The Josh Innes Show - Why Can't People Be Normal in 2026?

Episode Date: March 3, 2026

To continue on the conversation from the previous pod, I stumbled onto a story about Bill Clinton's thoughts on abortion in 1992. His thoughts were pretty normal and reasonable. What the hell happened? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Can anybody just be fucking normal? And can the normal people win anything? Is that possible? Is it possible for people to just be fucking normal for five minutes and like like see a, you know, like somewhere down the middle on this shit? Is that possible? Let me look up something. What was like Bill Clinton?

And that was before my time. I was alive, but it was before I had any thoughts on anything. What were Bill Clinton's thoughts on these? I feel like if anybody should have been pro abortion, but also kind of like kind of down the middle on another shit, it should be the guy that probably, you know, dipped his wick in some places it shouldn't have been. Let's see.

What were Bill Clinton's Pollitt thoughts on abortion? Let's see. Where did Bill Clinton? Bill Clinton supported abortion rights, famously advocating that abortion should be safe, legal. What's wrong with that? That sounds normal as fuck. During his presidency, 1993,

to 2001, he emphasized that the decision should belong to the woman, not the government. He aimed to reduce the need for abortion through better contraception and education. We all need to pull out. And education while protecting access to the procedure. That sounds normal. Safe, legal, and rare. To me, like, I don't know. Bill Clinton sounds like he was kind of fucking baller.

Let me see. Now I want to know more about Bill Clinton and why we can't have another one of him. Yes, he's probably a sexual predator. But why couldn't we have gotten more like this guy? What were Bill Clinton's, let's see, policies or let's see, what were Bill Clinton's, what's the word I'm looking for? What do you call it with their platform? What were Bill Clinton's platforms? Let's see.

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Many promotions are available both in-store and online, though some may vary. Bill Clinton's platforms as a new Democrat centered on centrist's pragmatic policies emphasizing economic growth through deficit reduction. Let's see, economic the Clintomics focused on the long-term physical discipline cutting the deficit, okay, whatever. Let's see, crime and social policy advocated for increased law enforcement. See, I'm fine with that. Healthcare initially pushed for universal health care reform, blah, blah, which ultimately failed education and technology. Promoted higher standards for schools, increased access to technology, and expanded access to higher education. That seems fine.

Supported free trade agreements. That's kind of beyond my, you know, I don't really know a ton about that kind of shit. But still, putting people first like a lay, let's see, focus like a laser beam on the economy during the recession. Okay. 1996 bridge to the 21st century, education and technology, family support, champion the family and medical leave act and targeted tax credits like $500 per child credit. Gun control, common sense, gun safety, including the Brady Bill. You know, what the fuck happened? What has happened to the world? Like that feels like a guy I would have voted for Again, I don't vote, but that feels like a guy.

Like, does it make you wonder how, like, like what you deal with with these liberal people all the time is they have gone so bad shit. And I think that this is something that Bill Maher says all the time or pretty frequently. He's like, I didn't change. These people got fucking nuts. And that's kind of how I feel about shit.

And that's the thing. It kind of goes back to the Gavin Newsom thing we talked about, you know, last week is like, this dude. like is like hey we need to stop focusing on shit that's fucking bad shit crazy that the average person living in the middle of america can't relate to people don't give a shit about your pronouns and they don't give a shit about how you think you're a fucking cat and they don't care about all this weird shit but that's all you people focus on is weird shit and the problem is they're never going to get away from the weird unrelatable shit because they've been placated so much so why would they ever get away from the weird shit that's the thing man like people are so obsessed with identity politics and hey i'm a fucking cat or or like hey i peed in a litter box the kids are peeing in the litter boxes in school or whatever this weird shit is or let your kid pick their gender before you name them like weird shit if you people could just be fucking normal for five minutes like things could kind of be okay but they never will be because why would any of

these people give back the power you've already given them you have given them the power to be fucking weirdos. How are these people that like yell and scream about my body, my choice and hands out of my vagina and grab her, like grab me by the pussy motherfucker? How are those people ever going to give back anything or try to understand anywhere that you are coming from when you've bent over backwards for them and you have empowered them? Like I wish I, like, you know what, and this kind of goes back to my point last week about James Carville.

James Carville was the guy that was running these campaigns. He and George Stephanopoulos were running these campaigns for Clinton. And when you see, like, and I understand that we all kind of look at Homeboy now, like he's a lunatic because he is, because like many people, he has Trump derangement syndrome and has gone off the fucking reservation. Okay, he's lost his mind because he's snapped. But his ideas about how to run a campaign and what matters to people, people is brilliant. That's how they got Clinton elected. But these people have gotten so crazy

that Trump is appealing to people. They've gotten so crazy that these extremists on the right wing side of things are appealing to people because they seem almost normal because you seem bad shit crazy. But you can't tell them that. And now they've obviously snapped and Trump is Hitler and they can't get out of this world. They've buried themselves in this world. The world seems like it was such a better place in 1992. I don't remember much about 1992 as I was a six-year-old boy, but 1992 seems like it wasn't all that bad. Because if you gave me the option of Bill Clinton, who seemed pretty fucking cool and George H.W. Bush? I mean, who the fuck am I going to go with? Clinton all the way. And that's all part of the strategy that was implemented by guys like James

Carville, who again, bad shit crazy now. But back then, like, like had the right idea. It's the economy stupid. Like he knows, like that thing that we played last week of him, it was an older piece of audio, but of him telling all these people like, you know, what's her name up in Minnesota?

That like you guys can't run on hating white people. That can't be your approach. You will lose whenever like the bulk of your voter base is going to be white dudes and you're telling white dudes that you're terrible. Like who advise these people? Who back when, you know, Hillary was running in 2016? Who thought it was a good idea

to call people a basket of deplorables and ignite that flame. Like these people are stupid and both of these groups are run by idiots. Can we get in a fucking time machine and go back to 1992? I would gladly vote for Bill Clinton in 1992. It seems real fucking normal. And I guarantee you all those people that used to listen to Rush Limbaugh in the 90s, the ditto heads at like the apex of the popularity of Rush Limbaugh, I guarantee you if you could say you can have whatever the fuck we're dealing with now

or Clinton 92, I think they'd all say, give me Clinton 92 as well. Because now everyone's lost it. But again, it goes back to the commentary from Bill Maher. People say, how have you moved this way? I haven't moved at all. These people have gotten fucking nuts. And that's what's happened is people have just lost their minds. Anyway, did I finish that?

Yeah, I did finish the abortion story. That very uplifting story about abortion. But I like that. Safe, legal, and rare. Like, how could you argue that? Like, in my mind, I hear that, and I'd be like, how exactly could you argue that unless you are an extremely right-wing,

very church-going type of person? Like, here's a story from the Atlantic that highlights that, I don't have the Atlantic, so I can't read it. Or actually, here it is. Losing the Rare in Safe, and Rare, this from 2019, coined by Bill Clinton, the phrase was an inspired way

to bring together a range of abortion support, under a now abandoned umbrella. I don't know. I find this interesting. You may not. I do. I'm kind of using the podcast at times, especially when there's nothing sports related going on

that really gives me all that much interest, to learn about shit that I don't know and try to, you know, educate myself on certain things and maybe read up on shit that I didn't know. Did it all come to him all at once in a flash of inspiration, or was it the final elegant iteration of ideas he'd been trying to compress into a single phrase for months.

He surely never imagined it would become the credo of millions. When Bill Clinton gave the country safe, legal, and rare in 1992, it was meant only to be a bit of political business, a workaround, but those five syllables didn't just get him out of a problem. They translated into language sentiments of millions of Americans who so exactly that they had to hear it only once for it to become their firmly held position on abortion. That's exactly what happened to me.

me just now. I didn't know that. But right now as I sit here in my extra bedroom at home, sweating my balls off, because I'm wearing this really nice Carhart sweatshirt, by the way. I buy all of my Carhart on eBay. It's slightly used or gently used Carhart, but Carhart's expensive. And I need big and tall Carhart, which is really expensive. So that's where I buy all my clothes. I buy all of my clothes from Coles. That's where I get my T-shirts, and I get my jeans and my Carhart from eBay. Let's fucking go. Now after a quarter century of mighty service of what President Barack Obama would have called coalition building, the phrase is being vigorously expunged from the pro-abortion rights conversation,

including from the plank of the Democratic Party and the official position of Planned Parenthood. Representative Tulsi Gabbard discovered this change of heart in the October debate when she evoked Clinton's famous phrase and was pilloried for it. Young feminists living in the age of dwindling access to abortion aren't interested in a mantra that implies, there is something shameful about the procedure, even if it has kept many in the pro-choice 10. That's the thing, man. And like these groups, and this is where they kill each other, I don't even know that these people want to win.

I just think they want to have a fight, not just the pro-abortion or pro-choice, pro-life, whatever. I think what you end up with here is you get a lot of people that don't even care about winning. They just want to have a boogeyman to keep fighting with. It's kind of to be careful what you wish for. You just might get it. I think that the second these people win something,

they're almost scared that they won something because they have no more boogeyman. They have nobody else to fight, right? But like, what would be wrong with that? Like, why would that bother you? Like, there's a lot of shit that, like, I'd like to have happened, but it's like shit that I don't want it to happen all that often, right?

Why should an abortion be a regular thing? It's because these people are so empowered and they hate Trump and they hate right-wing people so much that what they've chosen to do is almost make abortion a sense. status symbol. If we're Dave Ramsey in here, the abortion has replaced the paid off home mortgage as the status symbol of choice. Okay, better than I deserve. Like that's what we're like, hey, what kind of, are you going to, hey, Dave, are you going to get better than I deserve?

But that's kind of what we're dealing with here. Because people don't want to find middle ground and they don't realize that sometimes you have to give something to get something. You only get what you give. Don't let go. You got the music in you. Right? Like that's what we're dealing with. People don't understand. That's something I've had to learn in the corporate radio world forever. I used to fight battles. It's about picking your battles, but people don't pick their battles anymore. People just battled nine million miles per hour on everything and they don't give anything. And that goes for both sides. But in the case of this story, reading the story, like the idea, Like this line, young feminists living in the age of dwindling access to abortion aren't interested in a mantra that implies there is something shameful about the procedure.

But there is. At the end of the day, like it's not shameful to get it if, you know, like, again, it's based on the situation. It's not selective. It's not a shameful procedure if you're raped by somebody or whatever. But there is some level of shame in it. But here's what I'd say, they've brought shame to. it and they've brought shame to it by glamorizing, by turning abortion into an accessory, but again, by a status symbol, that's what's made it shameful. It's not shameful until you make it

shameful and they made it shameful. That's the problem. Abortion was a big issue in 1992. Clinton recently told a group of students at Georgetown Law School. I was one of the first pro-choice Democrats to run since Roe v. Wade who actually benefited from Roe v. Wade. Now my story is to fade out because I don't get to read the rest of it in the Atlantic, because I'm not going to pay for the Atlantic. Because I don't pay for shit. So I don't have any money. But I don't pay for shit.

But that's good. Like, it's so weird to me that, like, we can't have people. Like, people are so hell bent on being right about something that nobody wants to come together on anything. And we never will. Because there's no way in hell any of these blue-haired, nose-ringed, Subaru-driving Uber-lesboes is ever going to fucking. agree with a Trump person or a right-wing person on anything, that's over. That's donezo.

That can't happen. It's never going to happen. Should. It'd be great to be for the greater good. We'd all benefit from it. Because I think most people think like me. Most people are kind of just down the middle, right? That's who we are. We're down the middle people. But instead we have to celebrate states like Ohio that become a beacon of abortion tourism. Like people are riding in, Hey kids, what are we going to do? Like it used to be you'd go to Cedar Point and you go to Sandusky, right? You go to Cedar Point to go ride all the roller coasters. Now the kids are all piling into the wagon queen family truckster.

Well, your sister's got to get an abortion. So hop on in. We're going to cross the border. We're going to Sandusky for an abortion, guys. Come on over. Just fucked up. Anyway, more to come.