Advisory Opinions - Early Voting Numbers Explained

Episode Date: October 26, 2020

Echelon Insights predicts that we will see record turnout this election cycle. How might a surge in, say, 2o million new voters this year affect the presidential race in battleground states? “If we���re talking the day after the election about why the polls were wrong,” Sarah warns on today’s episode, “it will be because of the extraordinary turnout, and [pollsters] were unable to figure out where those turnout increases were coming from.” Tune in to today’s episode to hear David and Sarah’s take on early voting in swing states, the importance of political rallies, and the DoJ’s antitrust lawsuit against Google. Show Notes: -Join The Dispatch for a post-election gathering featuring congressional leadership, top policy and political experts November 9-10: Sign up here! -Most popular websites since 1993 ranked, Google’s statement against the DoJ lawsuit, and “For Trump Superfans, Huge Rallies Can't Resume Soon Enough,” by Andrew Egger in The Dispatch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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maple syrup on halo halo, Montreal style bagels eaten in Brandon, Manitoba. Here, we take the best from one side of the world and mix it with the other. And you can shop that whole world right here in our aisles. Find it all here with more ways to save at Real Canadian Superstore. You ready? I was born ready. Welcome to the Advisory Opinions Podcast. This is David French with Sarah Isger.

This is David French with Sarah Isger. And before we dive into the election and the DOJ antitrust lawsuit against Google, which is going to be an interesting discussion, I promise. Sarah, I have to share an athletic accomplishment. This is hard to believe. Do tell. Hard to believe. Do tell. hours on the golf course. And I pro I progressed from misery to mediocrity. And then after I had kids, I realized if I wanted to transition from mediocrity to sort of adequacy would be many, many, many, many, many, many more hours and many more dollars.

And I just wasn't, that just wasn't in the cards. So I kind of dropped golf. But once a year, I play in a scramble. Once a year. I don't even own clubs anymore, Sarah. I borrow clubs for the scramble. And this year, this Sunday, was that once per year on a beautiful fall day in Tennessee. For the first time in my entire life, I obtained a golf accomplishment. I obtained a golf accomplishment. I won the closest to the pin award on a 165 yard par three

with the hole up at the very back of the green on a steep slope. I hit it from 165 yards to within 10 feet of the hole. And it was glorious because they have people who are monitoring this so that nobody can cheat. So they had the volunteers monitoring it. And like Babe Ruth, I called my shot. I walked up with my iron and I said, watch me win closest to the pin. Completely joking, knowing it was never going to happen. And then I just did it. And I acted like I do it every week.

It was fantastic. And I have to brag. I'm not sure that's an accomplishment. It sounds like an accident. Those are different. Accomplishments are things you work toward and invest in. Two, I've never heard of this. I know what hole-in-one is, and it sounds like you didn't get that. No, I did not.

Three, please never compare yourself to babe ruth and anything athletic that's insulting to babe ruth fans everywhere well the only reason i didn't get the hole-in-one is it was the ten thousand dollar hole-in-one um hole where if you got the hole-in-one you'd win ten thousand dollars and i said i need to see the cash i need to see it before I'm going to go ahead and hit the hole-in-one. Otherwise, I'm not quite confident I'll get it. Yeah, not worth it.

I didn't really go for the hole-in-one. Okay. I just went for closest to the pin and the $30 gift certificate to the pro shop that came with it. Okay. Don't spend it all in one place, except I guess you have to.

Listeners, help me out. Help me out. This is a real accomplishment. All right. Before we dive in to the lesser important things, and by lesser important, I mean less important than my closest to the pin athletic accomplishment. For what it's worth, by the way, golf and law school have very negative associations for me because the men, I suppose, men play golf or something. This is like a thing. And so they had these flyers up that I remember that said,

women, you need to learn golf to be able to play with the male partners at whatever firm you're going to or else they'll exclude you and you'll never make partner. And here we have a free golf tutorial for women so that you can not embarrass yourself. And I was like, hell no, no, I am not learning golf to impress some old dudes who otherwise won't talk to me. Sorry. I'd rather watch football or, I don't know, make them talk about manicures. I refuse. This is my feminist line. But it was a very popular free clinic to teach women golf. And so to me, golf is the sign of the patriarchy. You're welcome. So I, okay, we're going to dwell on this for a second. I'm really sorry, listeners, because this is a story of how institutions can

change. Everything is not relentless. If somebody had advertised that tutorial when I was there, the left on campus would have ripped down every advertisement. It would have utterly rejected the notion that a single woman needs to learn golf completely. the person who had put the advertisement up would have been hounded off of campus forever and ever. The very idea that there would be any trace of conformity to the existing patriarchy would have been an anathema. And so you're telling me, Sarah, that Harvard went back to the patriarchy, giving patriarchy lessons years after I graduated. That's amazing. Yeah, and the other thing that I'm hearing is that

I would have been part of that back before. Huh. Okay. Yeah. Interesting. Except you'd have to dress completely and exclusively

in flannel shirt and jeans i think boots a i my doc martens are amazing but also b um i can't pull off the annie hall look but i really wish i could because this was the grunge era this was smells like teen spirit this was pearl jam oh i mean i had the ed Vedder, you know, silver chain with like a little dagger-y medallion on it or whatever that Vedder wore that I got from, you know, Claire's or whatever. Okay. Minor digression. All right. Before we get into the main event, I want to remind you guys of the main post-election event. November 9th and 10th, we are hosting an online series of conversations about the future of conservatism after the 2020 election, whatever the outcome. We've got Tim Scott committed. We've

got Ben Sasse committed. We've got really other really fascinating folks going to be joining us. And you can register for this at what'snextevent. h a t s next event.com so go register you will not regret it um and it's going to be a fascinating discussion however the election turns out um and with that sarah let's turn to a number here is the number. 60,268,395. And here's a percentage associated with that number. 43.7%. What do those numbers tell you? So when you said the number, I was going to tell you that that's roughly half of the entire 2016 vote. Yep. Yep.

Which is crazy. And that's the number of people have voted early already. And that includes, okay, I just want to, I want to just give you some percentages now

that are mind-blowing to me. So, guys, just so you can get a... A number of you have asked about this website. Again, it's electproject.github.io, which you can also follow on Twitter at at electproject. And so what we're going to do today is we're going to walk through some of these states and some of these numbers and talk about what they mean and also what they don't mean. But I want to start with Texas because this is Sarah's home territory and it's also an outlier. It is an eye-popping outlier. And that is right now, Sarah, 81% of the 2016 total turnout in Texas is 81.9%. And right now in Texas, 7.3 million people have voted.

So I want you as my Texas guru to just tell me what, if anything, this means aside from people really are eager to vote in 2020. Yeah, so it's two things. It's a perfect storm happening at once. One is the pandemic, which is not just that people are worried about voting on election day. It's actually a whole slew of things that have come from that. Because people were worried about voting on election day, there was a lot of focus on early voting. And that focus has both made early voting easier in a lot of states, but it's also just put an enormous amount of sort of front of mind attention like, oh, yes, early voting is going on. Here's how you early vote. It just has made, I think, a much more familiar process for a lot

of people. And that's all pandemic related. But then there's all the Trump related parts, which are that people on both sides feel incredibly strongly about Donald Trump. And so don't assume that all of this enormous turnout is pro-Biden, because if we're looking at a 20 million person increase in turnout over 2016, which is at least what our friends over at Echelon Insights thinks it could be, Joe Biden's not winning by 20 million votes, most likely. So that means that a lot of this increase in turnout will also be pro-Trump turnout. But so what's driving it is strong feeling Trump and then pandemic. And yeah, it's really interesting because what it also says is you want to go back to those previous elections

where people were complaining that nobody in this country cared, nobody voted. Maybe we should go to the Australian method of mandatory voting. No, people will vote when they believe it's in their interest to do so. And that's what I think this election will show. Now, that being said, I'm

still in favor of election day being a holiday. I still think there are ways to increase the ease in which people can vote when they do think it's important to them and not make it quite so difficult all the time. But this is a great example of like, actually, it's pretty easy. People can find a way to do it, especially if early voting extends two weeks or so ahead of election day. And it'll be fascinating to see the numbers among the cohorts that don't vote the most often. So I'm thinking young people in particular. Is it the fact that young people just couldn't figure out how to stop smoking pot and wake up in time to vote? Or is this election going to show us that actually they're well aware of how to vote.

They just don't do it when they don't think that it matters. Right. Right. Yeah. I'm seeing, you know, I'm seeing some some indications around the country that there is dramatically increased youth vote this time around. I mean, anecdotally, it seems if my older kids who are college, their peers seem much more interested in voting than I've seen in college students previously. But we'll see when the numbers all shake out. So I want to go to Florida for a minute because Florida is really interesting. You know, one thing I love about Florida,

Sarah, it just is a really transparent state. My friend, National Review Online editor, Charlie Cook, has noted that one of the reasons why their Florida man meme has sort of taken off is because Florida is so immediately transparent with its arrest records that board reporters can

just sort of comb through them and find whatever quickly and easily and write a news story out of it. So, you know, if you're really fair, Florida man could be Georgia man, could be Tennessee man, but Florida is so transparent. And Florida's really transparent about its vote records. So this is fascinating. Polls beforehand said to us that Republicans were much more likely to vote in person and Democrats were more likely to vote by mail. And this is showing up in the Florida numbers in spades. So the in-person vote in Florida is, so the total vote in Florida is 63% of 2016 turnout already. In-person voting, 2.2 million. And in that measure, Republicans have 46% of that vote,

Democrats 34% of that vote, and no affiliation, 18% of that vote. So that's a 12 point gap. Male votes returned, there you have 3.8 million returned, Democrats 47%, Republicans 31%, no affiliation 20%. And that means the total gap is Democrats 42, Republicans 36, no affiliation, 20. I'm going to be honest with you. If I'm a Democrat,

I'm actually nervous by that. That number makes me a little bit nervous. Would you concur? It's not the gap that the polling said we would have, sort of people self-reporting whether they're going to vote by mail

and whether they're going to early vote. Because remember, in some of those polls, we were seeing sometimes 40-point gaps. The Democrats were going to vote by mail early and Republicans were going to show up on election day. I am not surprised that those don't turn out to be the numbers, in part because most of those numbers came from a time where there was sort of this partisan language gap around the whole thing.

And that has largely disappeared where even president Trump is telling his folks to vote early and Democrats are telling their folks to show up in person. So some of that just calmed down after the summer. But those numbers are, you know, interesting. And especially when you consider some of the voter registration changes that are going on, that Republicans have been closing that gap in a lot of places, and the voter registration just in, has been through the roof

in Pennsylvania and Florida in particular. And Republicans have been the ones on the ground doing that because they were the ones doing door-to-door field work, canvassing, in-person stuff. Yeah, I think there's some things

in those numbers to be a little nervous about. Really interestingly, though, it's not really showing up in the polls. Right, right. That's right. But if I'm a Democrat, one thing that has encouraged me maybe is that the three Democratic mega counties, Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach, are all lower as a percentage voted than most of the rest of the counties of Florida. So they're in the low 40s as a percentage when the state as a whole is in the 60s. So, you know, it's so funny. You're looking at this, and I can only imagine if you're a party strategist. And it's almost like, imagine you're in the midway through the fourth quarter of a football game, and you can't really see the actual scoreboard.

All you know are sort of other numbers like total yards or sacks or some other ancillary measurement that gives you maybe a pretty good idea of who's winning, but doesn't give you the actual score and you're trying to adjust accordingly. I mean, I can only imagine that's frustrating. I think this cycle is really interesting because so often the campaigns are so yoked together. They're doing the exact same thing. They're running about the same amount of ads. Yeah, sure. Maybe one's running a few more points of ads in one state versus the other or concentrating their field operation a little bit more in one state versus another. But generally speaking, they're really evenly matched. Like to your point, the offense matches the defense. And so, you know, the offensive guy is being hit by the defensive guy. And it's that line on the line of scrimmage where it's just dudes pushing each other. That's a normal election cycle. That's not what's happening this time. And if it were a tighter race in the polling,

I would be really fascinated in some of these choices and just the strategic side of the two campaign managers and general consultants and senior staff and the choices that they're making, because this would be a really interesting test of who's actually good at this, who's making smart decisions. Now, unfortunately, because the polls are so far apart right now, just because Joe Biden wins doesn't mean that he's making good choices, his team. Right. Right. And vice versa. But nevertheless, we're really going to be able to see an asymmetrical offense and defense and study afterwards what that meant. And I am pumped for that.

It is going to be fascinating. But, you know, as I said in my newsletter that I published Friday, my Thursday newsletter that I published Friday, which regretfully happens on occasion, Sarah, the one thing, you know, the polls are overwhelming in a particular direction. They're overwhelming for Biden. They're over the swing states are many of them outside the margin of error for Biden. But this turnout is overwhelming. And I think that if we if we're doing a postmortem that says something about the polling being off, this turn, this remarkable turnout is going to be a factor in that discussion, I would say. But again, that's going to rest on turnout where and in what groups.

So shall we move up to Georgia? Georgia, thank you, red states, for providing us with more information than many blue states. But darn you, red states. I almost wish you could have our cumulative vote total where you could literally see the scoreboard turning. So Georgia gives information not by party affiliation, Sarah. It gives voting information by age and gender. Age and gender. Now, this is interesting. So they have, Georgia has already voted 67% of the 2016 total, which is, again, these numbers are ludicrous. And a whopping 53% of those are ages 56 and up.

Yep. 53%. Which is not, by the way, the average age in Georgia. Correct. Correct. Now, there's a gender gap. There's a gender gap in this. And so, again, if you're reading tea leaves, Democrats probably like this gender gap.

you're reading tea leaves, Democrats probably like this gender gap. Right now, Georgia has voted 55% female, 43% male. So in most elections, don't forget, women do vote more than men. They're about 52% of the electorate in a normal cycle. So that's a three-point bump. And women also, at this point, are going to vote probably 20 to 25 percent more Democratic. So of that three points, just under one point should be favoring Democrats. So, yes, that is good. It's about one, you know, one point good. Right. For Democrats.

And then if you're looking, you're reading tea leaves by counties fulton county democratic stronghold is well below uh moat the average of the other counties of percent of vote at 41 percent uh of the of the um 2016 total so see this is fascinating because when you think you're exactly right that if we're talking the day after the election about why the polls were wrong, it will be because of the extraordinary turnout. And they were unable to figure out where those turnout increases were coming from, because if in 2016, 128 million people voted, most of those were likely voters. people voted, most of those were likely voters. Therefore, they're voting again this time. The increase in turnout by definition is people who are low probability voters. And so then you're wondering, okay, are they equally concentrated in, for instance,

swing states, Florida and Georgia, let's say, that we're talking about, will there be the equal percentage there? Or is it just that a whole bunch of people in California are thinking like, yeah, my vote doesn't count in terms of Biden versus Trump, but I just really hate Donald Trump. And I want to rack up the popular vote score for Biden, or I just want to have my voice heard, et cetera, et cetera, even though they don't care about the down ballot races so they haven't voted in the past. Because if that increase in 20 million

is coming from states that don't matter, then the increase in turnout doesn't matter. And frankly, the polls should be able, in the state polling, to have done just fine. If it's equally in the swing states, that's hard to poll because you're figuring out which low probability voters bothered to turn up this time. And then there's a possibility that, yes, it's going to appear statewide to be equal in the swing states. But to your point, the turnout juicing, if you will, on field operation was really on the Trump side.

So yeah, Georgia's going to have increased turnout in Republican areas. And the Democratic counties are going to have lower turnout because they weren't really doing a normal turnout operation. And so you're going to see a statewide increase in turnout, but a county by county mix and match because in some they're going to look like 2016 and in some they're

going to look like 2020. And that's going to be even harder for pollsters to account for. Right, right. So all these numbers, they give you hints. It's to use the biblical phrase, seeing through a glass darkly. But I can't stop looking through that glass, Sarah. So this one is a little- David, can I give you another? So you know how I've ranted about yard signs previously? And I have feelings about people telling me about how much they love yard signs or have seen yard signs and therefore they know who's going to win. And then in 2016, all of those people felt vindicated, even though

they should not have felt vindicated. And there's nothing worse than when people who shouldn't feel vindicated incorrectly feel vindicated. Yes. Like Bill Mitchell, the turnout operation is in our hearts. It drives me crazy. So there's an equivalent of that, and that's rallies. People misunderstand what rallies mean, and it's so similar to yard signs. So I would like to do for you my rally rant. Oh, I'm here for it. So towards the end of every campaign cycle, both sides host these enormous rallies. And if you remember, Barack Obama had just tens of thousands of people showing up to his rallies. And in 2016, Donald Trump had tens of thousands of people showing up to his rallies. Andallies, therefore, must be a sign of enthusiasm, turnout, etc. And this week's sweep, by the way, is going to be the mailbag. And so this is an email that I got that was a smart email, but I just want to explain why it's wrong. Okay. I've never heard of Gastonia

North Carolina before. I do not understand how someone who is losing by 10% can do this in a place I've never heard of. Actually, I don't understand how a person who is winning by 10% can do this. Is it just like how the BLM riots were 10 times bigger because everyone is locked down and bored? Do you have thoughts on this? And if I gave you from now until eternity, could you get a crowd like this for Marco Rubio in his hometown, Florida? So he is referring to the president's rally in Gastonia, where he had roughly 20,000 people

in a town that no one's heard of in North Carolina, Gastonia, North Carolina. All right, let's break this down a little. One, Gastonia is 25 minutes outside of Charlotte, North Carolina. So it's actually just a suburb of a very major city. Charlotte has a population of 850,000 people. Even so, 20,000 people is a lot of people. They don't just show up. It's not like they put a little advertisement in the classifieds, Donald Trump's going to be here, and then everyone just organically decides to find their way over. If you are near a presidential rally or a candidate rally, and you look like a likely

supporter but a low propensity voter, you are going to get a zillion touches from the campaign. You're going to get something in your mailbox. You're going to get a lot of phone calls. You're going to get some text messages. You may even get some people knocking at your door saying, hey, you know, the president's having this rally. We'd love to see you there. We just live down the street from you and we're all going and we just wanted to make sure you knew about it. So there's a lot of turnout operation done just for these rallies because the thought is that it's somewhat similar to donating $5. It's a buy-in. And once you're bought in, you're more likely to vote and you already are supporting the candidate who you're buying in for.

in for. So it's taking those low propensity voters and sort of reducing some mental friction, if you will, or the stickiness, increasing stickiness for the candidates so that they're just more likely to turn out. But I want to give you an example that I think will blow your mind, David. All right. In 2012, Romney had 14,000 people in Fisherville, Virginia. Yes. Do you know where Fisherville is? Is it near Huntersburg? I have no idea. I just made up that town.

No, I know. It probably is, though. So Fisherville is also about 30 minutes outside of Charlottesville, Virginia. But Charlottesville has a population of 50,000 and there is no big town near Charlottesville, and for that matter, therefore, Fishersville. So Romney got 14,000 people near a 50,000-person town and Trump got 20,000 people near an 850,000-person town. Rallies are a sign of your field operation

and how good your field guys are. So kudos to the Trump field team. I think they're doing stellar work. It means nothing to me in terms of polling. Thank you and rant. And he also has some frequent rally goers. Was it Andrew who wrote a piece about these guys or sort of like, yes, you can find it on the website. It was marvelous. It was one of our better pieces. And it was, you know, they're, they're kind of follow them around. Like people

follow Trump around, like people followed the grateful dead or is there anyone who's sort of been the successor to the grateful dead? Like Dave Matthews. Dave Matthews, yeah. And so there are a lot of repeaters in some of these rallies. But yeah, Sarah, I have firsthand experience. In 2004, George W. Bush held a rally at Corbin, Kentucky. And if you've never heard of Corbin, Kentucky, it's because it's a really small town. And we drove down there

just to see it. And we're stuck in an hours-long traffic jam. Hours long. He had thousands and thousands of people near Corbin, Kentucky. I have no idea why he was in Corbin, Kentucky about five or six days before the 2004 election. But sure enough, he was there. I mean, about as deep red of a state. Was there a Senate race? Was there a Senate race? Maybe. I can't seem to remember. I don't remember a Senate candidate. He sort of flew in and a mini Air Force One landed on a short runway, went out, spoke for 15, 20 minutes, acknowledged all the local officials, took

back off again. The hangar rallies where you do the rally in the plane's hangar are very popular because there's like zero logistics for the campaign on the candidate side, which is nice. You're in, you're out, boom. And we're seeing the travel schedules of the candidates for the last week of the election which is also super fun to dig into what that means because we don't know what their internal polling really says even when they show us their internal polling there's like no don't believe that that's what it, but you can definitely judge their internal polling by where they're going. And Biden and Harris are hitting Texas and Georgia. And Trump is hitting

exactly the states that you'd think he'd be hitting, uh, Florida, uh, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, et cetera, uh, North Carolina, Arizona. Uh, why in the world Biden and Harris are going to Texas and Georgia, I simply do not understand. Because either they'll win, in which people will say that was a wave and they were going to win it anyway, or they're going to lose, in which people are going to say, why were you spending time, your most valuable resource at this point? The money, it's in, it's going out the door, it is what it is. Time is now the most valuable resource at this point. The money, it's in, it's going out the door. It is what it is. Time is now the most valuable resource that every campaign has. And they're spending their time on states

that they do not need to win. You know what it feels like to me, Sarah? It feels like to me, if you are driving to the basket and you know you can Eurostep and lay it in, but instead you go for the Vince Carter style, jump over the opposition entirely and dunk in their face final maneuver. Yeah, except the difference is that you might miss the dunk,

bounce off the rim, and give yourself a concussion as you hit the ground. And then everyone will mock you for not taking the layup. Yeah know i know that's that's why i chose that analogy because you go for the yeah if it if you hit it you can't see the scoreboard so yeah you might be up by 10 and it doesn't matter if you lose those you know two points but what if it turns out that you can't see the scoreboard yeah you thought you were playing an awesome game but actually the score is tied right now. And then you fall and get a concussion when you could have gotten the layup. Either way, you don't go for the dunk. By the way, fun fact from our producer, 2004 Kentucky Senate race, Jim Bunning. Thank you, Caleb. Ah, yes.

So that explains the hangar rally. Gotta love the real-time fact checks. Okay, can I give you two more states that we can overreact to? And by the way, he won with 51% of the vote. So there, so it, how dare I question the crafting? Don't mock the hangar rallies. But see, it tells you,

how dare I? It tells you what those internal polls were looking like. The, the Bunning campaign would have reached out and said, look, if we can get 30 minutes, we think we've got this. We need just a little bit of boost. Here's all of our polls, all the money, all of our buys. We're showing you open kimono that this will push us over the edge. Open kimono. the edge. And so I'm sure that Bush was on the way to somewhere else and they just did a quick drop down, 30 minutes push out and that got to 51% of the vote. So the other thing that the Biden and Harris stops tell you is there is some chance, I guess, that MJ Hager and Ossoff, the two Democratic Senate candidates in those states, have shown the campaign that they actually are able to win this race potentially. I do find that hard to believe.

I think Texas will be closer than it's ever been before, but I think that it'll be two and a half points probably. And two and a half points probably. So, and two and a half points is not worth the candidate's time. Right. All right, so here's North Carolina, here are North Carolina numbers. Now, North Carolina has already 3 million, 3.2 million almost have voted.

That as a percentage of 2016 total turnout, that's almost 67% of 2016 turnout in North Carolina. And here the numbers are pretty dramatic. This is one that it's sort of hard to spin positively for the Republicans. And that is total party vote by registration, Democrats 40%, Republicans 30%, no party affiliation 30%. I wouldn't want, let me put it this way, I wouldn't want to switch sides on this if I was a Democrat. And if I was a Republican, I would want to switch sides on those numbers. But that's 67% of 2016 turnout. So that's where we are on North Carolina.

And then the other one that provides detailed numbers is Pennsylvania. But Pennsylvania is early in the process. So it's only 23% of 2016 turnout. And the numbers there, it's way too early for the Democrats to be too excited here. But the ballots returned. It looks like the Democrats are up by a mere 50 points. Okay. Okay. But it's early. It's early. Yeah, that's very early.

Yeah. So I share all of this stuff just to say that I look at it from the standpoint because I try to put myself in your shoes, Sarah, about how maddening it would be to look at these numbers. And the question that I would have for you as we kind of wind down this part of it is, if you're advising Trump or Biden right now, are you looking more at your internal polling or are you looking more at these hints and tea leaves from these other states? these hints and tea leaves from these other states? I am putting all of those together. So I'm not particularly paying a ton of attention to the public polling, but I am looking at a spreadsheet that includes our early vote slash absentee targets, what percentage of those we have completed, and how that's shaping up to the overall numbers that are being reported back in those states. So are we running ahead or behind in our own voter rolls compared to the percentage that say they voted? Because that, in theory, should also show you how the democrats field operation is going and then i'm using that plus our internal polls um to you know to judge whether those internal polls are correct interesting does that make sense interesting yes absolutely okay now and the one last question for you before we move on to antitrust law is, in your experience, is campaign internal polling superior to public polling?

So sometimes they're looking at different things, and that's what's helpful about it. So it's not that it's necessarily a better, more accurate poll. It's that for what I want to look at, it's telling me the information that I need. So I don't necessarily want to know all the things that you and I are curious about. Again, I have voter rolls. I know individuals, like by individual, who I want to turn out to vote and who I don't want to turn out to vote and what they look like and why some of my voters are turning out more or less than others. And so that's the sort of thing that the internal polling can be far superior at. And it's why you're going to base your last week candidate time on that internal polling. Because I may see something in the numbers about young people, for instance, and that actually the enormous increase in young person turnout, as long as we can, I don't know, keep that to only a 15 point gap between Republicans and Democrats, that I already make it up in males over 55 or whatever. And so I want to do a little bit more digital targeting on TikTok or something. And so that's why the internal polls are better because you're looking at crosstabs in a different way and your internal pollsters. because the margin of error increases a lot when you all of a sudden decrease your poll number

by 90% or something, if you're looking at 10% of the electorate. And so you're going to tell your internal pollster to oversample those crosstabs that you want to look more deeply at so that the margin of error decreases and you've got a better idea. So again, it's not that they're more accurate,

but they might be more accurate in what you want to look at if you're looking at subsets of voters, idea. So again, it's not that they're more accurate, but they might be more accurate in what you want to look at if you're looking at subsets of voters, which of course is what campaigns are all about. Gotcha. All right. One quick thing. I think I said something wrong earlier when I was talking about some of the county level data. The county level data that is on the elect project is the percentage of registered voters who voted not the percentage compared to the 2016 vote on the county level data. The state level data is the percentage of the 2016 vote. So those are two different things. So some of those democratic counties that have

voted at the 40% rate, that's not 40% compared to the the 67 or whatever of the percentage of the early vote it is 40 of the registered voters and some of those democratic counties are still behind many of the other republican counties around them but that's just a the data can be confusing and so i think i i might have heightened the confusion which makes sense sense. But again, in 2016 nationally, 138 million people voted out of 157 registered voters. So while those numbers are by no means synonymous, they're not that, that far off. Everyone in this country, for some reason,

thinks that nobody votes. Actually, we have very high voter turnout with registered voters. That's why you see so many campaigns concentrating on those registration numbers, because our voting compared to voting age population or eligible voting population, it's not great. That's in the low 60s, high 50s. Let's take a moment and thank our sponsor, the Act In Line podcast. Act In Line is the flagship podcast of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, dedicated to the promotion of a free and virtuous society characterized by individual liberty and sustained by religious principles. With episodes released every Wednesday, Act In Line brings together writers, economists, religious leaders, thinkers, journalists, newsmakers, and more in conversations that bridge the gap between good intentions and sound economics. By demonstrating the compatibility of faith, liberty, and free markets, conversations

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That's acton.org slash opinions to subscribe. All right, shall we dip our toes into antitrust? I can't imagine a topic that I walked into the Department of Justice knowing less about than antitrust. I mean to tell you, Sarah, this is a complicated area of law. Slash maybe totally made up. And so what we're not going to do, we're not going to do a treatise on antitrust law because we like to maintain listeners your trust. Yes. We do not want to be anti your trust and frankly interest yes but i do know there is a huge amount of interest around uh big tech and the various

ways in which um government can intervene to deal with perceived problems with big tech. And what I would say you're having here is a fascinating discussion about what happens when a superior product achieves a kind of irresistible momentum, which it then can use the financial fruits of that irresistible momentum to continue to secure its place? It's very interesting. So here's some basic facts. Google, which started many, many years ago, not many, many, but Google, which started some time ago, began to accumulate dominant market share in an internet search.

In other words, most people when given a choice of whether to do a Google search or say a Bing search or a Yahoo search, and I'm old enough, Sarah, to remember when Yahoo, that's what you searched. I was AltaVista. You were AltaVista. Oh, fascinating. Okay. I went from Yahoo to Google and then I've occasionally forayed into Bing just to see, and I always go back to Google. Google's just better. And so it begins to get a dominant position in search. And then what it does is it's achieved this dominant position, which allows it to make a giant amount of money off of ads. It then starts to pay other companies what the Justice Department called exclusivity agreements, which means that, for example, if you buy an Apple iPhone,

the default search engine on your Safari app on the Apple iPhone is going to be Google. And so that means that you actually have to do some work to change your default app. that you actually have to do some work to change your default app. If you don't want Google, you've got to go through some steps to make Yahoo or Bing or whatever your default. And so what the Justice Department says is this is an anti-competitive practice, that Google's search engine, that Google search has become so popular and has created so much money that it is then able to sort of perpetuate its dominance through its sheer financial power to continue to buy its dominance from other companies. this really interesting blog post that we can put in the show notes, and I'll in fact put it in the chat right now

so Caleb can, we won't miss it, is that essentially shows how easy it is, how easy it is to choose another web browser and talks about how Microsoft tries to use its market power to put the Edge browser and Bing search into everybody's homes. And I have a beautiful, amazing, awesome Alienware gaming computer that, sure enough, Edge is the default browser. Edge is the default web browser. Bing is the default search. I had to manually change it to Google.

And what Google is arguing is everybody can choose. This isn't like, say, AT&T back in the day, where if you were going to get a phone, it was going to be an AT&T or a Bell phone, and that was it. You had no option. Instead, you can choose whatever you want to search from. It's just that people choose Google. And even in the rich competitors like Microsoft of Google try to do the same things that Google does and they're just not as good at it. And so how can you call that a monopoly?

So that's the basic parameters of the argument. Sarah, your thoughts. Well, this is where antitrust law, either for you listeners, will is where antitrust law, either for you listeners, will get very interesting or very boring, which is, of course, not all anti-competitive behavior violates the Sherman Antitrust Act, obviously, because every company would like to beat their competitors. It's sort of the definition of being in business. You don't welcome everyone else and then just say all

the products are equal and consumers should randomly pick between them. It also, however, doesn't guarantee that you will stay in your position. And I always use Blockbuster, of course, as the most egregious example of someone who had dominant market share and lost it all through bad choices. Despite, I mean, they had the brand, they had the locations, they had the consumer familiarity, all of it. And they just sat there and enjoyed it. And Netflix came in, ate their lunch and Blockbuster is gone, which is something that would have been unthinkable, David, in the 80s, the 90s. I mean, until really recently, actually. And Netflix, on the other hand,

has evolved five times over since they originally started mailing me discs. Ah, DVDs. Yeah, there's so little resemblance. I mean, I remember getting those discs in the mail and thinking, how's this a business model? documentaries. And she was furious because they would never arrive. And I was like, mom, I've never had a problem. Netflix always gets my DVDs to me. I don't understand. And so she kept calling Netflix. They kept sending her more, they would say, and they never arrived. And then one day,

my dad happened to be taking out the trash and looked in and lo and behold, like piles of Netflix DVDs were in the trash. My mother also does not tolerate junk mail. And she didn't understand that the Netflix DVDs were going to come in the mail, the same as all the other mail. And you had to find them in your mail through the junk mail. And so she was just throwing out all the mail. I don't understand still. How they still have their electricity on because she hasn't thrown out that. This is before you could auto bill pay. But anyway, so this is all to explain

that every company engages in anti-competitive behavior. Google uses the example of cereals, like Cheerios and Froot Loops, paying to have grocery stores put their cereal boxes in sort of preferred placement in the grocery store. Well, that's anti-competitive behavior. Of course it is. Because Cheerios isn't saying, just put whatever cereals you like in the front of the grocery store and here's some money. They're saying, nope, here's the money. We want Cheerios to be in the place of pride. But because we don't all accept, 90% of us accept that Cheerios are better than every other cereal on the market, we're fine with that. The problem comes in when

consumers also play some role in this. And all of us together, the company, the consumers, everyone has shut out anyone from being able to compete. It's why, generally speaking, conservatives have been very wary of using antitrust laws because anti-competitive behavior that is illegal is often just in the eye of the beholder. that is illegal is often just in the eye of the beholder. And that's the kind of wishy-washy living law stuff that conservatives really hate. So it becomes fascinating that this large of an antitrust lawsuit happens during a Republican administration. It is fascinating. And then the other interesting question is, you know, any trust law has a number of groups that is designed to try to assist.

Principal among them are consumers. But the hardest question, I think, for the DOJ lawsuit to answer is how has Google harmed consumers? That's the very difficult question. Now, you can see how its sheer market power harms, say, Bing, or how its sheer market power might harm Yahoo. But Microsoft is a giant company. It's enormous still. And they don't charge consumers. That was a big part of these other lawsuits that you were looking at on cable providers combining or phone providers combining, that it was going to increase the cost to consumers because they were going to be able to increase their prices because consumers would have fewer choices.

And so prices would go up. But Google's free. And so there's this interesting, yet to be answered for the most part, antitrust question of, can it still harm consumers when the price to consumers was free to begin with? And that's always been the big tech company antitrust. Ha ha, you can't get to us because we don't charge consumers.

And certainly running another ad doesn't harm consumers. Therefore, or costing the company that's running the ad more money doesn't harm consumers. Therefore, how could you even get us in an antitrust net? Because to your point, David, there's no harm yet. Yeah. And Google doesn't have a monopoly by any measure on online ads. That Facebook is a giant competitor for Google on online ads. And so here's what's going to be an interesting question to me.

Does the DOJ keep this lawsuit going if Joe Biden wins? Ooh, good question. Because now both the right and the left have big tech concerns. Both of them do. They're different, though. They're not the same. A more left-wing critique of Google is focused much more about how it vacuums up personal information than it is focused on market share. And I think hidden behind a lot of the right wing antitrust concern isn't so much, hey, we're really, you know, we're really trust busters

a la Teddy Roosevelt, but it's much more, we just kind of think Google's too powerful. It's just too powerful and we don't trust it. It's not, it's too powerful. It's much more, we just kind of think Google's too powerful. It's just too powerful and we don't trust it. It's not, it's too powerful. It's too progressive. We can't have that. That's not good for conservative America, for this progressive company to be that powerful. And I think that that's kind of one of the things behind this, is this notion that this giant progressive company is just too powerful for our culture.

But that's not an antitrust doctrine. Well, and fascinatingly, this has come into focus again today. YouTube is running fact checks on top of people who are searching for Biden talking about fracking because the Trump administration the trump campaign sorry is saying that biden was in favor of banning fracking so sorry let me flip that biden was against fracking right uh and when you search for him being against fracking on youtube you will get a fact check that says you know was biden for banning fracking in 2012? Partly, mostly false. Then you'll get a partly true on another video that you search for.

And the Trump campaign is very upset that this is once again, Google, of course, owns YouTube, putting their thumb on the scales in politics. Yep. And so it's not just Facebook, it's not just Twitter. Um, but Google is sort of the, for a giant company that, uh, dwarfs some of those and how much they touch our lives. You know, I'm not on Facebook. I'm on Google every day, of course. And I'm on YouTube sometimes as well, whenever I want to watch a video. Google has really escaped some of the attention, the notoriety, if you will, of Twitter or Facebook.

But there's a reason that the Trump antitrust division in the Department of Justice filed this against Google. Yeah. Well, it is interesting how, to me, Twitter gets, I think, by far the most attention for censorship. And I think there's a very simple reason for that. And the reason for that is that that's where journalists spend their social media time. And it's the most left-wing. Yes, and it's the fewest number of people on it. It's the least diverse in terms of who's on it. And to your point, it has the most reporters, so they're most familiar with it. But of course, Google and then Facebook, if you want to talk about anti-competitive behavior or political behavior or censoring behavior, any of those, Twitter's the least interesting of the three. Right. Right., Twitter's the least interesting of the three.

Right. Right. It is absolutely the least interesting of the three, although it is vacuuming up most of the tension. Now, if I remember correctly, so another one of these immense websites is Reddit. And Reddit has engaged in some pretty dramatic censorship. Now, it has a culture of a pretty freewheeling culture, but it has undertaken some pretty massive censorship steps. the Donald subreddit. It banned the Chapo Trap House subreddit to virtually no real public outcry. It's very interesting how we choose which one of these giant companies and giant engines of web traffic to focus our attention on. And it seems to me that in many ways,

the least influential one gets the most traffic. To your point, that's because reporters aren't on Reddit and aren't really familiar with how to use it. You know, Reddit was back in the day, basically a comment section without anything to comment on, like without the article. Right. And for the most part, that's actually kind of still what it is.

Yeah. But I've long argued that when we talk about big tech, it's a convenient way of trying to describe something that's actually more diverse than people realize. They treat it as if it's the Borg. But in reality, you have multiple very large sites that have very different cultures and reach different communities. And for all of this talk that conservatives are at this just unbelievable disadvantage, I would refer you to a Twitter page called Facebook Top 10. And what it does is it looks at the top 10 pages or the top 10 posts on Facebook day by day. And it is an avalanche of right-wing content. Just an avalanche. It's Dan Bongino, it's Fox News, it's Daily Wire, it's Ben Shapiro. Day after day after day after day.

after day after day after day. I mean, Facebook in many ways is the engine. It is the social media engine of the American, you know, of the GOP right now. Well, and certainly for fundraising, it's vital. If Facebook disappeared tomorrow, I don't know how these candidates would raise money. Yeah, it's been remarkably helpful to conservatives, Facebook has.

So I'm going to end with one other website, and I put it in the chat, Caleb, for the notes. And this is something that should be sobering for every executive who thinks they've cracked the code to perpetual online dominance. And it's a graphic from something called the visual capitalist a website called the visual capitalist and it is a tracking the top trafficked websites from 1993 to 2020 and it is fascinating sarah it begins with the many years of dominance of aol of course you got to start with AOL. Got to start with AOL. Do you remember when it was, AOL was such the mighty colossus

astride the land that it, you know, became AOL Time Warner. Oh, yeah. It, oh, it was many, there was a time period in which it felt like AOL was sort of the future great American company.

And now I'm mocked that I still have an AOL address. Sad. Sad, Sarah. I'm never giving it up. I've had it since 1993, I think, with this visual capitalist graphic. But I find it amazing that as recently as June 2010,

it was Yahoo. I know. That's shocking to me. I've never been a Yahoo person. So there's that. Yahoo was my transitional. I went from AOL to Yahoo. Yahoo search,

late 90s, early 2000s. That was absolutely my go-to. When Google started, I was like, why would I want to Google? Yahoo is so good. Why would I want to use Google? All right, David.

And there we have it. I have an ending question for you. Mm-hmm. What was the birthday that you can remember that was sort of most shattering of your own self-image? As in the sense of I'm i'm actually getting old now or as in the sense of i'm actually feeling like an adult now it could be any of those but you know sometimes birthdays sort of come and go and they don't really change your psychological view of yourself vis-a-vis the world at all but then sometimes a birthday comes along and you're like, whoa.

Yeah, that's a good question. I would say the one that made... We've never made a huge deal about birthdays in our family. It's never been much of a thing. So like when I turned 50, we did nothing different than when I turned 49 and nothing different for when I turned 50, um, we did nothing different than when I turned 49 and

nothing different for when I turned 51. Um, it's just not, it's just not a thing. Um, but I will say my 30th birthday, Nancy threw me a surprise party with all my friends from church. And I was a law firm lawyer at the time, and I was getting close to partner making partner. And I was a law firm lawyer at the time, and I was getting close to partner, making partner. And I remember the gift that I was given. And I remember feeling this sense of, this was the question in my mind. Do I have to choose one or the other of the aspects of my personality? Or how long can I continue with both? So here I am,

I'm a law firm litigator doing commercial litigation, um, had just finished a really big months long case involving millions and millions of dollars that fortunately we'd won at trial. Um, and here I go for my 30th birthday and my gift was night vision goggles to, for night paintball. Because I was at that time kind of running the young adult ministry at the church.

And one of the things all the guys loved was paintball. And we would have these overnight paintball wars like you cannot imagine. And they actually turned into a way in which people came to the church. People would actually call the church and say, can I talk to who's in charge of the paintball ministry? And so on the one hand, I'm this like commercial litigator, you know, in the suit every day, trying to present a particular image. And then the other hand, I'm like covered in thorns and weeds and camouflage

and have night vision goggles given to me by my youth group. So this is so fascinating to me because this is exactly the point that I was interested in exploring with you. And I didn't even tell you this. And yet you went right there with the question. so for me 30 was nothing like it was the same as 29 is the same as 31 but 35 for me i was like oh i'm an adult now and career-wise that was very satisfying i had come to a place that i really just felt like I had reached my potential. And that's a really nice feeling in one's career. But on the flip side, I felt at the same time,

socially or that other part of my personality, like, oh, I'm an adult now. So all those things that I really enjoyed doing in my 20s and the first half of my 30s are gone. I don't go to dance clubs anymore or stay out carousing and drinking or something. I don't even get the same amount of sort of hedonic pleasure from nice restaurants. I still enjoy having dinner with my friends,

but I'm not like, oh, look at this foam whatever. Nope, that's all gone., but like, I'm not like, Oh, look at this foam, whatever. Nope. That's all gone. I was like, huh? Like I was like, Oh, I guess this is just what adulting is. And, um, you know, there's good parts and bad parts and like, that's cool. But David, I had an epiphany this weekend. Oh, please tell me. So my birthday is in two weeks. Caleb and I share our birthday. It's on the day that the Berlin Wall came down. Although Caleb might actually be the day the Berlin Wall came down. I am not.

I'm a few years before that. So this weekend on Friday, I think we have talked to our listeners about Legacy Board Games and we had Rob Daviou on the pod for our Nerd August Mondays who created Legacy Board Games. And Pandemic Season Zero was released on Friday. We had pre-ordered copies of it. However, UPS showed us in their little tracking that our pre-ordered copies would not arrive until Saturday,

despite the game being released on Friday. So Friday morning, I woke up, did the podcast, and then immediately started calling through game shops in the greater Virginia area to find where they had it. I called one and was like, hi, do you have Pandemic Legacy Season Zero? And he was like, Yeah, we do. And I was like, Oh, wow. Okay. Do you know how many copies you have?

And do you feel like I should just give you my credit card number over the phone to reserve it? Or do you think you'll have it? I'm approximately 30 minutes away. And there was this long pause. I mean, and this guy works at a board game store. So it's not like he's so cool and is a bartender flipping cocktails.

And even this guy was like, yeah, I think we'll still have it. We'll see you in 30 minutes. So I went and got the board game. I had a babysitter come for the whole weekend to watch the brisket. And we had two friends, another couple come over. We have another bedroom for them. They brought their big, fluffy golden retriever, Wally, that some of you may be familiar with. And we spent all weekend from waking up to going to sleep.

We got like, we celebrated. So they're separated into months and what, you know, June. So when we got to June, we opened a magnum of champagne that we had had for years to celebrate getting to June. And I was like, it's your paintball equivalent. I was like, oh, wait, this is adulting. Adulting is actually having the financial just resources, but also comfort with yourself

and what you actually love and enjoy and who you love and enjoy and embracing that too. And adulting is so much better than pre-adulting. And so post 35, I now understand that all the things that are like hashtag adulting on Twitter, all you 20 something listeners and to our couple high school listeners, basically you're going to go through a phase where you're only getting the worst parts of adulting, you know, taking out the trash or doing your own laundry. That's not actual adulting. Actual adulting is going to come later. It sounds like for David, it kind of came in his thirties. For me, it came around 35 and actual adulting is awesome. Yes. Paying your mortgage kind of

sucks and you still have to do your own laundry and take out the trash. But those things just sort of fade into the background compared to sort of losing that sense of insecurity that you have or feeling like a fraud when you're showing up at your job. And then combining that with unapologetically spending a whole weekend playing a board game. And might I add, David, winning. We were victorious. We saved the world from the threat. Highly recommend Pandemic Season Zero.

Might recommend not doing it in a single weekend. I'm pretty tired. Well, you know, you raise a great point because I can remember... So my family has this motto and the motto is always do both. So is it, do we want to, you know, if you have a choice, do we want to do this or do we want to do that fun thing? To the most, to the maximum extent possible, always do both. Does this apply to dessert? always do both. Does this apply to dessert? It applies to dessert in diminishing serving sizes the older you get because there is an extent of reality to which you have to bow to. But I do know exactly what you mean because when I got into the paintball world with my friends from church, I realized I walk out there, I just bought a gun from Walmart, you know,

and I realized I'm in there with these guys who are like seniors in high school, freshmen, sophomores in college, and I'm woefully outgunned. Like they have these like... Literally, as it turns out. Yeah. They're just, they have these, all this gear. And I said to them, I did not go to law school and get a good job to be outspent by high school students on the field of battle. And so you would not believe the gear I showed up with the next time we had a confrontation. I was just going to, you know, like the allies grinding the axis into dust with superior firepower. That gonna be me um i actually brought paintball grenades perfect perfect yeah yeah can't say that my combat skills quite matched

my weaponry but hey uh but yeah that that is i mean that's a great point. I do think part of the midlife crisis that people go through is that they forget that the adult, the child inside begins to slowly wither away. as much for women, but for men, they feel like all of their, that kind of joy of life is in the rearview mirror. And they, and also, you know, one thing I've noticed for a lot of men is friendships. It is harder for middle-aged men to make friends. And your wife's friends, husbands do not count. They might be great friends, but it doesn't count if you don't hang out alone. Do not count. They might be great friends. No. But it doesn't count if you don't hang out alone.

Right. That's 100% correct. And so you end up, I've got a whole album side on this, but you've got a lot of guys who between say 45 and 55 realize several things simultaneously. Somehow they're not doing all the things that really give them joy anymore. Number two, somehow, and they don't know how how it happened they don't have the friends they had and number three they're too old they feel like to reinvent themselves or to recapture anything uh no too old for a big career course change maybe too old to sort of get back in the gym and recapture anything like you know about their athleticism or whatever.

And those three things in combination, a loneliness, a lack of sources of real, just fun and joy, and a feeling of futility that you can't change it anymore. I think that's what, I think that's the midlife crisis. That's my view.

I agree, and it makes perfect sense why then sometimes the answer to the midlife crisis is an affair because it checks all of those boxes with one person. And I am no marriage expert, relationship expert. But one thing that I at least personally emphasize is to make sure that my husband feels very free to go spend time with his male friends, even the ones that I don't particularly know. Like, it doesn't matter. And even if that means I got to watch the baby, I mean, right now, he only hangs out with them on Zoom. But even so, I give him the room, like, go into the other room, go on Zoom for an hour. Y'all drink bourbon. Yes, it's somewhat annoying when at 8 p.m. he is tipsy and I, particularly of women, or at least myself, to isolate your partner. Because like, well, I want to go out with our couple friends because then I can hang out with him because it's actually me craving his time and attention.

But I see very much where that can head with some of my older male friends who I think had that triumvirate happen. And to a person, it ended in adultery. To a person. Because... Oh, really? Oh, for sure. And every time they did not have standalone male friends, because I don't think it's just the loneliness. I think that is part of it. But there's also just a, hey, you dumb dumb, that girl's crazy. Don't blow up your life, your family, your marriage for that. Let's go paintballing instead. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Good friends keep each other accountable. There's just no question about it. And I have seen this. So I'm at this stage where all my friends are, you know, they're now my close friends from college. They're now like Nancy and I, this 2021 will be our 25th year of marriage. And so they're all in that 23 to 24, 26, 25 years of marriage. And almost to a person, there has been this evolution in the marriages where early on,

there seemed to be a lot of pushback against us all hanging out. There was a lot of pushback against us all hanging out like there was a lot of pushback i can remember all of these struggles about are we going to go skiing as a group you know our wives gonna come along yes no big angst about that and to it's completely changed to hey hey nance we I'm going to be gone this weekend in November hanging out with my friends. Okay, have fun. Yes. There's this recognition of the absolute vital necessity of it to a healthy life and a healthy marriage, quite frankly.

Well, David, I mean, you're the guy in this podcast relationship. But my guess is that when you're hanging out with couple friends where Nancy is good friends with the wife and you're even good friends with the husband, you're not going to tell that guy things that you don't want getting back to Nancy, even if you trust him a lot. Because frankly, it puts him in a bad position where now he's keeping something from his wife, which is not really acceptable to do to him either. he's keeping something from his wife, which is not really acceptable to do to him either. Whereas like,

if you just have standalone male friends, you can tell them stuff that, you know, fears you have or whatever. It doesn't need to be adultery related that you don't want getting back to Nancy, but you're then like, he can tell his wife and it's just fine because you know,

she's not going to call up. She doesn't feel some obligation to call up Nancy and be like, Hey, I think Dave, it's feeling going to call up. She doesn't feel some obligation to call up Nancy and be like, Hey, I think David's feeling really sad about whatever. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. No, that bond, that trust is incredibly important. And I would have to say, I just see a big difference between, especially at my age and at 51,

a huge difference between those guys who have healthy friendships and those guys who do not. It is a giant thing. And so people here who are listening, here's where I think the danger zone is. I think that when you, here's when I see friendships drift apart and it's not because of any, it's not at all because of any sort of conflict or whatever. There's a stage you go through when you're early in marriage and with young children, it gets all consuming. So if you have a career and you have young children and you're early in marriage, you often just to get up in the morning, take care of the kids and do everything that you need to do as an adult, you feel like you're burning the candle at both ends. And the path of least resistance is to sort of shrink inside yourself and to sort of move

into that mode where your entire world is in those four walls of your house plus your workplace. And then that's when you have that drift apart phenomenon. That's where you have to intentionally maintain. And one of the things that we did is we said, there's two weekends a year that we hang out. Full week, two weekends a year. It doesn't sound like very much,

but even just having that specific marker was really, really, really important as each one of us were dealing with our own, you know, sort of feeling overwhelmed by early stage adulting. And now we see each other much more than that, much more. But having those markers, I think, was really, really important. having those markers, I think, was really, really important. Well, I'll just wrap this by saying that as the mother of a four-month-old brisket, we smoked a full brisket on Friday so that we had brisket through the weekend along with our brisket. Nice.

And it just felt like, wow, having a baby did not end that part of our life. baby did not end that part of our life. And if anything made it so much more fun because, you know, during got to, got to visit the brisket during breaks in the game, obviously, uh, still was in charge of bedtime, things like that. And, you know, now we get to look forward to introducing this to him and it just made everything that much more cool and fun and yeah i'm super tired and i'm gonna have to make up for it at some point but totally worth it yay adulting and i'm looking forward to birthday 38 here in two weeks oh fantastic fantastic i would say you're catching up with me but no that's not how that works no that's not no it does not work does not work all righty well this has been the politics antitrust adulting edition of the advisory opinions podcast and And please go rate us on iTunes,

five stars only. Leave a nice comment. Much appreciated if you do. And we will be back on Thursday with more data to overreact to. What's your guess, Sarah? If we're at 60 million right now on Thursday, what will be the early vote total? Whew.

I dare not hazard, but I bet we'll be around 70. I'm going to say 85 million. Whoa! 85 million by Thursday. Mark it down. And no price is right rules. It's whoever's closer. Okay. All right. Well, thank you guys for listening. We'll be back on Thursday and we will talk to you then. Thanks so much. Your team requested a ride, We'll see you next time.