The Young Turks - Part 10 TYT Live: Election Day 2020

Episode Date: November 4, 2020

Election Day Part 10: Cenk Uygur, Ben Mankiewicz, and Alonzo Bodden TYT is Progressive Headquarters on Election Day. We’ll be tracking the presidential race between Donald Trump and Joe Biden and key progressive races around the country featuring a rotating panel of guests. Stay tuned for exit polls, state returns, down-ballot races, and more! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to the Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. All right, back on a Young Turks, Jake Ugar, Ben Mangwitz, Alonzo Bowden. Great to see you guys in auspicious times. We got a great guest for you guys in a second, but let me catch you guys up on something very important. So the rest of the media is now in a full scale panic and are worried that we're going to be in a replay of 2016. That's not where I am.

I think this race is very much winnable by Joe Biden, and I've got it now all the way down to 52-48 Biden. Okay, now it's really close, but I still think he's favor to win because Trump does have to win Ohio and Pennsylvania. and even then he could still lose. But having said that, it shouldn't be anywhere near this close. And one of the most important things, because we could be headed towards a tie, is who wins Nebraska's second district? Well, boy, do we have the perfect guess for you guys? Kara Eastman, the Democrat running in Nebraska's second district, joins us now.

Kara, hey, Kara, first, break down the results of your race in the second district as things stand right now. All right now, we are down 6,000. That the part of CD2 that is in Sarpie County, all of those votes have been counted, and that is definitely more of a Republican stronghold than Douglas County. I won Douglas County in 2018.

So now we've got more drops coming at 1045, 1145, 1245 and 1.45 central time. So if any of you want to hang out with us, come on down or jump on some kind of Zoom with us. It's going to be a long night. But we've got four more drops that having come in eastern corner of the city. So it, you know, being down by 6,000, that's 3%. I went home in 2018 and I was down by 4% and ended up losing by 1.9%. So it looks good, but it's going to be a long night. Yeah, and do you have any idea how Joe Biden is doing in that district? Joe Biden is doing well. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but he is doing well. And people are saying could be the tiebreaker. I don't know how, but this could be the tiebreaker. So he is definitely up in the district. And we're proud as a campaign to have helped him get there. Yeah, well, there's a reason why we emphasize your race. There's a reason why we said it was probably the most important race in the general election.

And here we are, and it's whether a progressive Democrat is going to beat an incumbent Republican Republican in the middle of Nebraska, and it's whether Joe Biden might be president or not. Everything might come down to Nebraska too. So Kara, look, I know you and I know that, you know, you've given four long, hard years to this and fought with every fiber of your being. And I know that it's maybe, you know, it's a tough time to be frank about the Biden campaign. But I'm going to try anyway. And I have no idea if they were great, if they were bad. I have no idea, right?

Was there a big presence from the Biden campaign in your district? Yeah, absolutely. And we worked in tandem with them, and we've always been proud to do that. This election is too critical for Democrats to be divided in any way. So it is time for us to come together. And hopefully we did it enough to put us over the edge. All right, Kara, I know we've got to let you go. We appreciate you joining us. And I got to tell you, I remember that nail biter in 2018 in the primary, where you came from behind and one at very late hour, just as we're about to sign off. So ain't nobody going anywhere.

Okay, we've got all those votes in Nebraska too. And it's going to make, it might make all of the difference. And thank you for fighting so hard for not just progressives, but in this case, for all Democrats, they might rely on you to carry the day. And that four years of hard work might decide everything at the end. So thank you for joining us. And thank you for putting that hard work in, Cara. Thank you.

It's an honor. It's an honor to be here with you tonight. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much. Okay. Ben and Alonzo, first time I'm talking to you guys tonight. Alonzo, let me start with you.

We were here four years ago. Here we are again. What's your take on how things are going so far? Okay, let me say first of all, I didn't want to be here, Jank. I feel like it was jinxed and I shouldn't have come back that we we had to change everything. I didn't want to do this. It's like an episode of Black Mirror, right? I'm telling you.

I'm telling you. You know, you said it. It's close and there's no explanation for that. How do you logically explain these things? The one that's blowing my mind is Michigan. I'm looking at this map here and seeing Trump's lead in Michigan. And I'm like, what? What? Like, have you not been around the last four years? What's going on in Michigan? And

I'm very suspicious of this thing with Wisconsin saying, we're not going to count them until 6 a.m. tomorrow. Like, what does, what does that mean? Are you, what are you waiting for, you know? I don't know, Jank. It's, it's too, the pundits are all, it's too close to call or whatever. I don't know if I qualify as a pundit being here right now. I don't even know if I'm cautiously optimistic, man. I, I'm leaving. I got them. Just cautious, that's all. Not optimistic, not necessarily pessimistic, just cautious. Well, look, guys, Ben, let me bring you in here because this, this is such an unprecedented election because of the mail-in ballots that it's literally impossible to make heads or tails out of it.

So let me give you the numbers as they stand now. In Minnesota, with 44% reporting, so all the percentage reporting here in the Midwest was going to be very similar. 44% reporting, Biden has an 18-point lead. Michigan, 41% reporting, they're supposed to have similar results according to the polling. Trump has an 11 point lead. Pennsylvania, 42% reporting, Trump has a 15 point lead. So I assume, especially in a state like Pennsylvania,

where we have better information that it is not the mail-in ballots. The mail-in ballots are going to get counted slower. And so this is more of a lead. That's the red mirage that we talked about in the beginning, where Trump appears to have a lead, but it's actually not a lead. On the other hand, tonight, we've seen Biden have a lead that won the lead. So I'm not asking you to make heads or tails out of it, Ben. I'm just saying that given the mail-in voting situation, is it even possible to guess what's going to happen in a state like Pennsylvania?

No. That's it, no. I enjoy being here tonight, Chank. So you're both going to leave. I'll carry out from here. So first of all, but it isn't all that the absentee ballots were counted. I mean, we know the Philadelphia County has 250,000 absentee ballots, and they've said they're not counting them tonight. Those are overwhelming Biden votes, right?

I mean, you know, in a bare minimum, he's figured he's winning that, you know, 225 to I can't even add it up right. But, you know, 150 to 50, you know, or that's not right either. It's likely at least 100,000 votes more for Biden. So we don't know. And what we used to know, of course, was the votes were being counted. You'd look at where they weren't coming from. Now we have this way of saying what Joe Biden's vote total is in the absentee ballots. That's what MSNBC was doing all night.

It was super helpful. And you'd see, I won 68% of these votes and Hillary Clinton only won 59% of them. And then that would get whittled away. It doesn't mean every state is doing it that way. Ohio had the absentee ballots counted, but they still have a lot of big cities to come, which seems like it'll get closer. I don't think there's any way Joe Biden wins it. But you could certainly make an argument that if Joe Biden loses,

Hillary Coton lost Ohio by nine points, and Joe Biden loses it by four, that bodes well for Pennsylvania, except some counties in eastern Ohio that border western Pennsylvania, Trump, at least one, he flipped. So maybe that says that Western Pennsylvania is going to go for Trump in a way that it didn't do before. We don't know, and we're not going to know tonight, clearly. And neither, Georgia also, all these votes that haven't been counted yet in Georgia, they got some problem. And they're going to sort it out tomorrow. All right, one thing seems clear.

Since it's not a blowout, we're now in a territory where the race has become steel. So one of the things we were worried about is they would say, hey, Trump's got the lead on election night, and that's it. We're ending the game in the third quarter, stop counting, or do massive hijinks doesn't really describe it well enough. Treachery, whatever it takes, Brooks brother mobs, militias, whatever, just send them in and make sure those votes don't get counted because we're within stealing range. That's right. And right now, Trump is within stealing range. And then, of course, despite what happened in Florida in 2000, with the, in stealing range,

I mean, ultimately it was the courts that stole it, right? Yep. That prevented everybody's vote from being counted. So, yeah, it's certainly within that range. I don't want this to go to the Supreme Court, right? You don't either. Nobody does. No.

You know, and you got to count on John Roberts just to make it five, four. And we lose anyway. That's right, we lose anyway, yeah. Yeah, by the way, yeah, go ahead, Alonza. Oh, well, I was going to say that, you know, when you come to the courts, it's like, it'd be like playing a basketball game five on seven, right? Because you're playing the other five players and the two referees are against you, you know? And the thing is in the Ben, you were talking about Philadelphia, you talk about Georgia.

It's funny how the cities seem to be where the votes don't count or aren't count. You know, in Atlanta, there's always something. Like there's a problem, if there's a problem in Georgia, the problems in Atlanta. You know, the Philadelphia votes won't be counted because the cities are overwhelmingly democratic. So, as you said, Jake, the closer it is, the worse it is. is. And I think one of the shames is that we, as like most people, we can't trust the vote. Like this is something new that we don't trust voting. It, you know, I used to not even think about that. It was it was unheard. It wasn't even a concern. It was like, yeah, it's an election. And there's

going to be votes. They're going to be counted. And now when the votes are counted, we're like, yeah, but is that really? And what are they doing? It's, we're headed the wrong direction, you know, just, just we're heading in the wrong direction. Well, you know, I'll keep on my theme because it's correct. Democratic incompetence. If I'm running a presidential campaign, and I think Pennsylvania is going to be the most critical state. And I know that by far the place where I have the most votes is Philadelphia. And I have the Democrat, the governor is a Democrat. You can't figure out a way to count Philadelphia votes quicker. No, the Democrats always say there's nothing we could do.

Well, that's why people don't vote for you because you're constantly telling them there's nothing that you could do for them, ever, ever. So I just want to point out, well, you say that people won't vote for them. I mean, Democrats have beaten Republicans in every election since 1988. I'm not even arguing your point because I just always want to remind people, Republicans have won once since 1988, but they keep. electing presidents? Well, I mean, that's, Ben, that proves my point. So, I said it was an argument. Yeah. So we won two popular votes. We bungled it away. We have massive edge in demographics. We have a massive edge on policy, but massive edge on everything. Yet somehow the Democrats can't find a way to win. They can't actually get into office. You got to get in the mud. You got to fight dirty.

You got to cheat there, you know, playing by the rules when there are no rules and the other teams making the rules as they go is stop trying to be the good guys. All right, win, win and then change the rules yourself. But yeah, the, you know, they're trying to be honest. They go low, we go high. No, go low. Go low. Get in the mud and fight for these things and don't let it go. go. That's, that's going to be the only hope. This, this just isn't working. You know, I agree with, I know, Jen, well, I think we both might say the same, relative to the same thing. The important part is the fighting. Like, if you fight well, you don't even have to get in the mud, right? I mean, I agree with you. And I agree totally with the sentiment. When you need to get in the mud, you get in the mud, but changing the narrative, right? Making it clear that you're not this party that is constantly looking to reach across the aisle and doesn't really stand for anything. I mean, stand for stuff. That's first. You stand for stuff, you start swaying public

opinion. Then you don't have to get in the mud. And then when they get in the mud, you're like, look at them, getting in the mud because they don't want people to have health care. That's despicable, right? But we're all afraid of, we're afraid of that kind of language. Yeah, it's, I don't know if you'll like this, Ben, but it's definitely the media's fault. because the minute any of us on the Democratic side, get in the mud or go low, the media rains down, holy hell on you. How dare you, you uncivil sons of bitches? How dare you?

That guy raises his voices at Democrats. Shut up. Ban him. Get him off the air. Bernie Sanders, that's it. We all hate you. You're going to execute people in the middle of Central Park. Everybody rally around Biden.

He's going to do nothing. He's going to be soft-spoken and do bipartisan commissions. They love that stuff. They love it, they enable it, and it's a cancer. Name one strong Democrat the media has ever been in favor of. Zero, none. That's not true. And I mean, I don't.

And they name one strong Democrat, they don't despise. I have no, literally I'll leave, not because I don't love you because I can't bear it tonight. But the issue, you got a party that is based solely on, I agree with you to some extent, and this is why. You got a party that is totally willing at any time to tell any sort of lie that suits them. And then you have a media that does not know how to handle that, right? And that craves what you talk about, craves bipartisan commissions. And the right has exploited that craving. And both institutions that we're talking about, the left, or at least the mainstream left in the Democratic Party,

and mainstream media, almost mostly on television. has not figured out how to deal with it. And it got worse in 2016, and it's gotten worse every month since 2016. And yeah, there were some shows that ripped Trump. And then it just became shows that ripped Trump. And I think they stopped having an effect. Still haven't figured out how to deal with deceit and untruths on a regular basis. No, but it's not just that they actively campaign against strong Democrats.

I don't think that's true. Nina Turner is a strong Democrat. Number one, most despised person by mainstream media. It just wears that poll. Okay. Oh, you, like, you think they, corporate, you don't think corporate Democrats in media can't stand Nina Turner? Come on, come on.

Well, Jenk, this is the fight that I don't like. This is the fight we can't have. This is what, in my opinion, the Democrats, you got to get into power and then fight progressive versus corporate or whatever you want to call it. I mean, if you look at what the Republicans have done, they were all disgusted by Trump. They hated Trump. You had a whole commercial of Lindsey Graham talking of all this stuff about Trump. But they were like, but we'll support him to get the power. You got to get in. You got you got to do whatever. Now, when you talk about the media, my problem with the media is their fear. And you talked about it.

They won't, they won't call a liar a liar. They won't call a racist, a racist. They won't use these words that are the truth because they're worried about hurting someone's feeling or not getting access or how many clicks they get or whatever it is that's driving them. But this division in a Democratic Party needs to stop until the Democratic Party gets in power. Get in power, then work it out amongst your But remember, the eye on the prize is winning, winning the elections, getting the Senate. Whatever it is, that's the prize, then have the battle within.

I know, but Alonzo, obviously I understand the logic of that, and that's exactly what we did in this election. It's not like anybody attacked Biden, no, we had as near 100% unity, right? Did it work? No, because the thesis is wrong. is wrong. The thesis is be neutral, be weak, be civil. And that's not how you win elections. So you're 100% right and saying, oh, and I know Michelle Obama is a saint and you're not allowed to say anything against her. But there's nothing that's hurt the Democratic Party more than the idea of when they go low, we go high. And you float away in a cloud, okay? No, when they

go low, you should burrow a tunnel underneath them and plant a bomb. Okay, so politically, politically, politically, okay, and you should blow them up. I mean, no, there's, there is, they won't be able to get lower than me, right? But when anybody does that on the Democratic side, the media says, no, no way, no way, don't listen to them, don't, those guys fight back, don't, right? So anyways, Ben, tell us about the gambling on. here and then we'll see if if they're right or not well I somebody a friend of mine told me because I talked gambling quite often that about I don't know 45

minutes ago you could you could the sites that were taking bets on this you could lay money on Biden at plus 1885 so it's nearly two to one you bet a thousand dollars you win 1850 bucks if Biden wins okay hold on sorry I got a call this has been the most amazing development of tonight out of so many amazing developments. Fox News has called Arizona for Biden. Yeah. So let me let me put that in and why we all should have made that bet at plus 185. Yeah. And now by the way, as you were speaking, it had gone to three to one. And so I wanted to talk about, is this red mirage or is it polling? So we're going to get to that next, but you start the conversation I'll follow up. So Nate Silver in 538 says if Trump wins

Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio, which seems likely, and I presume Georgia and North Carolina, but Biden wins Arizona. There's an 85% chance that Biden wins the Electoral Cup. Yeah. No, that's what I've been saying all night. Right. Right. At the end of the day, you win Arizona, you're going to win anyway. But it should have never been this close. Right, but I swear, yes, it shouldn't have been, but when it's all over, he's going to won by six or points if he wins Pennsylvania. And so as close as it is tonight and as frustrating as tonight is, and it should remain frustrating because I don't think Democrats are going to take control of the Senate. Maybe they get to 50-50. But then we're going to spend the next four years

desperately hoping that Joe Manchin is with us. And that's going to go poorly. That's going to go super poorly. Yeah. So but so he'll, it doesn't, in the end, it won't matter that he won the electoral college 278 to 260 or with Arizona 289 to whatever that comes to to 249. If he wins by six or seven points, it'd be a fairly dominating win and it adds some energy to states to get behind this electoral college, popular vote electoral college compact where we remove the electoral college that nearly here, even if Biden wins. But if Trump wins for the third time in six elections, the guy who got fewer votes. wins. It's insane. So obviously a win in Arizona changes the dynamic, you know,

went into this quickly. You think that you wanted to have some protection against losing Pennsylvania, although as Alonso pointed out right now, he's getting killed in Michigan, which would make Arizona irrelevant unless you win Pennsylvania. But you want a protection against Pennsylvania, so you needed Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, or Arizona. There is a possibility that it's worth mentioning, incredibly worth mentioning, that if Biden does win Arizona and Trump wins Pennsylvania, and Biden does not win either the second district in Nebraska or the district in Maine, that you're at 269, 269. So Biden has to win one of those districts. He's up nine points in the result from the early votes in that second district in Nebraska. He's up 11 points in the first district in Nebraska, which theoretically he has no chance to win.

Yeah, so guys, we talked in the beginning about a red mirage. So how in some of the states, they count the mail and ballots quickly, and in some of them, they count them slowly. And so in the states that count them slowly, Trump will appear to have a lead, but it's not real. Now, in Pennsylvania, he appears to have a lead, but I would still be fairly confident that it's not real. But the problem is, the red mirage did not hold, as far as we can tell in Florida or North Carolina, and it looks like he's going to win those anyway. So well, then that makes you question the strength of the concept of a red mirage, if you're being honest about it. And so since it didn't hold it, it appears in Florida and North Carolina,

then you worry a little bit more that it won't hold in Pennsylvania. But if things were normal, and obviously we're not within 100 miles of normal at this point, but if things were normal, we wouldn't be as worried because you'd be thinking, well, likely Biden's going to win Pennsylvania anyway when they count the mail-in votes, which are coming later and are heavily Democratic. We know those things. That's not a poll, that's registered Democrats versus registered Republicans. And that's far more certain.

So at the end of the day, you could still have Biden winning all the Midwest in Pennsylvania and Arizona. And it's not a blowout. And he made us way too nervous, but it's still a fine enough win and a solid win. And that's why I kept saying Biden's still the favorite, right? And I, and at one point I thought we were at the Nader, we went a little lower, okay? And now with Arizona maybe being called, it looks like we're on the way back up. Now, but there's also the wild card that consistently throughout the night, and at least what I have seen, Fox News has been the most optimistic for Biden.

That's right. And the New York Times has been the most optimistic for Trump. You know, I don't think they're planning it, but. I mean, that's the world we're living in. That that insanity that you just described is the world we're living in. So, you know, I don't know, I hope you're right, Jank. I hope you're right about the red, I forgot what you called it, but the red mirage, yeah. The red mirage, I hope you're right about this, I don't know.

You know, what Ben said earlier about the Democrats winning three elections through the popular vote, but losing the, the, the, the presidency. The only thing that's going to change that, and I don't know when or how it happens, let a Republican win the popular vote and lose the electoral college. And watch how fast the electoral college disappears. Gone. It won't come up. You know, these are the kind of fights that the Democrats forget the day after election day. Like how many times do you have to be screwed by this before you work on changing this? Before you work on figuring out a way, to make people's votes matter everywhere. Why are we always beholden to small states?

And when I say small, I mean smaller in population, smaller in economy. And the major states like a California or Texas or at New York, whatever, it's just a given so they don't even count. There's something fundamentally wrong with our election system. Let's work on changing it. And this is the kind of thing that the Democrats have to work on

in between elections, like today's not the day to have this argument. Yeah, I hear you, but Alonzo, in a sense, you nailed the problem exactly right. We all know with great certainty that if Democrats lose elections that they won the majority in, they'll do nothing about it. And if Republicans ever lost an election that they had the majority in, they'd ripped the country apart to change it. That's strength versus weakness. And whether we say it out loud or not, everybody in the country knows in their bones that the Democrats are weaker.

That's a massive, massive problem for the Democratic Party. All right. I don't know, Zhang, I didn't mean, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. But, and I understand what you're saying about weaker. I think the problem is that Democrats are spread too broad, too many ideas, trying to please too many people. You know, the Republicans at the end of the day, I have a friend, she and she put her money where her mouth is. When Trump won, she was Canadian. She had living in the United States. He won. She said, okay, I'm getting out of the country. But she put it really simple.

The Democrats can't come up with a good slogan. The Republicans, it's just simple ideas, right? They're going to take your guns or they're killing babies or some. And it could be nonsensical. It doesn't have to be true, but it's simple. Then the Democrats, going in nuance. I mean, Trump has been lying about having a health care policy for coming up on five years. We know he doesn't have a plan. He doesn't have a policy. They're believing that he's going to help the people with preexisting conditions while he knocks, you know, knocks down preexisting conditions. I don't know if it's weakness or you're trying, you're aiming too high. You're aiming too high. Simplify. Make people understand it. A simple statement

is easier to get behind. Yeah, but I think, Alonzo, that actually suits Jenks' argument. Like, stop with your nonsense of, you know, we're trying to bring dignity back and reaching across the aisle, take a stand on something that people want. And we know that polls show that Democrat, the Democratic positions on almost every important issue is either solidly supported to overwhelmingly supported. So support those issues, run on those issues. And then, at least for the presidency, and I'm telling you,

for a lot of these Senate seats too. You look at the Democratic candidates who seemed strong. Find candidate, look, it's not an accident that the last two Democratic presidents, who were too centrist for most people here at the Turks, certainly Bill Clinton, these were dynamic guys, unbelievably dynamic guys, lit up the room,

made their points strongly without a sense that they were making fun of the other side. It worked, right? And Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden are not in that mold. And I hope that at some point there will be a recognition that people, I don't know of her specifically, but people who have the dynamism of somebody like Alexandria, Alexandria, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, would, ought to be at the front and center of this party, whether it's winning a seat in New York and being Senate Majority Leader or whether down their

governor in New York or whether somewhere down the road, she runs for president. I'm not saying, And I agree with her on everything or that, but she represents the kind of person who is reminiscent of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Yeah, okay, we got to take a break, guys. I'll give you an update right before we go to the break. In Georgia, we know who the two people are that's going to go to the runoff. It's Democrat Raphael Warnock and Republican Kelly Loughler. Doug Collins conceded to Kelly Loughler. he is more of the populist, angry right-wing right-winger, and he is lost.

And she's only incredibly right-wing and corrupt and dumb. Yeah, yeah, so that's what happened in Georgia. She left the gun at home, so there's that. Yeah, so by the way- You didn't pose with the gun and the truck. Yeah, Cindy Hyde Smith won her re-election in for the Senate of Mississippi. So the idea that Democrats had a shot in places like Mississippi, that turned out not to be true. Then potentially close races like Elise Stefanik in 21st District in New York, she's a Republican.

She kept her seat comfortable enough to call already. So it's not just Biden. Across the board, Democrats are coming in not as strong as we would have wanted. And now in this case, it's not about the arguments they made. It's about their electoral performance. Okay, hit the join button below if you're watching on YouTube. Your participation in the show is absolutely critical. We need you to be the Young Turks and get our back.

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