Bill O’Reilly’s No Spin News and Analysis - No Spin News - Weekend Edition - August 24, 2024

Episode Date: August 24, 2024

Listen to this week's No Spin News interviews with Matt Grossmann and Douglas Bennett. We also visit the No Spin News archives and Bill's conversation with Ben Stein. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the NoSpin News Weekend Edition. All right, so obviously in 1960, Senator John F. Kennedy was elected president. And in his term, he cut taxes pretty dramatically, all right, because he wanted to give more money back to the folks. So the tax withholding reduced from 18 to 14 percent. And then corporate tax went way down from 52 to 47. It's still very high, but the corporations had a lot of different rules. They didn't have to report a lot of things. So Kennedy was a tax cutter.

He was a populist. You never get that in the Democratic Party now. Okay, Bill Clinton comes in. He signed the welfare for work. If you wanted federal welfare, you had to look for a job. And abortion should be safe and rare. Rare, R-A-R-E. Clinton. And Barack Obama, as I said, many social issues. He wanted legal immigration. He

deported more migrants, President Obama did, than any of the president. Now, the Democratic platform is, hey, everybody who snuck in here overstayed their visa, everybody can become a citizen. So I wanted to know how that happened. And there's an interesting book. coming out. It's called Polarized by Degrees. How the Diploma Dividing and the Cultural War transformed American politics. By a professor, Dr. Matt Grossman, who teaches at Michigan State University, and he joins us now from East Lansing. So I'm looking forward to reading your book because I am perplexed. My mother voted for JFK. My father voted for Nixon, 1960. and the Democratic Party, even though LBJ did the Great Society and all that,

it wasn't a radical left party until recently. What happened? Well, there has been a huge change in the demographic base of the Democratic Party. As recently as the 1990s, half of Bill Clinton's votes came from white voters without college degrees. Today, that's down to a quarter of Biden's. votes, whereas white voters with college degrees have moved from about 20% of the Democratic voting base to now more than a third. And those trends have been going up over that entire period that you just discussed and are linked to the increasing dominance of social and cultural

issues in our politics. Now, has that been good for the Democratic Party or a neutral or a negative? Well, the parties have been at rough parity since that time. So whatever is good and bad, I would say, has canceled out in an electoral sense. But it definitely poses a problem for Democrats to get a national majority because they still rely on votes of culturally traditional voters. And yet they keep embracing new social change. Okay, but most Americans don't have college degrees four year degrees they're working people and the working people you're saying have gone over to the republican party is that where they are actually the republican party has always been dominated by white voters without college degrees so part of what's happening is just educational

attainment is increasing over time and the minority vote share is increasing over time and the republican coalition actually looks about the same between those three Another way of putting that is that the Republican Party is staying the same while the nation is becoming more educated and more diverse. Okay, but the Hispanic voters, and there are far more of them than African Americans, are tending to be more conservative now. Is that bad news for the Democratic Party? It's bad news if they vote their ideology. Hispanic and black voters have been much less likely to follow their ideological self-definition. in their voting.

So another way to think about it is that the swing black and Hispanic voters are much more conservative than the swing white voters, even though overall minority voters are more liberal than white voters. So the swing voter in this election may come down to a black voter who is conservative and self-definition, who has conservative positions on social issues and economic issues, but still maintains a social tie to the Democratic Party. And is it gender split too among African Americans where the women are going big time for Kamala Harris? And there's a new study out today about that.

But the men are, you know, more men are looking at Donald Trump. Is that a factor? There has been an increased gender divide not only in the United States, but across Democratic countries. And it is very much tied to this rise in cultural issues relative to economic issues. So the more that politics is about culture and socially, issues, relative to economic issues, the bigger gender divide that we're like to see. Is it just abortion that's driving women into the liberal precincts? No, women are more liberal on environmental issues, on social issues of all kinds, race and

gender among them. So it's not just abortion. There's a broad gender gap across cultural and social issues. But you would think in America are, go ahead. I was just going to say women are also more highly educated than ever before. We actually, the college educated population is as geared toward women now as it was geared toward men before Title IX in the 1970s. So many more women. It's a good thing. I mean, look, anybody who can access higher education, in my opinion, should do so.

But the Democratic platform is corrosive to the family, and you would think that most women in particular, wouldn't want their children to be subject to state dictums over their parental dictums. I don't know if that has actually sunk in, Professor, that part of this Democratic platform is basically taken parental authority away. I don't know if that sunk in because it doesn't make sense that mothers and women would want that. The vast majority of voters, including women, are between the Democratic and Republicans. platform. So certainly, just because women are more culturally liberal than men, doesn't mean that they would endorse the Democratic platform. I don't think they even know about it. And final,

what's wrong with me? What is wrong with me? And now I'll narrow that question down because we don't have 10 hours. Let's face it, the U.S. economy is under stress. National debt rising, trade war, shaking the markets. And meanwhile, China is dumping the dollar and stockpiling gold. That's That's why I protected my savings with physical gold and silver through the only dealer I trust, American Hartford Gold. And you can do this. Get precious metals delivered to your door or place in a tax advantage, gold IRA. They'll even help you roll over your existing IRA or 401K, tax and penalty free.

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I'm very highly educated. And I understand economics. I understand social mores. I understand who the politicians are. I know most of them personally. There is no question in my mind that the Democratic Party, as it stands today in Chicago, though, is a destructive force to the traditions of this country. No question in my mind.

And nobody can beat me on a debate. Nobody. So what's wrong with me? Why am I not gravitating toward the Democratic party? Well, this is a broader issue because obviously elites of all kinds are highly educated. So members of Congress, Republican and Democrat, are 95% college educated. Most of them now have graduate degrees. the people in the media, people in educational institutions, people in non-profits in the corporate world,

are all very highly educated and increasingly taking on the views, the culturally liberal views of college-educated liberals. That doesn't mean it's everybody. That doesn't mean it's everybody. But it does mean that those people who are in those institutions but find themselves disagreeing with the consensus do develop a chip on their shoulders. and want to point it out to the rest. So you have a lot of conservatives. There's also peer pressure. It's peer pressure in a lot of, like you certainly know that at Michigan State.

There's peer pressure to think a certain way. I mean, my alma mater, Harvard and Boston University, overwhelmingly liberal there. Overwhelmingly. And if you don't, if you don't tow that line, then your career is going to be in jeopardy. So there's that factor as well. The book, again, is polarized by degrees by Matt Grossman. I'm going to read that book, Professor, and it's very nice of you to help us out this evening.

Thank you very much. You're listening to the NoSpin News Weekend Edition. So the Senate races are very interesting. As you know, it's 50-50 now. I think it is. There's something like that. You know, Bernie Sanders says he's independent, but he votes Democrat, all that stuff. So, West Virginia is going to add a Republican seat.

All right, Mansion says he's not running, and the governor, Jim Justice, will win easily in a landslide. So now I'll add one team. Montana looks like it's going to flip. Looks like Tester is going to lose in Montana. It's a long way away, but if I had a bet, I bet on this guy, Tim Shee. So that's two games for the Republicans. There are other close races in Ohio, Michigan, Arizona, Kerry Lake, running as Ruben Gallego, but Ms. Lake has not been able to get over the top in that state.

And then there are close races in Nevada and Pennsylvania. I think Baldwin is going to win in Wisconsin, she's a Democrat. Join us now as a guy who studies all this, a very fine political scientist. His name is Douglas Bennett. Comes to us from Ivan's Utah. as an associate professor of political science at Southern Utah University. So I'm not going to ask you to make a prediction now

because too many things are going to happen, as I pointed out in a memo, a professor, particularly to debate. But here's what I want to know from you. Usually the down ticket, the congresspeople and the senators, they have a tendency to go with the president who wins the person who wins the presidency.

But this year, I'm not sure that's going to have. happen? What's your feeling about it? I think it's likely that the presidential race will have a fairly significant down ballot effect this year, Bill. I think, as you pointed out of the memo, I think Harris has energized the party. I think there's no question that what happened was a coup. They were anxious to get rid of the president. They jettisoned 14 million primary votes and told Democrat primary voters who their candidate was, the candidate is Harris.

The good thing about Harris from their perspective is that she has stayed out of sight and is now being remade into the candidate that they would like her to be. And I think that will have some damn ballot effect, especially

in places where Republicans have gotten a little closer. I agree with your analysis of the Trump campaign. I think they're in trouble. And I think to the To the extent that the president talks about who's better looking or questions Vice President Harris's ethnicity, he's making a big mistake because I think she has a record that is ripe for criticism. He has a record with which most Americans disagree.

And I think if the Republican Party can focus on criticizing her, it will have an effect in the Senate races that are close. but right now, leaning toward Democrats, I would put Ohio there, for example. Yeah. Well, what I see is, I see two things. Number one, that Harris's support is not broad in the independent precincts. It's an anti-Trump play, all right? Yes. So they're voting against Trump, not for Harris. And that Harris herself is weak. It's a very weak candidate. If she was strong, she'd be sitting for interviews, she'd be going out and explaining her philosophy, which you can't explain because now she's backtracking on a lot of it. And if you look at her history in the Senate, she did nothing for four years.

And as vice president, she became almost a laughing stock with the border and her approval ratings being in the low 30s. So she is not a strong candidate at all. And they booted her out of the primaries in 2020 because she had no message. Now she's allied herself to the most extreme left in the Democratic Party. So it seems to me that if Trump would refocus and stop with the stuff that doesn't matter, he could zero in on how weak and how radical she is. And that would gain him support in the independent precincts.

Forget about the Democrats. They're going to support her. And so I see her support, Harris has supported, very, thin. And that means the polls could change very fast. I agree. I think one thing that Trump has failed to articulate is this. In 2020, the Democrats chose Biden as an alternative to Sanders, who was regarded as two left wing for the party. The only senator with voting record to the left of Sanders is Harris. It's crazy. It's crazy. And that's crazy.

It's a point that Republicans have failed to make, and I think those independents that you speak of and the people who haven't decided don't know that. They don't know Harris's Senate record, and I think it's incumbent upon Trump to make that front and center. Yeah, I don't know if he's got the precision to do that. He's more interested in the emotion of the game than the tactics of policy. Now, in the Senate races themselves, I have two Republican pickups, all right? In West Virginia and what was the other one I said? Montana, thank you.

Are the Republican senators in danger of losing any seats? I haven't seen any of that I think the Republicans are going to lose. Either of I. I'm glad you hear you. And I say I'm glad to hear you say that because I don't want this progressive crew in the White House. I just think it's a disaster. My personal opinion, but I've got to be up front about it. So you don't see any of the Republican senators being in jeopardy, and both of us agree that it's likely to pick up two, the Senate's likely to pick up two Republicans.

That would effectively block a President Harris in doing very much, right? Yes, although if President, if Vice President Harris does win the presidency, of course, Governor Walsh would cast a tie-breaking vote in the Senate. But it's 5248. Right now we've got 48 Democrats, three independents, King, Sanders, and Cinema. And if Republicans pick one, we tie, but they could beat us with a vice presidential tiebreaker. If we pick up two, speaking as a Republican, we hold the majority of the Senate, and the vice president can't nullify the tie. That is my crystal ball at this point, that even if Trump goes down, that there will be a bulwark. Now, in the House, it's also very, very close, but you can't call those local races.

There's just too many of them and too many people doing too many crazy things. But do you have any feeling about the House? I am more confident that we will take the Senate than I am that we will hold the House. Now, when you talk about we, are you coming from a House? a Republican point of view here? Yes, I'm a former Republican House staffer. Before I became a professor, I worked in Washington, and I was counseled to the Republicans

and the House of Representatives. So when I say we, I mean, I just want, I should have identified you as such, but I don't like to do that. I don't want to pigeonhole anybody. Now, Utah will go red across the board, and, but just to the South, and I've made that board across many times,

Arizona, which you would think would be a red state, that looks like it might turn into a blue situation. What's the difference between Utah and Arizona? Is it ethnicity? Is it Hispanic votes? What is it? Now, demographically, the two states are quite similar. I think in the case of Arizona, and again, this is just me speaking,

I think the issue is Canada quality. I don't think Kerry Lake is a particularly strong candidate I don't think she did herself any favor to testing her gubernatorial loss. And Gallego is not a left-wing Democrat. He's a veteran. He's interestingly, interestingly enough, he sent a letter out saying that no one in his staff could use the word Latin X. When Latin X was a big word, he said, I'm not going to allow that kind of stuff in this office. No, but he is soft on the border, Gallego.

He's not a border warrior. I mean, he says. No, he is, yes. Right. And that's the big issue in Arizona. And Very Lake is a big border warrior. Anyway, look, it's a pleasure to talk with you, Professor. You're a good guy straightforward.

And we'll have you back as we get closer. And thank you very much for taking time today. Appreciate it. Hey, I'm Caitlin Becker, the host of the New York Postcast, and I've got exactly what you need to start your weekdays. Every morning, I'll bring you the stories that Plus the news people actually talk about. The juicy details in the world's politics, business, pop culture, and everything in between.

It's what you want from the New York Post wrapped up in one snappy show. Ask your smart speaker to play the NY Postcast podcast. Listen and subscribe on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Power, politics, and the people behind the headlines. I'm Miranda Devine, New York Post columnist, and the host of the brand new podcast, Podforce One. Every week, I'll sit down for candid conversations with Washington's most powerful disruptors, lawmakers,

and even the president of the United States. These are the leaders shaping the future of America and the world. Listen to Podforce One with me, Miranda Devine, every week on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. You don't want to miss an episode. Here's a gem from the No Spin News Vault. So anti-Semitism is obviously a big story in this country and, you know, nobody knows what's in people's hearts. But certainly if you support Hamas or anti-Semitic, okay?

I mean, there's no wiggle room out of that. So there are six million Jews in America, seven million in Israel. All right? Six million in America. million in America. Yet American Jews have a disproportionate amount of wealth and power. Why? Because they are well educated, generally speaking. They work very, very hard. And they are organized. That's why. They're succeeding in our capitalist society. Not only that, but they control a large part of the entertainment and news industry. In Hollywood, there are, I mean, I got the list here of powerful people, and it is formidable.

It always has been. Always has been. Louis B. Mayor, all of these old movie moguls, they're all Jewish. But there is a problem now in that community because there is a tendency for American Jews to vote liberal. I think that's an accurate statement. Okay, most Jewish Americans are liberal. But now the liberals are against Israel at least 20% of them. So there's a conflict.

And I wondered why, how these movie moguls in Hollywood are handling that. So who best to ask, and a guy who's been in Hollywood since Walt Disney, Ben St. Stein is the author of a new book, which is a good book. I'm reading it now. The peacemaker, Nixon, the man, president, and my friend. Just out, and you should check it out. Mr. Stein, it was a speech writer for President Nixon, a Yale grad. Not going to hold that against him. And he joins us now from LA. So in the showbiz community, you know, the criticisms of Israel have been pretty muted, I have to say. Because they are progressive far left. There's a big cadre of them. How are you seeing it? I see it the same way it always is that the Jews in Hollywood in very large measure have substituted the worship of the Lord God Almighty for the worship of Karl Marx.

And this has been going on for a long time, although, as Hollywood is not all one stone, one monolith one I'd say, there's the studio heads before the war, before World War, They were all Jewish, and they were all quite conservative, very, very conservative. And then the writers and actors, they were very left-length. Not all, but very many of them. And those people have become ever more powerful and prevalent in terms of their political views. The people who are running the studios, nowadays are not the same kind of people who are running in the days of the leaving mayor. was in any way before the war, but certainly before the Vietnam War.

And just by dint of burrowing, burrowing, burrowing from inside out, the powerful leftists in Hollywood have taken over Hollywood. And it's very much of shame. It's a tragedy, in fact, and it's a disgrace to the Jewish people because Hollywood was one of the few clearly, clearly, on Jewish. on Israel's side, entities in America, and well, now we have the, let's say, very devout Christians, they're even better, but Hollywood has changed. They're still Jewish. Yeah, I don't see any, I don't see any outright support of Israel, and maybe I missed it. But look, you got Jeffrey

Katzenberg, one of those powerful executives in Hollywood. He's heading up Biden's re-election campaign, and money raiser. You got Ari Emanuel, you got Steven Spielberg. I mean, you got powerful, very, very wealthy people. Funding, funding, funding, funding progressive causes all day long. But on the Israel thing, they're muted. I haven't seen any demonstrations in Hollywood pro-Israel. Have you? Have you seen any of that? Well, I belong to a group called the Republican, Jewish, to us. And, but we are nowhere near, not even remotely at the level of power, well, the influence of the people whose names you just mentioned. And I don't see it either. And it's a very, very heart-rending, or as my wife would say, heart-rendering situation. And I don't

understand it. I mean, I don't understand. If Hollywood cannot be for the Israel state, the state of the Jewish people, I don't know who can. I mean, I mean, I'm waiting. I'm waiting. I'm waiting for some, you know, organized thing out of Hollywood, supporting Israel. I have not seen it. But the one thing that I have seen is that Hollywood now supports the cancel culture, big time. Because I know a lot of people, not as many as you, but I know a lot of people in the showbiz industry. And a lot of them are moderate, conservative. And they say, if I say one word that's not left wing, I don't work.

And that's across the board. I've seen that in my own life, and I've seen it happen to me very cruelly, I think, because I helped produce, write and star in, so to speak, a documentary, which said that God created the earth and people and creatures on it and not evolution, and for that I was really very much barred from Hollywood for a very long time, and basically still am, and that's a horrified. situation. People don't know this, but I want to share with you because you're my pal. Before the actual breakout of war between the U.S. and Nazi Germany, Hollywood sent

representatives to Hitler's Germany and invited representatives from Hitler's Germany to come to Hollywood to screen Hollywood movies and make sure they were not saying anti-German, anti-Nazi things, because they did not want to offend the German and German and German-speaking audience in Europe. And this is, as I say, something not everyone knows, but it was a disgrace and it happened. And I think it's, in a way, still happening. And very, very, very bad news, disgraceful. And I don't know what else I could say about it, except if it's bad news and it's

disgraceful, it's really a bad thing. Thank God for the evangelical Christians. Thank God for them. Sure. And not only that, but Roman can. Catholics, and they're all staunchly against the terrorists and pro-Israel in this regard. Now, I'm learning a lot from your book, which is my litmus test to read any book. And one of the things I learned that I had no idea was that Richard Nixon was a hero in the Yom Kippur War of 1973.

Now, for people who don't remember that, Egypt. in Syria attacked Israel. And Israel was ill-prepared for the attack, almost exactly the same that happened in October with Hamas. And Israel was fighting for its life in 1973. And Nixon okayed a technology, a new technology, and sent it to Golda Mair and the Israeli government that made it more difficult for the Syrians and the Egyptians to launch their rockets. And it was a new technology. And Nixon's advisors did not want to send that over. But Nixon overrode everybody and did it.

An amazing fact. Even Mr. Kissinger, obviously, too, people often think I'm Kissinger, even I'm much younger than Kissinger. Kistner said, no, no, no, no, no, you've got us in terrible trouble. with the Arabs. Nixon said, I don't care. This is right. It's just right that the Russians cannot be allowed to dominate the Middle East by sending these super good jamming devices that jam the electronics in the Israeli Air Force. And Nixon said, I want to hear the sound of the jet engines taking off from Andrews Air Force Base with the devices. It will help

the Israeli Air Force. That saved Israel. That saved Israel. Were you surprised because you were there? And were you surprised at Nixon overrode all his advisors? I was very sure. Not at all because bear in mind, I don't know how well you remember this. My father was chairman of the council of economic advisors. Right. The president, under president Nixon and Ford.

And he was pleading, pleading, pleading along with several other high-ranking Jewish people at the White House for Nixon to help Israel. But I think Nixon would have done it anyway. Nixon's mother had said to him, when Nixon was a young man, you will someday be given the chance to help the Jewish people, the children of God. You will be given that chance. It will be a gigantic historical chance. Go ahead and do it. And you will be in the history books forever as the person who saved the children of God.

But you know what? Everybody's forgotten it, which is why they should read the book, The Peacemaker, Nixon, the man president, and my friend Ben Stein. Hey, Ben, always good to see you, man. You know? Good to see you, sir. God bless you, sir. God bless every word you said.

Thank you for listening to the NoSpin News Weekend Edition. To watch the full episodes of the NoSpin News, visit Bill O'Reilly.com and sign up to become a premium or concierge member. That's Bill O'Reilly.com. Sign up and start watching today.