Latest / Normal Men / Episode 65 - Deliberative Bodies

Transcript

Episode 65 - Deliberative Bodies · Normal Men

• 0:00
  Ed: All right, we get one. Hold on, gentlemen. Ground rules. This incredible piece of shit deserves like 30 seconds.
• 0:13
  George: No, we, we gotta gloat for longer than that.
• 0:15
  Ed: I mean. No, we wait for the we. You, you can't gloat over this. This is like gloating over like a grand moff Tarkin. Vader has not punched his ticket yet.
• 0:25
  George: No, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
• 0:27
  Ed: Waiting on.
• 0:28
  George: No, the.
• 0:29
  Ed: Mitch McConnell is right there and we'll
• 0:32
  George: celebrate just as much and more for him.
• 0:34
  Ed: But, but you can't do it twice in a row. Then.
• 0:36
  George: Yes, you can. Oh, my redheaded friend.
• 0:40
  Ed: It gets boring for the listener.
• 0:42
  George: I, I don't, you know what? I don't care about our listeners.
• 0:46
  Lowtax: Lindsey Graham is not going to see the mean things you all post and say about him because he's dead.
• 0:54
  George: He gone.
• 0:57
  Propter: My wife sent me one wits comment which was between McConnell and Lindsey Graham. It's giving. Male Instacart shopper.
• 1:11
  Lowtax: So what?
• 1:11
  George: Okay, so I am being. Do we have a guess for what got him?
• 1:16
  Ed: I don't think they've even really given enough of a hint.
• 1:20
  Propter: There was, there was a 911 call. There was, there was a 911 call that said cardiac arrest.
• 1:26
  George: So that would fit, given his demographic.
• 1:29
  Propter: Yeah, I think there's going to be speculation that may not be entirely unfounded. Like this was definitely a man who had international enemies and who had just come back from an international trip as he, as he often did.
• 1:43
  Lowtax: Yeah, Trump did it,
• 1:46
  Propter: you know, like with technically an international enemy. But he was attempting to negotiate additional Ukraine aid at the time. So Russia hates him and he's been an, an Iran hawk for the last 40 years. So Iran hates him. So, you know, I, I, I, I don't think it's particularly likely that somebody killed him. I think it's more likely that he dropped dead because he's an old man and he was doing a lot of international travel. Who drank too much.
• 2:19
  Lowtax: But he's really old and they put a lot of mustard on that barbecue in South Carolina.
• 2:25
  George: Can confirm. I like it. But you know, it is a lot of mustard. So cardiac arrest for Graham and presumed cardiac arrest, slash brain death for old Mitchie boy, which again no confirmation whatsoever of what's going on there. We know he's down for the count in some very significant respect, but it's been a month and not nothing. Which is great. Love that.
• 2:50
  Ed: Wait, it's been a month?
• 2:52
  George: Four weeks.
• 2:52
  Ed: Isn't it? I don't know. Time has no meaning anymore.
• 2:56
  Lowtax: And this is why we Pulled ahead of Brazil in the World cup because we're getting rid of our Protestants.
• 3:01
  George: Technically, we finished level with Brazil, but we'll get to them in a little bit. I want to gloat a bit more over both of these two before we move on. Just a bit more. A little foreshadowing there from Mr. Low Tech Speedrun Enjoyer, which we appreciate. So I guess the question is then, is there any chance McConnell pulls out this. The answer's got to be no, Right? Like, if you have a cardiac event and you're still completely incommunicado a month later, like, that's it.
• 3:27
  Propter: Right.
• 3:29
  Ed: No.
• 3:29
  Lowtax: His wife is changing the floors in their house in D.C. which I sympathize with. Like, I couldn't wait to get the hell out of D.C. either. She. She.
• 3:39
  George: Can you.
• 3:39
  Lowtax: She's changing the floors.
• 3:41
  Propter: There have been. There have been people coming out of their house with, like, flooring samples. So I actually think that's a little bit bullish for the possibility of him coming home, although not necessarily unaltered. Agreed. Because one of the reasons you might want to do some surgery on the home is to have better home care facilities.
• 4:00
  George: Yeah. Carpet is tough to navigate with. You know, the various mechanisms we use to assist people who can.
• 4:07
  Lowtax: No, she's putting that bitch on the market.
• 4:10
  George: That's also possible.
• 4:11
  Propter: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, for those. For those who don't know, McConnell's wife is Elaine Chow, who has previously been a Cabinet secretary twice. Is she currently a Cabinet secretary? I forget.
• 4:25
  George: Secretary.
• 4:27
  Ed: How could you know there. These. These things happen so fast,
• 4:34
  Propter: and it's not clear that she has a whole lot tying her to the D.C. area, and she has a number of potentially knives out for her in D.C. if McConnell was no longer in the Senate. So.
• 4:47
  Ed: But to be clear, Elaine Chao is not currently the US Secretary of Transportation.
• 4:53
  George: No, no, she is not. She was under Trump 1. And she was Secretary of Labor under Bush for basically all of Bush's presidency. And then she lasted four. She actually was. The full term, I think.
• 5:02
  Ed: Four years.
• 5:03
  George: Yeah. For full four years for Secretary Transportation. Now, obviously, we have a reality show host as the Secretary of Transportation, which is going to get. Who could forget. I do like the idea of Graham getting got by Russia just because it would be so salacious. But I also think that given what we've seen in Ukraine, getting to a sitting US Senator feels like a little bit more than they're capable of at the moment. You know, like, minds could disagree on that one, though.
• 5:35
  Ed: I mean.
• 5:36
  Lowtax: I mean, Lindsey would Lindsay would go with whatever Trump wanted to do anyway, so why would. Why would Russia even bother? Like, the good conspiracy theory would be that Zelensky offed him,
• 5:51
  Ed: but. But he's out here.
• 5:53
  Propter: He.
• 5:53
  Ed: I. I suppose. I mean, if you want levels, you could go there, but I guess his. I guess his father died at 68, so maybe just runs in the family.
• 6:06
  George: Yeah. Yeah. There's only so much modern medicine can do when it comes to cardiac events. I mean, if. If your time's done, your time's done.
• 6:16
  Propter: Well, we've got. We've got Cash Patel swinging into action on this. So apparently FEI has offered its services,
• 6:21
  Lowtax: so I'm sure that's where. That's where you can gonzo this. Like, why. Why. Why are you involved? Cash.
• 6:31
  George: Cash Patel is on the case. We can rest easy. Well, Russia can rest easy.
• 6:40
  Ed: Stupidest timeline.
• 6:42
  George: Yeah, everyone's having a good time and
• 6:44
  Lowtax: we haven't even gotten to Count Ben face yet.
• 6:47
  George: Oh, yeah, that's more foreshadowing for Mr. Low Tax Speedrun Enjoyer. 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.
• 7:01
  Propter: I'm George in Charlotte in D.C. i'm
• 7:03
  Lowtax: Proctor Malone in outer Florida. I'm Low Tax Speedrun Enjoyer.
• 7:07
  Propter: And I'm Ed in Boston.
• 7:12
  George: If you caught our prior episode, the US Crashed out of the World cup, but Brazil did as well. So we are an equal football team to Brazil, which is something I never thought I would say about the usmnt. It is in fact, though entirely true from standings post this World cup, or at least performance in this World Cup. And one of the bits of drama around the Brazil team that has become part of the discourse, at least in Brazil. I don't know, you got to be. You got to be pretty far out into the discourse land for this to be mainstream discourse for you as an American, even if you are soccer oriented. But here we are is that there are deteriorating performance is a result of too many Brazilian footballers getting on the evangelical train instead of following the mother church and the historically dominant Catholic faith. That has been the thing in Brazil for a long time. If you don't follow this stuff. Protestantism, and specifically Evangelical Protestantism has been making huge inroads in the global south and Latin America especially, but other places as well. And so Brazilian soccer players being skewing more that wave and couple generations ago is entirely representative of that particular trend, given what that branch of Christianity has wrought in the United States. I a wouldn't put it past them being the. That being the reason that it. They're crashing into the World Cup. And B, don't love this for Brazil.
• 8:45
  Lowtax: All right, so I want to read a quote from the. The Institute for Hispano Studies, which I thought was just wonderful. It all happens on X, the Everything app. And it said Brazil was better when their players were womanizers, drunkards and slightly out of shape. In other words. In other words, when they were behaving like Catholics, letting the power of friendship and good fun do the heavy lifting. Evangelical Protestantism, sterilization has flattened their ball, ruined their samba and obliterated their swag world historic aura loss.
• 9:30
  George: I gotta say, I had never heard of these people before. This particular brouhaha and their Patreon, which is how they're support. Trying to support their work, is one of the most entertaining things I've seen in a long time. This is their description of what they do. The Institution for Hispano Studies is a think tank committed to the cultivation of Hispanic American thought and historical research on Hispanic Catholic civilization. Civilization. We seek to build a bridge between us Hispanics, Catholics and the intercontinental ibidophonia, thereby articulating a universalist and civilizational consciousness. We simultaneously denounce the cultural ethnocentrism of Anglo chauvinism as well as the cultural relativism of postmodern decoloniality, proudly upholding the rich heritage of our Catholic mestizo humanism and forcefully rejecting the black legend of our widely misrepresented history.
• 10:25
  Propter: I would instantly purchase a book that was just a memoir of anyone who's associated with that's time in grad school.
• 10:37
  George: It's almost like they, they have to be doing a parody of the woke left. Right. Like that's got to be what that is. They can't, they can't be serious with this.
• 10:48
  Propter: I mean, I, I think that. I think the one thing that I was kind of serious about, the grad school thing, I think the one thing that that's happened is that the language of the woke left has, has dominated grad school to the extent that even when you get psycho reactionaries coming out of it, they're still speaking the language of the woke left.
• 11:06
  Ed: Right.
• 11:07
  George: They're reactionary to that. That language and they're using that language to react against it.
• 11:11
  Ed: Right, right.
• 11:12
  Propter: I mean, like, you see this with JD Vance all the time. That like, I mean, he talks, he talks like a tumble woke skull.
• 11:18
  Ed: Yeah, true. Yeah.
• 11:20
  George: He's a woke scold on behalf of white people. It's insane.
• 11:24
  Propter: We talked about spreading evangelicalism and I, I don't know if you guys saw the stuff that was going around this last week of like mega church Buddhism and.
• 11:36
  George: Oh, now you have my attention.
• 11:37
  Propter: No, take it back where it was in Indonesia.
• 11:40
  Ed: Go away. Go away.
• 11:41
  Propter: So I think there, I think there's something here both about, both about the theology of these, but also about the methodology of, of how these churches are spreading that like, rather than smells and bells, it's. I don't know, I don't have a quick two word phrase to describe how, how, how the megachurch evangelicals do it.
• 11:59
  George: Altar calls and speaking tongues. Sure, yeah.
• 12:03
  Propter: So like high production.
• 12:05
  George: You get the idea.
• 12:06
  Lowtax: Yeah.
• 12:06
  Propter: But you know, in kind of a, in kind of like an aggressively smiley way.
• 12:12
  Lowtax: Relatively high production values.
• 12:15
  Ed: Yeah, we have standards here, Proctor.
• 12:17
  Propter: Yeah, I feel like it's high production values compared to, for instance. Okay. It's very different production values than, than Catholicism, put it that way.
• 12:28
  Ed: Look, I have to, I have to deal enough with the fact that like every piece of video Software is like 90% bought by churches. I don't need it from YouTube.
• 12:37
  Lowtax: It's definitely lower, it's definitely lower production value than the Catholics.
• 12:43
  Ed: That's just because they, the, the, they already have the buildings.
• 12:48
  Lowtax: It's higher than like Presbyterians or Unitarians and all this stuff. Right. Like, but that bar is in hell.
• 12:58
  Propter: Yeah.
• 12:59
  Ed: I mean, around here the Unitarians have some fairly substantial.
• 13:05
  George: There.
• 13:05
  Ed: I do live right next to the town where John Adams was born. Right. Like we've got, we have, we have Unitarians with swag up here.
• 13:14
  Lowtax: Yes, that, that happens in like a 5 square mile radius of my house. Yes, yes.
• 13:21
  Ed: Yeah, no, I fully agree. But like they, they can punch it up when they need to.
• 13:25
  Propter: It's like it's like folk music festival swag, though. It's not like, it's not like spectacle and extravaganza swag.
• 13:32
  Ed: No, it's. It's angry, hectoring, lawyer swag.
• 13:37
  George: That is technically a type of swag.
• 13:40
  Propter: Yeah, that does sound Unitarian. Okay, So what do we think? Do we think, do we think that Brazil needs to. Needs to return to mother church to return to football glory?
• 13:54
  Lowtax: Look, it's self evidently true, right? Like the good soccer countries are all Catholics except the Brits, who are the only good Protestants because they're basically, they're basically Catholics who just appointed a different pope who would let the king be horny.
• 14:14
  Ed: That, that. I, I've heard worse descriptions.
• 14:19
  Propter: Well, I guess we get to see how the semifinals go, but we're down to. We're down to what? We're down to three Catholic countries. And. And the English.
• 14:29
  George: Are we calling the Argentines Catholics? I mean, are they not.
• 14:34
  Lowtax: They.
• 14:34
  George: No, they are historically, absolutely. Now, in the days of melee, I. I'm. You know, I think they do have the same evangelical thing going on that Brazil does, though, you know, it has. Doesn't seem to have hurt them. And I've never heard anything about Messi's religious orientation. Not that he. We know basically anything about him. Just as a side note, Michael, I mean, are.
• 14:57
  Ed: Are you, like, insinuating that Pope Francis dies and now they're just like.
• 15:00
  Propter: They're.
• 15:01
  Ed: They're just off the Catholic TRA train?
• 15:03
  George: No, I just.
• 15:04
  Lowtax: No, but they are. They are Germans and, you know, so they're naturally conflicted about these things.
• 15:11
  George: There's always a funny thing in soccer where you see a German guy, a German last name from Argentina and go, I want to know your backstory, buddy.
• 15:18
  Ed: I need.
• 15:19
  George: I need some details here. There was an MLS player in that bucket.
• 15:23
  Lowtax: Tell me about your ancestral recipe for sauerkraut, Mr. Kirchner.
• 15:28
  Ed: We are not having sauerkraut discourse on this podcast.
• 15:31
  George: Sauerkraut chimichurri could be pretty good, though, anyhow, actually. Yeah, yeah. Right.
• 15:35
  Lowtax: But.
• 15:36
  George: But it just. On messy. Like, we don't know anything about the guy. Like, he is one of the most famous people in the world, and he is kept a level of privacy around his non. Soccer life that is shocking. Like, honestly, shocking compared to virtually any other major soccer star. And that's really interesting, neither here nor there for this discussion. But, yeah, I do think it's going to be a pretty significant Catholic victory in this World cup just because France is so much better than the other three semifinalists. But we'll see. Crazier things have happened than the horny Catholics pulling one out for old bloody.
• 16:21
  Lowtax: I'm looking forward to the Falklands bowl this. What is it, Tuesday or something?
• 16:26
  George: That's Wednesday, I believe. And, yeah, it's gonna be fun. We're excited for that. Resurrect the corpse of Thatcher and roll her up and down the sidelines. Is that tactic?
• 16:36
  Lowtax: That's right.
• 16:37
  Ed: Yeah. But it'll work.
• 16:39
  George: I mean, yeah, it's been, what, 30 years? She'd probably be looking pretty rough.
• 16:47
  Propter: Yeah, it's weird. I reflexively find myself rooting against England most of the time, but oddly against Argentina, who I would root for most of the time. I'm rooting for England.
• 16:55
  Ed: Yeah. Blue sky has absolutely polarized me on that. I don't even care about soccer. But like art, at this point I just want Argentina to be sad and to not have the Falklands.
• 17:08
  George: For the record, I do think England's going to beat Argentina, but both of these teams have a really fun. They just find a way to win quotient that puts them much more level than I think the talent levels should be. Messi obviously is unbelievable, but beyond that, Argentina doesn't look particularly threatening, which is a good way to describe a lot of inter Miami teams that have performed very well with Messi on him. So yeah, at the same time, the British really should have handled me. You know, Mexico in the Azteca was, was a hard match and there was a. That was a big upgrade for Mexico and made them look better than they were, but they still should have handled them a bit better than they did. And the same goes TR is true for the Norwegians too. England was a much, much better team than Norway and only got it done by a small margin. So yeah, it's gonna be, it's gonna be fun. On the other side, France, I think is going to smash Spain and I think France handily beats whoever wins the Falcons Bowl. So it should be a relatively boring finish to what has been an otherwise very entertaining World cup on the field.
• 18:17
  Propter: This is not financial advice.
• 18:20
  George: I can't believe we have to say that, but yes, it's definitely not financial advice. Speaking of England, I'm just going to
• 18:29
  Ed: get this out of the way now. I'm not bleeping the segment. It's too much work.
• 18:34
  George: Yeah, okay, low tax, tell us.
• 18:36
  Ed: I'm just going to play God save the King behind the entire thing and we'll just roll with it.
• 18:42
  Lowtax: All right, so. So Count Benface is a perennial parody candidate in the United Kingdom. He runs in all kinds of races
• 18:53
  Ed: and you don't have to like actually live there to stand for these races, right?
• 18:59
  Lowtax: Well, he doesn't live there. He lives on. On the planet Sigma 9 as the. The head of the recyclons.
• 19:07
  Ed: Well, I did ask.
• 19:10
  Lowtax: So Count Benface, and I'll just read from the Wikipedia article here. Count Benface is a intergalactic space warrior in a black and gray uniform with a long silver cape and a helmet shaped like a trash can with a glowing strip in place of the eyes. He describes himself as the leader of the Recyclons from the planet Sigma 9 and claims to be over 5,900 years old. Benface named his second in command as General Waist.
• 19:46
  Ed: Okay.
• 19:46
  Lowtax: In an appearance on the BBC's Newsnight on 7 July 2026. Put your dates right, Brits. When asked by presenter Patty o' Connell to remove his mask, Benface said that nobody wants to know what's underneath a recyclon, describing it as absolutely putrefying. In 2026, he appeared as a candidate in a general election in an episode of the television drama Industry. So that is Count Benface. He runs for all of the offices. In fact, the current Mayor of London, Siddiq Khan, during his victory speech a couple years back, noted that he was the first politician to ever defeat Count Benface in, in sequential elections. So he's a guy who runs around with a trash can on his head and runs in every election he can find. Usually he runs against the sitting Prime Minister when there's a general election, but he also runs for Mayor of London and anytime there's a by election, he runs in that as well.
• 20:58
  Propter: Yeah, so the secret sauce that makes this go is that in the United Kingdom they have the candidates for an office all stand up on a stage together while the results are read. So what that means is you get this great visual of politicians who are duking it out for a seat and then also this guy with the trash can on his head up there.
• 21:17
  Ed: But enough about Nigel Farage.
• 21:19
  Propter: That is widely reported. Well, actually we got to talk about Nigel Farage because he's the reason why we're talking about Count Ben Face. Nigel Farage, for those who may not have been paying attention to British politics, is the, the foul mouthed id, I think is a fair description of the British right. He is a racist, a reactionary, cartoonishly corrupt and he has been taking kind of a lot of crypto money and is now being accused of mishandling his office. He's a, he's an MP in relation to that crypto money to which he huffily said, well then I'll stand for election again. And I guess I don't know if you have to resign to trigger a special election or what one does to Restand, but there is a new election going on in his constituency for which no other party has decided to compete.
• 22:13
  Lowtax: Yeah, I think the, the basic thought here is that once the, the ethics commission or whatever it is comes back, Farage would be subject to another election and so far is triggering the election earlier by resigning as this gambit to prove that, I don't know, his constituents really love him before they have all the information. So everybody anticipates that there's going to be another election down the Road. So all the parties, all the major parties said go to hell. We're not even, we're not going to bother with this. We're going to wait until the commission is done with its work. And so that leaves Nigel Farage facing off against a comedian with a trash can on his head.
• 22:59
  Propter: And the way reform has built their political threat is that they're at best running at around 40, 45% of the vote. That it's a multi party system. Even in, even in constituencies that are very favorable for reform, they're not clocking big majorities, they're clocking big pluralities. So the thought here is that there's some chance that despite the fact that this election is being fought on terrain that's very favorable to reform, Count Ben Face might actually be a formidable opponent for Nigel Farage in this election. Assuming that the anti Farage vote coalesces around our, our noble Ben faced joke candidate.
• 23:47
  Ed: What if he wins?
• 23:50
  George: I mean, very real possibility. Ben Face wins.
• 23:53
  Ed: No, I understand that it's not unthinkable.
• 23:57
  Lowtax: Farage will probably win like 70, 30 or 80, 20. I do think we should discuss Count Ben Faces manifesto.
• 24:06
  Propter: All right. Tell us the war.
• 24:07
  Lowtax: Okay, so I am reading Count Ben Faces manifesto for Clacton. And actually before we get to that, we should probably talk about Clacton.
• 24:15
  Propter: Do we have to?
• 24:17
  Lowtax: Yes.
• 24:18
  Propter: Okay.
• 24:20
  Lowtax: Okay. Imagine a place like Atlantic City or Panama city, but it's 50 degrees and spitting rain, the food sucks and everyone's ugly. And that is Clacton.
• 24:37
  George: All right, for those that aren't familiar, Clacton is northeast of London on the coast, a little bit south of Ipswich. It's. It. It's on the English Channel, which not exactly where you want a holiday if you have the choice. Let's be real here.
• 24:53
  Lowtax: It's an old beach town. People used to go there on holiday.
• 24:58
  Ed: And then they realized they could go to Spain, right?
• 25:01
  Lowtax: Yeah, that's right.
• 25:02
  Ed: Yeah.
• 25:02
  Lowtax: Cheap flights came into effect and free movement of people in the EU came.
• 25:08
  Propter: Hey, what happened to that?
• 25:10
  Lowtax: Yeah, that went great. So anyway, let's get to Count Ben Face's manifesto. Count Ben Face for Clacton pledges that he will abolish VAR on grounds that football is meant to be watched and not paused for eternity.
• 25:29
  George: Bad take, but I respect it.
• 25:32
  Ed: He's a traditionalist.
• 25:34
  Lowtax: He will make water company bosses swim in polluted rivers until the waterways are clean.
• 25:42
  George: Unlikely to be enforceable, but you know, again, not a terrible idea.
• 25:46
  Lowtax: Yeah, he will build at least one affordable house.
• 25:52
  Ed: Achievable achievable which is more than Nigel Farage will.
• 25:57
  Lowtax: Which he notes is finally a housing pledge politicians might actually achieve. He will force rule breaking cyclists to ride unicycles. Oh, justice and balance.
• 26:12
  Ed: This weekend, I am now voting for this guy.
• 26:16
  Lowtax: He will invite European countries to join the uk.
• 26:22
  Ed: Well, you figured out a way around Brexit. Good job.
• 26:26
  Lowtax: He will cap the price of wigan kebabs at £2.
• 26:31
  George: Oh God. Do we need to tell everyone what a Wigan kebab is?
• 26:34
  Ed: Let them imagine.
• 26:36
  Lowtax: The most important one, I think is that he will move the hand dryer in the men's toilets at the Crown and Treaty Pub in Uxbridge. And I, I want people. The Crown and Treaty Pub in Uxbridge. I want folks to go and Google that. Google Crown and Treaty publish. Google will fill in the rest for you. And you can see where the hand dryer is placed there. And frankly, frankly, I think the man has a point.
• 27:09
  Propter: We'll get a link to that in the show notes for sure. All right, so a sensible politician with some achievable goals and yet he dares to dream. So from this side of the pond, we are all rooting for Count Ben face to, to bring it home. I think comedy is a pretty good way to fight fascism. That this is potentially a gigantic mistake by Nigel Farage to put himself in this position. I think that it seems clear to me that this is not what he was expecting the response to be. He was expecting to get to run against a split field rather than against one alien from the planet Recyclon. Did I get that right?
• 27:55
  Lowtax: The planet Sigma 9.
• 27:57
  Propter: He is Sigma 9.
• 27:58
  Lowtax: The. He is the head of the alien race called the Recyclons.
• 28:03
  Propter: Sorry, confusing the demonym there. How dare you. But I, I think that, you know, this is in some ways going to be a test for the kind of voter enthusiasm gap we're hoping is going to drive events in the United States also, where there is a sense, at least in some quarters, that some of this push for exciting new reactionary right, Neo fascism has kind of lost steam with some of its adherents, that it's no longer sufficiently shiny and new to drive voters to the polls and that they are losing steam with some of their core constituents for various reasons. That's certainly a problem that reform is having where there's this entire other neo reactionary party that is, that is, that is eating into their base as they, as they splinter, but also with their kind of reach voters who are maybe getting a little sick of seeing these guys prancing around. Maybe they sympathize with reform more than they do with the other more sane parties, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're going to turn out and vote.
• 29:12
  George: So what you're saying is Kimmy Badenoch is the next Prime Minister of the uk?
• 29:16
  Propter: I think that's incredibly unlikely. But, but, but, you know, we'll see. I, I, I, I don't really see how the Tories come back from this, honestly, but I think that she's still
• 29:30
  Lowtax: kind of hanging around, in all fairness.
• 29:34
  George: Is that how we're describing her whole deal these days?
• 29:36
  Propter: Just hanging around?
• 29:37
  Lowtax: Yeah, yeah. She's, I mean, she's like mid to high teens, I think. Yeah, yeah. The nice thing is in a first past the post system, right, you know, you've got like four or five parties who are now competitive with each other a lot of the time and, you know, if things go a certain way, that could win it for you.
• 30:00
  George: The next UK general election is going to be an absolute shit show. I just want to make sure we're all. Because when you have labor and the Tories both unpopular, there is no third party that's the natural pluralistic winner of the uk. And so you will get all kinds of completely insane results because people will do a combination of tactical voting and sort of coalition building in places where a certain ideology shouldn't be particularly competitive. But get split across two or three parties the other way. And modeling and predicting all that is going to be a complete waste of time. It is going to be an absolute Yahtzee match of an election and I really can't wait.
• 30:49
  Ed: We need to give them Nate Silver and not let him come back.
• 30:53
  George: I think we should give Nate Silver to a near solar orbit and not have him come back. But that's just me.
• 31:00
  Ed: I don't have enough lift capacity to make that happen. George.
• 31:03
  Lowtax: I'm fine with them taking Nate Silver, but Nate Silver does not want that smoke on an election like this. Right?
• 31:11
  George: Literally.
• 31:11
  Propter: No.
• 31:11
  Ed: Think of how much.
• 31:12
  Lowtax: That's how Liz Truss lost. Right.
• 31:15
  Ed: Think about how much money he can lose.
• 31:19
  Lowtax: He does need to restock his supply of money to bet on darts or Monopoly games or whatever the hell he
• 31:26
  George: does now was his big bankroll, wasn't it? Wasn't that where he like made and lost a ton of money?
• 31:32
  Ed: Yeah.
• 31:32
  Lowtax: That was what he would do. I know that was what FiveThirtyEight would do during the, the election off season is he would do, he would do the NBA and that's how ESPN justified keeping him employed. But I Don't know what he actually bets on.
• 31:49
  Ed: No, like he was. He had a substantial bankroll going, I believe, for the NBA.
• 31:54
  Propter: Yeah, I do think Nate. Nate Silver is kind of spiritually British, except for that he loves burritos and. And. And baseball.
• 32:02
  Lowtax: Oh, oh, oh.
• 32:03
  George: I hear you've never heard of burrito bonds, Proctor. How dare you?
• 32:08
  Propter: I never have.
• 32:09
  George: Okay, so.
• 32:10
  Lowtax: Yes, you have. He's done it on the show.
• 32:12
  George: Proctor. For those who don't recall the burrito Bond episode, I'm not sure what it was a long time ago at this point, several months back in the early 2010s, when Chipotle was at its apex in terms of growth and cultural mindshare, a similarly oriented British burrito store opened up and decided they need to raise some capital. And one of the ways they tried to do this was offering burrito bonds, which literally gave you free burritos as part of your. Your coupon. So, yeah, that place ended up bankrupt, as you can imagine. And if my recollection of how the British analysts who were over for analyst training with me back in my analyst training program, bank of America, reacted, I'm pretty sure Chipotle was vastly superior, which lets you benchmark it. But the British do like a good quality burrito when they can get their hands on it. Not that they're capable of that very often.
• 33:10
  Propter: Someday we'll export.
• 33:12
  George: Tough, tough thing to export.
• 33:15
  Ed: Why would we want them to have. Why. Why would you want them to have nice things, Proctor?
• 33:21
  Propter: I want everyone to have nice burritos, man.
• 33:23
  Ed: Yeah, but humanism, I understand that, but.
• 33:28
  George: Oh, oh, taco truck on every corner was limited to the United States.
• 33:33
  Ed: No, I thought it was limited to humans. I mean, come on, we have to have some chauvinism here.
• 33:41
  Propter: Any man who will roll a tortilla with me will be my brother.
• 33:44
  Ed: Yes, but what. What about a recyc?
• 33:49
  George: Okay, so to all our many listeners in Clacton, Vote Bin Face, and good luck, everybody. I think that's kind of the.
• 33:56
  Ed: Consider voter fraud.
• 33:58
  Propter: You know, this is. This is the country of Bod McBoat face. I think there's a significant chance that the joke candidate takes off sufficient to. To cause real problems for. For old Naj. And it'd be great if that happens.
• 34:11
  George: So for what it's worth, KI currently has Farage priced at 90% to win, so. But very, very long shot for Benface. But it's hypothetically possible crazier things have happened and hopefully worse things will happen to people like Faraj. So returning our eye of Sauron to the US Senate from the democracy of sorts on the other side of the Atlantic. We've had some developments in a couple of interesting Senate races. I think one of those developments which is now almost two weeks out of date because we were going to include some discussion on the last episode and it just didn't fit quite frankly. So we booked it for this one. One of the developments I think is positive and that is that the Michigan Senate candidate who is backed by the left and is generally, I think the most progressive or most left oriented candidate has become the front runner due to one of his opponents dropping out. And Proctor, what do we think about the dynamics there and what it says about the current state of Democratic voters and sort of the momentum that left candidates have put in over the past six months or so.
• 35:44
  Ed: So
• 35:46
  Propter: let me preface this by saying that I think both candidates still standing in Michigan are, are pretty good that this is, this is getting cast in some quarters as a, as a good versus evil fight. And I don't think that's entirely fair. On one axis it is which is that the two candidates, Abdul Al Said and Haley Stevens are opposed on Israel and Palestine. That Haley Stevens is not herself Jewish despite what a lot of people think. But she has taken APAC money in past and she got her current seat beating out Andy Levin I think it was who was, who was a favorite of the, of the J Street crowd. Also a Jewish politician. I guess not also because hey was not but a Jewish politician who bucked AIPAC and therefore was a target for apac. Probably she would have won anyway without, without the APAC money because of redistricting. 11 didn't have much of his district left to run in. But APAC dropped millions and millions of dollars into that race, got Stevens her seat and is now dropping millions of dollars into the current RA1 axis. It's totally appropriate to view this as a proxy battle between on the one side the forces of a particular flavor flavor of pro Israel advocacy and on the other side pro Palestinian advocacy generally. Elad is aligned with kind of the larger I think leftist is fair project. He has career wise he is, I'm going to say something controversial which is that I think he's a doctor, he went to medical school. This, this has been an attack line in the race because he didn't practice medicine. He went to medical school and then immediately started doing medical policy, which I think is a sensible thing.
• 37:47
  Lowtax: Didn't they work for like Doctors Without Borders or something in Syria or Iraq or something?
• 37:55
  Propter: My understanding is that Is is that his experience there is more administrative than is hands on. But I could be wrong about that. And he may have done hands on treatment as well. But I mean public health is his specific area of interest and that's a very clear through line in his career, both in areas like the United States where the public health issues are of a different shape than they are in, for instance, conflict zones. So I think he's a good guy and if I was voting in Michigan, I would vote for El Said. But it's become kind of a proxy for the ascendant forces of the left against the maybe waning forces of the center. Haley Stevens is not really that much of a centrist except for the APAC stuff. She's. I would say that she's. She's certainly more. She is certainly further to the left than Gary Peters, who is the incumbent Democratic senator whose seat they're running for. They're running to succeed Gary Stevens, who I have no problem with Gary Stevens, but you know, he's a purple state senator and he's on not quite the rightmost edge of the Democratic caucus, but certainly towards the rightmost edge. I think either of these candidates is going to be a significant upgrade. If you're looking for progressivism on Gary Peters, particularly with events in other states in some online quarters, this race has become kind of a totem for the left in terms of the ascendancy of that portion of the party. At this point, I think outside is a significant favorite. The dynamics of the race here were that this was a three candidate race until very recently when Mallory McMorrow dropped out and basically McMorrow and Elsayed were in kind of a knife fight for the. The left lane and Elsa had won. I think McMurray is a pretty good politician too, but Elsa had. Is really very, very skilled. He has had less success in past in in GES than he has in a primary situation. And you know, I think it's going to be a pretty good environment. But hopefully he's able to translate what I think is significant political talent that he's exercising in this primary into. Into a win in the general if he is the nominee. There is still a lot of money spent here and this has become a pretty vituperative race. The candidates clearly don't like each other and they're taking lots of personal shots at each other. So I am a little bit worried that we're going to come out of this with a fractured Michigan party and have trouble reorienting for the general at this point. If I was handicapping it. I would say that probably else I had is maybe 70% to win, but it's, it's, it's not over by any means at this stage of the game.
• 40:55
  Lowtax: Watch us win the main Senate seat and take out Collins and then lose Michigan.
• 41:03
  Propter: Yeah.
• 41:03
  George: I mean, who's the Republican candidate in Michigan likely to be?
• 41:06
  Propter: I think it's Mike Rogers again, who is, who is legitimately putrid. So, you know, I'm optimistic that we're going to be able to heal wounds despite the best efforts of what will be a number of paid trolls online trying to make this particularly a splinter issue against, against black voters in Michigan. They're going to try to pry black voters off of whoever the nominee is by arguing that they're disrespected either by. Either by the upstart left or by Haley Stevens, who is white. As a, as a relative centrist.
• 41:45
  George: Yeah, because. Because when I think of someone that respects the black voters of any state, I think of like, your modal white Republican dude running for Senate. That's definitely compelling.
• 41:57
  Propter: Yeah. I mean, like, it's the same playbook that right now you're seeing some quarters try to run in Texas, where the argument is, is, is that, you know, Democrats have made their choice and it's not, it's not the black politician and they're. We're going in a different direction. And therefore, you know, this is an insult to black voters in Texas. I'm going to leave the truth value of that alone. But it's pretty clear that if you are a black voter in Texas who votes, who has voted Democratic and passed Talarico, is much closer to your interests than fricking Paxton is.
• 42:36
  George: This is the same mistake that people on the left make talking about black voters, especially black voters in the south, like, it strips a degree of agency around the political calculation they're making out. And it really, really bothers me ideologically. Black voters in this country, and especially Southern black voters, I think my context is Southern black voters, and that is the most pivotal bloc black voters in this country because of how they're distributed and because of primary timing schedules and the fact that they are aligned with Democrats as opposed to Republicans. So, you know, I'm not going to paint with a universal brush here, but I think what I'm saying is true to a large degree outside of the south, but it's most true in the South. Black voters in the south have a very particular political strategy for representing their, their, their right. They are much less ideological in the classic Left right perspective or culture war perspective than virtually any other significant voting bloc in the country.
• 43:34
  Lowtax: What, they're establishmentarian.
• 43:36
  George: They are establishmentarian and they care about getting their people into positions where they can accrue political power. That is the entire black political project in the South. And you know, like, I am not going to sit here and say that is the right or wrong strategy. It is a strategy that has allowed a. A population that should, on paper, have very marginal power politically, nationally to be incredibly important over the past 50 years or so. It's a strategy that is in keeping with and in part fueled by the vra, which is now gone. It'll be interesting to see if they keep that same political strategy going forward. But it is a entirely valid political strategy and one I think you need to understand before you start saying. Well, you know, there was a, there was a quote from a left wing white guy who this week who that was resurfaced talking about the black voters defanging the white left in this country within the Democratic Party. And the thing about that quote is, it's true if your lens is black voters think ideologically and the black voters in the south think ideologically, the same way that white voters in large urban areas or white voters in Brooklyn think right. Like it's true to a point, but it completely misunderstands the project that those voters are engaged in. And I think that those comments were silly and misinformed. And I really wish there were more people on the left that were dedicating time to come up with a way to align the interests and strategy of black voters in the south with the interests and strategy of the left. Because that syncretic approach is possible. It's out there somewhere. I don't know exactly how it plays out, but like, the candidate that figures out how to do that is going to be a force to be reckoned with inside the Democratic Party. Maybe it's John Ossoff, maybe it's Alexander Ocasio Cortez. I don't know, maybe it's not for another 10 years, but at some point that's going to happen. They're going to figure that out because they respect and understand the strategy that black voters are engaging with as opposed to seeing them as ideological enemies and instead seeing them as a part of the coalition that has interests that need to be met.
• 45:58
  Lowtax: I'm sorry, are you suggesting that white podcasters from Brooklyn do not have an altogether healthy view of African American voters in the South?
• 46:11
  George: That is the ad extremist version of what I'M saying. But I mean, it's true. It's true, I think, of Democrats in a lot of places, at least true of Democrats. Democrats in Washington, ironically enough. Right. You can say a lot of things about someone like Nancy Pelosi, but she absolutely understood this dynamic.
• 46:28
  Ed: Right.
• 46:28
  George: She understood it very, very well. You can get mad about all sorts of things involving the 2020 primary for president and the Democratic Party, but Bernie didn't understand this dynamic and Biden did, or at least the people advising them. I don't know about the actual candidates themselves. I don't know, psychologize. But one campaign understood it and the other campaign didn't. And at some point, someone's going to figure out how to bridge that gap. Maybe it's Talarico and Texas. I don't think that's outside the realm of possibility, but I think for the base black voters in the south, maybe you can peel some folks off like you did in 2024, with messages about inflation, messages about incumbency. You can peel individuals off. But the base black voters vote as a bloc, are incredibly discipline. They are disciplined in a way that no other demographic voting bloc in this country is. And they get it. Like Proctor said, they understand that their interests are going to be better represented through Talarico than they will be through Paxton. And I think Republicans trying to peel off large, you know, that bloc as a whole or suppress turnout from that block as a whole are going to be pretty disappointed with the results they get. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's my view.
• 47:44
  Lowtax: It just gives you a sense of what they think of black people.
• 47:48
  George: Yep.
• 47:49
  Ed: Yeah.
• 47:50
  Propter: I mean, I, I think that this kind of ties in. I mean, this very obviously ties into the, the attacks on the VRA and on VRA districting, because that's, that's a direct attack on the Congressional Black Caucus in terms of removing people who have secured political power and have secured a longtime political base through, through the mechanism of gerrymandering their seats out of existence. This is going to be. So it's not, it's not the fault of Democrats that the VRA is going away, but it is a problem for Democratic coalition management because it means that you have a significant interest block within the Democratic coalition that is getting absolutely right now. There is, you know, they are, they are going to lose power generally, but also they're going to lose power within the Democratic coalition as a result of actions taken by the Supreme Court that are not within the control of the Democratic coalition. So I think that there's going to be a significant amount of coalition management that needs to happen to try to keep everybody, keep everybody happy and keep everybody feeling like things are. Like their interests are being represented, and they're being represented in a way that is equitable. The flashpoint for that, at least in the short term, is going to be Hakeem Jeffries, who is hopefully going to be the speaker of the House in a couple of years, who is black and who is very dependent on the Congressional Black Caucus to remain the caucus leader in the House. He's going to lose votes as a result of this, and he has already butted heads a lot with portions of the resurgent left, especially because he's a New York politician, a New York City politician. And I think that the ongoing rapprochement. I am, I am optimistic that this is going to be something where there is a synthesis between these interests. But the ongoing kind of courting ritual between Jeffries and the left is, I think, something to watch in New York because on policy, there's upwards of 85% agreement here. On personnel, there is some real divergence now with regard to the mission, with regard to the Michigan Senate race. This is, this is something that I think we've seen an uptick in attacks along this line from the Stevens camp recently because Elsad has taken some positions in the past that are expressly critical of Obama and that are expressly critical of establishment, of establishment politicians in general. I don't think that these positions were unreasonable at the time, although they were further left than I was. But, you know, he, he said some things about how Obama did an inadequate job during his first term prior to the 2012 election that are now maybe coming back to be reworked into attacks against him in the context of this crimary. And it'll be interesting to see how those hit again. I don't think it's at all illegitimate to say in 2012 that, you know, you were, you were disappointed with, with some things that Obama did during his first term, but that you're still ultimately voting for him, which is how ultimately El Said came down any more than it was illegitimate for El Sayad to be associated with the uncommitted movement, which was kind of the successor to that vague thrust of, you know, we really wish you guys would be better, but ultimately, ultimately we're going to vote for the Dems in 2024. But that's becoming an attack surface, and I think it's going to be instructive how that plays with, you know, Normie Dems in the wider Michigan race. My guess is that that's going to be what the bulk of Steven's money goes towards over the course of the rest of the primary. And any way that plays, if EL Sayed is. Is the nominee, if he does as expected win, there's going to be some amount of healing that needs to be done. And I think it's important that everyone involved take that healing seriously. On the far side of this, I
• 52:09
  George: think the distinction here is important because say what you want about Jasmine Crockett, who was as representative of the black voters of Texas as a candidate could possibly be. That is not true demographically in the Michigan Senate race. And I think it is incumbent upon members of the Democratic Party and candidates who are trying to leverage these sorts of frictions to think beyond just their race. People are going to do what they're going to do to try and win. I mean, that's a tale as old as time and create some really bad prisoner's dilemma type scenarios. Sometimes I think if there is a scenario where this creates faults that do endanger the general election outcome, which, again, I don't think that's going to be the case. But if there is a situation like that, then the candidate doing that, whether they win the primary or not, has a lot to answer for. You are trying to leverage forces that endanger both the party and the people the party is trying to represent. That is those same black folks that you're claiming are being shut out of the process. You're. You're effectively doing that too. And coming in and doing it as a white person, that's sketchy.
• 53:23
  Ed: So, I mean, that goes back to Bernieism.
• 53:26
  George: Like, I don't think it's the same thing. I think, I think the Bernieism thing is the misunderstanding that I had a soliloquy about previously. I think the thing we're talking about in Michigan Senate at this point is. Is the opposite thing. It's a. It's someone trying to leverage.
• 53:43
  Ed: Yes. And like, if you look at the way that, like Bernie's entire thing ended up going, it was main characterism to, to aim for the seams in the Democratic Party. Right. Like Bernie's entire thing has always been. I'm not a Democrat. I just run in Democratic races.
• 54:00
  Propter: Right.
• 54:00
  George: But Bernie wasn't claiming to speak for black voters is as a way to express. To drive out division in the Democratic Party. He was doing drive. Trying to drive divisions in the Democratic Party other ways. I'm not going to contest that. But the specific dynamic I'm talking about is A third party white candidate coming in and saying to black voters, hey, you're being disrespected. You know, the Democrats are, are looking past you, which was a message that Jasmine Crockett delivered. She's delivering that as a black woman from Texas.
• 54:29
  Ed: Right. And like, I don't care what she says. She, she, she's entitled. Right. But like Bernie Sanders, very, like, the attitude out of that campaign was very frequently, like, if they know what's good for them, they'll vote for me.
• 54:43
  George: Yeah, I don't. I'm not defending that. What I'm saying is that's a different problem. That's like, that's a separate thing. I'm not talking about that.
• 54:50
  Ed: Feels kind to me, to be honest.
• 54:53
  George: Okay. That is just, Just for whatever. We don't have to debate that. But what I'm saying is that trying to seek the mantle of. I'm speaking for a disrespected black community as a white person is different from what you're claiming. Bernie's attitude, which, full disclosure, I talked to black voters in north and South Carolina on behalf of the Bernie campaign, so I have some experience here. Like, I, you know, like that the problem you're addressing there, which I'm not disagreeing as a problem, I just think it's a difference in quality, qualitatively from the one I was specifically addressing. Now we get a classic proctors on mute.
• 55:30
  Propter: One per show guaranteed. With that, let's move on to the great state of Maine, where we've had some interesting developments. I know we said we weren't ever going to talk about this again, but unfortunately we have to just vote, vote,
• 56:01
  Lowtax: just, just dominate the lumberjack guy and be done with this.
• 56:05
  Propter: So I think we, I thought at least that we had settled on a nominee for the main Senate race on the Democratic side, and it was going to be Graham Platner, who won the primary with what, upwards of 70% of the vote. But then it turns out that it wasn't quite as over as I thought because a woman came forward to accuse Graham Platner of raping her. Her account is credible, and I think it's worth your time to read. And Graham Platner has withdrawn as the Democratic nominee. What that means is.
• 56:51
  George: Wait, sorry, hold on. Did he officially withdraw? I thought he was going to do it Monday.
• 56:54
  Propter: He did. He did it on Friday. Yeah. Okay, There, there was, there was, there was concern about that. He said he was going to do it Monday, which would have been the last day before the deadline. And I personally was pretty worried he was going to just, you know, not. But at this point he has, he has withdrawn, he transmitted his withdrawal to the Secretary of State. So that means that the main Democratic Party has two weeks to come up with a new nominee. The method they've chosen for doing this is a convention. I think that's a perfectly reasonable method. They don't have a lot of options here. So there's going to be something like 600 delegates in Maine who are going to be meeting in two weeks to select the next nominee, which is more
• 57:37
  Lowtax: than the entire state. They're going to have to bring people in from New Hampshire for this.
• 57:42
  Propter: Yeah, you gotta, you gotta bust people in to vote here. So this is being viewed as being essentially a three candidate race right now. It's not impossible that there's somebody else who, who gets involved, but essentially there, there are three people who have at least a reasonable shot at being that selected candidate. The I think, I think the odds on favorite here is, is Troy Jackson who is probably the closest ideological match to Graham Platner among the three. He's the former legislative leader of the Dems in the main House of Representatives. He's what, fourth or fifth generation logger, you know, manly man in effect has labor ties, former Republican, although you know, not in the last 30 years or so. And he, he was a Platner endorser early and has sort of hugged Platner close through that side of the process. The second option here is Sheena Bellows who you may remember for one of two different things and how you feel about her now probably depends on which one. If either you remember thing number one is she got blown out by Susan Collins by like 40 points in 2014.
• 59:09
  Ed: Oh wow, right.
• 59:12
  Propter: Is that, is that she was the Secretary of State who, she was one of the Secretary of States who refused for 14th Amendment reasons to put Donald Trump on the ballot in Maine in 2024 on the grounds that he had committed sedition against the United States of America. So she, she's got ACLU ties in her background. I, I think she'd be a great senator. We'll see whether or not the, the campaign selects her option. Number three is Nira Shah who ran the, the COVID response in Maine which from all accounts went really well. He's a public health guy formerly of Chicago. If you want insight into otherwise inscrutable beefs, Tammy Duckworth has already come out to anti endorse Shaw. Tammy Duckworth being, being one of the senators from Illinois.
• 1:00:12
  George: Tammy Duckworth is, is pretty solid Just before we get into this weird beef, like, we like Tammy Duckworth, right?
• 1:00:18
  Propter: Yeah, yeah, I like. I like Tammy.
• 1:00:20
  Ed: Yeah, she's fine.
• 1:00:21
  Propter: But anyway, apparently Shaw used to do public health in Chicago, and there was an outbreak of Legionnaires disease at VA residents that I believe killed a dozen people. Something like that. And he handled it, from all accounts, pretty poorly. So, anyway, Illinois senators hate him. So now we have made a beef more scrutable. I don't think how Illinois senators feel about a guy should be really a determinant. You know, what Maine's voters do. And it's pretty clear that Maine is not listening to anybody who's not from Maine anyway.
• 1:00:55
  Ed: But I'm not sure they're listening to anyone in me.
• 1:00:59
  Propter: But it is very likely that one of those three people will be your future Democratic nominee. It is my official position that I have no preference between these three people, and I refuse to learn any more about these three people than I've already relayed to you. Once we have a Democratic nominee, you know, we can talk about their strengths and weaknesses.
• 1:01:19
  Lowtax: But it's my position. It's my position that you should not overthink it. Go with the lumberjack guy. The Bellows already got blown out by Collins and Shaw. Shaw sucks because Tammy Duckworth says so, and that's good enough for me.
• 1:01:41
  Ed: I mean, fair on that. I mean, Bellows is.
• 1:01:43
  Lowtax: So go with the. The fat, ugly and not problematic Platner and just hope for the best here.
• 1:01:53
  Ed: I mean, Jackson is probably fine. He's been in Maine politics for basically my entire life.
• 1:02:00
  Lowtax: He was a Senate president, wasn't he?
• 1:02:02
  Ed: Yeah, I thought it was. Was it? Oh, that's right. Yeah, I think so. I'm not looking it up. That's too much work.
• 1:02:08
  Propter: Yeah, whatever.
• 1:02:09
  Ed: But, like, Bellows is also fine. And Also, I mean, 2014 was a much different time for Susan Collins. She was good at her job then and didn't just, like, step on every rake possible for. For the state of Maine.
• 1:02:27
  Propter: And I was a Republican. Wavier. Oh, that's right.
• 1:02:31
  Ed: Yeah.
• 1:02:32
  Lowtax: I was going to say, I think. I think the Republican wave in 2014 mattered more. Susan Collins has basically been the same person my entire life.
• 1:02:40
  Ed: But like, the way that. The way that, like, in terms of Maine. Yes and no. Right. Like, yes, same person, but a lot of, like, she has. She has definitely tacked more, I think, towards things that Mainers don't like over the last. Because she's dealing with Donald Trump. Right. Like that. The.
• 1:03:01
  Lowtax: The Republicans. Is it. Things Mainers don't Like, because Trump is the first Republican in quite a while to win that congressional district and that electoral vote, so.
• 1:03:12
  Ed: Sure. But, like, there's. You realize that there's two of those. Yes, I do. They're. They're rather different in. In composition.
• 1:03:21
  Lowtax: I also realized that George W. Didn't win that and neither did Mitt Romney and stuff, you know.
• 1:03:27
  George: True, true.
• 1:03:28
  Ed: But, like, so most of the people I know are in District 2. Right. Like, they're, they're up there. I went to school up there and stuff like that. And it sounds like the vibes have changed. So, like, I suspect either of them are probably fine. I. I didn't even know anything about Shaw before Proctor said that. And I'm with you, Lotex. Tammy Duckworth says no, we say no.
• 1:03:59
  Lowtax: But I think if the entire Chicago delegation says no, this guy sucks, then we can. We can probably go with that.
• 1:04:08
  Ed: On one hand, some of them are probably White Sox fans.
• 1:04:11
  Propter: I don't care what Dick Durbin says about anything.
• 1:04:14
  Lowtax: Okay. Yeah, that's fair.
• 1:04:15
  Propter: Yeah, he is still.
• 1:04:16
  Lowtax: Do not care what Dick Durbin says.
• 1:04:18
  Ed: He is still there. But like Jackson, there are. There were some rumblings that I think are very poorly. Let's just call them dishonest about, like, try Jackson, quote, unquote, having a temper problem, which I don't think was actually substantiated like some.
• 1:04:40
  Lowtax: Oh, was this the water bottle thing?
• 1:04:42
  Ed: Yeah, like some left wing. I. I don't even want to call them a pack because I don't know if they are, but they hired Brianna Wu, which tells me about how serious they are as an organization.
• 1:04:52
  Lowtax: Yeah, they're out here.
• 1:04:53
  Ed: Yeah, they're out here saying, you know, that. That, like, Jackson chucked a water bottle at someone. And I have not seen that reported or substantiated by anyone I would call credible. So, like, I don't think it's a thing.
• 1:05:07
  Propter: Yeah, there was. There was. I think it's fair to say that it was kind of a whispering campaign to paint Troy Jackson as. As being toxic in his masculinity in a way similar to Graham Platner. I don't know anything about the truth value there, but, you know, it's not like he's an unknown figure in Maine politics.
• 1:05:27
  Ed: Yeah.
• 1:05:28
  Propter: Like, if.
• 1:05:28
  Ed: If they have something, they should, like, bring it out. But I don't think they have something because the only folks. I don't even remember the name of the organization now. It is. It has evacuated my brain.
• 1:05:42
  Lowtax: It was kind of like no name organization.
• 1:05:45
  Ed: Yes. Yeah, they already.
• 1:05:46
  Propter: They already Withdrew their. Their allegation and apologized.
• 1:05:49
  Ed: Oh, did they? Okay, good.
• 1:05:50
  Propter: Which I think was. Was appropriate.
• 1:05:52
  Ed: Yes.
• 1:05:53
  Propter: If not sufficient. You know, one of the things with Platner is, is because he was a relative newcomer, people were still kind of discovering things about him. Whereas Troy Jackson is not that. Troy Jackson for 30 years. Yeah. I mean, I mean, it. And, and like, I don't know anything larger about Troy Jackson. Maybe he's an. Maybe he's not. Maybe he's. Maybe he's too much.
• 1:06:17
  Ed: I mean, he's hella gash. I, I mean, if you can get three sentences out of the guy, at least one of them probably includes the word.
• 1:06:25
  Propter: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:06:27
  Lowtax: He looks like a northern Maine Peter Griffin.
• 1:06:31
  George: Oh, my God.
• 1:06:33
  Propter: Wow. You know, like, there, There are forms of being an. That are lethal to being a US Senator, and there are forms of being an asshole that very much are not. You can be an effective US Senator while also being interpersonally kind of a dick.
• 1:06:46
  Ed: Yeah. And like, if. If personalities matter, I think Bellows was. Is a much better candidate. And honestly, like, Bellows has great political positions historically. Like, she's done a ton of work over time. She was one of the people. I remember she was one of the people that was, like, leading the marriage equality efforts in Maine. Right. She. She is legit. I, I still think that G. And Eric Democrat wins this thing in a walk. So I, I just don't care. Yeah. The one, the only thing I really care about out of this race is that because this is what the Internet is going to do, they are going to keep bringing up Graham Platner. And I don't even mean, like, the people who are cheerleading for him. I mean, the doom scrollers are going to keep being like, Graham Platner is going to go be an alt right figurehead. I, I don't think so. I think you should just stop talking about him because you feel bad about yourselves. Right? Like, the dude is going to just go away. Like, I would bet money on it right now. And, and like, we get it. We get a good candidate now pick one. They're fine.
• 1:07:55
  George: Just.
• 1:07:55
  Ed: Just go beat Susan Collins.
• 1:07:57
  Lowtax: Yeah, I mean, he might. He might do some petty podcast appearances or something in the next year or so, but yeah, he'll go away.
• 1:08:08
  Ed: If he does, I would bet it's after the election because, like, he's. Yeah, he's a dumb guy, but I don't think, like, in terms of his politics, he is quite that flexible from talking to people who worked on his campaign and stuff like that. He genuinely Seems to, to like have some level of core beliefs. Right. And sure that can, that can crack. We've seen it before. But like until you see a guy like that like go do this, stop hyperventilating about it.
• 1:08:42
  Propter: Yeah.
• 1:08:43
  Ed: Is kind of where I'm at.
• 1:08:45
  Propter: Yeah. My understanding is that is that Platinum World wants. Wants it to be Troy Jackson. But maybe that's, that's an impression that may be coming from Troy Jackson World. I don't know.
• 1:08:57
  Ed: So it's weird thinking that a guy like who is basically just a football shaped human from the middle of nowhere has a world.
• 1:09:06
  Propter: Yeah.
• 1:09:06
  Ed: But I mean, I guess it happens.
• 1:09:09
  Lowtax: Well, what like I want everybody to go look up what is it? Allagash Main.
• 1:09:16
  Propter: Yeah.
• 1:09:17
  Lowtax: And think of, think of that as a world all like two five houses.
• 1:09:23
  Ed: Oh wow. It is, it is at 237 people at the 2020 census.
• 1:09:30
  Lowtax: Okay. What are the boundaries of that though? Because that has to be like a 400 square mile town.
• 1:09:38
  Ed: I mean so when you get up there and this is up, up there. Right. Like this is up near Madawaska, like town is very much in interesting concept up there. Which is to say it might be two roads that cross. So. Yeah, you're right. It's. It. The. The population density of that town is probably somewhere around one.
• 1:10:00
  Propter: Thank you. Thank you Ed, for contextualizing that with other geographical cues I definitely know. Such as Madawaska. Oh yeah.
• 1:10:08
  Ed: I mean like it's. How do you. I suppose you, you're, you're. You live down there. No. So the locals know what I'm talking about. I am speaking to my people here. Now that Platner is gone. I, I accept them as my people again.
• 1:10:24
  Lowtax: It's like what, 10 miles from the border with Canada there at Fort Kent. It, it.
• 1:10:30
  Ed: Fort Kent's further over. This is, this is. So you know how Maine has. Has like a hat and then has a flat side, right? Like. Yeah, this is, this is very much on the western side of the hat. You're getting to the point where like if you want to go to civilization, you would better bring your passport. There's just nothing else up there. I looked it up just to be sure. Good lord. It is 131 square miles.
• 1:11:00
  George: Okay.
• 1:11:01
  Lowtax: Yeah.
• 1:11:01
  George: So the main geography hour is now over. I'm. I'm capping this.
• 1:11:06
  Ed: I'm sorry, you're not interested in places with 1.8 people per square mile.
• 1:11:11
  George: I am as uninterested as it is possible to be.
• 1:11:16
  Propter: Okay.
• 1:11:17
  George: I just want to emphasize that this main Geography Hour was brought to you by Low Tax Speedrun Enjoyer. And Ed, me and Proctor did not put this into the show rundown. That was not.
• 1:11:27
  Ed: No.
• 1:11:28
  George: Okay, we're done. Property, you were saying?
• 1:11:31
  Propter: All right. Yeah. Whenever. Whenever the Division 3 tournament winds up and we find out who the nominee is, I look forward to getting behind them and trying to get Democratic money behind them. On the one hand, this is a thing that is great about American local politics, that these are weighty decisions that are going to be happening in the context of people who care a lot and know a lot about this. One of the things that I've been impressed by over the course of the past year is interacting with people who live in Maine and are involved in politics is they all seem really knowledgeable about this stuff. Like. Like there are complexities that are completely.
• 1:12:11
  Ed: Grudges.
• 1:12:12
  George: Sure.
• 1:12:13
  Propter: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:12:14
  Ed: The. These are long term. Like some of them are familial, right?
• 1:12:19
  Propter: No, I believe it. I believe it. But like, all politics is local, as the saying goes, Right? Well, like, this is. This is hyper local. And I look forward to Maine figuring their out. And I also want to launch a direct mea culpa here, which is that I think of myself as a pragmatist politically, that what we should focus on is the art of the possible. And I did not think that getting Graham Platner out of the race was possible at this point. I was wrong on that. I was just flatly wrong on that. I thought we were going to have to eat the shit sandwich and support a guy who I thought had sufficient red flags that you hope they don't turn into actual fires, despite the fact that obviously they were. But I thought that we were going to have to swallow larger principles for the sake of tactical advantage, because there wasn't any other option. And it turns out that there was another option. I was wrong about that. I was.
• 1:13:15
  Ed: Yeah, but it required them. It. It required the meteor to hit first.
• 1:13:20
  Lowtax: Sure.
• 1:13:20
  Propter: Yes. Yes, it did.
• 1:13:22
  Ed: Like you are for. You are forgiven for not believing there is an alternative here.
• 1:13:27
  Lowtax: I have a plea to the people of Maine which is that now that this is over, please just pick somebody and then let's never speak of you ever again.
• 1:13:38
  George: I do think we need to at least say about Platner now that he's out and hopefully we don't have to talk about him again for any reason. Good. Ill otherwise, I think it is good that all but the most marginal voices in our political alignment were very, very quickly decisive on the need for him to immediately exit the race. There was no real debate about this, as much as people like Ryan Grim at the Intercept wanted there to be one. Or wait, is he a drop site now? He's a drop site now.
• 1:14:20
  Ed: They're all the same.
• 1:14:21
  George: Whatever it was, Ryan Grimm was basically the only voice. I mean, I think even Ken Klippenstein, who, up until the allegations that were published in Politico a couple weeks ago, I mean, it's. It's almost unfair to call them allegations at this point. I think that that puts them in a light that involves some sort of doubt. And I don't mean that at all. I just mean that in the sense that they haven't been proven in a court of law as a technical matter. But since those allegations have been published, I think even Ken Klippenstein got off the train.
• 1:14:55
  Ed: You know, didn't he, like, post some real. When it went down, though?
• 1:15:01
  George: He had posted a lot of. Up to that point. I, I don't know. I don't. I don't keep close track of these people because I value my sanity as much as that may come as a surprise to some listeners.
• 1:15:11
  Lowtax: But he posted. He posted a. A. A douchey thing that basically said he had nothing to apologize for.
• 1:15:19
  Ed: Yeah, that's it.
• 1:15:20
  Lowtax: And him. And eat.
• 1:15:22
  George: Okay, well, you, Ken.
• 1:15:26
  Lowtax: Yeah, eat, Ken, eat.
• 1:15:28
  George: Stoler can eat. Grim can eat. They're all. They're all pieces of. They're all said. The people who actually matter were decisive and immediately so true. And, And I think that's good. And I think that we need a standard for behavior. And the sorts of things that were. Have been. Have come to light about Platinum's behavior is or are disqualifying, and that's that, and we can move on. And I hope that anytime something like this happens in the future, it will, at some point happen again. We'll have the same reaction because we are part of a political point of view that actually cares about shit like this. And that's not true of the alternative side in US Politics right now, and very much the opposite, in fact. And there's a choice here, and I'm glad that people acted like there was and made the right choice.
• 1:16:21
  Propter: So, yeah, that has been.
• 1:16:22
  Ed: That has been one of the, like, really frustrating things is like, people are like, why do Republicans get away with this? Because they're the bad guy.
• 1:16:30
  George: Yep.
• 1:16:32
  Lowtax: Yep.
• 1:16:32
  Propter: Yeah, I want to piggyback on that just a little bit. This was mechanically the way. The way getting Platner out of the race happened. Based on Platner's own comments and comments from people associated with his campaign. Is that national Dem said we are shutting off the money. Spigot said we will not invest in this race based on. Based on the allegation, based on what we think is the credible allegation that just came out. So therefore, you have no chance of winning because there will not be national support for your campaign. And also because there is no national money that removes some direct financial incentives, not just for Platner himself, but for his campaign folk to continue. So this was very much a decision that came from the party. There's a lot to criticize about about the Democratic Party. There's a lot that we do criticize about the Democratic Party, but in this particular instance, they acted correctly and ultimately, maybe too late, but ultimately they acted decisively and it made the difference.
• 1:17:38
  Ed: Yeah. Hooray. Let's never talk about this again.
• 1:17:45
  George: Yeah.
• 1:17:45
  Propter: Anyway, we'll go back to Maine in two weeks.
• 1:17:47
  Ed: Look. No, we won't.
• 1:17:51
  George: We can talk about Maine at some point in the fall when the midterms are actually looming. We can maybe do a brief segment detailing who won and that's it. No more Maine. Other than that, I'm capping total discussion of Maine for the balance of the year at 15 minutes, and I'm going to be very, very serious about that.
• 1:18:07
  Ed: Wow, you gave Lindsey Graham more.
• 1:18:10
  George: Well, yeah, because that was funny. There's nothing funny about Maine.
• 1:18:14
  Propter: Sure. Next week on Normal Maine visit, you'll find the humor.
• 1:18:18
  George: Yeah. If I want to go and meet some yokels, I got a whole western section of the state to go hang out with. I don't need to go all the way up there and just drive over the hill.
• 1:18:31
  Ed: You're not wrong. You're not wrong.
• 1:18:34
  George: That's our show for this week. We are keeping it short and sweet because some of you don't like long episodes. And that's fine with us because I gotta go do some childcare. So no complaints from your boy. If you have the chance, we would love if you could rate or review our podcast. Wherever you're listening to it, share it with a friend. Share it with your boss if you really want to move up that corporate ladder quick. And that's it. So for normal men, in Charlotte, I'm George.
• 1:19:01
  Propter: In dc, I'm Proctor.
• 1:19:03
  Lowtax: In outer Florida, I'm low tech speed running dryer.
• 1:19:06
  Ed: And in Boston, Ahmed.
• 1:19:07
  George: Stay normal, y'.
• 1:19:08
  Ed: All.