From the Kitchen Table: The Duffys - It's Time For The Woke To Sleep

Episode Date: November 9, 2023

Tuesday's election results revealed victories for Democrats and shortcomings for the Republicans, with key ballot measures such as abortion once again taking center stage. How has the Left managed to spark a blue wave and should Republicans be on guard as we enter the 2024 election cycle? CEO and Co-founder of The Federalist, Sean Davis along with Rachel & Sean reveal their concerning thoughts on the direction of the country. Follow Sean & Rachel on Twitter: @SeanDuffyWI & @RCamposDuffy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, everyone, welcome to From the Kitchen Table. I'm Sean Duffy, along with my co-host for the podcast, my partner in life, and my wife, Rachel Campos Duffy. Hey, Sean, it's so great to be back. And today we have a friend of ours, Sean Davis, from The Federalist is on. And boy, last night was a crazy night. Not a good night. I woke up getting the news alerts and I was pretty depressed. We're talking election results. Sean Davis, welcome to From the Kitchen Table. We appreciate you joining us. Well, thank you for having me. We do want to talk about last night's election results.

There was a lot of hope Republicans had that they were going to, because of the tone and tenor of the economy, Joe Biden's failures, inflation, the border, the Middle East is blowing up. So Republicans were hopeful that they were going to have a good night. Last night was not a good night for Republicans. It was a great night for Democrats. And just to name a couple of the races, and we want to get your opinion on what happened. But Republicans held the House of Delegates in Virginia. So they're hoping to keep that and actually win the Virginia Senate. They actually did not win the Senate, and they lost the House of Delegates to Democrats. There's a Democrat incumbent in Kentucky. It's a Republican state. Donald Trump won by 60 with 62 percent of the vote.

Bashir is the current incumbent Democrat governor. Republicans were hoping they would flip that Republican state of Kentucky in the governor's race. They did not. Bashir won a second term in Mississippi. There's a governor's race. Republicans did win it. Republicans will be red. But Republicans went up by only five

points. It was a closer race than we thought. In Pennsylvania, Democrats held the Supreme Court. That's a seat that they already had, but they held it. And then the big one for us, and I think for you too, Sean, is there was a constitutional amendment on the ballot in Ohio. And it was for viability at 25 weeks, guaranteed abortions until that time frame and potentially after if it involved the life of the mother that passed with, I think, by 12 points in Ohio. So all things considered, not a good night for Republicans. Sean, what's your take on what happened last night? What are Democrats doing well? How are Republicans failing? Those are all great questions.

The results definitely were disappointing if you're a conservative and if you're a Republican, especially if you believe in pro-life principles that every life created is infinitely valuable, regardless of how inconvenient that life may be. So I think there are a couple dynamics at play nationwide last night. Number one, I think the Democrats nationalized one particular issue, and they spent a ton of money on it. They were uniformly focused on the abortion issue. They threw tens and tens of millions of dollars at it. And Republicans on the issue kind of just hoped nobody would notice. They threw tens and tens of millions of dollars at it. And Republicans on the issue kind of just hoped nobody would notice. They didn't really take a stand. They certainly

didn't spend a lot of money defending a particular point of view. And I think the lesson there is that the side that picks one issue, that makes an election about one issue, spends all of its money on that issue and then destroys you with that cash when you don't have a message and you don't have any money on that, you're going to lose on that. So there are a lot of people in what I would call the squishy right, certainly on the left, who want to say, oh, abortion's a loser. Republicans need to abandon it. They just need to accept that everyone wants to kill babies, and that's a loser, and they should move on. I think that's terrible advice.

And in fact, I think Virginia gives us a good indication on that there, because let's compare what happened last night to what happened with Youngkin in 2021. Youngkin was not supposed to win then. He had, for most of that race against McAuliffe, been running kind of a milk toast, pocketbook issues campaign, nothing all that exciting. And he was losing. And when he started winning and what ultimately gave him that election was going hard on the woke trans nonsense in school. He got suburban moms with him. He got suburban parents. And he ended up winning a state that Biden had won by 10. Whereas in this election yesterday, I'd have to ask you, do you know what message Republicans were sending yesterday? We know what the message Democrats were sending. I couldn't tell you what Republicans were

for yesterday. Well, but I do think, Sean, they were running on education and parents' rights. They were trying to replicate the Youngkin victory on education. But it seems like that might have been even muted because Youngkin has tried to do so much on that issue. It didn't seem to be as much of a motivator. Yeah, I completely agree. the lesson that we should be learning and that our establishment never seems to want to accept is that when you are completely honest, forthright, bold, unabashed and unafraid, and you run on issues that you passionately care about and you know that we're right on, Republicans win on those. It's when they try and kind of cower. They want to pretend, oh, no, no, I don't want to talk about that. I want to talk about this. It's the issues that Republicans are afraid of that end up beating them because people

can sense when you're not bold enough and brave enough to just take a stand on something. And whether it's left or right, people don't want milquetoast, squishy leaders. They want people who are going to go out there and boldly proclaim something and say what you will about the left. and boldly proclaim something and say what you will about the left, they're not bashful about many of the awful things that I think they believe in. It's very clear what they believe in. And I wish Republicans would be as clear and as bold on the principles that I know are right, that Democrats have been on issues that I know are wrong. Yeah, boy, there's so much I could say about what you have to say, because I couldn't agree with you more. You know, I was watching the TV yesterday and saw a lot of congressmen getting really passionate about Israel. I wish they had the same passion for America and for our issues.

You know, abortion. I don't want to give. I mean, the left deserves. want to give i mean the left deserves a lot of credit for how they've made it as you said they they've drilled down on this issue and they've made it but they get so much help i'm watching the morning show the the apple series uh apple tv series um with uh reese witherspoon yep reese witherspoon and um it's it's a it about a morning show. I can't abortion is like the main thing in this. You know, they are they have so much support for their cause in the culture. And they have convinced so many young people that abortion equals women's rights. And they talk about it in such a theoretical way. They never, ever brace the reality of what you were talking about, about the value of a life and what it is.

So they get a lot of help from a lot of quarters. But I agree with you. I think boldness matters. And and that's why that's why it got overturned in the first place. Roe versus Wade, because Donald Trump was bold and not shy to tell everybody what he thought and about and about his decision to put in pro-life justices at the Supreme Court. So let me ask you this question. Biden, I thought Biden would be more on the ticket on some level because of the economy and so forth. So does this tell you maybe that Biden polls bad, but some Democrat politicians don't poll bad and some Democrat issues don't poll bad? Potentially. I think that's definitely an option. Those of us who work in national political media,

I think, are always super eager to pick one person or one reason why an election went a particular way. But the truth of the matter is, Biden wasn't on any of the ballots, and Trump wasn't on any of the ballots. And this wasn't even a midterm election. This was a mid-midterm election. It's an odd-year election.

And those tend to turn often on things that are not directly related to what's going on. Now, I wish the Republican Party, being a conservative, I wish they had spent all their money nationalizing this election and making it about Biden because his numbers are in the dumps. He's deeply unpopular. He's ruining everything he's touched. But when you have one side that's united, which was the Democrat Party, they know exactly how they want to run elections. They know the exact message they're going to run on. When you're setting up against that, a bunch of fractured messages across a bunch of different states with different dynamics. It's not surprising to me that overall the election didn't seem to hinge on how good or bad Biden was. Now, 2024 is obviously going to be different because

most likely result we're going to see is Biden on the ballot, although who knows what Democrats will do there, and Trump on the ballot. And then it actually will be a referendum on the results of those two people's presidencies, because we'll have had four years of Trump to judge and four years of Biden to judge. And I think that's a contest that Biden is going to lose because people are so miserable. Well, that's interesting. First off, there's been a lot of speculation that Joe Biden should get out of the race. He's too old. His policies are too bad. David Axelrod just came out and made the point that, you know, maybe he should exit stage left. And after these victories across the country and after the victories the

Democrats had in 2022, I don't think Joe Biden leaves. I think he can make the argument to the Democrat Party. See, I'm winning. We're winning with Joe Biden. So I think he stays. And I think you're right. Even with those polls that came out that show Trump beating him just this last week. Joe Biden is one in 2022 and he won in the midterm of the midterms. But Sean, I want to go back to a point that you made that Republicans don't necessarily fight on issues. And this has been my biggest complaint. Democrats are running on abortion. They're calling Republicans extremists.

They want to take away women's right to choose. And Republicans run for the hills and they take the abuse. They take the beating, slap down, as opposed to going, you know what, actually, I'm going to stop for a second. There's a lot of things I want to talk about. I want to talk about the border. I want to talk about crime. I want to talk about inflation that Democrats lose on. But I'm going to take some of my money and I'm going to engage on the abortion issue, because frankly, we've seen from these results that Democrats can, and actually the voting base, can forget about all the other horrible issues in their lives and focus on

one thing, abortion. So you have to play there. And to call Democrats extremists, they want late-term partial birth abortion. They want no restrictions on abortion. So when they call a Republican extreme, Republicans need to respond in tow and start to call Democrats extreme and call their positions on this issue. But when you to your point, when you run away from it, you don't engage on it. You hope and pray the issue goes away. You lose because the message sticks that you're a radical extremist that want to take away women's women's rights women's freedoms and uh i had this conversation with with uh with some of my republican candidates and they haven't taken my advice and the the elections have been far closer than they should have been because they don't engage on the abortion issue you may not want to talk about it you may want to

you know wish the issue away but you cannot cannot. You have to engage, fight Democrats and call them the same names they're calling you and you muddy the waters. And then you can move on to issues that really matter, the pocketbook issues that are driving the American election. But is that decision, and Sean Davis or Sean Duffy, either one of you jump in here, is that decision to not engage on that issue, to be afraid of it? Where is it? At what level is that happening? Is that Ronna McDaniel's fault that she's not, you know, has this big, you know, neck in this thing? Exactly. Or is this, you know, state campaign, you know, consultant? Yeah. What is it? I think it's probably all the above. I mean, the consultant class in the Republican Party, by and large, is trash.

I mean, you've got good people here and there, and I know many good people in it. But by and large, it's an industry that it exists to do good for itself. It's not particularly conservative. They don't particularly like Republican voters. Republican voters are just whose money they need in order to buy lots of houses and fancy cars. So the consultant class is a huge problem. And you see a divide in the Democrat versus a Republican party. The Democrat party is not driven by its consultants. The Democrat party is run entirely by its client groups. And that one reason that works for them

is when one client group wins, they all win. And so the party has to deliver for the groups, whether it's on abortion or union stuff or crazy environmental stuff or trans stuff. They're all in it, even if they might not agree with everyone. The Republican Party, unfortunately, is not a client group. And when I say client, I mean voters. It's not a party that traditionally seems to listen to its voters. Instead, it often tells its voters, yeah, we need you to compromise on this, this and this so we can win. And then some point down the road, we might deliver.

So the consultants are a huge problem. I think the RNC right now is is a problem. All you have to do is look at the results with the current leadership team. And then at the end of the day, it's the candidates whose names are on the ballot. So they have to bear a whole lot of blame for results themselves. One other question for you on the elections.

This was a point that Politico made in an article they put out this morning. They said, obviously, Democrats are celebrating this morning, great results. Joe Biden is drinking a chai latte or whatever he drinks. But they note that in these off presidential elections that that lower income, maybe lower educated voters don't necessarily turn out as much as higher income, higher educated voters. So the differential there is obviously the blue collar worker is more of a Republican voter now, as opposed to the Democrats who showed up at the polls. So maybe the point there was that the Democrats should not be celebrating too much because who turned out yesterday was not reflective of who's

going to actually be turning out very upscale 2024. Right? Yeah, absolutely. And just as a midterm election, you know, a 2022 or 2018 gets a lot lower turnout than a presidential because you don't have the big guys on the ballot. A mid midmid year, an odd year election has even less turnout. And Kentucky is a good example there. We unfortunately had a Republican there go down to a Democrat who's just done a terrible job there, mismanaged COVID, allowed BLM to just torch the state, and nonetheless won. And there's a lot of people who went in there and they wanted to blame Trump for that. Not Mitch McConnell, who's run the state, who built the GOP machine, whose candidate worked for him, who he handpicked and who he sent senior staff to go run the campaign. They want to blame Donald Trump. And I said, well, who do you think is actually more popular right now?

Do you think Donald Trump is more popular or do you think the Republican Party is more popular? is more popular? Or do you think the Republican Party is more popular? I'll tell you 100 times out of 100, Donald Trump is personally far more popular than the Republican Party. And when you put him at the top of the ticket, yeah, a lot of Democrats are going to come out because they hate him. But he has a massive base of support among people who don't vote for any other reason that they want to support Donald Trump. So I think you can't extrapolate the results from last night to 2024 in any way, shape or form, because neither of the top guys are on the ballot. We'll have more of this conversation after this. From the Fox News Podcasts Network, subscribe and listen to the Trey Gowdy podcast. Former federal prosecutor and four term U.S. congressman from South Carolina brings you a one-of-a-kind podcast.

Subscribe and listen now by going to foxnewspodcast.com. So, Sean, when I was laying in bed today before I had to get up and get the kids going out the door, I was laying in bed and I was getting the little alerts of everything that was happening. I had gone to bed a little early, so I didn't know what had happened, you know, during the night with all these elections. And it was bad news after bad news after bad news. And I leaned over to Sean and I said, Sean, if that slut in Virginia won, I just give up. That woman, that's what I said, the woman who was running for the House of Delegates in Virginia, who had basically was like like a cheaper version of an only fan and had engaged in sexual acts with her husband for for money and and and for for people to see on the Internet. And she lost. Thank God. But not by that much, which was like, I just what is happening to this country, Sean?

That's it's so funny that you bring that up, because last night our staff and I were all texting together and I couldn't remember her name. And I just said, hey, did the gross porno lady in Virginia win? That was nice. And yeah, well, we have a word in this in this language for people who perform sex acts for money. The word we traditionally use is prostitute. But apparently I'm not allowed to say that. But yes, thank goodness. She is a prostitute. And it was shocking that she announced her campaign after that stuff came out. And it was only when someone found the video, then later she tried it, whatever. In any case, she did lose, but not by much.

Right. And so your question was, you know, how's this happening in our country? What is going on? And my colleague, John Davidson at The Federalist is writing a great book on this called Pagan America. And it's something we don't like to talk about a lot. It's people of faith in this country, it's Christians. But the reality is that we are not acting as a Christian country anymore. And I'm not saying that the government, I'm just saying the average morals and beliefs of the country are not Christian anymore. We're entering a post-Christian America where things that were once obviously bad and sinful to everyone are just taken as normal.

You know, drug use, prostitution, pornography, stuff like that. And it's just it reminds me of the quote that John Adams said when he was establishing this country is that our republic is meant for a virtuous people. And I'm worried that we are no longer the people that this type of republic requires to function well. I think we've lost our way. I think we need to need to repent and turn back to God because the trajectory we're on is not a good one. because the trajectory we're on is not a good one. And that's a really good point. And the problem that we see in our house is we're not repenting and going closer to our faith and Christian principles. We're going the other direction with schools, with social media.

And, you know, my fear is this point that I've made to Rachel this morning is that I think the Republican Party very well may end up like the conservatives. I put that in quotes, the conservatives in Europe, which they're pro-gay, they're pro-trans, they're pro-climate change, they're pro-drug legalization. They're like the Bill Clinton Republican Party. And they're not conservatives any longer. They call themselves that, but they're not, and that's because the society changes. There's different viewpoints, and they've left the views that we've traditionally held on to

as conservatives and Republicans. There's just not a base there that's going to vote for that any longer. That's my fear on how far the country has gone and how much it's changing. But the root cause is what Sean Davis is talking about, which is the secularization of Europe. That is absolutely happening here. And so, yeah, these squishy, you know, practically Democrats on social issues people are like the conservatives in Europe. We have nine kids. You know that you don't have nine kids if you're not optimistic. I have been as pessimistic and shunned too as we have ever been.

And this election, I'm going to be really honest, this election last night really depressed me. I just feel like I just don't have a lot of hope left in me. I don't know how you're feeling over there in Nashville, but just kind of give us an idea of how you feel about the direction of this country. And if you really feel like we can bring this back to something recognizable. So I will absolutely share your pessimism about the political situation. It's hard not to be discouraged by it. I will say the thing that gives me hope that gets me up in the morning and gets me excited to work is not politics. It's knowing because of my faith that in the end, we're winning this battle because the battle's already been won by a God and a Savior who's far greater than we are.

So I just try to set my sights on that. Remember that I'm just here working a very, very small part in a much bigger plan that a greater God has set forth for me. And all I got to do is get up and run with perseverance, the race marked out for me, and leave it all up to him. I hope that we would continue to be recipients of his grace, that we would repent, that we'd have the blessings restored. But if not, I know where I'm going at the end. So I don't get discouraged. That's a really good point, Sean. And that's what we came back to as well. It's like, it's really hard to change the world. But if you look inward and look at your own family, your own life,

your own faith, your own values, you can take stock of that. Again, you can't change everything, but you can change that little world in which you live and how you live your life. I think that's a really great point as we end the podcast. Sean Davis, listen,

we're so grateful that you spent time with us at the kitchen table. And for all your insight and all your great work at The Federalist, you are the CEO and co-founder of The Federalist, which is an amazing publication for which our daughter also works at too.

So you have also a fond place in our hearts as publication for which our daughter also works at. So we have also a fond place in our hearts as well for all the work you guys do. So again, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. Appreciate it. We'll be back with much more after this. Can I tell you, Sean, this morning, I had sent Sean Davis an article earlier and I went back because I wanted to get something from the article that I wanted to talk about on the podcast today. And I realized that I had sent him that article, but I had also sent him an article that was meant for you. And so you're Sean Duffy and it comes up SD. And I have to be careful because you and I sometimes fight by text and I'm like, Sean Davis might get some of our fights.

A little fight we have right now, Rachel will move her face away from the microphone. And I'm like, cause then you can't hear her as well. So then she hits me. She hits me when I was like, put the microphone. She turns her head away from the microphone. I'm like, you can move your hand with your microphone. I don't know. I just. Just leave me alone, Sean. Leave me alone. But I think the point that Sean Davis made at the end, again, we were discouraged this morning.

And again, we can put a cherry on this and talk about, you know, who, you know, you know, what voting block turns out in the elections last night versus who's going to turn out a year from now. But make no mistake, this was not a good sign for 2024. And I and again, we are distraught over what happened. I'm afraid, Sean, that the Republicans are going to get the wrong message from this, just like Sean Davis said, that they're going to go, see, we can't talk about abortion or we have to get mushy on abortion. Donald Trump said, I'm going to put in, you know, pro-life Supreme Court

justices. He did something that everyone else sort of kind of hinted they were kind of going to do, but they never said it overtly. I'm going to get a constitutionalist nominees for the Supreme Court. But he said, no, I'm going to get pro-life constitutionalists because the issue of life is in the Constitution. And and he did and he did it. And Roe versus Wade was overturned. This is I mean, we seem sometimes to not celebrate our victories enough. The overturning of Roe versus Wade.

And, yeah, you're going to get some bad results. You had it in Michigan. You had it now in Ohio. These constitutional amendments enshrining abortion rights in their states. Okay, that's going to happen in some states. I get it. But still, the message is that abortion is wrong. And it is a national message.

It is not a constitutional right. And there are many states that are now not going to have abortions and are going to use the resources and the attention that would have gone towards abortion, towards helping women who have these babies. And so, you know, I just I'm afraid that Republicans are going to get more squishy on abortion because of what happened in Ohio. As disappointed as I am in Ohio, it does make the point that what the Supreme Court said is we're not outlawing

abortion. We're actually giving the issue back to the people and let them make decisions. And they made a decision in Ohio. That's what they wanted. They made a bad one. It was bad, but it wasn't the Supreme Court making the decision. There was a there was a political fight. It was had the liberals pro pro-aborts won. And I think Sean Davis made a really good point. They're throwing tens of millions of dollars at this issue. And why aren't we the pro-life movements not responding with the same kind of money? They have more probably energy on their side and more because of the victory and more people willing to give more money to that cause. You think it's because we won? We won the the Supreme Court that pro-lifers kind of

get lazy? The Supreme Court, we won. It's over. It's not over. It's now happening at the state level. The hard work is actually just now starting. But it does come to the point of, again, this is where we came to this morning as we think about where the country's going, what's happening in America,

how this doesn't actually meet the traditional values that we used to have, and that you do have to look at your family and your faith and focus on that. And I make this point all the time, but if every conservative is focused on their family, raising good kids, you know, raising them in a faith environment, we're going to save the country because there's a lot more of us having kids than them. But if we just turn them over to the leftist mobs in schools, turn them off to a public university system that has professionalized warping their minds to woke-ify them, well, you're going to lose. But if you stay focused on that one thing of

saving your family, we do save America. Yeah. And I think, again, you know, thinking about the world's problems are overwhelming. And I think there was a time where because communications and we didn't have the Internet and we didn't have all this mass media where we didn't hear every little bad thing that was happening in the world, you know, and and we can now. And I don't think our brains are prepared for that. I don't think our brains are meant for that much bad information that we can't control. We can't process it. And I think that there is a time to like, you know, turn off the TV to focus on, on, on the beautiful things in the world to focus on your families, as you said also your little community maybe it's your church your parish your school community focus on the things that you have control over and i think that is the best coping mechanism

um you know to to go okay i can impact the spiritual and moral formation of my own children. Okay, that's what I'm going to do. And if you're a grandparent, that's your job too. You can be involved in that just because your kids are older. You've got grandkids. You can still advise your adult kids. We can all be in this as he said, we're living. And I think that admitting that when he said there, we live in a post-Christian America,

admitting we live in a post-Christian America, that's where we're at. We are the dissidents. We are the counterrevolution. We are small, but we can remain faithful and strong. So I want to be clear on one thing. That is job one. That is your first job is your family and the faith and the morals and the values. You just said, Rachel, that is the first job.

But that doesn't mean it's the only job. That doesn't mean we retreat from politics or retreat from culture. We still engage. We still fight the good fights that need to be had in the public square. But don't be thinking about the public square when you're not taking care of things back at home. Anyway, I appreciate Sean Davis. Yeah, Sean Davis. Kitchen table. Nice, nice, good man. It's been a good boss to our daughter. We appreciate that, but also really smart on the political issues that we deal with today. I want to thank you all for joining us at the kitchen table. If you like our podcast, you can rate, review, subscribe wherever you get your podcast. You can always find us at foxnewspodcast.com. Please subscribe. You get a notice every time we drop,

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