it was also like on the same street as what I think was like a Yemeni embassy, but not for Yemen directly.
• 3:37
  Ed: I don't know what that sounds like. A lobbying firm.
• 3:41
  Propter: I'll look into it later. No, like, I mean it had a very.
• 3:44
  Lowtax: Was it, was it the Houthi embassy?
• 3:47
  George: Was it a Yemeni coffee house? Like what?
• 3:51
  Propter: No, it looked like a school or something. I don't know that one I could look up and figure out what the hell's going on there. I just never noticed it before. Anyway, the important D.C. land market was on the same block as is Bull Feathers, which is one of like the, the ancestral DC bars that has been there for years and years and years. That's like a Capitol Hill bar.
• 4:09
  Ed: It's not one of the ones Graham Platner dealt coke out of.
• 4:14
  Propter: I don't know the answer to that question.
• 4:17
  George: I feel like it wasn't. I think there was a specific singular part that was allegedly.
• 4:23
  Propter: I mean, he wanted to tune in. It isn't the bar that he worked at.
• 4:27
  Lowtax: Right.
• 4:27
  Propter: But like it's definitely part of that same orbit of like Hill bars that plausibly someone who was dealing coke on the Hill would have dealt coke out of. So fair enough. It's a perfectly nice bar. It's not very expensive. It tends to cater to like staffers and the occasional member. The burgers are mid. But anyway, so. So Todd Achilles and Brian Banks. Todd Achilles is running for Senate in Idaho. He is a former ROTC guy is what I infer from his biography. He went to a college that has a rotc, did a four year hitch in the army during which he commanded a tank unit in the Gulf as Far as I can tell, immediately after Desert Storm. He wasn't involved in Desert Storm, but he was out there hanging out with the tank units right after. He then parlayed that into business school and a 20 year career in industry tech, but not the bleeding edge kind he worked for like Hewlett Packard and I want to say HTC sort of doing the Silicon Valley thing for a while. Went back and got a master's degree. I went back and got an MPP at Berkeley and has been doing the adjunct professor thing for the last several years. Might be associate professor now, I don't know. Anyway, he's been teaching classes at some combination of Idaho State University and Boise State and, and in the Bay Area. I say ucla. I think Cal is where he got his, his mpp. I thought he was an impressive guy. He's lived in Idaho for a long time. Married to his college sweetheart who is the descendant of interned Japanese Americans. He was registered as a Republican for most of his life. He got appointed by the governor to a Democratic seat as a Democrat in 2022, 2023 then to be one of the seven Democrats in the, in that house of the Idaho legislature. Idaho is crazy red at the state level. Idaho is kind of complicated at the state level in terms of its Republican Party because there is a real hot war going on between the MAGA crazies and kind of the, the more traditional mainstream Republican old guard. To the extent that a couple years back the Idaho governor who was one of the, the mainstream guys left the state and the lieutenant governor who was one of the fire breathers immediately tried to assume gubernatorial powers while he was gone. So you know, like there's, there's the two factions in Idaho that have actual political power are the two factions of the Republican Party. So in some ways it kind of makes sense that somebody who wanted to be involved in civic life and civic politics was a Republican. I do not think he has positions that are offensive to me as a Democrat or as a liberal. And that's after fairly extended conversation with him.
• 7:44
  George: What's his most cancel worthy take?
• 7:47
  Propter: I don't want to dig too far into what he thinks about high income tax bracket rates.
• 7:53
  George: We can work with that.
• 7:54
  Propter: I suspect that would not go over
• 7:55
  George: well with, we can work at that culture war stuff.
• 7:58
  Propter: I think he's, I think he's pretty good. I, I, I, I asked him, asked him straight up. Well, okay, I told him straight up that a deal breaker with, with the Bluesky audience would be a few three trans kids under the bus and he kind of looked at me and made a gesture like, no, that's not going to be a problem. I get the sense he's trying to avoid giving quote on that, that, that they, that he's going to get hit over the head with because that's not an issue that you need to run on in Idaho. But I don't like, I understand that I'm giving you like my subjective impression of a conversation I had with a guy. You know, like body language and implicit, implicit conversation here.
• 8:38
  Lowtax: What kind of issues do you run on at Idaho?
• 8:42
  Ed: Guns. So he has like, yeah, stuff like I'm looking at a website, I'm looking at a site right now.
• 8:49
  Propter: He did, he did just what he described as the obligatory gun commercial.
• 8:53
  Ed: It is taxes and guns, which, I mean if you leave the rest of the stuff alone, who cares?
• 8:57
  Lowtax: Well, and, and the crazy weed growing Nazis in the north part of the state.
• 9:02
  Propter: Yeah, he doesn't like the Nazis. Want to be very clear about that. With his major advantage in Idaho is that the incumbent, Jim Risch, is 83 years old and has managed to wind up on the wrong side of both the fire breathing MAGA guys who think he's a squish and the centrists who think he's too old and too malleable. So a lot of these centrists in particular are flaking off to Todd Achilles's camp. My honest and candid assessment is that this is maybe a 10 to 15% shot kind of thing, but it's cheap. It doesn't take a lot of money to run in Idaho and he's public.
• 9:43
  Ed: You have to pay him in that friggin oxen drive across that freaking state.
• 9:50
  Propter: I wrote him a check because I think there's a real chance that he's going to do this and because feeling good enough about the set of elections to try to buy some Powerball tickets
• 10:01
  Ed: to, to buy a senator. Yes, I understand.
• 10:03
  Propter: Yeah, well, you know, I mean the check I wrote him is like.
• 10:07
  George: So to be clear, nobody who participates in this podcast can afford to buy a senator.
• 10:12
  Ed: I don't know, they, they're pretty cheap these days.
• 10:15
  Lowtax: I don't know. Have you, have you seen how much Susan Collins costs?
• 10:20
  George: I, I know how much Susan Collins Collins costs and I'm going to reiterate, nobody on this podcast.
• 10:27
  Lowtax: Okay, listen, if I sold my house,
• 10:31
  Ed: look, it might be a stretch. I'm pretty sure we could pass by Susan Collins.
• 10:36
  Lowtax: Yeah, I've got a decent amount of equity in the house here. I've lived here for 15 years I could pull it off.
• 10:42
  Ed: Mr. Lowtax. Why do you want this reverse mortgage?
• 10:47
  George: That's how they got Capone, you know.
• 10:51
  Propter: Okay, so Susan Collins is going to spend what like, like, like $40 million on this campaign. Todd Achilles has raised $1.5 million so far and the estimate is that he needs somewhere between 1 and $2 million more to be in the race. That's not enough to buy the seat, but it's enough to get him out in front of the voters. His numbers are that he thinks he is getting somewhere around 30% of the Republican vote, around 80% of independents and around 90% of Dems, which is a bare bones winning coalition in Idaho. If he gets more like 40, he will win going away. There has been recent polling in this, the recent poll that got a lot of attention had achilles up by 11 points over Jim Risch in a two way. I think that poll is bullshit. But
• 11:40
  Lowtax: there was another one that had it like a fairly competitive race. That was a much more reasonable number.
• 11:46
  Propter: Yeah, I don't think he's up, but I think he's competitive. And also people are not really seriously pulling this race because it's frickin Idaho and there is no way this is going to be the decisive Senate seat. Also because thought Achilles is, is claiming that he's not going to caucus with anybody, which this is not because I talked to him about it, but which I frankly don't believe that I think he's gonna.
• 12:11
  George: No, that that's just not how the Senate works. Yeah, he can say that all he wants, but what that means is I'm not going to caucus with anybody without. What that would mean in practice is I am completely irrelevant. I have no say in anything that goes on.
• 12:25
  Propter: I can imagine a handshake deal where basically Chuck Schumer or whoever's leading the Senate caucus says fine, you're not caucusing with us. I'm making air quotes right now because we don't need your vote to have the majority but we're going to give you committee assignments and the understanding is that if we need your vote, it's there.
• 12:43
  George: The problem with handshake deals. Well, let's figure that out. Look, okay, yeah, here's my thing. Even if all you did is you bumped off seat out of Republican control that is important to their electoral coalition for six years into the hands of somebody who once in a while is going to break with the Republican Party, that in and of itself in the context of the Senate specifically and Idaho specifically is a massive win because a Democrat cannot win the state outright. That is literally impossible. Yeah, and there is a very plausible scenario where denying Republican control for the next six years of one Senate seat is the difference between a sea change in American politics and basically the status quo. What do I mean by that? Okay, so I crunched some numbers on this, and by crunching numbers, I mean I made a really, really excellent PowerPoint slide that I'm quite proud of.
• 13:43
  Lowtax: Okay, so before you continue here, I just want to note an excellent PowerPoint slide is like a good post. Like they're all bad. It's just summer.
• 13:53
  Ed: It's several steps below a good post. People will remember a good post in a few years. The slut goblins of false Berlin will be remembered.
• 14:01
  George: Here's the thing. I get paid to make PowerPoint slides, not posts. That is the context in which I made this. Okay, so look, there are roughly eight Senate seats that are plausible Dem pickups this time around. Plausible or competitive races. Alaska, Texas, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Ohio, Maine and North Carolina that are currently held by Republicans. Right? So let's say Democrats do phenomenal in, in this midterms and we sweep those eight. I'm not saying we're going to. I'm not saying that's the forecast or what we should be expecting or anything. I'm just saying hypothetically, there are then a series of seven other seats where it's incredibly unlikely a Democrat wins, but it's hypothetically possible. I have on that list Idaho, Montana, Kentucky, and in this case, Idaho is Achilles, not an actual Democrat. Idaho, Montana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida and South Carolina. Again, I am not forecasting a Democrat is going to win any of those seats. I'm just saying it's on the edge of the probability distribution. So let's say hypothetically, Dems sweep those competitive eight and they pick up two of the long shot seats. Or no, you know what, let's just say one long shot. So that gets you to 56 Senate votes. Okay? Next year or next cycle, in 2028, you then have. Again, these are Republican only seats that Dems could plausibly pick up. Alaska, I'm putting on this list just because it's competitive in 2026. It may not be in 2028, but for the sake of argument, Alaska, Nebraska. Sorry, Alaska, Kansas. Excuse me, Alaska, Kansas, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina are your potential pickups. Ohio. The rub there is that the 2026 is a special. So technically you're defending one you've picked up, but just for the sake of argument, you didn't have again, Michigan.
• 16:17
  Lowtax: I thought we had both Michigan seats.
• 16:19
  George: Oh, I'm sorry, Wisconsin, not Michigan. Excuse me. Oh, yeah.
• 16:22
  Ed: Okay.
• 16:22
  George: My Midwest geography is throwing me out, to be fair. Michigan and Wisconsin. Yeah, exactly. Michigan, Wisconsin and Kansas, Nebraska kind of similar. So just since that got confusing, let me just rerun that one of Alaska. Alaska, two of the corn states. Alaska, Kansas, Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio, North Carolina, those are your competitives. And then long shots are Idaho again, Utah, Missouri, Kentucky, Alabama, Florida, South Carolina again, none of these is a forecast. Dems are going to win that state. But in a plausible hypothetical scenario where MAGA continues to double down and we continue to hit a wall of public opinion being negative against them, and the solution people decide is we'll vote them out, something like we're getting in 2026, then you get into a scenario where Dems have a large Senate majority and have a plausible path to well north of 60 Senate votes. Now, I don't want to say again, like I have said this three or four times, this is not a forecast. This is not like this. This is going to happen or is high probability to happen. This is a tail risk thing. But it's possible if not plausible. Right? It's on the probability distribution. And when you're talking about going from 47 to 60 Senate seats or 60 plus Senate seats in really bad maps, like structurally, these are not friendly maps for Democrats in two years, denying Idaho once would be huge. So like, even if Achilles doesn't want to say stuff that would make him popular in blue sky, whether it's about taxes or trans kids or whatever, as long as he's not directly saying the stuff that, you know, puts him on the wrong side of that issue, then it's worth it to be clear.
• 18:16
  Propter: His stance on this is on abortion, is that the government should stay out of people's bodies and.
• 18:21
  George: Right.
• 18:22
  Propter: That's, you know, that's, that's his, that's his line. And you know, the fact, the fact that somebody is pro choice in Idaho is also kind of a big deal. That's the other major issue on the Idaho ballot.
• 18:32
  George: This Idaho, by the way, has had some really, really bad implications from the fall of Roe v. Wade because their abortion access was not great to begin with, just by nature of being a rural western state. And there have been deaths of pregnant people trying to have pregnancies terminated that, you know, they can't under Idaho state law. And that went up to the Supreme Court. And yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's raw, it's really bad out There.
• 19:02
  Propter: So yeah, like, so abortion access for places like Idaho is particularly bad because you have to go so freaking far to get out of state. Like, I don't even know what the closest abortion clinic to Boise is, but
• 19:18
  George: I'm guessing Spokane probably.
• 19:21
  Propter: I mean, if it Spokane, we're talking what, probably eight, ten hours by car.
• 19:25
  George: Yeah. I mean, in the end, in the examples that there was a lot of litigation around, it was, it was basically pregnancies that were in the process of terminating and needed a DNC and couldn't do it in Idaho hospital and you're talking about airlifts is the solution, so. Right.
• 19:45
  Propter: Yeah, it's, it's the same, it's the same problem as like interior Texas, where it's not just that the state making the, making draconian abortion restrictions makes it hard for your normal provider or your normal network to do something. It's that the burdens to go somewhere else and do it are insanely high just because of the leverage and the travel time for anything that's an emergent medical situation. It's really, really dangerous for women. So, and, and Idaho has a, a ballot initiative that could restore some amount of access that's on the ballot this fall. I haven't seen polling on it, but that's where a lot of money is getting spent right now on the airwaves in Idaho. And that's complicated. You know, like some of the politics there are involved. Idaho is 25 Mormon. It's the second most most LDS state after Utah. And LDS has occasionally more complicated abortion politics than you'd think. There's, there's definitely like the, the sort of evangelical like, streak that says abortion is bad and you shouldn't do it under any circumstances. But also like the church doesn't actually ban abortion. And it's supposed to be something that, you know, you do under, you know, guidance, guidance from your, your pastor and, and so on and so forth. Guidance from the church bishop. But for reasons of health, they're pretty much on board with it.
• 21:24
  Lowtax: The Mormons. The Mormons have learned after many, after 100 plus years of dealing with the federal government to maintain strategic ambiguity
• 21:34
  George: and
• 21:35
  Propter: you know, not too fine, not to put too fine a point on it, but like if you're trying to get another two to three kids out of that wife, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta.
• 21:45
  George: Seriously.
• 21:46
  Propter: That's so like, like they do, they do take marriage pretty seriously and like serial divorce is not something they're trying to do there. Unlike portions of the evangelical massive.
• 21:57
  George: Well, I, I just I think it's worth emphasizing that point. The difference between, you know, we aren't going to say full stop, all abortion is verboten and whatever is going on in the evangelical Christian community. And really not, we say the white evangelical, culturally conservative Christian community, which is most. Many evangelicals, not all. So just a little technicality. But the, the, the gap there is enormous. That's the gap between an outright ban where someone who's carrying a wanted pregnancy and has an emergency late term cannot, like doctors, cannot intervene to save their life. And you know, a very different world. Like the Republican state level abortion bans do not, are not compatible with the vision of abortion that Propter just described for the Mormon Church. Like, like they are, they are incompatible. They're not the same thing. You know, I am not going to be out here caping for the universal good taste and good ethics of Mormons and the Mormon Church, but in the LDS Church. But I'm just saying it's different. It's not the same thing.
• 23:08
  Lowtax: Let them have their dirty soda, George.
• 23:13
  George: Okay. That I will condemn.
• 23:16
  Propter: Yeah, like I think, I think you have, at least among the religious taste makers, I guess the religious, the clerics of lds, you have, you have agreement that abortion for things like this pregnancy is not going to work. And also it will kill the mother. You should do the abortion. That's, that's their, that's their theological stance and that's their functional stance. And one of the things that means is that you have hopefully doctors who have some, some expertise doing abortions. So there's, there's a massive difference there between having the procedure be banned such that. And again, this has actually happened in, in, in Texas and Southern states and in Idaho where you've had situations where the medical staff needs to get legal review before they can treat the patient, which means they need to wait for the patient to be, to be dying worse before they can intervene. Because, you know, because, because they're not, they're. The septicemia is not yet life threatening. So we can't get in there and do something that would terminate the pregnancy to treat the septicemia or you're bleeding, but you're not bleeding enough. We're going to give you another half hour and see where you are. And that, you know, they don't always stop on the right side of that. So the abortion thing in Idaho would be, would be a big deal if it passed. But it also means that there's kind of a queer lane dividing the, the more centristy Republicans in Idaho from some of the fire breathers there that's already on the ballot and is all. And is on the ballot alongside again an unpopular geriatric incumbent. So I think there's, I think there's, there's reason to think that this is a long shot that might come home. It's not going to take all that much money to put them in position where we get to find out and I might try to do a little, a little big sale for him on Bluesky to, to get his, his volunteers. He says he's got 2, 000 door knockers right now, which is pretty good. Doesn't sound like that many, but for Idaho.
• 25:28
  Lowtax: That's half of Idaho.
• 25:29
  Propter: Yeah, that's like a lot of people that, to get, to get his volunteers coordinated to get his ads up on the air and so on and so forth. He did a pretty good ad about how about how not to start dumb wars that I'll post to the, to the summary. It's, it's nice.
• 25:49
  George: I think what Propter is talking about here in terms of putting weight behind somebody who, if they were running in, even in my state, let's just use North Carolina. Like, if, if Achilles was running in the North Carolina Democratic Party primary, I would work very hard against him. Like, there is no question there. But if you have an ethic of harm reduction, then Achilles winning would be a massive reduction in harm. It may be attenuated, mediated by the sheer scale of the Senate. But relative to the alternative, you want every single day Achilles over whoever the Republicans are putting up. And that's true this year and in 2028, like every single time. And that's not to say he's like the greatest guy, that he's got lots of good opinions on everything that we can build a Democratic Party modeled on his stances or the, his stances are the ones that other Democratic Party politicians should take. But that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about picking off a Republican incumbent in the Senate in Idaho. Like, the, the wins over replacement here are very high. So, like, if you have an attitude of harm reduction and you have an attitude of doing the best you can with the hand you're dealt. Again, the Senate map is not friendly this year. It's just not and won't be next year either. That's what you got to do.
• 27:11
  Propter: Let me, let me say that, that I don't think he's. I think, I think that the, the local manifestation of Todd Achilles in North Carolina right now would be a Democrat. That, that he's an independent because he's running in Idaho and I think he's a, I think he's a pretty reasonable guy. Like, he's clearly undergone some evolution over the years on his political stances. I'm confident he voted for Romney in 2012. He probably voted McCain in, in 2008, although I'm less sure about that. But I would be surprised. I didn't ask him and I, I won't. But after talking to him and listening to kind of how he talked about Trump, which is not complimentary, I would be surprised if he voted for Trump in any of the, the three elections in which he has the opposite, the opportunity to vote for Trump.
• 28:00
  Lowtax: Is he open to getting rid of the blue field?
• 28:06
  Propter: I wouldn't recommend him to say yes even if he was. Idaho takes weird pride in that. Idaho's got up fields, man. Between, between that and the Kibbe Dome, it's, it's a sad scene.
• 28:18
  Lowtax: I don't know that you can go after them for having up fields when y' all got Eastern Washington.
• 28:24
  Propter: Yeah, we don't call that.
• 28:25
  Lowtax: That's even worse than, than the blue field.
• 28:28
  Propter: It is. Brian Banks was the other guy who was there who's. He's the, the independent on the ballot in, in South Dakota.
• 28:39
  Ed: Propter. It's cold open. Is now 28 minutes long.
• 28:42
  Propter: Oh, okay.
• 28:43
  Ed: Do you really have to keep going?
• 28:45
  Propter: Yeah, yeah.
• 28:46
  Ed: No, no, seriously, go, go.
• 28:49
  George: No, we should talk about Brian Banks. Let's, let's talk about him.
• 28:51
  Propter: Okay. Brian Banks was a Navy JAG for. He said he did a hitch in the Navy, went back to law school. Figured that was a good way to get law school paid for. Started as a JAG and then 9, 11 happened. So he did another 20 years. Seemed like a stand up guy. He was the Democratic nominee for whichever Dakota he's running in in 2022. Sure. I don't think he's, I don't think he's going to win. But he, he also seemed like, like a stand up dude. And one of the things that he said that stuck with me was that for lots of these states and, and I know for a fact this is true and I, I would guess you guys can speak to this a little bit as well. There are people that, you know, you start talking to about politics and you agree with them on a lot of issues, they agree with you on a lot of issues as a candidate. But then you say I'm a Democrat and the conversation's over. They will not vote for a Democrat, period. They don't like the Republicans much, but they will not vote for a Democrat. So I think that's kind of the, the overarching strategy behind marketing these guys as independents is to get away from a party label that has really become cumbersome to people in a set of red states. And I think this is worse in, in the Midwest and the Mountain west than, than it is in the south, frankly, because the south at least has an ancestral Democratic tradition. That's not why speak on it.
• 30:24
  George: Well, for a certain subset of Southern voters. Yes. That's why the. For black voters in the south. Yes, 100. That's why for white voters in the South, a lot of the new Democratic coalition in the south, so Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, college educated whites. Right. It is not the same thing if you're college educated. Like, yes, there are people out there who are going to say I just won't vote for a Democrat. But like they're not going to share the political views that, you know, an independent candidate in the upper Midwest or Mountain west might say, might have. Where you might find people like that is in the rural part of the state, but it's dying. Like, like the, the dynamics of the south in general are concentration in cities and a hollowing out of the rural areas. So the marginal voter in the south that thinks that way is much less relevant than and probably again does not share all those political views in a way that's just different from the Midwest and the Mountain West. So that would be my take as somebody that lives in the urban South.
• 31:31
  Propter: Yeah, I mean my sense is that is that these guys are doing pretty well with kind of the, the populist libertarian set. Todd Achilles said he had people showing up in MAGA hats to his rallies. So that's something I guess.
• 31:44
  George: And there are populist libertarians in the South. They're up in the mountains. And you know, maybe you could have success in Appalachia for a House seat with a candidate like this. The states just don't work that way. It just, it, the, the geography doesn't make sense. Yeah, you're giving up way too much ground with again, college educated white folks, black folks, urban voters, you know, in a lot of instances, Latinos. Like, it's just not the trade off isn't there for very white, less educated states in the Midwest. It's a different story. Midwest and Mountain west is a different story.
• 32:23
  Lowtax: The plan in the south is planet Atlanta 2100.
• 32:27
  George: Yeah. I 85 supremacy, baby. We're gonna go from Birmingham all the way into Northern Virginia and It's gonna control the entire region. And you can get on board and you can drive your EV pickup. I'm a noun 85 like a happy little fella or too bad that that's what's happened.
• 32:43
  Lowtax: Atlanta is going to spread from. Because there are no zoning laws in Georgia. It is going to spread from Houston to Boston and at that point the Republicans will not be able to win
• 32:56
  George: more seriously though, like there, there is a, there are two megalopoli on the east coast, right. Like you can go from Birmingham to roughly Raleigh, Durham, depends whether you end in the Triad or Raleigh Durham. And then there's a small gap and then you're into central Virginia. And that small gap is like. Other than that, you would have continuous urban development from somewhere north of Ed. I don't know how far north.
• 33:25
  Ed: They're basically about here all the way into northern Alabama, unless you count a hundred mile gap. And then you, then you'd get like Portland, all five people of it.
• 33:39
  George: There is, there is a gap and I don't know how that gap is going to fill because there is just not a lot. I mean you got. Wake County's got to get a lot bigger to send the exurbs all the way into central Virginia.
• 33:52
  Ed: I was thinking on the other side, you just have to federalize New Hampshire.
• 33:56
  George: Yeah, probably should have done that a while ago.
• 33:58
  Ed: I mean I wouldn't, I wouldn't recommend it but like it'll have to happen eventually. They can't, they can't be allowed to keep voting like this.
• 34:08
  George: So anyhow. But yeah, like in the south, the, whether it's Georgia, Virginia, it's happening in like, like last election, 2024, you, you saw it clear as a bell, right? Like this state is going to Democrats and it's a question of when and how fast. Not, not like how soon and how fast, not when, not if. And that that's going to continue eventually it'll probably be true in Alabama too, maybe one day Mississippi, but that's, that's longer term. I mean in the south, the more urban you get, the farther you get towards the Democrats. And you know, we have a slightly different approach to growth here in Charlotte from our friends a little bit bit to the southwest in northern Georgia. All due respect to that approach, I like ours a tad better, but it's having the same effect.
• 34:57
  Lowtax: I thought zoning was a traffic thing where y' all talking about with that,
• 35:02
  George: hey, you can build, you, you can basically build triplexes by right anywhere in Mecklenburg county at this point. So we're doing the damn thing here, you know.
• 35:11
  Propter: You know, for what it's worth, urbanification is part of the story in Idaho too. Like Idaho is moving blue in a hurry for various reasons. It's just moving from an extremely red base. Boise is getting bigger and bigger in part because of washout from the Bay area that particularly like Covid area. I mean Boise housing prices are insane. Like, like.
• 35:36
  Lowtax: Yeah, I was gonna say they all hate the Californians up there.
• 35:40
  Propter: Well, and Achilles specifically mentioned that the California transfers are some of his, his toughest audience. That, that those guys tend to be extremely conservative movement conservative. But that the organification is pulling native Idahoans to the left much the same way as it's happening in Texas where like the thing that's pushing left in Texas, the thing that's pushing blue in Texas is not so much internal migrants from other states, it's that, it's that the native born Texans are urbanifying and moving to the left of, of their parents generation.
• 36:21
  George: If you could only vote in Texas as a native born Texan, it would be blue. It would have been blue like I think eight years ago. It's. And it's not particularly close. The margins are widening. North Carolina doesn't work that way for now.
• 36:35
  Lowtax: There's some. Maybe it will nuance to that though, right? Because like a lot of people who were not born in Texas came to Texas in like the 80s for the oil industry.
• 36:46
  George: No, for sure.
• 36:47
  Lowtax: Nowadays, nowadays the influx is coming from you know, California, Arizona, states like that. And for sure.
• 36:53
  George: And if you ever want to read a story about or a book about this nut country is, is really good. I think I mentioned on this podcast before, but it tells the story of the Republican party's conservative tilt and the success they found in Texas in 1960s and 70s. And it's a genuinely interesting ethnographic story about the politics shifting there. But yeah, it was conservatives coming from the upper Midwest as far back as the 1960s and really accelerating into the 80s and 90s. But today, just snapshot today if you only let people who were actually born in Texas vote, they vote by solid margins for Democrats.
• 37:30
  Ed: Alex Jones is still furious about it.
• 37:38
  Lowtax: How's all Alex doing these days now that Ben has taken all this stuff?
• 37:43
  Ed: Well, I mean he's, he's increasingly swollen and increasingly loud in the few places that allow him.
• 37:48
  George: So nothing's changed?
• 37:50
  Propter: Yeah, yeah. I mean more.
• 37:54
  George: I did see Infowars Infowars like the new woke Infowars wars like rainbow Infowars Merch in the Wild earlier this week. And I was like, wow, okay. Good stuff.
• 38:07
  Ed: I think Alex Jones is like still working with Steven Crowder or something, which is like imagine being that guy's number two. Like, imagine having to pretend Steven Crowder has a chin. Like good.
• 38:27
  George: Louder with Crowder. More like chowder with Crowder. Am I right, folks?
• 38:31
  Ed: Workshop that one. Try again.
• 38:33
  George: You are the chowder guy. All the fur. Sorry, I mean
• 38:41
  Ed: you. Okay. All right, George, you know we don't talk like that anymore, right? You. You understand? You understand who's weird.
• 38:49
  Lowtax: That's not true.
• 38:50
  Ed: No, it's super true. The Boston accent is dead. Unless you. As as mentioned before we started one of the few remaining and dwindling population that responds to the name Sully.
• 39:05
  Propter: You're really.
• 39:06
  Ed: You're really running out of it.
• 39:08
  Propter: They.
• 39:08
  Ed: They taught the locals to talk. I'm sorry.
• 39:10
  Lowtax: Yeah, but. Yeah, but the guy, the guy who's still named Sully is the guy who runs the train.
• 39:17
  Ed: Not anymore. Keolis says that now.
• 39:20
  Lowtax: It was when I was there in 2010 because I sat on that train and this guy shouting had pack. And I had to sit there and go, what the is this guy talking about?
• 39:30
  Ed: I told inform you the French run our trains.
• 39:34
  Lowtax: Huh?
• 39:36
  Ed: No, seriously. Keolis is a French company. They do hire local, you know, as like a gesture of goodwill, but.
• 39:41
  Lowtax: Right.
• 39:42
  George: God, can you imagine being the French guy that goes to work for big megacorp in the suburbs of Paris and you get told you're actually going to be deployed to our foreign office over in Boston and we're sending you to south. We got some trains for you to run.
• 39:59
  Ed: I haven't seen them strike, so I'm guessing that's not happening.
• 40:05
  Lowtax: When you get to the airport, there will be a guy waiting for you with a car named Murph.
• 40:13
  Propter: He will take you to your barracks in Lowell where you will be spending the next two and a half years.
• 40:18
  Ed: Somehow he is smoking three cigarettes at the same time.
• 40:23
  Propter: See, I feel like that would make the French at home,
• 40:27
  George: the cigarettes bit. Yeah.
• 40:28
  Ed: Yeah.
• 40:28
  Lowtax: He will probably have a trapped CD blasting on the stereo in the car.
• 40:35
  Ed: Do. Are they allowed to have menthols in France?
• 40:38
  George: No, absolutely not.
• 40:39
  Propter: No.
• 40:40
  George: No, that's not a thing. Anywhere but the US I think I. I think so.
• 40:44
  Ed: But yeah. No.
• 40:46
  Lowtax: Which once again, supremacy on our end.
• 40:52
  Propter: Yeah.
• 40:53
  George: You are a menthol smoker. I'd forgotten that.
• 40:55
  Lowtax: Yep.
• 40:56
  Ed: Wow. Jesus.
• 41:00
  George: Yeah, I will say menthols are fun because if you ever see somebody, if you ever see a white person with a box of Newports, that person has some stories. And that person knows what they're doing. Not because smoking in Newport is like a blessed, pleasant experience, but just because to get to the point where you're carrying around Newports, you're either doing that for horrible, horrible reasons or really, really, really good ones. And the stories about which one it is are going to be interesting. So, yeah,
• 41:33
  Lowtax: yeah,
• 41:36
  George: there's a really good Tick Tock account where I think this. I think this woman lives in the Bay Area. I don't know where she lives. She's like, I don't know what she does for work. I think she writes code or something. I'm not really sure. Maybe an artist. I don't know. Doesn't really matter. One of her things she does to manage her compulsions is every time she has a compulsion of some kind, like a desire for something, she records a video of whatever she's doing in the moment of her describing what her compulsion is for. So, like, she then stitches them and posts them on TikTok. So, like half of them are for a Newport. Another time it'll be like a pickleback or like something like that. Like some, like, weird, like, aggressive drink. And then occasional, occasionally it'll be like a hit of K or an eight ball or whatever. And these videos are very creatively stitched together so that it sort of escalates and undulates through her week where she's doing her makeup and it's a Newport and then she's at her desk and it's like something really absurd and it goes back and forth. So if you're into that kind of thing. A lot of good content on Tick Tock. The other normal men don't think this is a very good idea. Yeah, no, I think.
• 42:49
  Ed: I think continue to allow the NFL to exist if we can hit Tick Tock with cruise missiles instead.
• 42:58
  George: Well, just let me buy some more Oracle CDS first, because they own it now.
• 43:01
  Lowtax: So I'm starting to be kind of with Ed on nuking the NFL, given how the Dolphins are performing so far this year.
• 43:09
  Ed: Look, it's the only way out for you.
• 43:11
  Propter: Seahawks lost today. I'm open to it.
• 43:17
  George: This is Normal Men, a podcast from four men who are clinging desperately to normalcy in an era when that's asking a bit too much.
• 43:23
  Propter: I'm George In Charlotte, in D.C. i'm
• 43:26
  Lowtax: Propter Malone in outer Florida. I'm the way low tax speed run
• 43:29
  Ed: enjoyer and I met in Boston.
• 43:36
  Lowtax: What is. So I asked this on Bluesky. I'll see if you three have a good answer. What is the what is the worst place? It has to be a city, town, or county. What is the worst place? We are going to flip this fall. Like, think of a city or something where you're like, I'm not sure this is worth it. Let the Republicans have that one.
• 44:05
  George: Probably like, like a county in northern Idaho if Achilles wins. Right. Like a random county with like 500 voters.
• 44:12
  Lowtax: I was going to go with killing Texas.
• 44:16
  Propter: Yeah. We could get killed.
• 44:17
  Lowtax: Yeah.
• 44:19
  George: The one I had is the county that the Woodlands Texas is in.
• 44:24
  Lowtax: Is the Woodlands in Harris?
• 44:26
  George: No, it's not. Well, it, I think maybe like a little part of it is, but most of it's in. I think it's like McAllister or something like that. Now, this was sort of a joke in, you know, response to the idea of a diesel export ban, because if you did have a diesel export ban, then you would lose the Woodlands and probably the county. It was 75, 25 Trump in 2024. For reference,
• 44:48
  Ed: the villages. Yeah. I don't know.
• 44:53
  George: That's a fun one, though.
• 44:54
  Ed: I don't know. It's gonna be bad.
• 44:58
  Lowtax: I, I promise you that's not gonna happen.
• 45:00
  Propter: Okay. Old people are blue now.
• 45:03
  Ed: Yeah, they're. It's.
• 45:04
  George: But hold on. Low tax. Let's specify that, that we win the villages. Like, like, let's just specify that. I'm. I don't think it'll happen either, but
• 45:12
  Lowtax: we're assume a spherical cap.
• 45:14
  George: Assume the spherical cow. Do we win Florida if we win the villages?
• 45:19
  Lowtax: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 45:21
  George: Okay.
• 45:22
  Lowtax: I like. If we get old people with advanced syphilis voting for us. Yes, we're. We're going to win Florida.
• 45:31
  George: They are definitely cooking versions of syphilis that you can't even imagine between all the like, suppressed immune systems and long, long incubation periods down there.
• 45:41
  Ed: Look, just hear me out. Trump only won by 30 points. Have you noticed the last two years. Because they have. They watch news and in between the syphilis parties.
• 45:57
  Lowtax: Yes, but like they, they only watch Fox News, though.
• 46:01
  Ed: Yeah. But is Fox News going to be able to pump up J.D. vance's tires?
• 46:08
  Propter: So we talked about this a little bit before on the podcast, but I think some of the politics of inflation with regard to old people are a little misunderstood because the inflation bucket that drives changes in Social Security indexing is not actually the old people Social Security bucket that they disproportionately spend on health care, that housing costs are relatively set for them. So if you look at like the inflation that happened under Biden, healthcare inflation was actually really low during that period. That was not the driver of that, of that huge inflation spike. So they got paid more because Social Security got indexed to the high number. But relative to their actual expenditures, their, their buying power went up.
• 46:56
  Lowtax: Right.
• 46:57
  Propter: What's happening right now is the reverse of that. What's happening right now is overall inflation. The, the, I think a CPI that drives Social Security.
• 47:07
  Lowtax: Yes, it is.
• 47:08
  Propter: Is not moving all that fast. But things that old people spend on are moving. So I think you might see a little bit more of a bite among, among the geriatric crew, specifically like older geriatrics. Not, not your, not your aging Gen X types, but you know, those few members of the greatest generation still with us.
• 47:32
  Ed: You really didn't put enough contempt on that.
• 47:36
  George: You tried.
• 47:38
  Ed: I felt it. But you didn't quite get there.
• 47:40
  Propter: I'm, I'm technically 1980, so I always feel a little weird ragging on Gen X.
• 47:45
  Ed: So you can sell them out. It's fine. They, they sold out first.
• 47:50
  Lowtax: You're late. Gen X. We'll give you a millennial hall pass.
• 47:54
  Propter: Yeah, I'm cussed. Right? Like maybe eldest millennial.
• 47:58
  George: Just to be clear, if you're 1985 or later, I do not want to hear about how you're not a millennial. If you are 1979 or earlier, I do not want to hear about how you're not Gen X. Propter, you are far too well regulated to be considered a Gen Xer. Like, there's just no. I don't know what you did to dodge all the lead, but you did it.
• 48:22
  Ed: We've heard what you listen to for music.
• 48:26
  Lowtax: Yes. Propter is the only one who could probably name the entire top 40 on the Billboard chart.
• 48:32
  George: I cannot.
• 48:35
  Propter: There is pretty good though.
• 48:39
  George: You couldn't. I, I would need five minutes with Google and I still couldn't name the top 40. No way. I couldn't. No.
• 48:47
  Lowtax: I'm not sure I'd be able to pronounce any of the names on the top 40.
• 48:51
  George: Right. That's a big part of the problem.
• 48:55
  Propter: It's all like stylized like, like text focused. YouTube forward names now.
• 49:00
  Lowtax: Right.
• 49:01
  Propter: Like, because that's, that's the discovery surface for pretty much anybody who's coming up, who's not coming up directly as an industry, industry driven phenomenon from inside the studios.
• 49:13
  Lowtax: But getting back to old people. Yeah, I, I agree with Propter that that's going to happen. I just don't think it's going to be nearly enough to get us Florida.
• 49:23
  George: Yeah, no, I, I agree with that.
• 49:24
  Ed: Yeah.
• 49:25
  Propter: Yeah.
• 49:25
  Lowtax: I think I think it's, it's going to be a lot closer than like 24 was and certainly a lot closer than 2022 was for the statewide races here. But I think it's still probably going to be like mid to high single digits. Republican win.
• 49:41
  George: Florida is one of the kind of
• 49:42
  Ed: going for 2028 this, this year. Yeah, maybe.
• 49:48
  Lowtax: No, we're not going to win Florida in 2028.
• 49:50
  Ed: Really?
• 49:51
  George: Yeah. No, I think even lower odds in this year where.
• 49:53
  Lowtax: Yeah, lower odds.
• 49:55
  Ed: You think things are going to be better? I mean, maybe the Democrats will solve everything, but it's not so much that
• 50:02
  Propter: I think they're going to be better,
• 50:03
  Lowtax: it's that I just don't think you're going to have turnout depressed on the right in 2028 the way you're going to in 2026.
• 50:12
  Ed: We'll have.
• 50:12
  George: That's going to be a huge factor in deciding these elections.
• 50:15
  Propter: If Marco Rubio loses Florida in 2028. Wow.
• 50:20
  Ed: I'm operating on the assumption that it will be everyone's biggest wettest boy. J.D. vance, not Marco Rubio.
• 50:29
  Lowtax: Yeah, I, I still, I can see it going either way. I do think those are the two most likely, but I'm still sticking with the divorce.
• 50:36
  George: Chucky doll, my gop, he's not divorced
• 50:39
  Ed: yet, but here's hoping.
• 50:41
  Lowtax: No, but he's like, looks wise and spiritually. He is very divorced.
• 50:45
  Propter: Very divorced. That's true.
• 50:47
  George: Florida is definitely on my list of plausible Dem wins. And I do think, you know, we're still five weeks out from an election. Stuff happens. Like, you know, and also I think the odds of a polling miss against Dems are actually higher than a polling miss the other way. I think there has been a lot of effort put into trying to avoid Mrs. In favor of the Democratic Party and eventually that switch is going to flip where they're going to overcompensate in some way. I don't have like a, a firm quantitative argument for this where I'm saying the polling firms are cooked and, you know, they're missing voter. I'm not saying that, but eventually that that number is going to flip the other way.
• 51:28
  Lowtax: I kind of think we're seeing. I kind of think we're seeing some of that right now too. Like you're seeing there's a bunch of polls that have us up double digits and then there's a bunch that have us up like five.
• 51:38
  George: Right, right. An election where the party in power has brutally suppressed any desire to turn out like this is very, very obvious in everything you talk to with people on the ground and just in the vibes in presidential approvals, like there is no reason for a, you know, hanger on Republican to go to the ballot box this fall. They're just not going to go. That is a huge deal because we talk about red states, blue states, whatever. But like there are a lot of Democrats in a lot of places that are very red. And if you get suppression of turnout for Republicans low enough, crazy stuff can happen. And it's not about swing, it's not about convincing voters to one thing or the other, but it's, it's purely about how weak is the turnout from the more powerful party. And you know, I don't think we're going to win Florida, but if we win Florida, I'm not going to be like, wow, who saw that coming? Like, it's possible.
• 52:40
  Propter: Yeah.
• 52:41
  George: And you know, the other thing I'll just quickly tack on to the end of this, like this difference between what I think is going to happen, like the, the modal or median or mean outcome and what's a possible outcome to consider. Like.
• 52:53
  Lowtax: Right.
• 52:54
  George: This is the difference between somebody who actually knows what they're doing around forecasting and someone who has no idea how to self critique their own forecasts. Right. Like if you're doing forecasting repeatedly, you need to understand that there are tails on either side of the distribution. Like there's most of the stuff that's going to happen that should around where your forecast is. But you have to understand risk either way. And you know, if you like again, I totally agree with low taxes. Take that. Like we're not going to win Florida. I think that's the right forecast.
• 53:24
  Ed: Distributions have distribution.
• 53:29
  George: Yes, go on. Yes. Fat tail curves. So anyhow, I just.
• 53:39
  Propter: Yeah.
• 53:40
  George: Like as a general modeling thing, anybody predicting anything, sports, politics, like what you're, they're gonna have for dinner that night, like you have your baseline forecast and then there's risks to it and you have to acknowledge that you don't see everything. You don't have all the information and nobody does.
• 53:55
  Lowtax: And even if you see it, you know, if you're assigning probabilities to it, like improbable things happen, as we all know, you know, Hell yeah. Now on Florida, I do think, I think it's more likely we win the gubernatorial than the Senate for sure.
• 54:11
  Propter: Let me, let me say that I do think it's important psychologically for low tax to believe that we're going to lose Florida. I think that's an important protective mechanism and we should try to preserve that.
• 54:23
  Lowtax: It's not a protective mechanism. It's just. I've resigned myself to it at this point, watching.
• 54:28
  Ed: Then you can't get your hopes.
• 54:29
  George: Hopes up, right? Yeah, but that's a, that's low taxes, emotional support, negativity.
• 54:35
  Ed: Yeah, I, look, I grew up a Red Sox fan before they were good and after. I understand,
• 54:45
  Lowtax: but like, you can't argue with the trend lines on this state. We went from it being. We went from it being three and a half points more Republican than the nation as a whole for like 20 years to it suddenly being. Being in Wyoming like overnight.
• 55:05
  Ed: Hey, Wyoming at least has the Chinese.
• 55:09
  Lowtax: That's true. Well, no, they have one Cheney now.
• 55:13
  Ed: Yeah.
• 55:15
  Propter: The one thing, the one thing I, I do think is pretty interesting in, in Florida right now is that there are black candidates on both the gubernatorial and the Senate ballot. And a. I have to think that that drives black turnout in Florida, which is good for Dems, because they're not gonna vote for Byron. They're not. Yeah, they're gonna vote. They're gonna vote Dem in both, in both in both elections if they turn out overwhelming the way they are. And number two, I think you might get some people who are staying away because on the Republican side because they feel that this is a bridge too far for them.
• 55:58
  Lowtax: Oh, that the Republicans nominated a black guy.
• 56:00
  George: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, low tax. Like, are there that many voters up in your part of the state, in the Panhandle, that will actually not vote for a black person on the Republican ticket? Like, because I've seen that hypothesized and I believe it to a point. But, like, is, is that real? Like, what do you think?
• 56:15
  Lowtax: So, so I was actually laughing about that during the primary, y' all will recall, because if you look at, so the Panhandle and the Big Bend, if you look on sort of the east, the eastern Big Bend and then the counties just west of like Tallahassee, Byron Donald's came in like third and fourth in a bunch of these counties in the primary behind guys who no one has ever heard of. Like, there was someone, something called a David Williams. No one knows. Like, I think he's spending more time with his family because they don't know who he is either. But I think there may be some truth to that. How big does the effect wind up being? I'm not sure. But yeah, I think, I think it's possible. It's probably not going to be enough, but, you know, we'll see.
• 57:15
  Propter: Put it this way, it's not that difficult for me to imagine a Republican Cubano who does not want to vote for the black guy and who does not want to vote for the woman and who stays home. Like, that's. There are affiliations here that are operating on a number of different levels and it's not clear to me that the partisan affiliation is going to universally carry the debt.
• 57:41
  Lowtax: The other thing I will say is if you're looking at those two areas of Florida in the north, that is also exactly why I am highly skeptical of us getting very close in Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Arkansas, because those are the areas that most resemble those states.
• 58:03
  George: Yeah. Any of those states voting for a Democrat is like an extreme tail risk thing. It's a thing that's way out the distribution. I think South Carolina, structurally, and we talked about this, I think a little bit after the primary, but South Carolina is just getting way too many Republican retirees from the Northeast. It just doesn't, the numbers just don't make sense. Alabama Democrats have won in recent memory, so we know it's possible, it's possible to win in the Mississippi Delta if you're a Democrat. Everything has to go right. But you know, sometimes everything goes right
• 58:39
  Lowtax: if you get the Republicans to nominate like evangelical Al Qaeda leader who is also literally a pedophile. Yeah. TOMMY Tugerville record
• 58:52
  George: like, come on, man.
• 58:54
  Propter: I'll say, I'll say this. I think, I think Mississippi Dems think they can win. I don't think, for instance, Idaho Dems think they can win, but I think Mississippi Dems think they can win.
• 59:04
  Ed: You're me, I think you have to think you can win though, if you're, if you're. Yeah. Dealing with that.
• 59:11
  George: And you should, and that's good. And we should support them. Like, we shouldn't throw a ton of resources at places like Mississippi, but they should get some resources. It's a national party. Right. Like, to the analysis in Idaho, it's the same thing, man. If you're within a tiny shouting distance of a chance of knocking off a Republican in Mississippi, you spend a few bucks there because those are really valuable bucks. Like, you do not get that opportunity. And especially with a state like Texas next door where, I mean, you're going to be into the mid nine figures in spending for the Senate election.
• 59:47
  Ed: Right.
• 59:48
  George: And Mississippi don't cost that much. Like, it's just not. So if you think you might have a shot.
• 59:57
  Lowtax: But I think you're, I think you're right about South Carolina and the, the types of retirees they're attracting Like South Carolina is almost. If you took Florida and stripped out south Florida and just stuck with southwest and central where all of the Ohioans go.
• 1:00:17
  George: Yeah, I think that's a good analogy. Yeah. Yeah you do. Again, like i85 supremacy is real. Like the upcountry of South Carolina is going to trend hard blue for a long time to come. It's just there are so many chuds headed to the beach. Like it. And North Carolina has this too. But like our beach is much less important in terms of the number of people and the scale. Like there is an offset to the blue ification of the. Oh, I blew myself of the urban centers in North Carolina. But it's an offset as opposed to a much larger trend. And in South Carolina it's just too large of a trend. If everything goes right and you know, there's an assad level margin for, you know, 65 plus which, you know, maybe, maybe the polling's wrong and there's a huge error. Well, but in that case, it's not just South Carolina, it's also Florida, you know, it's, we're winning Texas by five plus points, maybe 10 points. You know, like it's at that point you're into, into wrath of God territory.
• 1:01:20
  Propter: Arkansas, baby.
• 1:01:22
  George: Arkansas, Idaho, the Dakotas. Like we're riding that train all the way. You know, I do believe that one of the possible states will get picked off. I think that. But picking which one and picking why it happens. Ex ante. Good luck. I, like you're a smarter person than I am.
• 1:01:38
  Lowtax: I think if it does happen, it will probably be Mississippi just because they've got the third party guy in there who seems to be pulling some significant support. I think he's at like 6 or 8%. And so that in the polling error, you know, could theoretically happen.
• 1:02:04
  Propter: I don't, I don't think it's out of the question that more black people vote in Mississippi than white people this year. Like I think it's unlikely, but I don't think it's out of the question if that happens.
• 1:02:12
  George: Mississippi has a pretty good shot of going blue.
• 1:02:15
  Propter: Mississippi is 45% black. So like it's, it's, it's the blackest state in the union. It's not close.
• 1:02:21
  Lowtax: A little lower than that. I think it's like 42.
• 1:02:23
  Propter: Okay.
• 1:02:24
  Lowtax: But yeah, Mississippi elections are like, I mean it's a census. Right. Like all the white people vote Republican, all the black people vote Democratic and that's Mississippi.
• 1:02:34
  Propter: Right. But this year black people in Mississippi are fired up because of, because of, well, things generally, but especially the VRA stuff is, is hitting them where they live. They are angry. And it's not clear to me that that's matched on, on the, on the paylor side of things.
• 1:02:57
  George: It ain't, it's the other way around. Right? Like, like suppressed. Like, again, even if there are a lot of rich people in Mississippi, but there aren't a lot of rich voters in Mississippi. Right? Like proportionally, it, there are more rich people in a very poor state than you might think, but there are only so many of them and there's a lot more real poor folks and a lot more folks. And I'm talking about black folks, I'm talking about poor white folks. And if you have been told, if you were promised by Trump that gas is going to be $2 a gallon, inflation's going to plummet and yada, yada, yada, and now he's out here just binge posting. Your reaction to that is not to pull the lever for Democrats. Your reaction to that is, well, I got lied to by a politician again. I'm going to vote.
• 1:03:41
  Propter: Yeah.
• 1:03:42
  George: And that's enough. Hypothetically, if that effect is big enough, that's enough.
• 1:03:46
  Lowtax: Yeah, they, they are really dedicated to racism though. Fair. Like it's been, it's been 200 plus years. I do like the proctor, I do like the proctor keeps trying to sneak Arkansas in here, which I think is like far and away the least likely of any of these states to fall.
• 1:04:09
  Propter: So, like, okay, the Arkansas thesis is the farmers are pissed. I don't think farmers are that pissed. But if farmers are pissed enough, Arkansas is in trouble.
• 1:04:17
  George: Farmers are pissed. I don't think they're pissed enough for Arkansas to flip, man.
• 1:04:21
  Lowtax: I don't think they're pissed enough. I am glad you went with Farmers are Pissed and not this weird fairy tale about Bentonville that people keep talking about because I keep, people keep saying it. I'm like, please just look at the voting in Bentonville for the last 7 trillion years.
• 1:04:38
  Propter: No, it's, it's getting better, but it's not. Benville is not, is not going to flip Arkansas. No, we may win that district.
• 1:04:47
  Lowtax: We may win that district that has the, the northwest Little Rock suburbs, though. So that would be good.
• 1:05:11
  Propter: We have any other burning topics for this week or we want to just leave it there?
• 1:05:15
  Ed: I feel like we have to talk about literally anything else. Or like, I don't think you can. 1. We are now up to an hour and five minutes for the cold open. I'm going to have to do some work here. But I don't know what, what else has happened this week that is not polling related or related to an article in Rolling Stone.
• 1:05:40
  Lowtax: We could talk about Ole Miss falling on their faces against the Gators after they.
• 1:05:45
  George: I could not believe that. 52 points on Ole Miss. What is in the Gatorade down there in Florida?
• 1:05:52
  Lowtax: I. I have no idea.
• 1:05:55
  Propter: Who do we think the good teams are in college football right now anyway?
• 1:05:57
  Lowtax: Because like, like I'm pretty sure Texas, Ohio State and Georgia are really good.
• 1:06:03
  Propter: Okay.
• 1:06:04
  George: Indiana's undefeated. Just saying.
• 1:06:06
  Lowtax: Indiana's undefeated. Although they had a tough one the other night against a not terribly great team.
• 1:06:11
  George: Dude, Texas only won by a field goal. Like.
• 1:06:15
  Lowtax: Yeah, but Tennessee was.
• 1:06:17
  Propter: Tennessee's a realty.
• 1:06:18
  Lowtax: Yeah, they're pretty good.
• 1:06:21
  George: I don't know. I'm just. I, I am, I am of, of those that we just listed off, I think Texas is the most vulnerable. We'll see. My Blue Devils got it done against William and Mary, though, let me tell you. We scored over 60 points, so.
• 1:06:34
  Propter: Oh yeah.
• 1:06:35
  George: Good teams cover good teams to the next game. No, unfortunately not. We're gonna look real good. We're gonna get ranked 25 in the middle of this, you know, early October, maybe mid October. And then we're going to get in the mid. The meat of the ACC schedule and we're going to lose three straight games and that's going to be the end of our season. And as a Duke fan, I'm resigned to this. But look, we're the defending champ, so maybe, maybe things will turn around.
• 1:07:01
  Lowtax: You guys are probably going to do better than we will. So we beat Central Arkansas this week and we did not cover.
• 1:07:15
  George: Yeah.
• 1:07:17
  Lowtax: Fire the poor guy. Stop making him go through this ridiculous exercise.
• 1:07:23
  George: We talk about the President or FSU said coach.
• 1:07:28
  Lowtax: Yes.
• 1:07:31
  Propter: Do we. Do we figure out whether or not that that truck convoy was. Was real? The one throwing oil across west, across.
• 1:07:39
  George: Across Syria? Yeah, trucking. Were they trucking crude or products? That must have been products, right?
• 1:07:46
  Propter: I don't know. Crude seems like a bad idea.
• 1:07:51
  George: I mean you can move crude by truck. Like that's possible. But.
• 1:07:56
  Propter: Yeah, but where.
• 1:07:57
  George: Where are you moving it to the Mediterranean then?
• 1:08:01
  Propter: And then you've got, then you've got your tanker waiting there at a terminal that doesn't exist.
• 1:08:05
  Ed: And
• 1:08:08
  George: if you're, if you're moving crude over land by truck, I think you're in the. We don't need a terminal. We just need a big enough pump and some hoses territory.
• 1:08:16
  Propter: Yeah, fair enough.
• 1:08:18
  George: I Don't recommend this, especially as someone that cares about the idea that we could lose significant biodiversity from someone having a cigarette while they're doing this on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. But like, I don't know. I mean, the. We, we can talk a little bit about it, but, but in general, the biggest story right now is is China going to buy a bunch more crude or not? And you could have a funny thing where crack spreads fall and crude goes up and Diesel still stays $6 a gallon, which, yeah, sounds about right.
• 1:08:54
  Lowtax: We love our crack spreads, don't we, folks?
• 1:08:58
  George: They didn't do the export ban though, which was hilarious because they set up the whole week, it's like, we're gonna do the export ban. And then Friday comes around, it's clear that like, whoever talked to Bubba in the Oval Office last was like, nah, this is a bad idea. And so damp squib, we're gonna let them burn agricultural diesel in there? Ram3,500 dualies instead and fellas, that ain't gonna cut it. Try again next week.
• 1:09:28
  Lowtax: All he's got to do is unleash E15 and then we're right out of the woods here.
• 1:09:37
  George: I mean, Robinson Meyer, who's a really, really good climate and energy journalist at Heat Map News in there in his latest podcast called Shift Key. If you, if you want a weekly shot of climate and energy stuff, Shift Key is a decent place to get it. But he, he interviewed Chris Wright, the energy secretary. And Chris Wright was the one that was most opposed to the diesel wide reporting. He was publicly on the record last week saying, this a bad idea, whatever, whatever, whatever. So it was hilarious to hear him say something like that, like, no, like, guys, we shouldn't be doing this and publicly stepping out of line. And then you listen to the actual interview and it wasn't really important about the diesel ban, but like he was just spewing pure lies, like, just making stuff up about everything from the potential of clean firm like solar and batteries basically, to life cycle emissions of a internal combustion engine vehicle versus an ev. Like just making stuff up, like stuff that is decidedly not true. And you're just reminded, like, like these guys are not smart. Like they're not even making the case. Well, they're just dumbasses who, what if no have a. Have a view and are backing into it. And it's like, man, this is depress to hear.
• 1:10:59
  Lowtax: They've talked themselves into a whole worldview of we must own the libs. The libs have to be wrong about everything.
• 1:11:04
  Ed: And the Libs aren't even feeling particularly owned.
• 1:11:08
  George: I know, I'm.
• 1:11:09
  Ed: I'm checking. I. I don't feel very owned right now.
• 1:11:13
  George: No.
• 1:11:13
  Ed: Probably because I haven't bought gas since all of this started.
• 1:11:17
  Lowtax: Yeah, well, why would I try to stop you from lighting yourself on fire?
• 1:11:23
  Ed: I would like you to not light me on fire. That's kind of unfortunate, but I'm absolutely not owned by you. Conflagrating yourself.
• 1:11:31
  George: No, it. If you bought an EV and at some point in the last few years, congrats, you win.
• 1:11:38
  Ed: And if you just don't drive very far. So like there is still a full tank of. Of. Of pre hilarity gas sitting in my vehicle. Yeah, they finally, they finally attempted to fix that. By the way. I had to take the it over to the dealer because they said that they had fixed the thermally venting problems.
• 1:12:02
  George: Didn't they try and do with an OTA?
• 1:12:04
  Ed: They at. one point. Now here's the thing though. Their fix was not to do anything better. Their fix was to reduce the maximum allowable charge to the batteries.
• 1:12:23
  George: That. That's a fix. It is not probably the one you were hoping for, but it's a fix.
• 1:12:28
  Ed: The.
• 1:12:29
  Lowtax: The astonishing bad idea either.
• 1:12:31
  Ed: I mean, it's probably not, but the astonishing thing was they, they lead off with you can you no longer have to charge to only 80% and then on the next page it says this reduces your total charge by 12% and then the Internet realizes that it is substantially more than 12%. Don't buy vehicles from American companies, folks.
• 1:12:56
  George: Mine's going great. I had an issue with the 12 volt battery going out a couple weeks ago, which caused some minor problems, but that's on me for not replacing it after three years.
• 1:13:04
  Lowtax: So mine's been fine. Although I don't really drive all that much since I work from home, so I don't care.
• 1:13:11
  Ed: My wife has taken to driving my vehicle because my vehicle does not cost $7,000 a gallon.
• 1:13:18
  Lowtax: Yeah, I mean make it 10 bucks a gallon. I don't give a.
• 1:13:22
  Ed: Mine basically gets a round trip to her work and back and perfect. No complaints.
• 1:13:28
  George: Are you the most exposed to gas prices of this quartet somehow?
• 1:13:33
  Propter: No, not really. I mean, I work from home and my wife's main driver is an ev, so.
• 1:13:40
  George: Yeah, so we're chilling. And the libs are not owned, folks.
• 1:13:45
  Propter: Yes, four or five miles a day anyway. Like, like her commute takes half an hour and change. But it's short because driving in D.C. sucks.
• 1:13:55
  George: Driving in D.C. does suck. I drove up and Even.
• 1:13:58
  Ed: This is.
• 1:13:58
  George: Even two years ago, I drove up for a soccer match, and if I had known how big of a pain in the ass it is driving in dc, I would not have attempted that. I would have parked at, like, a Metro station and taken the. The Metro end. Because, like, y', all, if you're going to dc, for whatever reason, do not try and drive in central dc. It's just not worth it. And, you know, like, it's intentional, and that's fine. Like, I'm not complaining. I'm not saying, like, oh, DC's bad. No, like, that's the choice that DC has made, and that's their choice to make. And I'm just a guy trying to do my thing. So, like, I'm a guest and I gotta. I gotta buy by that. But y' all do not drive into dc. Don't. Same as Manhattan. Don't do it. It's not worth it.
• 1:14:42
  Propter: Yeah, just really unpleasant experience all around. It will take you forever to park. It will take you forever to get back to where you were trying to go after you take a wrong turn, which you will do. And it's just. Don't drive here.
• 1:14:57
  Lowtax: Yeah, I. I never drove in D.C. when I lived up there. It was just. When I drove, it was just going to the Food Giant or driving to work at the Census Bureau, which was, like, two roads. And it was out in the suburbs in Maryland, so who cares?
• 1:15:13
  Propter: Yeah,
• 1:15:16
  Lowtax: yeah.
• 1:15:17
  Propter: Once you're on strip mall country, it's a little bit of a different. Different thing. They're there. If you don't drive, you're gonna die. But here.
• 1:15:24
  Lowtax: Yeah.
• 1:15:25
  Propter: Walk the bike.
• 1:15:27
  Lowtax: Yeah, I. I would have. I could have walked to the grocery store, but there was no walkway across because I lived right next to the railroad tracks.
• 1:15:36
  George: Gotcha.
• 1:15:36
  Lowtax: There was no. No way to walk around.
• 1:15:40
  Propter: Yeah, we got. We got all this last mile stuff deployed now. Like. Like, I've seen a kind of, like, shocking number of unicycles recently, both electric and not. I guess that's a thing.
• 1:15:51
  George: That's just. That's just the commute home from the Hill, man.
• 1:15:54
  Propter: Don't worry about it.
• 1:15:54
  George: Yeah, we make up and stuff, too, right?
• 1:15:58
  Propter: This is, like, up in Rock Creek, Like. Like, I went to go pick my kid up the other day, and I saw three different unicycles. I don't know what's going on.
• 1:16:05
  Ed: Oh, the. The electric one seemed like a good way to become an organ donor. Yeah, I. I've watched some incredible cinema up here of folks who think that those are suitable for Winter driving.
• 1:16:20
  Propter: Yeah. Going 35 miles an hour on a unicycle does not seem like a good
• 1:16:23
  George: idea to me, but I saw video of a guy doing about 60 on a scooter, like a handlebar scooter on 277, which is our inner freeway loop here in Charlotte, last weekend. Speaking of organ donors. Yeah. Don't do that.
• 1:16:41
  Lowtax: Yeah, yeah. I would not do either thing. Although I would do the scooter thing before the unicycle thing.
• 1:16:48
  George: The idea of 60, when the difference between a straight wheel and a wheel that's about 15 degrees off center is about half an inch is not something I like the idea of. Just.
• 1:17:09
  Lowtax: I don't like that, but I don't like. I don't like the idea of unicycles. Just period, like.
• 1:17:13
  Ed: Yeah, that's how you get clowns.
• 1:17:15
  Lowtax: Yeah. I thought we got rid of these when, like, hipster lumineers, rock bands stopped in, like, the early 2010s.
• 1:17:24
  Propter: Wheels are cheap, guys. You can afford more wheels.
• 1:17:26
  Ed: You can get two at least.
• 1:17:27
  George: How do we feel about fixies?
• 1:17:29
  Propter: Yeah, whatever.
• 1:17:31
  Lowtax: Yeah, yeah, it's fine.
• 1:17:33
  Propter: It's a little bit twee, but, you know, I'm not riding them.
• 1:17:37
  Lowtax: As long as you're wearing a fedora and drinking a Pabst, so I can make fun of you thoroughly, it's fine.
• 1:17:42
  Ed: I. I have never been hit by someone on a fixie, and I have been hit by E bikes. So, you know, I. I think. I think we have to allow the hipsters, their. Their bicycling equipment.
• 1:17:57
  Lowtax: I agree. They can have. They can have a fixie as a little treat.
• 1:18:01
  Ed: But also, anyone who rides an E bike on the sidewalk should be clotheslined.
• 1:18:05
  Propter: Yeah, that's true.
• 1:18:06
  Ed: Yeah. Real tired of that one.
• 1:18:09
  George: Yeah, yeah. That's no good. I mean, if you're just like, pulling up to your stop and you're under pedal power or something like that.
• 1:18:16
  Ed: Sure. But then. Then it's. Then it's just a bike, right? Yeah, yeah. No, it's. I live in a town where there are a lot of them for some reason, I don't know why. And it's like, oh, cool, this is a blind corner. I'm definitely not going to have somebody peel out around it and then, surprise. It has happened three times in the last two weeks. And it's like, oop. I. I'm just going to flatten against the wall now because inertia is a thing.
• 1:18:46
  George: Yeah. I think my instinct might be to stick my arm out and back up a step.
• 1:18:50
  Ed: I've I've thought about it, but unfortunately I think there is a jury that would convict.
• 1:18:58
  George: Dude, I don't know. The E bike backlash is not. It's not data center backlash levels, but it's. It's bad. People hate those things now, especially like my. So right across the street from my house, there's. I live next to a right of way for Duke Energy high voltage line. I think it's. I think it's technically medium voltage. It's not like one of the real big long distance, you know, 230 kilowatt
• 1:19:21
  Ed: or whatever come after you for high versus medium voltage.
• 1:19:24
  Propter: George.
• 1:19:24
  George: Dude, that person's out there. Yep, George.
• 1:19:29
  Propter: George runs. George runs in some circles where they take that seriously.
• 1:19:32
  George: Yes, yes. So there's my neighborhood, and basically the property next to mine is the right of way. And then across the street from that is the other side of that right of way. The wires run perpendicular to the road. And the other side of that, like past the right of way, you know, where a house would be. But backing onto, there's a new neighborhood over there that got built in the last few years. And then there's some sort of more rundown stuff and the sort of more rundown stuff. There were some folks that were panhandling at the big intersection about a mile from my house, and they would cut through our neighborhood to get to the intersection. And there was a brief moral panic about panhandlers cutting through the neighborhood. And so we should put up a fence over the right of way. Right. So that they can't take the cut through. Now my argument to this would be, well, one, have you ever talked to them? Because they're very nice people. Like, you know, they may be panhandlers, but like, you know, I gave. I was out frying a turkey around Thanksgiving at one point and gave one of the guys a beer and had a nice conversation with him. He's a perfectly normal dude. So, you know, do that maybe before you start putting up fences, but also if you don't, if you put up the fence, then they have to walk on the main road in a place where there's no sidewalks. And, you know, they're cutting through not just because of convenience, but also safety. So let's have a think about that. Anyhow, fence didn't go up, but the newer neighborhood that was built over there, the quote unquote, nicer neighborhood or whatever, kids started coming in on E bikes. And as soon as my HOA figured out where the E bikes were coming from, or at least the poorly behaving E bikes. And there was some poor behavior. Don't get me wrong, a pregnant lady got. Got called a pregnant. Which is. We don't love that. Not good. So, you know, once that was discovered to be the E bikes, that was the end of the open passage through the right of way and they knocked down, they put up a fence and that's it. We got a fence now. So I say all that to say the E bike backlash is significant.
• 1:21:34
  Propter: Yeah, Yeah.
• 1:21:36
  Ed: I mostly live in a place where they automatically assume you are team car if you have thoughts on E bikes. And for the record, I am not team car. I am team. Any of you who I find in a crosswalk should have your vehicle compound, like impounded into a small cube. But like, it's weird. Like the, the, the levels of recklessness are amazing.
• 1:22:01
  Lowtax: I would say, though, Ed, I don't think a jury would convict you. We just gotta hold out and get Murph on that jury. Because Murph ain't convicting you.
• 1:22:09
  Ed: That's true. That's right.
• 1:22:11
  Propter: We.
• 1:22:11
  Ed: We can get to a hung jury. Wait, that's a, that's a, that's a difficult topic in Massachusetts right now.
• 1:22:19
  Propter: Yeah, we can't, we can't open, we can't open that. That particular topic.
• 1:22:23
  Ed: Yep. No, we're walking away very quickly from that one, folks.
• 1:22:28
  George: And that's our show. So from myself and the rest of the normal men, if you've enjoyed our blathering about politics and other radio random topics to finish out our normal weekly block. We appreciate it. Rate and review the podcast, do whatever you want to do. Send it to somebody who won't be grossly offended by our anti reckless ebiking takes, or, sorry, I should say won't be offended by Ed's reckless, anti reckless.
• 1:22:53
  Ed: You can be as reckless as you want if you are acting as a vehicle.
• 1:22:57
  George: Fair. Fair enough.
• 1:22:58
  Ed: I think that's like they already are.
• 1:23:01
  George: Who also won't be offended by Propter's perfectly reasonable calculation vis a vis the Senate candidacy of one Todd Achilles. And who won't just be generally offended by low taxes. Whole deal for the normal men. From the northern shores of Lake Norman In Catawba County, North Carolina, I'm George
• 1:23:20
  Propter: in D.C. but my heart's in Idaho.
• 1:23:22
  Lowtax: I'm Propter in outer Florida, but my heart is definitely not in Idaho. I am low tax speed run enjoyer.
• 1:23:30
  Ed: Yeah. In Boston. Absolutely not. And never in Idaho. I know.