Chapo Trap House - 260 - Wonk The Pain Away: An Election Special feat. Will Sommer (11/4/18)

Episode Date: November 5, 2018

It's Midterms, baby! Gotta love da Midterms. We start off today's show getting our Wohls filled by Will Sommer with the story of Trump-worshipping wunderkind Jacob Wohl's sad attempt to frame Robert Mueller. Then Virgil takes the wheel and guides us through America's hotly contested midterm landscape. Will Democrats eke out enough power to put a check on America's Three Stooges-led slide into fascism? Will Republicans solidify their stranglehold on power? Will we be excoriated by online communists for engaging in bourgeois electoralism? Come wonk off with us and find out! Keep an eye on our Twitter feed or the subreddit for updates on where you can watch our election night live feed, starting 8pm tuesday night.

Hello, they're pretty babies. It's me, Will Menaker, and it's your choppo in just a little bit. We are bringing you our official choppo 2018 election preview courtesy of our very own wonkspert, Virgil Texas. We're going to break down all the hot races, all the predictions, all the personalities, all the gold. We're going to wonk off together. Yeah, we're going to be wonking real hard this episode. But before that, and I know it's because you guys are begging for it. You are demanding it. I have heard you. The people, they can't get enough. I have heard you, and we are your voice. We will be talking to the Daily Beasts, Will Summer, about our favorite press conference of all time, Jacob Wall and Jack Berkman,

live from the Holiday Inn. Directed by the Coen Brothers. Yeah, no, burn after tweeting is a story. This story has every conceivable level of internet grifter and pathological personality. It has a doxin named Jack Jr. and a shooting. Yeah, I didn't know about that part. What? I didn't know that coming. It has a make-believe pretend intelligence agency called Surefire Intelligence. Staffed by the cast of Inglourious Bastards. Yeah. We were just laughing about like, OK, so Jacob Wall's made up intelligence, private intelligence firm called Surefire Intelligence. Like that's like calling your company a very good company, not a scam. Not scamming. Yeah, the totally legal, not at all, criminal enterprise.

What I really like about this is that his whole thing, and we'll talk about exactly what it was in a moment, his entire plan was basically the upper middle class internet grifter version of the MAGA bombing of a real big Trump fan who saw his president being attacked and decided, I'm going to help. And instead of mailing bombs to Robert and Nero, he decided to try to create a fake sex scandal for Robert Mueller. Amazing. He had that. He had the documents for the real shit. He's got the real shit. He's got the raw shit. I'm just imagining Jacob Wall just like in a closet smiling. We're sitting on that Grin and then we're sitting on that that hobby horse thing in the base. Oh, yeah. George Clooney's house.

So, yeah, just in a second, you'll be hearing about will be our wall to wall Jacob Wall coverage that will be breaking down the midterm elections. But most importantly, you know, Tuesday coming up, the most important election of your lifetime of any lifetime, the most recent important most important election of your lifetime. You know, will there be will there be a blue wave or a red tide? Who can tell? No matter what happens on Tuesday night, you know, the real story and the real thing that you do not want to miss is the debut, debut, debut of me, Matt and Virgil's choppo election night live Twitch stream covering the whole thing, baby, from eight till question mark. I don't know. And there's going to be

guests both in studio and on the phone. This is a highly ambitious project. You know, Felix has staked out his claim in the Twitch verse. Yes, the time has come for us to put our marker down. Yeah, we're ending up and kicking in. We're so we're going to we're going to we're going to do the most important game of all, democracy. Stay tuned. You know, just be on the lookout for the the Twitch link that we'll have up on for Tuesday. It will not not be on the choppo FYM Twitch stream. Yeah, because you know, we don't want to step it in anyone's toes or if we get taken down because of the various libels and copyright infringements we do, I don't want Felix not to have games

available to him. No, of course not. So Tuesday night, Matt, Virgil and myself will be live on Twitch, bringing you the real raw raw shit, the real intelligence, the results and then the takes you need to go with you to talk to your friends about and pretend to have ideas that you got from us. The last time we did an election show went great. It went fantastic. It was a huge success. We got exactly what everyone wanted and it was a wonderful day. Okay, without further ado, will summer. All right, people have been dying for this one. You've been requesting demanding name wall to wall Jacob wall coverage and joining us now is the man who is better equipped to do that than anyone else that we know. The

only other will that I recognize that I will not demand that they change their name if they appear on the show will summer the daily beast. How's it going, Will? Hey, good to be back. Okay, so you wrote an article this week about this utterly hilarious press conference that took place in Washington DC involving, you know, Internet Trump, Eugen Rind, Jacob Wall, this weirdo Jack Berkman and their allegations that about like to publicize their allegations that Robert Mueller raped a woman. But before we get into the specifics of that press conference and the hilarious charades that went down during it, let's talk a bit about the characters of Jacob Wall and Jack Berkman. Let's start with Jack Berkman because he's like sort of

the other figure that I wasn't really familiar with. Who is Jack Berkman? Yeah, so Jack Berkman doesn't really have Jacob's national profile. He's sort of a notorious DC lobbyist in this area and he's kind of a well-known, I don't know if lapping stock is too hard of a word, but his thing is he'll just do anything for publicity. And so he had this event where he was trying to get gay people banned from the NFL. And then after Seth Rich was murdered, he sort of attached himself to that case and was initially sort of like posing up to the family. But then when people were losing interest in the case, he started really going wild and he would have this press conference where he's like, okay, I'm going to reveal this

deep state whistleblower who said that the ATF murdered Seth Rich. And then I said, is this guy really going to come in? And he's like, oh, he's going to come in wearing a mask like a lucha libre mask or something. And then the guy ends up not showing. It's a classic Jack move. He makes these big promises and never delivers. But the other notable thing about him is he actually has been involved in Summon Tree. One of his sort of minions in the fake Seth Rich investigation ended up getting mad that he was getting all the credit and attempted to murder him. And so there's this whole, there's this scene where Jack is walking, he hears a noise in his yard or something, and he walks out with his doxen,

Jack Jr. And get shot, get shot twice. And so fortunately, fortunately, Jack has since recovered from that. But he's a real like kind of colorful local character. And the other thing is this is not, this is far from the first press conference he's had at this holiday in, in suburban Virginia. He is very into this holiday. And he said, it's the last hotel that will have it. Well, I mean, their continental breakfast is unbeatable. You know, they have those waffle makers where you pour the batter in. Good stuff. Mwah!

Yeah. Okay. So that's Jack Berkman, who apparently has a doxen named Jack Jr. and was shot by a former source of his, I suppose. But this is really the man of the hour. This is what everyone's going crazy for on Twitter. Jacob Wall. Who is Jacob Wall outside of his sort of, I mean, we know him mainly as a sort of annoying Twitter guy who's mainly well known for embarrassing himself. He's a sniveling Trumpiplier. Yeah. He's always there. Mr. President, I support you. The port, Colin Kaepernick, all that

shit. Yeah. But like, but this guy comes from sort of a family of, like he was sort of grown in a test tube to be like the perfect snot nose Republican teenager, right? Yeah. That's exactly right. I mean, Jacob is a sort of kind of a, as you mentioned, his dad is a big Republican. His dad's on Fox News. A decent amount. And Jacob has this kind of very like pugnacious, but at the same time, as you mentioned, sort of a bootlicky attitude on Twitter. He's always getting in fights with people and stuff like that. But Jacob's sort of original claim to fame was that he was a, the world's youngest hedge fund

operator, supposedly. And when he was 17, he ran, you know, I don't know if this was a real hedge fund, but he had some sort of investment operation and they don't let 17 year olds run hedge funds normally because Jacob ran afoul of the regulators and essentially refused to cooperate with the investigation. And he has been banned from life for, from trading futures. Who could have seen that coming? Anyone who gave money to this fucking child who should have it all confiscated. I'm, I'm, I'm making a big short on curfews. Homework, homework. That's a bear market. I'll tell you right now.

So and then like, you know, the running joke with, with Jacob Wall is his, his, his sort of patented catchphrase on Twitter is the, I'm at a hipster coffee shop in LA and blank, you know, like it, that's his go to move when he wants to say like, all the hipsters in LA are all secretly like Trump, or they're all talking about how they're going to vote 10 times in the upcoming election for Democrats that are being paid by George Soros to do so. Yeah. He's always making these weird tweets. Most of them, as you mentioned are from hipster coffee shops and it's like the hipster, I'm at the hipster coffee shop and they're also

glad Trump is sending troops to the border. But like he, he, he mixes it up sometimes. And so he had one that said, I'm at an urban coffee shop. These, these, these black guys are saying how excited they are. I'm Avinah. Oh yeah. But Jacob, you know, he, he's really come out of his shell this week from obnoxious Twitter personality to now national news story. And I always like when these two worlds cross over and it was really this press conference and it was like, Gateway Pundit ran with this story that he was, he was, you know, intimating that he had something big about Robert Mueller. What actually was his claims? And like, I guess like the, the genesis of this ridiculous

press conference. Exactly. So there's a couple of like weird tracks. And, and as you mentioned, a lot of kind of like hucksters floating on the edges of this, the, the Krasenstein brothers are involved. They snitched, right? Twitter personalities on the left. So this all sort of came to a lot of reporters' attention with this anonymous email from this woman who may or may not exist claiming that Jack Berkman and his associates were offering her tens of thousands of dollars to accuse Mueller

of raping her. And so then the Krasensteins, they spilled this open, but Jack Berkman has been claiming for a couple of weeks now that he has just umpteen numbers of women who are going to accuse Mueller of sexually assaulting them. And so this all kind of came to a head on Tuesday when Jack revealed that he had worked with this intelligence firm called Surefire Intelligence to find real, sounds very legitimate. If you believed their online documents, they hold out as like a bunch of like ex-massad guys who like, like just our, our real lethal, like maybe they do like hits and you can also hire them to like, you know, track your, your daughter's boyfriend or something.

It's basically a Sasha Cohen character from his latest show, Colonel Arad Morad. Yeah, that guy. Exactly, exactly. So Jacob was weirdly involved in this and he was kind of practically tweeting about it. And so then one of our reporters at the Daily Beast said, well, Jacob, are you involved with Surefire Intelligence? And he's like, no, I'm just like a Twitter dude. Like I couldn't handle anything that intense. And it's true because Jacob turns out to actually be the apparently sole employee of Surefire Intelligence. This was revealed in comical fashion. He, the who is registry for the domain of Surefire Intelligence was

registered to Jacob Wall. The phone number on the site went to his mom's voicemail. That is top level Opssec, you know? Yeah, yeah, a real, yeah, Jacob, Jacob's Opssec is not up to par. The pictures of his supposed employees turned out to be pictures of model Barr Raffaelli and actor Kristoff Waltz from the Glorious Bastards. So I mean, it was real house of cars that did not, did not take much to fall down. The first thing they teach you in Mossad is to use your mother's home address and number for to create your cover.

Exactly. Well, I mean, that's really what Jacob said. He said, he's been pressed on why he lied to everyone and why he had this fake company. He said, he's like, these are investigative techniques. You know, I had to stay low profile. So he has this, this, this fucking completely fraudulent made up intelligence, private intelligence agency called Surefire Intelligence. But I'm so like, what, what again was, what is the connection with Berkman and these like this accusation of Robert Mueller? Were they, were they the people with Surefire, the intelligence, the outfit that was trying to track down these claims or pay women to make them?

Yeah, so that essentially is how it appears to be. There is a woman on the record, a law professor who says she got an email from Surefire Intelligence offering her money to accuse Mueller. It seems as though it's not clear sort of who came up with this idea originally. But basically, they, Jack Berkman and sort of contracted Surefire, he seems to have paid them $4,000, according to an invoice. And I think I don't have this in front of me, but I think it was, it had like one of those like operation names. And I think it was Operation Hellfire. So badass.

So in the end, Jacob eventually did find this woman who's like a very mysterious character herself. She has not spoken herself, but Jacob claims to have met her through some state work he did for her. It's not clear whether any of that is real. And they have this app of David, basically where she alleges Robert Mueller raped her in August 2010 in a New York hotel room. And Jacob, but so they put this up on Gateway Pundit where Jacob works and then Gateway Pundit panics when no one else gets onto it. Gateway Pundit pulls it down and then they're like, we are going to investigate Jacob Wohl, you know, without saying like parentheses, our own employee. And so, I mean, it's become a real mess.

Well, I saw on Gateway Pundit, like when they, if the original article they posted like the mod in the comments, who's, you know, definitely not Jim Hoff was having to be like, just want to say here that Jim Hoff had absolutely nothing to do with this story. This is entirely Jacob and we have since pulled it, like, you know, just really running sideways from this as fast as possible. Jim Hoff also has contracted leprosy. Somehow his left pinky finger just fell off. Jim Jim's gout was acting up. He had was not aware of this story. His sleep apnea and gout have been bothering him as of lately. He's been struggling with dropsy for a long time.

It's inhibited his faculties. And they've since let Jacob go from Gateway Pundit, right? Yeah. Well, they've suspended their relationship. It's a weird thing. It's clear, like, you know, how much of this is Jacob Wall's actual doing? How much is Jim Hoff trying to pin it on all that kind of stuff? I mean, this is all abetted by the Gateway Pundit tradition of, like, having bylines on only half of your articles. Okay. So that's the background to this incredible show that was put on at the Holiday Inn and Suburban DC. So you actually, you attended this press conference featuring Jacob and Jack, J&J. And, you know, as you said, Jack Berkman has done this before promising that,

you know, the government, you know, wet worker who, you know, iced Seth Rich would appear in mask and confess to his crimes and then never showed. They were going to bring this woman, you know, this accuser to this press conference. And that was also a no show. They said, she landed in DC and then got very afraid and went home. But they instead, they presented an assigned affidavit that, like, spelled her name wrong or something like that. Yeah. So they had this affidavit and her name is, it's Caroline with an E in reality. But throughout the affidavit, which incidentally, you know, Jacob claims is the product of just epic amounts of research. He claims they joined historical societies to get documents for

this. So, but this woman's name is misspelled repeatedly. And people said to Jack Berkman, they said, you know, how do you spell this lady's name? And he gives the wrong answer. And they're like, well, geez, you know, she signed it this way. And he goes, no, no, no, she's got it all wrong. Yeah. So I mean, it was a real bumbling operation. But Jacob, like his time to shine is, you know, when he was asked questions or, you know, slightly pressed on any of this, just, I mean, already one of the most uncanny looking of these, these Trump, Eugen Reind, like just a featureless, just sort of fetus face fucking yeah, PS1 character. Yeah, like very odd. The my favorite takeaway from this is that

he kept harping both online and at this press conference about people comparing him to a corn cob or sending him photos of him turning into a corn cob. He was very disturbed by that. Yes. So this is a reference to, of course, the classic drill tweet in which a guy is getting owned online and shrinks into a corn cob. And so on Tuesday, when all this kicked off, people were tweeting pictures of Jacob as a corn cob. The best one I saw was now that, especially now that the FBI is investigating this, Jacob as a corn cob and then a giant corn thresher with Mueller's faces going by and Jacob's going to hide. So yeah, so Jacob's been very upset about that. He said this in this video. And then at the press conference,

he said, you know, people have been very unfair to me. They Photoshopped these pictures of me. One of them was a piece of corn. Jacob, someone asked him, like, what is your investigative experience? And he said, I've worked on various matters. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's all like a, I mean, obviously, it's all extremely fake. I mean, Jacob is acting like, like once again, like with the hedge fund thing, Jacob is kind of like reaching for this, this kind of like wonderkin status that he doesn't really appear to have earned at all. So in this case, yeah, he claims to have this investigative experience. Jack was defending him because people were saying, you know, Jacob's 20, there's no

way he can be doing all this research that he's already clearly messed up many different ways. And Jack Berkman goes on this whole thing and he's like, look, Jacob is way smarter than me, you know, which is kind of a backhanded compliment. And then he's saying, you know, Jacob is a child prodigy and Jacob has surpassed Mozart in his achievements. I mean, like, if you want to say, Jacob's a bright kid, he's good at what he does, don't his, your, his age fool you. That's one thing. But to immediately reach for Mozart, not to say that Jacob is Mozart's equal, but that Jacob has already surpassed Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is, I don't know, it's, it's just, you know, why again, why reach for something

so obviously untrue? I don't know. It seems pretty appropriate to me. Don't you remember when a young Mozart was banned from writing symphonies by the Holy Roman Emperor? Will, would that make you like, you know, you and all of the other, uh, you know, liberal, uh, biased, uh, fake news journalists? Would you, would you, that make you guys sort of the celliery to Jacob Wall's Mozart? Exactly. You know, he drives us so crazy and he's so effortless with it. You know, he's just having a good time. Are you poisoning him right now? Tell us if you're secretly giving him arsenic. My other, you can't handle his brilliance. The other amazing fact, uh, or, or, you know,

feature of this press conference was apparently Jack Berkman's fly was down the entire time. Yeah. So this is a, an unfortunate detail. Uh, yeah. So he had his fly down at the whole time. It was very obvious. Uh, there was one point where, you know, it got, it got wasn't it? He, he sort of ducked away and I thought he realized it, but no, then he came back and it was still down baller. It was, uh, yeah. I mean, it, it was a real debacle. Uh, me, oh yeah. I should say, so they said the witness was going to show. Uh, and then as that morning there was a post on Gateway pundit saying, uh, no, she's not going to show, but there was a picture, a selfie of her and Jacob and her face was like, almost like scratched

out with like the MS paint spray paint tech. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, and then Jacob claims she landed in DC, freaked out and then immediately hopped another flight. Like it's like a, like you're at a bus terminal. Like she was just like, no, no, no. Um, so, so yeah, I mean the whole thing is a big mess. So I mean, like, one of the questions Jacob and Jack were asked was, are you both prepared for federal prison? And they said, uh, no, we are not. But like what kind of like, you know, serious, I mean, legal trouble could young Jacob, uh, be looking at here with this, you know?

Yeah. I mean, it looks pretty grim. I mean, so the Gateway pundit has been getting very defensive about the fact that this case has been referred to the FBI. I mean, they're, their defense literally is going to be like who made Robert Mueller, the king of the world. Like, like, oh, okay. So we tried to libel the guy and said he's a rapist and maybe committed wire fraud. Like what's wrong with that? Uh, so Gateway pundit though, I think we'll probably skate on first amendment grounds. Uh, but Jacob and Jack, maybe in a little more trouble, uh, if this stuff about them offering people money to accuse Mueller is true, you know, you start getting into obstruction of justice, of justice, wire fraud, you know, if there's

any destruction of evidence lying to the FBI, that kind of stuff. I mean, they say they haven't been contacted by the FBI, but, uh, you know, we'll see. Uh, and, you know, speaking of it, you mentioned the people who asked if they were ready to go to prison. There were a decent number of hecklers at this event. And at one point after, uh, Jack compared Jacob to Mozart and said he had surpassed Mozart. Uh, someone yells, uh, he can't even open a knee trade account. Wow. Just another fucking solidary. Um, I will say though, throughout all of this, uh, I do give young, young Mr. Wall credit

for just absolutely tweeting through it, you know, not backing down in the slightest, just, just going straight through. Oh yeah. He's still saying this is going to happen. Mueller's going down. These women are going to come forward, even though apparently he had some sort of document that made a claim about a rape accusation that happened on a day when Robert Mueller is in the Washington post, having been in fucking jury duty in a different city. That was actually a great moment in the, sorry. Well, that was a great moment in the press conference where someone asked them like, well, like at this date that you're

claiming he's in New York, raping a woman, he has jury duty in DC, which is like one of the most bulletproof alibis you can have is being in a courthouse in another state. And he just goes, well, you know, people go to jury duty, then they're out of jury duty. You know, we don't know what they're doing. You know, like, like he was just basically saying, like, you know, he could have gone to New York directly after the jury duty. You know, it's not all day. He uses the subterranean tunnels underneath the FBI building. Yeah. So according to the affidavit, they said, Jacob, or excuse me, they said Mueller, you know, committed this crime on August 2nd, 2010. And then Jacob's proof that Mueller

in New York that day is that he was giving a speech in New York on August 5th. Now, those are not the same day. And then Jacob's like, it was this kind of very, like, metaphysical thing. He said, you can be doing jury duty and be in another location, too. You can Skype in. Yeah, exactly. Like a teleconference. Yeah, telepresence. Yeah. Oh man. That is great. And then I think like the day of the press conference, again, in terms of, you know, just tweeting through it, Jacob had a great tweet that was like a photo taken from, I think, maybe his hotel room at the holiday end. And it was just a photo of an empty street with a bus parked on it. And he was like, this is the bus that's bringing in the mob,

all cast. It was just like, just a bus. Yeah. I mean, in DC, it's not unheard of to have a tourist bus. You know, and David was claiming, yeah, when I got there, Jack and David were saying, or excuse me, Jacob, were saying, yeah, you know, this is Antifa's here. And instead it was just a true facts stated himself. Oh, right. Yes. And I saw it brought a John flatable rat and there was a great photo of all three of them in an elevator together looking like just like the absolute. This really is. It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world of Ophish Twitter scam artists. You got the Krasenstein. You got true facts stated. Jacob Wall. Where's Bill Mitchell when you fucking need him to just parachute in like the fan

man? That's going to happen next. Well, well, before we let you go, I did just see that, you know, you have a little bit of a late breaking wall news. Would you like to share that with us that this is just up now? So the Daily Beast is the Daily Beast exclusive from our reporters, Adam Ronsley and Lachlan Marquet. It is they've talked to a woman who says she was ripped off by Jacob's fake intelligence firm, Surefire Intelligence. Basically, she was trying to recover a Hummer that was seemingly stolen from her. And she hired Jacob's firm. I'm thinking these were going to be a bunch of ex-missile, you know, kick ass guys. And instead she got Jacob who took $1,200 from her and disappeared. And so, so the morning

of this press conference, our reporters were talking to this woman and she was saying, you know, okay, I'm going back and forth with Jacob and I'm saying, Hey, like you need to pay me back or whatever. And Jacob is just freaking out because he's terrified. This story is going to break before the press conference. And he's saying, he's like, look, look, I'll get you like a $20,000 settlement. Just calm down. So it was pretty funny. I love the idea of like hiring a just like private intelligence agency to like find your missing car, you know, like I need, I need ex-missile to command those to, you know, Yeah, that's very kind of like, like, I feel like you're suddenly saying like, by the way,

shoot the guy. Yeah, exactly. I mean, just the idea of like hiring thinking you're hiring this ex-missile and then you get this kind of like off brand encyclopedia brown. You know, it's a hipster coffee shop. Oh, well, best of luck to Jacob Wall. I mean, I'm honestly, I may be hiring surefire intelligence for my own purposes. I'd be interested in looking into that, you know, honestly, I would just like them to come to my birthday party, just mingle, like, just say things, it would be hilarious. They'd be make amazing party favors. I should say, Jacob does not have a private investigator license, something that it's

kind of legally dicey. And so, you know, we'll have to see, he may also have some exposure on that. Did Veronica Mars have a private PI's license? Actually, I think she probably did or her dad did. Yeah. OK. Well, one thing is surefire, and that's that Will Summer is intelligent and one of our favorite guests. Will, thank you so much for giving us this wall to wall Jacob Wall coverage. Thank you for hitting our back wall. Thanks for having me.

Cheers, Will. Bye. OK. Once again, big thanks to Will Summer of the Daily Beast. Yeah. All right. So, we teased it in the opening. I hope you're ready for it. Hope you're ready for Tuesday for the democracy that is coming. You can't stop what's coming. It's a Bukake of electoral voting. You can't stop what's coming. And Tuesday is Election Day. Will the Democrats take back the House and Senate? Or will they be stymied in their efforts to hold our tyrannical orange

chimpinator? Wait, chimp is Bush. Chimp is Bush. Yeah. She donated her. She's been stymied in their efforts to hold the Thief in Chief accountable for his many crimes against the Commander in Cheeto, our Republic. Virgil, who here has got midterm mania? I do.

I sure do. With the complication of Gallup polio. This is already. I already want to die. All 435 seats in the House are up. 35 Senate seats are being contested. 36 governorships will be decided. Thousands of state and local seats will be on the ballot along with hundreds of key ballot measures on the federal level. This election can determine whether Republicans continue to legislate with unified government or whether Democrats take at least one chamber along with its subpoena powers on the state level. This election in 2020 will determine who gets to gerrymander the other party out of existence, whether it will be minorities

and young people who get disenfranchised or whether big locks are placed around white gated communities every election day. Trump's approval rating mid to low 40s. Democrats up in the generic ballot in the neighborhood of 8%, but people have a huge net positive view of the economy. Gallup found that number to be 43 by which people approve of the economy. It's really uncharted territory that we're in, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, usually you don't have a situation where the economy is doing well and the president is this relatively unpopular. You really is a special boy. Wait one second. I forgot to give a disclaimer before this election special. If you are a

tanky anarchist or serious communist socialist and not a petty bougie reformist, turn off now, now, now. Yeah. You're just going to make yourself mad. I mean, just, and also I do mostly do this for fun. It's based, it's this and baseball are my two spectator sports. I don't really know if I don't actually think it matters. Really, what's going to happen there? Oh, I think it matters, buddy. And we'll see. It matters all right.

You like both because you're so big George will head. These, this is the middle of the Venn diagram is George me and him just hanging out, drinking chamomile tea and not wearing jeans because that's the side of cultural degeneracy. The views presented in this episode about electoralism do not necessarily reflect that of chopper trap house management. Continue for the block set of shifting since 2016. One story rust belt, white working class voters returning. You saw that in Connor Lam's victory earlier this year in the Pennsylvania special election. That's deep red territory. Turning to who?

The Democratic Party. The Democratic Party. Okay. What else you're seeing suburban shitheads who normally vote Republican are switching to the Democrats. You saw that in Alabama's special Senate election last year. Well, I mean, they were running against an actual pedophile. The pedophile right now. Yeah.

I mean, it was very close. Yeah, it really was. It was very close. It really was. Yeah. And you also see a fired up Democratic base everywhere. From this show. In the battle for the house.

I'm fired up. In the battle for the house, a lot of the places where Democrats are competing are traditionally conservative suburban districts that flipped the Clinton in 2016 in part because of changing demographics. And because of some of these aforementioned white suburbanites who voted for Romney just don't like Trump. And that's a big reason why his approval rating is so low compared to the economic indicators. Additionally, what we've seen a lot of these special election and off year election results

is a return to 2016 presidential margins takes Georgia's sixth district, the John Ossoff race. Ossoff lost by 2% of the vote Hillary Clinton lost by 2% of the vote story was the same in Virginia state legislative races last year where the seats that Democrats won were seats that had pretty much gone for Hillary. So in that in that regard, a lot of these special election results were kind of a regression to the mean. The real question is, did 2016 represent a durable realignment?

If every district in the country merely replicated the 2016 presidential election results, Democrats would fall a bit short of winning back the house because of how gerrymandered the country is. And I'm going to say it right here. I've gone back and forth and I know I have a bet with Virginia on this issue and over the months and the stuff special elections and generic ballots. I've sort of come around in the past and said that maybe I think Virgil's right. And I'm going to say it now three days before I actually do think that the house is going

to stay for the Republicans by a very narrow margin. Whoa, whoa, whoa. And the reason I say that is because I mean, I'm not obviously as into the details of this as other people will, uh, Virgil included. But I look at it, I read a little bit about it. And the thing that I see a lot of people saying, uh, is a lot of elect, a lot of an analyst saying is that the thing that is extraordinary about this race is how wide the aperture of possible outcomes is.

They're saying we, you could see anything from a narrow house Republican majority to a huge Democratic surge because so many races are within one or two points apparently. And it's all going to come down to where the late breakers switch. And if they go Democrat in any kind of concerted that way, then it's going to, you could, they could win a hundred seats if they in that same uniform way go Republican, they might hold on thanks to gerrymandering voter suppression. And I just, I don't know, I'm not really seeing it. I'm not seeing what you'd need to see to indicate that there's going to be that much of a Titanic

rupture with, with like in terms of turnout and voting and a lot of these races to matter. And so I think they're going to hold on Matt sticking out strong position. The chalk bet, of course, is that the Democrats take back the house, but the Senate remains GOP controlled. I think so. Yeah. That's the chalk bet. Yeah.

The chalk, you know, we didn't bet on any, on any chalk. It's a gambling term. It means that they're the, they're the, the more likely like they're the overdog, the overdog positions are that the Dems win the house in the game after that famously reliable and durable material chalk. It's, you know, in betting house, they would write out the lines in chalk because it would change. If you're doing like Mark Madness and like the chalk would be the numbers of the teams

that are ranked. So if a two plays a 15, you pick two, that's picking the chalk because it's a higher, it's like the lower number. One thing is for sure though, there are three possible outcomes on Tuesday night. One, Matt's hell world prediction, the Republicans retain control of the house and Senate. The blue wave crashes into the levees of gerrymandering and rolls back. And let's not forget just shitty candidates like, cause people talk about how horrified everyone is by Trump and then people get so mad at non-voters, but who are they supposed

to vote for in these specific races? Because that's the real issue. You can hate Trump all you want, but he's not on the ballot as much as they want to act like he is. You have to actually go out and vote for these motherfuckers. And what? CIA assholes and, you know, former prosecutors and stuff shirts, the same fucking scumbags they recruited in 2006, it's going to just require such a break with president and such

a push against the economic times to get everyone out to vote for these stiffs that I just think they're going to come up a little short. So I mentioned the chalk bet, of course, is Democrats retake the house, Republicans retain control of the Senate and, you know, the, shall we say, most optimistic, don't get mad at me is that the Democrats take the house and Senate and Trump and the Republican party are fully repudiated in a just title wave election. If you want some evidence against hell world thesis, if you want to feel counter hell world right now, keep this in mind, Democrats need to take 25 seats to win back the house.

Two of those were special elections in deep blue districts. That's already two down to 23. Pennsylvania by court ordered had all of its districts and that was very gerrymandered state redrawn. That should net about three seats from that right off the bat. No questions asked. That brings you down to just 20 seats. They have to win New Jersey.

These Republicans who voted for the tax bill, which just fucks everyone's property taxes there by ending the federal deduction for the state property taxes. They're looking at losing three to four seats there. That's down to 16. Then you have to look at the districts where Republicans, national Republicans have just pulled the plug weeks ago, just cut off all funding. That's going to what? A half a dozen, perhaps up to 10 seats?

That means that really when you're talking about the races that will decide this thing, where it is, you know, the very large number of races where both parties are competitive, which is perhaps over 70 seats right now, Democrats just need about five of that pool to win. So while there is a wide range of possible outcomes where you look at the races that are pretty much done for right now, it's almost certain that the Democrats take back the House, even if there's a systemic polling error, even if all of these undecided voters break in one direction uniformly across the country, just by sheer numbers.

OK. Well, that's possible. That's one data point to add in the data column if you're keeping score at home. Please have your own data notebook on hand for the election night live stream, by the way. We'll be giving you lots of data, too much data to just, you know, have unorganized out there. I'm going to ask that everyone, like you're at a baseball game, I want everyone to keep

score. I mean, you have to have a nice piece of graph paper and you need to write the result of every race as it comes in. Because keep in mind, that is fundamentally what politics is, a game that we watch on television. Absolutely. That is what it is in America. One distraction, a way to just sort of get our energy out and then they keep running

things and cooking the other thing I also want to point out right now is I don't know if you've been following the New York Times upshot polling. I have not. They do real time polls where you can watch the results come in. It's it's a novelty. It's fine. But the benefit here is they've been polling a wide variety of districts in the country and what they've found is not only are Democrats doing extremely well in places where the National

Republicans have cut off the money. They have fighting chances in a wide array of red districts. Karen Handel, who beat John Ossoff is an even bet at this point. Steve King. Both. Greg Geanfort. Yeah. Peter King, who's apparently running television ads right now.

I just saw them on that campaign in decades and now he's out there like a blue collar conservative. How about Dave Bratt, the Tea Party hero who took down Eric Cantor? Yeah, he's in trouble. And I also love when Dave Bratt, when he when he took down Eric Cantor, everyone was like, you know, this is the real principle, libertarian conservative. As soon as he's under any pressure, just going full racist against his opponent, credible polls are finding these Republican incumbents in Republican districts that voted for Trump

at 45, 46 percent, which as an incumbent, you don't want to be beneath 50 percent. That's true. And with their Democrat opponent polling about the same amount. Just real quick back to Peter King. It is incredible to me to see a Peter King political ad on TV, you know, because he, I mean, like, like he runs that fucking, he's carved his name into that fucking district, you know, like he just, you know, Pete was here, you know, like X to X dates in the ad that is now playing on New York City, local news and television.

He goes, as Matt said, I consider myself a blue collar conservative. I understand people need help, whether it's 9 11, Hurricane Sandy or MS 13. And he was like, you know, honestly, sometimes let's say a nationalist guerrilla movement in a foreign country also needs help. They need. Yeah, exactly. Sometimes you need some tax and armor lights to kick the queen out of your country. You also have races like Chris Collins in upstate New York, the congressman who was

indicted. He is. I think they're both going to win. I think the two indicted Republicans are both going to win, which is, I think, really funny. Duncan Hunter is an interesting one because he is running just an explicit white nationalist race at this point and has sent out mailers saying his opponents are Muslim, which he is.

His opponent is is Arab, but he is a Christian. Yeah. But he's just like, look at his name. Come on. He's straight up his argument and he's running ads for it's going to work. I'm telling you. No, I mean, well, that's the other thing is a lot of these California seats. Republicans have held them for a long time, but because of changing demographics on the

presidential level, they flip to Hillary Clinton. And a number of these seats like like maybe Walters in California, especially in Southern California, a number of them are probably going to flip to the Democrats. I Republicans only have what you can count them on one hand, the number of house seats they have remaining. Virgil. So like, obviously, there's been a roar back there might lose. There's too, too much elections going, too many, so many elections are never ending.

So many races. What are in your opinion? What are like the marquee matchups to watch? Yeah. What do you mean? I mean, I still want to come back to this point about the natural house race and like there's there's too much to really get into the weeds with these house races. But I think it's it's helpful if we have just an overall theory of what it's going to be.

And I think, you know, in 2016, obviously, the Democrats got owned real bad. And what's different this time around is Hillary Clinton isn't on the ballot. 2016 is a large number, a large number of third party votes, right ends and undervotes. Trump got 46% of the popular vote. Hillary only got 48. And I think what should give Democrats hope is that in 2016, Republican House candidates overall got 3% more of the vote than their presidential nominee. So a substantial number of people voted for their Republican congressional candidate or

refused to vote for Donald Trump. And the question I have is, do these voters this time around, if they're still turned off by Trump, which I think most of them are, if you look at his approval rating, do they do the same thing? Do they vote for their local, reasonable Republican? Or do they reject the party now and say, all right, I've got a vote for a Democrat? And I have a guess there. I really think it's the latter.

There's no question after nearly two years of unified government that the GOP is Trump's nominee. There's no such thing as a never Trump Republican. That's a bullshit and a lie. Hillary Clinton isn't on the ballot anymore, and she's not on television anymore, running ads saying that Trump isn't a real Republican. That was great. Oh, no, no, no, you see, it's okay that I'm going to guarantee that I have Republican

Congress and I won't be able to do anything as president, but at least I'm guaranteeing that I beat Trump. And remember, any never genius, any Republican who didn't hug Trump pretty much got primaried out. And like even the ones in swing states, even in a state that Hillary Clinton won, these guys have figured out that, oh, my only chance to win here is to hug Trump and get his base to turn out. Yeah.

No, it's you got to get the base. So I think if House Republicans are held to this limit, if they got 46% of the popular vote, Democrats get in the neighborhood of 54%, which is in line with most national polling. Democrats would be the overwhelming favorite to win back the House. And I would say at this point, the odds of Republicans keeping the House are lower than the odds of Trump winning a few days out from Election Day in 2016. You hear that, Libs? Don't draw that warm bath and get sharp in those razors yet.

So, Virgil, I have to ask, what is your favorite race? My favorite race? Yeah, I don't know if I have a favorite race. Why is it? Why is it? Obviously. Why? You know, the great architecture, those kebabs, all that great food, bread they got.

What? Just... Oh, they love cats. Oh, my God. Ketti, please see that movie if you're into cats. One thing we can go over, and I think if you want to, you know, zoom in on some of these races, we can go over the Senate. Yeah.

This is one of the most brutal Senate maps either party is facing decades. Democrats are defending 24 seats, many of which are in deep red territory, 10 of which are in states at Donald Trump won. And this is the class that was elected in 2012 when Obama walked to a convincing re-election victory, and the big story was still these Tea Party fuck-up candidates like Todd Akin and Richard Murdock, who lost races that otherwise probably would have been won by a less erratic Republican. For saying stuff that is just so adorably quaint, the idea that you lost your fucking

Senate race for saying the stuff about legitimate rape or whatever is like... I think the body has ways of shutting that down. It's like, oh, that's so cute that anyone gave a shit about that in the long, long ago. Here's the thing, this time around, Republicans don't have to worry about the Tea Party anymore because their entire party is consumed by the Tea Party and white nationalism. So it no longer matters how insane your candidates are. If anything, it might be a boon to you. Oh, yeah, yeah.

You get those, you get those Q-Dip shits to show it up to all the Trump rallies of the fucking barbecue to vote instead of just tweet. So to win back the Senate, thanks to Doug Jones, Democrats need to net just two seats. And the easiest way to do this is to hold all their seats and take two of the four competitive Republican seats. That was the arithmetic in January, it's the arithmetic now. So why don't we start by looking where Democrats are on the offense? And of course, the big one, how do y'all, Texas Senate race, you all know this one.

On the one side, you have Beto O'Rourke, Tall, Toothy, Woke, Skateboarding, member of the Choon Gang, and on the other, you have this sort of blobfish whose photo you might see in a clickbait gallery with the caption, a housewife found what in her toilet? The case for Beto is he's outraced crews by a big margin. He fields an army of canvassers over 10,000, the campaign claims, and that he's recognizable as a human being in his state. That's rapidly growing more diverse. But here's the case against, and it's a pretty heavy case.

Texas hasn't elected a Democrat senator in 30 years. Trump won the state by less than Romney, but he won convincingly nonetheless with 52% of the vote. Cruz has led in every poll since mid-September, often putting up numbers above 50%, which is where he wants to be. In aggregate, the poll show he has a consistent lead in the neighborhood of 48%. And despite his diversity, Texas is still a very red state. Cruz and Beto have the unified vote of their respective parties, but guess which party's

base is just bigger? Texas has a lot of Latino voters, but a lot of them are basically just country club Republicans. And the sort of habitual non-voters that could theoretically put Beto over the top are kept disenfranchised by Texas's Jim Crow-style laws, where if this is true, if you're a community organizer who wants to register other people to vote, you have to be deputized in any county that you work in. Wait, you're telling me in Texas you have to get state approval to raise a posse? Yes, basically.

To raise a voting posse? Yes. Damn big government. But the X-Factor here is that there's been a surge in early voting in Texas. Hispanic voters are up 200% over 2014. Voters under 30% are up 500% over 2014. And the early vote, and this is what's shocking to me, the early vote in Texas is the biggest counties is currently above the total vote.

That's election day and early vote combined in those counties in 2014. More people have voted so far with a few days out from election day than they voted total 40 years ago. The conventional wisdom holds that early voting always favors Democrats or the more... It depends on the state because in some states Republicans have more disciplined early voting operations. Normally, Democrats do well in the early vote in-person voting, but Republicans do well in the mail ballots.

For me personally, Beto vs. Ted is the most exciting race that's going on right now. I think Cruz is going to win, so I'm not trying to... I really don't want to get my hopes up about this, but again, standard qualified caveat that if Beto wins, he's going to be a normal milk toast Democrat. You don't have to expect... He's not going to build socialism in Texas, but this is just for me personally. He's going to build full gay space communism, and he's going to guillotine the people you don't like.

He's going to make Gritty the new sheriff of Texas, the new... He's going to be Gritty the head of the Texas Rangers, but honestly, for me personally, if I lived in Texas, I would vote for Beto. Well, of course, because you might get to see Ted Cruz eat shit, and who doesn't want to see that? Exactly. Everything else, the way you feel about voting or electoralism or the Democratic Party aside, as we said before, when it comes to buying our book or doing anything politically, Spite

is a perfectly good motivation. Yes, absolutely. I'm sorry, someone like Ted Cruz, Beto is the lesser evil. I'm sorry. Oh, no, really is. The thing is... Well, he wasn't fucking born from a meteorite. Even if the Beto is a median candidate, I would argue that the median Democratic candidate

today is way better than the median Democratic candidate four years ago or any previous cycle. The median candidate actually has signed on for Medicare for All. On paper, I would actually agree with that. The positions of this class of candidates is well to the left of even the most recent cycle, but I have very little faith that it would actually mean anything once the rubber hits the road. Well, that's really the thing, and funnily enough, earlier this week, I saw our friend

of the show, Nira Tandon, sound off about candidates supporting Medicare for All saying, well, let's just see who wins and who loses. Feeling like Nira, Tandon, Tandon, which, you know, that's great that your politics is just craven all the time and fear of fucking a tiny sliver of voter who probably hates you anyway. But the thing is, this isn't the real Medicare for All fight. It's easy to say you support Medicare for All because nobody knows what that means. There isn't a fucking bill.

The insurance companies haven't plowed money into this fight yet, and it's still a glimmer in Bernie's eye. By the way, on Tuesday night, on the election stream, I'm not sure about Matt and Virgil, but I can promise anyone watching, I will be gone off that molly, off those zans, feeling like white Nira. So that's easy enough. And I do, and this is also an aside, I think we should take this little victory lap because I read the other week that in the swing districts, counting up the Democratic TV ads, nearly 50%

are about health care, and in a way, what percentage is about Russia? Yeah, that's true. And well, that has been the Achilles heel for Republicans because they could run on the economy, and a lot of people are sort of baffled why they're running on MS-13 in hysteria when they could be running on the good economy, and it's because if it's a bread and butter election, the economy is honestly kind of an abstract concept, whereas they are literally trying to strip people with pre-existing conditions of health care in the moment.

Their health care votes are noxious. If people know what they are, they're against them. Fucking dumbass turtle man Mitch McConnell two weeks ago just says, well, we, well, which we're, we got a hell of a deficit here all of a sudden. I wonder how that happened. We're going to have to take care of that by cutting some social security and Medicare, which made it into every fucking ad for every fucking Democratic candidate. And I'm sorry, if Russia is this existential issue for our fucking democracy, you think

they'd be spending more than 1% of their ad money talking about it. Yeah. I think everyone, God bless them. This is the thing we were saying they were going to run on Russia and just, I guess, because they're not that incompetent or that delusional, they realized it wasn't a winner at some point and dropped it, which is very good. But back to taxes, he'd have my support too, because he skateboards, it's like voting for Bart Simpson.

It's cool. I think the main question about Beto Cruz, Beto, would or wouldn't? Yeah, would. Would. He's, he's daddy. What? He's very daddy. I like to salt pepper hair more than anything, honestly.

He's tall, you know, and that's comforting. Yeah. I think honestly, and Matt, I saw Beto on TV the other day, I realized if he weren't like tall, nobody would give a shit about it. It's true. If there weren't that like physical contrast between Ted Cruz, American presidents almost always over six feet tall. It's very true.

There you go. We haven't had a manlet president since Madison. That's all. Yeah. If you were a manlet. Michael Bloomberg. Is that my God is that Michael Bloomberg's music? Is that the Lollipop Kingdom soundtrack I hear coming through?

If you were a manlet, if you were built like a spark plug, nobody would care. Yeah. Or if he was perfectly round, not going to happen. And one last thing, you know, those numbers are pretty shocking about the early vote here. And it still is worth noting. I'm sure the early vote is also pretty, pretty strong in these white, more rural, ex-urban Republican areas, too. It's definitely going to be a base election Republicans are going to vote because guess

what? They always do that. That's their fucking hobby. Baseball and voting, just like Matt. So it's so there is a question is that early vote, which is, you know, demographics are very good for Democrats. Is that just cannibalizing their election day? Yeah.

See, that's what I don't know. That's what I wonder is that like they might have just shot their watt. It's why you can't read that much into it because the early voting did look good for Hillary last time around. That's true. The other thing is, you know, if you want to believe certain polls, some of them do have, you know, Beto hasn't led, but they still have him down by just 3%, like 49, 46. That's still a race.

Margin of error, baby. There's enough polls to suggest that Cruz just has a lead, but just because it's one systemic polling error from a work winning. See that's the thing is that is the systemic issue is that because we've talked about this polling is dependent. It's not like you can call anybody all day. You don't have a poll until you have a likely voter screen. That's what makes it like legible.

And that is basically as much as they want to say it's empirical, a largely a guess. You're guessing who the likely voter even the most modern polling outfits and data shops still are not penetrated even slightly Snapchat or FetLife. I cannot take anything seriously until we get the Dungeon Daddy Swinger Hot Wife demographic. I'd keep this in mind. Nate Kona, New York Times said, looking at the early voting data that he feels very, very good about the likely voter screen that they've been employing at their New York Times upshot polls.

And the most recent run in Texas showed a rork down by like eight, nine, 10. But other polls do have it a tighter race. So what's what do you think? Cruises probably going to win a win. Yeah. Yeah. Got to say Cruz. I mean, I would love better than to be like, we were so wrong about this one.

You know, I was just so ashamed to predict all of these, but I mean, Cruz is I think it's going to be basically Trump's margin again, like he'll get 51, 52 percent of the vote. Pretty tight. We're not watching that acceptance, that victory speech, by the way. Yeah, we are. It's going to be it's going to be on the Twitch stream. It's it's we're not. We're not.

We're going to play it like a horror video game. Disgusting bulbous slug man. Moving on. Tennessee Senate race. This is an open seat currently filled by the retiring Bob Corker hashtag resistance hero. Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn is a Republican nominee. He's hated by members of her own party in the way Cruz is.

Corker himself and the GOP governor say refused to say if they voted for her, but I believe they both endorsed her. So it's all a sham. Former governor, Phil Bredesen is the Democrat. He's a Southern centrist of some sort, right? He really hates deficits. He has promised to go to Washington to balance the budget. Another classic deficit race.

And that's also a good contrast because Tennessee, Texas, both red states, obviously, Tennessee, the guy's tag is, you know, roll up sleeves, both sides, both sides, reach across the aisle deficit shed. And Bato O'Rourke is like, no, fuck it. I'm just going to play to my base. But you know, he, Phil Bredesen, he like in terms of reaching across the aisle, he went the extra mile here, releasing a statement after the Kavanaugh hearing saying he would vote to confirm.

Amazing. Hell yeah. One thing that you don't have to do. You don't have to do that. I don't have to do that. No one told. He did not have to do that. And he pissed off the old people volunteering for his campaign.

George Kemp press. I'm not going to support you anymore. And I believe his fundraising just dried up after that too. He liked it. It was significantly impacted, just idiot move. Devil's triangle, triangle, because anyone who wants Kavanaugh to be on the Supreme Court will just vote for the party that would fucking confirm it. Why not?

Why take a chance? Just get, you know, we get the person you know would vote for. We all know what happened at the end of casino. Why take a chance? It doesn't matter. That's like Susan Collins saying in 2016, you know, oh, I could vote for Garland. Well, it doesn't fucking matter because he's not even coming up for a fucking hearing. Uh, Trump won this state by two to one, nearly two to one.

And while the race was tight as recently September, Blackburn has opened the lead in the past couple of weeks, anywhere from four to 10%. Yeah, I know that fucking old bitch is going down. Phil Breslin just retire, literally dig your own grave and crawl into it. Will, would you volunteer a prediction? I mean, I have for the volunteer states. I know nothing about this race. I followed none of it at all.

I was all say as I was worried for a second there that Matt called Marsha Brockburn an old bitch. No, no. No, I don't do that. I only call men bitches and, uh, and Phil Breslin is absolutely, I mean, I, you know, I think this is just, you know, Tennessee, the Republicans going to win. Yeah. Oh, I'm going to agree with that.

Uh, but here's some more fertile ground for the Democrats, uh, going into the two races that were always going to be the ones even in their narrow path to the majority that they would absolutely win Arizona Senate race. Another hashtag resistance hero, Jeff Lake is retiring. Arizona would have two open seats, by the way, if the resistance Demi or Jean McCain had retired when he was dying of cancer, when he still fucking held that seat while he was in a fucking hospital bed and could not vote. So instead of seat will be held by an appointed Republican who will vote for everything Trump

wants for the next two years. Hell of resistance. God, it's so fucking principled and said so. There's one race. Martha McSally is a Republican. She was the first female fighter pilot to fly in combat. So she is a, he was a bomber pilot. I know, I read fighter pilot.

She says fighter pilot, but it apparently was a bomber stealing Maverick Valor. All the guys with the stupid hats with all the fucking, like, you know, all the gold laurels. They're all mad at her for that is he, is she, I didn't know that McGrath, I believe the first lady fighter pilot in any event Martha McSally killed a bunch of Hodges is very high. Well, but he K to D ratio is off the charts. Well, if you're a bomber, that is the yeah.

D ratio, yeah, very high, I'm surprised, but her opponent, Chris and cinema also has a high woke score. She's bisexual. She used to be a green party activist and an anarchist against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. She handed out leaflets depicting uncle Sam and a US soldier as skeletons with a caption, you can help us push back US terror in Iraq in the Middle East. In other words, she used to be cool. She used to own it.

Chris, Chris and cinnamon is honestly one of the more interesting characters in all politics right now, because she sort of like came out of this like Occupy anarchist where she was literally like on that like America KK Bush hit like a friggin dumpster dive. Yeah. And like, but like since then has gotten significantly worse. She's like a huge blue dog. Oh, she's like even socially conservative, she's very concerned. I'm sorry.

Don't get mad at me, not exactly a check in the pro column for being an anarchist or involved with Occupy Wall Street in any regard. It's a mixed record at best. I think cinema. I mean, it's better than the current cinema because after she was elected to the US House, she discovered something even cooler than anti imperialism, reaching across the island finding common ground to reduce the deficit. Her first ad was about the deficit.

It featured like skeletons coming out of a grave and like, you know, clawing for fresh bodies and meat, but instead of America KK soldiers, it was, you know, entitlement spending. She's a blue dog, as you said, which is a thing that 100% should no longer exist. She's a new Democrat and she's a member of some fucking thing called the problem solvers caucus, which I like to think which is like a bipartisan caucus. But in my mind, it's just like people, folks who meet up and do puzzles together. It's exactly that. That'd be adorable.

It's exactly as effective as when Tracy and Jenna form the problem solvers on 30 rock. We get as much done. Here's the thing. I don't really think you have to be this right wing to win as a Democrat in Arizona. Trump only got 49% of the vote there. Flake himself was only elected by about 3% of the votes. Most people don't care about the fucking. I don't know.

I don't know. For the, for the, her hippie shit by McSally, all McSally's ads are all about how she's that she was this America hitting hippie. Yes. No, McSally runs these ads showing Chris's cinema wearing a pink two to protesting the war, contrasting with her, just showing a different kind of skeleton. All the skeletons, she fucking racked up. So it's like she gets, so cinema gets the worst of both worlds.

The progressives are fucking a hater and don't trust her. And everyone else thinks she's still the fucking 2002 cinema. Perfect. It's the best, best way to do it, but despite that. She's neck and neck with McSally. She's trading leads of a few points with each polls. She probably still has the edge here, but it really depends which polls you want to believe. I, I think she's going to win actually.

I think cinema will win. I mean, to disentangle two things. I in this race endorse writing in 2002, Kristen, when that would be my vote, but I also agree. I actually think she's going to edge it out just because of how poorly, relatively, Trump did in this state. Will. Again, I'm going to follow your guys lead on this one. I'm going to say, Chris, the gets it.

And it's worth voting for just based on, you know, bisexual awareness and visibility alone. Of course. We'll try to have it both ways. Nevada Senate race. The last one, probably the most vulnerable GOP held seat in a state that went for Hillary Clinton, a state Obama won twice where Harry Reid masterminded his own tough reelection during the Tea Party wavier of 2010, his own candidate poll showed, showed that he was toast, but he stuck it out and won convincingly.

He picked his own opponent is amazing. He picked his own opponent and he built this turnout machine. But here's the thing. Senator Dean Heller is very much so in this one. The polls are all over the map, but Nevada is a tough state to pull. Harry Reid built that turnout machine, getting these union workers in the hospitality industry in Clark County to the polls. Hillary workers, local two, two, six, holla back y'all, delivering the state to Hillary

by just a couple of points when in my mind, she otherwise would have lost if it hadn't been for that discipline turnout operation. But these elections tend to be close in Nevada and the Democrat Jackie Rosen hasn't locked up Latino voters to the extent that she probably needs to win. Heller spent the past couple of years fighting for a chunk of this constituency held by the popular Latino Republican governor, Brian Sandoval. One poll showed Heller up by like eight points and everyone got mad at it. Other polls show Rosedup.

Oh, that is, that is, I got to say, he, when they did the Obamacare vote, I thought Teller was toast and the fact that he's still in it is just proof of more proof of democratic incompetence. Well, this was the race that he's an incumbent senator, so they're going to, you know, stick with an incumbent and the race that everyone knew was on the table for years. If I'm going to hold true to my half trollish posture that the Republicans will hold the house, I, if that were to happen that in the world where that happens, then Heller wins. So I'm going to say Heller, Heller hilariously holds on and this one, you want to roll the

dice? Here's what I'm going to say about this race, very tight, you know, hard to say what's going to happen. However, what I do know will be crucial is where the support of Las Vegas based small business Western stage props as Western stage prop goes. So goes the state of Nevada. What is, uh, what is their support? I believe it is the Egyptian president Mubarak.

Yes. I'm going to say Democrat wins. Okay. All right. I'm going to say, I mean, I think that there's a lot of durability to Harry Reid's turnout machine. I remember him from like every right wing meme, not saying that he's stupid, but saying that he's scary.

That was hilarious. Oh, Harry Reid, I honestly, he is a piece of shit, but I miss him. I mean, compared to shock, Schumer, give me a break, but yeah, no, if he, if, if, if Rosin wins though, it'll be those fucking culinary workers, it'll be those union people doing it. Based on my predictions, if they win two of those, and again, I think Beto is very much so still in this and could really surprise people on election day. If they win three, that would be enough if they can hold all the following seats.

You have the deep red state dem senators, Joe Manchin, West Virginia, Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota, Joe Donnelly, Indiana, Claire McCaskill in Missouri and John Tester in Montana. These are all states that went for Trump by double digits. He won by over 40% in West Virginia alone. Hillary Clinton got something in the neighborhood of 26%. And this is a state that Bill Clinton won. But fortunately for Manchin, that's the state where Republicans probably have the weakest candidate, the state attorney general, whose wife is a lobbyist who promised to stop lobbying

if he wins. It could have been fucking blanket ship. I'm still pissed that we didn't get blanket ship in there. And Manchin, who voted for Kavanaugh and really sucks, has led in every single nonpartisan bowl in this race. And he remains personally popular there, probably having built his reputation as governor during the seagull mine disaster. Yeah.

Now he'll win. That one to me is a no-brainer. Manchin's got that one locked up. I would say, you know, Manchin's in the driver's seat, but you never know his opponents get out the vote operation in which they bust potential Manchin voters to the bottom of a mine and then blow it up. You never know what could happen there. I just want to know who Boyd Crowder is supporting.

I know he's from Kentucky, but they're right next to each other. Interesting. Blankenship has attempted to get on the ballot, but I believe it's K-O. Not Keg. Keg. I can't believe Blankenship didn't win with his slogan. He killed my ma. He killed my pa.

But I will vote for him. What the fuck? I'm going to agree, Manchin. Yeah. In Montana, John Tesser was elected in the blue wave of 06. He held his seat in a tough race in 2012. He also led in every nonpartisan poll, but like West Virginia, not always by a huge margin. He's a farmer and a butcher.

He brings his own meat to Washington. He lost three fingers in a meat grinder accident. He wears a crew cut and maybe cool off on the meat then costing you your own body. He wears a crew cut and a flannel shirt that say to Montanans, I'm a big oaf like you. Tesser is honestly just from the fact that I haven't heard a lot about the race tells me that he seems to be in the driver's seat there. I think he's going to win. And also in a red state voted against Kavanaugh without very much fuss.

That was pretty impressive. Like, it wasn't even really ever even a suspense thing. He just was like, yeah, no, I'm not voting for him. And this is as well a state where Greg G. and Fort is in trouble. That's true. Even under 50%. Yeah. I think Tesser holds that.

I will make my judgment based on my limited experience with the state of Montana. I think the crucial issue that based on the sort of straw pole bumper stickers I saw driving around that state, the most crucial issue in Montana is how many wolves you're legally allowed to kill. Some people are very, very angry that they're not allowed to kill more wolves. Some people want to save the wolves, but honestly, the kill the wolves vote is much bigger in Montana. You don't think anyone supports not killing wolves?

Yeah. Now let's get rid of the folks. I'm a friend of the wolves in Montana. Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, you got to. If you want to win, you got to play the game. Don't be a child.

No. Tesser will get reelected and then he will not serve out his term because he will choke to death at a Ruth's Chris. I think Tesser wins and a few months into his term falls into a wheat thresher. Or eaten by wolves, carried away by wolves. I should have let them kill more of them. I do think we need a new standard when gauging these senators and it's the Rand Paul standard, whether this senator is more likely to get beat up by their neighbor or more likely to

just freak out and just start wailing on the neighbor and Tesser 100% would beat up his neighbor. Oh no. Yeah. He would fuck a camel clutch, a power bomb. He would destroy him. Moving on. Indiana, some polls show Donnelly up by three, others show Mike Braun up by three.

There's a big vote for the libertarian candidate, something that might very well end up bailing Donnelly out. The raises devolved to the accusations of outsourcing both of the candidates are private businessmen. Donnelly calls his opponent China Mike. The Republicans call him Mexico Joe. Come on. God, I love America.

Come on. The rule is so hard. Indiana is a hellish place. Oh, it's awesome. It's one of the worst states we've got. And Donnelly is an accidental senator. He mostly sucks. He's bad.

For instance, he supports the border wall. But I think a credible argument can be made that he can stick it out. No, I think Donnelly is going to win too. It's tough for me to say, but I would, I'd say Donnelly. What do you think? Yeah, I think Donnelly. Will. I'm going to go the other guy just to be contrarian.

What's his name? Mike Braun. Mexico Mike. Mexico what? Mexico. China Mike. China Mike. Because I like that name because it's like China White.

Yeah, exactly. Chinatown. He's got that. He's got that good shit. Yeah. China White. Johnnelly is going down. China Mike is going to win this one.

In Missouri, Republicans got the candidate they want. Josh Hawley, telegenic young attorney general who led Yale's Federalist Society during law school. Sounds like a cool man. Psychopath. He was favored by all the major blocks of the GOP from growth to the MAGA contingent. I'm not a kidding. I was doing that as a sound effect.

I did just throw up in my mouth a little bit. Commit me to the bit. But here's the thing about Josh. He's lazy. He pissed off members of his own party by skipping important events like the Lincoln Day dinner in his own home county. His fundraising is a third of McCaskill's. Earlier this year, instead of campaigning, he posted Instagram videos of himself lifting

weights at the gym. He's got Felix's vote. Yeah, I assume Felix follows him. It is ultimately praising him or criticizing his form and saying things that I just don't understand. He's also been photographed skipping work to buy wine in the middle of the afternoon. He's famously a fan of wine. Well, I mean, I enjoy it as well.

You know what? He's not going to win because this is not the kind of country that rewards an entitled lazy Ivy League shithead with high position of power in the government. We that is not an American tradition. No, of course, I'm doing irony and that's why he will win McCaskill's cooked and good riddance. She sucks. I love McCaskill as of late was like being being interviewed and they were like, you

know, so. So what do you do in this Halloween? And she was like, I don't know. Whatever Bernie Sanders and AOC isn't doing. They were like, wait a second. We weren't asking about that. She brought up Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. I'm not one of them.

She brought up Bernie like an interview. She brought up Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren unbidden like in response to like some fluff question about. Man, this is an Arby's. Yeah. Oh, is Bernie Sanders dressing as a ghost? Well, I'm going to be a Dracula. No, she, yeah, she's running right hard.

She's going to eat shit, which is hilarious. Yeah. Good riddance to her. The most recent non-partisan polls show this race is a dead heat, but she is beneath the magic 50 percent bar. Last time around, though, most polls had her up by about four to six against Todd Aiken in the run up to the election. She run that race by 15 points.

Yeah. But I mean, keep in mind, she was given the absolute gift of Todd Aiken. And that was at a time when things didn't happen all the time. Like one thing happened a week and the one thing was him saying that about the rape. Now that wouldn't make it, if he happened to do that in the morning, it wouldn't make it to the evening news. In my mind, this is the toughest call because Missouri is hell world central. It is the crossroads of the hell world that is America.

Oh, no. Yeah. It's just right in the middle there, just this separating asshole, this throbbing hemorrhoidal butt, just sucking us into the inferno. It honestly could go either way, but I'm going to give the tiebreaker to the fact that it is a wave year. And I'm going to say she ekes it out. OK.

She's rewarded for being an absolute piece of shit. And then North Dakota. That's the sad one. Yeah. Republicans have Kevin Kramer, the state's congressman for a few years now, who's asking for a promotion saying he's done a good job and he's earned it. It's not a bad pitch in this genteel state. Also helping him is the Republican legislature's naked attempt to disenfranchise the over

30,000 eligible Native American voters in the state. Their new voter ID law requires anyone who shows up to present an ID with their home address on it. The problem is on many of these reservations, people don't have home addresses. They get their mail through PO boxes, which are on their ID and explicitly cannot be used to prove your residency. As many as 5,000 voters, they estimate fall into this category. Last time she won by around 3,000 votes.

Yeah. This is the kind of shit that's, I think, going to be, it's going to determine more races than you'd want. A few community groups are engaging in, frankly, heroic round the clock efforts to get IDs to Native voters. And a big part of this task is figuring out where they live in places that have long not had house numbers. The government of the state said, you can get your house number by calling the local

sheriff. This is true. In the end. Who doesn't love talking to the sheriff? In the end, it might be for not disenfranchisement or not. Hype Game hasn't led in any poll for months and she's currently down in the neighborhood of 10 points. 10-4.

I think that's it. That's the one they lose. Yeah. They lose Hype Game for sure. New Jersey, though. Oh, God. All right. Those were my second favorite one.

Those were the five canonical top races for Democrats. But also in trouble. Bob Menendez. This one is so fucking good. This is a 100 percent stem to stir Democrat fuck up. It's coming down to the fact that Menendez only got the Senate for being appointed to finish fucking Lautenberg's term. He never even won an election in his own right.

And yet they stuck with him. This corrupt pizza gate depraved psychopath. And like, you know, stepped on the actual progressive challenger, right? I mean, they didn't. They never organized any kind of meaningful opposition to him, which is just more, more calumny. The power of the Democratic Democrats didn't really take off and a big part is because yeah, New Jersey, the Democratic party is very much so a tightly controlled machine.

And they freeze you out if you oppose their candidate. He has literally knows her bodies are buried as in actual bodies in actual holes in the ground in the Pine Barrens, you know, like he's he has the fucking geolocation for them. And they're like, we're not we're not we'd rather him go down than fuck with him and have him decide to blow up our spot. The only explanation for leaving aside his, you know, fondness for pizza, shall we say? And the fact that I mean, the dude, you know, was credibly accused of sleeping with underage prostitutes on these political junkets is leaving that aside.

One of the absolute most basement dwelling shittiest Democrats in existence, awful, awful. He is one of the eight, one of APAC's most reliable fucking men on the hill. Bob Menendez, a piece of shit and that is unrivaled still in the Senate because he narrowly escaped conviction on a bunch of fraud charges. And it's like, it might have been good enough for the fucking jury, Bob, but that's not the same as people who are just going to be voting for it now. You know, as of late, like my favorite thing to watch on TV is local news.

And here in New York City, if you watch like the local or evening news, every single commercial is a political ad. And half of those ads are either for Hugen or for Menendez. And Hugen has been running ads on Menendez. They're going hard on this underage prostitution thing. And I think my favorite political ad of the year is a Bob Hugen ad that features it begins with like a mother watching a television with Harvey Weinstein on it in like grainy, scary footage.

And she's just like, and then she's reading on the iPad, like the Justice Department documents that outline the allegations that Bob Menendez slept with underage prostitutes. And she's reading these lured allegations next to a crib with an infant, her infant daughter who has a little bow, you know, or a head and she's like, you know, I can't live and I can't raise my daughter in a world where Bob Menendez explicitly, and then like you can see Bob Menendez's face on the iPad, like hovering over this infant, this, this angelic child. Yeah.

So, Bob Hugen. By the way, the response to that ad that we've also been seeing is, hey, Senate, you want the Senate, 51 votes, you want the Senate, you know it. Honestly, not a bad counterargument. It is. It is the last one. And he might actually hilariously pull it off. I've seen the poll.

There was a poll today. I've seen it by eight points. Most some polls show a big lead, others have it a bit tighter, but I haven't seen him. I haven't seen him. He's led in every poll. He's led in every poll. I feel like this race is really the vote for the creep. It's important.

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Now he'll win and it'll be hilarious. Just this disgusting pond scum piece of shit just oozing all over the Senate. Yeah. Menendez wins.

That's my call. What a wretched institution. The United States Senate, honestly, one of the just one more stem discern scumbags, one more Senate race of note. And also in a big state that has a governor's race, I'm talking about Florida, where long time incumbent Bill Nelson, the only statewide Democratic office holder is being challenged by Governor Rick Scott, who is for profit healthcare company, defrauded Medicare and had to pay settlements, adding up to $2 billion.

That's another nonhuman looking motherfucker. No, very not. God, that guy is just this just like a grub worm with a face. Rick Scott is spending a shitload of his own money. And it is. His cry is money. He stole from it. And it really does amaze me that this guy who defrauded Medicare in a state with so many

fucking senior citizens managed to win because they're hot. They're piggies. They're little suckling hoglets and they just love it. They love it. They love getting pissed in their mouths. Everything shows that this race is close. It's tighter than New Jersey's race. I think Nelson consistently has a lead of a couple points, but it's so hard to say because,

frankly, presidential candidates never win Florida by a big margin, as you know. And Rick Scott has never won the state by a big margin, both times very, very slim. I think Andrew Gillum is going to drag Nelson's bloated corpse across the finish line. That's the other race. And I actually agree with that. And I would say Nelson wins solely because of the excitement about Andrew Gillum, which is hilarious because he, I mean, he, he hilariously tacked to the center after he got nominated, which is just hilarious.

Like he starts talking about how we need to like fight Venezuela like, yeah, as governor of Florida. This is very crucial for you to take a stand on Chavismo. I don't think he's tacked that far to the center, but he is very much so talking about all the Latin American leftists he doesn't like. He tacked to the center for sure and set a bunch of incredibly embarrassing things in my opinion. However, I don't know.

Tweeting is tying to the center. I mean, is he spending $10 million in ads about fucking, however, what I will say about Gillum is that he has demonstrated since then, in particularly in his debates with Ron DeSantis at Discuss. Oh, just an absolute creep. Just just pure Trump, like, you know, Trump. Oh, yeah. So here's the funny thing.

No, no, no. What I want to say is like, like Gillum has, I think, shown like the way for new Democratic candidates to talk about Republicans. Yeah. Like he, like he is, he's going right at Ron DeSantis and, you know, he owned him pretty hard in those debates. Oh, yeah. Ron DeSantis in bed with races, probably races himself, and running racist ads and running

basically a racist campaign from top to bottom, which in a red wave year would probably be enough to bring him over the finish line. Absolutely. He's also kind of erratic. He's doing the Trump thing, but he's not as good as Trump. Yeah. Well, that's the thing is there's all these guys trying to be their local version of Trump and they aren't world famous TV oafs.

They're just some local car salesman dipshit. And they also, and I forget who pointed this out in a recent article, it was Tom Scoscia, but he, these guys who pretend to be Trump, they freak out when they get backlash for saying Trump things. And obviously Trump has no, you know, consciousness at all. He has no like inner monologue or anything. So you would never catch him apologizing for something. No.

He's given one apology in his life and it's because everyone told him to do it, the access Hollywood tape. Oh, right. But even there, he's just like locker room talk, whatever. Yeah. Right, right after that. And because he, if you remember that correctly, he like released this in the middle of the night.

It's just him talking about looks like an empty room. Oh God, I remember that. And then like there was a guy pointing a gun to his head off of screen. And then, you know, right, there's like a forced confession. And then, you know, like the next day he's just right back at a rally, say it was locker room talk. Yeah. That's it.

But a guy like DeSantis, you hit him with something and he's like say he's caught moderating a racist Facebook page or something. And he was out and says, oh, no, I don't support racism. He just wetly blinks like a fucking squid monster. Like what? I'm sorry. I mean, DeSantis did one good thing. And that was to utterly humiliate Adam Putnam, who was this famously called a howdy duty looking

motherfucker by one of his colleagues on the house floor. And this guy who's been like, you know, definitely trying to be governor of Florida his entire life, worked his way up, became secretary of agriculture, and just totally got owned in the primary by this screaming guy who said that Trump endorsed him. That's it. Yeah. I say both Gillum and Nelson went. Yeah.

I'm going to go the opposite direction just based on my conception of Florida as probably top three, maybe if not number one most cursed apocalyptic state in America that only nothing bad, nothing good ever comes out of Florida, except for one thing I can think of. It could be. I mean, the only thing, the thing about the Gillum race is he has led in every nonpartisan poll, but it's always been a tight margin, which makes sense because it's going to be a tight margin no matter what. But like leading in every poll, that's for by like two to 4%, I mean, that's consistent

enough to think that he has a durable lead in this race. Of course, the flip side can be true with Ted Cruz and there's always a little bit of uncertainty there. Could there be something like a Bradley effect? Yes, we'll see. Oh, and just before we finish with the Senate, it should be noted, the reason we're not talking about them when after Trump won, there was a mini freak out because there are a bunch of Midwestern Democrats who are going to be up in 2018 in states that Trump had won.

And people were thinking, oh no, could this like realign and all those people are for Club of Car, Baldwin, Stabenow, cruising to reelection, not even a question. No question about the Minnesota races or the Wisconsin race or the Michigan race right now. Of course, there's always an outside chance of an upset, but it looks pretty good for them. And as we close the door in the Senate, the one thing is, this is, it's a midterm year with an unpopular president of the other party.

And it's a really tough map for the Democrats and you kind of have to think, this is really the only circumstance where people like McCaskill and Tester have a fighting chance. Yeah. It's going to maybe get them across the finish line. And you know, right now it looks like, I don't want to say Democrats have thrown thrown in the towel because I think if one race out of my predictions goes the other way, they win back the Senate. But I think they're feeling pretty good about keeping it to a 51-49 margin or their abouts

going into the next cycle. Yeah, I agree with that. Especially if they win back the House, which is really that's, you know, that's what you need to put a check on the president, is win back the House. Yeah. The Senate's sort of icing. The problem is you'd rather have the Senate because then you have the Senate, I mean, it's harder to do things in the Senate, but that could potentially stymie these judicial

picks. Right. Like when Ruth Bader Ginsburg just flows away on a strong gust of wind into the ocean, it would be nice to have a Democratic Senate. And Thanda gets his infinity goblet and makes all the Democratic, all the non-goal votes on the Supreme Court just disappear. Yeah. But let's talk about the governor's races then.

Those are also incredibly important. As I said at the top of this, you elect a governor today. In many of these states, they're going to have veto power over redistricting when that happens after the 2020 census. That's pretty important. And there's an interesting story with the governor's race overall, which is that in these deep red states, Democratic gubernatorial nominees have a real fighting chance. But on the flip side, in these deep blue states, Republican governor incumbents are sailing

to reelection in Massachusetts, in Maryland, in Bernie's home state of Vermont. These governors who are Republicans have very high approval ratings. And maybe they get washed out in a wave. Maybe these polls are kind of off, but I don't see that happening. Take Larry Hogan in Maryland, where polls show that likely Democratic voters have a positive view of their fucking Republican governor. Well, I mean, part of it is that these are affluent states and they don't really have an ideological opposition to quote unquote, moderate Republicanism really at all.

They just don't like Trump. But I think what's notable is you've got like those three blue state Republican governors are all going to win easily. Meanwhile, Bruce Rauner in Illinois is going to get his ass kicked by a guy who might go to jail during his term because Bruce Rauner spent his term fighting just a tooth and nail budget battle with the Democratic legislature there and just tried to do this like scorched earth thing. Meanwhile, in Massachusetts with with Barker and Hogan, those guys basically kind of they

played ball. And as a result, they had they get this patina of bipartisan sort of common sense across the aisle. I think this runner is like a very right wing guy and he's in Pritzker has spent the most, I believe, out of pocket of any candidate in the country's history, well in excess of I want to say a hundred forty million dollars by governor governor raise. And as Felix has said, we're like we're like the shittiest job. Yeah, Felix has said he spent a hundred forty million dollars to what he gets like a high

school named after him went to awful job in an ungovernable state. I know Felix isn't here right now, but I got to bring it up because I know this is Felix's favorite thing. Rauner. Did you see the photo of him recently wearing the biker cut? No. He showed up in a rally with like like a sons of anarchy like biker leather vest like a cut that was covered in patches.

Oh, I did see one of the which one of the patches just said governor on it and the other patch I swear to God, look this up. We should probably make this the episode art. He had a biker's against child abuse patch. Oh, no. Yes, they patched him in. Oh, my God. He's a biker.

Governor of Illinois is a patch. What's that rumbling right here? You hear a sound of thunder in the distance. You're a child being abused. What's that? It's governor Rauner kicking down the door and saving you here. It's okay. No, we didn't put that on.

No, we didn't. Oh, damn. We should just Google bikers against child abuse against child abuse. You hear a rumble in the distance. You're abusing a state pension plan that's underfunded. You look up from what you're doing. You know, Rauner and Pritzker are both absolute goofballs. But these, you know, this trio of Northeastern, Mid-Atlantic, Republican governors with high

approval rates, that to me is the most credible evidence that Trump, despite, you know, his popularity with the base and riling up the hogs, is fundamentally a drag on the Republican party because I think any other type of Republican based on the economic indicators would have an approval rating in excess of 60 percent right now. Only. He didn't win. Hillary lost. And that's a fundamental reality that I think a lot of people haven't absorbed.

I do want the Northeastern Republicans to win, particularly in Vermont, where the first transgender major party candidate is challenging the Republican governor. Well, yeah. I mean, it'd be nice, but it sounds like it's not going to happen. But again, on the flip side, you have these red states where Democrats are running real well. And you want to talk about the Georgia governor's race. Outside of Beto and Cruz, the Georgia governor's race is the one I'm most interested in in

one thing. I got one other one. The closest attention to. I know. I know your one, Matt. Mine one, the Georgia governor's race is, as I last read, a dead heat. Dead heat. It's an absolute dead heat.

And I mean, to me, like the most interesting thing is the fact that the Republican governor is also the secretary of state in charge of these elections. And the voter suppression tactics they're doing right now in Georgia are insane and just straight out of like, you know, the 1960s. Oh, yeah. This is just Jim Crow all over again. This is 100 percent. I mean, camp has like been on tape.

Rolling Stone had this saying, you know, a big problem for us is turnout. The other side's turnout. And if everyone exercises, you know, their right to vote, it'll be a problem for us. And this is this race is 100 percent about the suppression of the black vote in a state where it is 32 percent African and American. Yeah. That's why I got to say Ty goes to the guy who literally counts the votes. It doesn't matter who does the votes, it matters who counts the votes, and he literally is

the guy counting the votes. No, you have that voter suppression there, but it hasn't dampened the enthusiasm of Democratic voters. Well, Oprah was there. Oprah did a did a whole thing for this weekend or yesterday. Much like you saw in Texas, in Georgia, there is shocking levels of enthusiasm from traditional Democratic voting blocks. I've seen footage of people waiting in the rain for hours, not just to vote, but to

early votes. They shouldn't have to wait for hours to vote in this fucking country. You couldn't. I mean, but think about that. Waiting to early vote when you might like like any normally you would you would go see this long line and be like, ah, fuck it, I'll just come back an election day or something. And failed state as well. Failed state Abrams, if she wins, will be the first African American woman ever elected

governor in the United States. Yeah. And sadly, like I said, I just I don't think I don't think you can overcome the structural opposition. I mean, again, this is like with beta, like, you know, heart in mind, like I'm I'm I'm rooting for Abrams so much in this one, but it's very hard for me to like get my heart over the hurdle of just how wretched a state Georgia is and the camp and the people who run it.

I will. I'll go with my heart. I'll say Abrams wins. OK. Yeah. I mean, Georgia Hillary did decently in Georgia compared to to Barack Obama, which is, you know, pretty interesting. If you think about it.

Yeah. Since it has a very, you know, relatively large African American population. So I do think like the Georgia purpling, bluing thing is real and in a wave election. Sure. Why not? I mean, could it be very close to the point that Kemp just monkeys around with the fucking results? Yeah, good.

I someone else said this on Twitter, but I think it's so awful. It's going to happen. Kemp, Kemp wins an incredibly narrow race that where the results are challenged, they go into court and then Brett Kavanaugh provides the deciding vote to certify his election. Here's the X factor. Here's the X factor. Georgia has runoffs. If nobody gets 50 percent of the vote, it goes to a runoff.

That's right. If you remember happened in 2008 in the Senate race that actually would have given the Democrats a 60 vote supermajority in the Senate. They fucking punted it. They did. Barack Obama pointedly did not go there to campaign for the guy. No money. Nobody gave a shit.

It does. And it was amazing that this guy, Jim Martin, got so close to winning, Obama did not go there because he thought it was important to bring the country together. More important than having a nil-buster proof majority in the United States Senate. King, king. Whoops. Oops. No drama, Obama, ladies and gentlemen.

But you want to talk about voter suppression, Chris Kobach is running for the governor of Kansas. Oh, God. He's running for the state also pretty much just charged with he was his primary went to a recount and he was he was in charge of it. Whoops. And he decided he won. So I think that's just going to be a recount or a replay.

Well, and Chris Kobach is the brains and I'm using that in scare quotes behind every like he is like the guy who is like the Trump's pitchman on a national level for every for the just hokum utterly spurious idea that illegal immigrants are voting or dead people. He is the GOP's resident voter fraud. Read voter suppression. No, he is the Lyle landly of voter suppression. He literally goes around to towns and and pitches them on passing very restrictive voting rules that he says.

Yeah, they're going to get challenged in court and then these towns they pass the bills and then they spend thousands or millions of dollars in courts defending them and they're overturned and he's out of there. Okay. So he's selling fucking voter suppressions to Bill and not to do but Kansas. What's the matter with Kansas? Chris Kobach, most recent poll from Emerson College, Chris Kobach, 44 percent, Laura Kelly, the Democrat, 43 percent.

It's a dead heat in that race. The X factor is Greg Orman. You remember that guy from last time around? He ran for the Senate. He was an independent candidate and the Democrats dropped out of the race because they thought he was the only guy who could possibly win that Senate race. Well, he lost. He went back to run as an independent candidate and at least one poll shows that if he weren't

there, Laura Kelly would be leading the race. Yeah, I got to go. Ty goes to the guy in charge of counting the votes and making the votes. Yeah, I'll flip it too and say that. Kobach wins. How about you, Will? Yeah. Yeah.

Kobach wins. It's too much of a prick not to. But there's also surprisingly close races in places as red as fucking Oklahoma. If you remember in Oklahoma, they fucked up the budget so fucking bad that they had to eliminate one week of the fucking schooled with one day of the one day of the school. They were going for four day weeks. I mean, also in Kansas as well, the Sam Brown back absolutely just they were blow decimated that state's budget and all its educational institutions and they literally had to unpave

roads because they didn't have the money to I'm not kidding to service them anymore. So they turned them into dirt roads. What is hilarious about Kansas and Oklahoma and this is very recently to both of those states were the labs through which like the Heritage Foundation was like, this is going to be our test case for how we want every state and the federal budget to run. Guess what? It turned into Mad Max in a specks of about a few months. It's also where they test all the new KFC and Pizza Hut con concoctions, the laboratories

of democracy. That one surprisingly tight race, the Democrat only trailing by maybe 4%, depending on who you believe. What do you think? Can lose. Lose? Yeah, sure. But rounding that out, you have the South Dakota governor's race, which really interesting

race here. Kristi Noem, who is their member of Congress, running for governor, who said a few months after she won the primary when she actually started campaigning, I didn't realize that I would have to campaign for this one. It's a tight race and she's running against this guy named Billy Sutton, the Democratic candidate who is a former rodeo star who was crippled in a rodeo accident where his horse flipped upside down in a tube that he was in. The old rodeo tube.

But he was a really compelling story. He went back to law school and then he, or something like that. And then he got elected and became the legislative minority leader in the state. I, for one, am sick of these rodeo clowns in Congress. And also, if you look him up, Billy Sutton, he's a big guy. He's a big boy. He would be a large governor. The Plain States love big boys.

That's another tight race. At least one poll shows him ahead. I'm going to go based on the tester model of large Democratic candidates who have mangled themselves in some sort of rodeo or agricultural related disaster accident. I say he wins it. I agree. That logic holds. I am in agreement.

During the election bell, we all think that the rodeo guy is going to win. And one more red state one. And this is also just a weird one because it's a weird state in Alaska. Bill Walker is the independent governor of Alaska. He was elected with Democratic support last time around. This time, he's running. He dropped out of the race because he was splitting the vote with Mark Begich. Remember that guy?

Oh, yeah. The one-term wonder. Who is that guy? He won in 06 in the wave. He was the Alaska senator, or no, he won in 08, and he beat Ted Stevens, who was famously roasted on the Daily Show. Died in an airplane accident shortly after. Well, that's a tight race now that the independent candidate dropped out, but he's still technically

on the ballot. What do you think? I don't know anything about this. I'm honestly my only opinion is that Alaska shouldn't be a state. Agreed. Because you went to Russia. No, no, no, no. Get rid of it.

Get rid of it in Alaska because it's big and we can keep things there. So Alaska should 100% be. I don't know. What? Like our groceries? Like pantry? You know, canned goods? Yeah.

Strategic helium reserve? What the fuck? Something might come up. It's good to have that much stuff, that much air. I'm going to say, what the hell, Begich wins, because the guy is a right-wing psycho and it's right-wing psycho. It's not that much of a right-wing, say, but a weird state. It's a very weird state.

I'd say, yeah, Republican, with the current governor still on the ballot, yeah, I'm going to say he wins. You know, you know, we keep in Alaska dangerous single men who are fleeing either child support or warrants in the lower 48. Right, yes. Two more now. California's governor's race. Or wait, no, I'm sorry, but I meant to bring this one to the Senate race.

Governor's race, who gives a shit? It's done. The Senate race is, of course, Diane Feinstein against Kevin DeLeon, both Democrats who advance from the first round of voting. Really? Because they got the jungle primary there. Feinstein is up. She's led in every poll.

Jesus Christ. You fucking morons. You stupid sunbaked idiots. You fucking avocado toast poisoned morons. You know why she's going to win? Because they don't listen to our show out there. Absolutely not. They have things to do.

What? They're out in the sun. Work on their screenplays? They're working on their screenplay. They're networking. They're having a good time. They're in traffic. They're like all tanned and good looking and they're chill.

They're on the Google bus. They're coding. They're creating our future. They're creating the future that we always dream of. Also, they're getting tuned up all the time. That's true. So they have better things to do than be miserable and listen to an East Coast podcast. That's a good point, actually.

They know they should listen to Native Californian and San Francisco guy, Joe Biafra, about the former mayor of San Francisco, Diane Feinstein. Fuck off. Fuck off. Kevin DeLeon does need to go to Diane Feinstein's house and mow her lawn. That would probably win it for him. But then again, and I know Matt has been waiting patiently for this. Yes.

This is the only other one I care about. Rather than Cruz, Marquis governor's race, in my opinion, Wisconsin. Let's go. Come on. Do it. Do it. Just get rid of this disgusting, come filled ventriloquist dummy. Three time winner, Scott Walker, three times.

They tried to recall him. He's fucking Jason Voorhees with the fucking two ham sandwiches. I don't know who's running against him. I don't need to know. I don't have to look it up. He's like if Michael Myers was sculpted out of fucking butter, just this relentless, just massacring piece of shit. He's trying to turn the Fox Valley into fucking Shenzhen province.

He wants to put a, he's putting a fucking Foxcom factory with suicide nets in Wisconsin. Oh, like he's just the most repelled scumbag on earth. States, it wouldn't be an issue, but Wisconsin does not have term limits on governors. Tommy Thompson famously was elected four times, but I think he's going to lose. I think he's going to lose. It's tight. And he's running against an absolute nobody, but I think he's going to lose. Bowling agrees with you.

The Democratic candidate consistently out the one bowl from Marquette shows it an even race, which of course is not good for an incumbent. No. Well, that's the thing. That's the case where the Senate race, Tammy Waldman's blowing away the awful trollwoman Lee of Hookmere. And that's another thing where I think she might have enough coattails to pull this fucking zero head of public construction.

Here's the other thing. Tony Evers. But hang on. Correct me if I'm wrong, but at least in one of these three races where Walker won, wasn't he behind in the polls, like in the recall maybe? No. It was all, I don't really remember. It was too, frankly, it's too traumatic.

But I never felt good at any point in any of those races. So I highly doubt there was any kind of consistent situation where it looked like he might lose. How you feeling now? I think he's, you know what, actually, the data point that makes me think he's going to lose is actually less to do with polls than to do with the state Supreme Court race that happened in February. And Wisconsin is one of the states that idiotically elects its Supreme Court members. And they're always off, they're never during like regular election day.

They're always a special election. And as a result, I think basically every race of the 21st century has been won by the right wing candidate because outside money just comes in, floods the airwaves. Every ad is for this whatever fucking homunculus they've got to run a run interference for their agenda. And then they win. Thanks to all the psychopaths in Waukesha County who vote every fucking election. And I think for the first time in a decade or so, the Democrat won one of these off year

off election day Supreme Court races and by like 10%, like she fucking blew him away. So I think that indicates that that whatever magic, whatever secret sauce of just getting out the aggrieved elderly people slowly dying of radon poisoning in Waukesha County to put him over the top in all of these off year elections, because he's never won during an actual presidential year. Yeah. I think it might, it'll do it. I think it's over.

Well, here's the thing that supplies for all the races. We've seen from these special election results that Democrats are excited to turn out. And in some of these races, I think what happened was the Democrats turned out and the Republicans just didn't turn out. This time around, I anticipate we'll have something that looks like a presidential election year turnout. And that the Republicans are fired up and they are going to come show up. Oh, absolutely.

You know what, I just had an idea. You know what I think we should do as additive incentive to vote against Scott Walker, if you're in Wisconsin. I think we should clip our reading from his book, Unintimidated, that we did in our Madison live show and released that as a bonus episode. If he loses. No, before just added motivation to hear in his own words from Scott Walker. I think that will put some fire in the belly.

I thought you meant this would be a reward that you get if he if he loses. What do you think? Why don't we clip it before you're right? Let's do it before. All right. Those are the barcay races. I have one final question for you, Urgell, about this election. Yeah.

As a New York state and New York City resident, obviously the governor gubernatorial primary, that was a hot one. There is a candidate and a reason to vote in that one. I'm obviously not going to vote for Cuomo, for governor, he's easily going to be this whatever Republican. I don't know. I don't even know his name. I literally don't know his name.

Is there anything, any candidate or anything on the ballot in New York state or New York City that I should get out and vote for or where where where you live in in the heart of Brooklyn in Park Slope in our mansion? Yeah. But I just say like I'm looking for a reason to get one of those I voted stickers. But like, well, you should vote. I'm going to vote because I really enjoy voting. Yeah, exactly.

You get to decide things. You're like a God, basically. Yeah. You get to fill in the little bubbles you put in the machine. And if the race is like shitty, you can write in whatever you want. I wrote down, I wrote in the come boys last time for all the judicial races. I'm planning on doing something similar and have fun with it. So yeah, I am going to vote on Tuesday.

You could. I mean, the working, see the thing is the working families party is afraid of losing their ballot line. So they want you to show up, swallow it and vote for Cuomo on their line. They can eat shit. The working families party sucks in my. They are. Yeah.

They're anything they were trying to do is they've been absolutely hollowed out. Fuck them. Yeah. Should I write in for governor? Well, you could vote for the green candidate. Oh, yeah. Howie Hawkins. Okay.

I might do that. He's some guy who just keeps running all the time. He seems perennial candidates. I always have a soft spot for. He seems genial. I don't think there's a socialist alternative candidate on the ballot yet. Yeah. Yeah.

Now I think I'll vote for Howie Hawkins. You could give just a good old write in for Cynthia Nixon or for Sarah Jessica Parker. Makes it up to them. Yeah. Let's try. Hey, we should go left. You know, we should try things. We should experiment.

Let's go through all four of them. I'm more of a Kim Cattrell fan. I'm going with her. That's a good idea. Yeah. Kim Cattrell. Absolutely. Yeah.

That's definitely gris for discussion on another episode. Though wrapping things up, I mean, I'm sorry we didn't get to get to the awful ballot measures that you should vote against, but I'm sure you figured it out by now. If you need us to hold your hands on this one, I mean, come on. Rent control. Yes. Things like that. Public bank.

Yes. Fracking. No. I mean, it's pretty simple. Yes. Vote in Colorado. Vote for whatever places greater restrictions on fracking. I don't know the letter or number it is.

And vote no on this fucking piece of legislation that's just this amendment that would just give money to fucking frackers. Vote yes. If you ban frackers. Vote yes on measure C in San Francisco, which is basically a tax to deal with the two really help ameliorate their homeless situation. Jack at Jack of Twitter has come out against it and says, you didn't know that Twitter may have to leave San Francisco.

The bots are afraid of this. So yeah. Measure C and obviously, you know, measure, measure B in Los Angeles. And there are a handful of great DSA candidates on the ballot that deserve your vote. I'm sure you're they're very local. I'm sure you're already acquainted with them, Jovanga Beckles in California, Zach Ringelstein in Maine, who is the Democratic nominee for the Senate against Angus King and a DSA. Don't vote for a fucking steakhouse.

Come on. I said, state house. I'm saying, don't vote for a steakhouse. Angus King. Oh, he's a steakhouse. He's a steakhouse. And in Pennsylvania, some great local legislative candidates, Summer Lee, Sarah, Sarah Innamorado, Kristen Seale, Elizabeth Fiedler, among others.

All right, folks, this is exciting. And by the way, preempting all you motherfuckers who want to try to own me if my half Trollish prediction is wrong, you're like, oh, see, it's not hell world. Yeah. Okay. Remember when the Republicans romped in 2010 and then two years later, they defeated Barack Obama? Remember when that happened?

Yeah, exactly. It's all hell world, buddy. Hell world all the way down. Absolutely. Well, you know, at least we'll be there live streaming and we've drinks on Tuesday night. We've drinks. We've drinks. We've whippets.

It's it's we've kept. It's going to be lit. We have special guests. We have special guests. No, yeah. It won't just be me, Matt and Virgil. We will have both in studio in studio. My fucking apartment.

We will have in stream guests and we will have Collins or many of our friends in the chopper verse who are many of them are going to be actually out there, you know, covering the election. Let the reporting. We will bring the election to you. Yeah. And we need to watch the just blank faced dullards of cable news, fucking the perfect ovular face of of Rachel Maddow steric blankly election results.

Don't worry about that crap or fucking Wolf Blitzer trying to trying to decipher simple mathematics. Don't worry about those motherfuckers. We promise that the chapel election stream will be the best online coverage of all the events this Tuesday outside of the chatterbait election stream. Of course. Can't be. And Matt, what are we calling our election night coverage?

It's Armenia decides 2018. OK, so get out there and vote, guys, you know, it's a it's a look. It's a game. Well, if you want to come on, it's a game. Play the game. I will say it's fun to do. Yeah. I do enjoy doing it just as an experience.

I always have fun when I go and yeah, we'll we'll see you have to pull Tuesday night. OK, guys. All right. Bye. What's up, it's a little John and I'm turning out for the legalization of marijuana. They're out for what?