Chapo Trap House - 466 - Beltway Garage: Endgame (10/27/20)

Episode Date: October 28, 2020

We take the 2020 election cycle in for one final tune-up at the Beltway Garage. Featuring Virgil and Matt’s official final predictions for Presidential and Senate races, plus predictions of how an indecisive election night might pan out.

Welcome to the Beltway Garage, DC's premier automotive themed political roundtable. If you're the owner of the Bootway Garage in Minnetonka, we have your mail and someone named Laura called Looking For You. I'm Virgil Texas, with me as always former Diners Club member, Matt Crisman. Hey, hey. So this is it. Oh my God. Can you believe it? It's the end of the road. In 18 Wheeler has just rolled into the garage and on the side of it is spray painted the word democracy because every four years Americans put on their voting jackets, take the L train down to the Montessori School and pull lever after lever after lever to choose the next leader of the free world. And every four years, we in the Beltway Garage

cast the most important votes of all. No, we don't actually vote in the election. We are ineligible to vote because of bullshit anti-vaping laws at polling places. No, we cast our ballots in public as we give our predictions for who will win the 2020 elections. You know, I never have pulled a lever. I really wanted to as a kid. That was what I was really looking forward to. I've always watched guys in movies and shit pull levers and I can't wait to go vote on the thing lever. And then I never got to. Well, it varies by state. You were like, you were a pebble in the jar of state. Yeah. Yes. I was a slap the donkey in the ass instead of the mule state.

Now, before we get to our predictions, which I know that you want our predictions, we have guided you for the past 43 years on this program about who the winners and losers of each week have been. So, of course, you want our predictions and we're going to give them. Before we get into it, I want to get serious for a moment. Voting is something you can do if you need to kill a few hours. Let's say it's eight a.m. in the Lego store. It doesn't open till noon. Go vote. Let's say you're waiting for acid to kick in. Go vote. Those are just two of what's like a half dozen reasons that you should vote. Isn't that right? Yes. My number one is that I really enjoy putting the paper in the machine and seeing

the number go up. It's a tactile and sense experience that I very much enjoy. It is, I am, I am fully entranced by the civic ritual of voting, not as a moral expression, but as purely like a Super Bowl type deal. And as such, I like to indulge in it. That's my number one reason, an aesthetic appreciation of the ritual of it. If you have to use the bathroom, they have to, they have to let you use it if you're a voter. That's true. Yeah. You can go in. In fact, I've done that. I took a dump at a school. I was going to vote and I have a sudden had to take a dump and I went in the school and

then because there was an election, they didn't look too weird when I went over into the kids bathroom and took a dump and then went and voted. It was very, very helpful. So yeah, if you need to dump, go in there. They will let you also if you are the hundredth voter to come in, your vote counts twice. Yep. Yep. And certain jurisdictions, if they have any kind of concentration of Australian immigrants, you might be able to get an election day saw. So sizzle. One of my favorite election traditions that I hope catches on in the United States, the election day sausage. So go vote unless you're like busy or something, then don't do it. Yeah. For it's raining. Fuck

that. Well, that out of the way, let's get to our predictions. And I don't want to, um, I don't want to build, you know, start with the local offices and then, and then go to the time. I think we should get the big prediction. The wait a minute. I thought we were going to do a Kings County cop troller. What the fuck? We're going to do the big one first. The one that's on everyone, the race that's been on everyone's mind, the race that keeps us all up at night, wondering will he or won't he, the race that will determine whether the next four years will continue to be a dumpster fire.

I'm talking of course about the Tallahatchie County recorder of deeds. Incumbent Lloyd Kawasaki has had a rocky tenure to say the least. The under-signing scandal that has dominated the papers for the past two years, where he's accused of signing the deeds underneath the signature line as opposed to above, has scandalized Tallahatchie Politico's. But challenger Eileen Danseforth is no stranger to controversy either. The final days of the campaign have been rocked with allegations that she purchased a mailbox out of wedlock. Matt, who's your call? I think it's going to be in Kanye West, an insurgent write-in campaign.

I think your balls will win because that tends to win in Tallahatchie write-in campaigns. I don't know whether it's a coordinated thing or whether everyone just simultaneously had the same thought to write your balls. Well, I'm going to go there, change my name to your balls, and then reap the rewards of a wealth of a job with a fat county sinecure. Yeah, you'll just be cradling a shotgun sitting in your office. So you want me to record a deed, huh? Yep. Put it in the jar, sweetheart.

With that out of the way, there are some minor races on the ballot in 2020, such as the race for the United States presidency. Who's going to win? I was on the stream earlier, and I was talking about how I think that at the end of the day, because of our weird habit of keeping the head of government and the head of state be the same guy, people tend to confuse what they're voting for, and they end up voting on these weird metaphysical points, and they end up turning presidents into some version of God. I feel like Trump is presenting himself as an Abrahamic God of tribal destruction, and

Bill Biden is presenting himself as a Christ-like figure of universal redemption. I feel like that's going to play better in the hinterlands. So I'll say that Joe Biden wins. And I'm going to say they might not call it on the night, but it might be closer than, they might call it sooner than people think. I think it might end up being kind of humorously anti-climactic. Really? Yeah. So you're not concerned about all of this early voting, and there's a shitload of early

voting, but it being overwhelmingly Democrats voting early in person or voting by absentee ballot. And in many states, those do not get, the mail-in ballots do not get opened until election day at the earliest, probably until after the election. Yeah. I mean, the issue is going, that's going to be a problem, but I think that the degree to which that becomes a jump ball that the Republican legal teams can use to pull it away for Trump, the kind of Bush 2000 on steroids deal that's the only realistic Bush Vigor, but dumber. Yeah. That's the only, like, there's not going to be a coup. It would be Bush Vigor,

but like putt due. If you would need things to fall in such a way that there could be challengeable outcomes involving like late ballots being counted in a number of swimming states that at the moment appear to be not, I mean, if you combine polling with the voter turnout models, in my mind, those two with each other are persuasive because both of them by themselves don't leave you a lot. Like, yes, you say the early, like early voting specifically is like, shit, like, yeah, these guys are voting and they're breaking records. But does that just mean these people are people who aren't going to show up on election day? And therefore you're not really changing the curve that much. And maybe they're even going

to get swamped by late, late appearing Republicans whose votes count earlier. I think that the models anyway have indicated that that's not the case and that this indicates an actual increase in likely increase in turnout from 2016. I've read one date of that says 80% of the early votes cast so far in Wisconsin. This is from this is from polling. I've been Democrat. That's we know it's not going to be 80% Democrat on election. Yeah. So we know that there is going to be huge difference. And the question becomes, okay, is is is it going to be 80% Republican on election day? Or is it going to be much closer than that? And there's just it really is going to be a blowout. And the

early votes are just sort of reflective of that. See, that's not it's not a matter of like the Democrats are eating their election day vote. It's just that so many people are going to vote. I like for one, I saw one day and I forget which state this was that said, I think it was Wisconsin again, that said more African Americans age like 80 to 59 something like that from some age cohort have voted early so far than voted period in 2016. See that see that to me means you're talking real increases in turnout. And if you have real if you have a genuine increase in turnout, a statistical percentage increase coupled with just the general demographics of the electorate and the polling, which is pretty consistent

shows consistent Biden leads and enough in over in over. He has 270 I think in the bag. If you have if the polls are even off, even if they're off, there's still his polling is better than Hillary's was at this point in every one of these states. And the turnout looks to be higher than it was. And turnout is what killed Hillary last time. It wasn't Trump having a big wave. It was that Hillary's in key states and key demos underperformed Obama because people didn't come out for it. It looks like not only are you seeing some shift towards Biden towards the Democrats in the suburbs, but you're also seeing even in old Democratic constituencies increases in turnout. And those two things to me spell

maybe an anticlimactically large Biden victory. It is 3am on election night. Are the networks calling any states? Well, actually, let me here's an earlier question. It's 3am on election night. Do you think that the election day figures in let's you know, let's keep talking about Wisconsin because we know this is a must win state for Biden. Is it going to show a 15% Trump lead on election night after in person votes are counted? Is it going to be closer than that? I mean, the thing is, is that it's going to vary state by state based on procedures because they don't, of course, because of our wonderful federal system that we love. We love it. There

are no universal voting guidelines. They all do it the but with their own individual specs and they like when they open ballots is different. And I mean, some states to count them beforehand. Others don't. I would need to know the specific voting procedure in a state to even guess. And then even then it would feel pretty random. I don't know. I really don't. Well, this is more a question. Okay, sure. Okay, there's there is the procedure thing. For instance, I believe in Pennsylvania, they're not cracking open these mail in votes until after election day. So the figure that we're going to see in Pennsylvania is going to be 100% day of it might include early in person votes. I'm not 100% on that because again,

it's a federalist thing and I'm not going to I'm not going to bother to look out what else if these states fucking do. But let's work under the assumption that it is at minimum mostly election day election day of is it going to be a matter of, well, Republicans are just all voting en masse on election day because that's what Trump has been telling them to do for the past eight months. And they're just going to do whatever he says. Maybe. All right. So if that's the case, let's assume it is because like I said, I don't know. Because if it isn't, then that's not interesting. Then you just have it's regular normal. Let's say it is the case because that's the only way to keep talking about it if we want to

talk about it. Let's assume that that's the case. So that means that when people go to bed, Trump is up in Pennsylvania and then they're going to keep counting and they're going to start counting the next day. And maybe that but one thing is that might not matter depending on how the vote drops out. And two, there is like because they're not opening until election day, there is an expectation that account will begin. Now the question has always been the moment that they would strike is not to stop the vote counting of absentee or of mail-in ballots. It would be if through the counting of the mail-in ballots, you reached a tipping point where it looked like they were going to as Brett Kavanaugh

put it in his amazingly fraudulent fucking decision today, flip the result as though the election night preliminary count is a result and not just the state of the process of account that isn't finished until you've got all the fucking mail-ins done. And the fact that they put that out there really does mean that it's going to be up to the state who's in charge of the state legislatures, I think, because in this case, they said that Wisconsin can do what they want in terms of not allowing counts votes to be counted. But I mean, I don't know what the state is. The Pennsylvania legislature controlled by the Republicans. I know they have a Democratic governor. They have a Democratic governor. So once again,

I don't know what, because there would have to be a willingness at the state level to intervene on behalf of Trump, right? Wisconsin and Pennsylvania both have Republican legislatures in Michigan as well because of gerrymandering. Right. Yeah. So they could go for it. I don't know. I mean, I guess what I'm getting at is it comes out to a question that I can't answer, which is the willingness on the part of state-level GOP members to intervene on behalf of Trump to risk or not risk, depending on what they think the calculus is, like the norms that we have as a system in order to

defend Trump. And I don't know what that answer is. Well, yeah, that's the thing. But I mean, risk is a good way of putting it. If you're just some fucking Republican shithead legislator in Wisconsin, you're in a gerrymander district. Like what's the risk? Like what you're going to get punished next time around for violating these norms? Yeah, I guess you're right. I guess they'll do it then. I guess they'll do it. Well, I don't know if they'll do it because, I mean, there has to be an actual impulse to doing it. There has to be a prime mover here because they're just not self-organizing

this. They're not just doing it on their own. They're following orders. And I mean, Trump has been continually saying deranged things, and most Republicans are just kind of trying to play both sides of it. In practice, they're being a Trump loyalist, and in practice, they're trying to not piss off the fucking MAGA base because they're afraid of getting primaried by them. But they're also kind of being like, hey, but we're still responsible. See, that's basically why I don't think this will happen at base, because it will come down to the individual decision of state-level Republicans to intervene on behalf of Trump.

And I think that even though the base might be clamoring for it, I think that there's enough blood and thunder in an election cycle that you don't have to worry too much that they're going to pick you out of the pile as the reason that this happened if you're an individual. Yeah, the responsibility is so diffused. Exactly. The responsibility is diffused is that you can kind of, if it's essentially, what would they do when pressed with commitment to the norms in the form of the Republican Party and the electoral system as it currently exists, or step into the void on behalf of

Trump? I don't think they will. But Matt, we know this is a shit or get off the pot moment, and you can't keep, what's the word, not dissembling, but... Equivocating? Equivocating. Yeah, you can't just keep equivocating about it. No, no, no. This is about whether or not you're actually going to do something. And isn't a good analogy to this? Trump's Supreme

Court nominees, all of his judicial nominees, it's like you can be an equivocating fucking asshole like Ben Sasse and talk about how, oh, this is violating the norms and this isn't being very responsible, and gosh, I don't care what Trump tweets. But then at the end of the day, when it's a vote that matters, you're voting for him. Every single one of them is voting with him. I'm just trying to imagine what this actually looks like in practice, and what I'm picturing is Trump getting on TV at midnight of election night and saying, it's over, stop the votes, stop and explicitly saying stop the counts.

It is up... Well, it's not going to be that. We must stop the counts. It's not going to be that. Here's the hypothetical situation. It's on election night. Trump has leads in all of these swing states. The networks aren't calling anything, and the networks are constantly trying to explain... Constantly, every single minute, trying to explain to people, well, keep in mind they haven't counted the mail-in ballots, they haven't counted all the absentee ballots, they haven't counted the early votes or anything like that.

So when it says Trump leads, you know, that number is going to go down in the next few days. It's not like every other election night where all the drama's over by 4 a.m., and we basically know who won. No, this is going to be a multi-day process. And I think what would happen is Trump wakes up on Wednesday and looks at these numbers and says, hey, wait a minute, I won. I know it's a dumb guy thing to say, but, you know, we're talking about dumb people. This is for the consumption of stupid people. He says, wait a minute, I won, and now my numbers are going down. That's a conspiracy against me. That's what he's going to say. And it's a question of whether he can actually organize

something. Because if he just says it, that doesn't mean people are going to, like, start doing something to bail him out. I'd say that the reason that the Barrett carrying is in the comparable to that is because that is a much deeper and more important project than the transient phenomenon of Trump being in office. Sure. Who's the president is matters much, much less than the sixth fucking vote for a permanent Republican majority in the near term in this crucial moment when we're, like, accelerating

towards the shitter-get-out-the-pot question on a bunch of very important things that are going to relate to what liberty is and what it means to have a job and, like, rights. So they're very, very keen to do this. Trump, I think, is not even close to that in terms of importance as, like, a project and a goal to organize around and to violate norms on behalf of. Yeah. And just as well, a Supreme Court vote is, you know, that's a thing that has to happen. Yeah. Exactly.

That's a scheduled thing. Yes. It's not like Trump tweeted, hey, put this lady on the Supreme Court and everyone just like said, you know what, we should do that. Yeah, exactly. Yes. There's a process. And there's not a process to steal an election, like, you actually need some organizing ability.

These people do not have that. At many moments when it would have behoove them to be organized, they failed, not because they chose not to, but because they were incapable of doing so. Now to answer the question myself, yes, I believe Biden will win. Not counting any of the election ceiling crap, no, I mean, you legitimately count all the votes. I think he'll win. Ultimately, when the votes are counted, it won't be very close.

I think he's going to win by double digits and I'll ask you the same question. What do you think the final margin is going to be like the actual final popular vote national margin? I'm going to say, I think the over under is 10 and I would go, I'm going to take the under. I'm going to go nine. Really? I'm going to go.

I'm going to take the over. I'm going to say 12. I'm going to say, I think my gut is saying 12, but I'll take the over overall. I think it is going to be a landslide because I think if you look at the polling data for Trump, one is it's his like raw figure. It's like in like 42% zone. And of course, we don't really know what the turnout is going to be, but I think it's going to be disfavorable to him.

Biden's consistently over 50%. Yeah. That's a big thing. I think that the third party vote is just going to be very low. It's lower than it was last time around. I mean, there's no guide this time for the third party. So Johnson. Yeah.

It's really, it's really this thing about like, you look at what happened last time around and all the stars had to align for Trump and it's like most of that shit is not here anymore. No. I mean, the funny thing is, is that Joe Biden ran finally this last time, this last gasp like with his brain seizing up on him as he crossed the finish line, like the, the terminator when he fucking gets sprayed with liquid nitrogen. It's because he watched Hillary run a campaign and lose and know in his gut that if he had

run the exact same campaign, he would have won. He would have. Now he is basically doing it and he will probably have been proven correct. You know, well, Matt, this is funny. This is basically a twilight zone for Joe Biden. Like, yes, you can have the thing you've always wanted. You can be president, but you're senile. Yeah.

Exactly. It's like, I've said, you're not aware of it. He's going to be sitting at the White House waiting for Obama to show up for the meeting they're going to have. Where's the boss, man? Yeah. That's the nightmare. He's going to be president and be unaware of it, just wondering all the flowers waiting

to get ordered around by Brahma manual. I'll put in that clip of him being asked about Amy Coney. Oh God. Amy Cohen brothers. Oh my God. That was, did you see that Virgil today? I didn't see that, but I just want to continue this riff. There was time now.

There was, there was time to fix the deficit. No, I did not see it. Let's put that. He just, he just, he just vapor locked. Completely. You lost. He just starts going like, well, here's the thing you got to remember is so you got to know.

Let me, here's the deal. Hey, Amy, they're going to confirm a Barrett tomorrow and the thing you got to remember, you got to remember the thing you got to remember is, he just goes back to the thing you got to remember and setting it up and just or a burrow. Here's the deal, one of the things that, that is important is that keep in mind, although they're going to vote on, uh, uh, Barrett, I think the day is, he's running through his mental Rolodexes of ways to start sentences. Yeah, exactly.

He's just caught at the beginning of the tree, the logic tree, and he's like skipping back to the beginning of the menu. All right. It's not good. On the presidency lightning round, will Biden crack 400 electoral votes? Uh, no. I think he'll get like 380 or something. I'm going with no.

Let's go to the States, the Rust Belt Trio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, who wins? I think Biden sweeps them. Same here. Georgia. You know what? Fuck it. I think Biden's going to win Georgia. Okay.

Because if the turnout is really high, as it very well may be. If Bryant camp and his a legion of stormtroopers aren't able to, uh, vote now. Yeah. I mean, if it really is a blue wave, then yeah, it's, he takes Georgia. Uh, if there isn't, then he doesn't take Georgia. You know, I mean, but we can't end this on a hypothetical. I'm going to, I'm going to be bold. I'm going to say he wins Georgia.

Yeah. Same. Uh, now here's an interesting one. It's been closer. It's been very close, surprisingly. Nevada. Oh, interesting. Yes.

Because of Trump's, uh, rising support among Latinos, uh, I think that Biden will squeak that one out. The Reed machine working their magic. Very strange that it's so close there. I think we're seeing, uh, Latinos de-align as a racial group, uh, towards being sort of, uh, like more broadly, uh, you know, uh, which is going to rebound to Republicans benefit. We're seeing Latinos disassociate.

Yeah. They're just, they're breaking away from the, uh, the polarity around like immigration is an issue and towards culture is an issue because what a shock. Neither party really has a different, uh, immigration policy. I will say Nevada for Biden, Arizona. It's so he, so that's funny. So Nevada has been close, but Arizona has been kind of consistently for Biden for a while now.

Like he's holding like a, like a solid four or five point lead. It seems that's from what I've been noticing anyway, but I don't know. Yeah. He has been, he has, it's a, it's a slim, but consistent lead. I will say that Biden wins Arizona. I think he wins Arizona. Honestly, probably on, uh, fucking Mark Kelly's co-tales at this point. Here's an interesting one.

I'm going to pair them together, Ohio and Iowa. I kind of want to have a map. I kind of think it would be perfect. Like symbolically. So even though it might not be the case, I'm going to say it just cause I like the symmetry of it. I'm going to have a map where Biden wins Georgia and Arizona, but loses Ohio. I think he's going to lose Ohio, but thanks to Jody Ernst, I think he's going to lose

or he's going to, uh, win Iowa. Interesting. I'm going to say he wins Ohio, which, you know, Hillary got flattened there. I think he squeaks it out there. He wins Ohio. I think there is a kind of poetic justice to an Ohio being this, uh, it was being the state that 2004 hinged on. I was a tougher one, but I'm going to, I'm honestly, I'm just going to say, you know,

so goes Iowa, Ohio, so goes Iowa. As goes to Ohio, so goes, I'm going to say, I'm going to say Biden for both. I would know. I will pipe in for just one as the resident, Ohio and, uh, red Ohio, Ohio is, uh, besides Hamilton County and, uh, Cuyahoga for Cleveland. It's solid red. I don't think he, he can, uh, overcome that. The demographics of Ohio are, are decline, a older and whiter.

Yeah. I think it's going to, I think it's going to happen. Well, ding, ding. We got a Beltway garage prediction disagreements on Ohio, uh, North Carolina. Oh, he's, uh, Biden will win North Carolina. It seems like, uh, like, oh yeah, I think, uh, Obama didn't win North Carolina in not the second time. No, but I think he's not the second time.

Yeah. He won the first time though. And I think it's going to be back. And the North Carolina is one of those ones where if you've got, if you broach like 8%, you will just, you'll kick it over. And I think since he's going to be over 8%, I think he kicks it over. And as we've mentioned on the show before, uh, the Dem demographics of North Carolina, the research triangle, it's moving solidly into that professional, the same trajectory

as Virginia was. It's like, I'd say like maybe 10 years behind Virginia. It's the research triangle and you have all of these people in North Carolina who are working on cures for Joe Biden and they're going to vote for their cash cow because they need to keep those research grants. Yeah. All the different unguents and stem cell, uh, packs and, uh, gene infusions he's going to get, the adrenochrome plugs.

Now last one, of course, Ohio, very important, but this one probably, uh, more famous for having decided an election. And one, this one's really confusing. It's hard to get a handle on it. Talking about the sunshine state. Oh God, Florida, Florida is the one that I have. I absolutely have no confidence in Biden looks good. I mean, if you just look at the polls, Biden looks good there as good as he looks and say

Arizona for instance, but it's Florida. That's the thing. That's the only counter argument. Well, it's Florida. A honey. It's Florida. Honey. It's Florida.

Forget it, Jake. It's Florida. I mean, Ohio, Obama did win Florida both times. So it's not like it's out of the question, but he barely won it in 2012. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He almost, yeah.

And I mean, in 2018, and this is, you know, this is also interesting for Ohio too, 2018 was blue wave, but Republicans, uh, the Senate and the governor, uh, governor's mansion in Florida, the polls were off because the poll showed, uh, Bill Nelson and, uh, uh, Andrew Gillum winning. Winning. Yeah. Uh, Ohio again, they also had a governor's race in 2018 and the Republicans kept, uh, the governor's mansion there as well.

Yep. Both those states internal, uh, politics have trended right since Obama won them. And I will say, you know what? So goes Ohio is Florida. Uh, Biden has this crazy wave where he wins everywhere except for Ohio and Florida. That's the I-75 Nexus. They just drive the Ohio winds all drive down to Florida to retire. Well, what about the, uh, all of this, uh, all of this talk about the Latino vote in

Florida of the, the, the, the Cuban exile vote. I mean, if, uh, apparently the younger Cubans are less reactionary than their parents were, but, but polling shows, they're not, you know, they're not full, you know, zoomer Democrat. Right. Well, in general, there's a trend, the right word in the, uh, Latino vote, especially among men. And I feel like it's all going to come together and Florida is going to go for Trump. I just, I just don't.

It's so tough. I mean, I think looking at the number, I think the head would say Biden, but the heart tells me it's Trump in Florida. Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. Well let's move on for the presidency because there are other races. Oh, I want to do one more. Oh yeah. There's some inklings of, uh, Texas, maybe cracking, cracking blue.

Oh, I know. We did to Texas. We did to Texas. Oh, I forgot. That's a Beltway garage goof. Yeah. All right. Texas.

We dropped the wrench on that one, boys. Yeah. Texas. The big boy, the big sweaty banana here. The thing is, if it's a wave, if it really is a wave that we're not expecting, then yeah, he could win Texas. Because he did win Texas. He would crack 400 because the demographics of Texas are very similar to California.

The difference is the difference in California and Texas is voter turnout, basically that it's not because Texas is this like reactionary level. It's because while it was a reactionary level, it was able to enforce voting regime that has like chronically disenfranchised the people who'd be most likely to vote Democrat. And if there is a huge surge of Texas, this is the thing that Democrat, this is the reason that, uh, one of the reasons that Texas Republicans who, even though are, who generally are insane on all issues are generally moderate on immigration because they don't want to poke the bear. Yeah.

Well, Texas, Texas has ground zero for the project to integrate Latinos as white. And as Republicans. Yes. And it was, it's going pretty well, uh, but Trump being president has like, it's aggravated it along several acts. It's like, it's, it's alienated some, but it's also brought some people towards them because he's creating this polarization around cultural signifiers that is going to be as appealing to Latinos as it is to white people.

Uh, and, but I think you, you're seeing the turnout in Texas specifically, which is just insane. It makes me think like they might have actually broke the dam a little bit and, and, and, and this is crucial, uh, voting, like the, the behavior of Republicans in Texas leading up to this bears this out. The number of Texas Republicans who just declined to seek reelection this year is significant. It's like, you know how in the, the, the Roman Emmerich movie where you hear a big noise and then a bunch of fucking birds start flying in one direction and then you're like, oh

shit. Like there's clearly an understanding that Trump was disrupt, disrupting the, the firmament of the electoral, uh, uh, like terrain in Texas and these early voting numbers say that might be the case. And if it is, yeah, I think he's going to, he'll win Texas. But the thing is, I mean, here's what it comes down to. If you look at the polls, Trump's going to win taxes, but if, if there is a, if the polls are off or if there is a real blue wave, then yeah, Texas is in play and it's possible.

The one thing, I mean, for me, the big data point is 2018, where you had like the best guy that you could have gotten in Texas, Beto O'Rourke, wonderful, sweet Beto, could win, couldn't beat this man who's repulsive on every level, disgusting, mentally, physically, sexually, emotionally, but, but this is where maybe there's a counter argument, the, the breakdown of voters in that election, Beto won among native Texans. He lost among people who'd moved to Texas, they will tend to be suburbanites, like kind of moving like the lowest tech, you know, to either live out some fantasy, to enjoy low taxes, some sort of ideological, 90% of people who moved to Texas are like free Republic

posters in California. It is, it is a fan, it is like a reverse Steinbeckian fantasy. And it is, but the, but the majority, the majority of those people I'm talking about who are the sleeping demographic giant in Texas are native Texans and they would presumably be the people who are bursting these numbers in terms of voting out a turnout. And if that's the case, I think Biden will win. You brought up Beto O'Rourke, I'm going to bet on red Texas because Beto is spearheading the get out the vote campaign in Texas.

And I think it's funny to vote against Beto O'Rourke. Beto, more like Beto, he could be, he could, he could have defeated Cornyn in the cycle if he'd run. What a moron. I don't know if that's true is the thing. I just don't know. But we'll get to that. Cornyn is running close.

We'll get to that. We'll get to that. But my final, to put a pin in this, my call is Trump keeps Texas, but Beto O'Rourke wins the Senate race. In a right and give it. But we do have to move on here. And I want to move on to, you know, honestly, it's kind of like the baby branch of government. It's a little, it's a little one.

Oh, no, baby. No, no, baby. The U.S. House of Representatives. Oh, the house. Look at them. Muppet baby's out there. Look at the little, oh, look at you little two year terms. Oh, every two years, little squirts.

Who's going to win? Who's going to win? The House. The Democrats. I don't think this is a question. Same here. Will the Democrats improve their margin? I think so.

Yes. Interesting. Double digits. No, no, no, no, no, no. I don't think there's going to be huge coattails for Trump at the congressional level or coattails for Biden on the congressional level. Just because Trump is such a mobilizing and galvanizing figure that, you know, people are voting on him, and they're probably not thinking as much about those down-ticket races.

I think they'll get like maybe five or six. I think the overrunner is Ted. I'll go under then. Yeah. I'll go over just for fun, because the thing is, I think that there are going to be coattails. I think he is, like, it's, I mean, whether you want to say that's Trump as a mobilizing force or Biden as a mobilizing force, it doesn't matter. We're basically saying the same thing.

I think people are going to come out and they're just going to look down at the ballot and say, I'll just vote for this Democrat. I think that is going to impact the race, and I think we're not going to see the kind of ticket splitting that we saw in 2016, because like the real rationale for, because remember, keep in mind in 2016, everyone thought Democrats were going to take the House and the Senate. I do think that some of the reason that they didn't is because of ticket splitting. I think people thought, well, of course, Trump's going to lose, so let's elect some Republican Congress to keep Hillary on.

Oh, yes. Those people who exist and who are the most amazing creatures, the politics understanders. I love them so much. Wonderful baby birds. And then they just get mad about gridlock. It's like they literally vote for it. You're voting for them. Why do all these homosexuals keep sucking my cock?

Yeah. Vote for a vote for a fucking agenda and try to see it fucking put through. Like just have them all just like figure it out like it's a fucking debating society. It's not. Maybe they just really, really like TV drama. It's a fucking tug of war. It's also especially funny because that is the worst possible pairing because it would just be show investigations of Hillary Clinton for two years straight.

Oh, yeah. Maybe they just like TV drama and honestly, that would make some good hearing about the emails like your normal people love hearing about the inscrutable email. That is true. The normal politics people who like go either way and vote in congressional races and stuff. They're all sickos. I'm now imagining a Lib conspiracy voter who is voting for Trump again in 2020, but all down ballot Dems because they're just a fan of hearing about Lev Parnas.

They love them. We love Lev Parnas. He's the best folks that we love it. I hope Lev Parnas comes back in the next season. Lev Parnas holler at us. We would like to add you as a Mike. Okay. You know, enough silly season.

Let's talk about the real chamber. Republicans have 23 Senate seats up the cycle. Democrats just 12. If Kamala Harris becomes vice president, Democrats need to pick up three seats to have a majority. Do the Dems retake the Senate? Yes. I'm going to say yes. Yes.

They're going to lose one seat. Doug Jones, RIP to a real one. RIP. All that poop touching for not. We'll go through them one by one, but it's more than three when I put them in my head. It's more than. Okay. Well, here are the ones that are supposed to be easy pickups.

Number one, Susan Collins versus Sarah Gideon in Maine. Bye-bye. They could not get, you know what, they couldn't get Susan Collins. She was untouchable since she was elected because she has a reputation as, you know, she's the moderate lady. Because she didn't have to make that. We were talking about being pushed to the edge where you can't live in the liminal zone anymore and you have to commit.

The Kavanaugh hearings was her having to commit and that broke the spell that she had in Maine as this figure who transcended partisanship because this was an issue that like was defiantly partisan. It's so honestly. It's so polarized that you just can't be a dumb person now who's like, well, I think we need to moderate. Yep. I've got to say, I love seeing that because it's one of the most annoying features of

American politics and seeing these figures just get popped like balloons is very satisfying. Interesting fact about this race, they will be using instant runoff voting. Yes. So there's no. That's harmed Democrats in the past there, insane man and apparently native French speaker Paul LaPage serves two terms as a Tea Party maniac governing the relatively liberal state of Maine because it both cases, he won in three way races against the Democrat and a moderate dumbass independent in the Angus King.

What are you doing? This is stupid mold and they instituted. They've since instituted now instant runoff for Senate, which means that the annoying third party person who is of course running there and of course taking like a high single digit percentage will likely not hurt Gideon and Collins will likely interestingly. This person is running from the, uh, to Gideon's left and really that's usually the independent in Maine is just like the most just shut the fuck up and pick dude. Just quit being such a Ken bone, smug dickhead and pick something and of course liberals

can't resist getting mad at anyone voting for this person and it's like there's instant runoff voting, not understand how this process works. This means, you know, we passed this thing so that you can't get mad at us for voting for party anymore. It's true. It's true. This is the whole thing. This is the thing.

It's like, you always say, if there was another system, that'd be one thing, but it's two ways. It's zero sum. It's like, this is the thing where I don't have to do that. I can vote my conscience and support the opposite and be strategic. Yes. And you're mad at me. Interesting question.

Do you think this case will go to court and do you think Susan Collins will go to court and say, you can't do instant runoff voting on the federal level? I will say that it won't matter because she'll just lose outright. Interesting. That's a good point. That's a good point. I don't think it's going to come. I mean, I think that if that could get settled, that could be a jump ball, but I think that

she will lose without having to resort to the IRV. So that's plus one for the Democrats. Number two, Colorado. That's Cory Gardner versus the dark one, John Hickenloop. Oh God. We're going to have to hail the Lizard King. Colorado has been trending blue for some time now. Hickenlooper has led basically every poll.

It looks to be a pretty safe Democrat seat. Don't keep in mind in 2016, Pennsylvania looked like a safe win too, and it wasn't. Yeah, but Colorado at this point, I think, is I'm more certain that Biden's going to win Colorado than I am that he's going to win Pennsylvania. So I'm going to say, Cory Gardner, you cooked. Bye-bye. And you know, some people are mad about this race because Hickenlooper, you know, he kind of sucks.

He's terrible. For what's basically a safe seat where it's like you could be way more to the left than this and still win in a fucking war. Yep. No, they had to pick the guy who will reassure all of the worst malefactors in our politics that, no, you can continue sucking guy a dry and destroying the hopes of future generations. Now, here's the third one of the trifecta, North Carolina. That's Cal Cunningham, which is the cab Callaway Cal Cal Cunningham versus Tom Tillis.

That's a hilarious case because, yeah, it was a race. Look like Cunningham was a little bit like I was going to win in a walk. And then hilarious bit of last minute shenanigans in October, surprise for the ages, the revelation of sensuous text messages, which we discussed on the shows. He got horny on main. He got real horny in a very PG related, rated sort of way. But now, now listen, I don't think we've ever actually discussed these texts on this program.

We did on an episode that you weren't on it, but yes, I was on it, so you read that you read the text. We read the text. Well, you shouldn't. Well, you shouldn't have done that because it might have been Russian disinformation. God damn it. I think that I don't think it's going to matter. I think Cunningham is going to win.

But it looks a little, I mean, it looks a little too close for comfort. Keep in mind, you know, he still has a polling lead. But when we, when I say polling lead, I'm talking like two to 3%, that's not insurmountable. That's the kind of polling lead Andrew Gillum had last time around. I know. But the thing is, it's about the momentum. For me, it's about the momentum in the state, demographically. That's how I put it in my head.

And the momentum in the state demographically is trending leftward or democratic word. It's trending, like I said, it's like in the draft of Virginia, it's following Virginia's draft. It's like 10 years behind Virginia, which to me means you, you go, if he's got a polling lead, he's the Democrat, Biden's the Democrat, he's got the polling lead. I'm going to say they win. I'm going to say they both win. I'm going to say Calcuttingham wins and that this race sounds so hot and so fun.

So fun. He just loves to love. He loves loving. Don't we all. So right there. So those are two or, I mean, if you, if you can't, those are three. If Democrats keep all of their, all 12 of their seats and two of them, two of them are kind of close races.

There is the Gary Peters in Michigan, who is white against John James, who is black. And this is a race where Peters has led, but not by a huge amount. And there have been some like close polls in this race in the past month. Yeah. I still think once again, I'm going to go with like Michigan appears, you're talking higher turnout, you're talking in the midterms, a big left democratic shift in the suburbs. I'd say that that translates to, if, if I think Biden's going to win Michigan, like I said, I think ticket splitting is going to be down this time.

So yes, I'd say that Gary Peters. You think this is fool's gold. I think so. Like you said, if tickets, if, if Biden's lead is real and ticket splitting is reduced, then in a lot of these races, you got to figure that, like, if you're in a tie, you got to go with the Democrat. I have a question. Which of those candidates supports arresting the governor and extraditing her to Mackinac

Island? Uh, John James, I think, then go with him. That seems to be where the energy I want to go back to the feed store. I need my feed. But here's the race that everyone assumes Democrats are going to lose. Oh, yeah, Alabama, Ruby Red, Alabama, the Doug Jones seat. We all remember his huge upset against Roy Moore in the special election three years ago.

Now he's fighting for his political life against a sports ball coach named Tommy Tuberville. Tommy Tuberville, former coach of Auburn, apparently much hated in the state of, uh, uh, Alabama. I mean, obviously hated by Alabama fans for being an Auburn coach, but also hated by Auburn fans for kind of abandoning the team, but he's a Republican running against a Democrat with a Republican on the presidential ticket and he did not abuse any children sexually unlike the last guy that Doug Jones ran against. So here's the thing.

This is interesting to me in terms of voting heuristics. Why would you just vote for the guy because he's a Republican or whatever? Like, what do you really give a shit? Why not just vote for him based on his record as a coach? Because you care about things like the Supreme court and owning libs and the president being happy because you love him and, you know, he'll be happy if your guy wins. You love him. You love the Jones's trail.

Jones has trailed badly in every single, except there was one complete outlier. It came out a couple of weeks ago. I'm not familiar with the poster, but it showed him up by one. Yeah. I don't think it's going to happen. Alabama also was able to do some voters shenanigans this week. I forgot what it was, but yeah, no, bye-bye, Doug Jones. I've heard that she, if it's not Andrew Cuomo, that Doug Jones might become Biden's attorney

general. So that could be his consolation prize. Well, right now we are at plus two net seats for the Democrats, so they're going to have to pull out a win in one of these wonderful states. And there's a lot of opportunities for them. I want to go, I'll start with some of the less likely ones, Texas, which we just mentioned. That's John Cornyn versus MJ Hagar. I would say that if not, if he hit, not if he ran for president, as soon as Beto ran

for president, he was cooked. If Beto had run against Cornyn from the beginning, I think that he might be able to win this race. But as it stands, I think the Cornyn will pull out a slim victory. But Beto could not have resigned in the middle of the campaign because at that point he became a poison mushroom with his ban all guns and strip religions, you know, the iconoclasts and the fucking churches. Something interesting about the polling for this race is there's been a lot of undecideds,

like a lot. And there were about polls where Cornyn is at only at 42%, but Hagar is at 38%. And everyone else is undecided. That's very intriguing. It's a little tasty. But of course that's not good for an incumbent. No, well, that's the problem to see the problem with the Texas Democrats for a long time has been recruitment.

They have had the dog shit time finding anybody even like remotely viable as an opponent to these in these statewide races where everybody knows they're going to lose and they don't want to get the stake of loser on them. So they run these dogs over and over again and it just lowers the stock of the party even further and depletes the bench. And now this guy, I don't even know who this guy, Sammy Hagar, if it's Sammy Hagar, I think that just the institutional inertia of the Democratic Party's shit branded Texas. There is something that we, well, there is something we haven't, we haven't really discussed

here and this applies for all of these races. Democrats, Senate Democrats have been raising a shitload of money. That's true. There's a lot of like, we're talking the kind of money you raise for some of these candidates you raised to run for president. Yeah. But like the, like, do we really know the efficacy of that? Do we really know if it buys anything anymore?

Well, I mean, you know, what it really is about is parity. If you are raising way more than your opponent, that means you have way more strategic options. Like that's worth something. That's true. If you and your opponent have both raised $40 million and you're just throwing money at each other and throwing ads at each other, I think the net effect is zero unless one of you is like running a particularly bad race. Okay.

But the question then is where is that allocation? Because it can't just be media because there has to be a point of diminishing returns. There is. There is. But you have someone like Sammy Hagar and nobody knows who the fuck this is. So you just need the money period to introduce yourself. Okay. So is Sammy Hagar being introduced to the Texas people?

I don't know. I don't live there. If Sammy Hagar is rising, is able to use this moment to raise the profile so that it's not just some fucking schmuck like everybody else who runs for state-wide office on the Democratic ticket in that state, then I think he might win. But I'd say that this is maybe the last gasp of the Texas Republican hegemony in the state is that fucking fringe-wearing dingus, John Cornyn, getting one more turn. I guess the counterpoint on that would be Beto O'Rourke managing to become a nationwide

phenomenon running against one of the most widely-loved figures in the Senate and still not being able to pull it off. That'd be funny. Maybe it would happen. I don't know. So if Hagar the Horrible hasn't managed to do that in this race, I would go with Matt's prediction as well. I'm going to go with Matt's prediction.

I think Cornyn keeps his seat. Mississippi, a state not unlike Alabama for certain reasons. Cindy Hyde-Smith running against Mike Espy. I don't think we're there yet. I guess it's one of those things where I don't think you're going to think you're there until it happens and then it's going to be a shock. Maybe this is the year. Maybe, holy shit, Doug Jones wins.

Holy shit, Mike Espy wins. But I don't think it's going to happen yet. With Espy, I mean, it's interesting, he has raised a lot of money, and he's desperately trying to make this case to people that you should give me more money because it's winnable because last time I ran for a statewide office, I got like 44% of the vote. But what people don't realize is that's what Democrats get in Mississippi and they can't get any more than that because it's a very inflexible state. It's a state within a black population of like 37%, something like that.

So that combines with white lives, of which there's not a ton in Mississippi. And all the white people vote for Republican. That's your ceiling, and everyone else is like voting Republican, exactly. So the actual number, like that number might look really good if you're Sammy Hagar or something, but Mike Espy, that's hard to report. It's a hard ceiling. Another tough one, Kentucky. That's Mitch McConnell.

Cocaine Mitch. Cocaine Mitch. Moving that. Yeah, yo. Versus Amy McGrath. What's Beth McGrath? We've talked about this race a bit, and right after RBG died and Mitch McConnell said, we're filling that fucking seat, a lot of people were saying, give money to Amy McGrath.

Oh God, it was brutal. She made so much money. She's raised what? Over $40 million. Like, she'll get gobs and gobs of money. Just so much money for her to like create a virtual reality simulator of her bombing a rock or whatever the fuck she did. And she is polling horribly.

Yeah. She's not eating dog shit. It feels like every, it feels like every six years. Yeah. This race is fool's gold for Democrats and they think, ooh, everyone's so pissed at Mitch McConnell. And last time around, it was everyone so pissed at his obstructionism. Of course they're going to vote against him.

Yeah. No, he, they love having Mitch McConnell there. Democrats love having. Yeah. He gives him Coke. He gives him cocaine. He is, he is, he does things that so that give, give them an excuse to throw their hands up and not pursue anything that their base might want them to do, which is very crucial.

And he provides this, this evil figure who can just be blamed for everything. Then that absolves you of any responsibility for how terrible everything is. It's really, really inconvenient. And so they definitely have an incentive to sabotage anyone who would run against him. And even if they didn't, they definitely have an incentive to make sure that anybody who wins in a state like Kentucky is a Joe Manchin style reactionary because the more of those in the Senate you have, the more excuses you have for not passing any meaningful legislation.

Oh, it's not about me. It's about getting McGrath and getting, or getting Max Baucus or fucking Joe Manchin or whatever the fuck. It's very crucial that you don't have that. But I have to say as annoying and awful as it was to watch them put their finger on the scale from a graph against Charlie Booker, who ran a great campaign and had a late surge and might have won if it wasn't for people who voted early and mail it in. I still don't think he would be winning.

I think it's an uphill climb. But I suffice it to say that the tens of millions of dollars given to Amy McGrath have just been wasted. Oh, total. The discussion down the toilet. I don't even. I mean, what? I mean, honestly, all of this started because she ran for the house last time around and

she didn't add where she talked about being a fighter pilot or whatever the fuck. And like that's just catnip to the kind of people who give to Democrats. Oh, yeah. Yes, because they imagine all red state. What it is is it's coastal libs who have this vision of the middle of the country as a savage wasteland of tribal aggression, bestial savagery, sadism and racism, misogyny and every every no growth you can imagine. I'll concentrate it and ritually, ritually performed daily by people who are barely human

beings. They're fucking savage and so if somebody comes in and says, I can tame these beasts, they are essentially worship, but it's always a chimera. It's always just a way to get these groups. It's like, oh, what do what do these monsters want? They want a troop. So we just get if we give them a troop, but she's like kind of woke and girl bossy, like that's the I that's that's the perfect synthesis.

Like that's how we're going to win. That's how they landed on places. That's how they landed on John fucking carry in 2004. But I'm with you on that, uh, six more years of Moscow match, six more years of partying. Oh yeah. Well, I don't honestly, if you saw the picture of his hands, we might not have him for six more years. He is looking necrotic.

Someone said that what they think, someone said they knew it like a nurse and they said that it looked like, uh, he was on blood thinners because I've heard rumor that he has a, he asked to have heart surgery, but he's postponing it until after the fucking session and he could get Coney, Brian in there dedicated absolute legend. So yeah, he might dice it in, you know, oh, that'd be terrible if it happened. Oh my God. So sad. Uh, moving on, we got Kansas and this is a, this is an interesting race.

The last poll to come out of it, uh, it has a dead tie in 43 to 43. And we know Kansas, we know there's something to matter with it. Oh yeah. And, uh, what happened in this race was there was a primary with Chris Coback and Democrats spent money trying to get Chris Coback to be the nominee because he lost the governor's race last time around in Kansas. He's, he's, he's a co-bongler. People don't like him.

He is unlikable in every respect. And I got to say that like, unlike when the Democrats bunglingly tried to get Trump on the ticket to beat him, thinking he'd be the easiest to beat, I think they were right. And if they had Coback on the ticket that they would be cruising right now, but sadly, I think they're probably going to lose because he was uniquely reviled by even the rock ribbed Republicans of Kansas. So they picked some guy, some Congressman Roger Marshall, but he's, but the polling is close.

It's a tight race. Why is that? I mean, you know, you're seeing, I think it's a suburban shift. There's a lot of voters in Kansas are, are from the suburbs of Kansas city, uh, Johnson County, I believe, uh, that's like a concentration of, of the voters that would potentially swing towards Democrats. Uh, you have the disillusionment of the catastrophic Sam Brown governorship where they had to fucking dig up a paved roads because they weren't paying to, uh, but do them anymore because

of his, uh, Wahabist anti-tax sentiment. Uh, but I guess with guys with states like Kansas, when I'm doing my predictions, I'll believe it when I see it and I'll, I'll take the surprise, but I'll just, I tend to just bet on the Republican 43, 43, Seattle poll, 46 for Roger Marshall, 42 for Barbara Bollier. Those are not good numbers for a Republican in Kansas. Yeah. He's not an incumbent. I'm going to go, uh, Republican miss a partial wins.

I'm going to say he wins by a hair. Yeah. Uh, next up, here's a weird one. Alaska. Oh yeah. I'm, I'm interestingly close. Have you guys been tracking all the drama in Alaska drama? Alaska has been dramatic AF lately, uh, with the mayor, mayor of Anchorage and his, uh,

girlfriend who the news anchor, the Q and not news anchor was so bad at sex that she became anti-Semitic. Yeah. You want to talk about, uh, case of two politicians with sex scandals compared to Cal Cunningham texts with the entirety of the Anchorage mayor store. Yeah, that Anchorage mayor is living his best life. He is living Moss. Uh, so that's Dan Sullivan versus Al Gross, who's an independent, but he was endorsed

by the Democrats. There's also a third party. Ah, that's so funny because Alaska is also a third part as it has a weird third party movement called the Alaska independence movement. Yeah. Go for that. That'll be great. Actually, they probably should.

What? I mean, Alaska is obviously a very weird state. Very weird. Not a lot of people there. You know, they actually can vote there, like these like tiny fucking villages that are not connected by like most of the, most of the state is not connected to the rest of the state by run. Yeah.

They have to fly. They do. They, you drop off your, uh, your ballots when the Iditarod swings through. Yeah. You tie your, you tie your ballot to Balto who brings it, who brings it to the Capitol. Yeah. Yeah. However they do it, uh, Alaska is a state once again, where I will say, I believe when

I see it there, I remember Murkowski was in trouble and she was able to fend it off. I think that Sullivan week, I mean, Murkowski is a different person. It's definitely, that's true. She is an institution. The most recent polls, uh, the most, the most recent two polls of this race have Sullivan up by just three again under the 50, again under the 50% mark. Yeah. But it's Alaska.

I think he's going to win. That's your rationale. Yeah. But it's Alaska. Yep. You got to surprise me first. My heart broke. Uh-huh.

I mean, I don't want my heart broken by Alaska either. Um, one poll from October 10th had grossed by one. I mean, I don't know because again, I just don't know how they vote there. Honestly, either. It doesn't make sense to me. Yeah. But also, also what if there's a blizzard? That's a very good question.

That would screw, if it starts snowing, that would screw everything up. Or what if when the sun goes down for the 30 days of night, a troop of Dracula show up and start biting everyone's throats, feasting on their blood? I love how when you, uh, when you have these other like states that are closer, like the normal states that are swing states, and, uh, we talk about turnout and you guys like Kornaki or like, uh, you know, while it might rain in this part of the state, there might be a drizzle and that's definitely going to shift the election. And in Alaska, it's like, well, okay, so there's an earthquake happening on election

day. Uh, it's nighttime until July and, uh, we're under 15 feet of snow. The bear population is in orbit and inordinately high this time of year and around gnome. I don't know how the earthquakes are going to affect this race. I don't know if that's good for the independent, if that's good for the Republican bears are doing voter fraud. They're coming in with hats on pretending to be dead voters who they ate. This is a tough one for me because I really want to say Al gross will win.

Let's do it. I live your best life. I kind of don't think so. I mean, I don't know though, 44% for Dan Sullivan as an, that's a terrible number for an incumbent two weeks before election day. Fuck it. I'm going to say Al gross wins. All right.

Do it. Leave your heart and Barrow, Virgil. Do I have it? Barrow? Yeah. Yeah. I got some guys in there. Yeah.

I'll hook you up. As soon as the pandemic's over, first, our show back, Barrow, Alaska, no, we're not waiting for the pandemic to be over. We're going to go to Barrow. We're going to go to this isolated place in the Arctic Circle and we are going to give everyone COVID. I want to buy a $20 a gallon of milk. We'll bring milk.

Obviously. Next up, Montana, Steve Danes versus another presidential candidate, Steve Bullock. Oh, this was a huge recruiting get for Chuck Schumer. No, no, that was, that was, that, that's one of those ones where he's one of the only guys who ran idiotically for president who should have run for Senate and actually did it. Like Hickenlooper shouldn't have. He should have stayed home.

Asshole. That's all. And that's all anyone would ask Steve Bullock on the campaign trail. Hey, why aren't you running for the Senate? They nagged him into doing it. And I think it'll work. I think he's going to win. They love electing senators and governors and Democrat and Montana, and they love never

voting for a Democratic for president. They love it. I don't know. It's tough. Last few polls, Danes, 49%, Bullock, 46%. And from something called strategies, 360, which sounds like, sounds like a cafe Felix would open Steve Danes at 48% Steve Bullock at 47%. I think it's, it's just a close race and maybe a coin flip.

Bullock is currently the governor. So you've got a classic governor versus senator showdown. Yeah. Who do you like more? I like the governor. People love governors, especially in Montana. I think if people like governors way more than they like senators because they hate Washington Clinton.

So I'd say that the good vibes translate from, from the plush rolling hills of Montana over the, the, the corrupt swamp of DC. You're going with Bullock? I'm going Bullock. I'm going to go with Danes because I know Trump is, I believe Trump is going to win Montana. Oh yeah. And I do think that, and I don't think that Bullock on his strength of being governor

is going to get enough crossover votes. I think honestly, Trump is going to bail out Danes. That's a good point. It might happen. I'm still going with vibes. Going with my gut. Going with vibes. Now here's one that's really close, Iowa, Jody Ernst versus Teresa Greenfield.

And you know, honestly, you want to talk about what's the matter with the state? What's the matter with Iowa? I remember in, you know, 2008, like that was, that's a state where Democrats used to do well. Oh yeah. Yeah. Obama wanted twice handling. But then, I don't know, the wheels came off the bus, Trump won it by a huge margin.

Yeah. 2018, they, you know, the Democrats clawed back some house seats, sure. And this time around is honestly the real test. Again, polling is very tight here, but Greenfield has the edge. Yeah. I would say that given the polling, given the fact that Iowa has the twin crises of the fucking tornado or the super tornado that went through it and the inadequate federal response to that, and also the fact that push Trump's agricultural policies and trade war

with China have, have devastated a lot of the Iowa corn industry. Corn is in incredibly cheap right now and people are pissed. And those things combined with polling, I think that's why I think Trump's going to lose Iowa. That's why I think that the hog gutter or the hog cast rate or Jody Ernst will be going down. That's why I'm going to say Democrat as well. Moving on, this is a twofer, Georgia, there are two races.

Here's what you need to know. There are two races on the ballot. One is the regular Senate race and the other is a special election. And they are operated differently. The one thing they have in common is if no candidate gets 50% of the vote, then it goes to a runoff. Well, I believe Louisiana, Mississippi also do that, right? Louisiana also does.

I'm not certain about Mississippi. All right. I know Louisiana does. Well, Louisiana does a proper jungle primary. The special election in Georgia is run like a Louisiana jungle primary where all of the candidates are on the ballot, Republican and Democrat alike. There's no like primary for that. And the top two move on.

So we'll talk about it one at a time. David Perdue versus, oh, this guy is back, wonderful, John Ossoff. John Jack Meossoff. Remember the ad that he did that was tweeting? Yep. I'm not going to tweet. I'm not going to tweet. No, that wasn't it.

No, it was him tweeting about like doing tech jobs. And there was no dialogue. There was no dialogue in the ad. It was just him, it was just him posting. It was to show that, hey, he's a young guy who understands computers. And the people voting in that special election were like, I don't care about computers. What the fuck are you talking about? He famously lost that big special election.

But now he's back to run for the fucking Senate. And it's a tight race. It is a, I mean, this is a state that Democrats are targeting because it's, you know, Biden could win it. There are two Senate races and winning both. I mean, usually when you have a situation where there's two Senate races, unless there's like a huge reason otherwise, they tend to go in the same direction, right? Yeah.

So if they, like, if they can actually pull off a blue wave in Georgia, they could run the table here and they could increase their Senate margin by two. That's true. I guess I don't really, I still don't get it because it's head-to-head, Ossoff versus Purdue, but Lofgren is running against a field and so like it's Ossoff, he has to get 50, right? He has to get 50, which he probably, neither of them will probably get to 50. So they both have to go-

Because there's a libertarian. Okay. But the thing is, is that if they didn't, all right, so it'd essentially be a rematch between the two of them with the libertarian gone, whereas this one with Lofgren, it's going to be a, it's going to reduce the significant field, a field that's divided the vote into like chunks because there's another Republican running, right? Yes. There's another.

So here's what's going on with Lofgren, right? Lofgren was, she's a business pervert who was appointed to this Senate seat and, you know, she was in the scandal. Yeah. The only thing she's known for is, besides her insanely patronizing ads like, hey, hillbilly idiots, vote for me is doing insider trading off of fucking COVID. Yeah. What are they?

These are the Genghis, these are ads with Genghis Khan to show. That's an interesting idea that, you know, that's an interesting metaphor to use to show how conservative you are. Like, hey, I'm so conservative. I'm this, this rapacious monster. Hey, you know, the guy you, the chopped a bunch of people's heads off. If they were too tall, that's me. And who they're running against, the Democrat, there are two Democrats in this race, but

the one who seems to have consolidated the most support and will move on is a guy named Raphael Warnock. I'm going to just say that they move, both Democrat moves on obviously in both of them in this race and then presumably both lose, especially because Trump won't be on the ballot for the runoff. Yeah. They will both lose. It's interesting.

I think this race will go to two runoffs and the only, I mean, the only real outcome where it doesn't, I think would be if John Ossoff won outright, but I don't think he's got the votes to do that. You know, this happened in 2008 with a Saxby Chambliss and I forget the other guys. I think the Democrats name, but he was some loser Max, no, not Max Cleland. No, no, he was, um, fuck, he had a really forgettable name, whatever he sucked, he lost. Uh, but that, but that race, even though Obama lost the state, that race did go to a runoff in December and the Republican won by a big margin in the runoff.

Obama famously did not campaign for the Democrats. Oh yes. Because he was still on his bipartisan kick. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He didn't want to remind people that he was a Democrat. So I kind of think without the mobilizer of Donald Trump, you know, if both of these

races go to a runoff, as the special election almost certainly will, and the Ossoff race probably will, uh, then I think the Democrats just lose both. Yep. I mean, unless you can see there being like a hardcore mobilization for both of these races. Biden, like Biden will go, like Biden and Harris go down campaign for this candidate instead of saying, okay, well, it's over. So let's work together now.

I think that's what they're going to do. Uh, yeah. The electorate will have at that point gone back to brunch. Yep. Brunch time. Ow. So final call on Georgia. You think both lost?

Both lost. Sorry. Both Democrats lose. Losers. See, I don't, I don't know is the thing. I really don't know. I mean. Do you think you could win the runoffs?

Well, that's the thing. I think with the, if it goes to the runoff, yes, they're very, very likely to lose. But I mean, I do think it's possible that Ossoff could win outright, especially if, like this is the year that breaks the dam in Georgia. We know 2018 wasn't it, uh, famous Louis space, Stacey Abrams losing. We know there's going to be disenfranchised. Oh, big time. But neither might, I mean, that night, not matter.

I don't know. If we're talking, if we, if we, if you, if you, if you're right and it's double digits, if like it's a 12 point lead, then you got to figure a state like Georgia might bust the seams. Georgia's might bust. There might be fit in the bus. It might be fit in the bus. I'll make this one interesting and say that, oh, well, I don't want to say Ossoff wins

because he sucks. He sucks. But he's doing better. He's polar better. That's the other problem is that Ossoff is a bad candidate. Awful. And he just like oozes. He has the same kind of affect as Pete booted.

No, he's a total proto peat. He's a Pete. He's just that this all hyper ambitious, you know, soul, creep, creep, he's a creep. Um, you know what, I'm going to say Ossoff wins, but the warlock loses. All right. All right. Peter the warlock. Here it is.

The last race. And this is a juicy one. This is one that I've been, you know, I've been interested in for the past few weeks. And we've talked about this in the elections, garage, Lindsey Graham, ooh, yeah, Jamie Harrison. This is the state of South Carolina, which is like you saying that North Carolina is going the way of Virginia. South Carolina kind of is too. Yeah.

Yeah. It's, it's, it's behind. It's behind, but it's, it's, it's going there too. And like, you know, like we've said here, Lindsey Graham has two big problems. One is all the anti, like all the anti Trump people was not a majority. They hate him because he's a toadie for Trump, but all the pro, but some of the conservatives in the state, some of the magazines say they don't trust Lindsey. They remember what he hated Trump.

They remember that. And also before he became a Trump guy, before he became proud of just, you know, rubber stamping Trump's judicial nominees, Lindsey Graham was like, what was he best known for? It's just a war guy. He loves war. It's a fucking defense industry. Loves war and John McCain who Trump people hate. Yeah.

For being friends with John McCain. Yeah. It's like, fuck off. So I mean, he's in hot water. Lindsey Harrison has shattered fundraising records. He's raised. What was it he raised in the last quarter of $65 million? It's pretty crazy.

But what is he using it on? That's the thing. If it's just slathering more ads on, I don't know how that helps. Like, is it effective motor mobilization? Is he getting into communities that are like usually touched like a state like South Carolina? It seems like you, you could hypothetically energize some deeply politically disengaged areas, but it would require a significant outlay and fucking resources to create the infrastructure to do it.

Are they doing that? I don't know. He's, I mean, he's attacking. He's spending a lot of the money attacking Lindsey Graham, which I think is smart because Lindsey Graham is not a human being that you think of very often. He's grotesque and repulsive. If he's your senator, it's like, I mean, I don't know who the fuck that is. I just vote for him because he's Republican or whatever.

And I think Harrison is running just a smart campaign. Harrison is also spending a lot of money boosting the libertarian candidate in that race. That's smart. If you go to a runoff, the thing is, I think Harrison will get to 48% of the vote. And the real question is, is that going to be enough to win? Can he convince enough people who are not going to vote for a Democrat, but who should, who should be a Lindsey Graham voter?

Can he even convince, but they don't like him. Are they going to convince enough of them to vote libertarian and thereby reduce the bar that Harrison would need to win? And I honestly think the answer is yes. I'm going to say that Jamie Harrison wins South Carolina. I agree for all the reasons stated and the additional one that it would be hilarious. It would be hilarious if the one, if one guy who gets owned out of this thing is fucking Lindsey Graham.

Oh, we all want it to happen. The most craven little shit just skittering across the fucking kitchen floor after you turn the light on like the bug that he is getting squashed by the people of South Carolina hit in his butt with a palmetto frond and I say, yes, let's do it. Hey, Mr. Harrison defeats Lindsey Graham. Let's do it and be legend. Let's do it and be legends mates. Well, those are your Senate races.

Those are your, those are your predictions. What does that come out to on the margins? Because as we were going through that, that's, that's, yeah, I mean, we're talking a significant Democratic majority here in the house. If we, if like, we go through this, like, what are we talking about? Well, we, we obviously have different. We had different predictions, but I'm, you know, I'm going to stick with what I said a month ago, which is I think Democrats have a three vote majority in the Senate.

How many three vote? I think they have 53 to 47. Three votes. Yeah. I mean, it could be more. I mean, if it really is a blue wave, again, like these races we've been talking about with the exception of the Kentucky race, they are close. Yeah.

Like these are all vulnerable Republicans. I think it's going to be five. Really? Yeah. Really? So you're more bullish on the Democrat majority now. Yeah. I'll say five votes.

So what, 55, wait, five vote majority or you mean 55? Five vote majority. Oh, so then we're saying the same thing because I said, I'm thinking 53 to 47. What? Oh, sorry. No, when I said three votes, I meant three votes over a majority. Oh, that's what I meant. See, that's why I was confused.

Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. So I was, so I'm saying six vote majority. That's my fault.

So I was, I'm saying, we agree then, we agree, six. So we're both saying 53, 47. Yes. 53, 47. Yes. I'm dad at math. I forgot about the symmetry of it. Well, that's just thinking of the one side of the thing.

I forgot that this one goes up. The other one goes down because I'm an idiot. Okay. I'm dumb. I get, I'm stupid. All right. Well, yes, I will go sign that six, six votes, three vote majority. It's nice for us to end on an agreement.

Yes. And that's what the Beltway garage is about. We have our arguments. We have our fights. We do our ad hominems as all politicos do, as all panelists do. But at the end of the day, we'll come together and agree that the Democrats will have 53 seats in the Senate unless we've been dead wrong about everything. We can be completely wrong, perhaps and Trump just wins and Trump wins again.

Would Trump wins in a landslide? Well, the wins with the Bill Mitchell map. Well, maybe that's a funny thing to wrap up on is kind of just we're, we're in the wonk zone right now and forget, forget the auto zone, the wonk zone. I just been rolling. I've just been entertained by everyone in the Wonko sphere online, just getting like quadruple negative by their confidence in any form of prediction right now. It's like no one is so everyone is completely snake bit like we've we've know we fix the

polls. Trust them. Well, we can't trust the polls now. So I don't trust the polls. Well, not, we're now, we're not trusting the polls too much and it's back and it's over is fucking Gene Hackman in the conversation just stripping the baseballs. Well, okay. The way to think of it is, is that there's a 50 50 chance that the polls are favoring

Trump or that the polls are are off. There's a 50% chance that that is for Trump's benefit. So that means if you combine those two 50% chances, then he has a one in an eight chance, which means is that likely? Could that happen? Yes. Is it likely? I don't know.

It isn't. But could it happen? Yes. Everyone has lost any ability to fucking to to make any unhedged statement. They have dissolved polling polling. How can you take it seriously at this point? These people are jibbering mad men. They have equivocated themselves into incoherence.

It's it's it's utter drivel. I saw that post and I had to go back to bed. I mean, I understand what he's saying and all of it is meaningless. Well, what are you saying? I mean, he's doing a sleight of hand is what he's doing. Like for the first proposition, you know, there's 50% chance the polls are biased for Trump and the 50% chance if there's a polling error, there's a 50% chance it could be in by his favor.

50% chance it could be in Trump's favor. Yes, that's true, but that doesn't mean that's a 50% chance there's a polling error to begin with. Yeah. And then the rest of it just went to shit. So what do you say, Virgil, are the polls cocked or should we learn to shut up and learn to look at the polls? I don't think they're cocked.

I mean, I do think that they could be off, but the most likely way they would be off is they don't anticipate the turnout for by honestly, yes, I mean, that is the only reasonable way. I don't think it's going to be. I mean, some people are whispering that there might be a sort of Bradley effect where Trump voters are, you know, they're afraid to say that vote for Trump. I don't think so. I think people who vote for Trump are very happy to do so.

They're very proud of it. They're certainly happy to tell a stranger on the phone, like these, this is the generation of like, fuck your feelings, people, like they like it. Confrontation is part of the brand. It's what they enjoy about it. Yeah. And they supposedly like respectable Trump voters who are afraid to say that to tell a poster or their neighbors that they support Trump, this, this, this silent majority.

I mean, those people don't, the Trump is not offering those people anything is the thing. If things were going well in the country, if the economy was coming along, and if the economy was coming along and there wasn't, you know, we weren't surrounded by death, then, then I could see it, then I could see a silent majority. But right now, but right now, unless you're like, unless you only care about triggering the libs, in which case you would tell a poll, sir, yeah, fuck you, I vote for Trump. Yes. Yes.

Exactly. The people who you are in your mind imagining would tell a poll, sir, I'm not voting for Trump because of their propriety, but their appreciation of conservative economic principles who exist and who voted for Trump. These were the people that Clinton pitched to and failed to get. They did not vote for Clinton and they, they probably did lie honestly to about it in the polls. And that could explain some of the weird fluctuations and the persistent bias for Clinton in the

polls that these guys wouldn't do it. But those people, all the data we have in terms of the intervening elections for Congress and in States indicates that those people are overwhelmingly voting Democrat now, which means if they're saying they're voting for Biden, we have evidence to suspect that it's because they intend to do so. That they have been turned off because as Virgil said, the reason they voted for him was a good stock market and they would have voted for him if the stock market had kept going up.

But then it went down because of coronavirus, which he obviously botched and they're not committed enough to him to believe his fairytale about what happened because they haven't stuck the fucking knitting needle in their brain in order to be worshipful of Trump because they're not desperate. They got the mojo. They got the cash and they went to college and they know enough to know that this is not going well and that Biden isn't really going to change that much. Especially right now with the virus is peaking again, again, and there's just not enough

people who buy this whole explanation that, oh, you know, the virus is bullshit and we've got to open things up and all that, no, people, it's happening, people are seeing this shit. It's very loud minority and it gets a lot of attention and they do things like claim to have the FBI tell them to kidnap the governor, but it's still a distinct minority position. The kamikaze open at all costs position is a minority one and that is going to hurt Trump because at this point, that's the only thing that makes sense as a non like cult reason to vote for Trump is what he's doing with COVID and it's pretty clearly bad and people will see that.

You also have to keep in mind that people are, the polls are much better for Biden than they were ever for him. That's the big thing is that even if it's as bad as, even as there is a bias as bad as there was for Trump, Trump still doesn't win with these numbers. He's getting creamed. I think that the most reasonable interpretation of the data, the most logical interpretation is the right one and I think everything else is just a psych out or paranoia or often just class resentments.

The thing that hits me over and over again is I think the position, the idea that Trump is going to win hinges on the idea that Trump has some sort of instinctive mystic reach to melding to the American psyche that transcends politics and that he has used it to win and he has been using it to maintain power and that it will manifest itself in a surprise victory. And in my mind, there is no way that you can make that theory of Trump compatible with spending the last week of the two weeks, the campaign talking about Sergei Organoff and Tony Bologna and fucking Hunter Biden and arresting Obama for the steel dossier and

nasty Nellie Orr. That is cargo cult. I want to repeat the Hillary Clinton campaign shit. There is no instinct there. There's no, there's no sense for the jugular. There's no political savvy or communion with the fucking world spirit. There is just a brain who like got lucky, something that he was trying randomly worked because of underlying conditions he had nothing to do with and now face with the same conditions.

Different conditions. He's trying the same thing and he's not going to get the same results. I'd like to add to that, which is I think the most accurate summation of where the race stands came from a Marianne Williamson tweet that I saw maybe early in October. Virgil, maybe you remember this one, but I was trying to look it up, but I can't find it. It said a few things at the beginning, but the concluding thing of it is that's it. That's simply it.

The vibe is off. I was trying to find it, but that is the thing is that I think that the American people sense the vibe is off. The vibe is off. The vibe is off. The vibe is off. The vibe is off. The vibe is off.

The vibe is off. The vibe is off. The vibe is off. The vibe is off. The vibe is off, America. I also think, I think there's, I'm mad, I just really quickly, I just, you know, I want to echo what you said. I want to say there's just two other things working here.

One is, of course, it's the same thing that happens every four years. Of course, the media wants to make it race and wants it to look close and two, nobody wants to sound too confident this day. Yeah, no one wants to get on. And I do think people are just making an overcorrection this time. Absolutely. Because the holding was so overwhelming. Because if you just look at, if you just look at the numbers, then yes, Trump is, Trump is going to lose. Yeah. If you, if, if, honestly, I think if you were to, like in college or something, if you were to just schematicize what the information is right now, just write it down and show it to someone without using the words Biden or Trump or 2020, every single

person would say, well, it looks like yes, this candidate candidate Democrat is going to win. I agree completely. Yeah. If you screened it out from like all the associations of the names, the data is pretty clear. And so I say you got the data, but then if you step towards the more subjective, you got the vibes. And I say data plus vibes equals a Biden cakewalk. Well, gentlemen, we all think the vibes are off, but if the vibes are indeed on for Trump, I say that we commit right now that we all touch the poop. Oh yeah, I would touch boo with Trump wins 100%. So there you have it. Those are. Virgil will not commit to touching the poop. Virgil, you got to say he'll touch the poop. If Trump wins. Yeah, you got to

say he'll touch the poop. This is the hair shirt. All right. All right. I'll touch the poop, but not if he steals it, not if it's a stealing thing. Okay. If it's, if they, if they don't stop counting votes, let's say that is because as soon as they stop counting votes, that's a theft. I don't care. Yeah. Like, I've told you, like they stop counting the votes. They start throwing out votes like that kind of shit. Like no, no, no, no, no, it goes to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Cabinet. It's like, no, no, Trump's president. Yeah. No, no, no, I will not be touching poop. No, I agree. No, no, me either. No. But if he wins, if he wins outright and all the, and even if you mutter about voter disenfranchisement,

it's about as bad as it was in 2016, which was bad, but it did not make people feel like they had witnessed a theft in general. Then yes, touching that poop. Yeah. Great. Okay. Well, that does it for our final Beltway garage before the election. Yep. And can we say now that on Tuesday, we're going to have live election night coverage on twitch.tv slash chapeau trap house. Yes, we will. Let us say that now. Oh, and I also wanted to say we will live, live coverage, Collins, guests, it will be good. Right now we're thinking of starting around seven p.m. election night. Yep. And going to a question mark to seven p.m. to a question mark, like a great party. Yep. I also want to say just,

I think we can say this and maybe we can cut it if we seems inappropriate that it will announce this morning that yesterday his father passed away and I just wanted to on the show, wish from the entire chapeau family and also to all his friends, sincere, very sincere thoughts and prayers to the whole Meneker family. Yes. Daniel Meneker is of course part of the chapeau universe and even more than just being Will's dad. So I just wanted to put it in on the show that we're all, our hearts are out for Will right now and wishing best for him. Absolutely. Yeah. His dad is wonderful. Met him a few times. He was on the show. Yes. Just a delight. Delightful dude. And I know he was very proud of Will

as we all are. As we all are. Yeah. Well, with that, go vote unless, you know, you've got shit to do. Yeah, whatever. Whatever. It's not my problem. Yeah. All right. All right. Until next time. Good politics.