Tangle - The Sunday Podcast: Isaac and Ari share their predictions about the presidential, house and senate races. Also, the truth is finally spoken about the robots.

Episode Date: October 21, 2024

Isaac and Ari share their predictions about the presidential, house and senate races as well as events surrounding the election. Also, the truth is finally spoken about the robots. And as always, the Airing of Grievances.Ad-free podcasts are here!For the last few years, our daily podcast has been ad-supported. In that time, we’ve gotten complaints from our listeners saying they find these ads annoying and would happily pay a subscription to get ad-free podcasts — and we finally launched it. You can go to tanglemedia.supercast.com to sign up! Once you subscribe, you’ll get instructions on how to add the premium version of the podcast to your feed, and then every time we publish a podcast you'll have an ad-free version in your feed (plus, you'll get premium, paywalled podcast content).Check out our YouTube video on misinformation about North Carolina here.Check out Episode 7 of our podcast series, The Undecideds. Please give us a 5-star rating and leave a comment!You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Help share Tangle.I'm a firm believer that our politics would be a little bit better if everyone were reading balanced news that allows room for debate, disagreement, and multiple perspectives. If you can take 15 seconds to share Tangle with a few friends I'd really appreciate it. Email Tangle to a friend here, share Tangle on X/Twitter here, or share Tangle on Facebook here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. Hey everybody, Isaac here. So I screwed up on Friday. I did something very dumb. I tried to change the settings of something related to our paid podcast subscriptions on Friday at about six o'clock at the end of the week when everybody was logging off and I broke it. So you might've noticed that if you tried to go subscribe to our podcast over

the weekend, you were not able to. I apologize for that. As penance for what I did, we released our Sunday podcast for free because I know a lot of people were trying to log on and access that podcast because I was making my election predictions. Also, you might have noticed that the audio was pretty cruddy in that podcast. And that's because Ari and I had a lot of difficulty technically with our microphones and our headphones. And first Ari's setup was screwed up.

And then he logged in and out of the podcast hosting platform a couple of times. And in the midst of him doing that, my mic switched from my actual microphone to my headphones and I didn't notice. So we've recorded about an hour of the podcast with me on my headphones. So the audio isn't great. So it has been a terrible week for us over here at Tangle HQ and technical issues, for us over here at Tangle HQ and technical issues. But the podcast subscriptions are back up and running. So if you want to subscribe to our podcast and you tried to do that last week and you were incapable of doing that, I apologize.

You can go to tanglemedia.supercast.com now and those subscriptions should be up and running. And if they aren't, please email us immediately. Staffstaff at read retangle.com. Coming up, I share all my predictions about the presidential race, the House race, the Senate race, and some of the stuff we expect to see on election night and in the days leading up to and after the election. Also, Ari and I just, I mean, we go in on the robots. Finally, somebody speaks the truth about the robots. You guys should enjoy this one, I think.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, a place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and I'm joined by Tangle Managing Editor Ari Weitzman. Do you want to do a victory lap on your stupid cooking philosophy? You're so bad at this. You're so bad at just letting somebody else share a little bit of... All right, yeah.

You're here with a vindicated managing editor, Ari Weitzman, who was prepared to show a good deal of grace about this by the way about how we've had readers write in to say yeah it really depends on what you're cooking and the surface that you're using it makes sense if you want to add your grease or butter early if you're doing a quick sear

and you cook meat far more often than I do so it seemed like that was really informing a lot of our disagreement but no yeah I was just more correct than you do. So it seemed like that was really informing a lot of our disagreement. But no, yeah, I was just more correct than you in this one, it seems like. So stupid of me. I guess we should shout out Megan. She gave our mutual friend Megan Rodin

with a very gracious and tangle-esque balance email about the argument on heating and heating oil and when to cook and when to preheat and when not to. And yeah, she did her best to think your side, but do it in a gracious way. And then I cherry picked one sentence she wrote and tried to take the victory, but it didn't really work. So yeah, it turns out there's a lot of people out there who put oil or butter in the pan as they eat it up, just like Ari does. I mean, we live in a sick country. I don't know what to say.

People are, everybody's broken. Sometimes you are so good at representing the brand and other times you're absolutely poisonous at it. It's amazing. Yeah, well, everybody has strengths and weaknesses. My weaknesses are losing and taking L's. Speaking of losing and taking

L's, the bulk of today's podcast is going to be some election prediction stuff. I think we should do at least a few minutes of throat clearing before we get into this um you know we're we're going to release a lot of this stuff in a paywall friday edition and obviously this podcast is in the in the premium subscribers only zone so at least the the pool of people who will be able to hold this over my head for all the stuff I get wrong

will be a little bit smaller. But I guess I want to start before we do any of this by just saying I think that political prognostication is a fool's errand. I am also going to keep trying to make predictions about the future. And I hold those two things pretty easily because as much as I think, you know, it's a little bit silly to play the game of trying to predict the future and is unreliable as polls and forecasting and all this stuff has been in some

elections over the last 20 years. I also think trying to make predictions about the future is actually a really good way to sort of test your own worldviews, a good way to test your understanding of trends, of current political moments. And it's just kind of like a little, you know, it's a mile marker in history to put down a flag and say, I think this is going to happen. And then in three months, be able to look back at it and judge it objectively. And we do a lot of that. I mean, we've done tons of pieces where I analyze all the things I've gotten wrong in the last few months. At the end of every year, we review our coverage from the last year. And over time, honestly, I've sort of embraced it. I think it's

one of the more fun and intellectually stimulating parts of the job. I'm not here to make predictions about everything, but in the process of analyzing the day's news, I think we often come out with some predictions or in our analysis, we end up saying things that equate to predictions and then saying things about what might happen in the future or misjudging a current moment creates an easy kind of benchmark to judge our coverage and understanding of the world down the road in the future. Do you want to add anything to that? I think just to maybe underline what you said about the usefulness of making predictions, I agree that there's an apparent contradiction between saying making predictions

is a valueless proposition in a lot of ways. And also it's a worthwhile and valuable proper proposition. I agree there's an apparent contradiction and I agree that there actually isn't a contradiction. Like I think if you're reading into predictions and trying to say, oh, Isaac said this is going to happen. Therefore, I'm going to assume that it will. I don't think that's the right way to read it. I think the right way to read predictions is this is a test of the worldview that we have at Tangle. So if Tangle is saying, this is what we're seeing, this is what we think is going to happen, here's something that we think maybe is less likely, but we are calling as something that we think is probably underrated as a possibility.

I think what that means is it's a test of the model that we use to understand the world. Like everybody has a worldview, and making predictions is a way to test the accuracy of your worldview. So if you keep making predictions and you keep being wrong, that means you have to change the way you think about the world. If you keep making predictions and you keep being wrong, that means you have to change the way you think about the world. If you keep making predictions, you're wrong some of the time,

means you just have to like make some updates. I think making accurate predictions is a very good approximation for how intelligent you are about the world. So I think more power to you if you make predictions and more power to you for updating the way that you saw the world

and the inputs and your reasoning if you're wrong about them. And then if you're right, you deserve to be called out for that and commended. So I think it's great. I think let's do it and let's be willing to update our worldview if we're wrong. Yeah, great. All excellent additions. And I'll say, I mean, proudly that I've leaned into this a couple of times in the past. I mean, most notably, I think in December of 2021, right before we went to 2022, I wrote a piece titled 19 Predictions About the Future. And of those 19 predictions, 12 have been resolved and a few more will be resolved in the next month because a handful of them were around what would happen in the 2024 election. And I was making this prediction two years out.

But so far of the 12 that have been resolved, I've gotten nine correct, which I'm quite happy about and pretty pleased with myself over. So, um, you know, I think it's, uh, it's been a valuable way for me to kind of track how my views have changed too, and how my views might evolve over time. Cause I do look back on some of the things I thought were going to happen two years ago and realizing, oh, I, I was wrong and I would change how I feel about that now. And then finally, I'll just say a few just quick important points before we really, truly, genuinely dive in. First, these are not things that I wish or want to happen. I'm not making predictions based on my heart or what I think should happen. These are predictions that I'm sharing based simply on my analysis of the data, the trends.

I totally can see that some of this is gut instinct. It's anecdotal reporting from on the ground. It's experience from covering past elections, the vibe I'm picking up on from talking to certain voters, especially here in Pennsylvania. But on the whole, I'm not making these calls with my heart. I'm trying to do my best to be right. Second, these predictions are mine. Ari is here with me on the podcast. My byline will be on this edition in the Friday edition of the newsletter. edition and the Friday edition of the newsletter. These are not positions or predictions that my team, Ari, the other editors, our social media people, our podcast producers have endorsed or bought into. I'm assuming we probably agree on some of this and disagree on other parts of it.

That might be worth fleshing out a little bit as we go through it on the podcast. I know for sure, for instance, yeah. And I know for sure, like Will, who's one of our editors, has already expressed that he disagrees with a few of my predictions that are in this newsletter. So let's all just say, this is me, Isaac, and I will be sure to lead this conversation by stating my predictions and make it clear that it's coming from me so I can personally be held

accountable for them and not tangle as an organization. And then third, the last and perhaps most important caveat is that I've said over and over all throughout this election for the last 18 months that a lot can happen in two or three weeks and that this election could really legitimately change in a meaningful way. I happen to think it's not going weeks, and that this election could really legitimately change in a meaningful way. I happen to think it's not going to, and maybe I'll just start there. One of my predictions about the next couple weeks, and this is a little bit meta, is that there isn't going to be anything that fundamentally changes the race in the next two or three weeks. We've gotten a bit accustomed to the October surprise as if it's normal.

It's not that normal. It definitely happens. But it's unusual for there to be some big, major breaking James Comey type, Trump access Hollywood type story that actually might move the election. And I don't think we're going to have one next two or three weeks. It's been a totally insane year. And there have been weeks that have been, you know, unprecedented in terms of the volume of news. But I don't think that's going to happen. That being said, I might change my mind about some of these before Election Day and I reserve the right to do that

because if it does happen, you know, I'll operate on the new information. All right. That's a lot of throat clearing. With all that out of the way, let's get into it. Let's do it. All right.

I think I sort of gave... This one is a little bit of a bummer for the regular podcast readers because I kind of gave this one away. I spilled the beans a little bit in our conversation last week accidentally. But after thinking on it more for another week and kind of leaning in,

my big kind of hot take zag is that Kamala Harris is going to win Pennsylvania and North Carolina, and she is going to lose the election to Donald Trump. I swear that I'm not inventing this just because I want like a spicy smoke or not category five take. That's not what I'm trying to do. I know there are a lot of people who do that. I came to this position earnestly by looking at the swing states at the state level and basically analyzing the trends, looking at the polling, considering some of the fundamentals, talking to people,

following reporters who are state-specific reporters on the ground, and just getting a sense of each of them over the last few weeks, and then picking individual winners and then looking at my map. And this is what I came up with. It's a victory for Donald Trump with 279 electoral votes. It involves Trump winning Wisconsin and Michigan, but losing Pennsylvania. It involves him winning Georgia and Arizona, but losing North Carolina. And it also includes him taking Nevada. I definitely recognize that this will probably be a pretty unique map in this space.

I happen to think it's pretty realistic. I think there's a story in the map, an overarching narrative that is a tiny bit convoluted, but maybe makes more sense when you go state by state. It looks a little something like this. Harris is going to do worse with non-white voters and non-college educated voters than Biden did. She's going to lose enough support from Arab voters and African-American voters and progressive liberals over a combination of the war in Gaza and the fact that she's not Biden in states like Michigan,

that she's going to falter in places where Biden didn't. She will benefit from shifts in the South, demographic shifts in places like North Carolina, and she'll reap the reward of a superior ground game that Democrats have in states like Pennsylvania, but she's going to slightly underperform Biden across the country, even among Hispanic and Black voters. but she's going to slightly underperform Biden across the country, even among Hispanic and Black voters.

And this is going to cost her Georgia and Wisconsin and Arizona and Michigan and the election. Anything you want to say before we get into this state-by-state analysis here? I think there are, in a very tangled spirit here, I think there's two different moods you can understand what you just said with, which is either one that says,

assuming like all on board with all of those reads and assumptions, you can take that to mean this actually looks great for Trump because the demographics have shifted somewhat to favor Harris, but not enough in areas where it might cost her. And that would mean a lot of things stacking up for Trump, like breaking any cracks in the blue wall in Wisconsin and Michigan generally signals landslide victory like we saw in 2016. generally signals landslide victory like we saw in 2016. Not really a landslide in terms of the, like by the strict definition of it, but a considerable electoral college victory. The other way that you can look at it is losing Pennsylvania creates a very narrow margin or narrow path for Trump to win the election. You're saying he loses Pennsylvania and North Carolina, assuming that we're reading these things with the same assumptions, but then wins Wisconsin, Michigan, and Georgia. If he loses Michigan or Georgia, that's not enough. It's over.

If he loses Wisconsin, the margin of victory is one electoral college point. It's actually a tie. It's a tie if you lose to Wisconsin at 269, which is nuts. So it's not as if what you're saying is doom and gloom. You're saying that the breaks are really, really small. You can see it's like dropping a drop of water on a turtle's back and it could go any direction. And you're saying like, this is the path that seems the most likely, but it seems like the paths narrow on either side, like with the same assumption, you could easily say within the

realm of the margin of error is a 40 point victory for Democrats and a 40 point victory for Republicans. It just seems like the path that seems like the most likely path is shifting a little bit within that margin. Yeah, I mean, look, I guess it should go without saying, and maybe it doesn't, but this is an incredibly close race. It is, it's a total toss up. And there's so much about it that's completely unprecedented. I'm, funny enough, I am sitting here on my computer. I just got a text from my good friend, Jimmy Mickle,

who some, some folks in the Frisbee community might know. And he just sent me a, uh, tweet from Rachel Bitkofer who I interviewed a bunch in 2020 and, um, 2022. If you don't remember Rachel, she's a, I mean, she's a Democrat. She's a progressive kind of activist, but she's also a pollster. And she talks a lot about polling. And she just said something online that I think is really, really relevant to the conversation we're having. And it says, why I'm not election forecasting 2024 beyond just saying that it's a toss-up advantage Harris. And what she says is there's just too many unprecedented elements. She says, we have a former president rerunning after

losing his bid for a second term, a switch of one of the nominees 100 days out, a candidate who's a convicted felon, a candidate who's facing a trial for insurrection, there's the progressive language, election stealing and stolen classified documents. A candidate who is a black female with an electorate bias against either of those demos, but especially both of them together. Changes in GOP mass voter behavior in terms of early and absentee voting. A national polling aggregate of three points and a realigning and de-aligning electorate with known unknowns, such as Republicans for Harris. Basically just saying, oh, and then

she throws in the Dobbs effect, which underpolled all through 2022 and 2023, and we could guess maybe is going to underpoll in 2024. That's just like one person with a very specific worldview listing all the reasons why we should not be doing it.

And she missed a few too, like the assassination attempts, the hurricanes recently, the Springfield, Ohio controversies. There's a ton of things that are shifting the way people look at the election. And yet, I think I can defend pretty much every one of these decisions. So I'm going to do that really quickly right now

because we're going to talk about the Senate race, the House race, a few other things that I think are going to happen up to and around the election. And for each of these sections, maybe I should have said this at the top, for each of these sections, I'm going to do a important, not caveat, but just a reminder that there are some different elements about this that could go sideways related to my prediction. So let's just start in Wisconsin. And I'm just going to run through these states that I think are going to be really important and kind of explain my individual justification. and kind of explain my individual justification. In Wisconsin, in their Senate race,

Tammy Baldwin is struggling against a weak candidate. We're going to talk more about that in a few. The alarms there are just wearing bright red. Trump took the lead in a recent Quinnipiac poll. Black turnout in Wisconsin is going in the wrong direction for Harris. And in the last few presidential elections, the Trump vote has been undercounted in Wisconsin. And I think we're going to see that again this year. So basically, I'm just making a guess

that this really tight race is going to shift a little bit to the right when we go from the polls to the outcome. And that equals a victory for Donald Trump. So why is Harris going to win Pennsylvania if she's going to lose Wisconsin? Her ground game in PA has been really good. I live here in Philadelphia.

My family's still out in Bucks County. I was just in Bucks County this past weekend. Obviously grew up there, have a lot of friends and family there. Democrats are just barnstorming the state. They've got volunteers everywhere. They've got advertisements everywhere. They have a popular Democratic governor in office.

I think throughout these close elections, Pennsylvania voters have shown a moderate and independent streak. Trump continues to have widespread appeal in these kind of bright red counties while struggling in the purple ones. And the purple ones in PA are the ones that decide the election. So there's some anecdotal evidence here, you know, talking to my people in Bucks County, including a lot of moderate independent voters who I think are breaking toward Harris. I think Harris is going to win it on the backs of suburban women, moderate Republicans, independent voters.

That's just a little bit of data and a little bit of gut feeling on why I think she's going to get PA. And again, all I'm doing to build my map is just I'm looking at these states individually. Arizona, Trump's up by six points in the latest New York Times-Santa College poll. That's well outside the margin of error. The lead in that poll that Trump had was so big that Nate Cohn, the New York Times resident pollster, thought it was a fluke.

So they did a second poll of Arizona and they got the exact same result. It's not a fluke. Harris is floundering in this critical swing state. And a big reason why is that she isn't doing very well with college-educ educated white voters, which is an anomaly for her campaign. That's like huge alarm bell

if she's not winning the college educated white voters by the margin that she needs to. And she's not in Arizona. On top of that, Governor Katie Hobbs has gotten a lot of criticism, the Democratic governor, for basically being MIA on the campaign trail. And Democrats have lost a big voter registration lead that they used to have. So the outlook for

Harris there is just not great. Nevada, really tough to get a read on historically. None of the signs there are encouraging for Harris. Democratic voter registration there has been diminished. Nevada's famous pollster and forecaster, John Ralston, who was very confident in Democrats over the last few cycles, basically said he has no idea who's gonna win. On top of that, a Republican candidate for governor just unseated the Democratic incumbent in 2022, which amid all the other red wave failings

of kind of what we thought was going to happen in 2022 was one of the things that actually happened so that's a rare thing and it's kind of a canary in the coal mine to me on a state that might be shifting a bit rightward which brings us to michigan this is the prediction i feel the least sure about. It's a little bit more gut than data or, you know, I guess it's hard for me to tell a really coherent story about this. But there are some kind of, I don't know what to call them. They're not fundamentals. They're variables, I guess I'd say, that give me worry if I'm a Democratic strategist. The Arab American community and the pro-Palestine protesters are gaining genuine momentum, and they're really collecting tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of voters who are talking about and committing to sitting out or protest voting for a third party. Jill Stein is campaigning in the state. She's going to be on the ballot. It's going to be a super duper close race. Representative Alyssa Slotkin is warning

that Harris is underwater in internal polling that Democrats have. She issued that warning, and then it leaked immediately to Axios, who published it. So the Democrats' internal data is telling them that Harris is doing poorly in Michigan. And I just think she's going to lose. I think she's going to lose Michigan. I think she's going to lose Wisconsin. And there are different reasons for that. But in a race like this, that's a coin flip. You have the party internally freaking out about the polls they're seeing. You have a third party candidate campaigning across the state and a really important group of voters

saying they're going to protest vote over a very specific issue. And I think Harris has a lot of problems. North Carolina, Harris is going to win in my opinion. And I know that that feels crazy to say after I just got done explaining why she's going to lose Wisconsin and Michigan. I don't actually think it's that crazy. The state's been trending in one direction for the last few decades. It's been inundated with

moderate and liberal college-educated voters. It has this huge university system that is basically producing well-educated voters who are coming out of college and then living in North Carolina. And we know that over the last 10 or 15 years, one of the new, you know, historically new divides that we have in politics is college-educated and non-college-educated voters. And college-educated voters tend to break for Democrats. In 2020, this was a super, super close race. It was a lot closer than people thought it was going to be. It was not expected to be a real battleground. And then Trump won it by less than two percentage points. That, all of that, combined with Harris's affection for visiting North Carolina.

She's gone there like 20 times or something. This was even before she threw a hat in the race. She was just visiting North Carolina. A lot of teams have a good relationship with their governor, Roy Cooper. And the fact that Republicans are running maybe the worst gubernatorial candidate I've ever seen in my life makes me think this is good for Harris. So that's the story on North Carolina, which brings us to the final state that I think is important to talk about, which is Georgia, the final swing state, and why I think she's going to lose. And this one's pretty simple. Biden won it by a whisker. He was polling better there than

Harris was. He had very good Democratic candidates who were running. And none of that's true this year. Harris is not polling very well in Georgia. Four years later, I think 2020 feels a lot more like an anomaly to me than the new normal. And the polling has begun to break in Trump's favor now, who has about a two percentage point average lead over Harris in the polls recently. I just struggle to see her winning Georgia. And I think Trump's going to get a wave of support in the rural areas. So that's it. Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan,

Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. Before I get into the why I might be wrong part of this, I'll pause there for a moment. Well, that's a lot. I'm just trying to think, just thinking about the ways where you said something that I could maybe needle into have any disagreements. And like where there's space between the way I'm interpreting some of the same information the way that you are. I think it's really just to me about Michigan and Nevada a bit because I don't know. I think Wisconsin, I'm actually, I think I see that pretty differently maybe it's just both Michigan Wisconsin and one one barrel for me and then Nevada second so I think I'm seeing the same thing about Ralston the pollster in Nevada the concerns about the Senate race the way that the demographics are shifting I just I have a view where I'm looking at the polls over the past couple months since Harris has entered the race.

We're looking at the absolute peak of her polls after she was announced to be the candidate to replace Biden. The DNC happened, and we're comparing them to now, and we're seeing a monotonic decrease for Democrats, and we're seeing a monotonic increase for Republicans. like a monotonic decrease for Democrats. And we're seeing a monotonic increase for Republicans, knowing that their candidate hasn't changed. So it's not that people are being swayed as much by anything Trump's doing. They're just getting less and less confused about what the Democrats are doing. And I think, I just think that we're probably at a bottom portion of that trough. And I know we're really near the election. so it's not like there's much time for Democrats to do anything about it. But I just think when we bottom out, the worst case scenario for Democrats is like, oh no, it's close. We're behind now. And based on that just straight read of the momentum in Nevada, that's why I think probably it's not going to be

enough to tip over the line for Trump. And's why I think probably it's not going to be enough to tip over the line for Trump. And Wisconsin and Michigan, I'm just not really convinced that the people that are going to be sitting out will. Wisconsin more so, but I think the lead that Democrats have had up till now, just remembering like two or three weeks ago, we were having a conversation about what the likelihood is that Trump wins Wisconsin or Michigan. And we agreed like those states don't feel like toss-ups as much as they feel like lean Democrat. And I don't know that the polls are showing enough to say that it is predictable that Republicans win that state in the presidential election. I think it's fair to say it's more likely, but I think it's still probable Democrats carry Wisconsin. And I think

the same about Michigan, with the added caveat that I do think when we get to election day, the people that are saying they're going to sit out that election are going to be faced with the realization, or maybe they already have it and they're just trying to play their hand as strongly as they can, that their choice is either Harris or Trump on the issue of Palestinian human rights. And I don't think they're going to vote for Trump on that, ultimately. Polling, indicating what it's indicating, I do think that it's probably overestimating. So those are just the areas where I disagree. I'll give you the my take on why I'll be wrong. In 2022, polls vastly underestimated Democratic enthusiasm and support. The quote unquote hidden Trump voter has maybe not really ever been there. I think like there have been polling errors, but Trump has never

really won, you know, more than 43, 45% of the electorate. And I think that just might be the ceiling for him. So, you know, if you're looking at tight races in this election, any toss up in these states, you could just make the case by looking at how far ahead Democrats are polling in Senate races, plus the fact that the 2022 and in some places 2020 Democratic enthusiasm was underestimated, that maybe we don't live in the era anymore where we're undercounting Trump's support, and that just breaks the other way. I'm going to read really quickly. These are not my words, but this is a take from somebody, Simon Rosenberg, who we've interviewed on this podcast. He's a

Democratic strategist. He's the guy who very famously accurately predicted the 2022 midterm outcomes and was pushing against the narrative that Republicans were going to have a red wave. This is what he said in a recent newsletter explaining why Harris is in a better position than Trump. He said, Trump is weak, not strong. He was dragged over the finish line by Russia and James Comey in 2016. dragged over the finish line by Russia and James Comey in 2016. Trump and MAGA had disappointing elections in 2018, 2020, 2022, 2023, early 2024, and he underperformed public polls in 19 of his first 20 Republican primary elections. As so much of our commentary in 2022 started with the idea

that the election was going to behave like other recent midterm elections. So much of our commentary this year has been based on a belief this election will behave like 2016 or 2020, and Trump would overperform public polling, that he had superpowers, that there is this secret Trump vote that would come out and the red waves would hit the Democrats. But this isn't what happened in 2016. He lost the presidency in 2020. Most incumbent presidents are reelected. And he and his party have really, really struggled since Dobbs. When looking at this, what we should have seen was Trumpian weakness and uphill climb of a failed extremist politics. Instead, what we've

gotten in the chatter is this lingering assumption of strength and power that was never actually there. He and his party have been far more losers than winners over these past nine years. And this idea of strength when looking at that ugly thing is blustery MAGA bullshit enabled by the right-wing noise machine. End quote. So if you're looking for the alternative take, that's it, basically. And I think it's a totally plausible alternative take. Simon's a pro. He's an expert. alternative take.

Simon's a pro. He's an expert. And he was right about 2022, and everybody else, including me, had a bad read on the room. Though I was reading stuff then, I did find it compelling. I'm less convinced this time, but we'll see if he's right again. That's it for my prediction

for the election. I'll just say one more time to put a cap on it. I think that Kamala Harris is going to win Pennsylvania and North Carolina, but I think she's going to lose the election. And we'll see what happens. Again, I think this race is a coin flip. I think it's going to be on a razor's edge. if there's a blowout in one direction or the other, my suspicion is it'll be Trump blowing out Harris. But, you know, for all the reasons that we've talked about, I think there's a lot of difficulty in making a prediction about the national races this year. So with that, I'm going to pivot to a quick sort of bullet point, you know, indented bullet point 1A prediction related to this, I guess, which is that when Kamala Harris loses, I think Joe Biden is going to give a brief but conciliatory concession speech and call for unity across the country.

This prediction should be a kind of layup, but after 2020 and 2016, it's not. should be a kind of layup, but after 2020 and 2016, it's not. A lot of Americans are bracing for protracted fights about the election results and narratives of interference. I mean, Hillary Clinton obviously still talks about not losing 2016 fairly. This time, I think Biden, after Kamala Harris loses, will do his best to unify the country in the event of a Trump victory. I think regardless of what you think about Joe Biden, however you feel about his policies, his worldviews, if you think he's the worst president we've ever had, he's a traditionalist who always recognizes the weight and responsibility of moments like this. It's one of the things I actually really like about him.

And I think he will shine in this moment where there will be a lot of turbulence and upset across the country and insist on Democrats accepting the results. That's my prediction. Could I be wrong about that? Yes. What's the scenario where I'm wrong about that? One, I think if the race is really, really, really tight, like a 2000 Bush v. Gore type race, Biden might feel a responsibility to side with Harris or hedge all his language as the courts play it out, which maybe is the right thing to do in that situation. But I could see a world where that happens. And maybe there's a ruling by the Supreme Court or something that Biden can't swallow and he does not take a conciliatory tone.

Maybe his frustration of being forced out of his candidacy gets the best of him and he just takes a back seat in the aftermath of the election. Like Harris loses and he's kind of MIA and lets her and her, you know, kind of pseudo administration deal with it and be the face of it.

And of course, maybe Harris wins. So all of this is a moot point. I think the first two are pretty unlikely. Harris winning, of course, maybe Harris wins. So all of this is a new point. I think the first two are pretty unlikely. Harris winning, of course, quite possible. But I think that's the read on how I could be wrong about this situation. Cool. No notes on that. I'm just nodding along here at home. I think I'm also trying to keep tabs on all the possible scenarios we're talking about

and remembering that we're sitting here Thursday, October 17th. And it's going to be really, really easy two or three days after the election to say, of course, that's what happened. And obviously, this is the outcome. holding on to all the threads based off of all the possible ways things could break on margins and seeing the outcomes, just keeping in mind that there's still a lot that we're going to learn over the next three weeks. So if Trump does win, I do agree. Biden will concede in that moment. And barring a Bush v. Gore hanging Chad thing or late absentee ballots not being counted or something.

But I agree that that's a really fringe possibility. We'll be right back after this quick break. We'll be right back after this quick break. Working in the trades is intense. It can be stressful and painful. Some guys use drugs and alcohol to cope. But when we ask for help, or we see someone struggling with addiction, our silence speaks volumes.

See how you can help or get help at Canada.ca slash ease the burden. A message from the Government of Canada. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. All right, that brings us to the Senate. And I think this is a less kind of hot take and a more sort of traditional read

on what's happened here. And I'll talk about why. My prediction is that Republicans are going to win the Senate majority and they will have a 52 to 48 majority when the dust settles on the election. For those of you who are regular listeners to the podcast or readers...

For those of you who are regular listeners of the podcast or readers of the newsletter, you'll know we did a deep dive on the Senate on Thursday. That lays the groundwork a little bit for some of what I'm about to say. And I know this podcast could get really long really quick, so I'm going to try and run through this part pretty quickly because we've given it a lot of airtime already. According to 538's polling averages,

the Democratic candidates are plus five in Pennsylvania, plus seven in Arizona, and plus nine in Nevada. Polling in these states is notoriously difficult. I have no reason to think the outcome would be that far outside the margin of error, especially not after 2022. So there are three states here that have been pretty consistently good for Democratic Senate candidates. I think they're going to win those three states.

I think the Senate candidates in Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Nevada are going to win. Take them off the board. The other side of this is that I think Republicans are looking primed to win Texas, Montana, and Michigan. That's one hold, Texas, and two flips, which gets them to 51 Senate seats. Texas is pretty easy. Every cycle we hear about the Democratic candidate coming to unseat the Republican senator or whatever, maybe Democrats are going to flip the state. It's the same story we had with Beto and Ted Cruz in 2018. I just don't think it's going to happen. I think Democrats are wasting a lot of good dollars there. I could be wrong, but that's what I think. And Cruz is going to hold his seat and win this race. One of these years, I will predict this and be wrong and I'll have

egg on my face because I'm just going to keep predicting Texas Republicans hold up until they don't. And that will happen at some point, I'm sure. I mean, as Ari and I talked about on the podcast where we did a bunch of ranking the past presidential elections, we talked about how much the electoral maps have changed. I just don't think it's this year. In Montana, Jonathan Tester is in a really tight race. Cook Political has rated it lead Republican. The polling averages are plus five in Republican Tim Schee's favor.

Trump is polling pretty consistently, 16 to 20 points ahead of Harris in the state. This has been a really nationalized election. I just don't see Tester winning despite the fact that he's a very good politician and a Democrat who has won in red states in the past. All of that brings us to Michigan. Democrats' lead there has evaporated. Debbie Stabenow stepped down. Alyssa Slotkin has issued the warnings I talked about. Ben Harris was underwater.

She's begging for support. She's begging for surrogates. She's begging for money. Axiosi Steph Knight said, quote, Michigan's the most complex swing state where Democratic erosion among union members, Arab Americans, and young men all collide. The details are not good for Democrats.

I think Harris is going to lose the state. I think they're going to lose the Senate race. And once you get there, we've got a Republican majority in the Senate and Wisconsin and Ohio to talk about. Thoughts or reflections before I explain my Wisconsin-, Ohio thinking, which will require some fleshing out? No, I think, well, actually, yes. I don't know why I said no. Yes. So there's one big omission there in my mind, which is Nebraska. And obviously we haven't talked about every Senate race that's on the table. I don't think there's no way, like you said. But in Nebraska, we have a candidate who is technically an independent running against a Republican candidate, Deb Fischer, who's the incumbent against the challenger, Dan Osborne.

challenger, Dan Osborne. That race hasn't been polling outside the margin of error for six weeks in a state that is reliably red and only gets narrower and narrower. And I think as much as we're setting up this, what I agree is the most likely situation of Republicans flipping the Senate, having a one or two seat majority as much as we're, or two to three seat majority, as much as we're looking at that being a possibility. Another possibility is that Republicans flip West Virginia, which is kind of a given. They end up flipping Montana, which is almost a given. And then, you know, we're looking at Ohio, Michigan, and Nebraska. It's possible Democrats hold Michigan, lose Ohio, and pick up Nebraska. It's possible they hold both, in which case we're talking about Dan Osborne as being one of the most important senators in the country, a la Joe Manchin at the end of his career when he was the

deciding voice in the Senate. Not saying that that's what's going to happen. I just think that I'm starting to see the path for Osborne much more clearly. A lot of people have been on this for weeks. I haven't been as convinced, but he's been persistent. And he's very much a coin flip in Nebraska right now, in my mind. Yeah. So you spoiled my why I'll be wrong section a little bit,

but we'll talk about it quickly at the end. With regards to Ohio and Wisconsin, my view here is basically that both of these states are coin flips. And the truth is I have no idea what's going to happen. And that's my position. And so what I'm betting on to get to the 52 to 48 Republican majority is that they'll split. So Democrats will win one and Republicans will win one. It's a little bit of a cop out, but to me, the to me it's the safe play like if i if i really feel like they're both coin flips the closest thing to to accurate will come out if i just say one's going to go one way and the other one's going to go the other way i mean the other kind of

reasonable thing to do is to think if they're both coin flips they'll probably both go the same way depending on how the election goes and so you just sort of bet on that. But this is sort of my safe bet to get to 52-48. I think Sherrod Brown is less likely to win than Alyssa Slotkin. Sorry, I got to say that again. I think Sherrod Brown is less likely to win than Tammy Baldwin, but I don't actually know that we can say that. He's been really, really consistently popular in Ohio, even as a Democrat. And despite the fact the state has clearly turned into a Republican state, it feels really dicey to bet against him. So I'd be shocked if Democrats win both of these races. I'd be much more surprised if Democrats won both of these races than Republicans win both of these races.

But I'm just going to bet on a split, which gets me to 52-48. As to why this take about Republicans winning the Senate will be wrong, a surprisingly competitive Senate race in Nebraska already just broke that down. I think that is a huge factor. And we didn't talk about it in this, you know, I'm not making an explicit prediction about Nebraska in this podcast. But I will say if Osborne somehow pulls that off, that obviously changes the Senate map in a really serious way. The other why I'll be wrong outcome here is just that all of these races are really close. They're either Democrats in the lead, or the race is within one or two percentage points.

And if we see what we saw in 2022, which was what appeared to be a polling error, you know, a couple percentage points toward Republicans, then, you know, they could win all of these races. Democrats could win all of these races if that were replicated. I don't think that's what's going to happen, hence all my predictions here. But if I'm wrong, it probably means that Democrats are pulling off some victories in the really tight races in states like Michigan and Wisconsin and even Nebraska. And that's sort of how we get to a world where they're holding on to a 50-50 or even 51-49 Senate majority with Kamala Harris in the White House. All right. Related to that, and another thing, I mean, you sort of just made the Osborne-Mansion comparison, which is interesting. Another prediction I'm putting out on the table here that's sort of piggybacking off of this is that when the dust settles in this election,

Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski will be the two most important U.S. senators in the country. And the reason they're going to be the two most important U.S. senators in the country is that in my reality, if Republicans have a thin majority of 51 or 52 seats and a three to four seat majority, sorry, if Republicans have a one to two seat majority in the Senate, then Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski become the two most important U.S. senators. They are basically the Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema redux on the Republican side. This is a super interesting potential outcome, I have to say. Collins and Murkowski are not just moderate Republicans who break from the party on issues like abortion or immigration. They are regular Trump critics. They both voted to convict him in his second impeachment trial. Trump then infamously promised to support, quote unquote,

anyone with a pulse who would run against Lisa Murkowski. And he ultimately landed on Kelly Chewbacca, who in 2022 lost to Murkowski. So she now has her seat till 2028. Collins' position in Maine is a little bit more tenuous. She's a senior senator, but she's also up for re-election in 2026, so I don't think she's going to be able to go.

Sorry, I'm hearing some rustling. You just might want to check to make sure you've got the right mic on. Alright. Ari just paused me because we realized in the middle of the podcast I've been recording the last 30 minutes on my headphones instead of my microphone. Just a nightmare recording

session today. We're getting absolutely clobbered by technology today. So sorry for the audio changing to all of our audiophile listeners. Hopefully it won't be terrible throughout. Alright. Sorry. Just to finish this thought now on my real mic here.

Basically, Collins and Murkowski are going to be pretty independent minded and they're going to have deciding votes in the Senate if there's a 51 to 49 or 52 to 49 Senate majority. It's worth stating here that Collins in Maine has a little bit of a more tenuous position. She's a senior Senator, but she's up for reelection in 2026. So she's going to have to do a little bit of like play the election. Why I'll be wrong here,

there are two ways this prediction goes sideways. One, Democrats maintain their majority or they get a 50-50 Senate split, in which case, for what it's worth, Murkowski and Collins are still very, very important. But, you know, they'll wield a lot of power, just less power than if Republicans had a slight majority. Or two, Republicans end up with more than 52 seats in the Senate, in which case, you know, they can afford to lose Murkowski and Collins and even one or two other senators on any vote. And then they

become a lot less important that way. Questions, concerns, thoughts? No, I think it's all based on that assumption of the way the rest of the states break. Because, yeah, I think not a lot of concerns or questions. I think that's just all couched within that. winning with 51, 52 seats, then we have Collins and Murkowski being deciding moderate Republican voices in the Senate. Otherwise, you know, tips back over to the Democrats. At this point, it almost sounds like banal truism to say, oh, no matter what, the party in the majority will have the more moderate voices be deciding the election or deciding the fate of the Senate and the bills moving forward. But it's just important to remember because we've had a Democratic majority over the past couple sessions that these are moderate Republicans in the Senate. And if Republicans do get the majority, they're going to be the new

tie-breaking votes. They're going to be the people under the microscope in the same way that Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin were. And we remember how their careers ended up. So it's worth sending out a little bit of good luck to Collins and Murkowski, because if they do end up getting a Senate majority, it's not easy being the swing votes. You're going to be under a lot of pressure in this very partisan political environment to vote forward your party's agenda at times when it might not be something that you agree with as a moderate politician. So it's going to be tough sledding for them as much as they're going to be people that are going to have a lot of newfound power. With great power comes great stress in the modern political

comes great stress in the modern political environment. So you just hope that it doesn't get too toxic for them as people in the middle. All right, at this point, Democrats are probably listening to this podcast, waiting for some good news. And so I will give it to you. I have a little bit of good news for my Democratic listeners out there.

The final prediction related to the actual election results I'm going to put out is that Democrats are going to win back the House of Representatives with roughly a five to eight seat majority. How do I get there while also thinking they're going to lose the White House and the Senate? First of all, Democrats' prospects in the Senate look dim. They always have. I think their prospects look much better in the House for a few reasons. Number one, presidential elections are decided by the Electoral College. Harris is still polling ahead of Trump nationally, which matters much more for House races.

In the competitive Senate races, Democrats matters much more for House races. In the competitive Senate races, Democrats are polling much better than Harris. Their issue is just that they're defending a lot more Senate seats. So all this is to say, nationally, Democrats are showing signs of strength as a party, which is really good for House races that happen every two years all across the country. Number two, Democrats have way more money. Money helps win elections, especially House elections, which happen every two years. In presidential races and Senate races, money is a little bit less important. It's still really important, but it's a little bit less important because the media is paying really close attention

to all of these races, no matter what, like everybody's talking and thinking and learning about the presidential election, regardless of how much money is being dumped in. House races are not like that. House races are really guided in a lot of ways by the edges that candidates have in things like fundraising or in ground game, those kinds of things where I think Democrats have advantages. Number three, Republicans won the House majority after a 2022 midterm election in which they got to run against a Democratic president. This is something we see all the time throughout American history. In the first midterm after a new president's elected, that president's party usually takes some big losses in the midterm elections. The kind of most basic way to explain this is that we live in a country where voters turn out

when they want change. Still, Republicans underperformed in 2022, even with the wind at their backs. And on top of that, the few areas where they showed strength were New York and California. These are states where Democrats in this election are going to turn out in droves. So I expect a lot of those seats to flip back. The last thing I'll say, number four about this, just like my overarching view, is that as a country, we're deeply divided. And I think we just seem destined for a divided government. This falls under the gut instinct, like just a little bit of spidey sense feeling that I have. There's just something about either party having total control of the White House, the Senate, and the House

after everything we've witnessed the last eight years that feels really unlikely to me. I just think we're in a really divided country. And I think it'd be fitting for us to come out of this election with a divided government. And I kind of think that's what's going to happen. This is not playing a big role in my prediction here, but it's just a little bit of a cherry on top of the Sunday I'm constructing. On the number side and digging into a little bit of the more tangible analysis here, Republicans have a 220 to 212 majority. There's three vacancies in the House. Cook Political has one Republican-held seat and one new seat in Alabama that are rated lean or likely Democratic.

So just right off the bat, you narrow the Republican majority by two seats. Then Cook Political has 26 House races that are rated as toss-ups. 14 of those House races are Republican-held seats. 12 are Democratic-held seats. So Republicans are defending a few more toss-ups than Democrats are. And part of my calculus here is that eight of those 26 races that are in the toss-up category are races that are in New York and California, where I suspect we're going to see really big Democratic turnout, even in Republican-controlled districts. Six of them are in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Arizona, where Democrats are running a massive ground operation, pouring in tons of money and just outspending Republicans from top to bottom.

In Pennsylvania, Democrats have a popular governor. Harris is polling pretty well. I talked about why I think she's gonna win PA. In Arizona, Carrie Lake is just dragging down down ballot Republicans. She's underwater in her Senate race. I think House Democrats in these competitive districts will be able to use that and Trump to their advantage. And in Michigan, it's going to be a total dogfight.

I think this presidential election is going to drive a lot of turnout. The early vote turnout has been insane so far. In Georgia and North Carolina, it's been really big. I think Democrats who lost seats in 2022 are going to benefit from that. That's my take on the House races without, you know, going through all 26 of them and the little minutiae that go into each House race. It's more a read of, you know, where the electorate is. Worth saying here, just really quick, the why I got wrong, why I'll be wrong part of this is that my position on this is not exactly the mainstream one right now. There are definitely a lot of people predicting Democrats will take the House back, but there are a lot of these sort of institutional forecasters who are calling it the other way. Right now, 538 projects the probability of Republicans winning the House at 53%. I'm not just saying

I think Democrats are going to win, but that they'll have roughly a five to eight seat majority, which requires flipping many of these competitive toss-up seats, most of them. So I'm definitely going out on a limb a little bit here, but I think there's good reason to, basically. I guess what is slightly a majoritarian viewpoint right now, that Republicans win the House, which is just when you do a breakdown of the seats that are either not up for election this cycle or the ones that are better consensus picks one way or the other, you end up with a little bit more Republican consensus seats

than Democrat consensus seats. Like if you, you can get different numbers from like Cook Political Report or from FiveThirtyEight, but looking at 270 to win right now, which is a little bit like leaning a little bit more towards Republicans, it shows 207 seats for Republicans compared to 204 for Democrats. And you just say, with all those toss-ups, if they break 50-50, all told, then Republicans end up with majority. Even if you

add two toss-up seats from the likely Republican side, you're looking at 205 to 204. Republicans start out with a little bit of a lead. And just when you toss all of the toss-ups up in the air, the odds are 50-50. They come down. The side that has the advantage keeps it. So without getting into all of the races and the minutiae of them, that's just some of the reasoning to keep in mind. Just to try to put a couple things under the microscope, just little bitty races, just two in particular. There are two races that are rated as toss-ups

that are currently being held by Democratic incumbents who are leaving to pursue other offices. So the Michigan 7th District right now, rated as a toss-up. Alyssa Slotkin running for Senate. We talked about that. There's a potential that Democrats lose both of those races, which would be pretty brutal if the House and the Senate hinges on that decision. Secondarily, in Virginia right now, bringing this up, the Virginia 7th District, Abigail Spanberger is the incumbent. That race is rated as a toss-up, she's leaving to run for governor in 2025. So if that ends up being an important race and Democrats lose that because an incumbent left, then that's another thing to look at. And in a race that's going to end up being this small, those kinds of things might matter.

But zooming out, I think at the wide view, there are things that are going to wash out. Republicans are starting with a little bit of an advantage for the map, and that just may be all the difference that they need in this term. We'll be right back after this quick break. Working in the trades is intense. It can be stressful and painful. Some guys use drugs and alcohol to cope. But when we ask for help, or we see someone struggling with addiction, our silence speaks volumes.

See how you can help or get help at Canada.ca slash ease the burden. A message from the Government of Canada. From Searchlight Pictures comes A Real Pain, one of the most moving and funny films of the year. Written and directed by Oscar-nominated Jesse Eisenberg and starring Eisenberg and Emmy Award winner Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain is a comedy about mismatched cousins who reunite for a tour through Poland to honor their beloved grandmother. The adventure takes a turn when the pair's old tensions resurface

against the backdrop of their family history. A Real Pain was one of the buzziest titles at Sundance Film Festival this year, garnering rave reviews and acclaim from both critics and audiences alike. See A Real Pain only in theaters November 15th. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. All right. This sort of concludes our explicit, you know, election outcome related predictions.

So to just put a cap on it, it is Democrats winning the House, losing the Senate majority, and Kamala Harris winning Pennsylvania and North Carolina, but losing the presidential election. I want to pivot to end the show here with a few predictions that are just related to how all of this is going to go down. And these are almost as much warnings as they are predictions for our readers. And, you know, these are almost as much warnings as they are predictions for our readers. The first one I'll say is that Pennsylvania is not going to be called for at least 48 hours until after the polls close. Why am I making this prediction? None of the problems we saw in Pennsylvania in 2020 have been fixed. No new laws have been passed to allow mail-in ballots to start getting counted until or before the morning of Election Day.

I find this extraordinarily frustrating. I am very angry that this has not been fixed because it was a very fixable problem. And most other states do not do what Pennsylvania does, but their legislature is broken. but their legislature is broken. And to be frank, a lot of Republicans, not a lot, but a number of Republicans in the Pennsylvania state legislature prevented this from being fixed. And it is really unfortunate that they did.

In 2020, it took four days for Joe Biden's win in Pennsylvania to be finalized. I do not think we're going to have a gap that large this year, but I would be very surprised if we got all the results in the first 48 hours after the polls close. What's the scenario where I'm wrong? Well, a lot of counties across Pennsylvania have updated their equipment.

They're doing their best to staff election centers. Fewer people are expected to be voting by mail than in 2020 when we were in the middle of a pandemic. So it's possible that even without a change in the law, we get the results a little bit faster. If the race is close, which it is projected to be, I still don't think we get the results until the day after the election. But if Harris or Trump opens up a big lead, it's totally possible Pennsylvania does get called on election day. Thoughts, questions? Just as a former Pennsylvania voter and just moved to Vermont in the last couple of years, but obviously from Pittsburgh,

lived in Pittsburgh for a couple of years, I echo that frustration about Pennsylvania not fixing the issue with not counting absentee ballots till the day of. Just a thing that does not need to happen and should have been fixed. And there's just another person to repeat those claims. So you're not a lone voice in the wilderness. A lot of people agree with that, not just me, but others as well. And it's worth trying to keep our expectations ahead of time so that when things play out, we're not stressed about them. If you are a moderate voter or a Trump voter, it's worth, I think, anticipating what might happen if things do not go the way of the candidate you voted for. And think about how it could be that the candidate you voted for, like what's the path to not winning? Because

Trump will say, and not with certainty, like it's definitely a chance that he won't, but there's a good chance that Trump will say that this election was stolen, that it was fraudulent, that there's things that were abnormalities that we can dig into and say are trends that are indicative of a stolen election. And just to keep our heads about us and say, okay, let's just, let's see if that plays out. Let's see if there's evidence, see if there's proof of that. There's always going to be abnormalities and issues and things that we can say should be fixed or looked into. But just to remember that there is a map here that's very legitimate that shows Trump losing the election. And there's a legitimate map that shows the Senate ending up deadlocked or split very, very closely one way or the other. So

just remember that if things don't go the way of your candidate, Republican or Democrat, it doesn't mean that there's, it doesn't necessarily mean that there's foul play. Just so we can try to keep our cool and think about the need for evidence in the moment. And then we'll like evaluate over time and just anticipate that so it doesn't feel as surprising or stressful or unexpected when it happens. All right, relating to that, I have a not-so-fun prediction about the election, which is that if the race is not called on election night, Trump's going to claim that he won. I wish I didn't have to make that prediction. I think it's important to give people a heads up that I feel this is a likely scenario. In 2020, Trump did something totally unprecedented.

At 2.30 in the morning, with no major news outlets calling the race and no clear sign of who was winning, Trump prematurely claimed that he won the election. Trump made this claim despite a horde of election experts and journalists, including me, warning that we were going to see a red mirage on election night where in-person ballots showed a lead for many Republicans that would change as mail-in ballots predominantly cast by Democrats were counted. This is exactly what happened. We knew it would happen. There was nothing surprising about it. Trump's team also knew it would happen. And as the mail-in ballots came in and got counted, Trump's lead disappeared in a lot of critical swing states,

and he lost the race. According to this recent Justice Department filing, and this is just an allegation, so I can't really speak to the truth of it, Trump's claim that he won the race was pre-planned. Basically, he was planning to announce that he was the winner before election day on election night. That's an allegation. I have no idea if it's true, but it's another

data point that maybe could convince somebody that he's going to do that again. The big picture thing is I've just not seen any sign Trump is going to act differently this time around. He still claims he won in 2020. His running mate refuses to say that he lost. He's already calling this election rigged. I just, you know, I think he's probably going to say that he's won the race on election night, especially if it's showing, you know, the results are showing him in a favorable position. Now, a couple of caveats. First, in 2020, I predicted Biden would win and he did. And so this is fundamentally a little bit of a different situation because I think Trump actually is at an advantage in this election.

Second, Trump was president in 2020, so he had more power to act on his belief that he won, which made the whole thing a little bit more unsettling. And third, because I think Trump's going to win this year, his declaration that he won might actually come true, which I think is going to change the way a lot of us perceive it and think about it. None of this makes it any better to me that I think he's going to repeat his actions of 2020. But I do think it's going to change the dynamics of 2020, but I do think it's going to change the dynamics of how this hits with people and how it's covered in the press. All that's to say, I think you can and should expect Trump to claim that he's won the race on election night,

especially if the early returns look even remotely positive for him. And yeah, sorry, I stepped on your toes a little bit with this prediction at the beginning, because I do think with those closer leave returns, it does indicate that that's a very strong possibility. But I'm a person who maybe this is wrong, but I think that if it does end up being the case that Trump ends up not winning this election, the results as they come in over the span of a couple of days show that it's breaking against him. I do think he will concede for some of those reasons, that he's not the president anymore, so it's tougher for him to act on it, that it's been four more years of this,

that some of that mirage is going to be less strong because we're going to have fewer absentee voters proportionally after 2020 was different with COVID. So I think I predict differently in that scenario about Trump conceding, but I do think he probably won't on election night. And I think I'll just end by saying sorry for spoiling the prediction again, my fault. No, it's okay. It's interesting to hear some of these come out organically. Okay, so we're going to have a delay in PA.

The race isn't going to get called on election night. The last and final thing I'm going to say, and this is my final prediction, and then we're going to wrap this up. There's just going to be a lot of lies and bad information going viral online up to the election, immediately after the election, in the days after the election. This is a broad prediction. It's not a particularly bold prediction. election. This is a broad prediction. It's not a particularly bold prediction. I think we're going to do an edition on this next Friday. But broadly speaking, I just feel like it's really important with the platform that I have to say this. Our information ecosystem is as unreliable and toxic

as I've ever seen it. Every single day, I go online on platforms like Instagram and Twitter and Facebook and YouTube, and I'm just seeing falsehoods. Just like bad, dumb lies, manipulated news stories, manipulated news stories, polls that aren't from actual pollsters, videos that are taken out of context, things that are low stakes. Everything from Kamala Harris was using a teleprompter during a town hall with Univision, which wasn't true.

It was a teleprompter that was running to translate audience questions that were being asked in Spanish to big important falsehoods like an AI-generated video that showed up in my Twitter feed of one of Tim Walz's former students saying that he sexually assaulted him, which, by the way, is like an incredibly gross thing to do to take a real person and then manipulate them with a video making an allegation of sexual assault. That's like the kind of thing

that could really ruin somebody's life, but was just on Twitter and had millions of views and had thankfully a community note that got slapped on it after a few hours calling out the fact that it was artificial intelligence, but was not taken down and was just out there existing. This stuff is gonna be everywhere. In 2020, it was bad.

I tracked allegations of election fraud live in real time. I know that's how many of you guys found me and discovered my work. In 2024, I think there are going to be more of them. They're going to come out faster. They're going to be harder to break down. And it's not just going to be claims of election fraud. It's going to be these out-of-context videos

showing political violence in the street when there isn't really, or photos saying, here is a picture of an unauthorized migrant voting when it isn't, or news reports saying that truckloads of militia members are attacking citizens when they aren't. So my message to you is,

if you read or see something and it feels unbelievable, don't believe it. Be skeptical. Look at the comments or replies for additional context. Search for more details about the allegation in the news. Consult someone in your social circle who might be an expert on a specific topic, excuse me, right into Tangle to ask. Nonsense is going to flood the zone. I'm going to do my best to track it, deconstruct it, talk about some of this stuff that really goes viral and tangle on social media. But I'm one person and it'll be a sea.

I mean, a sea of millions of bits of bad information. And we're all going to need to be using some discretion, some common sense, some patience to not lose our minds as the election unfolds. Why I'll be wrong? I'm not going to be wrong about this one. I'm sorry. This is a guarantee. It's going to happen. So be smart out there.

And, you know, if you see something, say something. I'm happy to try and reply and help the best way I can. But it's going to be really ugly. And I'm not looking forward to it at all. So I hate to end on a kind of downer note like that, but it's also, you know, I make a promise to be honest with you guys and that's my honest read of what's coming and we need to buckle up for it. Great. Yeah. I mean, just the thing that I'd said before about like, it's very possible that the thing that you saw is the likely outcome of the election is not what happens. It's possible that something that you read was wrong.

It's possible that something that we thought was going to happen is wrong. So just to come into it with humility, that fixes a lot. with humility that fixes a lot. And then when you are faced with the person who doesn't exercise that same sort of worldview or belief that it requires more patience than you think to be able to withstand that. So echoing Isaac's plea for sanity and a little bit of a prayer for strength for everybody to exercise that abnormal patience in those moments, because I think it will probably be very, very hard if it does take days for the election to be settled.

So best of luck to all of us, I suppose. All right. We got to end with some levity here. Let's step into the grievance zone. We'll share our grievances for the week. The airing of grievances. Between you and me, I think your country is placing a lot of importance on shoe removal.

I have like an epic tale, which I'm actually going to, I'm going to pocket, I think for next week, because I'm going to just make the decision to go first and open the curtain a little bit and talk about all the technical difficulties that we experienced with the podcast recording today. If you are a person with an acute ear,

you may have noticed a couple different recording devices for both of us today. Started out with first me being late for a normal session. So that kind of threw things out of whack. I had a meeting with the contractor at our build site. We're building a house. It's going really, really nice. It looks great.

It was a wonderful conversation. Went longer than expected. Went much longer than expected. So missed our recording window, had to push that back to later. Later came the co-working space that I use that has like a nice recording setup. Like I only have that till like 5.30, so couldn't use that. Went to a different spot where I noticed that my port for my computer that I normally use wasn't charging, which meant that I had to disrupt the session and go to a new location with a different cord, whereupon I learned that I could not plug in two devices into my normal computer at once, which meant breaking open a second laptop and getting a recording link on that one. But the microphone that I have, which is really nice, needs to have software installed in order for it to work.

So I'm on my backup mic on a backup computer hours later doing this recording, which is causing some disruption to the vocal tracks. So apologies to everybody for that. And it caused a secondary issue, which is when we started recording, it bumped Isaac by default onto his headphone mic, which neither of us noticed. And it's probably also more my fault

because I'm the one listening. It took me about 20 to 30 minutes to realize that Isaac's recording or his audio was coming through. A lower quality microphone. So the reason that you as an audience member listened to Isaac's audio through what sounded like a little bit of a muffled microphone was due to that. So you all get to share this grievance with me this week. It was a very frustrating afternoon and evening to try to put these things together. I appreciate the patience from Isaac today because why all this grievance is about a thing that I experienced, the thing that affected him and affected everybody. So thank you all for dealing with me this week. Apologies about that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Isaac's just sitting there mad the whole time I'm talking. He's like, yeah, pissed. All those things did happen. And all those things were incredibly annoying. Not by any fault of your own really, but I was pissed when I realized that I recorded 30 minutes of the podcast without having my mic on after we stopped and restarted. That was a tough bill to swallow. All right. My grievance for this week is it's about Optimum, Xfinity, whatever you want to call it these days, Comcast.

I don't know what their freaking name is. whatever you want to call it these days, Comcast. I don't know what their freaking name is. I, okay, this, and this, and this dovetails nicely into my criticisms of and thoughts about artificial intelligence these days. The backstory here is that I recently moved. Okay, so I left, I think I have talked about this grievance on the podcast.

The smoke situation in my apartment. We have these guys who live next to us who run like an after hours social club, quote unquote is what they call it, an adult after hours social club. And they rage basically. They just party all the time. And they were smoking cigarettes in the house. It was coming over into our place.

And the smoke got so bad that my wife and i who uh is pregnant i guess we can say that now oh yeah i think that's the first time for audience listeners yeah easter egg for the people who listen to the end my my wife's pregnant we're very excited uh big stuff coming in the chat yes and the house smelled like smoke all the time. We can't, so we're just like, we can't. We can't do this with a kid, whatever. We tried everything. We sealed up, you know, the floorboards and caulk stuff.

And we were running six air filters at once. And we lost the war to the smoke. So we moved. Found a great new place really close by, a few blocks away. We're in this new place. And my landlord was like, hey, I would really love to just transfer the existing Wi-Fi to you. It's like the router's already there. He's out of the country. He didn't want to have to return the

router. And he was just like, I'll just transfer the email to you. Like, all right, great. So I canceled my Wi-Fi. We moved in and he can't transfer. He's like filling all right, great. So I canceled my Wi-Fi. We moved in. And he can't transfer. He's like filling out forms to transfer it. He can't do it. It turns out that like Optimum, Xfinity, whatever, makes it really, really hard to do this. And so I ultimately have to go get a new like whole Wi-Fi setup for the apartment. So I go through Xfinity to do this because the internet package he had was affordable and the internet was working well in the house.

And I was like, I just want to duplicate it. So I go to Xfinity.com to do this. And I'm just looking for a number to call somebody because I know in my head that the fact that there's an existing account there and that I want to change that account, like cancel that account that doesn't belong to me and put my own account in is something that's just like a little bit too complicated for one of these dumb chatbots to handle because I'm not just starting a new account and I'm not moving an

account in and I'm not replacing an existing account or like transferring an existing account. So it's not one of the basic things. So I just want to talk to a human being to explain the situation. And I can't do it. I get stuck in this loop with the AI assistant where it's like, what's your Xfinity ID? I don't have an Xfinity ID. Okay, we can open an account for you. Actually, I can't open an account at this address because there's an existing account

at the address. Yes, I know that. So we go into the loop and I'm just like, please connect me with a live agent. This process will go faster if you do these steps with me first. Tell me your Xfinity ID. I don't have an Xfinity ID. Okay, we'll start a new account. No, I can't do that. Please connect me with a live agent. So I'm like, all right, I'm going to break my computer. Now I'm like getting all worked up, you know? And so I had this realization. Basically, I ended up tricking the,

I just started saying in all capital letters, I have an emergency. And then the AI is like, you should call 911. And I'm like, I don't want to call. I need to speak to an agent. So I finally get an agent on the phone. And I just kind of want to appreciate the situation where somebody with an emergency goes to a chatbot.

It's like, I have an emergency. The chatbot's like, I can help you because I know what you're doing. Call 911. Yeah, so I just completely melted down. I freaked out. And then I called Optimum. And by the way, I called, spoke to a human being

and got the situation sorted in literally 45 seconds. Like, it was so easy. I explained, oh, no problem. We'll set that up for you and we'll replace, you know, cancel that account and we can send a technician out, whatever. And then it ended up actually that in order to schedule the technician thing,

that took a little bit longer and I had to disconnect from the call because I had a tangle meeting with the team, with Ari and everybody else. And so it ended up being an annoying phone call. But I did line up, I fixed, I got the account set up, started my Xfinity account

and got the internet started very simply and easily with a human being and could not do it with an AI. And I had this realization that I'd like to share with everyone in this grievance section of the podcast, which is that the nightmare actually is not that AI takes over the world and decides to kill all of us because that's the more efficient way for the world to function and artificial intelligence is just going to kill us. It's that artificial intelligence is actually just fucking dumb and we're going to have to live with these dumb AI systems like a stupid Xfinity chatbot

that's going to be like kind of half working, but mostly not and can't handle even the most remotely complex situation. And we're just going to be stuck with that. And a bunch of people are going to lose their jobs. And I'm going to have to talk to a chat bot for an hour just to get to a live agent to explain a situation that a human can figure out in 45 seconds. That is the actual nightmare. It's not artificial intelligence killing us. It's a bunch of these crappy AI systems

like ruling our lives and being gatekeepers to real human beings. And it's the future we are destined for, if not the one we are already existing in. And that's my freaking grievance for today. How do you like them apples? Yeah, I like you invoking Good Will Hunting at the end, for sure. Like ranting about machines being stupid. How do you like them apples? He's on my side, man. I about machines being stupid. I like them apples. He'd be on my side, man.

I am on your side. I love that movie. I'm saying, I'm saying Will Hunting would be on my side. Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah. A hundred percent.

This is a plot to some movie, I think, but it's not good Will Hunting. I'm just trying to think of what it is. It's a little bit

like Idiocracy mixed with The Matrix. Maybe. It's like we're surrounded by- It's a little bit like idiocracy mixed with the Matrix, maybe. It's like we're surrounded by- It's a great future sci-fi dystopia where we are all living with these artificial intelligence robot systems, like cars and robots making our burgers and chatbots for customer service, where they're not actually that good and everything is just less efficient and sucks

because it's all been handed over to these dumb robots. These machines that have a really narrow prompt that they can handle four different scenarios and something's a little bit outside of it and just gets you stuck in this loop. Exactly. And this is my, just to full circle, like full loop here is,

this is what I've been saying from the start about AI. And like, I've been like, like a year ago when everybody, I don't know if people remember this. It's been more than a year now, maybe a year and a half, almost two years ago.

There was like this four month period where every single day there was a new news story about how artificial intelligence was going to completely revolutionize and change our world in like three months. And it wasn't like, oh, this is going to happen down the road. It was like chat GPT came out and everybody was like, oh my God, it's here. And the whole world's about this. Like I had people calling me, like friends calling me, like, do you think I'm going to have a job in three months? Will Tangle be written by AI next year?

And I'm like, no. I just asked ChatGPT the most basic question and it gave me eight inaccurate statements. And I just don't think it's that ready for primetime. So as annoying as my experience with Xfinity was, at least it vindicated me for five minutes on my podcast about how dumb I think the whole artificial intelligence hype is. I'm so ready for all the techno evangelists

that are going to be telling us too that we're criticizing the wrong thing, that it's still growing, that you should see the things that AI is capable of. I have been very much not sold about this as a revolutionary groundbreaking technology. It's a matter of time. I've been very unsold for years. And I think there's been a lot of mainstream smart people in the media that have been talking about this like it's an inevitability rather than a kind of technology that will cause a lot of efficiency gains in the medical, legal, and paratechnical fields. customer service more frustrating, make going to Burger King, McDonald's a bizarre experience

and cause us to deal with imposter newsletters that are spun up over the course of 48 hours and then ceased and desisted and then left for dead days later. We're going to be littered in a graveyard of poorly thought out tech scams until we figure out the next new groundbreaking technology whose job it is to mop it up. So I'm with you.

I'll go even harder with you. Screw these robots, dude. Screw the robots. All right, we got to get out of here. Write in about our predictions. I don't want to hear your robot AI evangelism. Send them to will at retangle.com. Yeah, if you have some thoughts about our predictions, send them to

will at retangle.com. And if you have complaints about what we said about AI, send them to will at retangle.com. And we'll see you guys next week. Peace. Love you, Will. And if you're looking for more from Tangle, please go check out our website at readtangle.com. That's readtangle.com.