Chapo Trap House - 620 - Beltway Phoenix at the Midterms of Madness feat. Dave Weigel (4/18/22)

Episode Date: April 19, 2022

We just noticed it happens to be a midterms year, so your favorite presidential podcasting duo of Chris and Matt have teamed back up to relaunch our beltway insider series. We’re joined by campaign reporter extraordinaire Dave Weigel to break down the key races to watch, track the trends to follow, and generally put drills to our temples as we attempt to once again engage in American Electoral Politics. If you want to catch us a Pickathon near Portland, OR in August, tickets here: https://pickathon.com/

Welcome, listeners, to the triumphant rebirth of our celebrated Beltway Insider series. I'm Chris Wade, aka Lil' Smoot Holly, here with Matt Crisman, aka Taft Hartley, aka The Big Magician. What's up, Matt? Hey, happy to be back, very excited. And just as we're getting started here, because there's been some controversy on the subject that's never been officially addressed on the show, I would just like to say regarding one of the previous hosts of this ongoing series.

He was, unfortunately, eaten by an alligator in the Louisiana Bayou while on assignment reporting a now-canceled 12-part investigative podcast mini-series called Tough Is Clay, the Clay Higgins story. Oh, I repeat, to everyone, more than me. But it is a midterms year, so after Matt and I's, I'll just call it magisterial recounting of the entirety of U.S. presidential history last year, we figured we'd team up again to give a deep dive update into the current state of electoral politics here in America. This is the rebirth.

The Beltway Phoenix. Hop on and fly away with us, destination, the midterms of madness. Beltway Phoenix, rising from the earth, Beltway Phoenix, noted for his girth, Beltway Phoenix, go in election mode, Beltway Phoenix, find out what the future holds, Beltway Phoenix. Of course, here on this program, we believe two things about electoral politics. First, that it's nothing but a cheap bobble offered by the bourgeois ruling class to distract the proletariat from the urgent need for a revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist yoke.

And two, polls, baby. Love me some polls. Love me data. Love me quantifiable voter demographic information. Simple as. But before we get into that, we have with us an expert in the field of voter psychology, voter physiognomy, voter phrenology, not a mere journalist, a simple slinger of articles, but a goddamn reporter.

So put some respect on his name. It's friend of the show, Dave Weigel. What's up, Dave? Hey, hey. I'm Mr. Midterm. I walk around with a medallion that says 36% voter turnout on it, solid gold. So I'm ready to do this. I know way too much about midterms.

It's been a minute since you've been on the show, Dave. And I do just want to say that I was incredibly impressed that you never for a minute stopped recording reporting all through COVID on the ground through the 2020 election and now deep into midterm season. So this does raise the question. How many times have you had COVID now? I've had COVID no time, which is still incredible. Okay.

So that means that it's either not real or for some reason the deep state gave you maybe without your knowledge, the actual cure. Yeah. I don't like when stuff like that happens because there's a lot of conspiracy theories about big media outlets owned by wealthy people, and if word got out about the booster shots that we and only we get, it probably wouldn't be cool. But I have no idea. I really think I'm, in addition to whatever else I do, really simple minded about health

and medicine. And my theory is if I just take zinc and vitamin C when I feel bad, I'll be okay. I don't know when I learned this, just like a witch taught it to me when I was a teenager. That's all I do. And I have not been sick yet. And I have shaken so many hands. Remember that week when people were thinking, oh, never shake hands again? So many hands.

So many hands is mingling with mine, sweat on sweat, flesh on flesh, I've been fine. And don't read this as like a medical statement on anything, but yes, I've been going places and like, this is, we'll get into this. Like the idea that there, the people who are saying, how are you still allowed to go out when there's a pandemic going on? Not many of those people right now, once you get off Twitter, everyone's doing things. Yeah. Okay.

You hear that people throw away your horse paste, pick up your zinc. That's how you do it. I'm just imagining, you know, your editors, you know, giving one of those automated needle injections to the neck as they push you out for the halo jump into a diner and suburban Topeka. There was a whole period. Oh, sorry, there's a whole period where the only way you could get into the office was to get PPE if you were going on a trip.

So I remember going and picking up some masks and some sanitizer on the way to Tulsa, where Trump had that rally that like half, half. That killed Herman Cain. That's right. I guess I was there for that. But yeah, people have mellowed and still I would say Republicans are 100% back to normal, have been forever. Democrats still I'll call and say, hey, I'm going to come out.

What should I see? And they'll say, well, we're doing a Zoom meeting. We're doing a Zoom debate and I don't judge them, but Republicans are having more fun. I'm comfortable saying that. Publics are back doing things. Democrats still feel weird about doing that. Well, that is the basic pitch of the Republican Party now. Go wild.

Have fun. On those lines, I mentioned earlier that we were all about polls here on the Beltway Phoenix and we will get into that. But what I wanted to get from you, Dave, right up top and we're already into it a little bit is the vibe. What is the vibe of the American voter right now? And to start off, I want to quote a tweet or an image from MSNBC that I saw pictured on Twitter from at Good Politics Guy, an MSNBC screenshot saying in all caps, midterms

issues for Democrats were, quote, censoring conservative voices on social media, quote, college campuses becoming liberal echo chambers, quote, the push to be politically correct, and quote, canceling historical figures are these the kitchen table issues on the road right now. Not all of that, really. This is one thing you get from going around the country is that you meet people who are obsessed with stuff that maybe doesn't affect their material concerns like obviously all the time.

But that goes both ways. You know, very wealthy people whose kids are going to private school who love Ibram Kendi and there's very wealthy hot tub salesmen who are terrified of something being canceled that hasn't canceled. That happens. But it has all been about one, stuff costs more, two, the president's pretty old. I'm not sure, speaking the voice of the American voter, I'm not sure this old guy can handle it.

It's basically like a theme of the election when I boiled down what I find, which is after, until you make the whole thing about Afghanistan, after Afghanistan, people looked at Biden and whether or not they agreed with what happened, the decision to get out most people agree with that. They thought, hmm, I'm not sure if this guy is on the ball in a crisis. And that has just kind of run through everything. I don't understand the living skeleton man who is trapped in a prison of nostalgia and 50 year old memories who can't seem to indicate any awareness of his surroundings at any given

moment. He doesn't inspire confidence. Who is increasingly taken to shaking hands with ghosts after speeches. Oh, I saw that video. I think he was doing the, the, the, the politician thing where you go like, oh, you're putting your hands out. But he does. They don't, there's no one in the White House who says, uh, let's say I'm a big guy.

I, if somebody's giving me a speech, I'd say, hey, don't have me wear a white body suit because I wouldn't look as good as I might look in like a, you know, good clean cut. If no one in the White House is like, uh, hey, there are a lot of memes out there about the president being old and out of it. We should minimize the, the times when he looks old and out of it. That doesn't really happen. Cause some of this is unfair, but they also just kind of let him roll. And I don't think letting him roll is the way, is the way to go with his, I mean, he's

still like the whole dementia thing. I don't, I've met people to mention how he's one of them. I think he's an old guy, which is, which is a legit thing. We know lots of them. They, they, they, they're not all that they used to be. Like that, that shouldn't be that controversial of a take. Certainly it isn't here. What's so wild is how that, his energy and his presence is matched by at least according

to what you read in the papers from people who get, uh, inside sources matched by, uh, his administration, the lack of urgency, right? Like that's what people around the, the party, like in the, in the legislature and stuff keeps saying, right? It's like they're yelling at these people at the White House about what's going on and how things are being perceived. And they're just not doing anything, which is the very opposite of the O'Bungalow era where they were like, federal fast twitch muscles going crazy.

Like every news cycle, they were there with something and they were just tacking to public opinion frantically all through those eight years. Whereas they seem to just have, uh, I don't know, like that wiki, how, uh, drawing accept, accept your death or you're looking out at, you're looking at the plant seems like that's everyone in the White House and Democrats running for Congress. Like the, you get talking to them and you can tell, you can always tell when somebody's saying something because they'd rather say something else, but they can't. Uh, and that's, that's why I mentioned, mentioned Biden, but also when they talk about their

agenda, not passing, they just can't keep saying it would be much easier if Joe mentioned, let us pass this bill so we can go back and say, remember that stuff we did, we did it and they haven't. So, uh, my, my, I'm a very, very minimalist, but I come to the midterms. I don't think it's bending that much based on one piece of news or another. I think you even see news cycles, right? That are one poll shows Biden up a little is this going to help them. There's a Supreme Court nominees is going to help them.

I know it's just that they ran on a lot of stuff and I think their base, democratic base, the coalition they built, which is very weird coalition notices more if something doesn't happen. And I'm not trying to be demeaning to conservatives, but the conservatives when they're in power demand a lot of stuff that pretty, pretty easy to do like, Hey, I put a commission together and we're going to teach John and Tremaine in school again, instead of instead of how to be anti-racist, like that didn't take, that was just Trump signed something with a pen.

They're like, that's amazing. Whereas Democrats are like, Hey, we were getting a great tax credit. Where is it? Democrats are like, you know, you should be worried about January six. And I feel like that doesn't work. Just their, their, their voters need, need when they're in power to have resources redistributed to them. That's why they voted for them.

And when that doesn't happen, you know, things get crazy. Although it keeps happening, doesn't it? This is the third time in a row this has happened. So on the Democratic voters side, I mean, we're seeing a lot in the last few weeks about the, the just horrible portends of the collapsing Biden approval rating, even among, you know, among potential voters, among like you, likely voters on the Democratic side. Are you hearing a lot of people who, you know, would be traditional Democratic voters who their skepticism, their disappointment, their lack of feeling fulfilled by the Biden administration

affecting that being the number one principle that they're voting on this year. They're actually more engaged than you'd think at when you lay it out like that or even the way I was talking about it. So one thing that happened, I mean, they're, their electorate got more college educated, more PMC, less white working class, a problem for them has always been, oh gosh, our white working class voters, just the ones we have left don't vote in midterms if they're unhappy and, and we don't have anyone else to make up for it. They do now.

They have, well, I mean, the education gap is nuts. Go back and look at polling when Obama's running. There was no education gap. It's like 30 points now. Those voters do vote. So you look at something like Virginia, where the last six, I mean, really the last two months of that campaign or garbage time, where Democrats get to do anything right, and they only lose by two and a half points, and that's a state where they, they lost under Obama

by 20. So, and, and if you look at the map, it's like, well, all right, we're getting destroyed everywhere that has like a sheets, or, you know, there's kind of places everywhere where like the gas, there's a, there's a, where you can get a hoagie at the gas station. Where there's a memorial, there's something that got turned into an Instagram experience that used to employ people, all the things that make up rural America worse than ever, but they still have those suburbs. And if you talk to Republicans, they're like, well, that will mitigate some of these losses.

Like you, we're not going to, you know, maybe we can't flip Portland anymore, you know, Bush could compete in some suburbs that we like, we're so hated because of Trump that we're not going to, and this is Republicans, but we don't need to. So I think that Democrats have more money and more excitement than they did other times when they've been in really bad shape. It's all relative. Like this time 2010, boy, even though the president was more popular, just their voters did not care.

We're not going to show up and we're not giving money. Well then I would like to turn to the flip side, which is the, the vibe among the Republican voters, and I guess along the lines of what you were just saying, you know, I guess the conventional wisdom, especially if you're just, you know, scrolling Twitter is that, you know, the Democrats are going to get creamed in the midterms just based again, as I was saying earlier, and you kind of put some nuance on of the Biden polling numbers. But is this going as well for the GOP as it might seem at first glance? One thing that I saw that I thought was interesting were the results from recent elections in

Wisconsin about school boards, where a lot of these people running on real hardcore GOP school board censorship, anti-LGBT shit, did not quite go as well as they thought. This is from the Wisconsin Examiner in Eau Claire, all three board candidates who ran on anti-LGBT platforms lost to the incumbents and their allies. The three conservative candidates stole controversy about a teacher training program. They claimed excluded parents from conversations about their child's gender identity and sexual orientation. This became a topic on Fox News.

They all lost similar results in, oh God, in Beloit, La Crosse, even I think in Green Bam. So are these issues that the GOP is trying to make a cornerstone, the things that I referenced from that MSNBC tweet earlier, are they playing as well as they could be, or the GOP wants them to? I'm glad you brought up Wisconsin because they have underperformed in some of those places where the trends are going their way. Their big coup in Wisconsin that day was they won the Kenosha Executive, which was Kenosha.

There has been a backlash to the riot there in 2020. They pulled that off, and they won this judicial seat, which it's just drawn to be pretty Republicans. They won that. It was pretty mixed. I'd say probably six months ago, or before Afghanistan, I was more bullish on Democrats having an okay midterm, just because all these things we're just talking about now, they're not really actionable. They're not a thing, no member of Congress, no Democrat member of Congress is coming

home and saying, I'm going to teach your kids, I'm going to put all these explicit books in school because I know it freaks you out. They're not really doing it. So you had conservative activism focused on stuff that the real hardcore ideologues were interested in, and that's still the case, and that's not where most voters are, it's just that voters can be convinced, oh, if something's happening that's so crazy that nothing works anymore, so the school's less good than it used to be, and the dollar is worth less than it used to be.

It needs to be connected to something. There aren't really people turning out and saying, I used to be a Democrat, but I'm so angry that a teacher who's gay had a TikTok saying she was gay. That stuff does feel like people who had incredible success in the anti-CRT thing are trying to get into a side gig and make it about that. I don't think that's clicked quite as much yet, it's just all the other stuff. If that was happening in an environment where the economy was what it was in summer 2019, I don't know if it would be connecting the same way, because everybody as soon as anybody

wins anything, you're like, well, that's what did it. My pet issue is the reason that we won this thing. Virginia's a good example. You go back and look at the data. It wasn't that a bunch of parents were so angry that they switched over. The electorate was just a lot more white and rural than it usually is. Those guys who vote for Trump and nobody else can be convinced to vote for Yonkin. That's the moment.

New cycles change. What we're really scared of the Democrats I cover is thinking, oh, well, we have a better electorate that we used to do that turns out, but they have an even better one. Another one is motivated on stuff we're not doing. They're going home and saying, here's the money I brought back for the bridge and the question that the Fox News viewer is getting is, what are you doing about the petto tunnels under Disney? It's a literal thing people have brought up to me when I've been talking to them.

That's what's so confusing them. Republicans are chasing something that's probably not where most people's heads are at, but they're angry enough about another stuff that they're willing to go along with it. And they say, oh, the lesson of this is we're the schoolbook restricting movement right now. Could you think of a better issue to motivate that PMC person at home who doesn't have that much skin in the game? The idea that the school somewhere is going to ban Tony Morrison?

There's a lot of these issues where Democrats are just trapped in a room with Republicans and they want to win the argument. It's not clear that anyone cares. Anyone who could be persuaded cares. We're like, could you shut up and make it like I have a child tax credit again? Do you have any takes on that, Matt? Well, that raises the interesting question. So the Republicans are, as the losing party for the last election in midterm usually are

more motivated. The economic headwinds, as they like to say, are pushing against the incumbents. But the other big thing that's suggestive of a wipeout is this huge collapse in Biden's approval of young younger people, this possibility of just a massive not switch to Republicans, but rather just a decision to stay home. And the question is, does the fact that the Republicans plan for keeping their base whipped up involve pressing all of the most sensitive culture war buttons that young people do, the young Democrats anyway, are committed to?

Will that be enough to get them to overcome their disappointment and resentment of Brandon and the Democrats and to imagine that there are stakes enough to vote in the midterm? And I don't know. I'm not sure. I don't know. The Republicans do love overplaying their hands. Oh, yeah. And they think that they're winning.

I mean, a lot of the trans politics is it's not that they think we found a great thing on the floor. And it's that they think we can, if we freak people out about everyone becoming low T and transgender, then we're going to get a lot of votes. That's the thought behind it. But you're right. That's not that's not really where everybody's head is at at the moment. I do think that helps a lot of people I'm talking about motivate themselves to turn

out like, ah, well, you know, Biden's not in the ballot, I don't want these these these people to win. I mean, that was the whole McAuliffe campaign at the end was do you really want the people to win? And it failed, but it failed again, less miserably than what they've done in the past. My point towards what, what Felix said a couple episodes ago, they lose the House and Senate if no for for no other reason that they don't really have any, any leeway there. So they're likely to lose the Senate with and the House if there's any, you know, partisan

Republican edge to the electorate or to the outcome anyway, but that won't be a complete annihilation. And would you would you think that that would you say, you know, I don't like to do predictions, but I'm happy to ask you to do predictions. Right now, does it feel to you more like a wipeout is coming or a more, a more middle of the bell curve sort of pro pro opposition party midterm? I think it would be a wipeout if Republicans got out of their way and in some places they are.

I mean, I feel I feel that there's stuff that went Democratic by 10, 15 points that will be in play just because of enough voters are switching over and which kind of voters are they. So there's a, if there's a district that's like, there's one Colorado seventh district, watch, watch this flip. And I look at the stupid, but that one's just like everyone there has a college degree basically that's where Republicans are saying, we're going to compete for it, but it's really tough. And then there are seats where like in Nevada, where the electorate is Hispanic and white

voters without college degrees. And those voters, those groups are both like done with this. So I feel like there's going to be potential wipeouts in places that were drawn to be safe for Democrats because of who is voting. I hate you in the, well, let's not do this, let's not do the weasel thing where it's like, well, if it was held today, I just feel like that trend has been happening for a year. So if the people who, if the electorate looks like 2014, that was a really small one, even they'd be losing differently than they would lose this under this electorate.

There's a lot of people who were fine with voting democratic until like six months ago, but they, but they live in different kinds of places. I mean, even this Florida electoral map that they're trying to finish up is, is, is getting attention because the rest of the redistricting was not that great for Republicans, a combination of lawsuits and just, there's so many suburbanites who don't want to vote Republican that there's not that much more they can gain. Like if you push them, they're like, yeah, on the current map, there's maybe 15 seats we should be able to flip, but if things get really crazy, we're going to be competing

for, you know, the deep blue place that, you know, nobody had bothered spending money and that moved 30 points toward Biden. They think those could be in play because the Biden coalition is weird. I said that before, if I had a better word, it is like everyone from most DSA members to Bill Kristol, and they want different stuff. Like it is really, I'm going to suck it down and vote for, and a lot of those people are, I'm going to suck it up and vote for Joe Biden, who I don't love. There are people who, he's more like than Hillary Clinton was for lots, lots of reasons,

but there are a lot of voters who were like, I voted for him to get Trump out, things are still bad. I'm tuning out everything and maybe I'll tune back in and vote Democratic because if I see this Stephen Colbert at night and he scares me out, maybe I'll vote. Not everybody at a fine election, that's where you see people talking. It also strikes me when there's, you know, when people are writing a lot about this kind of historic collapse of young people, young people's enthusiasm in the Democratic coalition, how much that suck it up and vote for me was the explicit pitch of the Biden

campaign of being like, basically like, you don't like me, I don't like you, but everybody has to get in the van to do this one thing. And now the one thing's done. And I mean, that was the, you know, the statement from the beginning. So it's like, I, you know, it shouldn't be their argument, it is very funny watching people get mad at the young people for checking out because like what Biden's explicit pitch to people was, I am the status quo, you will not get what you want, but that's okay because we have this bigger mission.

But you know what, when it's, when the election's over, we'll, we'll, we'll discuss it, you know, like, uh, like we'll see your parents saying we'll see, well, you got home and you found out what many kids do that we'll see means no, we'll see always means no, they're just trying to shine you on. And so this is absolutely unpredictable. And if you do believe that, uh, Biden is constrained and can't do the things that these people want him to do, then, uh, getting mad at them for feeling that way to me is absolutely baffling because you're, you're, you're essentially asking them to just, uh, act like you're your

parents essentially, like, like pretend you own a home. But most, you know, it's like, I'm sorry, I am who I am. I have a student loan debt and, uh, I have, you know, a precarious life situation and there's these things that I, I, I imagine this guy could do. And this stuff that his predecessor was doing that they're now being cut off and we're being told like, except this, it's like, yes, if you are a secure Democrat, the people who really pushed Biden over the people who didn't want to dive COVID, uh, and so voted for Biden over Trump for them, this is not a big deal.

This is not a reason to not do your duty to vote for the Democrats, but they're young people by definition, they vote less. They're supposed to care about politics less because they're supposed to be having fun. I, well, I, we do have a bunch of individual races to go to get into, uh, and there's a lot of real fun, goofy stuff to talk about there, but I wanted to hit one more thing in just the general vibe before we get there. Uh, we've been talking a lot about Biden, uh, but I do want to touch on Trump's role in the whole, uh, midterm cosmology because this is the first election in six years.

He's not either in office or, uh, on the ballot. Uh, and yet, you know, as I'm putting together the, uh, dossier on all this, basically every, you know, Republican primary race is, is defined by proximity to Trump. So, uh, Dave, at this point, what is, uh, the, the exiled Trump? What is his, um, kind of role in, in, in all of this and then Republican politics right now? I mean, he's having a great time. You see, you see all the, you see all the photos of him hanging out with the, a very

small buffet stand at Mar-a-Lago. That's always what surprises me. I would imagine like some kind of Vegas, uh, casino, uh, buffet, but whatever I see that buffet photo, it's him and maybe some eggs, uh, ketchup for some reason, but he's hanging out Mar-a-Lago. Everybody comes to Jenny Fleck. I mean, this JD, we'll get into Ohio, this JD Vance endorsement, I thought was, uh, by the time it happened, it shouldn't have been that surprising, but I think even a few months

ago, I mean, I went on to cover Vance when Marjorie Green endorsed him and I was like, and I thought, one, this makes sense. Two, what is, what is better than having somebody that publicly denounced you and says they hate you begging, you know, begging for your support? That sounds amazing. Who wouldn't want that? And so Trump has just not only popularity among Republicans, but Republicans really willing to, to supplicate themselves, uh, and seeing just no other sure thing passed

to winning a campaign and getting him to endorse them. So he has complete control by choice. I mean, like one hinge point in history, I guess, is if Mitch McConnell had convinced, well, it'd taken nine Republican senators to just say, yeah, actually what he did is so bad, he's banned from running for office again. He could have. Uh, we've been in different situations, but he didn't. And Trump or anything else, this people have the, unless you are a very weird person who

was on Twitter all the time, it's a bad thing happens. And then like a month later, you're like, well, I'm not constantly thinking about that bad thing anymore. Uh, that's how you adjust and live, you know, not like tweeting about trauma. And so Republicans who really did think January six was bad or like, you know what, uh, but my voters don't think that and wasn't really that bad. And he's just in a great position where he doesn't have to apologize for anything. He's used to rally that the rallies have gotten like a little bit smaller.

Um, from what I've seen, I haven't been to any in a while. Yo, you'd better not be talking about the size of Trump rallies, Dave Wagle. This is true. This is going to get the beam put on you again. Uh, he apparently talks about that sometimes, uh, but anyway, no, the, the rallies are, are like, they're big. They're the biggest rallies anyone is having in the country. They're just like, I think he went to Selma, North Carolina, and he got more people than

Biden gets when he goes to like Boston. That's just true. Um, but so he's not like driving news cycles. He just drives news cycles inside the Republican party. I cannot stress how much entire primary campaigns are just people talking about who loves Trump the most. And that is all that they talk about. Yeah.

Yes. Although we'll also get into this. Uh, his endorsement has not yet appeared to be the sort of golden ticket that everyone was really assuming. Yeah. Because there's been some, uh, some of his, they haven't taken off, but we'll talk about that. Well, let's get into it.

Uh, for this episode, I think I'm going to be, most of my focus is going to be on the Senate simply because there are what, 435 house races. And Dave, you can maybe highlight some as they come up. I'm going to rank them all. No. Uh, but obviously in the Senate, uh, an incredibly precarious time for the Dems kind of, uh, you know, you have to be lucky every time we only have to be lucky once spot the Democrats find them in to keep their, uh, slim control of the Senate.

Uh, there are 14 Democratic seats up this cycle, all in States, Biden one, uh, 21 Republican seats are up and, uh, two of those are in Biden States, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. So we come down to a map that looks like GOP pickups possible in Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, maybe New Hampshire, and it possible Democratic pickup spots in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, maybe North Carolina. So with that said, let's go to the States starting with Georgia, the Peach State. Now let's dive right into whether or not this Trump endorsement is a good golden ticket or not.

For governor, we have, uh, Brian Kemp versus David Perdue in the GOP, governor primary. Perdue had gotten the Trump endorsement, but is currently floundering Kemp up currently almost 12 points to Perdue. Uh, Dave, any insight on the Georgia governor race or Georgia in general? I think a problem for Trump is, is Georgia, he has so many endorsements that people are kind of picking and choosing and they're like, well, I'm going to vote for his guy for Senate vote for his guy secretary state for governor. I'm not sold yet.

It just kind of, it's easier to sell, you know, streaming channels than a cable plan. Like you, you can, you can make your choice. You're going to, and Kemp just really has not done anything apart from literal, like not literally overturn the election and pretend Trump won it. There is no rhino thing in Kemp's past, even when you go, when Trump goes there and talks about it, he can't really articulate what Kemp did. It's just that, it's that he and others did, you know, did not stop absentee ballots from or let it be easier to cast absentee ballots and let ballots be dropped in drop boxes.

Well, also didn't they ask him to literally just find votes for him in Georgia? Weren't they recorded? They asked the secretary of state to do that too. Yeah. It was, can you just find 10,000 something? That was a, my colleague, my colleague Amy Gardner's story, uh, which is one of the, and that story is also one of those moments where we realized just, you can't, you can't like stamp your feet and say, why don't people listen to reality?

Cause that story of publishing, it has an audio of Donald Trump, but I have met people who were like, well, that story was made up because they don't want to believe, or if you prove it to them, then it isn't what it was when they didn't believe it. There's nothing to be done. You guys, the media didn't write about the laptop, you know, the ipso fasto, nothing you say can be trusted. Yeah. Uh, this does raise an interesting question though, because the, the Achilles heel of

a Trump rebound to me is that fixation on the election, uh, to the, to the, uh, ignorance of everything else and, and making it like the only, uh, litmus test for support other than making sure that you think they can win because Trump doesn't want to back a loser no matter what they believe, uh, cause that looks bad. That reflects badly on him. So here we have a case where he's trying to unseat a sitting governor using his disguise failure to help him out, uh, after the election as the sole reason for doing it. And even in Georgia, which, you know, has a strong Republican tilt, electorally, generally,

even though it went to Biden, they're not sold on it. It's not enough for them to overthrow their governor. So that makes you wonder how is that really possible? Is his fixation on that a chink in the armor big enough for somebody like, say, Ron DeSantis to sneak in? I don't think so because it's, he's gonna, so I'm in the media, but the media loves the Trump endorsement story. It's just, it's, it's, it's interesting on its own.

It's also just easy to track. You can get your scoreboard and say, okay, he's got, he's got a W here. He's got a, he's got an X here. Um, and so may begins with, uh, Ohio's primary. And if JD Vance wins that, I think that just the vibes from that will carry Trump quite a ways. I mean, he will not be able to stop talking about it. I did that.

Then a week later, he got West Virginia. There's a house race I've covered where he's endorsed a guy, basically that race. One guy voted for the infrastructure bill and Trump retroactively is like, that's not fair. So he endorsed the other guy. So I think he's going to have some, some momentum coming in, but there's no, uh, and he will turn on Kevin. One thing Trump did in the last month that I thought, uh, I tried to be surprised, but

I thought, hey, you can do that was Mo Brooks in Alabama was just kind of sucking wind in the primary. And Trump said, you know, I'm endorsing him for, for reasons, uh, because he doesn't want to back a loser. Yeah. That's it. Pull that off. I tried for Ryan Camp, but he's a loser and I knew he was never going to win.

I only did it, uh, as a favor. And the people at the Macarons are going to be like, you're right, you're right, sir. I mean, you, you cannot fail. You can only be failed. Um, but yeah, he looks like he's, you know, totally. It's like, uh, but camp, camp is has been in command just because like he's been a really conservative governor and there's no reason to dislike him apart from Trump telling you to, if you're, I mean, you, you kind of, uh, talked about this earlier, but I think one

of the things about the, the Trump endorsements that makes them, you know, maybe a little flimsier than they should be is that it is all, it's, you know, it's not a slate. It's not announce all once it's not coherent. It's all just about the personal peak of Trump. So you have to be like a Trump follower. You know, you have to get your daily Trump updates to even know who he's talking about or like, you know, what is going on in his imaginarium to follow these endorsements. So you know, I find them not like clearly message.

There's not like, you know, he doesn't roll out and be like, in this state, these are my guys. They're basically like, whenever somebody sucks up enough to get, you know, their, their Trump suck up bar past, you know, the whatever percentile, they then get the endorsement and it's kind of, you know, fickle, random, uh, incoherent basically. Yeah. I think that that's, that's fair. And some of these endorsements, there's one in Michigan where he endorsed a guy on the

old, on the old district lines and the guy built his, his state rep running for Congress against a, a, well here, I'll lay it out because this explains one, how Trump does it and two, how he always like wins anyway inside the party. So Michigan, there's a couple of members of Congress who voted to impeach Trump. One of them, Fred Upton is in there, uh, Trump endorses a state rep against Upton just saying, this guy is great. Upton is a traitor. Okay.

That guy bases whole campaign around Trump, uh, and Steve Carrot was his name. And then they have new districts in the new district. There's a different guy running against Trump. So Trump endorses that guy up against Upton. Trump endorses the other guy running against Upton. The first guy he endorsed just quits because Trump told him to, and then Upton just retires because all of, you know, like three of these other, I think he's the third of these guys who were like, I stood up to Trump when it mattered.

Oh man, that was hard. And they just, they just quit. So with very little effort, I mean, I, I can, I think putting on, you know, giving a speech, putting on a rally, that is effort. Other things cause effort, just like sitting at your house and having people come to you and say, please Sarah, please, that's pretty easy. So with very little effort, Trump is, is pushing people off the chess board, getting the people he wanted.

And a contrast with Democrats who don't quite know what they're doing, it's pretty, it's pretty incredible. It really reminds you that one of the reasons that the Republicans are less of a just completely sclerotic gerontocracy is that these Congress people are lazy as shit. If you make them work at all, as they get to a certain age, they'll just go home. They'll just like, fuck you, I'll be a fucking lobbyist and make eight figures. I'm not going to fucking have to go back and campaign what at my age and have to like worry about a primary.

But yeah, a little pressure and these guys quit, but Democrats, they don't really get credible primary challenges that often, at least not until recently. Yeah. The leadership will stick around forever, but then there's, there's a bunch of people this cycle, just somebody raised money against them and like, oh no, man, really? And then they just retire because they're, they're 70 something. They can be a senior fellow of whatever or be on the board of fair and those two, whatever it is you want to do for your next congressman.

Let's move on to the Senate campaign in Georgia. We have Raphael Warnock, who won the special election in 2020. Remember his election along with John Ossoff was what was supposed to bring you those $2,000 checks immediately when they got to Senate. I don't know how that turned out. I assume good versus Herschel Walker, the 1982 Heisman Trophy winning, running back for the New Jersey generals, among other teams. Now he's a businessman claiming ownership for several businesses, some of which the

Daily Beast recently reported don't actually exist. And he's also skipping the latest GOP primary debates, though he still remains the front runner in the GOP primaries. He's also faced with allegations of domestic abuse for which he has discussed struggle with dissociative identity disorder. He also has a gay conservative influencer son named Christian. So obviously, I would say that the, I guess, the famimeter favors Herschel Walker. He is as of now up 1.6 points over Warnock.

The state went to Biden just barely in 2020. How do we think the Georgia Senate goes? I mean, Walker has the advantage. There are Republicans who quietly think that, but what does quietly mean in politics? It's basically they'll tell a reporter, but then they'll tell you not to quote it. They do think that Walker is just so personally flawed that he's going to have problems. So Walker, Walker has run, he's kind of pulled the full Tommy Tuberville. So Tommy Tuberville won a Senate primary and a Senate seat without ever debating his opponent.

He just is, he's a coach. People know him. I remember him because I was calling around at some point in the race saying, Hey, you know, I'm a campaign reporter up in the race. When could I come out? And his campaign was very not rude, just honest saying, we're winning. We're not really going to do any interviews or stuff like that. We're just kind of like coast and win this thing.

And Herschel Walker's been doing that. He's got all these Republican opponents warning this guy is going to make so many gaps. He can't win. And we're probably just put up with it because they're like, well, people know his name. He can beast it out. If this is like a plus eight Republican year, you can make a lot of mistakes and win. I think you mentioned most of them. My favorite Walker oddity is he famously, I mean, the reason he was in the USFL is because

he was allowed to, at that point, they could turn professional after a junior season, not a senior. So Walker pretty famously like leaves this great college career to go to the USFL and then claims many years later that he was this high school valedictory or sorry, that he graduated top of this class in college, which is not a thing you do when you quit college. But it could just so we're so in this Trump crafted reality or Republican primaries, wherever it's like, eh, won't matter. Yeah.

Say stuff. Say stuff. And they watched Warnock had what they thought was going to be fatal in 2020, which was this dispute with his wife, who, you know, I don't want to say press charges, makes it publicly known that like in a dispute that he backed over her foot with his car and he's a senator now. So the idea that something's going to take Walker out that that sounds bad. I feel like they've gotten over that.

Matt, any thoughts on Georgia? It's funny. One of those races without remembering that the opponent of Kemp or Purdue is going to be Stacey Abrams, which I think speaks to just how far her stock has plunged since she didn't get to be Brandon's VP. Because I don't think there's anybody, she's no longer the, the, I don't see the Democrats like worshiping her or believing her. She's going to deliver them George anymore, especially, you know, since that, that spell

was broken in 2020 with the, with the, with Brandon winning and with the, uh, with the special elections. Uh, so I feel like, yeah, she's not going to win and nobody even seems to care. So I think she might be done for her. Who knows. Yeah. Just going through these, the candidates here, it does seem like, uh, the median, the median Republican candidate in this cycle is a, uh, former hedge fund executive who's been accused

of domestic abuse and the median Democratic candidate is somebody who has been, uh, somehow both in the national conversation among Democrats for like a decade, but has lost six consecutive losers. The word you're looking for is losers. Yes. So that's kind of where we are here, uh, Stacey Abrams stock is down. She is pulling behind either Kemp or Purdue. Um, most recently she pivoted from doing, you know, voter protection stuff, which she

has, you know, made a big place for herself in the Democratic swing and a miss on that one, uh, to talking about how she's, uh, a, uh, business woman and, uh, has started many small businesses. So wonderful. That's always a sign of strength. She, she kind of infamously when, when Biden came to Georgia to, uh, to close the deal that sounds sarcastic, but when he came to Georgia for his final rally before the Senate voting rights bill, she just wasn't there and they, she never had a great, I had to

be somewhere else. She's just kind of like, yeah, I'm, I'm not there. You can probably figure out why, um, but yeah, she's running a different, although she never has run as the far left, uh, candidate. She's always been, I'm, I'm pretty liberal, but I'm very good at describing how my life and my work fits within the, it's just like yours and I'm, I'm not anti-business and you're still chasing, you're chasing, uh, a conservative position, which is never, I don't know. It just doesn't seem to have a really strong track record.

I mean, Claire McCaskill and people like that. Yeah. They go out blaming, uh, you know, leftists for, uh, smearing the brand of the Democratic Party. But all that really tells you is that that specific strategy of running to the right in these States is it cannot win as long as the Democratic Party is a national party. And the Claire McCaskill's of the world, what they're, they're demanding is impossible because it cannot be enforced.

You're telling people who aren't members of the party, who aren't members of its electoral class to think differently and act differently. How is that a fucking pop, uh, plan? How is that an electoral strategy? Which is the same one that people who are saying that young people should just stop being mad at Brandon or doing, like you actually have to have, be in charge of like the thing, like Pelosi complaining, Oh, there's too much loose talk about socialism and abortion. Again, nothing they can do about that.

Yes. They're literally saying we're in charge of this party, but we also cannot change anything about it. Well, then why the hell should you stay there? Well, let's move on to Ohio because there's a lot to talk about in Ohio. Oh boy. Uh, the main thing about Ohio right now is the shit show Republican primary. We've got Ohio treasurer, Josh Mandel.

We've gone over this a bit, but just as a refresher, Ohio treasurer, Josh Mandel, state GOP chair, Jane Timkin, an investment banker, Mike Gibbons, and of course, the G shucks Yalie JD Vance. I'll just want to quote this, uh, time magazine report on a recent GOP debate. It was the greatest hits of the conservative fantasy last night on stage in Wilbur force, Ohio, as the Republican Senate candidates clashed in another debate. Topics for discussion, massive ballot harvesting operations in urban areas, jail time for Dr. Anthony Fauci, a defense of, uh, reps, Marjorie Taylor Greene in Madison, Cawthorne, Hunter

Biden's laptop and Joe Biden's family crime syndicate, a total deportation of immigrants in the country illegally and the restoration of Donald Trump to the white house as quickly as possible. Uh, Dave, have you been to Ohio? Yeah, recently. Yeah. I'll head back there. I was there, uh, only for a little while when Vance was rolling out his, his, his green

endorsement. Uh, not, not the biggest thing that happened to race. And I was there last year for the Nina Turner, Chantel Throne, Chantel Brown thing, getting a rematch. Um, but it was, uh, it was hard to get a feel on things there and it's still, it was hard until the Trump endorsement because you had a ton of, of in some ways flawed Republican candidates. I think Vance theory, which I think is being borne out is, yes, I have said more bad things

about Donald Trump, who I did not vote for 2016 than any of these people, but I'm better at talking than they are. And that's been true. I mean, he's just better. He's more compelling. He's, he's meaner, which I think is, is, is, if you read it, hillbilly elegy, I mean, I don't think it's inconsistent with the JD Vance of hillbilly elegy means he's a kid who grew up with a chip on his shoulder.

Yeah. His family was poor. He blamed, you didn't know who to blame. And then as an adult, as a mega guy, he knows who to blame. He just adopted that. Oh, I just love, I love though how he switched. He went for blaming his parents for being weak and for having bad, bad hillbilly blood just being trash to now it's, uh, it's, it's the Republicans and China's fault for getting

them all hooked on fentanyl. And Mexico. Yeah. Well, we'll put a clip of his most recent, uh, Hey, are you racist? So am I. Add. Are you a racist? Do you hate Mexicans?

The media calls us racist for wanting to build Trump's wall. They censor us, but it doesn't change the truth. Joe Biden's open border is killing Ohioans with more illegal drugs and more Democrat voters pouring into this country. I got to say, I really, I marveled at his, uh, we all marveled at how like phony and transparent his attempt to suck up to the people who he spent his career defaming in order to get head pads from Hollywood liberals. And he is inauthentic at it, but, uh, his opponents are all, uh, none of those are

strong candidates. And the guy who sort of embodied like the authentic version of what Vance was going for, uh, Mandel is a fucking serial loser. The guys run for every office in the state and gotten his ass kicked. Uh, so it's like he, there's no strong horse there to oppose him. And then what Vance has is the fact that he is because he started off as the ultimate POC striver and his initial, uh, like worldview is basically liberal. Like it's these hillbilly's own fault that is the liberal diagnosis for the problems

he grew up with. And that's why they all liked him and they gave him a movie, uh, he knows them inside and out and that, and he is one basically. And so he can speak in a way that gets under the skin of liberals. And that means that they talk about him and they get mad at him. And I don't think Trump necessarily notices anything that, uh, like discreetly online, but you know who does don fucking junior don juniors more online than anybody on earth. He's more hooked into the just dispiriting me more between Democrats and Republicans.

So he knows that Vance gets liberals pissed because he can push their buttons the same way that the post left became like a phenomenon because on Twitter, because unlike mega people saying things that is just gibberish, this is like a, uh, a critique from within in a way and it's just drives him crazy. Uh, and then don juniors sees that and he's like, Hey dad, uh, you know, if you don't have anybody else you like in Ohio, how about JD Vance? And since there is nobody else for Trump to like instinctively pick, he goes, sure. And that means it's people like us who are responsible for this motherfucker actually going

to probably win, uh, which I think is honestly perfect. We were talking about how at least there's that like remaining, you know, bullshit detector in humans to prevent a slug like JD Vance from sneaking in and now that's gone too. And how could it last? I started to put stock in him when he, he gives a speech at the NatCon conference at the post liberals you're talking about. And his theme is, uh, that the left, the left is led by people who have no children and therefore have no mind in the future, which is a very pilled, um, new right argument.

Right. That is like a, that is like bronze age mindset. That's a lot of these, these new things here. You saw it with this Tucker Carlson. Everything was memeing. It kind of came pre-meaned, but so it's a promotional video about the end of men. Oh, yes. That's where the testicular tan.

That's very online and, and Don Jr. is very aware of that and in advance, I mean, to the extent he came up with himself and the thing he adopted it, uh, it's a mix, but that's, that's the new stuff. And it's very clear when you're watching him in debate with, with guys who were just MAGA as of 2019, uh, that they, they, they, they haven't run, done the new reading. They're using, they're using, uh, last year. They're on the old script. They're on the old sales.

They don't have the good Glen Gary leads. He's got the good Glen Gary leads, which is, which is the left is not just bad. They are perverts who don't have children and they're trying to kid, turn your kid gay. That is a big undercurrent. A lot of, a lot of this stuff. I mean, he referred to Tik Tok as the, the Chinese pedo app. And that is just, I think really right inside the heads of a lot of, uh, Republican, not

just elites, but some of the voters too. There is that, I've seen this, this mindset that's powering a lot of the, uh, the school protest, which is, uh, yeah, these liberals are just, they want to watch Disney movies and you know, experiment with gender and, and they're, and they're ruining America. Cause America is supposed to be a place where you can have a family and afford a house. And what Vance does successfully is say also those things, which is, he has a riff that I saw on the campaign trail where he talks about, you know, black rock and, and investors buying up houses and so they can rent them to people.

And that's an issue I've heard, you know, the left run on and with ideas. And his is there is like, I don't want my kid to grow up in the future where he's, uh, buying Chinese products and living in a house that he can't own, owned by a Chinese banker. And I'm like, well, that's, that's a populism. There you go. You're connecting this to something real and you're also really irritating the left, uh, in your spare time. Where it's like Mandel, um, and these guys, I really can't stress, Trump, I also watched

these debates, the debates were just very revealing of who had juice and who didn't. Um, and the guy who's just been giving speeches, um, to not just, but Vance has been taken around the country, kind of drill the, got the whole Peter teal like mindset and make over and you get to be really good at talking and arguing, which I think he was already and he's running against guys who were just very stuck on talking points and kind of stumbling around, uh, when the Ukraine invasion happened. I mean, Vance was a little bit of tangent, Vance, there's a statement on Ukraine initially was, uh, you know, once he didn't, one, he didn't care to that, uh, we'd invested as

Americans in a failed Ukrainian army. So he totally misses the boat on, you know, Zelensky mania, uh, what's like even conservatives were saying, well, I wish we had a real president like Zelensky instead of Biden, but his opponents didn't really do anything with it because they just are like, um, what's the talking point on this? Uh, well, Biden this week and, um, uh, Ukraine is good and he would just swoop in and say, yeah, my opponents are acting emotionally, they went over a three where I will, I had the guts to say Ukraine doesn't matter and mech, you know, the Mexican border does.

And he just, he just outplayed them. I mean, there's some campaigns where like Herschel Walker is sleepwalking to victory. Vance actually did kind of have to hustle for it and, you know, by pissing off liberals, as we were saying. So all the candidates there were, uh, pumping hard for the Trump endorsement. Uh, this is from NPR recounting TV ads, uh, Josh Mandel's ad was Josh Mandel, pro God, pro gun, pro Trump. Another was a Jane Timkin, uh, saying there are pretenders in the Senate race, Jane Timkin

is the real Trump conservative and me so horny for president Trump. Yeah. And Mike Gibbons saying Trump and Gibbons are businessmen with a backbone. Trump saved our economy before Gibbons knows how to do it again. None of them got the, the endorsement. Vance did get the endorsement, uh, no new polling since then. Uh, but last time we checked the RCP checked in on Ohio, uh, Vance was in third place, fully seven points behind, uh, Josh Mandel.

You think Dave that that's going to flip with the Trump endorsement and, uh, Vance has a real shot at pulling off the primary, which is in just a matter of days. Yeah. And, and, and early voting had been happening, but people really, really, really weren't really taking advantage of it yet, uh, this, this and we're going to Pennsylvania. These are both kind of like 2016 GOP primary all over again where somebody with, with the right. Compile of celebrity and like lib, lib hating, uh, only needs to get like 30% to, to win

because no one else will get out. There's just, there's just all these, we might Gibbons, this banker who's running, um, who led in the polls for a minute is just incredibly wealthy and self-funding and I've never been a billionaire investment banker, but I assume if you can buy like anything else, why would you say, well, yeah, I spent $20 million on this race, but I'm going to quit. Uh, Mandel, we discussed Jane Tinkin, who is the chair of the Republican party in Ohio, it's just, it's just very, uh, very programmed and has not, and has like jumped on every single message.

It's effective that Vance is just immigration, immigration, immigration, the Peter teal ads also bashing immigration, um, whereas Timkin was like, whatever was in the news, she didn't add and it became, um, just kind of a joke in every debate, I think at least three times he's per debate, she would just turn back watching me saying, I'm a mom on a mission who will have the grit and the grace to deliver the MAGA agenda and, and, you know, people are, uh, whatever we think of the voter, like people have gotten conditioned to say, well, that one sounds like she's reading from talking points, whereas that guy sounds like me on Twitter and like the me on Twitter guy, that's, uh, that's, that's the way to go.

Yeah. People are looking for a mirror. Yeah. You got to be able to perform. Well, just to touch on the democratic side. Uh, in the democratic primary for Senate, we have US rep, Tim Ryan, who you might remember from the presidential primaries, roughly one billion years ago. And he's the guy who thinks that, uh, you're going to reverse the industrialization with

like yoga studios. That's his deal. Right. Like he's the yoga congressman, I think, like the wellness guy. He's written twice as many books as Vance. He wrote one about wellness and one about a different kind of wellness, which is like healthy eating. But yeah.

And he is, uh, in a primary against Morgan Harper, a senior advisor for the consumer financial protection bureau. She's anti monopolist. She's a Medicare for all supporter, a public transit investment supporter. She's pro pro act, et cetera, uh, assume she does not have a chance here. Not really. That this is Ohio is going to be weird for progressives unless they get a lot of momentum because you got Nina Turner's rematch and you have Harper running against Ryan.

But like it's neither of them have figured out, uh, how to win over an electorate who's just like really panicked. And I mean, if you're an Ohio Democrat, everything's falling apart. You went from like winning to losing in like five years. Uh, so Ryan just raised a ton of money too for a guy who never, never mattered in the presidential. And he's run this, um, and he's gotten attention with, he's run this real, what we think works for Bill Clinton kind of campaign where his first ad was just him saying the word China,

I think like 12 times, but you go back to his campaign and they're like, yep, it works. Like we're, we're in Ohio. We're not listening to the woke, the woke folks anymore. We're going to bash China. That is what people want. And, and, uh, Harper has not done that. If people are panicking, he should tell them to breathe. Just breathe, feel your body, feel that you're inhabiting your body, feel the space that

you're in. Honestly, we really are just getting different, uh, you know, prescriptions here that boiled out of the same thing. Nothing can be done about any of the actual structures of dominance in your life. You have to look within. That's it. Uh, and, and it's only, it's just a different specific prescription, depending on like the cultural, uh, valence, but the underlying premise is identical.

Well, it also sounds like if we do get both Vance and Ryan in there, we will, uh, by the end of the general debates, have at least one candidate for Ohio Senate pledging to deploy the Ohio National Guard into, uh, Beijing or something. So, um, looking forward to the great Ohio-China war of 2023, but let's move on then to Pennsylvania, the Keystone State. Uh, this is maybe one of the better chances for a dem flip right now leading the democratic primaries. We have John Federman.

He is the, uh, the big guy with the goatee, right? He is very big, uh, large goatee. He's less big than he used to be. He lost like a hundred pounds, which on a guy has, I think he's six nine on a guy his size, you notice it, but, uh, he had room to spare. So he has been, uh, leading the democratic primaries, uh, more, more recently though, he has been come under attack from the other candidates over, uh, a shotgun kerfuffle. Uh, apparently when he was mayor of Braddock, Pennsylvania in 2013, Federman used a shotgun

to detain, did not fire, but, you know, threatened with a shotgun to detain an unarmed black jogger claiming that Federman had heard shots in the area and then just chased off after this guy with a shotgun who was running near his house. Uh, this is becoming a bit of an issue and digging his points a little bit in the primary, but it seems like he's going to withstand that and go on. What do you think, Dave? Yeah, that story has been used against him in, in every time, every time he's kind of got momentum, which is not that often.

So he ran, he ran for Senate, uh, in, in 16, you got kind of, got kind of owned, but it was the same time as Bernie's, so he got a lot of that, that juice. And then 2018 he runs for the Senate governor and that's when they really try this. Like he's not that popular with a lot of Pittsburgh activists. You know, many Pittsburgh leftists, he has pissed a lot of people off. He's always, I mean, the thing that really pissed them off originally was he's, he's not for stopping fracking and wouldn't go along with the line on that. But so yeah, he, they knew this was coming and it was, it's been used either by Malcolm

Kenyatta, who's this black state rat from Philly, uh, who used to be friendly with Fetterman or Conor Lamb, who's a white guy from a rich part of the Pittsburgh area. So both of these guys have been running around, uh, in the debates talking about how this, how Fetterman did this. And the problem I think for them is their argument is that, like, we can't win, uh, the election with a guy who did this. And I, it is not clear that the swing voter is going to, is going to look at that, especially now.

But like there are Democrats, I think, who look at this and say, boy, wouldn't it be great if our candidate like chased down a jogger with a gun, then we would go on air and say, I support law enforcement. In fact, I've even dabbled in it, um, and he has not been dragging him down at all. And then, um, with lamb, just they, they, they had a theory that, uh, you could win all these like local party endorsements and all this, all this support from, from your Democratic clubs and he is, maybe I've covered them both. He's like a more affable backslapping guy than Fetterman, um, and just hasn't really

worked because Democrats are so scared that they think, well, the guy with a goatee who people think as a wrestler, I think can, can convince my MAGA friend. Uh, but the guy who's just like a Democratic Congressman, I don't think is going to do it. It's, it's like a very electability, panicky argument that has helped the Bernie guy, which is unexpected. It's interesting to me, uh, that even though lamb and Kenyatta, those guys have absolutely been getting blown out in polling for months now by Fetterman, that there's not been any

pressure on them to drop out and stop their negative campaign against the presumptive Senate nominee in order to band together to defeat the Republican. It seems weird that there is no institutional, uh, uh, pressure being put on these guys for what, I mean, by the fact they're still running these negative ads trying to remind people about Fetterman's incident with the shotgun after it's very clear they're not going to win. Wouldn't the party, if it was really as interested as it claims and electability and is beating Republicans and saving democracy, wouldn't they do something?

It's almost as like there's like a civil war going on in the, in the party. Not so much between anything, uh, ideological sides, because that was determined by the 2020 election, but rather by Patriots networks, like the thing with Fetterman, the reason that they're still going to like try to cut his knees out, uh, even though he's got the domination clinched at this point is because he's not in the right circles. He doesn't pay the right people. I guess he doesn't, he is not like a flaming leftist, uh, and he, his image pulls well. Like he is not, there's nothing that is that there's a poison pill about him to the, to

the electorate. That's obvious. That's not something that any of them really believe. They're just trying to prevent this specific guy from getting in the Senate and I can't understand why other than, uh, he's not part of the team. Yeah. And it's not many people who agree with that, but lamb has not found a lot of people willing to, to join him in bringing Fetterman down, there's the pack didn't raise a ton.

I mean, it raised more than a million, but, but not enough to, you know, kill a candidate with his raise a lot more than that. And then also, uh, political had a pretty good story after this pack started attacking Fetterman. And they just went around the center asking Democrats and the, and the reaction is basically, he should take that down. Can we not? Like we don't need this right now.

Just no attitude in, um, in favor of let's have like a messy fight inside the family to help hurt one candidate who we think is fine and can, can win. And it's, I think a lot, a lot of it runs through this panic, like, oh, we thought 2020 was going to be a sweep and it wasn't. So now we're scared of the electorate and like, why, why would we do anything to screw up? What is already going to be really hard? But yeah, you did not see Democrats rallying around and panicking the way they did with

other Bernie candidates and saying, this guy must be stopped. It just didn't happen with Fetterman. Well, let's move on to the, uh, Republican side. This is kind of a mirror of the Ohio, uh, Republican primaries because you basically have the meme candidate versus another hedge fund guy. And that is Dr. Oz making a play to become a MAGA guy versus Dave McCormick, who is the hedge fund guy. Uh, the key issues here as of the last debate were, uh, fracking, uh, Oz was once against

it for health reasons and now says frack baby frack heated debate recently, uh, Oz was complaining to the moderator notably about the other candidates, uh, claiming multiple times. She's not following the rules. I follow the rules. And then the moderator threatened to mute microphones, uh, that's some nerd shit, man. That's embarrassing. That's some, that's some real Democrat shit.

But Oz got the Trump endorsement, which you pointed out, Matt, uh, must be or could partially be to blame of just TV, celeb guy solidarity. There is that. You know, he's another guy from the TV and therefore he thinks of him as Trump thinks of him as more of an equal than these political insects that he has to deal with. Uh, but I think there's also a real calculus for, uh, electoral success here because as I said, Trump wants people who like him and kiss his ass and affirm his version of reality, but he also wants people who will win because he does think he feels like he, uh, is lost

if a guy that he nominated that he endorses loses. And so he always has to create an expo, spacto explanation for, well, why he didn't actually endorse him and they didn't technically lose, but they would, he would like to avoid that if possible. So he's not just picking Oz cause, Hey, you know, another famous guy, he does have a theory for, uh, the cases to why he's the best candidate. And he said, he said the Philly suburbs, very important, a lot of votes there. Dr. Oz has been on the televisions of Philadelphia suburban white housewives for 20 years.

That's good will that's been built up and that's going to make them want to vote for him. And that's, that's as good a calculus for trying to figure out how to get a, to win that seat as I could, as I can imagine one being before the endorsement, RCP polling had McCormick up 4.2 points over Oz. Dave, do you think Oz can make up the difference with the Trump endorsement? I'm going to start to say the Ohio thing. I mean, he doesn't need to convince half of the Republicans, he needs to convince like

they're, you know, 28%. I mean, this is, I won't go through every candidate in the race, but it's another one where just no one has gotten out, uh, and it's complicated things. Uh, the, I was at a conservative conference in Pennsylvania to cover the race and talk with some of the candidates and Oz was there. Like they did a straw poll. There's like the hardcore right wing activists in the state, like half the panels are about critical race theory.

And he lost the straw poll there. And I don't, this was one of the examples of the straw polls, the only one thing, because the, the winner was this woman, Kathy Barnett, who's like, uh, uh, a election integrity. Uh, let's just use that euphemism now, integrity activists, um, who natural Republicans know nothing about she's, she won, but Oz had like real con, you know, conservatives who, who just seem in the room were not that impressed, but it is going to be a lot of those people who just turn out their MAGA guys, maybe they're suburban Republicans and they're like, well, him, sure.

Cause this other guy, Dave McCormick has spent all his money just trying to do like a Glenn Yonkin speed run, like very, very quickly go in there and say, I have also have a vest. I also am very rich. Uh, I have every conservative position that you, that you guys have, like he ran a Super Bowl ad that was his people chanting, let's go Brandon, for example, there you go. What else do you guys want from me? And I, I think it was effective and this screwed it up. Like he was really trying to not get Trump to endorse Dr. Oz.

Yeah. I think Oz has like a pretty good shot. And that's why, when there are reasons Democrats think, all right, tough year, but big wrestling looking guy actually from PA versus Dr. Oz who moved back to the state to run for Senate. We think we got something there. Uh, I mean, I will say that I like this because it is a battle of, uh, two different, like actual responses to the reality of, uh, American politics now, you know, like you generally only have one largely, usually it's a Republican because the Democrats can't face reality

and keep having to vote in vote for people who deny reality. Uh, here you got a guy who, he doesn't have celebrity in their traditional sense, but he goes against the images. He embraces the semiotics of a Republican. And that is a response to, uh, conditions and you can see if it's effective or not. We'll find out. Uh, we will Biden won Pennsylvania by just 1.2%, uh, so this is going to be a very close race.

Um, if it does come down to Fetterman and Oz one to watch going forward, uh, any predictions or would you guys like to move on? I'm not trying to predict anything. Yeah. That's for real sickos. All right. I'm normal. Well, we'll leave, we'll leave you the listeners with just the facts there.

Let's move on, uh, to one that's not maybe as contestant of a state, but one that I find very interesting, uh, Missouri, the show me state. Uh, I wanted to bring this up because the Democratic primaries just got, uh, upturned by Trudy Bush, Valentine, the daughter of a beer baron August goosey Bush. Uh, she just entered the race recently, pushing out the other leading Dems, Scott Sifton. And then immediately had to apologize for being crowned a queen of love and beauty at the veiled profit ball. 1970.

You've not been following the bail veiled profit thing. That's the, uh, the local, uh, white elite, uh, Catillion, uh, there that is cloaked in, uh, you know, the mystical majesty of the, uh, lost cause. Yes. Uh, create, originally created to celebrate, uh, as a celebration by the city's elite for, uh, crushing the, uh, 1977 St. Louis general strike. Yes. So, uh, Ellie Kemper from the office and, uh, uh, breakable Kimmy Schmidt, also a queen

of love and beauty at one of those. Trudy Bush, Valentine enters the race, pushing out the leading, the other leading Dem candidate. The other Dem, uh, still in that race is Lucas Kuntz, a Democratic favorite type, which is a former Marine progressive. He's an anti-monopoly guy. He calls for a quote, Marshall plan for the Midwest, which sounds cool and funny to me. Do you know anything about the, um, Missouri primaries, Dave? Uh, yeah.

The, that guy, Lucas had a very good press team that like introduced him as, as a, as a path breaking candidate, but you're right. This is the kind of camp we've seen a lot of in every Democratic midterm where there's a Republican president, uh, they, they find 50, uh, like really compelling veterans who were, who were, have a couple of good issues. He's one of those guys. Um, but this was kind of off the mat. The way Democrats see this is if Eric Greitens is a Republican nominee, then they should

have somebody who can win. And they thought maybe him, maybe Bush, Valentine, I wouldn't, how would I put this? I mean, they're kind of clapping, uh, for this race without really expecting it to win. You know, it's like the fourth quarter and they're down by 30 and they're like, oh, you know, he looked pretty good tonight. Bad luck. Uh, but without Greitens, they're, they're kind of going to ignore this race. If it's, you know, Vicki Hartz learned a Republican congressman who Josh Hawley's endorsed.

I point her out cause she's one of the, uh, the innovators in running against, uh, trans transgender people. She is. And she had two ads about, uh, one about, uh, Leah Thomas, the U Penn swimmer, and then one, uh, almost inevitably about being canceled for having run that ad and that being, you will not allowed to run it. Uh, that's what, you know, the social conservatives, uh, folks are back. If you thought that, that Trump winning, that those guys were gone.

No, they're very much back. And that's a state where like everybody who's switched over from being a conservative Democrat to Republican, they're all, they're all in for that. So, um, you might have a very right wing Republican candidate, like more right wing than could ever have won that state, you know, in 2000 versus a Democrat who's got money and is pretty good and it's just not going to matter. This is going to see the, the, the, how far the bounds of, uh, uncancelability on the Republican party are because if Eric Greitens can get back in the Senate after what he was

accused of and essentially admitted to doing, uh, that'd be pretty insane. Which was the, the raping governor basically, and he had to stop, step down because of that. And now with only more accusations having piled up since then, he's now going to try to be a Senator. What do you think he's got a chance? If he wins the primary, I think he has a chance. I mean, Republicans just, it's a good year and they, they've learned just the basis. Like if you turn this into, I was attacked unfairly by the same people who tried to bring

Trump down, they're, they're, you got their attention. Uh, yeah. Greitens got, I mean, he, he gave me with a leap because people knew what he was. I mean, he, he was one of the few guys I saw. The raping governor. That's why they, you know, no such thing as bad publicity anymore. Swear to God. Absolutely.

And he's been kind of staying put or fading as other people spent the money. But I mean, he was one of the few guys who went out there and showed up at the trucker convoy. Uh, great. Oh yes. And that made me wonder like, okay, you're, it can't be that confident if you're going to a trucker convoy and saying, I stand with you and everyone else is busy campaigning elsewhere.

He, like, he needed to attach his battery to some other source of conservative power. I don't think he really found it. Uh, well, as of a political report recently as even more, uh, allegations against, uh, Greitens come out, uh, his internal polling is showing him fading against Hartzler. So, uh, we will see how this all comes out. Uh, you know, Bush Valentine is, is worth an estimated, uh, over $250 million. So obviously can sink a lot of money into this, uh, but Dave seems to be, uh, undervaluing the democratic chances in, uh, picking up Missouri.

It's a tough one, folks. I'm going to kind of speed round down through, uh, these also a potential flip, uh, Nevada, uh, where we have first termer, Catherine Cortez, master of reelection against former attorney general Adam Lix, Lixalt, Laxalt, Laxalt, it's also Nevada. Is that Paul? Does he, has he related to Paul Laxalt? He is, uh, the illegitimate son of a different senator who was raised by Paul Laxalt. No, really.

That's, that's his origin story. I'm glad I asked. That's amazing. Paul Laxalt, for those who don't know, was that one of the first like real Reagan Republicans is a senator from Virginia, Nevada, and was like one of the people who ran his AD campaign. And he raised the illegitimate son of another senator who is now running for a Senate. That's amazing. Uh, what, what is the, uh, the bastard name in Nevada?

Uh, Sam. No, I was going to give tips, tips, yes, exactly. So, uh, Adam, Adam chips now, Adam Lixalt, uh, lost his, uh, governor, uh, his race for governor in 2018, uh, but Biden won the state by just around 2% in 2020. The question is going to be about turnout. I find this one interesting because we have lost, of course, Harry Reid, the longterm master of the democratic machine in Nevada. So I guess the interesting question here is how, how well that machine survives the

death of its master. Yeah. I was mentioning Nevada before because it's, it, it is tough where there, it's one, look at this way. It's the thing of the only state that voted, uh, well to the left of the country in, in the, if you look at the presidential vote, like seven points for Biden, Nevada was way to the left of the country. You look at the presidential vote in 2020, 12 years later, it's pretty far to the right

of the country. I mean, Nevada has been moving far right because of all these, you know, you're, you're like a working class guy. Uh, you can move there. It's cheap. It's an industry that doesn't require a bunch of degrees you can get into. And those people have just been like walking away from the Democrats and they, they held on to what they had, but their, their, their theory of how to win the state has been challenged.

And this is, this is one of those, uh, kind of a theme this year is like, can they hold on despite that? Because Republicans nominate very right wing candidates. And that's kind of their hope that Laxalt, who's, uh, I think most famous in this race for more than a year before the election, saying he's ready to sue for regularities when they try to steal it from him. He's also got a primary challenger who's a veteran whose face was disfigured in combat and has raised a ton of money based on that, but, but probably going to be the nominee.

And it's really like, it's kind of like every boat's going to go the same, going to go down or none of them are. If Democrats screw out of their tailspin in Nevada, they should be fine. But that's when I remember sitting down the governor in Nevada a couple of months ago, and he was one of the most open about how, yeah, Joe Biden's not really popular. They're also just pretty old, like that's not a state where they're counting on Biden to pull him out. They're like, we got to do something else here.

All right. Well, let's move on quickly to get the rest of these in, uh, back to Wisconsin, America's Dairyland. Got a touch on this just because we have, of course, the preeminent Wisconsinite political thinker on the pod, Matt Crisman, uh, Ron, Senator Ron Johnson is up for re-election in a site, uh, state Biden barely won, uh, Biden's approval is now under water there, as with everywhere else. And on the Dem side, we're looking at Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes and Alex Lassry, who

is the son of the Milwaukee Bucks owner. So you know, a good old, uh, hometown guy seems to me like a, uh, a mirror image of the Missouri queen of love and beauty, yes, where it's just the, the, the failed child of a, of a, uh, wealthy, uh, family who feels kind of guilty about it and decides to just jump into the political, uh, uh, field because they're going to help, they're going to help out and aren't they adorable doing so. And as I mentioned up top, uh, you know, with that news piece about the school board elections in Wisconsin, you know, maybe the GOP strategy is not as strong as it looks here.

Uh, what do we think? Does Wisconsin say, uh, just barely blue or, uh, is Ron Johnson back in this year? Uh, he's, he's the favorite, uh, like Matt knows more Wisconsin than I do, but, um, I mean, not, not at this point, I really don't, but I've, that guy, honestly, I like him less than Joseph McCarthy in terms of like historic Wisconsin senators, just because Joe McCarthy had like, he had a feral glint in his eye, you know, he, he was like going for something. This guy, he's just such a more, he's just a, a room temperature IQ shithead. He is just the embodiment of, uh, the worst Wisconsin, uh, traits except that he doesn't

have type two diabetes to my knowledge. And the fact that he beat like my childhood favorite Senator Russ Feingold, uh, and has been holding his seat ever since, and the fact that he's just going to stay there forever. It's very disheartening. I, I, my cousin is friends with his son, his, like one of his kids and he told him, and he went to his wedding and everything and he went to their house once and they literally have in their jig, big hideous McMansion, a TV with Fox news on it with the volume up in every room.

Uh, that's wild. I just can't imagine hearing the parallax stereo of, of walking from room to room, just hearing it fade out and immediately fade back in, moving on, uh, just to get these few in because we are going along here, uh, I'm going to skip Alabama because the only news there is a Mo Brooks, you know, getting the Trump endorsement and getting it rescinded, which we've already gone over. It is a little interesting though, why did he flop so bad? Is he just a, is this just a real obnoxious motherfucker?

So the Trump, Trump's theory is that, uh, Brooks showed up at a Trump rally and started basically it's like that, that, uh, kids in the hall sketch were like the, the actress accepts an award and thanks Hitler by accident. He basically started doing that, not thinking Hitler, but he went there and said, uh, basically look, I know 2020 was, uh, was, was he had some questions, put it behind you. We got to win. And he just got these lusty booze for saying put it behind you. He says, or don't, but we need to win.

And so there's this very minor moment, but every time you cross Trump, every year, all your opponents are like, well, my opponent, uh, didn't even say that he thinks we can overturn the election still. And that kind of chipped away, but it's mostly he, he's not good at raising money. He's a classic kind of freedom caucus tea party congressman who just votes against spending at all times, doesn't have a lot of friends and, and he's just a dumb ass. Like that's the thing. Like the people, the ones of these guys who succeed are the ones who are having authentic

American stupidity to them, to, you know, appeal to voters, but also, you know, are to extent playing a part, you know, knowing what they're, what works and moving towards it now and, and playing that up guys like Brooks. And I honestly think Sarah Palin's in this bucket too, they're just stupid and, and like they're up there there because circumstances allowed them to be, but any attempt to like grasp the brass ring and do anything beyond like the first level of difficulty, uh, getting out of like tutorial mode, uh, they just can't hack it. They can't do the things you need to do.

And then even a Trump endorsement isn't enough. And then he has to take it back from you because you're just a sticky little baby and you can't do it. Yeah. That's kind of what happened. And you had the, the, the senators retiring Richard Shelby really liked his former chief of staff, uh, Katie Britt, who just like, anyway, it's not that hard, honestly. I mean, I haven't done it.

It's not that hard to say to be a former moderate Republican or, you know, mainstream, whatever that means, uh, Republican because mainstream is not Megan. And then just say, I'm Megan now. And so she's running ads about immigration, all that. And then you had a, uh, one of the guys, the, the black Hawk down, uh, fighters, if you remember, for that real thing and the movie, um, Mike Durant got in, uh, and just has a bunch of money. So you're watching Brooks kind of sucked wind as two people with a lot of money and charisma,

uh, you know, gained and Trump just said, yeah, enough of this guy. Uh, let's move on to Arizona, the last Senate contest that we're going to highlight here. Uh, astronaut Mark Kelly is up. Biden's approval rating, obviously plummeting as it is as everywhere, but Kelly is seen as more of a moderate, uh, more palatable to the Arizonans and certainly probably drafting a bit from being the normal one, uh, standing next to Kirsten cinema, Republicans are duking it out in a primary featuring attorney general, Bernovich, a venture capital exec, Blake Masters and solar energy company owner, Jim layman.

Uh, like most other GOP primaries, all three of these guys are now in a race to jack off Trump, the hardest, including a Bernovich, uh, notably flip-flopping first denying election fraud and now saying there are quote questions about the election. Do we think Kelly has a chance to hold on in Arizona? Uh, vote, the Democrats, we mentioned probably the best chance because, uh, uh, you know, Blake Masters is another very online guy, online guy, but he doesn't have, uh, Ron Howard making a movie about his life. He just is a, you know, one of these Peter teal acolytes who went to work for him and

made a lot of money. Um, and just does video ads where he, he really, I mean, conservative, uh, operatives love him. I mean, he just says what they think, which is like, oh, if country's being run by psychopaths, you know, the, this transgender stuff's out of control, but it's not really, he doesn't really have a normative message. It's just that I'm saying the conservative things and then Bernovich not raising any money.

Masters also not raise much money. So look, Democrats dropped a lot of races in 20 where they had a ton of money. I mean, what's the name? Jimmy Harrison. They let him lead the party after this. Uh, but this is one where Kelly is probably going to keep trying to distinguish what he does from Biden and take advantage of opponents being kind of weak. So I think he has the, the fundamentals to do way better than other Democrats, despite

how red Arizona can be. Like, you know, either random people in Peter teal guy or mediocre attorney general, like guys like that can win, but he's, it's, it's more of a mismatch in some of these other places. So let's move on in the last, last few minutes we have to, uh, some fun ones, uh, Alaska, the last frontier notable story here, Sarah Palin is back in the news, uh, running for it. The state representative, uh, position, I believe there's only one statement.

That's a lot of RAP Don Young is this notable or is Palin still a side show? It's notable. I need to stop myself because the, the, the Arizona ballot systems new and complicated with basically there's one big primary ballot for every candidate, the top four candidates go to a November ballot. And then when voters get that ballot in November, they, they rank them one to four until somebody has 50%. So it's incredibly complicated.

The idea is like, well, this is a big state. We have a lot of, you know, independence, third parties actually do pretty good there. We're going to make it open it up so that maybe somebody can, can crack through actually not, you know, this usually ends up locking the two parties in place, but whatever, she's going to run in that system and any Republican, uh, even as pop unpopular as she has been in Alaska, pretty good chance in that system. But I'd say like generic Republican, Steve would probably be a hundred percent sure thing bet to win.

And she's got, people didn't like that you just quit to become a celebrity like 10 minutes after, after the president, like that really did eat, eat away at people in a way that everyone forgot it outside as they call the rest of America. But in Alaska, it was like, yeah, that lady who quit went on Fox a lot and she's not been that popular. I will use this excuse to mention my one interaction with the Palin family back in a thousand previous lives when I used to work in a, uh, for a TV network in their reality television development division, I once had to, uh, serve, uh, Levi Palin as he was pitching a, uh, reality

show to them. And the main thing I remember about interacting with Levi Palin is could not form a sentence and it was wearing the most complicated jeans I had ever seen a person wear the complicated jeans. Yes. You know, the kind of, he never took the family name. He was, uh, to my knowledge, that would be funny if he had though. All right.

Let's go back to my last little bit here, uh, under a headline that I have as more trouble in Magaland, uh, both Marjorie Taylor Greene and Madison Cawthorne are now facing primary challenges and I will quote from one Dave Weigel in the Washington Post, supporting on this in the trailer. This is a quote from Jennifer Strahan, a healthcare consultant, challenging rep Marjorie Taylor Greene, quote, if people are so busy critiquing everything you say and not willing to actually hear you because you don't have a message that resonates, then it's distracting from really bringing results back to the district.

The main point here seem to be that there is a minor backlash to these guys just being super online and yelling on, uh, Twitter or TikTok or whatever they, wherever they are, a small but genuine dissatisfaction with just being the kind of celebrity representative. Do we think that these, uh, challenges to these, you know, notable, uh, MAGA representatives will go anywhere? Uh, they're, they're big long shots. The Cawthorne one is a little more serious because you've got, uh, they're both serious. They're both serious people challenging them, but you have a very funny situation where

Cawthorne announced he was going to move to a safer seat, uh, and then they redrew the map so that seat didn't exist. He moved back to his old seat and literally had a fundraiser scheduled called welcome home Madison that they canceled because they realized that sounded bad. Um, but, uh, and also he's just a guy. He's like, he's 27 at this point, but he just was a politics guy who wanted to be powerful. Now he is, whereas, you know, Green, I think just, uh, is, she represents a MAGA constituency that I think is, is pretty powerful as the, is the, is the, what we mentioned yoga a lot

is the, is the, the cross fit, uh, woman who made it on her, made it on her own as business, all that stuff. Like she, uh, is less relevant in Congress than Cawthorne, but I has made in that district, I think fewer enemies, but both of them are right in line with the Trump style of politics is if you want to piss off liberals, cause they drive you crazy and look, look how good I am at it. I mean, that's why I think Cawthorne might just be so incompetent that Republicans can be convinced to vote some for somebody else because they're not running as vote for them.

And I will vote for me instead of Cawthorne or, or, or Green and I will, you know, team up with that Romney. They're all running as MAGA conservatives and they're just like, wouldn't it be great if we had a MAGA person who was not ineffective, getting made fun of all the time. So like do they convince people actually when they're getting made fun of it's bad because that's not where they're at right now. No, they like it. I think that's going to be tough.

Speaking of getting made fun of and pissing off liberals, uh, let's move to my last item here, which is the dem opponent for Lauren Boebert. This is Alex Walker who, uh, made waves on Twitter last week, uh, for posting, uh, intentionally obnoxious TikToks, basically, uh, calling leftist whiny entitled bitches for not getting on board with the platform of suck it up and believe in nothing. I love when people are like, you have a moderate policy. You lost my vote. Oh, what was that?

Was that the vote you were going to give to some Bernie wannabe who's overkill policies are unpopular with 75% of voters just so you could feel good about yourself until they lose the general election at which point you'll point your finger and blame someone else. That vote. Oh honey, your vote got lost a long time ago. Democrats need to wake up. Jesus. In order to legislate, we have to win.

Go to walkerforcolorotter.com and stop complaining. Uh, Dave, you recently wrote about Alex Walker, uh, what is, what is your take on this strategy? Yeah. I teamed up with, uh, Taylor the Wrens who did the interview with him. We were both, uh, both on that beat of the, uh, this is a new ish thing. Like the last six years you can run as the make people angry candidate and raise millions of dollars and not win. I mean, like concerted did this forever that have direct mail firms that just like spammed

your grandpa and grandma's mailboxes and said, this is the candidate who can fight the liberal fascists. Uh, same thing with online money. Uh, but that, these are happening in races where the, the, the party in November is just giving up like Marjorie Taylor Green, Democrats aren't competing there, they're not competing with Scott Thorne. Their only hope is in the primary. Somebody beats them.

So these guys are just vacuuming money for, for no reason. And you could tell there's some, uh, annoyance among, I could say elite liberals on this. I mean, crooked media had this whole ditch, Mitch campaign in 2020, like a, a, a, a site where you give money and he'd split it between other candidates in part because they didn't want people to just keep giving to Amy McGrath to like set money on fire for a race they couldn't win. So these guys are going to probably think suck up millions of dollars and not win. Is that, is, is their story.

That's different than the primary challenger to Catherine, this guy, Chuck Edwards, like could maybe get in her runoff and maybe beat him, but no Democrats going to beat him. Matt, I almost hesitate to throw that, this question to you just because I don't want to, uh, you know, give this guy air for the dastardly Bernard brothers, uh, you know, making fun of him, but do you have a take on the, uh, liberal attempt at the pissing people off via the internet scheme? As Dave said, it's very effective at making money. It's, it's can't necessarily when you want election, although as I say it, uh, it really

does show the, the radical asymmetry really in, in, uh, the two parties and their relation, their dynamic relationship to their base and how it reflect out how that relates to their electoral prox, prospects, JD Vance can needle liberals until he, he, he, uh, you know, amuses the Trump family enough to win a primary for a toss up Senate seat that will then go probably towards the Republican because of the year it is, uh, this guy can probably make a bunch of money and maybe get a nomination where there is no, uh, chance of the Democrat winning. It's the only place where that kind of, uh, approach can get any, uh, traction is where the party itself isn't just like squatting over, uh, the, the electoral territory, which

is true of anywhere that's remotely, uh, for, for grabs. So it, all they can ever do is just, uh, is just suck, suck money and attention and he's doing it and God bless him. He'll probably do it forever. He'll never stop. I hope he never stops. I hope he continues doing, uh, TikToks. I hope he starts doing cameos.

I hope he starts only fans. I love him. Well, that brings me to the end of my outline, uh, gentlemen, thank you so much for your insights. I guess I will just flip it to you guys. Any final thoughts about the, uh, the state of these elections, uh, any races I might have missed covering, uh, anything that you want to touch on before we sign off. I'd say it's the most important election of our lifetime.

Uh, I wouldn't say that. Uh, no, I mean, uh, you, you laid it out pretty well. I'd say like, uh, find out what district you live in because that's weird now. That's going to be new. And just, there's going to be a bunch of stuff that, uh, pops on the map because people are so angry. So, uh, don't look at any outcome as crazy. Uh, you know, I think if people six months ago were like JD Vance, but huh.

Yeah. Don't, don't be like that. You were doing that. Now we're on. Don't, don't do that. You ready? Be ready for insanity. Cause we're going to get some.

Uh, anything from you, Matt. To the, to the, to the polls. Let's poke him on go. To those polls folks, it's, it's very important. It might not be important, but in certain countries you can bet on it. So it's still fun. Well, that will include the first installment of the Beltway Phoenix. Uh, hopefully once we get a little further and these, uh, elections go from the primaries

to the generals, maybe we will reconvene this, this panel to discuss what's what the, uh, situation is looking up closer towards November. Uh, but until then, I do have one plug that I'm just going to get in real quick. Uh, maybe you've seen from online, if you follow these things, but Chapo trap house is playing a music festival this summer. Uh, that's right. We are reteaming with our friends from the frequency festival to the actual IRL festival they put on every year outside of Portland.

It is called pickathon. Uh, we will be playing on August 6th at the pickathon music festival. You can go to pickathon.com to pick up tickets there, uh, a lot of great bands playing there. I mean, built to spill. Come on. We'll be in a dream girl at that show, uh, gorilla toss will be there, love them a bunch of other great acts and you'll get to see us in a fun outdoor setting. I've been told that pickathon is one of the best festivals in the country and as a fest

head myself, I'm very excited to be going there. I know Matt, you were very excited to be playing a festival as well. Absolutely. I want to soak in those vibes. Uh, great. So that is August 6th at the pickathon music festival. That's pickathon.com to pick up your tickets. We will also be doing a frequency live stream of the set, which we will have information

on how you can buy tickets to just watch online, uh, do your own little couch cella, uh, if you want to watch our set there. We'll have more information about that coming up, uh, Dave, of course you are in Washington Post. You have the trailer. Anything specifically you would like to plug? Uh, no, we have, we have a relaxing the paywall, uh, sometimes if you hate paywalls, uh, come to us because the, they're pretty good odds that we're going to have it down that day.

You can read all of our politics content. Uh, I will also take this chance to, uh, plug Dave's great book on progressive rock, the show that never ends. We've covered it on Andrew's using a good read. If you like reading about the, uh, the history of prog rock, which, uh, I do as well. So, uh, by that too, I know you're way out of book cycle, but, uh, take a, take a look at that until then, uh, thanks for listening. Keep your eyes on the polls.

Uh, goodbye everybody. Bye. Bye.