The Daily Beast Podcast - The Cuomo Crony Helping Republicans Win in New York

Episode Date: November 15, 2022

No one really likes New York State Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs, Lindsey Boylan tells host Andy Levy on this episode of The New Abnormal podcast. Boylan was one of the first people to publicly accuse former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo of sexual harassment. Now, she feels equally emboldened to call out Jacobs, a remnant of the Cuomo administration, first on TikTok, and now to Andy. According to Boylan, Jacobs is to blame for solidly Democratic parts of New York turning red. Mainly because of his hatred for progressives. Plus! Andy chats midterm fallout with columnist Jeb Lund and both clock all of the lies, sad and hilarious, that Elon Musk has Tweeted (and deleted) on the app. And David Weigel, who covers politics at news site Semafor, explains how Fox News essentially screwed over midterm Republicans and the LGBTQ issue Republicans won’t touch these days. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. And I'm producer Jesse Kennett, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some great guest co-hosts, as well as some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try to make some sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. What an excellent show we have today.

First, you were joined by Lindsay Boyle, who was the first woman to come forward against then-governor Andrew Cuomo and speak out about his sexual harassment and has served in a variety of New York State government rules and she's going to talk to us about all the bad stuff happening in the New York Democratic Party and the ripples that has across America. Then we'll talk to Dave Weigel,

who covers politics for Sebafo, and he'll tell us about some of the fallout from the midterms and all the chaos that's happening there. But first, we have a contributor to the Guardian, Vice, Rolling Stone, Gawker, and the New Republic, as well as the co-host of its Christmastown, Jeb Blund. Jeb, thanks so much for being here with us today. I'm delighted.

Thank you for having me. Absolutely. Let's talk about politics, since this is a political podcast, that seems like a good place to start. We must. It's pretty much looking like what we're going to have is a narrowly, democratically controlled Senate and a GOP-controlled House, possibly very narrowly. So, I don't know, where does this leave us, do you think, for the next couple years? Is it going to be just crazy insane times in Washington?

Or is everyone going to reach across the aisle and it's going to be kumbaya? I'm so glad that you even tried with the second part. I know. Like, let me think of a positive example here. Well, all of them are just sort of fatuous, but what the hell? No, I mean, I think it's like what kind of flavor of chaos are you betting on? And to me, I think the obvious one is you have the GOP, which has been long lauded as having such tight message control and almost being the antipode of the kind of default message of the Dems are in disarray. But you're going to see what happens when they've got one or two people as wiggle room as they've further kind of incentivized being a personally funded, non-party dependent whack job.

So you've got all these little running would-be warlords. and you're going to have to watch somebody try to whip them into a vote. And that to me is going to be the pretty chaos. I don't know how obstructionist you can be with that when like you're clinging to your little ledge by your fingernails. It feels like it's going to be next to impossible to herd the House Republicans. And, you know, it'll be interesting to see who actually gets the job as the shepherd or cat herder or whatever.

And we're now hearing that Andy Biggs is going to challenge Kevin McCarthy for the House speaker seat. Andy Biggs. One of the dumber members, I think, of the of Congress, I think is a nice way of saying it that's still objectively true. I guess we'll see how many votes he siphons from

McCarthy. It feels like he ain't the one. If there's going to be someone else, I just cannot see Andy Biggs as House Speaker, but who the hell knows these days? Well, I think, you know, you have to be Andy Biggs to float yourself as the House Speaker.

And, you know, like the sort of the Gohmert Dunning Kruger wing of the caucus. Right. And I think most people who are within that caucus who are still fogging the mirror of intelligence there are going to go like, why would I want Kevin's job? You know, this is a job that just basically kills careers. I mean, it sent Paul Ryan into the private sector for what, like the third month of his life. And, you know, John Boehner, like a guy who really just wanted to have some Marlbrose and

red wine and kind of be chill. Like, he gets kicked out. Like, nobody wants to be the next person in line to just, you know, get their hat shit in by all these people. So, you know, why not just let him? I mean, go ahead, sure, make it look a little competitive. So you make McCarthy feel maybe chastened or maybe just chased. You know, as long as he's hearing footsteps from your wing of the party, maybe he'll be a little bit more attentive. But, you know, let him fall. This does kind of feel almost like Biggs is sort of the sacrificial lamb of that wing of the party in this case, or he's just sort of, as you said, it's an incredibly dumb horse's head in McCarthy's bed, just letting him know that he needs to tow the line of the Freedom Caucus and the even crazier's. But that ultimately nobody thinks Andy Biggs is going to win. I had an S.E. Cup on here last week, and her take was that McCarthy is going to be speaker, but he's not going to last.

And in thinking about that, that seems increasingly more likely to me. And so no one is thinking Biggs is going to be speaker, but this is like an opening salvo type thing. And eventually it'll be someone else, whether it's Jim Jordan or one of the other ethically challenged people that Republicans seem to love these days, they'll take over. Yeah. And or you could see, I think maybe McCarthy staying on as a continually like facing headwinds speaker because he's very good at raising money. And so you might wind up with the messaging spinning out of his control, but nobody's going to want to separate him from where the check balances are. Although that didn't work very well with Rick Scott in the Senate. This guy has a lot of money.

He'll know better. Yeah, we're seeing that really play out as not being true in a lot of places, and one of which we're going to talk about later. But sticking with the election, some really interesting stuff happened with Ruben Gallego in Arizona Democrat. He was on MSNBC and he was asked about, and he said, we fought as a team in Arizona and we won. Senator Cinema was nowhere to be found at all. We did not see her at one public event for anybody. She did nothing because she only cares about herself. That is a pretty amazing thing to hear a sitting member of Congress say about a sitting senator from his own party. Yeah, it also accords pretty well with, you know, what I've heard

over the course of my career. I mean, I think everybody, you know, who works in Beltway politics at some point picks up a lot of former Hill staffer, friends. You know, they wind up maybe in, you know, an advocacy group or they wind up in journalism. And even by the sociopathically selfish, like, now what's your name again? Kind of standards of D.C. Like cinema has stood out for a long time. Even among those people steeped in that as like, this is a human-shaped void.

And I think they're done. And I think seeing the Democrats' performance on the Senate level in Arizona gave them license to be like, you know, we're done. I think basically the people who are going to remain in Cinema's corner are the people whose careers are, you know, controlled by her recommendation because they still work for her or they're still dependent on her in some way. I think everybody who isn't expecting or doesn't need something from cinema, I think now has the license to say, I'm not getting anything from this person and neither will anybody else forget it. This does not feel like something that Gallego just suddenly thought. It definitely feels like something where he's like, this is the last fucking straw. Like, I'm saying something. I've kept my mouth shut for a long time now.

I don't even want to say it had much more of a feel of that. It's clearly that. It is clearly that he's just fucking had it. And as you said, the fact that, you know, that Mark Kelly was able to win and it looks like Carrey Lake is going to lose to Katie Hobbs. Maybe he felt a little emboldened to actually come out and say, And also, I think he is maybe looking at challenging her in 2024 for the Senate. In fact, he's barely denied it on this very podcast. Interesting.

I think that just goes exactly to what you said, Jeb, that he didn't wake up on election day or the day after election day be like, hey, wait a minute, she didn't do anything. That's weird. You know, no, this was like, oh, my God, I am so sick of this person. And she does not care about the party. She does not care about anybody other than herself. somebody's got to say it. Right.

Yeah, no, it's like he was playing a game of hearts and he was sitting there with the queen of spades in his hand for a couple tricks, just waiting to give it to the person who deserved it most. As I said, it looks like Carrie Lake, who is even among Republicans, kind of stood out as unbelievable whack job.

Actually, Arizona, just between her and Blake Masters, the Arizona GOP is just, I don't even know how to describe it at this point, but it looks like given the votes that are still out, that Lake is going to lose to Katie Hobbs. And this is kind of a big deal. And it, even more so, because I think Republicans were so confident that she was going to win or she was so confident she was going to win. She started doing campaigning for other Republican gubernatorial candidates. Of course, those candidates were Doug Maestriano. Well, somebody had to campaign for him.

I mean, he clearly wasn't going to do it. Not his job. I'm now blanking on who the other one was, but they both lost. Well, the great thing is you've gotten ahead of forgetting. Yeah, that's a good point. So anyway, look, there's definitely a lot of good news that has come out of this election and that is still coming out of this election. And we'll see what happens with the House. It would be shocking to me if the Republicans don't take it.

I mean, it seems pretty clear that they're going to. But it's going to be a narrow margin. And I guess that sort of leads to the question. Is this sort of the new thing now? Is the House going to flip back and forth every couple of years? The question I was kind of hoping you would ask, and I'm sorry not to answer your question right this second. I will, I promise. But the question that I sort of think of, like coming out of that like Kerry Lake and Doug Mastery on our discussion is there's, I think, a really strong impulse to say, hey, listen, you guys nominated a bunch of whack jobs and whack jobs don't work.

Running normal people works. And I worry that the Democratic Party, as is its want, is going to internalize that, hey, that works message and use it to punish its. left wing again. Right. And basically say, listen, if disavowing extremists works, let's preemptively disarm and disavow all of ours. And I think that will guarantee that we flip this back and forth over the years. If the Democratic Party doesn't keep its foot on, you know, floored on the pedal and maintain the momentum of, you know, what what sort of actual like kitchen sink policies and what sort of, you know, progressive justice legislation gets people excited about us. Because you're always going to have the capability of going, that man is crazy. You can always run on that. And they've

done that very successfully, you know, for the last 20 years or so. Like, okay, we're not these people. Right. But I don't want to spend the rest of my life. I know people, a generation younger than I am, do not want to spend the rest of their lives voting to hold back a tide. They want to be part of a tide. And so that's my first worry is that if we're going to default to, we'll keep all the bricks in the dike. We'll keep the tide at bay. If we get back to that mentality, yeah, we're going to lip-flop a lot because people have to have a thing to vote for not a thing they're afraid of every time. Yeah, okay. First of all, shame on you for equating the Democratic progressive wing with the Republican nutjob right wing. I think you're exactly part of the problem for doing that.

You know, I didn't expect that from you when I invited you on the show. And I quite frankly, I'm now, I'm a little sorry I did. Look, Governor Cuomo is coming back. You have time for a response, Jeb. I'm sorry. We have to move on. bills to pay. Anyway, I do want to move on to Twitter, which is, it bums me out that Twitter, it just bums me out that Twitter is a topic of conversation, let alone like a big topic of conversation, but also like sort of a necessary topic. And it's all one man's fault, Elon Musk. In the last few days alone, he has, first of all, he picked some kind of fight with Ed Markey, which is maybe not the best idea in the world. Marky was upset because some, uh,

somebody, there's been a lot of, since Musk sort of launched his bullshit pay eight bucks and get a quote unquote verified checkmark thing, we've seen, as was predicted, a bunch of people paying eight bucks and registering accounts with names of people they are not. And someone did that with Marky. And from a fake Marky account tweeted something and Marky was not happy about that. And he tweeted about it. Marky tweeted, why are these parody accounts allowed? to still be up. And then Musk decided to reply by saying, perhaps it is because your real account sounds like a parody, which, you know, is maybe not something you do to a senator who sits on the Commerce Science and Transportation Committee, which includes the National Highway Traffic

Safety Administration, the Federal Trade Commission, two organizations that are very interested in companies like Tesla and Twitter. And Marky replied saying one of your companies is under an FTC consent decree. Auto Safety Watchdog, N.H. TSA is investigating another for killing people, and you're spending your time picking fights online, fix your companies, or Congress will. Now, I want to say I'm not a fan of this. I still have a little bit of the libertarian left in me, and I don't like government officials threatening people like that. I don't like it when the right does it. I don't like it when, I don't know if it was Josh Hawley or some similarly dunderheaded Republican talking about hauling any company that stopped advertising on Twitter.

That was Mitch McConnell's chief of staff or former chief of staff. Prior to that, it was some sitting either congressman or senator. I can't remember. But I don't like that. And I don't like Markey doing this either, even though Musk is an idiot for picking this fight publicly with a guy who does have that much power. No, I feel where you're coming from, because I had that same reaction to of like, oh, no, you know, they're going to weaponize what Markey said.

Like, you fix it or will fix you good. You know, and like, oh, no. You know, and then I've read a little bit more about it. And I was like, okay, well, I can kind of see where Markey's coming from because, you know, the FTC find Twitter again this year for violating the consent decree it's under. One of the aspects of it is that Twitter was misrepresenting. And this is like the terms of the consent decree, the extent to which it maintains and protects the security, privacy, confidentiality, or integrity of any non-public consumer information. Now, if there's like one person Markey could be talking to on planet Earth who's clearly not going to give a damn about any of that. It's Musk.

It's the guy he's talking to. And like, you know, if we're already talking about consumer safety, then, you know, in addition to he's messing up Twitter so rapidly that there's no way any representation he's making of its efficacy like in terms of protecting consumers can be true. Like that's on one side. But in addition to that, you know, you've got a car company that he runs that doesn't include safety redundancies that are standard for other automakers and likes to paper over its safety problem by papering it over with non-disclosure agreements. So we have no real accurate sense of just how often they catch on fire and almost kill you in a terrifying inferno. Right. So in addition to that, Musk is, he keeps tweeting things that just that simply aren't true. He tweeted that Twitter was the biggest driver of clicks of any internet site, which as I tweeted,

it's so far from not being true. You can't even, like, you can't even say, well, what he meant was, it's like, no, he's just lying. Like, it's not even supposed to being true. He since got sort of fact-checked by Twitter's own little community thing called Birdwatch, I think, that attached a note to his tweet saying that it wasn't true. And he has since deleted that tweet. He deletes a lot of embarrassing tweets. He does, especially lately.

Yeah, he's a big fan of it. He's showing off all of Twitter's various functionality. And, you know, there are a lot of people saying, like, well, the infrastructure is really bad here, and this whole site might collapse in a week or two. And he's saying, no, see, the delete button still works. I guess the Android app for Twitter is being very slow or something like that. So he decided to tweet an apology for that and then gave what he said is the reason for. it. And then a guy who actually works at Twitter replied saying, I've spent six years working on

Twitter for Android and can say this is wrong. And it sort of went into why exactly it's wrong. And then someone tweeted at Elon with this kind of attitude, you probably don't want this guy on your team. And Musk replied, he's fired. I'm not both sidesing this one, but you tweet something like that publicly at your boss. You're probably not long for the company. So I don't think it's a surprise that Musk is firing the guy. The thing is, though, it's like, why are you doing this over Twitter? Right. The initial report of your firing

thousands of employees concluded with, like, he still has not spoken to any of us. He hasn't addressed the company, like, as a group, as he's going through and firing people, this sort of like, I'm not even there, but my power extends there. Be terrified of my presence because I'm compelling you to

come into the building, no more work from home. You know, I'm compelling you to come in where, you know, my power sort of drapes over. you like a shroud. But I'm not going to be there. I mean, it's just like the capriciousness of it, it like maximizes the nauseating aspect of just terminating people willy-nilly. I mean, it's already like you're garnishing it with like, hey, everybody can see me conducting firings on Twitter. Look at how I am the god emperor. I mean, just the pettiest self-esteem Philip. I mean, the whole thing has been a petty self-esteem philip. Right. But that at the expense of, you know,

of people's livelihood right before the holidays, like, you bastard. You just unmitigate. bastard. Yeah, and it's just, it's the constant, again, it's the constant lying. Like, he canceled the free lunch program for Twitter employees after, you know, bringing them all back to the office. And then he tweeted something about how, oh, this ended up costing like $400 per person per day or something like that, whatever he tweeted. And then again, someone jumped on and said, yeah, this program was, uh, under my purview for a number of years. It costs $15 to $20 per person and was taken advantage of, and, you know, Musk tried to claim that it was like, very few employees use it. And the person was like, no, it was like 80% of the people who work there actually used

it. And it made it a lot easier to, you know, to do your work when you could just grab a free lunch on site. So it's, again, it's just, it's the constant lying. And the similarities between him and Trump are not, like, they've become more noticeable in the last week or two. They've always sort of been there and I don't want to cast aspersions on rich people. I'm starting to feel like maybe they're all like this and they just constantly lie and they're so used to not being called on their shit that they just keep going and they just keep going. And the ironic thing with Musk is he chose to buy a platform that is just riddled with journalists and people who are just like, yeah, you know, we can look this stuff up and we can prove.

that you're lying in under 30 seconds, and by the way, we're going to? Right. I mean, some of these lies, they don't take journalists. This is not particularly abstruse information. He claimed that Twitter was the number one driver of, like, click through for websites. Like, if you have had a blog, you know that this is absolute horseshit. You can get 100 impressions on Twitter. You might get two people to show up.

You put it on Facebook. You can put 100 impressions on Facebook. You'll get 20, 25, 50, whatever. This wasn't specialized knowledge known only to an easily demonized media elite. Like, anybody who's had a podcast knows this. And so, like, it becomes harder to view the purpose of the acquisition as anything other than, like, acquiring the means to be gainsaid and eradicated. Of, like, this is a war on the media elite who keep fact-checking me about how I came

on to this lady. And she said, no. So I said, would you like a horse? which is like maybe even weirder like in terms of sexually inappropriate horse related details about a public figure maybe even weirder than Alex Rodriguez supposedly having a portrait of him as a centaur

you know I'm just looking at my wall and I'm thinking yeah no it's definitely weirder than that but yours is tasteful right and the script called for it just say well yeah mine only takes up I think it's 8 by 10

yeah Joining me now is someone who worked at the highest levels of New York State government and the first woman to come forward against then governor Andrew Cuomo and speak out about his sexual harassment, Lindsay Boylan. Lindsay, thanks so much for being here. Thanks so much for having me, Andy. On our last show, Jesse and I talked a little bit about this when we made Cuomo our fuck that guy for the episode. But I thought it was worth getting into in more detail. And before I do, I said this then and I want to say it again, we tend to stay away from New York centric stories here on the new abnormal. because we have listeners all across this great country and abroad. Shout out to Philippa in New Zealand. And we don't want to fall into the New York as the center of the universe trap.

But while this story is about something going on in New York, it has political ramifications for the whole country, potentially huge ones. So that said, what I'm talking about here is the state of the New York Democratic Party, which in an election that overall wasn't bad for the Dems nationwide, managed to lose four house seats to the Republicans. And a lot of people are placing the blame for that, not only. on our disgraced former governor, but also the New York Party chair, Jay Jacobs. And Lizzie, you are one of those people and you feel so strongly about it that you even took

to TikTok to talk about it. So tell us why. Yeah, and I'm a new user on TikTok. So it's quite a lot of effort to go to. I felt it was so important to speak up about the former governor. And I feel equally that it's as important to speak up about Jay Jacobs. This is a person whose job it is to marshal all the money, all the messaging, and get Democrats elected across the state of New York. And if you look at a map of the country, like you prefaced all of this, we are in much more dire straits than anyone else. We lost more seats. The balance of the house is perhaps resting on us. The governor in a quote unquote blue state barely got reelected. And in fact, in many cases, there was even a lot of concern in the city that the messaging was so bad for Democrats that they would lose

re-election. We really can't have any kind of meaningful change on any of the things we care about in terms of who we work for and how we work unless we take out the people who have been in those positions really doing nothing to help people. And that's Jay Jacobs. Yeah, he's a guy who, again, he's the New York State Democratic Party chair, but for some reason he has always seemed much more interested in going after the progressive wing of the Democratic Party than he has been going after Republicans. And we saw that a lot in this election cycle right now. And he was part of that whole thing that quote unquote crime has become a huge issue. Yep. And in New York, it was a big issue, particularly oddly. Crime in New York City seemed to be a very concerning issue for people upstate

and on Long Island, who don't know that they're basically being lied to about the state of things here in New York City. But Jacob seemed to play along with that strategy. And what do you know, that strategy led to both Long Island and upstate shifting even redder than they generally are. Yep. You know, there's a lot of debate about how we talk about crime and how we talk about responses to it. To be clear, I think that it is important for Democrats to have messaging that responds to people's fears, whether we're talking about inequality, we're talking about the climate crisis, or we're talking about people's fears of crime. It's not that we shouldn't be doing that. It's that there was no cohesive message to respect. To your point, he kind of piggybacked on what the Republicans were

saying and used it to punch down on who he views as responsible, which are progressives. And not only is that a bankrupt idea, but it hasn't worked in the past. Kathy Hochel actually has a pretty useful CV on this in terms of reaching a state that is blue overall, but has a tremendous amount of more moderate, more conservative people. I mean, she was someone who it took some time to get on board with more significant gun control. She's been someone who speaks about people's use for hunting and the like. And she's been someone who has pushed for much stronger regulation, permitting process in kind of light of the Supreme Court rollback of gun control laws. And guns are what is causing the worst crime. And as we all know, crime is up across the country. So,

So it is both alarming and ridiculous to me that we knew that this was going to be the narrative, this false narrative, this fearmongering narrative pushed by Lee Zeldon because he's been doing it from the beginning. And they're to say, we understand the fears that people have. We refute the fearmongering. And here's what Democrats have been doing. Here is why Kathy Hokel, here's why the Democrats are the only ones who are serious enough to take on this problem.

And I'll say, just as an aside, I live in New York City, to your point about this division of the perceptions of crime. But we also spent a significant amount of time in Westchester where in the 17th congressional district, Sean Patrick Maloney, just lost his seat to Mike Lawler. Probably every weekend we're up here in the summer we are. I'll tell you, I didn't see a single sign anywhere for the governor. I didn't see any TV ads. I didn't see anything robust as an attack. And politics is a blood sport. And I'm left wondering why we ever chose this person other than the fact that the rumor was he could always deliver Long Island because he's also the NASA party county chair. And he didn't do that. He hasn't been able to change that shifting tide for some

time. So it's ludicrous to me that we're even asking this question at this point in time. Yeah, to your point, my sainted mother who lives in a district that somehow encompasses parts of Nassau County and extends into New York City now has a Republican congressman and I blame Jay Jacobs for that. So this is personal. Absolutely. It's and you know, it didn't have to be this way. I think changing demographics, people feeling left out of the conversation, you can't really felt them for not coming along with you. People who haven't been reached by either the governor directly or by her county level affiliates or by any kind of positive messaging. You can't really fault people in the absence of any kind of messaging strategy. And I hate to say it for one of the biggest war chests in the country, the governor and really,

through Jay Jacobs was not able to manifest that. And it shows in terms of what's happened in New York and the potential really serious role it's going to play on a national stage. And we have to figure this out because it is a microcosm of an ongoing debate and a failure of messaging that isn't backed up by things that are really important that the governor has done. And I'll also say just on one other point on that front, the former governor, I think does drag down this governor and Democrats because he was proven to be such an abusive person in every possible way. One of the last vestiges of that system is Jay Jacobs. And you see it in how he helped the governor corral state legislators to control the budget

process by controlling and manipulating IDC members, the Independent Democratic Caucus, and all these systems that really just enabled the former governor to be as abusive and punitive as possible. And that person who enabled that in many ways with Jay Jacobs. And so it behooves the current governor, Kathy Hogle, to take this time to make that change and ask for his resignation. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I don't think it's a stretch to say that Jacobs is, as we say in politics, a Cuomo crony. Yes. And it sort of makes sense that when the main guy resigns in disgrace, you also take that moment as an opportunity to replace his cronies. So it would be nice if we did that now. I also mentioned that Jacob seems far more comfortable going after progressives than Republicans. And part of this obviously tied.

into 2022 because of the crime issue and other things. And he does have sort of a history of this. I think it was last year there was the mayoral race in Buffalo. Yes. Jacobs would not endorse the Democratic nominee, India Walton, a progressive. And in fact, compared her to David Duke. And she ended up losing the election. There was no state party support for her. And Buffalo now has a Republican mayor. So this is something he does. Yes. You know, you know this, but our listeners, if you were thinking, well, maybe he's learned his lesson now. Absolutely not. He says he bears no responsibility for what's happened this year. And once again, he somehow says that it's all progressives' fault. We have a word for that in New York City. It's Hutzpah.

Exactly. Exactly. It's almost shocking. It's kind of incredible as a skill to be so blatantly ignorant or, you know, choose not to see reality. The person who he likened to David Duke happened to be a black woman who had come up through the ranks in Buffalo to be the Democratic nominee, knocking out someone who'd been mayor, essentially controlling Buffalo with support of the state machinery, including Andrew Cuomo at the time. And he chose to disparage her in this way. And I think it's even more hypocritical because he spent all of his time before and after that saying that Democrats should never challenge each other. And incumbency is something that should be respected. And yet, when it's someone that he doesn't think can be controlled by this broader apparatus, all of that goes

away. And I think even in the case to a certain extent of the redistricting process, which is this whole other topic work, there was a redistricting plan. The Republicans fought it. There's a lot of consternation that Jay Jacobs and the Democratic leadership didn't put nearly enough fight in terms of, you know, making sure that we had independent redistricting that would hold. And then we had a Cuomo appointed judge basically strike down that redistricting plan in favor of one that ultimately helped the Republicans. That could be his whole topic about Democratic machinery. Right. Created by Andrew Cuomo, supported by Jay Jacobs.

But even if you just truss that aside, and Jay Jacobs' complicity in that, Sean Patrick Maloney in this new district that he was to run in 17, less of his community than Mondare did. And instead of turning to him and saying, you know, you take this, the head of the D-Triple-C, which is the House Democratic Party's fundraising that. mechanism. He pushed Mondare out and he lost his election to a relatively young, relatively newcomer Republican to take parts of Westchester that absolutely should not have gone Republican in this case. And that I rest in many ways on Jay Jacobs. And I think many of us do. And one thing

I just say on top of that, Jay Jacobs tends to blame progressives for everything. And I think it's such a tell because there's no authentic messaging around a belief system, around what the Democratic Party stands for, something that is inclusive. And so all he can do is try and punch down on people, you know, he may agree to a certain extent with or not. It's just that there is no messaging coming from the New York State Democrats. And that's sad because there are policy wins. There are important points that we can all get on board. But instead of doing that, in the middle of nowhere, he starts to blame people like AOC again. I mean, it really sounds as though this is a person who represents people and men from another time. Why are you focused on this person? She won her re-election. Why are you

focused on these new leaders? They won. Why don't you look at the areas where you failed and your messaging failed there? He says, oh, well, it's because bail reform conversation, ruined things on Rhode Island. Well, that sounds to me, having been in numerous elections, that that was failure of messaging, you know, and it's just really embarrassing for him at this point. I think the longer he stays in, it's embarrassing for everyone involved, including the governor, who has said that one of her key intentions is to change the way that Albany works. There's absolutely no ability to change the way that Albany works when you have one of Andrew Comer's chief enforcers that is not at all interested in the Democratic Party itself, but power itself still in play and still

running things. Yeah. So Jacob's big thing to me has always been, like he tries to act like he's the adult in the room and he's having to deal with these brady progressive kids. Meanwhile, he is basically overseeing what feels like the gutting of the state party. And as I said at the top, and you also alluded to, this has real consequences for Democrats nationally. Right now, as we're recording this, either there are a bunch of outstanding house seats. Right now, the GOP has an eight seat lead, 212 to 204. So if you look at those four New York seats, if they hadn't flipped red, it would be 208, 208. You know, there are some folks saying, look, this, Final count is going to be a GOP majority house, but it's going to be an under four-person majority.

So, yeah, this is a huge deal nationally, and it's a huge concern for the Democrats nationally. And it would be nice if we could get to the root of this problem, which right now is the New York State Democratic Party. And whether he wants to accept responsibility or not, that's on the party chair. And as people are pointing out, when he takes no responsibility for this stuff, they're like, well, then what is your job? Yes. I mean, essentially, Hill, I guess his only response could be, you know, not being normal about it is he raises money and he was supposed to deliver Long Island. He didn't deliver Long Island. That I think was the biggest pickup of congressional seats for Republicans. And in spite of how much money was raised for the governor, the message did not reach people. And what I would say is this is our most urgent issue in New York because if we don't have, you know, if, If it's like six cats inside a coat trying to achieve something or walk down the street, that's what Jay Jacobs is. You really can't go anywhere.

You can't communicate anything with resolve. And it's going to be a really difficult march, particularly to the presidential elections. This issue is going to come up again and again, particularly this one around crime. And I didn't see any response to any of the totally incorrect things said. I also didn't see any response to people's. feel fears, whether they're founded on dab-driven things or not. I mean, I don't know many cases where it's smart for a politician to just say, I don't care about your fears, especially if they're genuine. I just think that that's poor policy, poor planning. And that's essentially what he's

doing when he says it's the progressives fault. He's diverting attention from himself and his failures and the messaging failures and the failure to connect policy to messaging, the failure to connect funding to messaging. And he's trying to punt. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy and I don't think the Democrats on a national front have any real answer for this specific problem and the nature of the problem, which is we're not here to respond to Republican volleys. We're here to make sure that people understand. We hear their fears and we are about responding to them based on reality, which is very different than the Republican. Yes, it's the polar opposite. You mentioned that his job is to raise money.

I may be a political novice, but my understanding is the point of raising the money. is to then win the elections. And you can raise all the money you want. If you lose the election, it don't matter. So so far, Governor Hockel has said she has no plans to replace Jacobs. There's now a letter going around that has been signed by over 600 people. And I don't mean just normal people like you and me. I'm talking about elected officials in Albany, elected officials in the counties in New York

City, members of the Democratic State Committee. And this letter calls on her to do just that. The letter says that the state Democratic Party, quote, failed to commit the time, energy, and resources necessary to maintain our deep blue status. Do you think she might change her mind? I think she will. I did work with the governor in my time in the administration. I think she's very smart. I think she's cautious.

I think she's probably weighing the different dynamics at hand. I think that the and I signed on to the letter, I think it's very important. I think the next step is that congressional leaders need to be pushing her behind the scenes. And I would assume perhaps some of those are if they're smart about their own prospects, even on a national stage. How well can you do in a national stage if you have problems in your own state? Right. So I would assume that she's getting pressure.

The secondary question would be is who gets placed into that position and how does it the various dynamics. But honestly, I think there's so much agreement on this issue, and it's not just progressives. It's moderate Democrats that I know. And having run in elections myself, you interact with very different types of people and Democrats. And I don't know, I can't think of a single person who thinks that this man has done a good job. Even if they don't know who he is, you say what the person's job is. They say, get him out of here. Right. It could be an easy win. You know, there are always considerations that tie up in the kind of, I would call it, sort of world of Albany. But, you know, those things, I think, are getting much less costly than this albatross.

She's got around her neck right now, which is Jay Jacobs. And so I think she's, if this momentum keeps, she's, she's really going to have to ask him to resign. And I think it's really important. And I think sometimes in state and local elections, people get annoyed that it garner so much national tension. People say, oh, this is New York, you know, this stay out of our business, similar to probably sometimes when we look at Georgia, we look at different, you know, state and local elections. My friends and my colleagues and I are very keen to make it clear what role this man has had ultimately in the potential failure to hold the house. And I think that that should be brought to

bear. And it already is in many conversations around his Elster. He needs to go. And it's had huge ramifications for the whole party beyond New York and for New Yorkers and Americans that this person didn't do his job. And I think that pressure needs to continue to be conveyed. It's what I'm trying to do. I think it's what so many advocates are trying to do. And I think in the back of her mind, she's probably running through all these scenarios currently is my guess. Yeah. No, I agree with you. I think she said the thing anyone would say right in the aftermath of the election was, no, I have no plans, you know, to replace him. But I do think that even as she was saying that, there was probably the thought in her mind.

And as this, you know, this story really has exploded in New York over the last just really 24 hours. Yes. The New York Times wrote a big piece about it. And I think that really, between that and your TikTok, I think it has really captured the imagination of the people. So my exit question for you is, you said the question will be who replaces J. Jacobs. What about a guy, a young man, a young black man, who was a congressman who sort of got redistricted out of being a congressman by the name of Mondair Jones? I think he'd be amazing.

You know, I'm not in a position to be in that room, but I think he would be amazing. He has credibility, I think, in progressive circles. He has credibility in more moderate democratic circles and that he was holding a district that was a back and forth with Republicans, as we now know. it's clear in the demographic information on the returns, particularly in New York City, that black people and black women delivered this election for Catholic people. I think we should never ignore that. We don't need another at this moment in time, older white man running our party.

And that's just, you know, a message for change. And I think he would be incredible. You know, I could think of a few people. I think that it would be, it would be only smart for her to be considering that. Lindsay Boylan, thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate it. And we'll have to have you on again as this story continues to blow up. Absolutely.

I appreciate it. And it was fun. Thank you so much. With us now is Dave Weigel, who covers politics for Semaphore and has a newsletter there called Americana. Dave, thanks so much for being here. Oh, it's good to be here, guys. So let's start with some current political stuff.

We're looking at a runoff in the Georgia Senate race between Reverend Warnock and Herzl Walker. Concurrent with that, we're now learning because Semaphore is reporting it, that Chuck Schumer is going to bring a vote to codify same-sex marriage rights to the Senate floor this week. Gay marriage is an issue that polls fairly well nationally, and it's also an issue that Herschel Walker opposes. Now, anyone who knows me knows I hate being cynical about politics, but is it possible there's a connection here as to why Schumer is doing this now? Luckily for Schumer, for anyone who is cynical, they said they would do this before the election. There was a whole discussion, should we do this before the midterms? And the counter argument was there are, for

Republicans holding off until the election is over who are politically cowardly, although I guess that wasn't the word people used. If you just wait until after the election, you're going to get some people saying, I don't care anymore, but I'm going to vote yes. Like, Lord Ron Johnson do people like that. So that was one reason. I do think it helps in Georgia, which had to be a consideration here. I just was talking to the chairman of the DSEC. And like, yeah, they just think this is one of popular issue in Georgia. It wouldn't have been 10 years ago.

It is now because there's one of the many, many, many states that has a gay marriage ban back when that was the thing to do. And then Walker just has not been clear on this at all. I mean, he has been asked several times. He was asked when Democrats introduced this because they were trying to get political pressure on Republicans. And he just said, you know, voters are focused on gas prices. Voters are focused on other issues. He didn't say yes or say no clearly. So anytime one candidate can say, yes, I support this popular thing and the air candidate can't, that's pretty good. That's like pretty good for the guy who can give a clear popular answer. Right. And also, I mean, obviously it has the benefit of you'll get a yes vote from, Warnock that you might not get from Walker. So that's the obvious reason. Yes, so he's going to cast a

yes vote. He said he would. He'll get attention for doing that. I feel like the idea that there's like a secret conservative electorate that's going to come out and pound the pavement if this happens. I think that again was true maybe 10 years ago. I only it's true now. There are many signs that the election was not going great for Republicans. At best they were going to have like a two or three seat with the House majority. They were going to lose a Senate. Like one was Ralph Reed, who's still based in Georgia. And he was very active during the age of the popular gay marriage ban in the states, like was going to have a post-election briefing on what went right and then just canceled it. That was a clue. Okay. There is not a great story for social conservatives to tell about this.

There are issues. The other thing about gay marriage at this point is one of many issues in, let's say, the LGBT zone. And Republicans have moved on from gay marriage. There's times where they just pretend they always supported it. You'll hear something like, well, Dick Cheney endorsed a gay marriage before Hillary Clinton, things like that. True. But like, we know what was after what Dick James Vice President he's not supported. They'll say that because that is popular.

What they would rather talk about is puberty blockers and transgender surgeries and things like that. That is stuff they, if they want to, they can. If the conversation is gay rights, issues under the rainbow flag, basically. This is the worst one for them. Game marriage is the least popular ones. Yeah, absolutely.

So along the lines of the Georgia runoff being relevant, there's supposed to be a vote next week on leadership in Congress from both the House GOP and the Senate GOP. You know, this is determining if the Republicans have a majority, it will determine who the next speaker is, etc. We're starting to see some calls from prominent Republicans, prominent conservatives to push back these elections until after the Georgia runoff. There's a letter that's been signed by a bunch of people, including Ginny Thomas, Matt Schlapp, Mark Meadows, and other. saying that these elections should be postponed until after the runoff is done. What do you make of this? Is this just playing politics? Are they trying to get their ducks in a row because they want to challenge McCarthy and McConnell? Or is there something else going on here? Yeah, it is about the anger inside the Republican Party that things went wrong.

To win over, let's say, there's 49 Republican senators, Mitch McConnell only needs 25 of them to support him. I mean, he has that based on everyone's conversation with these senators. There were two runoffs in Georgia two years ago. Rick Scott was elected during that period, and the deal was he takes over after the runoffs, which is what happened. So there's not actually a practical reason to do this. On the book of rules, you do not need to delay anything. It really is just this conversation between Republicans and said, okay, we were perfectly happy to have this leadership fight once we expanded the majority. And Rick Scott's idea was, I will be the guy who will take credit for expand the majority. I'm going to run based on that. The McConnell idea was, no, I was the guy who expanded the majority. Look at all the money

I raised for my PACs, none of that happens. So they actually are in legit disarray. And then when it comes to the House Republicans, I think, they were getting closer to having an actual majority that maybe it's only one or two seats. But enough of one where they're like, okay, we are voting for a majority leader. We are voting for majority wit, not just other random guys in the party. They're already underway, though. Like, they're doing that. So this is, this really is just an attempt at a power play. The kind of thing that clearly drives McConnell insane, just because he thinks that what did Rick Scott bring to the table of this election? I thought he was in company.

He thought he was, I mean, again, I was just talking to Democrats about this. Like, why was the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, like, starring in all these videos about the issue of the day? Why? Like, who cares? No offense to Rick Scott. Who cares who the chairman of the committee is? But he's very photogenic.

Well, that's the thing. It's like, even if it was, even if it was like chairman Brad Pitt or something, like, that's just not what they do. They're supposed to just go in there and win stuff, not, like, increase the brand of somebody who's ambitious. And, like, you know, McConnell has like the last job he wants to have and will ever have, which is Senate leader of the Republican Party. Like Scott, it's well-known, might want to run for president. And so this fight is a great way to deepen those divisions, for one, and get attention for Scott. Like, however it goes, just getting conservatives on

record saying we should delay this election because we have less faith in Mitch McConnell, that's great for him. I think he'll get, he'll get smoked. But the fact that they had to complain about it at all was a real coup. Yeah. I also think this is kind of, this is a peave of mine because I do think this is sort of a Rick Scott is an observer from the TV show fringe. And I believe that this is them trying to gain more and more power in the Senate. So nobody is with me on this, Dave. I stand alone on this. Takeaways from the election.

I feel like election analysis confirms people's priors. You get a lot of, oh, the Dems did well because of the issue that happens to be my thing. And the GOP underperformed because they didn't do the thing I really wanted them to do. What is your big takeaway or what are your big takeaways? Why did we end up where we did? A few things. So I was looking at what I've been writing all year about the elections. And I never wrote anything about how there was going to be an enormous Republican wave

that sweeps every Democrat out of power or even, I think people at the end were saying they'd get 54 Senate seats. The Republicans, I never thought that made sense. I thought Democrats now have the advantage Republicans used to have is they have more college-educated voters who show up and vote in every election. That's just true. that helped them in 2018. They helped in, I mean, presidential matters less. It actually did help them in Virginia in 2021. Like, they had very high Democratic turnout.

They just, like, lost another reason. So they had that advantage. Republicans, I think, they ran weird campaigns, not necessarily bad campaigns, but where they did not have the advantage from the get-go, like Iran DeSantis, piling up money, to get, you know, credibility with conservative media, they were just focusing on a lot of hot-button issues.

I've mentioned before, like, you know, puberty blockers, Hunter Biden, like just all these things that clearly like normal voters were not paying attention to. You can argue do they matter, maybe. But were people paying attention to them? Not at all. So when they talked about inflation, they talked about economic issues, they didn't have like a plan. And people did notice that. They just, they ran a sort of alternative campaign and they ran a right-wing one. And what Democrats do when they, in our lifetime, when they flip the house, we all write about it. Like Democrats nominate a bunch of candidates who do not make the most left-wing people in the party happy. like Rahm Emanuel helped nominate a bunch of kind of moderate veterans, moderate state

legislator, et cetera. The 2018, same thing. You've got like several like former intelligence officers running as Democrats. They go out of their way to find people who have a, I'm not your typical Democrat story. And Republicans didn't do that except a couple of places where it did work they did. Like they, like there's a race in Arizona they would have lost had they not found this former gubernatorial aide Siscomani who they could not stop talking about who just had a great story, like no baggage, like worked for the popular governor, worked in the private sector. Where they didn't

have that control, they nominated fairly right-wing candidates and where they, the Senate candidates, really, the Rick Scott approach of being hands off, which effectively meant Donald Trump gets to pick the nominee. That led to really bad candidates with bad strategies. I mean, Blake Masters is sort of iconic here. Blake Masters in Arizona is like, not just because Democrats said we want to talk a lot about Blake Masters, but Blake Masters had a Tucker Carlson documentary special done about him. He did a ton. I mean, just if you turn, I mean, just if you turned on Fox News prime time, most of the campaign, like, flip a coin, there's going to be JD Vance, there's going to be Joe Cant, there's going to be, they just had guys appealing

to the Fox News voter all the time in a way that Democrats don't do, they have guys who do that in super safe races. But I mean, this is like me indicting the media a little bit that I'm part of. It's more that Republicans have built a very safe conservative media bubble, even if you don't think you're changing, you're adapting to the wrong strategies because you're hearing. only good things when you go on TV. Like, that's what happened. That's completely what happened is that they just became convinced that a lot of these issues,

which nobody outside of maybe the 40% party base cared about, were winning issues. I mean, the 2020 election stuff was a huge liability for normal people. And like, you can tell, masters again, you could tell because the way he handled this. For normal people, 2020 election lasted longer than people remember except for 2000,

but nobody ever proved that anything was stolen just like took a while. So for years, there'd be polls, not years, two years, polls would ask, like, do you think of stolen? It was basically no one who voted for Biden thought this, a chunk of people who voted for Trump thought this. But, and I'm doing the thing where I'm kind of referring to something without providing a link exactly, I did see a lot of wishcasting that would just say, more people than ever think that the election was stolen. I've ever seen this, I can think of one of them. Harris

Faulkburn on Fox News just misread a poll, which had said most Republican voters think 2020 was stolen and just said it was a poll of everybody. This kept happening. You had a lot of Republicans obsessed with things that only the base cared about because they didn't talk to anyone outside the base. I mean, maybe the totemic example, this is before the midterm, but like Paul Gosar in Arizona was one of the guys who would say. As he was out campaigning in the final days of 2020, he didn't meet anyone who's voting for Joe Biden, therefore Biden couldn't have won. Like that was a pretty popular attitude. That was that idea that there's something was so clearly awry because we didn't know anyone who voted this way that, the media is going to tell us that we're not winning, but we are. And you can boil it down to if everyone is convinced that you do anything wrong in the last election that was just stolen,

then why wouldn't you just do the same thing and just try and not steal it? You know, okay, let's run the same campaign. Let's talk about all the Trump issues, but let's have more poll watchers. Like imagine if Democrats in 2018 has said, all right, we're going to run exactly on the Hillary Clinton campaign, but we're also going to say the 2016 election was stolen. And that's it. We're going to nominate like Hillary Clinton loyalists. Right. People just like Hillary Clinton, we're going to call people to be. deplorables. It wouldn't have made sense. It sounds crazy when you apply to 2018, but I think that is

for a lot of Republicans what happened this year. Yeah, no, I think that's absolutely right. And also, it's just they did things, as you said, they nominated these sort of strange candidates. And then they ran, there was that attempt at meaning, at least on Twitter, I saw it by the Arizona Republican Party, I guess it was, that sort of mocked the idea that Mark Kelly was an astronaut. Oh, man. Yeah, I remember this one. The average Mark Kelly enjoyer ever average Blake Masters enjoyer. Yeah, and it's like, really, your market, like an astronaut,

like probably the one career that everyone sort of is like in awe of and that every five-year-old wants to be, that's where you're going with this? Yeah, there's this, Jared Holt, who used to be at right-wing watch. There's other kind of nonprofit watching the far-right stuff now,

but he had a good substack about this. There's just like a lot of conservatives convince themselves in 2016 that like Donald Trump meaned himself into the presidency and if you just post hard enough, even though the media will tell you it's not working, it's actually working. So just keep posting.

Just keep posting that stuff that you think is epic and awesome because the media will say that's crazy, but we know the majority is with you. And the problem you can probably spot if you're not even paying attention is like, Trump never won a majority, like at any point. Like you are talking about pulling an inside straight and getting 47% of the vote nationwide.

Okay, well, like, that worked in 2016. You did not prove that you can actually actually just overwhelm the normie voter who doesn't care about this crap with, like, good enough memes. Yeah, maybe they don't understand that other than the presidential election, we don't have an electoral college. And you actually have to win more votes to win your election. Yeah, yeah. So I want to move on, because there's a story that's been kind of big in the last several days about this company, FTX, and it's a cryptocurrency exchange, which if I understand correctly, and fair warning, I probably don't.

What it does is it lets customers trade digital currencies for other digital currencies or for what the rest of us call real money. And it was run by this guy who became a crypto billionaire, Sam Bankman-Fried. It was one along with another company called Binance. It was one of the two largest of these cryptocurrency exchanges. And now, because of what we in the business call shenanigans, that company and the users who trusted it no longer have their money. So I don't want to go down a crypto rabbit hole because it gives me a bigger headache than I already have. But I want to focus on the political

aspects of this story. This company FTC spent millions of dollars lobbying for crypto-friendly regulation and donated, again, what we in the business call a shit ton of money to elected officials and candidates. Is all of that correct so far? It is. Yeah. It ended up being about $28 million and they we'll probably get to this. That's less than they thought they were going to spend on these campaigns. But it was mostly in primaries. But yeah, about $28 million and Bankman Fried made connections with people in progressive politics, not all of them, but like people who were interested in working on this project and directed money to people who were like sure bets to win. And then one race in Oregon, it was like a long shot where they ended up losing. Okay. And I've seen Bankman

Free described as the Democrat's second biggest donor. Is that correct? For this. cycle. For this cycle, yes. For he would have been because they don't, there were put 28 millions like a lot. I mean, there are people who put in multiples of 10 million, but not that much. Right. He looked smaller. So if you're having a conversation a month ago before FTX collapsed, you'd find Democrats saying, I wish this guy would give us more money because he'd, he had claimed,

uh, it just like, you know, shoot off the hip and some interviews. Like, he might give a hundred million. He might give a billion. And there was some frustration, okay, there is this guy who, would love to be the progressive savior of America, or at least the savior who keeps Democrats in control to work on philanthropic issues, pandemic preparedness, yada, yada. It'd be great if he gave another $100 million, like, we really could use that. There's a world where things collapse less quickly, and he's putting that money in like this race in Oregon or a couple races

in New York, and they do win a majority. They're not wrong. I think in a retrospect, it would have been so embarrassing with, like, questions about where the money came from. Right. They would have been dealing with that this week, but then they would still have the majority. Well, that's the thing. I mean, I hate to do the media thing where you always say that the other party pounces, but it does feel like I've seen a lot of conservative media sort of pouncing on this and throwing Bankman Freed's name around in the same breath as, you know, their ultimate bugaboo, George Soros. I guess this kind of ignores the fact that one of Bankman Freed's deputies is a huge GOP donor. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Not as big, but like Ted Bud,

the other Republican Senator in North Carolina after this week, he got some of that benefit. Because the idea of this crypto space in general is let's get a Congress who passes regulations that we like that let us make more money. And you want to hedge your bets, you want that to have bipartisan agreement. You want to be, you know, the NRA until like the 2000s, where everyone just is on your side, or in 2010s, where everyone's just on your side. That's the dream. But yeah, like, no one's hands are completely clean in this. And the members, I think it's Cynthia alumnus of Wyoming, like the members of the Crypto Caucus, people who like laser eyes and their avatars, those are still mostly Republicans. I mean, I did a story in January or February

this year with the small amount of Democrats who were really crypto curious, like a couple who had like minted NFTs for their campaigns. All of it flop. I mean, nobody bought that stuff. It was, it was a terrible idea. But it was getting more bipartisan because I think a lot of liberals thought like, okay, this thing that doesn't make any sense seems to have made a lot of people money, especially libertarian-minded people who will like spend this money to work against us. So let's at least pull around with it. And I think everyone who was getting into it at that point in time got washed. Yeah. So it does sort of feel like there was a lot of money going around and there now might be a lot of recriminations going around. Yeah. Dave, thanks so much for joining us. I really appreciate it.

No, thanks, guys. I'm really glad to do it. Have a good day. Anytime. Jeb Lund. Andy Levy. So, Jeb, who is your fuck that guy for today's episode? It's Bugs Bunny, Andy. I think a lot of people saw this coming. Yeah. You know, I've been burning on this one for a long time.

No, I'm, look, I've been a Florida resident since the 1990s, and I've watched as the state has grown less blue with time. And as the Florida Democratic Party has more or less fused into the place it was in, in 1993, and not really adapting to circumstances. And so I've grown very used to every. major national election when there's, you know, senator, governor, or, you know, president up for grabs in Florida. Watching people post the, the Bugs Bunny saw Florida off the rest of the continent gif, which, like, I get it. It's funny. I mean, I think part of the reason why I'm animated about this is because

I absolutely recognize that impulse in myself. You know, when, when Texas votes for Ted Cruz again, I'm like, we'll get them the hell out of here. Forget them. They're all gone, you know, but it's, It's sort of like the pushback that Democrats and the left had about when Republicans write off California as, you know, like, it's unimportant and we have to keep the electoral college. You're like, wait a minute. No, there are more Republicans in California than in any other state. Right. You know, like, there, where do you think Nixon and Reagan came from? You know, you guys have a good track record there.

And so we're capable of recognizing this sort of like self-defeating stupidity of the other party. when people write off a state because it doesn't pay off for them. But we do it so spitefully to our people when, you know, assuming you're a Democrat listening to this, like our people when they fail to deliver us something. And like there are a lot of Democrats in Florida and they could really use your help, especially because the state party seems to be sort of like a hobby organization for a lot of people. They're in place by the Clintons after they won. And then Obama didn't really clean house in Democratic parties every.

And so this is just sort of like what everybody does in a Tuesday. So they have something to talk about in like, you know, marine related fundraising activities out on the bay. It's like, well, it's very interesting. We mentioned poor people earlier this week. Yes. You know, and I'm tired of that. But jettisoning me into the Gulf and saying fuck off, like is not going to help,

especially because, look, the Gulf is going to come to me. Right. We already know it's coming. Like if we're going to keep up with the seawall metaphors from earlier, help please. Along those lines, we see this, you know, as you said, we see this after election and stuff like that. We also see it in the run-up to natural disasters when, you know, for instance, a hurricane is going to hit Florida and you'll see some idiot, it's always like a resistance Twitter person or something like that. Well, we shouldn't be sending any,

why are we sending FEMA down to Florida that their governor doesn't like FEMA? And it's like, we're not rescuing him. We're rescuing actual people. It's just the worst attitude. And going back to the elections, it's almost always white people saying this about states that have fairly large non-white populations, many of whom it's not as easy for them to vote as it should be because the Republican Party likes it that way. Maybe don't write off a whole state and maybe don't show your ass and talk about how Alabama this and Mississippi that, when, you know, a large percentage of those states is poor black people and poor brown people who would love to change the system but don't have the power to do so. that you phrased it that way too because one of the most exasperating things for me about this

election was watching chain gang Charlie Christ get nominated by the Democrats to lose like a third time. You know, he's very good at winning in his backyard where he's got a very, you know, reliable like I know this district and being essentially a Republican who is not mean to gay people is a great sort of economic policy for this area, especially being so tourism and retiree dependent. But, you know, in 2018, a black man who is campaigning on Medicare for all and who was being falsely accused of being personally under investigation by the FBI came within a hair's breadth of beating Ron DeSantis. Right. Right. He did a lot better than Charlie Christ.

And, you know, there are debates about why he came up short. My personal take is that the institutional Democratic Party went, this guy jumped the line. We're not going to work very hard. Right. So, Jeff, do you want to hear who my fuck that guy is? Absolutely. So my fuck that guy is a guy who I have actually given credit to before on this podcast. I've gotten a lot, a lot of hate mail from people like Jeb Lund about it. And that is our former vice president, Mike Pence, who is now got a book to sell. So now he's out there talking about how mad he was at Trump on January 6th and saying that Trump's words were reckless and was. part of the problem. His actual quote is,

the president's words were reckless and his actions were reckless. The president's words that day at the rally endangered me and my family and everyone at the Capitol building. Well, thanks, Mike. No shit. And maybe don't decline to talk to the January 6th committee when they want to talk to you about stuff like this. Instead of saving it for your book and your, you know,

ridiculous notion that you might be the Republican nominee in 2024. And again, I have given Pence credit for his actions on January 6th. And I have said that it's not too much of a stretch in my mind to say that his actions went a long way towards saving democracy. He very easily could have gone along with what Trump wanted and with what Ted Cruz wanted and with what all those other little petty fascists wanted. And he didn't. And he deserved. And he deserves. And he deserves. credit for that. This is exactly why I have always said he deserves credit for that, and I hate everything else about him. And for him to come out now and to be pushing this and talking about Trump, not coincidentally right after an election where a lot of Republicans are at least paying

lip service to the idea of souring on Trump, suddenly he's going to jump in and say, yeah, this guy, this guy was bad news. When he hasn't said anything like that leading up to this, Just fuck that guy. Yeah. Like, what's your encore on December 7th? Are you going to call out the Empire of Japan about Pearl Harbor? Like, how much later could you be to this party? Hope you enjoyed checking out this episode of the new abnormal.

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