It Could Happen Here - Vote Harder: 2022 Midterms Update

Episode Date: April 14, 2022

We get temporarily electoralism-pilled and discuss the upcoming 2022 midterm elections.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's the horror of dead generations hanging off the backs of my

modern everyone society? What are we doing? Did start a podcast are we done great job robert so i'm gonna go i'm gonna go take five this is your favorite electoralism podcast it could happen here um the podcast that says just vote about it come on you know have you voted yet can you vote a little harder you know if, if I could vote right now, I would. That is how dedicated I am. I know. Everyone says that about you, Garrison, that you're always ready to vote.

Oh, we have an update on the TikTok thing. This just dropped. TikTok, there is now a new TikTok a new tiktok account launched to boost biden with young voters um it already has 100 fans um this this isn't a joke this is actually an actual garrison because that sounds like like a bad like a like a jimmy fallon saturday night live weekend update type no this is actually completely real oh Oh no, we're gonna go to the polls again. A government-funded Biden, pro-Biden

TikTok account has launched and it has 100 followers, guys. It would be funny if like, you know, like the Gravel Institute, but good. They just steered it

in really radical directions so it did start like tweeting about Zerzan and the importance of destroying time. The Biden TikTok account embraces ecological sabotage. I would take government money if they paid me to do that. I'll say it.

I'll take government money for a lot of reasons. If they paid me to make an unhinged TikTok account about how the scientists are the police, then yes i would i would do that that's a fun joke for four people listening to this podcast we're going to talk about the midterms yeah so we're gonna count look official stance of the mostly anarchists who make this podcast voting is dumb but uh it's also bad when certain things happen electorally like a bunch of insane fascists uh winning elected office uh two things can be true especially when people are really set on killing trans people right now yeah that's real problematic hashtag problematic things are gonna

have it could happen as a result of the midterms. I think the by far predominant media narrative is that the Democrats are heading for a shellacking. Now, is that actually going to happen? The short answer is nobody knows because polling, we should all be accepting at this point that polling is not good at its job, generally. So heads up, no one's really sure. There are certainly, number one, if this is a normal midterm election after a presidential election, Democrats should lose a not insubstantial amount of seats because that's just usually what happens. The only time it didn't was the midterm election right after 9-11. And everyone was out of their minds at that point. So you can't really factor that one into the averages. And nothing like 9-11 has really happened. Like the war in Ukraine is a whole

thing, but it's also not, I'm not seeing any evidence that it's causing any kind of like political realignment or affecting support for Joe Biden in any meaningful way. No, everyone's still pretty economy based in terms of what they claim to be their biggest factors for voting. The war in Ukraine is a huge deal, obviously. We've talked about it a lot on our shows. But also, it's foreigners and Americans don't care about foreigners when it comes to voting. So look, that's just reality. As a guy who's repeatedly tried to get Americans to care about foreigners when it comes to voting. So, look, that's just a reality.

As a guy who's repeatedly tried to get Americans to care about things happening in other countries, we don't. So in the absence of anything that could cause some sort of massive political realignment, the most likely thing historically is that the Democrats are going to lose control of one, maybe both houses of Congress, and a modest amount of seats. So if that happens, if it's kind of within historical dimensions, then that won't be all that weird at all. If it's a huge blowout, then that's a big deal. And if the Democrats don't lose or kind of barely lose ground, then those would both be big deals for different reasons. And again, no one knows what's going to happen, and no one on this podcast is going to make a prediction.

We're just going to kind of try to talk about what is sort of evident right now. Well, you're not allowed to legally make predictions, Robert. I'm not allowed to legally make predictions, although I will make one prediction, which is that at some point, at some point, we're going to see Joe Biden's whole ass.

You heard it here first. And 50% odds, if we see the ass, 50% odds that you can see some balls. 50%. That is, I've gone back and forth with my polling experts on this, and we're firm on that 50. Coin flip. Coin flip for the coin purse.

Toss up. Toss up. Toss up for the tossing of his salad, which might be why we see his butt. Anyway. You heard it here first on It Could Happen Here. It could happen here. That could happen here. It's not impossible.

Someone has a picture of joe biden's butt right it's out there so yeah so uh for every midterms um the uh the house has uh has um has all their seats go up for every two years uh The Senate gets one third of seats up because they serve six year terms because we like having fun here. Yeah, so it's going to be interesting. Obviously, it's most

likely that definitely Republicans will win back a decent number of seats inside the House and probably make the divide there less extreme um if not actually just like take the house also the senate's obviously more more of a more of a toss-up because we're only at a 50 50 stance on the senate at the moment um so that is definitely way more of a thing that they could totally seize but even if they do seize it that's not actually changing much

because uh they're not we're not we're not able to pass anything through the senate anyway uh we sure aren't so it doesn't matter because yeah i mean like it it would only really suck if um republicans get extreme control both the house and the senate yes um but i think that's kind of unlikely in terms of getting total control, and then we still have executives. And part of why it doesn't seem super likely is that in the last couple sets, particularly 2016 midterms, the Democrats lost basically all of their most vulnerable seats. And so a lot of the seats that are coming up are less vulnerable. And so we have more tradition. Yeah. And that does mean that like if the Democrats lose a bunch more than again, it's a much more significant sign that we're seeing pretty predicted, potentially like pretty fashy political realignment in the United States. It's it again, there's not like evidence that makes me think that's particularly likely.

That's just what it would mean if that were to happen. And I think probably the number one thing I would expect if there were some sort of gigantic apocryphal shift where the Republicans wind up with like 60% of the seats in Congress or something like that, is they're going to try to impeach Biden. Like they would have to, right? If they wound up in control of both houses, like they would have to try and impeach biden they got it because of the rhetoric it's the bit you know they got it um which again i don't i'm not saying i don't think that is particularly likely based on what we're seeing but like if that happens they're gonna do that so yeah i mean it's not even a prediction that's just like well they've been talking about it because like because like on average the president's party has lost about 30 uh 30 house seats yeah uh during midterms over the course of like the last century um and republicans

only need to gain five seats to win the chamber but uh now now gaining five seats is not the same as winning five seats obviously yeah it's a net thing it's a net thing yeah so like the party needs to needs at least 218 seats to win control of the house. So Republicans are actually, they have to flip, they have to, they have to do the flipping and they have to flip actually a good number of them because again, the seats that they do, the seats that Democrats currently have are all like pretty firmly Democrat. So there's, there is, there is less toss ups. And the other thing that's kind of interesting is that the redistricting process that has been going on the past bit has seemed to kind of favor favor Democrats. So that will be interesting.

If you want to have a good time, go go look at what go look at what the Democrats did to the Illinois map. It is hilarious. It's weird. There is a district that is like, it starts in the north, in the south side of Chicago. And the district ends literally like nine-tenths of the way down the state in a tiny town in Southern Illinois. And it's really funny

because 80% of what was going on there was Southern Illinois elected a Nazi to the House. The Democrats were like, how can we... funny because like like 80 of what was going on there was like someone annoyed like elected a nazi to the house the democrats were like how how can we well it's funny because also they didn't even do the optimal gerrymander because they're cowards and fools but yeah like this you know okay like the the maps are always constantly gerrymandered and part of the reason the democrats have been just like getting smashed for the last decade is that when they lost 2010 election they lost control of uh like the gerrymandering yeah and so that like fucked them for like a decade and they've gotten to a a position

that is slightly better for them but you know again like the important thing to actually take away here is that like basically every year like every every election that happens in the US on like for the House is rigged like before it starts, like at least partially because gerrymandering is just legal and you can do it. I mean, it's amazing to me that they're they're connecting these little rural areas to the south side of Chicago because and I'm sure you're aware of this, Christopher. It's the baddest part of town. And if you go there, you just better beware of a man named Leroy Brown. Now, you know, Leroy Brown,

he stood about six foot four. All those downtown ladies called him treetop lover. All the men just called him sir. You know, bad, bad Leroy Brown. Baddest man in the whole day. Baddest man in the whole damn,

this is important electoral stuff, Sophie. He could win. He's badder than old King Kong and meaner than a junkyard dog. So about 61 house races are seen to be viewed as competitive out of 435. But out of those 61... Again, amazing democracy. Yeah.

So and out of those 61, only about 16 are actually kind of viewed as toss-ups at the moment, with seven of those seats currently held by Republicans, eight of them being held by Democrats, and one new seat in the state of Colorado. So, yeah, like, it does seem like in order for Republicans to really get more control of the House, they have to actually flip more traditionally democratic uh territories so like they're kind of they have to do most of the actual like work here um to actually get those things flipped but again i i don't i don't trust democrats ability to be able to hold on to what they have anyway so who knows yeah i mean it it's it's one of those things there's a lot of talk about like how incompetent the Democrats are

and there's a pretty interesting article that dropped oh gosh where was it about how millennial support for Democrats is like at its lowest point

in recent memory oh I wonder why yeah yeah millennial here it's because they don't do anything it's because they say

they're gonna do a number's because they say they're going to do a number of very popular things and then do not do them but also again the people who gerrymandered all these districts and as a general rule just the the data we have on how midterms seem to go all factors in the fact that that young people don't vote you know um so the fact that the democrats are worse than normal with youth may not actually have a huge impact on the midterms at this state, especially – again, there's not as many – at least based on the polling we have, which is, again, imperfect, doesn't seem like there's a tremendous amount of super competitive districts. No, and it does seem to be the group of people that will be the most interesting deciding factor right now is boomer women seems to be the ones that are actually going after.

I don't like that, Garrison. I don't like that boomers are allowed to vote. Get them out of there. On that note, should we take a quick little Addy break? You know who else doesn't want you to vote? That is true, Garrison.

It's the Washington State Patrol. The oligarchs who support this podcast. Oh, God. Welcome. I'm Danny Threl. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America.

From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, we're back. And we're again talking about the elections in the south side of chicago and there's

a lot of reasons to wonder how this is going to go and i just want to point out that leroy brown keeps a 32 gun in his pocket for fun and a razor in his shoe which should be factored in when you're thinking about you know how things might go down on election day thank thank you for that for that critical analysis from uh robert evans um yeah really really on the cusp there thank you yeah it's uh we are we are we are lucky to have such an academic mind on the pod i say that a lot but i'm glad someone else is finally uh should we talk uh senate senate seats that are potentially going to flip even though Garrison doesn't want to? Yeah, I read the article and I found it kind of boring and I didn't find them to say anything super interesting. But yes, we can.

So one of the ones we got here is in Pennsylvania. Is that the one that's open? It is the one that is open. Okay. that's open it is the one that is open okay um so yeah this is uh the the seat the seat opened up when the republican senator pat too many good for him for having a funny name uh announced that he would not be announced that he would not be having he would not be running for re-election so so yeah there's the lieutenant governor is is is running in the Democratic primary and raising a good deal of money. That's cool. the two candidates, which we have David McCormick, which is a former hedge fund manager, and his

Republican opposer is a friend of the pod, Dr. Mehmet Oz. Oh, good! Oh, yeah! I love that I have to care about a fight between Dr. Oz and a hedge fund manager. I'm glad. Awesome. Cool.

And do you want to guess who Trump endorsed between the hedge fund minister and the good doctor? It's gotta be Dr. Awesome. Cool. And do you want to guess who Trump endorsed between the hedge fund minister and the good doctor? It's got to be Dr. Oz. Yes, of course it is. They let Dr. Oz speak at CPAC. Yeah, he's hot. So immediate, immediate endorsement. Because the hedge fund guy specifically went to Mar-a-Lago to take to like help get trump's support um and then trump endorsed

the bro endorsed her good doctor was he like was he like hey like what's your tv ratings i don't know you you don't have a t like you were not oh no no no donald trump is not a dumb man he's just a very focused one and the only thing he is focused on is the same thing that Dr. Oz is good at, which is getting buzz. Attention. Yeah. So, yeah, it seemed to be kind of a toss up between these two Republican candidates. Both are pretty wealthy. Both are spending millions and millions and millions of dollars.

And it is expected to be the most expensive race in the whole country because of the hedge fund guy, because of Dr. Oz, and then the one Democrat, Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman, who is raising a lot of money from the Democratic establishment. So yeah.

That's the metalhead, right? I don't know. I don't't know i want to talk about ohio for a second because there's been some stuff out of there that is it is because it is also open yeah so it's open and the guy who's running on the democratic side is tim ryan who's like a weirdo and like has sort of been a like on the right wing the democratic party for a long time but like so tim ryan's doing this like it's being called economic populism oh oh boy thing where okay yeah it's fun so so uh let's let's read a shirt out of the yeah so let's let's let's let. Let's read some Ryan quotes. China, it's definitely China. One word, China. It's us versus

China. His campaign basically is What a lyrical genius. What are you talking about? I mean, I gotta say, it seems very hinged, for one thing. Super hinged. It's an interesting thing, because it's like, okay, so he's trying to do the, like, ah, we're gonna do economic populism. We're talking about how China is, like, taking jobs away from the Rust Belt. But it's an interesting thing because it's like okay so he's trying to do the like ah we're gonna we're gonna do economic populism we're talking about how china is like uh taking

jobs away from the rust belt but it's also funny because like he's against medicare for all like so am i so like he's like he's like not like a he's not actually like like like on the left in any serious way but you know there's there's this whole thing like he's he's running as nafta which is interesting because like you know in terms's, there's this whole thing, like he's, he's running as a NAFTA, which is interesting because like, you know, in terms of economic populism, like Obama did run on that. Like Obama ran on, get on, on being against NAFTA.

And this is part of how we just like absolutely clobbered John McCain. But like, you know, the Democrats will literally never do anything about that. But like, yeah, you know, but there's,

there's, there's this whole sort of factor here where, where Ryan's big thing is he's anti-China he's and he's anti-china he he he tried to be the house speaker multiple times yeah yeah and and there's just you know the thing that's interesting about it is is it so he's getting a lot of support for the like so asian american groups in ohio were like hey what the fuck are you doing and he was just like i yeah i don't care um and just kept doing it and and it's interesting because there's this sort of like he's getting a lot of support from like republicans for this like you'll you'll there's been a lot of columns

from sort of like republican columnists who are like well i'm pro free trade but also like this whole opposing china thing is good and i think I think there's an interesting dynamic going on here where you have this, like this is a very, very old tradition in American, I guess you could call it American labor of there being this kind of like, well, okay, so the solution to all of our economic problems is that China is taking our jobs away.

I mean, like you can see this, like literally in the 1800s this was happening. And what happened in the 1800s was that they ethnically cleansed the entire West Coast and like most of the. The Sunbelt states. Yeah. So like that. Yeah.

You know, a lot of states are mining going on. Yeah. This is like they just like ethnically cleanse all the Asian people out. in a lot of ways because it's the democrats so far haven't really gone as hard on this as they were going in 2020 but this kind of stuff gets really really bad really quickly and you know okay like the the worst the anti-asian violence has been largely coronavirus stuff but like if you go back to the 80s when this exact same thing was happening with japan that got really really bad very quickly people got murdered um yeah a lot of michael crichton books were written with lots that are very racist now in retrospect yep yep and you know and i i think i think it's

important to remind people that like you know like, like there were a lot of jobs that got moved from the US to China. And that happened because corporations were trying to find a where, you know, like this is the thing that corporations did not like the Chinese people. And the other part of the reason it happened was that the Chinese government fucking murdered, like, literally like just machine guns, a bunch of trade unionists outside of tiananmen and you know that like that that had the effect of shattering whatever was sort of left of the chinese work of organization the chinese working class and so the factory worker in china who is making like if they're lucky maybe like sixteen thousand dollars a year is not your enemy uh despite what fucking tim ryan and all these assholes are trying to tell you. It's just it's it's it's not true.

And the reason they're doing this is because they're trying to get you to not look at the people who are actually fucking stealing all of your money. So he also seems pretty pro cop. Yeah, he sucks. Oh, the Democrats are all pro cop. Now we have yeah completely turned turned around on that one yeah they were only anti-cop for 11 minutes in 2020 when everyone was was scared that things were gonna go minneapolis in a lot more places yeah the in that 11 minutes was when nancy pelosi was kneeling that 11 minutes though. Not that part of it, but a lot of parts of it.

That part keeps me up at night. You guys remember when the CEO of Target had to come out and be like, it's cool if people loot targets? Yes, I love that. That was maybe the peak. I will say this. If you want that back, you can do it again.

You just have to burn a bunch of police stations and riot and loot things. So, yeah. Someone just have to you just have to burn a bunch of police stations and riot and loot things so yeah we can someone go back to molotovs it it yeah that that's a thing that could happen and if it were it could happen here it could happen here that is the bit i hope that georgia doesn't flip yeah let's let's talk about let's talk about let's talk about georgia um let's talk about georgia because yeah we got uh rafael uh that's what i yeah is running for his first full term after winning the special election uh last year um so yeah he's obviously trying to trying to like since since biden barely barely won georgia in the in the last election, trying to kind of ride off of that energy. But Biden's approval, like everywhere nationally, but in Georgia, his approval has taken quite the nosedive

with only like 33% saying they approve of Biden's performance on the job. And then on the job. Um, and then on the, uh, on the Republican side, we got the guy leading the race is a formal, uh, former NFL running back, uh, Herschel Walker. Um, so he, he has, he has, he has Trump's endorsement. Um, so he's trying to, trying to run off that, but he's, he's pretty new. So it's kind of, he's on, he's more, he's more, uh, he's pretty new so it's kind of he's on he's more he's more uh he's it's it's unclear because he doesn't have a lot of political background so who knows what's gonna what's gonna what's gonna happen there um well and it's also one of the reasons why Warnock won in 2020 is that while as has been shown people in his district aren't big fans of Biden, they just really were tired of Donald Trump.

So it is kind of a question as to like, well, what is the degree to which a Trump endorsement is going to matter a ton in this? Because the fact that they're now don't like Biden very much does not necessarily mean they're less exhausted at the thought of a Trump type guy coming in again. So another another race that's open is actually North Carolina, which is intriguing. Why? So that's... Huh? Why?

Well, North Carolina's always had a pretty reasonably prominent left. Like, it gets kind of, like, lumped in by Democrats as, like, a right-wing state, but it's not. I mean, there's certainly strong elements of that. There's a lot going on in North Carolina. Yeah, I mean, the person that they're trying to run is is Cherry Beasley, which is the first black black woman to serve as a chief justice on the state Supreme Court.

So she will probably win the primary. Republicans are still flip flopping between their Trump backed candidate and the former governor, Pat McCrory. So it's that's that's still still kind of retiring. Is it is it Burr? Yeah. Richard Burr is retiring by Republican Richard Burr. republican richard burr so yeah it seems like republicans don't really think uh cherry beasley is going to be much of a threat um and again biden's approving rating is also nose diving at around 40 percent um so it's it's the democrats they can just hopefully hopefully wish that there's because of the vote is so split

on the on the republican side if they can stoke stoke stoke divisions there and just coast by but they don't seem to be doing much much work in north carolina actually in terms of trying to like gain ground so yeah yeah yeah it's because again like the primary is going to be in may so it's there's enough time to get support behind one republican candidate so yeah let's see i don't i think that's all of the ones that are open races uh but we also got more more stuff like in like uh nevada wisconsin arizona florida fucking florida but i oh yeah flow rider won a 22nd in the eurovision awards representing san moreno back in 2021 it's rubio's seat that he it is rubio yes oh that would be so that would be so fun i would like i do enjoy the thought of bad things happening tomorrow oh that would be so fun yeah currently rubio is leading in the polls but it's not it's not uh it isn't

above 50 it is so it is it's it's pretty it's still it's it's close but i i've i'm not gonna get let down by florida i refuse no you can't never expect good things from Florida or Texas or Texas that is the general rule and never count out North Carolina yeah sure as a Texan do count out Texas look if it happens and it's good that'll be lovely but don't hinge your mental health on it

well do you know what you should hinge your mental health on? The products and services that support this podcast? That is right, Robert. You got it. That is a little bit too literal to our major advertiser, Garrison. That's why I did it. Welcome. I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows

presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time.

Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I also hope Rubio gets kicked, Sophie. Oh, welcome back. We're talking about the thing. I was just going to make threats of violence against a sitting representative. That is one of our favorite things, isn't it? That is one of our favorite things. That's why we're launching a new podcast, the Actionable Threats Against Congressmen cast. Do we know anything about the person who is running against Rubio?

Do they have a chance? Do they have a chance? That is a good question. I mean, it's Florida, so probably not, because you can't rely on Florida, as we previously discussed. Val Demings is waging the fight against against rubio um and uh it looks like the funding is actually pretty pretty pretty similar in terms of both having around 20 million dollars in funding um but there is a lot of other democratic challengers

uh there's but i mean the demings is the one that's gonna do it but there's a shocking amount of others like there's still like other millions of dollars getting spent on other challengers which are not going to succeed again great great great way to do democracy yeah we really have it locked down um it is cool that santa claus is running for governor of alaska uh and see they have a first past the post system i think he's running for governor of Alaska uh and see they have a first past the post system I think he's running for governor yeah Santa Claus is yeah there's a guy who's the mayor of the North Pole which is a town in Alaska who legally changed his name to Santa Claus that's funny you know he's a big Bernie supporter that is okay that's pretty rad it dope. Cause I, I know Santa Claus has been doing more, uh,

more acting recently. So it's, it's good to see him. Yes. Uh, I, I, I mean,

I can't wait to see the new crash more film. I mean, I'm pretty excited about that as well. Vote for Santa, vote for Dunleavy, vote for Santa. Yeah. So what do we,

what do we, what do we, the other thing I wanted to mention is that, um, uh, is that in terms of like you know the other recurring bit we've been having is uh people thinking that elections aren't actually real um a fun bit so we have only 47 percent of republicans are confident

that the midterms will be conducted fairly and accurately um so that's less than half that's that you know what that is is a recipe for stability that's less than half compared to 76 percent of democrats who think they'll be fair and accurate um yeah but also that's not going to be a problem also uh republicans are more sure that everyone who wants to vote will be able to they just don't think the votes will be counted uh but they think everyone who has access to voting is can do it easily whereas democrats say that voting access is more of an issue that actually could impact elections um which is you know if you actually look at stuff is actually true um well yes yeah it's uh we have one of the like the fact that our elections are ran by volunteers

is like one of the most absolutely batshit things on earth yeah it's it's low-key and existential threat to everybody listening to this yeah and i mean it's you know and this is one of the things i would say about sort of electoralism is like every single okay you probably won't hear about it that much this year because it's not a presidential election but every single time there's there's there's an actual presidential election there's a bunch of stories about how a bunch of people waited in lines for fucking seven hours because there weren't enough stations they didn't set them up in the right places and i nothing ever will literally will ever be done about this this has been like i i remember i remember stories about this when i was like 10 and it is it will never change nothing will ever be done about this this has been like i i remember i remember stories about this when i was like 10 and it is it will never change nothing will ever be done about it every

single time it happens people say that they're going to do stuff about it and they don't and uh yeah so that's that's fun uh the elections are kind of pre-rigged already for other fun kind of statty things to help with to help with like trying to you know get the temperature of the room so about uh half of white voters 51 say that they would vote for a republican candidate uh 37 say that they would vote democrat uh i know i talked with i mentioned this briefly but 52 of women aged 15 up say that the economy is not working well um and that's going to strongly impact their electoral choices. And this is what a lot of people are kind of looking towards in terms of indications of how they're going to vote and how results could be in the end is like older women who are Gen X and boomer women seem to be kind of the people to go after at the moment.

So yeah, 52% say that they don't like the economy and it's not working well. That's up from 37% in 2019. And most of it's around day-to-day budgets. So that's

an interesting thing in terms of how, how propaganda can be shifted around that. We know we've even seen that around like the war in Ukraine with like, with like, uh, gas prices and stuff we have, uh, in terms of back to how kind of looking at, looking at, uh, people, what race is generally trending towards what, what thing. Yeah. so over half say they do republicans about a third say they vote for democrats if if if they are white on contrast we got like a larger majority of black voters 72 saying that they prefer the democratic candidates seven percent prefer republican uh asian voters prefer democrat over republican Republican from about like a 2 to 1 ratio, which is 60% to 30%.

And Hispanic voters also favor Democrats at about 50%. Republicans have about 28%. And the other interesting stat pulled from Pew Research Center is that 70% of Republicans agree that party control of the House and Senate is the important factor, but only 60% of Republicans agree that party control of the House and Senate is an important

factor, but only 60% of Democrats believe that. So that means 40% of Democrats don't think that the House and Senate's important, which is a little wacky, which is also down from seven points because in 2018, under the same in this under the same question 67 percent of democrats said that they valued uh house uh house and senate control so that is so that that is down by almost 10 percent uh meanwhile the republican percentage points of that question have has turned it upwards which makes sense because of you know whoever's affecting who's ever in the uh executive branch will will say oh, it's less important for the House and Senate, right? So Republicans will like.

Republicans will say it's less important. Now to them it's more important, you know. And I also think with the Democrats there's an angle of this, which is like, okay, so we gave them power for two years and they did. Kind of nothing. Yeah, like what? It feels like nothing like they well actually that's not true they gave they gave police more money they gave uh they gave the pentagon lots and lots more money the most amount of money ever largest ice budget ever largest ice budget which

was with global warming we're gonna need more ice y'all like come on come on uh-huh i'm sure that was it that was the joke that's the joke temperature joke yes i understand it's also a climate refugee joke though oh double double meanings that's what we call a double entendre you gotta that's how you pronounce the french garrison but yeah it's only 17 of female to age 15 older have decided who they're going to vote for in November. So that is wacky. Well,

with so many good choices, how could they not know? So yeah, they're really, they're really, really trying to pull from there. And where do women over 50 spend a lot of time on, typically? Facebook.com. So yeah, Facebook and the GOP are really trying to do a lot of stuff to influence elections right now, as we detailed in our last episode around Facebook and the GOP funding all of the anti-TikTok stuff and funding all the pro-Facebook stuff. They really want people to be on Facebook because it turns out that's how they spread their propaganda the best. And yeah, specifically with women age over 50,

that's like the prime demographic for Facebook. So neat. Yeah. Anyway, that is a lot of the election notes that I had. Because again, I keep up with all of the electoralisms basically every day. I wake up every morning. I go to that one polling website. And I... You text me just the word vote every single morning. Tell the truth, you're secretly a pollster. And always, always, here's what's weird,

always using a different phone. Tell the truth, you're secretly a pollster. Never the same number twice. Tell us, tell us the truth. Well, it's not that they're a pollster, it's that one day Nate Silver woke up with a splitting headache and Garrison leapt fully formed out of a hole in the side of his skull.

But yeah, I mean, in terms of all of like the anti-trans stuff, that it's actually worth focusing on. Obviously the ICE stuff's really depressing in terms of Biden getting in office and giving ICE millions and millions of more dollars. You're like, great. But, you know, it seems like

if more Democrats are in office right now, it seems like that will make life slightly easier for trans people. So that's cool. It's, you know, it's the thing you always have to accept with our democracy, which is that it's foolish to say that the elections don't matter because they do. Because, for example, price caps on insulin or not passing more laws to make life a nightmare for trans people really does matter. But certain horrible things like the continued dominance of extractive industries that are pushing us towards climate disaster or the expansion of the carceral state and militarized policing in many different forms and the militarization of the border, that's going to keep right on trucking no matter who's in charge. And the elections don't matter for that. So far, maybe someday they will, but I'd have to see it happen.

You know, I do. I believe it's possible. I do got good news for you, though, is that the White House is launching a new TikTok campaign and it already has 100 followers after like two weeks. Why don't you refresh that TikTok, Garrison? Let's see how much they've gained since we started this episode. I want to see what they're up to. Give me a second.

Because I'm curious if I've gained more followers on Twitter than they have on TikTok at this period of time. I'm checking. I'm checking. I'm checking. Alright, here we go. I'm going to do it. The account is called Building Back Together. So so already pretty catchy

um how do they keep making these phrases worse i know they cannot oh they are actually up since so the the last news article i looked at they had had 94 followers. Now they're up to 1,800. Oh, okay. So, no, things are going better. Garrison, you owe Joe Biden an apology. I think we got this. I think we got it. This is a good sign.

Anyway. I mean, there's a good – there's an article about the millennial whisperer or something like oh wait no sorry it's dim's turn to gen z whisperer to show her up support an article from a day ago from real clear politics um that that's that's that's that's fun you know what you know what biden has to do biden has to get mr beast on the job and start making those videos politico and then i think i think i think i think we'll have this one in the bag. Yeah, I mean, Garrison, just based on my knowledge of you,

the main thing that Joseph Biden could do to prop up Gen Z support is to just start airdropping hormones to whoever wants them. I think airdropped hormones and airdropped money would be the way to go. It's funny. You could appeal to the right by giving them HGH.

There's a lot of options here. Like it doesn't have to be just one. Everybody likes some kind of hormone, you know? Hormones for all. Hormones for all. Steroids and estrogen for everybody. Well, yeah. Yeah.

I mean, like in terms of things that Biden could do to actually gain, to actually get stuff to do, get to like get enough support is that he can start doing executive orders that actually do are that actually are helpful um he could they we could we could they could really start rallying around the marijuana legalization bill um like they're like hey if you vote for uh democrats in the senate we can pass this thing but we need to have more democrats in the senate like they could do that they could campaign they could actually do things but they're not he could he could he could order the dea to reschedule cannabis that is a thing that the president can do um he can do more stimulus checks he can do a whole bunch of stuff he could forgive

a bunch of student loan that just honestly making tangible progress on federal decriminalization of marijuana and forgiving a bunch of student debt in the time left before the midterms would be enough that it would be a lot harder for people to say Joe Biden didn't do anything. Yep. There is ways to counter the arguments people are going to make. So they're they're showing. And by God, some of them are easy. Pot is a real free space. Most of my family are like super right wing and absolutely none of them support marijuana being illegal anymore. Most of them now smoke pot.

You can make this happen, Joe. Unfortunately, the president of the united states is the man who wrote who wrote planned columbia so uh oopsie doopsie oh just parts of it come on he claimed responsibility for all of it he sure did he really did no one talked about it it's super funny um so not about all the deaths because a lot of people died but so that is our that's our little rundown on the good terms as it stands in this moment there still is primaries happening um obviously stuff's gonna keep going but yeah if if if if if the democrats actually want to

stay in office which i'm not sure if they actually do but if but if they do they could actually just start doing things um things that are not hard. That would actually, you know, if you want young people to vote for you, maybe you could give them drugs, whether that be estrogen or weed. And that might make them excited. Joe Biden's famous saying, vote out with your scrotes out. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com. Thanks for listening. by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturno on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.